 Thank you. Here we go. Okay, you're all set. Good morning. It is January 19, 2022. And this is the organization meeting of the finance committee following the election of the council that was sworn in on January 3, 2022. I'm going to begin the meeting by just giving some opening statements calling the meeting to order pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting is being conducted via remote means given that we have a quorum of the finance committee of present. I'm calling the January 19, 2022 meeting of the committee to order at 9.04 a.m. I'll call upon each committee member and including our members that are the non-voting residents. And at that time, I'd like you to unmute your mic and say present. And I'd also like you to just tell us in a sentence or two your interest in the finance committee. What brings you here today? Okay, so I'm going to start with, oh, hi, Alicia. How are you? I'm going to start with actually myself, Lynn Griezmer. I'm president of the Amherstown council. Finance has always been my kind of sweet spot. And so it's a role that I have served with nonprofits and been very interested in my own professional life. I'm going to then go to say to Michelle Miller. Hi, everyone. Yeah, hopefully you can hear me. And nice to see you all. And yeah, I'm interested on multiple levels to learn. And I think I have some things to bring to the committee as well. At the MMA orientation, we went to our former finance director, Sandy. I'm not remembering his last name, gave an excellent presentation that really sparked my interest. So thank you. Kathy Shane. Hi, everyone. This will be my, I guess, new term. We're on fourth year on finance. I'm my training is as an economist. So right from the get go, I wanted to be understand the town's finances, budget constraints, the way we do capital. And so this committee has always been my top priority. Andy Steinberg. Hi. I've had a long time interest in town finance. And as Lynn did, I started out in nonprofit management leading into the financial issues that really are similar when you come down to what the goals are of a town to try and use limited resources to identify and serve the greatest and highest goals and to try and see what we can do to expand resources. I was on the prior finance committee that existed under town meeting and chaired it for several years and have been on the finance committee on with Kathy from the formation of the council and was chair during those three years. Okay. And Alicia Walker. Hi, everyone. I'm Alicia Walker. I think so my general interest is in math. I do do the finances at the law firm where I work. And so I'm really interested in learning it on a bigger scale. And just because everything is sort of dependent on finances. So I'm just really interested in learning the processes in which we use here. Okay. Bob Hegner. Hi, I'm one of the three resident members of the finance committee. I actually am in my third year on the committee. And I've been, I started out very interested in the town's finances. I come from the private sector, which gives me a little bit different background than most people. And I just want to keep continuing to provide my input to the issues that the committee wrestles with. Great. Bernie Kubiak. No, wait, H Holloway. Matt Holloway. I'm sorry. Trying to go alphabetically here. Hi, Matt. Morning. I'm Matt Holloway. I'm another resident member of the committee. I just joined in November. I am a fairly new resident in Amherst. I'm the parent of a two-year-old, first-time homeowner, and very interested in this ambitious and exciting financial outlook that we have for the town and thrilled to be a member of this committee. I work in public education in a school district currently. Previously, I worked at the state level in public education. And I just, I really enjoy the work of this committee. I'm happy to be here. And Bernie Kubiak. Good morning, Bernie Kubiak. I'm a local government junkie, having held some local positions as a selectman and clinic commissioner and have the dubious distinction of having managed three smaller towns after a long, almost 30-year career in human services, nonprofit management. I'm trained as a historian and as a policy walk. This is either my second or seventh year on the finance committee, depending on when you, if you count the tenure from the old one. It's always a thorny issue. There's always more demand than there is funds. And what the town does in terms of finances really reflects what the town is and how the town chooses to operate and treat its citizens. So I look at this as a key position and as a way of my giving back to the town of Amherst as well in terms of providing my labor. I also want to welcome Sean Mengano and Sonja Aldrich, who work with us on a regular basis and help staff this committee. I think that's a word that basically so underestimates what they really do for us. So I want to just say that they're really an integral part of how we move forward. And then we have guest today, Chief Nelson and assistant chief, Lindsay Strongroom. And then also we have our Bill Cason, who's our minute taker and Athena, who is clerk to the council. So with that, we are going to move to the election. Oh, excuse me. I have a few more things I have to say based on this being a virtual meeting. There's no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let the chair or me or the minute taker know. When you have a question or you want to respond to something, please use the raise hand function. And if there are technical difficulties and you lose connection, we will decide what to do at that time. And we may have to take a pause in the meeting or at least note it in the minutes. Okay. So with that, my one and only other job besides myself being a member of the committee is to conduct the election for chair of the finance committee. So the floor is open for nominations or volunteers. Michelle Miller. Like to nominate Andy Steinberg. Okay. Andy, do you accept that nomination? Yes, I do. Okay. Are there any other nominations or volunteers? Okay. Then I am going to do a roll call vote since we're virtual. We have to do that. And your vote is in favor of Andy as chair or opposed. And I will also ask for the opinions of the non-voting residents as well. So starting with myself, I support Andy as chair. Let's see. I'm going to go next to Michelle Miller. Hi. Thank you. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. And also then I'm going to go to Bob Hegner. I support it. Matt Holloway. Support. Bernie Kubiak. I really like you. And in spite of that, I agree that you should be chair. A little humor at this hour of the morning is always appreciated. Andy, with that, I'm turning the meeting over to you. I did not write a script for this meeting. And so if there's any questions, as because I'm a member, I'll be here, but I would be here as president for this first meeting anyway. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you, Lynn. And I want to thank the committee for kind words and confidence in my continuing as chair. What I propose that we do is finish the election of officers to elect a vice chair and then proceed in the agenda to action item five, the part A that has to do with the bumper truck, because that way we can let our chief and deputy chief of the fire department get on to other work unless they want to stay with the meeting, which is, of course, a welcome to but preserve their time. We take that item out of order if there's no one who objects to doing so. So with that said, are there any nominations or self nominations for vice chair Kathy? I would like to nominate myself. I've enjoyed being vice chair and working with Andy. So I will appreciate that. And then I don't have to ask whether you accept the nomination since you made it yourself. Are there any other nominations? Since there are no other nominations, then I think we can just proceed to vote under the same process that was before which is an indication of yes or from the resident members of the committee, whether they will, what their opinion or support is for the motion that's on the floor to elect Kathy as vice chair. And I will stick with alphabetical order, but since Lynn voted first last time, this time we'll start with Bob Hegner. I support Kathy. Ed Halloway. Support. Kurt Burney. Really like Kathy did, so I support the nomination. Michelle. Yes. And Kathy. Yes. And I vote yes. Yes. Alicia. Yes. And Lynn. Kathy. And thank you, Kathy, for being willing to do this again. Yes. And I want to also thank Kathy and we'll talk about minutes in a little bit, but I really do want to thank Kathy for two things that she did above and beyond. During the class council, one was that she was really a great sounding board and for me and a great person to look over reports and sort of allow me to bounce the wording on reports off of somebody who's an extraordinarily good writer and very thoughtful person. And second thing she did is really move our minutes through the process and we will talk about that a little bit later, because I think we need to refine and revise the minute process and take that burden a little bit away. I think it's unnecessary to have Kathy do quite as much as she did before, but I really appreciate that she did so much. So with that said, I'm going to go back to either Sean or Sonia, whoever's prepared to do this, and give us a brief explanation of proposed financial appropriation and transfer order FY 2205D. And as you do so, maybe I should for just a second explain to the newly elected members of the council who have not experienced the word order before in city form of government. This kind of inaction when it comes for the council is referred to as an order and the numbering system and the wording of the orders comes as proposed to us from staff most frequently from Sonia. And we consider the both the wording and the intent of the proposed order and whether we recommend it to the council. There are two orders that we need to deal with, but I wanted to at least address the first one so that the chief and deputy chief can choose to leave if they wish. Sean or Sonia, can one of you begin with the explanation? Would you like me to put the order up, Andy? If you have the order, yes, that would be helpful because I'm not sure that everybody has seen it. And Andy, if it's okay with you, do you mind if I just I'll do the first order on the fire pumper and then see if there's questions and then do the next one after that? Yes. Okay. Yes, we want to do at least that one right now. Okay. So both of these projects are capital projects that were approved in the past and in both situations for different reasons the cost has come in higher than what was approved. So we're bringing this request back to the council and to finance committee for review to request the additional funds that are needed in order to complete the project. So the first one is the fire department pumper truck which was approved in FY 22. The estimate back then was 450,000 and for a variety of reasons, vehicle inflation, the estimate was I think a little bit out of date and the additional options that the fire department when they looked at the state contract for this truck, the options that they added which in reviewing those options make sense and you'll see the main ones here brought the price of that truck to $637,000. So we're requesting an increase of $187,000. The way we're purchasing this is through an MAPC or metropolitan area I think planning council. It's a state contract where they go out and they get pricing for these trucks because they're very specialized vehicles. So they work with other fire departments to figure out what type of things are needed and then they bid it out and then we have access to their pricing when we go out to buy a truck. So it saves us from having to do an individual bid and it brings the collective buying power of multiple fire departments together. So that's how this was priced out and when the chief and his staff went to price out the vehicle that they want to purchase and this is a vehicle that we'll have for 20 years. So it's a large investment that we want to make sure it meets the needs of the talent for 20 years going forward. That price came in quite a bit higher as you can see. Some of the options I think are noteworthy that are key for this again 20-year vehicle. There are a couple major things to allow the pumper truck to act as an emergency response vehicle, allows it to carry emergency medical staff and also the equipment and the supplies that they need. They need refrigerated cabinets and things like that for their supplies. It has all that functionality. And then the other two big pieces, it has a generator. So if there's anything where emergency scene needs lighting or anything like that where they need to light up the scene, it's late at night. This vehicle will have the ability because of the generator to put up those lights and power those lights for the duration of the event. And then the other large thing that was a addition here is the larger pump capacity which allows the pump to push out more water faster, I think also could receive water faster. And then there's some things that when we looked at the base price for this vehicle, it was pretty close to the $450,000 estimate. But surprisingly, the base price doesn't include some simple things like vehicle safety equipment for the staff, for the responders that ride in the cab of the vehicle. The base price doesn't include things like airbags. So there's a number of things like that that we felt again being a long-term investment that we needed to add to this vehicle to make sure it meets our needs going forward. And then I offer, if Chief Nelson or Assistant Chief Stromgren want to add anything, it might be a good time for that. Sure. Thanks. I'm going to add in a couple of things. It's going to have the zero RPM to feature that we have on our new amp and amp. And if I have a link perfect X amount of time, it'll shut itself down from about batteries, which is a pretty green green to feature. But that's an expensive item. The other features we're going to have built in is an interconscious system within the cab. That's head-to-head-to-head-to-head-to-head set by my closest system. One of the big, big things still, one of the big things in the fire fire service is exposure to the noise and engine noise exhaust noise. And degradation of hearing is a big problem still in the fire fire service. This will address that long-term exposure to extraneous noise. So it's built and it'll come built in as part of the system, we're actually retrofit setting. We're reaching the award or the grant where we're going to retrofit to two of our front line engines with this same interconscious system. And it's not cheap. So that's a type of thing. Vince, do you want to add anything? Sure. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, gotcha. Okay, great. Yeah, I think Sean summarized it pretty well. You know, the biggest thing is our original request was in fact out of date. We've been more focused on the new ambulance and the new ladder truck. Those prices we have kept up with. It was unrealistic to expect to get a pumper for 450,000. In 2022, when we spent 4.24 back in 2014, so that's on us, so we did not keep the prices up to date. Then on top of that, as Sean said, there's been price increases. In fact, within the state bid that he mentioned, they are allowed to raise the prices based on market value. And there was a 4% increase last spring, a 4% increase in November. And there's, believe it or not, a 6% increase coming next month. Fortunately, if we move this forward, we will get in under that 6%. We will not be looking at a 6% increase if we move forward with this. So that's some of the biggest challenges. Simply been the market and the price increases on top of the original appropriation, unfortunately, being out of date. And then also the additional features that the Chief and Sean mentioned. But this price, at this point, is firm. If we move ahead with it in the next month, the vendor has guaranteed that. Indy, I can't really. Go ahead. I was just about to ask for raise hands to see if there are questions about the proposed purchase and the truck itself. And then I'll have, I'm going to turn to the actual wording of the order if that's available. So, Lynn, and then I think I saw Bernie's hand momentarily. First of all, I'm in sticker shock. But what I'm really pleased to see is the added things that have been brought forward. And especially as we work to try to get to zero our sustainability goals. Will this be located in Central or North Fire Station? And when we build South Fire Station, where will it go? It'll be in Central. And then when we build the new station, it'll be in that station. Thank you. I want to start by thanking Chief Nelson for continuing on with us. We've benefited from his leadership for years and hopefully for a few more to come. Is this a piece of equipment replacing a piece of equipment or is this an add-on? It's a required. So there's some cell. Stand is standard. You want to dress that? Really, what we do, we replace one and then move each truck back into a reserve, reserve, reserve status. Yeah, unfortunately, the trading value of these vehicles is negligible for the ambulances we're getting. About $1,500 maximum for a pumper like this. The truck that we're actually going to get rid of will be a 1999. So it'll be 23-year-old, 23-years-old, about the end of its life. We might get $1,000 to $2,000 for trade-in, which we would typically just put towards putting new radios into it. But unfortunately, they're not worth any more than that. It's probably worth more as a scrap steel. Thank you. Actually, what happens a lot of times is that you end up being sent to some play place around the world, a country that needs a fire truck. They'll sell it to some place. Andy, do you want me to speak to the funding source real quick? I have two quick questions and then we'll turn to the funding source, which really would be covered by the wording of the orders, which is why I was asking about the wording of the order. But I'm assuming, and so we don't need to go into a long discussion about it, that the width of the truck is appropriate for use at the central station, and that's been calculated and we're comfortable with that. And the second is just to know where we are in the cycle of purchases. Have we bought anything since the quince was purchased when John McSanti was town manager? Yeah, I can speak to that. In terms of the size, width pretty much is regulated by DOT. They can't be any wider other than theirs. So yes, width is okay. Height is a big factor for us. It will be built to our spec to fit into the very low doors of central fire station. We are able to make it longer to accommodate a more cab space. So that's what we're doing. And to answer your question, Andy, the second one, yes, we bought our last pumper in 2014. And the quince was purchased in 2009. Okay. I just wanted to give everyone an idea of what the duration of purchases is and what the history of purchases. Kathy? A quick question. You said we're actually kind of custom ordering these. Do you have any sense? And this is a longer term, not on this project. If we had regulation door heights, if we didn't have to custom it, would the price be lower? And some magnitude, like a few percentage points, big difference? How much does the custom matter? Well, first of all, custom is sort of a misnomer in terms of how we're thinking about it. Pretty much every pumper that anybody buys is called a custom pumper because they are appeal to all of our specifications because every fire department, sorry about the noise, wants something different. In terms of the height question, yes, it has a small factor. Probably a very small percentage price-wise, but it limits us on what we can actually do with the pumper in terms of features more than actually a cost difference. Thank you. Andy? Yes. I'm ready to make a motion if you're ready for that. Actually, we have one more thing we have to do before we get to the motion and that is that if Sean or Sonia have the actual order that's being proposed available, then we would need to get one of them to put it on the screen. It's in this memo at the end. Page four. Yeah, page four. Okay. Then can you get down to the bottom of the memo so that people can see the wording of the order? I think Lynn, it's your document. Yeah, it's on there now, I think. Andy, it's on the screen. It might just take a minute to update. There it is. All right. So I make a motion to recommend to the town council that they approve appropriation and transfer order FY22-05D. Shane, seconds. We've been motion has been seconded. The order addresses the where the source of the funds is. I don't know if you want to say anything more about that, Sean. Yeah, I'll just say that we talked about whether we should pull from free cash or increase the borrowing authorization. I think we felt based on the conversations of this committee in the past about reserve levels and where they are currently and also that these are one-time costs we look to free cash instead of increasing our borrowing because we know we have some significant borrowings coming in the future. Okay. I don't know if Alicia or Michelle have any questions they want to ask about the terminology or whether the training program that you referred to the Sandy Poole led cover those topics sufficiently and so I'll give you a moment to see if you want to raise your hands and ask any questions and then if you don't, I'm going to go ahead and ask for a vote on the motion. All of my questions have been answered, so thank you. Okay, seeing no hands and indication of that, the continuing on with the Andy, Alicia has her hand raised. Alicia, I'm sorry. Sorry, it took me a minute to put the virtual hand. I just wanted a quick clarification. So this order, we're just, I mean we're passing this to the Town Council for approval of the 187 from the free cash. The other amount is already taken care of? We'll do that one next. The school one we'll do right after this one. Okay, thank you. Were you asking about the 450, the original purchase amount? Yeah, the original purchase amount. So that was already, that was voted back in June of 2021, that initial amount, the 450,000 for the pumper. Okay, and so that those funds, that funding is already set aside, it's already taken care of, they just need to increase. Exactly, yep, that funding is there. Thank you. So Bob has his hand up. Yeah, sorry, I should have forwarded this earlier. Sean, is it possible to take the 187 from the ARPA funding or does it have to come from free cash or some other tours? It could come from ARPA funding. I think right now we've got plans for how we propose to use ARPA funding, but theoretically it could. Anything else? If not, then let's go ahead and proceed in the same way we did before with resident members indicating whether they support the motion and actual votes from council members and this time continuing the alphabetical presentation, but starting one done, we'll start with Matt. I support. Bernie. Support it. Michelle. Yes. Kathy. Yes. And I mean, yes. And Alicia. Yes. Lynn. Hi. And Bob. Yeah, I support it. I think these additional features are very well thought out and will be very useful both to the fire department and to the council. Okay, so motion carries unanimously with support of three resident members of the committee. And I want to thank these Tim and Lindsay for having been here. And as noted, you're welcome to remain in the meeting, but if you have other business to take care of for the day, we understand and appreciate you for being here. So I just want to say thank you. Appreciate the support for we really appreciate it. So thank you. And I want to thank Lindsay for taking us on a train ride. It's a new Zoom background that they offer the trainer. Yeah. Yeah. Just trying out the valley flyer on my way to New York. All right. Thanks a lot. Okay. So on the agenda, since we're into the two financial orders, would I guess it might make sense to just go ahead and talk about the proposal for additional funding for the elementary school feasibility study. And I don't know if Kathy, you'd like to introduce the topic as chair of the committee, or whether you'd like Sean to introduce it. I'll just say a few words, but then Sean should go into the details because he's actually been at the table with us. We're in the feasibility stage and the town had, as the memo said, originally done a best guess of what this would cost, both for owners, project manager and for the designer services. And this is the phase where we are comparing options. We're not yet designing the school. So we're comparing options. There's a lot of work on the building and the sites to determine what can be built there. And particularly as we've got a net zero bylaw that we will be building, trying to be extremely energy efficient and move away from fossil fuels. So there needs to be exploration of both sites, both Wildwood and Port River. So as you can see in the memo, the estimate of what it would cost was lower than we, it turns out to be lower than what we're finding. Both the length of time we thought we would save some time and money because we had done a Wildwood study and we've done a Fort River study, but they did not look at some of the things we are now going to be looking at in this, including traffic studies for both detailed traffic studies flow, not just at the gateway to the schools, but also geothermal capacity and solar capacity with Fort River being one of the sites. And actually it's named as the site, but we're looking at both sites. We will have to be taking into account wetlands if we end up saying that's a preferred building site. So Sean, you can go through some of the elements, but all of this ended up meaning that this feasibility stage is more expensive than we thought. Sure. So for some history, when we were in the MSBA pipeline the first time back around 2014, 2015, we had budgeted $1 million for the feasibility study. And we, with the contracts we had signed for the designer and for the OPM and for the construction manager, we were pretty up against it with that million. That was a pretty good estimate at that point. And so when that project obviously didn't come to fruition, we came back to request funds for the second feasibility study. There was hope and at the time that we could reuse some of the work from that feasibility study back at Wildwood and then also the Fort River site, which is why the $750,000 estimate was brought forward. There was no certainty that we would be able to reuse those studies or that we would save money, but I think the hope was that we would be able to at that time. We weren't able to get a good cost estimate or figure out whether that estimate was appropriate until we were able to get the OPM and the designer on board because they're the ones that really dive into what materials were in place from the prior studies and also work with their sub-consultants to figure out what their pricing is right now. And in addition, as you all know, building costs have gone sort of through the roof. And a lot of the way designers and OPMs build their fees is it's usually a percentage of construction. So if construction costs are going up, designers and OPMs also increase their fees, you know, usually in the same percentage. So this new budget that's on the, actually, but if you scroll down a little bit, there's a breakdown, a detailed breakdown that we've worked on with our designer and with our OPM that really gets into the individual contracts or pieces of the feasibility study that we'll have. So we've asked, we told them like, we don't want to come back again. We wanted, this is, we need the sort of, what is the true cost going to be for this going forward up until the point where we vote on a full building project. So they dug in and worked with their consultants to get as accurate a numbers as they could. They've built in a little contingency there that you see just so again, we don't need to come back. We're hoping to bring it in under the 1.3 or 1 million 30,000. We hope not to use the contingency. There's a couple of things in here that we won't spend unless Fort River is selected as a site. You can see a couple of those marked at the bottom. As Kathy mentioned, there are some new costs from the last time around when we did this feasibility study around energy sustainability enhancements. So there's a lot more in terms of geothermal because that might be a major component of this project. There's money around solar because that would, you know, almost certain will be a part of this project. And then the other cost that's depends on which way we go is the construction manager. So there's two ways to procure building or contractors for these projects. You can either do a construction or a CM at risk construction manager at risk option, or you can do design bid build. And if you do the CM at risk, usually it's a more smooth procurement process, but it also costs a little bit more, which is why that money is there. But that decision hasn't been made by the school building committee yet. So we're hoping to bring in under that number, but we wanted to bring the full most up-to-date estimate to the to the Council, to the Finance Committee, and we do not anticipate having to come back at any other point up until the time where we ask for the vote on the full project. So, are there any questions from the committee? Bob? Yeah. The question I have is for the Fort River site, and whether we know where the 100 and 500 year floodplains are there, because I think we need to know that information before we would do any construction. Kathy, do you want to weigh in on that? I think our recent information is that water will be an issue, but not a issue that maybe prevents a project, but it will be an issue there. Yeah, those lines have been redrawn, Bob. They haven't, I think, been officially posted yet, but Chris Brestrup gave them to the designer, and they are definitely worried about and focus on that as an issue. And they've been out, they were out over Christmas and New Year's doing both geotechnical borings, but sort of better sense of where it might be possible to build, whether it's building new or add Renault, but also the question has come up with a solar array. We have a lot of land there. Can a solar array be near those 500-year floodplains? And that's going to be a question they're going to be talking to with the Conservation Committee. So if the building itself isn't there, can some part of what the renewables would be, be how close can they be? So both those play in in two ways to this, the feasibility of that site for this building. And can I just say, just to add to that, on the 7th of January or the 21st of February, on either the 7th or the 21st, the flood maps that have been developed, which we have to do every 10 years, will come before the Council for approval. Yeah. So, you know, so what they were given, I think, is the same thing we're going to seal in. So it was unofficial, but those are the ones that have been redrawn. So they were all actually, when they were bidding, they were all given the updated flood maps. So they could at least tell us whether we had two prospective sites or whether there was going to be a major restriction on the Fort River site. Matt. Thanks, Andy. And I apologize if this is a little basic. I just, I want to make sure I understand the bulleted items, Sean, that are on this list. So traffic, solar, permitting, hazmat, and contingency. If I track those down in the revised budget down below and then add up those items, should that be the difference between the million 30 and the 750,000? Or is there additional, is that how the accounting works here? Or is there additional? Not exactly. There's some, so the contracts for, so our original appropriation was for 750,000. We have a contract with the designer for basic services for 500,000 and the OPM for 196,000, as you can see there. So that adds up to 696,000. So we have a little bit left in the original appropriation of 750 that we can put towards some of these things. So basically, it'll be these things, if you see this list, minus the 750 that we already have is what the additional appropriation is for. Okay. And so the additional appropriation itself is the 280,000. Yeah. And so these are the main, these five bullets are the large things, but there's, as you can see below, there's a number of smaller, smaller things. Okay. All right. Michelle. Thank you. I'm trying to think about how to ask this question. So bear with me. And Sean, you may have already answered it, but if any one of these line items are to come in less, so if the traffic study costs 30,000, for example, there's no, there's no single entity that's getting this a million dollars that's just capturing it. Okay. So any one of these can be reduced. Yeah. If this comes in less, the money will flow back, flow back into the, to the town's capital funds or to the town's coffers. It won't, we don't give this money out until it's, until there's a contract in place. That being said, we did ask the designer and the OPM to figure out, you know, as accurate a cost as they can. So most of the cost estimates on here are pretty close to being exact. The main difference will be if there's some things we just don't have to do for like, if wildwood is selected, then we'll definitely come in $27,000 under because we won't have those costs at the bottom. So, but to your point, yes, if we don't spend all this, it'll come back to the town. Okay, great. And so the contingency will sort of be the, that's the catch-all in case any one of these items are higher than we think. And a lot of that is around the timeline. As Kathy mentioned, we were hoping this project would be a little bit shorter than where it is currently. And with these projects, time is money every month more that we go where we have to pay for consultants to stay on and provide services and things like that. So some of this is the contingencies around the timing and making sure we hit our timeline that we're on. Great, thank you. Yeah, I think that it's just important to note that we're really, for the most part, authorize expenditures, but the actual expenditures don't happen unless they need to and they're expended and money that's authorized, but not spent, just remains within the source where it came from. I think that Bernie, Bernie. Thanks, Andy. I'm not surprised that the engineers don't like the results of our previous engineering studies because they're always, my experience are always unwilling at some level to use the results that other firms have done at other times. So it's not surprising. The question on this is if you're studying the feasibility of the Fort River site, if the Fort River site's chosen, it's going to impose other costs on the project. I'm thinking of you got to do something with the kids while the old building is being refirmished or being torn down for the new one. So are those additional costs included in this study or is that coming later? That would be part of the project. Those types of things will be looked at as part of the study, but the cost of it, if there is a cost, would be part of the next phase of the project, the actual construction. We know from all the previous work we've done, that if we do anything in Fort River, it's going to, we're going to have to have temporary classrooms. Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on what the staging and phasing of the project is with Wildwood. I remember there were options where, even when they demoed some of the building, some of the building was open and they were able to keep some kids in that part of the building. But you're right, most likely it will cause some disruption that might have a cost to the project. Okay, thanks. Kari? To the question you just asked, Bernie, I would be glad and I can send it to the whole committee. There's an evaluation criteria list, a pretty long list that be comparing both sites. And what you just asked is one of the cost factors, you know, the duration of the construction, can we, you know, moving the kids to another site? I visited one school that Dinesco did that just opened, you know, about a year ago, and they were able to build a new school eight feet away from the existing school without ever having to move the kids. You know, so some of what they're looking at is what, how many, what's the size of the new place? Will it be Adreno? Will it be new? And we're going to have side by sides with cost estimates on all of that before we get to what are we doing? So you'll see that in the next phase, those costs, but they are also a factor in us making a decision. Okay, that would, having that list would be helpful and it might to be frank, I look at the Fort Riverside as a loser and I'm sorry that we have to spend money on it. I've been through constructing three schools. So fortunately, none of them had to be next to each other, but I would appreciate a list of criteria that would be helpful. Thank you, Kathy. Any other questions at this point? Because otherwise we should turn to the order itself and then see if there's a motion. I think the one other thing Andy, I'll say real quick is, you know, when we're planning for these four building projects for the schools, we had, we had estimated 80 million for the school project. Again, that's a pretty high level estimate. We'll get much more detailed estimates coming up, but working with the designer and the OPM, they didn't feel that this additional request is going to change that estimate that we had originally of 80 million. The estimates they've used, at least initially, came in a little bit lower than 80 million, so we're not anticipating this will impact the projection that we had for the four building projects. Okay, which gets to a topic that I wanted to get to later and then I see another hand up, another question, but at some point I think we need to find out whether newly elected counselors would like to have a presentation of the funding plan that was developed for the major projects and whether that should happen if so, whether that should happen at a finance committee meeting or in some other forum, council meeting or retreat, so at some point we do need to think about that because otherwise I don't want to have new counselors behind other counselors and understanding and knowledge about how the funding plan was developed and what it is and I guess the other pieces, whether you've done any modifications anyway since it was last presented because of changes in cost. Yeah, so I do think that if we could get a presentation or see the funding plan that that would be extremely helpful and then also I have just a similar question to my question before and if this is just asking for the increase, so the other amount of the funds are already taken care of and then just a little bit of clarification on Sean's previous statement that this isn't going to affect the overall estimate and so how is that possible if this is a different estimate than before and then also it says here that we'd be looking to take this from the free cash as well and so if in that, sorry I don't know if I can see it here anymore because the orders moved down or was I looking at something else? I'm down the screen. Yeah, you can go down just a tiny bit more. So it's the 5% of the budget, if that is taking into consideration the other amount that we just were talking about taking from the free cash for the fire truck. Can I respond to those, Andy? Thank you. So I'll just start with the last one first. So yes this the 4.45% that will be the what's left over that's if both appropriation requests are approved. So it does take into account both the pumper in the school and yes this again we're just requesting the 280 for the school. The 750 was already approved back in February of 2022. It was quite a while ago because it had to be approved before anything started. So this is just requesting the additional funds and I do think one of the things I think it's actually a goal for the council goal this year is to update the four building project plan. So that's on our list to update it with the most recent assumptions, projects that obviously push back from where we were hoping they would be. We hope to have better cost estimates on projects like the school and the library or what we have the cost for library but better cost estimates maybe on the DPW building as well because we're getting closer to having a site selected for that. So we are anticipating on updating that four building project model and then bringing it back for a presentation I think makes a lot of sense. And then the last question about the budget. So when we did develop the model for the four building projects I looked at other school projects extrapolated to what we were thinking for this project added in some additional funding because we knew this was going to be a net zero. So we came up with a sort of a really high level estimate of 80 million. Working with the OPM and the designer so far they haven't done a detailed cost estimate but the original sort of thought is that 80 million should be more than sufficient for what we're proposing at this point. Not to say that can't change if things can change quickly especially the way construction costs are arising. But at this point they didn't think that this increase in the feasibility study phase was going to push us over that 80 million for the whole project. Yeah I was wondering also whether we're going to have to reevaluate borrowing costs under what's happening and what we're reading in the paper about interest rates. But that's a future topic to discuss. I think the one thing that because you know we keep focusing on free cash as a source of funds for the add-ons. These purchases originally these amounts the original amounts were they funded from borrowing? So for the school project yes this would have been if it's part of the 80 million this would have been part of the borrowing and part of the debt exclusion so that's being proposed. So pulling it from free cash will reduce a little bit of what would have been excluded if we had borrowed for it instead. It was the original plan to use tissue notes or to... I'm sorry say that again Andy to use what? Yes it was the original amount for the preparation work that we're talking about was that coming from borrowing or was that coming from free cash? The 750 was borrowing again we're proposing free cash for this because we're trying to keep the amount that's going to be debt excluded as low as possible. We've heard the impact and the early feedback on trying to keep that cost down as much as possible. So looking at our reserve balance and then hearing the feedback from the committee to try to use that for these types of one-time costs that come up and then also trying to keep that amount to be debt excluded that would be passed on to the taxpayers that's why we propose this coming from free cash instead of increasing the borrowing. But the original 750 is a borrowing. I think that my concern here is that again for the new members there's a lot of terms being thrown around right now about the difference between borrowing and borrowing by bonds and borrowing by notes and what's funded from borrowing what's funded from free cash and how they all tie together and what might be reimbursed but that exclusion is which is the amount of the override request that would be asked voters. These are all topics that are things that we just need to have the time to in a place to explain them and sort of come to an understanding of whether those explanations should be just to the finance committee to those of you who are in the finance committee or whether other members who are on the council would like to have that kind of explanation also. But I do recognize that there is that whole level of complexity and I apologize for the amount of these terms that are being thrown around without explanation and recognize that if you have questions if you feel you'd like to have an answer now about any of the serenity explanation you know don't hesitate to ask and Sean or Sonia I'm sure will be able to respond. Kathy you have your hand on. I just want to I want to strongly endorse what you have proposed not for now but to come back to this and I think it should be the whole council Lynn if we can figure out a way to do it. I have my hand up to say exactly that. I just think it shouldn't be just the finance committee it should be the whole council and it should be a dedicated conversation amount of time because I going back and forth it's not just the terms but all of this as you look forward five years or 10 years has an impact on the operating budget so it's just to understand how we're funding capital what is debt and I think it's not just for the new counselors but for the whole council for existing you know people who are still with it because it's complicated enough and interactive enough that I think we need just to carve out the time. So Andy I'd just like to add on to that we will definitely have to carve out the time not only for the finance committee and the including the non-voting residents but the entire council and the reason we will have to carve out the time is that given the time frame for when this would probably be on the ballot it would be this council that would be brought to the question of placing a debt exclusion on the ballot. In addition to that as some of us who were at the four towns meeting the other day realized that now the regional schools are asking for a larger chunk of money and Sean and others have already talked about the fact that that's going to have to be in the update of the financial model as well. So I hear everything you're saying I think it would be useful to stick to this question now and come back to that later. I'm ready to make a motion to remember anybody else's. Okay let's see what Bernie is saying and then we'll go to a motion. Quick comments. You have to watch the headlines. The municipal rates, municipal borrowing is still pretty, municipalities can still borrow at pretty reasonable rates. So don't take the headline scrolling across the banner at CNBC as the sum of it. The other thing is for anyone who wants to geek out on this the division of local services and the State Department of Revenue has a very detailed, a lot of detailed information on the website. Some of it is written for folks who are new. Some of it is written for the folks like Sonia who get to live with this for way too long. But you can look at the DLS website and find plenty of stuff and I do support the idea of in-depth training or discussion on this committee as a whole in the council. Thank you Bernie. Lynn did you have a motion? I do. I'd like to move that we recommend that the town council approve appropriation and transfer order FY 22-05E. Shane seconds. And it's been a motion that's been made in second. I've had plenty of discussion if there's no further discussion and I'm looking at don't see any hands and we will proceed in the same process as before. But this time we're starting one further down on the alphabetical list with Bernie Kubiak. I support the motion. Michelle. Hi. Kathy. Yes. Can I vote yes? Alicia. Yes. Lynn. Yes. Bob. I support the motion. And Matt. Support. Okay so then again it's unanimous with support from all three resident members in the committee and we will report it to the council as such. So with that we need to get back to the agenda itself and we need to I'm very conscious of time so I think we need to move forward as best we can with items and decide what's most important to Lynn. Your hand. I have one request and that's of Sean and that even though we're not using borrowing in this case we keep track of all money spent on this project regardless of the source. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So I don't know if we should stay with the action items and go on to the daytime and then come back for discussion items to the extent that we have time and if that's agreeable then I think that the other thing that we were going to put on the screen because it's a very difficult topic and that is just Lynn did you have the doodle poll as Michelle recently? Yeah actually I think Sean asked that. Okay. So because what we need to try and do is find a regular time for meetings each committee is being asked to do that and as a council we have decided that at least for the time being the committee meetings will continue in the virtual format that we will not be doing in-person committee meetings for the president and I think we have a date on that to review that process in the spring but right now it is being done and I think what I wanted to you know the problem we have is that you know there was no suggested time that was universally available or desired by everybody on the committee and so I was trying to see if we could come up with a resolution and one possibility is whether there are additional times that were not in the original poll that we ought to be considering and I think one suggestion that was made was whether there'd be a time later in the afternoon after four o'clock but before six o'clock that we should be asking you should have been asking about too and we should be considering and but I also want to recognize that for people who've put an absolute nose into times if anybody feels comfortable doing so I'm not asking anybody to do it but certainly to feel free to be honest with the group about what your limitations are and why you have the limitations that you do so that we can try and balance this out in the best possible way so is there any people should just feel free to raise hands and if you have any thoughts about how to proceed with this discussion yeah Matt looking at Thursday two to four I could be flexible with that if that winds up being the preference it's but you know I just wouldn't be able to engage with it for a couple months that's all but I could eventually I can straighten it out Michelle I'm sorry can you clarify how often does this committee meet is it only after town council meetings or so every other week or we will try and establish a schedule if you when I wrote the transfer memo about the committee we generally had been meeting either once or twice a month during a large part of the year twice a month being more frequent but when we get into the very limited important time after excuse me the town manager submits a budget and we have 30 days to respond to it we then go into a larger number of meetings for a short period of time and that usually well doesn't I shouldn't say usually that happens in May because the requirement in the charter is that the town manager will provide the budget by May 1st the first meeting after it is referred to the finance committee and the finance committee has 30 days after that to make a recommendation back to the council and then the council has until June 30th to adopt the budget so that's why that time crunch happens at that month of the year but otherwise I don't think we generally met more than twice a month takes something pretty exceptional yeah I just wanted to throw out that I'm open any day of the week really between from three to five or from four to six I know that gets into some evening hours for some people but I also just want to mention that my experience has been over the last couple of years that we often go beyond the two hour scheduled meeting time you know I I personally block three hours of time just because sometimes you know the importance discussions take longer than than we can fit into two hours so just bear that in mind when thinking about a a meeting time Lisa um so generally because I so I work full time and I teach classes every day so I will never be available from two to four um I think my earlier class on the day um uh ends at two thirty so it's possible that maybe if we started around three I'd be able to make that but a two to four block is not going to work for me during a weekday my evenings are completely clear besides council meetings and then generally the other time I have available to me is early mornings like nine a.m. I have meeting slots available um those are going to be a little limited because I have the elementary school building committee the Crest implementation team all of which are morning meetings during the week but is something that I can accommodate on a Tuesday or a Wednesday if that's helpful that is see who else Kathy well I'm just I want to try to repeat back what Alicia just said if if you're saying that Tuesday three to five would be feasible for you um you know starting later what I'm seeing is everyone was available Tuesday afternoon I am totally I could have checked every box so I and I can do late afternoons too I just I I thought the evening real evening hours starting at six are harder on both Sean and Sonya um who need to be here with us and I know Sean is also staffing JCPC which tends to meet in or has been meeting the evenings we haven't done it but if we moved I'm just looking at Tuesday if everyone has said Tuesday two to four was okay with a three to five and if Alicia can do three to five then we have a day that works for everyone so I'm just I I needed to ask Alicia whether I didn't understand with the classes and the work whether starting at three might work on a Tuesday or or Thursday the other day that looks like kind of almost everyone could do it um except for Matt but anyway I was doing the only one missing is on Tuesday sorry Kathy I realized I did I wasn't very clear so I was saying Tuesday and Wednesday mornings I could be available on Tuesday I could still be available but my class on Tuesday ends at three so it would still have to be a little bit later than three on Tuesdays I have Tuesday and Wednesday mornings um on Monday Wednesday and Thursday my class ends at two thirty so those days I could be available at three so I'll just say so three thirty is feasible three thirty is feasible for you on Tuesday also yeah three thirty is feasible almost every day of the week besides Friday okay I was just asking that because for me it it's I'm indifferent you know I I didn't click any evening hours but it wasn't because I'm not available it's just because I was thinking of staff time so I'll stop talking anybody you want to take my hand on any other questions or suggestions to have otherwise Kathy do you have a recommendation out of all of that yeah I'm thinking what I see on the grid if we made it Tuesday from three thirty to five thirty we are unanimous that that works unless I'm just speaking for myself for the people who said it was okay if we start later and and before six does that work for them so I just we look to the rest of the group not just for myself but we get to 10 people if we if that works for everyone Andy can I just ask a quick question yes all right Alicia does three thirty give you enough time or would four o'clock be better three o'clock could work if if that's what works better for three thirty okay yeah that's fine okay so um we want to see if Tuesday three thirty to five thirty works why don't we do this um Bob three thirty might be better because of what I said earlier we often spill over a little bit so people can go from three thirty to six without you know stressing out that that that might be more realistic so we set a goal of three thirty to five thirty Bob but it leaves us to spill over if we have to right that's yeah that was my point yeah there was one suggestion that I was going to make is that we order the agendas for all future meetings so that I work with Sean Sonia and Kathy his vice chair to determine what are the most critical items and if we have to set a hard stop time which are the ones that can carry over and we put those at the end of the agenda and let our agenda flow by what we think are the most critical issues Bernie yeah if um Alicia believes that a half an hour is enough time for her to stop teaching and switch gears that's great and I agree with Bob that if we we you know kind of leave that option of five thirty to six open because we do turn over from time to time and I know I'm a sometime contributor of that um man I'm sorry to say this since we're so close to a solution here but you know something during the work day I can work around or something in the evening I can I can plan for something right I have a long commute at a young child and that you know if that's really the only solution this group can come up with then I I'll proceed with it but it is that is um probably the worst possible that overlap of the of the commute time is probably the worst possible time for me so I don't know if anybody has thought about possibly alternating um you know a morning in an evening or or something like that um I don't I don't know I apologize because I know we're very close to a solution here but that it really couldn't take a worse slot of time for me okay well this is what we need to consider um and when you say commute time but are you thinking of exactly the time we're talking about yeah that's that's pretty much right in my sweet spot of getting home and getting my kid to bed and then be able to attend like the cultural council we do our meetings the evenings six to eight you know this was an afternoon meeting um it's again you know if this is the best thing the group can do that I'll I'll make do with it it's just it's a it's not a great spot for me so we can come to Bob yeah what about Wednesdays at 9 a.m we all made it this week is it difficult for people to make that on a regular basis last that question second alisha I was just wondering if you might be able to bring back up the the doodle poll for the schedule that was a little helpful but I could I can do Wednesdays at 9 I just thought it would be helpful to see this and also just um resonating with what Matt said because I completely understand I also have a work commute and children so that time is slightly difficult um but depending on the frequency of our meetings I could make that happen and then also I know michelle asked this question I'm not sure if I was clear on the answer because I know the frequency of us meeting changes so right now are we looking to be meeting what is our frequency of meeting right now right now we're on uh based upon experience with we would be meeting every other week probably until um may or very close to the first of may and then we would get into that very short period where we have more frequent meetings because of the 30 day timeline for responding to the time managers proposed budget okay and just to I'm not sure if this will matter but in may because schools will be out I won't have the same teaching schedule after that so it might be different but for right now um that's my limitation but you um would be available I mean we'll be asking this of everybody so you don't need to actually answer right now about the Wednesday 9 to 11 yes okay bernie it went Wednesdays are difficult for me because um childcare um if my partner's around then she will sometimes graciously she can I can get her to sub for me but um there's no guarantee that I could be here reliably on Wednesdays until school's up are there other days of the week or is that true for every day um that's true for Wednesdays the other days of the week I have some flexibility I also have other other things that I do but um so the most of which I can move around um what about Tuesday at that time Michelle I was that's what I was gonna ask Alicia just to clarify if 9 a.m. every if a 9 a.m. any morning but Friday was right I'm sorry if I I misheard that Alicia but was a 9 a.m. good for you any morning yeah I'm sorry my schedule is a little confusing but um every morning except for Friday there's Thursday and Friday because Thursday I have cross implementation and Friday I have elementary school building committee um but so I essentially have Monday Tuesday Wednesday at 9 a.m. open so um what did I yes um anybody who has problems with 9 a.m. on Tuesdays to raise their hands and uh let's see if we have anybody who has a problem at that time so I don't see any um other and uh if there any schedule is there any schedule that we need to work around to um make Tuesday 9 to 11 work uh occasional meetings or things like that otherwise what we should try and do and uh for the next meeting um I'll work with uh Kathy and Sean and come up with a list of Tuesdays and propose it back at the next um meeting in order to um inform a schedule for the time um going forward Lynn I'm going to suggest that in order to avoid potentially running into having TSO and finance on the same day of the week or day of the calendar I should say that this committee meet the next time on either February 25th or February I'm sorry January 25th or February 8th at 9 o'clock. Yes um I mean the time that was being considered by TSO was the evening I said recall from last night. Right but the first time that TSO meeting is February 1st which means we would start this at 9 in the morning and have another meeting that night so unless it's urgent the finance committee could wait until February 8th. So um I think that's actually a good suggestion Kathy. I like that Lynn because it also would get us on a schedule we're meeting the day after the council meeting although as you know when you look at the council calendar sometimes we don't meet on a Monday because it's a holiday or something but if that becomes every other week I will just book it and then we can change it when we need to but that and that also gives us that meeting next week to me we need to figure out the next meeting in a way the content of it and I don't think we have if Sean and Sean you will know whether we have anything that has to be decided between now and the 8th if not then we can have more time to figure out the agendas as well rather than meeting again next week. Yeah well I don't think there's anything that needs to be decided we'll have quarterly reports ready for the 8th the 1st and 2nd quarter financial reports. That would be that would be great. Yeah so I think that I think next week would be is is going to be kind of tight but the 8th would be perfect I think I'm saying that for Sonia and she's probably going to shake her her fist at me but oh there thumbs up great. We have an agreement that the next meeting of this committee after we turn today will be on February 8th Tuesday at 9 o'clock in the morning and we will propose a schedule for consideration of Tuesdays for meetings that take us through the end of April and an agenda for the next meeting we'll work on that too. If that's agreeable I don't think we need if we can just do it by agreement I don't think this necessarily has to be done by motion unless someone just wants to do it by motion. No it does not. Okay so I think we have a thank you very much for everybody because this was a difficult topic I mean we all have a lot of things we're trying to do and so the flexibility is very helpful. As far as the discussion items are concerned and knowing the amount of time that we have left because I actually do want to try and stick with the two-hour things let's see if in the other thing I need to do is check to see if there's any public because we also have to allow time for public comment. I think there's one member of the public present and if that person would like to offer public comment at this meeting that I would like but can you bring Tony Cunningham into the meeting and then we can have welcome Tony and you can have comment usually we try and limit it to three minutes but we appreciate hearing from you. Morning. Good morning Tony Cunningham I live in Owen Drive I'm sorry I was in a work meeting for the last hour so I'm sorry if this already got discussed and I missed it. I had a question about regional schools capital requests last night at the school committee meeting they discussed the track and fields projects and there seemed to be a desire to pursue the more expensive of three options which is close to five million dollars and then I noticed in the packet for the four towns meeting there was also talk of middle school and high school fire suppression improvements which is also pegged at five million dollars and then separately to that there's the middle school roof which was authorized three million I think it was a couple years ago but they're waiting on MSPA approval for hopefully half of that so in theory you know that adds up to quite a chunk and I know Amherst doesn't pay the whole amount but the portion that would be on that Amherst would be on the hook for could in theory be many millions of dollars and I know it doesn't go through JCPC for the regional schools so I'm wondering when does that get talked about and where does that money come from if it's going to be a borrowing with debt service for example you know over 10 years and is the room in the capital budget bearing in mind debt repayments will become due on the library project and the school project and there will be roads and other demands on the limited capital budget would the regional school the portion Amherst portion of those regional school projects also have to come out of that same capital budget and is the room in that capital budget for those projects I hope that's clear thank you okay thank you for the question honey in the comment and I just want to note that on the discussion items list of four items one of them is the regional school funding and four towns meeting and so while we don't always respond when public comment is comes forward at the meeting we probably will come back to this issue in a few minutes in that discussion item but thank you very much for your comment and bringing it forward and with that in mind I saw Michelle you had briefly your hand up I don't know if you want to be recognized or otherwise let's try and talk briefly about each of the discussion items and again I'm keeping my eye on the time and trying to stay to the two hours that did not go into the additional overtime that we've normed about so since I don't know hands up with the at the beginning I think that the question of the transition memo and items carried over from the previous session is a standard item that was put on all committee meetings but what I really would like to turn it into because I think we the transfer memo was a little bit different from the other committees because you know it's just the nature of finance that we work through projects but but I'd like to establish a list of things that we would like to see on the agenda for meetings over the next few months prior to when we really have to delve back into the budget and I open it for suggestions of those items one thing that are two things that I have observed and I want to at least make sure that somebody at least mentions them if they think that we should do so is the water sewer rate questions and parking revenue for the transfer for the transportation fund and other issues yes Lynn I think you're going in the absolutely right direction Andy I think the extent to which we can look at items that are either need to be looked at with more depth in advance of the budget would be useful so for example are we going to look at CPA recommendations and I believe they're ready correction and so that's one that we can also look at between now and May 1st and then the other ones you just brought up I think are excellent and if there's other kind of issues that are not if you will part of the regular budget then I think we should focus on those between now and May 1st and then in addition obviously I'll be putting together working with you all to what that primer if you will for the town council will be about financing capital projects all those wonderful terms we slung around earlier today and so forth what was the first one you mentioned CPA oh which I believe yes they have completed their recommendations and so we could do that anytime between now and before May 1st okay Kathy yeah and I Lynn my memory but you will know this usually this CPA comes to the council and we refer to finance to review so if we're meeting the day after the finance the council meeting on that first week in February it's perfect to be on that agenda then you know we could be looking at it early so that was one comment on timing the other is Sean will know where this is but we I raised the issue and I was told we're working on it and then I send a memo in on parking fees meters parking policies permitting for parking and you know I know the staff was working on coming up with a revision I I think it would be good to see it's one of your out of cycle land you know that it won't come up in the budget but I think it would be good to try to see where you are on it and then again I think it's going to come to the council first and then be referred referred because there is a substantial parking item planned for Monday the 24th okay with fees I Sean yes yeah yeah okay so then that potentially is another natural and then the last one is one that we've had a couple meetings but we didn't get very far we talked about Bernie was in them with me with uh Guilford on water and sewer and if we want to change in any way the way we do that and this wouldn't be for the coming year at this point it would just be we raise the question on quarterly rates and so if we try to schedule that I'd like to do it not when we're dealing water and sewer next year's rates I'd like to do it in its own separate meeting so that was the other one I had that it's kind of unfinished business we had raised we'd started to look at it and even if we want to put it to bed you know that we're not going to do anything I'd like to have a discussion in Michelle yep so if there are former or current town committees that have made recommendations or will be making recommendations such as the community safety working group and the African heritage reparation assembly how do those sorts of conversations get added to an agenda I think that's what we're and just I'm newbie here I'm sorry I'm not I don't know sort of the process in the way that it works so it would just be helpful not specifically to discuss those recommendations or those committees but just to understand how the process works generally um I mean some of that comes up came up through the discussion of the guidelines um in that because the head needs needed to be fit into the larger scope of planning some of it comes up individually um I don't think that we've we certainly have had a detailed discussion in planning around CSWG recommendations because they were built in at least for the first year Kathy and Lynn uh much had taken that that order Kathy I was just going to say that in general Michelle and I'll use Climate Action Committee as they to the extent it has a budget impact the committee gets those to Paul as part of the budget process so that we in finance then see it in a consolidated budget we don't deal with those because it's got to be worked in within the guidelines that were set um so we that has been the general route um you know there have been some exceptions you know and so the things we but we haven't done um specified as as much in finance they've gone because we we have an overall policy setting piece but Paul has to bring us a budget that works um so that has been the route um and that and then for example then in JCPC which is the capital place um the issues of hybrid trucks and different kinds of solar or an allocation they came as specific requests um but often from departments and sometimes from residents but we didn't see them you know so it came through a process that came through the budget piece so I'll I mean we can talk a little bit more about that maybe at the next meeting but it's been a rooting through Paul because he's got to make it fit and council sets the overall policy guidelines you know and in in big picture but then there's the reality of how much money we have thank you Kathy helpful yeah so I'm just going to set that in uh in the context of a calendar so we've already done the initial uh fiscal indicators back in the beginning of middle of November and on the same night um we also had public forum um Michelle I believe you made extensive comments of that public forum I would hope that you would forward them to the full council and to Paul and um with regard to the CSWG that conversation has been ongoing now for a while uh there's the um motion that was made uh a year ago well in the budget that we're now in was also then I believe continue that into the next fiscal year and I do want to call attention to the fact that Alicia and the implementation team will be doing two public forums on what's coming up with the Cres program which is one of the main features of the um uh CSWG recommendations so but after that we then did the budget guidelines which we did not include in this packet and we need to just make sure the people have them and then Paul basically starts the budget process and he's doing that already with Sean um and get you know collecting data from departments and collecting data from all of the recommendations and then that is what comes to us in the form of a proposed budget on May 1st and on May 2nd Paul will make his budget presentation to the town council and there is an automatic referral to the finance committee at that point and that's when we begin the process of the in-depth look at the budget so um those are issues that are in people's minds they're on the on the slate if you will and they may not all get implemented but it's out there okay so I think that that's uh gives you a sense of kind of the timing and why we went through that indicators back in November and the budget forum back in November as well okay Michelle I appreciate that that's really helpful and yeah just I I did we did make comments um uh during the forum and then I did attend the finance committee that was following that uh and and watched uh I think that the second meeting following that and there really wasn't uh too much of a discussion about the recommendations that the AHRA made um and I know we're working through a process here and so I I just it's it's more about trying to understand how to actually get these conversations to happen uh when they need to happen and the timing that they need to happen in and I know that it's um they're not easy conversations to have and there is much demand on the budget and I I completely understand that um I just I I want to make sure that in that case with reparations there wasn't much of a conversation that occurred um and there really wasn't much that was added into the draft guidelines either um with respect to it so whatever now Paul and Sean are looking at doesn't it you know there those those recommendations really haven't been um addressed and so and maybe they're not going to be addressed right now and that's okay and we're working through a process but I just I want to understand how how we can have that conversation okay so here's where I think we're at as far as identifying items to try and include an agenda over the next months before we get to the May 1st crunch period and if I missed them please miss anything please speak up but one is water sewer fund how we establish rates and alternative mechanisms for establishing rates another is a bundle of parking issues which I think Kathy described we want to make sure we get the community preservation act done we want to because they'll be there are recommendations from that committee and it has to go through finance to the council as the next steps uh we talked about making sure that we do some planning for the full council and for the committee about how the capital planning process is going to work and trying to explain a little bit more about how borrowing and fits in and just working in terminology around borrowing so that we get everybody into the same place and understanding those issues and funding for some of the initiatives that we've talked about in addition to reparations to CSWG there's ECAC did I miss anything because if not I'm remaining conscious of the time um in the next item on that discussion list was council retreat discussion and I think Kathy or Lynn can pick up on this a little bit but just to give you a real quick is that there was a thought about trying to do some kind of budget presentation um and Kathy was uh had offered to work on that issue and um is to try and then have it presented I think at the next finance committee meeting on the 8th as far as what the general outline of it would be which would be done immediately prior to the retreat itself um for where the council is having a retreat I think on the following Saturday so uh enough Kathy or Lynn have anything to add to that the retreat is on the 12th I since I'm trying to pull the together the retreat agenda I'm trying to understand more what this recommendation is Kathy have you done any uh more thinking about how you put you wanted to present uh and well my my thought was and when when I say this Sean will just blanch but um but my thought was if we could have just a few charts to say what is what is where's the money come from where's the money go to you know and I thought of sort of a budget reality and then show out five years I just wanted to have a grounding of what we're up against you know unless you know um I always feel like you know I watch the federal news and boy wouldn't that infrastructure bill be nice wouldn't that you know solar energy piece but we we've got a very tight budget particularly with the capital projects and debt service coming online for big projects so I what I had in mind Andy is like a few pie chart kinds of things and then at least one two tables for uh maybe a 20-minute presentation but just an orientation not a lot of discussion and I don't know whether that's possible I did one once in 2018 just after I'd been elected with our local district we had a district meeting and I made it simple you know I and it was just to show people where the money comes from and where it goes um so is this something Kathy that you're proposing to do at a finance committee meeting or is no I thought during the day I finished my question please thank you yeah is this something that you're proposing for a finance committee meeting or is this something you're asking that it be on the agenda for the retreat because I didn't know that we were doing that okay okay I had originally Lynn proposed it for the retreat if we think we can't do it at the retreat where we don't have room for it but one of the things we were supposed to be talking about at the retreat was our priorities and and to the extent any of the priorities have dollar signs next to them um I would just like to make sure we're doing it from a foundation of of the town of the town of Amherst um so my original suggestion was the focused on the retreat Lynn and if if we just can't do it that way I would understand but I yes let me look at that agenda the other possibility is that this be part of that dedicated meeting for the full town council and the public and our non-voting members all about finance and I think that's fine it's just the with the retreat is the 12th so I you know it's just I found that grounding really helpful for me to understand why we were faced with such hard choices um and I said if I do this here how does it impact something over there um unless I found someone who wanted to give Amherst a few million dollars so yeah got it thank you anything else here the question about future agenda items which is D on that discussion item list we've really been handling as we've talked about in B so I spent a couple minutes on the four town meeting like a number of us were present at the four town meeting it is a difficult topic Tony Cunningham raised an issue that I think that those of us who attended the meeting are well aware of that adds to the operating budget side of the four town meeting but basically there are two things that happen in regional schools and one is that there has to be an agreement amongst the four towns on the budget as a whole how much is being spent for education at the middle school high school level and then the other is the portion that has to be paid for by the towns that is not coming from other funds state funds in grants how that gets divided up amongst the four towns which is really what the most contentious set of issues were at that meeting and I don't know that we can go into a long process about it but I do want to offer for new members of the committee if you're interested to set up to either have fun conversation about it maybe a group phone conversation with a smaller number of people to just answer your questions and bring everybody up to speed on that issue but it is a difficult complex topic that a number of us Sean in particular have been living with for seems like our whole lives Lynn and there will be another four towns meeting we just don't know when sometime in February and we will need to make sure that we have a further discussion item on this prior to the four town meeting in as far as the capital piece to it I don't know if you have anything more to add Sean sure so so the way regional schools do capital is the school district will bring a capital request to their school committee and then if the school committee approves it it will then get sent to all four towns and the towns have so many days to either act on it or not act on it it requires all four towns to approve so if for let's just use for example if they approve the track this year it'll come to each town to consider so for the smaller towns it would go to their town meetings for us it would go to the council and then ultimately that gets routed back to finance committee to discuss but all four towns have to agree if any town votes it down then it goes back to the school committee to consider and the cost of those capital projects get split up to the member towns based on equalized valuations which is basically property values in each town that's how they they split it between Amherst, Pellum, Lever and Shootsbury and I think that's the other major takeaway from the four town meeting is there was a large increase in capital not only the track but as the as the public commenter mentioned the roof and lots of other projects that result in a really large increase in the capital assessment that we pay to the region so when we pay to funds to the region we pay an operating assessment and then a capital assessment and so the capital assessment was projected to rise pretty sharply in the next five years and so we're going to have to work with them to figure out a way to make it manageable for us but also to meet the needs of the of the region which has two pretty large buildings and the capital as we do our general consolidated budget capital portion comes out of the capital portion of the town budget right so if we set aside 10% of the the levy for capital which is what we we hope to do this year off the top of that comes our debts whatever the town's debt is for for general fund projects but also what comes off the top is the regional school capital assessment so that directly impacts what the town has for its own capital projects and again just going back to the way capital is authorized so once once the capital project is brought to the school committee if the town's approve it that's the last time the town see it if it turns to debt then the towns have to pay their their debt assessment for that project which might come three years down the road but once it's approved by the council and the other three towns and it's it's the funding is approved yeah um let's say one thing and then recognize Kathy because actually this is getting into jcpc territory is what i'm going to say and Kathy is one of the council members of jcpc and that is that the to the extent that the recommendation of this was noted by the comment uh Tony's comment was to do a more complex project and that there was a request not only that he does is a regional project but the Amherst paid additional amount if you really went down that path it really cuts into what jcpc has as a total amount to recommend for other capital needs within the town and i assume therefore we would need to have jcpc discussing that issue also Kathy now turn back to you since you're talking no so andy you you said that piece and i just i actually had a question um for smaller for capital that doesn't get debt financed by the regional do we see it in a line item um so or is it rolled into the overall regional budget because i when i look at the budget i see regional debt service um so that i'm just asking us a question yeah um so if it's not we'll see anything that's assessed to us so if it's part of their capital plan and they approve it um as such it will come to us as an assessment um looking at the regional agreement pretty much everything that comes to us an assessment has to be debt financed even if it's little stuff they usually bundle it into a bigger package so so pretty much everything that comes to us is is debt financed either through most of the time through a bond anticipation note they may never convert it to long-term debt but it usually has to be at least financed through some sort of debt to start with okay that was my understanding i just want to make sure i did because if anyone wants to look at our budgets there is a line for regional capital um you know but we don't in jcpc or in the past we haven't seen little pieces of it you know we we've been given this is as andy said this is how much is left over after we pay that debt service and other debt service this is how much we've got for this coming year um so we're not seeing in advance next year what's coming to us as individual projects we're seeing them as uh it it's in a different you you explained it well shone where else we're seeing it as a council okay um yeah and i um the timing may be perfect for what we're talking about that they brought it up early enough that some of this discussion probably ought to happen to jcpc and i don't know who's going to be chair of that committee but when it needs to make it would be helpful to have that input because we're talking about how we divide up our debt 10 percent that we allow from for capital um so looking at the time and trying to be very conscious of it um that we've had general public comment i want the thing about minute process that what i just want to conclude that is that um with a proposal that um we do what other standing committees nor have done and take the pressure off of a single number of the committee who's been happy to review the minutes and just have draft minutes certain given to the committee and have so that everybody has a chance to read them the um and offer corrections even either in advance of the meeting or um if you'd be at the meeting and approve god minutes at meetings and uh make that a committee function for you for this year um if there's no objection to that and i'll look at the hands raised this counting as objections then we'll just go forward with the um changing it over to that standard process and seeing nothing coming up um i have no announcements i don't know if our items were not anticipated i don't know if anybody else has we talked about the next agenda already in the meeting so um i'll just pause for a moment to see if any hands go up without any of those items other items to be discussed but things people would like to announce otherwise um we'll be ready to adjourn so seeing none then i thank everybody and we're adjourned and we will reconvene at our next meeting uh 9 a.m on february thank you