 the Joint Capital Planning Committee meeting of Thursday, April 25th, 2019 to order at 8.30 a.m. and welcome everyone. And we're going to follow the order of the agenda and start with the report from the Community Preservation Act Committee and welcome Nate Buddington who's the chair of the committee and he's going to briefly walk us through the CPAC recommendations and then we probably will want to have a little bit of a discussion about the relationship between CPAC and Joint Capital Planning Committee but I think it's important to start to hear about their work of the year. So, Nate. Thank you. I know you have a full agenda so just let me know how you want me to do this. I can go through these relatively quickly and take questions at the end if you have any or I can take questions as the proposals are described, whatever you prefer. Why don't you just briefly because a couple of us were here yesterday and heard to a different committee which would the report was but there are a number of people who are not and so I go through quickly and especially covering the items that are also were submissions from the some part of the town or schools library. Would you want me to go through all of them? Yeah. Okay. Yes. So we can start with community housing. There was a $400,000 request from the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust to begin the process of planning for the conversion of the East Street School into affordable housing. We awarded half the amount requested $200,000. The Valley CDC requested $500,000 for their studio apartment supportive housing project. They've purchased a property on Route 9 near the Amherst College football stadium and will add an addition under this house to create about 28 units of studio apartment single occupancy housing for some of the most vulnerable folks in our community, the people emerging out of homelessness, people who've been working with the State Department of Mental Health, very low income, very moderate income people who've been struggling to find housing. Amherst Community Connections requested a little over $116,000 for a program that they've been doing for a couple of years now. This is the third year we've supported it and it is a program that gives housing vouchers to the chronically homeless in Amherst and helps them transition to being self-supporting with a number of different counseling programs that they run and they've been working with some local landlords to find in-town housing for folks involved in this program. So those were the three community housing proposals that we approved at CPA. Yes, Lynn has a question. And the reason I didn't ask it yesterday is because I'm not officially a member of that committee that met yesterday. Just going back to the One Room Community Connections, how much is each of that and how many people do they serve per year and what kind of evaluation have you received from them on the impact of their program? I think they're awarding three to four a year. Do you know? Yeah, so we might be getting confused a little bit with the details of the other proposal that they withdrew for the phase three. This is six rental subsidies of $400 per month. There's one other thing I should note on this and I'll just said really quickly so that we can go on because etc. There was a question that arose in a prior year about this particular program because it has both a social services component of providing social services assistance to the people who they're providing housing for and the actual housing part of it. And we did some investigation and came to a conclusion that it's not appropriate to use Community Preservation Act money for social service programming but it is for housing programming and when I looked at the budget that they submitted the social services part of it is being supported by other funds that they have available and so they're asking the CPA program to only pick up the housing part. Right, I should have mentioned that this is a more of a comprehensive program but our contribution is for the housing vouchers. Yeah, maybe. So I apologize, I have a question on each of the three programs, a couple questions. So I will start with the ACC one since that's where we are. It goes sort of to LINZ. This is a similar to a program that's already been supported for two years or so by CPA funds it sounds like. So have you as a CPA committee been able to receive sort of those results from the last two years of support to see whether the rental support is accomplishing the goal of what the ACC has said the goal is is to move them to higher incomes and out into so that they don't need to continue that rental support. Are those questions you've asked and if so what are those answers so that we know that this is an effective program to support with taxpayer dollars? It's a great question and it's one that we've wrestled a little bit with on the committee because there doesn't appear to be a really organized mechanism to have an outside evaluation of this program and we've been relying to some extent on a kind of self-evaluation and a report from the Amherst Community Connections itself. And I think to some extent our concern about that is aligned with a concern that CPA seems to be the first inline funder three years in a row for this project and I think there's some resistance for us being kind of consistent year to year budget support for a particular agency. So we for that reason I don't want to speak for the committee but I'm guessing if this comes up next year there'll be much more resistance to being a sort of annual funder to this program. But your question is a good one we don't really have a mechanism for getting a really rock solid evaluation defectiveness of this program. What they have reported has assured us enough that it's worth supporting. Hi good morning. I just feel like I have a stupid question but I love stupid questions. On this very item the total amount requested is $116,000 and the the service's description underneath it is for rental subsidies up to $400 per month with six overall households being helped. And if my math is right that means that comes out to a little less than a quarter of the money or around a quarter of the money something like that. And then less than a quarter of the money. And I was just curious what the rest of the money was for. This is a staggered three-year program is that right Anthony how this is funded? I'm looking for it right now you know she did submit a budget. So it's not really just an FY20. It's not a single year. It's not just an FY20 amount. It's awarded this year but it will cover for three years. Okay. I believe that's the funding. This is oh you can't read that. So this is this is the budget they submitted. And yes it's multiple years. And there is a portion as you look at that for management in addition. Knowing that it's for three years helps in order. I assume there was some overhead to it but you'd never have like 80% overhead to a program. Right. Yeah no it is because it's three years. Yeah Bindi did you have anything else? Not on ACC. I've got some on East Street School and Valley CDC project. Okay anything else on the Amherst Community Connections. Now go ahead. I'll move to the East Street School. I wasn't completely clear on what this is for given what the Town Council voted on the East Street School project. The Town Council I thought voted to transfer the property allow the transfer of the you know sort of the property the building rights to a private developer. And this request seems to be for the housing trust to be the developer. So I guess I'm confused as to what the housing trust's money is for if the housing trust is sending out RFPs to have that property developed privately. The housing trust has requested this the second year in a row to have money awarded that and the previous request was based on the awkwardness of the calendar with CPA regarding Town Meeting where we only met once. They wanted money on hand to give them the flexibility to be able to make investments in planning for the East Street property without having to come back to us when we couldn't align with the Town Meeting calendar. That is less of an issue now with the Town Council. But they wanted to be able to have the flexibility to have funds when needed somewhat undesignated but mostly based on things like planning for the project. I don't know how it relates to the money that was allocated by the Town Council. Yeah I think my suggestion on this would be it's a good question that you're raising but to try and focus today on the interrelationship to the joint capital planning committee but that because ultimately the vote on CPA proposals is a vote of the council that that's an issue that needs to be taken up by the Council on this finance committee and we should be asking the affordable housing trust to come back and make a fuller explanation of the whole mechanism and how those two pieces fit together. So in your can I ask something about Valley CDC? It might be better for Councilor. One of the questions I had was with this mental health social work type support Valley CDC I think intends the SRO project to have some sort of social worker and mental health support there. Is this money going to that or has it been split out? Well there's a number of sources of money for this project which will be considerably more than $500,000 so we're contributing to the to the overall project. I think that the other aspect of this one that actually does relate to JCPC, yes CPA funds can't be used for social type services so all CPA is reimbursement so they have to submit invoices to the town in order for us to reimburse them up to the $500,000. If there's anything on there it has to do with social services it will be disallowed. So there is some checks and balances in this and for the affordable housing trust that is a municipal town of Amherst municipal housing trust so that all goes through the town's treasury as well and it's well audited and the checks and balances on that so it would have to be for a legitimate housing. The other aspect that does relate very much to this committee and I had brought this up yesterday at the community resources committee meeting but saying that it really belonged in a different place so I didn't pursue it there is that it's a proposal to borrow money and then to actually repay it as has been done in previous years in future with future years CPA funds and because we know from the work that we've been doing on planning for long term capital there is a limit to the amount that the town can borrow a statutory limit of five percent of the EQV of the town total property values and as we're looking at the requests that we're going to be getting from major capital projects we do need to be very conscious of where we are against the town's borrowing limit and to the effect that that has an impact on long term capital planning of the town that gets us back very into this committee's role very clearly and so can you tell us a little bit about what the request is on and why the borrowing is a necessary component of the proposal? Well we went into this this year realizing we had about you know 1.7 million to spend and requests totaling much more and we had two very big housing proposals so we were pretty vigilant in vetting these proposals we rejected a number of proposals and part of that was rejecting them on the face of it that they just weren't appropriate but also keeping in mind that we realized the very issue you're bringing up was in front of us at the end of the day we felt these were exceptionally good proposals and you know we we have borrowed more than this at times we've borrowed less than this at times sometimes we haven't borrowed any we just felt this studio apartment in particular this proposal was kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to address in a pretty profound way the most vulnerable people in Amherst we thought it was worth the borrowing these are 28 unit switches significant is that what you were asking for kind of a rationale for it is it's helpful I think that in the end we're going to have to rely on Mr. Mangan on this all to give us some advice on that subject and then to through the finance committee and jcpcd the council advice on the subject so that but I wanted to make the because we have representatives of the school committee and the library trustees here who have an investment it's so to speak in the process that we're talking about about a long-term plan and the borrowing capacity against that's needed to fund the long-term plan that and needed to bring this up to get it to the attention of the library trustees and the school committee one thing I would say is I would hope that rather than simply if this comes up rejecting the bonding proposal that we be given the opportunity to regroup and maybe reorganize proposals there was uniform excitement about this particular project I think probably more than anything else we consider this year it's helpful thank you anything else on housing so for historical preservation there's a preservation plan update process that the historical commission uses on a regular basis they like to get it done every five years that's the recommendation we haven't done one in 13 years and this allows us to kind of do an update on our preservation needs and planning work getting more income comment from the public and just sort of do an inventory of needs and we're way out of date with with doing a preservation plan so we wanted to support that the continuing effort to improve the condition of some of the gravestones in the west cemetery this is a phase two we funded a previous phase this is to fix and repair a number of damaged headstones of some of historical importance some of just importance because they needed to be needed to be repaired the farmhouse window restoration this is the farmhouse down in north amherst at simple gifts farm we funded last year a exterior repair of that building and this is a second request to use historic windows in in the exterior of the building to refurbish the existing windows that are historic wooden windows and this will I believe repair all the windows in the building we also approved amherst historical society's data migration project this is to take currently exists sort of an inventory of items that are in the collection that are on an excel spreadsheet to a more open source system where these will be available to be viewed by the public by scholars it's a much more modern up-to-date system of managing collections is this a one-time cost or would it have future I believe it's a one-time cost in open space the town had requested $50,000 for improvements to existing lands public lands as you may know if you use them there's some pretty serious degradation of trails and bridges in our public lands we because of how much money we had to operate with we did not approve the $50,000 request but we requested 10 and recommended that the town come back to us at a later date the Zala property was a hundred and eighty eight thousand dollar request this is an interesting piece of a property that exists as sort of a donut hole where route 16 and Sunderland Road meet just west of there there are two conservation lands that have an interruption in the middle of it and this is the Zala property this property would be able to if purchase would create a sort of an entire north south rectangle of preserved land this is important wetlands there's been moose in this land it's ripe for development the eastern section of it so we do want to protect not much development maybe a couple of housing lots but we do want to protect that agricultural land and include the land that would allow this this north south split to be contiguous just west of this land is a very large Hadley agricultural reserve so this would create on the Hadley straddling the Hadley Amherst line a pretty sizable piece of protected land the Hickory Ridge property acquisition is we would be CPA money would be used for the part of the Hickory Ridge golf course that would be used as recreation open space this is a piece of land that is both beautiful it is right in the middle of two of the most densely populated parts of Amherst and it is because it's been set up as a golf course it has trails and bridges that would make this without an awful lot of work almost upon purchase a park that is handicap accessible there is a section of this land that would not be purchased with CPA money this is where the clubhouse is in the parking lot and the area around Pomeroy that that's parallel to Pomeroy that could be used will be purchased with other funds but could be used for affordable housing reuse of the clubhouse CPA lands or funds are just being used to preserve the Fort River buffer zone if you will and the meadows to the north the Keith Haskins property is another pretty remarkable piece of property this is the Cushman Brook area that that feeds Puffer's pond this is sort of an area between Market Hill road and I think it should spray road or eat North Leverett Road or this is an area that is under threat of development and this purchase of this land would would we basically have at the end result because of other protected lands a two mile protected corridor on the Cushman Brook which is something that I believe has been part of the master plan to to purchase this land CPA has a bias toward proposals that bring in matching grants and this proposal is bringing in a 400 thousand dollar land grant so we're pretty excited about the the cost the participation in a project with a pretty big matching grant one question about the land the Hickory Ridge if there's no land being purchased along Pomeroy how does a handicapped person access that trail that land will be purchased but it won't be purchased with CPA funds so the so access to that would be through Pomeroy to that would be part of this whatever they're going to call it the Hickory Ridge Park or open space would be the the meadows to the north and the riverway and it would also be the land that you're referring to but CPA would not be purchasing that part of the property but access to what CPA is purchasing would be through that property once it's correct and possibly to the north where the apartment complexes are there will probably be interestingly okay one part of the property where there's a fence is between the golf course sadly road I mean from that direction okay thank you I wanted to follow up on that I'm just maybe if you don't know I don't have members of the council now who else is buying and putting up money to buy the rest of it I'm just saying it since this is about a definite acquisition of this portion of the land it makes one curious as to where specifically is the rest of the money coming from and who's doing it and is that definite follows on sort of the question around access of if you were buying this land and you had access and the question is it was speculative that you'd have access then the question would be how would you know you definitely would have access and so you'd want to know both power pieces were locked down and I'm just curious if that's public information or not it's not this Sonya I believe we don't have a definite plan yet and how it's all going to be purchased I'm sure there'll be grant funding involved applications going out this money won't be spent until the whole package is put together so I'm sure that will all come out and go through a long public process I just don't think they're there yet I will follow up with Dave Zomek and see if there is more information and get it to you great so essentially this is this is obviously a critical piece of the puzzle and the whole puzzle is being put together but it's good to have this locked down as you're proceeding the rest of it maybe I had a question about the land improvement and rehab that you reduced from 50 this is one that came to JCPC 2 is sort of a multi and I personally see it as more of a CPA logical one so I'm concerned about that reduction because as you stated in your presentation these trails are need are in need of severe maintenance yet you reduced the request by 80 percent and it is something that on the face of it to me looks like it would have wide wide public benefit and public use because we use our trails and Amherst so how was the decision made to reduce that one by $40,000 but you know say the Zala property which I'm still not quite clear on where it is but that one keep it its full request how do those decisions get made all of which a lot of times also come to JCPC land acquisition requests too so why was that one chosen to be reduced well the town was pretty clear with us that they were open to a reduced award and that they would come back to us next year so it actually came from them understanding that we had some pretty hard decisions to make so we wanted to get this process going to do some of this trail and bridge repair but when when when in a time when we we have to make some pretty tough tough decisions if someone who proposes something says this year we can do it less money we're going to take advantage of that offer I also want to point out that all the respective committees are asked to prioritize their projects so that helps the CPA make their decisions as well I think that the other thing to recognize is that when you've got land acquisition opportunities sometimes time is of the essence whereas some of the other things like the trail work if you postpone it for a year you can do it next year if you don't buy the Zala property you may lose that opportunity so that that that's a factor that has to be worked in and I think that when our staff provides advice to committees it's sort of with that base of knowledge a couple of recreation proposals the graph park modernization proposal $110,000 this is to complete the new playground pavilion and water park that we've been funding for a couple of years has been a little bit of a frustrating process I think the original there was a grant that didn't come through the original bid came in kind of high so we've been going back to this project this amount of money is money that may be coming back to us because it's to fund a 20% contingency fee on this project to make sure we don't run into budget problems again as we try to complete this project which has started by the way so this $110,000 is money that we may very well see return to us if we don't use the contingency the mill river recreation area grant mill river has gone through a number of improvements in the last couple of years new tennis courts and pretty significant improvements to the pool new baseball fields but the playground as it is as much too close to the baseball field that creates a safety hazard the basketball court is in very very bad shape and needs to be completely rebuilt and the pavilion is not in great shape either so this is the beginning of preparing for a park grant that will hopefully address all of those issues and effectively complete the rehabilitation of mill river which is now four years old five years old the project beginning the rehabilitation of mill river Andy I just had a question if the money for the graph park ends up not being spent and coming back is it then specifically reserved to be used on recreation only because otherwise recreation might not hit its 10% limit this year so I'm curious how that works recreation is is the 10% is recreation and open space combined so recreation doesn't have to meet the 10% threshold so if it comes back it could be used for any purpose then it wouldn't have a specific reservation technically the funds go back to where they were appropriated from so if it came from the undesignated fund balance of cpa that's where it goes back if it came from one of the reserves if we had reserves for housing or recreation or open space it would go back to that and we appropriated from there it would go directly back there but when it's not designated into a reserve then it just falls back to undesignated revenue and we watch the 10% we have to for state reporting so but to respend it it has to go through the process again of the cpa committee making recommendations and then the council acting on the recommendation I get that I guess I'm just concerned when you're looking at the splits many years the split goes well to affordable housing and I'm not saying that's a problem but if you're looking at this year one of the big projects for recreation which has you could argue has a larger public benefit than affordable housing in terms of who gets to use it just using it and and there's other arguments for affordable housing so don't don't indicate that but then it comes back and the if the indicate you know if the inclination is to not then spend it on recreation that that just concerns me because those recreation requests would be in jcpcs hands if they're not being funded by cpa so I just want to watch out for the split too I think in a general sense of the way the committee operates there's a real interest in maintaining that balance beyond just simply meeting the minimum 10 threshold yes I just want to add to that a little there's no reason why we couldn't internally come up with a way for the funding if it was voted for recreation for it to fall back to recreation however that's like a two-edged sword because the money might something might come up with recreation that we need more money for and we don't have it and we can't use it because the affordable housing project tanked and it went back into the affordable housing and our process is not to do that so I think I think that would tie our hands too much other than administrative expenses that's uh that's our expenditures this year other questions about the report and then did you have something Sonia okay because the other question that I think that we ought to really spend a couple of moments thinking about is whether anybody has any suggestion concerns about the amount of communication between the two committees and suggestions about next year if there's things that they would that could be done differently to have communication earlier yeah Lynn first of all I think both with jcpc and cpac several people on the council have suggested they'd like to see us move this forward in earlier in the year so there's more of an opportunity for a dialogue between the two and doesn't feel as compressed this year that just the change in government just didn't allow that and that's one of the issues and then the other issue that I think a couple just speaking for myself I'm focused on is anything that commits to our debt and the extent to which we're as we look at our large capital projects the extent to which we commit other debt as well and I guess I would love to have some sort of real dialogue when projects come to cpa with jcpc and since cpa money is taxpayer money and you know jcpc has a lot more flexibility in what we obviously fund my personal view of cpa is if a project could be falls under a cpa that might be where the priority of funding it comes from so that that opens up jcpc money for projects that can't be funded by cpa and so having that dialogue about you know like this trail thing came to both of us having that dialogue earlier on what might get funded what might not and the reasons for maybe reducing those requests in cpa and priorities and both would would be very beneficial I think to both committees as we're looking at what do we pick to fund and the thinking on well maybe cpa is not going to fund it this year because of these others but it's a high priority for say next year and so we don't have to necessarily put it on our side of the 10-year capital and I think those conversations need to happen earlier in the process then later we've often said the same thing on cpa is we wish we knew what jcpc was doing so this makes good sense yeah I think you did I guess based on what I'm saying here we got a request for cherry hill and some potential improvements to cherry hill and I guess that that was not brought to the the cpa that's correct and I think this isn't really when you talk about meeting the two committees meeting or having better communication this isn't really directed to anything in the cpa report although I think it probably echoes some of the the the thinking around trail maintenance and things like that but one of the things that this is my second year doing jcpc and it's hard not to start to think about and get worried about more broadly in the town but including our our historic cultural and recreational assets the amount the amount of money we're able to put into sort of new projects and new things versus the resources we're able to put into ongoing maintenance and capital replenishment of of assets that are used durably so it's not a new bright shiny thing but it's something that in fact the community really relies upon and as as if you whenever you look at it when you take a look at some of the things that are going to be coming out of the town's overall capital budget for fy20 and for the next five years it'll one thing that leaps out I think should leap out to anyone who's paying attention is we we have lots and lots of core needs that are sort of backing up that are either either buildings equipment or systems that are nearing the end of the usable life and the question is how do you balance out figuring out where you're going to be able to find the money and when things are going to end up failing this is obviously a topic for later in our meeting in terms of the long-range look but in terms of the intersection with with cpa in cpc is that it to me the way the better we as a town are able to think about the balance of how we're investing where we can before we have to and looking out a few years to try to make sure that we're making investments every single year to chip away at maintenance and and things that need to be just maintained seems to me to be really really critical and I think the challenge is and you look you're wrestling with this all the time and this is what you're doing so I'm not this isn't critical but the challenge is precise what you're talking about the balance between finding new opportunities that are exciting maybe one time maybe really important versus the fact that as it is a town we look at our overall budget there are lots of things that we need to be doing better at that are just ongoing things we have that are are nearing the end of their life and could pose some substantial either risk or erosion of the usability of some of our assets over time yeah I guess I it's more of a practical question I think we all agree that better coordination makes sense and so Mandy's proposing that you know you meet earlier but is that I guess is that realistic that you meet earlier and then present to us or does it like I guess I'm just trying to figure out like how do we really figure out a coordinated approach I don't know whether it's a liaison on either committee I don't know whether because I suspect you need to know what's going on with us as well as we need to know what's going on with you and just having you meet earlier helps us but probably doesn't help you so again not proposing solutions just yeah this was an exceptional year and Nate actually did contact me early on because I had been the select board liaison to CPAC in prior years and the so he turned to me and said should we go ahead and start our process and actually there was you know a little bit uncertainty as to when to get that process started we ultimately you know I encouraged them to go ahead when they did but we need to be much more strategic in thinking through the timelines for all of our processes now because you know one of the things that we're now at is that with town meeting it would only meet twice a year and everything had to fit into town meeting schedule now we have a legislative body that meets throughout the year and therefore you're not we're not bound by having to adhere to a town meeting cycle of calendar and I think that enables us to be more flexible for both committees and to find ways to do the scheduling that works together effectively because of the transition happened in December we didn't have the luxury of being able to spend time figuring that out but that's what one of the things we need to talk about now is how we can do it what we what we would suggest to do better next year so that we learn from the experience and take advantage of the fact that we are a year around legislative body now and in defense of Andy I actually did attend a couple CPAC meetings when I was able to as a liaison but it was my first round with both JCPC and CPA and so I was obviously on a huge learning curve and have not done as much input to proposals that I think in the past Andy has been able to do so that's part of trying to do it earlier and literally that decision happened with my looking at Andy Andy looking at me Andy saying I can't take on anymore and my saying okay I'll do it so it's not exactly the way we should do business in the future so but having said that I will also say that in the town council goals under budget and finance we already have the goal of looking at both JCPC and CPAC and their timeline if I could just add if we are going to enter into some discussion on how to better coordinate it would be my preference that we begin that sooner than later so when we get to the beginning of the cycle next year we really know what we're doing and we may need obviously need to make adjustments as we see how it works but I think the finance committee is thinking about doing that in June so I think I'm not sure we can take it rather than that but this has been very helpful is there any other questions or comments that people want to make about the the PAC part of it having said everything and all the questions we asked you and having attend several of your meetings they do an amazing job and provide an opportunity for people to come before them and make their case in a way that you know we don't have the time for instance through town council or in most other situations although we do that here and it is in those meetings that you really get a chance to understand the detailed nature and the thought of this and you also understand why proposals are withdrawn and why proposals are rejected so in none of this is meant to diminish the work of the committee but to basically thank you for stepping to the plate so fast and so thoroughly this year thank you thank you yeah I would echo that I really do appreciate the work that was done the hard work that was done by the entire committee and thoughtfulness of the proposals and you know we do need to learn a lot more throughout our council finance committee and this committee about the valley CDC proposal how it is structured what the funding mechanism is why the why the money is what they envision using the money for those kinds of things and we may need to get valley CDC to make a direct presentation so that we have so you don't have to get caught in the middle being in the middle of that because you know we don't know that whether or not it's going to be a bonding capacity problem and but it you know other alternatives how what what are the alternatives about where the money is coming from and how it's going to be spent over time is this a construction grant for example it has to be done all at once or can it be spaced over time and those are things that you know I have no idea about you might have a better sense but yes so this is a question both to you here and to you as chair of finance and to the three of us as counselors so the schedule right now for CPAC is that they will come before the finance committee on April 30th and so if you want the finance committee have more information on the CDC project that's one opportunity and then the recommendations of three committees that are reviewing CPAC recommendations that go to the council is on the May 6th agenda and so again now the council could decide not to take action that night but if there's going to be a present presentation by any of these like CDC then it needs to be either then or at a scheduled time so you're thinking that maybe they should attend the finance committee meeting I think it might be helpful to have the LACC but that we can work that through our own staff and I don't know for sure maybe somebody can quickly check but that meeting may also be called as a committee of the whole which is the entire council is able to come and discuss it I'm getting a yes it is so and that's on April 30th at two o'clock in this room and at a committee of the whole means that any counselor who arrives and I call a committee of the whole they then can function as a regular part of the discussion and not sit as a audience. Nick is the one final thing you can send me on this one is there are provisions in the charter that require that on the capital budget and on the budget as a whole the actions have to be taken by a specific time in the course that's because we have to have budget by the beginning of fiscal year with CPA are there similar timelines that are statutorily set or does the council have more flexibility and that's the things of that now but it would be helpful to know. I don't have the exact answer to that but CPA funding is also based on estimated revenues so it's also subject to the tax rate being set and all that so I think there will be the same limitations where we have to have it voted before July 1st. On another note for all the questions and all the projects and everything all of these proposals are posted on the website CPA website along with a comprehensive list of questions that were submitted to the seat to all the uh proposers with their answers and that's all there so that you could probably answer a lot of your questions right on the website. Good point. Okay I'm sorry Andy would you like um CDC to come to our meeting on the 30th? I think we can uh we don't have to make that decision. Okay all right um but thank you very much mate appreciate it. So um going back to the agenda then um I think this the second item is the final review of the 10-year capital plan and uh that was an item that was sent to us by staff it is the chart and I think um so um I don't know if you want to start by making comments to us. Yeah so I was gonna Sonya and I were gonna quickly go through the full plan and listen to the projects and highlight some of the changes to the out years that we talked about and tried to look at it a little closer and update those projects and also all that is flowed through to the summary page but if you go to the next page so under equipment I don't think there have been any major changes here I think under fire um there was a comment last time about the protective gear and we talked about that being an every year type expense on a schedule um so we rolled that forward every year um but other than that I think that was the only major change. So I just have a quick question so there's the summary page for the current year and then we've got the 10-year plan so I had a couple of comments on the summary page do we want to hold those until we go through the spreadsheet or when you say summary page you mean um it's the report that lists each line item with a description no we can start if you want to start if you have questions on that page we could okay more just from a consistency so I'm just going to follow along with where we are on the spreadsheet so from a consistency standpoint um under equipment when we get down to the end with the schools and the new buildings in parentheses um Sonya I think you put borrowing so I didn't know on the fiber optic net for that 589 in that grayed out column of your summary do we also do we want to consistently put where it's borrowing does that make sense what I'm asking there's two documents one is a spreadsheet and then one is the written summary that accompanies just the fy20 so that's why I was asking do we want to kind of do the same time or do you want me to save those comments for are you talking about summary that describes each individual project right so like it'll yeah yeah let's go through that after because I think that would be a lot of that was my question language cleanups exactly thanks okay so back to the so again we updated the protective gear for the fire department under equipment to be an every year expenditure because I think it was ending at like FY 27 before so we just rolled that forward on the next page don't think there were any changes here um again a lot of vehicles got pushed back to FY 21 but we haven't shifted any of that around so I believe that all stayed the same same thing with the next page there weren't a lot of changes there again to the next five to ten years under buildings nothing on this first page we did talk about some stuff at south south amherst campus about future expenses but um nothing definitive at this point and here's a yes so um on line item 129 so in the prior spreadsheet the building envelope repairs was 25 000 now it's 100 000 and on the energy conservation project on the previous it was 10 000 and now it's 179 85 so those are changes from the prior yeah so the request yeah so the building envelope there was something that got freed up when we went through it as we got closer to uh refining this we realized that the 410 that we voted for amherst media um the debt service for that wasn't going to happen in fiscal year 20 it was going to happen in 21 so we moved that debt out which freed up some money and um the town manager wanted to put that into buildings so that it could cover an emergency for any of the buildings or something that got taken off the list for all town buildings including schools schools um the libraries could be any of the buildings so it was his decision to move that there and then he wanted the um he wanted to put 75 there and then he wanted to put the bulk of that into the remainder of that into sustainability efforts okay so that happened right after our last meeting after we last meeting right okay so i guess my question is like that's pretty significant to go from 25 000 to 100 000 for emergency repairs and so i guess i just want to make sure that we as a committee are that's where we want to put the 75 000 and and everybody's on board with that well we took a lot of things off of individual building asks uh like the cabinets that are falling down at the police station there were some things at the school we took off so we figured this would be a flexible way to handle handle all of that okay so i so last year one of the library requests was to put it aside 25 000 for emergency requests um because that's with some of the other buildings and we were told basically no we can't do that but so is this now and you said so is this now that space and does it because we did have an emergency request this year but we wound up funding it and not coming to jcpc so i guess i'm just trying to understand how this works i guess emergency request was the wrong phrase to use it's basically to achieve some of the things that were already on this previous ask without having to go back and go through the whole program again so what was taken off yeah what was taken off to move this additional money under 129 the one that comes off my comes at the top of my mind where it was the um cabinetry that's falling off the wall at the police station that was 25 000 ask that came off what what line i think the question is what line did the it was debt i believe that it was debt service that we didn't need so there's a prior year 20 there was a project approved in the past that had a debt schedule and the project hasn't started yet so the debt schedule so the projected debt needed to be pushed out a year um so basically when you start with the total levy available for capital the first step is to subtract out the the debt and the projected debt um so one of the projected debt items got pushed out because it hasn't started yet if you look at previous reports you'll see that in there for for emers media meg uh peg i i get the funding source i just didn't i don't see the cuts that's what like the cuts that you're like i don't when i try so the schools for example the schools had 150 000 in originally for ada upgrades that got trimmed back to 100 000 um the schools also had 150 000 for water fixture uh replacements and that got trimmed back to 100 000 so at least from the school perspective those were two facility requests that got trimmed back and not saying that this is going to that but that again that's the kind of things that this would help cover yeah i guess i'm just having a lot of difficulty with this rigorous process we just went through for however many weeks you know line by line and then we're just throwing 75 000 back in with i i just that feels really strange to me yeah one and then i this is long the same line so in other words some changes were made cuts were taken from one place and put into another to create more of a pool the different groups could count different departments and the schools and libraries could come to no after our last meeting here we had like a 20 000 deficit that we had to come up with because of some changes that this body made you made some cuts and what did you add money summer um the citizen request for the cracker farm study right the citizen request for the cracker farm study so we had a 20 000 deficit that we were looking to fund maybe with old capital or something but then we our debt estimates became more firm and we realized that we were not going to have to pay the debt service for the audio visual equipment for amorce media until fiscal year 2021 so we were able to move a hundred thousand dollars of debt service out another year which gave which balance which gave us an extra eighty thousand dollars approximately so we put it in the building envelope so that we could cover some of those things that were taken out of the capital plan for ease not having to redo the whole capital plan is amorce media on here if you go to the first page so the area that would have gone down would be is it the current debt obligation the proposed debt obligation that's where that would have been uh lumped into right sonia that's the debt service projected debt that we had in the beginning you'll amorce media in fiscal year 2020 we had a hundred and two thousand dollars their principal and interest payments since since then recently had a conversation with the amorce media about their debt needs they're not going to need the whole 410 it's about 175 that they're going to need to borrow and they're not going to borrow they're not going to start until July one so the debt service would not start into fiscal year 21 so not only did it shift a hundred and two thousand from fiscal year 20 it reduced it in the in the subsequent years because the debt is going to be lower so i guess um and you may not you may not have an answer to this because i'm there's sort of two lines of inquiry or thought on this subject one is really more about process and how this relates to what we've been doing which i don't disagree with the observations but that's that's sort of one line of discussion another line of discussion is is how how we're thinking about the actual priority prioritization itself so this is a line item a building envelope prepares that's funded at 25 000 dollars like every year in perpetuity into the future and if in the best judgment of the professionals in the town that's an appropriate number then i would look at i hate to call it a windfall because nothing's a windfall right i mean it's a precious money and it's all tax dollars but if we had another 75 000 then i go back to the observation i was making earlier during the cpac discussion where when you look out at the capital plan without increasing any line item so if you hold constant the building envelope prepares at 25 000 per year then you just see other other priorities that are stacked up and are being delayed you know year to year and so you could easily look in here and look for example on the vehicles and you could cobble together 75 or 80 000 of vehicles that have been requested for the last couple years are stacked up now over the next couple years to be replaced no one's disagreeing whether whenever there actually is a failure on the equipment everyone's agreeing at some point it has to be replaced and if we move the money there we could at least knock down a couple of those items so that when we're going to that's process next year we've whittled away just a little bit more at things that we know we're going to be very hard for us to place down the road now that's obviously a judgment about prioritization you can make an alternative judgment and i'm just trying to think about since we obviously didn't have that discussion here i'm just trying to figure out if it's if it's being funded at 25 000 a year every year why is that why is that in fact more important than looking at some of these backlog of other investments and saying let's knock some of these downs make a little more progress and i just want to reiterate here that this what this change was made after the last meeting that we had for jcpc it's fully we moved it around this way it's fully up for discussion it's just that's where we put it to balance this at this time and i actually was looking for that line just as you brought it up so so we'll bring this feedback back to the town manager again that's the recommendation we got from him as to where to put the funds that were freed up but here in the feedback from all of you we'll bring that recommendation back to him or the feedback back to him and see if that changes his his thought process where it should go yeah i think that the the the questions do need to be divided between process and substance and the process part of it is that if there was just a explanatory memo right at the top saying that the proposal was being made to shift funds from one line to another the following reasons and the following amounts that would at least put us in a place where we could look at it so that would be the process part of it and then the substance discussion follows but we can't have the substance discussion if we don't know the you know if the process part the points it to us to it doesn't happen so i guess to simplify the process is the the need for debt service or fiscal year 20 reduced which allowed extra money for projects and then of course the other thing is that there was some mention made about the amherst media and the borrowing that has been authorized again which had to do with the contract with Comcast but that's a unique bundle of money that can always serve a very limited set of purposes so we we just all need to understand that that needs to be tracked separately because it is very restricted in what we can use it for you're not are you is that germane to this question and where the extra 75,000 or 80,000 goes no i think that they're actually separate pieces but they both care that's what it was assuming i just want to clear that okay yes a lot of this confusion also comes up because of the timing and the whole change in governance and in one town meeting and all normally the budget's done back in january that's a our educated guess back in january what the budget's going to be we're getting closer and closer we have more information comes in every day and what our numbers are going to be so we fine tune it we're not used to doing that we're used to giving you a budget and a capital plan based on solely estimates so we could have had this 102 sit here in the past and then it would just close out to free cash at the end of the year because we wouldn't have had to use it for debt service so because we have more time and we can adjust this we just moved it to cover other projects it's just time it's just a change for all of us yes i i'm confused so i apologize questions comments it's it's all going to go in multiple things so it looks like 75 000 was added to the building envelope repairs 17 or so 8 8 000 or so was added to energy conservation projects these are general things you were mentioning earlier that some of this could be used for building stuff that we pushed forward years but what i don't see is those that were pushed forward years including i think the one you mentioned of furniture for the police station removed from fy 21 it's still sitting there in fy 21's funding um hold on and could could something designated as building envelope repairs and this goes to when we have you know this might be more of a question for when the council passes the budget that the town manager does do we pass a bottom line capital planning or are we passing these specific projects because if we are i'm confused as to how something labeled building envelope repairs how a cabinet replacement in the police station qualifies as a building envelope repair so that that's that's specifically to you and then i think going to what alex was saying in terms of process maybe what we as jcpc need to be doing in a future year is not specifically saying here are the projects we want to fund and here we're just pushing them out but as we potentially move this project process forward when funding is not as solid what we we prioritize i think you know nsf grants and other granting agencies do this where they look at all hundred projects and they put here's number one here's number two here's number three we think the line is here and if the line moves down here's number 2021 and 22 that we want as first priority so that that's a comment towards sort of this whole group as to maybe we need to start actually putting a ranking on all the projects of this year here's our ranking and that line falls wherever the funding is so i thought i'd throw that in too but if you could answer the first question i'd appreciate it well the first question is when we had town meeting we would vote capital in two sections equipment and then building and facilities and it was bottom line and equipment so we had a list and an estimated amount for all of these projects in there but if one project costs more and one another project costs less we had the flexibility to move the excess into the one that they needed a little more money um because their estimates are too low same thing and buildings and facilities and um that's a question i have for council later on is how are we going to vote these so that we can write the orders do we continue with the breakup of equipment facilities and building or do we just do one number for capital of course any borrowing has to be separate um votes but for uh cash capital that can be all one number and then you have the flexibility if things come up to move it around answer yeah because that goes to do these line items matter in the end and and that answer is depends on how we vote it but likely not necessarily because we'll be voting a bottom line number that still gives the manager flexibility so for the most part we stay within the numbers that are voted by each category some sometimes things come up and we have to use the money in other ways but that's always transparent in all of our financials if a silly question that goes to that then if want a better term legally it's the it's the bottom line number that's authorized for a given year in a given master category let's say of item does that mean that the the spreadsheet allocations between fiscal year are similarly not binding and that if you found yourself able or needing to move a line item up from one year or back to another year that you do that i'm just asking literally i'm asking the question because it follows on what Randy was just asking around you don't ever i mean i haven't seen things get moved up before but sometimes a project may not be finished completely expended in that fiscal year just may take longer for example like our security articles at the school gets we replace doors sometimes we don't use it all in that the year that it's here might be a year after no i understand that kind of stuff i'm what i'm saying i think i'm getting the answer i was looking for but i'm just i was just asking the question whether these things were in the end a matter of of clear sort of binding policy in terms once they're voted or whether they're more sort of inferential like you think you're going to do x and what you're telling me i get the idea that for a million reasons projects get delayed and you sometimes move f y 20 projects 21 or 22 but you're just saying it so you don't end up jiggling between how yours i don't wrong impression we do have to stay within the um the votes here within reason if we start moving money around to all these projects all the time and everything the auditors are going to write us up on that that's not really good financial practice so we try to stay within the lines that are here we close out old capital there's money left over in there we cannot cross fiscal years you can't use fiscal year 18 and 19 combined unless it's for the same purpose specifically in the plant yeah yeah so i i get that this was all last minute not ideal but i guess the the comment that i want to make is you know jcpc as a committee originated so that different departments of town weren't you know throwing each other under the bus and fighting over money and so when i when i see you know 75 thousand dollars put into sort of a general basket i guess i'm i'm assuming this is just sort of temporary where where we put it but my feedback to the town manager would be that i personally would prefer that we allocate it to you know if the police department needs the cabinets or if you know whatever it is that makes more sense because i mean the whole point of this committee is for us to sort of listen to all the departments and figure out the needs and and taking such a large sum and putting it into a basket to me is in direct contradiction to what we're trying to do to work together with the various departments so that everybody feels like they're getting a fair shake and i know this was not the intent this year i just that would be my feedback yes i i just want to note that we totally expected there'd be conversation about this and questions about this it's just where we put it we knew it would and i i think um just to underline a point i made earlier because i'm sort of tag teaming with the things that elix is saying in terms of her perspective but build really building off of it again on the one of the things that we've talked about and we've we've been struggling with is this question of not just what are we doing this year but how do we understand the investments that are made out of the next few years and how do we look at the sort of larger projects that we know that the town is going to be dealing with in terms of funding while also recognizing that we have just this i hate to call it a backlog because it sounds like it's not being managed well and i don't mean that but there's just there's clearly a lot of documented need that needs to be chipped away and so part of the comment i was making earlier about if if this line item has been funded at 25 000 every year and it is in the next year a few years funded at 25 then my immediate thought is well i can see other items on this list that have been pushed out a year that i would like to see knocked down i don't have a preference and i actually don't have i'm not pushing something from the schools or something it's just it's more a matter of saying we've expressed i think a general concern about how we get a handle on ensuring that we're in a state of good repair on our our maintenance and equipment over the next few years in light of various significant projects we're looking at and so when i see an opportunity like this come up similar pardon me for doing this but similar to the difference between 10 000 and 50 000 for for trail maintenance on cpa i i actually agree with the sentiment that anytime those numbers come down or we don't see ourselves chipping away at things that we know are documented needs in the future i worry not about this year coming here i worry about where does that put us in f y 21 and 22 where we're just sort of building up a list of things that could potentially fail and i'm not being it sounds like i'm being critical but i'm not because i understand how this came up now it's more a matter of this is the this is what we're going to be talking about in a moment about like what are our recommendations what are we looking at and this is the biggest thing that's on my mind is trying to figure out how this jcpc can play a useful role and we can collectively work together to think about how we manage this large group of investments we need to chip away at while we're also looking at greater needs that we know we also have yes okay but i i just want to reiterate that it's the timing now that we're dealing with where things are getting fine tuned in the past the 102 would have just stayed there as debt service it would have been adjusted in the overall budget we would have put less in capital cash capital when we balance the budget we wouldn't use that it would have gone to the overall town town school budget so it's just a change in how we do things and we probably need to come up with a process if this ever comes up again to learn the experience that will note for our improvements so i'll keep going because there is a there's a couple more i was just going to say i think that's why us maybe in a future year looking at doing an actual priority list would help you win that money after we especially if we move a jcpc process earlier before we know numbers then you could look at it and go oh the next one on the list would fit you know and and then you've got that input from us thank you so i am on the page now that starts with the police station municipal buildings okay so i believe the only changes here were down in the school building section in the interior upgrades and the we added the so first thing we added the feasibility study for cracker farm i don't think that was in the last version you saw so that's been added as an f y 20 project um interior upgrades um f y 21 and f y 22 were increased from i think it was 50 000 to 150 000 and down below um so when we moved the water fixtures and the ada we moved it up into interior upgrades for f y 20 but we didn't do that for the out years for f y 21 and f y 22 um so to clean this up we moved the out years up into interior upgrades as well so it was a it was no net change in the plan but it was moving it from specifically at schools into the district level interior upgrades yeah yeah so just on the um the line 209 for the preliminary feasibility for the cracker farm study yeah i think at the end um the person who one of the people who brought it said that they thought the cost was more 30 000 than 40 000 yeah i mean this is a budget at this point yeah so until we actually put it out there we're not going to know the exact cost so you're right it could come in less and if it comes in less then those funds just wouldn't be expended it would um be able to be used for future capital plans all these numbers are budget so none of these are gonna most likely none of these are going to be exact um in the end um i think i this is just a main it it's under school buildings with a random thing it's not under cracker it's not under new buildings it kind of i think our last conversation was maybe it gets folded into the new school feasibility at the 400 and maybe it's just a listed as 440 or 430 and yeah we could put it maybe putting it close to that one even if you want to line it out separately would be helpful so that we can see it all yeah we can do that on the other two the afd headquarter numbers were moved and changed to f y 20 and i think public works was also yeah i'm not on that page oh okay oh you haven't gotten to that no any other quit any questions on this page and those are the some of the bigger changes that i'll talk about next well the other thing that was there was when we had the last discussion about the north hammers library it was uh we suggested that since that was probably going to be borrowing that it would be um it's a placeholder year where it is right now unless it's up to the manager to make future recommendation as to whether should be shifted to an earlier year and whether borrowing should be suggested in earlier year whether there's substantial reason to do that i just i'm trying to take notes which during this conversation is has to be about one of the worst jobs um i want to go back to where you're talking about and just make sure i know where you are and this is not for the purposes of notes but it's for the purposes of the of the conversation so just where are we for the north hammers library conversation i wonder so this is on line item one it's line item 199 okay so we've moved that all the way out to f y 22 no i don't think that one was moved i think discussion last time was should it be moved forward based on um the conversation that's happened at prior meetings okay so this is not this is not just a statement to the town manager but it's but really um in regard to the people who are proposing that they would like to raise money i personally would like to see this moved to f y 21 however i also say to the people who said they would like to raise money that would perhaps seriously reduce this amount that they do so they put it in a revocable revocable account that is visible and for which we can have a statement that says here's our money it's cash on the barrel had fine you put up some money now we'll put up some money it's not something that the town should do first and then hope that they come forward with the money they raise so then on the next page so again at fort river and wildwood you'll see that there were amounts moved or actually i think it was all three schools but i can't remember that it was just so forever model but we moved the interior a da upgrades and the water fixtures up to the interior upgrade section under the district wide but the major change was in their new building so jones library reconstruction we pushed that back a year originally f y 22 i reviewed the most up-to-date timeline i have that had i think construction not starting till f y 23 so it doesn't make a whole huge difference but push that back one year to f y 23 for now public works facility we talked about last time um having money in f y 20 for the schematic design so that's what the the 250 000 chunk is and then the balance is basically in line with our sort of pulmonary ballpark number of a 30 million dollar project there um the fire station um again this one had to be moved forward because based on our conversation last time originally it was 500 000 i think in f y 21 um so we split that up we moved 250 forward for schematic design in f y 20 um so that could be done at the same time as the dpw again both of those are borrowings um and that's a total project cost of 20 million um the new school had some big changes to it the the way low if you recall that we had in there was from the last time we had the school project um so that was increased up to be a roughly a 40 million dollar project again that's just a ballpark number could go up or down based on what ultimately happens but it's closer to the number we we've been talking about um and again based on the conversation we had last time we talked about putting the feasibility study funding in f y 20 in case it happens um just to have it there um you know whether things are dead exclusions or not dead exclusions are still to be determined so we can change the shading any color that you guys think makes sense but the school project and the library project were two that have been talked about in the past um and i think those were the major changes uh for the buildings andy yes um unless the price of feasibility studies has gone up dramatically since the conversations that we had prior to going to previous town meetings i don't see any reason to have the additional 250 000 for the fire station in f y 21 okay so you're maybe i misconstrued your comments last time you think the 250 could be for both the dvw and the fire station we've been given again these are estimates and they're now three or four years old for a feasibility study for a building of this nature was 250 000 and that's what we had previously gone to town meeting for whether that's a realistic number or not anymore i have no idea i want to make sure they both stay in f y 20 but i don't see the reason for the one in f y 21 oh sorry so for the f y 21 um yeah we could move that back so originally there was 500 000 there and so the question was is the first piece sort of the schematic design and then there's some additional planning work that would happen in f y 21 ultimately for a project to start in f y 22 but we could move that back to f y 22 so that it doesn't look kind of funny with two um i guess what i'm saying is i'm not even sure i understand the need for it either 250 or just the second one just the second for fire station yeah no we'll move it back i mean the total ties out to 20 million so the park number we have for the fire station was 20 million so we're trying to keep it consistent with the numbers that have been out there um but in terms of where it's slotted we can move it back so it doesn't look like a separate chunk i mean it could be site prep but you can't do site prep until the dpw people are kind of moving yeah the timing of this was sort of the why it kind of came out funky is not knowing exactly how the dominoes are gonna fall there so i just want to um state that this is all borrowing articles so we wouldn't you don't necessarily need to vote these borrowing articles before july 1 it can wait until we're much closer to actually doing something whether you know how much your feasibility studies really gonna cost you we can these are just estimates for the capital plan to give us an idea or just to put it on paper so we don't forget about it like we're going to forget about it right but it's it can be fine tuned later on it does not have to be exact right now yeah i just like to comment on moving the library i mean i have it on yeah but it she had it for f white i mean 21 originally um and you moved it to 22 but obviously that's yeah i'll double check with her i mean again the latest timeline i have had serious construction looked like starting in 2023 um right but i'll double check again that 22 yeah okay but again that number moving forward or backwards a year doesn't matter a whole lot can i ask one more clarifying question sorry on the the crocker farm feasibility study i think mandy and i were thinking the same thing and i maybe i'm misremembering but i thought we weren't setting aside a line item of 40 000 i thought we were sort of and right now it's not shaded like it's borrowing it's like it's a separate line item so i guess i don't know if i'm misremembering sort of how we ended up but this makes it look like a funded separate line item instead of part of the overall feasibility study that's borrowing yeah the way we have it is a separate item that would be cash um funded i want to be borrowing um and the discussion i remember and i may be misremembering is that it it will help lead into a feasibility study but if we do it before the feasibility starts it would because it potentially could start earlier um if they decide if we decided to do it over the summer um then it it's sort of its own item at that point um and we want to borrow for 40 000 dollars yeah no my my memory actually i mean we we had like a really robust discussion of this and um and my memory is actually we talked about potentially rolling it into the feasibility study but actually i thought there was actually a majority of the jcpc was saying no darn it if we're gonna do it let's pay for it and call it out and say that it's gonna be part of the budget and so i think to me the real question and i don't really i don't want to say i don't care like i don't care but i mean i i don't really care if you pick 40 or 30 depending on what you think it was i thought the real issue was by the time we were done with the discussion we thought 30 was a more realistic number than 40 um so so i but i but i think i was i thought we were becoming more clear that it would be a it would be a separate item yeah 40 was the citizens requests and then we got a um i think sort of a estimate from i think it was tskp that said oh it might be 30 it could be 30 um i think ultimately until we draft what we want somebody to do it's hard to know exactly what the cost would be i mean um we sort of have thoughts of the study we want them to do but there may be other things we want them to look at at this so i think 40 we were just trying to be more conservative but again we'll only spend what actually comes in look works the 30 million dollars for um the year after this that is with with land far as we are still in search of land but coming close and so the and the reason we wanted to um put this money in f y 20 is that if we are successful and as sonny has explained this is an estimate on debt uh if we are successful then the best way to go about trimming the estimated cost of a building to see therefore what can we really build is to once you have the land is to do schematic design and schematic design is when you can say no we're not going to do that over there or we're going to stage this for another year so it's really dependent on land you're absolutely correct there but we're honing in yeah and the only definite about those lines is probably the the schematic design piece the projects themselves will just keep going backwards until the plan is in place as to what we're going to do makes sense so i have a question that doesn't really relate to anything for f y 20 per se we have a line for ambulance fund throughout this entire for shading for everything it has zero in it under funding and it has nothing shaded should some of the ambulance purchases be shaded but you know i always thought some of them were paid for and why are we not shading anything for it or even showing we have funds available from ambulance fund so i can't remember if this was a change after our last meeting or before our last meeting but there used to be a lot funded in this plan from ambulance funds i think it was two hundred three hundred thousand dollars ish spread over several years because of the change with Hadley there's not as much money that's in that fund so the amount that's available for capital is going to be i mean there's still future decisions that be made but in general the plan right now is that there won't be money available for capital from the ambulance fund so that so that was a change from probably the very first version that we saw that had some numbers in there for ambulance fund receipts that are likely not going to be available for capital items so the future ambulance purchases are going to need to come out of regular capital funds that's all factored into the when you look at the front page and the future deficits between available resources and spending that's impacting that gap that we have there and then the other change i'll just point out real quickly is in roads so we we kept the investment in roads non chapter 70 or chapter 90 investment it's a million dollars up until f y 24 and then we dropped it down to 800 000 there and after so again the thought process there was the guidance we've received is that we need to put about two million dollars a year into roads i think it was for the next six or seven years or it was for six or seven years total and so this then we dropped that down a little bit realizing that there's still a need for road to invest heavily in roads but that we've got all these other needs as well and we also put the housing production plan back in that was a request last time to put that back in with the alternative funding source so on the very last page you'll see the housing production plan is restored but with a different funding source and the front page and i know we haven't been discussing the summary page has the percent 11 of capital equals nine and a half straight through are we i think our goal was next year i guess f y 21 would be increased to 10 and then keep 10 all the way through should this summary page sort of show that increase or is there three quarters of the way down the page oh yeah so sorry about that i totally miss that it shows hypothetically if we do get to 10 then what the gap would be in the future but you're exactly right this this is kind of a it's a question to the town manager and all of you that work with the town and that is when we do the um meeting which i believe is scheduled for june 10th on the immediate capital and the five-year capital and so forth what will this sheet be altered or what will be presented still working on it um i think if we're going to focus on five years then we'll probably trim it down to five years but it was still sort of under development but we welcome your thoughts now if you've got and put into that so again i want to go back to messages we're sending okay and one has been raised about when was the library request for was it was was it for to f y 22 or f y 21 and then the other one is what whether or not we should move the north amherst library up from 22 to 21 and it's it's a um i think this is a critical year for us to begin sending messages about desire because then reality is going to hit and we'll get to the use of the model and that's going to inform the public with a lot of information about what's desired versus what's doable i tend to share that concern we have lots of needs both for things we keep pushing back for example vehicles uh roads which we keep um we we know is a continuing demand we're putting chunks into it but it is the expression a hole we're trying to fill is quite large and then we also are talking about maintaining current facilities and building new buildings and not letting new buildings fall into lack of maintenance to make sure that we protect our new assets that we're building we've got a lot out there and trying to balance all of it is that sure that our thought process really has gone far enough into that i i i agree that i mean that's a plumb line probably in every comment i've made today during the meeting has been about trying to think not just about this year but out years and and i think it's rel it's in some ways i think it is relevant to a discussion of the f y 20 plan the five-year plan what's presented publicly and what you end up voting voting on as a as a council is trying to figure out how to do that in a way that's looking at these these larger projects in the town but also thinking about how to how the conversation is managed around these other you know sort of stacked needs and it's something the town manager had said um at our last meeting or the one prior to that about uh echoing a process that the schools had done around uh trying to really dig in within the capital requests to start with something many Joe just mentioned a while ago to start to figure out how to stratify the the level of urgency of some of the requests that are coming in and i say that in light of the i mean so how we approach that or how time manager is going to approach that with the departments i think is probably a really important thing for the council to have presented to you to understand in light of this budget because if i were looking i maybe i'm not smart enough if i sit here long enough week after week at least i eventually get smart enough to look at the spreadsheet and say oh my god look at all the deferred things and the part of the conversation we had um you know a month ago now was actually this is both sort of better and worse than it looks simultaneously on the one hand it is genuinely daunting and there is in fact more there are in fact more requests than there are there is money to pay for it and then on the other hand once you start digging under the hood around you know what how long can a vehicle last when is it really likely to break down when is it not once you start getting into that then you realize well wait a minute you know it's one thing to say some things again at the end of its book usable life it's another thing to actually understand you know where what is our actual hit list of things we need to knock down in terms of vehicle acquisition and that list is going to look different than it does on the spreadsheet and i think the closer that between the professional leadership of the town and the elected leadership of the town there can be a good dialogue around what these needs really look like it'll i think it'll inform the same discussion that lin you were talking about a moment ago of helping the town really wrestle with where are we actually and where are we gonna what are we gonna need to do over the next couple of years and how do we get better information to manage and facilitate that conversation cpa has a line for coloring none of that funding for recommendation is in here right now um it will eventually go in um so it would be great to be able to see things like graph park has cpa funding we're not just completely ignoring it because right now graph park has nothing for 10 years um but i also there's a grant funded line and i know we've talked about this before as a way to how do we show that all of that borrowing in terms of debt exclusion of 39 you know or or those numbers where do we show the msba match and you know or with the cpa land grant acquisition where they just testified that there was 400 000 coming for a land grant where do we show that as a way to show the public that we're getting substantial funds from other resources to help do this so i i don't know the best way to do it on this spreadsheet but figuring out a way to show those msba funds potential funds you know the potential library the land grants the park grants all of that would be i think very helpful that actually reminded me of another thing i wanted to point out and it's worth discussion here as to how we should present this going forward so the the library actually in the prior version had had the town amount but it also had in there um the amount to be fund raised and the question is should we to be consistent with the projects we're really only putting in the town share um so i took out the amount for that's projected to be fundraised but it's up for discussion as whether you think that should stay in um and whether it should be shaded as an alternative funding source or the town should be preparing to fund that if the fundraising isn't what it's projected to be so that was in the prior plan ahead both the town share and of a projection for private fundraising and some tax credits and things like that since i honestly believe we can't do all of these projects if we don't get those outside funds i would strongly urge that we figure out a way to show the expectation or the hope of those funds because again our opportunity now is to use a year-long process if that's what it's going to take to finally have a full and complete discussion with the public about all of our capital needs in a way that our previous opportunities were not there also it's not reflected on here what the mblc is contributing that's another yeah both would be added back yeah so in other words that the actual cost here is only the town or the fundraising piece it's not the money coming from the state which is important for the public to understand that right can i piggyback on that the and i know this is challenging because also you end up getting every color in the rainbow on the on these spreadsheets after you know i like to shade that is that if we're going i mean i agree with what lin said about showing future outside grant sources but then you've got to figure out how do you differentiate between known sources of funding outs and then projected or hoped for sources of funding because the last thing you want people doing is looking at a spreadsheet either doing one of two things either saying well isn't the council stupid because i think they have money they don't really have which of course isn't true but people might say that and then the other one is just saying i'm confused when you say you have an outside grant do you have it you know what i mean so just being clear about what's actually under contract or at least has been awarded or whatever initially awarded versus what we're hoping we're gonna get but we don't actually know yet yeah and a similar example is the live the northammer's library right now potential funding from another source isn't in here at all we don't know what that number is but that's another one that could potentially be adjusted in the future i mean as with the schools if we don't raise money in the town privately and from town funds we won't get the mblc money so it's the same dynamic so that's it's hard to reflect that i don't know whether it needs to be footnotes or something that indicates what the total cost is but the state money won't come unless the town appropriates the amount needed fortunately and it's a chicken and egg problem because it goes the other way too the town is relying on the board of library commissioners and then the fundraising piece is also a part of it and so if we're gonna give an accurate description to the public it all has to be there so any other questions on the five to ten year plan um is there a way in the um i guess it's like the i'm looking at the fort river and the wildwoods sort of numbers particularly the fort river number um of you know replacement windows that in two years is eight hundred thousand dollars in f y 26 and 27 and all is and i know this doesn't even have at all similar items for the library if the library is not renovated with mblc money but yet we're showing some for fort river if that doesn't is there a way to either include the library numbers but then take those numbers somewhere on a different line on the summary and say hey if the schools are redone these numbers disappear you know if the library is redone these out numbers disappear so here's what your f y 26 requests kind of looks like if this capital project major capital project is funded and here's what it looks like if that one's not again i don't know how you would do that in terms but i think it could be done in a way that shows us a more realistic if we do end up doing a library if we do end up doing that school what those school maintenance costs are 10 years out yeah and we've i mean we so we did that for the school price before it got here we did those schools are showed if we get the new building here's the cost that we would not need a request if we don't then we're keeping it on here because so how to do that in here is something we'll have to grapple with but it's a good point oh yeah the library if the library funding does not i think it was what 10 million 10 million well it's 10 million but that doesn't even include the ADA compliance that only includes basic maintenance deferred maintenance so yeah yeah i'll check with Sharon on that one i think we i i i think we're getting to a point where we probably um really need to be thinking about having one or two members of this committee work with Sean outside of this committee process this committee meeting and then come back to it because we're identifying a series of problems and we want to be transparent to the public in what we're doing and what the choices are um without being able to say clearly that if we don't do the library major project that we're talking about this is how much we're going to have to spend on the library and have that as a number that so that people realize that um there's going to be costs to not doing it um and what those costs are we're not showing that right now um and uh we need to be able to do that both for our own planning purposes realizing that it's going to be one or the other but also for the public the chair yeah i was just going to say the the challenge we've talked about this thoroughly within the school committee and i think some here too the challenge on the schools is it really isn't just an either or is that it's very i mean we already know this but i'm just saying it for the purposes of our discussion it's really super meaningful whether we get into the the msba program this year versus other years because some of the repairs that are being listed most of the repairs that are being listed for the ellen for wildwood and for river um will have to be done and will have to pay for a new school it's not one of the other if we if we don't get into left y 22 or 23 we're going to be doing both things and paying for both because of the state of repair of the buildings and that where you might get failures in the buildings between now and then um so i and i i don't want to put a fine point in it because i just don't know the council is certainly is well aware of that yeah the other piece and i shan i just and paul and sonja i don't know how you do this but one of the things that i mean we literally heard this last night in the district meeting and then that is to have a way in which we look at a new building and say what is the ratio or formula that we need to have in a fund to make sure that that building does not deteriorate to the extent that our present buildings have done so so what is our ongoing maintenance of a new building my practical mind is playing here and i'm thinking of all the changes that we want to make to the report whether we have enough time to do that we have to submit this by may 1st to the council which is next wednesday so i think we can get some of the changes that were talked about in this report done but not everything so i think you need to prioritize what you want changed so we can get it done and get the report submitted and hope for a much better report next year yeah and just to add to that i think the questions i've heard i don't think we're gonna have time to like create a new workbook that reflects everything you're asking but i think we can try to answer those questions in the presentation separately or at least give some what our thoughts are at the time on those questions but you're in terms of doing the whole workbook that's going to take more time from my point of view it would be great to answer those questions and then maybe as finance committee works on other things not wait till next spring to have a new way of showing this present it whenever it might get ready as we work on doing that so that we can start getting out to the public in a in a way yeah and i think to what andy had mentioned before about maybe a couple members working offline it could include that as well a couple members kind of working with us on that workbook and giving feedback in real time so it's ready to go for next year so just a minor note lines 218 229 and 239 use unit ventilator my discussion with rupert is that it should be unit ventilator and that's not a term that's used anywhere so thank you miss bellen yeah i'm just one i'm noting the time i am too and just i will know i it's a practical matter i don't know what guidance you had for the committee around what we're going to try to get done today and how much longer we'll go andy can i recommend two quick things yes go ahead one you know i already saw a few edits if people have edits to the project listing for f y 20 the that actually has the project description if you want people could just send those edits directly because a lot of it's just clarifying um what we talked about so that's one thing and then also the feedback we discussed last time or talk about getting more feedback and i've got a lot of it today um but there's other feedback that people have in terms of what they like about the existing plan what they want to fix um and new things that you might want to see added that's nothing you could send offline we could compile and if we have another meeting we could bring it all back sort of compile it at that point so alex go ahead no i was just going to say on on that there were a couple of edits that i can send in an email that just for consistency sake but um the only one that's is on page one the library information technology you have is 10 000 but it's really 26 800 so that's an actual number um and i can send the other comments uh that are more yeah consistency or verbiage so i think that we're out as practical matter because we are running out of time and i do want to we do need to have a moment for public comment in the but we probably need alex and i probably need to work on a revised version of the report um the narrative and see if we can bring it in alignment with the discussion today and the um i think that your point is is the spreadsheet the we can do the best we can but there's a limit to how much we're going to be able to bring that into alignment in this year we do need to be very clear about what it is that we're recommending what our fy 20 recommendations are and that is just a list i don't think that it needs to be um we can tie it to motions if we're going to do separate motions but ultimately it's going to be presented by the manager as a part of the budget for fy 20 so we want to make it aligned to what the budget recommendations for fy 20 are this is what we're recommending to be included for capital and have that as a concrete list so i think that those are the pieces that we're at that seem right to the committee and so yeah i um in terms of working on the spreadsheet i'm more than willing to do that and feel that i need to do that since we will be and we've already posted the june 10th public forum and uh clearly as president that that's a major responsibility for both me and the town manager in the uh the years beyond fy 20 are important for that process and that public discussion um so we need to get that clarified but it is different from the you know what what's most important is we need to get the budget and i think that we really do have the we're not suggesting real changes to the fy 20 recommendations no the only question again is what to do with the the building envelope additional funds which i can we'll work on that but i think that was the only change to the fy 20 um piece so is there uh any proposal for what to do about the presentation of the envelopes and said is the one piece of that by 20 yeah alex i i don't know if the town manager's amenable but i for me it would just simply an explanation of here was my thinking over the other things that we cut i i guess is the only thing i would be interested in it doesn't happen it doesn't need to happen now but that you know we had other items that we cut or that we pushed out as erics talked about and we put off other years and and just understanding the logic of of where the money's going would be great okay not hearing anything anything but he asked him for recognition um so yeah so i'm gonna go back now and ask for public comment and see if there's anything to be said afterwards and then we'll make a decision about how to proceed uh kathy kathy shane um i'll just make them briefly uh because i will have an opportunity to comment again as a member of the finance committee um i'm mainly looking at out years um and thinking away this looks visually i believe on the north amherst library the discussions that have been going on on the much smaller project they had received some feedback including the donors on library preferring the one that doesn't have a major expansion that would require operating costs so the number is potentially lower so in addition to what was mentioned that there might be private funds that brings the town share down i think the total project could be lower so it just would be worth getting that information to pencil it in at a potentially lower number um for out-year projects that potentially have grants or we think we've applied for grants the middle school roof i would put in the same category as the school where there's a msba grant so it instead of it going in it's three million going in this half of that with whatever you're going to do to indicate this is grant pending um then the uh permanent bridge is the same at station road i believe is the same that we're intending on applying for a grant for that so if we're doing the town share if we get a grant it should go in at a lower number it will help the way the whole sheet looks if we're doing that for some of these out-year items then the other comment i had on out years on the interaction with cpa c and i'm not sure how this could be done since you can see that funds can be used for recreational areas when you get out to conservation and recreational areas there's a large chunk of money for puffers pond and for mill river so if it would be possible to be drawing on cpa on those projects you know thinking about these two together um on the very first sheet it says cpa funds as potential sources and then later on potential uses you know so however that gets shown you know but that being thinking about that because that first page when i got it um what my eyes went down to is the net net in the out years where we're negative six million negative five million and that's with two debt service overruts so that's not with the town absorbing all of this so i think if this is a long-term capital plan we have to when we're talking about it have some way of talking about it because we can't actually be in a deficit of six million dollars as i understand it so just whatever we can do to the out years to get them as realistic as possible with this interaction or lack of interaction i strongly encourage us to do it yes chris hawkman two observations one related to the capital request process as it occurred this year and ongoing years my observation would be that it would be helpful to have the process not limited to a early 2020 to a deadline point have it all year long allow submissions throughout that time post those submissions so that department heads proactive department heads can monitor the requests the feedback coming from the concerned citizens and then perhaps incorporate it into their budget request or perhaps take advantage of funding as it becomes available through unforeseen grants or unforeseen opportunities second observation relates to the 10-year capital plan upon review of the street scan 2017 results the most recent that i can see the concerns of those who drafted that were indicated that there were 22 miles of emmerich roads approximately 22 percent needing reclamation which is basically reconstruction at at at very conservative estimates a million dollars a mile to do those reconstructions or reclamations that is the the numbers given for a 10-year outlay including chapter 90 and general fund will never will never accomplish what the study creators the 20s the street scan individuals that we hire here that are hired here recommend needs to be a significantly larger number and no that's not pleasant to hear thank you and i just want to clarify you are not a resident of emmerich i am a i am a resident of the four towns uh yes i'm a resident column thank you affirmative yep okay thank you my children go to school here um we uh appreciate the comments and um we will have to take them under consideration i think at this point um we is the committee available to meet next week any but let me just we'd have to meet before wednesday see wednesday i'm looking at the town manager going and which midnight oil are you planning to burn to get that budget to us what's the agenda for the next meeting is it would it be just to work more on process improvements or would it be to actually vote the f y 20 piece um i i think we need a meeting to approve the report and vote f y whatever it would be the 20 i think we need a separate meeting maybe june july to talk about next year's process separate that out completely after this year is done i think that the maybe there is two separate questions one is can we just take a vote now on the f y 20 recommendations and um so that they get firmly planted um we really have completed the work on that and if we can uh have that as a simple motion that would allow us to at least say that we've completed that piece of work then we're back to the report and there's part of the report that needs to be done um promptly but it isn't doesn't have the may first deadline i don't think and so we could put it off and just meet a week from today at a normal time just i'm prepared to make the motion would you based on previous experience i suggest what it should look like i was just going to comment the library trustees have a meeting next thursday at nine a.m so we wouldn't be available we we usually meet but we put it off for jcpc which we thought was done so i can we'd have to reschedule our trustees meeting or pick a different date unless there's yes paul so the way the way i understand is jcpc provides advice to the town manager town manager has to submit the capital plan on may 1st so i'm hoping that you would act today maybe to final you know nuance changes by the chair whoever so that i can submit something with your advice prior to on may 1st i think that's the goal of this process at this point in time and when you're saying that are you specifically referring to the fy20 recommendations are you looking for something on the longer range plan the charter calls for a five-year capital plant capital improvement plan plus the fy20 capital plan so it would be both and i i mean i think you're there honestly uh with the changes i think there are some nuance changes concerning the major capital projects that typically i don't recall that being included in this capital plan in the past but i think think people it was wise to include it because people want to see how this all fits together um but there are so many iterations to it in the sense of do we have grants or not what if we don't get the the if we don't do it then we have these deferred maintenance things we have to invest in those are sort of changes that we can make as as we develop the plan further but i think the urgency at this point is to deliver a product to the council on may 1st yes i think at the beginning of this process we talked about the need to have more information on the major capital products projects and maybe putting them as an appendices so i'm wondering does it make sense at this point to approve a five-year with those removed which get which buys us the time to put together the appendices for the more detailed way that we want to present it i mean if i don't know if that makes sense or not yes another way to do it is to categorize them as for information purposes you know not even like this is where this is our best estimate at this point in time but we know the council is going to be spending the next six months playing with the tool and sort of figuring things out it's it's a i think that's yeah i think if we today vote sort of the the five-year portion of the tenure we saw today as a recommendation to the town manager i don't think we need to report the as the town manager said the charter just requires that the manager with the advice of us submit a four-part capital improvement program the we i think with that chart give him advice on at least three of the four items and the fourth one is something that doesn't really deal with us which is the estimated annual cost of operating maintaining the facilities and equipment included in that five-year plan but the other three are the summary of the contents which is there in the spreadsheet the list of the capital improvements proposed to be undertaken during the five years that's there and the cost estimates method of financing and recommended time schedules again that's there in that spreadsheet if we can maybe vote the concept of the spreadsheet with potential changes to it i think we have will have provided the advice needed and necessary under the charter without needing to vote the report today and if we can get that report to the council prior to the hearing would that then satisfy the manager's needs to get it to the council by may one and then jcpc submits a report later technically jcpc would terminate on may one your your mission will have been accomplished you've delivered advice to the town manager that's how i read that's how i read the mission of the jcpc if you think that it has a broader mandate i'd be interested to hear that i think the uh the the other piece that the reason that the committee might continue to have one more meeting is the process for next year that we really feel like that there have been some serious problems that came up this year that nobody's putting pointing fingers about but it's just a matter of the change in government got us there to where we are now and we would like to see things done differently for next year and based upon what we've learned and also would you weren't here earlier when nate buddington was here but i'm closer relationship with cpac so those kinds of things we still can work on but it would seem to me that we should probably vote on the f y 20 recommendations as they are now formulated and then um secondly vote on a five-year plan to be developed um and uh with uh ultimately giving the chair and the vice chair the authority to approve that and the the understanding is that the amount that is going to be shown for major projects will be consistently presented as the current estimate of what the town contribution to those projects are with the understanding that there are other portions that will be expected to come either from private donations or grants and but to be consistent with those will be excluded from the plan uh which will only cover the town portion let's take the first motion and that is to recommend to the town manager the f y 20 recommendations jcpc recommendations as they are now formulated i will move in this or second i'll second any further discussion on that motion all in favor then indicate by raising hand so it's unanimous and second secondly we need to do it with one absent and i move uh that the joint capital planning committee approve the five-year capital plan recommendations and further delegate to the chair and vice chair of the joint capital planning committee any further refinements as discussed did you restate that i'm sorry i move that the joint capital planning committee approve the five-year capital plan recommendations to the town manager and further that the joint capital planning committee delegate to the chair and vice chair further refinements to that plan as discussed i'll second i'm sorry what did you say i've as we discussed at the last meeting i've been taking minutes you two get together thank you sure yes i would just like to request that the library funds be put where sharon sherry had requested them in her request yeah we'll double check with her again that number i think was there from prior i don't think that's part of her request that was there from last time but we'll double check what year should be no i have her request that she requested and i have a spreadsheet that lists again i'll connect with her as when anticipated construction is to the chair i must yes i the last part of the motion that had been seconded it said i had discussed i was assuming that there had been some tally of some of the changed recommendations to the five-year plan that could be reflected in the refinements that the chair and vice chair were going to go over yeah and that was one of them right that's one of them right and the the other thing that we have an understanding that just to make confirm it that that the five-year plan will very explicitly show that it is only the town portion that is there that we expect other funds will be provided in order before the construction would actually proceed but for presentation purposes it is only showing the town portion and i think that we can leave it at that recognizing that borrowing would have to be approved and numbers of steps would have to take place before it would actually be there this is a planning document so the motion and we do have a second i believe so further discussion all in favor again looks like unanimous with one member absent um so at that point i think that we're we're at is that uh helix and i will work on the report section together um consistent with the motions that have been passed and that we will not schedule an immediate meeting but plan on having a meeting um after a little bit of pause it's time to catch our breath and get this out of the way in order to take um think about the process that we want to recommend for next year so it won't be next week will not be next week how do we yes shan and if it's okay with the chair sending the edits to like the project listing some of the technical edits that language so we can get that cleaned up um for the fy20 projects yes anything else i think we have no minutes at this point to consider um i submitted the minutes from the April 4th meeting we have a chance to do you want to make a motion that somebody be designated to approve minutes i'll i'll move that the chair of jcpc be designated to approve our outstanding minutes by second his motion made in second aid any discussion is now in a lot of procedure um so all in favor indicate by raising hands again uh unanimous with one from brebson so we will schedule another meeting to but not immediately in order to talk about recommendations for next year's process is there anything else that people would like to raise not that i'll hear a motion to adjourn for all your work as chair it's been an interesting year thank you i also wanted again thank the staff of the town and um town manager we've um run you through your paces and um for that we apologize but on behalf of the public it's kind of what we have to do thank you so much for all your artwork so i have to adjourn motion to adjourn second second okay and i'll note the word adjourned at 10 55