 So let me repeat what I said a few minutes ago and thank you for the flexibility and explain it and tell you why why we're waiting a few minutes. We were advised when we changed location from one building to another by the town clerk who oversees our compliance with the open meeting law that because there was a time needed to get from one building to the other that we should not start exactly at 6 30. The reason that we switched rooms is those of you who are familiar with the first floor meeting room know that it is a small room if you get a large public audience and when we became aware in the early afternoon that a lot of there was a lot of interest in attending the meeting it was sort of required that we give some quick consideration finding a new location that would be more suitable for the number of people who might be attending and so we really switched locations for your comfort and to make it more convenient for all of you to be here with us and we value your public participation because that's an important part of our values in our charter. So I'm going to call the meeting to order it will call it 6 35 couple minutes after that and I'm going to start by doing some introductions first to myself and then go around the room or get around the table so we can get introductions because I was told at the last meeting that some people were wondering who everybody was on the committee and it was a fair question since we don't have nameplates my name is Andy Steinberg I am the chair of the finance committee and I am an at-large member of the council and before I was a member of the select board so Lynn Kathy I'm Kathy Shane and I'm vice chair of the finance committee and I'm on the council from district one I'm Lynn Griezmer I'm from district two I'm president of the council and a member of the finance committee I'm Shalini Behill-Mellon I am from district five I'm Dorothy Pam from district three and a member of the finance committee I'm Sonia Aldrich I'm the comptroller and this definitely is on for the finance committee I'm Gilford mooring I'm from Public Works yes so welcome everybody and explain what we're doing if just yeah I will in a second so for those of you who don't have an agenda for tonight's meeting who would like it they have a copy or something to take notes on that so all of you have your agendas I know I don't it actually hasn't so just for whoever in the public would be interested we're not going to necessarily do the agenda in the order that is listed in fire late but we are going to address all agenda items we'll our town manager Paul Backelman anticipates being here later but the competing meeting that's going on at town hall up in the council chambers also known as the town room is the regional school committee meeting and he had to attend the first part of the regional school committee meeting so he plans to be down here in about an hour so I want to make sure that we have a chance to hear him and hear his comments if any during our discussion so we wanted to go through some preliminary parts of the meeting agenda first but I'm proposing to Mike to the committee then we start by talking about the review of the plan for the four major projects so that there's at least a full understanding since we now had the PowerPoint from the 2017 presentation available to us to look at and Lynn has it available on the computer that she's using so and see to just briefly go through that and to the key points so once we know how we were we fund major projects then we can get to the other parts of it my suggestion would be that we see how much interest is in additional public comment before we get into the full discussion and get into public comments I do have copies from Sonya of the recommended motions for our consideration that the motions that would have to be passed there actually two motions so I will distribute those and that should allow us to be ready to see what questions we have of him and final discussion in Guilford and Sonya right answers to questions too and the last thing that I wanted to explain to everybody is that town manager Bachmann and all of the members of the council that you see here in Sonya we're all at the Mass Municipal Association meeting on Friday and Saturday however only Paul was able to go to a late afternoon Friday session because we were all concerned about our Saturday I mean because we were all concerned about getting back before the snowstorm really hit and he was staying over in Boston for a little bit extra this weekend so he was able to go to a meeting our session that was put on by Mass Department of Transportation which they talked about the various grant programs that they have including the bridge grant program and so he did send us copies of the two slides from the PowerPoint from that presentation regarding the bridge thing project funding proposal but it would allow us to ask him questions since he was there if we able to get his attendance for that part of our meeting so that's what I would suggest is that agreeable okay so then we would proceed by going on to talk about the 2017 plan and what this was for those who have not familiar is that it was a meeting actually it was 2016 in September as he got it can be projected see see if it is and I think I might as well be very explicit right now as to why this is an important topic on how on funding this it is a major capital project it has to be funded from the same sources of other major capital projects and the some total of the amount that we're being asked to transfer from free cash which is part of the ton reserves is four hundred and forty thousand dollars and the if that comes out of reserves I think that the question the finance committee should be aware of as it gets into its discussion is how that might affect the four major projects so the transfer is for that is for the temporary and the permanent bridge or so is the temporary bridge being considered it is a capital project and so see it's up here do you want to come maybe before we well doing that yes there's two part there's two motions here one motion is for the two twelve five that is for the temporary bridge if we move forward with the temporary the second motion is what was the first the first motion was the two hundred and twelve thousand five hundred to be transferred from free cash and that would cover the temporary bridge if so voted the second motion is for the two hundred and twenty seven five which is for the engineering services which needs to be paid whether we do temporary or permanent anyway so it's all so that would have to be voted that's to replenish what's been charged to the road repair fund and to finish the engineering services so the two some total of those two is four hundred and forty thousand yes so if we recommended both motions we are then recommending to the council which will make the final decision with transfer four hundred and forty thousand dollars from free cash yes so in terms of the permanent bridge two hundred twenty seven thousand dollars five hundred thousand five five hundred dollars would be part of that so the rest of the permanent bridge would come from state grant is that correct that's a question that those ultimately might hold in most gilford I'm not giving him initially but so we confirmed a couple of things one our application to the grant program has been forwarded to mass DOT they've extended this grant period it was originally supposed to expire October 31st it's been extended until April 1st so we probably won't hear anything until May about the grant the second thing is is that the maximum amount of grant is half a million dollars so you would add that to the two in terms of the permanent bridge five hundred thousand plus a 227 that would be it for the permanent bridge or subtracted is it added or subtracted if you look at the page three so 227 is engineering costs the permanent bridge is 925 do you have to subtract half a million from that so we still own another 425 for the permanent bridge and that will not there's no grant money you can only go to the grant one time for one bridge this small bridge municipal small bridge program only gets one grant yes yes I just have a follow-up question if the max is less than the total cost and we started doing some initial work we were told last time that any initial work we spent would not be covered by a grant but is there a way we can finance part of it and not interfere with getting the 500,000 or do we have to wait until we get the contract for the 500,000 no we can keep doing our work and keep moving with town funds and that doesn't affect whether or not we get that half a million dollar grant for the project or anything like that as long as we don't enter into a contract for bridge replacement before they give us the grant sign so so the fact that we've started the engineering work is not going to affect our chances of getting the grant no the fact we start engineering work tell some we have a shovel ready project they like shovel ready projects because they like to give people money and then they let you see if people spend the money and build what they say they're going to build immediately that does help us is there a seasonal period during which you can build a bridge or not well no the no river bridge is being constructed right now they're actually doing the pouring concrete in this weather which I was like really but they have a cold weather plan they're heating the concrete they have blankets they sometimes actually have a guy staying there to make sure it doesn't shut off by itself so you can build year-round if you want to the implication we're going to have are the only limitation we're going to have is the fact that there's turtle breeding season and during turtle breeding season you have to do certain things and it may actually stop you from doing construction during turtle breeding season I haven't got it confirmed but it's there's a section in the spring so just the time in the spring it's like April major but it's up to the it's up to the natural heritage people to tell us when and how it's going to affect us they could set we could set up a plan where we have people watching the whole time during construction and that might suffice to let us build during the turtle breeding season so there's different ways to deal with it we won't know until I get the permit okay so we should do skip the first three slides for sure and then on the fourth side slide just to let you know that what we're what this is just doing is for those of us who looked at the last time and we're looking for the debt service this is showing how our debt service has been over a period of years remembering that we are currently in the very right-hand box it is currently applied yes this report is old that's a couple years old so 2018 I can tell you it was 2.8% was our debt it was low and of course when I remind everybody when the what this was about was is we have four major projects one is the fire station to get a fire station located south of downtown and more accessible to the larger part of the community the second is the department public first building which is most the best location identified for the fire station in the building that is extremely antiquated and makes it very difficult to provide the range of services that the department needs the elementary school project however it ends up being done and we don't know I mean this was before the last override vote and before town meeting then chose not to issue the bonds in the library so that often there was a question was as if this meeting was about the question of how do we fund all of these projects and can we fund all of these projects so as we go through to the next slide what there what this is generally trying to show is the debt service per capita is an annual expense over the years and one of the things to the purposes to show that there's a goal of trying to be even in every given year so that the burden on the budget and the burden on the taxpayers is relatively constant over time the this is just showing our debt service per capita compared to other communities using FY 14 and you'll see on the very right hand side is Amherst and we're relatively low compared to the other communities that were shown on the slide going through to the next one this is showing the debt service that's been committed for various types of funding the blue is the general budget things that are funded out of taxation through in general terms the red is the Community Preservation Act amounts which are funds that were borrowed and are being repaid through CPA funds and the green is the regional schools and our share of the regional schools go ahead which is divided and this is just then switching to show what our reserves are is a percentage of the budget our goal is to have reserves somewhere between 5 and 15 percent which is the red and the green line 2016 is the right hand line and the purpose of that was to demonstrate that what had been happening was the it was an attempt to increase reserves over a period of years and this was a policy that had been created in part by Johnny Santee and part by Sandy Cooler in order to make reserves available to pay for a part of those four major projects I described go ahead and this is just showing explaining the assumptions behind the sources so that I can just read it with 8% of taxation and FY 17 was what the capital budget was that that's what we would use for capital purposes out of the budget was calculated on a percentage of taxation the CPA funds should be the source for any CPA projects we continue to pursue grants and use the ambulance funds to the extent possible and we continue to use enterprise funds for enterprise capital needs there's a quick explanation of what that is about is that the water sewer transportation and solid waste products of our government are funded by fees through what are known as enterprise funds and the capital associated for example putting in new sewer lines would come out of the sewer fund and be paid for from sewer fees not from taxation going on to the next slide this is on half of expense assumptions and I won't try and read all of them because it's going to be too long if I do and explain each one but this PowerPoint is available on the website on the town website under the budget section I believe for the year it was made we can confirm that we've gone to the next slide so what we're trying to do here is show a ongoing capital expenses and how they how our capital expenses are in comparison to the eight percent of resources that we generally try and make available which is an indication of this is ongoing debt service and expenses to show that there is some excess capacity within the amount that we try and target and gone so I think we just remove this this is that was calculations on the four major projects and so then we move into describing the scenario for funding all four major projects and they include in the bottom line conclusion is that if we move the capital budget up to 10% of taxation from 8% which is a process we have now been doing that if we use debt exclusion overrides for the elementary schools in the library maintain long-term focus and budgeting build the stabilization fund through FY 22 and then in the gun have to remember that this was prior to the school project consideration all of this will need to be redone but it's how the thought process goes and how the process goes in that then we could use stabilization fund to reduce the expense for debt service in years FY 24 to 30 and borrow the remainder through debt exclusion overrides and otherwise so I think I'm gonna skip the rest of the slides I just wanted to give a flavor for what it was about as to why anything that we do regarding either permanent or temporary bridge will have some effect on the four major projects the amount of that effect is a matter that we will be discussing a little bit but it's not a question you know the first question is will it have an effect in the answer I think is fairly clearly yes is there is that understandable committee of any questions about that part yeah on the slide with the the line the cover the blue when it says ongoing capital expenses I'm going to assume that that word ongoing does not mean the new capital projects that we're considering but would include things like replacing a boiler replacing a roof major things that we have to do for buildings but not build the new borrowing we're going to do for new things is that correct so yes I believe yes all right so this room is has nothing to do with this means we can handle what we're doing and there is a little bit of extra that we could put out the capital projects I don't know much yeah this this is back and we're still at seven and a half percent we're going to eight percent for fiscal year 18 for right half percent nineteen right now we are at nine percent for fiscal year 19 and for fiscal year 20 we're projecting we're projecting our our projections are set at nine and a half percent whether we can keep that balance budget or not that's still to be determined but we're slowly increasing our our spending on capital and like I explained in our presentation we do a percentage of the levy and out of that percentage we pay for all the debt service and what's left is what we consider cash capital you can spend straight out without borrowing of course the more debt service you put on the less that cash capital comes I want to mention two other three other pieces that were not in this presentation this was before the net the zero energy bylaw for unit buildings which applies to schools DPW and fire does not apply to the library it was before the one half percent for art bylaw and that still has to be approved through the legislature so now there are those two in terms and the costs projected on the buildings are not based on schematic design and therefore are truly and completely estimates and should not be quoted as real costs the other thing it does is make an assumption of state money to supplement the school and state money to supplement the library it's also based on the 2016 capital plan so our capital plan is a 10-year plan each department puts together and submits so this was based on that plan for 2016 there may have been changes that have happened since 2016 I know mine's changed a little bit good so where do we come where we create reserves from maintenance like if there's emergency repairs and just as an example the station would be just with that come out of the cash reserves the general reserve fund yeah it would need to because we've already set the tax rate fiscal year 19 so once you set the tax rate you can't estimate with revenues you have to use funds that are already in the bank and that would be reserves so that is indeed used for emergencies or yes unexpected maintenance or repairs or placements right one time use for one time cost and of course which gets back to the point of having gone through the quick review of the how you're finding us but that number of major projects is that would you take from reserves for that purpose then becomes unavailable for other purposes down the line including the four major projects but it is where we would have to fund it from anything else you know and I guess what we just heard also about the permanent bridge is the grant is only going to fund roughly half it roughly half so there's another almost $500,000 that has to come from our flow of capital yes yeah so wanted just for opening it up to the public for a few minutes wanted to see if there's anything else from the committee in the way of questions about how we financing how we would finance four major projects should we choose to go forward with them and how we would be financing the bridge and you've now seen the motions that we would have to be recommending ultimately these would our motions would have to be passed by the council as a whole but our choices whether to make a recommendation to the council or not and what we would recommend that we will have to get to a little bit later I just have I have one question about the flow you started out with the temporary bridge plus the design comes to 440 you know that number and then we've got the second number for the our share of the permanent bridge our share the town share of the permanent bridge would that have to come out of the current year budget or it could be the FY 20 budget so we don't yeah we haven't I mean we're only asking for what we spent so far for the temporary yeah so then we can take the permanent bridge and put it into the regular capital plan and and process it that way our if the council and the town manager so desired we could do it outside the capital plan but it hasn't been the side how to handle it the permanent bridge yet I guess the way to answer that the other piece if I'm correct is that this is a application to the state and they may or may not fund it correct which means we do know what the maximum now is yes exactly are we discussing the the station road bridge right now are we just discussing the cap we will this what we've sort of flowed into the question of general discussion about the station road bridge in expenses and how it would be covered we've gone to the permanent bridge because it ties into the grant question we wanted to make sure that's understood first and then we'll have to move backwards into whether to do the temporary bridge after we've sort of got to understand if we did give the permanent bridges the highest on the list then how did that gets funded first discussion choose something else yes so we can have several different questions we could say we're going to build no no temporary and no permanent bridge we could say we're going to build both no matter what we could say we'll build a temporary bridge and a permanent bridge if it's funded in which case we would have a temporary bridge which could last for a certain period of time and sometime during which time we might find another way to fund that permanent bridge if we had to do it on our own without a state grant or we would be applying again in another grant year is that a possibility yes it is we get a lot we we automatically we submitted automatically in this round the grants and if we're not funded in this round we automatically roll to the second year of funding and if they're not funded in the second year we have to reapply but we can keep reapplying until they cancel the program or funded or we do something else yes so I was wondering if this is the right time I just wanted to summarize all the discussions we had last time and this time and based on some research I've been doing based on what I've been hearing from residents and I made a summary of some of the key points about this before we can this is a good time to do I'm trying to I'm only causing because I'm wondering if it's something you wanted to wait until Mr. Bachmann's here that's what I was thinking unless I guess what I'm looking for in the way of public comments but of course I can't tell you what you're gonna say because you're right to say what you're gonna say but certainly there was somebody who had a hand up of question and I want to make sure that if you questions about the financial piece that we've been starting to talk about to do that we did hear a lot of information at the last meeting about the need for the bridge was permanent and temporary certainly if there's additional information to offer want to hear additional but if you were at the last meeting you know something was offered at the last meeting please consider it so I'm just gonna ask so I get an idea of how many how many people are wanting to speak now with questions or comments so I see about five yourself you'd not have questioned at this point yes because you had your hand up early it was about your presentation so you can count me in there okay you in the start so sure sure I'll be good to please give your name because our note taker would like to make sure that we get the names for the minutes sure my name is Amin Denai the question I had it's I just want to make sure I understood what you said when you concluded the presentation you said that the takeaway is that the temporary bridge will affect the capital projects you're considering and I didn't I didn't know that until you said it so I want to make sure I understand how the slides show that what I saw one thing that I saw if you could incorporate this in your answer is that our debt load is seems to be very low relative to the other towns that were shown on that slide so I'm wondering why having a temporary bridge needs to take away from the other projects you mentioned I guess I'm sorry if I created the impression that it made it impossible but I meant to say it would make it works it would raise the amount that would have to be funded from something other than reserves what it would probably mean is that to the extent that we take a significant sum because of this unexpected expense from reserves or when we are pre-cash which is a part of reserves then those money that money is unavailable for the capital projects and we would have to go to another place within that the whole scenario it would mean probably that we would have to ask for a slightly larger override either for the library or the schools as a portion of their ex above those projects in order to be able to fund it and you would have an ongoing effect on future taxation but I wouldn't say it would be a large effect because talking depends on the amount of that we would end up and just gets into the question of whether we get the grant for the bridge the permanent bridge yes yeah go ahead since it's only $170,000 do we need to put it on the taxpayers couldn't it be just an extra debt that we take well all that's been up going to the taxpayers because they have to repay it come from our budget and and from what I understand the general reserve is maintained and kept in order to meet emergencies such as this in part yes but in part what I was pointing out is that that what our fairly high level of current reserves was built in part in order to be able to help fund the four major projects without putting as much extra future debt burden on taxpayers so that's where the relations does that the answer okay so I'm going to go then well just do is I'm going to go this way around and look through for a hands-on question not a comment so it looks like the my name is Nils Christiansen the Nils Christiansen Trillion Way the net cost of having the temporary bridges $212,500 is that correct because the other expenditure would be have to be made anyway is there some of that that could be recovered when the bridge is no longer necessary I think we've talked about that last time yes and no yes and no I think several of the counselors actually had a discussion with our consultant during the NMA conference and it's we're gonna if you're going to just have this temporary bridge in place for a year you'll probably have something that may be usable somewhere else and something you can on offer self you might even try if it's only gonna be there for a year you know you're gonna pay 12 months of rental payments if you don't know how long it's gonna be there if we say we're back and I replace the bridge until we get the grant and it takes three years to get the grant our rental payments will go up so we wouldn't want to rent it we'd want to buy it if we know we're gonna be in this for a long time with a temporary bridge we might want to take more time and put a better more appropriate temporary bridge in so as you start playing all the different options it affects your value of the temporary bridge I was telling the town manager I mean we could always use it to replace some bridge somewhere in the watershed if we had to but it would just be taking a really nice bridge and sticking it on a logging road somewhere if we went very far with it so there's a chance to get some recovery out of it there's a chance we may get no recovery out of it because it sounds like it could take more than two years to get quite a bit more and it's a little scary to hear about the important project in North Amherst that's taken 14 years it took Atkins corner we took almost 20 years you back in the corner around about so for 20 years to have a temporary bridge I didn't start I didn't start at that was an peaceful way to start actually was I have a question and then a comment that I'll save them both so that you respond I'm Peter Barrick I live on Woodlock Road the the question is one of proportion clearly all money is fungible and if you're spending money from reserves on a temporary bridge then you're then you have less money in the same fund to spend on other capital projects no one would argue with that but it would help my understanding to know whether we're talking about let's you just use a round number say it's a million dollars for the bridge project that's coming out of reserves but is this a million dollars out of anticipated future capital expenditures of a hundred million dollars or of anticipated capital expenditures of ten million dollars because clearly to me it seems if it's a relatively small piece of a very big number then you take it seriously seriously as an expense but nonetheless its impact over in the long run is going to be fairly modest but if it's 25 percent of your future capital expenditures then you should worry about it more so that that's one thing I would hope that that you would speak to the other is that I'm going to say something which my neighbors may or may not agree with but that seems to me as implicitly coming on the table from my point of view as a regular traveler on station road the crucial thing is to get the road open as quickly as possible a temporary bridge does that once it's open I can be very patient if if it serves the town well and serves all of us as citizens well to delay for a year or two or three on installing a permanent bridge while you explore other funding opportunities so be it the roads open I would much prefer if it comes to a choice in your minds between a temporary bridge and a permanent bridge getting the temporary bridge and then worrying about a permanent bridge at some future date because the crucial thing as I said is to get the road open if people disagree with me I hope they'll speak up but I mean just continue looking around I know there's somebody standing in back yeah I just had a kind of general question then for clarification I mean we have capital projects which mainly are buildings school buildings fire station whatever and then we have you know infrastructure projects you know really fixing a road like that North Amherst intersection that that really needs work and is a big job and you know bridges road pavement whatever they are sort of infrastructure now so they aren't necessarily considered capital you know long-term capital expenses then are they or or how are you differentiating those but they're in the same budget it's called capital because it's not people you know so it's in all the road infrastructure projects are put into the cap joint capital plan so when you saw on the graph the little lines that showed that we were being able to maintain our capital plan that was maintaining infrastructure that includes replacing roofs that includes replacing boilers so that was in there the issue you have though is we have a 16 to 20 million dollar backlog of road repairs we know that our consultant that did a survey of our road system came up with those numbers 16 to 20 million or 21 million in that range that does not include the North Amherst intersection project that does not include things people want to do with just repairing existing sidewalks that doesn't include well that's that's basically it doesn't include any intersection improvements it doesn't include any existing sidewalk improvements and then there's things people want like they want traffic coming on southeast street they want they want new they want new sidewalks on East Pleasant they want a new sidewalk new multi-use path on North Pleasant those aren't even included in those are just wants yet they haven't been put into the pie so all that is included in the capital plan and yes there's a chunk that's not even figured out how you're going to pay for in that 10-year capital plan but so an emergency repair of an existing road which is the case of trying to get a temporary bridge to get this road opens that it's the only east-west road between town center and Bay Road so that's still called a capital I think even if it's really an emergency repair yes because we have a we have a very sorry go ahead sorry we have boilers that go out in buildings that's an emergency repair it may not be on the capital plan but it's an emergency repair so yes this would be the same consideration okay I'm really keep moving around I did others in the quarter in the center so go ahead David Tory I was not able to make it to your last meeting on Wednesday morning at 11 o'clock so an observation from someone who drives out that way daily the intersection of Stanley Street and route 9 if you were to come down Stanley Street and take a right turn and to go west on route 9 at 5 30 in the afternoon when the people are leaving the campuses leaving town from work you have a about a hundred and fifty feet that you can see to the left there are five or six old pine trees right there the sight line is horrific and it is not a question of when there's going to be a serious accident it's just what day it's going to happen this is an inconvenience and it's a safety inconvenience it's more than just an inconvenience and I apologize but I wasn't able to get to your Wednesday 11 o'clock meeting and I do hope you would all go and look at that intersection at 5 30 on a week night and take a look at that and tell me that that's what you want to do for the next two years no there was somebody in this yes was I accurate and saying oh Ernie May station 366 station road I just like to ask if the am I correct in observing that debt service which is debt service to operations which is currently 2.8% is projected to go up to about 8% is that where you're in the total capital plan no the 2.6% is what our current debt service is the 8% is what the percentage of the levy that we are going to that we dedicate to capital and debt service okay just from observing this the same condition in the at the university I understand the standards and pours regards 8% is kind of an upper limit on debt service for public institution for public entities so that is what we're way in the low end even though not only have come here to other towns but also compared to bond rating agencies second point is that that doesn't alone represent our financial condition because in order to represent the financial condition of town you have to take deferred maintenance into consideration also so I think that our our debt service to operations is very low but our deferred maintenance is extremely high and so that you really have to balance the two to two aspects of the town's financial position because you can't continue to operate without appropriate school buildings or without roads that work or bridges that have fallen down or boilers that have gone out of service either I mean and I think that so deferred maintenance is one of the things interest rates are still very low and so sometimes there is a time to act and and to fix your deferred maintenance and it's usually when interest rates are you know in the four to five percent range rather than the 10 to 12 percent range infrastructure really isn't optional you know if I and also deferred me I mean preventive maintenance is also something you might want to consider if you can assess your bridges and see that something is within five years of failing then you can do the planning ahead of time and and not have to go through two or three years of having a bridge or something out of service I mean I don't wait until my car blows up the engine before I change the oil the or but why don't wait till my roof absolutely he's got torrents of water coming into the house before I fix the roof you actually do what you need to do into reserves or whatever to fix serious infrastructure problems so I would hope that the the finance committee will find so determination to which I think the various things which have occurred in politically in the town over the last 12 months or so reflect feeling on the town that it was time to to move on deferred maintenance and to make appropriate forward motion in these in these areas and so I would reflect my neighbors comment that getting station road bridge open again is is the high priority and maybe the permanent bridge has to wait a bit but because sorting out all these different projects with the amount of deferred maintenance that the town has is serious but I would strongly hope that it's time to move and get going on these things and respond to the emergencies that are there and then make significant planned progress on the on the really the biggest issues which have to do with the large buildings I just want to agree totally because I have torrents of water running through my building when it rains thank you yes here and then way in the back Sigurd Nelson I just want to echo some of the points that have been made certainly this is a relatively small cost in relation to the total amount of capital projects we're looking at secondly the safety issue not only on route 9 but the other end of Stanley Street as well as now Mill Lane and Southeast Street which is being used I use it much you know now I never used it before when I could go down station road and and hook up with Shea Street to get over to Whole Foods etc but that's a very dangerous intersection I you have to knows way out into the lane in order on Southeast Street in order to see whether someone is coming through that bridge under the rail trail secondly doing the temporary bridge will allow us the flexibility if we don't get the grant from the state on the first round to time the permanent bridge in a way that makes makes fiscal sense and also looking at the the total the the four or maybe five capital projects maybe they won't all be funded maybe the town won't go for two overrides but this is a relatively small cost that we should invest in and I think the point made this is in a sense an emergency this is like a boiler blowing up this is the bridge that's totally destroyed a road this should be fixed as quickly as possible I just wanted to concur with a lot of what people have said I wasn't able to meet your daytime meeting also do the work schedule but I do want to say that I believe this is an emergency I think that the safety issues with travel from where I live to anywhere else has become really difficult I have a 17 year-old driver who's only got her license within about six months and it's very worrisome to me that she has to make such difficult turns onto roads where the visibility is really difficult she almost got in the head on collision on Warren right road because somebody came around and there's just so much more traffic all of us going down Warren right and the person everywhere she honked loudly and the person swerved off and hit a tree so I'm very concerned about the safety station road is also in bad shape so it's something that you have less traffic on than more I know a lot of us are headed that way if we need to go anywhere south you need to go you know she tried she drives herself to south Hamley for school so you know it's just a situation I think is very urgent I do think that two hundred and twelve thousand dollars is that is a drop in the bucket this town has a lot of capital needs as everybody has talked about a lot of deferred maintenance but this is one that is impacting a lot of people and has a real safety element so I hope you'll consider funding the temporary bridge yes one last round so the agree completely with everything everyone has said and we were talking a lot about safety and those those arguments are very real but let's let's also be honest that there's also the you know we we bought a house a year ago right near there and we buy it in reliance on access using station road and it's a reasonable assumption that that road will be open and if it goes down the town will do whatever it can to get it open as soon as possible especially in a town where tax rates are as high as they are so it's just in the safety arguments are real but I would encourage all of you any of you who don't live near there to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who does live there and uses this on the absent this issue would use this road on a daily basis multiple times I use this for work I use this for everything and the idea of this being down for two years is frankly a joke especially when we have in front of us a proposal that is very reasonable in terms of cost to get it open in the short term otherwise because I'm gonna turn to the committee just as each member of the committee since struck them is not made it yet we said we'd only wait a certain amount an hour and we've done that so he probably tied up with an issue that's equally important to us and what he's doing at the regional school committee meeting so what I would like to do is hear from each member of the committee now as to where how you would summarize where we're at and what your questions information you'd like to know for me they're I believe I have sufficient information but then I dealt with capital for many years and I feel that this is something we need to pay attention to now Mr. Bachman would you like to enter the room are you sure that's for you so I'm actually prepared to vote for the temporary bridge and I am hoping that we will go ahead and in the process be successful with our actual application to the state but I do want to say we need to be prepared for the possibility that we may not get it just so that you're aware what the discussion had been for is that our now understanding of the DFT bridge fund program is we can apply for up to five hundred thousand dollars for the bridge that the remainder would need to be paid for by the town and that we hope to get it in the first year but if we don't get it in the first year we could defer and get consideration in the second year and beyond that would have to reapply that could continue to seek it so that was our understanding okay Kathy I think I also have sufficient information I just have a question more related to the permanent bridge on the temporary bridge where we've got a certain amount that we've got allocated your best guess on temporary bridge on how much we'll need then there's this other part that gets up up to the 440 that is a planning process that's partly planning for current bridge would that plan stand for two years from now so if we if we made a decision to live with temporary for two years because when we looked at our capital budget we can't we don't think we can put our share that permanent bridge in in the next six months so you know whatever so that won't be wasted funds we'll have done that work the only thing we have to worry about is the shelf life of the environmental work we've done there is a shelf life to that work if we go beyond five years without actually doing construction we may have to go back and do some of the environmental analysis wetland elineation bank delineation we may have to redo that and that's surveying analysis type thing that's the only thing that'll happen has a shelf life if you're talking about a two-year period we go for we get the permits we should be all set but five years is the most you can if we get a permit five years is the most we can have a permit from the conservation commission and well and people and then if we actually don't get a permit our surveys are only good delineations are only good for five years worthy of any well I think it was Paul Backelman who said to me at the last meeting that to enter a capital project without getting state money is not a good idea so I am at this moment in favor of a temporary bridge a relatively decent one while we pursue getting state funding though I I had wanted to add that I thought we needed some lights with it or some kind of lights that turn on when people are on the road you know that they have a tripwire or something I'm just afraid of it being I'm thinking about driving at night it's a one-way thing so there isn't going to be a white line down the middle of the road and I've seen it's but it's hard to see never been aligned okay but you've had a two-lane road and now it would be a one-layer so it wouldn't be any different then that was the point we have a temporary bridge already it's okay it doesn't work we just want to use the road okay that sounds good that sounds good it's so juicy yeah anything else that's it gentlemen I think most of the facts have already been shared the additional additional research I did was speaking with an emergency doctor and finding out that the time they're trying to reduce is from door to balloon so it does indeed matter the extra time that it takes to get to a hospital so that's something that we have to keep in mind the other thing was just I did some additional math to see what is the cost of the residents it's you know I can obviously share the assumptions I've made at a later point but just briefly stating that it's if it's a two-year delay the residents are taking three million taking two million extra miles I mean that's a lot of fossil fuel and cost to residents if it's three-year delays three million extra miles and the cost itself to the residents would be anywhere from two hundred fifty thousand dollars to three hundred seventy five thousand dollars and I'm happy to share the breakup these are very safe assumptions I made nothing to extreme we talked about the extra time as well anywhere from ten minutes to 30 minutes 45 minutes because taking route nine is much more time consuming and so instead of one traffic light when we do station road we may have up to nine traffic lights that we have to go through there's extra cost to the businesses the delivery businesses at guns city's pizza lawn businesses and there's also we all received a letter from a realtor saying that a house is not selling on station road because of this pleasure I think that's pretty much it I think that when we you know if you set the criteria is what are the cost to the people in the environment and the businesses and we compare that with what the cost of the temporary bridge is it's very clear what our decision should be I think I'm reaching a point where it seems to be consensus in the committee I'd sort of gone through this myself and I guess that I view the permanent bridges being the end goal and so I was looking at questions about timing in order to sort of help me think through the question of the temporary bridge we're uncertain about the availability of funds we hope that they're available quickly but we don't know that they'll be available quickly if we knew they were going to be available quickly I would be not in favor of a temporary bridge but it's the uncertainty that kind of puts me in a place of saying the other should be exact opposite that we probably do need to go forward and make the recommendation to the council that the economic thing to do is to do temporary bridge because we have too much uncertainty with other avenues so this point I think it's probably worth sort of taking a quick look at the two motions to make sure that on each of them that we know what we're going to do and I do go with the second that has written on the sheets paper first for first discussion because it's replenishing money to the road repair account that has already been committed and spent and is not available for the road repair account for this year if we don't do it so it's money that's been expended on the station road bridge project already because of the emergency nature but it was a decision that had to be made by the time manager and staff and they didn't make that decision at this point it's either we go without the road repair money that would normally be spent this year and given the cycle of freezing and buying that leads to potholes it's now pretty obvious that we might have that problem yet again because we do every year so I think we should go ahead and do the second motion and then get back to the first motion all right I will move that the town appropriate 227 thousand five hundred dollars to reimburse the road repair account for the engineering service costs occurred for the station road hop bridge replacement and to meet such appropriation transfer and to meet such appropriation transfer 227 thousand five hundred dollars from free cash yes motion made in second this is recommendation that we would be making to the council to the council and so it's really to recommend this to them so you that's my question I was going to ask this is just to recommend to the council yes the council has to act as a whole the council asked us to make a recommendation by the 28th of January so should the friendly amendment be that we I move to recommend to the town council yes this motion is recommending this motion anything else discussion we've really discussed it already for any comments from down manager no so all in favor then of the motion and K by raising hands so it's five it's unanimous so then we get back to the first motion okay I move that we recommend to the town council the following that the town appropriate two hundred and twelve thousand five hundred dollars for the purchase and installation of a temporary bridge for the station road hop brook bridge and to meet such appropriation and to meet such appropriation in transfer two hundred twelve thousand five hundred dollars from free cash so it's motion made in second the additional discussion the only discussion I have is that I'm assuming that we've been assured by our finance people that we can trick we we had the free cash that we can transfer it won't undermine anything else we were planning with that yes yeah I think that the one thing that it does do and the first one is money that we've spent already in it was a question of going for going the annual road repair spring road repair work on this one we've talked about it it does have an effect on free cash and that's why we started the conversation that we had that if we recommend going forward with all four major projects that were previously discussed it will have a small effect on the amount that we might have to ask for that exclusion override authority from the taxpayers it theoretically could make it more difficult to get the override passed and we also have heard a lot from many of our citizens including people who live in the area affected by the bridge that our taxes are high and wanting us to do things we can to limit the growth of our taxation and obviously we're asking them to make that choice I think in reality it's a fairly small amount of money that we're adding to that exclusion and the amount of additional taxation that people would have to pay in order to support this kind of additional debt is really small and so I don't think that in my mind it's not enough that it's going to affect a decision to build one of the major projects if that major project is dependent upon passage of the debt exclusion override later so any other discussion any comments from the manager then what's about all in favor of this motion indicate various enhancements they're gonna see an animus I think we are at the end of our agenda and the only thing that I'll see is if there's any thoughts as many as the housekeeping matter would you take up about when you would like to schedule next meeting if you have anything now that you would like to get out of the chair could you take your conversations in the hall please meeting is still going on so I think we're talking about the major capital projects and all the other things yeah not the four capital projects but the other maintenance and repairs so as we get into the year the calendar years we will focus first on the four major capital projects in February that's going to be our focus in February and later on we'll look at the larger capital the other capital projects that is taking on as we move through the calendar year ultimately you'll get officially it on May 1st that's when the charter calls for the information being transmitted to you along those lines I just came from the school committee meeting the regional school committee the recamera school committee and the union 26 meeting where we have made a proposal to share the services of the finance director for the school department which is Shawn Mangano who's the finance director and we would obtain some of his time to work on the major capital projects because half the projects already the schools anyway he's familiar with all the projects he's familiar with all the players he has credibility amongst many of most of people and so they're taking that into consideration now and they will be going back to it next Tuesday to vote on whether they approve that scenario or not so they didn't vote to approve tonight no because they you know they're in executive session right now to discuss the contract because the contract is between the finance director and the regional school committee and union 26 so it's a they have to talk about what it means for his employment contract go ahead okay just to build on Shawn and his question Paul in addition to the four big projects where when I think of the four big projects there are all there are potentially alternative scenarios in terms of what the price point is I mean Lynn pointed out that we don't have the fully scoped out what the total cost would be I think it would be useful because most of these graphs that were done earlier are just showing the four big ones and then when we hear there's 16 to 20 million of deferred maintenance of roads and others and somehow what do you call that the six you know whatever you call it it's a big number that starts to be you know to what extent should we be planning on doing some of these pieces it was interesting I think on the station bridge road some of the comments we had last time we met was the general condition of the roads feeding into all of this aren't great so when the bridge goes out it's on top of that and you get those comments all over town so just some sense of all of that fits right so I think you know I think on our website is the study that looked at our deferred the amount of work needed to upgrade our roads was $12 million about $2 million a year investment we've using chapter 90 and town funds we've increased our commitment to road repair last year significantly almost a million dollars so I think we're making good progress on that and I think the roads in particular are getting special attention there are a lot of I wouldn't say deferred maintenance but things that need to be done to the town it's just maintenance and stuff that goes on and the fact that we have not built a new building for the town in 28 years since this building was built in 1990 so we're behind in terms of making an investment in our community so it's time for us to make that kind of investment which by the way is one of the reasons our debt service is so long and we've been able to put in reserves and so the reality is that debt service is going to go up and we will look more like other towns once we finally do what we need to do yeah and my point was just only it's easier for me to think about it all when I see these interactive charts because yes debt service is going to go up are we going up are we putting a permanent bridge in the mix with roads and is it one of the big buildings you know whatever it is it's going to go out to the bond market at some point I mean up for some of it not necessarily for the maintenance stuff we don't like that going into the bond market we'd like to pay with that and that's why every year we've been upping our percentage of levy that we contribute to capital projects for the last four years half a percent every year so we've been stepping up our investment into our existing buildings just to make room so instead of pouring that money into operating costs it's going into maintenance costs so we're at nine and a half percent nine percent fiscal year 19 we're trying to get to nine and a half percent for FY20 so that means another bunch of money that will go into capital okay so when we talk about these things people often mention increasing taxes on senior homeowners and we do not have something that they have in New York City I think it was called the circuit breaker and where we'd have to decide how old, whether it's people of a certain age with a certain yearly income and perhaps a house of a certain value but I'm not sure if the house value is in that get some kind of help in not having to have their taxes raised I'm just thinking this is something that we as a group should study and have because so I asked my husband I said so what would what would our taxes increase and it was going to be $800 or $1000 or whatever like that so I thought okay we'll handle it but I thought well if I were somebody else I wouldn't handle it you know I really wouldn't like it and I'd like people to be able to vote on things that are good for the town as a whole but not have to vote them down because they can't handle the additional taxation and is this something that has been discussed in the past as a doable thing? I think it's very sensitive to the impact of all the taxes on property owners I think Mr. Burgess explained at his last meeting with you the principal about we have done pretty much everything that we're legally allowed to do for property owners to receive any exemptions for seniors if they there's a tax work off program where they can volunteer their time to pay off their taxes basically and a lot of seniors take advantage of it they do it actually partially for the funds but also because they enjoy the work we've got a lot of them throughout town and at LSSE and at the senior center and that's only for $150 or something I mean I did read that and I thought if I'm an old lady of 90 I don't really feel I want to go do that you know so legally unless we get a state law there's legally nothing that we can do we're not allowed to do it because this is all regulated by state law we can't just say you don't have to pay as much taxes we're not allowed to do that that is the problem that in Massachusetts municipalities are bound to a large extent by the legislature's rule books I must speak the limits that they place on us this is one of those areas so we're back to the agenda question how soon do we need to do the next meeting or can we take a little bit of time until we start giving the school budgets and library budgets that should probably the first we'll have to look at April 1st when do you expect that he said April 1st April I know capital may be over in JCPC but capital requests coming up from departments coming from schools that's flowing in now we'll be flowing in in February when we review capital requests at the time we do our budget hearings internally so the manager looks at all those capital requests and assembles the package that will be delivered to the council have you scheduled roughly the time period for those now so we've got a few more budget hearings to do this week I think and then I think we're pretty much wrapped up with our doing a budget hearings internally then we have to assemble the information that's been submitted by departments so we can put a schedule together though for you and I guess the last question is has anybody taken on organizing the first meeting of the JCPC so that we can get appointments from all of the entities that appoint to JCPC we haven't set a date yet I was hoping for Donald to be appointed because he will be a key person on that and I wanted him to be in place with an agreement with the school district before we do that so that'll probably I guess mid-February just to have an organizational meeting if nothing else right yes it's usually at that point you start getting setting up a schedule and looking sequentially at each of the requests in the way that it has functioned every year that I'm aware of is that there's a series of meetings set up and one day it's Mr. Morrow's opportunity and he gets to come in and defend his requests and explain his requests and advocate for his requests we sequentially go through the departments and the school library entities in order to then understand the full scope and then the JCPC can work from that to make recommendations in this process so if we had cross cutting questions and I'll just do one as an example not that I'm focused on this but if we wanted to say across everything in the town on vehicle requests whether it's conservation or DPW or rather than doing department our department would we go through you for some consolidated just to get a sense of the total and what it would look like I can go back through all budgets and see actuals but just wanting to get an inventory and I think you're doing an inventory now we've always had an inventory I have a question. The question of the school budget we've been receiving mail saying that perhaps we should, there was a suggestion that was brought up that each of the district councilors should have a forum, a community forum on the schools soon and with George we've scheduled one for March 3rd but we know that if there's going to be something that organized that all of the districts will have a forum that there has to be some overall coordination with school people as to who's when they're going to come so we kind of feel like we can't go forward planning our march forum because we're waiting to hear what's going to happen. So I think that that process is really in the hands of the schools I don't think their intention is to come to every district forum because they have a different rollout plan and I think that that's how they had a discussion about that last Thursday and I think we're hoping to have the superintendent and chair of the school committee come in to your meeting on Tuesday. On Monday. On Monday. Yes. With the president and I would be meeting with the chair of the school committee and the superintendent to work out exactly what that would be mainly to help educate the council to understand its role, the timing of its role when you become, when it comes onto your plate especially for the mass school business school MSBA process that's going to be the next big decision and then I think it's also they have some ideas on how they want to educate people because they have a whole sort of education plan from their perspective that they have to do that includes interested parties like staff, parents and then the general public. So sometimes it might not match up exactly with districts. So just go ahead and not worry about that being something that's kind of superimposed and just go ahead and have a district meeting and know that at some point this school board will have their townwide forums and we'll hear about it. Yes. That's what I would do. I mean you might, I mean there's some discussion about if they have a forum maybe we should have a district meeting immediately after that forum so that people already gathered, they don't have to go out twice so we've had some conversation about that. That's some of the conversation but they, you know, there are three schools with five districts and some people are more directly aligned with certain schools for instance I mean district two is almost exclusively Fort River but then there's you know about district four and then district one and district three really focus much more on Wildwood and to some extent also for so it just doesn't break up neatly. I do think it's very important for us as a council to have this conversation with the school superintendent and also ourselves to really understand what our role is and what our role is not because there's an even bigger not than there is. If I jump in, one of the concerns expressed tonight at the school committee was because the council hasn't really formed as a whole yet they were concerned about Mr. Mangano's time and what kind of demands the council would put on his time and because he and so there aren't established paths and so that's one of the things really high level communication between the two bodies is really important so people aren't stepping on each other's toes the public will always try to involve everybody they can to take roles that might not be appropriate so I just think that it's important for the two bodies to have that sort of conversation as to when do we come into play, what is your role, what is our role, the council plays a super significant role in the MSBA process and you are ultimately the ones deciding on the capital projects So I'm probably going to cut this off because it's not really opposed to part of the agenda we said it was housekeeping to talk about next meetings and agenda and that's why I need to get into the substance plus the substance will be discussed on Monday, not anyway So to really add to the original question it's seeming like there's no immediate need for meeting that generally around the beginning of April when we start having the school and library budgets to actually look at and when we start getting a better sense of what the JCPC timeline and process is and I'll continue to just inform you about that and then you can pose a request back for a meeting at any time and if I have a request we need a meeting because this is what I think we should talk about I think we should, it doesn't change it. Do you see anything on the four schools, the four towns school budget for the group? I think it'll probably come up when the regional budget request comes up because they will put forward what they think is likely to be the school committee's request for an assessment free to the towns and that's the opportunity that we will have to come then and talk about it so it fits together with the budget at this point. So we'll save our meeting time but expect April to be busy. I think we can expect April. Because we are, I mean that's the whole thing and that's very different and a budget coordinating group discussion how to redo the budget calendar under our new set of rules because the budget calendar is very different than it was when it was a town meeting that had to meet much earlier than we have to make budget decisions. Anything else then? Anything else you think the new people need to know before we hit though? One thing I would recommend, I mean some of it we were sent by Paul during the summer like here's some documents you might want to look but the April 2018 JCPC report laid out backwards and forwards some line items that gave you a sense of both the backlog or the maintenance on the road. It was very clear it's tons of tables but it's a good document to look at what these larger numbers. We had a question from Peter Barrick on what does if I add the part of the bridge that's not grant funded plus this what's a million dollars out of our capital flow and you can look at these documents and say this is what that number looks like we thought we would be spending every year and how much more is that or what piece of it. I just think it's a good document as a background document the same way these charts were. That is actually the working document for the JCPC process that is a spreadsheet that gets modified through the discussion process and ultimately then becomes a crux of the report even though the report is in the past has also been a narrative it may have to be a little less narrative and I just thought the actual tables there it shows you the magnitude of some of the other things and how they interact. So why don't I just include with a couple of observations or steps. One is on this general question if you have any member of the committee as recent as they feel they need to meet including I've looked at these documents and I'd like to have a meeting just as so that I can be educated about it and it seems to be an item that might be of interest to the entire group and not just though for a single person we can take that up at that point so we can leave it at that and the other is that I will need to write up a memo reporting on our recommendation and I will initially do that with the committee after I've done a first stab at it so that we'll but I think that it's fairly straightforward because it's just going to reflect a little bit of the discussion that we had and a little bit about the process that led to where we are with the recommendation and the recommendation is what we voted. When do you think you'll have that? I'll do my best to I will start working on it tomorrow. I can just tell you right now that this is going to be a posting on Friday a lot of documents because I've got a couple other pieces that I'm trying to write. Any time before Friday is most welcome. Do our best. The shorter we make it the faster it will be. Anything else I don't know if you can agree with? The smallest question. The so-called retreat. Whenever we retreat. My hope is that we get an email out to everybody with the details about it and an agenda and a couple of preliminary questions. February 2nd officially starting at 9 o'clock and going until 2.30. So I guess if that, we would agree to be adjourned. Thanks. It's not the house.