 Okay, I'm going to call the meeting in the finance committee to order. First order of business is the minutes by the motion, second? Second. Okay. Okay, are there any corrections on the minutes? Okay, all those in favor, the minutes as presented, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, minutes are accepted and presented. Next article is article 29, the revaluation. So if anyone's going to speak to you, how much do you want, what do you want for it? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mary Winsdale, Leo Connors for the Board of Assessors. Presently we have $24,000 in the revaluation account. However, as you know, we have to use $9,000 of those funds to pay the assistant data collectors' sick leave and vacation buy-in, so that will leave us $15,000. For fiscal year 16, that's a statistical update, you know, we have to do rewales every three years. Two of the three year rewales are statistical, the third one that comes the ninth year is a full loan measure and list valuation, that's the expensive one. The one that we're going to be doing for fiscal year 2016, we believe that in addition to the 15 that we have in the reval account, we'll need another $10,000. Okay, so we're looking for another 10. You're requesting $10,000? That's correct. Okay, and that will be the work for fiscal 2015. Correct, and we also are going to plan to come to you at some point with a plan. I think Mr. Foskett suggested that we kind of amortize the larger reval, the nine year reval, so that it's not such a big number in the fiscal year before. So, we will put something together in that respect. But that's not for this fiscal year. Okay, so the request of $10,000 for revaluation work to be done in 2015. Are there any questions? Any comments? I have a question, not on the reval, but on the setting. The housing authority is not assessed, is that correct? The properties that they're buying? No, the housing authority, yeah, the one down on the east, down on the east. Oh, you mean the public housing? Yeah. I don't know if they're not. That's correct, that's correct. The public housing is not assessed on the faculty. All right, how about the public housing authority? That's what I thought was going to get this expanded. The properties that the housing corporation purchase today, some of them are not on the faculty, aren't they? Yeah, I think they're on the right. What's that? If you think it's 25% correct, I'm not sure I have you all aware of it. They're not totally off of the faculty, but they get a reduction. Do you think it's 25% or do you get back to us, if you want to know? Thank you. Is that, is that, does all the towns do 25% or is it just Dowlington that decides to do that? There was a significant amount of discussion a few years ago when the housing corporation started to buy out the properties. About them coming off tax rolls, so there was no change over it. They still do a good job. Okay, are there any other questions? Mr. Curiosity, does the housing authority pay anything in lieu of taxes? No, I don't believe so. The housing authority, no. You mean like a pilot? No. I thought they paid, I thought they paid some type of a, like a donation or something to the tax. The housing authority? Yeah, the public housing authority. No, not that I'm aware of it. John can check into that though. Yeah. Can you check that? So, and follow up on that. The town doesn't give them any money to run their programs, is that right? Well, are you talking about the housing corporation or the housing authority? No, the housing, the housing authority. Does the town give the housing authority any money? I can't answer that. I think it's something under CBG. They did over, went all their water heaters or something a couple of years ago. Okay. No, they've led, they deleted the place. Charlie? You pay a substantial amount of their attention in the annual contributions to the pension authority. Question? Public Works and Public Safety Service, yes. Okay, are there any other questions for the assessors? No complaining about your own assessment. I didn't get your name. Okay, so your question is for $10,000. Thank you very much, we appreciate it. Thank you all. She works for the assessors. Okay, the next order of business is going to be the capital plan. No, she's elected. That's after that, 048. We can get through all the budgets. I wrote about 15. How? Oh, I understand. It's the first meeting. Okay, there you go. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Okay, yeah. So, are you ready to present? Okay, turn it over to Charlie Kloss, the chairman of the capital plan. Charlie? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We all should have a document that has a picture of Thompson School from the Thompson School in front of it. And this is our traditional approach to presenting for the finance committee. Just to make some introductions, the people that are here from the capital planning committee tonight are Mike Bouton, who's right here. He's standing in for Andrew Flanagan. Apparently, I can judiciously schedule this meeting for a day that Andrew was out of town. And I publicly apologize to him for that. But I know that Mike will do a great job. Myself, Diane Johnson from the School Department. Our Chief Financial Officer, Tony Landau. Paul Olson. And Barbara Thornton. And Brian Berry is the right of the course there in the middle. We're trusting that he'll be there. So these are all members of the capital planning committee. On page three of your package, there's a little short agenda. And just to mention that there are a couple of other members of the committee that are not here tonight. And that's Steve Andrew, who is a citizen appointee. And Ruth Lewis, the town's control. On page five, you'll see how they're organizing. It's something we actually copied from the finance committee, setting up subcommittees that focus on particular areas of expertise. And so that we have some institutional knowledge and familiarity with the different budgets. Well, let me introduce Brian Berry, Vice Chairman Peter. So Tony Landau and Paul Olson handle all of the public works departments. And Barbara and Ruth Lewis handle town manager education, department of center, as you can see in the chart. Andrew Flanagan and Steve Andrew and I do the finance sectors. And Diane Johnson and Brian Berry handle community safety. So tonight we're going to just give, say, a couple of words. Many of you have heard this before, but why are we bothering through the capital planning, what the value of it is. And then discuss some of the major issues that we're facing this year as a town. And then the budgets themselves. On page seven, there's a summary of why the capital planning committee exists. This capital planning committee was organized around 1985 and 1986 by John Filfer, who was then the treasurer of the town. And basically to try to get away from some of the problems that we had at town meeting in the early days, some of you may remember we would have these great discussions for hours on end about, you know, getting a new electric typewriter or something like that in the town budget. All these things came out as individual items in a warrant. And the capital plan tried to collect all these things together, put in a five-year planning horizon, and most importantly set expectations for managers in the town as to when they could expect to get their capital items financed and also to provide a mechanism where town meeting could work more efficiently and actually meet the expectations that the various department managers might have. So we've succeeded in this method in reducing a lot of the uncertainty in acquiring capital assets. There are some like school buildings, for example, very large assets that we can't pay for inside the envelope of the limitations of Proposition 2.5, in which we have to often, not often, but occasionally go to the voters for debt exclusion. And there's always a big level of uncertainty in that. But we managed outside of a few of those items to fit these items into the long-range capital plan and eventually, according to a set of priorities that we have, the town meeting can tend to finance these things. The practices that we follow are on page 8. So we have a five-year planning process, five-year planning horizon. And the first year of the plan is always the capital budget, so you'll see that in the packet, this packet that you have. We adjust the non-exempt spending and just to refresh everybody's memory, the non-exempt budget is the budget that we spend 99.9% of our time on a town meeting every year. The exempt budget is either votes of an override or votes of a debt exclusion, which allows financing beyond the limitations of Proposition 2.5. We attempt to forecast the future budgets so that we can effectively plan these capital expenditures. This is a lot easier because in 2005, the town adopted a long-range planning program. So the town and the Capital Planning Committee and the Finance Committee are all working off the same five-year total revenue plan. The Capital Planning Committee has had about 28 years of successful capital planning within the budget. That means that our budget has improved in all those years. I'm not 100% sure, but I think without any changes and I think most of the time it was unanimous. So we've been somewhat successful in this process. And the key is that the Finance Committee and the town meeting members, you know, know four years ahead of time what we're asking for. For the most part, things change. But there's a certain level of consistency there and hopefully not too many surprises. The requests from the town and school side are also made since we have this long-range planning process when they make these capital requests. They know that they have to try to fit their requests inside the capital budget because if they don't, it's going to put additional pressure on their operating budgets. The 5% number, if I remember correctly, came out of the deal between John Billfer and the chairman of the Finance Committee at that time, Bob O'Neill. I don't know how much intellectual effort went into it that just plucked it out of the air, but that was the deal. And we've stuck with it ever since and it seems to have worked. It seems to be the right level of spending at least for the most part. And when we can't stay within that 5% when we have a big item that's too difficult to manage in the now-exempt capital budget, we declare it a subject for a debt-exclusion consideration and eventually it goes to the voters. And you may recall that the entire elementary building rebuild and renovation campaign went to the voters in two debt exclusions. The oddison rebuild back in the mid-'90s was actually accomplished inside the now-exempt capital budget. So with that background, each of the members of the committee that are here tonight are going to present different parts of the budget to you for discussion. And we'll start with Mike Barton, who will give us the summary of some of the programs that are in progress and how we arrive at the five-year plan and what it looks like at a macro level. Right? Just walking through the program progress right now. On the left, you see some recent realized benefits from the capital plan projects. The first is the completed streetlight conversion. We estimate that this will save over 700,000 kilowatt hours per year, 105,000 savings in electricity costs and 40,000 a year maintenance costs. Current projections say that the realized savings will pay back to the cost in 4.9 years, and those LED lights have a 10-year warranty on them. We replaced the slate roof on the libraries, the two buildings, 1892 and 1931, on time and under budget. We repaired and reconstructed the town garden wall, the wall along that side that goes in front of the library through town hall. It took longer than expected. There was more stone that needed to be replaced than was originally anticipated, and that stone came from Illinois, so delays ensued, and the wall now is replaced. The landscaping portion will be finished this spring. Moving on to the various roadways and sidewalks portion. In 2014, we appropriated $410,000 of funds to fulfill a commitment in the last override from 2011. In 2015, we were budgeting $420,000 with $500,000 coming from Chapter 90 funds. That's part of the pavement management program run by the DPW. For water improvements, we spent $850,000 in $14,000, which was used in a hybrid replacement program. Sewer improvements, we spent $1.4 million in sewer improvements last year, and the Thompson School, as Charlie alluded to earlier, that was completed on time as well. Students entered in the fall, so far it's been a great success. The completed design and construction of the floor in its aft playground, this project is in its final stages and is expected to be completed this spring. Moving on to those in progress. The community safety building, if you'll hear more about it later, we believe now that the building is watertight and will be moving into substantial completion in the next couple of weeks. On-going water improvements, in 2015, we were spending $950,000 in water improvements, again including $100,000 in a hybrid replacement program. $1.3 million in sewer. It's important that in FY16 the situation will switch slightly. We will begin spending more money on water than in sewer. That's because we're in the middle of an administrative consultant from DEP to catch up in the sewer area. Roadway and sidewalk, we're continuing our roadway and sidewalk program. We have $190,000 budgeted for sideway ramps and $125,000 of which is from CDBG funding. The roadway stop, we're continuing to replace our fleet. FY15, we have a snowfighter and a sidewalk plower or some of the ticket items that are coming on. The design phase of the central fire station, we have $450,000 appropriated for the design phase. Construction is set to begin in July of this year and the total project costs is projected to be just over $6 million. The master plan, I believe you've heard about recently, we've had several community forums and interviews with residents, staff, property owners, community leaders. That plan is currently in a phase to identify issues and we expect that the committee will work on recommendations and present to the ARB and town meeting next spring. And then the North Union Spray Park and Kibbert playground is out to bid. That bid is actually closing this Thursday, June 26th. And on the next slide you'll see the old reconciled to the town's firewood plan. We'll start with the town budget and this table here is used to determine the profile of the budget from which we developed the 5% used for the capital budget. So we start with the total town budget, $536 million, and then we take the following adjustments, the water sewer adjustment, which is the MWR and a dead shift of 5.5 and change. We adjust for the exempt debt service for debt payments on existing exempt projects. And then the adjustment for enterprise funds are indirect costs associated with those enterprise funds to come to the adjusted profile in the budget of 125 million, 914, 613. And on the next slide we have a table that illustrates how we get to our 5% max. The first line shows the life of the prior non-exempt debt over the span of this 5-year plan. You'll notice the number decrease over the life of the plan as certain projects fall off. The next line is cash. So projects that we don't borrow for. Then we have the new non-exempt debt service. You'll notice the first number in 15 is rather small compared to the others. That's because in new borrowing, the first-year payments are generally interest-only. It brings us to the total non-exempt of the tax burden just over $70 million. And then we begin to adjust for and make certain adjustments. The first is for the better price fund. These funds partially offset the rate debt. It's approximately 50% of the rate debt. Just for ambulance remodeling, these are offsets the debt associated with purchase of ambulances. The roadway reconstruction OR 2011, that is part of the override commitment for 2011 for the town that's been beginning with $400,000 and then adjusted for the 2.5%. Every year, we have committed to roadway construction. Capital carry forward is capital balances used to offset the non-exempt debt plan. And 10 of them likely offset the plan. And these revenues come from the lease of town property in which antennas are privately leased. There's one on top of the central fire station. There's also one on top of the water station at Turkey Hill that's actually stayed on but we receive a portion of those at revenue. Those of the antenna funds, it's important to note, are only able to be used to offset their creation debt. And then we come to the net non-exempt plan in 2015, which is 6.2 change, I'm sorry, I missed Odyssey play. The Odyssey, as Charlie mentioned, was the one school in the elementary that was paid for within the confines without taking a debt exclusion. So that is the adjustment that you see here. The net non-exempt debt plan for 2015 then becomes 6.2. And using the pro-former figure noted on the previous slide, 5.7 is 6.2, so we are right at 5% margin. Charlie, do you want to put this into the roll-on? Sure. Any questions on the section we've gone through already? So, we'd like to now move into the discussion part of the presentation. And we're going to review the status of the Unity Safety Police Project with a couple of specific issues. One is the fact that you're all familiar with the fact that it's been delayed and it's been somewhat over budget. And also, at the request of the police department we're trying to compress the next several phases, we're about to start the reconstruction of the Central Fire Station. We'd like to give you an update on the Thompson School Project. We plastered that nice picture of the Thompson School in the front of the reports. And, you know, I feel particularly attached to that because the Capitol Planning Committee had an instrumental role in planning the financing and Tony Planetta from the Capitol Planning Committee is spending many, many nights working on the Thompson School Building Committee to help me to make sure that this came out in the right direction. A big issue this year is we're spending a lot more money on computers in the school system and Diane can talk about that. And then we have some other large expenses to consider like the Straton, the high school and potentially residential. So we'll go through these and some other issues to give you a sense of where we are and I'd like to turn it over now to Brian. Brian's going to talk about the community safety. Hi, everyone. I'm actually going to talk about both the Fire and Police Department and Capitol very major projects both of which have been challenging, which are the community safety building and the central power station. So first the community safety building just to recap, it was originally planned as a five phase project. The first phase was dealing with the water infiltration problems and the plaza between the station and the housing authority book. That was completed the second was the building envelope which is the phase of the project that's just being completed now. The next three phases were planned to spread out over several years and are all interior renovations. So the building envelope phase as Mike noted is almost completed at this point. It's nearly a year behind schedule and it is finally due for substantial completion within the next couple of weeks. It was behind schedule and over original budget largely because of existing conditions that were despite very best efforts on everyone's part with a lot of forensic work that was done in advance there were existing conditions from the original construction of the building that could not be foreseen and were just unimaginable to the architects and engineers doing the work today. The we feel that the permanent committee has done a great job of controlling the project as best it could as the architect. At this point the big picture is that in 2010 we gave town meeting an estimate of $8 million for the entire project complete all phases. That at this point looks to be 11.5 in total and then includes the numbers that I'm about to give you. So phases three through five which were scheduled to be done over a period of a number of years there's a really strong consensus that the police department has suffered enough and that stretching it out into three more phases and disrupting three times is really unfair and there are also some financial advantages in consolidating so the plan is to do phases three through five together as you see here the design is budgeted $573,000 the construction which will be done in fiscal 15 and the construction at about 6.4 million in fiscal 16. We'll save some money by accelerating those phases we'll save some money by not having the contractors mobilized three times that's three separate projects and we'll save some money in repeated disruption to the police department there will be some added costs of course in temporarily relocating within the building so on the next slide in general for the police department included in this year's plan is the ongoing renewal of the cruiser fleet that's on a three-year cycle likewise very consistent replacement program for their LiDAR and their body armor and a personal favorite in this year's plan is a new canine animal which we had some lively debate about the capital planning committee but whether that's a capital item or not and proved to our satisfaction that it is good accounting practice to capitalize trained animals and and it cost $10,000 to acquire and train a new canine the existing dogs get them on the fire department side the and we also have a challenging construction project underway but first there's we acquired last year the year that we're in a new ambulance in accordance with the plan we've also had a couple of really nice pieces of news from the fire department this year we replaced they replaced the chief I should say replaced two department vehicles with a combination of money that he saved and acquiring the pumper a year and a half ago and a grant that he got from the mass emergency management agency and going forward there's a continuing program of replacement of the self-contained breathing apparatus and the protective gear for the firefighters and we were able to reduce the amount in this year's plan and eliminate it entirely in next year's plan for those two items because $168,000 grant was obtained from FEMA and then there's the central station this is not a level of challenge perhaps of the community safety bill we've got a very very challenging project in an historic building you'll remember that two years ago now the initial phase of that work excuse me was completed on something of an emergency basis making the building whether preparing the masonry and the cornices that were in danger of falling off the next phase is the interior renovation which is budgeted in this coming fiscal year for design and construction that's to be design and engineering and then construction of about $6 million in fiscal 15 the cost of research is the original plan the major drivers of that have been the trades which are pricing of the trades generally is up in the last year and we've learned a lot more about the building the permanent time building committee particularly the slab that supports the trucks on what is not the ground floor requires much more extensive reinforcement than it originally been for the good news is that we reported last year that there may be a change in the mass building code that would require the building to be reconstructed to a level of seismic safety that that turned out not to be the case that was not required but the final version of the code which saved us about a million dollars and so this will be going to bid in March and April for construction to begin as soon as now any questions for the Sure Hi I ask this every year are the prospective police and fire chiefs happy with their the items in here for the capital budget yes there were some things that delayed like relatively minor items got shoved out you know right well let's in general if they were in the room I think they would say they were happy you know the way I always look at it to sort of distinguish on minor items is I mean the last the last year sort of summed it up right I mean I don't have to send anybody over to Watertown to chase after people I don't have to order anyone to chase bank robbers but I definitely want to make sure that the guy doing it has everything he needs to do it yes I mean from that perspective from from that perspective I think both would say that they haven't okay Tom on the community safety building yes do we have a budget community working for the town over seeing that we do who we're you are you're you're and we're the the name's just escaping me but we do town was that part of the the team it's a line separately town okay okay any other questions Sean what did give me I can give you my third, well Diane's got some of this, I mean I can give you my third half version of some of it, I'll give you an example. They discovered when they opened up the exterior wall that there were vents, is this where you were going? There were vents that appeared to ventilate the outside, inside of the building to the outside and there's a vent outside, they were connected in the wall. It was that sort of level of thing that when they opened it up, you know, Susan Covertz and Hager did the forensic work and there's nobody better and there were just some things that were just unimaginably bad around the original construction. So these were vents for air conditioning or something like that? Fresh air? Fresh air. Yeah. So the pair was going into the wall and coming out of the building. It didn't make any sense whatsoever. The other wall that I found should be more fine was that the walls when they were built at the top, there's a capstone over the top of the wall, it's masonry on both sides. It was supposed to be flashed appropriately so that when water hit the capstone it would run out. Instead the flashing was done in a sheet with a hole drilled through the middle of it to secure the capstone. So the water hit the stone, rolled over the edge, hit the flashing, rolled into the middle of the wall and down inside the building. I mean you don't have to be an engineer to know that drawing a hole in the middle of flashing would basically turn into a funnel as a bad call. But they couldn't tell until they got the capstones off and really saw that. So the water, I mean from apocryphally it's leaked for minute one and based on that kind of a flashing job you can see why. And of course there's attendant damage to all the water migrating through the walls and the degradation of various pieces. Taking off the brick facing and melted into the, oh it was a mess. That's just the ones I can remember. Thanks for everybody else. Any other questions? On the phase one, the plaza. By chance did the housing authority chip in or did you mind for that? Yes it did. That's under control. Okay, there are any other questions? The next speaker will be Barbara Thornton. She's, you know the finance committee has long been remarking about the need for maintenance in the town. Barbara has been a force in getting the board of select committee to create a maintenance committee on the direction of the town manager. She's been working with that committee. She'll give us an update and then talk a little bit about the planning community development project. Thank you. Yes, we've been talking about it for at least eight years in preparation for this and working on the maintenance committee. It looked back through my notes and they actually went back about eleven years, but eight years seems long enough. And in 2012 the select committee said okay we're going to do it. We're going to adopt an official maintenance plan policy and we expect you to report it to town meeting this year. So this spring is when it's going to be reported. We've met a few times, you are represented on the maintenance committee. Take a stand. A quarter of a week only. And we've met a few times, we met most recently last week. I think it was a great meeting. We'll move toward presenting an overview document with a policy and some recommendations for the town. For the town meeting and some baseline data, some recommendations on software, etc. Is what we will bring to them. The maintenance discussion that we've had won't identify goals and tasks that we need. Address long-term planning for upkeep facilities, preventative maintenance. And as well address the short-term scheduling problems that we have in the town. Sort of Mark Miano is sort of the official maintenance guy and you need to be able to find him. It often works through DPW, but it's not always clear. And ultimately we'll need to select some software and there's not a lot of software, if we've been beating the bushes and we have one good and maybe another possible lead for selecting software. The interesting thing that, and I'm going to paraphrase Cheyenne from our last meeting. There are really three levels of maintaining our facilities and we've invested a lot. As you heard from Mike and we'll hear again, well as you know, from the fire, police, etc., public safety schools. We've invested a lot in our capital infrastructure in this town. And we have, I think, not that I'm precious, a very good capital planning committee to oversee how that investment is done. How we kind of set it out and get it started. And we have with DPW and Mark Miano, the people that work in the schools and the town at the custodian level, we have a good repair system. We're missing this middle piece, as Diane made this point at our meeting last week. We're missing the maintenance piece. We have a huge investment and we're not maintaining it. One of the challenges that came up as we discussed it last week that we're going to have to deal with is not only how much money is it going to cost to maintain it, but first we're going to need to show that we can maintain it and we're going to try and do it with existing money. We're going to try and identify where we're going to ask any maintenance men. Down the road, we may move towards, I think it's more like a capital planning model where we ask for peace, but we're going to prove the need before we ask. Secondly, there's a question about exactly how we decide who is going to get maintenance. I know from, and I was talking a minute about the human services piece, but I know Christine is wondering how she's going to fix up the buildings that are associated with human services. And she thought she was supposed to do it on her own. She wasn't tuned in to going to DPW. Some departments are more comfortable calling on DPW and Mark Miano than others. We may come up with a DPW-centered model. We may come up with a facility-centered model. We may say it's too soon to say and just kind of muddle through. One thing that just, I'll talk to you in a minute about the master planning process, at the master planning process on public facilities, people that are studying the towns of departments in preparation for the public facilities piece of the master plan said that Arlington, compared to other comfortable towns, is underinvested in DPW by a significant amount. So there's hard number of evidence for our underinvestment in maintenance in the town. Any questions? Are there any questions? Joe? In this plan that you'll be presenting in the spring, are you going to be talking about the high school? The maintenance of the high school? No, we're not going to talk about specific buildings. The maintenance in the high school, I immediately started thinking about, that's really a capital, that's more on the capital radar screen right now than on the maintenance radar screen. Was there a question behind that? No, no. You mentioned underinvestment of the DPW, were there specific areas of underinvestment? They had a very general number. Tell me, do you remember, like 1.8? It's about a 2% less than the average. Yeah, yeah. In broad terms, were there any specific areas of the DPW that they felt were, could be? They just looked at the number, they did, I think, look at personnel and dollars. Does that like roads or water? No. Okay. Some people don't like fishes. Yes. Steven? A question on maintenance. Specifically, in this situation, these are one of the most school buildings that the Recreation Department uses, the gymnasium, for example, and other user groups do. And sometimes it seems to me that in Mark, he's doing the best he can trying to juggle maintenance scheduling. But there are certain facilities that are used so much that they really require annual maintenance, specifically on the Recreation and Gymnasium floors, where I don't think I, which is going to be done this summer, I understand. And the odds that are on every other year cycle. And those gymnasiums are used all the time. And it seems to me that there's a way to coordinate both the school, the Recreation Department, and the Athletic Department. If that is to identify, this needs to be done. It's not something that we can think about every other year, but because of the users, because of the fees that are coming in for users, that it's going to be maintained better. Because they're revenue sources, but there's also safety issues. So is there much discussion in between just not looking at the jurisdiction of the building, but looking at the users to continue that dialogue? Absolutely. You're right on target. What we need to identify is that there are things that, if we gather the right stakeholders around the table and meet in a defined process once a year, we can identify those problems. We're not doing this often enough. We need to increase the rotation. The other piece that I alluded to would be short-term work order problem are the things that spring up all of a sudden unexpected, that are substantial maintenance things. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions? Thank you. I'm next on your list. Planning and community development. Under review ongoing projects is a new project or relatively new. It's been kind of going on in town generally. How many people have been here, have been to one of the master planning meetings? And how many have not? I'm telling you, this is the future of the town. I don't want to overstate it, but I think they're doing a great job on going out and talking to people, getting input. They've broken down the master plan into subsections. The first one was on long-range planning. That dealt with some very interesting zoning issues for the town, which reflect on what GAPA planning committee and probably FNCOM was also interested in. And that is how much money can, given our four-year miles of acreage, can we get for taxes versus what we need for services? And the next one, which was last week, it says here next Wednesday, but it was last Wednesday, was public facilities and maintenance, excuse me, public facilities and public services. What services do we want and how and what are the facilities that provide those services, including some recreational buildings, they'll be a separate open space meeting. But this, again, was, I think, very interesting for the town. And this is where the comparison of the DPW money for compared to other towns came up. The housing will be on Wednesday, those of you, and I'm looking at you. How does that go? I expect to see you there. I'll see if they can change the meeting time. The master planning process. I'm representing the master planning process for the capital planning committee. Who's representing it for FNCOM? I don't remember. Okay. We have the master planning committee. We have Carol Ross, she divorced a couple of weeks ago through the whole thing today. I know she was under the impression as of today that I was representing my city. Parking study for Arlington Center, they'll be meeting tomorrow night on that. I don't know if Mike wants to add anything to it. I think it's not just for Arlington Center, it's for overall, for the town. And there are proposed projects that you're going to hear more about on the building improvements for the town rental properties for Mike in just a minute. And last on my list is the 2016 rink plan. This is something that Tony has been very involved in. It's not the building that is owned by the town. It will take a lot of maintenance money to improve it. This is not something that the town has traditionally done. And this ties back to this whole question of a maintenance policy. Are we going to start investing in buildings that we use that don't own? And the next bullet under there is the policy issue on debt, which is related to the example of the town. Charles, do you want to speak? Yes. In the capital plan you'll see some expenditure, I think it's a million dollars plan in 2016. But I think the word, there has to be quotation marks around the plan. The Ed Burns Morrill rink, as you know, is an enterprise fund. So it's supposed to be paying for its own capital improvements and debt service out of the fees. And right now it looks like that it's not going to be able to pay to fund those improvements. So there is a policy decision that has to be made by the Board of Selectment because the state owns that building. And whether or not the town wants to put a million dollars into that building that is not going to be paid for out of the fees because Joe Connolly says they can't raise the rates anymore. So that would become a direct tax burden on the town competing against the services when the state would decide to take that for other purposes or whatever in the future. So that's not something that we have traditionally done in the town pay for capital improvements and property that we don't own. I think that's something that has to be addressed by the Board of Selectment. John, does the state owns the land? Do they own the land? I actually don't know the answer to that. Brian, two reasons. I give you a reason to say they own the land. And I believe they own the land. So it's the state. That's the reason that I put no questions. Are there any questions on that? Okay. Do we have some kind of contract with the state? We have a lease. The lease I think has 15 years or 14 years left. And in the lease we had an obligation to do some capital improvements in the building which we've done. And you see that. Mike mentioned the line for the $3,000, which is the money that a break of paying towards that debt service. And so the question is, how much more do we have to put into that? And it competes with the fire station and all of it. But as far as you're saying that the state could take the building back, presumably they can't take it back while the lease is still on. Presumably. But city of all it's city of all, you know. Okay, Tom. Charlie might answer my question just then, but I remember when we signed the lease to those on that committee, we was actually a bid among other organizations out of town for that ring. We had put together a maintenance plan that we guaranteed them we would do certain capital improvements over a certain amount of time. Have we completed that? Yes. Is there any way we could buy it? Is there? Above my favorite. No, I'm not sure. The state has been very banned and hawkish. Do we know when to pay it rent? I think it's about a year or two. No, it's 1% of the revenue. So it steps up to 2% next year. And so when I met with Joe a few weeks ago, the other sort of gotcha was that after five years, we had to pay those, make those lease payments, but it was five years from when it was the lease was presented, not five years from when it was signed. So that's why, and that was signed three years ago, but it was five years ago that the whole negotiation began. So that's why you'll see when I present the ring budget that there was a huge lease payment we had to make in addition to the ongoing, the starting of the lease or what we thought was a start and actually it started two years ago to pay that. Okay, have you got any other questions on that? No. Is it true that the ring budget also pays for the rent? Well, the recreation department collects money both from the, I don't know if the fund is intermingled or not. No, the recreation department and the rink are separate. So we don't take any money from the rink anymore but the rink makes it shoulder the rink. Yeah, the rink stays within the rink and the rink department needs it. Right, and the rent is part of the rent. Okay, you've got John? Does anyone have any other way to select them and why can't you start seeing this issue? We have not presented it to them yet. It's not in this year's budget so we will raise this issue in the next capital budget cycle. A year from now? Well, between now and a year from now. The amount that we're talking about, remember we said earlier that the idea with the five-year capital plan is to tell people about what's coming in the future. And this is a fiscal year, 16. Yeah, 16. And the next fiscal year is 15. So this is two years away in terms of expenditures. Well, you know, you all planned to raise the issue at family. I guess that would be my question. Oh, we'll mention it. Yeah, it's the same. But it's not, I mean, it's really just, the swagger we'll have always been. Joe seems to be in the rock and hard place in the sense that he can't raise the rates on the talents he's picking up from raising the... The states. The states. And it's gotta take up half of the state. We're picking up some too and that, but at the same time, you know, other restrictions were the least understanding about families. John, I'm not trying to be glib. Every department in the town faces constraints like that in some fashion or another. I mean, they have just another constraint on the town. I understand. But that's why the... Well, I just wanted to have to address it. But the rift was a choice on the part of the town. We didn't have to do that. I agree with you, Joe. I agree. But we're there. That's much, yeah. If there's a problem, let's say, for example, it says a million dollars for the work that you're talking about. Yeah. And we've got another 10 years left on the lease. Probably 14. So if there's a million dollars to be energized or have a useful life of 14 years, that might... Yeah, it can't be longer than 14 years. Long can't be longer than the length of the lease. Right. So we've gone through all those calculations. And he just told us that he can't directly finance that out of the earnings from the enterprise. Okay, so any other questions? Charlie? So next, we had a discussion the other night about the town of buildings. I think Mike is going to present... Mike's got a little work on this. There's on page 19 of your package. There's a summary. We'll turn it over to Mike. So the town owns and operates eight buildings that it operates as rental properties. The first three that I'll talk about under the Urban Renewal Fund, and those are at the Central School, 23 Maple Street, which is right next to the Central School, and the Jefferson Cutter House. As of the end of February, the current balance in the Urban Renewal Fund is just shy of 279,000 as you see on the slide. The Central School houses a number of tenants, one of which is our Department of Health and Human Services. It houses two state agency departments and several other organizations. 23 Maple Street is a tenant at Nill's situation right now. We expect to go out to bid for a formal lease this year. Currently, there's an organization there that serves at-risk youth, and they've been in that building for some time now. Jefferson Cutter House, we have no formal leases there. The Chamber of Commerce operates out of there as well as the Dallarm Museum. The next two properties both went out to bid this winter. First is the Gibb School. This is for East Arlington Junior High School. It went out to bid this winter that bidding process is now closed for formal leases. There are five rental spaces in that building, one of which is the gymnasium, which leads to our recreation department for a flat rate of 15,000 every year. The other four spaces are leased out to a few different organizations. We decided on a three-year lease period because that building has been surplus by the school committee and town meeting only through FY 17, so we were only able to offer as long leases three years. We do have a contingency extension that pending approval to surplus the building for longer than that. The extension can be offered for five years. The Parmenter School went out to bid. It has been surplus for much longer, so we went out with a five-year lease that also begins this July. The interesting thing about both of these properties is this year we just instituted a capital contribution into the lease agreements, so what we're requiring is at the mineral price 50 cents a square foot of lease space to help offset capital needs in the building in the future. The other three properties are the Dowling Library of the ACMI leases. That lease expires at the end of FY 16. Ryder Street, which is a former DPWDR, is now leased by Malacata Landscaping, and that lease expires at the end of 15. And we have the Nelma Gilboa House, which is currently vacant, unfortunately, last year in January, the tenant passed away, and we have not been able to fill that building. We expect that to go back out to bid this spring, and hopefully get someone in place at that point. And the table below shows profit and loss beginning in 11, you have 11, 12, 13, and year to date, 14. We also included 13's revenue figures for the year just to give you a snapshot of what those revenues are. All the buildings are projected to show the positive cash flow. We've got only possible exception being Nelma Gilboa, because we have started to assume the expenses for that while the building is vacant, but as soon as we get a tenant in there, we think that will more than cover up those expenses that we're trying now. Any questions on that? I hear the town manager is going to be looking for a new house. That's great. Tom? On the Ryder Street property, we don't put any money into that building. No, they pay for all the operating expenses as well. And so you'll see in the chart that for 13, the revenue matches the property loss. Paul? Why does the Gibbs have a year to date loss? Currently, mostly because of maintenance costs and things associated with plowing right now. But last, this past summer, we lost our accounts payable person in the planning department, and we fell behind in billing and collections on utility costs and rental payments. We have only now filled and have started to recoup some of those losses. Is depreciation taken into account to calculate the profit loss? In the profit loss, we do account for capital costs for the debt service on projects to some of the buildings. The Urban Renewal Fund, all the capital costs come out of that fund. We do not borrow any funds from that for any of those buildings, but depreciation is particularly low. So in any way, instead of going out for this formal bid process from Elkville Bowl, we could turn it over to a real estate broker. Settle rate. I'm not sure how we would... I'd have to check it out with Chairman Officer. The limitation is pretty big in terms of how much we're looking today. The process makes it very difficult to go through. It went out to bid last summer. We didn't receive any prospective bidders or people interested. I think perhaps it's good. Because just the amount of money we're talking, maybe about $2,000 a month, I think the last lease rate was $1,800 a month. So for $1,800 a month, it seems to me that we could, like I said, just turn it over to a real estate agent and let them rent it out. Because how many years are we renting it for? What's the bidder? I'm not sure what the most recent one was. It's usually at three or five years. People are going to rent it for a year lease and then go it over. It's a very cumbersome process to rent a house. It might be fine for the gifts or buildings. It's a very different thing for a town. If you could check that out. Okay, are there any other questions? I have a question. The property that the DAV is located, that's a town building as well, is it? I believe it is, yes. Is there a reason why it's not on the list here? To be honest, I don't know much about that property. I can look into it further from the information about it. Anybody else? Go over to come back up and tell us about the library and human services. The library has three interesting points that I want to bring to your attention. The first is they're moving toward RFID. Those are the little gadgets that allow them to track more easily where the books are and checking them in. The Fox Library got a real bonus. I don't know how this fell into their lap but they got $50,000 worth of RFID equipment and processing. So it's virtually free for the Fox Library right now. I believe at this point it's up and running and that will enable them to understand better how useful it will be to invest in RFID for the main library. They're under a considerable amount of pressure from the Minuteman Library Network right now to make that investment even if it doesn't prove immediately cost effective. There's a multiplier effect around this decision. If they decide to participate with the MLN's wishes there will be big benefits kind of a carrot. But if they decide not to make the investment there will be a stick. So they will be... they are leaning very much in favor even if the dollars don't show it to be useful to make the investment in RFID. The second one is the... Yeah, sure. I was in the library just the other day far from the book and the library was very excited and I'm not saying how wonderful he thought it was going to be just a thought. I think they're assuming that there's going to be some saving on the carpal tunnel syndrome and other indirect costs. The way Ryan explained it though you could take a whole stack of books and then they could not only just be bar coded I mean read all together but the decision about where they get shelved is also printed out. The librarian doesn't have to make that decision for each one so it would save a lot of time. Yeah. The librarian has come to Arlington with a very progressive attitude about what a library is and he sees the library is offering a makerspace and I'm not sure if you're on top of the movement in our country right now. That's one word makerspace. Makerspace. There we go. Right here. On top of it. Not even a dash. One more. So makerspace is where people can come and get together and talk and even have the equipment there and I'm not sure how far Ryan is intending to go but to have a 3D printer for example or things that they can put together and finally to make available the opportunity for them to share software and negotiate or talk about things that they want to make and it's I think a very exciting thing and very appropriate for Arlington because Arlington I think is known for having a lot of inventors and independent workers and independent businesses and artists in town. The last thing that the library is looking at is more information for on long-term planning. The library has always been my example of a well-planned department for looking forward at their capital planning needs. There were the first two I believe to invest in the on-site insight before which is one example of a report that says these are the capital improvements that you want to do on your elevators over time, this year, this year. That report has run out. They need it updated. They also need for the makerspace projects some space utilization planning. Can I just slide, any question on that or I'm going to slide right in with the human services? Yeah. Any comment on any sort of makerspace plans? This should not be a cost to the town. There should be a revenue generator to the town because typically in any makerspace situation some organization rents a big chunk of space and then deals with it on a very interesting and formal way, but it's not something we want the town to be involved in except providing some space with a rent attach to it. Okay. You didn't mention that. I guess I'm making that point there should be a revenue generator about a cost. How would you say we're doing with the world capital funding on the library? I mean I asked a question because I think for a bunch of years when the budget was getting tighter the library became a quick and easy target for a lot of things, maybe either capital or operating, so I'm just wondering. My perspective? Yeah. I think because they have that report they've done very well. They didn't fall behind because every year they were able to say this is the year that we need to replace the roof, this is the year that we need to replace the elevators, this is the year that we need to replace the stairs, and it was documented and it came with the cost to the capital planning committee and it was always small enough that we could fit it in and there were big expenses. But I think they've done very well because of that advanced planning. That's my way ahead of the five year plan. I think they're a real model. I'm glad that the new library was talking about different configurations to the library. I think it's one area that technology is catching up with really quick. I mean since my wife got the one of those fancy electronic books she doesn't have a book in her hand at all. At what point does the library become replaced with a website? She doesn't go to the library more than she does the Amazon. She doesn't go to the library actually, to be downloaded. At what point did both piles of musty books just erupt suddenly? You're going to make the librarian fly. It's like what's happening to journalism with Jeff Bezos in Washington Post World? To that I'm not too far off talking but the one thing I think the library's done a good job of is sort of reinventing the one thing I would say is I'll be honest, I never could. I don't think I've ever set foot in the Arlington Library. But with that being said my wife drops my five year old off at preschool four days a week at the church two doors down and then my three old jobs out there two days but the two days she doesn't drop them off they go right into the library. And they what? They're all sorts of programs they are and they're all sorts of cool things and they spend a few hours and then they just walk across that small little parking lot pick them up and off they go. So they've done it, I think they've done it. Anything. I feel like the Oscars, the music is playing here. Health and Human Services. Winterburn, Robbins House, etc. the renovations issue I mentioned before this is an example of a building that needs to be maintained and Christine was kind of tearing her hair thinking I don't know who to contract for I don't know what to do and she's now brought in Mark Miano and DPW but I'd really like to get that cleaned up. The other thing that I think is notable about Health and Human Services is that Arlington is designated as a food desert. We all fed around this table. I don't know if you knew that we were a food desert but there are a lot of people who don't have money to feed themselves and the Human Services Department which the master planning group said is far more doing far more and using more of the town's resources than comparably sized towns. I wouldn't say it's less efficient. I would say they're exhibiting a multiplier effect. They raised the money to do the food pantry and now they're looking for more space. They're looking for 1,000 square feet of space with refrigeration and doing fundraisers and looking for grants to do that. The senior center also is looking at a change in space and I use the space utilization term for the library as they talk about as Ryan is talking about how to reconfigure the space in the library for these new uses. The Arlington books the senior center is also looking at ways of attracting young seniors. I assume that's like me. And the space utilization means we have a space forget the walls how are we going to use that space in a new way? So those are two studies that I'm expecting is going to hit the capital planning next year or so. Any questions? Yes. Are we a food desert because of our lack of pantry services? No. How are we a food desert if we have she looks like she knows. We have a lot of people who need food. So it's not defined by what food sources and resources are available in the towns defined by the income of the people? I think it's more complicated than that actually. I think it's also available affordable. You may be right, there may be a factor in that algorithm that says we've got whole foods but we don't have it's the income it's the percentage of people it's the age it's what food they can afford or how they're able to spend their money Where's the food pantry that I love now? Last time I remember it was Marathon Street a church on Marathon and it's a stairs to go down which makes it complicated I was going to ask who designated the food and why? I was an official I've heard it I was surprised I hadn't heard it and hear about it nationally Food doesn't mean there aren't a lot of good places to buy foods in our bodies convenience stores but we have many food stores on all sorts of different levels I can't really answer this question it's the mice aspect we wouldn't be possible to get back to who designated the place of food doesn't with a link to our website We'll ask Christine You're going to meet with her? Yes Great Is Robin's house under the historic register? I don't know probably probably Renovations would have to I don't remember that external but the last time it was Renovation in the early 80s I think So the next subject is Public Works starting with Parks and Recreation Public Works directly with Paul Olson former member of the finance committee Good evening I'd like to start with Parks and Recreation some of the highlights from last year very important the ADA evaluation that has been awarded to Institute of Human Design very quickly Florence Avenue Playground was I think almost complete for the winter months two important additions North Union Spray Pool and Helvet Street Playground the design is being completed being advertised for bits the Spray Pool and North Union that hopefully will be up by July 1st and hopefully winter will be over by July 1st This year I think one of the highlights I think we're finally going to complete the tennis court process that's going to be major renovation where I think the surface is going to be reconstructed hopefully for much longer time as you may or may not know the last five month tennis court just celebrated this silver anniversary and we wanted to make sure we got to them before their golden anniversary hopefully that will take effect fairly quickly and also there will be some side work with the playground in that nature I'm not sure exactly but it looks like we're keeping them basically replacing the sand surface with a kind of rubberized surface that hopefully will last longer and be less likely to erode during the climate weather The last but not least is really we're going to utilize $50,000 to start implementing the recommendations of the ADA study Any questions or any additions? Okay we'll move on to the public works highlights from last year high school culvert has been completed the cemetery water system improvements bid has been completed the cemetery expansion has basically been negated so there will be no action taken on that front This year I think some of the highlights in regards to the sidewalk grant program are continuing receiving CDBG funds, I think that will be $125,000 the title will contribute $65,000 on their own and obviously depending upon what Washington does the impact on CDBG obviously the lost CDBG funds will seriously slow down the work while program We're also pursuing a FEMA grant for flooding We have to provide 25% and so we've appropriated $100,000 last year FY14-125 this year and we'll finish up $300,000 in FY16 One issue that came up this year in the capital plan Department of Public Works Mike Rademacher introduced basically a renovation of the town hall yard for public works There are a number of issues that he feels that the yard itself is terribly inefficient in terms of not automating certain functions and some of these functions that are manually performed with heavy equipment is more dangerous than it should be and there is also a situation where you mentioned trying to get the entire workforce in a single room as if possible at the town yard for just a lot of chopped up rooms which really makes communication difficult at best I think it's something that we're going to be exploring obviously the design plan takes place I scheduled for 2017 so there's going to be some obviously going forward next year to make sure that we're all in sync in terms of what needs to be done Once again we're going to renew moving forward we're going to renew the incremental town hall renovations and that is my discussions with Mike Rademacher it's basically the ongoing maintenance that I think Lauren has alluded to that we really need to fight an old building with a lot of issues with it and wear and tear it just really needs to be done on an ongoing basis hopefully this will install any more damage to the building that we should be able to avoid last but not least is really the enterprise brakes that are going to be restructured for those who may not be aware of it we went to a three-tier water system and the build will be started going up shortly that will have the new three-tier system and going forward in July the town is going to institute quarterly building on the real estate we're going to be in a situation where the people that get their builds in July may have the normal six months but they may have as little as one month the ongoing in terms of the meter replacement program two million dollars and as you may know we did a major renovation on DPW with the automatic collection of water usage and that was completed about a year and a half ago so this is just an ongoing maintenance program that is hopefully going to be more efficient more update information more accurate information in terms of water usage in town any questions okay Joe what happened to the fall to the cemetery expansion I mean do you know any more why basically my understanding talking to the DPW is that they didn't feel that they had the necessary funds or that there wasn't this space that's simply justified as you may know we're going to the cemetery commission has 250,000 I think the colobarium and I think there's been kind of a shift in focus and vision so to speak okay Grant I'm going to give you a grant from the Riverbrook Fund loose locations and that's who's right that's my understanding that's the area that if you start from the old Brigham Center that parking lot and it goes up towards that apartment building along the Riverbrook that's the area that it's going to address it's going up towards the heights which part is it the Colbert? yes it goes beyond that that's the street behind Gold's Gym yes I'm not sure if it's going to go that far but it's in the general direction okay are there any others right now regarding the meter replacement program what's been the return on the wireless meter replacements what do you say what's been the return on the dusting again I don't have a figure in terms of return on the dusting power but I can tell you that from my observations at the treasurer's office the accuracy in terms of the water bills has increased dramatically reducing the number of estimates which usually are very labor intensive in the sense that you have to have repeated interactions with the person who does what holds on does not have the accurate information of the water reading so from an efficiency standpoint I think it has improved dramatically there are some dead spots in the areas where you're not getting the information but that's something that's very quickly identified in terms of not getting the information so there's very quick remedial steps taken to alleviate that situation so the labor savings we should be able to put a dollar value on it before we invest another 2 million dollars in return I don't think they've calculated in terms of the return on investment in an actual percentage but we can see if we can figure out that it's like I'm at the street in the street lights there's been a very nice return on going down it's nice to see the same kind of return on this investment I'll ask the question I was going to ask which is I think this is one of our follow-up when we started this program I had asked the question a couple years ago but because when this was pitched to us by the DPW director not the Karamona prior one we were told that we were going to have reductions in overtime and costs and you're not going to have to go door to door and blah blah blah and then they started getting put in or they got put in and I had asked the question of where the savings was because there was no decrease in the labor budget and we started getting this sort of zigging zag about well and the people who do other productive things that they weren't doing even though I don't know what they weren't doing and we didn't get a real answer on that and now we're sort of back getting two million dollars more but like Alan said we never got an answer for the first million where that went that's a perennial problem that the capital plan today has and I have to say and I'm not saying this in a pejorative fashion but it's very hard in a public entity to quantify return on investment because there's a couple of things going on you know the overall cost of labor is going up all the time but we have a proposition to enhance women over the span so there's constant re-adjustment not here you don't because it's enterprise-farmed no we should do because the selectments have the rates they don't raise the rates here to get the same revenue coming and in any event the workers that are used in that system are coming from the town side anyway so it's not easy to identify those numbers the other comment I was going to make is about those new water meters it's also to upgrade the water meters the DEP who's interested the Department of Environmental is that the water on the state we're under consent order to improve ourselves there's a lot of water meters around the town that run slowly, have a finite lifetime so they have to be replaced in order to have accurate water meter readings and that's part of this expenditure as well so not all of the meters have been replaced which is why we're asking for this or we're getting different meters different meters so all of the meters were replaced fairly recently and now we're going to replace them all again? no more than 10 years ago oh alright, okay some of us just have one memory stick any other questions? do you have a sense of maybe some of the projects that you're thinking of doing on the town hall in the town hall renovation? yeah, I tried getting that from Mike Bradamock he was compiling a list but since it's not really going to start until FY 16 he really hadn't done a lot of hard numbers on it but generally it's a small 25,000, 15,000 type of project that you know, it's the best you can do and it's the highest priority in terms of preventing further damage or fixing something it's a serious problem could you see at some point some of this type of work moved over from the capital budget into the maintenance budget? okay, there are any other questions? okay thank you now we're going to move into some general subjects associated with schools and the first thing I wanted to start was to talk about the Thompson School that finished this last fall and the students are now in the school I just wanted to comment that in my mind this is a model project that was solved in the face of a lot of problems the rebuild the last one was the 2000 the number of the school budgets school rebuilding budgets that took place between 2000 and when we hit the Thompson were well over budget so we were as we got towards the last several schools we were tightly squeezed on the budget sense at one point the school department wanted to spend $33 or $36 million on this project we actually got it done for $20 million and that was primarily through the efforts of Tony Landetta and the chairman of the finance committee and the capital budget committee that helped guide the school department to come to a more reasonable approach to this capital expenditure even at the $20 million level we didn't have enough money left in the debt exclusion authorization to finish that project without going out for another debt exclusion but through a combination of selling town assets in using money, using the funds from the non-exempt capital budget and the state reimbursement and some funds remaining in the debt exclusion we were able to put together a financial package to get this done Tony sat on the Thompson school building committee working with the product manager, the architects and the construction people and the MSBA and I think that the project was a great success it came in on time and apparently so far under budget so I want to turn over to Tony that gives the detail good evening I'd just like to go back for one second on the meters the meters we have are 30 years old they also are not able to measure the quantity of water the way it should be especially the minimum they can register is 100 cubic feet the new meters would be one cubic foot and as Mike looks at his program on the point of savings I cannot give you a number but Allenkin has a lot of unaccounted for water about 28% of our water is unaccounted for and the intent is these meters and the finer the billies it had to get down to what precise cubic feet measuring we're looking to try to get that down to a much lower level so there is a cost savings with these new meters I just wanted to refresh myself when you were talking about it look at the Thompson school the next sheet gives you some statistics on the process I do think it was a very successful process I enjoyed being on the committee I got the school department and superintendent Brody and Sherry Dunn there and Ian were great to work with we had a lot of successful discussion through the process the school was completed the children were back in school this fall we're currently working on punch list items and I don't understand it needs to be not major issues but there are some that have to be addressed most of them hopefully being addressed over the next month or so there will be some work done this spring or the summer on the outside of the building we can't really do that right now the intent is for the punch list items to be addressed and we are holding $130,000 in in security to make sure the punch list items and the outside work are done and all indications I did check in with superintendent Brody and Sherry Dunn and it looks like they're getting resolved the contractor is there the president is getting things done the final construction number was just over $15,000,000 it was bid at $14,657,000 so we had change orders in the amount of $473,000 which is about 3.2% I also would say that some of that $143,000 was for things that a couple of items that we had as an all additive bid and we decided because of the bid to bring it back in so that became a change order we also had a planned change order for a puring of the concrete floors which we had to do so even though we're showing $473,000 in change orders a good part of that was for planned plan changes so I had so after the architect HMFH and we did have an OPM on the project PMA it sounds like an alphabet but I don't know what PMA or HMFH means but they did a very good job I thought the people we had on the consultant side knew their stuff and did a good job so we do have a balance in the contingency fund amounting to $409,000 and assuming everything goes according to plan that would be available for other needs such as strata yes Do you have any kind of example of things on the punch list just so you can get some senses Diane maybe a lot there was a drain properly that had to be flushed out the outside work the seating the landscaping things like the building still operational and thank you one more question I didn't quite know what you said about concrete floors when they the concrete floors the moisture content has to be a certain level before you can apply the tile alright so given the time of year we were bidding the project and the aggressive schedule we wanted to hold them to they had to dry out the floors we did some testing to make sure what the water content was if we were lucky it would have been fine we could have applied the elastic but we couldn't get the moisture level down and around the holding things up we basically brought in heaters to extract the moisture out of the slab before we put the tile down that was the nature of it thank you any other questions thank you ok just to go to Stratton the new frontier our next school project is the Stratton school the last elementary school that we need to address and the way we're approaching this is to we don't see this as a major project as compared to the other schools this is more of a rehab, repair what do we need to do to make the Stratton school have parity with the other schools in town so the plan basically is to keep the building and what can we do to enhance it so a working committee is established by the superintendent remember us on it and we're looking at having dialogue with the educators and parents and town officials what can we do to have parity at the Stratton school we're looking at technology we're looking at the physical plant how the school is used I can tell you some things that have come to mind come to the forefront thus far are the media center if you look at the media center at Stratton it's about half the size of the other schools and maybe we should have a larger media center at Stratton as a way of getting parity we have a skeleton of a funding plan we have 1.25 available from proposed warring so until we did on Harding I mentioned the contingency on Thompson for $400,000 we may need to look at the sale of another town asset similar to what we did with Thompson and it's a question mark whether MSBA will participate given the kind of project we're talking about here we certainly will explore that option to try to get some contribution from MSBA but we're going into it right now not counting it the plan is to have the parity study if you will take place the balance of this year and come back to capital in August and September with some idea of what we feel is required to get parity and some process to do that so I have a number for you right now but that process is ongoing any questions? I know there was an issue they had I did a tour after a couple of months ago and they were having an issue with the carpets first floor last floor floor basically must be so is there anything in here to get rid of those carpets and put tile on them? definitely they said we have a plan for July when it starts that would be done prior to the initiation thank you any other questions? next thing is minivan high school can I also go back to we're talking about me and Thompson tell me it's also about a pound representative minivan building do you pay an extra for that? well just to give you a status report on minivan the administration this district has hired an opm Skanska they were brought in on board December 2012 Castle Blues is the design team one of the big issues with minivan is the student population there are two numbers that have been floated by the administration and by MSVA one is 435 students the other is 800 435 is really based upon the in-district population the 800 is an outside number which includes bringing other people into the district as you know there are 16 in-district communities we have completed the first part of the feasibility study and we have some numbers as to what the expected cost range is going to be they range from $54 million to $160 million the $54 million will be looking at the current building and doing what needs to be done to preserve the building update the building but not expand it basically keep the space the way it is but update the heating some of the structural work the windows that type of thing the 160 looks at having 800 students and having it in a timely new school and it would be located towards the Lincoln town life in that area beyond the play field so kind of west of the play field so that's the range of options there are several options in between repeater and add renovate and add different combinations of the range that we're talking about MSBA kind of pushed back on the administration about a month ago and said listen we've been carrying this along we conducted the first part of the feasibility study looking at 435 students and 800 students we really need to make a decision as to what it's going to be so above was taken at the building committee and above was I don't need to that's a 10 minute vote that's a 10 minute vote or a final vote that's a 10 minute vote you still have to formulate a number it's less than 800 it's alright it's my hearing less than 800 is what you said it's less than 800 so obviously there's going to be a lot of discussion about how we get to 800 too and one of the things we are asking is how we can get to 800 how are we going to get to that number what communities are going to become part of the district what vocational schools are maybe going to come into in the end I personally think there's a lot of questions on that subject how that's going to happen there was a revised regional agreement and Charles is the expert on that getting the questions and as far as the schedule is concerned kind of laid out what the plan is we look to have the revised agreement approved between March and June of this year the team is looking to submit the schematic report by August of this year a final schematic design completed in September of next year and then take the project to a vote with the district communities in June of 2016 after which the final design will then take place any questions on that what's the sequence in terms of the revised agreement versus the decisions about planning in the school how do they match up I know what you said present school to me present formalations without the building in the school that Florida is under I wish you could give me the answers to that question I'm sorry? I wish you could give me the answers to that question I think the answer to John your question was what's the generalization between the regional agreement and the new building in theory there they're not connected in theory the citizens all member towns can vote for the new building to be built even under the current agreement in practice the town of Arlington has said that they will not support a new building until a revised agreement takes place and then even after the revised agreement they reserve judgment on the exact proposal I believe that Belmont and Lexington can have taken essentially similar positions as well as possibly some other towns but they are legally independent but politically they're connected okay do you have a question so I'm going to begin okay thank you very much thank you for all your good work and one more please so the next has a little bit more to do with the Arlington school system Diane is going to tell us about the new spending $400,000 $400,000 how much? $50,000 new computers for the school system this year and Diane is going to tell us some of the rationale for that and also talk about the impending requirements for Arlington High School okay the three big stories for the school department they're more about when we do our presentation in two weeks from tonight our enrollment growth the common core and the new park assessment the MCAS the standardized assessment in Massachusetts following the national sample of the common core this year as part of these changes we're also part of the race to the top funding Massachusetts getting race to the top money they've implemented a new teacher evaluation system that we are required to participate in in order to participate in this teacher evaluation system it allows us to do two things it allows us to manage the elaborate teacher evaluation system and to use student data analytics so that a teacher can analyze various testings on a student to see where they're strong or they're weak they can look at their whole class and see oh you know in a math class looks like everybody missed this fraction concept better go back and do it again unfortunately though many of the teachers' machines are so antiquated that they're unable to utilize the software that we purchased 280 to 500 teachers have software that cannot run this baseline edge with the whole analytics component in any way that's useful many of them also can't use power school which is the system we use for keeping track of student attendance data grades and such we have every placing computers on about a seven year schedule all along the capital budget committee has been investing in this and we've been keeping up with it but the rate of computer obsolescence is just accelerated over time also the demands for what a teacher needs for a computer to change baseline edge being the most outstanding example of this but also we need technology in the classrooms in a whole different way this new assessment, the park assessment will largely be a computerized test and not only is it on a computer but it requires a student to demonstrate computer skills such as highlighting, cutting and pasting assistant superintendent Laura Cheson attended a workshop recently where one of the math questions of I believe a third grader was to measure the side of this triangle and they had to know that there was a ruler tool down here, they had to select it they had to drag it out, they had to be able to rotate it to go flush with the edge of the triangle and then they had to see based on the four multiple choice answers what the unit of measurement was best so if they picked an inch measurement ruler they'd see that none of the answers work so they'd have to go back and change it to a centimeter ruler and bring it up and measure it so this requires not only the analytics that part the park assessment and the common core are pushing for but a high degree of technical skill which is using a computer with drag and drop teachers so in order to do this we feel it's really necessary to get enough technology in the classrooms for students to become more proficient and with that in mind the other half of our capital budget request for computers is focused on elementary classroom technology at this point we're going to be able with this funding to have one iPad part for each two classrooms right now the Thompson has one to one computing with iPads but the elementary school is very greatly in the number of iPad parts that we have with this funding this year we'll be able to bring it to parody throughout the elementary school which will allow kids to roll into the middle and high school with equal levels of we hope computer technological abilities Park will be tested the park exam will be tested this year I believe at one of the elementary schools and the middle school but only a few select classrooms and a few grades to just demo the test it's not entirely clear when the park will be at absolute switch over from MCAST to park but we are planning to go to park next year which my understanding is currently that you're allowed to be either on MCAST or on park but if you go with park your test scores don't count against you and then the year after that park becomes the real deal so it behooves us to be able to move forward with park one of the upsides of the park exam versus the MCAST is that it feeds back into the student analytics and it gives more not quite real time but faster time evaluation so the students are relatively strong and weak so the curriculum can be adapted teaching classroom practice can be shifted in a faster way than is possible at MCAST Questions on school technology okay to fall are the computers for the teachers laptops that they bring home and use working from home also I believe at the high school it's predominantly the high school where the teachers are the most substandard and I believe we have priced for laptops Bill, is there any coordination with IT on the IT department? Yes, in the school department budget you'll see that we've added some enhanced funding for another desktop support person and another higher end IT support person to help with this rollout and to support the IT infrastructure we've added a phenomenal number of pieces of IT equipment for the last five years and we just need more infrastructure in terms of bodies to help that more efficiently I'm not going to put you on the spot but we have a lot of new members can you explain how town and school IT work like department wise because obviously when I met the director that's the school IT department the town IT department we share a director yes I just wanted people to understand that we fund our own personnel but we share the director Okay, do we have any questions John? Do you have any knowledge or indication of the security of the combination of software and interconnection especially in terms of grades and things like that in other words suppose I was a very concerned about someone hacking in or changing their grades I can't speak to that directly I do know the power school is not unique to Arlington it is a system for grades that's used nationally and it's web hosted so I would imagine that I would hope their encryption is fairly sophisticated it's not a homegrown system by any chance it's not a homegrown system by any chance but I think I might see Dexter Okay, the high school as we know that the there's been an effort in Arlington to update all of the schools and the high school is the last man standing in terms of waiting for a substantial revision there was a study in 93 that called for a major renovation the last major renovation was completed in 1983 so it's been a significant period of time we've commissioned a study the school department has commissioned a study from onsite insight which identified $35 million worth of infrastructure issues the vast majority of which needs to be done immediately not surprising when it's been that long since the major upgrade there's a lot of questions about the facility use there are some town offices in the school we share space with the lab we have a collaborative we have a free school there that's part of the school department but not strictly high school these are all with the administrative offices around the sixth floor we also have a growing population we're not seeing it immediately at the high school though we do expect the high school population to rise about 120 in the next five years but we expect it to rise significantly more over the next 10 based on our larger classes of students at the elementary level that we do currently at the middle and high but as those larger classes roll up, if we continue if they continue to be retained at the same levels that they have in the historical past we're looking at a big flood rolling through the middle school and then into the high school also the New England me ask, I don't know what the I can't remember what the initial stand for right at this minute did an accreditation review of the high school and put us on warning but because of the state of our facilities right now we're at work creating a draft statement of interest for the Massachusetts School Building Authority we hope to be circulating that draft very shortly there'll be a presentation in school committee this Thursday night from HMFH which has done a study to help us identify the programmatic needs of the high school as separate from the on-site inside study which looked at the physical needs of the high school so we hope with these two reports plus the me ask report we can really get a complete picture of what the deficiencies are and look for a high school this will not be a small dollar project though exactly what the scope of it could be at this point it's very difficult to determine and we are as you know competing with many other projects in the town that are also worthy and they need attention and funding is the administration going ahead to submit an interest to the strength we are working on a draft it will be submitted to school committee and then to the board of selectmen we must have affirmative votes from both the school committee and the board of selectmen before we can submit and there'll be also the architects will be presented to the board of selectmen I believe on the 10th for hopefully a vote on the 24th okay questions I would like to take that little presentation and actually vote on that tonight so therefore just for people thinking ahead I'm suspending the Mary Rowan rule and see if we can wrap it up so any questions? No okay didn't need to on the on the other side of the study just give us an idea of what some of the infrastructure the bigger ones are rooms, windows, boilers, floors electrical system plumbing ventilation identified almost immediately fairly there's been no significant electrical updates since the late 70's and Charles given this and certainly here people have anything to comment on this in terms of renovation of the building but what's the capital planning committee's thoughts on something catastrophic that happens at the high school how we build it? We come to the finance committee and ask for a transfer of the reserve fund seriously we have a lot of debates about this at the capital planning committee we have funded some things that we think will survive a renovation and we some of them have been replacements some of them have been major repairs but we are trying to kind of planning this program we're trying to come to a conclusion about what path the school department wants to take before we start digging into that $35 million because we could wind up digging into it and then having to pull it out it's awesome Is there any kind of specificity from the Commonwealth and the state of Massachusetts about what specifically needs to get done if the accreditation is to be held? The NEAS report is out on the school department website if you go to the school website and put NEAS in the search field it'll bring up the report and you can read it for yourself they are quite clear about some of the deficiencies science labs are being won um toilets are an interesting one that turns out we're way below state code and the number of toilets we have for employees there's just a whole range of things that the building is deficient in okay they did put out a pamphlet on their recommendations and it's on the website but I can't read it the printing is so small I can't read it so if you could do something to one okay I'll pass that information back okay thank you so I'd just like to draw your attention the finance committee has to keep in mind the cost of these things and on page 30 in the book there's the chart there shows the way the total exempt debt service is rolling off over the next several years and there's an inflection point where a series of prior debt exclusion debt service payment streams in the first one is around 2018-2019 you see that the whole level of the graph drops and then the next one is around 2023 so the annual debt service differential between where we are right now in 2023 is about $3 million and if you have an interest payment of 3% and you advertise that debt over 30 years that would give you the ability to pay off about $58, $59 million in capital costs and that means that if we were to be successful in getting 50% reimbursement from the state from an MSBA we would be able, assuming no man or other things without dramatically increasing the current exempt debt load on the taxpayers to be able to afford something between $100 and $120 million total capital costs if the total capital costs were to go beyond that then the level of exempt debt service that we would be applying to the taxpayers would be higher than the $3 million level that we're paying in the current time frame that's just a snapshot to give you a sense of what sort of financial impact that this project could have on the town yes a 4% interest rate would assume that would have a significant impact on this part of the economy let's see 1% is going to be $300,000 a year I'm sorry, $150,000 $15 million on the average over the 30 years so 1% will have a $150,000 per year impact so I just wanted to I've been trying to suggest to the school department to have to think about this instead of long-range planning committee because ultimately we have to go to the taxpayers and ask them to pull me up and the taxpayers have been very supportive in Iraq over the last 20 years of the various school building programs and if we approach it correctly I'm sure they will be in the future I'm going to ask Mike to give us a 1-minute summary of the sentences and then we'll move on to try to finish this up currently at the same site 7 of the 12 townhouses are over 30 and 1% of the rental units have been leased the rental units are currently available and for FY 14 Arlington 360 Sims we have $777,000 coming up through tax revenue Brightview assisted living we're at $112,000 for a total of $889,000 that will pay for the FY 15 debt service which is only $777,000 and the bond should be retired in FY 22 which is probably partially the FY 23 drop off that total to the previous slide okay so I'm sorry 2022 it will be down to the last year okay that's on this chart right well it's buried in there most of the exempt debt service is really from the two rebuild programs okay the open is a big issue because we've been pondering most of these issues during the course of this meeting you just take that home I would like to ask the support of the finance committee on is the treasurer's vote to rescind certain authorized but unneeded debt that we have voted for in the past but are not going to use the $10 million item on page 33 was for we voted this time meeting a number of years ago in the hopes that we would get an American Recovery Act shovel ready grant to build the fire station and we needed the debt authorization that we were going to get the grant we never got the grant so this particular authorization is no longer useful in the 125,000 for the fire radio station system upgrade was done through the one of the other I think was the park circle fire station rebuild program so that's been accomplished and that vote is needed so okay so then it brings us back to the earlier chart all of these things that we've been discussing that we're asking you to vote for not including the high school of a minute man but high school of a minute man are not contained in the five year plan at this point but they're all in this five year plan and the five year plan worked out in detail comes to about 4.97% on the average over the five years in the back of the package that you have there are three exhibits the first one is the detailed budget the capital budget which is the budget we already request the town meeting to vote in 2015 the second document is the five year plan this includes all of the major items that we've discussed tonight plus things like photocopiers and the various rolling stock in the public works department etc in detail which you're familiar with from prior capital reports to town meeting the finance committee and then the third exhibit is the forecast of new debt schedule that is the result of the proposed bonding over the five years which gets added to the cash expenditure and to the prior debt and comes what's used in the calculation of meeting the 5% commitment to the 5% of the town annual budget this is a self governing system because each year we force the budget to meet the 5% in that capital year so if prices go up on something two years out and we get there and it's more than 5% we have to cut something out and push it out so that's how we keep this budget within 5% every year and we get to the big items for example the high school and we're going to have to go to the public for that for a debt solution any questions we'll be attached tomorrow Paul correct this committee the capital planning committee is the old one that I really see that look up 5 years be a I mean truly is planning out 5 years as we discussed earlier I think when the town manager was in in 2019 we're going to have sort of a budget armament that's going to happen when it's going to be a $6 million shortfall how has the capital planning committee looked at that no it's not your problem but you're the only committee that I really have seen that I mean goes out and talks about and plans for it right now we are using the long-range planning forecast the long-range forecast that's been developed by the town manager and the long-range planning group and there's an implicit assumption in that plan that the town will be able to accomplish an override or some additional financing at the fiscal year 2019 what we have done in the past in the capital budget is as we get closer to that date we reduce the spending we shifted from cash from bonding to cash and so that in fact I want to say it was something like 3 or 4 years ago when we actually had a shortfall reduction in the operating budget we actually didn't have to cut the capital budget because we had planned it lower in anticipation of the budget reductions that actually did come now whether we'll be clever enough to do that so smoothly this time we'll have to see it in 5 years but that's the practice that we follow I see you guys as a leading edge I mean truly I see you as a leading edge of getting there when you're talking about going for an opportunity to have an override for the schools I think that's going to have a devastating effect 2 years before that we go for a $25 million operating budget override and I'm not sure that's the reason for this chart Brian that's a very good point if you look on the page the reason I would like you to focus on this chart is because if the school project the high school for example stays within the parameters in this chart the high school project is not going to be competing with the override but it didn't pop up as the within the override not if the town would turn around and say your taxes are not going to go any higher than they were in 2015 in other words this is not the not exempt tax this is the exempt tax and stuff like that and so if we can say within a standing envelope it's not going to be in competition with the override if we go above that then you're exactly right okay you know what I'm saying you know first thank you for the presentation I think I say this every year but I think sometimes we get lulled to sleep we come here and we get an excellent presentation from the capital planning committee and it's thorough and it's well thought out and it's long term and it's thinking and instruction in such a way that I think when I think we get lulled to sleep we don't appreciate how great this is really and I really mean that because what's amazing about the capital plan is that it's really the bedrock of a lot of the way our community function whether it's our schools or our playgrounds or our public safety buildings and things like that and when you look at a lot of surrounding communities you know I always look at the neighboring town of my childhood they need to they go out and they get overrides for everything like police stations fire stations I mean when I always look at our lieutenants you know the capital planning and long term thinking you know I feel like you guys talk about not being able to fit a hundred million dollar school and your capital plan is all we wish we could and we really can't but when you look at everything that came going and support our way of life and our quality of life I mean I think it's an excellent job it's an amazing job I've always said it's my favorite budget to just sit through the presentation and I realize like I said I mean I think we sort of just take it for granted it's a ton of work we guys do you know I'm always appreciative and it's the one budget I can support in both work without any hesitation so thank you as always now don't keep that up don't want to raise no okay now keep in mind this is where we're going to be voting on so go to that page for now I also wanted to say support of the capital budget committee that when we went to the association of capital budget committee that meeting we also found out that a lot of towns are now using Arlington's format and process for their own capital budget committee okay page 36 this is the report of how you want to just go down to it briefly okay so in the non-exempt portion in summary what we're asking for authorization to spend is $10,593,105 worth of borrowing to purchase the various projects and acquisitions we also want authorization to spend $1,554,300 worth of direct cash expenditures and authorization for $5,680,000 from other categories these include things like water and sewer enterprise funds CDBG state grants etc that are off the tax base but the town still needs the authorization to appropriate that money so that's summarized on the right hand side in the box at the very top okay also the town meeting has to authorize the actually not only I think it's authorized the spending for the prior year's debt service so that in the next box the non-exempt debt service that was voted in bond authorizations in prior years is $4,662,050,000 sorry $4,662,050 in principle and $966,528 in interest now in addition to that we also have to authorize some spending for different enterprise funds for the water and sewer etc even though that money is coming not from the taxes but it's going to the town the town meeting has to authorize that we make also the corrections Mike took you through the adjustments for the intent of funds and the ring payments etc and then after that we have to vote a town meeting authorizations of the debt service for prior exempt debt that the town has voted for and incurred but that has to be reappropriated each year so when you get it all up you take out the enterprise fund and the MRA MWRA loan payments the total tax rate appropriation is $9,918,750 including both non-exempt and exempt expenditures that will show up if you remember the finance report from last year and the capital planning report that shows up in about a page and a half worth of a vote in five sections one line on it by line on the detail so that's but this is the net summary of what we're asking for in addition to these we're asking for the commission of of the rescission that I mentioned on the earlier page those two items and in a separate time we're going to ask for transfer of money from the loss and grave funds and the perpetual care funds but I think we'll take that at a different time okay so what we're voting on basically is page 36 on that so that is the do I have a motion on that second? okay question, discussion, Paul so we will not be doing any of this on this at the special town meeting that's a good question according to the permanent town building committee I think they will not be ready to take a vote on a hard number at the special town meeting so while there's a warrant article in there they won't want to move on that if that changes we'll come back to you we'll have the managers going to be in on Wednesday on the special town meeting articles okay are there any other questions or discussions for the capital vote on page 36 okay the motion has been made and seconded for positive action for sort of bottom line on page 750 but you're basically voting this page all those in favor please say aye aye okay so it's favorable action your name is 2514 okay then if you go to page 33 and Trawley could you get your recommended home at the Gloria as soon as you can put it together okay on page 33 is the rescinding prior to your get service so this is basically prior authorizations that have not been borrowed, not used not needed do I have a motion? second okay any questions or discussions okay all those in favor of support of the rescission of these votes please say aye aye okay unanimous favorable action on page 35 Gloria you could just use this exact language so just copy this right into the vote okay okay is there any other questions or comments for the capital committee Allen? there's a big question as much for the chair as for the vice chair in other discussions there have been questions about two specific items that could potentially be the director's enterprise funds one being the rescue ambulance service and one being the build and run of program revenues and I guess the question for the chair is what would be the appropriate time or venue to talk about whether or not we would want to recommend either of both of those to become enterprise funds I think you should check you should have a time manager with the we should have a time manager check my recollection I don't know about the ambulance funds my recollection on the building funds the building town building is that we when Adam intervening was comptroller we did run those as a enterprise fund but some state law prohibited it and the DOR forced us to put the money in the general fund I don't know whether that's still the current state law or not the difference the one part of that that does operate as an enterprise fund although it's not an enterprise fund are those three buildings that are in the urban renewal fund that's a special type of fund Arlington's allowed to create those in distressed districts under this special redevelopment board act but I don't think the building falls in that category so the first question will be to the manager the only question is whether it's possible okay we're going to have him here on Wednesday so we'll have plenty of time for him yeah I think I misstated the date for the disaster plan it is Thursday I realize I understand that he needs to be careful about careful guys I think he's going to take attendance I think you're going to take attendance so as many as people can make it I think that would be appreciated okay are there any other questions for the capital committee okay thank you all for coming we really appreciate your work we're working your time now we had one other vote we had one other hearing today on article 29 but I think Charlie is going to be meeting with the assessors to be asked that we put that off let's just take a look at these votes article 26 I'm going back to the warrant see if there's anything else we can get rid of okay article 26 is collective bargaining I talked to the manager there's a collective bargaining article here and there's a collective bargaining article in special town meeting all the town unions are up June 30 of 2000 except for one and the manager would like us to vote on that one union under the special so therefore there's nothing to really consider under the article 26 of the annual town meeting therefore we might as well take a no action vote on that do I have that motion? second so no action on article 26 for collective bargaining again because we're taking that action under the special town meeting all those in favor of no action on article 26 can we say aye? aye okay so there's unanimous 3 3 14 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 8 9 8 9 9 8 9 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9