 This is Christine Dashler, I'm chair of the finance committee. Let me confirm that all members who are present can hear me. When I call your name, please answer in the affirmative. Starting with Jordan. Here. Shane. Here. Jennifer. Sophie. Brian. Caroline. Caroline's here. Here. Rebecca. Here. Josh. Grant. Here. Charlie. John. John. Darrell. Here. Annie. Here. Al Jones. Here. Topher. Here. Peggy. Here. Al Tosti. Here. Dean. Dave. Here. And Tara. Here. I'm sorry. Is that Jennifer? Is that Jennifer? Sorry. This open meeting of the Arlington finance committee is being conducted remotely consistent with governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 as extended on July 16, 2022. To do the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth through the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely. The public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access. Access does not ensure public participation on that. Such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to T Bradley at town.arlington.ma. Dot us. Com. For this meeting, the Arlington finance committee is convening by video conference via zoom as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join in conversation with the community. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted, the public is encouraged to follow along using the posted information. So please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care of you otherwise. Before turning to the first item on the agenda, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. Chair will introduce each speaker. After they conclude the remarks, chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comic questions or. Promotions, please hold until your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or computer. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself. Finally, each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote. We typically start each meeting by approving the minutes of the prior meeting. But since I see I. I see that. Well, you correct me, Timor and. Darryl, do you have everyone from the capital planning committee that. You would like need. Or want right now. Yes, everybody who's supposed to be attending tonight is attending. All right. All right. So then. We will just go right to. The capital planning committee presentation. Darryl, I'm going to turn it over to you, Timor, and. And anyone else who wants to talk from the capital planning committee, just let me. Just tell the new members. That our. Fincon member Darryl Harmer isn't is sits on the capital planning committee and is our liaison. So if you have any further questions or issues. After tonight's presentation. Darryl is available. For us all year long. So. And Timor, we have reviewed the written materials that you gave to us. I think. Many of us have reviewed them in detail. So just have that information going forward. So I think you can just stress what you really want to stress. And spend time talking about what you want to talk about. And what you want to focus on. The written materials. So with that. Take it away, Timor. That's great. Thank you very much, chair. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for having us. We have many new faces on both bin con and capital planning. I'm Timori Antar, the chair of capital planning. And. Chair, do you have the deck? We'd like to basically put that up on the screen for as we go through the. The lead off slide and then I'll be training with my colleagues. To do their own sections of the deck as well. Yes, let me, let me share my screen here one second. Thank you. Okay, great. Thanks. And so we thought we could kick off with an in progress picture of renovation here in the foreground is the department public works. Which is the capital plans largest project ever. And then right behind that is Arling and high, which is an exam project outside of the capital plan. We'll have more about both of these later. Next slide, please. So here's tonight's agenda. What we are asking you to do a little bit on who we are, what we do and what capital is. Then an overview of the major issue that came up this year and that we expect will be with us for a while. But the capital plan has achieved or is currently achieving and how it fits into the town budget. Some detail then on the main sources of funds and the recommended uses by department. Some specifics on what to do about prior borrowing and reappropriations and then finally the recommended vote. Next slide, please. So we're asking you to vote favorable action on our FY 24 budget. The reappropriation of previously borrowed funds. And bond authorization recision. And then more broadly to endorse our full five year plan for fiscal 24 through 28. I want to thank you all for submitting your questions in advance, which we've provided the answers to through Gerald. And we're going to be able to cover tonight and so we're hoping that it'll be helpful in getting through all of our slides to have those already covered. Page four, please. Thanks. Okay, this slide recapped our membership and how each of us came to be on capital planning. Since we're on zoom, we clearly have our name next for our video feeds, but I'll go through our members quickly and one of their here for here tonight and ask you to vote. And also start, I'll start with our town's brand new finance director, who started just on Monday. Alex McGee. Hi folks, I'm Alex McGee pleasure to meet you all. Then we have our great secretary Joseph bar. I wave. Sorry, I'm not supposed to. Maybe this is a little awkward I'm sorry so I'll just go back to you. You'll be hearing from all of us as we go along. Jonathan, Jonathan Houghton. Kate Lucian and Joe Solomon are three more of our citizen appointees. Our vice chair Chris Moore couldn't make it tonight. You all know vice chair of Fincom and our designate to capital planning, Carol Harmer. And then our town officials we have, we have our school accountant from APS. Phyllis Marshall, our treasurer was on the committee until she retired at the end of last month. And Julie Wayman is our town director and she also couldn't make it tonight. Both Chris and Julie's absences are because it's my fault. I broke my wrist. And because of that we had to postpone our meeting from last week, which they could have made. So I'll be covering most of their slides. All right, moving on to page five, please. So as I'm, I know that you do as well, we divide up our work among several subcommittees. Each of these meets with a number of town departments. And this is how we cover the entire spectrum of what the town and the school partner asking for for capital. Page six. So before I really go into the work that we do, I'd like to take a step back and say why we're doing this. Capital expenditures are for long-term assets. And they're also for long-term expenses. And we're also doing this. Costly ones that we have to borrow to pay for. And that will endure for many years. And so the cost of them should be spread out over many years as well. They naturally therefore leave themselves to long-term planning. By creating a plan, we try to reduce the amount of uncertainty that's out there. We also way priorities. As you know, how to create a budget. And by having this dedicated group that does this over a number of years, we're going to be able to do that. And all of the other committees and so forth. We assurance about our process. And more than our process. Next slide, please. So. For many of these, this is already familiar for new members. This is how we do things. Every year we look at the towns year by year. We look at the cities. We look at the cities for capital expenditures. This is for non-exempt spending. We don't count the exempt portion. Exempt would be the kind that's authorized by. Our citizens and get exclusion votes. The best example currently is the high school. This creates a separate pool of money. Paid for by a dedicated tax stream. For a specific and finite project. So that's outside of the capital plan. But within the non-exempt portion. We look at the city council. We look at the city council. We look at the city council. We look at the city council departments. When the fiscal year begins in the summer to tell us their requests. For both the coming fiscal year, but start the following summer. And for the four fiscal years after that. We received those by early September. Our committee begins our meetings. We then have our subcommittees meet with the department heads discuss their requests in detail. We. Come together to discuss our proposals. For example, the city council. The city council has a lot of physical plants. So, for example, questions around. Is it a time for a new roof for building X. Sure. You froze. It's been too little or more likely too much. He. You froze for great. When did I. When did I freeze? Am I still there? finishing talking about exempt versus not exempt. Okay. And a little bit after that. All right, so I thought that. No problem. Hazards of zoom. Okay, so yes. Okay, so we were saying that at start of the summer, when the fiscal year begins, we asked town departments to tell us their requests. And this is for the following because the year that begins the following summer, as well as the next four or five years after that, we get all those requests by the beginning of September, which is when we can meet our meetings. We then meet with the department heads via our subcommittees to get the requests in detail. We talk to facilities about the town's physical plant. So questions around things like, is it time for a new roof for building X? We then have the subcommittees present reports to the full committee, we deliberate, we approve or not for the different plant items, and we prioritize them. And we look to balance the spending within the 5% rule over the full five-year plan. I think the town's been successful in budget with their capital plan since 1987. I hear that the 5% rule has met the town's needs and also provided some guardrails to keep us from spending either too little or more likely too much. 5% as a rule, it's not a magic number, but it has worked for the last 30 plus years, and it's also in line with what we see at other towns and cities. Okay, next slide, please. All right, so the question that we've gotten in the past is what falls under the capital plan? What is capital? We've defined capital assets and capital improvements as shown here. We also publish this every year in our report to town meeting. So there are assets that last for a certain length of time, a certain size, or that extend the useful life of an asset or adapt it to a new use. So we then on the next slide show a couple of examples of what might be considered capital, and also an example, painting that wouldn't be considered capital unless it's part of a project that we would be doing anyway, and then we would want to have painting as part of a building rebuild, for example. So then we have three types of items that are in the capital plan, if it's a capital improvement, if it's a purchase relief of a new capital asset, or we also have plans and studies that will either lead to a capital improvement project or producing a new capital asset. So using that framework for what is capital, we then, sorry, next slide please, we then craft two main things, the upcoming fiscal year's capital budget, that's the actual spending on these capital items in the coming year, and the five-year plan, which is based on our current estimates, how we would spend out the next five years. It puts us something that nothing changes, of course, things change immediately. As the plan changes, we then make adjustments every year, but the items march on through the five-year plan, and we get updates on costs, we get updates on priorities, etc. But having, because these are multi-year expenses, it's important to see how things will fit in the coming years. The important thing to know is that town meeting and their vote in May usually only votes to approve the coming years, FY24's capital budget, not the out years. Okay, next slide please. I want to let you know about two things that we have changed in our practice this year. The first is that we are not trying to micromanage the balance of the out years. What we do is, and you'll see this in a few slides in actual numbers, we try to make sure that FY24 is in balance as close to 5%, but not over as possible. And that the total of the next five years is also as close to 5%, but not over 5%. What we're trying to not micromanage right now is 25, 26, 27, 28, but the out years of the plan. To do that, we were just sort of, in the past, we would sort of artificially say, well, we'll just either increase or decrease some things that we would then adjust the following year anyway. So we think that actually doing it this way will give us more insight into what we're seeing as possible tight or loose years in the foreseeable future. So you'll see in a few slides, for example, looks like based on what we're seeing right now, next year might be a little more tight. So we'll keep that in mind when we're looking at what we're seeing in front of the departments in their next year submissions. Also, second thing is that we've been trying, and we're continuing to try, and certainly we'll welcome every opportunity to do so. Moving items that we think based upon our classification before really should be considered to be operating expenses, but had somehow found their way out to the capital plan over to operating. That's constrained, of course, by what room there is on the operating plan, but we want to make sure that if it sounds like operating, doesn't sound like capital according to our criteria, and there's the opportunity to move it, we will do so. We'll also really try to push hard if there's any new expenses that come to us. And they say, oh, for example, we're going to get this new package to manage something for a department that involves IT, that involves a software license. We could say, well, we could pay for the initial cost, but then if there's a long-term hosting fee, that's something operating. So let's let the cost and then have that be over on the operating budget. So definitely trying to make a push for that, and sort of enforce more purity among capital and operating. Okay, sorry, I'm talking so long. I have a couple of these slides for other people's slides, but here I am. Let me then just talk about a little bit on the big picture. So page 12, please. All right, you'll see in more detail that we are once again at 5%. Our capital budget was $11 million before offsets, and then $9.5 million net, which is at the 5% number. And you'll see in more detail then throughout this, Jack, what it has paid for, is paying for now and is intended to pay for in 24 and in the out years. But we will note that we felt tight as we often do as you're going through the process this year. We're seeing a lot of effects of cost escalation, general inflation that we're all experiencing in our personal lives, of course, supply chain issues, making things scarce, and therefore bidding up those costs as well. And then because of the fact that prices have spiked in a way that is unfamiliar to a lot of people in the last few decades, when will it come back down again? What inflation that is, when will we see not five or more percent year-over-year increases in prices? It makes it kind of hard to guess what things will cost in, say, fiscal 28. So we made our best estimates, but it's a little bit more uncertain. Also, we're looking at trying to do more in the way of proactive maintenance. Announcement of prevention is a good thing. The town has a general desire to improve services and facilities, and so we're feeling that and trying to respond. And one more thing that we've noticed is interest rates. They're historic lows, which has been terrific for financing our bond issuances. They've gone up. It's not at historically painful levels, but it's more than it had been. Finally, we saw ARPA, and I'll talk a little bit more about ARPA in a few minutes, but ARPA has been a very useful source of funds, particularly for HVAC in this year, also for some recreation uses last year. The problem with ARPA was that it was a windfall, and it won't be renewed, so it was great while it lasted. So part two of this slide, next slide, please. Thank you. So to make it all fit, a few things happened. First of all, and thank you to APS for their responsiveness. They withdrew their long-term requests for odyssin from their needs on the grounds that it didn't make a lot of sense to be investing in odyssin long-term, since it's quite likely to be rebuilt. After having rebuilt the seven on-entry schools, reopening Gibbs, and now working on the high school, odyssin is the last of the schools that would need to be rebuilt. So if that happens after AHS is completed, making a long-term investment now wouldn't make a lot of sense. We also moved, as I mentioned before, some of the operating expenses out in capital. It wasn't a big change in the dollars, but certainly trying to keep that momentum toward moving them to where we think they ought to be. But we also worked as a committee to create a prioritized ranked list of what the plan items were and what we thought shouldn't be in the plan, and worked then with the town manager's office and through them with the departments to see where we could sharpen pencils, tighten belts a notch, and make a few reductions, delays, or cuts as needed. Some of the main scope reductions that you'll see in DPW, we have been trying every year to increase the amount that we spend on roads. We were unable to do that this year. We level funded them, and we acknowledged that we need to do more for our roads. There was a request to install electric vehicle charging stations, which we mixed at the time being, and with the intention of applying for grants to fund us instead. There was a request to do a renovation of the Wittemore-Robins estate. For a number of different purposes, we reduced the scope considerably by about one-third still going forward. We'll talk about that in a little bit too, but definitely a reduction there. Do you want to mention that we still have some considerable concerns that will outlast this year and go into the future? Still needs maintenance before our schools. I mentioned that we've been in this program of rebuilding our schools for many years, which began with Brackett back in 1999, I think. The first few schools are now more than 20 years old, and a lot of school systems have a life span of 20 years, and so we're starting to see that those costs catching up with us. The other thing that we're looking at is, while we have the largest project we've ever had in the capital plan, the Public Works Department yard rebuild, we're trying to figure out when we will have the capacity for the next big project. Given what we've been able to attend in the plan in recent years, the next department that is due would be libraries, which is coincidentally fortunate because the State Bureau of Library Commissioners is reopening their library grant program in the near future, so we can apply for that, hopefully get some matching funds for that. Okay, I'm going to pause down, because I've been talking for a long time. Anything that people wanted to just ask about before I turn it over briefly to Alex McGee. Anyone has, does anyone have any questions as to the material that teamwork has covered so far? It's so, El Tosti, go ahead. Yeah, I guess I don't understand. The oddison was rebuilt, was the first school to be rebuilt. I can understand having to replace a roaster upgraded boiler system or air conditioning or something like that, but it almost made it sound like we need to rebuild the school. So yeah, I mean it was the first one to be rebuilt back in the 90s, and it is, and that would, and I've been in the oddison recently. Do you have kids? It's in not the greatest shape, and I have spoken with the superintendent of public schools who does intend to explore getting NSBA funding for an oddison rebuild following the high school. NSBA policy is that they won't fund two big projects in the same town at the same time, so it will have to be continued on the high school program finishing first, so but it could still take place in the latter part of this decade. Ella Jones. Thank you. Tim, following up on Ella's comment, did I hear you say that a school typically has a life of 20 years? No, I'm saying that things like roofs or boilers or major systems can be expected to last that length of time, and it's often shorter if it's something like as opposed to an entire rebuild if it's a rehab. That may not address all the needs in a building envelope that you'd otherwise be getting more bang for your buck or longer term bang for your buck for a people rebuild. Do you have any sense that maybe we're spending too little upfront and paying for it later? I mean are we building a too low a cost and getting too little life out of it? I don't know if we're doing that with the school rebuilds. I've seen a few examples of and we may even come up tonight about projects that were underscoped, and then because they were underscoped, we had to pay for it later because the need is still there. The thing that I actually worry about most given the inflationary environment is that we'll have a certain amount that we'll be able to pay for a project and then we'll be hit by cost overruns and it will have to value engineer and in the process of doing so we may end up having quality issues. If you look at the Gibbs School as an example, it was built in two parts, the first in the 20s and the second in the 70s and they did the renovation of that in the last few years. The contractors were looking at it and everyone was saying why on earth is the new part the part that's falling apart? You know the 20s part is very solid, the 70s part is not and it's because the 70s were a period of high inflation and we had a lot of substandard construction that happened throughout the country and presumably in that building as well. So that was what they were seeing more work to be done in the younger part of the Gibbs School. Yeah okay well it seems like something to be cautious about but thank you. Eda. I just wanted to mention that I had a conversation with Mike Mason. He told me that they had a study last year in April done for this artisan school and they did the study to see what kind of repairs it needs and it came up to over 20 million dollars. This was last year in April. Who knows how much it would be now probably over 30 million dollars. Their original request on this year's capital project for the next five years was five million dollars but since they're really considering rebuilding then they withdrew all the requests and we will be probably be looking at rebuilding. Thank you Eda. Charlie you have your hand up. Thank you Madam Chairman. I just in response to Alan's comment about the artisan. It was originally bid and costed at about 8.6 million but by the time it was finished it expanded in scope and I think it closed at about 14 and a half million and it took us a long time to pay for it but I don't think that the project was initially short changed. Sofer. Yes thank you Madam Chair. Two questions. So one is you mentioned library size projects. Would that be the Fox or wasn't Robbins, didn't Robbins get expanded a while ago? So I'm just curious as to what you think is the next one through the libraries. Probably Fox. We received a draft of a letter of intent from Anna Lytton our director of libraries who is looking at applying for that mass bureau library commissioners grant program. So the first step in that is letter of intent. The application would be a year from now. Answer Fox. You're right that we did a redo of the Robbins library not that long ago. There are some smaller projects they're looking at doing it in Robbins but Fox. And there are questions. He's freezing again. Hopefully he'll come back. You're freezing on us Timor we can't hear you. Hello you're back now. Hello okay I'm sorry I don't know why. Yeah so here I will actually stop my video if that helps us in order to maybe reduce the and what the issues here and just talk. So as I was saying Anna Lytton letter of intent she's intending to do for the Fox. The Fox is a building that it's a good amount of use obviously but also it has some serious constraints one of which is that it is not ADA compliant. It has a non-working elevator which is terrible because there's a community room in the basement which you can't use if you need to use it to access it by elevator. So again early early stages we've been talking about this for a number of years but it got I think that the the grant process from the state is triggering a bit more of a focus on moving it forward and it would be great to get the state funding which can be on the order of about half of the total cost. There are some open questions around whether it would be a standalone building as it is now or if it would be a multi-use building that would incorporate some additional stories and what if that would be housing or what so she's she's also looking into that. And Tulfi you have one more question and I think we'll continue. Go ahead Tulfi. My other question was just the five percent that's a best practice but not enforced by statute or bylaw or anything the five percent of the total budget being capital. That's correct. There's no statute. We we're not sure we think that by continuing to follow that practice every year that gives some comfort to rating agencies and helps us keep our triple A rating. Great thank you. And let me add by keeping to that five percent year after year enables us to keep to that five percent so that when we have other constraints and people want more money there's there's they don't try to grab that five percent or they're less successful in trying to grab that five percent so practice by being a practice continues to be a practice in good times and bad so for that I think it's a it's a good thing. All right teamer go ahead. Four years again. Yeah and I'm going to turn it over now for the next slide to my instructor Alex McGee to talk about capital plan progress. Sure thank you teamer. So I'm going to just give brief updates on these capital plan projects that you see in front of you here on the screen. As noted today is my third day on the job so I'm going to do my best to give sort of the right level of summary detail here so without further ado the town hall envelope project so a full study assessment was done and we will receive cost estimates for the work soon. I'm not entirely sure what the timeline on that is so so that's something to look forward to looking we're also in the process of automating doors into the select board chambers to make those ADA accessible. I also understand that there is an application into the community preservation commission committee for funding a portion of the envelope work. Moving on to the engineering study for electrification of schools a consultant study I believe we just received it like I think maybe this week and so this could open the door the door to a number of electrification projects within some of our schools and then potentially down the road to more municipal buildings more municipal facilities so I understand the consultants who put that together will be doing a presentation and the CPC will be invited to that. The Hardy and Pierce playgrounds those projects have both been completed under budget. Voting machines I haven't had a chance to connect with the town clerk yet. I understand she's been out this week so I don't have an update on that but I do understand it was a pretty urgent need and so once I have something I'll circle around and email the chair. The Odyssey repairs we sort of touched on this and essentially I think the plan for now is to work on only urgent like emergent needs and so currently there's some HVAC work and some PA system public address system work going on with the HVAC needed to sort of keep classroom temperatures comfortable and the PA system is sort of a safety issue so holding off on any other non urgent needs until a larger MSBA involved project as noted. Some other projects that have been completed recently include an elevator, some exterior stair repairs, some rooftop HVAC units in the lift. All right moving on to vehicle replacements sort of sprinkled across a number of departments. The big one being in fire a new pumper was ordered. There's a long lead time on this build out it's about 18 months with the planned delivery in this December 2023 so money's been encumbered but it won't go out the door until we take delivery of the truck. Also in fire an air supply unit which I'm not entirely sure the function of that and then I spoke with the chief today and they've combined sort of two vehicles down into one with an F-350 utility vehicle with sort of a box body and so the same story on the as the pumper that's been ordered the build out is ongoing with the planned delivery either this summer or early in FY 24. Same thing money's been encumbered but it won't be paid out until the unit is delivered. Moving to police there's been so for police all of the vehicles have been ordered and delivered are currently in service so we're looking at four cruisers. Typically they they do three cruisers a year with vehicle shortages in the past we played catch up this year and then an all-electric parking enforcement vehicle and a transit van for animal control. Public works had sort of a variety of different vehicles a backhoe a street sweeper a chipper forklift and a compressor truck. Those have all been either ordered and or delivered for the vehicles that have been ordered their expected delivery is before the end of FY 23. For the ice rink there's been some capital work done there over the last couple of years the most recent project to be completed which is just completed recently was a a bleacher lift project and Joe Connolly said that there's nothing else I'm going there for the rest of the year. School and IT projects there's sort of a variety of different projects the biggest being classroom devices within the school department but the total is sort of seven different categories totaling six hundred and seventy thousand dollars there's about two hundred and thirty thousand dollars left to be spent in FY 23 across those categories. Spoke with our CIO today and she's got a plan to have all the money sort of expended by the end of the fiscal year. Moving on to sort of some water sewer roadway projects our DPW commissioner said that he doesn't really have specific like with these kinds of projects unless there's like a named project he sort of does high value work and how he described that to me means that he doesn't want to dig up a new street just to put in you know some subterranean infrastructure he wants to sort of do it at a time where it makes sense so if there's going to be road repairs then we'll try to tackle water repairs at the same time. Road and sidewalk improvements there is a specific project the Chestnut Street Road sidewalk project which is slated to start in April beyond that it's the same thing it's going to be you know where we can get to high value work repairs based on priority with the CPI the pavement index report and that'll you know that work will be ongoing all throughout the spring summer and into fall as the weather allows. The biggest update the Mystic Bridge this is still on hold due to a utility coordination issue Verizon I guess is sort of currently on the hot seat and so there's other utility issues as well though gas and electric so it's a pretty complicated project but working on that. The DPW building teamer touched on this earlier but building E and building A are both slated to open very soon this spring and once those open other phases of work on that project will move forward so that's moving on time. The community center project that is nearly complete punchless items are currently being dealt with and it should be like fully closed out very soon. The high school you know you could spend a month speaking about this project on its own there's a really good detailed website to get updates on what you all know is that phase one is complete and phase two is underway with sort of you know superstructure being built out right now but I would encourage you to visit the website for detailed updates on that. So when more Robbins complex this is planned for use for HHS with additional space being offered to the AYCC, Town Hall, the Plaza renovation that was sort of paused at a reasonable point last year they're going to pick up where the flagpole is and head towards the parking lot starting this spring so you know very soon once the snow is done falling. Veterans Memorial Park there's a plan to look at a sort of a full renovation of this park looking at sort of a whole suite of different funding sources for this including you know state and federal earmarks among other things and then this isn't on the slide but there's a I guess Poets Corner there's currently a moratorium on building turf fields in town and there's a forthcoming meeting to sort of discuss the future of turf fields and then you know based on the outcome of that then Poets Corner I believe will be able to be considered. So that was a lot. I don't have a ton of detail on these I had to scrounge for them so but I can try to take any questions and field them if possible. Does anyone have any questions for Alex over what he just covered very well very quickly? Any questions? Jennifer? I just have a really basic question so I've been hearing about envelope repairs for years and I was just curious what that was and beyond sort of brick repointing what else happens? Sure you're talking about Town Hall? Town Hall or Hardy or you know I've just I've been hearing about envelope repairs and I just sure yeah I just not not sure what it is. Okay yeah so so when you think of the envelope just think of the outside of the building so anything that can be you know can be deteriorating or falling apart or damage on the outside of the building and what the sort of source cause of that is. I know the bell tower on Arlington Town Hall has been like is sort of the source of a lot of these issues on the envelope now and so it's water penetration has become a real problem. So anything on the exterior of the building that needs work when you're looking at masonry so anything that's granite or stucco or anything like that it the work becomes very specialized and very expensive and so there is a full study and I saw it somewhere today it's it was linked somewhere maybe even in in this agenda but there's a there's an envelope study on Town Hall that is floating around somewhere so if you look at that it'll give you all the information you could ever want about sort of the envelope at Town Hall and what the sort of issues the world of issues are right now. I think we were able I think we were able to to get the report and then forward it on through garyl um for your uh bedtime reading. It sounds like fun. It is on our share point side. Thank you. Thank you very much. As Darryl points out it is on our share point site um I don't see any other hands so um continue. All right and I'm going to put my video back on just and hope that nothing increases um for now but thank you Mr. McGee um next slide please. All right here we want to show how we arrive at the five percent target it's a two-part process here so we have the town budget here as of uh January 15th in the manager's budget uh when we decide to freeze the numbers and part of our approach is that we consider um uh that the items that are non-core to be sort of alongside or above and beyond the the budget that we're trying to calculate five percent of so we take those out of the total we don't think that for example our five percent should be calculated off of budget for exempt debt that's this separate um citizen uh elected um uh revenue stream that is you know above and beyond the rest of the budget so we take out uh both the exempt debt service and the enterprise funds to arrive at an adjusted total town budget that's a bottom line there and then next slide please that that number is then the input for what we call that they're the pro form of budget line near the bottom so 189.8 million dollars in the fiscal 24 we then take five percent of that that's our target um and we compare that with what our net nine plan is a few rows up from there and you'll see that just under the five percent number we are we came in by um 1100 dollars of a wiggle room um but how do we get to that number the net nine plan starting at the top we sum our prior debt service so what we incurred in prior years borrowings this current year's cash expenses um we incur we uh in the out years we'll see us that we're adding in uh new debt service but in fiscal 24 if we have um new bonding in 24 we don't start paying debt service on that until 25 so there's actually no new debt service for 24 in the 24 plan which is actually one more reason why it's very important for us to look at a five-year plan otherwise it looks like hey you're borrowing think for things and they're free but they actually hit us immediately afterward in years two three four five and beyond and finally we have a category for ban interest bans are bond anticipation notes they're short term loans that we in this case are borrowing for the DPW in in anticipation of a future bond issuance next year so those pieces add up to the total gross non net exempt plan cost so that's 11 million dollars and 24 and then more in the out years and then we adjust that by taking out direct funding from items such as enterprise funds also take out certain dedicated funds like the dollars that are specified to be used for capital by overrides for example we had overrides in both 2011 and 2019 in which the town manager thought to be the select board promised that they would use a portion of the of the proceeds for these purposes so there's some that's being used for roads and the number is a weird number because it started out as a nice round number and it's been escalating by two and a half percent every year since then for roads and then in 2019 we had the same kind of thing for that earmarked 200 000 dollars in the first year and that's escalated since then for what we called accessibility improvements which really we mentioned this in one of our answers to the pre-questions it's things like addressing the sidewalks where we have for example a lot of bricks that tend to get frost heaves tend to be really hard on people particularly people who have some mobility issues and so we've been looking at you know where we're possible replacing them or or entirely or at least fixing them so that they're flatter again but I digress so we're taking those out because those are again alongside the capital plan but they're specified to be used for capital by these overrides taking these all out gets us to that net nine-cent number and that's what we're trying to get to fit in the five percent and again as you as I mentioned before we're at the five percent number for equal 24 we're at the five percent number for the total column all the way over at the right we're not at the five percent number for for the interim years we're above it in 25 and 26 26 barely and we're below it in 27 and 28 so we're seeing if nothing were to change we're seeing that next year would be tight and then we'd be seeing an approximately flat year in 26 and then we'd be seeing some room in 27 28 things of course will change okay now just a little bit about the funding sources and funding uses and I will stop talking again so next slide please okay so our funds like gall are divided in three parts we have cash and bond and other cash expenses are straightforward they're what we pay for this year out of current general fund tax revenue they're paid for it in their entirety in this year bonds means that we borrow funds and pay them back over multiple years with interest and as I mentioned before there's no cost to the plan in the year of the issuance of the bond we then have the the debt service coming through us in future years our general rule is to bond for items that cost over a hundred thousand dollars and as long as they're not part of a general regular purchase program like those computers that alex maybe mentioned before we have we have a four hundred thousand dollar per year program of paying for new PCs to cycle through for all for our kids and our and our teachers in our school system so we're just paying that out every year that's we don't think that that should be bonded it should be a cash expense similarly we have a vehicle program for the police department we pay for three vehicles every year it's about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars per year we pay for those in cash but but larger things that are sort of big clunky high dollar items that aren't hitting us every year those are bonded finally other other is outside funds they're not part of the tax revenue they're state funds like chapter 90 they're federal funds like ARPA there are other grants that we get there's user fees enterprise funds trusts etc it's stuff that we're glad to have that as additional sources of funding and you'll see that part of our you know part of our public works in particular is heavily other I mentioned ARPA next slide please ARPA is the American Rescue Plan Act it was enacted in March 21st federal law for pandemic recovery it provided $1.9 trillion to the entire country which then broke out by state and by locality our income received about $35 million it's been put to many uses including capital one of the main capital uses has been for HVAC systems improve HVAC as a direct response to people having to breathe the same air in buildings during during the pandemic in 24 we're putting about $1.7 million of this other ARPA money to use for HVAC purposes as shown partly schools partly town again this was a great thing to have to address our backlog of projects but it's a one-time windfall so it will be going away in the next few years there'll be a few more I think that 25 you can use ARPA money and then it cuts off by the end of calendar 26 which would be halfway through the 27 capital plan this will be our excuse me okay oh so I see Alan Mr. Jones sorry I should say chair Gessler go ahead Al thank you madam chair Timor how do you calculate the number for the two override commitments oh we began with what the original number was so back in 2011 I think actually well they were voted in 2011 it was then put into practice in 2013 I don't actually remember up top I had what that number was but then every year we escalate by by by 2.5 percent for the 2019 override the first year one was 2021 and it was $200,000 and that has then been going up by 200% every year since then and you consider those they'll be there forever but is that what the commitment was I think so okay thank you yep any other questions right now for Timor capital plan it all right one more for me and then I'll release up for a while so page 19 please okay great so I just talked about sources now we're talking about uses so here we show a breakout of what we're spending in 24 about 13.4 million and this number is not the same as the 5% number that you saw this is out of pocket cost this year this the 5% number doesn't have debt service from bonds this year but does have prior debt service this is how much well everything cost that they were buying this year and then we're going into bonds for part of it it's you know like paying for your with with a credit card also the 5% number doesn't include the other portion so we have here this year how much we're going to spend cash for bond for and other four as shown public works and schools are about three quarters of our total capital budget I mentioned before that public works has a large other component due to the water and sewer fund what we've done in the following slides is we've tried to order the department specific detail in rough order of capital budget share so I'll take questions one more time and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues how Jones you still have your hand up. John go ahead yeah sure thank you madam chair regarding the the 5% it seems like so you get 7 million relates to debt service and then 3.9 million relates to kind of current cash outlays that we we purchase these these capital items with cash cash so it seems to me like the only thing that you could really control going into next year is the 3.9 million the cash outlays because the 7 million has already been committed like there's nothing anyone could do here tonight that would change that 7 million dollar number that's that's already been agreed to in prior years so I assume it's kind of locked in so I guess my question is do you determine what you purchase currently what you pay for cash for is it to some extent driven by what's available like what how much space you have between the 7 million and the 5% so I mean we try to bond again large items because we feel that they long we should not try to squeeze large items into our plan in the given year and we can't because you point out there's only so much room to pay for things with cash there reason what we think bonding makes sense and it makes even more sense in low interest rates environments because we are still in one even though it's gotten higher than it used to be just because they these are multi-year assets and so they they we shouldn't like pay for something that will benefit the town for the next 20 years and charge it all to one to one cohort this year so we spread out over multiple years by paying the debt service so yes you're right that we're constrained in how much we can actually pay for things with cash this year because we're constrained by what we've bonded for in the past it's kind of like looking at your your personal budget and saying I got to pay my old credit card bills for my mortgage and then I can pay certain things right now and then I'll charge new things for next year and pay for next year so yeah got it thank you and it may be a quick follow-up so you know and I look out over the next few years and it looks like you know we're pretty consistent outlays over the next few years and I'm just wondering you know in a rising interest rate environment is it possible that the amount available for you know current outlays is there any possibility that the debt service would get close to the five percent number like right now you got a nice you know cushion I should say a window 3.9 million I assume all else being equal with debt debt service in interest rates rising that 3.9 million could get lower and lower is there any chance you could get to zero I mean anything's possible I think that we have our for example our largest piece of debt service right now is debt service on the on the public works building and we were able to get that in during low rates like historically low rates when we had the last large issue and it's not the most recent one but like I think two years ago we got the terrific rate of you know 1.77 percent so that's you know not free but as close as it gets in real life so yeah we're we're we're still riding that that benefit of low rates and even today you know rates are not as those they were but they're still quite on the low side so I I hear your I hear your question yeah we have to be mindful of rising rates no and you know don't ask anybody to predict where you're going to go because they'll be at wrong but I'm not worried about us crowding out our our plan in any near time soon got it thank you and actually maybe if I could sneak in one more quick follow very quick follow question in modeling out the debt service costs you know for the next four or five years is that pretty solid like you know like we just basically saying this this amount is due or is it an estimate I did go back and look at 23 I think 23 was forecasting 6.5 million for the current year and it's up to 7 million so you know it seems like a half a million dollar increase so I guess my question is how solid are the the forecasts for the the the debt service going forward I mean there they're we try to be really conservative in fact one thing that we do is we assume a higher interest rate than is currently the case and we are often then pleasantly surprised when we do the issuance and get a lower rate and then are able to say look there's a little bit more room to plan than we thought so I think we're trying to be as not worst case but bad case scenario so that we have some wiggle room and you know if things actually do turn out to be as bad as we had forecast we're still not you know saying oh now we're in a hole that we have to dig or tell the outer got it yeah but there was so it does look like and I don't know if I'm looking at all the right numbers but it does look like there was about a maybe $500,000 increase from last year's forecast to get to the 7 7 million 036 this year but is that just kind of par for the course or just something things happen it made a timing issue as well in terms of you know bringing some more more depth that was going to be done later um earlier on got it all right we had we had we had we had a we did our issuance in December not in um the usual February March timeframe this year just because we wanted to capture race before they had done going up even even further got it okay so pull some forward all right well thank you very much Charlie you have a hand up thank you uh madam chairman um John this is a just a comment what protects that cash number going forward is that the debt service the historic debt service is always rolling off so you know there are there's debt service in there that might be going back 10 or 15 years and ending so the old debt is declining and then you're putting in new debt so it doesn't necessarily automatically crowd out the cash number got it thank you for that thanks Charlie Jennifer uh thanks Madam Chair um so my head's been in the DPW budget uh for the last few days and I was just wondering how common is it um for something to for us to be able to get reimbursements from the state or something else and I'm thinking of the the toters right that that potentially half the the the cost will potentially come back to us is that is that a odd one-off thing or is that a common occurrence uh that's a relatively odd one-off thing um the you know we do get um some state uh grant money for um green initiatives um if we're looking at green vehicles for example now uh DPW is probably uh with with the exception that's like some smaller vehicles they have DPW is one of our least well suited for green vehicles because they're heavy duty vehicles that need to you know shove snow around and and and carry asphalt and so forth and so um those are uh we're not we're not as far along with the electric vehicle to those kinds of things but um I do remember for example that we had a um a green vehicle for their for um inspection services which is part of DPW um and so they they um were able to get some uh state funds to offset the cost of that. Thank you to go ahead Timor and the floor's yours again. All right so like I said we use this to order our um uh the department uh specific slides excuse me um in rough order of capital and share so I'm going to stop talking for real now and turn this over to my colleagues beginning with Joe Solomon to talk about public works. Thank you Timor I have three slides I'll go through them and then pause for questions at the end the first one here is just an update on the public works facility I believe it's been mentioned a couple times already but it's an ongoing very large project happy to say that it is on budget at this point um this is on Grove Street by the way if you get a chance to drive by the this new building um the finishing work is is underway on the new building and that is on track to be wrapped up in spring of this year there's also a portion of the project that incorporates the existing building that's on track for completion and fall of this year. Next slide please. One of the other large um expenditures that was discussed is bucks um what I've done here is broken out to spend showing the average spend per year for the two um there's many line items that fall under these in the capital plan but I think a summary is is more helpful so for roadways over the five years there's an average of about 1.7 million dollars per year for sidewalks um for curbs and curb ramps the average funding is a little over 900 a thousand dollars per year um these amounts are sort of driven by a couple reports that were done uh for roadways there was a 2019 pavement management report I believe there was a question asked about this it should be updated within the next one to two years um the director of public works likes to update it on an approximately a five-year cycle and this provides us with a townwide score and then a dollar amount to hit different numbers above and below that score so it gives us guidance on how much we would have to spend to move that score sort of up or down a few points and again that's a scale of zero to 100 so um just to give some context there so based on that in 2019 the the sort of gate was on the low end 1.5 million dollars a year to maintain a score of 78 uh two million dollars a year to maintain a score of 80 um on sidewalks there is a older report this was a one-time report that was done um and in that the score same zero to 100 scale but obviously looking at a different type of asset was 76.7 in that case there wasn't a uh a target provided because there's a lot of sub-assets in there right there's a sidewalks there's the curb ramps there's the curbs themselves um but the the approaches to take all the money that is given to sidewalks curbs and ramps and spend it against that backlog and there's a uh you know sidewalk quality inventory that's out there that they use for guidance on you know how to identify where that money can be spent and if we go to the third and final slide so here we've split out in FY 24 and then the four out years um what the capital requests are uh really you know that that road and sidewalk money is a lot right so that's most of that that highway money I think teamer talked about the the water and sewer money as well um again for vehicles most of that is also requested by the highway department those are plows large trucks um you know large expensive vehicles and again you see similar patterns in the out years um you know that that road and sidewalk money putting the highway number up pretty high with the associated vehicles um water and sewer being a also a large spend as well so those are the three slides I'd like to pause here if folks have any questions any questions for Jill uh Jill I have a question how do we compare as Arlington can compare in terms of roadway roadways and sidewalks to comparable communities in terms of road conditions inside of our conditions do you know the answer to that I I mean ultimately I would I would defer to Mr. Audemacher as as the expert in that I had done some homework as as this is my first year um you know I found a statewide group that had done a survey and in that one we were like 11th in the state but you know these scores do go up and down over time um 11th in terms of good or 11th in terms of bad good good right and and there's some sort of anecdotal data of you know when a large source of this funding is chapter 90 funds that come in so it's a state providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to towns and I was reading interviews with other directors of public works or we're saying like yeah that's nice but it really just like it makes a dent in what I need to do so this is something that kind of seems to just be underfunded in general but I think the folks at DPW do a very good job with making do with the funds that we have um they they do these recurring reports to update the inventory they have a computer program that guides them and creates their roadwork inventory so it it is optimized to some degree it's not you know based on people's opinions so there is efficiency there on chapter 90 by the way so the state the state gives out 200 million dollars a year in total chapter 90 funds um to the 351 cities and towns of the Commonwealth and there's a complicated formula that looks at both population and road miles and so while we have a you know a decent sized population for a little under one percent of the state we don't get one percent of the funds because we have we're also small because we don't have a lot of road miles so we're at about three quarters million dollars per year in chapter 90 but it certainly helps in our budget it's a it's a big share of our total highway um or roadway dollars. Charlie you have a handout. Thank you Madam Chairman um so very very good presentation Joe thank you um does this chart is this showing expenditures in the given year or is it or these does this include debt service on um various expenditures in the past in other words how much of the capital budget debt service is allocated to um DPW. I'm gonna say I don't think this is showing debt service based on my understanding but Timur do you want to know it's not this is the current year uh cost so you know what we have what we project to pay for say vehicles in 24 per cemetery or vehicles in the out years for yeah um highway so notice it's not shared deserts so for example the the the cost of the DPW building itself isn't reflected here correct thank you I don't see any other hands up so um I think I'm I'm next so Tara if you could just advance the slides my name is Kate I actually sit on the Arlington High School Building Committee and on the High School Finance Committee um I think Alex actually touched on this pretty thoroughly we are in the middle of phase two uh wrapping up this fall and set to start on the athletic swing shortly thereafter the website is really thorough but I'm here if anyone has any questions to be answered in this meeting all right does anyone have any questions regarding the high school build no questions I think I turn it over to Eda for the next oops sorry too soon go ahead yeah just um in terms of phase two and opening up and is it it says open 923 is that the beginning of the school year or is there some overlap or there is there some delay in that and if so like you know what happens in terms of moving students around yep um there is currently although this is always a moving target a delay in finishing phase two before the start of the school year at the beginning of September however we've retained Fusco house to be able to start school and accommodate the numbers of students on campus during that interim period they'll start a Bateman and demo in the blue gymnasium but not the Fusco house at the same time so that will buy some time the primary impact from a school perspective on that is that the preschool will not move in before the Thanksgiving holiday but they have temporary space that they are in and it doesn't impact their programming so they're the parminter aren't they I'm sorry say that again they're the parminter right they're at the parminter yes yeah all right thank you thank you any more questions all right thank you Kate thank you super to uh I turn to Jonathan sorry thank you all right yes hello I just have a couple of slides here and these really give a few details of the major expenses related to the schools together there are about 5.9 million out of the roughly eight and a half million that will be needed over the next five years so the bishop school the big item here is a roof replacement which is scheduled for fiscal 24 at 1.6 million that's a big ticket single item and then RTU that's rooftop units for generally cooling and EMS which is energy management systems these are upgrades which as you can see will be funded by ARPA and are more modest in total expense um we there will be a need for further envelope repairs on the bishop um originally those were penned in at 950 000 in the initial capital budget that we got in September but um it felt that that could probably be uh kept to about half a million um the the committee has talked a certain amount about uh issues related to for example sealing the outside of buildings and we've been quite skeptical about the need of that and sometimes sent some of these um this message back to sort of see what what is really needed um the bishop also uh there's an idea a need for a reconfiguration of the front office there are currently three offices the idea is to provide a fourth which could be used by a counselor and a small area that would improve the security of the front door and that's um foreseeing for fiscal 25 and then on the Hardy school um uh roof replacement is in in progress at the moment about nearly half a million um is scheduled for rooftop units and other energy and upgrades and boilers and then um the big item here is envelope repairs for fiscal 26 so um if we could look at the next slide and then that'll sort of complete these items and then the one other sort of big ticket item here is the um bracket uh school playground renovation um it's very difficult to get a good handle on the costs that are needed for these playgrounds um but survey work was completed on the needs here and so um this 800,000 um the idea is that it would be needed in um the end in fiscal 25 the photos here show some of the degradation that's in place and we know that we have to be careful with playgrounds they have to be extremely safe that's what makes this equipment um surprisingly expensive or surprising to those of us who come across these numbers for the first time um there are other school expenses that run at close to uh half a million a year things like the photocopier leases and energy efficiency projects sprinkled around the schools various security updates um and a few other bits and pieces dividers in the gym and autism that are absolutely needed um but we haven't detailed those here because we want to just to keep the focus on the the big ticket items that really can be can be budget but busters indeed um the um autism school uh last summer when we got our initial capital plan as Ida mentioned um there were requests for for 5.4 million dollars worth of um basically maintenance and patch type upgrades and nearly all of that has been cut but um if the autism is not going to be substantially rebuilt within a few years much of that is going to have to come back and indeed there will be some catch up needed um so the expenses there are very considerable um and we're kicking the can down the road on that one does anyone have any questions jennifer uh yes two questions one is um I assume that we don't know yet what the autism projects would look like if it were funded by the MSBA so if it's a renovation or rebuild or partial one of the other does that seem fair that's fair okay so because I think some people are thinking we're just gonna knock the building down it it may not look that way it may look like a gut renovation instead or something quite possible I think it's too early to say um and then the other question is I'm just new to this I haven't followed all the capital projects I remember there was a substantial problem at the bracket gymnasium has that been handled in a previous budget or is this something pushed off I'll have to defer to someone else on that one okay is there anyone who can answer that question I don't remember the bracket gymnasium but we can find out and get back to you do you mind me asking Jennifer was it the HVAC yeah I think it was it had some serious um problems either being sometimes cold sometimes hot um leaking water like that kind of stuff yeah from what I remember I don't recall seeing it in a cap in the capital projects in the past but we can look into it yeah I can't recall this one either so we'll I'm afraid we'll have to give back to you on that one okay sorry wasn't on the list of requests that we received last summer so either maybe there was an easier fix and sometimes some of these things get fixed out of the current budgets right turn out to be a little bit uh you know there's a bit of money left over and they managed to to to deal with it right right also the school department has a school um building rental fund and sometimes that they tap into that fund to um do temporary fixes sure yeah okay thanks I don't see any other questions so uh continue on over to Jose Mr. Farias for uh the our department here hello everyone my name is Jose Farias and I work for auto public schools of the School of Comment um I'll try to sum this up as fast as I can but feel free if you have any questions afterwards I'll answer them we broke up the fire capital quest between non-facility related requests and facility related requests um the first non-facility request includes the rescue ambulance excuse me so it's part of the six-year lifespan and and uh similar to the ambulance the protective gear has a has a lifespan but this one is about for 10 years um and this this amount includes things like um gear for the firefighters like bunker pants boots hoods things of that sort the next item on the list is the Lucas III chest compression system and this is more to assist patients in terms if they go under cardiac arrest um the next item is another vehicle replacement program for the and this is excuse me so a part of the vehicle replacement program we did include a pumper which is why the amount is about 1.44 million and that just uh means replacing the traditional staff and support vehicles um because they have a minimum lifespan of 10 years and the excuse me and the C grade pumper has a life expectancy of about about 20 next item on the list is the jaws of life extraction equipment for about 50k um and uh it's been about it'll be about 10 years from FY 21 for the reckoning replacement and the next item on the list is exercise equipment and the cost of that is about 50k and that's just due to the wear and tear of the current exercise equipment of the that's current use um and I think from there we'll go on to the facility related request on the next slide um so some of these we brought down into the some of the buildings park circle island station and central central station and the amounts are a bit different the different requirements um park circle some of the mechanical system replacements includes air handlers um apparatus bay heating unit and a water heater for island station it's a bit higher because it includes uh multiple boilers hot water tank and also replacement of some rooftop units and then for the central station it's it's just some exterior waterproofing in addition to other mechanics of replacement through the wear and tear and some of these include um sorry yeah sorry that's that's that's about it sorry I'm sorry when we were fast but if you have any questions feel free to share them and I'll try to answer them Carolyn you're muted Carolyn I didn't ask about audison because others beat me to it but I will hear how long ago did we renovate completely renovate the park circle fire station and I remember specifically one of the things we were doing in renovating it was drastically improving the air quality because it was so bad for the firefighters there so I'm a little surprised I'm not quite sure what mechanical system replacement means but I'm surprised that we need one already and maybe it's been longer than I thought I'll I'll I think take that to start here um I'll say please jump in if you feel like so we bundled a number of different items uh as systems replacements and so uh and it's a little bit different by each each building um so it's a park circle it's air handlers and um I believe uh well I was able to correct me on on what's in those in that bundle I know the highland one for example is hot water heater and rooftop units and um some boilers but just back to park circle your original question um when did we last do something here that was 2007 so it's been 16 years um and um what we were hearing from facilities is that the uh the mechanical systems that we're looking to replace have expected lifespan of 10 years so they eked out beyond their original lifespan and that's great um with with proper maintenance that's we we we preserved these things for longer than they were supposed to last but eventually we have to replace them okay great thanks charlie thank you madam chairman um on the on the ambulance uh issue uh I I understand that the that the money from the ambulance revenue has to go into the general fund now and I saw that you have the offset uh as pointed out in the answer to the questions on the five year um as an offset on the five year plan um but I also heard that um um Armstrong ambulance was getting more revenue than they used to get out of the ambulance um revenue stream and I'm wondering why that is and if that means that we're getting less use we're we're using the ambulance is less and do we need to I can um I can try to answer that question go ahead either I had a conversation with with the fire chief um recently um the reason why more revenue is it appears to be directed to the general fund as opposed to the revolving fund is because we have changed the policy on the transportation and this happened after the pandemic due to the shortage of paramedics specifically in the past when they would have a medical call they will the fire department would respond and also the ambulance will respond if it was just a basic life call then our department the fire department does the transportation and all the money goes to the general fund in the past when they had the um an advanced call advanced support call they uh they um they would send Armstrong would send a paramedic and we would be doing the transportation so they have a rule uh at the fire department or an understanding between the two that will bill in other words if we transported the patients with their paramedic we will put the money in the revolving account will give them Armstrong 60 for their um paramedic and will keep the remaining in the um revolving fund now because of the shortage of of the paramedics they can't they come they respond to the call and they do the transportation as well so they take they use their cars they don't jump in our ambulance when they do this uh the transportation we don't even see the money they do the collection for us they send us the whole bill let's say when we their paramedic came with us and we paid them back 60 percent but when they take care of everything 100 percent they take they keep they get to keep all the money we don't even see the money they don't come back to the town so the hope is that we will go back to the old system to the old policy as to um us doing it all both transportation um both transportation for BLS and ALS but for now this is the way it works and um we have to deal with with the money that we have so the question I have then is that says we have less use less need to have use of two ambulances so why not just keep one in reserve for one as a project breakdown and only buy one new one as opposed to the two that are in the plan that one is I think in a 275 and the others in a 350 or something that I can't remember exactly we we always need two ambulances the fire department needs two ambulances one is backup either because let's say if sometimes they need it because they don't have they have to roll it out because one is on a call but most of the times they are not staffed for two ambulances they're only staffed for one one is always the backup they cannot that's that's my point that's my point if we're not if we're not using it and and and um Armstrong is taking over a big chunk of the transportation why are we spending the money on two ambulances we are still using it and if the if our current if one of them breaks we still need a backup to respond to all the BLS's but a new a new backup at $350,000 I don't know if it's a I I'm not sure if it's um we would get rid of the old one so we'd always have to rescue two always two ambulances aren't there two purchases in the five-year plan so I can fill it in so basically they have a six-year lifespan and so what happens is they get rotated every three years so for three years we'll one in the front line and then after that it gets you get put in reserve for three years so that's why we'll see two ambulances in the okay but that still doesn't answer the question if Armstrong's doing the work then the lifespan is going to go go longer had a brief discussion of this uh in committee and we also wondered about whether we need ambulances that are this expensive but we didn't have additional data as of now to to investigate further but given that it's a little bit out I think it's something that the committee might want to we might want to look at more carefully next year I'll also just add to that that so um well I hear you Charlie that the if you know if patterns remain the way they are then we may want to revisit the out-year purchase can it be extended further out into the future if they revert to where they used to be we're back to you know transporting and they will they always want to have a backup so that if the ambulance has taken somebody out of town to a hospital and there's another call that they have to respond to they have that backup thank you the I have a question the exercise equipment are is that in all of the buildings all of the fire stations in the play station or is it in one location um wait one second um in one second let me double check sorry I know it's in the central station because I've seen it I did well with Chief Kelly but I've not been in you know the other two stations so I can't say with my own eyes yeah I'm the same way I do have the quote in front of me so you think it gives me any more information I just put this out it's a cheaper to buy gym memberships for people but um uh carol and you have your hand raised yeah I'm not I just want to oh sorry go ahead okay yeah sure so um so I'm not sure if it's every building but I do know that it's going to be about three three treadmills um some alpine treadmills in addition to something called uh three three stair masters and that's where the the mount comes from for the exercise equipment so they're basically ordering nine different types of equipment in addition to the shipping that seems pricey but carolin go ahead they they are on shift for 24 hours at a time but yeah I I have to agree with you um so I want to go um piggyback on charlie I would hope you would look at um whether or not we should be extending the life of the ambulances beyond three years to four or five at least to four if we're we're having that much decrease in their use and that's it oh oh yeah kind of they're on a six year so it's what happened just three years during use I'm sorry so then so then so then consider an eight year extension you know the reality is they could probably last a bit longer unless there's significant changes in technology thank you we're definitely going to keep that in mind as the next ambulance marches its way through the plan Annie um so I can give you a little bit of history on the exercise equipment um I believe that it was originally purchased using a grant that um some members of the fire department went after in somewhere around 2005 and yes it's in all of the fire stations because I did a tour of all the fire stations when I first got elected and saw the exercise equipment in all of the fire stations um I believe that at the time they assumed that was sort of an experiment but that it made a huge uh difference in the physical health of firefighters and that's probably why they want to replace it thanks Annie any other questions all right go all right thank you back to me thank you mr friess now the other half community safety the police department um bullet one we've got the annual appropriation of uh hundred and fifty thousand dollars for legal replacement simply three vehicles per year uh usually one mark sorry two marked cars and then one unmarked car or one motorcycle um this is an increase over last year because of inflation and vehicle costs number two is um quarter million three what sorry one quarter million dollars for a cooling tower replacement this will be paid for uh using our funds for HVAC um in the 2017 police station renovation the cooling tower was not replaced and uh the assessment of both facilities and the occupants the police department is that it's undersized to cool the building it's it's pretty hot in the summer um so the replacement cooling tower will have the increased capacity needed for this building item three it's called the QED server it's um for fifteen thousand dollars it's um the police department's report and uh report writing and tracking system occasionally it goes down and then they have to take all the reports by hand and then they have entered all later on uh this has been maintained for eight years but uh town it says it has a usual lifespan of five years so it's beyond its end of a useful life um and has to be its own separate server because of the sensitivity of the data that's stored on it item four we show a picture here it's called the Bola wrap these are um they're non-force options they're used to shoot a set of weighted filaments that wrap around a an offender and um immobilize them from a distance um they're piloting a few of these now and then they they've liked what they've seen they're we want the additional 15k to purchase 10 more units to outstit all of their cars and so they'll have it in every um one of their marked cars as well as at the at the headquarters um we actually uh when we heard about this we said why do you want it in this was 28 let's pull it forward it sounds like a great idea um beyond that we've uh shifted the cost of the bulletproof vest to the operating budget um you'll see also some out years cost here for some vehicles and that's the police department any questions about the police department budget okay all right we'll pass it over to Joe the Joe bar talk about the recreation department good evening um so in terms of current year requests most of it is for three ongoing programs that kind of cycle through every year um playground audit and safety improvements so this is doing as it says audits of the current condition of the playground and then if if there are kind of immediate or fairly emergent uh improvements that need to be made they can get done using these funds so that's 70k this year just to kind of balance things out and then but normally 75 per year going forward um the implementation program for the ADA retrofit program study that was done a while ago um so recreation is just kind of working their way through um accessibility to the town's playgrounds uh and this is 50k a year obviously when playgrounds get renovated they address the accessibility needs there but there's a lot of pieces that need to get done kind of before they get to a full renovation and then the last ongoing one is the feasibility study program which allows them to kind of study what's needed at each playground and each park and then you know scope out the work so that when they come to us with a request to actually do the work it's it's a little bit better flushed out and then the one non-recurring is they want they are asking to do a study for sort of reconfiguring and reworking the parking lot and the sort of adjacent areas at the at the arena and this would kind of come up with both a plan but also some conceptual designs for what what this would look like in the future and it's not just about the parking it's also about like I said reconfiguring some of the areas around or adjacent to it next slide and then in terms of um progress um to date there are three ARPA funded playgrounds at the Bishop Pearson Stratton schools that are are largely complete as of last year with some you know punch list items of things that can't get done until the weather warms up a little bit um you know but those are functionally done but I think it's important to say that you know we've not had to fund playgrounds out of the capital plan for a few years both because of the um CPC C yeah the community preservation act committee it's like it's been really easier to say the whole thing than the acronym um funding them or most recently ARPA as team are referred to has been funding a lot of things related to playgrounds and other things as well so when we look out into the the future years of the plan in 25, 26, 27 we have some significant projects to renovations at parallel park and Waldo park um and then um some initial design work for Thorndike Field which would be a much more significant project if it if it turns out to be uh something that the town wants to pursue the 200 ck it's just for laying out the initial design but again I think the larger point is that you know these program these projects are going to start to come back to the capital plan in a way that they haven't um for a few years any questions any questions anyone I don't see any thank you over to Ida for Charlie Charlie has a question Charlie do you have a question yes thank you Madam Chairman I'd like to come back to this to the subject of the um study programs and the ADA programs uh after the presentations are through I just I have some questions and concerns about that so next teamer over to Ida for libraries I have the library slide um and then um I will come back for the debt so the library um has a small request this year uh they only have three requests one is the recurring M&L project um one is the EMS system and the one you have see here on the screen is the lighting project um this is a lot smaller compared to the previous year requests which were to the tunes of tens of millions of dollars with those two libraries um but just because we kicked out the libraries out of the current plan it doesn't mean that the projects went away so the um library director has a pretty large list with projects that need to be addressed in very near future and she's in the process now of determining um the priority of this project as well as the funding because she does have um alternate funding funding sources from outside such as cdbg um friends of libraries um the trust funds and various donations but for this year she considered that the highest priority um goes to the lighting project because we need a greener and brighter library the problem the current problem with the poor eliminating now is um the the current fixtures are out of date and um they're not uh very um efficient when it comes to energy use and also they're not they don't provide a sufficient lighting um there are many areas throughout the library where which are dim and actually some rooms they go completely dark there's no motion so patrons things that those specific rooms could be closed she engaged a vendor and the scope of this project is to completely remove um the old lighting and replace it with the new led fixtures and retrofits the total cost of the project is 155 743 but this includes also the ever source ever source rebates um which is um actually this rebates are part of a larger um program called mass saves um if we um do this project we will realize save annual savings of 30 000 dollars which translates into a payback period of five five years the chart you have here on the slide doesn't have anything to do with the project is just here to illustrate that the actually um post pandemic the the circulation has increased of the libraries and um both contents uh digital content and physical materials um have seen an increase um after the pandemic that's all we have for the libraries tonight uh el jones has a question i think thank you a few years ago there was talk of a major addition on the back of robbins is that still lingering out there or but yeah so um we had if i remember correctly it was like 12 million for robbins library which included renovations in addition and about eight million for the fox library but of course budgetary constraints pushed forced us to push them out um yes it's the anna's desire to pursue this project but we don't know when this is going to happen as soon as we make more room in the budget so sort of an indefinite it's not in the plan anywhere it's just in you know indefinite at this point it's in the back of her mind yes okay some wish list robbins sisters it's on the wish list yeah right okay thank you any other questions regarding libraries okay moving on all right back to me for one more um other general items uh so the biggest one here is we have a planning study in fiscal 24 for a future capital project which is the veterans memorial park you'll see a rendition of it here it's envisioned to be a total redo of the space in broadway plaza um at the upper left corner is the monument and then at lower right is where the central fire station is um so um $200,000 in this year for the planning and then actual construction would be in 25 and 26 total cost for that is on the order of $2.6 million uh notably um we are looking at a large portion of this over 60 percent of it to be coming from outside funds from state uh airmarks from federal airmarks um from other grant applications and from donations and we um been clear with the planning department that we're counting on this that there's no infinite backstop we can't say oh you didn't come up with the money we'll give it all to you because we don't can't afford it so we wanted to just be clear that we're expecting a substantial other commitment from the from the town from these different outside sources in order to uh to help fund the um the necessary upgrade for this memorial um I mentioned before the where the more robins estate this is the building behind the library um sorry the robins library uh and the associate there's a cottage and carriage house uh where more robins is mostly used currently for AYCC the youth counseling center and um the scope of this project was originally about uh half as a half again as large um and we have uh carry down the scope to focus on trade space for the for AYCC both in the existing uh building and in the uh the cottage and also in doing some exterior repairs uh there was some talk about um looking at rehabbing some additional uh space in the carriage house that would be a rental property for you know citizens to rent from the town and then have their own events there and we didn't need that to be a good use of town uh town resources to do that renovation for that carriage house so that's on indefinite hold for now and we're focusing on on on these core um town services in the buildings for half a million dollars the community center um this is uh the elevator in there was not part of the scope of the uh the renovation that is nearing completion um the elevator was installed back in 1982 uh so over 40 years old had an expected lifespan of 20 years and has been able to work mostly but less since less so recently and it's being frequently out of service is a problem it is a senior center um and uh if you're trying to get between floors and the elevator isn't working that's a big problem it also makes the building non-88 compliant um there's uh a hundred thousand dollar budgeted amount for uh ADA disability upgrades this is really to uh remedy whatever architectural barriers there may be at town properties that challenge people's access so steps where you might eat a ramp or lifts over over threshold and so forth that are hard for wheelchairs to cross over etc um so that's a an ongoing expense that we have in the plan an initial ongoing expense is I mentioned before in passing um four hundred thousand dollars per year for PCs for our students and teachers this will buy about 1200 PCs in a given year and these are um laptops uh Chromebooks and so forth we refresh them on about a four to five year cycle and that way we get them through for several years and cover the entire population of our school district and it really is students I think that are in grades three and up as well as teachers and some of those Chromebooks probably see a little bit of hard use with those kids so it's it's an ongoing need but some of the work that the kids do even at a very young age you know eight or nine uh with their laptops is quite remarkable I'll pause there any questions Rebecca thank you Madam Chair um I had a question about the planning of the veterans memorial park um we had mass av rebuilt in east Arlington and I know that ultimately eventually the hope was to have mass av rebuilt um through Arlington Center and as part of that there was in the sort of brainstorming stages there was a possibility that the way that Broadway intersects with mass av might be kind of reconfigured and the shape of that park might change so um do you know I guess I'm a little concerned that we're going to plan a new park and then it turns out that the orientation of the park and you know what part is park and what part is parking wash on Broadway changes is there is that a concern at all yes a concern I mean um the configuration that you see here is pretty much in line with the current configuration it's got the cars parked on the Broadway portion you know nosy and um so yeah I know that there that there was talk about re-scoping how the traffic flow would be at the end of Broadway and um I've not heard of any uh resolution to that okay but hopefully they're at least I guess thinking about I just would be concerned if there was somehow you know we we designed this wonderful new park and then and then the park ended up being you know arranged slightly differently because of the parking lot yeah thank you team are if I can add since I had that um thanks the department is one of my projects they um Rebecca they're definitely working with the planning department um so hopefully they'll they'll stay in sync thank you very much Charlie I'll wait until we get to the end of the presentation Dave you have your hand up yes uh on the uh the Venice Memorial Park um the last presentation I went on on that uh design plans that was mentioned the concern about the um Broadway meeting uh joining Mass App and the that concept that was that was out there was um put to bed if you will so what we have now is presented on tonight that that's that's the design that they're going to go with thanks Dave um I don't see any other hands so continue on in two months all right back to miss Cody please move to the next slide all right so the next three slides are about um actually uh borrowing this is um pretty much a standard procedure um we um we want we need to um rescind the prior um authorization to borrow funds um in 2014 the town meeting authorized the treasure to borrow two million dollars to replace the water meters um to date we've only spent 1.7 million dollars and we have learned that our pa is picking up the tab for the rest to finish up the installation of this um water meters therefore we do not need to borrow this money however we do have it recorded as authorized and unissued on the books um the town meeting has to vote to rescind the to rescind the authorization uh and in turn I will remove it from the books and report it to DLR as such if there's no questions we can move to the next line okay go ahead um this is the reappropriation of borrowed funds um this is actually part of our large sweeps in other words we have projects that a number of projects they came under budget um and the total amount is um somewhere around five hundred forty six million dollars off this five hundred forty six two oh three are restricted funds because we borrowed this funds to do the projects now um we have two options we can either use this available balances to pay down the debt service or we can reappropriate this funds to complete other projects however the bond council requires that if we reappropriate this funds we need to map them um to uh some projects we need to identify projects that for which we could borrow for the same term or longer and we did so in this slide we um we presented the projects that came on the budget so we have the available balances of two oh three and in the next slide we have the mapping to the new projects where we would like to apply this funds but in order to do that if they have to be disclosed and voted does anyone have any questions about what you did just cover I don't see any hands up okay thank you miss cody we're in the home stretch here um after all the detail that you've seen for most we hope your heads are exploding and you've seen this slide before to recap what we're asking to you to do tonight again vote favorable action on our budget for fiscal 24 the reappropriation and the and the rescission that miss cody just covered and then more broadly to endorse the five-year plan there's one more slide that miss cody will be presenting do you have a question that you can answer now surely i do um um so um if i could raise a general question it actually covers several of the presentations that were just given and let me start off by saying that the presentation by the capital planning committee and the work that that's been done is really outstanding and um you have my my respect and my my gratitude for the for the work that you do and for the and and you team are for your leadership um but i have a very uh uncomfortable reaction to a couple of line items in the different categories and years ago we had surely can i interrupt before we get into that that those questions i just want before we launch into more general questions i want everyone um to understand what the capital planning committee is asking us to approve once everyone is settled on that then we can go to any other questions that we have haven't answered um so i think on slide 37 team more is the let's let's pass over to slice 337 we'll come back to that thank you um so back to you that's uh miss codio you walk us through the recommend book please sure so this is the selfie has our hand up so if you do you have a question as to what we're clarifying right now or um well it's just a quick question on the reappropriation so i don't know if it's too specific or not for this point you can tell them not to answer if you prefer um on the ADA funds do we know specifically what the 100 000 is for or it's just a general 100 000 and my concern goes back to funds being used by the disability commission on some capital you know on things like the doors for the select board that actually came out of the committee budget so i just want to make sure somehow we track what's coming from where um is that something we'll know or this is just a general 100 000 we've allocated 100 000 in cash for ADA accessibility constructions in general across the town um i don't have the exact details here um but i can find out um from someone who probably who had who interviewed planning um but this is in general for ADA constructions all right so um back to you Timo or the Ms. Cody or Eda slide 37 please yeah this is the very final slide and it's a high-level summary of what we are um asking you to vote for the capital expenditure um many times the commission the committee this committee asked what is the final number that we actually have to vote so we put that whale there um you need to vote the total net capital appropriation um i hope you're not going to ask me what the the um significant the symbol of this whale is because i can't remember the whole story maybe we should change it next year to see in this picture because it was something that came up in his classes um but anyway so the bottom line that we need you to vote is the total net capital appropriation of 22 million 387 67 this actually includes the total debt service um you will see at the bottom for the general fund 19 million 183 900 uh but then we also have other financing sources that we will be using so um the the net the the new net general fund that will be 18 446 911 and of course the cash capital appropriation of 3 million 933 856 you've seen these details in the previous slides so we ask you to endorse our plan and approve the capital expenditure of the 22 387 67 and then you also want um us to approve um rescinding prior borrow borrowing in the amount of 300 000 correct correct which i think is is article 40 of the warrant am i right oh i had a different article that's right and the reappropriation um is that a warrant article as well it's a component of the uh of the capital um okay got it so you want to separate vote on that as well or it will that be just incorporated in the bottom line capital budget i would say it's in the bottom line okay all right so um if anyone has any questions as to what we just covered raise your hand so people understand what it is we're being asked to approve um i don't see any hands raised for that so if anyone has just general questions um on um the capital plan that we haven't already covered so charlie what questions do you have for the capital planning committee thank you madam chairman so i'm not going to repeat the kudos i started to mention before but i think the plan is you know very in general very well done and i thank everybody for their work but i have some concerns in uh you know uh miss cody just uh touched on one of them with respect to this a da appropriation uh and and sophie asked the question about it you know a hundred thousand dollars what is it for we have several categories in the capital plan that seem to have grown over the years it started out as in the recreation department you know ten thousand dollars for planning the next um you know park improvement and but now we have a hundred thousand dollars a year for electrification studies in the planning department and we have um i think i'm not looking at that screen but i think we have in the same five-year plan uh fifty thousand dollars a year for um undetermined unspecified engineering studies for the planning department we have uh fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a year for a da improvements again not specified um i and i think there are more but you know we're talking about numbers that are in the three hundred to four hundred thousand dollars a year range in the aggregate and and to me uh you know over four years that's over a million dollars and that to me is not a tight capital plan that that's you could drive a coaching for through through some of those gaps so i'm just concerned that we're that the plan is heading in the wrong direction with the especially when for example i read the school department's electrification study and and the conclusion of the study was it's going to cost uh ten million dollars of building to do these electrification changes so are we we have twenty two buildings in town are we going to spend uh ten million dollars on all those twenty two buildings as a result of this hundred thousand dollars a year electrification study if so maybe we shouldn't be spending that money in the first place so that's that's one set of a whole range of categories that i question in this plan and another big item that i question is in the dpw area these toters for the i think it's called toters for the for the trash collection in in that seems to me to be something that i'm not sure how you categorize it but if if they're distributed to everybody's house right then i don't understand how that can be a capital item because there's no control over the asset and there's no um guaranteed that the asset's going to be maintaining its value i so i mean it there's just some questions here that um are troubling and i i don't know i try to express some of these in the in the in the questions that i sent to to um daryl but i um i still think there are gaps in this that that are very troubling and i don't know if uh capital planning committee wants to comment on it yet um timor do you or anyone on the capital planning committee have a response to um those items that charlie raised uh i'll take them quickly so we do studies we do studies and uh it's been a long-standing policies since before i was chair that if we are doing a plan or study in in preparation to decide what we should be spending on a capital improvement or a capital asset it's capitalizable um so you know best to do an electrification study to figure out how we can possibly get this town to be compliant with our net zero goal by 2050 i think 2050 and um yeah it's going to cost a lot of money and we spent some money to figure out how much it's going to cost us and what has to be done so that's what we're talking about with with that study for electrification in particular and for studies in general what we're doing here is you know trying to get the best number and the best scoping for future capital projects i hear what you're saying about ADA i think that it would be delightful if we could get a item by item specification of what $100,000 would be going for in a given year we were we understand that this number is put to good use every year and we can get a you know reckoning of what to spend for for the accessibility of town properties and so forth um so um i don't see the practicality of asking for you know an itemized punchless in advance of what has to be done for all the all the projects we could certainly ask for a bit more detail and provide that um and to the point about the toasters the toasters are not in 24 they're an out year item we are still looking at at the the plan the plan is proposed because of the the growing trend among towns to switch to automate pickups so you have these loaders that come and grab the toasters and then pick them up and drop them into the into the garbage trucks and so we are looking at and we do not have a cost benefit study that says how much more will it cost us for doing it the current way versus a better deal for using these toasters and so basically you're talking about putting an investment in for these for these items and they'd be attributed to the different households throughout town um back of the envelope says if it's if it's one and a half million dollars and there's 15,000 households it's a hundred dollars per household for these um specialized garbage cans and they're supposed to have a 10-year long lifespan and that we can get half of the the cost reimbursed by the state the Department of Environmental Protection so that's sort of the upfront investment side and yes we do need it to understand if it really is worth it from a you know return on investment cost and then a time to break even and we don't have that yet and when we are asked to actually fund this in the plan perhaps next year that's when it's currently split slated for you you can be sure that we'll be asking for that. Thank you. If I might just add a couple of quick things we did get a request last summer for um improved boilers at the Pierce School that would cost um $600,000 and one reason they were so expensive is they were electrical with heat pumps and on further examination um we uh the same the equipment could be replaced for half that price um if it were continuing to use gas and that's the direction we took um but I do think a conversation is needed at some point about how much we're willing to pay um for the electrical side the thinking of the committee was as of now and for the lifetime of those equipment um gas would still be at the margin what is being used to generate the electricity so the advantages um environmentally are moving to heat pumps at this point were not obvious given the cost differential but um so that was one specific example where we're we're wrestling with the problem another example was as mentioned earlier the um proposal for um EV um charging stations and our sense was that the proposal as it came to us was sort of give us money and we'll see what we can do with it and we felt that that wasn't specific enough and it didn't identify our felt needs that needed the funding that doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea it just didn't strike us as um clear enough for the current purposes so I think the concerns you're raising are concerns that the committee's been trying to grapple with and they're not um they're not easy ones to always resolve thank you Ella Jones you had a hand up did you have a question uh well I actually put it in the chat it's it's it's almost a typo I think the new non exempt debt number here is actually being interest is that correct nothing makes that much difference yes yes okay thank you that was all thanks um um Shirley um you have your hand up again thank you um Madam Chairman I I uh uh thank you uh Mr. Houghton for your your comments I I think your phrase of you know throw us some money we'll see what we can do with it is really a very much my concern and in uh with that the the line about the electrification we're in the in the five-year plan it's a hundred thousand dollars a year for five years as I recall and and I just I'm deeply concerned about uh categories like that and I mentioned three or four of them so that's that's really what I was drawing attention to thank you thank you any other questions anybody have anything else that they have for the capital planning committee or uh the capital planning committee have anything to say Joe Solomon yeah just real quick to tag onto what teamer had said um actually reached out to Charlotte Milan who is in um our recycling coordinator just to give a little bit more color on that is that there was a a takeover of the town's current waste management company by another company and because of our linkedin's contract we had the ability to um essentially veto that takeover and that that allowed us to gain very favorable terms that at in the near future will run out so the the totter issue isn't just the efficiency in the market moving to that but we also have favorable terms that that end at some point so we sort of have that double hit of having to go to the market standard and you know having a favorable contract run out thank you for that so for just a comment than us I believe Belmont has started to use totters so that might be a source of you know on the ground information about how they work out and whether there's any hidden gotchas we're moving to I think Medford has as well anything else that anyone has all right I'm not seeing any other hands phrased um team Laura and everyone else on the capital planning committee thank you for your presentation that I second everything that Charlie said uh as it always is it is extremely thorough um and uh clear uh and we on the finance committee greatly appreciate that and I also want to thank you Timor and Eda and Daryl and I think Julie for the last few days um spending quite a lot of time answering individual questions that finance committee members had um I think um that responsiveness was really impressive and I think everyone appreciates the effort that that you made um so again thank you um and um we really appreciate it thank you all we appreciate the opportunity and all your questions we have a couple that we've been taking down that we owe you some responses on um so we'll get those back to you through Daryl as soon as possible uh and with that that concludes our report thank you very much thank you all right everyone we have uh just 10 minutes left in our meeting um I see two hands come up first do you want do you want the uh the capital planning committee members to depart at this time you you can stay or you can go it's completely up to you I I have a serious question here uh I'd like I'd like to know um uh Mr Yantar uh if if you are giving an appropriate credit to um to luke 1428 for your motto that is the uh the latin source correct yes I believe it's in the vulgate latin bible um first sit down and count the cost yeah check check it out just just an aside thank you el toasty thanks all thank you timor you're you're muted el I just had one comment on the tophers I spend january in a place that uses them extensively if you've got a lot of parked cars on the street they don't work and that could be a big problem uh madam chairman I just uh if it's appropriate I just wanted to make a motion for the appropriation as stated in page 37 of 22 million 380 767 and uh the rescission of 300 000 under article 40 of the warrant back end all right I have a motion which has been seconded um any other any further discussion on the capital plan request Tara notes that we need a third uh in the chat she notes something I don't think we do I think eda confirmed that the um reappropriation is included in the the recommended vote of 22 380 767 so I think we just need to vote on this bottom line plus the rescission of borrowing um any discussion all right let's take it to a vote all in favor of approving the capital planning committee budget requests um say hi jordan yes jane yes jennifer yes sophie yes uh caroline yes rebecca yes grant yes charlie yes yes john yes daryl yes annie yes l jones yes tofer yes pegy yes al toasty yes dean yes dave yes all right the capital plan budget has been approved unanimously and right 40 what's that l and article 40 and article 40 correct all right um we have six minutes left um I how about um doing quickly the the minutes of the last meeting I don't think it would take a whole lot of time um Tara could you pull up the minutes of March 6 does anyone have any um corrections to the minutes of March 6 do I have a motion so moved second all right the motion has been moved and seconded let's take it to a vote jordan yes jane yes jennifer yes sophie epstein caroline yes rebecca yes grant yes charlie yes john yes daryl yes annie yes l jones yes tofer yes pegy yes al toasty yes dean abstain dave yes 15 votes to approve with one two abstentions the minutes of the six have been approved um all right um we just have four minutes left um let's just briefly talk about scheduling right now we have the water bodies scheduled to come in on next Monday the 13th um caroline will you have reclass and human resources ready on on monday we can definitely do um human resources reclass there is something that is still in the works i'm not which i just found out about today it hasn't been resolved um it may be resolved done by monday and if it is then i'll present and if it's not then we'll just hold that until that specific thing is done but yes we can move them there for now all right that would be good if we can do those um since since david morgan is coming in with the water bodies group um we'll also have him address the open space committee and gas leaks task force asks um on wednesday the 15th the town manager will come in and talk about the various town manager um foreign articles uh answering any questions that we may still have on things like open space committee and gas leaks he'll also um provide us with the latest five-year long-range plan um so that will take up a chunk of our time on wednesday on the 20th we have um the community preservation act people coming in um andry it looks like we will have a presentation by some school kids for um that warrant article uh and then on on the 22nd we have the schools coming in um caroline you have a hand raised so i i'm not going to be going to meet over at the school with others they're coming to us we're not going to do that little subcommittee meeting the territory you've spoken to or have you yes i i'm sorry i thought i sent an email to your group um yeah terrace uh like reached out like super super quick amazingly and got this done yes so it's going to be their teacher and probably six of the kids from the eighth grade history social studies class oh i i thought we were going to meet with them separately and not have them come see the whole group so i had actually emailed them on sunday night so this conversation happened on monday um and uh so she the teacher responded to me with email that i sent before the subcommittee was formed do we as a committee want them coming as a whole group i thought we well i mean you know whatever can i just suggest that you know if they want to come and get the full process i think we should let them do that if they have parental permission and they have a crew that's jennifer we still might want to reach out to the teacher and ask whether or not the kids would like a pre-meeting to kind of okay yeah i was going about what we're expecting and how we behave and yep we can do that and so forth and then i would like if i may have the chairs indulgence to just make a suggestion to the committee which is that these are fairly young students and you're going to be tempted i suspect to pull your punches and although i think we should be super polite i don't think it helps them for us to be direct about our actual personal positions on the issue there are ways of doing that in a educational format rather than educational and polite but i have seen the select board tell a whole bunch of kids how great they were and now excited they were that they came and then vote against them and i think it sends a really mixed message and is more painful than just being honest about whether or not we believe this will fit in our financial future if annie and caroline and jennifer if you can coordinate with tar and get the reach out to this group before they come help them prepare for the presentation get any information they have and circulate to us help them with any presentation to make it as efficient as as possible i took it off my list of things to do but i'll put it back on i can start the email thread with the teacher and copy you all and just say we could you know if you if it's a big imposition to come in we could do the subcommittee kind of meeting just all together outside the finance committee or like regular meetings and or a kind of preparation session with your group i think actually the message with your chair seem to be slightly different it's we're happy to see them but more that we might want to meet with them first just to give them a heads up and to maybe get them to submit some materials to us yeah yeah i'm less worried about materials than about the kids getting asked questions about the process yeah yeah okay so so i would be offering to the teacher to say hey there's a subcommittee of our members who would love to meet with your class and answer their questions about what you expect and so on and so forth and if as part of the conversation we also say you know these are the kinds of presentations we get from other committees right if if they were asking for money we need the information right no matter i just want yeah i think it's making clear to them this is what other committees come to us with presentations this is what they look like but this is what we need to know we need we need dollar amounts not um uh yeah we need we need something that has dollars on it we're asked to make any kind of decision yeah i just wanted two things one is uh we've got a lot of budgets to do and if we're going to finish by the end of the month uh the town manager is going to take a good chunk of the night the cpa committee will take a good chunk of the night and the schools usually take a good chunk of the night so we really don't have a lot of meetings left to get this done so i think it would be good if they come before is that there's a set women that they know you know it's 20 minutes um and i think the members need to know we're supposed to ask questions we're not supposed to be giving opinions at at this stage of the game we share the opinions with each other when we decide on what to how to vote so those are just a couple of thoughts yeah i agree i agree d hi um so my apologies i wasn't going to inform that subcommittee um if possible could i tag along with the existing subcommittee i um i think i you know my my my eighth grader mentioned that it was kids that want to talk to me about this and i guess i totally ignored that sense when he said it to me and now i know what he meant and so i i think i'd be a total like jerk if they will have you dean you're welcome to do it i think i should i probably know two or three of them so i i can't so we will be planning what we're going to be meeting in person um until the through the rest of the process as far as i am concerned unless there's something that comes up like tonight if we were accommodating capital planning committee who had two people who were not very mobile but otherwise we'll be meeting in person at the community safety building and um and if we don't then we'll give you everyone plenty of notice of that so uh from now on just expect to be meeting at the police station jennifer you have your hand up uh yes ma'am cherub i i'm i'm just trying to figure out our timing for facilities and dpw and i think we were trying to um aim for the week of the 20th and i'm looking at it and not it's likely that won't fit in to that timing does that seem i would plan for the 20th and if if uh we we we'll use every moment of our meetings between now and the end and if if we can only do partial presentation or something right if we can only do facilities okay or a street lighting or something like that we'll we'll we'll do what we can um so if if you and and and jordan and shame can try to get those budgets ready um just let me know when you are ready and i'll try to start fitting you in somewhere great thanks and we'll still plan for that and then uh just to urge the committee again if there's any questions you have to send them over sooner rather than later in the best of possible worlds we don't go back and forth too many times so thank you all right do i have do i hear a motion to adjourn to moved second all in favor hi hi we are adjourned good night everyone see you on monday right oh