 Yeah, thank you. So pursuant to chapter 20 of the act 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone, which are in the agenda. No in-person attendance of members of the public is permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the specific public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. We have a one-hour restriction on our meeting today, and this is the agenda. And my role is to initiate the meeting and then ask for the selection of a chair, and then that chair will then ask for the selection of a vice chair. So I think Kathy Shane was the chair last year. So do we have, in the way we'll do it is we'll ask for nominations, and then we will ask the person if they want to serve, and then we'll continue with the nomination process until there are no other nominations, and then we will go around the room and ask people to vote on who they would like to serve as chair. So looking for nominations, I see Mandy Johanicki with her hand up. Yeah, I'm going to nominate Kathy Shane for chair. Kathy, do you accept the nomination? Yes, I do. Okay. Are there other nominations for chair? No eager anybody out there? Okay, seeing none, we will go around the room and see who would like in terms of the vote. Mandy Johanicki. Hi to Kathy. Okay. Anna? Yes, Kathy Shane. Alex? Yes. Farah? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. Irv? Yes. Kathy? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Now the meeting is yours, Kathy. Thank you very much. I actually love being chair of this, so I'm glad to do it again. And because of Sean, it's gotten easier because we're so well organized. So I am now open to nominations for vice chair. Mandy? I'm going to nominate Alex Lefebvre. Alex, are you willing to serve? I am again. Any other nominations? Seeing none, I will do just what Paul did, call out names, and indicate whether you're in favor or not. Anna? Yes. Mandy? Yes. Alex. Yes. Farah? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. Irv? Yes. And I'm a yes. So it's unanimous. So we have a chair and a vice chair. And delighted that you're doing it again, Alex. Thank you. So I think at this point, we're turning it over to Sean, who will talk about, is that correct, Sean? You're ready to do this, yes? Yes, he's on mute. Do we want to do quick introductions? There's everybody know each other? Maybe we do. I'm Kathy Shane, and I'm a town counselor. There are three counselors, and I'll have everyone just go around the room and say who they are. Why don't you do, I'll call out names, Anna. All right. Around the room, I think it looks different for everybody. It's all good. No worries. Hi, everyone. I'm Anna Devlin-Gothier. I use she, her pronouns. I'm the town counselor representing District Five, and very excited to be here. I'll throw it over to Alex. Alex Mufave, Jones Library trustee, and I'm going to throw it over to Farah. Hi, I'm Farah Amin, and I'm the newest member on the board of trustees of the Jones. Oh, sorry, Jen. Hi, Jennifer Shaw. I use she, her pronouns, and I'm a member of the school committee. I'll throw it to Irv. My name is Irv, and I am on the Amherst School Committee. And we have Pete, that leaves me. I'm Mandy Jo Hanneke, and I am one of the counselors on this committee. And so we have, so, Sean, if we turn it to you, we have new members who haven't served on the Joint Capital Planning Committee. So I think just what we are, how we work would be useful, and it's extremely useful that you've given us timing because we're trying to end in an hour because we have a second meeting that starts then. That was the best innovation last year was the setting hard timeline, time allocations for each agenda item. So, yeah, so the next one is that leads to our next agenda item, which is review the role of the Joint Capital Planning Committee. So it has changed a little bit in the last few years. Pre, the town, the charter change, Joint Capital Planning Committee did more of the creation of the capital plan. As part of the charter change, it really, the JCPC really changed it to more of a review and advisory model. So the way it works now as a town manager develops the capital plan and JCPC will review that plan and provide guidance and advice to the town manager for his final, as he develops a final plan to present to the council. And that worked really well last year as there were different issues that came up. And I think there were changes that just based on recommendations and feedback from JCPC that led to the town manager changing his capital plan. And I would just say the other thing that was the innovation last year that earlier JCPCs had asked for is the plan that's brought to us is more nearly balanced that we're looking at. There were, it may be a little over and we look over several years when I first, well, I wasn't on the first time on Council Mandy was, but the potential list of what was on the list, which were all high priority, was about double the amount of money we had to spend. So now we're coming in closer to what I would call a balanced plan and but still with nuances, we then write a report and we give the report to the town manager and we also post it to give it to the council with a brief summary. It then becomes the town manager takes our recommendations and turns it into a capital plan that goes out for a public hearing and review. So that's where that middle step of recommendations and we have changed it in terms of we've added, subtracted, modified some of what was in the first round of proposals. Yeah, so this, so what I have on the screen now is last year's capital plan, FY22, which I was thinking we'd spend some time just to go through the sections and just see if there's questions on those sections and because it kind of follows the process that we're going to follow. So this first piece just lays out what it is that we're doing. The first piece here is the capital inventory. So we have, when you get the capital plan or the draft capital plan, hopefully next week you'll have the inventory attached to the back of it. So that you'll have that as you consider the need for different capital projects. The second section here talks about the capital improvement program and what I was talking about the role of the joint capital planning committee. It also lays out some things that shall be in the capital improvement program and I think we made progress on just about all these last year and making sure these were part of that package that goes to you early in the process. So you'll get a complete listing of the projects. You'll get five years worth. There'll be a focus on the upcoming year but you'll get five years worth of projects, what's on the radar. You'll get the cost estimates, how we're proposing to finance them, the time schedules for the way it'll work is we'll give you the capital plan but then every project that we're proposing for FY23 there will be a detailed project description form that you'll also have access to which was what the department had submitted when they requested the project and we'll try to organize those by when those departments are coming to meet with you. So for example if in a couple weeks you're meeting with the schools we'll have all the school project request forms in that packet. So you can go to that meeting date and go to that packet and you'll see all the projects that are going to be discussed that night. Hey Sean quickly can you let Sonia into the meeting? I try to. She was struggling to get in. I think it has something to do with the Zoom account. I will try one more time though. Okay. You have a question. Yeah I don't know who to direct. I'll just throw it out into the universe. The capital inventory it says that town council determines the requirements for that inventory. Where is that in the timeline? When does council one or when is that supposed to happen? So my memory and Kathy or Paul or Mandy might remember this better. Last year we went through more of a process with the council where I think it was given to finance committee to talk about what those items would be and they came up with a preliminary list and that's what we followed. So our hope is that it doesn't change every year in terms of what's so that we can kind of have a mechanism for gathering that information. So unless there's a proposed change or additional information we'll follow the same criteria or the same types of information that we gathered last year. And I'm pretty sure I can find there was a document on it that went through we could do this that or the other and we came up something that's feasible for them to be regularly updating rather than you know we might want to know other things but we want we don't want the staff to spend forever doing research so that that guided the criteria. Yeah definitely to clarify I was just thinking about this from like the agenda setting perspective and making sure that we're not pushing it like we're not leaving it till that right April or something by accident so I just yeah. So Mandy has her hand up too. Yeah I just wanted to say I think the town council actually passed the past some sort of motion that said here's the things that will go into it so there's probably a motion somewhere. I think there's a motion and a document that sort of said here's the motion but here's here's the rationale so we can make sure everyone gets that as an acronym. Yeah thank you. Good so this is just the rest of the process so we this committee tries to wrap up its work by the end of March and make a the recommendation to the town manager by the end of March so that gives the town manager one month the month of April to make any adjustments make any any final modifications based on the guidance from JCPC to then be able to deliver the final capital their final proposal the capital improvement program to the council at the first meeting in May or the first business day in May and then there will be a public forum on on the capital plan. I think that's currently scheduled for sometime in early June and and then the capital plan will be adopted sometime in June usually at the same time the operating budget is adopted. So let's keep is okay if I keep going Kathy. Yeah and I think Sean if you're willing if if hands go up I'll keep my eye on the screen to make sure I capture anyone so people do the little raise hand button. So we we modified the document last year to try to include everything that the charter calls for but also make it you understandable to residents who may want to follow along and see where we are at the process so we did put in some just charts that kind of lay out different months of the year what we're working on things like that so this won't change a lot every year and we can certainly clarify if there's questions or things are confusing that feedback would be helpful we can we can make those modifications. Same thing there's a little narrative a little message if there's anything unique about this year's capital plan if there's themes we'll we'll put that on the front end of the document and you can see a breakout of projects and this can be a little this is again this is all last year's this was the final plan from last year this can be a little funky because we have the building projects in we one of our goals was trying to incorporate the planning for the building projects into the overall capital planning so when you see like this big slice for public works administration that's because there's a chunk I believe of the building project in there which makes it look like it's a huge piece of our capital which it is a huge piece but it's spread out over a longer period of time Jennifer so the blue wedge that's not labeled is public works oh it is labeled yeah sorry we should have we should have changed the color on it public works administration yep what's the percentage Sean I'm coloring it 21 percent thank you and again that's because we put in we were hoping to start funding the replacement of the DPW and and just so I mean Sean will cover this later but there's a combination as we're reviewing things of things we buy outright that are called capital but if we're taking out a large loan over time it gets booked in the year that we're paying some amount of it back so all of those enter in this and part of the capital plan has capital that we're paying from earlier years so we will see here's the total amount that flows in and here's how much we have to allocate this year that's cash but the cash could be taking on debt so that comes to us linked to projects with a recommendation of that whether this is cash or whether it's debt I'm not going to focus on the time this timeline because we're going to spend time at the end to focus on the the timeline we're going to follow for FY 23 so I'm going to skip that all right so this is um this is probably the most important summary if we understand it's also the most complicated I tried to draw on it earlier to make it highlight things I didn't realize I was going to save I was going to try it out tonight but you get the you get the messy version so you probably won't understand it completely tonight but if I do it tonight and then I also do it next week at a better chance that it'll it'll start to make sense so this is sort of an overall financial picture of the capital and what we can afford and what we can't afford whether there's a gap or not and keep in mind this is looking at what was done last year so this top section where where it says prior levy limit two and a half percent of level increase this is what drives how much funding we have for capital from the property tax levy and what the town does each year is it it establishes a person it agrees upon a percentage of the tax levy that is going to dedicate to capital and so this bolded percentage right here that those are what we're hoping to hit for targets or what we did hit for targets in the years that are approved our goal is to get to 10 percent and we took a dip when COVID hit that was one of the areas where we had a scale back we scale back in capital that's why you'll see it's at 5 percent for FY 21 but we have sort of an aggressive plan to get back up to 10 percent because we were almost there before COVID hit I think we were just about to go to 10 percent or maybe we hit it for one year and then we had a scale way back because of COVID so we have an aggressive plan to get back to 10 percent so you can see it goes from five to eight and a half up to ten and so you'll see what that looks like when we bring you back the next the FY 23 version but all this is based on whatever this levy is so if the levy estimate is 57 million that's what that percentage is based on we when we do a look back when we base the percentage when we calculate that percentage so like the eight and a half percent for FY 22 that's based on the final levy from I believe FY 20 so we do a little bit of a look back so we have an actual number but it's tied directly to wherever that levy is Alex Alex has right too many buttons to push I don't know if it's helpful or if people want any history around those percentages to understand sort of why we have them where we were why they were put in place just to have a sort of bigger broader picture sure Sonya do you want to give that history you've you've probably you've lived it the longest in terms of the fluctuations in terms of our capital do you want to give a little context I can't see her though she there yeah she just unmuted herself yeah it's pretty simple history I think I think we were down to like five percent and even lower than five percent back in the last recession that we had and I really didn't come into play for JCPC until we started to slowly started to slowly climb back up but um basically it was the recession and the first place everybody cuts is capital to to avoid cutting operating budgets so I don't really have a whole lot of history yeah I think I think the other thing is there was sort of recognition that there was a lot of capital coming up in the future that we had to get in the level up to a higher amount in order to maintain things that we're starting to need repairs and also to prepare for some of these other larger projects that are great we started to really aggressively increase when the four projects came up and we're trying to figure out how to fund them we started to slowly increase the percentage higher and higher in order to prepare to get there and also to be able to fund more of our capital to get more things done before these big projects came into place yeah and I would just add I mean this has been well over a decade in terms of the planning and some real active planning on the part of the town to move the percentage of the levy toward capital up by a half a point every year which is what was being done successfully with the ultimate goal of getting to 10 percent and we were on track and doing what needed to be done and then covid hit um and things were shifted and so that's why you're seeing the numbers go five to eight and a half to ten and so that's it's it's playing out what was the model that was put into place I want to say like 15 20 years like it's been a while that I mean I've been on jcpc for what six or seven years um and so it's been a very steady thoughtful yeah increasing about a half a percent every year each year exactly and the the financial guidelines that the council is adopting has reconfirmed or confirmed again those targets because we and when we came on as counselors we inherited a financial policy that was doing this as alex said going backwards and we immediately said we wanted to continue doing that so it wasn't just a let's do steady course there was a look at it uh jennifer and on his hands are both up jennifer I think first thanks this might be a silly question but in what ways did covid affect our tax levy such that we had to reduce to five percent I mean obviously covid affected everything but like what's like what's specifically some of the good examples um so a lot of it was in our two places our state aid stayed flat the year um that covid hit so normally we get two three percent increases that stayed flat so that um that was an issue and then a lot of many of our local receipt categories were impacted negatively and our enterprise funds were impacted negatively so when the UMass and amherst college sent their students home for half of the year things like parking revenues dropped way off water and sewer revenues dropped way off hotel motel uh meals tax really anything you can think that is driven by economic activity downtown those things either dropped off or we were really concerned they were going to drop off and most of them did drop off we were um this has been a tough challenge for budgeting because it was sort of trying to estimate how quickly they would recover how far they would fall off and so we're starting to get back to having a little bit of a trend that we can estimate going forward um but those are the major drivers that caused it and then what sonia said jennifer because we wanted to protect the school's operating budgets we've said it where do we need to make a cut to adjust and we cut it out of capital okay you know so the capital took took the cut to maintain we didn't lay off anybody you know yeah can I ask one more question it's 10 percent the goal or is 10.5 percent the goal because it says it looks like it we maxed out at 10.5 in great question um so 10 percent was the goal um when we did a process to determine how we could afford the four building projects um we used a lot of different assumptions we modeled it out going forward um and if we can get to 10 and a half percent it puts us in a better position to be able to fund those four projects um comfortable in a more comfortable way so we started again we try to integrate the plan for the four building projects and our regular capital together so we could see it all fits um and so you'll see elements of the building projects in here and that's one of those elements right so i'm not apologizing for needing to learn i am apologizing if this is frustrating for other people um my question is the dramatic shift obviously you're expecting recovery and you're estimating recovery right but is there a potential that this is going to impact operating if we are increasing at such a drastic making such a big jump right no that's not a worry so when we did the four billion projects uh analysis that was one of the things we looked at is would there be an impact on operating um and it looked like for um it looked like there was some potential in f y 23 f y 24 that um if we wanted to stick to this plan we might have to scale back on the operating increases a little bit um i think things have recovered quickly enough that that's not going to be uh concern like we were able to do two and a half percent this year um and i think when i did that analysis i wasn't sure we were going to be able to do that so i think things have recovered quickly enough that we don't have to worry about that if we try to get to the 10 percent but it is it is a given it takes so the more we spend on capital the less we have for operating and for other costs john can i just interject too that part of the um process of going for the four large projects is we were building reserves at the same time so that if we we were planning on using some reserves for some of the debt service through the out years yeah after after herb's question uh let me get through this some um slide just because you'll see some of that too what sony just mentioned so irv so are we still on the five-year plan are you going to go forward john um we're still on the plan no we're still yeah no if you have any questions whatever all right so i when i look at this i'm trying to i mean i'm taking a deep dive in this thing for the first time sure when i look at it i the first question that comes up to me is when i look at the bottom line for borrowing as we go across for fiscal uh 23 is that an estimated projected borrowing and is that bar is that the gross number for borrowing and if that's a gross number for borrowing what is the number that we would be actually paying if it's going to be a bonded issue so that's a good question can i just keep going through this top part and i'll get to that i'll highlight that when i go through i think it makes sense as i go down to cover that um is it okay if i just keep going on this top yeah i'll go ahead because i i think word if i i'm concluding rightly in terms of my mind where you're going get that question will be answered yeah yeah exactly yep all right so let me just i'll get there pretty quickly um so this top section that you're looking at right now this is all about the resources for capital all right not this doesn't focus on any of the outlays of capital this is all about the resources so this line cash capital that's how much uh the resources that are available for capital based on the tax levy um this next line debt exclusion this is because we have the four building projects integrated into this and so the um the plan that we have currently would be to do a debt exclusion override for the schools and so that would become a funding source for the school debt so you'll see the revenue on the top piece here and you'll see an equal amount on the bottom um for the school debt reserves again this is only in here because we integrated the school the four building projects so we had a plan to use um a little over 4 million total to support the four building project plan it would we would use reserves in the years when new debt would kick in and then it would phase out over time so this reserve these reserves that you see here um it's consistent with that plan that we presented for the four building projects and it really will only use reserves if we have a building project the debt start for a building project in that year community preservation is an in and out to every year there's uh some debt for community preservation act projects it comes in as a revenue source and then it goes out so that's a wash you don't have to worry about that very much Comcast funding in our agreement with Comcast we get $75,000 a year that we can put towards the debt for the municipal fiber project and so that's why you'll see it as a resource and then down below in the debt section is the outlay for the municipal fiber other is if we have any grants uh if we use revolving funds or some other funding source sometimes we're able to purchase things out of the ambulance fund um purchase ambulances out of the ambulance fund when we have enough there um so if there's any other funding source it's we don't have this a ton but if there is any other funding source it would be in this other category and then the last one here is state aid uh we get something called chapter 90 every year which can be used for road repairs and so we show that here too um but pretty much that's entirely that chapter 90 money so the total of all those um those different funding sources is shown here and then if we can't in addition to those funding sources we have the option to borrow so what Err was talking about is this borrowing line so this would be in addition to these funding sources we could choose to borrow for a project and it really depends on the project and um whether we would choose to do that the reason why it gets so high in these out years is because it has the building projects in it so we don't tend to normally borrow a ton each year um but because we have the um the library the dpw the um uh the fire station and the school project I believe they're all in here um that's why you see these borrowing numbers go up so high or did you have any did you want to ask anything else before I keep going on that borrowing I want to just continue okay I'll come you later okay so again those those are the funding sources so this next section are the outlays so we start by subtracting any of our actual debts um so anything that's been approved in the past we either have a we're either paying the debt currently or we have a debt schedule that we feel pretty good about that comes off the top because we have to make those debt payments first and this is debt for capital um so that's first then we have a row here for projected debt so if there are um any projects that we're proposing that have debt we show them here and then we put a separate line in here for the four building projects because of um I think we wanted to see what the impact of the debt was from four building projects separately so that's shown here under new projects so those three categories combine two four or sorry let me let me take one step back projected debt that's all debt that includes the um the debt for the school uh the building projects new projects is what we call cash capital or if we pay for it all at once so if we were to buy um uh repair the stairs to town hall and we were going to pay for it all at once that type of project is in this new project section so this is sort of pay as you go um this new project section so you got your actual debt projected debt related to projects that we've we've earmarked as a borrowing and then pay as you go types of projects and those three types of um ways to fund projects combine to be the total cash capital outlay and then we have these three other sources here where if we were to fund um if we had a funding source up above you'd see the outlay down below so the debt exclusion override that would be for the school if we were to pay for something out of the ambulance fund that would be in or another grant type fund that would be in this other category and then the state aid outlay um that expenditure would be in the state aid section and then the bottom line is what we're looking at to see if we're in balance and so for FY 22 we always you know we have to be in balance for the year we're proposing but when we look at the out years we've been trying to spend more time focusing on those out years to make sure we don't have a bubble um or we don't just keep pushing projects off because that sometimes can cause issues too if you just keep delaying things so we we do look at these out year numbers as well um the farther out you go you might see a bigger um amount available because it's um the farther you go the less certainty there is about the need for certain projects um so those usually will fill in as they get closer and the last thing I'll say is so anything we propose for borrowing we build in the projected debt so for example if there was the library um if we projected the library up here as a borrowing the library projected debt payments come in here so it's all here um for capital any questions yes um so Sean the actual debt um under projected I'm in the projected debt is that the debt payment on fiscal 23 so fiscal 23 this is projected back then but the actual debt payment would have been um 1,242,000 again this includes CPA the Comcast funded piece that I was talking about and then general fund debt um and I believe it also includes Sonya correct me if I'm wrong I believe it also includes the regional school assessment as well right we pay an assessment to the regional school for their related to their debt um so that would have been the actual debt number for that year and the projected debt under fiscal 23 the 1,24 yeah that would be for projects that are not approved yet all right um so one small question here CPA debt would you explain that I always thought the CPA was separate and they can do their own borrowing etc yeah um Sonya may be better to explain that because it has to do with it being it's part of the general fund so we include it um because we want this summary to tie to the general fund summary that you you'll see as part of the budget process and so we have to include CPA here because we have to include it there but Sonya can probably do a better job explaining that one thing I think that there's a ton of questions happening and I would like to just at some point circle back with you Sean and ask those questions separately so I don't tonight yeah do you want to explain CPA debt sure and then we'll go to fara so when we do the CPA process um we uh propose all the projects to the council a part of that is for debt service in the CPA process so um the CPA committee recommends of course paying our debt service debt that we've already borrowed for and that that amount of money gets transferred from the CPA fund once it's voted from town council it gets transferred over into the general fund into the debt service so it's included in the debt service because it's part of our general fund debt it has to come out of the general fund so it just ends up being a transfer from the CPA fund over to here but it has to show up here to show the debt fara uh just two small questions what is the Comcast project like real like really briefly and when you when you were talking about state aid and roads is that just bigger picture roads or things like potholes and things like that so the the Comcast so that's so we've started a project to connect most of the buildings the municipal buildings in town with fiber um our own town owned fiber I believe right now we're on Comcast fiber and so we want to get off of that and get onto our own network that we can manage and there's other benefits of having control over our own municipal fiber in town and that'll go to the schools and the library and really all the all the key buildings and then the second question was about the chapter 90 in the state so it can be used on it's used on road repairs I believe sometimes it can be used on other uh road related improvements right Sonia and equipment yeah um it can be used for uh large trucks for roads it's chapter 90 money and it just it basically just gets lumped in with the other road money and whatever the DPW puts through for roads that year it it just gets added to that bucket yeah so when you think about the amount of money that we put towards roads it's going to be adding two lines together it'll be this state aid amount and then it'll also be another amount that we fund out of other capital resources but you'd add those two together to get a sense of how much we're putting towards roads and and just I want to add that when we say roads it's also sidewalks so it's a road size sidewalks which when you see the total and you hear Guilford say how little we get for the amount of money that we pay you know it's uh you get a sense of a pothole versus a mile of road versus a sidewalk um but that will his those questions are really good to ask him on what can we get for our money yeah right so two questions what is our deck capacity for the town and uh a uh i'm s a deck capacity and this question the follow-up question is that I just want to make sure i'm understanding this when we put together the municipal budget the first thing that is going to be paid is our debt obligations is that correct when we put together this capital yeah we start with any actual debt we have to pay that comes off the top so if our debt goes up then that means there's less for new projects going forward and in terms of our debt capacity so now I don't know if you have the latest number it's over 100 million I think it's about 130 at this point yeah it's around 130 and then that so that's our debt limit and then some projects we have are what they call outside the debt limit a lot of those are water and sewer projects those are usually funded by our enterprise funds and by the water and sewer rates those don't count towards that limit so that was that's a good question that was one of the things when we did the four building project analysis and we looked forward we wanted to see how close we were going to bump up against that debt limit and I don't believe we ever got over 100 million with that that's part of what's driving the budgets for these projects and why we're trying to have a complete package complete financial plan for all the projects yeah given the four projects we have we have some challenges ahead Anna so state aid is chapter 90 right what about things like ARPA funds or other federal grants that are coming through for COVID relief is that included under capital or is that does that go somewhere Sonya no it goes somewhere else okay thank you so that's not included the other thing that's not included our enterprise funds so they that's in within the enterprise fund when we talk about those in the budget document or with finance committee that capital is separate from this okay even though they're four capital projects it's not included in the capital budget the four capital projects are sorry no sorry I meant the the funding that comes through that's for like smaller capital improvements that's not included in us the like ARPA funds for for smaller thing for yeah so ARPA funds are just not in this because this is mainly focused we don't usually include those types of grants here but I I think we could provide a separate report or something on that type of capital that's okay grant grants would have been a better word instead of going specific in what I was talking about so that's what I was curious about thank you I will keep going I'll try to go quickly so we can spend a little bit time on the timeline so the next few pages again this was last year what's already been approved but these are all the individual projects and it has the out years the only thing I'll point out here is you'll see the department on the left you'll see the location the description of the project and then this column here is the funding source so if it says cash capital that means we would buy it outright if it says other that would be an example of something that's funded from a grant or some other funding source if it says borrowing it's a borrowing so yeah that was just prior it's repurposed capital so capital accounts aren't spent then we can repurpose those capital so that's repurposed capital grants normally normally we pay we charge direct the grants directly for capital I mean all expenses come directly out of grant funds separate accounts this is just the general fund and this is where I'll just point this one out because there was a question on it so the chapter 91 we specifically call state aid because it's so it's it recurs every year so here you'll see the road repair resurfacing state aid this is the estimate we use every year because it's it's generally around that amount and then you'll see another road repair another road repair here this was a little bit unique this year we similar to what Sonia just said we repurposed old capital we had a capital reserve an FY 21 that wasn't used so we repurposed that to support the FY 22 capital plan and then the regular cash capital road repair which we usually have every year and you can see the amount and then there is a separate one for sidewalks as well so Sean that other that other is the capital reserve we did in fiscal year 21 when we reduced the capital plan and we decided to just fund roads and then put it in a reserve in case something came up and then we we allocated out in the next year so that's what the 700,000 is so the next section we do put a little description of each project so you'll see that after it goes roughly an order of the projects up above so you'll see a description there and we did try last year to start highlighting projects that improve the sustainability efforts of the town so if you see something highlighted in green or that has a little green leaf it's something that the department had reported will improve improve sustainability for that department or for the town overall all right I'm gonna keep going sorry there's a lot of these all right so one thing we started doing last year too is this sort of pending list so we knew there were a number of projects that were on the capital plan before that were nice projects important projects but we're not the highest priority or we didn't just didn't have funding for them and so we wanted to not lose them or lose sight of them but we did want we did take them off the plan and then we should we list them here so there's sort of two categories there's projects that if we get a grant these are high on the list for things we would do you know the grant depending on what the grant is there and then the second section our projects that again are also important but we're just they're not developed enough to the point where it should be on the capital plan yeah we're not ready to to move forward with that project so this these lists will be updated again for this coming year but that's that was the reason for this that these are things that were taken off the five-year plan and if we get funding they might go back on but for now they're off this section here is around asset maintenance so this is just a summary of different buildings in town how much we spend on sorry go back this way how much we spend on utilities maintenance of those buildings or square footage roughly their hours of operation which probably won't be super accurate this year with covid but that's what this page is this page is we started giving jcpc a report of any capital projects that are three years or older and that were not fully spent so that jcpc couldn't when they meet with the departments they could inquire a little more about why those projects weren't fully spent yet so you'll see the projects usually the project number that first number relates to the fiscal year in which it was approved the department the project description the amount that's still available and then we try to give you a status update if we can get one in time so again this is old so a lot of this has been spent or are updated since that point and then I see a couple hands I'm just going to finish real quick so we can go to the timeline up but we'll go to the questions first this these are just some over like baseline information about capital planning what a project needs to be to be eligible how we prioritize the different some of the stuff I talked about the different financing options things like that and then the last section which I'm not going to go into super detail is inventory so you'll see a building inventory and a vehicle inventory and I will stop there so I see two hands far and Alex and the way I okay I think now I can see the screen Alex's hand looked like it went up first um nope far you're you're on um I was just curious about the child child care facility on one of the pages what is that or where is that so I believe I get I'm confused sometimes there's two we have two facilities two town-owned buildings that have child care so I believe this is the one over by Wildwood there's one by Wildwood right yeah because it's not the North Amherst schools I believe that's the one over by Wildwood right it's a separate little building we enter Wildwood as you go down the driveway that building to the right okay that's a daycare okay thanks Alex it's a head start program um are we going to add the North Amherst library to the list of assets I don't think that building ever got added I'd love to I'd love to yeah cool yeah and and and that's probably a good example Alex of something that didn't enter in this capital program because a donor financed a big expansion of it so you know it's it's a facility we own that's going to be improved um but up until now we've been fixing it too so you know it's just not it's just not on the list of assets I don't know it's not even so question Sean how um where are we now with that hundred million I know the words that is the gross amount that we were looking at for the hundred million how much of that uh has already been or is um encumbered in some way or another or that or is that a part of it that's the for the four building projects yes uh so the only I got past is hundred million hundred million dollars yeah wouldn't do we now currently have outstanding so um the only project that is sort of encumbered at this point is the Jones library um so we have uh we've we've moved forward with the owner's project manager we're working on extending a contract with the designer um the town council approved the funding or the borrowing authorization for it um so really the only project that um I'll add one additional piece to that um that's the the big piece that's sort of moving forward we do have smaller pieces of funding approved for the schools for a feasibility study and for the DPW and the fire station for um engineering and design work so we've got um maybe three or four million dollars between those other three projects um authorized and there's very little other outstanding debt or otherwise the debt is pretty low in the town all right in terms of the Jones library what is that what is that number so we haven't borrowed for it yet the amount authorized was yes I believe the the full amount of the project and I'd have to pull up the um the order but the the expectation is that we would borrow just the town share um at the end that's the amount we'd end up having to pay back which would be about 15 million all right if we say 15 million then some small amounts we're talking somewhere under 80 million dollars in terms of total capacity remaining thank you all right Kathy can I quickly go to the timeline because I want to make sure we go through that and no I think be great and Sean I don't remember what you sent everyone but you if you didn't send you can see we can make sure you get last year's jcpc report which what what fed into the the report and the capital plans are up with all these inventory all this information is on the web so we can make sure you at least know where to find it all right so timeline um it's which to be structured very in a similar fashion as last year here we are tonight doing this piece next week we would present the the preliminary version of the five-year capital improvement program um have time for general questions and then we do have one resident capital request who is here tonight that we would talk about as well um and then we have we have tentatively put departments in for the next few meetings so the way that would work is those departments would come they would give very brief presentations on their projects and then turn it over to the committee for questions and so and then once all the presentations are done there would be a couple meetings for jcpc to discuss a recommendation if there's any work to be done to to get or get the plan balanced or um or make adjustments to the plan that would happen during these final two meetings um and we have a we have a third if necessary if there's any reason for delay um we do I did want to talk about a couple dates um to see if we could shift the meeting time if that would be okay with people um there's three meeting dates where jcpc conflicts with I think it's crc um and so those dates are February 24th March 3rd and March 17th and I guess I'm looking is the schedule okay and if people are people okay with on those three dates starting at 6 30 instead of five um I don't know what the most sufficient way would be as if what a show of hands if you are okay with it so I can't see everybody wait a minute I have to make my screen be bigger I'm fine with it so people want to just raise their hand of shifting spine or shout it out uh shifting is going I'd have to look at my calendar I know I know that uh Thursdays are really problematic and I are already uh calendar and dates that in times that were previously put out there so I'd have to go back and look at my calendar for whatever reason Thursdays are just an incredibly popular time to have meetings so Sean do you want to send out an email then and just find out yeah yeah it doesn't affect next um next week so um as long as we can get a sense by next week we can we can um finalize it at that point yeah yeah so so I'm the one with the conflict because I'm I chair the community resources committee um and I also happen to be on this one um I would appreciate I I'm going to be talking to my vice chair of crc to see how much of each crc meeting I can miss but any move slightly later of jcpc those three nights would greatly help me crc starts at 430 um I I I know I can get out of a half an hour of crc most every time given the coming agendas which so even a six o'clock or 5 30 start instead of five would allow me to miss less of each meeting so I you know and I just want to say I appreciate the consideration for it since it's it's my conflict there Jennifer so um I just wanted to ask so like next week um Sean you're going to present the town manager's preliminary plan and so like that's going to be posted ahead of time right so yeah we will we will try to get it to you a couple days ahead of time um yeah I I just do our best I think the we know it's a lot of material to go through so we'll do our best to get it up as early as we can that would be great I just wanted to ask if that'll possible for you to put it up like 48 hours in advance because I'm someone who like needs to like sit alone and read something in order to be able to like take it in the one thing I'll say is you'll um the good thing is we kind of go through it in chunks so um if there isn't something you get to the first night we're gonna you know each night we're gonna be diving into a different chunk of um of the plan so but I do hear that cool yes just so I think that's a really good point that the next meeting is just an overview it's not a substantive discussion necessarily and then every meeting you'll say okay today we're talking about police and fire the next week we're talking about dpw the next week so you'll have plenty of time to dig into it the other thing just want to clarify and I'll ask this of sonia um erve was asking about dead capacity and the hundred million dollars that the school is outside that the school does not apply to that is that accurate sonia yes so when we look at dead capacity we're only talking about non-school projects so just really really really appreciate that clarification believe me I was in panic I knew you were I just like to clarify the school is outside of it simply because the school is planned for a dead exclusion override right it also has special discipline it's in this odd category yeah um because of the way because of the way the state funds it you know it has more to do with it being an msba project um was my recollection that there was some um special section of the law for for msba fund but we can get the exact um uh legal uh section where that's referred to you know and I looked it up and it's you know the way the library we had to take on the full project even though we're getting paid it back they knew with school that we get paid differently so they we would bump up against debt because it's so expensive but we can get that back to you it was an it was it was an archaic explanation but and it's just one other thing is Sean brings these pieces to us and we get the big piece last time if we got any questions to him early we we had focused discussions with the departments on questions and similarly after the discussion if there were remaining questions John was really good at getting answers for us so we we had two ways of interacting that weren't just in in the moment of meeting that I thought worked really well Sonia I just want to clarify that um debt exclusions have nothing to do with whether with debt capacity or debt limit they don't go into that and that to that equation thank you you're welcome Alex I just want to quickly say that this is a really new jcpc committee um I'm the longest serving member which is terrifying in terms of this being a really and I asked a million questions for the first two years that I was on the committee and Mandy Jo asked a million questions um if you're a geek like me if every jcpc report that's issued each year is a really good summary and if you go back to f by 2020 we actually used to include a history of jcpc and like how so if you want to geek out go read some reports that will help round out a lot of things but um yeah so questions are good can I just I don't know if I said debt exclusions or overrides I meant overrides have no play into the debt exclusion just to clarify that I can't could remember what I said pretty bad so I'm I think um I'm looking for any other questions or comments it looks like we're two minutes from six o'clock so we do have one member of the public and we have a member of the public so I'm just want to make sure there's no more committee questions and if our member of the public um I we will take a public comment if there is a comment so I'll wait a second to see if a hand goes up we don't see it um so we're the town is getting much better at posting these videos quickly you know so um both the material will go in a packet but to the extent you're late to a meeting and want to see a discussion or go back and listen to it again um those are now up pretty quickly um and I can't remember how we've been handling minutes Sean I think you you know to the extent we did minutes we we kind of took the program summary as the minutes we didn't we didn't do yeah board on minutes yeah I'll I'll do them for tonight I I volunteered for tonight because it was a it was a short meeting so I volunteered for that one okay so we assign each week to a member of the committee yeah so I think next time just prepare be prepared to be volunteers and uh that would be great so I don't see any other questions I can see everyone on the screen and is everyone all right with me doing the simple way of journeying saying I think we are adjourned and thank you all for coming see you next week bye bye thank you bye