 And welcome everybody to the November recreation meeting. Recreation Commission meeting present today is myself, Recreation Director Ray Harb. We have commission members, Yusuf Fidel, Angie McDougal, Sanjay Arwad and Matt Kane. And so we did publish, this is the middle of our really busy time with CPAC, with CPAC reviews. We are interested in giving all of the recreation center proposals a chance to meet and share their proposals with the commission. Our commission is going to be asked to do, asked to prioritize and present some of that information as we see it for our interests in recreation. I would like to first, at the beginning of the meeting, take care of the particulars. I would like to ask for our commission to again think about the chair. Again, think about a chair as they are looking, as the CPAC is looking for a comment from us or if the town is looking for our priorities for this. It would be a help for them, for the town or the press to get the direct impression from the commission and not have to ask me with commission thanks. I don't, I'm not, I still will tell you that I will not force anybody to be a chair and to represent the commission's needs or interests. And I don't have a problem with sharing what I think the consensus is, but I would like to again, just encourage people to think about offering to be a chair. You can talk to me about that offline. It's not as much, I think it's more of a verbal accountability. It's more of a presence for the commission. So it would not have to be myself that offers the thoughts of my advisory board. If anybody was worried, if the commission is worried at all about my reporting on the commission's interests, then you certainly could take that chair for yourself. I don't, there hasn't been a lot of times where I've been in that position. There haven't been a lot of places where I've had to speak and summary for the commission. And I don't believe that I've ever said anything that has been at all controversial for sharing that impression. But if there is an interest in having commission independence from my own view of a chair would be helpful. The second thing is minutes. I am going to ask that we, for us to be able to approve the minutes from October's meeting, that was shared, the minutes were shared with us. Have people had a chance to review the minutes from October? And can we, can we motion to approve those minutes? Make a motion to approve. Do I have a second? I'll second it. I think you said might be muted. It looks like it. So then let's take a vote with the four person quorum, all in favor. Man. Nice. Minutes have been approved for October. We didn't do this in October. I figure I would do this now and open at the beginning of the meeting for public comment. If there is anybody in the attendees that would like to offer public comment right now on new business or on October's minutes, please feel free to raise your hand. No hands raised. Then let's get to CPAC. We have our department. I'll, I'll introduce some of the things that have sort of changed with our seasonal issues at the end at the CPAC, but I do want to make sure that we have time for our presenters. First up, we have War Memorial Pool. I am going to pull Amy Rizecki with DPW out of the attendees group so that she can be here to present the War Memorial Improvement Full Disclosure. Full Disclosure I am. As I mentioned in October, I am also a co-author of this. Recreation has gone in with DPW to present this proposal. It will be Amy presenting here today. Let me promote Amy to a panelist. Amy, are you here? Hi. Hi guys. Amy Rizecki. Nice to meet most of you guys. Yeah, so which one are we starting with, Ray? We're starting. There are actually two presentations, they're two proposals, and Amy, I'll let you choose which one you want to go through. Okay. I guess we'll start with the bath house. That's probably the bigger one. And like Ray said, he's been instrumental in putting this together, so certainly chime in if I'm missing any important aspect of it. But as we know at War Memorial Pool, the bath house is in rough shape, and part of it's just due to the vintage of when it was built in the 1950s. And because of that, the structural integrity of this building in general is in rough shape. And so that's leading to structural issues of it. It's also, as my guys like to tell me, it's a great squirrel habitat inside the bath house, but that's probably not what you want for a bath house. So it's just leading to, we're struggling with the maintenance of the building in general, with keeping the paint and the plumbing working and stuff like that throughout the year to keep it in good enough shape to be able to be used. But as you guys were instrumental in putting together the preliminary design of the entire larger area, and so what we're looking at with this project is kind of taking the first steps to replace that bath house, but understanding that we can't simply just replace the bath house, because we have to do it in the context of what the additional uses will be in that area. People have thrown out having a spray park, having a new playground, potentially having the basketball courts in a different place or having different playing fields in the area. And until we kind of look a little more at what those additional needs are, we're not gonna know what the needs on the bath house are gonna be or where we might wanna put it in the context of everything else that's gonna go there. So really what this project is is a preliminary design of the bath house, but also kind of a site design of that area to start to answer some of these questions so that we can move the bath house specifically forward, keeping it in context of everything else. I think that's kind of the broad strokes, but I don't know if you wanna add anything, Ray. No, I mean, I think that's fair. I think there's a lot of energy about what we can transform that space into and this proposal basically gives us an opportunity to look into that. I have a quick question then. So when you talk about in the larger context, that's the Western Samson sort of redesign of the whole area. All right, so I guess is the actual position of a new bath house is in question as well? Like it may be relocated and all right. Yeah, if you look at, sorry, I don't mean interrupt, the Western and Samson study, if you kind of dig your teeth into it, obviously it's looking at a whole huge area. I think phase two of it is a little more what I've labeled as the kind of enhanced war memorial pool area. And that's the area that particularly we'd be looking at, but in the preliminary sketch that Western and Samson had, they actually rotated the bath house so that it was on the side of the pool rather than at the head of the pool as it is currently. Okay, so that sort of gets to the crux of my question then I guess would be if we're not sure where the position would even be, is it premature to start doing some of that design work now? Cause I would assume that the design would change, windows position, things like that, max my son and so forth. Is this a little early to be coming to see back for money now? Well, that's why we're packaging this with at least a site design, not that everything's gonna move forward right now, but we want decisions to be made so that we don't shoot ourselves in the foot with putting this in one place and not thinking about the full context, but also understanding that we can't wait for everything to be built in order for the bath house to be replaced cause we've got a shorter time period to do it. So. Okay. And one of the Amy mentioned in her presentation there about phase two of this larger process. The timing is actually very good because the first stage is the part that the fundraising is really going for right now. That's sort of the really exciting part which is the track and the bigger issue there is town and schools partnered in massive, information project. This is a chance to put the study, the research into what happens on that phase to on the front burner while the energy is going in another direction. While phase one is part of it. This is the part that, you know, honestly has been needed by recreation. This is the part of that high school of the regional area there, the ground over by the high school that is controlled by us. There's also community field which is another stage in the development process. But this is one of those processes that we've been looking at for a while and it just so happens to be the first town field in that four step process. It's the first town into that four step process. So the research I think is timely in that it would be done at a time where we could put concrete on the table for in time for that second phase to happen. Okay, so that helps both of you. So maybe putting it another way, would it be fair to say that this work will help dictate how the rest of the plan gets built out. So it's not a matter of here's a master plan, now put your bathhouse here. Here's where the bathhouse should be now plan around it. Right, especially, yeah, no, that's a much better way to put it. And it's especially as I understand like the Weston and Samson plan was kind of the 10,000 foot view. And so now that we wanna move forward, we need to drill in on it a little bit and actually make a couple of those decisions enough to know where that bathhouse should be, not only in terms of where it should be but also what the needs are for this. Is this only serving the bathhouse users? Is it gonna serve people that are using the fields as well? Is it gonna be year round use where it needs to be heated and insulated? Some of those things we don't know and we need to have a better idea of everything around it to make those decisions. Great, thank you. Yeah, I have a couple of questions. So firstly, I'm trying to understand a little bit more detail what the level of urgency, like how much is the maintenance costing each year right now and how is that changing over time? And if we push this five years off, what will happen? And then the second question is for this, I think it's a $200,000 proposal. So what do we get for that $200,000? Great questions. So in terms of the urgency, I mean, I will say that even if we start this process now, the reality is we're looking at two to three years easy for us to go through this first phase and then get the final design and then bid it out to be realistic because of all the different steps that are gonna be involved. Right now, I mean, the reality is, race staff can talk about this as much as my staff. We struggled to get that building open and operational and it takes a lot. I don't know that I have a number that I can pull out but I know that there were even several times this year where we had to just shut down one side. You've got the men's side and the women's side and we have to shut down one side and all users of the pool had to go through the other side because every single bathroom, every single toilet was backed up on one side for about a week during the summer or the drains weren't draining properly and stuff like that. So we're fighting this constant battle and partly it's because the roof's in rough shape and so unless and till the roof gets fixed, we're gonna keep fighting these battles with the infrastructure inside. So that's the urgency for my side is to, we could either fix the roof, which is a cheaper option. We're still gonna continue to have like gender and equity access issues. There's no way we can fix that with the current building structure. So we could fix kind of in-house, not in-house. We could fix the roof and continue to make it work to a limited basis if we needed to but that would be a lot of work or we're gonna continue to fight this battle. So hopefully that kind of answers, I wish I had no person- Well, is it like one person's work or less than a person or more than a person or is there outside costs? I mean- Like on a daily basis, Ray, would you know how to estimate that? I know my guys are there a lot to keep the plumbing- I don't know what a lot means. There's a lot mean once a week or once a day. I don't know. I would guess it maybe averages once a day that we're getting called in for some sort of a plumbing thing or to get a shower running that isn't running or to try and ventilate everything because the ventilation isn't working well either. So- I mean, one of the things that I learned just last week about CPAC and we're trying to stay away from the focus on it as a maintenance issue because maintenance is not supposed to be a CPAC. Some of it is gonna- No, my question is sort of this right now, CPAC has a very limited amount of budget and this year there's like a lot more like many times more requests than what we have available. Yeah. Yep. And so go ahead, Amy. No, I was only gonna say I absolutely don't disagree with that, Matt. But I will say that's partly why we're in this situation now is because this pool house much as it's needed attention for a while, it kept not bubbling to the surface of anybody's priority list and- Right, I understand. The reason I'm talking to you now is because it is. The reason is because the reason we have so much this year is because people are suddenly, oh, CPAC has money and they've neglected it for 10 years and now they all want it now. But yeah. So the second question for the 200,000, what do we get? So we're gonna get a preliminary site plan. So we're gonna understand the context of everything that's going around to understand what the plan is for that space in terms of knowing that. Yes. So we know what the needs. So it's a site plan. It's site plan and then preliminary design. So it's kind of bringing it through about 50% design. It's not gonna give us big documents to go out but it's gonna get enough that we're gonna be able to know where it is. And we know the sizing requirements and all of that so that the design can get finalized no quicker. Yeah. And it's not gonna be like these are the three options. That's gonna be halfway through the process. It's gonna be halfway through. We have these are the three options. And then at the end of this, we're gonna have this is what we wanna do. Basically the specs to design it. And I'm gonna interrupt for one moment and Dave Zomek actually has his hand up here. So I'm gonna bring him into the equation who also has some understanding of the issue. Dave, are you here? Yeah, Ray, thanks. Dave. Yeah, are you able to bring my video in as well, Ray? Yes. I'm sorry, I'm gonna promote the panelists. Are you in? Maybe he has to sign his video. There we go. Thanks. Dave, you're a panelist now. Okay. Good evening, everybody. You know, I've been listening to the conversation. Great questions, great conversation. And yeah, I just wanted to kind of support, you know, the direction that Amy was going and the description that she's been giving of this project. And yeah, I mean, I was very much involved with and initiated some of that 10,000 foot look that we took at all of our recreational facilities with Weston and Sampson. And Amy was spot on with basically saying, you know, we had that high level view. And then this is one component of that view, really looking at that area that includes, you know, the ancient playground, the 1950s pool, the War Memorial and then the basketball court that really isn't serving much function at all. And really, I think in terms of the product we're gonna get, it's that design of that bathhouse. And bathhouse might not even do it really. What does that poolhouse of the 2000s look like? Not what does it look like from 1950? But, you know, for those of you who haven't been to that pool lately, a good reminder, and I wish we had site visits for CPAC because I think it would be eye-opening, but, you know, 1950s cinder block construction, one-story cinder block construction. It's grandfathered in now. It doesn't meet any of the current ABA standards that we have today. As Amy said, there aren't separate changing rooms for, you know, different gender changing rooms. And then really, we've kind of made a decision as a town that it's not worth investing in, you know, to put tens of thousands or hundreds of, you know, say $100,000 or $150,000 into that poolhouse from 1950 just doesn't make sense. And it's really not, you know, people do talk about deferred maintenance. It's not really, in my estimation, this isn't a deferred maintenance situation. We've invested in that building to the degree we can since the 1953 or whenever, it was in 1953, Amy, we've invested in that building. We've taken good care of it. Yeah, it's an end of life. Yeah, but it's really an end of life building. Right. So it's kind of exciting to think what could that building be like? How could it also serve the high school, as Ray mentioned earlier? Do we need external bathrooms there for when events happen at community field or the fields next to the high school? So kind of an exciting project. And I think it'd be a good little visioning project, get the community involved and see what people want there. Do we want a new playground there? Do we want a small, you know, one spray, spray park, spray pad there? Do we want basketball courts? What does recreation want to happen around that pool? My last bit from recreational programming standpoint is also when that phase two happens, when we start looking at that space. So I would like to know how feasible it is to do that construction. If we are moving the building off 90 degrees to the left or what have you, if we are moving it, is it possible or how can we make it possible to do so while maintaining operations in that pool? Because that pool, of course, is a very important piece. We learned this year with the malfunction, with a small, mechanical malfunction, we know how much that pool needs for us in terms of revenue, in terms of community activity, in terms of purpose. We would like to make sure that we don't all of a sudden get thrust in phase two at trying to come up with something that doesn't take into account our need for operations that are needed to keep operations moving smoothly. The other piece I would just add that I think from, and Ray, you just spoke to it there, but I would just add too that from a usership standpoint, the number of children that we put through camps and take advantage of that pool from a social justice, environmental justice standpoint, it is a huge low cost recreational opportunity for so many kids who don't get to go other places during the summer and that's a wonderful asset to have. And I think Amy's gonna speak to the liner in a minute, which is another long-term investment in this facility. I will say I'd like to, as part of this, look at the War Memorial. It's a very modest War Memorial. We've had a lot of input through the years from veterans groups. They would very much like to have something a little more meaningful, perhaps larger referencing our veterans from various engagements throughout the wars throughout the world and through history. So that's part of this effort as well. Thank you, Dave. If there are no other questions immediately about the pool house, the bath house redesign, then I could move Amy into the pool improvements. Yep, we moved exactly 20 feet through the building and now to the pool itself. Yeah, so the other project that we're moving forward is for the improvements to the pool itself. And there's kind of three parts to this, two parts that are driving, you know, part number three. So the first thing is that the ADA accessible chair is broken. And so we need a new ADA accessible chair for the pool. So that's one part of it that we need to make happen. Another part is that the drainage structure of this pool, we've got a couple of issues with it. One is that there's a pretty good leak that keeps getting worse and worse every summer. Right now we estimate it's leaking about 2000 gallons a day whenever the pool is full. And because of that, it means that like, I think a couple of years ago, we actually bought a cover to be able to winterize the pool full, which actually makes the liner last longer, but we can't do that because we're not gonna continually pump water in in the winter. So we're unable to actually use it that way. So, you know, we need to fix this drainage issue that we have underneath. And then the other thing is there's a compliance regulation called the Virginia Graham Baker Law. And that's a safety feature in pools. And we do technically meet the regulation. Again, some of these things were kind of grandfathered in through what we have, but it's not modern compliance with that regulation in general. Really what you want is two different drainage structures so that heaven forbid, if someone, you know, gets stuck on one drainage structure, there's not gonna be a suction issue. You just need to have two. Right now it's, we have a vacuum breaker that will technically work, but if something happens to that, we have no kind of fail save on that. So these different, two different drainage issues we wanna take care of. And we've been kind of holding off on it until the pool needed a relining because relining the pool is a pretty expensive thing. But at this point now, we're, you know, at the point where we need to be redoing the lining. So we wanna take care of these drainage issues and then reline once it's done because the drainage issues we're gonna have to like cut pieces of the pool structure out to do work underneath them and then do the total relining. So that's kind of the scope of this. I guess that it's all over, but it's all dealing with the pool structure in general. So, Ray, do you wanna add anything to that one? No, I think that pretty much says that anybody have any questions on that piece. I say 2,000 gallons a day. That's what my guys tell me. Unbelievable. It's been getting worse. It was not that... Okay. It's growing in confidence over time, you know? All right. So my question may sound like a silly one given how hard everybody's pushing to make any of this happen, but the pool is gonna stay in this location as an outdoor pool for the foreseeable future, correct? There's no part of this larger master plan that might say to move the pool or to reorient the pool or to make it indoor or anything like that, right? It's here for the long haul. Okay. I'm gonna say yes, although if you look very carefully at the Western and Samson plan, they did actually move the pool about like, I don't know, half a pool's length. And I think they changed the rotation, but cost-wise I don't know that that's the best use if you're not, you know, it's not moving significantly. So... Okay, okay. That helps, thank you. Yeah. Other questions? Oh, so I guess every year we don't do this, we just have to suffer or you think we're at the point where the pool is at a serious risk of not being able to open it. We don't do it. On the chair compliant, we're out of compliance on the chair that will have to be taken care of in order for us to open the pool, order for us to open the pool in any sort of compliance. We will have to find that funding someplace. The town will have to find that funding because that is... Yeah, that was only 8,000 of it though. Yeah, that's the small part of it, yeah. I mean, the bigger part, if say this didn't happen this year and we had to keep moving it forward, you know, I mean, we're paying for the water in order to keep that up. And then, you know, the pool lining as you get longer away from when it should get done, that's when you can do structural damage to the underlying structure of the pool. And the drainage issues, like I said, it's more a safety thing. Like we're okay until somebody gets injured or until our health inspector does do the annual inspection on the pool. Like this year, the pool didn't open on time. Is that, am I wrong or am I correct? Is that related to this? No, that was the pool house. It was the filter room. It was one of the pumps in the filter room that didn't work. And with supply chain issues, it took from when we realized to when we got it in place, it took some time, so. Right. You know, if I could just add, if I could just add going back to something that Andrew asked about made me think, you know, for this commission in my mind, the biggest question is, you know, how committed are we as a community to having two outdoor pools open for X number of days in the summer? Now, what we know about global climate change is in all likelihood, we are gonna be getting more days over 90 degrees. We will probably, as we're seeing this week and this month, have, you know, many more, perhaps a longer season in the fall, a longer warm season. And some of that will be unpredictable. But I think the big question is, do we invest in both of these pools? Now, a few years ago, not too long ago, I don't think anyone was, maybe Yusuf might've been on the commission then. You know, War Memorial was closed for a few years because it needed so much work. And we were able to get a grant from the state. I believe we put in CPAC money, but it was a couple hundred thousand dollars to get the new liner, some pump and filter improvements. We redid the deck. We put a new fence around the 1950s original. Everything was original, right? And we did the same thing at Mill River Pool. We've invested a couple hundred thousand dollars in Mill River and we still need to. So these, you know, we just as a community need to decide, are we gonna invest in these assets long-term? So to me, that's kind of the fundamental question here. Are we gonna just have them limp along or are they gonna be places that we're proud of? They meet all ADA, they meet all safety and health regulations, et cetera. Because I think DPW has been doing a good job through the years limping War Memorial along. You know, that's a 1950s pool. Mill River is a 1972 pool. We just redid Mill River, a lot of the systems up there, the filter and the pumps. You know, we did redid the basketball courts. We're reinvesting in these community assets. And I think people aren't really responding well when we do it, but it's, you know, we have to make a conscious decision to say, yeah, we need to keep these two pools for the following reasons. Well, the pools bring in revenue, right? Some revenue? Yeah. Large revenue in the summertime, yes. So it seems like it's an investment as well if it's doable. Yeah, I don't know, Ray would know better than I. I'm not sure they're a revenue source. I'm not sure. You know, we don't do the pools. We don't keep them open to make money. Right, no, I know. We need to invest in them. It was and has been in my short period of time. It has been a, I don't have numbers in part of me, but it has been a source of revenue for us. But I think arguably as much, if not more, is the sense of public service that allow us to give, yes, in hot summers and in terms of having a place, having a central place, that this was more than just our department when we gave the free days in this past summer because of the heat waves. That was largely out of a conversation with town hall that said this is part of our relationship with town. We wanna try and make this so that we have access in those days where they are. I think there's a public service piece to it that allows us to transcend our revenue source and make it mean something a little bit more. So I mean, I know how I would answer Dave's question about need for or interest in having to pools open, but I think he's right. We do need to be having that conversation. We need to have this as part of that conversation. I think I would add swimming lessons too. I mean, teaching kids how to swim is so critical. And a lot of kids get through school grade, K through 12 and don't learn how to swim. And I think it's a terrible thing from a safety standpoint and just being comfortable around water as adults that if you get through the system, K through 12, I believe we should be offering swimming lessons to anybody who wants to take them and having as many people learn how to swim as possible. If there are no more questions about the pools, about more Memorial Pool and the CPAC proposal there, we can transition. Sorry, go ahead Sacha. Yeah. And this may not be that short a question as Ray was just hoping to wrap things up. But I'm wondering, Dave and Amy, if you can just say a little bit about other ways in which the pool, the building is basically, we're looking towards new construction, right? We've decided, you've decided that that building is the end of its life. But with regard to the pool itself, we're looking at maintenance activities, at least to my understanding of what's been said. What are the other ways in which the town plans in its budgetary process to maintain the facilities that it owns? And how does the CPA funding fit into that picture? Amy, you want me to take a stab at that? I was gonna say, I'm gonna hit mute. I will hit mute really quickly, so. Yeah, no, it's a great question, Sanjay. Let me see if I can take a stab at it. Let me start by saying, I wish it was better. I wish we were more systematic about it. Sanjay and I have, and others have worked hard on trying to increase the amount of funding going toward not only new recreational facilities, but also the maintenance of the ones we have. And I think it's, we've made a lot of progress over the last seven to 10 years, but I think we have a long way to go. And I think the short answer, Sanjay, is we need to look at multiple sources of funding. So, this all can't be on CPAC. It all can't be on the capital plan. And frankly, honestly, I would say this in any venue and town, we also need to increase operating budgets for both DPW and for recreation to maintain the facilities that we have. And I've been a strong advocate for that. And I think we've made a little progress, but we need to make more. We need to have budgets for the basics or paint for annual maintenance of roofs, fencing, filter systems, all of the things that DPW and recreation have to take care of, those should be baked into operating budgets for DPW and for recreation appropriately. I don't know all the division of labor there, but appropriately. And then we need to look at capital and make sure that there's a good balance between what we're asking CPAC for and what's in the capital plan. And I think we were doing better at that than we were 10 years ago, but we need to make improvements even on where we are today. The other thing we did some years ago, three or four years ago, we did, let me see if I get this right, we did an ADA transition plan, which was comprehensive for the entire town. So that plan looked at every building, every facility we have, and we had an outside company come in, it's available online, it's a fantastic document. But what it does is it assesses the accessibility of every building and every recreational facility we have. So the pools are covered there in great detail. What do we need to make our pools, Cherry Hill, et cetera, Mill River, et cetera, a fully ADA. So that, those plans should inform the capital plan, the operating plans and CPA requests. I will, I'm not shy in saying that I'm a huge supporter of using CPAC money for town projects, not to say that non-town projects are not important, but my bias is we've got a lot to do, we've got a lot of projects that we, we should be doing to improve these facilities. And I think town projects should come first. And there's plenty to do. I know there's $8 million worth of requests. Clearly there's not $8 million to go around. There's only about 1.8 million if we spend every nickel, every dime of this year's available funds. So, so I'm not shy to say, I think the town projects should be prioritized, but the committee will decide, using the best information they have. So I think, I think we're doing all right, Sanjay, but we need to do better. Thanks. I thank you, Dave. I feel seen, I don't know if I speak for Amy here, but as a, as a department head, I feel seen by that comment and I appreciate the words. Yeah, I was going to add just two, two things to that. You know, one, I'm glad that Dave's beating the drum that I say all the time in meetings. I'm not, you know, I love the new spray park. I see how much people use it. I love the new park and Kendrick park, the playground. I see how much kids use it, but every time I see those things, I see additional maintenance costs that aren't reflected in our budget. And it's why like these two projects are so important to me. I think it's important that we continue to invest in what we, the infrastructure that we have, rather than continue to add new stuff and then forget about it and not reinvest in it. That's not how we're going to keep things moving. And that's really what these two projects are getting at is, let's take these, you know, one of the jewels that we have in our town, which is War Memorial, and let's make sure that we're reinvesting it so we can continue to use that into the future. Yeah, I think, I think Sanjay's question and Dave's point is that the CPA while it can do this is maybe not really the right solution, necessarily in the long term. And there's always going to be a trade-off. I mean, you, instead of spending your budget on staff, you're going to have to spend your budget on materials and other maintenance projects. Or you could say increase the budget. But I mean, basically, you're looking at the town, the town has, well, I don't know the numbers, like $150 million budget. And CPA is one of the most important projects on the budget and CPA is one and a half million is 1%. Obviously that's not going to be enough to maintain, to do even, you know, 20 year, every 20 year maintenance projects on all of the facilities in the town. So you can't be relying on CPA for doing that. That's going to have to come from other places, not just CPA. Yeah, and these are great conversations for you all to, you know, in your travels and town as you, you know, we have a joint capital planning committee and that's- Yeah, and I don't know what their budget is, but that's also pretty over-allocated. Yeah, well, that's where these conversations have been happening. And for years, it's a little bit of a hot potato who's going to do what, you know, it should be CPAC, it should be capital. And I think we found a pretty decent balance. But to your point, Matt, I think, you know, this CPA fund shouldn't be used for, you know, just maintenance or deferred maintenance over time. Ideally. Here you go. I was just going to add in my second comment and I may be speaking out of turn because this isn't, I don't know that anything's like finalized, but I know like part of our conversation as we were talking about the bath house in general was, there are grants out there like park grants that you can use for the building, but not necessarily the preliminary design. And so as we're talking about the first phase, we're coming to you guys this year because that's an appropriate place for the funds, but we're not necessarily looking to come back to you guys next year for the final design and construction of it because we do know that there are other grants that we would be eligible for. We just need, it's not the appropriate venue for it at this time. So we are looking at those and I totally get what you're saying, Matt. That's a thank you for throwing that out there. We get that. Amy, I would recommend you bring that to the CPAC committee's party presentation as well, just to let them know that we can come. Thank you. If there are no other questions, I say we fold right over into conservation. Amy, you are free to hang out if you want to. I'm going to remove you from the panelists list. You can come or go as you wish. Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Amy. Great. Well, I will be fairly brief. And yeah, just a little transition from that last conversation. I think staff, all of us are kind of acutely aware of the capital demands on the town, right? We have these four really large projects, school, library, DPW and buyer station. And how are we going to navigate our way through all of those projects with inflationary factors, interest rates on the rise? And I think right now I know there's a meeting going on and in town hall with kind of a financial indicators update for the town council. So I'm sure we'll be hearing more about that in the media and on various presentations in the coming months. But staff is acutely aware of kind of what can we bite off? What can we do over the next five to 10 years that's realistic? And I think to Amy's last point about the bathhouse, we've been very successful with getting grants. Kendrick Park was funded what, 80% with state grant and not local funds. We just got a grant for an ADA trail at the former Hickory Ridge site. And again, 80% of that will be funded with a state park or land grant. So we're good at getting grants, we'll continue to go out and seek those. So really briefly, open space. So broadly under the CPAC umbrella, there's open space which includes kind of active recreation and passive recreation. And historically, the passive recreation side has been really covered by conservation and that's one of the departments under my purview. This year we came to CPAC with a $100,000 request. As most of you know, we have an extensive trail system in Amherst, it's about 80 miles of trails if you can believe it. It includes places like Buffers Pond, Mount Pollocks, Hamathus Brook and the list goes on. And all of those trails need maintenance. All of those trails include bridges, big bridges, large bridges over the Mill River, over the Fort River, over the tributaries, they include parking areas, they include bog bridges, hundreds of bog bridges throughout Lawrence Swamp conservation area to keep people out of wetlands and also from keeping them going through muddy areas of the trail. So this year, back in 2012, the CPA legislation was changed to allow for actually under the recreation category for passive recreation and improvement to trails to be covered. Now, historically what happened was when you went for trail money through the CPAC, you could only use that those funds on CPAC purchased properties. So the amendment to the legislation allows you to use, if you go through the recreation, under the recreation heading, those funds can be used on any property in the town of, in this case, the town of Amherst. So as we look at the list of improvements or replacements that needs to happen in the town, these bridges, these parking areas, these access points, ADA trails can be covered, can be enhanced using CPAC funds. And I think if you read my proposal, as you look at bridges at Amethyst Brook, bridges along the KC trail crush culverts in different places with flooding, raised boardwalks at Plumbro conservation area. We have four or five accessible trails in town, which all need work. Kiosks can be covered, informational kiosks can be covered by this funding. Repairing bridging along the Robert Frost trail and Lawrence swamp and the list goes on. So again, we're successful at getting grants. The Kestrel Trust has been very supportive in the past of helping us. We had a $30,000 grant last year from the state to do trail work, but there's well over $100,000 worth of work to bring our trails up to the status that we'd like them to be. Just to give you an idea, we've done a couple of projects just in the last two months and just two bridges were probably around between the materials cost and the labor cost was around $25,000 for those two bridges. One is along Southeast Street and one is down in South Amherst. When we can, we use town labor. We have two full-time conservation land managers, if you will, and they can do a certain number of projects, but when you get into complex projects that require complex permitting, and larger bridges, for instance, that require design work and then installation over say the Plum Brook, the Hop Brook, the Mill River or the Amethyst Brook, those projects are probably something we're actually gonna bid out and not do in-house because it's beyond the capability of our staff. So that in a nutshell is the proposal. Happy to take questions. Before we take questions, I guess I run the problem of assuming that David doesn't need an introduction, but for all those here, David is the assistant town manager and he is head of conservation and he knows a ton of the CPAC process as we're really fortunate to have him here tonight and for a lot of different reasons. Are there any questions about the conservation proposal? Yeah, I guess sort of following on, is typically the materials and any external contractors, that's not a line item that you normally have in the budget. You have to get that as a separate grant from somewhere else. Yeah, it's interesting carrying this theme forward that we covered with Amy under recreation. All right, we have what's called a grounds maintenance fund for the conservation department is a total of $5,000 a year. That covers any materials you might need. It covers oil changes, it covers trash bags for puffer spawn and $5,000 as you can see. Yeah, that's not gonna go very far. It doesn't go very far. Just the materials alone on one bridge that I mentioned a moment ago was about $5,500. That granted, we're in a severe inflationary environment here so materials are costs are through the roof. I guess I would add too that the reason that many communities come at this under the conservation heading is that we look at recreation, we look at conservation trails as passive recreation. People hiking, people running, people doing yoga out on our conservation areas. And during the pandemic, we saw a dramatic, dramatic increase of the use of the trails. I mean, I've been with the town almost 20 years. Those two years, everybody as we all know was trying to get outside, get fresh air, get out of the environments that they were in with family, friends. We saw weddings happening on conservation areas picnics in areas that we'd never seen before. So it kind of validated for us the importance of our conservation land and Amherst. So $100,000 may seem like a lot but it's really probably five or six bridge projects. Some done being done with town labor and some farmed out to private contractors. Yeah, so you mentioned in the last few years you had a $30,000 state grant and another grant coming in for Hickory Ridge. Like over the 20 years or so, is that like the average you're getting grants like $30,000 a year from outside of CPA from the state and so on? There's no real average I like. Like is that typical or is that not typical? I would say that it has been increasing the more advocacy work that I've done and we've done as a town, I think it's increasing. So I also support recreation going to capital. We have gone to the JCPC, the Joint Capital Planning Committee and asked for funds for projects like bridges, parking areas. We did a new parking. We redid the parking kind of a dual use parking area at Stanley Street, which some of you if any of your kids who are maybe you use the ball fields at Stanley Street, conservation took on that parking area. I think that was in 21 and we redid that parking area. We resurfaced it, we brought in new signage, we reoriented the parking lot and that was probably six or $8,000. It functions both for the conservation area that is there but also for the ball fields that are adjacent. So I'm also going to, as I mentioned to the state for as much funding as I possibly can and then we try to get grants. So I'd say it's increasing, not decreasing and that's primarily because of just more advocacy for the money. Any other questions for Dave? I do have another question but I don't know if I should keep hogging the limelight here. Oh, that's fine. So Kestrel is one volunteer group you work with. I've seen in some places in the woods like little blue metal things from ACC or something. It looked like it was an Amherst volunteer trail group from a while ago. Like these could be over 20 years old I think but like, so you don't know other than Kestrel have you worked with any volunteer groups? Yes, yes, good question. Those signs may be very old. They may be antiques at this point but yeah, they might be, I can't picture exactly what they are but they might be boundary markers desing any kind of Amherst Conservation Commission ACC. I'm not sure, I'm happy to see one if you ever out there and take a digital photo and send it to me. Sure, sure. But yeah, we do work with volunteer groups. We have great success working with folks, young people from UMass, from Amherst College, from Hampshire. We also have a very active group of retired folks in Amherst who do work along the Robert Frost Trail. David Mullins who is a retired teacher from Amherst Regional is quite a gifted experienced carpenter and he has got a wonderful group of very active people along the Robert Frost Trail. And, you know, as best we can, we try to take advantage of volunteer help. I will say that on some of the more complex bridge projects, you know, we need muscle but in fact, we need the skill set more than we'd need muscle on some of these projects. They're also often working in very sensitive areas and some of these bridges, you all are familiar with our bridges, if they need replacement, oftentimes it's an equipment rental piece as well that we need to, you know, rent augers, you need to rent a mini excavator to get in a sensitive wetland area or near a stream, something like that. So it's complex. Great example is the Amethyst Brook Bridge which has been out for a couple of years. It got sheared off by an ice flow in December. We have the most of the funding together for that. And then this year we reassessed the project given inflationary factors. We looked again at the design, our building commissioner, our town engineer said, if you want that thing to last 40, 50 years, you need to take another look at that design. So we're doing that right now. So that'll probably anytime your engineer and building commissioner say take a look at the design it's probably gonna cost more money but we wanna make sure that bridge does not get sheared off by ice or water along the Amethyst Brook. So we've got some of the funding together on that but we need more funding to make it happen. I always saw those little signs were trail markers because we have some near mean and some are like square red ones. Some of them are like orange triangles. So I kind of follow them when I'm walking with the dog. Yeah, most of our trails are, they have blazes. So red, blue, green. I'm not sure what those signs are. They may be kind of have been out there for 20 years because I can tell you, we have not put them up. They might be along the Robert Frost. They might be along the M&M trail. Yeah, those are the ones usually out here. I did also think they were trail markers. Are there other questions for Dave? Okay, thank you very much Dave. Thank you Amy for being here before. I am going to move Dave back to the attendees. I know, I would like to say there may be a little bit of a change in order here but I have in attendance. I have Maria and Tony from the Fort River Group. If they would like to share, I can ask them to raise their hand just to give us an update as to where they are right now. You certainly don't have to. But as they figure out if that's something that would be interesting for them, I believe that Andy McDougal is going to have to leave us which will put us below quorum. I don't know for sure what we start the meeting, what have you. If Andy is leaving and we do have any information, I'm going to say that if we have anything else that we do beyond that, dropping below quorum, I'm going to ask that it just be presentations from the public that want to share and that we don't discuss it right now because we are short of quorum but I do want to respect their time if they want to, they're interested in sharing where they are. And then I can table the program updates which I think about and put some time into but I can either share them with you separately or I can certainly reach out to share them with you on the commission separately. And so I move that we allow, there is a hand raised in the attendees, I move that we allow 10 minutes for the proposal just to share where they are and then I can wrap it up after that. Yeah, is this the Crocker Farm one? Sorry, not the Crocker Farm. This is the Fort River. We heard from them before. There's been- Is the Crocker Farm one here? Crocker Farm is not here. Oh, okay. Crocker Farm is not here. Unless there's somebody that's here for Crocker Farm, please raise your hand for that also. That would be priority first. If Crocker Farm is here, please raise your hand. Okay. So in that case, I will give Fort River who spoke to us in October, I'll give them 10 minutes just to share where they are. We will not have discussion afterwards. I should have that motion seconded. I move that we have- Okay, I second it. Okay, thank you. I'm bringing to the panel, Maria Kopecki and Tony is here also. Hi, guys. Hi. Hey, I don't want to take up 10 minutes of your time. I'll just report in that we presented to the elementary school building committee on Friday and took questions there. And they have continued, I think as we talked about last time, the site plans continue to evolve. So I do have some new maps to show you where they're at at this point. I don't have, I mean, I don't have to share them now, but if you'd like, I can forward on to you where they are on the school building committee. But that's really where we're at. We have a presentation date at CPAC on December 1st. But if anybody had any other questions, I don't know if you guys- Oh, thank you. Thank you. That's fair. You certainly can send anything to me. I can share with the commission information that you sent to me. New maps, new work. I was there for the last 30 minutes, 45 minutes of the meeting on Friday. So I caught a little bit of that. I might be reaching out to you specifically for anything that may have missed, but I wasn't there. The one thing that they did mention that is new is the, both the designer and the OPM spoke about saying that they're going to be looking into putting the conduits and any possible plumbing. So for the comfort station and for the lighting, they're going to be looking at being able to do that as part of their project. So that was nice to hear. Thank you, Maria. Okay, I'm going to move you back over, Maria, just for the close. Thank you. So that brings me, we can set up our November, December commission meeting. We'll do that over email. I'll be reaching out to each of you all, if there aren't enough of you all to it for us to really take a vote right now and find dates that work. We will figure out a way to post and prepare for that next meeting as we can. I'll get any information that I didn't cover in here to you all directly. If there's anything that you as commissioners would like to share with me or get on the agenda, please reach out to me whenever you see fit. Questions, comments, I move to adjourn. Second. Sounds good. Everybody have a nice night and be safe, be well.