 Thank you Mr. Chair. So I'm just going to simply introduce the Director of Veteran Services we have, Jeffrey Chungle. I'm not sure if all of you have had a chance to meet him. Just a bit on board for a little over a year. Just a lot of great work since he's been on board. And I'm going to ask him to just describe the need to be transferred and talk a little bit about his work in the office. Good evening. Welcome. It's nice to be here. Nice to finally see some faces. I know I've spoken to a few of you on the phone. So thank you. So we are seeking some additional funds to cover our budget for this year. And they relate to Chapter 115, the state level Veterans Benefits. So these are our benefits that we provide. They're means-based. So once I sit down with people we review their finances, determine whether or not they're eligible for certain benefits. And if they are, then we enroll them in the program. So in addition to that, we provide additional services looking for additional funding, benefits, resources that would be available for veterans from either additional state programs or federal VA pensions. So what we're looking at, there's a little breakdown on your sheet in front of you for reimbursement for municipalities. So typically, the Chapter 115 benefits at a minimum are reimbursed back to the town from the state at 75%. So those are the financial assistance or medical assistance portions of the Chapter 115 benefits. And then there are a few things that are reimbursed at 100% of the cost of flags for Memorial Day, emergency housing and assistance to prevent homelessness, burial assistance, and then obviously our training and certification from the state is at 100%. So you can see down below that there's a little breakdown and a trend of historical data that relates to the veteran service budget from the town and reimbursement from the state. If you go back to FY12, they were reimbursed, the town was reimbursed 78% for a net cost out of the total budget of $59,173. As we trend forward through the years, FY14, you can see that it's 64%. That's because the reimbursements from the state are offset by a year, so we'll continue to see those funds be reimbursed down one more block veteran served. So you can see in 2012 with a total of 49 clients enrolled and now currently I am 69 and then we're projecting next year an increase in clients up to 75. So we provide additional resources. We have a new resource center that was dedicated July 3rd last year. So that's in my office. Another resource for veterans to seek benefits services right in the town. Provide mandate of job counseling for veterans receiving Chapter 115 for unemployed vets. We assist with all the federal, state, and local benefits and resources that would be available to them. And I just want to touch on an additional point that out of the $155,000 that we're looking to have reimbursed, of that $116,250 would be reimbursed by the state at a minimum. So leaving a net cost to the town of approximately $13,750. For those of you who are kind of unaware of the type of programs that we offer in services, I just want to give you a brief summary of a few instances since I've come on board. Dealing with providing benefits, I had a 91-year-old veteran living at home. Her brother-in-law had called, inquiring about benefits. So she was low income. Therefore, she qualified for Chapter 115. We're able to provide monetary support, fuel assistance, health care support, and then additional resources. Since she was qualified for Chapter 115 for additional utility discounts and looking for tax deferrals. So what was the net benefit for this person? Lifelong resident of Arlington, she was able to remain at home. So that was a success. Another one, a veteran had called, inquiring about funeral services. The call was for funeral services for that veteran who is currently receiving hospice care at home. So both the husband and wife, low income, they qualified for Chapter 115 benefits. So kind of a sad story, but we're able to help them. So I also filed a federal VA service-connected disability claim for the veteran. Potentially, we'll get that review, get it approved. So they'll receive additional resources, which will decrease the Chapter 115 that we're providing to them. And also for the surviving spouse, we'll be able to provide and file for a federal DIC, DIC or Woodhouse Pagodin for the spouse. So that's important as well. So ongoing help reduce costs for the Chapter 115, but be able to provide those state and federal level benefits. And the last one wrote, what two brothers, both veterans in their mid-20s, came in. They are technically underemployed, part-time, jobs making a minimum wage, still living at home with their parents. Both had significant issues, health issues and mental health issues coming back from deployments. So is able to provide immediate resources for them for their health and mental health issues through the VA. And also for both of them, filing service-connected disability claims. So with that in mind, they'll receive additional finances from the federal government, again, reducing the burden from the Chapter 115 benefits. But again, to keep them back up and running, get their needs addressed, and provide them with the benefits and resources that they need. That's a sum. Are there any questions? So I have a question regarding a veteran. Is there a highest amount kept for a veteran, or how much of the maximum they can get? There is. Since it's means-based, there is a maximum fuel allowance that they would receive, which would be $279 a month. There is a maximum assistance for housing, living, and then medical assistance as well. But that kind of all, each case is so individual that it's based strictly on the numbers that they provide. Okay, Brian. What are the demographics of the people receiving services, like what age? Typically for our 115 veterans, they're the older clientele. The vast majority are living in subsidized or they're living in the housing authority apartments. So lower income, social security only, for I'd say probably 75, 80%. I do have about four right now unemployed veterans that we can provide some additional resources for them. And then the others are kind of in between, like the 20-year-olds that require a little, but not a lot of support. Yes, sir. Okay, Dean? So following up on that, so when we've gone from 49 in 2012 under one, chapter 115, 20, 75, is this, we're just breaking it into demographics, is this increase of 50% being driven by a 65-year-old age group in older? I think most people would, because obviously I think most people look at that number and they'd say, oh, these are veterans who went to Iraq and Afghanistan, but you just said probably these are Vietnam veterans that are retiring. The vast majority of the chapter 115s are still in that World War II era, the older surviving veterans or surviving spouses. That's the other thing with this program. Massachusetts is the only state that provides these type of benefits or dependents as well. So surviving spouses. So we're kind of peaking at World War II. We're now starting to see an increase in the Vietnam-Korea era veterans, so that's the anticipated increase. Paul? This question is more for the manager. How does this request for 155,000 for the reserve fund work with other requests that might be coming down the line for reserve fund transfers? Well, I think at this point, it's fair to say that any reserve fund transfer has an impact on how we're going to make decisions about covering the stone ice deficit. So it certainly has an impact. I don't think it takes the trains out the tracks, but it impacts our decisions and which way we go from there. If a veteran was burned out of his house, Red Cross usually comes in one, two, three nights in a motel. Are there services or money or help you could provide? Yes, sir. And we have. We've had a couple of cases already this year where through either a home fire or some other setback at home, whether it's loss of heating, hot water, through the state, we're able to provide that emergency relief up to seven days. So we put them up in a local facility. We get 100% reimbursement from the state. We're able to address those immediate needs because there is a zero tolerance for homeless vets for the state. So that's our main goal, to take care of their immediate needs. And then during that week, we can look at providing additional resources or relocating them to an appropriate facility. Is a vet that qualifies just curiosity have to be honorably discharged? Yes. Okay, are there any other questions? Okay, the request is for $155,000 for veterans benefits to be going to the Veterans Services budget. So moved. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion or questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Fading unanimous? Okay. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for your service. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, Facilities Department. So I think as most of you will aware, as contained in the budget proposal, is the creation of or at least the initiation of the creation of the Facilities Department. And we have, like, 16 budgets. So there's some detail contained in the budget book, but we won't be able to provide the finance committee with a detailed presentation about really the multiple years worth of work that's been put into this concept by the Global Maintenance Committee. They provide you a little bit of the thought process, the background, and the reasoning behind this year's proposal. So I'm gonna give a brief overview of both of our few slides. You should have a presentation that was handed out in tonight's materials. And then I'm gonna have Andrew go over a few of the slides and then also ask Ruthie Bennett, who some of you may have met, Ruthie Bennett's the town's regional energy manager who we share with the town of Bedford. She's also gonna go over several of the slides in the presentation. Also, before I get into it, I wanna just recognize the members of the Building Maintenance Committee that are also here tonight. So Andrew and Ruth, he sat on the committee. We also have Barbara Thornton, who sat on the committee, and was really the brainchild and the impetus behind all of this effort, starting on the Capital Planning Committee. And we have Vincent Boner as well. And Christine Dachlan, the most important. And she's gonna vote. So before I jump into the slides, we're gonna hear a lot of, you know, back-based reasoning and best practices in this presentation tonight. But to start out, really from where I sit, this is something that's about trying to address a structure that currently does not align management responsibility with budgetary responsibility. And you'll see that when we start looking through some of the organizational charts. And I think this winter season and the snow removal that needed to take place in school rules became an instant anecdote and perfect example of the issue. Right now, the superintendent of facilities is a division head under the Department of Public Works director whose budget and funding for his position is completely contained within the school department. So when it became an imperative that we need to start removing schools, there was no one manager who had authority over a budget to make decisions about how we were gonna go about spending and properly allocating the costs that would go along with removing the snow from the rules. Now, we got it done and we'll figure it out. But I think it points out right off the bat that there is not a sufficient management structure in place to properly address really the 21st century or any century needs of a real complex organization in its facilities. So to start, the first slide after the cover slide, just have some highlights of what we think this proposed facility department will yield or provide. First, a new department. We're talking about a department that is separate from the school department and separate from the Department of Public Works, an actually independent department that will collaborate, of course, with those departments and other departments that have facilities, but yet independent departments. We're talking about a new director's position, which we'll talk a little bit more about later in the presentation as well. But this is a department head level position, not a division, a department head level management personnel. We also believe that this proposal of this department will produce long-term capital benefits by extending the useful life of equipment through better maintenance planning and better repair scheduling and management of systems and equipment. We also think, and we'll talk more about this as well, there'll be short-term cost benefits. With enhanced management and coordination of the current personnel, as well as better management and coordination of the contracted services we have for both cleaning and maintenance and repair of equipment, we feel pretty confident that we'll be able to achieve some short-term cost benefits. And then finally, we also feel strongly that we'll see long-term quality improvements. And what I mean by that is just simply better running, longer-lasting systems and an improved experience, I think, for building occupants when you have energy systems that are being maintained properly and functioning properly, probably more important than even being maintained properly in this instance. So moving on to the next slide, just highlights of the implementation plan that we framed. So this year one being FY16, the upcoming fiscal year, we're looking to officially create this facilities department. Again, one of the big steps of that is funding the director of facilities position. The proposal that's before the finance committee this year has 50% of that positions funding in the town budget and 50% in the school budget. We mentioned here establishing an administrative function. At this point, that doesn't mean creating an administrative position, but rather between the current positions in multiple departments that take care of the administration and bill paying another administrative work that goes into facilities management, figuring out how we're going to either keep it staffed as it is or possibly transition some folks into the facilities department. We're also talking about, and we've actually already started this a little bit, consolidating the reporting structure for all our custodial and maintenance personnel. We have custodians not reporting all to one source, instance, and again, we'll give you more detail, library custodian reporting to the library director and not the director of custodians or the custodial supervisor for the town. That's something we've already begun to address. And also, contracted cleaning services, not reporting directly to custodian supervisor, but rather to individual department heads. That's something, again, we've already begun to address. And then also, we're going to start looking at beginning consolidating maintenance budgets under the facilities department in year one. Year two is when, if we're successful in year one, we'll want to move to actually take everything that you see in town budgets and the police budget, the fire budget, DPW budget, moving it to facilities, and then everything you see in the school budget that's related to facilities, moving it to facilities and actually creating this one consolidating department. Moving on to the next slide. You see here, we have long-term facilities management, mid-term facilities management, short-term facilities management. And we've really highlighted mid-term facilities management. The work of the committee has really shown that, you know, long-term, the capital planning committee has a very robust process in place in terms of scheduling and funding capital asset upgrades. Short-term, it's being performed pretty well, but there can be some improvements as you've seen mentioned here. One of the real big focuses that the committee has looked at and one of the sort of the core pieces of this proposal is improving mid-term facilities management. So you can see some of the benefits that have been put forth or projected by the committee. Doing a better job of taking a look and analyzing the value of town-owned assets, getting better at looking at what the life cycle of certain equipment and systems should be and making sure that we're putting our repairs and maintenance schedules in line with that. Having standards for both contracted and in-house work for maintenance work and making sure that it's kept up to schedule. And then also related to that, making sure that we have procedures in place within all staff and contracting work are keeping on that scheduled work so that we can meet the goals that we put in place. So moving forward from that slide, those benefits that I just outlined, what do we get out of that? You can see I'll line up the slide as mentioned earlier, talking about having longer used-to-life of assets, thereby performing capital costs through better collaboration or coordination, excuse me, producing manpower costs, reducing areas and efficiencies, and that's really through that better consolidation of the management of both personnel and contracted services, specifically in regards to contracted services, being able to make sure that we're not being overcharged for work that's being done on our system by a contractor, proving the quality of the work that's performed. So overall, improving and maintaining the conditions of facilities. So with that, I'm gonna pass over to Andrew to talk a little bit about the status quo of facilities and stuff. Thank you, Adam. One thing I'd like to do is really provide you with a quick overview of the current organizational structure, if you will, of the current, not facility department, but staff responsible for facility-related issues, some of the issues with that, and then what we're recommending in terms of our structure moving forward. So I apologize that you have a black and white copy of what was provided in Color8Belief3 email this afternoon, but if you did see it in Color3, broken up by yellow and blue positions in yellow funded by the town, those in blue by the school. So currently there are five individuals directly reporting to the town of Andrew that have responsibility for both custodial and maintenance-related responsibilities with buildings across the town. Quickly moving through them, begins with the recreation director, who has responsibility for the Edburns Arena, the custodian in that, or the custodial support services in that building, including a cleaning contractor. Then there's the public works director who assumes by far the greatest portion of the burden. He oversees the energy manager in the town hall custodian in the superintendent of buildings, which is a school-funded position, and all the staff that is responsible to that position. So that includes the two primary divisions within the school department, the custodial division and the maintenance division. That consists of custodians, both day and night and more maintenance-type personnel, including a plumber of electricians and carpenters. One thing Adam alluded to early on was that while the public works director assumes all responsibility associated with the maintenance of town and school buildings, he doesn't have direct responsibility for the budget, a big portion of that. The lion's share is actually funded through the school department. But just to talk about a little bit of the decentralization and the fragmentation, if you will, the town assumes all responsibilities with regard to HR and benefit management for these employees that are funded in the school department, all hiring, recruitment, and then the management of all the employee benefit plans. So I'm gonna keep going right across to ORICHARD. We have the police chief who has responsibility for this building and the custodian that staffs this building. Then you have myself as the deputy town manager who along with the director of planning oversees the maintenance of nine buildings that are under one cleaning contract, separate from the cleaning contract that I referred to in the rink. And the building manager in your budget book, he's called the Building Craftsman and he's really the primary front line staff support, coordinating maintenance and custodial services in our rental properties. And then lastly, the library director who oversees the maintenance functions associated with both the Fox and the Robin. So there's five people that report to the manager, but when we actually peeled it back a level further, there are 11, the department heads administrative staff, excuse me, that have a certain level of oversight of more than 40 buildings. And in the next slide, this will be broken down. Like I had mentioned, there are currently three separate cleaning contracts that are supervised and procured by three separate individuals. There's a lack of a formal oversight of both staff and cleaning contracts. And the large part of that is supervising staff may often work a different schedule than a custodian a building or the hours of the cleaning contracts. The perfect example is Town Hall. We close at four o'clock and the cleaning contractor comes in at some point after that. One other major component is facility capital planning and budgeting is decentralized. I sit on the Capital Planning Committee along with Robert Thornton and our chairman, Charlie Foskett. And one thing that's always asked is how department heads go about identifying capital projects within their facilities. How do they prioritize it and then how do they come up with the budget form? I think our department heads do do a good job, but one of the questions always asked is was there input for the facilities? And because of the decentralized nature of our approach, the answers often no. And then lastly, a huge gray-billing burden. I don't expect too many of you aside from your meetings with department heads to have a full understanding with the gray-billing processes. It's kind of unique to Arlington. And that is often, let's take an example, mid-day there's a pipe break in Town Hall. Building superintendent again funded through the school department will dispatch a plumber and any other necessary staff whether it be custodial or not. Then the manager of that division will cost out what that associated expense was. That gets built to the individual department. That gets it to the comptroller. And then the funds are transferred based on the work and the expenses that were incurred. So it really is involving not only the school department, but a specific division within the custodial or maintenance division. The department that needs to work done and then the comptroller's department. I think if you talk to our department heads and our administrative and clerical staff, I think they'd all agree that it's one of the greatest areas for alleviation as a result of moving forward. Then if you turn to the next slide, what we're proposing under the direction of the town manager with input from the superintendent of schools. There'd be a director of facilities reporting to the town manager. Below that would be the deputy director. That's a new title. It's not a new position. I think it's important to note that position would essentially be what is today the superintendent of buildings. We just for the sake of simplicity didn't want a director of facilities in a superintendent of buildings. So we thought it was a bit cleaner to call it a deputy director. Then we have the energy manager, the regional energy manager and then an administrative support function which as the manager said would come from a reconfiguration of current resources. We have a clear two divisions, maintenance and custodial services both managed by a supervisor. Some of the changes you'll see under the supervisor maintenance will put the individual who's currently responsible for the coordination of maintenance and custodial related activities and the rental properties. And then what we'll do under the supervision of custodian not only take the school custodians that are currently there but move over town custodians library, town hall, community safety building we're in today. So that's what we're proposing. Again, I apologize that it's not a color format but it's a new color and this one and it's green and that's what we jointly funded in those positions would be the director of facilities, the energy manager which is currently jointly funded in the administrative support function. With that I'll hand it over to Ruthie. Thank you. So as the town manager noted currently we are not functioning very well when it comes to maintaining our assets. And so the facilities department is one of the methods we're gonna use to actually maintain our assets better than we're doing now. And you'll see there's a few questions here that we thought you might have will the department save money? Will it save time? Will it improve quality? And I wanna go through a few slides with you of examples of how the facilities department will function differently than we're functioning now and why this consolidated department will actually help us save money, save time and improve the quality of our assets. So for example, capital cost of major repairs. Some of these costs for major repairs come upon us when we were not expecting them. We don't have a 10 to 15 year plan of midterm repairs and maintenance. And that can often cost us more by not knowing of the expense ahead of time. One of the examples is this past summer we bought a chiller for the peer school. All of the summer school programs were moved to that one building. We bought a chiller big enough to air condition the entire building. The good thing was that nobody complained about the temperature in the pier. Everybody was happy, it was cool all the time. The bad news was that the chiller was cycling constantly. Between three and five minutes it was on and off, on and off, on and off. And we didn't know this because from a thermal comfort point of view it was fine. But from a new software we had implemented and we were watching this chiller because it was very expensive, it was new. We hadn't had this before. We noticed from this new software that the chiller was cycling constantly. And the reason was when it was installed it was installed to cool within a half a degree bandwidth. Meaning if the temperature slid a half a degree up or down, the chiller kicked on. So of course nobody was unhappy from a thermal comfort point of view but not only were we wasting energy we were wasting a lot of money and we were shortening a lifespan of this new chiller. And if we hadn't sort of understood that we have a new piece of equipment we need to focus on monitoring it on a consistent basis, on communicating with the staff at the school and with those of us who were looking at it we would not have figured this out. And so I'd say we probably would have lost a quarter of the lifespan of this new and very expensive piece of equipment. And so within two months of installation we saw the problem, we recognized it we worked on it, we fixed it but we also memorialized in notes from those two months what happened. So the goal is that next time we buy another very expensive piece of equipment we will from the beginning know the specifications of what this piece of machinery should be set to. And it isn't just that one person knows it but it's been memorialized so we know what happened and we know what we wanna do next time. That's a big sort of component of a new department is all the information will be institutionalized. It won't be one or two people were there then you would have them they forgot or they moved on and we don't have that information with us anymore. The next value will be reducing the manpower cost. So as the deputy town manager said there's a lot of people managing a lot of other people and those department heads often that's not their expertise to manage a custodian or a maintenance person. So in the new department the goal will be that there's one person who has oversight but also has expertise in maintenance, in facilities. They understand what the problems are what the fixes could be they'll have suggestions they'll know what work should be going on. We'll be consolidating three separate cleaning contracts which are now supervised by three separate individuals. So there'll be one person to say these are the standards for cleaning in Arlington. So all the buildings or the buildings that are similar will have similar standards and there'll be one person understanding if it's being done if we're hitting our new standards as opposed to three different contracts three different people who knows if we're really cleaning to the level that we wanna clean. This will certainly alleviate burden on departmental administrative staff and as a deputy town manager said many department heads will be happy not to have gray building going back and forth between the school and the town. And there will also be this opportunity for consistent performance evaluation. So every custodian, every maintenance person will know what their performance is going to be based on during one department where everybody is in a similar boat. It isn't that you work for the town over here you work for the library over there. There'll be a more uniform understanding of how you are evaluating in this department. Another value is gonna be reducing missteps and inefficiencies. And unfortunately we have quite a few of these because there aren't in place policies and procedures for how to initiate and implement a project. There's a lot of please fix this, this isn't working, there's a leak, it's cold, it's hot but there isn't, we need to fix this on a longer term basis. This is a project. Who's gonna do it? When are they gonna do it? What's an emergency that would take that person off of that project to go do something else? That kind of calling someone off and on happens multiple times in a day. And not only do the projects not get done but the staff who's doing the project feel sort of torn in different directions. And they're not, this is my editorial, they're not as motivated and as excited because they know they get here, they set up, they're working on it, they get a call, they have to go somewhere else. So there's a lack of uniform policy and procedures for doing the work we need to do and knowing when someone needs to be pulled off to do something that really is an emergency. And sometimes we do incur extra costs for people coming, doing a project, they have to stay late because they didn't finish the first project. So we're trying to lower the number of missteps and the inefficiencies within our own staff. One of the big goals is gonna be to reduce cost for emergency repairs. And I'll give you an example. We had a thermal comfort issue at the middle school and there was, I think it was a basketball game that evening, so parents and students were gonna be there and we had to fix the heater. Basically the rooftop unit in the gym was not working. We did call our third party to come in and fix it. They came and they sent somebody, we sort of all relaxed, it was gonna be fine by seven o'clock. Unbeknownst to us in the middle of the day there was an emergency at the library. They also called the third party contractor and told his person from the middle school to go to the library. There was no one to blame, it was just that that's not probably what we would have chosen. The library could have waited but the middle school could not wait. So there wasn't a clear path. And in the end we were fine, we got the person back and everybody worked with everybody but there was a lot of juggling and moving back and forth. And no one to be the person who sets the priorities for that day or even those next four hours. There was no one to say to the third party contractor when you get a call from this one person that's where you go. When everybody else who has your phone number calls you you need to talk to one person or one or two people. But there's a familiarity with our staff and with our third party contractor so everybody feels able to call them but they need to be managed by us. We're gonna pay them, we wanna manage where they're gonna go. Improving the quality of the maintenance work. Definitely right now, certainly for some of the custodians they don't really see the person they're working for because they're working after five and the person has left at four. So they're not sure exactly what to do. Someone leaves a note, tells you they didn't like what happened. It's not a great way of communicating. There's also, like I said, project oversight. We'll set up a project that'll take four days and we wanna have a policy and a procedure about how to do the project. Who to tell if you have a problem? What to write down at the end of that project? And we memorialize what was done on this piece of equipment. So the next time someone calls and says it's too cold in this one room at the pier, we can say, well we already looked at that unit ventilator and remember the last time the problem was X and we did Y. Right now if the person who fixed it isn't in the building that day, nobody knows what happened. So we haven't institutionalized and memorialized our own work for us to go back and say, we fixed that unit ventilator one time already. Why is this the same problem? Is it a different problem? So we're losing our own value of knowledge by not having one department where things are recorded. And one of the biggest goals and value for our town is gonna be improving the condition of the facilities. So we have a long to do this in many of our buildings of what we like to do, painting, flooring, appliances that should be upgraded, building systems. Some of them get done when they come up in the capital process. Some of them get done when there's an emergency and that thing broke. But if you're not big and you're in the capital planning process and you're not an emergency, you kind of get lost. So the painting doesn't happen. The carpeting in the classroom gets worn out and doesn't get replaced when it should. So the goal is to have a 10 year schedule for all of our buildings of midterm maintenance, not the huge purchase like a chiller, but flooring and painting and midsize appliances. When those things should be turned over and redone or purchased new. Not to say that if there is an emergency, that project might not get pushed, but at least it's in the queue, right? And if someone says, I really want this classroom painting, we say, you know what, you're in year three. It's coming up. So we have a schedule. It gives people a piece of mind that we're looking at their building and their classroom, but there isn't sort of jumping ahead and everybody kind of angling at that moment to get what they need. There's a system, you know, and we will discuss the system with all the department heads to say, this is where we think your midterm repair and maintenance has to happen. And you know, it won't be just a facilities department. It'll be in concert with all the department heads at clearly the school, you know, committee, but it'll be known and understood. So if you want something painted or you need a new carpet, it'll be in the queue. It won't be, if you can squeak the loudest, you'll get in front of the queue. Thank you, Ruthie. One thing I'd like to add is the recommendations before you tonight, the committee spent a considerable amount of time thinking about and by no means made the decision to include any of them in a vacuum, but rather, we looked at what Arlington considers as some of our comparable communities and whether or not they had a facilities department and specifically how they deployed their resources as it relates to facility maintenance and management. So what I did is I've provided a list of those communities that's by no means exhaustive, but what I've done is list the community and the total square footage of their buildings. They're all currently, they all currently have a facilities department. As you can see, the average of those communities is just about 1.3 million square feet. We're slightly above that at 1,322,000. So this is just to give you an idea of what other communities are doing and in each instance it's working, it's working well. And when we talk to both members of the facility staff and the management of those communities, they all live to what a benefit it has been for them to test and implement it. All right, so that's the final slide. I'm sure one of the major questions would be, how will we know if we're successful and how are we gonna measure our effectiveness? So really what you see here is a reiteration of a lot of the concepts that you just spoke about and these are the things that we're gonna be looking at if this facilities department is implemented as our benchmarks and our tests for whether or not we are. We're gonna look very closely at our third party personnel costs. Those are the easy costs to look at year over year and you do expect to see reductions in those costs. You can see early detection of issues and then later then you see more details of work completed and new software that will allow for more detailed data to be provided. Those are all the things that we're gonna hand in hand is that we're gonna be able to collect all of this data more regularly and then do some trend analysis of whether or not we're seeing less emergency work and more implementations of successful schedule work. We'll be able to see, not necessarily immediately but over time, how asset life is lasting and whether or not we're seeing any improvements and how long high price capital assets are lasting. We'll also be able to see or benefit at least from and make a management determination whether or not we're getting a better coordinated response to issues that come up, like taking snow off groups or chiller issues or other problems that we face. And then the final part we hear is overall the manpower of the organization is going to have a departmental budget that leaves a fiscal trail that we can monitor and re-order here. So with that, that closes the presentation. Happy to answer any questions you have for me. That's great, thank you very much. Tom, with this new position, director of facilities, hold the seat in the Permanent Town Building Committee. That's a good question. So the enabling bylaw for the PTBC would have to be changed, but I would absolutely think they would have to, yeah. Because the example of the chiller of the peer school, if we had somebody like that and they stopped that company, they would have known that chiller was only designed to do with certain classrooms and to operate certain hours. So if you did hold the seat, and this came up, you would have recognized it right off. Yeah, I think that's fair. And I would think you'd want to be involved in the building sort of what we do. The current superintendent of buildings sits on the PTBC. So whether we have a loose translation of the current language, or we change the language to represent the director, one way or the other, I think it's appropriate. Are you? Of course, and stuff, because I think this would be a lot of equipments in the different buildings, right? Do you have any inventory system of like when the equipments were bought? For example, this year equipment was bought in like five years ago, B was like bought in 10 years. Do you have some kind of like a locked seat or a split seat? Yeah, so we actually do have a spreadsheet of all the major pieces of equipment that we own when they were bought, sort of specifications about them, but that literally is in a spreadsheet in one person's computer. So it's not utilized very well, but it does exist on a simple level, yes. I mean, that might be the easiest way to go and log in, right? If somebody goes and repair that, then you can probably log in when you do a repair. Right, so the school bought something called School Dude, which is a software program that does work orders. And one of the values that it has is a way to have a spreadsheet that you can view, it's set up for that kind of purpose, when what the repair was, who did the repair, what they did, exactly. So we try to sort of grow into a more sophisticated spreadsheet that can handle that exact situation. Okay, Ken. What would be the number of personnel in this department? Yeah, we can, so in terms of net new positions, it would be one position. Total would be one, two, three, just about 50, 55. Personnel? Right, and again, that's one more than what the existing structure is. And this will come from other personnel in the town. Correct. We're not talking any new, except for the director, not talking any new highs right now. We're talking transfer of people who are in existing jobs, they transferred to the facilities. So cost-wise, it's the cost of a new director. That's accurate. That's that? That is the first statement. Thank you. Okay, Andrew, I'm sorry, you said 50, 50? 50, 55. Okay. Paula, moving to one, okay, Jonathan? Yeah, Andrew, under the current org chart, there's a building manager that reports to you. That's what it's like. And in the proposed org chart, there's a rental building manager under the supervisor of maintenance. Is that the same position? It is, it's... And what does the rental building manager do? So he serves his official title with regard to the Wagee classification plan is Building Craftsman. So he's responsible for any small repairs associated with many of the rental facilities. So those include buildings that are currently under the authority or jurisdiction of the town manager, one under the board of selection or the ARB. So it's just to just go through them very quickly. It's Central School, 23 Maple Street, Jefferson Catterhouse, Give School, Department of School, and former Dallin Library. He also coordinates most of the custodial type work that happens there. They're all under one contractor that up to now I've supervised. And he manages any private contractors that do work in those facilities. And so your feeling is that with the consolidated department, you're still gonna want somebody who's just focused on the rental buildings? Yeah, I think certainly in the interim, it's absolutely necessary. There's a lot of work associated with them. There's over 10, 12 tenants between all the buildings where they have competing needs. And he really does a good job in providing them. And then we work on how we fund them. And under the current structure, often we wind up working with facility staff that again is under the school department to get some of that stuff done. Thank you. I would say we have the benefit of a long-time employee who has in-depth familiarity with the buildings that Andrew listed. So should there be position changeover? I think I could see where you're going with that question. New person doesn't have that benefit of a long tenure with those buildings. There might be some benefit to them taking a second look at how we maybe use personnel across the department. Yeah, I'm not suggesting that you wanna eliminate a position of just wondering whether in this new structure, the distinction between owned and rental buildings doesn't really, you don't really need that. And you don't need a person that's just for the rental buildings. Can you hear me? I think it's an excellent idea. I appreciate all the work that's gone into it. 2020 hindsight, you wonder why it wasn't done a long time ago. But I had two questions about scope. I think you've already answered one. This does include the redevelopment board properties. The schools covers that. And the second one is where does the facilities end? Does it include the front steps, the landscaping, the sidewalks? I'm gonna say all the way out the landscaping. To the street? Yeah, sorry? Yeah. John? A good deal of what's proposed here involves transfers of personnel and money, if you like, from the schools into this new department. When you described how this was developed, I may have missed it, but I didn't know that there was anybody involved with the schools that are represented from the schools. Has the solvents cleared the superintendent, et cetera? Yeah, so Diane Johnson sat on the building maintenance committee. So she was highly involved. It has been agreed to by the superintendent. They've included funding for half of the position and they have proposed an FY16 budget. And then if we were successful in creating the position what I would do is sit down with the superintendent, hammer out an MOU between the two of us in regards to how the new framework would work. And that would set the stage for FY17 and actually moving the budgets out where they are now at building the project. Okay, Mary Margaret? So for example, with the library, you'll take that custodian and the contract out of there. But then will you save money because you maybe have to pay a differential firm to work nights and weekends, but it wouldn't be overtime like there is now? How did you like that? So the current individual who's asked the library would remain in the library working in his normal schedule. We're not proposing moving him out. Right, but would it save any money though with the new way of managing the time? In terms of backfilling his position or after hour events? You are not having overtime because his hours are this now, but he gets a differential for working weekends instead of having to work overtime, for example. That level of budget impact, we haven't really looked at yet. All the library maintenance money, as you know, remains in the library budget this year. We didn't see the outcome of that, but that will certainly be a consideration. But the goal then is to take all that money out of the library budget though. So all the... That's part of the whole implementation plan correct. Okay, Charlie? So, first thing I'd like to say is that the presentation was really great. It's very, very well done. And I think this is a fantastic idea. And I'm glad that the panel is going through with it. I have a question on slide 11. Ian, you say that we're going to reduce man time cost. How are we going to make it? You know, one of the problems that we have traditionally had in the Apple planning community is that we spend hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars on things that are going to save labor costs. And we go ahead and spend the money and get the equipment. I'm thinking, for example, we had a big project for automatic reading of water meters. You know, it was going to save a tremendous amount of labor, but the labor never gets saved. It just gets into this vast pool of expense. And you've identified management people that are managing things that are not supposed to be managing other duplicate efforts throughout this, which I think is great. But how are you going to actually measure that you save money for the town? And what are you going to do with that money? Are you going to reduce the tax payers' taxes? What is the end game here for you? So I would say, year over year, we're going to have to look at both FTEs, contract between them, and determine whether or not, you know, balancing for inflation of whatever the contracts for either would be, whether or not we are seeing that career go down. And in terms of manpower for internal, you know, overtime would be part of that. Well, can I ask that you make it a major objective to track that? All of these costs have been identified now. Track how they could change and actually report to the finance committee how much you're saving and what you're doing with it. One thing I'd like to add is one of the goals is that the third party HVAC contractor is called quite quickly. And there have been a number of times where we could have handled it either with our own staff or we could have done a lot of the legwork first before we called them. So one of the things I'm going to look for is reducing the cost of unnecessary third party contractors. So that's sort of external to our own staff, but we're not using our staff as wisely as we could before we pick up the phone and have to pay someone just to drive here. So, but have we, for example, looked at the cost for the last two years for all of these activities, put them together in one place and said, you know, this is our current cost and this is where we'll be two years from now. We have looked at snapshots of that and then when we do create the consolidated department absolutely that will be in one lot. I wouldn't say that today we set goals of where we're going to be, but I think once we have a department structure and place a lot, so we have to set the goals of where we think we should be. Thank you. Okay, when, okay, so the school department is on board. Obviously that's the biggest part of this entire thing. Challenge meeting would be on board when they approve the facilities department and the budget process and the departmental head. Is that what you're looking for or are you challenging me? Yeah, it would be really, it would be approval for the funding of the facilities director. Okay, so once that goes, you go back to the schools and set up the structure and the, you know, if money is shifted out of the school department into this budget, obviously you could revamp how the whole five-year plan divides up their money and such. Okay, you're memorializing all this knowledge from my vast experience as being the facilities manager of my church, which I happen to get when I miss that meeting. We created, you're probably doing the same thing, but we created a website that's just for property and everybody who's supposed to has access to it and all the contracts go up there and this is probably what you're going to do, but it has worked, you know, amazingly well because before this, all of the stuff was in dusty boxes, all over the church. And, you know, a separate website really is sort of a cool way to consolidate everything and put it together. Just a thought. Does this mean all your craftsmen and custodians come out of the school budget and go into here? Okay, David? I just want to thank you for your presentation and just going back to Charlie's point, I've been around all the time, I've been around a long time. We had a physician in the town of Allenton called Director of Properties and Natural Resources. And that position was cut for two reasons, one for monetary and it was a real organization. In a sense, that position is coming back, in a sense, with this. Am I correct? I think without the natural resources, Ben, correct. Yeah, the properties. Okay, Stephen? Just a question on the expenses other than labor. So for your third party contractors or for materials related to maintenance, does the expense go to the department where the building is, for example, does work that needs to be done at the odyssin, that's an odyssin expense? Right. Okay, so what it is, and this has been a recurring issue just that I've been involved in through the recreation department and the youth basketball program. So every year we have an issue, when's the floor gonna be redone or resealed at the odyssin and at the high school and making a pitch before we make the question that once the department is created, that should be done every year because both those buildings are used seven days a week. But what if there's a dispute between the facilities department and the schools as far as whether that should be done every year? Who decides? Because it is a maintenance issue because the life of the floor really depends on how well you maintain it. But if the expense is gonna be in the schools and the CFO says, no, we don't really have that, who wins and how does that get worked out? I would think in the proposed arrangement, the facilities director would be the first line of defense and then me working with the superintendent if it rose to that level would make the final decision. I see that even, and I think this is a great idea, but after years of between talking to Joe Connolly who recognizes how many programs are in the building, talking to Mark Miano understands that there's an issue and then being told, no, there's not money in the budget. It's not something, you know, we don't need an instruction to know that that should be done every year, but we do need to prioritize how that works out. I hope going forward that if more money is needed for maintenance as a result of this department, it gets put in there because there's no sense in creating the department if you're not gonna maintain the buildings. You know, you see, you raise an interesting point with all this, with the facilities director, you have a department head load position whose priority is going to be the facilities. So when making capital budget requests and then operating budget requests, we'll have facilities first. The truth is, you know, when a police chief or school CFO or a deputy town manager is making a request, the priority might not always be the facility. There's married priorities, but a facilities director's priority will be the facilities. So it doesn't mean it's gonna get funded, but I think you have a better chance of having a person that will be more focused on the facilities and not have as many other falls in the year at the same time. We're trying to make a request or decision. Which is good, just one, and I think I hope there's better coordination because the schools may not realize how much the recreation department is using the facilities on weekends or at nights and through the growth of different programs. And while it's a good thing for the town because there's more revenue through these outside rentals, it's not good if a group uses a facility and says it's no good, we're not coming back or there are a number of complaints. I'm sorry, Dean, and then Paul? Oh, I have a handful of questions I'll turn them quickly. Director, you have a new position director of facilities. You're converting the superintendent of buildings into the deputy director. You're adding a bunch of positions under them. So they would probably have a position reclassification next year. Caroline would be in that request because you're adding a whole bunch of stuff under their purview, not a fair assessment. So I can hear the board chart on page six, the board chart on page eight. There's a series of responsibilities that we've got right now. The superintendent of building, you're now putting them on there. So we're gonna have a new position and then we're gonna have a reclass at some point. It's an incremental cost, but I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Just speaking to the superintendent of buildings, deputy director? Yeah. Then yes. You're gonna reclass the position. Would it be through, yes, the answer is yes. Okay. Ring cleaning, same chart, when I looked from six to eight ring cleaning dropped off the board chart. Is that because ring cleaning is gonna be upside of this? I think it was just an oversight. Yeah, no, it's, so we have three cleaning contractors currently and they've been broken out in the current org chart and they've all been put together into all third party cleaning contractors school in town, considering the ring cleaning contractor on town contractor. I'll move to the right. There's no need to manage energy. Or I just, I'm curious why you wouldn't have taken that position and put it up under you till it could have responsibly for both public works and facilities. What do you feel like to do with the challenge of facilities? Well, I would say, and Ruth, you could probably speak to a better 97% of her efforts at facilities focus with some smaller focus on vehicles, whether it be HVAC boilers, everything that we do in terms of green upgrades for facilities focus, so far. 97, 98%. There are some vehicles, but it's looking for a green lawn mower, but mostly I'm doing boilers and chillerism. All right, and then to the last question, Evan, you're creating two separate, creating sort of a, the structure created outside of public works. It is, then it's correct. Right now, so now you sort of get worried about the unintended consequences of having, we talked about, we just talked about a whole bunch of facilities departments that are unified and coordinated and inefficiencies and stuff like that. Now we're going to have a facilities department separate from a public works department. So do we have any concern that we're going to create a whole new set of non-unified, not coordinated problems? I actually think it's more appropriate. I think it's much more uncommon to have a public works department that's responsible for facilities and it is to have public works that are responsible for public works and facilities that are responsible. So there'll be a learning curve based on the history and the culture that currently exists, but I think we'll be avoiding more problems than we would have or I'd expect. Okay, Kay, Paul? Just a few quick questions, I think. There was a talk in here about software needed to manage this thing. Is that part of the IT strategic plan at this point? I believe the schools have already purchased the software. The building maintenance committee, is it going to stick around as kind of an oversight or a resource for the facilities? I want that to. Yes, I would imagine they would. On the, going back to the library thing, right now, what happens when the library custodian goes on vacation? Is there someone that bring in a third party to do it or is it someone from some other place? It's a great question and it illustrates part of the problem. Often we get a call or when I say we, the town manager's office, gets a call from the library director who then calls the facilities when the day, the first day, scheduled day, the library custodian's not there because they're on vacation, that's when the library director got around to letting us know and then they scramble and have to make a quick decision on who they can get over there. So our whole goal is that having all the custodians report to the custodial supervisor, he can know who's on vacation and have the employees resources acquitted. Yeah, that sounds like one of the things that this gains from this organization. And the last thing I have is on maintenance and how it improves the quality. I hope that we have a history before they did the renovation of this building of this room being very cold for our meetings and I hope that... I'm sure. I'm sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. I have another comment and support. I think another benefit that isn't really stated here particularly related to the rental properties is better cost accounting. Remember years ago, a few years ago we were debating about disposition of certain rental properties and I remember a famous moment of a former town manager and a former director of planning where the town manager insisted that we were losing money on some properties and the director of planning insisted we were making money on some properties. Now, the revenue side of it's pretty easy but the cost of the facility is pretty difficult. So I think unifying this will certainly make the cost accounting better including depreciation and other things like that. So I would call it a benefit of this. Okay. Oh, Carol. So on your work chart, it has the energy manager listed as 0.6. Yeah. So I thought you're 0.88 now with 0.86. So I work basically one day in Bedford and three days in Arlington. Not every week, it's like that, but generally it's... 0.6 here. 0.6 here and then I'm 0. Basically one day over there. So then why does the reclass have you as an FTE of 0.88? Oh, it's an FTE of 0.88 which is the same as 0.6. No, no, no. This is right. This would be the energy manager's Arlington representation as 0.6. And the remainder is their Bedford representation. The way it works, we budget them at that and then Bedford gives us the office. They really show the time the energy manager is in Arlington at the 0.6. Okay. So they're paying us. Okay. Okay, Dick. Is this gonna stop all gray buildings between these apartments? As I'm asking, the school department has a evolving fund for buildings. They get money from all their rentals and they can't spend it only on maintenance of buildings. Do you know that one? I do. Okay. How are you gonna, are you gonna be able to take them and build back maintenance out of this new department to that? So when we sit down for FY17 to take the money out of the school department and from the town, I was actually thinking about that part you're mentioning today. We're gonna have to figure out exactly what they're spending total, you know, out of this general fund and out of that revolving fund to figure out what the appropriate portion is. Yeah. A lot of money did. Okay, what? I was gonna ask about the revolving fund. But also as far as the cost accounting, I mean, the school has to report to the state what they're spending in total. So there has to be some estimation of how much of this facility's department is going towards the school. I think also for the other department is still useful information to have. We already have hidden costs with insurance and health benefits. We don't really know what our library costs as a result because those costs are hidden. So if we hide more costs, that gets a view further away from the goal of finding the true costs of our library and our schools. So if you're developing a mechanism to track the costs for the library, for the schools, it might be useful to continue to, you know, unofficially build back to the library and the other department so we know what the costs of those operations are. So this software program that the school has invested in does that every time a work order happens, it's how much time was spent, who did it, all of that happens. It's just we don't have that deployed everywhere, but there is that software that answers that exact question. So you can then go back and just query by library time. We just have to expand to that situation. The interest and see how the age of the building relates to the amount of maintenance. For the use, right? I mean some middle schools use way more than maybe the elementary schools. It'd be interesting over time to take a look back and see how you can ask questions of the software or what's being done. Okay, other questions? Okay, well thank you very much for your presentation. I'm hoping that this will be as wildly successful as the development of the capital plan back in the 1980s. Wow, that's a nice hedge fund. That's a nice hedge fund. And you're involved with both, Barbara. Thank you. Okay, thank you for coming, I appreciate your time. Okay, different, but you mentioned that fund. Keep in mind, all these little pots of money around them. Big pot, big pot. Okay, just briefly, could everybody take a look at the handout dealing with META assessment? Okay, go to the first page, which has Arlington up top. Now, this just came about Adam and I are both members of the fiscal policy committee of the Mass Municipal Association. And at the last meeting, they had the MBTA advisory board, which is not the MBTA, but the advisory board and the person from that office talking about MBTA, because that seems to be a job of discussion these days. And he handed out this sheet. Actually, there's a couple more sheets with it, but I handed just this one about the MBTA and their assessments. We pay two and a half million dollars in assessments every year. And so there you take a look at it up top. So our assessment is about 2.596 and a little extra, but we're paying a lot of money for this. And then they started going down the sheets, you know, Belmont, well, the population is easy, but the weights, how the heck did they come up with these weights? Well, Belmont, you know, we don't have a subway line in Arlington, we've got one on a border, but we don't have one in Arlington. Belmont doesn't either, well, they got a train service. Boston, of course, has everything. We're flying green, you sort of go down through it, and then you get down to Bedford. Okay, well, you know, Bedford should be about west because they just have bus service. Then you get down to Beverly and then you get to Braintree. Wait a minute. Braintree's got a major terminal inside of Braintree in addition to all the bus service, and they pay one third of what we pay. Okay, now my blood pressure starts to rise about this. Wait a minute. And you sort of look at that, and that makes absolutely no sense. And then you go onto the next page. You're okay, I didn't put a next page on mine, I'm not sure why. And you get down to Quincy, okay. Now you get down to Quincy. They're also a three, and they pay a million eight versus our two and a half, and Quincy's got three MBTA stations, red line subway stations, right through the middle of Quincy, plus all the bus service. So I went to the gentleman afterwards, when I say I was focusing on Braintree at the time, and I said, how are all these weights determined? Well, they were on the legislation. And he just happens to note and mention that the time the chairman of the transportation committee in the House of Representatives came from Braintree. I mean, this is, you know... So anyway, that's my blood pressure was this high. And Braintree is bad enough, Quincy is even worse. So we're paying three times the amount that these places are paying with no subway service. Brandon, we got a lot of bus service, but still. So Adam and I are actually, Adam, because he gets paid more than I do, is writing a letter and we're gonna try to get our legislators and senators on board, because this makes no sense at all. That, you know, the money, that's a lot of money. And, you know, I suppose just comparing it to Braintree, you know, it's almost two million, not million eight, we're paying more than they are. And it makes no sense. So as I asked you, you know, with the local aid, if you happen to bump into your state or state senator, you might want to mention this. There's a breakfast meeting in Lexington that we're going to and we're gonna mention this. It's a lot of room. So, one, two, three. Sure. And so, any of you are thinking, you know, well, good luck with that, getting in the chase that funding formula right now. I think the reason that it may be an opportune time is that as part of the MBTA's more prominent fiscal woes right now, it is rumored that the secretary of transportation is in favor of increasing these community assessments. So if there is a look at the community assessments, I think that's the time to strike and say, okay, if you're looking at more money, why don't you take a second look at how it's allocated out. So I think that there might be an opportunity for that door to open up and have us have time for a while. Yeah, and we really need to, you know, make this an issue. Not to bring up another issue, but for example, for years, met co-reimbursements that we got back, our reimbursement was less than brain trees. Picking on brain tree today, was less than brain trees, even though we had twice the students that they did. And that's because obviously they set the assessment at one level and then we changed it. So even though our population was going up and theirs was going down, it was still the same assessment. So, you know, sometimes we've got to look at these things and so this is the time to do it. So if you happen to bump in, might mention it. Maybe there's some secret reason why we're denying. I'm not sure what it would be. We have good bus service, but sort of a lot of other places have good bus service. Well, some people would dispute that we have good bus service. I'm one of them. I'm trying to be nice on that. Multiple bus lines. Multiple bus lines, put it that way, John. I just like to point out strategically in terms of what you plan to try to do here, that whole collection of communities with nines represent allies because they're all much, much smaller in terms of, virtually all of them are much more smaller in terms of the service that they get than Boston. So we're not the only ones in this situation. There's a whole host of, what not, who are in this situation. I think that's fair. And I don't necessarily think the approach ultimately is, our link, it shouldn't be a nine and move other people out. But certainly, give us some rationale to like, yeah, but we're not alone. Now, whole host of, you know, maybe 12 or so communities in this situation. So this is the time to get some, I saw what we're looking for, sort of a level playing field. There's some basic fairness in how these assessments are going on there. So, okay, so much for my grant. Snow on Ice options. That was asked how we're looking at that. And so the manager has given a piece, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. Obviously, if we take a look at the reserve fund, we've voted about after the 155, we're down to 715,000 in the reserve fund. The fire budget has been mentioned. I took a worst case and took 80,000 after that. So that's 635. So let's say the finance committee threw in 500,000 into the Snow on Ice. That would bring it down to about 135, which gives us some backup going into May and June. In case something else comes up that we really are not familiar with. And I think the April 13th meeting that I mentioned to you, that last meeting, when we try to pull everything together, might be hopefully a good time we can make some decisions on that. But that's, even if we throw in 500, that's still another 300,000 according to this, 313,000 that we have to come up with from other sources. Do you want to add anything, Jim? So one thing I do want to mention that we are also asking for one, hopefully one further authorization for definitely spending on the last sheet. There are about, Mike Rademacher lays out, and I know Andrew, we mentioned in the memo before you an expectation of about another $80,000 in costs. And then should it snow again or a few times there could be further costs. So we're asking for one more bonus committee to push the limit up to $200,000. Or an additional $200,000. Yes. So it goes up to $1,450,000. For total. For total. That's an authorization. Correct. Adam? I had, I think it was part of the last meeting. What aid road's been made getting aid from federal or state authorities that I think came most mentioned. And then this word kind of has that already going on the news that there may be some pockets of funds available based on the need of the town and the situation. So the second page of the snow and ice memo has a breakdown of what current efforts we've made agreement. So you can see that we've submitted costs for what they've outlined as four separate storms with the state-owned and state-owned storms. The only storm that's been designated as of yet as reimbursable is the first storm that the official blizzard. So if we got 75% back, which is the normal reimbursement rate for a media scene of claim from that storm, we could get up to $274,000 in change back from that storm. If they did decide that the other storms were reimbursable, if you have that breakdown, you can see by storm what we think we would get. If all of them were reimbursed, we could receive over $750,000 back. I don't know what the prognosis is for storms two through four to be made reimbursable. I know Game of May's working very hard at that. The governor's working very hard at that. I think the governor's strategy is basically make the storm one through four, one storm. It was really the cue and effect of them that created the emergency situation. So you can make that entire situation reimbursable. Are there any other questions for the manager on snow and ice? No. Coming on board, do you know we have a snow and ice committee? I've heard of the snow and ice committee, but I don't think it's met during my time. It hasn't met in two years. It might be longer. I think it was created by a town manager that was meant to be met three times a year, getting middle at the end. Yeah, I would hope when the smoke clears, you might want to call that a move. I'm scared to hopefully tell it. All right. Okay. Call it. I just wanted to comment on any aid we received from out of town. Like for example, I know there was something called the Beast of the East. The Beast of the East. It's on that Quincy Street that really widened it. It sort of wasn't a piece of our equipment. Where does that come from and how do you pay for it? Yeah, so we immediate aftermath of the storm. MIMA was in full mobilization and was getting resources both in terms of private contractors and using their resources to pay that as well as help from other states, departments of transportation. I think as far as New Jersey, we had crews coming up. So we first had a private crew, Newport Construction and Newport Contracting came in and they did a great deal of work on Broadway down to Bates and River and then some work on Warren Street clearing back. They didn't have very large equipment, but they came in, I think they worked it totally, maybe two, two and a half days and didn't cost the town anything for that clearing work that was done. And then we had put in a request for a big snow blower on the front end loader or a big piece of equipment like the Beast of the East that you saw. The first thing we got, and I'll chuckle a bit, is we put in that request and then we got a call and said, your snow blower equipment's coming down. It's on the way. So we mobilized some folks from DPW to manage it and two Bobcats with snow blower showed up. There were some feelings to be dealt with in terms of the expectation level, but those two pieces of equipment went down the bike path from the Lexington border. They made it almost to Brigham's at some point during this aftermath to clear snow off the bike path. And then we did finally get the call from me without the Beast of the East was coming down and we did get Quincy Street done a little bit more work around the Odyssey. I think we get some more school work done, but unfortunately the equipment arrived and shortly thereafter broke down. Did some good work. Did a great job. You know, when it was working, it did a great job. Worked for a little while, broke down again. And then, you know, that equipment is only as valuable as the dump trucks that you have to go along with it because it moves fast, you know, it picks up a lot of snow and gets into the dump trucks. So it also had seven dump trucks along with it from MIMA and they were here for a while. And apparently they said, oh, we're called off. Well, we've got some replacements coming. They got called off and they're replacing some of the kit. So we got some benefits out of it, not as much as I think we were hoping to get, but it was very nice that it was done. Now in terms of the total cost of the storm, is there any way of estimating what the sort of donated efforts would have cost or? Yeah, you know, I could probably ask Mike to estimate. You know, I would guess though, somewhere between $40,000 and $70,000 wouldn't work. That'd be my guess. Okay. Not my huge, my millions. Not your huge. Thank you. Gene? I'm sorry, Alan, are you fresh? Okay, Gene. So we've heard conversations that you're on. So if people under your authority went over to the school department and helped them shovel off the roofs and things like that. And then you brought up the fascinating concept of gray building. So what's going on there? Are you guys thinking about building them? Are you talking to them? Are we gonna hopefully absorb it into the other stuff? What's going on? So my, I am talking to them. And my thoughts on our, as we move into this, we're gonna be looking at town operating budgets. We're gonna be looking at every budget to see what we can piece of things together and cover it. So my expectation is I will ask them, can you cover some portion of this? But I don't see it as a full core for us to say this is your responsibility. If out of that facility's revolving fund, perhaps, you know, there's some leeway of flexibility. I would appreciate that contributing. But again, I don't, I am not at the position that it is their responsibility to come up with that money. Okay. Well, I appreciate you're saying that, obviously, because I think we, and we've talked about it before. I do, I will always say appreciate the degree to which you work with the superintendent of schools versus being adversarial. And then we've also talked about the reserve fund is what's actually not yours. Ours. Right? It's supposed to be used for all appointing authorities and things like that. So I do appreciate your diplomatic way that you appear to be handling that. You're welcome. Charlie? Yes. Tom, Tiger Barrow, last week, we came out of the boy's day with a crazy question of using the Ryder Street property as a snow farm or whatever you call it. All year round. All year round. Snow, snow, you know, taking it back. Reduce the cost of trucking snow and other stuff out of town. Have you heard of that before? Yeah, I have. And I think there's some pros to that and some cons to that. I think the pros is it's a currently town-owned, town-controlled asset. It's already sorted in industrial use. It's kind of in the neighborhood and near the path, but it's somewhat well-situated. Cons, it's a contaminated site and I'm not exactly sure what impacts that would have. And then maybe also on where it's situated, that could be a con as well, raining to the right, the bike path. Snow wouldn't be such an issue, but maybe other debris could become an issue for folks using that path. My preferred approach, this was probably going to be the first template, I talked about this in a public meeting, but I think the space that we used two or three years ago, the field behind Stop and Shopping, GSM to TPW, I think that's the spot we really need to focus on. And I immediately focused, involved with athletics, and said, nope, we're practicing there, we need that for the sports field. So I think, and this is actually Mike Rademacher's brainchild, the finding way to acquire the land of poets' corps that we're currently using for snow that's owned by Saint Camillus. Acquiring that, making it to a sports field, thereby replacing the sports use, and using that lot, or that field behind Stop and Shopping, cutting it in half, having half be for TPW as a lay down facility for snow and debris and other uses, and then half be parking for the high school to alleviate the current parking problem, and then also provide modular classroom space for an eventual project. That would be my preferred sort of more master plan for addressing that view. Okay, Tom. Two things I see wrong with going to Poets' Corner. One, it's not zoned, and you'll have every neighbor there. That's right. And I just don't feel it's an ideal, I wouldn't want beep, beep, beep, bang, and then whatever, and debris, where you see from my view. I'm saying I think Poets' Corner should be a sports field. So that we can take the sports field that's behind Stop and Shopping. Second of all, if you maybe take a walk down ride of this property, there's more debris there than what you'd put there as a town. I don't know about snow, but... Well, I'm just saying that that's, you know, on that climate makes more sense to me right out, it's already zoned. It's, yes, it could have any potential land is gonna have a problem. It's right there, we own it, even though we make gross income of $95,000 a year, I don't know what that comes out to, but the figures the last three years in snow are definitely going up. I mean, this year's crazy, we know that. The trend seems like snow is global warming, came and left, and it seems like we're going, and we just have no way to put it in here. We're moving snow from the res, and then from the res, we're paying to get rid of it. We're moving snow to here. I just really think that at one area, we need to invest in, and at least we have an area. Right now, we don't have an area. You are correct. And I don't know. What way do we have to identify an area? How long is the lease on that property? I believe we have another five years after at this joint. Okay, so any other questions? Okay, I mean, the real good idea that was suggested at this finance committee at the last thing was to put it all on Robin's farm and create a ski resort. But, my idea actually was to cap it all at the great necklace. I was a good boy, I like it. Okay, I felt it. Just one other idea, I don't know if you heard about what they did at Fenway Park, but they brought in 20 tons of black sand and that actually brought the level of snow down from, I think, 12 feet down to about a foot. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with the black sand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Charlie. Yeah, I moved the motion house additional funding for the snow ice. Okay, do I have a second? Second. Okay, any further discussion? Okay, so we're adding another 200,000 to the deficit spending, bringing it to a total of $1,450,000 and then we'll figure out how to pay for it. You know, probably already for 13th meeting when hopefully this is all settled. All those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Okay, department heads step increases. The committee, a couple of people in the committee had asked about how that was determined. Paul, there's a short memo here. Paul, I don't know if anybody wants to follow up on it, but Paul, just one question. When the union contracts are all settled and the practice has been to give the managers the same percentage increase, is that correct? In terms of cost of living, as we call it, yes. Right. So the plan would be to still do that in addition to these increases? Yes, that would be like that. And is the same true for the police chief salary, which just got a big pump? So the police chief's sign for it would be what his compensation would be, not anything additional? Well, I don't know, a step or the cost of living? The cost of living. His contract actually states that he'll receive the cost of living adjustment in accordance with other employees that he may receive. Thank you. Okay, so are there any other questions, Charlie? Yes, I have a question about the statement. Is that plan to offer step increases around this point in different amounts for the merit of rather than plan to offer step increases for positive reforms, so is that not embarrassing? What I mean is I don't need to put, I have no intention of putting in place a system where someone gets taxed and another gets wide based on the outcome, but rather the positive performance, you get a merit increase if you don't, if you don't. Okay, thank you. Okay, are there any other questions on this issue? Okay. Solar. Okay, here's the status of energy and fuel contracts. We're interested in how this works and what are these up and do you want to add anything? Should we, yeah? No, I think it's somewhat self-explanatory to have an answer to the question. Okay, John? Adam, is that the electric supply rate? Is that off by a factor of 10 there? I don't think you're paying 88 cents per kilowatt hour. It is. We can catch it. So that's 8.8 cents. It's 0.8 cents, yeah. Okay, I'm sure what was the correction there? It should be either 8.8 cents or 0.08 cents. Okay. Any other questions? John? Did you evaluate the possibility of the town simply installing the solar panels themselves and keeping the, are there a crew of those and these things for private individuals, SRECs and all that stuff? Is that all part of this? I'm going to check that solar, David. Okay, he's going to take care of that next. Oh, I'm sorry. This is just on the one-term energy supply contract. Okay. The EMD, had you built in here? Yeah. These are just sort of long term fixed contracts. So. They are hedged. I guess they are hedged. So no matter what happens, it goes down or up. Whatever the market does with me. It's a different duration of time here. Okay, anybody else have any questions? Okay. Why does the new rates get these end this year? I'm sorry. Some of these are ending this year like the global gasoline contract? Yeah, so what I did for gasoline, those are just, we do that annually. Do you see the one that's ending this fiscal year and then the one that begins next fiscal year? Okay. Anybody else? The electric supply contract. You buy for street lighting separately? No, no, no, we do not. So that pricing is inclusive of street lighting? That pricing would be inclusive of street lighting. Okay, try. Do we still have a maintenance contract that's ready on the streets? It's with now the company called Siemens. It was with public ITS. But I think it was ready enough for people. Siemens bought with public ITS and they know that. Oh, okay, so it's an outside contract today. Thank you very much. Anybody else? One thing to mention, in case you're thinking we're getting really great deals on our gas and electric. This is just supply. It's not transmission or distribution. It's the utility. We pay a separate bill to start a national grid. They supply these goods. So what power of purchase are there? So I'll very quickly say, so I'll try to lay out some of the key points in this memo I provided. This is really a project that Ruthie Bennett was here earlier tonight. She's done a great deal of work on. I think it's something that John Dyke's asked about a time meeting a couple of years ago about what the town was doing with pursuit of solar energy and school buildings. The long and short of it is putting solar panels on six school roofs, producing just about 800,000 or more than 800,000 kilowatt hours a year. And then projecting based on the energy produced by those panels, saving around $100,000 a year. And you can see the table I was provided in the memo providing just about $2 million in savings over a three-year period. Somewhat of a complex financial scheme that you achieve that savings by, we would still be buying all of our energy from the grid, from MSTAR, or Eversource, and Edo supplier. We would then also be buying the energy that is produced on those panels for 12.8 cents per kilowatt hour. But then we'd be getting net metering credit from the utility at the market rate, which is currently the B3 market rate, which is currently 25.49 cents, which is what creates the savings of this scenario. So for the point John is getting at, if I may, the real key of why entering into a power purchase agreement is more advantageous for municipality. Are the tax benefits that a private company can realize by making this investment versus a municipality? So that's why we've seen a large number of municipalities in the state go through a power purchase agreement with a private developer. So you don't have the upfront capital costs and the overall economics of their basic taxes that are available to a private company. The reason I asked the question, not thinking about the municipalities, is that I sort of went through it for putting them on our roof and I decided it was a far better deal than we'd own them to have one of these contractors essentially rent my roof. So have you gone through that other possibility? Has anybody tried the economics at other possibilities? So when you look at the economics, we would get this SREC, the solar renewable energy credits, but we wouldn't qualify for the tax incentives that Anarasko would qualify for, or a private homeowner. I see, okay. So because of that, economics are better for them. Okay, got it. Okay, Jonathan? Yeah, it says here that there's a provision that if the facility has to go offline for major repairs within the first 10 years, the town will reimburse Anarasko for the lost revenue. And is that, by lost revenue, is that just the lost sales of the power to the town or does that include their loss of SREC's? That's a good question. I believe it would be loss of revenue from the town. And I think you might be thinking about the high school. That was gonna be my follow-up question in terms of the high school. And I don't know if Stratton would also be, you know, an issue there. What's the risk associated with putting the facilities, putting the panels on those two buildings? So for the Stratton, they're going on the portion of the building that's already been renovated, so there's lower risk. For the high school, the purchase, the power purchase agreement has something to the flexibility for us to be able to move the panels during the duration of construction, find alternative locations, generate power, and then put that back on at the conclusion. Okay, other question? I'm trying to, further this, John Dice, comment. Think of the tax benefit, because we're paying their profit. You know, we're paying their margins. So why does that, if we were to be, if we were to be as long as themselves wouldn't, we'd not be paying that margin. Okay, that's a fair question. Whether or not the margin we pay exceeds what? Costs as if we just put it on ourselves without the taxes. Yeah, let me, let me ask Cadmus, so I can solve that question. That's a fair question. Okay, I'm sorry, finish. Well, go ahead. Okay, what? A process question, was there a competitive or a QRP process for this service board? There was, good question. I should have put that in here. So we were, by association, part of two competitive processes for, so one, we were part of an ESCO solicitation at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and ESCO is an energy-serving, energy service contract. We were on a multi-community NAPC solicitation that included social channels. Also, the town has a membership in power options, which is a power purchasing consortium. We've been into that through Rudy Bennett's work at Bedford, and they were a member of power options. They also did a competitive solicitation that resulted in Sun Edison as a developer, and after comparing their proposed draft BPAs in terms of Cadmus, the consultant, that we get a grant to work with who we are, suggested that ESCO was providing a better deal. Okay, Dick. Who maintains these things? And we don't pay any for the maintenance? No. Because it's in their financial best interest and their electricity. They're renting the roof. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alan and Charlie. I see a lot of new, covered parking lots with panels, airports and things like that. Is that discussed as part of this whole process? Seems like we have a lot of parking lots that can be covered. That's sort of a win-win, because it keeps the snow and rain off the car or something. So we looked, I had asked them to look at the DPW parking lot and it wasn't big enough to provide the necessary scale. Their initial proposal did actually include a complete and total canopy over the Russell Common lot. And at this point, I felt like a much larger public discussion would be necessary based on the aesthetics of putting something like that in the early sector. So it's not at the top of the table, but to be able to move this project forward when we get to schools and not move it forward. So I see some stores with just 10 or 20 spaces that happen. I'm not sure what the economics are. Sir, we can plug in our hybrids and we can go right through. Just a general question, I think we already mentioned this to you. I'm sort of concerned that this is a 20-year contract and we haven't had a lot of success with 20-year contracts in the last 18 years. What's our ability to exit this contract? So one, and again, we haven't spoken about this to some degree, but if something dramatic in terms of the change of law, some net meadering credits went away or extracts went away and the economics went wacky in terms of this, the contract would allow for both sides to enter into renegotiation, the trends of the economics back in the balance. Also, there is the option within the PPA to be able to buy out the system if we chose to from Amoresco. So we'd have to take a look at where we thought we were economically if things went bad and decide whether or not it would be better to buy the system. What is the value of the system? There's a statement of values in the PPA apps. I didn't bring the PPA permission on that. There's a statement of values in terms of what it would cost to buy and move for the system. So we do have that statement. How many panels were involved? I don't know which ones. I don't know which ones. I don't know which ones. Is it worth more than $2 million? I don't know. There's pro ratings. Okay, there are any other questions? Jane and then Grant. So I think I already know the answer because it's not in here. They're gonna build these solar panels on our buildings, our roofs, this stuff. They're gonna make us sell it back to us. So in a hypothetical situation, someone were to do this on one of the buildings along Mass Ave, let's say a row of buildings on Mass Ave. That building, I'm gonna get to the concrete if you can't put in this contract. That building, they attach it to building a Mass Ave. I think default into being real property at that point to be subject to property tax because it's physically stuck on the building. It's not something you can move and all that. What goes on here? Are they just sort of getting a little bit of a de facto property tax windfall because it's on a governmental building? So not necessarily. There's been some recent case law not in an exact scenario, but in a similar scenario where solar panels have been exempted from property tax. But with that said, from what we've seen in other communities, some boards of assessors choose to assess it in some unit. I've had some preliminary conversations with the director of assessing the board of assessors. Should they choose to assess it, it will impact in a direct proportion what our price is if they do not choose to assess it, we'll pay with people for quotes right now. So that there's no, there is no handshake. So what do they do if you put it on your own residents? They assess it. I concur with some of the comments about the length of the relationship and the acquisition. So I appreciate you looking into the acquiring rather than renting route to somebody, to a 20 year attendee. I do have questions, two questions. One is about the Amoresco. Can you tell us who they are or about them or something like that? Yeah, yeah, they're a very large firm that primarily does ESCO work and that's energy service work where they'll come in in a comprehensive manner to a community or organization, not necessarily a city or town, and do energy efficiency measures throughout the building stock. And then nation-wide? Yeah, and then nation-wide. And usually those contracts are structured up, they'll do all the work. The organization will borrow the money, they'll do the work, and then the work is paid for by the energy savings that are promised. And then if the energy savings don't pan out, a company like Amoresco's on the hook. But basically they say, we're gonna do $10 million worth of work. It's gonna save you a million dollars a year, and then you'll paint down everything. And they take the risk of putting it all on. It doesn't save a million bucks a year, they come with the difference. It's part of that work, they also do so important work. So what you're talking about, they're basically, they're capitalistic profit on doing, they're taking the risk and they're making a lot of, and so they're a for-profit and are they public or is this their private? You mean by they trade it? Yeah. No, I would invest if I could. And the other one was on the rates. This is fascinating stuff. It is just like the decision, the homeowner would have to do. The net metering credit, this is on the financial terms and considerations, which you know all of this right off the top of your head, it's amazing. The net metering credit from utility, based on the market price of electricity and then you say about the current calculations. So is that based on it? Is it directly and exactly related to it or is it like a proportion of it and that proportion changes depending on the rate increases? Is that a question? So the interconnection agreement, it's called that we would sign with utilities or with the net resource, with state what rate classes to be used. I don't claim to be extramarital what this means, but we would be signing something that commits it to the B3 rate class, which today is the B3 market rate class, which today is at 25 cents a month. And how often they get adjusted or something, is it say? It would fluctuate with the market. No, so you understand the direction here is there's a disparity and does that disparity grow over time so that they're more profit for the company because of the difference in the rates and what they pay us and what they charge normally. So no, the company, Amoresco is charging us 12.8 cents for 20 years. Right, but I mean they're charging the market, but they would charge the market. They won't charge the market anything, they'll just charge us 12.8 cents. And then we get credit from Eversource, not from Amoresco, from the actual utility because we're still buying the energy from the grid as we always have. And then this energy is getting produced on the panels and it's going back out into the grid. And the grid's using it. So we still buy ours. We then pay 12.8 cents for what's getting generated, but then we get that market rate credit, which is today more and projected to always be more than that 12.8 cents so that we make money off what's being generated. I understand the difference between what the town pays and what the market rate that we would be getting, but the market rate, so I'm saying so Eversource is the one that's getting the benefit of the discrepancy of an increase in the market rate. I think Eversource would tell you to get rid of net meter increments, we hate it. Please don't make us pay people for this money. This energy. All right, fair enough, we're good. Stephen? Yeah. Adam, is there an estimate of what percent of each building's power needs will be generated by the solar? We do have the estimate. My recollection is that it's roughly about 30% of the cumulative power needs. It's less than the high school in the audience than it is in the elementary schools. Cumulatively it's about 30%. Okay, so in terms of what we're, so there's not more being generated, I just have a question, I guess that gets into the ownership as well. So we would be, everything that's generated by the panels would be utilized on site. There's not more capacity that's going out to the, actually I might not be wording that. Now everything that's generated actually goes out to the grid. No, I know, but what's being generated is less than what the needs of the buildings have done. Yes, yes. In total. All right. Okay, will you follow us? I'm forced to have the manager come back another night so we shouldn't have to go through all the warner articles with them. So if we could just keep the number of questions on this down a little bit. Can I just ask another follow-up now? Okay. Sorry, I have a second question. Just a question, at the end of the term, was there, I've seen other arrangements. The 20 years is what's important to the company in terms of investment and is the useful life of this 30 years or is 20 years considered the useful life of the panels? I think the expectation is somewhere between 25 and 30 years. And at the end, we could either renegotiate a continued arrangement with them or we could purchase the panels and then begin receiving the electricity ourselves. Okay, thank you. One last thing on that. So Ambrusco makes money, right? How, back to the rate thing. How does Ambrusco make money? They make their money through the combination of solar renewable energy credits, tax incentives, and then what we pay for the electricity. And they make most, in this arrangement, they make the lion's share of their money in the first 10 years. Okay. Charlie? So I'm still concerned about the 20 year aspect of this. And over 20 years, if you look at, just take our current budget and grow it at two and a half percent. The present value of our budget over 20 years is something like $2.1 billion. In, we're gonna save, to the present value point that is recorded here is a 1.9, it's about $2 million. It's the present value of the savings. If any time during this, if you said that the equivalent value is higher than the two million dollars. So at any time in the course of this course, that something goes wrong, we're gonna have a liability that's substantial greater than two million dollars. All for the potential of the savings value of $10 million today. Which is, that's less than 10th of a percent of our budget. You know, the present value of the total budget. It means strategically, is this the right thing to do? I struggle to understand what could go wrong so dramatically that would completely went wrong. I don't know, but I can tell you, in 1973, when we voted for the Nesway garbage burn trash and get energy, everybody said nothing could go wrong. The price of oil is gonna go up. Now the price of oil is lower than it was in 1973. So I'm just, we're getting involved in a 20 year contract. And the problem is, you can't see what's going on. Because you can't see 20 years into the future and know what's gonna happen one way or the other. So we're, but one thing we know is we're gonna have a risk for a liability for this equipment, which is gonna be somewhere in excess of two million dollars, probably four or five million dollars. In the present value of all the savings, it's two million dollars. That to me doesn't seem right. Why, they were all in the project. If we get out of the contract, if we want to get out of the contract this is 10 years, we have a liability and the unabrogated value is the quicker. And somewhere in excess of two million dollars, probably four or five million dollars. So, yeah, maybe the contract says it will be negotiated, et cetera, but that liability is out there. And what I'm saying is we're signing up for 20 years worth of something. We don't know all of the parameters and variables that are gonna happen over the 20 years. The present value of our savings is two million dollars. It's less than a 10% of our budget. If something goes wrong in a given year, we're gonna have a big liability, a big impact, just the way we did with Neswitz. And that's, I'm just really troubled by that. I suppose the argument I hear there is that the town manager should not be pursuing even small efficiencies based on it's a good impact on the long-term budget. If that means that the town is exposed to a liability that it can't get out of that exceeds the savings, if those conditions are there then I make that argument. And I'm not, I'm not criticizing, I mean, what you're trying to do, save money, it's good. I'm just, I'm looking at this as a 20-year commitment and the experience we've had with these 20, I mean, how much time are we spending on the minivan contract that we'd like to get out that we can't get out, you know, it's been 40 years. So I'm, you know, I'm trying to learn something from those experiences and see how it works. Okay, now they were all in the different, so Spanish. Spanish. We're renting the rooms for 20 years is what it comes down to. And so yeah, if I may suggest, I agree with Charlie in the sense that we're delighted that you're doing the kinds of things you're doing. You know, first, I'm very pleased that you are looking at these kinds of things. But it is a 20-year commitment that's, the two that Charlie cited, the devil to me as well for all these years, you know, the men and the Jesuit were awful things for us. So anyway, that's the, that's the worry, you know, the huge uncertainty represented in my 20 years. Well, yeah, we're renting a, like you said, we're renting a room for 20 years. Right. But we have a liability. Well, the ability is there. And if we stop renting the room, we have to buy their equipment. You're not really asking the roof, you're leasing their equipment is really what you're doing to factor. I mean, it's the capital lease. In which case, if you stop paying the lease, they take the equipment back. And you owe whatever the liability is, whatever the outstanding liabilities until the lease is terminated. Okay. Caroline? What can we get, can we get what the liability is over the course of each year? Or at least over five year brackets? Well, I know you want to wrap this up, Mr. Chairman, but you know, I think they're in life the question. What's the risk with the liability? And I think the big risk is that this cost calculation assumes a price today from marketing. Inflated at 2% for the course of this 20-year contract. So the risk would be that financially that energy price comes way down. So today, transmission and distribution of electricity is about eight cents a kilowatt hour. And based on that 25.24 cent rate, that balance of 17 cents is commodity cost. So I don't think there's much of a good argument to say that transmission and distribution is going to come down over the long term. That's the built infrastructure, the wires and then transformers and everything else and pulls that energy is delivered over. So it's all about the commodity. So electricity as a commodity would have to come down to 4.8 cents per kilowatt hour for some long extended period of time for this to even become a great even project. So even at five cents, we're not making nearly as much and we're still in savings mode or spending less or earning more mode. So outside of that financial risk, what are the risks you see? So the equipment doesn't work and you want to get rid of it. And there's a loss. The liability is going to be there, that liability, whatever the value of that equipment is, two million, five million, somewhere more than, you just said, more than the two million, we're going to be on the hook for that equipment. Why? Why? If the equipment doesn't work, we don't buy electricity, it doesn't generate electricity, we don't buy electricity, and nothing happens. Just take that back. That's the strength of this arrangement. It's on them to perform for 20 years to make that equipment. And why is there a buyout clause on the equipment? Why is there, why do you have to pay for the equipment if you can have a contractor on it? Well, because there's so value to the equipment. Why would they allow it to just say, after a couple of years that we don't like this, we'll take all of your capital investment and we'll keep the electricity as genuine. Well, I mean, because maybe you're unhappy with the service they're providing. I mean, I just think there's a big liability here in relatively speaking as a small savings. And that's, and as a long-term commitment, why don't we continue the conversation offline so that we can continue near to it? Yeah, I think a couple of questions have been asked as far as the total amount. If you could continue the discussions and then maybe get back to us with another memo on this particular issue. And if anybody wants to, you know, feels the same way, you know, please contact the manager and see if we could get our hands around the liability issue. Grant? Would some of this, I understand the town doesn't want necessarily, I like to hedge the risk on the low end side, doesn't want to necessarily be in a power-producing business and only equipment, that may not be what the town's role is. But I think to have the number of the amount, I think that might appease, well, me, I don't know if it appeased Charlie, but that if we owned the equipment, what would be the amount of savings versus the, and also the amount that... The much higher risk. Yes. And then we have the risk of... One thing we need to make sure is that five years or so are going to be absolutely of operation's cost. We're not tax-free. I understand they wouldn't want to be in that business, but that would help. Okay, so why don't, you know, get the town will vote to amend the zoning bylaws required that all applications for building permits, special permits, when you have the warrant there. So it's basically asking for an additional level of information. It'll be a redevelopment board slash selectment recommendation. Do you know if the redevelopment board is making a recommendation on this? They've made it a selectment. Okay. And the selectment? I did, they're not going to do it. Oh, sure. They're not going to do it. It's a zoning bylaw. It's a zoning bylaw. Okay. Could you give a brief overview of what they're looking for and what you see as our study problems? Yeah, so my general understanding of the proponents goals here is to require a further level of documentation whenever the building inspector makes a zoning determination in the issuance of a building permit or the non issuance of a building permit thereby requiring special permit in the ARB or variance from the ZVA. Our position, the town's position has been that this information already exists. The issuance of a building permit is in and of itself a statement that there is compliance with existing zoning and the denial of the issuance of a building permit requiring either a variance or a special permit has an application process that goes along with it where each part of why zoning is not being provided is laid out within that application that then goes on to either the ZVA or the ARB. We have concerns that if the building inspector was required to create a further narrative document for every zoning determination that was made there would be a significant administrative burden that would require either the hiring of further inspectional help to perform the inspectional work that the director's currently performing or hiring of additional administrative help to perform that additional administrative work that the building inspector would have to be creating these additional documents. So based on that, I think our general position is you feel pretty strongly that this information is currently being generated. And I think additionally I'd add should the ZVA or ARB need additional information about its own determination made by the building inspector? The building inspector has, probably Zeno will continue to be readily available to them to answer questions that provide further information that they needed to make room for their decision. Okay, so does anybody have any questions on the manager? Ken? This is really a money article that gets right down to it. Because when I spoke with the building inspector, he felt that if he had to in turn do all this administrative paperwork, he definitely had to hire another building inspector because he does a lot of the building inspecting. He's out on the field. So if he's stuck out on the field, there's an inspector who possibly included, like you say, additional administrative staff, to me, that's wages. To me, that's money. Absolutely. So this is absolutely a money article. Absolutely. Does anybody else have questions, Allen? When the basis of it ain't broke, are you aware of any situation that this would fix? Is there anything broken that this might fix? Anybody else? Okay, so there's the finance committee. Oh, sorry, John. Oh, John, that's right. If this thing should happen to go through, what would be, in your estimate, what would be the expense? You know, so talking with the building inspector, depending on what was actually put before a telling meeting by the proponent and then potentially adopted, you know, the level of detail being required would have some impact. But I think somewhere between, you know, one and two, FDEs could be possible, depending on what we're talking about. It's not a problem on a date. Say that again? This is not a problem on a date. No, not that it's ever been brought to my attention. Thank you. Okay, so we can either let it go at the redevelopment board or say our doing, or we can take a vote to support the no-action vote of the redevelopment board. I move we support the redevelopment board. We'll have to be available for it. Second item. Second? Is there any other discussion? Okay, motion has been made and seconded to support the no-action vote of the redevelopment board for the reasons that have been stated. All those, Peter? Oh yeah, I haven't heard the proponent. I don't think, I don't think we should vote on it. He declined. He declined. He declined. He declined. He declined to come. Actually two things, he declined to come and he did put forth a memo that I think was went out to all the people. But he was, Gloria specifically asked him and he refused to come. And in which case, I think the position of any of the reporting boards has always been no-action. Yeah, I'm gonna vote against the motion because I don't think it's the direct expenditure of funds. There's lots of things and how meeting does that could possibly relate result in additional funding needs in the future. So I kind of agree with Chris that it's not really our position to vote on this. I'm gonna vote against it. Gene? Yeah, I was gonna say, I support what Lynn said because I think we don't really know enough here. I mean, I think our position, so if I had to break down our position as all new spending is bad new spending, period. I'm sorry. Our position here, if we voted, is all new spending is bad new spending. Because we really don't know enough about it. We don't have this article, right? So what I'm concerned about, we're gonna get on the floor of town meeting, we're gonna find out something we don't know, and we're going to look really stupid. And I just, I agree with Lynn in the sense that we're not really being asked to vote on anything and we're being asked to vote on incomplete information. I mean, even, I guess even if the redevelopment board, you know, I'm assuming they had a hearing on it and if we at least knew what they heard at the hearing, we might be in a better position. But I think just voting it down seems to open us up to a weird position. Do you want to make an amended motion to not take a position on this article? I don't think we're informed enough to take a position on this article, right? But anyway, it's not gonna do it. I hate to drag this out even further, but it's, I mean, maybe the board should chime in on that. We invited him back in early February. He refused to come and he sent a memo to us. I mean, I don't know what more. We can't drag him to it, but I think the position either, you know, Ken's position is it's gonna be a cost. We don't see a reason for it. We don't know. Or when, and you, it's not a direct appropriation. Therefore, there's no reason for us to take a position. That's what we're gonna vote on, Paul. I would say it's precisely because we don't have the information from the proponent that we should vote no action, that we don't want, yes, we don't know what he's gonna bring to town meeting for a substitute motion. And so we should recommend no action at this point because just because we can't make a judgment as to what it's gonna cost. Okay, Greg. Last time we invited Mr. Loretta, he declined because he didn't think it was a financial impact. Maybe if it was pointed out to him that it was a financial impact, he might reconsider and then he'd have more information. Well, my guess is it's probably, did he appear before the redevelopment board? I believe he did. Okay. Other discussion? I mean, okay. Mayor Margaret, did you have your hand up there? Charlie? Well, I think we've had information from the department head and also from town manager that there's a cost assumption and that it's addressing a problem that doesn't exist. I think there is a three-month-old client who needs to make a decision. Tom? I agree. And Dean, I think this is, if this should ever go through, and I've done some research on it in dealing with inspectional services on a daily basis of what I do, there is no problem. And if this ever should slide through, because we've all seen things slide through town meeting on the 12,000, this would be a costly way away but we're gonna be sitting here looking for at least 150, 200,000. So I agree, I think we should take no action on this. Okay, is there anybody, any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor of supporting the no action vote of the redevelopment board, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. No. Okay. All those in favor, please raise your hand. One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Okay, and how many opposed? One, two, three, four, five. Now, here's the consideration. I'd almost ask the people to oppose it to abstain or something because, you know, are you opposing it because you think we should do this or are you opposing it because you think it's not, it's not a role of the finance committee, it's not a finance vote. If I could just ask, Peter, yes or no? Yes or no? Well, I'm sorry. Are you opposing it because you want more positions there or do you want this to be done or because you don't think it's a role of the finance committee to deal with this? Because I don't understand it. Okay, I'm sorry, I don't mean to question the vote, but I don't want, we're probably five people are supporting doing this. No, I don't think so. Five people are saying we don't support the motion, right? That's all it is. That's the motion, we don't support it. Or you can put in our reason, we don't support it because it's not a direct, because it's not a direct appropriation if you want. So as a commentary, you can put that, but I'm not sure. Maybe write a comment and ask for review of the comment. See if everybody agrees with the comment. Okay, I'll write up a comment. What I think is happening, if anybody, of the five people who disagree with that, please let me know, okay? Okay, article 13 is the disposition of real estate on 1207 Mass Ave. So 1207 Mass Ave is the former DAV, Disabled American Veterans Hall, found out about two years ago based on some liquor license issues that was actually owned by the town under the Board of Selectment. So moving forward from there, DAV was not able to retain its national licensure as the DAV club today moved out. The town was taken possession. Board of Selectment went through a subcommittee process to look at options for reuse of the building that held public hearing, where people were able to come in and put forth ideas for what would be a good use for the building. So the Board of Selectment's chosen path is to very soon put it out to short-term lease to try to experiment basically with some of the ideas that the folks who came to the public hearing had shared workspace, collaborative workspace for folks in town, but then also to ask for permission from town meeting to then eventually sell the building. So what we would be doing is putting on a lease, probably for a short term, a year, maybe 18 months, but then be looking to sell the building at the end of that lease. We want to get permission from town meeting this year. Proceeds of the lease by law proceed to the sale of a capital asset, have to go towards a capital asset, and proceeds from a potential or expected sale are currently included in the capital budget, roughly 17. Okay, and the Board of Selectment is voted? Favorably to request town meeting authorization to sell. Okay. Is anybody have any questions? Tom? What's our cost by putting it up for lease? So we're drafting an RFP that really limits our cost. So very, very minor costs. We don't have to do anything to it. No, our entity, you know, so long as the building systems are working, we're not planning on actually getting improvements. So why hold the 18 months, 12 months? What's the difference between the Board of Selectment? So the idea really from the Board of Selectment was there's a lot of folks who came out to that meeting and there's been a lot of interest in talking town about creating spaces for collaborative workspaces for people who either currently work from home or looking to get into some kind of startup or just work in such a space. And there was the thought of whether or not, you know, this space could be where it's tested to see if the concept works, come in, maybe it does work, maybe they buy the building, maybe they don't, but really as the town giving an opportunity to be the first testing ground for that concept. So the lease would read the person and rent it and do the build up, it would cause this. Yeah, any build up that was necessary, we would, that's what we do look forward to. Anybody else have any other questions? Grant? I like the approach because it might be worth more once it's been proven to evaluate the lease in. I concur with that one. Now, so the Selectment and Moving, they're gonna recommend favorable action. I don't see that the Finance Committee needs to get involved when somebody wants to. Charlie? We need the money for this strategy school. Okay, so. So I would like to ask the Finance Committee to support the selection of this because eventually, as Adam said, if it gets sold, it's a capital asset, it has to be used for a capital asset and it'll help to frame the cost of the renovation of the strategy school. Okay, you make your motion. I am making motion to support the selection. Second. Okay, so support for the selection recommendation. Okay, is there any further discussion or questions, Steve? Are we gonna directly say that we support it in hopes that it's used to frame the cost of the strategy school? Well, I think the sale, if it's the sale is, it has to be used for a capital asset and then that would be with the Capital Budget Committee. I only bring it up to the week, I think we supported selling two schools, I know we supported selling two schools in the past for the purpose of rebuilding an elementary school. I think it would be the same. I mean, is it directly going to support? Yeah, it's gonna be in the presentation I will give you for the next one tonight. Okay. Okay, motion has been made in a second to support the recommendation of the Board of Selectment. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor, we say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, unanimous. Okay, 14, disposition of real estate parcel. What is that? Cliff Avenue and Lexington, I guess we just wanted to know what's this all about. So, quick rundown, the Board of Selectment going to no action on this at their last meeting on Monday night. This had its genesis in, local attorney approached me having a client who lives at the address here in Cliff Ave, a portion of that property is owned by the town. We own a great deal of property that leads from this area of Lexington up into the Great Meadows. It was originally taken as water access rights. However, this portion of land that's a small triangle about four or 5,000 square feet, about half of it is this person's driveway and has their shadow. They had an interest in buying land if the town was willing to release it. After some further investigation about the town council and his staff, we determined that based on the way it was acquired and some of the restrictions on the land it wouldn't be advantageous for either us to give it out more for this property owner to try to acquire it. So, we're recommended to no action. Anybody want to finance committee to get involved? No, no. Okay. No. 14 is crossed off. Okay. Complete streets program. Acceptance of legislation. Complete streets program. 16. This is a new piece of law adopted last year. It would create something somewhat similar to the Green Communities Division whereby when a community adopts certain criteria it would then become eligible if it met up with those criteria to receive grant funding for project implementation. So, the first step in having access to that grant funding is adopting section 90i, I believe it is, which is the complete streets statute. You would then need to adopt a complete streets policy which can be done either by administrative policy or by law, something the town already does but doesn't necessarily have an adopted policy. You then need to make sure that when you design and build streets they are in compliance with that policy and you also have to set benchmarks for what kind of mode shift you want to make over the next, I believe five year period. Mode shift being how many, you know, people do you want to move from cars to walking to bike. The state has some very aggressive goals the town would have to have such aggressive goals but since we basically, you know, comply with or right now do business as a complete streets community we figure it's very appropriate to adopt the legislation and then have access to the grant funding that would be made available. Okay, so you're saying we already do what they require therefore we might as well get the extra money. Correct. Okay, questions, Charlie. What is the mode shift about? Mode shift is about moving people from one type of, I guess transit from another. So, you know, moving people out of a car to a bike or a pedestrian. And what are we doing now to do that? I mean, in other words, what does that have to do with building streets? And are we, what I'm really asking you about is are we reducing the amount of parking available? Are we increasing the cost of building the streets? What are the background implications of this? So I think, you know, if you're talking about adding sidewalks or expanding sidewalks, yes, you might be expanding the cost. A lot of this is designing streets so that there's more pedestrian-friendly accommodations and bike-friendly accommodations and potentially transit bus-friendly accommodations so that you can move people into using those accommodations more comfortably. So a lot of it's designed and not necessarily hard infrastructure. There might be some projects in Arlington maybe more than a few communities in Arlington where you're talking about actually building, like I said, a new sidewalk where I would certainly have a cost factor. I'm not sure that that's what we would be focusing on though there are some areas that people today are requesting sidewalks. I would see this in Arlington much more of a design guideline than a new infrastructure model. Karen? I'm assuming that it's one of the grants and probably one of the impetus for this is moving the bike lanes between the parked car and the sidewalk rather than the bike lane between the parked car and the driving car. Because I know there's a strong impetus among cyclists in town to have that shift happen at some point in time. I'm not sure what else it would be used for that. I suspect that's a time of use, but I may be wrong. It could be used for raised crosswalks, more crosswalks, better pedestrian signalization or notification for motorists to know where there's pedestrian crossing. There's a lot of different iterations that could fall under a conflict street policy. Can we get more of the Countown crosswalks and the birds? Something like that would be a long-term problem. A long-term problem. Well, you chuckled with that. Those chirps are very important for disabled people who are using those signals to know where the box that looks like it is. Other questions from the committee? Okay, is the select one is voting favorable? It has one if you're watching. Okay, so the select one removing the head with this is this something the finance committee wants to get? No, no, no. Okay, 16 is gone. Okay, collected bargaining. Now you've given us a memo. Okay, so it sounds like you have a couple of contracts set and you're working on the rest. You think you'd have additional information by April 13th? I think by April 13th, we will have proposed votes for you in regards to the two contracts that we have for you to discuss. Okay, could you possibly have more contracts or is it of course you can? Yeah, so could it be a month? Potentially. Potentially, I wouldn't commit to it, but potentially. Potentially. Okay, so if you could get April 13th as our last meeting, we're trying to wrap up everything. So if you could have votes to Gloria and also a vote to set aside the rest of the money, you know, the standard where a company has to do it, has to re-vote it before it can be used. Okay, so that's elective articles. So that will be April 13th. And if you could obviously email it out ahead of time. That would be appreciated. Public art, East Arlington. Could I ask for deferral to a further meeting? I'm still waiting for some information from the web. Okay, financing of that water and sewer articles. Grant, do you want to do that now or do you want to wait until you present the whole water and sewer budget? I actually had some questions to ask Patty or Mike about, but I may want to wait until after. Okay, that's fine. Or. Okay, Human Rights Commission Executive Director. We've heard a presentation on this. Could you please tell us what's the status now of the Human Rights Commission Executive Director? So the fact, though, for quite a while, the Health and Human Services Director has been acting as the Human Rights Commission's Executive Director, so it's my intention at either the next Board of Select meeting or the following meeting to request that the Board of Select might officially take a vote to appoint the Health and Human Services Director as the Executive Director of Human Rights. Are you aware of the proponent of this article's objection that she's supposedly not qualified according to the original article that was the Human Rights Commission? That's what he says. You know, I don't think I'd say that. Well, let's test the heads up for you. Okay, now this would be an appropriation article, so we need to take a position. I think we're waiting to hear. So right now, Christine has been acting as, for all intents and purposes. And there is funded administrative support under Christine's jurisdiction, so she's served in more of that supervisory capacity and there has been administrative support to the commission for some time. And she meets regularly with that support. Okay. Let's go to the meeting. Is there any other questions, Karen? Does she currently consider that part of her job description or would that include a stipend in the future? I don't think it would include a stipend in the future. Any other questions, Charlie? So the Board of Selectments is recommending he gets this article? The Board of Selectments hasn't heard this article yet. What is your recommendation? My recommendation is that the request is a, I don't know the background of it because it's a finance committee article. Yeah. So my recommendation is as opposed to funding and hiring an independent executive directive between the Rights Commission, officially having the Board of Selectments appoint the existing Health and Human Services Director hasn't exactly been correct. Okay. Do I have a motion on this article then? So moved. Oh, what's, no action. I'm sorry. I'll keep saying this. No action. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. I have a motion for no action. Second? Second. Second. Any further discussion? Yeah, Adam, I would just emphasize what John said, which is when we were here at the hearing, we read the bylaw and it has a very extensive criteria for what executive director of this position should have for qualifications and things like that. So I do agree with John that I caution that you might be trading one set of problems for another. Stephen? Yeah, just a quick. So is it the next meeting of the Board of Selectment that it's gonna be taken up or? Yeah, I was looking at the 23rd, but if it doesn't happen to the 23rd, I would be followed. I almost think, Adam, that this, our vote here is premature until if the position's filled by Christine, then there's no appropriation that's needed. But if it isn't filled, then they have to take it on step. And I'm not saying to do. Then maybe there is an appropriation that's appropriate. So I move to postpone the vote on it until the selectment take action. Well, make the motion. I just did. Okay, is there a second to that? Second. Okay, moved and seconded to table until the selectment take action. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Tabled. Okay, the Council on Aging Transportation was the last thing I have here. And I think the issue simply come up and we'd sort of like to get in the background is that over the long term, this does not look like the viable enterprise fund. It's growing down substantially on its fund balance. And the fund balance is going to be gone in a couple of years. And so I think members wanted to say, well, you know, what do you see as the long-term plan for the Council on Aging Transportation? Well, so we have been subsidizing Council on Aging Transportation the general fund, but I think we have three or four years now with $30,000 a year. But we were doing so now in the face of them having more than 100% of their operating budget in reserve. So this year's budget proposal included reducing that operating subsidy to use a responsible and reasonable amount of that reserve down probably over the next two, maybe three years. 50, 25% of the actual operation and then consider a general fund subsidy get to the existing one. Because they've been growing down. You probably talking the range of $120,000 if I remember correctly, for a subsidy. Yeah, I think we have misread that. They weren't really growing down the fund, they were getting a larger subsidy than the $30,000. In 13, they grew down 54,000. And in 14, they grew down about 68, almost 69,000. And they plan for 15 and 30. And so this money is disappearing. I'm just looking at transfer from retained earnings. And they're getting another 40,000 from community development block grant money. So the issue is, and this is a presentation issue, transfer from retained earnings. That's both from the general fund and I believe. I know the 30,000 and 15 budgets is directly from the general fund, but it's 30,000 in 16 from retained earnings. Sir, you said the 68,000 and fiscal 14 that just ended, that's not from retained earnings? I don't believe it is, no. No, code 4972 is a transfer from the general fund. It's just coded, it's just, the description is odd here, is wrong. Okay. Why don't we put together a memo to explain that? Okay, because that's what we were looking at. It says transfer from retained earnings. You can only transfer so much. So, does anybody else have any questions on Council on Aging? If I send you a group in five. I'm sorry? I send you a group in five. Well, I don't know why I was asked to do it by other people on the committee. Right, and you asked me, or somebody asked me to ask group to do five years of revenue and expenditures that they sent to everybody. Okay, that's fine. Is there any other questions for the manager? Okay, so meeting is on Monday. That'll be the capital program. And we'll go on from there. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.