 All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Athena O'Keefe. I'm the clerk for the town council. I'm getting us started today just until we have a chair elected and then I'll pass things up to the chair. I am seeing up the presence of a quorum of the joint capital planning committee, so I'm calling the meeting to order at 401. I'm going to confirm that everybody can hear and be heard. I'll also make a note that we're recording audio and video. So Kathy Shane. Yes. Leah Edwards. Here. Sarah Marshall. Here. Eugene Garfredo. Here. Anna Devon-Gothier. Present. Bob Hagner. Here. And we are missing Jennifer Schau, the only absent member. So we're going to go right to the election of the chair. Did you call Sarah's name too? I noted that she's absent today. No, no, me. I'm here. Oh, I'm sorry. So I'm going to open the floor for nominations. You can self nominate. Anna. I'd like to nominate Kathy Shane to serve as chair. If she's interested. Kathy, do you accept? Yes, I do. Are there any other nominations? Jennifer's just joined. Jennifer, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. It was difficult to find a time that worked for absolutely everybody. So I'm glad you were able to make it. We've just, I've just opened the floor for nominations for chair. There's been one nomination on a nominated Kathy and Kathy's accepted. Are there any other nominations? Kathy, would you like to make a statement? No, I'm glad to accept import because I've done it for the last couple of years and we have new members. So the drafting of the report is usually done by the chair and then a vice chair, just to give you a sense of what, what has been the past as the vice chair is, is a close reader of the report. So when the whole committee is looking at it on. So that's the way it's been. So I'm happy to continue to do this, at least for this year because we have quite a few new people. So thank you. Thank you. Is anyone, would anyone else like to make a statement before we move to a vote being none. I'm going to call the role. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Anna. Hi, Eugene. Yes, Sarah. And Kathy. Yes. Congratulations, Kathy. I'm going to hand things over to you. Vice Chair, and as I said, the main function, the Vice Chair, well, the two main functions, if I can't make a meeting, they'll run the meeting. And the second is what we have done in the past, and a terrific person, Alex LaFabre, did it from the library, is we had a Vice Chair who was willing to do a really close read of a first draft. So that was the, that's been the main function. So the floor is open for nominations, including self nominations that someone is willing to do it. Oh, my gosh, OK, I will self nominate. If no one is going to nominate, I will, I will be happy to serve as Vice Chair and read through reports and support Kathy in this role. Is there any, can I, can I just say that I would have volunteered, except that our superintendent search is culminating, that work is culminating at the end of March. So I can't promise I'll even be here. So is there anyone else because hearing no one else, I will put it to a vote. Nice, Kathy, can I speak to my nomination? So I think the reason why I'm happy to serve in this capacity is that I have seen Kathy serve extremely adeptly as the chair of JCPC for a few years. And I believe that this is not she makes this an easy lift for her Vice Chair, but that having read the report several times through as a counselor and then also as a committee member, having helped shaped it my first year on the council, I feel that I'm familiar with it and could be a helpful set of eyes to Kathy in this process as we go forward. So thank you, Anna. And thank you for for I was going to nominate you, but I'm glad you. So so I will I'm going to call out the vote just based on the organization of people on my screen. That's easier since I don't have a list. So Bob. Yes, Kathy. So yes, Eugene. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Lee. Yes. Anna. I and Jennifer. Yes. So thank you. The one other issue I just wanted to quickly say is we've had a practice at JCPC of doing minutes by committee members. And Athena has agreed to do the minutes for this session. This organizing session. So then our other part of our practice was that as chair, I reviewed the minutes and posted them rather than putting them on an agenda. But anybody and sent them to everyone, but anyone who had a change could do it because we are posting the zoom. So if that's a practice, it was mainly to speed up the meetings because we rotate through staff, people coming in, heads of departments coming in. So it expedited our meetings to focus on substance rather than minutes. So if that practice is all right with everyone, I don't need we don't need a volunteer for today because Athena said she'll do it. I'm seeing nods of heads around. OK. So at this point, you know, Sandy, I need to have the can I interject for just a second? Are you looking for an agreement that you would approve the minutes? Yes, it's it's both that all that will have a minute taker from the committee each week. I would basically ask at the beginning who's willing to take minutes and then I'm willing to serve as a review rather than having the whole committee review it. Anna. Sure. I just want to just generally raise the kind of slight alarm or not even alarm is not the right word. I do get worried when we shift to committee members taking minutes, especially for something like JCPC. I think that there's something to be said for the ability to participate and take minutes at the same time. And I would love for us to look into what the budget cost would be if we were able to get a minute taker for for JCPC in the future. I do think I've no I know when I was on CPA, we had to take our own minutes and it really detracted from my ability to participate that particular week in conversation. And I'll speak for myself personally. It's a minute taking generally is is challenging. I don't envy Athena who does it for for us for other meetings and folks. But just raising that as a I'd love if we could raise out this practice in the future. So I can have Athena check it out. We haven't the staff person just Sandy. So, you know, the staff person has been shone. So we didn't want to have turned to Sean to take minutes. And I think one of the things that has made it possible on is a lot of people just looked at the zoom. We got the zoom right away after the meeting. So rather than trying to focus and take minutes, they could just, you know, jot down notes and go through zoom. But but we have there hasn't been a budget to staff us. So so we can check that so we can report back next time. Yeah. And there's agreement by it sounds like there's consensus that the chair can approve minutes on the committee's behalf. Kathy, I'm not expecting it to shift for this year. I'm just I recognize the budget's already set. And I'm more just commenting for a future. So I think with that said, we can move to what is for the new members. What is JCP? See, what do we do? And then what, you know, what are we going to see next week? And the items that are in the package if people didn't did or didn't have the chance to look at them is last year's JCPC report is in today's package. And last year's capital plan is in the package. So what we have typically seen is the next year's capital plan big coming to us with a lot of question marks in that some of the proposals might add to more than the total. So part of our function is to balance the budget and think of five years, not just one year. So, Sandy, were you going to describe the overall function or do you want me to do more than I just said? I'm. And you're you're muted right now. And I think that sums it up. I hadn't planned to do a big explanation, but I'm happy to do something sort of extemporaneous. For those of you, but and please, Kathy, jump in or cut me off if. So JCPC is here to provide recommendations to the manager about what the capital program will be. We'll have presentations by various departments to come in and explain their their capital requests. Some of them will be requests that have been in the plan in previous years. Others will be new things. It's not a hard and fast rule, but generally, if there's a new request, we would attempt to see that come in in the fifth year of the plan and not in the next year. But sometimes immediate requests can't be helped. Something breaks or falls apart or roof collapses or whatever. So we try to be balanced about that. There are always more requests than there is money. So as Kathy was saying, we just are going to have to make some decisions about about that, both in terms of the amount, but also in particular in terms of timing. Sometimes it may be that we'll have to ask committees or excuse me, departments if they can push a project off a year, or we usually start that whole discussion by asking them what their top priorities are so that then we can help balance them and then kind of play back and forth, looking at different scenarios so we can get the plan in balance for the current year and in the fiscal year is going forward. I think that is essentially it other than to say that the town has a policy. It has had an enunciated policy in the past of spending 10 percent of the tax levy on capital last year and this year. We have forecasts that actually have that up to 10 and a half percent of the tax levy. The tax levy is. Actually, I don't remember from when I was here is about 60 percent of overall tax revenue. So I mean that we're spending about 6 percent on capital of our overall revenues. That has to pay for both the debt service for bonds that we have issued in the past for big projects like schools or other buildings where it's like taking a mortgage out on your house. It's so big that you can't pay for it in cash. So the debt service for bonds that have been sold in the past. And then if we are projecting selling bonds for future requests, we have to do a forecast of what that would cost. And then the rest of the capital program is made up of just plain cash. And in general, again, I've been in different communities or different different standards. I forget what Amherst has been in the past. But usually there's some threshold that something has to cost at least. I'm going to say a hundred thousand dollars in order to bond it. Otherwise, you're just spending a lot of money on bond costs for something that really doesn't last that long. And then there are all sorts of rules about you can only bond for the useful life of a project. In other words, if a truck is going to last seven years, you can't bond for 20 years and things like that. But those are all messy little details that we can get into. All right, I think that is, in essence, what we're going to do. And if other people have their own perspectives or Kathy, if you want to share anything else as chair, I will turn it over to you. OK, thank you. Let me let me just a couple of things. Athena sent us. It's it's in the packet, actually. She posted we're meeting every week. And I see Bob has a question. So let me call on Bob first, Bob, before I get to agenda. And then I was going to open the previous year's plan so you could kind of see what we're going to be expecting. Bob. Yeah, it's not. It's more of a comment than a question. And it really is the issue about maintenance of existing facilities, et cetera, existing capital equipment. Sometimes it's cheaper to do it this year than it is next year. Because, you know, if you let if you defer maintenance, you can the problem can grow. Do we do we try to take that into account? In other words, the the the issue about it'll cost fifty thousand this year, but one hundred and fifty thousand dollars next year. I would say in general. I mean, the town has a facilities department that is overseas and coordinates a lot of those issues. That there's a new facility director again. I haven't met him yet, so I can't speak to what he would say about this. But, you know, it may be while he is in talking about capital, he can also talk about what kind of deferred maintenance programs that the town or the city has. I guess it's called the town. The town has, you know, whether it's, you know, inspecting elevators or, you know, repairing a roof for, you know, there's a whole range of things like that, that he can tell you much better than I how sophisticated and developed that that is. And certainly, I think you're right. A great example of that is road maintenance. Most towns have a payment management system and they rate all their roads. And, you know, if you rate them from like one to ten, you know, you want them mostly to be on average, you know, seven point five or eight, because if they get down to be fours or threes, you have to completely redo the road as opposed to just patch it. And that goes along for a lot of other things, too. You know, think things like roofs, you try to maintain, although at some point roofs just wear out. I mean, you know, sometimes you don't have a choice. So anyway, instead of my speculating about how the town does it, I think it would be worthwhile asking the facilities manager to address that for the whole committee. And just one thing, Bob, if we get a chance during this introduction that one of the innovations, Sandy, that happened over the last couple of years is when for the town buildings, the there has been a pooled amount of money of these are the repairs. And he's gone through all the buildings in town on what is needed, including the police, it's that rather than the police department having to think about their building and fire, having to think about the years. And then he's listed what need to be do right now. But in the five year plan, for example, Crocker Farm is in it for its roof and for something else. And then we can see police so we can see some big ticket items coming. And he talks through those and why. And then his bucket of money is with some priority. And the schools have done something similar, you know, in terms of, you know, a meat immediate. So it's been, but particularly with the town, that was the something that we didn't used to do before. We were reviewing 20,000 for this and 50,000 for that rather than a bucket that's going through all the buildings. So on the and then why decision this year for this. As Sandy said, the roads is we're never catching up on the roads. But so so that's that's been helpful in terms of thinking about things. And one of the things I'm going to ask Sandy during these meetings is there's new federal money on the books to if if part of it is moving away from a fossil fuel to an alternative that on some things it enters into the financing equation. So it may or may not want to speed you up on when you were planning on doing it. So, Jennifer, I see your hand is up to. Jennifer. Yeah, I have a question. When Sandy gave his description, he said that the amount of requests would be more would be more than we have and that we'd have to make some difficult decisions. But is that actually the case or am I remembering correctly that in the past few years, the process has shifted such that the amount of the total amount of requests pretty much comes in at the amount that we have to spend? Or am I not remembering that correctly? You remember correctly. We we we did an improved process where the very the very first year when I wasn't on JCP, but I was watching it, there was more than twice the dollar amount, three times the dollar amount that was available to spend. We've gotten really close to a balanced initial request. And all five years have been balanced. You know, when I say balanced, nearly balanced, you know, three or three hundred thousand more in out years, because one of the things that was happening is we just shifted it to the next year and had a five million dollar deficit the next year. So there's been a there's been a real five an effort to do a five year plan that you realize the next year is going to make have some decisions. But Jennifer is right. We haven't had we we've been able to say, shouldn't we spend more on this? And can this be postponed rather than how do we cut the request in half? So so I just I just wanted to say that that's been made the conversations easier in terms of comparing things. The one other innovation, while there have been several, the plan has we've been reviewing inventory. There's been an updated inventory list and with a with a grading on a in bad shape and good shape and vehicles. We'd asked how many vehicles do we have? So we finally are getting a list right at the beginning of vehicles. And we asked for and it's been updated. If an amount was authorized out of the capital plan and a previous two years ago when it hasn't been spent, you know, how much of that could come back into this year's capital plan? And we've actually found we, meaning you, Sandy and the staff have have found money that way and said, oh, we've actually gone back. And it turns out that's not going to be spent and we can bring it. We can repurpose it for this year's capital budget. Sarah, I see your hand is raised. Yeah, thanks. I just want to make sure I understand this process. So in last year's report, there was projection for FY 25. So our role, let's say the two of us from the schools will be to look at what's in the projected FY 25 for the schools and say, yes, those are still our priorities or no, they're not. We want to put those off and here's what we feel we need to do this year. Is that right? That's correct, although it's already what I and Sandy can correct me. But there's been work by staff done already. So your school facilities person will be coming to us. Rupert, you know, this still stands, but we want to shift this around. So we will be looking at and it probably will be helpful if if I can try to figure out how to open up the document. If you if you look at what we get is there's a column that says tomorrow. Next week, we're going to be looking at this department and we get a list of everything that's being proposed. So it's not that the individual JCPC members have to bring those in. Those are being brought in by staff. Yeah, great. Thank you. Yeah, so it's it's we're there to to hear as as a group and to raise questions. If we we want to say why why do we need to spend that? How urgent is this in priority on this? So we don't have to actually bring the you don't have to bring the proposals from the school. So you get to actually question the school the way the rest of us, you know, have to be where we're a group reading all of this. Right. Thank you. And and so so it's the the the presentations then talk about particularly the larger items, people are coming in to explain both what it is that's being proposed and why it costs as much as it does. And and some of the reason, Jeremiah Jeremiah Group, the things is you didn't want to go through all the small things, but he could go through the banks building and say, this is what's on the lip for the whole building and lots of pieces of it. But for anything like a large building needs a roof and we're only coming in with the design of the roof this year. But, you know, two years down the road, it's a big expense. The one other piece what Sandy did said very quickly is when we see the budget we have to work with for the coming year, our recommendation is focused on the coming year, but we are looking at all five. When we when we see what's being recommended, there's money that's already got a claim on the amount of cash we've got and it's authorized debt from the past. So we get a debt service line existing debt service and that shows you how much remains. But some of what we're allocating is to a cash project where everything will be spent in the coming year and some of it. And the staff will have already indicated they're proposing a bond funding of it so that we're we're authorized. We're saying yes to the project, but that expenditure may not hit till two years from now, but it's real money. And so the report itself has a debt schedule for the whole town for everything. And that's been updated regularly, so it's out 10 years so that we don't forget that a big and it's had placeholders. So Jones Library, there was a placeholder for it. For the school school, the elementary school doesn't show up because we are raising taxes to pay for that. So it's it's funded in a different way, but a lot of things are still with like a DPW or a fire station, new one. It's sitting there in out years as if we're going to do this. It's going to be less for other things. So we get to see that 10 year table of existing debt and proposed as well as the current year. So that should all be in the posted plan from last year. So the what staff has been bringing us to a stand. Sandy is the beginning of that whole final report that the manager is doing. But then we just work on the the the proposals. So it's been a it's been a very efficient way. It has been a very efficient way of looking at things. Great. So any other questions? Because one of the things I wanted to bring to people's attention is that Athena hosted a schedule where we're due to meet every week for the next several weeks. But one of the things I noticed is that today is a Wednesday. All the other meetings were on Thursday from four to six. So hopefully Athena is always very efficient on this. So hopefully everyone knows that the the meeting time is four to six on Thursday. So this Wednesday is an exception. And it's the schedule has us meeting all the way through the 4th of April. So you should just block your calendars and typically the materials for the next discussion are posted at least a day or two before we meet. So we have a chance to look at them and then people are invited to staff is invited in to talk to them so that we know we're talking about DPW or we know we're talking about the schools or whatever the cluster is. So and we are deadline for getting the report out. There's some allowance in there for us looking at a draft and then finalizing it. Then we send it's a recommendation to the town manager. And we we send it to the council as well. We're we're on a tight deadline because this becomes part of the larger budget that the manager is proposing to the town. So it's it's it's informing the capital budget. So that you know we've been finishing by the end of March, but we've been starting by the beginning of February and that wasn't possible this year for many reasons. You know, so so we've been pretty good on meeting our own deadline, but it means that final reading of the report people have to really say this this represents what we all thought and flag things along the line. This is we we, you know, examples were initially there was a bucket of money put up for sustainability that we put in the capital plan that could be used to seed grant money. And initially we thought it was too low if we really wanted to use it this way. Or we, you know, so it was we flagged it and wrote it as a recommendation for change. But the other thing that was happening since our staff is fabulous and very responsive. We also got signals that town manager likes that idea lot so does staff so as we were making a recommendation we didn't think we were going completely against the grain and we were figuring out a way that it fit within the budget. So those were things we flagged that we as we went along. Well, I don't, I don't know how it's 430 so if people want to we could look at some of the tables in the past report on how you read these I don't you know anyone who's been on JCP has seen these in the past but we get a. Here's the revenues. Here's what 10% what that 10.5% means and how much of it is, and then what does the plan look like when it comes to us for the five years, but the only thing we'll be looking at is last year, you know, it's not it's not been updated for this year. So the numbers would just be it would give you an illustration of what we're going to see. Would that be a helpful or would it be better to wait and be looking at the coming year, rather than the previous year. I'm open for it. I mean, it's always fine to end early. Sarah. I have a question so I'm looking at, excuse me page seven of last year's report I guess starts the tables of the five year plan. Do all do all the years potentially get revised than the numbers for like for the revenue, or really we're just updating FY 25 and now projecting one year further out but might there be changes to the other funding funding summaries in out years. And while you answer that I'll see if I can get to that page so people can see what Sarah is looking at and show it on the screen document page six. So, each year, the, the revenue forecasts are updated through the budget process so we just went through fairly big process of finding that we actually had more money than we originally thought we could and so we changed the revenue for FY 25 so there's an across the board, 4% increase for all town and school budgets originally been three. So it then set the new base from for 25. There's a then a consequential. It flows. It falls right through that through to the following years. Right, so we'll do that once we won't keep tweaking it. Did that answer your question Sarah. Yes. Yes, thank you. You know, so if so, you know, some of the things that when we were looking at proposals last year on and all the way through coven. One of the issues was that people weren't completely sure what the price was going to be of what they wanted to buy, because there was a queue so if you were buying a new van. You're going to get it for a year or a year and a half and your best guess so we actually created a little pool called inflation factor, so that people wouldn't have to come back and say we'd allocated, you know, X dollars and it's, it's why. So, some of what gets changed is what we actually things got pushed into a following year, because the purchase didn't happen. So, but, but the projections come from us for the out years based on what Sandy just said so on the revenue side that 10 and a half will have been revised based on what we think our revenues are this year and the five year forecast of the whole town. And the debt service to sense something is newly coming on but it is an obligation. There was a best guess at what the interest rate would be. And so now you're seeing, we are in fact we incurred the debt. And here's what that line is so we those things get updated but changes so looking forward on what you, we thought we were going to be doing this year and the next year. We can expect that those are necessarily going to be completely different, but priorities may have shifted. If anyone wants to, since I guess I'm saying about three or four people are brand new and a few have been through this. I'm happy to spend some time before the next meeting if it's how do I read this table. You know, and the the debt service table by the way in the report is all the way at the end it's like page 31, but it's a good thing to look at because that's where the out years. If we make a decision now, it starts showing up is that to fund something with that and show start showing up as limiting the next year, or, or three or four years from now. So, so some of those tables are my, I call them my favorite tables because their tables I keep pulling out to look at again, as I think about how much money the town has Sarah. Maybe everybody wants to leave but it's my chance. So, do we play any role in the resident capital request. They come to us, and I don't know Sandy and Jennifer, whether we received any this year we posted the opening for later than we normally do. It looks like Sandy saying we have to even though he's muted but I could read his fingers. But yes, they do come to us and if you read last year's report or even the report. The previous year, one of the issues with the revenue resident capital requests is there often things like a sidewalk, a speed bump. There are things that that people are directly concerned with, and we haven't had an easy way of setting a priority around our crosswalk. You know, they're not they're limited in budget way we haven't had an easy way of saying yes or no because they sound like great ideas, and we've been asking for a staff review before we get them. And I don't know how it is, you know, so that we have some sense. And it's been a very, it's not, it's not been a satisfying process, I guess, is the way I would summarize it, because things we think make a good sense where people have already gone to the committee gone here gone there. And we're not a yes or no because someone says well we don't know if we do this here what is the priority for speed bumps on other roads that have the same characteristics so. So we've been asking for a process that doesn't send people first to us than to hear than to hear and and be caught in if you are a programmer you're in a do loop where you can just never get out of it. One of the resident request came directly to the council saying help. There's a small daycare center with cart with no sidewalks and we just want some speed humps in front of it, and the council wrestled with it and it's still not completely resolved. But those do come, they do come to us. I think it's a fixed amount of money like this every year we can spend up to this amount of money for them they're set there in the overall pot of what money do we have to spend. I could I would just say. My experience in other communities has been that because we didn't do these residents request when I was here last time that we would want to make sure that if there is a resident request that acts the operations of a town department that the department under whose ages that program falls agrees with that request in other words. We should make sure just to vet those things with departments before we say yes. So, I know one of the requests for example is for one of those speed signs that shows how fast you're going down the street tells you, you know, slow down. And so that would be the kind of thing that I would say, you know, we should definitely ask the police department. Alright, is this the right location for this. It might actually work, you know. And so that's just one example of I think the back and forth you might want to have with departments about some of the citizen requests. And Sandy just so you know, I mean, Anna was here for one of them so was Jennifer. And that has been a request of JCPC to do exactly that. And for one of the ones and it's probably a repeat, they'd gone to the police department and the police like the idea. And then it just, it never quite happened because DPW didn't completely agree with it or, you know, those things get complicated. So, so it's, it was, it's, it's been a, it's been a frustration because the idea was just what you said that, that there were no red lights or warning signals on something and if it had to be part of a bigger plan that someone was actually putting the bigger plan in place so that the request for traffic calming in one neighborhood could be prioritized over other neighborhoods and see that we wouldn't be just a few residents came in and they knew about it. And we, we thought there were problems in other parts of town so it's just been a, it hasn't been satisfying for either the JCPC members nor the people who are, are wise enough to try to get a resident proposal, front of us. Anna went through one of your first term. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a really I think this has been Sean and I actually worked on the form a while back to try to make it a little bit more user friendly because the process is pretty. The hoops are pretty small that you have to jump through and I think it's pretty frustrating and so for me the conversations we were having was, it's got to be worth it to have this process, someone's got to be able to get through. And the way that it was existing before no one got through, because we'd always hear well this should have been part of the DPW request or this should have been part of the fire request and the reason why they're, they're coming forward with this resident request is because it's not, because it's not necessarily the priority of DPW but these residents are trying to push the only avenue they have to make it happen. So I think for me it's, it's, I, I think that that the resident request form has so much potential to be the closest thing to participatory, the participatory budgeting that we're going to get. And I'd like to see it utilized more productively and and equitably I think that the request that we know will, will come through is about Cushman Scott, and they have literally tried every single other avenue and are continuing to try to get their work done. I think if we're pointing people to this we need to be able to move them forward without getting bogged down on on it being top of someone else's priority list, or we shouldn't have this process. I think that's what it comes down to for me is, if we have it we should be able to grant them and if not, then we shouldn't have it. That's my Wednesday afternoon take. So maybe a topic for the charter review. It's not in the charter. Sarah this is. This was an in this resident capital request was an innovation that the town did actually just before the seating of the council to allow this to come through so the participatory budget commission I do was charter process and there was some recognition that came about. But it's honest that this is the one piece we have. Community Preservation Act, the one you served on is another place where residents can bring forth. That's also participatory budget said we have two places. And then the block grant. I was about to mean where it can originate outside of staff. And we pointed to this JCP through processes one of them, but. Yeah, that's where that's where it's been sitting. Yeah. All right. So that commission met, did its report and is no longer meeting but having served on it. Is there any other questions you know the definition of capital itself came up last year I don't know whether it will come up this year but sometimes capital is to do a study. And it's been to buy something and it's typically been to get ready to buy something large, but there are a few things which didn't fit in any operating budget that have come to us on a salary study or updating it. And so one JCP member was questioning what our definition of capital was whether we shouldn't tweak the words a little bit because this didn't look like capitalists. So I don't know what on the docket for this year, Sandy, but that came up for a couple of specific items and we raised we raised it in our report just as part of a discussion. Sure. I would say it's a typical conversations into these in towns. I think there's no easy simple definition of what constitutes capital. And it is often the case that if the town wants to do something. The only way a department's going to have enough money to do it is if it gets a capital appropriation, because they just don't have the money in their operating budgets to undertake studies or so forth. It's easy to see when a study is preliminary to a in-ground capital project like you have to do an architectural study before you build a building that seems clear enough. Sometimes planning needs to do a study around things like zoning or various development proposals to understand the feasibility of a particular route to take or something to propose to the council. And again, just typically that has come through as capital requests in cities and towns that I've worked in. We can take that up on a case-by-case basis if it arises again with other things, but I would say it's not an unusual thing to see. So I don't see any other hands, and I do. It was a sincere offer on a walk me through the report and show me where we're making decisions. I was able to attend some JCPC sessions a year before I came on the committee, and I'm on the finance committee ever since the council. So I also get to see the report, but I'm happy to walk people through just reading the tables and where to look for things. All you have to do is email me and I have flexible enough time. I'm more than happy to do that. So I'm assuming that we'll hear from you what exactly who we will be seeing next week and get what it's or if it may be, you're just giving us the big picture next week. And then we start doing departments the week after it on the schedule. So, Athena, you can correct me, but next week, I'm not actually here. I'm going to veil to go scheme. The life of a retiree. I believe the schedule that sent out. Unless you guys want to meet without me, or we can arrange something that way, Athena, can you speak to that? I sent out that schedule. Today and then I sent it to Paul and Sandy and our finance team. And I just need to confirm that we'll be ready to present. We'll be ready next week without Sandy. So if that's not the case, things might get pushed back a week. I'm just waiting to confirm and then we'll be able to post the agenda and I'll, I'll update folks. And as soon as we have a schedule about which projects are going to be discussed which departments are going to meet which day then, then I'll update that schedule for you as well. And thanks for rubbing that in Sandy that's really kind of you to throw that in for us. Well, you know, I'd like to share. The big picture for the initial proposal is on for next week, but it means if Sandy's not there, it's going to have to be Paul, Jennifer, whoever to to highlight things for us. If we're ready for that next week. And resident proposals are listed. Resident capital requests are on for next week. So we would, you could at least post those so we know what they are. I see Lee has her hand up. Yeah. Yeah, as long as we're on schedule. I'll be back in the country next week and the time difference, but I could, I, I could watch the zoom and informed and I will be I'm planning. As far as I know, there's nothing coming up. You know, I'll clear the other Thursdays, but I couldn't, couldn't do it on the schedule that I have. I'm sorry. So Eugene, Eugene, are you Eugene or Eugene? I'm you can just tell me. Eugene is fine. Those both sounded the same to me. So I could call it much worse. I'm just a pile on. I'm also not available next week. Although I was planning on reviewing the zoom meeting probably that Sunday night following. So, just since everybody else is saying they're not going to be here. I'll chime in on that too. Okay, so we're, we're, we still will have a quorum if everyone else will be there. And so it's an important meeting to get the big picture and the talk through. And just so people know we don't. So if the resident capital requests, if we do have time to do that next week, we don't make a decision. We just hear about them. They're not making a decision. But Athena, if they're on less time, somehow the notice didn't go to the residents who had made the proposals, you know, they didn't realize they were, they were on for the week. So we should at least let them know they're potentially on for next, next week. You know, since it's listed, they'll know, and it would be good for us to get them in a packet if there are two of them. Whenever you have the chance to put them in. Jennifer, I think you have the resident capital requests. I don't have access to those. And I think are the requests open for a couple more days on Friday. I think it closes. The resident request is open till next Thursday, the 29th at four o'clock. So that, that, that's a tentative schedule that I posted. So if we need to move things around, then we'll do that. Leish, your hand still up again or, you know, is that just. So I think we've covered everything and I don't see a hand up. I'm also happy, you know, we're a pretty small group. So if you do this, I can see it if you can't find the button. But I, I, I think that is it for today. And I do urge you to look at the larger document to do just what Sarah was doing, saying, okay, this is, you know, what we got was really a list of all the projects for the current year. And then we can look forward and say next year and next year and next year. And last year, there was initially a pretty big deficit. One year later, and we actually, you know, not the year we were, but during our discussion, it disappeared and it made everyone feel a little bit better that we had a five year plan that wasn't in big deficits and any one of the five years it might be a slight slight surplus in a few years. But it felt like a plan rather than a wish. So, that's my plan or view. Normally, normally I would be reminding you that we need to do public comment but there's no attendees today so just a reminder that we do public comment at these regular meetings. Yeah, and, and we have been doing them at the end of the meeting to make sure we can plug the staff in for specific time slots. So, there is no public and I thank everyone for attending today and Sandy be safe on the slopes. It's a great as you're probably returning to it but it's a really great ski area. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. So see everyone. Almost everyone next week. Thank you very much. We are adjourned at 454. Thank you.