 Okay, it started good after every good afternoon everyone it's the March 3rd meeting of the joint capital planning committee. I'm Kathy Shane I'm chair of the committee and my first order of business is to call out the names of the committee members to make sure they can see and be heard, and then I will turn it over to Sean to introduce the order of the agenda. I'm just going to call out the names as I see them on the screen Alex. Yes. Anna, Anna. Here. Mandy. Jennifer. Yeah. And Pharah here. Okay, we have one more person to join us and we'll, we'll just note when he comes and I'll make sure her can hear and be heard. So Sean, I know Guilford has a time constraint so maybe we will just start with Guilford at this point. And I don't know if anybody can keep an eye on the attendee list I'm going to share my screen, but they, someone keep an eye on it and let me know if her joins. Sometimes he comes in that way. Okay. I think we got it up more or less. Okay, so. So all the projects. So, Guilford morning superintendent public works is here with us tonight. He's going to walk us through his projects. All of the descriptions were in the, in the packet. And so you can refer to those if you have any questions but I'll turn it over to Guilford and start. Good evening. Thanks for having me. So, as we Herb is here. Sean, you can promote him. Sorry to stop sharing for one second. Sorry, Sean is host he's doing multitasking here. I can't unless he promotes me. Yeah. All right, you can go ahead Guilford. Hey hi. So, before I start, I kind of want to. I want to say that. We're having a lot of, a lot of volatility and pricing right now. So we have quotes from vendors. And that's what you'll see here for some of the vehicles is actually the quote from the vendor. But the vendors are telling us that that probably won't be the price. When we go to buy the equipment in July. We had one quote come in, which is actually for a vehicle for next year. And the quote said it was good until March, March 24. And after that, it needed to be redone. So as we, as you, as I tell you, some of the vehicle equipment prices. Please understand that we may come back and tell you it's not enough because the prices have gone up so much. And delivery dates are astronomical right now. It's taking a long time to get just about anything. So with that being said, I'll start. The first part of our request are more, the first two are more programmatic funding things we asked for the transportation plan which we use that money to take projects which the, the TAC has said we should do. We take some DPW projects which we need to move forward and we take this money, and we do surveying or any type of data acquisition we need to do before we actually start designing the project. We do not use it this money we have not used this money yet to actually hire designers we use it to just get the information we need to design and house. So the stormwater management plan we're asking for $25,000 and that's kind of the same thing. This is part of our MPDS permit which is a national pollution, something elimination system, so a federal program that the state of Massachusetts has in. And we're starting our program off and this money the $25,000 is going to probably do a round of outfall testing of testing where water, stormwater leaves the road and enters the streams to start collecting data on our, on what's in our stormwater, what type of metals we have in the stormwater what type of suspended solids we have in the stormwater, how much salt we're actually putting into the stormwater those types of things. That's probably what this $25,000 is going to be used for and we have some money from last year will probably use that for that too. The next two are the town or money the town puts into the infrastructure of sidewalks and roadways. We have 200,000 in there for sidewalks and we have 750,000 for road resurfacing. We are the road resurfacing projects are being bid this time. This money here will either get used in projects at the end of construction year if we still have time, or will be used next construction cycle which starts for us it starts before July 1 so you have to approve it. Before, you know, you can't wait until the budgets approved as we approved earlier. We have about two miles, two and a half miles of sidewalk we're proposing to do this year. We haven't confirmed that list with the town manager yet so I can't give it to you. We are advertising our road repair for next this season. Right now we're doing some sections of small roads around town we're doing Russellville road we're doing Meadows Street. We have a section of Leverett Road, we have a section of West Palmer Roy. We have a few more, which I left my list laying on my desk at work because I was going to bring it to this meeting and still there. But we have those. We also have the two community development project road projects going on which aren't included in this money but just since we're talking road projects will be doing a multi use path, and some road projects will be laying on Mill Lane, going to Graf Park that finishes the link of the multi use path that goes down North Alley Road crosses over and we'll go up Mill Lane to Graf Park. And we have some sidewalk CD CD BG which is Community Development Block Grant project going on on Kellogg Street downtown will replace the sidewalks there and then we're going to take some of the paving money and repave the road. That's the next one. The next one down is our road repair money which comes from the state. And this is chapter 90 money. And we take the chapter 90 money and we add it to the town money and that's how we put together our project. The project we're bidding right now is about $2 million. So it's going to use chapter 90 and town funds to actually cover that whole, that whole project base. One thing to consider also is construction prices are going up as well. Asphalt is liquid asphalt is made from petroleum products as petroleum products go up asphalt paving this year will get more expensive. We also have steel for some things in the projects and that this is increasing as well. So that's the next one which is about $841,000 is chapter 90. Guilford the the next one if you want to speak to it by all means if you want to leave that for planning when they come, you can also leave it leave it for planning if you want the 30,000. Yeah, for the replacement of the audible pedestrian signals. Yeah, just so people know. So that was the project that came in from planning. We put it under public works because a lot of things kind of fall under Guilford in terms of terms of actually implementing them or putting them into action. But the planning department will speak to the need for that one when they come. We have lots of audible alarms in town and they just go in and out so they want us to replace them all one time is really what this is all about. But they have a better story probably. The next one is the $12,000 for street street light relamping and we do this every other year, and we use this to buy additional street lights that we use for replacing throughout the system. The next one is we need to replace a mower in the public in the treating grounds division. This is roughly an $18,000 mower. We did price an electric mower versus a gas mower, and the electric mower was about $23,000 $24,000 when we priced it. They are getting better. But we're really not sure we're ready to try one out this these are large industrial size mowers. So that's what that, but this is for a regular gas powered one. The $40,000 is what we use for tree removal. If you notice we have it in the budget every other every year. It goes from 40 to 20. The years we have 40,000 are the years we get rid of all the trees we've collected and stock piled at Ruckston. So that's tree kind of disposal funds. And then the other $20,000 is what we use to hire cranes, mostly to lift the bigger trees to help us take down the bigger trees. And that's for tree crane removal. And then we have some vehicles following that. We're replacing the one ton dump and highway, I mean in treating grounds, and we're replacing a three quarter ton truck and treating grounds. And yes, one ton dump price is significantly higher than it was last year. And it's mostly just steel and they say it's steel prices is why it's going up, but all of the vehicles prices are going up. So we're replacing a one ton dump and treating grounds and replacing one and highway. And then one of the three, three quarter ton trucks and treating grounds and other three quarter ton pickup and highway. And then we're asking to either replace our backhoe or our mini excavator. And we haven't decided which one we want to go with yet. They both, they both do a lot of good things for us the backhoe can also plow snow. But the mini excavator really works well when we're doing small projects and people's backyards where you have to get to a storm drain or sewer line that runs through backyards. This is a $75,000 is actually the quote for the mini excavator. And that's what we're leaning towards right now. We do have one right now but it's actually costing more to keep that one running than it is to costing more to keep thing running than it is helping us right now so we're proposing to get rid of it. And it's over it's well over 10 years old. So that's everything a brief description I know you have lots of questions so I'll let you ask questions. So I'm looking for hands up and or just I'm going to check that you can hear and be heard. Okay. I'm here. I am assuming I can be heard. You can and go for it is really good to see you. Good to see you. So I'm looking for I'm not seeing any hands. Mandy was trying to wait to let other people. I'm going to keep since I know you're under time pressures I'm going to keep my questions to the vehicles. In the out years there's a lot of one ton dump truck purchase purchases both in tree and grounds and in highway. You know four out of five years for tree and grounds and three of five for highway along with for it over those five years for three quarter ton pickup trucks. So two questions with that number one, can we were given the price difference. I think that many one tons or can some of them be three quarter ton. And then the other thing I tried to count one tons and I, the car, the vehicle inventory is very hard to determine what's a one ton and what is not a one ton, but that seems like a really large number of one ton trucks, potentially more than we have assigned to tree and grounds right now. Those four, I couldn't determine how many we had to sign to train ground so can you talk about how many one ton trucks we have, and why there are so many being replaced in the next I mean that's that's seven over the next five years between train grounds and highway. So I, I could, if I left my pick my sheet up off my desk when I was getting my stuff together. We have about six right six one tons right now in the highway department. The six we have in highway. They're also they also use for plowing and they also have a little a little standard that goes on the back of them. So they're, they're multi roll trucks they they do more of the plowing and then they also are used in just regular construction work around town. So that they are a pretty versatile truck. If you want if you really wanted to like do away with a truck we would do away with probably a three quarter time but those are more fuel efficient actually so and those are better for actually going to and from the job sites where we don't use a lot of the big truck one tons are where we have to use the big dump the fyi 27 out here. That year is really those truck anything in the out here is kind of like just a number out there it wasn't really, we haven't really decided. We do have three trucks, three one times coming up for replacement. And the way we do it like we say if I don't know which vehicle list you're looking at what you're looking at the public works list that we use for ourselves or if you're looking at the town list, which I assume you're using the town list. In the DPW one, we actually try to keep our one ton trucks anywhere from 10 to 15 years. We have some we have three in the in that range that are coming up for replacement. If we did, if you did find the fyi 27 one in the out year. That would be early replacement for that truck. Just so you know. And the same is true. There's about three. There's three one tons in the tree and grounds division and the out here on 27 is really just a placeholder we may not need it or may not. Mindy just said. Okay, or as his hand raised. I don't really appreciate what you said in relationship to the price fluctuations. And anyone who follows the current economic scene as ideas, especially if you are an average reader of such newspapers as the Wall Street Journal, which I have been for the last 30 years. These, the price, the change supply chain has been severely disruptive, and it will even it is going to be even more impacted by the events going on in Ukraine. So, all of us should realize that when go for says what he says that that's really important for us to take into consideration. These prices are not going to be something that are going to be stable over any long period of time, if a couple of months maybe. So I really appreciate it. Hi. This might be a no brainer question, but when we're talking about road repair, are you talking about fixing potholes or is it more extensive than that. So the money, the money in the capital plan is for more extensive repairs and potholes. So what we use to either overlay a road or to totally rebuild the road, or to do any of the more in depth repairs were. We've done some chip ceiling, which is a thin overlay and we're also looking into doing some fog ceiling soon. Those are the repairs are beyond pack pothole patching. And that's what we use this money for. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Gelford. Hi. As you know we're always looking for where we can trim. That's our job so just two, three quick questions. You said the cost that you had was for the mini excavator, but you were looking at a backhoe versus an excavator what do you know what the approximate cost of a backhoe would be. I assume last. Well the last backhoe we bought was a 125. So more. Okay. There you go. Good to know. All right. And then the fall testing of stormwater is that something required by state is that something that could be put off if we needed to. How does that fall in terms of priorities necessity, mandatory, etc. It's part of a state permit, which is a minute. Well, it's a, it's a federal permit and managed straight by EPA and the DP kind of gets involved in it, but it's a federal stormwater permit. And it's, we're coming into the, the, the term I'm supposed to use is just evading me right now, but we're coming into the phase where we're supposed to start. We've already kind of inventoryed this year we're inventorying our outfalls where the water leaves the pipes. Next year we're supposed to start actually going through and start testing so it is in a cycle that's laid out for the program. Great. Thanks. And then the last one that I wanted to ask about was the money for the studies you said that there's money put aside for for projects that are referred from tack. You said there was money left over from the current cycle so I'm wondering, again, is this an area that could be trimmed slightly if needed, since it's sort of an unknown, not much just a wee bit. It is an unknown what we're going to do next. We have, we're just starting to dip into the money that was appropriated last year. So if you think about trimming it back. We'd be dipping into what we do, not really in 2023 but the end of 2023 and in the 2024. So, we kind of the money is there so it's ready to go when the products are kind of queued up by the transportation advisory committee what they, what they recommend and what we decide we think we should be doing. And have you found that number to be sort of the right number I mean again I assume it's sort of a loose number because you don't really know what's coming at you. So the surveying cost is what we've been using it for right now and they've actually surveying costs are actually staying really, really competitive and they're really good numbers. A lot of the surveyors are using drones now to help with the surveying. And it seems to be bringing the. Well it seems to be keeping the cost lower. So it's been really. I mean we just signed the agreement to do East Pleasant Road to survey East Pleasant for the sidewalk that's been requested there. And that actually came in about 15,000 last night thought. So, the number is a good, pretty good number, it could be cut a little bit if you wanted to if you wanted. Baby haircuts this year it's it was worse last year so thanks. Anna. I'm not I'm hearing what you're saying Alex and I'm not suggesting adding more. This is more of a curiosity Guilford you said, and I recognize the kind of cost prohibitive jump to the electric mower. I am curious you said you weren't ready and I'm curious when you would be like what would, what would it take for you to feel ready is that the crop cost difference is that the, the actual mechanics of mower. When do you anticipate making that switch. It's a good question. It really comes down to reliability and how long they'll run for. We send the mower out they can be on, it can be mowing for almost six to seven hours a day. So the mower has to be able to have a charge that'll carry that. There's actually a mini excavator that's a battery powered one. In the excavator, they say it only works eight hours, that's it after you work eight hours you need 12 hours to recharge it. So, if there's a water main break in the at night and we've used the excavator during the day. You wouldn't be able to use it at night you have to use one of the other pieces of equipment. So we're kind of hoping that when the, it seems to be getting there that reliability is getting there. We're just looking for a little more reliability and length of service. Just, Sean, go for it. So, we had a resident request to study sidewalks bike lanes on Middle Street. And I emailed you about this. Could you just say a little bit about how those decisions are made what so for example that the tack money is a tack that sort of prioritizes how that money. And what projects are the, that money is spent on, or how does that process work. So the, the tack does see a lot of those projects and they make a recommendation of what they're. Well, they've made a recommendation the last four years for a project they've put in the queue. So they have three, they have I guess I have four projects that they said they're important these pleasant streets, the one that's on the top right now. The pleasant sidewalks is in there. And then there's two others, I can't think off the top of my head what they are. And they look at those and they look at which ones, they think they can move the fastest to get toward completion so depending on what the project is, and the scope of the project. So that kind of, they kind of put it into where they would think they'd all be, but then the decision is kind of made by the town manager myself as which one we're going to go for for next, as far as the projects go. So to get something on the queue would it be. Is there a process to advocate with tack to get a project in the queue or is it public comment or writing letters or how to, how would one get a project on the queue with the tack. If they are to the town manager the tack or me that they get in there and they get looked at. That's how it goes. Some, some projects move forward faster because they end up in special areas of town which get more attention which have community development block grant money, or they might be an area town that special funding is available. Those can actually move faster sometimes. Otherwise, some projects move at the same pace. Mandy. We've, you know the manager submits this CIP to us that is almost balanced, but that means there's probably things that are not listed on here that you might have wanted. So I'm curious if there's anything from the department that is not listed in the five year plan or in the future projects area that you think we should know about. So that there, there always is. One of the things that we kind of pushed back is the equipment for the field maintenance program we've moved that a year back. That's something we kind of wanted to do this year because we kind of, it kind of came to the forefront last year, but it's been moved back a year. We've got a warm memorial pool. We've got to do something. We got to make some decisions about warm memorial pool house, not the pool, but the house. It takes more time to open that pool house every year and it's just a, it's just a labor sink. It just, the building is, it's beyond its useful life a center block building the squirrels love it they live up in the top floor. The squirrels out every year we got to fix the squirrel damage, the mold and they'll do has to be taken off it's just, it's just a building that just needs to go away. And it does go away in the bigger project for community field that does go away. We need to start thinking about planning and funding the engineering and architect work to actually start designing what's going to replace it. We know it's going to be a multi year process, we just need to start. The pool is also going to need the liner replaced the liner is a has a 10 year life, life to it. We're coming up. I think next year is year nine. So we'll be asking in the fall outgoing years for a new liner for that pool. There's a lot of other things we, we could always spend more money on paving we could always spend more money on sidewalks. We could relamp the whole town if people wanted to go to a lower wattage lamp you do have me we did the LED conversion back when there was really only one type of LED light that was reliable and it's been over 15 years now I think, almost 15 years. And there's newer versions of lights there's smart lights if we wanted to go with smart lights that we don't want to guess to be 12 o'clock it dims itself. It senses a presence in the in around the light after it dims itself it can brighten itself and then dim itself again. Those are things that you know start thinking about is, although the lights, the lights don't need a wholesale replacement because they're not beyond their useful life. It's a fact that there's new technology that might make lighting better for people and people may enjoy better atmosphere. I know. Feel for you suggesting townwide mood lighting. So what's happening. Well, I'll try to connect with you about the resident request because that was, we did that they did that and then it came back so I think it's getting a little spirally so happy to talk with you more about it because I'm confused on where to go with where to tell them to go. So, not a question just to follow up on that. So, I'm looking to say, I just, I have one connected with the sidewalk studies. You, East Pleasant and the others, whatever else you have on the list that would be a potential new sidewalk. How do you then go from, we've got the study to thinking about getting the sidewalk in and and is there a pipeline at the state level. If the town makes a case for safety for outdoor healthy movement for example during COVID people on East Pleasant families and children have been walking down the road in the road at 40 miles an hour because they decided to go out and get exercise on it so is there a way of moving from we have the study, we know where it might go to one point you cited us the numbers of putting in a new sidewalk and it doesn't look like it's in the budget for the next several years so. So my question is what what happens after the study. So, but actually, we were actually not studying it. We're actually doing a survey. Yeah, I meant sir, I used the one where I meant survey to where where where it would go right yeah. Yeah, we need to survey to find the property pens and find the best way to lay out the sidewalk. And what if we need to take property to identify places we need to take property. So, what we normally do is after we do the survey will design it. And then once we design it, then we'll start. We either ask for an appropriation to do the whole thing will look for grants to do the whole thing. So we're going to be dealing sections of it together and start building a section that looks like a natural section like the finish from Olympia Drive, all the way to Eastman Lane that would be a good section to do. That would connect some sidewalks make a connection to go from Eastman Lane to the next neighborhood or the next neighborhood we would start looking at how we can break it up if we don't get money. And if we had to break it up we take it from the some of the some of that money from the sidewalk funds that we have every year. We, we have before the town council we submitted the North Pleasant Street sidewalk improvements we want to do. We want to those are existing sidewalks but we want to make one side wider. We want to move some crosswalks around we want to do a bunch of things on. But once that's approved, we'll start moving some of those sidewalk pieces into either asking for money for it or asking for are using the existing money we have to kind of piece it together and work it down the street. And for a North Pleasant where it goes past UMass dorms and up past lots of apartment buildings. Do we approach UMass and say this is going to be benefiting your students and get them to share in the costs. That's beyond my level. Okay, yeah, so I think look at the I think we do try to have those conversations with UMass around infrastructure projects that have joint benefits. Okay, I don't see any other questions so I think we we thank you go for it and are we getting you out in time I think so. Yes, you are fine. Okay, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you go for. Thank you. Next up is the fire department and Chief Nelson with assistant chiefs Olmstead and Stromgren are here to talk about those projects. Chief Nelson would you like me to put up the summary, share the summary that you guys sent over of all your projects. Yeah, that'll work. Take me a second. All right, we have all the time in a word. Sorry, almost there. You ever have to have your spouse calls even in the middle of a meeting and you try to try and sell them that you're busy and they won't and they just keep on talking. Doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work. I always answer the phone and I have a conversation with her. Yeah, right. Okay. So, anyway, would you like to like me to go through each one or just go one. Yeah, why don't you start with one at a time or. Yeah, why don't you start with, which I'm going to go through. And we're going to actually we're going to split split split this up. But we'll start start with the truck truck guy this is some some something's been on a radar radar radar quite quite quite some some time it's in dire need of placement. One of the one of the things is, it's the 34 year old truck. It's the oldest truck and service in the in the state. And it's at the, it's released last five or six six years it's been at a point where you cannot get parts from that. It's just a few strong strong strong and then it can give us more exact exact times on that but we can't get part of it. the FABs, FABs, FABs advocate parts. We had had it out for I believe five, five, five months last year while part of the FABs, FABs, FABs they advocated and we just found out to today that it's gonna be out for another four months because we have to get a part, part FABs, FABs, FABs FABs, FABs, FABs, FABs, FABs. That's a point where it's pretty much an untenable condition for us in terms of the uses we need. Liz, do you wanna jump in there? Sure, I just wanna step back one second just to sort of reiterate something that Guilford said in Mr. Rhodes about both the time and cost increases for things. Obviously that's affecting us also for vehicles. In terms of timing, you'll see later down in the narrative on this truck, it's a 500 day build time, so about 16 months. So that raises concern with us that this was approved July 1st. We're still not seeing the vehicle till fall of 23. That effectively means we have to keep the existing truck in service another year and a half, which again, based on what the chief just said is a challenge and I'll talk more about it in a second. Cost wise, we're seeing similar cost increases. We're a little bit more stabilized because as it notes here, all of our vehicles we buy off of what's called the F-CAM Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts MAPC bid program and they can only increase the prices so much each year. So the prices we have here right now are the current price and they certainly can will go up over the next six months, but they can only go up so much because already in this state bid process and we would be buying the truck off of that bid. So the longer we wait, the more the price gets. This truck when we started proposing it five years ago was about 1.1 million and every year it's gone up by 0.1 million. So now we're up to 1.5, but that's a relatively known number right now at least for the next few months. So I just wanted to throw that out there. You know, as the chief said, this is a 1988 truck. It's outlived its useful life and FPA standard is 20 to 25 years for a truck like this or almost 10 years beyond the national standard. You know, you look at a city like Northampton they're about to buy their third, they only have one ladder truck, but it's a third truck they will have had in the time we've had this one. So they had one, they bought a new one it's about 17 years old and now they're replacing it again, you know, just to give you some perspective about a quarter to a third of our full-time firefighters are younger than this truck. And that doesn't go unnoticed when we take them out training on it. Bottom line is it's outlived its useful life. It was out of service for six and a half months last year. We spent about $30,000 to fix it to use it for those five months. When I wrote this narrative, it was out for repairs. We thought it would be back in March. They just called us. I just told the chief this two hours ago. That one part they need is not available for four months. So we won't see that truck back until June. So it's effectively not even available to us half the year and we're pouring a lot of money into it. So it's really come time to replace this truck. And in our narrative there, you know, we've explained, you know, what it does, what its role is, and it really comes down to just its age and the parts of availability is why it's really time to replace it at this point. I don't want to do questions item by item or wait till we go through them all, Sean, whatever you'd rather do. Unless somebody raises their hand, we can stop. But why don't we go through them and then we'll do it again. Next, next, next up, Sam. When I originally, when I first came in, we were on a tent and tenure size cycle and we were replacing the am, and as time has gone, gone, gone on, because of our in-person activity, we've proposed a few times to reduce, reduce, reduce at replacement time because we're reaching and end of life for our ambulance is quicker. So, so this, this would be a place one that's ten, ten-year-years-old, it's our number five, or eight, or eight, or eight, or five, or last thing that happens, it's out. And one of the benefits of this is that it's, it would be on a state, state that also also as our label, latest one, one, has a high bridge, zero RPM to the system that will shut down the engine and run the accessories off the battery while we're, when it stops, I don't have a scene. And as I said, currently, you can see it's ten years old has a hundred and fifty-five miles on it. And those are pretty hard miles, because as you know, from, from, from Amherst, it's 10, 10 miles to the hospital, to the center of town. But we'll, we'll also serve shoots, shoots, shoots very well, well, rather than talent, which of course is going to add more time and model. So, let's jump in. Yeah, this ambulance essentially would be a twin to the one we bought in, it was FY 20, emergency procurement, because our 2011 ambulance died. We just took delivery of it this fall. So that, that new ambulance we just got a couple months ago is our first story, if you will, into the hybrid zero RPM system, which is a version of a hybrid. So this, I should have mentioned that the ladder truck we're proposing would have that same system in it. The pumper, fire engine that's on order right now with FY 22 funds will also be a hybrid. So essentially, all of the vehicles we're ordering now, we're putting this, what they call as an idle mitigation system. So it's not like a Prius that's shutting down the engine when you're driving down the road or stop light. It's shutting down the engine as soon as you park it on a scene and running off of the batteries until it needs to restart due to low battery meeting air conditioning, heat, et cetera. So the, and the ambulances are where you really see the shortest turnaround in your investment on that based on our usage that are saying that the zero RPM pays for itself. It's about a 25,000 up church in about four to five years. So we're going to track that closely to see how that plays out something like a ladder truck. It would take much longer to pay for itself, but we also run the truck twice or sometimes three times as long as an ambulance. So this ambulance would be a twin to the one we just bought. And right now, I think I mentioned the ladder truck was a 500 day, so a 16 months build time, the ambulances are about a 400 day build time right now. So it'd be a little over a year before we would see this if we ordered it. This is keeping with our 10 year replacement cycle, which we've been doing for about 20 years. Pre-pandemic, we are trying to up that a little bit and make it about an eight year replacement cycle for each of our five ambulances because they are getting beat up, but we did not buy one in FY 22. So currently we're still in the 10 year replacement cycle with this purchase. So this is part of our normal buying ambulance every two years cycle that we've been following for about 20 years. And I'll just add to that that right now, this project's being proposed to be funded with a borrowing. We sometimes buy ambulances out of the ambulance fund, which collects the money when the ambulance goes out and they transport somebody, they get billed. And so that money goes into an ambulance fund, which supports the department and sometimes supports equipment like this. So by the time the capital plan is finalized, if there are sufficient funds in that ambulance fund, this might get switched to be in purchase out of that ambulance fund. It won't positively impact FY 23 resources, but it would make the out years look a little better because there wouldn't be a debt payment for this vehicle. Next up, the vehicle we've got our assistant chief for EMS prevention intervention in his car, which is my old car. Presley has, how many miles Jeff? How many were yours now? We're up to 181,000, almost 182. We just did a new water pump for 3,100 dollars. And I think we did 3,600 dollars of spending on it on the repair back in early fall. Oh, it's used every day. And the other people, it's a response. And as we say here, we're gonna get rid of an old car. Just gonna get rid of that and this and this and the vehicle would become one of our staff cars, station cars that you buy by the captains that you're doing inspections and that type of thing. It wouldn't be used as much as it is now. It's not as much repair as it is right now. One of the good things is that we can, the next vehicle can be, would be a high hybrid. It's similar to what we've been buying. And of course it comes from state, state business as well. Coming up next, Detective Lindsey, we're gonna talk about the detective gear. Sure, protective gear, most of you I don't think have been on the capital to me a few years ago. This is another one of the recurring items. We try to put this in every year, $40,000 to replace the protective gear. Protective gear is basically referring to what you see there in the picture. It's the ensemble that the firefighters wear, the pants, the coat, the helmets, the boots. It's everything that protects them going into a fire, except for the breathing apparatus. With about 45 full-time members and our call force and our student force, we have to outfit just under 100 peep firefighters. And our full-time people really need two sets because if they get their gear dirty or wet, it really needs to be swapped out. You can't go into the next fire with wet gear. It needs to be a dry gear. So we have over 100 sets of gear we need to keep active. The NFGA standard is 10 years, regardless of its condition. All I can tell you by 10 years that pretty worn and need to be replaced anyways. So this 40,000 enables us to replace anywhere from 10 to 15 sets a year. That typically goes to the new full-time firefighters and then it gets a hand-me-down situation to our newer call and student firefighters. Occasionally they get new gear. So this is a recurring charge to try to keep all our sets of gear under that 10-year maximum. And in fact, the fire academy won't allow us to send anybody for classes if their gear is over 10 years old, they do check it. So this is like I said, a recurring amount of money and that's what it's for every year is to keep the cycle going for replacement. One of the things about this amount, I don't know if that's what we've asked, asked for that same amount the last six years or so. At least, yeah. And we've kind of stated that at that level. Level, because we don't, there are years where we don't spend it all. Given the age and youth and all that over time, the amount that we spent on protective gear does fluctuate. We've found that this is a good amount of amount of money. What did that, because Jen and Jen definitely mean we're able to replace the amount of the safety gear that we need to do in any given year. I would just add to that that some years like, 20, I think it's FY21, maybe FY21, because of the situation, we did not get that lump sum of money. So we actually then fell a little bit behind. So right now we're trying to make it up again. And I would also add, just like the vehicles, it's about a nine month delivery time right now for this year, it's crazy. We used to be able to get it in a couple of months and we have new firefighters that actually started last summer full-time people. We fit them in order to gear end of September. We still don't have their new gear. They're using hand-me-down stuff. So right now it's about nine to 10 months they're telling us to get new gear. I'm going to let some of the people on that talk about our ambulance laptops. So our laptops go on every ambulance, the five ambulances, as well as the two frontline engines that we use as paramedic level emergency response vehicles. They give us the ability to do all of our patient reporting. So any patient contact we have, we type in the patient information into the software that's embedded on the laptops. And they're our most crucial element for data collection and for billing. We got behind because a couple of years ago for purchasing and keep up with our replacements every two years. And so this 15,000 is to go on top of what we did last year to try to get back and replace the ones that are basically breaking down as we go. Supply chain issues are a problem for us as well. We ordered two laptops probably early August and we didn't receive those until a couple of weeks ago. We thought we could get them in November. Those were an attempt to try to use a slightly cheaper version of what we had been using previously to see if we could sort of extend ourselves. So we just got those in service and we're trying them out. And before I buy the next two with the last year's leftover money, they look like they're gonna work out and then we will go after probably at least four more using this $15,000 after July 1st. And that hopefully we get us all those vehicles, seven vehicles in one spare because unfortunately when they start breaking down they often can't be fixed. So if they do that we needed to have a replacement available to let that repair happen with IT. So the last project that's not on here and maybe Jeff, you could speak to it a little bit. There's a project for defibrillators or life packs. These were, this is a piece of equipment that broke or that we weren't able to get repairs and replace. I think it was last year. So we did an emergency replacement of them during the year and we did a three-year lease to replace them because we had limited, we didn't have any existing funds. So we were able to find the funds within the operating budget to take the first year, that lease, but the second year and the third year, the plan was to come back to capital and ask for those funds. And so Jeff, do you just wanna speak to a little bit about the life packs and the LP 15s and what they do? So the cardiac monitors, they're a mix of a number of features. They are cardiac monitors so we can monitor your heart rate. We can do hospital-level EKGs to look and see if you're having a heart attack. They take care of monitoring vitals, everything from your blood pressure to your heart rate to your oxygen level in your blood to the amount of CO2 in your exhaled air, especially for folks that are having difficulty breathing. They're really what makes the one tool in the ambulance that really allows us to have a paramount level of service because of all the types of diagnostic tools that are attached to that. Unfortunately, that makes them a fairly expensive proposition. And what happened with our previous version, which it was coming closer to its end of life anyway, is that the motherboards and those actually had lead. And the FDA came out and said, we're not gonna allow anybody to change out those motherboards if they fail or technicians to touch them anymore. And we were probably year eight of year 10 when they put this out. So what this said was that if it fails or breaks, you're gonna have to replace them. You cannot fix them. And inevitably within a short time after that, the first machine actually broke down on a call. It had to be replaced by another monitor and took an ambulance out of service to accomplish it. And thanks to Sean's help to sort of figure out the how we figured out in working with the striker company to do the replacement. And they knew they had some skin in the game and they actually made us a really good deal as far as the trading that we got and the cost. We probably bought those five machines for half of what we would buy them on the regular market format. So it actually worked out really well for us. We were going ahead to have to purchase these things anyways, probably in the next year. So, questions? Yeah, we'll get to think about this. Anna. So the last ambulance that y'all got had the anti-addling technology and you were able to get a grant with Stephanie Chigarella from Dewar. Any chance that'll happen again or no? My answer to half that the pumper that we now have on order with the FY22 funds which the council also had to add some money to a few weeks ago. Sean, correct me if I'm wrong. The anti-addling for that is being paid off of a grant also, but we haven't addressed that question for the next vehicle, the latter truck or the ambulance, I don't believe. Yeah, a little. So right now that money's included in the money we're asking for in capital. Yeah, a little, so the only difference, so with the ambulance, we did get a grant. I think it was actually a green communities grant or came through them. With the latter truck, we approved a separate pot of money for sustainability last year as part of the capital plan. So we pulled it from that. Yeah, for the proper truck. Yeah, so we pulled that from, it was still capital money. So I think for the, this ambulance, we would look, we could, we'd consider, we will work with Stephanie to see what other grants are available. I think Stephanie is always willing to apply for those grants when they're available. Great, so other than staff time, there's nothing stopping us from doing, I know staff time is significant, but other than that, stop us from pursuing that. Okay. Yep. Irv. Tim Nelson, hello, I'm saving a long time. How are you doing? How are you doing? I'm doing well. All right. Where I'm staying currently is, I am a block and a half from a fire department. Okay. And every morning when I'm finishing my walk, I walk past it. So the other day they were pulling out the trucks. And I got a chance to talk with them. They have just completed their cycle of replacing trucks. Their last one was replaced last year at this time. And the pricing differentials between last year and this year, if they were going to be doing it, is extraordinary. Again, because of supply chain issues. But the other thing that was a note to me is, how proud they were of the equipment. And the confidence that they gave them in terms of doing their job, the way they're supposed to be doing it. People don't really realize that people have to work with equipment day in and day out, especially in emergency kinds of situations or stressful situations. How really important it is to be confident about that particular equipment. Especially that you're racing down the road in a 20, 50 ton truck. So I really appreciated that. And I really have a new appreciation for not only their job, but also for the cost, the capital cost that goes into replacing a truck and the planning that needs to go into that. So when I see what the fire department is doing here, I'm really grateful for it. And I appreciate it. And I thank all of you for your service. Well, thanks. I'll pass that along. I mean, we have good equipment. We make sure that we get good equipment. But the main thing is that we've got really good people, good, smart people, dedicated people. You can have the greatest equipment in the world, but if you don't have the people who know how to use it and use it well, then it's just a bunch of expensive toys. But we've got really good, really good, really smart, smart, smart folks that get the most out of the equipment that we provide. Thank you. Mandy. Thank you. I'm glad and happy to see that the ladder truck is on this one. I know you guys have been asking for it for a while. And so I'm glad we're finding a way to do that. But my question is sort of the same that I think you heard me ask of the superintendent of DPW, which is this is a five-year plan. It tries to be balanced, which means inevitably there are things probably missing from it that you would really like to see on it. Are there things that we don't see on this plan that you would like us to know about, to think about and maybe ask the manager about on things like that in terms of capital? You know what? Yep. Yep. Yep. I'll tell you. Well, Lindsay is the key keeper of the record where that comes from. Yeah, I mean, there's always things we could improve upon equipment. What I would say is when you look at the five-year plan, you'll see things like, I don't have it right in front of you, if you look at next year, or FY25, there's things like radios somewhere in there, thermal imagers. There's an ATV in there somewhere. Those are all things that honestly we've been pushing down the track for a few years now. They were an FY20 at one time, some of them like the ATV. The radios, we could have an FY23 for this year. But we've pushed them out because we can wait a little bit longer for them. And things like the ladder truck and the turnout here are bigger priorities than the ambulance. So you're kind of seeing them. A lot of the things you see coming up in the next couple of years are things that really would have been this year. But to be realistic, we've pushed them out. I did want to make a note that one thing you're also not seeing, one thing we had kind of complained about for years, and now it's been improved upon. So this is kind of a shout out. I like the way it's going is things like repairs to the fire station. You've seen already in Jeremiah's capital budget request. So like this year, there's the facade, the siding of the station, which looks horrible up here at the North Station and to build out the sprinkler system. Up until just a few years ago, those were all going in our capital budget. And then inevitably, JCPC would say to us, what are your priorities? And it's really hard for us to prioritize do we buy turnout protective gear for a firefighter or an ambulance over do we fix the facade on the station? I mean, actually, it's not hard. The answer is we buy the gear for the firefighter, but we didn't like, that doesn't seem right to us. And Jeremiah took a note of that when he started here. And it's actually working much better now. He's working to take care of the town's infrastructure in terms of buildings. He's championing causes like that and projects. So he's dealing with that part of it and we can deal with the fire specific stuff. So you're also not seeing some of those products, Nandi, because they're over in his budget now because there are a lot of building issues to address. I won't even get going on Central Station right now. Yeah. And I think one of the big, big points is that what you don't see is how many times we've essentially kicked a can down, down, down the road on certain things. Because you go for assistant chief, almost that that should have been gone three, three, three years ago with Ormond on the money and into it because it's getting run, run into the ground because it's being, it's, it's old and it's being used a lot. We ran into that with an, an ambulance last year, last year, right? We had to replace an engine because we didn't, we didn't keep, keep with our replacement plan. So we had, had a front, frontline ambulance that was, that was on the frontline for too long and took too, too, too much wear, wear, wear and tear. It wasn't, it was in the back. So those are the things that you don't, you don't see things that we deferred and warned about and said, hey, you know, this is going to come back to all of us. And at times it has. Chief, if I could kind of jump on that side of the ambulance. So if you look at that, that list, that still maintains the kind of every other year, 10 year format that we've had basically since I pretty much got here in 1994 to help us get into that eight year format, it would mean something like moving the ambulance as up a year where you'd have a sequence of this year, next year, buying the ambulance a year off. And then another sequencing in order to sort of make the whole fleet get in, the whole five ambulance fleet get into an eight year cycle. It would take, because they kind of offset, they don't fit a perfectly nice FY cycle is easily. And also just remember that supply chain issue affects the ambulances too, because the ambulance we might buy in July won't show up probably until the following, at the end of the following summer, by the way, it looks. Thank you. I see Anna has her hand up again. And then I have a question, but not on this topic. You go. I think it's a quick one. There are not any infrastructure implications in terms of buildings with these new vehicles. Are there? I know they're hybrid, they're not electric, so you're not trying to plug them in, but seems like a silly question. Is that ladder check going to fit in the North Station? It will. Well, it actually will. And that's one of the things, one of the parts that's good about replacing the doors as part of that project. They're going to do some, they're going to clear, clear, clear out an air, air, air. That will allow our truck to fit in. And we're doing it now, as opposed to say we end up with a truck that we want, that's our larger than the one we have. We won't have to go back in and re-figure it. That's an issue we have with the central station because of the size of the doors we can't get, and the size of the footprint of the other, as far as we generally cannot get the truck. We want the truck what we need. All right, we have to make it, we have to kind of give some something up, because it has to fit through the door. It has to fit on the floor. And it's a little tough. Like the one we're ordering now, we went, geez, we went with a shorter, shorter, shorter, shorter, longer, longer, longer, longer, but that's going to take away from some, since I'm not sure it's too long. Thank you. Because of the size of the door. Err. Just like there are two things. One, in relation to you, Tim, I have not found a way to deal with the spousal interruption when we're talking, but if you ever find out a way to do that, please pass it on. Yeah. The second is that I just want to say again, and for all of us on this committee, is that we are in incredibly difficult times that will hang over us for the next couple of years or three or four years in relationship to procurement. And the price fluctuations are going to be unknown, but we will know that they will fluctuate and they definitely will not be going down. Thank you, Irv. I just have one question, not about the purchases. And as you can hear, we're all proud of our fire department and our ambulance department. We're grateful for the work you do. I'm wondering with the computers and the laptops, do they track, you said they track data. Does that give you an easy way of seeing not just how many calls you have, but how many calls were for a student going to the hospital or down at Applewood or the Arbor picking someone up the floor and putting them on their feet that didn't result in a hospital. Does it give you a tracking advice in addition to a billing device or do you have to do that in another system? We can kind of do that in both. It requires, there is at least in the software that came with this and the ability to do some reports that we didn't have access to in our previous EPCR, our patient reporting system. So data birth is, age is a great way to kind of do that and then address location can be the other. If you have a specific location and say, I'll pick on Applewood, for example, one Spencer Drive makes it really easy to pick out a location and say, how many times do we go there? How many times do you go to the Arbor? How many times do you go to the Center for Extended Care? And also understand it looks like we're probably building another assisted living type format down at the Greenleaf. So, we'll be tracking all those things to see what the impact is. But we can do the same thing using using those functions for data birth. And we do do some college-based ones and I've done those in the past to get a feel for how billing goes in that demographic. And I'm mainly asking not for the purpose of the capital fund, but if we really wanted to say, let's get an update on the calls and where they're coming from times of day, like the things you've given us before, I was thinking that the computers might give you a way that was less labor-intensive because some of it is built into them as long as you can protect the privacy of the people. So, that's where my question was coming from. I didn't need a long, a definitive answer on this. Yeah, we know we have other ways of doing that too and we've used dispatching software to help us as well, sort of on both sides. So, if you're looking for time of day and of all of our calls, we often do that in the IMC dispatching side of that search function. And in terms of being labor-intensive, I mean, I guess that's a real relative term. I mean, the data is there. We know where it is. We know how to get it, you know, and we've been doing that for a while. As I said, we've got some pretty smart people here and I've got some folks here that do that, that type, they do it well, so. Okay, thank you. Sure. Any other questions, comments? Thank you very much. And let's hope the supply chain delivers some of the Euro vehicles before we meet again, a year from now. We can hope. All right, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jeff Nelson. Thank you. Thank you very much. All of you. All right, so the last department tonight is the library and library director Sharon Sherry's here. Sharon, do you want me to bring Cindy in as well? Yeah, Cindy and George? Both of them, okay. Yeah. Hi, everybody. I thought, so I'll just give a quick, just a really brief telling you a few words about what we're asking for this year and then George and Cindy will really be there to answer your questions that you have. Here comes George. So our first request is we're asking for $24,000 to purchase some shelving for our special collections materials. Our building project unfortunately is about a year plus behind. And we just can't wait to remove this collection from where it's located right now. The room that it's in is just not safe. The roof is leaking and located above the archive is an HVAC system that is leaking. Yeah, so our plan is to install the shelving in what is now the exhibit room and then we'll move all of those irreplaceable items into onto that shelving. On the plus side, we will be able to use the shelving during the interim, you know, the two year during construction as well as in the final resting place, you know, once the project is done. So that is the special, how would you like me to do this? Do you wanna start with, do you wanna take it on a case by case basis or do you want me to say everything and then? I think since you just have the two projects so maybe just do the last one and then people wanna add to it. Sounds good. So the second request is for $46,200 which includes it's $45,000 for an electric van and $1,200 for a charging station. We have been without our van for several weeks this year, this fiscal year, it's been in the shop for repairs. We finally just got it back early this week. I think it was. We have exhausted our vehicle maintenance budget. We're worried about whether or not it is gonna pass inspection. It's got some serious rust issues. It's 16 years old, high mileage and it doesn't always a thing. It's been a really great vehicle. But we're looking forward to moving on to an electric vehicle. I think that will be really great. Our facility staff, the reason we have a van, we use it to deliver books, interlibrary loan items between the three buildings, tools, supplies, that kind of a thing. We also use it like to go to Home Depot or when we have to bring our special collections to spaces to be restored or evaluated for insurance purposes, that kind of a thing. So right now what we've been doing is our facility staff. They're using their own vehicles, which is, they do get mileage reimbursement, but it's not the same thing. So those are our two requests for this year. Thank you, Sharon. So do George or Cindy, do either of you have anything to add? Otherwise we'll open it up for questions. George? Yeah, I mean, I'll just, I actually have three parts that I can talk about. I wanna talk about the current van that we have, what our goal is and what the reality of the auto industry is, which I've learned a lot about in the past few months. So Sharon's told you pretty much what we use our van for. It's pretty much anything that we need off of our property the van gets used for. It could be picking up a donation from a patron. It could be like Sharon said, bringing something from special collections to be restored. It's taken several trips to other libraries outside the region, but the bulk of the mileage is doing the branch deliveries every day, seven days a week. It's a 2006, 4350. It currently has 76,000 miles on it, which isn't bad for a 16 year old vehicle, but it's all city miles. And we all know what city miles does to a vehicle. This past year we've spent about $4,000 doing repairs. Some of it is wear and tear, like brakes and things like that. But a lot of it has been age, rotted fuel lines, rotted brake lines. We've had it towed three times this year, just from breakdowns. So yeah, it's just, and we've done some body work on it. We did some body work on it to get it to pass inspection last year, but I'm not convinced it will pass inspection this year. It might, but the rut is in places like around the door casings and things like that around the back cargo area. So, moisture's getting in, fumes are getting in, things like that. I'm not sure whether or not it'll pass. I'd like to think it would, but if it doesn't, we have to look at whether or not we're going to try to fix it to pass inspection or do something short-term until we can get a replacement van. So the goal is that we definitely want to go with an electric van because now they make electric vans that are big enough that can handle what we needed to do on a day-to-day basis. We really do need a one ton van because of the weight of the books and just the size of the things that we typically have to haul. Leaves to the transfer station or just dozens and dozens of the crates of books, things like that. So it does need to be a full-size van. Right now, the only electric van that's available on the market is the new Fordy Transit. Amazon has electric vans and other companies have electric vans, but they're only selling them to corporations. They're not selling them to municipalities or out to the general public yet. So with going with that, that's where we came with that initial dollar figure. Now, I got that dollar figure in December and of course, since then, the auto industry has not recovered yet. I've talked to three different vendors that are on the state bid list and they've all basically told me that the manufacturer has stopped taking government orders for two months. They said they probably will not be able to take any orders for the 2023 model year. And they also said that because of the chip shortage, because of the backlog, that we can expect the pricing to increase possibly 20%, which is substantial when you're talking about a $40,000 vehicle. So planning that ahead, I don't really know what to ask for, for money, because I would like to think that the initial cost that we came up with will be enough, but we can't predict what is gonna happen come July one into the next fiscal year, where the industry is gonna be at, what's gonna be available at that time. I'm also looking into possibly leasing a vehicle for a year, just to get us through the interim until the market starts to recover, but I do not have those figures with me today. I will have them next week because I'm meeting with somebody to talk about it. So that's my field. Do people wanna focus on the van first and then hear from Cindy or do we wanna hear from Cindy first and then do both of them? No, no comments. Well, Cindy, why don't you go and then we'll figure out where we have questions. Yeah, so thank you. We've had several leaks in the Special Collection Storage Room over the last few years and it is getting worse and worse. So now everything is covered in tarps and then our roof started leaking into a Special Collection. So now the reading room has tarps in it as well. And I know that the biggest question that I've gotten is about these future leaks. Every time a new leak happens is why you put the stuff back where you know it's gonna leak and it's because I don't have any other place to put it which is why I think this is such an important project to really move forward on. The exhibit room can be taken down in terms of the exhibits fairly quickly and it wouldn't be too much of a loss given the interim period in terms of people not being able to see the exhibits. Every time there's a thaw, I get worried because that's usually when there's some sort of leak happening and then with the changeover from heat to AC and then AC to heat there is always some sort of problem happening. And so there's been water damage to the collections and so far we haven't lost anything but there's definitely dozens of books now that have irreparable damage to them. So I think it's a time sensitive project. Questions, comments, Anna. I was just, I was gonna alleviate Mandy's stress of going first again. So first question is about the van. Super excited that you're going electric. Question is, feels obvious but is the charging station going to still be viable post renovation and expansion? Thank you. Yes, in fact, when the project gets into design development because I'm on the building committee I'm going to make sure that that is a part of the expansion project. And if it's in place before the project starts that we'll be able to repurpose it and use it in the new location. Move it. Okay, second question is for Cindy and Sharon about the shelving. So CPA allocated a decent chunk of change to y'all for the special collections for fiscal year 22. I'm curious if this is admittedly a smaller portion, but is that able to, you said you can use it in the new facility. Does that alleviate at all the ask from those CPA dollars or no? I think that's an awesome question. I have no idea. I would ask you guys, Sonia, do you know? And I apologize, Sonia, while you're thinking I did pull up the application but I did not have time to look through it fully to see if she'll make. I mean, we can pull it up. By understanding as the CPA request was not for things like shelving but I could be wrong. I thought it was more for the room itself but we can pull it up. Yeah, I can get back to the committee tomorrow and have a chance to look at it. I think you're right, Sean. I just wanted to make sure I asked it. Yeah, no, it's a good question. We can get the answer to that. Mandy. On the vehicle, just a question on use. You described a whole lot of uses. Have you ever thought of using or is it used for things like book deliveries to shut-ins or potential starts of bookmobiles to where you just take a bunch of books in the van to one of the apartment complexes or to green leaves or something. And if you've thought of that, is this van something that could be used for that or is that not something that this could be used for? Let me, you can pipe in an amenity charge. So yes, the staff are... So here's one of the great things about being kicked out of our building for two years. And we don't know where we're gonna be during this interim time, but I have a feeling wherever we are, it's not going to be very pretty. And there's not gonna be a lot of space. And so this is going to force staff to get out of the building and do the programming wherever in parks or apartment complexes, schools, wherever it could be. So yes, the van could be used for that. I think it's less about George and how he has been using this van and more about staff getting together and figuring out logistically, you know, hey, George, we need the van from two to three every Thursday, that kind of a thing because when our staff leave the building, they're not in the building. So it's just more of a staffing issue and planning and all of that. But yes, I love where your mind is going. So thank you. George, I didn't know if you wanted to tag on. Yeah, I'll just add on to that. That was something that I had been thinking about. I mean, we have actually used the van to deliver books to people before. Because of the nature of how multifunctional we need the van to be, we wouldn't be able to set it up as a traditional style bookmobile with shelves and being able to walk into it and browse shelves, but it could certainly be used in that vein to bring materials to a location and maybe set something up. And I had something else, where is it? My brain. It's gone. Oh, no, I was also gonna say the only other factor, like for regular library staff to use the van, they would just have to go onto the town system as insured drivers, because we keep a list as to not anybody can use one of the town vehicles. They have to be on the insured driver list. So that would be the only other factor. Any other questions? I have a couple of questions if no one else does. I was just gonna wait. Okay, so first I'll start with the van. I, as you were talking, George, I immediately thought of lease given the maybe, maybe there's one available. Maybe there's not a son I have who lives in Europe. Finally got what he was asking for, but they said the seat won't be automatic. The back door won't be automatic. Cause the chips for that aren't available. So do you want this vehicle or not? So it wasn't exactly what they wanted, but they needed it. So would you, you might, how will you make that decision? Cause if you could lease, one year lease might get you out of this bottleneck that we're in right now. I mean, we don't know where we're gonna be a year from now, but it might get you out of the bottleneck where even when you get the car, it doesn't have everything you thought you wanted on it, which is not, and, and what they basically told them is you will never have it on this car because it would be $8,000 to bring it back in. And, you know, it's just won't be built. It won't be built that way. So, so that was just a question on that decision that maybe in this case, leasing might make sense if they're available. I guess that's what you're looking at. Yeah. I can absolutely say that electric vans are not available for leasing because they are brand new on the market and literally the year's allotment has pretty much been sold. So if we needed to say if the van did not pass inspection and if we needed to lease, it would be a regular gasoline powered van. And I would wanna do it in a short enough term where we could get that electric van say in a year. Unfortunately, I just started looking into leasing because I haven't had a lot of time to prepare all of this. So I actually have a meeting with one of the vendors that's on the state bid list to discuss leasing and what the options are. So unfortunately, I don't have any figures for that. But I also needed to find out whether or not the town ever has a history of leasing vehicles, which they've looked into it before, but it's kind of a gray area that hasn't really been done. So we may be the trend setters in that. But unfortunately, I just did not have figures for what that would cost to get us through a year. Okay, that was just a question. And then if it was a lease with the intention to buy and you're getting the cue of the buy list, I mean, as you said, trying to do the timing. Yeah, I would try to a lot money for the one year lease and then get the money in the five year plan to be able to buy the electric vehicle so that when they became available that we could do a PO and actually purchase it. Okay, so I will leave that on Sean's desk in terms of what might be possible. So my other question is about shelving. I did read what you'd written on the kind of shelving. When I've walked around Jones recently, like within the last couple of weeks, you have quite a bit of shelving that's empty. And my right is that that shelving wouldn't work for what you're talking about. So I just, there's some that either has no books in it or very few books on it. So you don't have extra shelving in the building right now. And I'm partly thinking that you have a move. You're gonna be storing everything and then you're gonna be taking everything that is there inventory within the building that could be used. I'm looking at George and Cindy. I can answer that first. Just to clarify, like any of the shelves that are in the library with books, the top shelves and the bottom shelves typically aren't used just because of ADA compliance. But most of the shelves that are actually in the public parts of the library are either built-ins or they're built in such a way that they have to come out as a unit. Otherwise they're not stable enough. We do have some spare stuff in the basement, but it's, there's nothing to build like complete units for shelving that would be safe and stable for the materials. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. That's built-ins don't travel very well by definition. So any other questions, comments? Thank you. Thank you both very much. We look forward to the bookmobile. Thank you all. So I'm not seeing any public. So I don't think we have public comments. And anyone who wants to see minutes, by the way, we've been doing this expedited way of doing minutes. We, Jennifer prepared as did Alex, excellent minutes. And we have been posting them as soon as we get them approved. And so I don't know whether we sent everyone the minutes, what we could do each time since people are getting them done so quickly is when you send the materials, we could send the minutes if everyone would like to see the minutes from the last meeting. Because I'm thinking particularly this meeting, for me thinking about our report, one of the things that came across is the town's innovation with Jeremiah of creating this building fund and maintenance fund is a big help for the fire department. So I hadn't thought of it that way before, but to put it- Yeah, just to clarify that. So the town has always, well, I don't know always, but the town has had a sort of general repair fund for a long time. The part that has changed in recent years is that they've sort of taken the fire department under their umbrella. In the past, the fire department sort of maintained their own stuff and they weren't generally included in that bucket of funds, but we expanded that bucket of money to include the fire stations. So that's really the only change was that they just, Jeremiah now helps oversee the maintenance for them. Because it felt like last year when Jeremiah was talking about the funding, we put together and we asked him all the possible uses. Maybe it wasn't innovation, it's not the right. He was thinking bigger and going around looking at all. Yeah, I think flexibility, as much as we can, we try to keep flexibility with those funds so that he can prioritize. He's out there and knows what the highest priorities are and what needs to be addressed soonest. So I think the biggest thing is to just create that flexibility for him to address all the buildings as needs arise. So then my second question is on this fluctuation of vehicles. We just had an extra request come to finance and then to the council because we had approved in a capital request a vehicle and it turned out we were way below the actual price. Do we have a plan? So wherever we end up in March, what do we do if something changes between before June, for example? Yeah, I was just thinking about that. Well, everyone brought it up. This committee may want to recommend, we did a capital reserve fund a few years ago for the whole year. We may want to do a much smaller version of that this year, sort of like a price fluctuation fund or something that's maybe $50,000 or something that's only used if estimates are coming in. I mean, if we can get better estimates, we'll get better estimates maybe having some small pot of money to address that might not be a bad idea. And then if everyone's estimates are good, we don't use it, it can close out at the end of the year. Sonya's not shaking her head yet, so it might work. Well, it depends on what kind of flexibility you want with that. If you set it aside as a budgeted reserve, you would still have to go to council and all the committees and public forums and everything because you would be adding another expenditure. But if you voted it as a line item for this purpose and the capital plan, then you could just take the funds as you needed it for those different projects. So it's all kind of flexibility you want with this. I think we'd want to do the latter because we're going to, I don't think we'd want to do a hearing and then the time restraints that happen every time you have to be doing appropriation because we're already doing that for these projects now. So again, we don't have to do that, but it's something to consider. Sean, you've got a basically balanced budget that you've brought before us. That would mean we have to carve a piece of money out. It could, we could also look Sonya to see if there's any closeouts in prior years that we could put towards this. Okay. Okay. So we might be able to, when projects don't use all their money that we have sort of a small reserve that we can appropriate from. And so we might be able to pull it from that. And really that's the intent of that money is if a project comes in under, then if we don't have enough funds to complete a project that was approved, then we can appropriate from that source. So that might be a funding source for it. Okay. So I just want to mention those in terms of a report that we would be preparing with recommendations. So these were a couple of things that occurred to me. Anna. This is unrelated to that. So if Alex is, I'm finished you. Alex, is your comment about this? No. It's unrelated to, so go for it. Okay. So item one, did anyone notice when we lost Irv? It was in the minutes. Minutes. And I was sometimes during the library, sometimes during the library presentation. Thank you. And then second thing, just about minutes. I'm not, I don't, we don't need to go back and change this, but my last name is Devlin Gothier, not just Gothier. So if folks can, I know it's longer, I'm sorry. But if that can be reflected in minutes, that'd be great. Going forward. Thank you. Alex. Yeah, I just, one of the things that both departments were talking about and sort of in response to Mandy Jo's question is, you know, at the beginning of JCPC, one of the things I often do is go back and read from the prior years to sort of figure out like what, what we kept kicking down the road. And I feel like especially as the makeup of JCPC has changed, do we want to have some tool that allows us to have a sense of when things are being kicked down the road? And I guess for me, there's two potential benefits to that. One is going in, you know, you know, that say that the fire department's been asking for replacement of radios for four years. And, you know, eventually we're gonna have to deal with it. Or maybe it's also a tool of seeing where things are being kicked down the road. So perhaps they didn't have the priority that department thought it did. And so I just, I don't know if there's a benefit to having that in a way where you don't have to do, you know, two hours of research to figure it out, going into a meeting. It's just something we sort of start to maintain. It used to be done that way, right? Sonya, I think you used to do the color coding. The year was initially requested. And then, Yes. So it's something we can consider. Yeah. And Alex. I guess did we do away with it for a reason is the question? I mean, you're right. Yeah, I mean, I think it started getting, at least when I looked at it, it started getting sort of complicated when things would get pushed multiple years to where I think it sort of lost the, you know, the goal of what it was trying to do. So, and also I think we're, Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think I only bring it up because, you know, I think when I first joined JCPC, it wasn't necessarily like it was. It was a multicolored thing, but I don't think it was as big a deal, but in the last probably two fiscal years, we've done a lot of pushing down the road of vehicles and other things that are eventually gonna come home to Roost. And I think understanding sort of what those out years might realistically look like is important. So that's the only reason I bring it up. Yeah. I think we did do a lot of pushing off. I will say, I think in the last two years we caught up a lot. I think we did a lot of vehicles last year and there's a lot of vehicles on the list this year. I think when you look at the fire department, in particular with the ladder truck, it sort of gets them up to schedule. I know it's gonna be a couple of years before it arrives, but I think we've caught up a lot in the last couple of years in terms of pushing things off, especially vehicles in particular. Okay, I'm not desirous of creating work for staff. In the least, it was more just would this be helpful, that's all. Mandy. Yeah, I was asking those questions because when I joined, which was slightly after Alex, we got this list that was completely unbalanced, right? And one thing that's happened by getting a balanced list is that we no longer get to see sort of the things that don't ever show up on the list. Whereas we used to see the whole thing and then we'd see the change from a million unbalanced or a half a million unbalanced to balanced and be able to track what was pulled off. Now we don't get to see what was pulled off. I don't know whether that's better or worse. I like seeing a balanced plan, but maybe there's a way to track what the manager or you, Sean, in getting to the balanced sort of disappeared. Besides, you've started some of that with the major projects that aren't on there, but what vehicles got pushed off beyond FY 27 or something and things like that. Maybe there's a way to have a nice balance between seeing a balanced plan and knowing what isn't being funded that was requested. Right. No, I think that you're right. There's probably a balance. There are some things that are just sort of manager decisions that are more about like just efficient use of resources that we don't want to send every single request to you because some of it's just, we have a conversation with the department head and they say that makes sense. And so there's lots of little things like that. We are trying to use that other section of the capital plan to list out those things that we can't fund, but I think there's probably more we can do there in terms of, there's probably more projects that fall into that list than maybe what's there now. So we can look at that more. So thank you. I mean, we just formed a few sections of our report, which is very useful. So thank you everyone. I think, unless I see any other hands up, I think we're finished for the evening. And Sean, I just really want to thank you so much for organizing the way you've organized. You've both figured out enough things to go on the agenda that we don't go well over, but that I don't feel like people are being rushed. They have their time to be enthusiastic and explain the request to us, which is terrific. So thank you. And thank you everyone. Thank you, Sonia. You're welcome. Bye everyone. We're adjourned. Bye everyone.