 The first order of business is the minutes. So here's the correction on the proof of health insurance, the total request for 2017, the new actual number that I have is 15, 875, 564 and that's a result of the change in the line 5190 offset for group health insurance, difference of 19,178, so it actually brings down the total request by that amount to 15,875, I'm sorry, 15,875, thanks, 564. That shouldn't be a correction to the easement, should it? I'll check. This was the number as of Monday, let's end the minute. Well, you're right, so on Monday it said health insurance floated 18974, so that's correct, but I think the point I was trying to make is that's not a correct number. Okay, so I'm sorry, you've changed, the voted number is correct? No, it's not correct. It's not correct. We need to revote it or do an administrative change. I go with the, according to the common rules, it's not correct anymore. I think we need another half hour of discussion. Yeah. That was a good one. 20 grand administrative. Okay, so what is the correct number? Okay, I'll show you everything. The correct number for group health insurance for the 2017 request is 158,715,000. 15 million. No, 15 million. I'm sorry, it's been a long day, guys. That's right. We're bankrupt. 15 million. 875,564. The minute man's clear. Okay, so that's different than what we actually voted? That's correct. Yeah, remember we had a difference of opinion of what the health insurance was? Right. The offsets. Right. That can make them to the water and sewer, so we figured that out. So, so. So this number actually was correct that we, this down here, the peer had it. Yeah. What we needed to do was take the vote. I mean, that's where we could get the last thing. Oh, you could just correct that number. I'd like to have it in the minutes because the last thing I do is I check all the numbers against what's in the minutes. So I'd like to do something that we'll get into the minutes. Okay. Well, why don't we think we can do both at the same time? I'm not sure if this is technically correct. Okay. So Mary Margaret, are your votes that you did correct? Yes. So you had the correct numbers. The health, the other one did not. Right. But also I think there was a water and sewer change too. Yeah. Okay. Why don't we do it this way then and see if we can, do I have a motion to revise the health insurance budget to 15,000,875,564. So moved. Okay. Second. Okay. So are there any questions on this? Okay. So actually we're revising our vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. So Peter, why don't you put in these minutes here just a foot or just a little bit. And then we'll move on to parentheses corrected on 3,3028. And then in the minutes today that you take today, note the revoke. Okay. Is that doing well? One more thing. Okay. Because of, because Sandy did revise that number, it also affects the change. So the percent change in the minutes is 3.45%. And the correct increase would be 3.32%. So it's actually the, because I have like a couple of different copies of that budget. Of what? The health budget? Yeah. The health budget. So I have a big X through this one, which is how I scientifically keep track of this stuff. So I'm going to remove my X. So it's 15,875,564,3.3. This is 3%. Correct. That should be correct. Okay. Everybody clear on that? So that way we'll have the corrected number both as a sort of a parentheses in Monday minutes and as a motion in this minutes. Okay. So it's, it's done. Okay. Are there any other corrections? Well, yeah, I guess the numbers we used off the budget were based on Sandy's revised numbers. Yeah. I think those numbers are correct. They're not. They're not going to be the other one. Bill, are you saying the water and sewer number was correct? Yeah. Well, Sandy was saying when I was speaking with him, he was saying that, I can't remember exactly what he was saying about the water and sewer offsets because I was only concerned about wreck and rake. But he thought, I thought he said he was going to contact you. He did. Oh, okay. He revised the budget. Oh, okay. And it's different than the one that, that was used to be presented under, I think an effective wreck and rake. The total, it's a total amount of the health insurance offsets then changes then the contribution from water and sewer changes. No, we need to know which one we're going to use. Either version A or version B. Sandy is a different person. Well, we have to use the correct version. Right. Well, that's the one we're going to use. Okay, so. So, do you want, I have the numbers for wreck and rake. The ones I presented were correct. Yeah. Okay, the health insurance. No. I don't know about the rest. Well, then the water and sewer is correct. It's a health insurance that isn't. Okay, so the health insurance and water and sewer. Is 576-828. That is not correct. I believe I brought this adjustment. 576-829 or 828? 576-828. Okay. That's what we voted. Is that the correct number? Yes. Well, according to Sandy's memo, yeah. It is a consistent number. Yes. But you said it wasn't correct. No, we haven't. That's the new, that's the correct number. It went back to the original option. This is, this is as of Monday. Who knows what's correct. That's what the issue is, is that it's a matter of timing. We've got one budget that's changed. Right. But it could be that it was a mistake made on the other two. Right. But not on this one. When he did this one, he did not put in the correct reckon rank insurance. What number did he just give you? But he said the final number was correct. That's all I can tell you is what he said. I didn't do the math. I only cared about reckon rank. Well, I emailed you the number. And reckon rank, as I presented it on Monday, was the correct number. Was the correct number? Yes. Correct numbers. And I did the same thing for health insurance. I took the new number that Sandy sent out last night. Okay. And I changed that to that number from what it had been for the offset. And that offset affected obviously the bottom point. Right. It seems like we just simply have a timing issue. Right. Because everybody, so everybody had issued on their presentation new budgets. Not the budgets that were in the book. Right. It seems like it looked like the last budget was just catching up to the first three because Mary Margaret had the two and knew the rink in here. Right. We ran at that water sewer. Now we're tying it up with the actual health insurance. So that's why I think they're not going to come back. The rink and the recreation are the record. Because that's how we voted. Yes. We corrected the new health insurance budget. And now we just need to know is the water and sewer budget 576828 health insurance correct? Let me look at the revised budget. Okay. We've got people waiting. Why don't you see? We can find this out and we'll come back to it. I have an email from Sandy that says this is the final underlying change. And he's got a total of 575602. 575602. Well, give that number to Ray. And he can play with it and make sure we have it. Are there any other corrections on the minutes? That's not the one we just looked at. Excuse me. Are there any other corrections on the minutes? Okay. I'll draw him a motion. So moved. Seconded. Okay. Seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? This is for the last minute. Wow. Okay. All right. Here's Ray, folks. You've seen what's even happened at the last minute. Borsig, can you take the mic? Any other presentation? Absolutely. Welcome. Thank you. I'm Borsig Rowe and we are the other, well there should be eight members, but my care had a previous engagement. And I'd like them to introduce themselves to you and then I'll go through the presentation. I'm Eric Humber, Vice-Chair of the State Act and I'm selected appointee. I am David Beebe of the State Act and Appointee. That's the mayor of our commemoration, Mr. Robinson of the Historical Commission. Secretary of the Conservation Commission and Appointee. Richard Murray, the Alty Mountain Department, is the Interest in the State Act. And you will find all of the resumes for the committee at the back of what was giving you today. And if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves to us, I know most of you. And for the new members, I'm Clevisa Rowe, I'm chair of the committee. And if you wouldn't mind, so people can find out who you are. We have met earlier. Peter, when she started. Oh. Darryl Harman, precinct 12. Bill Keller, precinct 16. Brian Beck, precinct 9. Paul Bayer, precinct 13. Grant Givian, precinct 19. Dean Carmen, precinct 20. Allen Jones, precinct 14. Mary Margaret Franklin, precinct 5. Dave McKenna, precinct 21. Gina Russell, precinct 4. I appreciate 50. Great. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate the time. What I'm going to do tonight is introduce where we stand with the money that we're getting and a brief overview of the Community Preservation Act for those of you that haven't or not familiar with it. And then we'll introduce the projects. I think what I'll do after the first introduction, I'll see if you have any questions. We'll introduce the five projects that we're bringing forward and we will stop after each project to see if you have questions. People will answer questions and we have Kathy Garnett from the Conservation Commission as well to answer questions. And then at the end we're going to do the administrative expenses that Eric Helmuth will speak to. I would like to thank Eric Helmuth because after our Monday night presentation, one of your good members seated in front of me told us what we should be doing for our presentation tonight. And I don't think that Eric has eaten since then. So if you have any praise, keep it on Eric. The reason that we're here tonight is when the Community Preservation Committee was formed, there was, as part of the bylaw, requests that we consult with the Board of Selectment, the Finance Committee and the Capital Planning Committee and actually the Council on Aging about our budget and our project recommendations. We have yet to vote on our projects and we plan to do so tonight after we talk to you and get your reactions to form things. This has been a very special year, shall we say. Frankly, we don't want to repeat it because we were really just appointed in October. We started working in mid-November. There were no application processes in place. We had to write a plan. We didn't get the projects until the end of February and here we are at the end of March having decided on five projects. Nine were submitted, but five of the ones that we'll talk about tonight are going to town meeting. As you know, town meeting is the one that decides whether these projects will go forward or not. We are really proud of the care that we have taken in this process, this very hurry process. We've had high standards that have been met by the five projects that you're going to see in front of you and we have had a variety of public meetings. We plan to do more so next year. Most importantly, the nine members of this committee take their responsibility as fiscal agents for this town money very seriously. It's terribly important to us that we really vet these projects and we have and we're happy to present them to you. The basics of the Community Preservation Act are three-fold. There are three uses. They tend to be uses that are not traditionally funded by municipal finance. They are historic preservation, open space and recreation, which Arlington does a wonderful job of funding, and affordable housing, which we also do a pretty good job on. We have a great housing authority and we also have the Housing Corporation of Arlington. So what we have to do, and if you go to the chart, which is a couple pages beyond, every year we need to spend 10% of the money that we take in on housing, 10% on open space and recreation, and 10% on historic preservation projects. The rest, the 65 to 67%, is flexible and it can be spent in the way that the committee proposes and is accepted by town meeting. If we go back then to the page that says the work of the CPA Committee, I won't read through what we've done. I've sort of said it already, but we are about halfway through the process. We still have to go to town meeting and then like the CBDG funds, we'll be monitoring these five projects if they're approved. So we're still very new at this, but this is the way that we plan to be working. You can see on the next page how CPA projects happen. They're initially submitted to the Community Preservation Committee. We then look at them and see if they really will work for the law, the Community Preservation Act law, which is very strict when it was written. One of the things that was, one of the initial writers of the law, Marion Walsh, wanted to make sure was that it wasn't a funnel for the maintenance needs, and that's one of the reasons there's an awful lot of very, to us, somewhat arcane requirements. And then we will ask the projects to give us more detail. So we got nine to begin with. We're coming with five because some of the other projects were not ready for presentation to town meeting. What we do then is we go to town meeting and you'll see on the right-hand side what town meeting can do with the projects. They can approve the recommendations. They can reject the recommendations. They can reduce the amount of money that's spent and they can, the last one, the reserve account recommended is something that's almost never used. But they can't raise the amount of money. So if we say we're going to spend $636,000 on Robbins Farm Park, they can't say, you really need to spend $800,000. So that's the way the law is written and that's the way we plan to use it. We have been working with Doug Hyme and we'll be working more carefully with him as soon as we've taken our vote. And then if you go to this project, the projected revenues for CPA in 2017, that's what we'll be recommending to town meeting. One of the quirks about CPA is the local match that we have been raising in Arlington in the first year, which is about $1.3 million, cannot be spent. And in fact, the recommendations that we're making to town meeting are of 2017 money. So there's about a $1.3 million amount of money that cannot be spent until the books close in the summer. It will then be added to the next fiscal year. It's just the way the law is written. It was kind of a surprise. So we have had absolutely no money to spend on any of the work that we've done thus far. And we'll get into the administrative reserves later. What I want you to see is that, as I said, the town of Arlington receipts is the $1,364,000. We seem to have a little more money. It's $1.3 million. What I do every month is talk to Mike Moriser. He'll send me an email spreadsheet of what has come in and what the balances are. In the third quarter of this year is when the abatements happened. And so some of the money, the abatements are happening now. So we're making a conservative estimate of how much money there will be coming from the local receipts. Again, this is a matching program. We do get a state match. At the moment it is estimated by the Department of Revenue in March as being a 19% match. So that's what the $247,000 figure is. It will really be determined in November, next November. And we already know that the governor has put an additional $10 million into the fund in his budget. But because we never know what's going to happen on Beacon Hill, we have not estimated that as part of our match. And in fact, DOR doesn't ask that we don't do that. So what we'll be going to tell the meeting with is that figure, the $1547,000 figure. Then on the next page is the project page with the amounts of money that are attached for each project. And I will go through them briefly, just the money part. Robbins Farm Park, as you know, was in the capital plan. We're going to be funding that. The spy fund edge is none of the capital plans. It brings tremendous benefits not only to this one project, but we believe to the entire edge of spy fund part. The Kimball former house is one part of, I think, how much total money is it, David? $1.4 million that will get those three units up and moving. And the Arlington Housing Authority, the Drake Village windows that will be funding the $200,000, is leveraging state funds of $1.4 million. And Richard, do you want to get up and talk about the meeting today? No. Can you hear me okay? No? Okay. Actually John Griffin, the Executive Director of the Housing Authority, met with, I believe it was DHCT and the architects of it. And DHCT, in particular, grills over the potential opportunity of this $200,000 company. So I just want to read it. Great idea. And I believe there's 150,000 coming from CBDG this year to leverage that money. And then we have the stabilization of the Whittemore-Robbins carriage house. So those are the five projects. The next page you can see the revenue and expenditures and reserves that we have. And the lower part, the $94,000 and the $77,000, Eric will talk about later. And then we have a map of where the five projects are. And luckily for us, they're all over town. And I think that that's the way it should be. I know that Parks and Recreation and everybody, all the committees try to make sure that the money is spent all over town, but this has worked out particularly well. Before I get into the projects, are there any questions that you want to ask on what I've already presented? Talk here. Melissa, on your page. I know, we don't have page numbers. The revenue page. I've been considering the state match. The current it says in 2017. That supposed to be 2016? Yes. Was it fiscal or calendar? Right. Fiscal 17 but calendar or 7? Well, the Department of Revenue actually just did it this month to determine what the match should be for the communities. So it's in actually 16. So it probably should say March 2016. To raise the money one year in a second. Yes, but we're actually spending next year's money at town meeting. So this first year is an odd year. I don't know why it was written this way. And it was kind of a surprise. But so the money, unless we have a special town meeting in the fall, the fiscal 2016 money won't be spent until fiscal 2018. We can, yeah. It's very odd. That's the way the law works. Yeah. Only for the first year. And then it's the normal. Yes. This is the money, the $1.57 million, $547,000 is actually next year's income that we will be designating in town meeting. Well, we will spend money next year. But the effect of that would be is that 2018 we will have, we'll have the opportunity to spend the local collections from fiscal 2016 plus anticipator. Right. So it'll be the one year where it's double because we had one year where it was none. And thereafter it'll just be one year in time. Our town meeting is in the spring. And so it needed to be approved before the tax rate is set. Maybe get in time to go to town meeting this past spring. So it pulls over. The books are closed in the town. So next year, next year in fiscal 2017, you will be sending fiscal 2017 revenue. Correct. And the money received in fiscal 2016 is held over and actually gets sent in fiscal 2018 together with the fiscal 2018 revenue. Okay. You already have the questions, Karen? So maybe I should wait for you to go over. But I was surprised. I like the idea of the break with those teams. But how does that qualify for the confirmation? Okay. I would love to get it. Why don't we take that one first? One of the things that happens in the, because we have a two-step procedure for applications. The Arlington Housing Corporation's Arlington Housing Authorities project came in. And it was for both a life and skill center and for Drake Village windows. The way the Community Preservation Act law is written, we can't be providing funds for the life and skill center. So we had, I know. I mean, you could rewrite the law if you like. But we can provide funds for fixing the envelope of a building. Fixing the envelope might be in the roof. It might be in the leaky windows. So you've got some really new pictures of weekly windows. And that's that part of it we could fund. CBDG can fund the whole thing. So that's what we have been doing with the housing authority and with the planning department is working hand in hand to come up with something that we can fund so that they can get the DHCD funding. And this is $200,000. We'll put it in the affordable housing category. Did you want to say something here? Yeah, just for a little more detail, if you're interested in the policy that informs that little quirk as to why we can do the windows. We can do the windows because they're threatening the integrity of the building. We couldn't do the windows because they're uncomfortable. The reason for that is in the back of your packet is this grid that we sort of have been encouraged to live and die by. So the VOR interpretation of the law because that's their charge to do so. And you can see in the grid of their community housing that we can do preservation. We can't do rehabilitation restoration unless that housing asset was acquired in the CPA. So in this case, the windows is falling under preservation and there actually has been a VOR written opinion along the waxes DHCD, actually, that you can, you know, things that protect the real property and preserve the real property are eligible. So you can do things for the building but not for the inhabitants in short. Okay, Peter? Another question like the previous one. On the recommended projects at the top of the page, it says recommended projects for FY17. But if I understand what you said earlier, that should say FY18. No, it's FY17. The money can be spent in FY17? Yes, the money will be spent. And that's one of the things that we can talk about as we go through each one is what the schedule is. And the idea is that you have to have a schedule, you have to have very thorough cost estimates, and you have to have an idea of, you know, our funding. We would like our funding to happen in a yearly cycle. I'm hoping to use some of the CBDG reporting mechanisms so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel because I think that would be a good way. So in a year's time, we can be coming to you and saying the $1.5, $47,000 that we appropriated, if it's approved in town meaning this is where the funding stands. And we'll have a spreadsheet to follow to track the projects. FY17 starts this July? Correct. July 1st. So these projects can start sometime after that? Right. And not before that. But not even. Right. And one of the things that we were trying to do with the Kimbell Farmer House, for instance, is we want to make sure that the certificate of occupancy happens after July 1st. So, you know, we can't really incur expenses in advance of that. We now have to incur them afterwards. Okay. Now, why don't we do the Spipon first? The Spipon Project Edge Protection and Erosion Control Project is a project of the Conservation Commission. And it is a study for 49.760. It's a wonderful idea. There's a lot of erosion in Spipon. This is not the Spipon Project that was done by the Park and Recreation Department. This is a natural processes study that will be done by Chester Engineering and seen by the Conservation Commission and the Community Preservation Committee. And you can see what the goals of the project are. And it's really a water quality project. One of the things that happened during the Massachusetts Avenue Reconstruction in East Washington, the protection of the catch basins to make sure that there wasn't anything going into Spipon because they kept the water from draining well. And so there was a lot of overland drainage that went down the streets and into the pond. So it's been more polluted than usual. One of the things that you do on a regular basis is authorize the amount of money for the treatment of invasive species in Spipon. This is a water quality project as well and a habitat project. But it's mostly to be looking at the Edge Protection for Long Spipon and figuring out where the erosion is, where the accretion is. And there's a very good bioengineering company that will be doing the work and it will be overseen by this woman on my right and the man right behind me. Kathy Garnett is a registered landscape architect who thought she was retired. Have I left anything up? Yeah, something up really good. The Conservation Commission is trying to strike a balance between the ecosystem and the use of that pond, which is going up every year. And what's we noticed, but maybe no one who's been on the Spipond park has noticed that the Edge is eroding away and chunks of soil is dropping into Spipon and that's deteriorating the water quality, which brings everything else down. So our project is to come up with some ideas to stop this in the future and to make sure that we keep that balance between recreational use and the ecosystem and habitat and place at Spipon. Sure. Because they're publicly owned parcels so that's the only ones that we can spend money on but we're hoping to have an educational component so that what we learn and do could be done by homeowners around the time. Last month, I think it was, you came before us to talk about some serious problems in McLean. Do you anticipate or do you feel that in the future it would be appropriate use for CPA firms for McLean? From McLean's park? Yes, I could see that happening in some sense. That study, if it goes through town meeting will identify some actions that can take place and using that chart we can see what can be, how CPA can fund some of those projects. But the study is already happening so then it's down to doing work and a restoration project on such a... So if it's recreation in open space and if you don't purchase the open space with CPA money you can't use the funds on it. So we're really going to have to look at this and find out what's there and what we can do for that project. So explain again why it would be appropriate to use CPA funding for Spipon but maybe not for McLean? This phase one of Spipon is just a study and a study is appropriate under CPA, under open space. So what was it, $10,000 that Wired Life requested? Who had been paid for CPA funds? Who had been? Do you know whether that was considered? Whether it was considered bringing it? No, because it was... I think it was that committee and that process was brought along just a few months before the CPA committee was put in place and finalized and we were still waiting and we didn't want to miss an opportunity to move forward with that very important project. One of the things that we found actually is that there are a lot of parts of the town that don't understand what CPA is and after town meeting when there's an apartment head meeting I've asked to come and talk to all the department heads in town so that they know exactly how they could provide for parts. Christine Bonjourno was the only town person who immediately turned up at the first meeting and said, we would like to do this and she's been great. I mean, why health and human services is the first in line, I don't know. Maybe if you look at the building you'll know why. So I'm just a little confused. You can spend CPA money to do a study but you said you can't spend CPA money for the work? So if you're thinking, hey, this is water and so is that study we're thinking about but it's not really similar. What's spike on is recreational area and the London Park is a storm water retention basin that supposedly should be maintained by the town. We can't recount work with CPA money. So I don't know what's coming out of that study but if there's something available to be funded through CPA that makes a lot of sense to me. Spike bond is a great bond and it's a public space and it's open space. So that's why it works. But in some places you can protect, you can protect the shoreline and through future damage but you can't maintain it. So the maintenance activity, any maintenance activity, whether it's open space or recognition line is still responsible at the town. You can't refund it by CPA but you can protect and keep that asset from deteriorating further. Okay, so if a study came out and said that water area, spike on the Quintet Park really needs to be detoured in a different configuration that could involve construction which might be possible. Potential. Okay. But if it's just to maintain it, you can't. So if you maintain it as in dredge it, that's probably a small amount of pressure. No, probably. But one of the reasons we hired a partner on Chester Engineering, and we met with the DCW but some of the CPAs wanted to match some state grant money and Chester Engineering was going to work with us to identify other sources of funding that could fund things like that and you also have a better chance of getting funding from the DCS. So just like, you know, in his project we'll, engineers and our committee will look at what where the problems fall on how they could be identified as a big project that could be used as a platform. Okay. Okay, the next project is the chemical formula house. You probably have seen this house from the form of Pierce and McAddie and it falls into the category of affordable housing. It's being done by the housing corporation of Arlington and the amount requested was $200,000. This is actually an affordable housing project and historic preservation project. The old Kimball Farmer house belonged to the Cutter family descendants and has been sitting in Massachusetts on Massachusetts Avenue since 1826. It's one of the... How much is it registered? Is it a national? It's a national registered building and it's also on the state list. Yeah. And what we have done is estimated we have a cost estimate from them about the finish... It's basically finishing up the work. It's a lot of the exterior work that qualifies under historic preservation. There will be three units of affordable housing and it's through all of its... zoning and... Dave, do you want to say anything else? Sure. So the person was saying three units would be created, two one-bedrooms and one two-bedroom unit, all rentals that should be owned and managed by the housing corporation of Arlington. I've been seeing those. We say it's a $1.4 million project, as we said, $200,000, which is being funded by CPA. It's being restored for the apartment and the materials standard for the state-of-the-art. So I thought the counter said affordable housing under the... Yes. That's right. It'll be those three units that go on the sub-size housing unit for you. Any questions? Dave? When CPA money is used on governmental assets, they just have a company with a type of... Deep restriction? Yes. I guess you made that term. No, no, no. But you're completely right and it does have a deep restriction. Yeah, it's in perpetuity. It has to be deed in affordable perpetuity. And the historic preservation wants to have a historic preservation restriction on the property? What is a non... Wait, what is non-government? I mean, like, I assume it's a different process if it's a town asset already. Right. Okay, so by them accepting that thing, this money, they're sort of committing themselves to keeping this as affordable housing. Yes. Correct. Correct. Or they have to return the money. Yeah, or they can return the money. Okay. Okay. Great. All right. We don't want to rob them's carriage house. This is... You can see that wonderful yellow carriage house. It's a little bit behind the Woodmore-Robbins house. It is currently used for storage. This is a rehabilitation project. Again, when you talked about preserving the envelope of the money, that's what this project is essentially using. The use that is envisioned now is continuation of the storage. Now, there are many conversations about other uses, but this project is not going to build out that space. It's going to protect it from falling down. If, in fact, there's another use that happens, we would have to come back and whoever was going to use it is going to have to have a build-out space. But this is working on the foundations. This is working on the framing inside mold, all sorts of things. This is going to be overseen by the Health and Human Services and the Arlington Historical Commission. You might ask why the Health and Human Services is involved in a construction project. We did. I think Christine Bonjourno has a lot to do without overseeing construction. The amount of money that they asked for at the beginning was too little, and we made them, I think there are at least three layers of contingency in there and a lot of oversight that's come into the project because of our concern that this town entity that really doesn't do construction is in charge. There's a structural engineer that went and did an analysis that we've reviewed and is available for anybody that wants to see it that talked about what actually needed to be done. We did a cost estimate. We have not only the overseers that we've just talked about, but we also have architects and structural engineers that will oversee the work. Anything else, Joanne? No, I mean, I think probably all of them will know a little bit about the generosity of the brothers and sisters and the historical significance of the property that was donated to the town which included the house and the carriage house which were originally on mass. They were moved back to make room for the library. And so this building was an original part of the run. In all of these projects we have letters of support just wonderful to read in your spare time after town meeting when you're putting your feet up and you want to read some of the letters of support. The ones for spy pond. The spy pond project I think are particularly wonderful as is the history of this particular building that Robin's sisters would drive their car into the carriage house and there was what I call a turn sign and it would go around and then they could drive their car out again which is, they didn't have to turn. They just put it on the trim style and of course I think it's been filled in with concrete. Any questions on this one? Okay, hey. Robin's farm field and 8-way renovation. The Park and Recreation Commission has done wonderful work. This is the second phase of the two phase project and it's doing the playing fields and the community gardens are that group of getting some money to redo some of the fence work and the paths in the community garden which is just south of the current playground. The playground and the slide were the first phase of work and this is more the playing fields up the hill. They're also going to be putting in a historic landmark which is the building of the old Robin's farm building, sort of granite blocks to make it look like the foundation. There is a bronze dog that will be recreated and we will not pay for the bronze dog because it's fake history and we can't pay for fake history. This is a great project. It's going to be run by the Parks and Recreation Commission as they do all of their projects very well. They're going to be doing design and Leslie, do you have anything else you want to talk about? That was a project that as you probably know was in the Catholic plant. So this will come out of the Catholic plant with the support of the town name and the CDA. We have studied to assess all of the problems in town as to whether they need ADA requirements or not and what we're going to be doing is incorporating the recommendations to ensure that the site and Robin's farm is accessible and that's kind of the foundation for why we're helping the friends with the site work to put in the dog and the markers for the mansion. That's one of the projects they're running and they were paying for but the commission wants to ensure that that is an accessible installation and since we're doing fields and it's very close to the fields we're providing assistance with the site work for that and the gardeners will be doing their own work they're going to contribute to volunteer labor along with contributing to the terrorists for that project. Thank you. Carolyn? To comment since I grew up in the park it's great to see that you're restoring the frame the foundation. I've actually played on that as a kid. My concern about fixing the field is that you don't decrease the safety of the kids who are sledding to just watch if that's been happening and make sure that's not affected. And I am a little concerned as a current resident of East Arlington to see the wealthier people in town buy their own statue when you can't even have 15,000 for parking in East Arlington. Go to breakfast. The normal story handling part this year that's the current project. We do try to spread the wealth around town. That's actually a comment from the finance committee. You'll be glad to know that the chair of this committee lives in East Arlington. She'll be watching. Of course she's lived in every part of town. And I want to just say one thing Andrew Dexton is not talking but he's a very instrumental piece of architecture and he has been really helpful in this process. And Chuck, even though he's a conservation major also happens to be a builder. So their contribution to the financial evaluation of projects has been tremendously important. So that's it for me and now I'm going to give this guy the next section. Thank you. So Clarissa asked me to talk about a couple of reserves that we're going to ask Tony to do. The first one I'll just briefly mention as you go back to the budget you'll see the budget statement that shows the ins and the outs. You'll see these listed. And I apologize for not being engaged in this. Under the expenditures and reserves there's two line items. The CPA budget and reserve account for $94,335. And that's project money that's just not appropriated so we save it. And the reason it's not mandatory to create this reserve and budget reserve but it's advisable because that preserves our access to it throughout fiscal year 2017. So if something comes up and we have a special time meeting to be a little appropriate we can get out that money instead of waiting for the next. So that's the simpler one. And then the administrative expenses reserve account $77,350. I'll now flip back to my page on that. So there are restrictions that we have been learning and will continue to learn on what the CPA revenues can be spent on because of the cost of implementing the CPA. Some of those have not been nice and surprises but we won't be conscious. There are ways through the business that is controlled by this committee to as much as possible legally within the law spare the town budget for expenses that are incurred by the committee's operation by the processing applications of vetting them and presenting them to town meeting. And that's what this reserve fund can be used for. So the opportunity is to ask town meeting to reserve up to 5% of the estimated revenues coming in for that fiscal year which is where the $77,350 figure comes from. There's not a financial downside assuming you don't need the money for projects. There's no financial downside for doing so because any of that money that we don't use for qualified administrative expenses goes back into the general CPA funds or projects for future years. We don't get to the bill that does not occur from years here. It does not carry forward. So that fund can pay for some specific things but the benefit that we particularly interest finance committee is we don't know what kind of CPA proposals are going to come through the door next year. There may be some really interesting opportunities that require some very expensive due diligence. It could be legal work to investigate whether or not this is eligible or it is what the state can say it is. It could be environmental studies, it could be surveys of the land and we are allowed to use the administrative funding instead of town budget funding to vet those projects up to the point that we recommend doing town meeting. If there are those in need as Dean was saying earlier we need to do legal work to ensure the job of grant agreement that private entity will agree to a grant agreement that will enforce some of the requirements for grant agreement. But for the town side instead of having to ask the town council to absorb that time and therefore that cost that we can hire a lawyer to commit a work committee that knows how to do that. And she can do it. So whatever possible that the intent of this is to protect the town budget from the CPA committee expenses when it gets possible. So the next page, what can we use it for? It's a professional health education. It's part of the process of not only receiving, processing, evaluating, vetting and recommending projects but also in the community preservation planning process. Every year we are required to hold a public meeting with a real planning process and a real listening to priorities and needs and we can use that money if we need to to hire someone to conduct part of that process for us or conduct a meeting if we really don't have the expertise. Again, instead of asking someone from the town side to do that and to spend that resource. A small item about $4300 is paying due to the statewide community preservation coalition which is probably the best deal on the page because of the multitude of technical assistance available to the town and to the committee that they provide. We've gotten it free the first year because they don't have any money savings thanks to that weird first year process. We can apply the money if needed for administrative assistance for the CPA committee itself. Because we haven't been through a full year we frankly don't know how much administrative help we're going to need. Our intent is to be conservative with that because we want to use as much of the CPA money as we can on projects. We very generously had a donation from the town manager of Ebra Golis this time and she's been fantastic but that was the understanding that that was because we were poor so to the extent that that is necessary for committee administration we may look at some ways to get a few hours there. She's been tracking her time since the beginning. Yes, she has. Yes, so we have some hours on that. As I mentioned we can do due diligence and vetting projects in some smaller expenses but why not pay for those out of the CPA since their CPA incurred public outreach communications even this report, that we're going to be mailing to town meeting can be duplicated under the every penny counts model of fiscal management. Again, you can come out to CPA and kitty if we have that reserve fund for the committee. Just a final thing with town meeting that the reserve account for the budget reserve is transferred from the funds. This is actually an appropriation because the committee is the only body that can spend that money. Okay, so let's say you figure that you need, you know, thinking numbers out of the year, $5,000 for administrative help over the course of the normal year. Does this, and the town manager decides that he can assign a member of his staff to do that. Ken, then we get that money as an offset to his budget. If the person was working part-time and then had the CPA responsibilities added to the reserve or scope, we could pay that difference to make it full-time. And what we can't do is supplant an existing amount of money, like CBDG pays for a lot of our planning staff. CPA can only pay for a new person or a new component of somebody that's been part-time. This has been a real bugaboo for Adam and me. At one point, we're talking, before Jenny Raid came, of trying to, because the CBDG administrator left, we thought, great, we'll have a person that does CBDG and CPA, and it's a new hire, so we could have some of the administrative budget go for that. When Jenny came, she looked at the job and she said, I want this to be a full-time, the CBDG person to be full-time. So we're back at a point where we don't really know yet what we're doing, and so, and we don't know what town meeting's gonna allow us to do, so we really won't know until July 1st. I've done a lot of ideas, I've done a lot of research in surrounding communities about what they do. Obviously in Somerville and Cambridge that are a little richer than we are, they just have the existing planning, mostly planning staff do the work. In Cambridge, the Cambridge Historical Commission has a lot of staff. They do the historic preservation. They have an affordable housing department. They do the affordable housing, and their community development does the open space and recreation. So this is all new for us. We called Belmont, actually Eve called Belmont for us, and to find out what they did and they have a person that says he's a financial planner that's doing the work on a part-time basis. We don't know yet because we don't want to go out and advertise a position that doesn't exist nor do we have know what money we have. The town has a very hard time getting good part-time help and I know Karen Malloy is concerned about that. We thought we would try to see if there was another CPA administrator we could share. We've looked at what Lexington does and what Concord does. Lexington has a lot more money than we get through CPA, even though there are fewer people. So it's in process. We don't really know yet what we're doing. We're just incredibly grateful that we've had Eve to help us. And I think the tracking of the construction projects is a concern I have. I manage construction projects, so I know what's involved. And I have a very hard time with the idea that Christine Bongiorno, who is head of health and human services, is going to have to be overseeing that construction, granted with two more volunteers from the Arlington Historical Commission. But how we handle that is something that I'm concerned about. I don't have any real answers yet. Any guidance would be appreciated. There's a new position being recommended in the manager's office. That might be something to discuss. Yes. With the manager. Correct. Are there any other questions? Carolyn? 74,000? Okay. Right. So I'm assuming that that money can be paid out of this? No. And why is that? It can't be because it's incurred in this fiscal year. We've already, when it was $44,000, David Goode came to us right away and said, can you pay for this money? I have a distributed of a memorandum from the Department of Revenue. So we can't pay for the implementation costs of CPA that the town budget incurs. We're sorry. We'd like to, but we can't do it. To just clarify, there's really two reasons. The one of them is that it was the wrong fiscal year and we didn't have access to the money. And the other one is through that memorandum that you have, there was this unpleasant surprise to us as well because it feels kind of unfair. But the reason, there's a reason, and it goes back to the, how they got CPA passed in the first place. There was concern when the law was passed that it would be a back door to getting a wrong profit two and a half. So there's a, the nose of planting phrase that would be claws in the law that we've all come to know very well, is a fire, intended to be a fiscal firewall to prevent you from backfilling what you're already supposed to be doing on the town site. And in this case, it doesn't make sense because it's clearly an expensive employment CPA, but it's kind of a casualty of that firewall built into the statute in the way that the money is not permitted to flow. Yet next year we'll have the 2016 money. And so therefore, why can't it, why can't it come out of the administrative cost from that money once we have access to it? It's because of the second reason, that the nose of planting clause, that the fiscal firewall, that if it's, if it's, well, I'm not, can you do a better way to explain it, because it's tricky. It's very tricky. I did send out, and I can send it to you again, the Department of Revenue. When the town of Brooklyn was trying to decide whether to adopt CPA or not, they asked very specific questions. And it's, the money, administrative money can be used for only the community preservation committee expenses. But it is an expensive committee because the committee can't do the work without it. Correct. That's not the way the Department of Revenue looks at it. They would, they would look at it and say that it's, it's the town, in this case, the treasurer's expense. Right. And, you know, they said that there are other costs that may be incurred to implement an adopt CPA, that it's on the town side of things, as it were, were not allowed to. And the assessor's costs, for instance. Yeah. So in, in actuality, this is an assessor and a treasurer at the Department of Costs and IT is doing the work for that. Correct. Is how the state would look at it. Right. Correct. Okay. And, you know, David Good is a good friend and when he gave, I got that $44,000 email, I thought, oh, now what? And, you know, Adam, I, I said, is there any way we can do this? And I was told that. So. Well, I, I represent the. Yeah, yeah. Department. So if, if I can pass the buck on to treasury and assessors. I will. At least they got my response to them. Yeah. Well, I'd like to know. Maybe if they upgraded the treasure software, that would help too. Well, there, that's what they're doing. That's good to hear. Other questions. Good job. So. When, when the Community Preservation Act was presented at Tom meeting in May of 2014, there was a, there was a portion of the select men's presentation that talks specifically about using CPA in a way that would extend the budgetary life of Arlington. And I think they were very proud of that, that section of it, right? And so in order to make the mechanics work, there's a, there's sort of a balancing act between the projects that would not be part of the ordinary scope of government and the projects that, that are. And so the target to all of it becomes the affordable housing piece. Cause once the affordable housing piece goes off the state match, you're not extending the budgetary life. You're actually eroding on using their own model. You're actually eroding, eroding the budgetary worthiness that they championed so loudly. So I guess my question is, I guess a little bit more open-ended. So with, you know, I think about 400,000, let's say, of affordable housing. What was your sort of the committee stop process about sort of the balancing act in that regard of how much is, you know, give you, think of it as, I mean, how it's spinning the scope of government. What was the thought process in balancing it? Well, first of all, we have to act on projects that come to us. And one of the things about this very truncated year is a lot of the town entities didn't know enough about the CPA to apply. We're hoping that will change next year. And so the ones that really helped out the budget are the Park and Recreation Departments 1. The capital planning people were very good. They sent a spreadsheet immediately. Christine Bonjana was again good. That's a town-owned resource. And then the Arlington Housing Authority 1 came to us. So those three are really helping the town budget. The other two, if you don't include adding to affordable housing as something that will help the town, you could say that that's an extra and the spy pond park one. But we don't see it that way. I mean, we got nine projects that were proposed. We went down to the five because of the schedule who was going to manage the projects, whether the cost estimates made sense, who was doing the work. This is, for instance, historic preservation. That's not a field in Arlington that we've done very well by. So there will be, I would think. And then in the back of this handout that Eric so nicely put together is a list of all the CPA projects. And you'll see that the longest list is the historic resource list and how many projects there are in that realm that really need attention. Both town-owned and other historic resources like the Jason Russell House and the Milt Schwab Mill. These are projects that don't traditionally come into the kind of town that we have. But there are projects that, for instance, anything that has to do with this beautiful building could certainly be dealt with with CPA. Anything that any exterior work on the senior center could come to CPA. There are lots of things that could be done. I don't think that necessarily the department heads understand that yet. And that's why I want in the summertime to go and talk to them about what things CPA can pay for and what they can't pay for. That's something that this committee can be helpful to us as well because your work with department heads is to help spread that report. Well, that's okay. I mean, that's the point of it. No, what Adam is doing is keeping track of all the costs. So, for instance, Eve's time. I'll manage it. It doesn't make sense to your knowledge of the fiscal year. Which should be the highest one. No, we don't know yet because we don't know we're halfway through the process. Once we get to town meeting, that's another... I mean, Doug Hyam is going to have to spend a considerable time. The comptroller is going to have to spend time setting up the reserve accounts with us. The treasurer's office is going to have to spend some time. You know, Adam was hopeful that we could pay what was first a $44,000 bill now gotten to $74,000 for the IT work, but we couldn't do it. I mean, I think what we should be doing is keeping track of these expenses and really see how much it's costing the town. I don't think... Has there been an effort to forecast how much of an impact this will have on, for example, helping human services that much with overseeing that project? How much Doug Hyam's time will be spending can't be paid to the administrator? I think that that is something that Adam has been looking at. I don't think it'll come close to $630,000 for the Provins Farm Park, for instance, that is being taken off the standard budget. But I think what we have to do, we have to go through a whole year, because we're just at the beginning. We have town meeting to go, then we have the oversight and the projects to go. And as Adam said, we have to... I understand that there hasn't been an effort to forecast what that... Well, we have... Before the... We put in contingency money into the project, and we've included not only an architect's design of a historic participation person to help the other side or to take the other side of the project. Okay, but there hasn't been an effort to forecast, for example, to just be my draft, and it uses the same... How much of her time... That's going to be a member of the community, but I think that what we'll be able to do is to put almost any responsibility on the designer. And the least that she has to do, you've got to do, is from the least standpoint. And we've got the budget for that in the ministry. Is to provide the other side of the structure. But I think that what we should try to do is to do a forecast. Because... Because not only that, but the... I'm concerned about some of the structural problems, not in part of my creation. That's a really solid... Isn't it? This is the ninth member of our committee. Like here, who's been very instrumental in helping out in all these projects. Where was it? The structure. The open space and park and recreation structure is there. I'm not worried about that. The affordable housing structure is there. There is no structure for historic preservation. We do not have a historic preservation plan. There's nobody paid in the town that does anything like that kind of work. Do you know somebody? I have to approve any questions. So that's why I'm waiting. So if we were... If the person responsible for that project wasn't a consultant, related to specific historical projects, could that be paid from the CPA? Yes. And then to build it into a project. Yes. It's going to be paid by the project. So could your committee hire a consultant to manage those over time, rather than using... Yes. Absolutely. That's what we're trying to do. The reason that the amount of money for the Whittemore-Robbins House project went up quite a bit. I love Christine Bojarno. She should not be doing what she has done already, let alone anything more. Except to be... You know, she's in charge of the Whittemore-Robbins House and how that happened. I don't really know. But I have been working with Barbara Thornton and we've got to talk about how to take care of some of our buildings in the Civic Lock, which we're going to come up with a proposal, that are in many, many jurisdictions and are not getting the kind of care that we now have in our building maintenance department, but not those buildings. But could we hire a consultant that will be... Yes. You know, that you would consider using over five years or 10 years for that Civic Lock. So they would be responsible for suggesting what you were going to do then manage all those projects? Yeah. I mean, that's... You know, that would be traditionally something that the Permanent Town Building Committee would do, but they can't do it right now. Well, they also can't get paid to do it. Correct. Correct. So, yes. I mean, that's why it's been very helpful to have Andrew and myself and Chuck because we managed the construction projects. We were used to doing this and we also know what the skills are that you have to have to do. The estimating the construction oversight and, you know, the sort of day-to-day management and that's evolving. And I want to continue to work with, you know, the Catholic Planning Committee to come up with constructive ways of bridging this gap. I mean, it's my... I mean, Christine is raising a concern is that every year that you do a project, some of us will be finding out where is that money going to come from. What I'm going to do after this meeting is to talk to Sandy and Rick about dividing that money between assessors and treasurer. So now assessors and treasurer budget are going to say, what do you mean you want to take out X number of dollars from our budget for this year? Right. And that's... I see that happening over and over again in economic circumstances. Yeah, and I really appreciate it. If you feel that you have a cost related to CPA, if you would forward it to us so we can keep track of it. I know Eve has been keeping track of her hours in the first couple of months. It was only 25 hours a month. This last month is 40 plus. So, you know, 10 hours a week. We just don't know in terms of management of the construction and the money management. There are two aspects. There's the construction management and there's the money management. There has to be both aspects. If I could just quickly say, I think in large part some of these costs are going to be much greater start-up costs for the first year. Especially with the comptroller, the funds and unfortunately with the collection system due to the software and stuff. That's what it is, but that's not going to be every year. I think to the second point has been mentioned, but just to reinforce that, whenever possible, we will require that project budgets and coverage that comes out of CPA for management. I do think it's a really good suggestion, really good question though to make sure that when we do account for what the cost of the benefits are that we do consider and maybe even ask town applicants to estimate the hours that they will spend on this because I think it's a fair question to ask when you're looking at cost and benefits. And that can be part of our application process when we have a four-year to do it instead of four months. And I think one of the things that Kathy would say, and I'm not going to speak, but she spent as did Joey Robinson, unbelievable amounts of time putting the proposals together. Is that really part of the conservation commission or historical commissions work? No, it isn't. And we're going to keep track of our hours as well so that we have, there are a lot of people that are putting a lot of hours in and not getting paid for them. And I'd like to know any townside costs that you see so we can keep track of it. There's, I mean, we have a wonderful tracking spreadsheet that I'm going to be using and I think it's, you know, we should keep track of that. And I was going to say that we did put in money for a breakfast to, because we're going to have a lot of meetings, so that's the project. There is a small amount of $38 over four weeks, as she said, involved so that I can get an idea to come forward with another project and something more that the commission started to do, going after grants and things like that, we don't know how to estimate these kind of hours. And of course, at that time, so we could include a few hours for her, but she doesn't have the construction. No, she couldn't. Yes, I'd like to make a comment. I think, I don't think we should get too wrapped up in tracking hours of people inside the town. And I understand your concern about the subject, Christine, but it costs money to spend money. And if you think about for example, in the capital plan, when the $630,000 $636,000 that is going to be spent on the Robin's farm, the Parks and Recreation Commission has to spend some money to monitor that project. You're going to have to do some work to spend that money. And just like they're doing it down at Thornbeck for a previously approved project. So I think within when you should just this is just to the town entity itself. This is tax money that is being spent by the town, when it goes to recreation or goes to other town organizations. And those departments are going to have to spend some money to get that done. Just like the fire chief spends money when he goes out to buy a fire truck and then has to manage the vendor. The risk here which is where they I think the CPA committee needs to focus their reserve funds is on the non-town entities. Because that's taxpayer money that's not being spent by the town. It's being spent for projects that are approved by the CPA law. But they don't necessarily have an inherent management structure that knows how to control the spending of those funds. And that's where I think I predict that the CPA committee is going to have to spend money to monitor and manage those projects. And I think that's why I think with somebody new coming on board in the managers department this is the time to negotiate with the town manager to get a piece of it because it's a new person and whether it's 5% or 10% you can hash that out. But that has a direct tie into the management of the town. I actually, Adam and I have been talking about it for months. Okay. Let's not get too much into minutiae. We've got the basic projects before us just like we do with the capital plan. Are there any other questions on the basic projects? Paul? That could go back to the Drake Village window replacement. I'm afraid this is minutiae, but I don't mean the projects themselves are what we're really improving. It says that the project will leverage $200,000 of CPA funding and $150,000 of CDBG to get 1.4 million from the department of housing and community development. But then it says it's $1 for every 30 cents of local funding and if you take the $350,000 of local funding and multiply it out by $10 for every 30 cents you get 1.17 million not 1.4 million. The numbers have been changing. Actually it's a little deceiving because this is I'm only making the third year CDBG for this project. So we we're can you get back to me? Sorry. Any other questions on the on the projects or the CPA process here? Just a quick question. Could you possibly send me a copy of this for our minutes? Yes. Okay. Any other questions? Well I think that for our first year you've done great. I think this is well put together and I think it has a great deal of information and when I talked to you a month ago I wasn't sure. We weren't either. There was a very good consultant that we had on Monday night who helped us register. I think well I think the presentation was well done and I heard you making it through if actually you could make this presentation about two or three weeks earlier then we wouldn't have to do lots of work. You want to be on the normal budget side. I don't want to do this again. I promise you. Well again. Thank you all for coming. We appreciate it. Okay. I think our job and I guess of course we're doing this for the first time too is to the recommendation that's going to be before town meeting is the recommendation of the CPA committee. Our job is to make a recommendation of support or change it or whatever else we do. I'm not sure we have to make a recommendation but I think town meeting probably appreciate a welcoming thing. He spoke just a second before you put your hand up. Peter. I move we have a second. Okay. Is there a second to that motion and support? Okay. So Peter recommends Charlie seconds. Discussion. Paul. So just going back to their slide where they say what town meeting can do and they list these four things. So we as a committee can recommend one of these four things. I recommend this is always an important thing to do to have a page numbers. Okay. I get them. Okay. Town meeting so we can support we can move that they reject or reduce. So motion has been made seconded to support discussion. Dean. Are we talking about supporting in its entirety or are we talking about matching our support or lack thereof with the votes because I believe I don't think we vote all five of them. I think they have to go one I mean we have to vote each one separately. Each of the projects. Right. So I think well I'm telling Peter I'm wrong I think the motion all of the projects are recommended. Right. I'd like to suggest that we're not in a very good position to be more specific than that. I agree with that. This is all new for me and for many other people too and it's hard to sort of bounce it off experience when there really isn't a history. Charlie. So this is probably the last time I'm going to remind people of this but I was publicly and vociferously against this act when this referendum went before the public and I was also opposed at the most recent time it was before town meeting and about five or six years before that but nonetheless citizens voted for it and it's now law and the town collects tax funds for it every year that have to be spent wisely and judiciously just the way the other town departments and other town functions spend money and I think I spent some time reviewing this over this last capital planning cycle and I spent some time last Monday night in prior to that talking to Clarissa about the projects and there are things that are pretty familiar here and there are things that are not familiar. I mean you asked the question earlier tonight Dean what was this doing for our financial condition, our financial budget represented by the selectmen during their campaign I don't know if it's actually happened the way the selectmen envisioned it but the fact that the capital planning committee moved out of its budget about six or seven parks and recreation projects and sort of pushed them over the fence towards CPA in the five year plan substantially improved the ability of the town to finance the stratum school and it's funny Charlie because I thought I gave them the ultimate softball question when I asked that I thought it was easy because we talked about this exact thing and they just cut it out but none the less I'm just saying that it did improve the fiscal position of town not necessarily in the way people at that time but it has enabled the stratum project to go forward going through these projects first of all I'm convinced that the five projects that they have presented do qualify for the CPA funds they fall in the right categories that they check all little boxes off one of the things that I personally can't get my head around and that may just be a deficiency on my part is the there's a lot of subjectivity here for example it's pretty straightforward to be objective about affordable housing because you can see it you know somebody is going to benefit from it but historical preservation is a little bit like art it's very subjective is that $99,000 on the carriage house is that the best use of taxpayers money absolutely in my mind it's not but inside the envelope of the CPA law and what these funds should be used for it's a legitimate purpose so the reason why I second Peter's motion and why I think the finance committee support this is because number one it's the state law now town law number two the taxpayers money is now in a box somewhere you know that has to be spent on these things and number three I think that these people did a reasonably good job in selecting embedding the projects and lining them up and I also think that $77,000 reserve is a good move talking about the administrative reserve I mean the fact that the matter is some of these projects that are not administered directly by people inside the town that are sort of in private organizations could easily go a ride and you know cost more money or they would have to spend money to manage it overall I think it's a reasonable job considering it's the first time I have to gate I'd like to add to that in my mind we should be treating the CPA a bit like we treat the capital budget committee in other words capital budget committee starts to work in September works all through it they come before us they present their projects and I don't think it's our job necessarily to say and look at each individual job and project and say well I think I do this differently or I substitute something three years out for something the first year that's what they've spent their time on and I think that's what the CPA committee has spent their time on I think our job is to say is it reasonable you know are there recommendations reasonable within the law do they conform to that and if we decide that yes they're within the law and they're reasonable and that the committee has done its due diligence then I think we should support them and just the way we've supported the capital budget committee over the last 25 years with one exception 29 years 29 years with one exception and before town meeting they won but we lost the process question between capital planning I think for 29 years with appropriated 5% to the capital plan in the last 20 years actually for a number of years it was less than 5% okay well in recent years it's been 5% and I've heard someone go all over the state saying 5% is a good number to start with in the capital plan there are always calculations that show the 5% bottom line just for clarification the projects for town owned property that have been pushed over the fence how does that factor in the 5% calculation it's $7,800,000 it doesn't change it does the 5% include these which would have been in the capital plan or not no 5% it's just 5% of the budget these are this is let me put it this way 5% is a net spending against the non-exempt budget this is an exempt budget so this is like this budget is it's like the town decides to do a debt exclusion for the middle school so that moves out of the capital budget into some other category so that's the approach that we've taken projects that are CPA eligible should be considered by CPA and projects that are not considered so in terms of the capital plan it's thought of sort of like a debt exclusion for a particular capital project it's an exempt spending category the voters move a certain class of things from non-exempt to exempt so the effect is actually spending more dollars on capital projects yeah one and a half million a year not quite because that's right okay is there any further discussion I'm not sure I agree with you that we should look at this as all one pot of money I am concerned for the example you say about the carotels that may not be a choice the town taxpayers would have said this is worthy of us spending our tax dollars this year but it does fall within the CPA realm and I think it is a reasonable use of that money based on what I've heard tonight I feel comfortable supporting what they recommend but I do think it is part of our job to make sure that the town budget isn't detrimental effected because of what the CPA is doing I disagree that we should just view it as all one budget I think we should evaluate these projects to the extent we can to the extent we have any vote of voice but how is this going to burden our ongoing operating? I agree with you the point that I was trying to make especially with respect to the as an example the Robbins farm project is that if we funded that at a capital committee they would still have a bunch of administrative parks recreation would have some amount of administrative expense to do that project that was my point and actually ask them to track that is putting an extra burden on the department if they have a which I'm not sure is what we want to do I think it may be reasonable for us to ask them and to ask ourselves are these particular projects next year and the year after and the year after if we support them are we creating an added cost to the town budget the non-CPA budget and I think it's fair for us to either support or not support those future projects based on among other criteria in the back that's the I can't say it's not a good opinion it's an opinion I'm not sure I agree with it 100% but it's reasonable hopefully I mean some of these things you know we start up and not be onerous continuing expenses further discussion Caroline did I see your hand go up again that's okay that's your job and the resources by the town to manage them where does that money come out that's still part of their operating budget what about that yes it yes it does for example if you look back at the building of the firehouse the permanent town building committee which includes a dozen department managers and people in the town as well as volunteers along with the fire chief and people in his department we're managing that project they go out and buy a new pumper they spend money the school the school department wants to build ex-new schools so that involves the school administration involves the finance committee the town manager the purchasing agent and the permanent town building committee so there's an infrastructure there that does in the operating budget that comes along with spending that money and if they need additional professional services like architects or for example OPMs which is owner's project manager for a building project that's built into the cost of the project but the capital budget is part of the town budget we take the town budget and we take 5% for capital projects and as you say there may be a spillover of additional 5% but I see the CPA as over and above in a separate category that can only be used for certain expenses and I'm concerned that using that deciding on those special projects that there may be a spillover onto the the normal town budget which is part of the reason I was making the recommendation that with a new employee coming on board that they help pay for that so we'll see how that goes so the capital campaign never reimburses any of the departments for their involvement in that process no but the capital budget pays for any additional professional services they have to retain to do a project similar to what they're doing similar to what they're doing okay is there any other discussion Peter? one other comment one of the reason I at least have a fair amount of faith in the capital planning commission is because of the people that are on it I think most of you would agree that they're good people except maybe the chair but I take that but anyway I know a fair number of people that are on the CPAC and they're good people but we have to keep the fire to their feet anyway okay Carol? in addition to that, Kathy Barnett is not just a landscape architect she worked for the department of conservation and recreation for 25 years as a project manager she drives a long line she buys gas tanks and you see all of that in western Massachusetts so she's not just a landscape architect okay any further discussion? okay the motions are made and seconded to support the recommendations of the CPA committee two town meeting all those in favor please say aye all opposed okay unanimous 330 16 okay now I've got a few other things to do first of all is there anybody who really likes to get into GIS and likes to read about all this technical stuff anybody? okay okay secondly I passed out a piece with a lot of little drawings on it so since everything is really tight over the next month as far as several major projects I thought what I'd do is this is on the school involvement task force we met last night and we heard a preliminary report from the architect who really did a nice job and they proposed two options to the odyssey two options to the odyssey so the first one is look at this one that has the existing school there with Appleton down the bottom so that's Appleton that's towards Mass Ave so the the second recommendation option two was back in the parking lot after the field is the enrollment task force unanimously decided to reject that option and focus on this option option one which is in the front so if you look at it from there there's a small field there right on Appleton street in front of the school it was built up a little bit right off the sidewalk it's not a very big field but there so that's where option one would put the addition inside the dotted line inside the dotted line so you could see the dotted lines right in there and then there's two connections to the existing building with the more dotted lines okay so that's where it would be and then if you go on the other side this is looking at it from the side and so originally one of the problems was you're going to be able to connect this addition to the current building, the existing structure there and so it was going to be a 24 foot high space which was going to be parking and then two classroom forts with basically it's basically a classroom structure after a lot of discussion the enrollment task force recommended unanimously and I think the architect accepted that to move to knock off that top floor where it's all xed out and instead put them underneath there where it says CR and CR written in and so instead of a 24 foot lift to get up there it would be like a 10 to 14 foot space and then you'd have a classroom 4 and then a classroom 4 that would connect into the existing now what that does is underneath the proposal was parking on the superintendent made a position that if we're having more students there we're going to have more faculty we're going to have more parking so that seems reasonable and 10 to 14 feet should be more than enough I mean 10 feet is my trailer that I told her so that should be more than enough for cars and then in addition there was some discussion of only making half of that underneath there for parking and maybe the other half into some kind of more common space now the superintendent said that they basically solved the problem of the cafeteria because by knocking down a wall to within the present cafeteria and the adjoining spaces they could expand the cafeteria into a bigger space so that just leaves the problem of maybe gym and library for common more common space and so the architect's going to look into that using half of that sort of ground floor into some kind of other space so this is the option they're looking at the architect is now pointing on there's no cost estimates yet so the honest option that they're looking at will be this revised thing with the two floors of classrooms and the bottom four could be half parking and half common space they still have to work that out the advantage would be they don't have to have so much structure 24 feet of structure there's now we need 10 or 14 feet of structure to support the two the other point the advantage to this I think would be that the poor people across Appleton street wouldn't have to look at this huge wall I mean it's still big but at least it wouldn't be quite so high so that's the option they're looking at now that's an option the other option still on the table is the gifts and and that would basically be a renovation of the gifts they would the only real thing they're looking at is where there used to be lockers down underneath the gym probably most of you have seen the gym underneath used to be locker rooms apparently kids don't use locks I'm sending more they don't take showers it's just whole different at least when I was going to during your hike and underneath there they're going to put a cafeteria underneath the gym would be a cafeteria area and a kitchen so other than that it's pretty much you know the next four is all classrooms the third four is all classrooms and that would be the option so it would be putting an addition like this option one on the Odyssey and it'll be renovating the gifts school you know that's what we're going to be looking at now there's two if you could please put down the following dates April 28th the architect will be making the final presentation with everything you know what they're going to do and the gift option before the enrollment task force it will be in the auditorium the town hall auditorium so this is one I really recommend that you go to because you can hear all the same stuff that the enrollment task force is going to see we've got cost estimates etc etc and hopefully the report will be available like probably by the Monday before that so everybody have a chance to read it and it will be interesting to see depending I mean if you have you know one comes in at 20 the other comes in at 30 you know it's not necessarily an easy choice because obviously taking the gives out of what it does and moving it back into a school has certain operational costs increase over the addition and also it has costs from the rent and obviously the removal of all those tenants so there's different things to balance and then on May 2nd I think that's the following Monday May 2nd at 7 o'clock there will be another meeting of the school enrollment task force hopefully to vote I don't remember where they said that was going to be the yeah May 2nd 7 o'clock they'll probably be here because it will be before town meeting so again everything's moving very quickly so I recommend you come to both the April 28th meeting and the May 2nd meeting and as soon as that information is out I'll make sure it gets to everybody what about Thompson I'm sorry this is all we're focusing on now I think Thompson is the school department issue right now but all the enrollment task force is focused on the middle school on that Charlie do you want to add something I think that a lot of this conversation took place last night after Adam and Joe Coro left but it seemed to me that I ran into two concerns one is that they seem to be focusing again on this 280 square foot $290 per square foot renovation cost and $400 per square foot cost to build new and I thought that this study was going to be a departure from that simplistic approach and they were going to actually get into what the real costs were and I hope that they don't just come back with this conceptual design and then start to add those numbers because I recall in the rebuilding of the elementary schools at least three of those schools right Brackett and Thompson Pierce they determined that it was less expensive to build new than to renovate and I'd hate to see them come back and just give us this $400 per square foot and $280 per square foot analysis and then downstream wind up with the huge renovation cost at the Gibbs I hope so too I'm looking for some real numbers I think they had a cost estimator involved in this I'm looking for the same thing I'm looking for as solid numbers as you can do at this point before you actually develop the final specs and go out to bid any other questions Karen I think that'll have to be determined by the school committee and I think she was at first thinking that she'd do six grades and seventh and eighth grades of the oddison for some pedological reasons so they keep everybody in the same rather than have it with two separate schools but you know that's the classrooms are going to be there the furniture's all going to be the same it's sort of beyond the scope of I think the enrollment task force that's a superintendent school committee decision do we bus the sixth graders to oddison or do they all walk or take the I think they want to take the MBTA or their parent strike but we don't pay for bussing for the sixth graders I don't believe I think we do they're too far away we pay for busing for the they're too strong they pay for the parents pay for that there is a sixth grade bus that goes down in Stanleyton there's options you can either ride that bus your appearance can take you or you can ride the MBTA so are we going to increase our busing cost by moving all six graders to Gibbs I mean that's just enough because if you think about it we refer to the Gibbs as an East Arlington school it's more towards the middle of town than the oddison middle school is and so when they've talked about busing before I think they have this they have this weird model of like two miles depending on how someone walks flies, skips I don't really understand it but when you start to look at the map is the Gibbs is more to the center of town than the oddison so to get to that two mile to get to that that stretch of two miles at the Gibbs is more difficult than it is to get there at the oddison with the oddison right now I believe you hit that two mile mark when you get like to a relatively small sliver of East Arlington it's about Lake Street pass that actually you really have to get down there but I think on Lake Street on this I think it could actually decrease the busing for that, for the overall area I did ask again the superintendent did give us some operating costs for the oddison for staying at the oddison versus the Gibbs and I asked her we'll go over those numbers again because the school budget is going to have to absorb that so we've asked for those numbers as part of this whole decision making process and like I said as soon as we get stuff we'll send it out to people because things are sort of going one right after the other okay so oh I just thought I remarked that you probably don't know how talented the chairman is he's an amateur architect in his spare time because this idea of lowering the building down so it came out in real time last night by Chairman Tosti we'd like thank you you have something very much like this in your house okay now we still have to go back to you so hopefully you have a number for us we have a reserve fund transfer request which should be before you I only gave you the first page I'll serve this is dealing with the class of the CPA 10 copies of all pages if anyone wants to see this one so this is basically the IT was updating this work was the first correction software that the treasury uses apparently cannot take the CPA it had to be redone and so the IT has been having a consultant come in to basically offer for that and since he's been since July basically spending any place from three to ten thousand dollars a month he's been paid through November but then the IT ran out of money and so they have requested a reserve fund transfer request of twenty four thousand six hundred dollars to pay him up through the current time on it so it's a bill they really wanted to get out of the CPA but the statute just doesn't allow it and it had to be done to collect money sometimes you have to spend money to make money and the guy's been without being paid now for a bunch of months that's the reason they're requesting twenty four thousand six hundred and and the thing that was it a reserve fund transfer twenty four thousand six hundred so moved moved and seconded any discussion I support this but the one thing I will say is I think we I call it a brief history lesson I think this is like the third time we've appropriated money to deal with an issue related to this collection software which is the reason we're getting rid of this collection software I think the last time we appropriated money was when we changed the water bill in rates because the system couldn't deal with the water bill in rates and the reason I bring this up is I feel like the CPA folks are kind of getting beat up a little over this but you know the root cause of the problem is not the CPA the root cause of the problem is the software which we've all agreed needs to go away and we're working to get rid of as quickly as we can so I think it's just important to note that it's really not their issue it's the software's issue okay thank you any other questions or discussion Carolyn do you have a question to cover this because he tends to be giving cash back every year um rather than taking it out of the reserve fund well I don't know whose budget is the treasured question yours do you have a spare 24,000 well you have to ask him this is only to go up to March 30,000 all right it's another about 20,000 estimated potential so if there's more money in the treasured budget I'm sure Brian will find it and we could use that money to pay for the rest of it take it from the assessor and maybe transfer this to the Ford guys and explain it to his wife it's a dare okay any other discussion okay motion has been made and seconded for a 24,600 reserve fund to the the account that's on the sheet okay all those in favor say aye opposed okay number of present and voting come to me 17 that's no that's just a cover okay I will take care of that and now just one note that we've gotten an email from the head of inspections that there's probably going to be a reserve fund transfer request to cover the retirement of the wire and the inspector who retired and will probably be on the order of $44,000 okay so it's all of a sudden and we still have the modules for the Thompson which the manager and the superintendent are fighting with the people about so all of a sudden a million dollars doesn't really seem all that much money okay water and sewer alright hey we've got the amount from that from the controller so is the $576,828 for health insurance the correct number to be charged um no last update if we're going to use the email we got from Sandy which was yesterday I believe last year after that we changed the budget we voted on one day we have to change the amounts there's only two amounts to change the difference of 1200 $1227 or something okay so what's the new number the total number of the entire budget is $19,974,341 $19,974,371 $341 $19,974,341 in expenses now of course that makes it into a deficit they're already substantial amount from use of retained earnings so it could balance okay so why don't we increase the retained earnings use to balance it off so it's a and what is the correct health insurance number that number is less than what we voted on Monday oh wait a minute I'm sorry oh you're right okay so $19,974,341 whatever's the difference is the surplus what is the health number individually because it's split in half it's $287,801 okay I just want total collectively $575,602 $575,602 okay so is that your recommendation the health insurance $575,602 total expenses $19,974,341 and then a small surplus of what is the surplus the change from $1227 but the amount changed $1200 to $1226 okay I also have a number for the enterprise fund though from the controller I'm sorry also have the enterprise fund number balance as of 630 2015 you would ask for the balance in the water oh the circle okay yeah the retain yes $8,546,621 $8,546,621 is the fund balance I actually pinned Richard back and said that's the right number that's a little higher than everyone else estimated but I haven't gotten anything back now under the revenues are we I'm sorry are we using some retained earnings but we are using retained earnings so we could either use this to have a $1200 surplus or reduce the retained earnings why don't you reduce the retained earnings so it comes out zero again so the fund would be the same number for expenses because all that would happen is it would go back into retained earnings so we might as well not take it out in the first place okay so you're making a motion the health insurance changes from $576,828 to $575,602 the expenses are now $19,974,341 we will drop the revenues to $19,974,341 and and drop the use of retained earnings by the balance that your motion second okay any questions okay all those in favor of that motion please say aye opposed okay I think $9,42 so you get an extra 17 minutes 18 minutes 16 minutes okay is there any other business before the committee okay so there'll be no meetings next week the and the following Monday after that the next meeting will be April 13th we'll be looking at the discussed minute man so I guess you know discuss it talk about it talk with others see what you think and we'll have a recommendation hopefully from the minute man task force and so we'll be finally balancing everything please go through your budgets make sure they match with what you understand it give any changes to Alan look through the footnotes and all sometimes footnotes get carried from year to year even though they're no longer relevant if you have any comments on the word part of the document please get back to me send me an email send me an email with any changes suggestions questions I want to send this out tomorrow the word document to the to the people who review it you know the moderator and the council and the controller Alan you'll probably be sending them out I'll make all these last changes and send them out in the next couple of days I also haven't done all the reconciliation with long range offsets the next two weeks we really got to pull everything together I really would like to send out the finance committee report as we did last year with the selection and the redevelopment board report to do that I have to we have to finish on the 13th and I've got to have it actually it's going to be interesting I'm not even sure we can but it's literally got to be to the printer at 8 o'clock the next morning so if we can do it fine if we can't but I'd like to try we'll do that on the 13 that's basically that just balances out everything and we still have you know we still have to find out if there's anything left in the special town meeting there's a couple articles we'll probably have to deal with hopefully not we'll probably have to deal with those okay any other questions meeting adjourned thank you for all of you for all your good work