 All right. I've been calling the Finance Committee meeting of May 16 to order at 10 minutes after 2 p.m. And we have one set of very big things to handle that are a significant portion of our budget and all under the expert guidance of Guilford Boring. So it's Department of Public Works, which has actually multiple budgets and then the Enterprise Funds. And we will start with Public Works, which begins on page 66 of the book. And if you have any introductory remarks you want to start with. Someone needs to take a minute, Sandy. Okay. I did it last. I did it Tuesday. I can do it, but you will have to check them. Because sometimes I can't write as fast as I need to. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you, Guilford. So thank you for having me. Thanks for the introduction. I was very kind. There really isn't very many changes to any of the budgets under Public Works this year. They're pretty much level services, as a way to say it. We're not changing any services. We're not adding any services at this time. They only increase or cover personnel costs, which are mandatory by our contractual is really what they are. So there really isn't that much. I can talk a little bit about some of our challenges, if you'd like. Or if you want to dive into the budget first, then I can talk about challenges at the end. It's up to you. Why don't we do it this way? I think, and I'm going to ask my colleagues on the committee to explain, because I think that I'm in a different position in having been involved with budget presentations previously that you made. You did a really great presentation. It was some months ago for the council explaining the intricacies of the department and its various pieces and how they fit together. And of course, the question for them, and I tried to point it out at the time, is to start thinking about how that relates back to the budget, which is what this finance committee is trying to do. So I want to give time for my colleagues to ask questions that help them to understand those linkages. But why don't we start, since you mentioned challenges and accomplishments, if there are things that sort of are holistic department as opposed to in the breakdown of the various divisions, to at least start with there. And of course, that could pick up on administration issues too. So I actually wrote down a cheat sheet. So if I start wandering or I forget something, it'll be on the cheat sheet, and hopefully what I said will jog your memory to understand what it is. So for the department, one of our biggest challenges that is coming forward to us right now is our permits. We're controlled by several permits that are issued by mostly DEP and EPA. We have a bunch of smaller permits, but there's four main permits that we're going, we work under. The Water Management Act permits, the biggest one for the water department. And that's under review right now, and we should get a new Water Management Act permit probably in, I said, 21-22. The biggest changes that are going to come to the town are the fact that we're going to have mandatory conservation requirements for water. We're going to have a lower unaccounted for water rate. We actually have to meter the water we produce and meter the water we sell, compare the two and make sure that they're within a certain percentage. Anything that's not metered that's outstanding is called unaccounted for water, and you have to figure out where that water went. And right now, it's allowed to be about 10%, and it's going to probably drop to around 5%. So those two numbers can't differ by more than 5% soon. There's also going to be a change in what they consider the per capita use of water. Right now, DEP allows for about 100 gallons a day per person, and it's going to drop down to 60 gallons a day. This is all part of the DEP's conservation and new water management issues. So we're, as you said, where are we now in the water use per person? We actually, in our unaccounted for water, we're very good. We're below what we're supposed to be. It's right now 10%. It depends per year, but we're around 8% unaccounted for water, and as far as use, we're probably around 85 to 90 gallons per person per day is really where we're at. So we're in the, we're in the ball field we're supposed to be playing in now, but when the new requirements come, we'll have to ratchet down a bit and figure out how to, how to do that and account for those things. The other thing we have is the fact that our permit is going to probably lower the amount of water we can take out of our sources. So our sources are actually registered. Each source has its own production registration. So Atcom's Reservoir, you can produce 101.5 million gallons a day out of there. Each one of them has their own what you can produce, but then you take it and they tell us how much we can use per day. So we may have six million gallons of water available from all our sources, but we're only allowed to use maybe four million gallons a day. And it's going to go down a little bit. So it's a little bit of an adjustment and it's all geared towards conserving more water for the environment and having more water for other users than just the people who use drinking water. So that's a big change in the world of water management at, of water management in the state. It's being pushed by the Sustainable Water Management Initiative. So if you want to look up what's guiding this, it's called SWIMI, Sustainable Water Management Initiative. So that's the water permit. Wastewater has a permit too for the discharge. That's its big permit is what we're allowed to discharge to the Connecticut River once we treat it. That's under-reviewed as well. And we're expecting to have lower limits on how much nitrogen we can discharge to the river and how much phosphorus we can discharge to the river. And that's tied to the bigger issue with the Long Island sound and to the algae and to the those type of issues they're having down in the sound and the usage of the oxygen and depletion of the oxygen and the sound. So as we look at our world we think we're just up here by ourselves but in the wastewater world they're saying and in the water world you're in a bigger environment. You have to do more for the overall environment. So those changes are coming to us. For the wastewater we know we have an old plant. Our plant is over set over 40 years old. We have some things we need to upgrade. We've been holding off on those upgrades and planning for those upgrades because we're waiting for this permit. If this permit ratchets us down our limits for discharge of nitrogen and phosphorus really, really low we have to design changes to our plant which will be more extensive. If the changes to our permit are not as bad the changes to the plant will not be as extensive. So it's all controlled by the permit. We have two other big permits. One's the permit for the landfill and the landfill even though it's closed has a monitoring permit and then has a permit for operating in the transfer station and we have to stay in compliance with both those permits. We're having some we had a couple issues this year with the landfill. We're getting those under control but the landfill permit will probably not change in the next four or five years. That's the cool thing about the budget. That one's not changing. The other one's all going to change. And then we have the new permit which is the MS4, the stormwater permits. And we're just starting the first year of that permit. It's a 10-year permit. It may get extended longer but it's meant to be for 10 years. And we have certain things we have to do over that 10-year period to bring our stormwater and into compliance with regulations for the nation. And that permit's issue is maintained by EPA. It's not controlled by DEP. DEP has some input into it but EPA is managing that permit. So those are our four big permits and they affect the broad spectrum of the whole department because almost everybody has to work to a permit and manage a permit and report something and so forth. And then so that brings up our second issue we have is expectations. We have these permits we have to manage but then we have expectations of what people want. And if you look at our budget, the budget hasn't changed that much in 20 years, 30 years probably. The changes you see are mostly in the personnel numbers and can be directly attributable to the fact that wages have gone up over that time period. There has not been a really big influx of money into the budget except for one year we put $100,000 in the snow and ice. And that was it. So as we think about doing things and as we've done things, we've improved comfort stations, we've improved different facilities we have, we're getting ready to improve Groff Park. At no time have we done this and then added more funds for maintenance for these facilities. Community field is being looked at now, how to rearrange community field, how to improve community field. One of the tasks that the consultant has is to give us an estimated cost of what we should be spending if we do this improvement, what should be our maintenance outlay to maintain this. Not a capital expense but an annual maintenance number. And it's going to probably dwarf the budget for treating grounds. So those are things that we've always just worked within what we have. We've always made it work and we've always come up with a way to do it. But many people talk to you about the fields don't look the nicest. Why is this bathroom so cruddy looking? Why don't you fix this bathroom? We talk to you about our roof is leaking. This is how these things come about is we don't really have, we haven't really planned as much as we should have and it increased the amount of money for maintenance over time. And we put something off to fix what's the desperate thing at the moment and we move forward. The third thing is a challenge for us as personnel. We are at a all-time low for unemployment. We haven't seen unemployment this low in a long time. I was probably a kid last time it was this low. And that's putting a big strain on us to find employees as well as for our consultants and the contractors we hire to find employees. Employees are drying up in the area. We hire people who may not have all the qualifications they need. We train them up. We make them great employees. They enjoy being with us and we get them really good. But then again there's headhunters out there all the time. And you know if you can make a little more someplace else and you're young you might take the lead. We have lost several employees. The environmental scientist was the last person to leave and she went to another pseudo-miniscible agency in another state and she's making more, well more, probably twice what she's making now was making with the town. So it's a challenge. It's a challenge across the entire town not just in the DPW. But there is an issue about how do you keep employees, how do you make their payments and you give them enough to make it so they really like being here. We have a lot of people who come here to work here because they live in the area, they have ties to the area and they like to stay here. But when the dollar starts being waived around and when costs keep going up some of them will think to leave and some have left and will continue to leave. So those are our big three challenges and they're probably the big three challenges in most of the departments. Working within your permits, managing expectations and meeting the expectations we have and then keeping our personnel so we can do all those things and not fall behind. Like I said we lost the environmental scientist. Well the environmental scientist work is now divided among three people right now. I'm doing part of it. Amy Rizeki, my assistant is doing a bigger part of it and then the water and the wastewater division directors are doing parts of it as well. So it gets farmed out and the extra work gets pushed on people who already have a full plate to do. So those are just things to think about and those are our challenges that we're managing just so you know. So I think that's about all I wanted to say on those issues. I'll just open it up. Let's see if the question is Lynn. When you get licenses from DEP for water, wastewater and I guess solid waste or the three right? How long are those for? It depends. The permit we have to operate the transfer station landfill was issued to us and has not changed and will not change unless we change something about the landfill and they decided to modify our permit. Water and wastewater licenses are issued every so often and are set for review and then resubmission and updating as they need to. DEP used to have every five years they did the Water Management Act permits that were renewed but when I first started here in 2002 the permit was up for renewal then and so now it's almost 20 years. A lot of things happen in those permits that and things drive how they issue permits but they're supposed to be renewed and updated at least every couple years and the stormwater one from EPA was first time was five years they extended it out to 10 and this one's going to be a 10-year permit. Following up on that. Do we have an estimate for the upgrade that might be required for the wastewater treatment plan? No. So that's not in our present capital five-year plan? It's in it's not in the capital five-year plan because water and wastewater has their separate sort of plans. Right. So in our separate plans and water and wastewater we've been picking away the things we need to upgrade and we know we need to upgrade but there's still this looming what does the permit require? We probably have about four million dollars of work we're working on right now to upgrade the wastewater plan. Which should be obvious and is that when we make purchases of capital nature in the enterprise funds they get charged back to that enterprise fund and but then you have to build the revenue into the enterprise fund also which means that if there were a big expense that had to deal with changes required for the wastewater treatment facility and we authorized the debt it would be debt for to that enterprise fund and it would have to be repaid from future rates in that enterprise fund. Kathy. Just following up on on both of those if you have a rough estimates what it might cost and as I understood you were saying you how much it needs to be upgraded repaired partly depends on what kind of permits requirements are there also estimates on once that's financed what that will do to our rates that need to be charged so you know how that translates to a rate increase. So based on the stuff we're upgrading right now we have already done that we projected that into a rate system so as you were you're increasing rates 10 cents this year on sewer that builds in the work we're doing in the sewer plant right now and the upgrades we're doing right now it does not project and we're trying to as we get closer to being able to find a number we'll start adding in some buffer so we start building our reserves in wastewater to offset any really really large expense so we haven't got there at the moment and we will we will eventually build in the bigger demand but we don't know we haven't even got well there's numbers being thrown around but the numbers are just numbers and they're not realistic to base your rates your customers on. Can I just continue I just can you build a rate increase before you have an expense and the expectation of an expense? You can but we need to have we need to have a valid assumption of what why we're doing it and we don't really have that good valid assumption yet. Does borrowing even when you have a fund to take the money from does that go against our debt ceiling? That depends on whether it's outside the debt limit or not water and sewer are mostly outside the debt limit. Okay thank you. The question that I had to see but I'll just finish out my question is you're talking about water conservation and if you measure it in usage per person is there any additional factor that gets built into the fact that we have agricultural uses in town including agricultural uses for water? We do so we we we're actually a good way to answer that question is to say we do. We have all of our uses classified so you have agricultural residential and commercial and then the institutional ones are in there as well so we know what class of use it is and based on the class of use we can actually try to differentiate the usage per capita differently so we have very low I mean we don't we have maybe one meter for agricultural use a bigger thing we have is institutional use so there's so many people who live on campus but there's so many people who come on campus to work every day and that goes through one meter so there's a methodology in the formulas that lets us analyze that and differentiate that differently than people who live in town so we'll look at the residential people and we'll look at the at the apartments and we can easily say well these are all people who live in town and they're using it for personal consumption this is an institutional use this is some personal consumption for the people who live on on the campuses but it's also mostly just business consumption it's people who come to work so that's treated differently so we do break it apart and we do track it by classification of which meter is which and we try to make adjustments and we're allowed to do that when we submit our reports every year I guess the other thing just to point out to my colleagues is that there was one other use we discovered on the select board a few years ago in discussion that is the water usage by the university and colleges for recreation fields yes yes you know we we talked about this briefly at some other presentation when we're talking about the enterprise funds and water rates that you could do differential water rates that we don't now do them not right now but I'd like to see some way of assessing should we do them and what what it what would it do if we had the the large consumers meaning like a UMass what would what would it do to the rates residential rates for homeowners we can do that yeah if you really want to if you want to look before we give that information to you look at the water rates or google water rates from northampton northampton went to a differential water rate recently and they had a large outcry from their business community about the fact that they were being charged more than the residential rates and how they adjusted that so that even if you so there's a high rate for residential and there's a high rate for commercial and it's kind of balanced they balanced it out so that it didn't really penalize one group versus the other and that's what we would have to do and we'll have to figure that out and could if you didn't have it by commercial versus residential but you had it by some quantum you know like using more that you regularly so that you wouldn't necessarily hit a small business person with a higher rate but you would hit a major bulk user with a higher rate can can you do that yes and that's if you read about northampton that's how they did it too because they had some small small businesses that were being charged more than a residential customer but they were using less water than the highest residential customer and so they were adjusted and kind of came up with a methodology for meeting those needs and yes that can be done and I'm mainly focused on umass and risk you know and it's because they're not necessarily paying us taxes for the rest of the land so this is one service they're getting you know so I understand the implications of that but just trying to think of how it would be targeted in a way that would be perceived as fair and but mainly to know what the consequences would be of different choices yes the four million is working are you uh microphones oh sorry I need clarification on the four million whether it's for ongoing repairs or whether that's an estimate for some future work the four million is repairs we know we have to do right now we're working on doing right now and my second question is um I am interested to see how uh New England and the uh New York metropolitan area are working together most of the conservation is national um there's been a lot of talk lately about all kinds of regulations that were put in recently uh being reversed and um just what is the situation how are how is New England working with the New York New Jersey metropolitan area in this political time you're talking about the wastewater permits mostly I assume so and conservation okay the for mostly for the wastewater issues is the most of the issues that we're talking about with the New Jersey or actually New York the Long Island Sound New York actually went through a process and they made some major upgrades to their facilities all their wastewater treatment facilities they made spent a large sum of money upgrading their wastewater treatment facilities um the science shows that we in the Connecticut River Valley are not that big of a input into the problems they were having in the Connecticut Sound um so there's a lot of discussion going on and a lot of back and forth about well do we really need to go to the level and make the expenses that New York did to solve solve a problem that really isn't as big in this area as New York's problem was New York was discharging directly at the head of the Long Island Sound um so whatever they put into the sound went down the whole sound we discharged from the Connecticut River farther to the east closer to the ocean there's less of an impact from what we're discharging we have less of an impact on what we're putting in as well what we put in as far less than what New York was putting in the Hudson River Valley and Hudson River and some of the smaller rivers in there so um that's one of the things that's holding up our wastewater permit is this discussion because EPA is controlling it and each state's trying to have a little say in this as to you know hey this really you know we're really not putting that much into this you know we shouldn't have to expend as much as this was done over here because there's a bigger there was a bigger problem or bigger the bigger source was coming from here we're not that big a source so that is going on and we talked a great deal there's several consortiums that work together and talk about it um the nitrogen and phosphorus issue is the biggest issue that's going on right now um the issue with drinking water has not been so much of a region wide discussion drinking water has been more of a state discussion where state issues have been brought forward and mostly the eastern part of the state which is very concerned about their water resources and the fact that some of their water resources dry up in the summer where we stay we stay pretty flush with water didn't mean that that way but we have lots we tend to have more water than they do so that's driving the eastern part of the state is driving the overall water picture in the state and we're actually the western parts are starting to push back a little bit that it's not really that fair because of the way the situation is set up but um there's a bit of a working relationship going on there as well yes including so when I think about water and I don't know if sewer but I know we provide water to some parts of surrounding communities and we charge them at rates similar or the same as we do our own community with one exception we treat all our water customers the same and we serve water to we have two customers in Hadley we have some customers in Belcher town and we have many customers in Pellum okay and what's the exception the exception is is when someone doesn't pay their water bill outside of Amherst we actually get pretty uh we're going to shut it off if you don't pay and they get paid pretty quickly and Amherst it goes through another process which I understand there's people who may not have paid their water bills for a while and it may be carried on a bigger debt but it's usually the fact that the water customers who don't pay in Amherst also aren't paying property taxes and other things and that's a bigger issue um and the surrounding communities we only worry about water and sewer and we address the water and sewer issue and say we're turning it off or else you're if you don't pay so that's the only difference between a customer in Amherst and a customer outside Amherst looking around to see if there's anything else we seem to have jumped right to some of the enterprise funds so which is fine with me I did but I had a couple questions about them and then also on DPW more generally so I don't know how you want I think what we want to do is we want to stick with um where we really started because of the fact that we've got there with Guilford's guidance and looking at some overarching challenges questions I think the budget piece is we should try and stick with the order because we're going to try and go with the sections of the book. Okay so I'll stick with these funds right now just if when I'm looking at them if you're holding a balance in the fund is there a place and maybe I can ask Sonya later where I can see the balances so do you carry you know five percent ten percent in a balance or or try to build up funds. The goal right now is to have at least one quarter's worth of spending in our reserve fund so if the budget's two million dollars a year we try to have half a million dollars in there so that's just a number I think we're in the million dollar range right now for both the funds the water and wastewater fund the solid waste fund is a lot lower it's our it's our fund which is hurting the most but in water and wastewater we try to have at least one quarter's worth of revenue in the reserve fund and transportation is kind of in a different bucket to a certain extent since you were talking about sort of the overarching challenges you're facing in the department I was curious to ask about one thing that you didn't mention and that is the consequences for the administrative staff because of the decision for the last couple of years to try and get more money into the roads and sidewalk repair funds whether managing all of those projects if that's affecting other pieces of the work we kind of consider it all part of one with the road trying to do more road and sidewalk work it does kind of impact us a bit the issue we want to try to get to and we're trying to move towards is making sure we spend our winners and fall planning for the next year and have everything laid out and ready to go we've had in the past years where we are given a project in the middle of the construction season that's not what we want to do so we've been slowly changing how we approach projects we're not really running or having problems managing them as far as long as we keep them in order we do have one issue is we can't we've been having some problems getting interns that come in and work to help us in the field work and we're doing construction we used to bring in two or three interns engineering students our recent graduates from UMass to just be field field engineers and oversee and watch what the contractor is doing keep notice of what the contractor is doing we haven't done that as much as in the past that's the one place where we are falling behind and that impacts the staff because the regular staff now has to go out and be a field engineer as well as being their normal job so that is one place we have a little bit of issue but overall it doesn't have that much of an impact in it we we definitely could use a if you want to have a lot more in-depth analysis of what people are proposing and asking questions about we do we would need to have more staff to help fund that or to have more money to have a consultant look at that but right now we we're balancing out pretty good although it is a bit stressful every once in a while that was a really bad answer and I apologize for it you're just building on Andy's question for the road work you've said in the past that you also use contractors for some of the big projects can I see when I'm looking at the budget how much of the expense on roads is done by a contractor versus done by ppw staff you cannot see it in the budget if you wish to see that we we can pull out an expense report and you can see which contractor how much we spent with each contractor because I was thinking that's partly the way that you can ease the stress if you're you're trying to do more of it the dollars are going for contractor rather than for in-house you're not spreading your own staff time as thinly while I was addressing the administrative staff the administrative staff doesn't do much of the contract you still got that side yes we got to so many meetings I get confused which one it was but it may have been Paul or Dave that said when it comes to roads we really need to think about the fact that some of them just have to be redone all the way and I know that we have this huge backlog in just kind of fixing and repaving what are the thoughts and plans for taking things down to the to the dirt and building them up again we do we look at every road and we choose the appropriate repair method for it west bay road is we're doing that one right now we actually took that all the way down and ground it all up and repaved the whole thing so we started from the ground up with that one we did that for two reasons one it needed it and two we're making some significant improvements on it when you widen the road out and you're going to add sidewalks and you're going to add splitter islands for traffic calming and so forth you do need to change the profile of the road horizontally and vertically so you'll need to change to tear up the whole road and redo it east pleasant street we're not doing that much we added the bike i mean the bus pull-offs not the bike lanes we added the bus pull-offs but the road was wide enough and in good enough condition that we could just mill it and overlay it so that's all we're doing so the main construction was bus pull-offs milling and overlay is the road road repair technique so you have to combine some you have to use different methods and so forth yeah one of the challenges you mentioned is expecting managing expectations and it and it's tied to your objective of or implementing a new work order system and I was wondering if you've already identified a new work order system or what's being done about that yes we did it we did bring in a new work order system it's called dude solutions by dude industries they're out of north carolina so it's kind of a neat little system we're breaking it in we're getting it going the biggest issue we're having right now is is we have some employees who aren't up to speed on the digital digitally putting things in digitally entering things so we're getting those people up to speed and moving it along a little better so well halfway the system works now as you submit a request for something to us either in writing an email a letter if you do it in c-click fix those things are taken and then a work order is programmed in the dude solutions our dude program and then a dude work order is sent to the person in charge and then he goes out and does it sometimes it doesn't get back for three or four days or maybe a week that he actually did it and that's the shortcoming we have right now so then there's no feedback then that something was done there's also no feedback in when something gets put into a bigger project because we have we were trying to figure out how best to do those so sometimes we'll get a whole lot of stuff people want people want something really really big done and it's not a maintenance issue it's a project issue and then feeding that back in as a project is a we're trying to still figure that one out and is there a process to communicate back to the people where what's going on in this solution dude solution dude solutions feed feeds back into the office and the office staff member feeds back out and the way it was submitted to us so if you do it by c-click fix it gets documented on c-click fix you do it with an email it gets sent back in an email and that is a little rough too right now but that's how it goes yeah I guess I have a related observation but I don't want to discuss it because it's not really a budget issue so just say it and real quick is that is we've been out in the community and all of us were involved in campaigns I think one of the frustrations that we keep hearing from people is they really want to know where their street is on the repair order list and when they might expect to see something done to their street that they've been unhappy with and I know that this is an ongoing challenge and something that is hard for you to deal with in the same way but you know it is sort of this ongoing friction tension that we've observed the easiest way to explain that is is look at how they're rated and the ones that we put together the five-year plan and yes the five-year plan doesn't hold well to get hold very well together although year one and two the last five-year plan is working out okay what happens is that something will happen to a road it wasn't expected it wasn't seen when they did the survey and it'll move a road farther up or what'll happen is is money the cost of repair will go up so the easiest way to explain to your constituencies is yes the road was rated this is the rating and these are the roads that are worse than you are and these are the roads better than you are and that's kind of the driver as we look at that and we try to spread money out with minor roads and major roads so that's how that is works yeah I just I had a question on that five-year plan because miraculously one day it appeared in my inbox because someone had asked for it they got it they sent it to me so what I noticed it was dated December 2017 the one that I guess the select board had requested so far and it goes out through 2019 so you wouldn't is there does that get even that document if it got updated so it was a rolling five-year plan so what didn't happen in when 2019 ends and the things that are on the list didn't happen people know it but if they knew they rolled over to the next year so this kind of document is actually a pretty useful document I think it is but it doesn't actually it doesn't actually just because you make it doesn't mean it actually is real it doesn't mean it actually functions the way you just described okay something may not get done in one year and it actually may get rolled back two three years okay so it's not it's not directly proportional directly related where it is it's a it's a lot it's a lot like the transportation improvement plan the state has for the Pioneer Valley they lock in one year and then years two three four and five can actually totally flip depending on what's going on so it's it's hard to tell somebody that and people I know people have their smartphone and can get instantaneous updates on football scores and baseball scores and find out where your your team is or where your team is projected to be if they do this or that or the other you can't it's very hard to do that with roadways unless there's a good deal more money and resources put into it and we haven't we have to put a lot more into it yeah I mean I think that's what always important to remember and this is just from experience that I've gained over the years is that what happens to other roads doesn't always happen at predictable rates and it may make a decision as to a road that was farther down the list important to move up higher on the list more quickly because the cost consequence or safety consequence of not addressing it may be greater if you don't get to it more quickly but that tends to shuffly order so that the plan never can work quite as a plan would we take things in order for that reason is that a fair statement yes but you say but it's still a tracking mechanism you know it's similar what I'm seeing some of the things in this budget are have been rescheduled so you can see done done done reschedule it's it's just a useful to go back and take a look at it so I agree that it's going to keep moving this might be more for the town manager question and it has been asked I think in different forms different ways but what I'm still struggling with is we're looking at different components of the budget in isolation right and how are we making these decisions we have limited funds so just broadly speaking there are capital expenses there is conservation you know how much how much are we putting into conserve more land and then there are these infrastructural maintenance questions so are we building more than we are keeping for maintenance and then for the people or are we you know how much are we conserving do we need to put in more money for more conservation so I'm not sure how we are making these decisions of where we're putting in money and how much and over what period of time so I think that the message I have since I've been here we've been putting more money into maintenance specifically roads we've really focused on roads and this year we're on sidewalks and the philosophy has been take care of what we have before we start building new there's a lot of demand for new roads and things like that and I think one of one of the things we've been waiting to do and DPW has been eager to do is to do a presentation to the council about road how roads road maintenance and one of the things that is educational about that is that you may have a road that's in worse condition but if you don't you may have road A that's in really bad condition but if you don't do road B this year it's going to be three times as much the next year so they make their engineers may make the decision we're going to do road B this year so it doesn't become such a terrible thing is and it's hard choices there's not enough money to do all the things that they want to do there they hear about the complaints on roads in terms of purchasing land I think the assistant town manager has talked about throttling back any kind I think the sense from the council is that we've sort of done enough conservation will bind conservation land we have to start looking at different ways of investing our funds and whether that's in affordable housing but there are hard choices that you're going to be making and I think the whole council's activity has been revolving around our capital infrastructure meaning our the buildings that we need and then taking care of the buildings that we have I'm not sure if that answers your question or somewhat it acknowledges it but without answering what we it's complicated there's actually was a point later where I was going to make a similar point but I'm going to save it what I wanted to just get back to where we were and just go through budget and see if there are budget questions on anything else related to public works administration and the next section that was in there's in the budget book that follows in page 71 is highway and whether there's anything under highway so I wanted to just sort of open up those two areas and make sure that people get a chance to ask otherwise we'll move on to snow and ice and add that too when I when I scroll back to the beginning so it's on page 70 there's a big jump in capital appropriations it from 40,000 to 270,000 is that the plan to do schematic design for dpw it's under public works administration yes I believe that's what that's for okay so that's what that's where that that money that that money's put and so I was just looking at that happens once that's approved yes that's that's approved money and that's once you have a place so that's money that's on hold till you know where you're going where you're moving we're fires movie so that's the placeholder money I believe so it's 4 4 10 sonia 4 4 10 public works administration it's in the book book it's page 70 and when I do the scroll online it's 98 you know the nine yeah I did it was just a question because there's not a little note on what the number is and I assume that must what must be that you under personnel administration you didn't suddenly have a giant capital expense yeah no but usually when we have capital expenses the eventually I can't tie it back like just going back and forth here but it's all in the capital planets whatever was approved in the jcpc process that's coming forward is is what's in those line items so I can get that for you but it's going to take me a few minutes but it's not so much I need to know exactly I just was trying to trace if I'm looking at something called public works administration I see a giant jump I was just assuming that's what it was so that's just the question because I knew it I knew that is the only that's the only thing we requested that went was approved that actually covers the whole department yes was the DPW building yeah can I that's um in the budget book that's all supplemental information so especially capital is going to jump up and down from year to year depending on what's put through the jcpc process so that's not unusual to see it jump like that or go way down from the previous year and I just wanted to point that out for a future year yeah let's really go back to my service my days in which I was on the prior finance committee but I think that what we did at the time was is that there was a feeling that people wanted to see what the total cost was related to various departments and since employee benefits was actually under general government and capital was under a different section of the budget throwing supplemental information in there was to try and give a place where you could see that but it doesn't make it a part of that section of the budget and I think that was the intent back then if I recall um but that was yes um so I thought I found the place that Kathy's referring to and I'm trying to figure out are you saying that the going from 40 000 to 270 000 that that money is being spent or that money is being held as reserves I'm not sure which it is that money is being proposed in the current budget to be used for the next phase of the TPW project that's planning you mean it's planning okay once you approve the budget then it will be it goes into what is uh not um development of a schematic plan is that the term that turning to linen asking this schematic design schematic design it goes into schematic design which is the point at which you have to have a location for the building to in order to do that so that's why we're sort of but if you don't have the money sort of set aside you can't do it um yes shall we question about um sidewalks and um crosswalks um is there attention special attention given to people with disabilities you know like I get emails from people about concerns about downtown and how slow it is to fix and stuff especially keeping in mind people with disabilities so one of the biggest costs now for actually doing road repairs once we touch a sidewalk or once we touch a road in an intersection we have to bring it up to ADA standards so we actually every time we do a project we have to bring it up so yes there's some people who walk a certain section of road or a certain section of sidewalk and it hasn't gone into a big project yet and it's slower to get fixed because we don't have a bigger project and we're spending all our money to make those improvements on the other projects does that make that's this would be just maintenance though not like taking on a new project like adding a new crosswalk or something but just the maintenance of the pavement so people on wheelchairs and so forth can so if we go we're doing maintenance work on Main Street and we're working on the sidewalks so we have to change every handicap ramp to meet ADA compliance while we're doing the project so that's why a lot of that money gets used up is making those ADA compliance changes while we're doing maintenance on a bigger road project and one additional question I had going back to buildings gets us back to this something you worked with us very closely on in linen ball the zero energy building thing I couldn't help but notice when I was looking on page 70 the amount of electricity utilities expense that was built into the administrative budget and then um seeing the amount of electricity going into the water facilities and wastewater treatment facility and couldn't help but wonder if we were looking at the best way to expend available dollars to save to to solarize and ultimately save money whether we're going in making the right choices by tying it solely to new buildings as opposed to buildings that where it could be most effectively capitalized it's a good question but you also have to realize if you look at the public works admin their electrical number is it's actually pretty small compared to water and wastewater so water and wastewater is process energy it's not building maintenance they're building it building energy in the DPW building on south pleasant street it's really just lighting it's running the heating system it's running in the computers it's running a few electric garage garage door openers it's it's that's what the electricity is there it's not a lot of process when you get to the wastewater side electricity is pumping water wastewater it's pushing wastewater it's spinning and aerating right wastewater and it's doing a lot of other things over there is dewatering wastewater so we can take the slides and dispose of it so the there is if you could put solar at the wastewater facility and the water facilities you would need a large amount of solar to manage those where the DPW building the solar would be much smaller because that number is much if you look at it it is much smaller than the other two but uh yeah it's just no thank you um turning back then uh we were talking about highways and snow and ice which we always uh it is what it is depends upon what's what we get for the year yes this year we went deficit we're at we went deficit this year by about a hundred and thirty thousand a hundred forty thousand dollars and it's uh yes there was no big snow storms people always ask well we didn't have big snow storms uh the big snow storms we love big snow storms because those are the least expensive to take care of it doesn't take a lot of money to go do a big snow storm you go out you treat it you plow it you treat when you're done you're done what's killing us now and in a sense it's you can call it type of global the global weather pattern shifting is these smaller storms you got to go out and you got to treat them you got to go out and treat them again you got to go out and treat them again there's no big bang for your buck you're just constantly treating these little storms and trying to keep things the way people expect them to be so it's actually the smaller storms are more draining on the budget than the big storm and it's in that uh everybody realizes we never want to have snow storms on weekends but we always seem to get them we always get on weekends and holidays when we have to pay overtime um anything else that people want to ask and then we'll move into um open it up also to street and traffic lights oops get rid of that um I'm going to put that on silence right now but um going on um also on the equipment maintenance and tree and ground maintenance uh see if there are any questions in there I was curious about the cemetery pieces I saw that uh we really are we required to provide cemetery space or if we said there's no more plots available and look elsewhere is that an option for the town um I'm on page 79 under long range objectives uh yes if we decide we don't want to be in the cemetery business or the new cemetery business the town can decide that um but we will always be in maintaining the existing cemeteries our threes we can't just I don't think anybody would want to buy our three cemeteries so our our three cemeteries will be maintaining those in perpetuity just like the landfill so uh but when we run out of space we run out of space so if we don't get new land somewhere we would be out of the cemetery business out of the new cemetery business could I ask where the new where the cemeteries are we have one in south amherst we have one behind the toy box which is west cemetery and north cemetery up in the top it's off of east pleasant street there's four in town wild was the fourth one and that's privately owned so just leave it at that but draw to back to our attention and at some point um council may want to have a economic analysis of whether it's worth staying in the cemetery business if we reach that point but uh I don't think we need to discuss that today um anything else um tree and ground maintenance do do we pass street and traffic lights already yes but go back yep can we discover I just had a quick question on them um and it related to the crosswalk question uh sort of either installing a new traffic light installing a blinking light those kinds of decisions painting a crosswalk line do you have a way of um I I know the answer is yes so I'll ask it when you're setting priorities on which things to do um the more heavily trafficked crosswalks with blinking lights I think the one on pine street works quite well for example you know just to let people know there is a crosswalk and then you in the dark you actually see people going across the street so on north pleasant where there are those crossings and where we had someone hit who either was or wasn't immediately in a crosswalk how the how expensive it is to do that and can any kind of lights be more passive solar like I have some crap in my lawn where they come on every night and they're powered by the sun and they get the sun the next day you know they're never using electricity um so there is so there is a mixed question yeah it's a question of how can we do it less expensively if we need more of them so uh I'm not sure less expensive as ever possible in this world anymore you can do uh solar powered lights since sort of like what you're talking about the ones you have in your yard they're bigger they're industrial um the battery that's in your solar powered lights just a little triple a double a battery you'd have a battery on the light that's an industrial size battery so it's a it's a big box not a very big box but you can have a solar panel charge the battery in that box and then that light light from the battery all night long so the light's not connected to the system um you can do that UMass had some of those over by the mullen center before they put the big solar can't carports in they actually had street lights in the parking lot that were lit by a solar battery in a solar panel if you could if you drive through new jersey uh every street light in new jersey has a big solar panel on it a little battery some have batteries some don't but they do the same thing um that was conned new jersey's way of doing solar little things everywhere uh as far as where we put traffic or where we put crosswalks and where we put um the r r fbs or any type of enhancements if someone requests a crosswalk it goes through a process which is examined to see if we really want to put a crosswalk in um we don't just put a crosswalk in anywhere we have to make it ADA compliant so it costs a little more money than you would think um if we have a crosswalk we want to upgrade it that's easier um the r r fbs are around $12,000 a pair I think is what they are um that's pre pre this round of tariffs I think um I don't know what the new prices we've been warned all our prices are going up um so they're about $12,000 a piece and they all run on they're all solar powered so when you see one of those r fbs there's no power from this grid going to it it's all a little box a little battery and a solar panel charging it it should mention uh just for um my colleague said Pine Street was a complex project that had um where we were dealing with um water sewer and street altogether and the building of the sidewalk and the installation of the crosswalks which were required because of the multiple crossings in the design it was kind of like this big huge web that was all in related and uh Kilford spent many hours trying to uh get the select board together on a uh plan for that I used to have dark hair before that project so um I want to keep this moving along and um so have we are there other questions that come under the general dpw budget before we turn to the enterprise funds I had a crosswalk question that brings us to the enterprise funds it's when you asked at the beginning when you saw the amount payback to the general funds from the enterprise funds where did it go in general when you do the accounting um for like I saw a draw that said paying back for town council for water or whatever it was do you do how is that actually accounted for you say you know x hours of certain people were used oh how do you come up with those numbers yes yeah you know how do you you know I said oh this is interesting why do we're drinking a lot you know I don't remember which one I saw but it it was a very laid out and it came up with a number and since the total seemed to be in the half million dollar range this these weren't when we edited it all out so it was yeah so I'll start and then they can finish so uh we we basically it's it's been this way since I've been here and most people who have you told our enterprise systems do it basically the same way you kind of just pick a point and you start going back in time and you figure out what you use that year or you pick a year and you make that your base year and um you come up with what you know if the town manager spent maybe 10 percent of his time doing dealing with water and sewer issues that's kind of how you based out these things and what we do and what most people do is you have your baseline where you come up with that just examining one year and then every so many years you look at and adjust it and we do that in Amherst every every couple years we look and see well are we using this much of this service or we're using this much of that service um because the other thing that happens is is that if if we need something done and we actually directly ask the administrative side to do it for us um that's figured up and that's added in and then we have to go at a later time or a couple years later we check to make sure that that number we added in is still correct so it's a basically an analysis of the cost or the time we think we're spending we don't actually do time sheets but we do a general accounting of our time and we break it down and then we just always keep validating it every few years and make sure we're right and they're gonna tell me I'm totally wrong now thank you so um water fund we'll start with uh just do them in the order and uh we've had some fairly good discussion of the water fund already so it's just a question at this point as to whether there are others other questions that come up um we do have a very we do have a very good supply of water right now yes yes well planned good job um the uh one question that I had is in this such as back on something that I think it was Kathy asked about um if our rates we had to do something with our rates for example is there an alternative for the university or they are we the sole provider that they can consider at this point there's always alternatives it's an imagined matter of how much they want to pay for the alternative the UMass could become their own water system if they want to and then they could decide whether they wanted to have a any type of supply on campus or off campus and pipe it to them but they would have to become a water provider and they would incur the same cost we would incur we incur now they do not incur that cost they just pay for the service they don't have to do the testing they don't have to do the management they don't have to have the licensed operators they don't have to freak out when the well blows off in the middle of a hockey game and leave the hockey game and go take care of the well they have other problems they freak out over but that's not one they have so yes if they wanted to and spend that money they would also have to disconnect themselves from our system our water system is pretty much entangled among the campus it wasn't meant to be that way but it's kind of how it developed we have one main line that runs through the campus and the campus feeds off that line and they would have to segregate those lines off our main and put them on their main they would have to also segregate all their other buildings off and they could not totally disconnect from the system they would always be some of their buildings because of where they're situated if it's easier and cheaper to be on our system it's actually overall easier and cheaper to be on the town system anyhow could they go to Hadley and ask Hadley to provide water they could but then they would have to be a disconnect from the town system as well you can't have the two systems together the systems the way they were regulated is as each system is self-contained and is regulated separately and if you have a connection between the two systems they have to be protected and you have to monitor them and you have to make sure there's no contamination between the two systems Hadley doesn't do fluoride we do fluoride not to not to start that discussion but but we do connect with them every once in a while to give them water for something they're doing and they have to warn their customers and say that's what's going on but then we have to watch and make sure that we're if there's a contamination issue in Hadley it makes a contamination issue for us so we're very careful and and the way the water systems are managed it's meant to be careful and it's meant to be segregated so that you can if you have a problem you can research the problem and solve the problem quickly so yes they could but it's a cost and it's an expense they would have to bear I guess this really does go back to those challenges you presented in the very beginning particularly the ones around water management and the potential of very serious new goals that could not just goals but targets that you could come forward in the next permit and so you've got part of our town that nine months a year has heavy heavy usage and yet for three months a year they don't we'd look at it on the average obviously but if they're more if they're having more difficulty exceeding our meeting those new standards should we consider a change in the rate I'm not sure I consider the change in the rate that there I think what we're going to find is that DEP is going to want us to have some type of penalty mechanism in place for people who cannot meet the standards and you can call that in a higher rate a penalty rate or you can just call it a penalty on top of the rate they're paying for the water it's something that's still being discussed among the water people and among DEP but you can do either one but yes there would be something that would be mandatory required so we could have a tiered water rate system and then on top of that there would be like a penalty for you just not making an additional penalty so as we come back to that whole challenge and we think of the new committee that we've created energy and I'll come up with its name ECAC it's it seems to me that it's going to be very important that the water and sewer people are connected into that committee as they look at goals and to make sure that our systems not just meet the DEP standards but also any other standards that they would like to see the town is in general meet yeah and that would make sense okay I mean the other reason I had actually thought to ask the question was on page 130 where you're talking about the debt service you mentioned is one of the long-range projects North Pleasant Street water line replacement project from Massachusetts Avenue to Eastman Lane that couldn't help but wonder how much of that has to do with getting water from one end to the other but to serve residences in businesses and how much of it was to serve UMass as an institution um tell the truth is probably it's it's meant to just improve the overall water system during times when we have lots of water in the reservoir UMass and that side of town is served by Atkins Reservoirs when we cut back on the reservoirs and don't take as much water from the reservoirs we actually flow water from the south in the town up through so it's hard to say it would be hard to say who gets the most benefit out of it as a system wide it is the biggest one of the biggest system improvements we want to make is just to get rid of the two smaller pipes and put a larger pipe in there just one pipe larger and be able to connect it better um so it's an overall system improvement it's not being driven by UMass or a need to serve UMass. Actually Dorothy I may be missing the point here um when it comes to the lower uh individual consumption rates and that would include UMass students um what does that mean talking with the university and having them um post uh water limits or shower time limits um because isn't that where a lot of water goes? That that is something that has to be decided is how do if we start identifying places that are actually exceeding the state goal it's a goal they have people who are exceeding that goal how do we handle it do we go to the customer and if it's a large apartment complex as well as UMass do we have the apartment complex send notices out to their their tenant saying hey uh we're using a lot of water we're exceeding the goals of the state we need to cut back on water the state UMass would be you have to do the same thing uh if it's an issue in Amherst College um it might drive um Amherst College is moving around I mean UMass is moving towards metering all their buildings um Amherst College hasn't metered their buildings but it might drive some of the larger people to meter their individual buildings so they can you know pinpoint who is the big user in the problem so there's a lot of things that could happen there's a lot of things that have to be worked out and thought about how we would implement all these things and it's a lot moving forward when when we do something like Northampton Road which is a state highway and we're going to be tearing it up for sewer replacement waterline waterline thank you um how does that work in terms of the actual reconditioning then of the road who pays for that so we actually got lucky the Northampton Road project by the state was proposed and we had been looking at replacing the waterline at the same time or earlier um we've actually delayed the waterline because we want the state to do it at the same time that actually saves money for us because we're only paying for the waterline and the water trench we don't have to pay for the paving and the final pavement that's all going to be paid for by the highway project so a project that we thought was going to be two million dollars when we first started it may be a little more now because we've moved out in time um is going to be still very economical it would have probably been three or four million dollars if we actually had to repair the road to state standards and the state wasn't doing their part doing the road at the same time it's distinguished from what happened on pine street yes it's based yes if you we spent four million dollars on pine street and all that was water and sewer and yeah and then you did those fancy stickers on people's cars i survived pine street we didn't do that some enterprising young person at the kushman store i believe the cell in those um so other questions yeah i had um you have a and i'm i'm jumping around so i won't find the exact one but you'll know what we have a payment for watersheds to other towns is that land we purchase and we're repaying them in lieu of taxes on on that land uh it's not in lieu of taxes we own land in pelham we own land in shootsbury and we own land in belcher town and hadley um is that right is that all of them leverett leverett shootsbury pelham belcher town and hadley we pay property tax at the at the proper rate for the land to those towns we pay payment in lieu of taxes to the town of amherst for watershed land in the town of amherst anything else on the water fund or should we turn to the sewer fund no i think that's fine it's just when we when we're considering buying water shed land then since we have that's in another that's on the 23rd when we see that is the cost of that purchase are we also putting in the cost of the taxes we're going to have to be paying here doing some sort of this will incur this much taxes each of the following years do we do that computation we wait until we actually finish it the next year we'll put in the budget yes but can i ask that question of what it would likely be when i'm looking at that as a purchase wing figure that wing how that for you yeah i mean of course the other side of the coin is what is the consequence for our water system of not doing it no i understand and it's you know since sometimes we're sharing it in regional water supply too it's a consequence for everyone i i do understand it's just recognize that well it's not regional in the it's all water we may be selling it we may be selling it back right but it's still our water system Dorothy um right now we're having a lot of water and we're having the wettest year i guess since they took records but um let's just say in 10 years we have a real drought that goes on is it how can we prepare i can you can't save water um or is there some way that you can actually increase the supply and see credit and keep it safe well there's different things we do to try to keep our system resilient we actually have a lot of supply different supplies we we have more but we were talking earlier that the water the sources are rated but then what we're allowed to withdraw is rated we actually probably have one and a half times our rating right now so if all our supplies if we were rated to take out five million gallons a day we actually probably have about you know seven and a half million gallons of rating that's just the number i just made it up i can never keep it straight so we have we have a lot of water sources and we have a lot of supply out there we did do a study with tata and howard and they came up with the the five things we should be doing for our major capital plan for the water water department the first one is to do some autumn is optimization at baby carriage baby carriage is an older plant but it's um was built as a manually operated plant um that's out in the south into town it treats for iron and manganese so we've been automating that plant we've been installing backup generators so it can run automatically we've been working on all this the next thing they talked about doing was uh rehab rehabbing the centennial water treatment plant so we can we need to rehab that plant we've actually kind of taken that plant offline we've had some lightning strike kind of did that plant in but we need to rehab that plant they talk about buying a water source or what possible water source in the north in the town another water source in that in the town to build our resilience and make sure we're good so um we have that plan and we're working towards it and probably we should be in as far as what we have we should be in good shape going for at least 10 20 years out right now and that's what we that's how we are looking at it okay the questions no though i saw it turn solid make sure we get the solid waste shelly can you explain why we're making this for interest and delayed payments to be 100 like 100 more this time it's like double of last year it's for until we one second why did we budget more this year why are we yeah for water and for sewage as well it seems it's like we're expecting we actually had more last year and we budgeted so we adjusted this year's budget to reflect last year's we we have more we're still on um i think we're we're just finishing up with wastewater and i think that i the last point that i'll make to this committee and then i want as we go on to solid waste is that um very soon coming back to the council will be the water and sewer rate request and the reasons for rate tie back into the budget that we just looked at these two budgets so to the extent that we're going to come back um or ask to come back and offer comments on the water rate increase to recognize that what we've just looked at is the material that is really the backup for that question to some extent there will be additional information provided but not to lose sight of the connection between the two so if there's nothing else we should go on to solid waste and see if there are questions there and or just overall comments you made a few already is our solid waste is not our stellar performer of enterprise systems um we don't make a lot of payments to the town for our support their support and we don't uh it's not it's not run as just like you would like we talked about how enterprise system should run it's kind of struggling right now um we are looking at possibly raising the rates because we know we're getting some rate increases for disposal cost um but it's uh it's a struggling enterprise system the one question that i had from that fund is uh there's nothing in there for capital expenditures projected for equipment and that seems i mean at some point we do have to there is equipment there we've uh we mostly what we do is any when we replace a piece of equipment in the public worst apartment and we're it's still in a usable condition it gets passed down to be recycled at the recycling facility um they have a older pickup truck they have an older backhoe they're using um there is one piece of equipment that is going to have to and we're actually trying to get a grant to help pay for it as the roll-off truck when it actually gets to some point we may have to make a decision on whether we keep providing the services we provide or whether we change a little bit um we've never wanted to do trash collection in this town the when i got here i was told we never want to do this we don't want to do it it's still the it's been the position up until now um the world of trash collection around the town has changed there's only one local truly local trash hauler in town now um as you look at the solid waste or sorry the refuse recycling management committee's report that they did their final report they had some recommendations uh time might be right to pursue some of those recommendations and uh maybe change a little bit and that might change how we run the transfer station you're always going to have an expense at the landfill our monitoring will be required probably indefinitely i don't think dp will ever say we can stop monitoring the landfill we'll probably have to keep monitoring both landfills well for probably another 20 or 30 years usually it's only a 20 year period where you monitor a landfill but we never really closed out the old the old landfill which is across the street that was never really closed down until 2004 or five the paperwork wasn't finished although it was capped in the 80s uh the new landfill was capped in 2002 um we're coming up on 20 years and most landfills are will stop monitoring but in the the world we live in now i don't think dp is going to not let you stop monitoring a landfill until you until something happens and the landfill vanishes but i don't think that's going to happen either so uh we're always going to have an expense for landfill whether we're doing transfer or waste services or whether we're just monitoring the system and running the flares we're always going to have an expense out there so the question is where do you want to put that expense do you want to keep it in a struggling enterprise system that mostly makes it or do you want to move it totally to the general fund or do something else with it yes um if you you you started with your remarks on the struggling side that we have a recommendation there was a report with some recommendations and would we ever revisit does amherst want to do trash pickup or you know consolidate it could you have an enterprise fund that was the trash collection and use a private contractor to be picking up the trash and i'm partly asking this because when it was presented to us and then i've also been hearing from residents having more than one contractor for one small street is trucks going by during the day um and you could if you still wanted to have some competition in the system say you get a quarter of the town or you get a fifth of the town and you can your service will determine whether we're renewing your or half the town you know something that is continuing to say that we're not going to sole source so is that would that help a fund like this could we combine that with solid waste i don't know if that would help the fund um but other communities do do it where they where it's a town based system but they use private contractors for the service yes other towns to do and if if we wanted to even think about whether that was a good idea where would uh an initial proposal with you could do it this way or that way where would that originate with with you or with i think is the town manager with the town manager okay okay anything else on solid waste fund because otherwise uh then we should go into transportation and you're the prime presenter that you're going to hand that back to the other guy um no i'm fine okay we'll work it we'll tag team up the tag team so um this is our first question for Sonia is what is our the remaining surplus in the funds is it 53,000 now after the amount that was spent by town meeting last year do you know the cash balance and all of these enterprise funds are in the revenue pages resources in the significant uh 169 if you look at the bottom significant budget changes you'll see what the balance was at the end of um 20 at the end july 1 2018 it was 133 246 and that was july 1 2018 and then in 20 f y 2019 which is the year we're in now yeah we don't know the number but we the town meeting 53,000 allocate about half of it if i recall correctly so that number is going to be substantially decreased and if bus service which was what this was all about um to continue it you know this gets into very complex issues that we've talked about at the council level previously but sustaining a draw on the transportation fund to supplement what we were previously doing i guess is a financial question that we just need to be aware of is a group um so i just want to point out that this is a certain point in time if you were to take the vote from town meeting of 53,000 and subtract it from there you can do that but by the time the next free cash comes along whatever surplus or deficit was in the fund is going to be subtracted from there so you you really it's it's a big calculation that the state does and it's never works out like a checkbook so that's what i say in the end i think the only thing i say is that likely it would be reduced as a result i wanted to just point out one other thing but before doing that see what other questions that we have just as you've looked at this i was just curious about the drop in the parking fees um seems to have gone down i was just wondering if it's related to the increase in the parking um charges and if that's affecting people from coming downtown is there a particular line or just the overall number it there's a negative seven percent in the transportation fund under the line called parking meter fees 169 page so it's gonna be there's a decrease in the budget but if you look at the fy 18 actuals we don't have fy 19 actuals yet so you're looking at actuals versus budget of a different year so but in fy 18 it's actually up from 17 i i i guess i would i'm just building on that if it was up in 18 budget we budget for being down in 19 and when will you know whether 19 looks more like 18 well the the negative seven percent you're seeing is taking the two budgets from fiscal year 19 we budgeted a higher amount than we did this year we might not have needed as much revenue to balance out the budget this year we have to balance out the budget so it's it's kind of like we had to reduce somewhere if you look 19 budget was 1.1 million the 20 budget is 1 million so it's less there so the revenue you have to make it balance if but if you're asking questions about whether people are if we're having less use of the parking system that's really what you're asking right i anecdotally we're having discussions about the fact that there are less people using it there's also more people using the apps so like the parking fee fines are down because people are in their restaurant or wherever and they're just putting more money because they can do it on the app so there's less tickets being written because of that there is information and we it's going to be looked at a little more but it hasn't really been flushed out is you know is our people parking less because the rates are higher there's some anecdotal information but there's no we haven't really found anything concrete other than the fact that people do seem to find it easier and they're on their phones to pay with a pay app instead of so they get less tickets we know tickets are definitely down so so that would suggest that if in fact people use the parking system correctly don't go to overstay their time don't get tickets that you shouldn't reduce that as a source of revenue well we would reduce it as a source of revenue from the projection knowing that we're going to get it lost that's why i would be reading yes so then you there are various places that that affects but obviously parking violations is projected down but meter fees were projected down too that was i think with the question that was the question we just that was we were looking at a very specific line not at the total i think the projection down on the parking meter fees is the fact that we don't have to project as much because our budget is less this year right so we didn't the enterprise systems have to what you expend and what you're taking it as revenue you have to balance it has to be totally balanced so if you're revenue if what you're spending is less you can cut down your revenue to make a match so that's what that's all that is in the budget this year mostly when you look at revenue from the meters or just trying to make the two numbers balance and we have a lower number to make balance so basically we back into the revenue number from based on the budgeted number and if we have a lower budgeted number which is what we do have then we can project less money we may bring in more and that's okay because that'll wind up in the transportation funds free cash but we have to come up with transportation or any kind of enterprise then has to balance at zero so it's always more important to look at the actual when you're trying to figure out how the system's performing look at the actual numbers we took in the year before those actuals are better because yes we do balance we do fluctuate the projections to make that thing balance can i just say this because i don't completely i understand what you're saying but i don't understand it conceptually on the other question where andy started with how much is left in a free cash if we are in fact bringing in more revenue you know if the actual for 2019 then our free cash once we do the books is going to be higher because right we're pretty good on what our expenses are so that we potentially have money to do something with buses that we don't yet know about so i'm just thinking that the these three conversations are interactive because we've got one line lower than it might actually be that's a revenue source right welcome to municipal budgeting okay there's um but i think that's very interesting to know because well at some point we're almost at the end of f y 19 we'll have a pretty good idea somewhere at the beginning f y 20 what 19 actually was right and then you'll get a more solid sense of the reserves right correct then we submit all the information at the dor and they set the free cash figure so i do want to change the subject a little bit but still it's very much transportation just to call your attention to something and ask you to look at page 171 and then i'm going to tell you why i picked 171 um in april nelson and eyeguard um released their study on parking and um it was a presentation that was made and one of the things they talked about was what the expense would be to build a new parking facility and um what they said and because we know that there are certain people we hear from in the business community who very much think that that's what we should do and it's 40 what nelson eyeguard was telling us is to assume that it would cost 40 000 dollars a space to build the facility and that we would need 275 dollars per month in revenue in order to um pay for the cost of building those spaces with the financing that's required over time and um so when you look at 275 dollars per month and then you look at the annual average meter revenue per space that's at the bottom of the chart that's um the at the bottom of that's page 171 you very quickly realize that revenues are not going to be at the level that would be required to actually pay for building a facility and that's assuming of course that you build it out of the enterprise fund that the enterprise fund is going to take care of itself which then means that what is being suggested by people who argue that we should build a new garage is that we would actually have to pay for it out of other taxation revenue and it would compete with our other capital needs to build a new elementary school to build a dpw facility a fire station um the library so it's not a simple set of calculations and um as a finance committee I think we need to be able to understand this point because I can see this issue coming back to us in future discussions at a council meeting and um we at least as a finance committee need to understand the complexity of this economic problem I'm just trying to figure out Andy how you're coming up with the numbers to actually tell us this it was in the Nelson iGuard report okay thank you but it's I can't come up with those numbers unless it's not it's not in here it's a I was melding two different documents I took the April Nelson iGuard report and it said forty thousand dollars per space two hundred seventy dollars per month required revenue and I compared the two hundred and seventy five dollars per month required revenue against the annual revenue that is shown for each of these facilities and of course you have the annual you have to take it by one-twelfth that's where the dilemma is and you have to take it by the number of spaces I was at that meeting and I think I've spoken about the second part of his report which was that they'd found that there was lots of little pockets of parking or possible parking in the town of Amherst some of them were private lots with which one could make the town could make arrangements but that the other thing was we mentioned the parking apps was that the people are using I of course don't know how to do it but people are using these parking apps and if the parking app language matches the language that the town names things people will be able to find spots without us building a garage he was pretty pretty firm that the garage was not a reasonable estimate and I was not trying to get us into a full-fledged parking discussion today I was just trying to point out that if we hear from people who are saying no no no that those avenues are not going to work or we're not even going to try and make them work we just need to commit to building a new garage that I think it's important that the finance committee begin to grapple with what really is involved with building a new garage so that we can respond to those questions and it was because we were going through the budget book and those numbers happened to be in the budget book that it was it was just a good opportunity to make that point that was all I was trying to do I I I just want to digress for just one more minute and ask a question that has been on my mind for a while when boltwood was built it was there was a lot of controversy it was supposed to be a four-story garage or something like that and it was argued down to the two stories that it is but supposedly the structure at that time was built so it could have been added on to in today's requirements for garage construction is that still true yes but we have other constraining factors now because of the way we've built adjacent buildings next to the garage there's setbacks that need to be there's changes some changes in some of the setbacks and some of the newer buildings especially the ones on the north pleasant side that have built back towards the garage might impact how you would align that wall so I don't think there's any other none of the other sides is impacted but the north pleasant street side may be impacted so that you couldn't build it the way it was designed at that time and that's probably the only caveat I think there is right now thank you okay so I just I would be curious to know whether people knew that when they were giving permits for the buildings to go up I mean just did anyone report on we will we be restricted later if we should ever want to add floors to the garage I think it had more to do with the rules changing as we went along so that the things were allowed to be built and then the rules kind of changed a little bit and that put us in this in the situation I think we're in so it wasn't something you knew at the time you gave them permission to build the building okay I'm afraid that may be a question more appropriate to be asking people who are explaining sure sure no I can figure out where to ask it in other places just not sure that so is there any other questions about the transportation fund the the only question I have is do our UDPW was a town manager setting rates including rates for the parking garage and the reserved rates so who who makes those decisions you mean in terms of parking fees and things like that parking fees for the meters and then there are the 25 reserved place in the the underground that are a thousand dollars a year there's so much for permit if you get us I just don't know where the location of decision for what those rates are sits who what entity it's either the town council or the town manager or probably a combination of the two in sense that because it's in the public way it's in a sense the town council but in terms of management of town property it could be the town manager so it depends exactly what you're talking about I guess in terms of if you're talking about the garage versus being in the public way so the last time we set rates we did it much the way we do water and sewer rates we the people who manage the fund look at things we have to do so the transportation fund has input from the public works department input input from the police who do enforcement and input from the collector's office so normally we would sit down and talk about things that are upcoming expenses are coming or where we wanted to be and then we would say we need to look at making a rate adjustment and then it goes to the town manager and the town manager usually flushes us out and make sure we're we know what we're talking about and we come to a good decision and then the last time we set rates they were recommended to the count the select board and the select board approved them but they went through another we had an advisory committee a parking advisory committee it also looked at them as well and a parking working group yes yes that answers it you know in terms of we could think of what we might need if we want to think about this so I think a lot of these issues are going to be addressed by the parking study that Nelson Nygaard is working on right now that we expect to get this summer and I think that that once we get that and are able to digest that I would assume that this in the fall is when the council will be grappling with parking issues across the board as a comprehensive system and it is and it's going to be a complex web because it deals with issues of parking in making in parking availability and it is a revenue question for this enterprise fund so it really kind of touches both places I totally agree and you know I was at early presentation not the formal one but I went to the committee and it's just several people have noted if you go downstairs in the garage not that people love to hang out in the second the underground those reserve spaces are often empty at night when people are searching for a place to park so it's just it's part of the overall picture of what do we have downtown and are we using it and the way that works the best for people to live here so I think the reason they set that rate at $1,000 a year is that if you look at what the revenue comes in from a regular parking it's at the high end of what a normal normal parking space would bring in so the logic that the time that they set those rates was that it was produced more revenue than if it was open you know I could I could see that and I could see that you've got your reserve space till 5 30 at night or you know you get it during the day when you really need it and then if you want to park that night it's free for anybody you know so I just think it's it's a revisiting these things rather than was it the right or wrong decision it's a complex question because the residents of buildings who live in the over in the area use those spaces too and so the park the cars that are parked down there are in that classification so but we're not going to get to solve that today just a little caveat to think about when you do this there's one thing that's changed since the last time we had a real discussion about parking rates in town and that change is the fact that we now allow parking overnight in the winter it used to be you had to find a place to park off street during the winter so almost all UMass students and all Amherst college students that came to town they went and found a place to park off street a whole winter because I knew they needed it now you only need it for like six or seven times a year a season so that changes the dynamic a little as well is that we've now given free hunting permits which we never had before so it'll make your discussion really interesting to see because that's going to be something that plays into it I have one question more yeah um when people talk about parking and possible garages sometimes they mention the CVS lot and the question is well Northampton has this big garage and it's free for the first hour and why can't we do it and I have no idea what funding sources were used or how Northampton built that garage it would be interesting to know some of that because just to counter the arguments that people might make Northampton built their garage the same way we're we would propose to build a garage they had a enterprise system that was a transportation enterprise system they bonded for it and they built the garage they set the rates based on offering people the first hour free and they set the whole thing up it's gone through three changes in how they collect revenue in the garage from when it started originally it started with a person in the booth and then it went to a pay at the gate and then it went to a pay and a kiosk type system so it's been through multiple changes but they were an enterprise system um that's how they got the funds to do it and they bonded for it and and they should actually they should be done paying it off because when I was working there that was a 2000 that was early 2000s so they should be close to paying it all off by now and but you can ask them the people some of the people who were involved are well there's a small number that are still there but there's a few people that were still involved and they did it still there okay anything else um on the because otherwise I thank you very much Gilford you've been great it's appreciated and I appreciate the way you started us off with keying us towards the challenges that we need to be aware of so thank you thank you I also just want to make an observation for the town manager Gilford and others and that is if we had not had the overviews we had early in our tenure on the council we'd be sitting here with a whole lot more questions but that really helped us have a grounding on who you are whose DEP etc thank you yes thank you very much for those you're most welcome I want to say I appreciate your incredible institutional memory and I kind of wish I didn't have that sometimes but you're welcome so as far as other business is concerned yeah one thing I have and I assume that Paula you've seen it too is the draft report that I sent out earlier and so it's just a question of whether there are any other any comments on it or whether it's good to go I move that we I move that we accept it it's just a matter of as I tried to summarize it and make it easy for the council now I think you did a very good job that you did too and as I told him when I first saw it the only thing I found was one date was wrong and he's already fixed it so so Lynn I is the same report coming up from CRC I have to I mean I don't mean this literally the same vote is coming up from CRC what I don't know is whether they're going to actually have it in a report form otherwise I'm just going to take draft off of it and send it to Margaret yeah no I think that'd be great now I'm just thinking that I have Andy's and a copy of this I will send it to Steve and Dorothy and just say will we have a similar report the only reason I asked Linus is probably helpful that they're at least similar enough so that when we look at it as a council they're simple yeah I don't even know that CRC needs to repeat what I wrote being a member of both committees I didn't feel exactly yeah that's what I the wording was you know Andy the wording was the same that the the there had been a question on the item number three 35 percent and you had responded with the wording as written and that the need for flexibility so that was the only there'd been that little additional discussion I think the pat had said let's make it more than 35 percent and you responded that we could do that at any time but that we would just go with the wording as it's in the motion so that we would have the flexibility to do what is needed at the time yes that was part of the discussion yes would it be helpful to the down council to get the pros and cons or anything of how we came to the decision to include that in the report what I will do is ask each of the committees to briefly make a statement about their committee discussion we didn't really have a long discussion about it I think that it just seems like the appropriate thing to do that we recognize we didn't but I did think that the link and then I read the report that shall any refer to so when we report out our minutes to the study that argued that a community impact fee made sense might be worth at least making part of the record you know whether we I don't think we need to write it into the report but it was a useful report on saying why you why this made sense we don't have to write anything yeah we don't since we hadn't read it at the time that we took our vote I didn't feel like I could make it a part of the report but you have a very nice paragraph here that in fact makes the arguments that were in that report so the they use town services they benefit from our intersection may have impact you know so that is exactly where that report goes with its thinking okay so I think that the other thing is down and did you want to vote on that oh well we can take it we don't have to actually vote on the report we don't have to vote on the report actually the Lynn did make it as a motion so if there's a second we should vote on it I'll second it okay so the motion is to approve this the other report has written I yes I'll in favor indicate so make it the unanimous 5-0 for the purpose of minutes I just want to go and I don't know if either Senator Paul have anything they want to add our next thing to we have to pay attention to of course this next week the budget hearing is coming up and that is our hearing and I think it's been posted as a for the council as a whole also if I recall and and but do we want to make any presentation or have time manager make any presentation at the beginning or are we just opening it up for Paul so I would be prepared to make a presentation to the finance committee and to the full council and it would be sort of what I presented but enhanced so it'll be a more robust presentation with more numbers in it than the quick presentation on during the on May 6 when we hand it off the report to the council and I think that that would sort of lay the framework for what you have under your consideration could I suggest that you have some some handouts of some sort at this point I'm not expecting many people but those who come would be very happy to have a handout of some sort so you'll do I'm sorry you'll do the presentation similar to what you did to the council back on the 6th boat but with more detail okay we'll go through a section by section of the budget report so someone who's fresh to it and wants to see what's in the budget they will be able to see it based on the presentation and will you deal with the other funds that are discussed are presented with the budget page but not discussed at this time particularly the CPAC no this is just this will just be the budget book the budget book basically yeah I think that there will be substantial questions and I just the other hand some that but there will be substantial questions about the capital plan potentially and you know I think that it will boil down to the major projects and roads and sidewalks probably and because I think we've been aware from the amount of constituent contact that there could be questions and we've sort of been inviting it in a way about the CPAC report which was and recognized that it's not strictly a part of the budget but people are going to feel and appropriate to raise those questions and we have to be prepared for it I thought that the capital was more the April I mean the June 10th meeting which is a forum it will be but I'm not sure that we can assume that people won't yeah I think so I think you're not going to even see the capital proposals till the 23rd and the CPAC proposal so I think you're right I think people are going to bring up those issues and I think you can listen to them and take them into consideration because it is anytime anybody wants to come and talk to you I think you should be able to listen even if it's not perfectly on topic but it is really the presentation will be focused on the operating budgets not on JCPC or the CPAC because you're not even you're getting that presentation on May 23rd I think that's right and then you have the public here the public forum on the capital budget on June 10th which is another opportunity for people to weigh in on on anything capital I need refresher this is a hearing no yes it says budget discussion May 23rd it's called a budget discussion so it doesn't say it's a hearing or a forum May 21st Tuesday is the public hearing on the operating budget okay May 23rd is the a normal finance committee meeting in which you talk about capital plans okay so June 10th is a public forum where I always get because I really have trouble with the language here the hearing you're going to talk but then we're not going to talk because the audience talks okay we do have the chance to respond in the budget hearing we are not bound to the rule that applies to forum that 50 percent of the time is to engage the public so it's the forum when we don't talk the forum where well is a forum we can we'll we'll come back to that before we get to the next forum I think and we'll get guidance on that but I what I was the other thing I was going to say is that on the 23rd and then I can't come back on 23rd I'd like to at least have a little bit of time on our agenda and maybe we need to amend our agenda to talk about what it is that we want is the content of our report that we're writing for the council to summarize all of our activity and work because it's a we also have to make a presentation and we have to make a recommendation yes and I think we start needing to think about the content because the former finance committee as it was structured had a type of a report that doesn't make sense in our new form of government and so what it is that the report looks like needs to capture what's important for the council and we shouldn't be looking at town meeting is the guiding the guidepost to that shall we do you hit Kathy going back to Paul's presentation the one a couple places you probably have already identified them but the very last page didn't have June 10th on it to put it back on and I I thought because I I had to do a short presentation of this for the district when I got to the capital piece the charts you had on capital were great but they didn't what they didn't show us sort of the I had to talk about the total amount of money available and then the big decisions that were made so just even if you do it verbally people found that really interesting that we went up went back up to a million we went up to 200,000 for sidewalks and that that was in an out year plan and that would be a way then of saying stay tuned for June 10th when we're going to be you know so it's not a full discussion now but we're talking about the future not just next year so that that was just a comment on expanding what the council saw because people understand that these are interrelated then the only other thing I had Andy when you talked about the finance report I'd like maybe at the next meeting on the 23rd to make a decision whether we have a meeting on the 28th and the 30th which we certainly currently have booked I we I can't make the 30th at all and I'm happy to help work on the report so if we decide what the report might look like I would try to get a draft done by the 28th which I can make so just you know in terms of looking at our own schedules the latest budget calendar did not have a meeting on the 30th okay so that is now completely we've had it is so that's gone that's great but you will need the 28th because we'll want to be you'll want to be talking about the orders the actual actions you will be asked or we're going to recommend that you ask the council to take right and I had that and I still had that in for the you know three hours you know if we need three hours we'll we'll we'll take three hours my only I have a constraint in that I really can't go past for that day so we'll order the agenda appropriately so that we can so on this meeting of the 28th which is I just took again one day of the week it is it's a Tuesday we will have a draft Kathy's going to be working on a draft is that right of the report and it'll be drafting I just said I can help him work on it if we're working in that time space if if it goes much beyond that I'm I've got an old-day meeting on the 30th you know I just but we do have to I think we have to have the report for the meeting on the 28th because it's for that we're going to present this to the Town Council on Monday the 3rd and you're saying some people can't be here on the 30th including you but we don't have a meeting on the 30th so the point of this was just to make sure we got our calendars and agenda straightened out we I probably will amend the agenda for the 23rd to say preliminary discussion of report to council or something like that just so that we can be more more freely talk about it because it's not a housekeeping item it'll actually be potential deliberation about the content of the report and the 28th is when we're going to actually take be presented with what are and this is just the wording that's used in the city form of government the orders we are going to be recommending to and we'll get guidance from Paul and Sonia about that at that time and then we'll discuss the draft of the report. So the draft orders are with our town attorney right now revealing them and then we'll probably meet with the chair and vice chair to go through them to make sure that you're squared away with the approach that we're recommending before that meeting. Okay I need to know how inclusive the report is our recommendations on all aspects of the budgets the operating budget and the capital or just the operating budget. We will cover operating capital but not CPAC I think because CPAC can really be treated as a community preservation act can be treated as a separate item because it's not going to be dealt with at the same time it's not a June 3rd item yes. I'm not going to be able to make it on the 21st I teach in the evenings I'm always available in the afternoons but evenings I'm teaching and even 28th I'm traveling. So you cannot make it on either the 21st or 28th? Not the 28th. So we would if Lynn leaves by 4 we'll have a quorum until 4 correct? Yeah no you'll have a quorum I mean one option on the 28th would be to start an hour earlier if we could. That works fine for me. My only thing is rules Lynn and as you know rules can go longer than one ever could imagine but we start at 9 30 so we should be finished by one. I can come earlier because by that time I don't have a class that day so I could start an hour earlier on the 28th. That works for me. Andy does that work for you? That works for me and but the goal is to be done by 4 at the absolute latest. So we just need to notify Amherst media as well and make sure we have this room available and things like that. So is that what you're going to do? Yes. If you want to meet by 12 or 12 30 I mean if you're worried about being finished. That's too risky we might not be done. So May 28th at 1 p.m. in this room. May 28th at 1. Got it. We need to change the posting. Okay so anything else people want to talk about with regarding the budget hearing at this point otherwise I'm going to work with Paul and Sonia and Lynn about that in their other capacities and I would see most of you then. Thank you. So is Andy just to clear up on the budget hearing Paul's going to give a detailed report so that they feel that they know what's going on. There'll be a handout. People will or will not talk. If they ask questions we would then be able to answer questions. Is that correct? Yes this is a real hearing. It's a hearing. And then we make comments at the end. There's a whole sequence. Actually the charter has a very nice piece on hearings that'll describe it but it is it's a more of a back and forth. It's a presentation, questions, comments, responses. But we don't have to have informal reports. Do we? No. Just comments, just answers to the questions. No absolutely you don't want to because when we get to our final decision making we should be considering comments we've seen from the public otherwise why would we have a hearing to ask for them. That's good. If they ask a question that we didn't delve into though we'll have Sonya here and Paul here. We aren't asking all of the department people to come back, correct? Correct. Okay. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? I make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? So we'll interpret it in unanimous 420.