 Okay. We're recording so you can go ahead. Okay. Today is April 4th. And this is the joint capital planning committee meeting. And my, my first order, other than calling us to order, seeing that we have a quorum at four o'clock is to make sure everyone can hear and be heard. So I'll just call out names on those. I see them on the screen, Bob. Present. Lee. We just, uh, we can't hear you. I can see your mouth moving. Last zoom call I was on starting at two had the same thing happen. Okay. Well, let's try Eugene, cause we still can't hear you. Um, I could hear Lee. Oh, you can hear me. Yeah. I could. I could not. I could not. I think I heard her. I heard. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sarah. Sarah. And we can hear you and Anna. Okay. So we are, we are at a point where we're. Working with recommendations that'll go in the report and Sandy has listened to the conversations that we've been having. We've had a lot of, as well as he's had additional conversations with staff and department heads and has sent us a revised. Five year summary plan and a revised list of projects for both. The FY 25. Year and all the way through 29. And it miraculously balances. So in, in FY 25. We're going to talk about what had changed and what had moved, but I think it would be good for you to kind of walk us through it. Um, And the other thing is, um, I started to do a draft of the report. So people just know the schedule we have. Um, Today we turned to our own recommendations and then in theory next week, we review the draft that. I write and Anna. And then we review the draft. And we make it final, um, because that's our last meeting. And I realized that we're under. That's a quick turnaround time, but I think depending on how efficient we are today, it's doable. Um, thanks to what Sandy did. Um, so. Uh, so Sandy, it's the, the time is all yours. Thank you very much. Um, so, uh, yes, we do have a. Uh, plan, uh, both in FY 25 and overall over the five years. There are in future years, some deficits in some years and some surpluses and others. Um, so just bottom line where we've gotten to where we need to be. Um, I have. Heard feedback from some of you. Um, there's still one thing I need to look at. So there might be a little bit of a tweet to come. I will get to that in a minute. Um, but I thought what I would do is first just talk generally about what I did to get things in balance. And then, um, Show you the specific numbers and show you the pages. Uh, we had sent out a draft version earlier today. And then, um, I was double checking some of the debt numbers. And realized I needed to change some of those. So those ended up moving numbers around a little bit in the out years, but not in FY 25. And it brought the overall deficit actually down some. All right. Let's just start. Um, I'd say the major things that I had to do. Uh, I think what I did for FY 25 was move certain projects out of FY 25 into future years and or change them from being paid for in cash to being paid for by debt. Um, I think particularly when I did that in the out years, those are a part of a plan at this point. In other words, this doesn't mean that in FY 26 or 27, we absolutely have to borrow for, you know, the Parker school roof. But it means to have something reasonably in balance. Now that's what we're planning to do. And then a year from now, when you guys are all going through this, you can relook at it, see what resources you have, see what projects have come forward or dropped off and make new decisions about how you want to finance things. Um, so that's what I did. And one of the things that, um, Some of you had questions about, for example, the sidewalk plow. I pushed that out two years because, um, just in talking to people, I got the sense that DPW would put that there. It's a placeholder. Not that they absolutely had to have one right away. So that got pushed off two years. Same thing with the North Amherst traffic study. And I think it's pretty clear that, um, That was both a placeholder and probably a little bit too early, even to be a placeholder, um, for a variety of reasons. Um, some of which has to do with, maybe we wouldn't have to spend money for outside consultants for something like that and actually do the engineering in-house, which Amherst often does. And some of it is just the consensus about what that project's going to look like and how we try to line that project up and spend money or do work on it in-house with the town's plans at some point to apply for another mass works grant, which will substantially pay for any changes that go on up there. So anyway, so there are some things like that that were just premature. There were other things like the, um, Tablets at the Civil War Memorial Tablets, $150,000. Um, we've talked to some of these other, I think some of the other people, I guess we've talked to others that when I talked to, uh, this guy named Bob Parent, who I don't know if any of you know, I don't think I've ever met him. Uh, he's, um, He's doing some part-time work for the town around a lot of cap capital management projects. And he was in touch with the construction company for the library that told him, a, of those tablets were going to go, they're very heavy, but they're going to end up, as it turns out, on the bottom floor so that they don't need to reinforce the flooring and so forth, which is a concern. And that they, in fact, had already designed some space so we didn't have to spend money on that sort of thing. So I put that off a couple of years, figuring that also what he said, we weren't going to be able to move those in there until the library was really fairly much constructed that we wouldn't be moving them in there in the midst of construction. So I put 50,000 in and out here, just in case we need something. So there were various things like that. And so now I'm going to start to share the latest and real version of this. You are all learning something that I first learned when I started doing budgeting for the city of Newton back in 1999, I think it was, that anytime you talk about budgets, and particularly at this time of the year, you just wait a day and the numbers change until they just have to be finished. It is also something that I teach people, and I teach a budget course at UMass, and I tell them there are two kinds of numbers. There are real numbers and there are budget numbers. The most are not necessarily the same thing. So things do change. Lee, did you have your hand up? Yeah, because I'm the minute taker. So I have self-interest in this. I'm going to take notes, but will this version be posted to us so I can print it out again tomorrow if I need to? Yes, thank you. Thank you. I thought it would, I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, again, I touched base and she thought it would be better to just go through it now. Agreed, agreed. So I'm going to start to share my screen. All right, so you can see this now. Wait a minute. Can you all see that it says final draft? Yeah, we can, and what you just did to make it a little bit bigger probably is, I can see it fine, but just as, that's good. Oh, so this is different from what's in the packet. This is, okay, okay. So I will point out a few things. Is there a down in the corner it says 4-4. That's why I say that, yep. And what changed, Sandy will tell you, I looked at it quickly, it's FY26 in the later years that changed. At least from my quick look at it, so. Yes, it's these numbers that changed. 25 really didn't change. I always kept that in balance. And so we have $374,000 deficit for 26, a small deficit in 27, we actually have surpluses that get fairly big in 28 and 29, which means the plan overall has a surplus of $451,000. We could get rid of that surplus by, for example, there's a couple of projects that are on the plan, which I will point out for FY29 that are currently down as being borrowed. One of them is for $400,000, for example. And so if I didn't borrow that and use cash instead, then we'd be pretty much even. So I, you know, part of it is the feedback I'm eager to get from you as to, you know, just how balanced you'd like to see this. All right, so this is just how it looks. I will stop now and ask if people have any questions about these numbers, but then I'm going to go into the list of all the projects and you can see where things are. So Sarah, I see you have your hand up. Yes, thank you. So, well, I'm using my cursor, but nobody sees it. The number that we need to focus on for today, am I right in thinking it's new projects? 4 million, one, three, six, five, four, eight. That's what we need to whittle the list down to in order to be balanced. Yes, I mean, really it's this zero number here at the very bottom left. Yeah. Zero means that you're in balance, that there's no surplus or deficit, you're balanced. That all the resources up here, including, you know, tax money and CPA and state funds and so forth, match all the spending that's down here. So resources, expenses, they have to come out to zero. But the only thing this group has any control over is new projects, right? Or is that not true? Yes, that's true. Okay. Yes, okay. And if I could jump in, Sarah, when Sandy says that 4.1 million, is cash projects. So what he's done on his list is says the $900,000 chiller is gonna be borrowing. So it's not taking anything out of FY25. So if you look down the project list, Bob was asking Sandy it, the project list totals 6 million, you know, if you add them all up, but some of them don't hit the immediate fiscal year because you borrow the money and then you start paying the debt. Does that make sense? So that's trying to reconcile those two numbers. Right, so we need to be tracking the cash. But if we decide, okay, we'll borrow something, we'll do some, we'll fund a project for FY25 through some borrowing. Is that gonna change a number in this first column? Or we're not gonna... Yes, let's say there was, let's say we were gonna spend $100,000 on a giant widget for the town because the town really needs a widget. And we said, okay, we're gonna borrow for it instead. That would mean that in FY25, all of a sudden we'd have a surplus of $100,000 because we're not paying cash in FY25. But in 26, 27, 28, and 29, the deficits would go up or the surpluses would go down because you'd have debt service payments in the future. So there wouldn't be any debt service in FY25 for any project that we decide we want for FY25. The town sells its debt late enough in the fiscal year so that we don't have a debt payment during that fiscal year. Okay, okay, thank you. Yeah, the other thing just on trying to do what Bob was doing just before we officially met is that 841,000, the state aid road is real spending. It's just not a new town project, so that that's cash spending it's coming in. So when you, excuse me, I think I'm speaking right. So the 4.136 gets added to the 841 as cash spending during the year. So the, his column, his new column for 25 does add to the same column we're looking at here is the other way to think about it. Yep, okay. All the specific projects, yeah. Any other questions so far? Otherwise, I'm gonna go to the sheets. I had only one, Sandy, and it's not about projects. So it's about projected debt. So maybe we can come back to it. It's the Jones Library. It's the band, at some point we have to do some short term depending on when the money is coming in from the library trustees and grants. So when, I don't know whether you've accounted for it yet. I did see you've accounted for the R15.8 million dollar borrowing, that's clear, but that thing called band BAN is just a constant 50 all the way across. And so I just, that's my question. Is that correct? And again, it wouldn't affect this year. So it's a different year. So it would affect the out years. And I don't know which out years. Yeah, and neither do I, which is reason, one reason I didn't add anything. So with the library, there is town money, then there's state money, and then there's trustee money, three big pools of money. The state money will come in as reimbursement. So we have to start spending our money first. And then the board of library commissioners will start to give us its grant and so forth. And then at some point, the trustee's money will come in and how and when that is going to come in is not set in stone at this point. It may be that the town would have to borrow money on a short-term basis, a bond anticipation note, or in this case, it would actually be probably a dam, a donation anticipation note. So that the town would have to borrow some money until the trustees could move money into the project. The town would have to do that because you have to pay the contractor. They don't like to wait. You have to pay them as they do their work and they pay if they're their employees and pay for their supplies and so forth. And it isn't clear how quickly the trustees can come up with their money. However, that's not to say, they may say, hey, wait a minute, Stockmark is doing great or we just got a lot more donations than we expected. We have plenty of money and the town won't have to do that borrowing. I don't know that yet. Somebody, you guys will all have to figure that out so next year, that's where we are with that. Okay, all right. I'm gonna go to the next page unless anybody has more questions. This, I realize is small, so I'm gonna enhance this some. Can you read that? Yeah, I can. Everyone should shout out whether they can read it or can't read it, I guess would be. I can see it, is it okay with it? I can see it. If you can make it bigger, I would like it bigger, but that's better, thank you. Okay, this does some, so I'm gonna hide the department some and so we'll see how this works. If this does somewhat remind me of it, when I worked in the state house and they were testing the PE system or PA system, excuse me, where they would, which they would use to call members when it was time for a vote and it would come in all our offices. We could hear it. And they said, if you cannot hear this, please call the office. Yeah, right. Anyway, so these are the projects. So some of the things I did were different from what you saw in the original were that I talked to Jeremiah a lot about the condition of our roofs and about what might need to be done when in his original ask, he had $500,000 in FY25 and then increasing numbers in the future. And one of the things I just did is I said, okay, it's a good aspiration to increase your spending in the future. However, for the purposes of this, I'm just gonna spend the same amount every year. If in the future it becomes apparent that there is some roof that really needs more work done or so forth and maybe in 27 or 28 or whatever, you can boost that amount. But also since this roof item was really new as a five-year plan in the capital plan, from what I could tell, I think increasing the number you're gonna spend every year is a little premature. So we had enough money to spend cash in FY25. So I did that. And then I assumed we would borrow in the future. Again, I think a year from now, you're gonna look at your overall financial situation and determine whether you're actually gonna borrow this money or pay cash or some combination. And again, it's gonna depend on how big that roof project is that year. Same thing with the chiller replacement, their original ask there was $800,000, but talking with Jeremiah, it was apparent that that number was a little bit old. So I put in 900,000. When we get the final price for the chiller, we will borrow up to 900, whatever it actually costs. So if it's cheaper, we'll borrow cheaper or less our amount. All these other things, the roof replacement at the fire station, the flooring at the fire department, and town hall flooring replacement, all are the same as was in the plan. Sandy, if you could slow down. Sarah had a question on one, one of the items. Sarah, do you wanna mention it? Cause it's one we actually didn't- Yeah, well, the shed, the Munson Library shed. And then somebody told me it was put off for a year, but it's listed in 25. So when I asked Jeremiah, cause he didn't talk about it. And if you saw his pictures, I said, you move that from this year. And my memory, I'd have to look at the minutes or he said, yes. So I see it's on here. So it's a question rather than, is it actually gone from this year? Cause we didn't hear about it. Okay. And it wasn't- I did talk to him about it cause I had a question about what the heck it was. Cause I didn't remember. And he just explained that the sheds that they had were old and leaky. And they have, you can say store their- You know how we gave these pictures of everything and he had a list? That one was missing. You know, he didn't. And it was on the initial list, but it was missing from his presentation. So it's possible he decided it doesn't need to be done this year. So. Well, again, so when I talked to him about it this last week, I asked him about it and it was, A, it's a fairly small thing. So I mean, we could put it off or not put it off depending on what we want to do. Or, and if we do then we'll have some sort of a surplus in 25 and then have to decide what we want to do about that. But I got the impression it's something that he really would like to have done at some point in the future. And since it was small, I just kept it in this year. But if the committee wants to move it- Could you have him send us a paragraph then? So we know what we need. Okay. So just at least we feel like we, we did a kind of review of it. I agree it's such a small number. Yeah, okay. Sarah, does that make sense to you? Yes, but I actually have a larger question if I can. So I, maybe I misunderstand what's going on. Are we supposed to be deciding during this meeting what projects need to be cut? Or is what we're looking at for FY 25 is balanced? It's balanced. You may say, Sandy, your recommendation makes no sense to me. I want to do something different, but this is my attempt to give you a working plan and then get your feedback in case there's something about it you don't like. Okay. So the reason that the grand total at the bottom is more than $4.1 million, which was on the first page as new projects is that in this yellow column includes borrowed amounts. Is that right? Yeah. And it includes $841,000. Right. For the red. Okay. I thought we were having to come in and decide, I've been busy crossing things off in my mind. Think of it this way. Well, this is the news. Thank you. The yellow line total is the size of the house you're buying. The first sheet shows your mortgage payment every year. So you're buying a million dollar house, but your mortgage payment's going to be $2,000 a month or whatever it is. Yeah, I get it. I get it now. So thank you. Excellent. All right. Anna, your hand went up. Did it go up and then down again? It did. My question's a little bit later on. I'm going to, I'll jump in later. I think. Okay. Again, other facilities stuff. I'm not going to go through each one just to say I didn't make substantial changes to these, to, I think this was for finance that I'm sorry. I just have to remind myself for their facilities management software. This is all fire stuff. I think, yes. So one thing I did do is I moved the radio system out a year and I listed this as barring and I moved it out a year because the fire department made a presentation to us. But when I first asked the police department about it, they said they didn't know what it was. That worried me a little bit. So then I did get a little bit more feedback from them but I frankly sent them both on note this week. I said, listen, I've done these radio replacements in other towns that I know they're big projects. They take many years. There are a lot of components. And I just don't think you guys have a solid plan together at this point. So I'm going to put it off a year and I think you need to present the more solid plan to Paul and to the next finance director and the JCPC. Also, this was the first year it had ever shown up. And that always makes me nervous when I got $2 million project shows up out of the blue. So that's why that's out a year. I think that was it for that one. Okay, so I see both Anna and Bob had their hands up. So Anna. Yeah, I mean, I think I've got big concerns about pushing this out a year given the areas around us and UMass switching to the other type of radio for this coming year. And I was wondering if you had heard any more about the leasing program that they had mentioned for the radios versus just the outright purchase. That was something that was mentioned, I think, quickly as a possible option for this. But I do worry about sending it out a year. I also don't necessarily think that, and maybe this is my naivete coming in, but I don't know that people need to have tried and failed to then get a project approved. I think it's, I don't necessarily mark that against it. And it does sound like I'm curious what we didn't, we heard from police, but we didn't hear directly from dispatch. And so I think that would be a helpful perspective too. And I know that police was representing dispatch, but I don't know that this was coming just from fire, even though police didn't necessarily talk about it. So I guess I'm concerned about it getting pushed out a year. I know it's a big ticket item, but we're also approving a lot of little ticket items that we kind of keep saying, well, it's just not a big amount, but at some point those add up. And I think I'd like us to look critically at those and not necessarily knock off something that's major, given the, I mean, all of Franklin County has shifted, all of you masks is shifting. So I'm worried about this. So I just want to make clear my concern about something showing up for the first time, isn't that I think you said something about having something show up and then get knocked back because if this is really the big deal that some people say it is, why didn't they know about it before? Why did it take till all of a sudden now, like these things don't happen overnight. If there's a major shift in technology, people know it's coming. And I do worry that sometimes sales people are able to convince department heads they need to do something right away. And it isn't necessarily the case. The amount of backup that I saw about the plan, I thought was fairly minimal. I did not, you know, the police did not ask for it. And then when I asked them about it, they did not, again, they first told me that they didn't know what it was. And the idea that the police and fire having, including dispatch having completely coordinated together on this tells me that they need to do some more work and have a better plan. So that is my recommendation. I do suppose if it turns out that this is a big deal, you know, that is something that I suppose they can come back and make their argument to Paul and have him change his mind. It's also just frankly, at this point, I told Paul this is what I was doing. And being able to get him to focus on this stuff now, given what's going on in his personal life, that he's out for the next couple of weeks is limited. I don't know how much you know about that, but he's got some family medical issues that he has to deal with. So that just, that kind of put me in a box. But I appreciate what you're saying, Anna. I just, they didn't make the case to me that this had to be done now. No, I appreciate that. And I think I definitely am trying more of engaging in the discussion around it because I do worry about it getting pushed out. I hear what you're saying about folks, you know, encouraging them to do it quickly, but I'm remembering back to the police presentation and they seemed clear on it at that point. So I'm just, I'm trying to understand that piece a little bit. Maybe I misunderstood them, but we can go to Bob and Sarah. Bob. Yeah, Sandy, what's the other source in the fire thing? Is that the ambulance fund? Yeah. In that case, yes. Other can be a variety of things, but for fire it is the ambulance. Okay, thank you. Sarah. Yeah, so two things. One, I'd like if Anna's willing to explain why she's worried about pushing it out. And I don't know if you mean you think the current system is just going to collapse or there's some interop communication problem between Amherst and other areas, other cities. So that's one thing. And two, what is a drone? I didn't hear about any drone. That's another one that's, at least it wasn't called a drone. But that's in the next year too. So they didn't, we didn't get a lot of presentations for things that were a year out. You're right, sorry. I should have noticed that. All right, so Anna, I wonder if you're willing to say. Yeah, of course. And I thought that they talked about the thermal imaging thing. I think I thought that's what the drone was, but maybe not. Anyway, whatever. Sarah, to answer your question, I don't think it's calamity, but what was presented to us, they talked about how there were some dead zones where they weren't able to receive communications from dispatch, as well as the way that their radios now do and don't function with Franklin County and UMass, because those two organizations have shifted over to the digital system. So while it's not an entire, like it's not like they're trying to use carrier pigeons, there are zones where they're not able to receive communication was what I remember hearing and that that communication is now not consistent or always, they don't necessarily talk to each other across those counties. So that's what, that's my recollection. And they cited, they said, I think specifically, like areas on University Drive, like there's some areas where now new buildings are going up too. I know they're not gonna be, you know, habitated within the calendar year, but I do think that that's a consideration as well. They're populated areas. So one suggestion on this we can walk through is we can write up the report to say it was recommended that this be moved to be developed further with more information, but we think that town managers should also focus on whether we can wait a year. You know, we can leave it with a, I mean, Paul has, he doesn't have a whole lot of time, does he? He has a budget that he has to present in May and then, but for the capital plan, that doesn't get discussed publicly until June. So there's time to say, I'm very much persuaded that it should wait a year to get further developed. I think it's very problematic when you have a sales group offering you an almost $2 million system. And if I was told this is exactly the system that a bunch of other people have done, then it also, the implementation costs in NAMRS could be lower because they've already tuned it in. So that's what I wasn't quite sure of on the need to do it right away, as opposed to work on the details of it more. There's, you know, when they gave us the pieces, there's the base receiver and then there were all the mobile units. So also how many mobile units do you need? So some of that was driving up the costs and some things you could lease and other things didn't make any sense to lease. So it had moving parts in it. So I'm comfortable doing this the way Sandy has recommended. I also think that if it got moved back into the 25 line, if we're borrowing for it and we borrow at the very end of the year, we were mainly hitting FY26, not 25. That's the year that's still showing a deficit, but that's okay. You know, I mean, it's kind of okay. So we can, that's what I would suggest is writing it up with some question marks. I'm wanting to make sure this is the right move. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, Gene, Eugene. Yeah, on this same line item, because it does sound like a really big project just from there's like a lot of moving spaces, pieces, base stations, antennas, if I recall correctly, in different locations, probably like a huge amount of tuning even if they've done it to some of the adjacent places that we're gonna try to plug into from a communication standpoint. Is this, could we also find out is, yes, if we finance it, it mostly hits fiscal 26, but even still, it's probably big enough that it probably would go across two fiscal years. I don't fully understand how, like, isn't this big enough that you probably would have two separate items in two separate fiscal years? Is that naive on my part? That's an excellent question. I asked that in an email to the chiefs and I haven't gotten an answer back yet, I mean, I really don't mean to be critical of staff. I think they do excellent jobs, but again, when I've done this before, there was a committee together, a police and fire and dispatch and they reviewed all the components and so forth. And I'm just getting answers to the kind of questions that I would normally ask about a project like this, including can we spend it over two years or what do we buy and when? And so... Yeah, when you put it that way, that we haven't had all of the potential departments that would be impacted by this, like fully on board and knowledgeable about it, that also kind of sets off some alarm bells a little bit from is the $1.9 million the exact system that we need? So yeah, I think we do need more information. I do agree with Anna, though, that this is a potential response time slash safety thing that could cause some adverse problems, if some kind of worst case scenario happens in the next year and we don't move forward with it too. So I want to be cognizant of that. I guess I would just add one other aspect of this and then I will move on. We don't really have a police chief now. I have an acting chief. I don't know if he will become the chief or not. I really don't know anything about that. But I do think that a police chief needs to put his or her imprimatur or imprimatur, however you say it, on this project. So with that, I'm gonna keep going to... These are the police projects. Again, I think they're pretty much in line with what you saw before. I don't recall changing them much. I see hands coming up. So, Eugene? Oh, I just had to put mine down. I'm sorry. Okay, Bob. No, the only question I had, and I know later on they've got the cruisers in there. Why is there nothing in FY 27, 28 and 29 for the police? I can't imagine they won't have any requests. I do think that has something to do with not having a chief at this point. Yeah. Yeah. So we should be expecting some requests in the out years. Yeah, I think it's just gonna take another year for them to get their act together to be able to do that. Fair enough. You know, the other thing is we've split some of this capital that relates to police like the Chiller, the $900,000 Chiller and the Roof. That's all in another bucket called it's police, but it's not here. And then down in vehicles, there's 360,000. So it doesn't really add up. It's like, this is the police other category. And I did hear them say the record management system, they could definitely live with what they've got for another year that they're not quite ready. So that to me was not just permission, but saying, yeah, it's next year, not this year. That's the $400,000 one. Yes, that's a good point. This next section, I skipped the head too fast. This next section is, oh yeah. There's a whole bunch of stuff for Crocker Farm. Now I put a lot of it as borrowing. I love some of it together. I don't know the dynamics of this. I think there's some political issues and there's some facilities issues. I come from a place and when I work in Amherst, we had a single facilities department that coordinated projects in town and school buildings. That don't no longer happens. And I did ask Jeremiah, the town facilities person what he thought about these things. I would just say, I think on the one hand, they may need to do this work at Crocker Farm. I don't doubt that, that that could be true. Again, I'm not sure that I've seen the studies to show that that is, in fact, what needs to be done. The same way that Jeremiah is doing studies or town buildings and having all the roofs analyzed and then given a recommendation for each roof. And he'll have that during the next fiscal year and you can look at that and make decisions. I don't know that the school department has done that and I think somebody needs to ask that question. The other thing that I heard from some people is that there's a feeling in the Crocker Farm community that Port River Wildwood was getting all this money and it's Crocker Farm's turn. So I don't know what's driving that. And I don't wanna speculate that that is what's driving it but I do think in general, it is never the case that you spend capital money because somebody deserves it. You spend capital money because buildings need it. And so I do think that conversations needs to be had in town. I'm doing this in hours a week and so I don't have the time to do that kind of stuff. But I do think that you and the staff next year need to have some of that conversation with the school department about spending on that location. And also frankly, what the timing of some of this stuff is it should all be just one big project. So if you're replacing HVAC equipment oftentimes that's on a roof. So how do you do the roof first? Do you do the HVAC equipment first? And it very much depends on which equipment it is and it's very site specific. There's no one writing into that. It just raised a lot of questions in my mind. So having said that they are on the plan, the way the school is asked for them. I put them under borrowing because they're very expensive and that's where we are. Anna. Anna. So, sorry, Sandy, the last sentence you said they're on the plan, the way that the school's asked for them and I was just trying to pull up the other plan. Are these dates, the dates that the school's initially indicated? I think so. Yeah, okay, that's what I thought. Cause I think for me, the question is is there something preventing JCPC from asking those questions which I think, you know, Crocker Farms in my district I'm gonna always champion Crocker Farm. And I also know that for example the Crocker Farm playground is something that's been being requested and worked on for a number of years through CPA through, you know, this has come up in a number of places. These are not, I think this is in different ways these Crocker Farm requests have come up often. And so I'm curious if there's anything preventing us from as JCPC from requesting written responses to specifically the question about the strategic planning around the capital or the infrastructure. So the roof and the HVAC and the timing of those. Is that something we'd be able to do? I recognize that we're looking at this plan today but I think just setting ourselves up well for the next, even the next iterations of this it'd be helpful to get those responses. I would say those are very good questions to ask and that is a good thing for JCPC to do. So I would say, yeah, as you're going through this same process next year and that's partly why I'm trying to flag it for you now because it raises those questions in my mind and they came back, come back with great answers. I mean, I just left it on the plan but I did, I do think it's a lot of money and somebody needs to look at it more carefully. So just one response on again, in the report we're writing we can also pull things out to send them directly to a group but this, we're talking about their own request is out two, three and four years and it suddenly hits two and a half million a million really big amounts. And one of the things Rupert said is that if the MSBA accelerated repair program opens up some of this could turn into a grant we would have to pay part of it. And so he can only, there's some questions he won't be able to answer with more certainty than a space, a placeholder. And if the roof is failing or not failing in the HVAC equipment because one of the things I noticed is this is a totally different spending plan than last year, totally different. There were a lot of smaller, when I say smaller, they were $300,000 pieces. There weren't any two and a half million dollar pieces. So this is a shifting way of thinking about Crocker that I think is so much in motion that it would be good to flag it as something that we the town is gonna need just more information on. And playgrounds can go to CPAC. And so we, and we'll have a model accessible playground at Fort River and even the playground amount accessible playground just so people know the accessible playground equipment at Fort River was $500,000, not $800,000. So just having looked and that's real those are real numbers in terms of what they're buying. So I think he was doing his best to put placeholders in. Yeah, I think we'll have a model playground until we build this even more model on a Crocker. Thank you. Yeah, I'm wondering how much of the money that's listed as schools, not specific to Crocker is actually anything but Crocker. I mean, we're gonna basically build a new elementary school. So we should have new everything in that school and we shouldn't have to replace HVAC and exterior doors and things like that. So I don't, I mean, I'm not saying that they're not real but why shouldn't we, I mean, it's probably on the next page of your Sandy. Why shouldn't we, we've got all this stuff in here. Me, maybe copiers and technology equipment but exterior doors, furniture replacement, electric school system certification. I mean, that's all gonna happen as part of the construction, I would think. So anyway. I will note that there are a lot of things here that are blank as opposed to previous years. So the schools definitely did not ask for as much this year as they normally had in the past. And then other than that, yeah, I guess, you know, they didn't talk that much in their presentation about the future year. So I think those are, again, good questions for the committee to get more information on as you go forward. Yeah, I recognize that they didn't, we didn't talk about this, but I just noticed that, you know, what they're asking for in out years would seem to only focus on Crocker Farm. We shouldn't need any of these, maybe some of the, you know, as I say, some copiers or some things we may need for the new school, but we're having a new school. Bob, that's a good one to pose as a question. So as you said, you're looking at the fire, the fire alarm, but that's listed as Crocker, but everything after that is energy management, tech equipment, copiers. And that will all be new in the new school. The thing that won't be new is anything that's trying to coordinate between the schools, you know, so is all the furniture, Crocker. So we can just pose these as questions, you know. I just don't know. It just would appear it would focus, we're gonna need it for Crocker and not necessarily for the new school. Yep. Sarah. I wanted to say, if you go back to the previous page, just about the Crocker Farm playground. My last year on CPAC, which was at least two, I think it was two cycles ago now, I think they asked for this and they didn't get it. So maybe it's all in here now as opposed to partly CPA money and partly JCPC. Well, and it could end up being split somehow depending on what CPAC decides. Yeah, I don't know if they tried again with CPA. Well, frankly, I think JCPC could encourage them to do that, say, hey, you know, we've got a lot of needs and... Well, I think that's what CPA did. How about you cut it JCPC? Well, yeah, but just cause they do it to you, doesn't mean you can't do it. Uh-huh, okay. Lee. Yeah, I just, I thought I understood now I'm confused because I was assuming that everything on this page that's now up from roof to generated replacement was all for Crocker on the assumption that the new school had its own budget and everything that was part of the new school has already, was already taken care of. So... Yes, Lee, these things here are all Crocker. Okay. I'm gonna move down the page, the next page and then these things are all school generally. Okay. So I think that was Bob's point is if we have a brand new school, why do we have to spend money on doors? Yeah, he's cut off the very first column. So the fire along system is Crocker and the rest is just called schools. Uh-huh, okay. And this is something you actually do have, I mean, or you can have. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm just saying that the observation is that there's a whole bunch of other things that is called schools. And the other thing to remember, none of it's regional schools. This is, that's in a whole nother way. For all sorts of interesting reasons. Right, so whatever this, whatever these expenses are, wherever they belong, they belong to the town of Amherst, not as part of the, yeah, I get that. All right, well, it's hard for me to see how some of these, in fact, I think I remember the exterior door discussion. And I thought it was exclusively about Crocker, but yeah, sure, let's get more information. Okay. Excellent. We're now into, if everybody's ready, into DPW. And these are pretty much along the things that they asked for. The only thing that's different is this item for sidewalks. And in the future, they asked for $50,000 a year. Paul Blackelman said that, A, he thinks we need to spend more on sidewalks than 50, and that in other years, JCPC apparently has sometimes added money. So what I did is I just used that as my default bucket. If there was any extra money, I just dumped it into sidewalks. So that's why it's an odd number, 179.48, who does capital at that level, but that's why it is there. And yeah, other than that, it's pretty much what they asked for in this section. Lee, do you have another question, Anna then? So I apologize, I missed the DPW presentation. Could someone refresh me on the field maintenance and what fields that entails? That's regional schools in particular, and they split the field maintenance over two years last year was a piece of it, and this is a second year, and this is normal grass fields, not turf fields. So we have an explicit what it is. It's a piece of equipment that's big and wide and do the pieces as opposed to a plow or a tractor. No, I understand. And so is this factoring in the either addition or removal of grass at the regional level in terms of when we look out a couple of years? I'm thinking about the decision that's being made by the school committee about this and how that might impact the need for capital costs. Remember Fort River's gonna be reopening and 20 acres of grass or five, 10 acres of grass will need, it's not gonna need. That's not the region. So how is that, you said this was for the regional? This is for all of it. Yeah, DPW does field maintenance for the town as opposed to the schools doing field maintenance, whether it's regional. So because Fort River, I said more, they also do the fields, the Mill River fields, so it's fields, it's fields. And so the reason I said more around the regional schools and those large fields is cause for the next year and a half, the Fort River fields will not be... We out of service. We'll be out of service. It's the best way of thinking about it. You're not gonna be out there maintaining it. And does this get the grass to the level required to play all sports? For example, I know field hockey requires a much lower mo versus soccer. That's what was described to us. Okay, thank you. And I apologize for missing that meeting. Thank you. All right. Can I add something to wanna ask about the, whether this has anything to do with the proposed artificial turf? I want everybody to say artificial turf because grass is turf. So anyway, if there is one artificial turf field, it's only gonna be one out of all the grass fields in town. So I don't think it'll make an appreciable difference. We'll still need the mower. We'll still need the mower. And I don't know what, if anything might be needed specifically, I mean, I believe there is some equipment needed to roll or whatever is needed for an artificial surface. But we're not there yet. Thank you. If there are no other questions, I'm gonna move on to the next department. And this is conservation. I just have to remind myself. So in a similar vein to what I did with the roof proposals from facilities, I took what Stephanie had proposed as a dollar amount for sustainable projects for FY25. And I left that amount the same in the out years because again, at the time I did that, I was looking at a fairly big deficit over the five years so I had to reduce it. So I thought at this point for planning purposes, just stick a number in there that you know the town will commit to. And if over time Stephanie comes up with more specifics and out years that number could change but it is a reduction from the amount that she put forward. Even though I do think sustainability projects are very important for the town, I just thought for something that was new to this plan at these big numbers, we shouldn't automatically be increasing the number every year. Other than that, I think pretty much these are the things that the conservation asked for. Anna? So I would rather have taken the excess from that we had added to sidewalks and instead bump up the conservation number instead of cutting it. I think that would be my preference. Are you saying you only did that in the out years? You haven't done it in this year? That's correct. Stephanie, sorry, sorry, I misinterpreted. 250 is what she asked for. Stephanie asked for 250 and she gave a specific, it's in there. Yeah, that's what I thought. And then you're saying she asked for three, like up more than that in the future years? Yeah. Okay, so it's not necessarily, we're not locking into that. You're just, oh my God, sorry, my dog just caustic. Knocked my entire charging thing out of the wall. You're saying, but a future JCPC would make that decision, we're not locking ourselves into it. Right, and just so people know, I've got all these microscopic sheets in front of me that the original ask was 400, 400, 400, 500 in the out years, so what he's done is just straight-lined it across to the 250. Thank you. And she can always come back with a bigger number in the future if she needs, yeah, thanks. And what she did was, I thought terrific this year on giving us very specific things she was gonna do with the money. I agree. All right, I'm gonna move on next to planning. So I did leave that big hundred in for those consultants because that was the conversation you had with Chris and so I went with that. Downtown parking, I put that out a couple of years because, A, I needed to balance the budget in 25 and also because I just thought there had been so many damn parking studies and immersed. That's all I'm gonna say about that. I already talked about the Civil War tablets. I think this will end up giving them what they need and I left the demolition for the clubhouse at Hickory Ridge because I know Paul says he thinks it's becoming what in legal terms they call an attractive nuisance that there's worry that kids are gonna start getting in there and somebody's gonna get hurt. So I do think we needed to do that right away. Sarah, your hand is up. Yeah, I'm not persuaded about that $100,000 for zoning and feasibility studies is an appropriate use of capital and I'm as interested in zoning as the next person and understand the importance but I don't see that those kinds of studies lead to the eventual production of a town capital asset. I mean, you think about zoning, you mostly you're changing what private property owners are gonna do so convince me that this is appropriate. Right, I'll give it a shot and you tell me how I do. Okay. For one, if it is common and it has been in Amherst and it's in other communities where I've worked to put capital study money in the capital plan because if you don't then you don't really have a source for it, you'd have to increase the planning department budget by let's say $100,000 next year which and then it's one of those things where the planning department budget would be going up and down, up and down every year and because otherwise they just there's just not money in their budget to do these sort of things. These studies sometimes have a major effect on things like zoning but they may also have impacts for things like how the town looks at traffic flow or whether to put a traffic circle in an area or how much more traffic is gonna exist in an area because there are zoning changes and so forth. So it's hard to predict with certainty what the whole scope of these changes is going to be until they actually do the studies. That's about as much as I know as in a non-planer but again, I would say you heard Chris talking about the kind of things that she wanted to do so I will leave it at that. Kathy's gonna try and give it a stab too. No, no, I'm gonna jump in on the amount. I could see fifth, this is the planning department got 100,000 to talk about potential design changes in the downtown zoning and took them two years to hire someone who's an expert on design to actually put, not just it can be 60 feet tall but that some kind of, and it should be set back from the street to make some recommendations to us based on input. And I don't think there's nobody not that much done and the list she gave of these are such technical terms but professional development park we've got places zone for that. Is that useful or not? We keep overriding it. We've got flood plain conservancy which is different than flood plain. I'm not sure why that's not an internal staff settle looks that's I have a different question on this that do we need an outside person to come in and look at this. So what is interesting about the university drive example is that two buildings are being proposed for a corner that couldn't normally exist in that zone and everyone agreed on a variance and just said, sure we're okay building a building that's taller and various things. And it didn't require going outside that could be between the planning board and the staff. So I wasn't sure Sandy about the hundred whether she needs 50 because there's a particular expertise out there that we don't have or does she staff up for a year or she I know they've been down a staff and I may know more about the staff person is this a temporary staff person who knows a lot about certain things? I don't know, but I didn't quite understand why we needed an outside person to do some of this work, Sarah. So I do think the work, the thinking needs to happen but what they did was remarkable on university drive they took to a whole overlay thing and were quite creative on suggesting ways to change it all staff. So Anna. Yeah, I think the answer, Cathy I don't know details about the hiring process for that other person, but I'm guessing if you want it done within the next year we need to hire a consultant to do it. I think that that's my understanding is there are so many requests from the town the council from everyone that they need to hire consultants to do some of these projects and this is one that would get a consultant for. So I don't think it's a matter of lack of expertise I think it's a matter of bandwidth and I think that we could say we want internal staff to do this but then it's not gonna get, I'm gonna guess it won't get done for a while because of all of the other things that they're currently doing. So that's my understanding, Cathy is really it's about the bandwidth that the staff have. Okay, and I just wouldn't want to see it. Were you here, Anna? I can't remember who's been on the council but there was a whole thing on 40B overlay there was a consultant hired we did a whole bunch of meetings and then it went nowhere. I don't want to see us repeating things that we've done that took a lot of everybody's time and then didn't move forward. And that was a consultant that that was, you know, they weren't a bad consultant they weren't a bad consultant. It's just we have all that thinking in a file cabinet somewhere at this point. He did not move. I was not on the council at that point but did it not move forward because the council decided it wasn't a project they wanted to pursue or did it not move forward because we just didn't act on it. Cause I feel like that's sometimes a consultant will do all the work and we decide, okay, based on the results we don't want to do this. My sense is they didn't, it wasn't clear that the best there was a downtown particular place it wasn't clear that had been thought through well for that and they didn't look as well at some other places that people wanted to have considered. So, you know, this was the housing trust it was a lot of people were involved in this. So it's, so Sarah's question is about use of money for studies. I don't mind to use some money for studies if I think it's expertise we don't have and what you're saying is we're short staffed. So I think maybe again, if we keep it in this line we want more of an explanation before it goes out to bid for the consulting on what kind of person, what are we hiring? Because there are different kinds of people for some of the stuff she was talking about unless there's a senior planner out there who wants to work for Amherst for a year and they're gonna snap that person up. Yeah, or is it something that we decide is not a priority? So we don't want to consultant nor do we want internal staff time spent on it. I think that's it kind of gets back to what the council was talking about at our retreat which is we send a whole lot of stuff to staff to work on and we need to pick which ones we want them to actually be spending their time on. I don't know if it's under staffed or overburdened or a little bit of both, but yeah. They're mismatched. Yeah, exactly. The math isn't nothing on that one. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna keep moving. The next project are these two playgrounds which I think in the original were much closer to the present and my conversations with Dave Zomek and Jeremiah both made it clear that neither of these playgrounds at Mill River Memorial Pool or excuse me or Memorial Pool or Mill River were ready to roll anytime soon. So I just dumped them to the end. I made them borrowing. So they have no effect on the bottom line because the borrowing wouldn't start until 30. If you wanted to put the whole plan back much closer to balance, I could change one of these to cash and then it would be basically even in over the five years. So that's what's going on there. I just bumped them out because I got the impression that they weren't ready for primetime. Anna? Is this one also an instance of by bumping it out we are giving them the opportunity to fund these through for example, CPA funding and then take it off of our roster because these seem like great projects for CPA funding and I'm sure that they've thought about that and have other things in the pipeline that they're gonna go to CPA for but that is still an opportunity for this and it may not even show up down the line. That is exactly correct. And they said that quickly, Anna when they presented this, it was like they already have a piece for Memorial Memorial from CPA so they could get another piece. These next things we're now getting in things for Cherry Hill fixing the bridge that Kathy has to slog across in wet weather. I use lawn mower in the future some dredging of the irrigation pond there and then in the future a couple of other pieces of equipment. So fairly modest frankly. Oops. We are now into vehicles. Again, the big thing that I changed here was to move this sidewalk plow out to 27. And I did leave the police vehicles in at four a year and I don't know in the future if you're gonna want to buy four every year. I just put it in there because that's what he asked for and it didn't make that much of a difference capital plan as it was. So I didn't care about it too much. I do think once there is a new chief in place you're gonna have to ask him or her about the condition of the vehicles, how many miles they have on them and which is really for cruisers the key thing how many hours of running to the accumulate in a year given that they a couple of years ago couldn't buy any and another previous year couldn't buy as many as they otherwise would have been allocated. I went with the four for FY 25 and figured that you guys can figure this out for future years. And that I think was the only, oh, and I changed the source for the parking vehicle to the transportation fund from the general fund. And there are lots of hands. Yeah, start with Eugene. I just had a real, I'm not sure if this is the correct venue for this question going back to Cherry Hill. And this might be a place where these numbers exist. Cherry Hill is probably a net positive because they charge fees, right? So I would just just kind of like looking at their website. So I mean like that 75,000 is probably easily covered by the money that's coming in for the fees. Yeah, it's interesting that you raised that because during the budget hearing we had, Paul was starting to ask a lot of questions along those lines about how much Cherry Hill does cover and it does turn out that they do and cover, in fact cover their expenses. So the question is very timely. And that's the new good news Eugene because they used to be a lot. The fact that everyone else closed their golf courses and we increased Green's fees has ended up meaning, I don't know whether they have enough to pay for this kind of extra, you know, for fees, but so. Well, I will say that the Cherry Hill fees go into the general fund. I think we used to have a separate fund or a revolving fund for Cherry Hill or something. And because the finances are so precarious at one point, it was brought back into the general fund. But so the fees just flow into the general fund now, just like in the other sheet. I'll probably just take that offline and just see if I could see some numbers there. But like if they're the only group here that actually pays for themselves, that's amazing. It's somewhat weather dependent. True, true, true. So Bob. Yeah, also one of the things that Ray said was when the bridge goes off its moorings, they have to shut the course down and they lose all that revenue. So I think, you know, definitely the bridge is, and you gotta have a mower for the Greens. So I don't see either of these as being a real big thing. What I do have an issue is the Greens mower in the vehicles. I don't remember seeing that before, maybe it was there. Certainly, we didn't really talk about vehicles very much, but as I recall, Ray's position was that a new mower would be around 70,000. So this looks like a new mower, but it's for the middle school. Yeah. That's the same question, Bob. I didn't know what this one was. Yeah, but I don't know, I don't know why. That might be that original mower that he didn't change to the used one. So that may be extra money. I was thinking maybe it was a duplicate that one was listed under Cherry Hill and one was lit because unless someone tells me, I don't think there are any Greens at the middle school. Oh, they have a new putting class. I mean, let me ask you about it. Ray did say that. And then his original cost was 71 for Cherry Hill, but then he found a used one for 35. So it is, it felt like a duplicate and I didn't remember it. And he did say that field hockey requires a very, you know. That's what I was asking earlier about the mower. Yeah. They were bad to the high school. So maybe this one is for field hockey, you know. It's a high school. It's not, they don't play at the, I don't believe they play at the middle school. Did they cut it at the middle school? I guess I don't know. Okay. Anyway, I think we need some clarification on this. So when it's mainly, are there two of them or just one? There's one. And, you know, and if it's for either the high school or the middle school, it shouldn't be, Amber shouldn't be paying for it all alone. So I'll send them an email when this movie, when this meeting is done. And then the other big thing I did is I moved the fire building, excuse me, the DPW building out a year. Because I, I mean, maybe it will move up quicker. Maybe, you know, I'm wrong about this, but I just don't see any movement on it. The other thing about this is that at ultimately, the barring for this will be broken up into phases. So there may be, even if it does move up earlier, there may be some initial design work that needs to be spent in FY 27 and then the construction falls. But my understanding is that there isn't even an agreement at this point on a location. Even though I know this is an important project, I moved it out. So I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's toes by doing that, but that's what I did. I have, I saw that you had done that. So I just have a, you know, a question when I bounce back to the summary of all of this, there is room. And I think, Sandy, we can write it up the way you've just described. But there's room. If it should move to we're ready to go in FY 27 rather than 28. The borrowing costs would hit FY 28, which is a year you're showing a surplus. Yeah. So it's, it's a, so it's sort of, if, since you don't see any in 27. So that was my looking at it. I think that's a good point. So that was my looking at this. And, you know, of course, fortunate we don't have to do a 10 year capital budget. You know, to see what does FY 30 look like. 31 as DPW comes online and, but, you know, so if people are comfortable with just saying that's what's happened, but you know, I started to do a draft is, you know, and it's got blanks in it. So since we have to get your draft by next week, we can mention this as put, put it out. And then in the, in the revised 10 year capital, 10 year debt service, you can see what the debt would be if it moved a year earlier than a year later. And since those are in the super guesstimates, because we don't even know whether we can get it for 30 million. You know, so one in Arlington for 42, although it is a bigger DPW. Well, yeah. There was, there was a grandiose plan originally in Amherst for a really big. It's being scaled back. So are people comfortable with, with what, what he's done? So, I just want to mention one thing I didn't do is I didn't put any money in for the citizen articles. Right. That's what I was going to raise that one. And the other thing, so maybe we can talk quickly about that. And then if you could put after we finish that discussion, put back up your summary because we're generating surpluses in 20 years. And so my question on that. The school people will like this question is, do we need to be at 10 and a half percent for capital. In 2029. You know, because it's generating a half million dollars in surplus. Or do we leave it with that assumption right now, but do we point it out in the report? Because that have extra half a percent came out of operating budgets. You know, so if, if it could be 10.2 percent or 10 point, you know, something else rather than, you know, get to roughly balanced, but don't get to, because there's, there is a tendency to spend it. If you show it, you know, so that was a question I just had on the, the Sandy's magic with the numbers moving some big ones off altogether, like 450,000 for the intersection and moving others around have now generated a surplus in 28 and a half million dollar surplus in 29 and a half million overall, you know, by the assumptions that are in here. So I do want to show, if you can see this multicolored page, this just show the debt service in the future. So that's one of the things I did this morning is update this. So it is in what I'll send you. And then as Kathy was saying, we do have a surplus. And again, part of the reason is the heck is it? Oops. I didn't want to do that. Part of the reason is that I had borrowing for those. Playgrounds at war Memorial and Mill River. And so if I put this back to cash, that would get rid of the surplus and keep us very close to the 10% percent. So if you think having the surplus, that big surplus out there might cause political issues, then we can easily get rid of that. And now I will go back to the sheet. So as you can see, there's about a $451,000 surplus. If we added $400,000 in cash and 29 for one of those pools and a playgrounds, then it all just balances out. I leave that for others to respond to. You know, I, you know, it actually would be the one of the first times I can remember that we've focused on out years to this, you know, to this extent in terms of worrying about, because that clearly could be a decision on, you know, to do it in cash because the other thing everyone might or might not have noticed, but we don't have to deal with the big buildings. The fire station doesn't exist in the 10 year because the assumption as of two years ago is that we would have enough and reserves to pay for the fire station with reserves. So right now there's no fire station with debt service at all. So I see. I do think you should mention that in the report because some people will be looking for it. Like where did it go? So Lee's hand is up and Bob's hands up. Lee, you're on mute. I had it up and down because I think I substantially agree with you, Kathy. I mean, unless there's some real reason to show a surplus. I think there are so many ongoing chronic demands in town. And as you say, there's some big ticket items. That you're just speculating. I mean, we can only speculate about what they're going to cost. So I think it's better to show that, you know, that we're not in great debt and that we're balanced, but not that we're generating a surplus, which we may not actually be able to do. Although it's lovely to show it. I mean, I understand when you're putting a budget like this together and you come out at the end and you have a positive number, it makes you very happy. So it's a political decision. The Sandy's quick solution to it was to not have the two playgrounds be debt. Right. Yeah, I would have, I take one of them off and then that would basically leave you with a slight surplus in 29 and an overall surplus of $51,000, which is close enough for government work. So Bob. Yeah, I was just going to say, I'm neutral about it. I don't believe any numbers beyond FY 25. So, you know, if anybody's making decisions based on what we're projecting in an FY 29, I think they're crazy. So I don't, I don't, I mean, it's fine to show it as being in balance or to show it as being a surplus, but either way, I don't think it matters that much. So, so again, you know, since we're short on time, because we started late and we don't want to keep meeting until the end of April, we could leave it the way it is, but make this with notes that in, if we did the playground, the surplus, it would be a balanced budget that, so there's a choice out in the out years of debt financing or not for playgrounds would be. I think my inclination would be to do one of those playgrounds as cash, make it look pretty balanced and then. That's fine. I mean, I don't have, I don't feel very strongly about it, but I, you know, I don't believe any of the numbers we have. I don't either Bob since, since from year to year, the next year changes. So we're not even good for two years of this. So Sandy, is that really easy for you? So you just get us a different, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, so should we have a quick. Or not so quick discussion about the resident proposals. Yeah. Sorry. Raise my hand. That's okay. Go, go for it. Yeah, I think we should just remind me what was their total cost. 50,000 for the one that put two of them at each of our schools. And 4,500. So it doesn't even meet the capital threshold for the one street where a resident has a street where people speed and ended up in her front yard on a regular basis, you know, or another near accidents. If it turns out that the $71,000 for the mower at the middle school is a duplicate, then there's money in there to cover the costs of these things. So, I mean, I'm not sure that we can build it because I know you have to get. Traffic studies and all sorts of things, but the police have to agree, but it seems like if we have the funding this year, we should go ahead. I think they were both reasonable projects. Yeah. So Anna. And then Sarah. Yeah, I strongly endorse the one by the schools. I think that that makes a lot of sense. And I think that it's a really good use of the resident requests. I have concerns about the other one just in terms of. And I, and the, the concerns that I have aren't. Good enough to disqualify it because we don't have a current process. They did exactly what they were supposed to do. But I think that we don't have a process is, is a problem for, for traffic calming measures. And it's something that I think we need our council committees to focus on. Because we're going to get requests everywhere and anywhere. And, and I don't. I think, you know, what, what was just said about having engineering studies, et cetera, et cetera. I agree with that, but we also have no process to say they need that. And I think that's my concern right now is, is we need a process before these come to JCPC or JCPC can be the first step, but then I still have to go through another process so that we don't completely, you know, negate the ability of these signs to slow people down because they're everywhere and anywhere. So I just want to express that. And then I don't know about whether or not something meets the threshold for capital in terms of resident requests. I, I don't know if that is. I find the idea of resident requests not having to meet that threshold because we are kind of the only avenue that they have for that type of request. So I, that, that doesn't bother me necessarily that it doesn't hit the 10,000 mark because I think many resident requests may not, but I am very bothered by the, the lack of process. Sarah. Yeah, a couple of things. I don't want to hold the lack of process against residents with ideas. You know, and, and there are dangerous roads in town. So let's just do it. And maybe that will stimulate some action on, on whatever process needs to be developed. But thinking about the school, the signs for the schools, all for school safety. And maybe we discussed this and I forget. I mean, the Wildwood school will come down in a few years. I mean, I don't know if it's useful. We'll need signs there. And meanwhile at Fort River. We're probably going to be having. I mean. The traffic is going to be so disrupted anyway. And they're already signs telling me to do this or do that. I don't know if it's useful. Put signs there. Before the new school is finished. So I don't know. So, Sarah, you like the idea. Sarah, your question then is the, the two time. So he came up with the number 10. By counting them where for some of them. So the, there's. I also think I also would be in favor of funding at least that piece and Anna to address your. And we need a process. One possibility might be that we say, you know. The school should figure out exactly how many and where. And then there should be a process on deciding where else. And we open up a line, whatever they're called dynamic. He had a name for them, dynamic, whatever's. We open up a line so that those can be purchased. And so that's what we do. And over the next year we see where they go. The state put one here on the road. I live on when they lowered the speed to 45. And it, it actually has helped. Lower. It used to be 50. It has helped lower the speed. From 60 to 50. Because people see that they're five miles over the speed limit. And so that's what we do. But they would otherwise ignore the change in the speed limit where it's 50, just a little bit up the road. So you can almost see them start to break. So, but it would have to be what you just said, there'd have to be. Where is the best use for these because as soon as they're everywhere, people ignore them. I. So Bob's thing was like, open up a line. You know, if we're going to open up a line as much as 70, I was going to say open up a line. Or 40 or 50. With the schools being the first piece of it. And then Sandy's other way of doing it, 71 is an overestimate. Put it all into sidewalks. You know what I mean? Shove it over. Shove it over. If we've got a sidewalk, at least allow people to walk on it. Yeah. Anna. Yeah. The first, to the first point, I understand where you're coming from. And I'm curious about the opportunity for looking into signs that are movable. Because we know that. There are plenty of places in town that could use them. So I, I. That's a question I have for, I guess, for DPW on. Are these signs able to be picked up and moved to another location installed again? Or are they really, once they're in, are they still moving to another location? Or are they moving to another location? Or are they moving to another location? Because I would, I still think that even though it's a couple of years out. Especially, you know, by Wildwood, I think that would be particularly helpful. There's, you know, there's one by Cushman daycare center. That's movable. The police put it there. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was part of TSO with that whole. And so it's been sitting there. You know, I think it's going to be sitting there till we agree to do speed humps or something else there. And so I think it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be some sort of speed sign. I would like to see happen at the schools. And I recognize the merit of possibly doing a, a removable one. And then I think Kathy, to your point, I. I still think that TSO in conjunction with. The transportation advisory committee needs to come up with a process. I don't think that we should limit any sort of, I think your idea is an interesting one, but I think we should open it to general traffic calming and we'll end up with lots of different funds for lots of different things. But I do think it's an intriguing answer. I actually kind of feel like leaving the resident request as the opportunity for that allows people to work within an engineering study to get what they need versus just limiting it to one thing. But I, and I agree. I'm not, I am not suggesting we limit this request because we don't have a process. I'm absolutely not saying that. I think that in our report, however, I think we need to make it explicitly clear that people are getting bounced around between committees, between the council, between JCPC. There isn't a place for them to go because everywhere else tells them to go to the other place, right? Like we're just, we just even said it now when we said, well, they should go to the schools and the schools should decide to fund those signs, right? Like they were told to come to us. So I think that we need to honor that resident request process. And we need, I don't think it needs to be this committee, but if traffic calming is it, or if something else is it, we need to, to clearly articulate, articulate this or we need to just take ownership and say yes or no. But I don't think we can do both. So, but you just said about bouncing around. It'll be the third. If we, if we can maybe write it better, it will be the third time we've written that advice. And I'm not against doing it. I know. I don't know what else to do though. No, no. But so the question is, if Sandy finds that there is this 70, that's a duplicate, do we want to open up a line called traffic calming, including speed things for the schools at 50, at some amount that would allow this to move forward. And that to the extent it's not all used for that, or it could be a mix of stationary and mobile to extend, it's not all used. It could be used for other calming. Advice, but the first thing would be for these resident request, the resident requests around the schools. I'm okay with that. It wasn't necessarily what I suggest. I was suggesting individually funding these as they were asked. I worry. Okay. Years that that would limit other resident requests that aren't related to traffic calming. If that makes sense. You were going to go all the way for the. So Jeremy asked for 10 and Janet asked for one. I was saying we should, I believe we should fund those. This year. Yeah. Janet's was not school related. No, I know. No, she just had, she just had one on the road. Right. But I just sounded like Kathy was. I was going to limit it. I, I don't, I'm not strong on this, Sarah, on limiting it to just the schools, because it was coherent to me that you would want to do this there. I wasn't sure you needed two at each place. And I wasn't sure you needed any at Fort River in the short term. So my question on that was. Was it 50? But if they're mobile. So. I see Lee's hand is up. I do think though, Kathy, sorry, just my last minute was, I do think that we still should have either a traffic study or an engineering study. Done before they're installed. So that we're not determining where they go specifically. But I think if we were giving that area, I think that folks who have money, expertise should be deciding exactly where they get placed. Okay. So I see Lee's hand is up. Yeah. I just have a question about the. Possible nature and status of these public requests. Are they. Are they restricted to being about traffic calming? Or. Okay. So this is just for this year. We have these two requests. They happen both to be about traffic calming. And so we're. To give you an example. Last year we had. A bikes. One of the bike stations. That. I remember. One in. We've had crosswalks. They've often related to roads because people can't. It has to be. Town. You can't just say, I want a porch on my heart. I get it. Okay. So that's just for this year we have these two requests. They happen both to be about traffic calming. And so we're. To give you an example. Last year we had. A lot of traffic. Traffic calming. So. It's. It's been speed humps. Yeah. Holding traffic lights. Adding a. Doing a sidewalk study to put a sidewalk in. Doesn't have a sidewalk. So it's. Largely revolved around. Road and walking safety in town. Because I think those are more. You know, You know, We could have people asking for an additional swing in a playground. You know, I mean, it's just. We never. There's no limit to what the proposal could be. We just haven't had it. But is that part? I mean, is that. A partial explanation for why there's not been like a process. Because. These public requests can be about so many different things. I think. The issue that has run into is when it's traffic calming, it's brought by. Someone who there's a specific street that they have a problem with. As soon as they name that street. Someone on our own committee can say. I have a problem. So. Shouldn't we have a way. An example is there's an intersection with a traffic. You can avoid the traffic light by going down this street than this street. Which is narrow without any sidewalks and cars go zooming around. So there's more than one of those in town. And the people who came with help us. So the question was, do you just do it because they knew that there was a traffic light. Or do you have a plan on where this should go and what priority. So we just, what I just said, we've, we, we haven't responded. Any of them. It's like, where, where were they supposed to go? And meanwhile we set up this fantastic. Possibility of residents coming with ideas. That's my point. So. The only one that's made it through since I've been watching was the sidewalk study for East pleasant. And that was done by DPW. And we haven't seen the results of it, but they did eventually do it. And they warned us it would be expensive to do the sidewalk. Sarah. You know, but we have a where it would go. And how it would have to cross the street. Somewhere at DPW. But they've never proposed doing it. Well. Yeah, I mean. Sometimes there's a certain amount of sort of ad-hoc'ing. Can't. Be helped maybe. And, but so, I mean, and it seems. Oh. You don't want people to do the sidewalk. Sarah. But we have a where it would go and how it would have to cross the street somewhere at DPW. But they've never proposed doing it. You don't want people to get caught in the washing machine going round and round forever. But if you have a place where you have a committee that considers capital proposals. And you want to make room for individuals who can't quite figure out where. In the structure of town government, their request fits. It might, I mean, maybe JCPC is the best place to come with the plan. But I think that the stipulation. That, you know, we're sort of doing what we're trying to do today is say we have this much money. It will cover this request. And here's the process that now needs to be followed to make sure. That the police are on board or that the schools are on board or. The neighbors on Southeast street are on board. I don't know so we'll try to write it up as a draft and see what people I'm trying to figure out what what to put in the minutes You know, I can just say you can say long discussion about It's all selfish It's all about me Can I ask to the to the extent? I mean it sounds like maybe we're going to say yeah Okay, we'll give money for these but we need somebody needs to do a traffic or engineering study Well, does that cost money or does that can that be done? by town staff because Otherwise you're just It's like the best placement the police could weigh in on it and they they can act pretty quickly speed humps and changing road configurations is something bigger so this So especially with the honest idea that some of these could be mobile, you know that they don't have to be forever in the place they went It's it's just someone What did Jeremy Jeremy when he came he's the one who said the the tan he went to gilford and he said I like the idea as long as it doesn't come out of my budget So that I just don't want to say That we shouldn't say for these specific requests First we need a traffic or engineering study Because that sounds big and expensive and formal if it's simply Great idea. We're happy to fund it work with the police to decide or whomever I mean The residents can't take town property and and install it somewhere. I mean it has to be done With and through a town Let me let us try to do some wording, you know staff involved in decisions about location You know rather than call it a giant thing and then people can react to that And I see sandy's hand is up. So I just lowered it because I I was going to say what you just said What I just said staff will be involved in decision. And then I mean, I I think you any of these things you We haven't had a process for where DPW and police have really looked at this stuff if we put a certain amount of money in for traffic calming and signs It would allow departments then to move forward during the year Uh, and in the report you can make specific reference to these ideas and ask them to take a look at them Anna I'm guessing that what we're going to get back is can you please be more specific about what staff involvement means? Because I think we've dealt with this with safety zones right now where they're saying A traffic study like they'll say a traffic study was done Which means the police are speed study, excuse me was done Which means a police officer did the radar gun But they want an engineering study for something that is anything beyond just that lit sign Because they need to know about the flow of traffic and all of that So I do think that they're going to come back and say please be more specific But I think we could start with that. I'm just I'm not anticipating that that's going to solve the Issue that we're dealing with here, which is getting stuck in the circle of We can try to write it. The problem is it's a difficult issue There's no easy answers to these things in your trade-offs They put speed bumps on one of the major roads next to my house and now the other major road is full of traffic So You know Which is why we shouldn't do it willy-nilly like that's I think that's that's exactly right That's why I I do think jcpc is not the right place No people to come and ask for this you do not want that hitting charter charter review But I do think Sane, you know, you've looked at this at this point if you're going to set aside some money and ask that this be looked at So that if dpw and police decide, okay, actually it's a good idea We can go ahead and buy some things and they have the cash to do it So I so sandy you'll get back to us whether that 71 was a duplicate And then if if it wasn't bob There's still we could take it out of this extra sidewalk money, you know, we could make it 50 or 55 Since the total of the two requests was 55. We don't have to go to 70. So we'll just open up a piece and Try to word this in a way that makes everyone comfortable And let me just I'll describe The process that we've we've been under a time crunch in the past. So it's this isn't unusual It's just a little bit later So if we can get you a decent draft In terms of fairly literate and I'll Write a first version have Anna go on to go through it Then when we meet next week if everyone comes prepared with Line edits verbal edits or something I take them all and get to a final But we don't have to meet again. We just get to a final that way and this becomes a recommendation It's a recommendation to paul. We're not the decision makers here You know with to the extent some of the rationale for what has happened since day one today to this day is Sandy has gone out and gotten more information is making advice to us so we can reflect that staff came back to us with recommendations that enabled us to get to Very near to a bad. Well, we're at a balanced budget for fy 25 and the other the out years look good too And then we can focus on where there are question marks If that and so so it will be when you get the draft I'll send it in words So people can mark it up if that they're more comfortable doing it that way those that aren't comfortable can get come with comments any other way and There are there is a way of mushing everything together. Um, that's probably more efficient than the way I do it, but um You know since so it will be mainly to the it capture our thoughts here On where we didn't have quite enough information or where we still need to know more about the out years Does that the does that process sound okay to everyone? Okay And to the extent I mean the minute takers have been amazing I have to thank everyone. You know the minutes are all now posted with obs. I sent them in today so to the extent The description of the project is in the minutes. Um, I will borrow from that And and for people to say I'm not sure that's what I heard the zoom is out there It zoom is just painful to try to figure out at what point in the conversation Whatever you're interested in was being discussed, but the zoom For all meetings zoom has been posted. I just checked that today too So I think I'm just checking to see if we have any we do not have any public So there will be no public comments because there are no public And sandy is here and Jen stayed with us Jennifer stayed with us the whole time lee Is has a hand up. No didn't mean to and you're muted. So I don't know what you're saying I'm always muted. I will do my best to get the minutes for today to you tomorrow If that would be helpful You know in anyone and and feel free to ship them to everyone. I mean, they're useful to me because I'll be drafting And sandy, do you does does everything make sense to you? I mean, I have some notes But you probably took notes as we went along, correct? Yeah, and you're muted I Had some internet problems all of a sudden so I had to get on on my phone. So Yeah, I think it all makes sense. I'll look into those unresolved issues. I will give you a redone draft with the numbers we talked about and Obviously contact me individually if you have any other questions. Otherwise, I think we're in good shape Okay, and and what I've had what we have included is a summary table and then We now have this very nice five year of all the projects so we can just decide whether we're sending all of that through or not No Sean always Sean and or other staff I never knew who did this figured out a way of how to get these big documents into one document You know bring them in Since some of them are horizontal and some of them are portrait, but In any case, well, I won't worry about that because this is just going up to paul. So as long as he sees Where we where we landed. I know how to do that. Kathy. I can help you out Great. Thank you. So I want to thank everyone and it is I think we're Amazingly we're ending in time again. I just want to offer up my personal thanks to sandy sandy. You've done a tremendous job Standing it's amazing together for us and I really appreciate JCPC was always my favorite committee when I worked for the town No, you've been amazing sandy, I just I can't even imagine with what what you had to start with which is I I think I have all the proposals Exactly And I loved I loved it when you said I got Sean's spreadsheet, but I'm not exactly sure what he was linking it to Yeah, so so thank you very much. I mean you still got a lot for the final report We've always put the You know the other things that we've seen in pieces the vehicle list and some of this other stuff has been in pulse final report and We didn't spend any time talking about that because there's not enough to talk about anyway, but that's been an innovation That's much appreciated by the town to see all the vehicles we own Yep, no, which I you know, I did send an updated version to you guys. So it is now current Okay, great Thank you all and we are adjourned and Five minutes about Motion to adjourn I oh right. Thank you second Okay, quick quick vote. Thank you Bob. Bob Yes Kathy. So yes, Lee. Yes Eugene Yes, Sarah Anna We are adjourned and thank you both and thank you Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Bye