January 7, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript
January 7, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee
Call the meeting of the Capital Improvement Planning Committee to order at 6pm on January 7th. We're in the large hearing room and in the town building and on Zoom.
And I'm going to review the agenda. So this is, as I said, a hybrid meeting because we are in the town building and on Zoom. I have to read the OML statement. So this meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, will be made available to the public on WICAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Public will be excluded from executive sessions. We're not having one, so it's no big deal. Today, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. If this meeting has remote-only access, no in-person attendance by members that are publicly permitted, that is not the case today. If this meeting has remote access, which it does, one may watch or participate remotely at the meeting length that can be found. I'm not going to read this out loud, but it's available on the town's website.
Okay. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so. In person or on Zoom, public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. And so attending in person, we have Brian, Liz, Kelly, and John. And attending on Zoom is Brad. So we will be needing to do roll call vote for any votes that we take. And I'm going to go ahead and review the agenda, and then we can do announcements in call comment. So 6 p.m. is called the Order Review Agenda for Public and Announcements, 6.05, Public Comment and Members Response, 6.10, continue to review of the Excel spreadsheet reflecting consolidated departmental capital requests for FY 2027 to FY 2031, including answers to questions from department managers and revisions to requests and potential vote of the committee's position on ranking such requests. 7 p.m. We're going to discuss content, revisions, and potential vote on the draft of the committee's report to the town manager. I left out of time, but at 9.20, we're going to review and vote to approve the minutes of December 17th, 2025. 9.25, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. 48 hours prior to posting, if any, and setting the times of our next meetings. And 9.30, hopefully, adjourn. So is there anybody in the queue for public comments? So no one there for public comment? One member of the public who I not want to make public comments, so we are all set there. I do not have any announcements. Does anybody else have announcements? Brad, you all set? Yep, all set. Okay. All right, so I want to go ahead and get started on discussing capital. So I sent you guys, I forwarded you a bunch of responses to questions that I had based on our last meeting and based on review of going through the spreadsheets. I had sent out to various members of town staff, and they had sent back, and I think sort of highlights of those, if you didn't get a chance to look at them. Christine from schools did get a quote for the security, which was the radios. It was, as I understand it, Brian, correct me if you think I read that wrong, did include the full request, so not just a phase one or phase two, because she hadn't done the estimate previously. And that amount did come in significantly lower than her placeholder. I think her placeholder was 200 for phase one, and I think it came in at 135 for everything. So that was good news. On fields, I still have a question outstanding, but did try to pull a little bit further on costs that we're currently experiencing as a result of the baseball fields not being playable. And what it seems like to me from those responses is that they are used, but they are not being used for games, that they, whenever they have a game, they're doing an away game. So they're not necessarily experiencing field rental costs, but they are having to pay for bussing, which is costing about $500 per prep. And obviously they reiterated the cost of the septic, and obviously they reiterated the cost of the septic needing to haul waste off site is costing, I think they said $150,000 range. What I didn't get an answer on yet that I've asked a couple times different ways is the question Brian had asked earlier on, which is we have a project that was in the plan originally for FY29. It was called phase three, the high school fields project, which is from 2017, there's a document attached that shows kind of the sequencing of rebuilding the football stadium, swapping the softball and tennis courts, all that those were phase one and phase two were done. Phase three was the baseball diamonds in that plan, it's moving the base, the two baseball diamonds and making room for a multi use, multi configurable rectangle. Sorry, trying to get this to go out of the problem that is in that plan. And the project that was on the docket for FY29 was phase three, which links back to that document, but there was also a second project that was in the plan then and still in the plan now for $75,000 design and $2.5 million of fields to build rectangles where the baseball diamonds used to be. So it seems redundant, which Brian had said from the beginning, I can't, I've yet to get an answer, I don't think you've gotten an answer confirming whether or not that actually is redundant or not.
It seems like that second one should come out, but I can't get an answer. So in the later years of the plan, attempted to drop it to low until we get an answer, if we have it all right. Okay, so that was fields, and we sent a request to IT, because it wasn't clear to me in their requests. We have in the plan, one of the security projects, we have it phased the way that he's got the expenditures laid out. So it was $425,000 total, phased over three years, we have it as three projects. He answered me today, but he didn't really answer my question. He gave me more detail on the projects, but didn't really answer the question of, is that supposed to be one project with a three-year spend, or is it supposed to be three projects? And so I'll follow up again just to get that answer clarified. The biggest thing that came across was, I had asked some questions of the facilities director, and I got back, it was the questions of, do you have an answer to break down on the roof, right? And he did give that back, and he did break it down into phases, but he sort of reworked his whole plan for a few other things that had come up with the elevators here in this building, and swapping some other things out. So it was essentially a bigger tweak on his overall plan than what we had talked about before. So with all of that, I would like to do a couple of things before we get into the report itself. I would like to do a couple things on walking through Brian's spreadsheet, and that is, one, looking at the changes that facilities made, and ranking the ones that we haven't ranked. I would like to also talk about where, if all we have room in capital spending sources, and this is a bit of a tough thing to say, but given the size of the MWRA project, arguably you have no room in anything anywhere, right? But at the same time, I think there's probably some space in things that don't affect taxation, specifically free cash. And so I want to talk a little bit about that. Ultimately, it's not our call. Ultimately, the town manager and the finance committee and finance director will make that call. But I do think there might be a little bit more room to get in a couple projects, and what stuck out to me is DPW, we don't currently have anything in the plan. And I do think, one, we have to revisit roads and discuss roads, and two, it doesn't make sense to me. It makes sense to me to hold off on some projects because of clearing the backlog. Vehicles at DPW doesn't necessarily make sense because those that don't tend to be things that tie up resources for a long period of time. And so if we've got needs in order to continue service, I think we need to, pushing that off doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of benefit from a service standpoint or from helping keep the backlog cleared. So I'd like to talk about that as well. So why don't we start with facilities and the changes in the facilities budget or request.
Let's see if I can move this so I can actually see. Was that all on the 8th, the subject project was called, or is that a separate? No, it's throughout his budget, he made changes. So I was going to... That's not a big thing about the Excel file that came out earlier, right? So if you look at the version 6 of the Excel spreadsheet, I decided the easiest way to do that, just to allow us to continue to track what we've looked at before, it was added column that showed divisions, and most departments are no changes, so I just carried over the total. So the facilities and the schools were the only two that you'll see revised numbers, and you can see it in the spreadsheet, but it's the very first item that I'll just add. What Kelly just said, facilities director, they did what we asked them to do, which is rethink the roofing part of it.
The first six items up there, they're showing as zero in the revision, and what he submitted back, simply left those open. And I, for the moment, if you move to the right a little bit, I simply parked them in fiscal 28, in the revision column. That's not necessarily what he has suggested, and probably an open question for him is, is he still looking at those items to see if there's anything there that he's proposing be funded in fiscal 27, which is most urgently needed? And if not, that's fine. And then, as to what's parked at the moment in fiscal 28, when does he think he'll be able to provide more color on the dollar amounts and timing? Yeah, so what I read in his email, how I read it was that he has to delay it because of other things that have come off here, sounded like the elevators, other things that are going on, and that he was also trying to get better information on cost and exactly what needed to be done. And so it seemed like he sort of tabled it. I think the question for us is, do we put it in FI 28 or in another year? Right. I feel like we should, because it's a significant amount of money. At a minimum, if we don't do that, I think we have to have a paragraph on the town building. But along those lines, and why I could go with either approach is, we know that's not everything, right? And so I think it's still worth, even if you put it in FI 28, I think it's still worth discussion in the report about, you know, there's an elephant in the room here of this building and what it needs. And we don't have a number over, we're dealing with what has to have to be done right now, but we don't have a good concept of what, when, and how much the building needs overall. And I don't think we can go back to the town, as I've said before, to ask for that until we have that whole number. So we can talk about it, what other people's feelings are, do we want to just move it out and do another year because we know it needs work, or do we want to leave it out and call it out as a, you know, this isn't everything, there's more that likely would be needed to bring the building up to standard. I can be convinced either way. Yeah, I think the finance director chose to pull five and a half million out of fiscal 27, 20, 25, I don't know how many more, and it didn't appear in the capital table, so I'd rather pull all in a footnote indicating that there was this aggregate amount to spend. So that is sort of similar to the approach where we would obviously include it in 28, but put it in a paragraph. To say, this is what's left. Yeah. But we still don't know. Yeah. I don't feel comfortable putting it in any other year, because I have no basis on which to phase it. And at least for me, I don't really care either way. I think it just needs to be clearly identified as it's still an open question and highlight, I think, the point you're making, which it's really difficult to look at those dollars outside the context of what's going to happen to the building. Yeah. And if they're staying, what other costs over what period. So I don't know how others feel about it or where they want to wait until you get to the report to address that. But I just wanted to highlight that that's why you see it in the fiscal 28 column. What he did do is identify $310,750 needed to redo the roof, the flat roof over this section building, the gym. And assuming that's based on whatever ongoing conversations he's having with a vendor, focused on fiscal 27 per minute. But the only odd thing I found about that was he gave a lot of airtime to the structural issue over the town manager's office, which is on the opposite side of the building. And that was the one that he seemed most concerned about addressing sort of the waiter. He's got that one programmed in fiscal 28, which he's identified it. But nonetheless, that's his call. And I, it just, it always makes me a little uncomfortable when people, and I'm sure it was based on whatever information he had at the time, and maybe further inspection to determine that. Well, this one's leak actively leaking. This one's actively leaking. Yeah. Versus the other one. It's actively leaking, and it's been leaking for a while. I agree with you, right? I mean, I, based on his comments, I'm surprised to get pushed. But I think, based on, I don't know what the situation in the elevator is, I assume that's up there in terms of safety. So, I would agree. It's not going to safety, you can't, like, the buildings no longer, it won't be ADA compliant. Yeah, the elevators weren't, they may have been in the on-site insect report, I haven't gone through all those reports yet. But, but again, yeah, that one wasn't even on the radar screen, but, and so the only thing I'm concerned about the roof is just have him confirm that he's comfortable, that there is no active safety issue. The phase two. Over, over the town manager's office. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about $150,000, our safety issue, I don't think that, that's not, as things go, it's not the worst thing out here. If it's, he hasn't listed as phase two structural. Well, the problem is, I think, to get at the structural issue, he's, he's, I think, assuming that the roof is ripped off, whatever the underlayment is under the. Yeah, there's two pieces of that. So, he just broke it into the structural roof, et cetera. Yeah. And I don't think he can deal with this structural without doing the 500. Yeah. So, but I'm assuming that he's programmed this way, he must be comfortable. So, I just want to see if we can get him on record to say. Yeah. I wrote it down. Yeah, I mean, I agree with the overall assessment, which is, I mean, yeah, there's no way, just with all the cost, to me, if they missed a half-million-dollar elevator and the cost of something to repair, then that's not a little thing. So, my personal take is, I don't know where our leeway is on this. I mean, I like the idea of one and two. I think those are pretty sound. Like, I mean, the defense was there, right? We know what they were in the structural, the rest is fine. I mean, the roof is straightforward, but I think, yeah, we put below the line, here's what's been identified as additional costs, but our recommendation is that a full building assessment is done, because this is likely a little bit of the bare minimum, right? And I think we identified that elevator, you know, case of the point, elevator for half a million was just added in 2017. Yeah. That would be my personal take, but I absolutely agree with you. I think five million is, you know, I'd be very surprised if it's less than 10 if you really get it to where you want it to be. Yeah. But the interesting thing is, we have 2.8 in for the roof, and the sum of the five pieces, I think, is 1.8. So, I think maybe, to John's point, to that point, Kelly, maybe in the report, a sentence or two. Yeah. Just, just, and again, I understand that, you know, Michael, again, just joined, partly through last year, he was catching up on a lot of projects, really hadn't, you know, he kind of, I think, brought forward, was probably in the file, and they just drive home the point about, we needed to be a bit more rigorous, upfront analysis before presenting proposals to this committee, the town manager, whatever. Yeah. Is that, I mean, is that the right approach for something like this? I mean, he's not, I mean, we're talking about essentially, we're dealing with the whole building, right? He's just, his focus is repair. These items now look more like what absolutely has to get done in his opinion. And so, do we recommend, I mean, do we go with the part of recommending that perhaps this becomes its own, I don't want to call it, committee, right? Like everything else, saying, should there be someone appointed to actually do a full assessment? Well, this, their, their, their, on-site, in-site was an assessment of the building. I think he's just, he's, in his defense, he's scrambling, right, to put together, give, having, new in the role, to take what was protected in the past, marry that with the on-site, in-site, and dig in. So, I think a little more time, he'll be able to do that. But is that, that, get it to what we, like, tell, or is that just repair? Yeah, this is the other question, though. Like, there's a bigger question, which is, and the select board has asked me when we're done with our report to come and, you know, talk to them about what we've, what our report is, what our challenges were. Or, one of the things with your, your buy-in guys that want to talk to them about is, they need to, they need to figure out what they're doing, right, what the plan is for this building. Because otherwise, we're going to start burning into, we're not going to have a choice, right? It's just like the roof. You're going to have to, the elevator. You're going to be spending millions of dollars, and you're going to do it by default. Some cost, and then you're forced to just say we can't leave the hours. Right. So, I think there's two points here, both of which I think are valid. And I think both should be made in the report. Not a long-winded discussion, but just, these are things that became clear to us as we evaluated the site. One, we really need some initiative to determine what future use, because if the facility's director can't do the second part of it, John, which is, over one period, you know, what needs to be done and how much does that cost, because, yeah. Yeah, I think we just approach this, but we don't understand the full scope and cost of this project, just based on the emergency department, right? Yeah. We already see an additional 4 million ahead of us, or 5 million, and we already have a half million added before we finish that conversation. I mean, I don't know how long we want to word that, right? Well, you had a 10% error rate, and we're three, four months into this. What Kelly said, though, it actually is net favorable variance at the moment, because the roofs went from 2.8 to 1.8, and the elevators are in there and a half million. So we're half a million ahead of where we were, but we still have that top six items that, you know. But I have no confidence, and this is nothing, this is nothing against Michael. I have zero confidence that this encompasses all of the demons that are in this building, right? Go ahead. Hey, we're still going for an analysis of all the towns building, so we don't have the confidence that you know. They have an overarching, what's called on-site, in-site came in and did something, but that doesn't get down, from my understanding when we asked him about this, it doesn't get down to the level of detail. It gives sort of, it goes through and says, okay, your boiler is X number of years old. It's probably going to need to be, you know, looking at it from here, it's going to, in this condition, he needs a deeper. That's what I'm talking about. He hasn't had the opportunity yet to go to each site and look at staff and get eyes on-site. Okay, yes, I agree with this, or it's better than or worse than. And so I would imagine everything we're going to get from facilities is going to be, and so he's gone through and- For sure. Do we have an idea of how long? Well, that's why I say those first six items- But I mean, so we could- I think we have to ask Michael, and I think that's in the report, right? I put a future section, sort of what I wrote first, which was one of the things that we, as a committee, want to do, right, when we get beyond this report. And one of them is, and it starts with the facilities director and other department heads, but what is the condition of everything where, like, we need a better underlying understanding of that in order to be well-informed as we're prioritizing. So I don't think we have it now. I don't know when we're going to have it. I'll add it to my Michael- Well, I was just saying, like, the changes that we saw, I would imagine we're going to have more iterations of that just as continues to go through staff. I mean, it's possible when this leaves this committee. We'll have to snap a line and say, based off of- There could be changes from the department heads direct to the town manager. So before we claim, say, that 600 grand of the attic, it's probably part of the attic. It's just not- I'm sorry. Oh, because the attic's in a different place? Yeah. Yeah, it could be. He inflated the attic in a different lineup. Yeah, that's true. I didn't think about that. I viewed that as possibly a different project, but yeah, you're right. Yeah, but he talked about it when he was talking about the roof replacement. He talked about it when they were up there. Yeah. The mistratch. So we're net even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So- Okay, just one thing. Brad, are you hearing everything okay? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I agree with everything you're saying. I think that it's very important to emphasize that we do need a complete building assessment and not just a building assessment, but also just what's the necessary use for the building or what does the town need? And does the current building satisfy it? I don't think it does. And so, you know, where are we going to go from here? It's beyond just a building assessment. It's more of a use needs as well. But I agree with everything everybody has said. So, let's keep walking through the changes. Are we going to stay focused on 27?
Yeah, let's stay focused on 27. I think, you know, on the roof, though, I will comment, right? He's basically phased that roof out over five, the full five-year schedule. So, the pieces are, you know, he broke it up, but it's spread out over a couple years, right? From what it was.
All right. Next was the elevator.
So, he has an elevator specification for 47,000 and elevator upgrade for 471,000, which is basically the design and construction. He broke into two projects. Normally, we do design in one year and construction the following year. So, we're asking for the right amount. He's got them in the same year. I understand why in this case, if the elevator is not functioning. I do appreciate that he broke it out so that we are recognizing that there's two pieces to this. I would probably, though, ultimately, and I'm sure Brian Keveney will do this, combine them just because otherwise you end up with a spend issue if you're under on one over on the other. So, this is good for my cash certification before they have to get a bond, maybe, that we're used to. Yeah, you could end up, I think, in bonding. So, combine them for purposes of, like, it's a, in fact, we combine a whole bunch of things when we bond. But they can do the first part in cash and then bond later. Yeah. I just like, I just like when it's, you're right, you could, I just like when they're identified because we're identifying that there's, there is a step that comes before, right, the actual work. If you, to understand what you just said, would you propose leading this, you know, assuming people rank this, which we need to do, high, such that it finds its way into fiscal 27? Yeah. I would rank both the phase one roof and the elevator at high, and I would, I will ask the question on phase two, right, just to make sure we don't have. Oh, everybody else. An issue. So, is it, is it really late until 27? What? Is it really late until 27? It's not, listen, it's not that far away by the time, by the time they get everything up and, you know, like, contracted, right? Yeah, I mean, the elevator's our worst thing in the world, for sure. Yeah. But. Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's, it's where we are right now by the time they get everything ready to go. It's not that far away, right? It's only, it's six months away. So, one clarify question I would have is the elevator specification. Do we know it's just for the main building and not the one in Children's Way as well, or is that? He has another line for that. But, I mean, the 47, does that cover? But, my understanding was the 47 is the design of both, and then the two pieces were, although, that's a good question. I thought it said it was both. I assume it would be, but. And then the, and then the actual work on the second one was pushed out a year. I said, we don't have, like, a bonus 15K to do the. No. Yeah. So, before we ask about rankings from the others, for our purposes, would we leave this specification broken out to be able to, again, drive home the point about normally? I would leave it in our report, and, you know, if Brian, or they want to combine it, if they can. Great. Is one of the four people on their ranking of those three items? Yes. How do you guys feel about ranking of the phase one roof and the two elevator? I think it's high. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Hi. Yep. Yep. Brian? Yep. Yeah. Perfect.
Let's see. What else was?
Was that everything? I think that was everything for the 27. For his other changes, he did some swapping of things, some in and out a year, and then I believe he also added the tie-in for the DPW building. That, my dream in that, Brian?
Yeah. The DPW and retro commissioning, which you explained to me what the tie-in was before, but I don't remember. And it was $60,000 in FY29, I think, and $15,000 in FY30, that was, yeah. Yeah, I think, again, the out years, we're just moving things out, but there were two small items brought in. Yeah, that was, yeah. Okay. So people want to rank those more upon them. Sorry, which ones? We're still on facilities, the second to last, the third to last. The 87 and the 88, where have you been in your specialty? The building management system. No, it's DPW. 60,000, I mean, fiscal 29. 50,000 and fiscal 29. It's got a DPW BMS tie-in to the town building. It's not a building management system. I don't know what it is. Which would make sense. Like, I have a town building. Oh, building management, that's what BMS stands for? Okay. I would think so. It's a general system. Okay. And I don't know what retro-commissioning is. Does anybody?
Normally, the commissioning of a building would be, after the fact, because everything's running. Okay. That's fine. All right. I think those kind of items, looking at other similar kinds of items, were... We've got a bunch. ...building right at medium. Yeah, I would put them as medium. Because that's what we did on the other ones. Medium works. I agree. Sorry. Yes. Brad? Yeah, I agree. Medium.
I think those are the only ones we need to do rankings on.
Yeah, I believe so.
Is that what it's living? Yeah. Oh, the insulation, yeah. Well, it's out here, but you still have to rank it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I guess the question is, I think people have been leaning towards high for the roof in general. So, I guess the question is, I assume that all roof-related aspects are still high. I would, my opinion is still high, because if you're up there doing the roof, I would go do the roof and not do the insulation while you're at it. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. The only statement I have about the attic, and this gets back to, at what point do we say I've ever just been a green-to-green versus match. So, it's out in 29. Do we need a lot better information in two years about what we're going to do? I know it's a loaded question. I would like to. Do I do? If I was a betting plan, which I'm not, would I take that bet? No. I mean, I think- That's our request. Well, I mean, I think, and it may be, that's a part of our recommendation is, you know, we have all of these expenses that are going into past jobs. Let's just make sure that, you know, the ROI is there. But, especially as these are in further hours. Yeah. I'm having a hard time mapping that the ROI is there, based on how much money we're looking at. And how to replace. Because I, I think my personal opinion is that the money spent on this building is some cost. That it's not necessarily what's needed for- Yeah, I mean, it's just hard at the moment to- Well, so when I think of a roof repair, that's 100% high. When I think of insulating, not that it's a nice to have, because it's definitely, there's definitely a value that comes with making sure we don't have loss of heat and cold. However, if we're going to go and decide to put a whole new town building in place- But if you don't, but if you don't put insulation in the, like- It extends the life of the roof. But to your point, if you're not going to be in the building for more than another five years, who cares? Yeah. But you have to, but you have to make that decision. On almost everything on here for the town building, you have to make the decision, right? This is, even though this is not getting the building to, like, pristine condition, it's a ton of money. And so I don't see how you can go beyond a year of emergency stuff and not have made a decision on what you're doing. Even if the decision is, we're not going to have a plan, it's going to take us five years, you're going to have to spend, right? To keep us functioning for five years, even if that's the decision. Yeah, I mean, I think a decision to stay is a fine decision. It doesn't, it hasn't yet, and no one has yet put up a rational alternative. Alternative, yeah, agreed. With a possible exception of stop and shop vacates that building, it's big enough to, you know, carve it up into a town building. But otherwise, you're left- You stop and shop. It's not new anymore, but yes. But otherwise, you're left with either having a breakup where the schools are operating and the town's operating or, you know, leasing space. But, and if you propose to build a building, a likely timing of that would fall probably somewhere in line with the school coming forward to want to build a new elementary school. Yeah. And so, but I think the only point is it has to have a focused discussion with a decision that people will live with for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I think I'm just going back to when I, some of the earlier conversations was there was talk of having, yes, a new school building, maybe multiple. That was a consideration, consideration for a new town building. This was just, as we have dripped and dropped of investment going into repair, you know, understanding what is the ultimate decision on a new town building. Well, there's no, then okay. I don't know. And I would just say like that it gets complicated outside of like, like Brian said, outside of, you know, there's a building at town center that's big enough, especially if you start talking about new school buildings, because then you start having the discussion of, well, if you're going to build a new school building, would you keep Children's Way over here? Or would you build that building to accommodate Children's Way? When you pull Children's Way and say, let's, I'm going to go even further and pull the school department Children's Way out of here. Well, then you're rehabbing a building. And yeah, you rebuild and it's half occupied. Does that make, and you're heating a building that made that we're attempting to. So there's, they're trying to move meetings from here to the community center. I mean, I think we can do, like, I don't want to say we have to, I think our task is to make sure you just have to make them aware is aware. Yeah. Yeah. So you read the last year items right up in the paper. It was, it led a much smaller, oh, it's only this. And it's clearly not the case. I mean, I actually just re-looked at it. I don't know. Cause I added the elevator 7.5 million already in the book. Yeah. That's what I mean. You have these. And that doesn't count what we've spent. Cause we've spent a bunch on this building. You need to go do 27, 28. I say that is short term. You have to go and do it. But when you think, I think 29 and out thereafter, it's like, okay, well, what do, what is the long-term plan for this building? And if it's just to keep it functioning, upgrade it as we can, but if it's not going anywhere, then, then, okay, that's, that's an answer. But if, you know, we're going to, I mean, forget the hole, we have to go and replace the water and taps. I feel like, oh my gosh, we're not getting any new buildings. We have to pay for that instead. But, you know, it's just, you know, I feel like we should have a better idea of where we're, where we stand three years out from now. Yep. I agree. Okay. That was fine. That was fine. But otherwise, yes, fine.
Okay.
You will go back to fiscal 27. Yep. And then scroll, scroll down to some of these a little bit, so you'll see where the library line items are. So I included the library line items here. He removed. He took out 75,000 and 200,000, didn't he? Yes. 28, 29. Yes, because, and we were concerned those were duplicates. So it looks like he thought they were duplicates. Yeah, because I, I caught that as well. I think that was it on this one. Okay. We've gotten right to the new items. Yep.
All right. Brian, did I capture everything that was changed or we got answers on? Definitely so. Okay. And he, I think, again, it was tough with what he gave us back because he deleted line items that completely deleted the line items that were in there before. So if you look, again, at facilities, there's a line item that originally had, you know, $450,000 for the transfer station repair, and then he had a million aid out on fiscal 31. He completely deleted this line item, but I just hired him out. Like, I don't think I caught that. You just need to look in the, need to look in 28 through 31 to see what, you know, other activity where he might have either phased things or completely cleared him out. So on that note, and I didn't get to putting this in the report, but I wanted, we can, we can talk about it when we get to the report. I did want to walk what was originally requested, meaning like, what did everybody give us right out of the gate before we got any clarification, before there were any changes to, okay, now there's been a bunch of, we've had to ask questions, they've made changes. I did want to show that in the report just because it, it wasn't insignificant in terms of like, Hey, there was stuff duplicated, there was clarification, there was a whole sale. I do think it's, I don't want to spend a ton of time on it, but I do think it's personally, I think it's a valuable part of like, we didn't just take what we got and run with it and plug it in. Right. We had discussion. There were realizations both on our part and on the part of the department managers, which tweaked it in the end for nearly a hundred million dollars with projects. It didn't move it, you know, $15 million, moved it a couple million, but I do think it's, it's a point I want to make somewhere along the way that there was, you know, changes, changes and redundancies and things that we, we cleared up a long way. I mean, it shows value. We're not just a pastor, but we're actually. I think offer a comment on that when you get to the report. I disagree with that. I think the other thing that's right to prove that we need longer term planning, because this is the volatility that everyone says, why we sort of like, this is what we're seeing. And it's not, it's not so much the town's imagination. It's, it's literally been as volatile. I think that's that confirmation as well. I don't know if that adds value, but I think I would agree with that.
I think it's valuable for a couple of reasons. I think one, I think we added some value to, but for the process to work, we prefer, it would be preferable. We wouldn't be having sort of wholesale changes at this stage in the game. We'll let it find out of the process. Yeah.
Okay. So from here, let's talk about, you know, we've just added a few other things as high. We're going to have the schools because there's a couple of, oh, yep. Sure. Changes there. Oh, okay. Oh, he made changes.
Michael made changes, you mean? Yeah. Okay.
So in, go back to facilities for Matt. Yep. Because again, this was difficult for what he sent us. There's a line item. It's after the library grounds improvement line item for fire sensor replacement. Isn't it earlier? You mean the middle school one?
It's right here. It's row 73. It's row 73. The middle school fire sensor replacement. So he had in fiscal 29, he had 200,000, and fiscal 30,000, 350,000. Yeah. So he deleted those. So you see that he zeroed those out in the facilities budget. And put them to school. And then, I'm assuming, because I remember when we met with the schools and Mike Faye was here, we asked about, are they comfortable waiting to deal with fire alarm systems until a later year? And all three of the attendees seemed comfortable. But then he basically added into the school budget, $140,000, 203, an upgraded Happy Hollow for fire alarm. And then a $375,240 upgraded poker, a $409,160 upgrade, a cleave business. And you don't see it in this spreadsheet, but in his spreadsheet, he sent back to us. He also noted in the sidebar that there was $173,189 of existing funds to deal with the Happy Hollow fire alarm, which suggests to me that that project's really a $310,000 project. Yep. So if you add all those three items up, it's $923,000.
They had a, I think there was a $500,000 item that I zeroed out in the schools for the fire alarms, right below those three, so right above that one. Right here, district-wide? Yeah, $500,000 in fiscal 31. That's what prompted us to pose those questions. Yep. So $923,000 is bigger than $500,000, and the only point I'm making by highlighting the $550,000 came out, whether fire sensors are related to fire alarms kind of sounds like they are. Yeah. It may have been a duplicate, but I think the whole budget is probably washed it out. Yeah, it also put it back. It was helpful because it put, I didn't understand why they were up in facilities and not in schools. But middle school never came back, right? That's what it was labeled as, and you're correct, is these are all three of the elementary schools. So I suppose that's the question, you know, were those, what were the middle school fire sensor replacements just not needed?
Yeah, so he was, he was in, I think he had said he was delayed the report, so that made the timing sound terrible surprise. Yeah. Okay. So the question is, I'm assuming, if anybody disagrees, I'm assuming everybody due to fire safety is high for all three of those.
Anybody disagree with that? Okay. So that's the only, oh, and then he added, which again is a new item on the radar screen, a middle school hot water heater system, 359,722. I have to assume, but certainly ask the question to be sure, but I have to assume if he decided to put it in now, this way in the game, something must have presented itself to suggest that they're at risk of the existing system and that they need to deal with it. Yeah. I thought this came up two years ago when the boiler went, that the water heater was going to need to be replaced. So I don't know. Maybe he looked at the outside inside report and it was all that. Although those are separate reports from schools. They are. Yeah. So I think when people, assuming for the moment that it's a risk issue of the current system failing, people generally do that as a high priority? Yes. Yes. Yep. Okay. So I think those are the ones that require rankings. I noticed. There are a couple of, a few other items that he either deleted or moved around. Um, that's like a hot water for the bicycle that we need to bring. It's in and out here. And it's very good. I'm just going to pause back to what we've already said. It's interesting, right? That we get to submit this on time. These are the all being changes. Yep.
Which is a point where we're making our land production. And, and I would like to tell you that this is unique, but this is hard for the course. Yeah. And there are things literally right up just before in that. And in fact, after the warrant is printed, if something happens, it's got to get dealt with. Yeah. The hard, the hard part. Right. And I'm, I want to give Michael a lot of grace because he's coming in trying to do this. Right. This is, there's a lot of public buildings to get your arms around in the short time he's been here, but things like water heater failing, getting ready to fail at the middle school. It's hard for me to understand, right. How that's a surprise in general. And I swear it's come up before. So it's like, it's, it comes down to, yeah. I can't blame it on Michael because he's, he's brand new and he's trying to get his arms around things. But I think this is one that was on the radar. Yeah. The first thing that started too. Yeah. So it doesn't, that, yeah, they're, they're unfortunately don't have any history. Yeah. And it was warm in September. Yeah. And maybe there's more. Anyway, I mean, one thing to probably, because it is because he's looking, I do wonder how much of this is because he's having third party inspections versus someone internal was saying, Hey, it's fine. Right. I mean, fire alarm, all that, right. Hey, do a compliance study because he's digging into it. I wonder how much of that's really tied to him having a third party. Well, again, the schools initially did their own onsite insight reports. He just may not have had. Right. But I thought when they redid for the town, they refreshed the school one. I thought that was the plan. Right. So, uh, as I said, I don't think there's any, uh, rankings other than those items required. He moved out. Did he move out something else? The sidewalks? I think it was like sidewalks and driveways. Yeah. Roadways and sidewalks. He moved. Push. He pushed them out. Right. A few years. And then. Yes. And then. Exterior, interior, door replacement, uh, bicycle water heater. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Bicycle water heater didn't have an amount in what we were looking at before. But it did last year. I looked last year, but it had a ridiculously low amount. In the five-year plan? Yeah. It was like 50. Do I have a number next to it? You do now, but he, cause he gave us one. Well, I put the 450 in, but if it was in the five-year plan last year, I would have put a number next to it and I fixed it. No. It didn't. It tied all these numbers. It tied all these numbers out to the five-year plan. So what it might've been was it might not have had a number in the five-year plan, but I have in my spreadsheet, the full. Maybe it was a request. At some point, and this is where I get into like, at some point, somebody requested this and it came off the list. Right. So it's, it's been on the docket before. Yeah. Now the finance director would be the one that normally would go through and do triage. Yeah. And so, you know, as Kelly said, it might appear in forms that were submitted, but never have gotten into the actual plan. Yeah. So we didn't rank the, I guess we need to rank the high school water heater. Aye. Aye. Water heaters are high priority. Aye. Agreed. Okay.
Okay. Is that everything? I think I, as you were looking at the description there, I think I put yellow highlights in the ranking column for all the items that are required in ranking. So you just quickly scan. Where's your ranking column? Is it over here? It's the green column. It's just a little more one. So the left. Right. Which fiscal year in 27? Yeah, right here. Sorry. So let me just start, if you scroll down, there should be yellow highlighting and anything required a. I'm looking as well. We've been going through. This one there we did, right? Yes, this is high.
And I want it not me. I marked them down on my sheet here, so I'll fill it in here. No, but it won't let me type it in. You may not have enabled it. I can't see the enable button, because I've got the zoom. You don't need to put it in now. Just as long as we scroll down and make sure we can rank each item in the yellow part. You just go back to stills. So I'll put those rankings into this in version 7, and there's also a couple of other corrections I've made after getting some questions from Elliot that don't affect 27 other than a description. And there's two numbers for engineering, there's an engineering department that had $50,000 a year in fiscal 28, 29, and 30 for new vehicles. So I guess we need to rank those, since I put them in version 7, which we don't have yet. So most of our vehicles, I think we had been ranking as medium. And these are not specific vehicles, it's just arbitrary vehicles. So people want to rank those? I'm fine with medium. I would, at some point in our journey of understanding, like, to see the full inventory list of vehicles and where they are, you know, who has them.
DPPW has three more vehicles? No, that's what I'm saying. Well, that's DPPW. Engineering reports to DPW, but it's not, it's a separate line item. And then we missed it in the original submission. I didn't pull it in. It was there the whole time. We just, we missed it. So when you get this, there'll be a one line item section for engineering that has $50,000 and 28, 29, and 30. Yeah. And people feel comfortable ranking those medium. Yes. For now. Yes. Good with that. So now, $1.50 then? Yeah. $1.50. For all three. And we still have more to do on school 20. And I'm assuming next year we'll get more information, so we're going to be asking more information. Yeah. So we'll get a lot more. In theory, we'll get a lot more information. Well, yeah, that's number one on my list. We've got to change the CIP form to the information we want. And then be a good way. The other lesson learned. We're not. Yes. We picked up on that because Ellie was populating her own spreadsheet that she uses to produce tables that are partly being used in the draft report, but also the finance fee they end up using. And there's so many numbers, so many years, that obviously I was hopeful that someone would do a double check. And obviously a double check proved that errors happen. Yeah. Going forward to next year this time, really, everybody should be looking at the detail, but at least two people. Yeah. Everything needs, and so Brian and I have been doing that for each other, right? Like, just somebody's got to do a quality review on peer review to make sure that everything gets captured. I hope two things. One, if we create a CIP form that has got useful information in it and we only accept completed CIP forms, that we can then automate the production of the summaries using a complete CIP form. But until we get there, there's a lot of manual work here in getting this stuff summarized.
Question. I don't want to add more work because, you know, our priority is getting this finalized, but since this is our baseline going forward, to your point of what you said about vehicles, is it worth sorting these a little bit? Do you always finalize this to say within these department vehicles as a section, right? Yeah, so we can do that. I attempt in the spreadsheet that I use to identify categories for each project. Vehicles are easy to categorize. I always get caught up in my own head between things that are building repair versus equipment. Like, you put a new hot water heater in, is that building repair or is that equipment? I think it's building repair, right? But sometimes I get into, like, funny. But yes, so I have that. And I think it's probably worthwhile in our complete listing. So we will have a listing in the back of a report of everything to identify the categories. We can certainly sort that way, too, like, within our rankings, what's building repair, what's new buildings, what's vehicles. Because I think it's valuable in the way that you look at it because there's so many. And then it just, again, I mean, not that we can't sort it, but there's a big chance we continue to go through it. And say, I have another vehicle, another vehicle. I have to type the vehicles. Like, you know, it gives us the sections to kind of say, what's your, versus just saying we're going to rank everything in your group. It may not come down to that. We may say, well, we need to start, you know, each listing. I don't know. And DPW particularly, right? Because, I mean, I think roadway is its own thing, right? It's so much money. And then vehicles are the other. So my highest kind of order of priority of things here, my highest priority is the FY27 capital budget, because that is needed most urgently to develop the FY27 operating budget. Then it's the plan, the five-year plan, because that's going to ultimately be a part of the warrant with modification by town manager, finance director, and FINCOM. And then my third level priority is, okay, did we get this all communicated fully and in an easy fashion? It's important, but it's got to go after actually getting numbers agreed upon by us. Yeah. Okay. You want to go now to the green tab and deal with how we paper these things? Yeah. I just threw them into columns that seemed feasible to me, but you all think, I don't know if you want to go through all of them. Yeah. You really didn't. We didn't really talk about it. No. Yeah. So I think we want to go through it. Let's go through it by column of funding source and talk about it in a couple. I want to talk about it by project, but then I want to talk about it in total. And there is a guideline, which I put, I reprinted in the report that came out of the finance committee's report last year. It's been regurgitated a few times. Interestingly though, it still says, I think six to 800,000 of cash capital, which we haven't been using for a number of years, but it's still helpful. So let's start with borrowing and we'll start with excluded borrowing. So I believe the only excluded borrowing for FY27 we anticipate is that the MWRA project, but that's actually not, is that not because it's water, now I got that confused. Is it water rate borrowing? Sorry. Two things. I'll take this off to you because it's a minor change to report, but I think it's critical. So when, when we refer to the MWRA project, we need to refer to MWRA slash happy hollow wealth project. Okay. The cost is split roughly 40% to the connection of the MWRA and 60% to build a new permanent filtration system at happy hollow wells. So I think it's just question putting the slash HH, you know, happy hollow wells. But anyway, on that item at the moment, if there is no, we're, we're not proposing that anything be funded with excluded debt in the draft report or on this schedule. I suppose if we'll get to the report when we get to the report. So at the moment, the report doesn't include doing the ball field at the same time. So if all we're doing is $2 million septic, well, it doesn't yet. We need to talk about that. Yeah. But if all we're doing is a 2 million septic, that probably is levy debt, needing excluded debt. If, if that was expanded, it's possible that that would, we would call that. It's possible that the select board, because the select board's decision, right, would say those projects are combined for purposes of, of debt. And it's an excluded. Right. Because because of its impact on the operating budget, $4.5 million debt, they just went through the town election, special election to eliminate debt on the old DPW facility. Yeah. So to put another $4.5 million on the levy debt. I agree with you 100%. Interestingly, though, their debt policy that they adopted uses $5 million as the threshold. So that's why I put both those items in here as levy debt. But anyway, as to excluded debt, I think I mentioned this at the last meeting, and I'll keep it short. The, I believe the select board, it was decided that the MWA Happy Hollow Wealth Project debt funding, debt service, should be paid for through water rate. Waste water, water, yeah, water rate. Okay. Normally, if that, and it's the case, that would be water debt, and that doesn't, you don't need a debt exclusion. It doesn't affect the town's levy. Because that's already outside the levy. But I said that there was a pretty long discussion two or three meetings ago where the finance director was expressing concern that if water rates weren't increased high enough and or people started using less water because the rates were going up, you know, significantly, that the town might have to subsidize the water enterprise fund, and if that were the case, that is done inside the levy, which would affect future overruns. So he came up with a proposal, although I'm not sure how wedded he is to it, that the town actually issued the bonds, its town debt, the water debt is town debt, but town debt as an excluded debt, which would require a ballot question, vote, the ballot. And the water fund would reimburse, and the water fund would reimburse general fund 100% of the debt service. That way, if, for whatever reason, the water fund fell short, the general fund could pay the debt service, but it wouldn't affect the levy. But in a reimbursement scenario, doesn't that make it part of, oh, no, because we're doing it as a levy debt, as excluded debt, sorry. Excluded debt. Okay. And his only issue he had with that was that assuming the water fund is reimbursing 100% of the excluded debt service, it actually creates, absolutely anything else would create excess levy capacity, and he was concerned that future folks doing budgets would attempt to use that for operative costs. I sent him something that the OR put out that suggests that if you're getting reimbursement, your debt exclusion amount can be net of, you can take a vote, net of your reimbursement, so there wouldn't be the issue you had. Having said all that, the select board never took a vote on that proposition. He seems to be shying away from it. So at the moment, based on the select board's discussion, although Phil Whitney's still not concerned, he's still concerned that they haven't got to the bottom of that question, because I think he would prefer the whole town getting an opportunity to vote on the project. It's really been a focus of his, rather than just town meeting of, you know, two, three, four hundred people. And certainly he didn't want it to be five select board members voting on it. Yeah, I agree with Phil. I think if they're going to do a $38 million project, it should be at the ballot box. But to get it there, you have to do what I just described. Yeah, I understand. So at the moment, there is no debt excluded debt that will be on the ballot, but it's possible that that particular debt may end up on the ballot. Yeah. But at the end of the day, right, and this is like... We don't control it. Touch on the report. We don't control it. And it's a significant project, whether, I don't care where you put it, right, or how you do it, it's a significant project that's going to affect. Residents and what residents pay. And so it's why I called it out separately and because it's going to be voted as an article. And I don't think it's appropriate to just slam it in with everything else, right? But we have to consider it and the cost of, you know, what can be afforded.
Okay. So there's a bunch of other items that I put in the levy debt column. And again, you all may disagree with some of them, right? No, I had, because I've matched that up to Brian when I was doing mine, and I think I was pretty consistent.
Yeah, I think you... So the ambulance one, though, how come that one isn't in the ambulance? Well, it's on the far right side for ambulance. Oh, the ambulance itself... No, because they can't have funding. They don't have enough for an ambulance.
But is the debt service not servicable with the ambulance funding? I think the finance director said sometimes they will have the ambulance fund cover a debt service. So that's what he said. Yeah, the way he does it actually similar... It's done similar to what you just described, Brian, with the... Yeah, it's a funding back. And that prevents... What if the ambulance fund... Because we have had issues with collections. So what happens if you have collections issues and can't pay it, right? So that's why he did it in debt. And that is, I believe, consistent with how we've done... We may have done one ambulance out of the ambulance fund, but I know we've done fire trucks that way as well. Okay. Okay. So let's just go down. I agree. It's ultimately not going to be our decision, but the wastewater facility and the fields could be bundled and potentially put and excluded. It's a little bit lower than what policy says, but it won't be our fault. We talked about the ambulance.
I did this independently, Brian, from what you had first, and then we were pretty much well matched. It was sort of a... If the project was of a sizable nature, had a decent life on it, and... Or it could be combined, like, for example, the upgrades to the fire alarms, if there was, you know... Maybe that wasn't a good one. There was a few projects that went together that were sizable. They belonged in levy debt. And I think that's consistent with what you have as well.
Feel free to chime in, Brad, if you see anything that you either feel differently or have a question on. Yep. Okay. These are just our recommendations. I mean, the town manager will look at the manage director to tell them how to fund it. So... Yeah. In the road of privilege, that was the net of what we get from the state. No. That is what we get. That is... That is what they're requesting from the town. They also get from the state. And we do need to revisit that, among other things. Because right now, if we were just doing highs, we don't have that in... At all, I think, right? Yeah. So I think we need to revisit that. Yeah, again, for your all purposes, this includes all the requests. Yeah. And... But we're at... In our rankings. When we get to the memo, Kelly has pulled out just basically the highs with a couple of the median highs. Yeah, which I did it just so I could get an exhibit in there. But once we decide... Yeah, we have updated for something that we talked about tonight. Yeah. Okay. So I was fine with all of the things you had as debt. That's most of it.
Okay.
General fund. I need to freeze this because I'm not going to be able to tell you.
We don't have anything coming out of cash capital. Then it's free cash. So free cash, we tend to do shorter term, smaller amount items. That wouldn't necessarily be good candidates for debt.
Although I could argue a couple of these, you know, if we were to do this swap loader for... That one could probably move. But for the most part... Maybe we could track... The HVAC was the other one. Just for everybody's benefit, the free cash balance that's certified at the end of fiscal 24, it was $10 million. And the recently certified free cash balance at the end of fiscal 25 was $11.9 million. It's up by $1.9 million. So knowing that, I kind of erred towards spending a bit more of the free cash. Yeah. And there also will likely be some surplus in capital. Yeah. So open projects. Two things. Yeah. I wanted to talk about on that front. So thank you for bringing them up. One, I think there's probably still some room in free cash.
There's debate always about how much free cash we should have. I asked my AI friend on how much free cash you should have. And for the state of Massachusetts, the recommendation is 3% to 5% of the operating budget, I think. I think we have double that. Now, that said, we, from a Moody's debt rating purpose, they want to see us have larger reserve balances, which is not just free cash. It's free cash. It's emergency stabilization. It's cap stabilization. It's all of the balances. So my issue is I don't know that free cash is the place that it should be sitting. If the town, this is not our charge, but I'm going to give you my view on it. If we need it for a reserve balance as a town, that's fine. I just don't think it should necessarily be sitting in free cash. I think it should either be decided, well, that's part of a stabilization fund. And the reason I believe that is, for those of you who haven't lived here for a period of time, we got a pretty high free cash balance at one point. And voters put a petitioner's article up to have that returned to taxpayers. And it was approved. And I'm not saying I'm opposed to that. I'm just saying, if you think you're setting it aside for a rainy day and you're leaving it in free cash, you're right for being told otherwise. Given how many capital projects we have and the MWRA, I think it requires, and this will be another thing I think might be worthy of discussion at select board is, what's the policy on free cash? What are you doing with it? How are you going to utilize or not utilize it? What's the strategy around free cash? Yeah, I mean, and just to add, again, more educational, in years in which union contracts are not settled, the operating budget usually carries a reserve covered with estimated cost of living adjustment is going to be. And if it doesn't settle, if that contract doesn't settle by the end of town meeting or just before town meeting, what happens to that reserve, it ends up going to free cash. And then next, the following year, you basically have to add two years worth. So, at the moment, my answer is recommended, the site board seems to be agreeable, is to start putting the reserve-run-settled contracts into the general stabilization fund so that you're not raising budgetary appropriation capital and then having to go to free cash. So, that's going to start to help, at least every three years anyway, potentially. Well, it'll manage the future, but it won't manage what's in there right now. Yeah. So, anyway, that's just an aside. Yeah. So, I just, I agree with John. There's a couple that I think could move, but I know, I knew what Brian's philosophy and mine's the same. If we're just looking at hives, we're at 1.3.
You have to put in the range of? Yeah. Well, I think we have, what, 1.5 to 2.
I, if we come back to talk about a few other projects, I would, I would be comfortable going up to 2. That's with the changes we just made. Yeah. Because you had already made them. Oh, that's the total of the town. Had you already, you had already put them in? Yeah, I put the changes in this version. Okay. They were the ones we just talked about, the classic. They should be in there. Yeah. He guessed where we would be. He tied to the green tab. Yeah. Yeah. So, like the elevator. Again, you may not agree with the columns I put in, but. No, I do. They're in there. Yeah. And actually, that's another reason to our earlier, should we keep that split? You have the specification of free cash, John, exactly what you were saying. You've got that cash, free cash, and you've got the elevator itself in debt, which makes sense. Okay. So, those are already in there. So, I do think there's a little bit of room. We can come back to that.
Finance director might not agree with me, but I, I think there's room.
Yeah. I mean, one of my colleagues recently talked about the program. That's like yes or no. It was, can we, can we do a different voucher? Yeah. Yeah. And I, we've got to kind of, we've got to keep that in borrowing to stay consistent. We can move something else. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. All right. Cap stabilization. There's only a few things in cap stabilization.
So, we have the IT project, the additional 100,000 for the firewall. Yeah. One of the, one of the rationales of the cap stabilization, capital stabilization fund was to provide follow-on funding for projects. And that was a follow-on. That's why that, I put that one. Yeah. Yeah. And then the radios at the school. It's kind of an unforeseen. Yeah. But immediate need, and you need to use that capital fund for something. I mean, radio system in general, they're constant, they're constant follow-ups, right? Yeah, I did ask the fire chief about it. I asked everybody, actually, because I was like, there's so many radio line items across the department. And, you know, he had laid it, he had given more detail, which I thought was helpful. But then he said, you know, they would drop off after that. And I'm like, I don't think so. Because if you look at the life of some of the equipment, like it's, it's almost as if you're going to have sort of a continuum of, between DPW, fire, police, schools, feels like you're going to have a continuum of a couple hundred thousand dollars of replacing radios. And you don't want the broken stuff going to the school, if that's for safety. Yeah, and I actually prefer it that way versus, hey, it's all replaced and it's all got to get replaced at the same time. But I feel like we might be putting ourselves based on how we're doing it in that situation. Speaking of radios, I meant to bring it up before. It may be that not all radios are created equal. We did get a, most of the responses we got to Kelly's questions, we got a lot more detail from Tom Folder about, well, where his estimate came from for his radios. And on top of my head, I think he referenced 70 to 75 radios. And when I worked out the math, I'm sure there's other equipment. It was like 8,000 bucks per radio. And then I looked at the estimate that Christine gave us, where she, in order to cover phase two, she added an extra 50 radios into what was probably a handful for administrators. And her quote was 135,000, which is a lot less for radio. And I don't think we didn't get any detail that I saw from police or fire. So it may be that they are, they have different capabilities from even what they're used for. If you look at DPW's quote that they sent, there's a lot of other stuff other than the rate. There's a lot of other equipment. Yeah, so I think the schools is, you know, basically walkie, yeah, walkies and repeaters. And I think the DPW's had more equipment, which I think also has to do with the fact that they've got stuff that's in the vehicles versus portables. So it wasn't that far off. But yeah, I mean, yeah, it's another one of the recommendations of these, this should be consolidated for just to line them. I guess we have five different groups of radios constantly. Yeah, I'm not sure where Christine got her estimate from, whether she went to a vendor. They said hers is from Motorola. They were all from Motorola. And the state has a contract, they think. Yeah. I would prefer that the radio be an IT buy, but that's just because ultimately the IT infrastructure has to support that. And so I wish it was a combined buy, right? But I think we're getting pricing based on it being combined. It just, it's weird to have it all over the place. So anyway, the radios, I guess that's the capitalization stability, though it's growing. I just picked that item to throw in. Yeah. Along with the fields, the town manager request for the fields, which is- And that was consistent with last year, right? Yeah. Okay. So it makes sense to me last year, but- I'm still struggling with Wyatt's town manager versus DPW. It was a last minute ad in the budget cycle last year. Right. But it's not last minute anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And it technically should fall under recreation. Well, but REC doesn't have, this is like a round in circles, right? REC doesn't have any actual requests. I think it's, it's either facilities or DPW. So, okay. I'm fine with the funding sources there.
And then water and wastewater. Brian, Kevin, he said, you really can't do retained earnings. Everything needs to be borrowing. So we've got the water main and MDA area, which we've already talked about at length and a vehicle fall in borrowing.
And then wastewater, same. There was great low pressure sewer in borrowing. And then transfer station. Did the transfer station actually have anything? No, I think I included it because it was a request. Oh, yeah. But we, yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's a disagreement with Tom Holder. Like, hey, it won't keep it done. There's 27.
And that's another one. It's in the same category as the town building or similar category. It's like, there's some thought that needs to go into the future before we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay. And then ambulance was the dive equipment. And this one is actually not the ship command vehicle. It's. It did not change the. You didn't change it here. It's the cardiac. The cardiac monitor. Yeah. So that was one of the things I caught when I was reviewing Brian's. Two line items, one above the other, where on the other tab, I changed the descriptions. I forgot to do it here. Yeah. The ship command vehicle was actually a request in FY28, right? So the 80,000 is really the cardiac. The number's right, the description. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.
I'll change that on. All right. All right. So I think seems, does anybody have any, before we want to talk about DPW, if we want to roads in particular, to the extent where I try and squeeze anything in, else out of free cash. We want to lose like free cash in now. So we live with other projects. We'll be. We can take that aside. We'll assume they go to Levy, or Brian will answer that later.
I would like to at least make sure we've got all the projects we think need to get in here. And if, if it's, I would, I would recommend moving a few things to free cash.
The other thing which Brian, earlier he mentioned is, there's likely to be some capital closeouts. We don't know what that amount is. I've asked and I don't get answered if there's a sense of what that is. But I think it would be good to say, here's our recommendation of projects. And if there was more funds, right, our recommendation would be to go, you know, these, these next one or two or three things are, you know, what we think are next in line. Um, if there were additional funds via surplus capital.
So let's talk about roads first, because I think that's. Well, it's your first question. Are there, are there items that are currently, you know, here's Levy debt that you're. Yeah, could you, could you, could you move to free cash? I guess my, my take is, I'm comfortable the way we have it. Once we make final selection, I mean, Brian, as we go through this, I think it doesn't matter if we move to free cash. I think it's more the other way to maybe, but it will be something that we move to free cash. I have no concern, right? I think I'll get each budget, but after the fact, we decide off on it. I don't think I mean, where it should be to start, but yeah, my instinct, just because of what we, the town just went through and moving the DPW debt to a sluter debt would be if, if folks are. Looking to move. Three, $400,000 more to free cash. I would be supportive of taking out of the, what an item that's in levy debt, right? Yeah, yeah, I think you, John's agreeing with you. I think you just choose after, I don't think it really matters. I mean, I don't think everything, I mean, you can pick any of the basic scenes. The only thing that makes a difference, and this is light difference, and I don't have the debt periods on here, is like, yeah, you probably want to leave the things that have a longer. Yeah, I mean, you want to follow the debt, the capital policy. Right. The debt policy, I think it would have a five year or a lesser. Yeah, the shorter stuff you want, you want to move first. So I'm not real, I don't have strong feelings otherwise. So what I'm hearing, folks are comfortable with possibly shifting something else for free cash, but you're not looking to sign that right this second. So we'll leave it up to the chair to make that decision and inform me and I'll reflect it in this particular. Okay, so let's talk about roads then. Now you're talking about, are there non-high priority items that people think might be funded somewhere? Yeah, and I think, like John said, we did say we weren't going to fund roads at all, we were talking about what the amount should be. Oh, I did. You did, yes. So.
Uh, let's, let's do it from, why don't we do it from this one? Is it easier? No.
Yeah, it's just, you know, maybe can I just do, you don't have a total problem, right? Or did I freeze it? Maybe I froze it. There? No, there's no total. What are you looking for? I was just looking for, if we can look at the mediums without scrolling across to what the numbers are. But I think, um, the mediums start your road improvements. Um.
Right. So my first comment was when I was putting together the summaries, it did stick out at me that DPW had zero capital, um, appropriated. And as you probably have gathered from the way I've talked before, I have a hard time. I have a little bit of a hard time with that one because I think Tom does a great job putting together his requests. Um. You're sort of clear. Right now you're referring to what we're talking about next, which is your draft report. Your draft report picked up as quote our proposal for our recommendation. It picked up all the highs. All the high items. And then in this section, it picked up an IT item. And the field maintenance. The field maintenance. The field maintenance. Yeah. That's exactly it. Everything else below the high priority in those two items at the moment is not in the draft report. So I think we're now saying do the majority of the members feel like we should take any of these other items table to medium when we're not low. And, uh, we'll include those in what we recommend be funded somehow in fiscal 2017. So make sure we're all in the same. Yes. Correct. That is what, thank you for, thank you for clarifying. That is what I'm saying. But everything in column A is identified if it's in, if it's not, or if it's a main period. Yeah. And sorry, I can't. Yeah. Column A is where we racked and stacked. Yeah. We racked and stacked. And I think there was one that was a, is there one that was a maybe that we didn't decide? Maybe it was this. The field monitoring and the field's got fields are medium, but the moment how we put those into a same as a high. And in the high section, the only item not included was the two and a half million dollars for the field. High school field. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm not necessarily going to start there. Yeah, we should start there. Yeah, we should start there. So I, I'm struggling if they, if they tear that whole thing up to do the septic, that we would just leave it and not fill the field. But what I still can't seem to get the answer on is, is there a lesser project that fixes, right? What they dug up from the septic and gets the fields in game playable condition? Oh, what they haven't responded to yet. I don't know if they just can. Once I've asked them, can you on the site plan, which shows the existing area where the two baseball fields are in the proposed rectangle. Can you delineate what's going to be impacted of that area by whatever extension of the leaching field needs to be done for the traditional septic system? Yet, you're not in a position to be able to do that. So it's hard for me, I mean, if it's literally, you know, a rectangular trench that goes a little bit further in the grass area, but I think he did say there wouldn't be anything built under the playing field, you know, the infield area. But without that, it's hard for me to say how much has really got to be put back together once they do whatever they have to do. So I just don't think we have the benefit of doing that. Yeah, I just don't think we have enough information. And the fact that the fact that you got to pay $500 to bus the kids to 10 or 12 baseball games, I do feel bad that the town doesn't have the ability to host home games. But in the scheme of what the town's up against and overall financial picture, I just don't think we have enough information. I don't disagree with your point. I think we talked about it. There could be very good rationale as to why it makes sense to do it at the same time. But I'm not even sure they have to be responding on where they got the 2 million estimate for the septic by saying, I think, the preliminary estimates 1.4, and we added a 35% contingency. And they're still designing. It was clear the fields were, well, this is what they had the last time. Yeah, but you couldn't get an answer on if that's what you had the last time, the last time had the rectangles in it. And there's a separate request for the rectangles two years later. So I'm struggling with lack of information. In the report that Kelly referred to, which was done by an outside engineer in 2017, I think, they had a very detailed list of costs related to a project. I'm still not exactly sure if it's redundant, not redundant. And it wasn't clear how that cost five years ago relates to $2.5 million. So I just, my general view is we just don't know enough. And if within the next month, they can provide enough information to the town manager or the FinCom to justify putting it in. Yeah. So be it. My instinct is it could probably wait. In fact, I also asked the question, which we didn't get a response to. Yes, we know the DEP has been telling us for the last five years, we've got to stop yearly pumping and come up with a solution. But they haven't done anything terrible to us in five years. Could this all get pushed out given what we're up against financially and the big water project? But they even pushed the septic project to fiscal 28 with the DEP's consent. And he hasn't responded to the test. So I still would like the question and answer to that question, but I'm comfortable leaving the septic. And I just, I don't know how we can put it in. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing and I would like to see it done. However, I have significant concerns given how much we're looking, the town is facing expenses, capital expenses, that we're not further along, right, on the detail of the project for something that we want to do in fiscal. Right. We're asking for money in fiscal 27.
Right. And I understand when we give it, that's when, you know, a lot of work will start on this. I just, I struggle with, it's four and a half million dollars. It's the biggest thing on here outside of, outside of the MWA. I'd like it a little more flushed out before we said, yeah, it goes in there. So I, I'm with you, Brian. I, I'm fine with leaving the septic in and leaving the fields out. I would like to put some words around that in the narrative around like the reason, the reason we're leaving it out is not because we're necessarily not supportive of the idea of the project, but because there were still unanswered questions that were significant given the large spend. And also include as your normal design build concept. Yeah. And again, as the school designee, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Kirsteen, in her email responding to questions about the field, it was pretty emphatic that the school would really want to see this done. And so I'm relaying that information, but I know when we met with her, she wasn't that clear yet, but she did speak to the athletic director and I understand they want it done. But our job on the designee of the schools, I think our job collectively as a group are to try to be consistent, how we evaluate and propose things. And again, for all the reasons you're saying, I haven't heard anybody say don't build it in any, under any circumstances. There's a readiness issue, right? So part of the, part of this, what we said we were going to do as a committee, right, is determine priority. And that there were both financial and human resources to execute, right? But it's also, it has to be, the project has to be ready. And I, like you, Brian, we said on FinCom many years ago, one of our big problems we've had as a town is not doing design, build, as separate phases. And we've gotten ourselves in trouble in the past. Fire Station 2 is my favorite example, right? Where we didn't fully scope everything out. And we ended up having to go back to the town three times to get full funding. So I have a hard time with, hurry up. We've got to do this right now. We don't know what we're doing, right? We're going to go ask the town to do this. And we don't have, we don't have it fully. Well, I'm riskier as well with the pilot narrative. If we don't improve it, it's not a field.
I guess I'm not clear why the fields are okay to practice. Not that it's not okay to play. I couldn't, I think I asked that. Maybe I didn't know. Like, can you, can you give me a little more color? I'm like, well, it depends on the day.
I mean, I've been out there. It's something, sometimes it's up to six. Like you just sit right there. Yeah. We also heard that Tom Holder, I think said in a meeting or said in one of these email exchanges that in the spring, I mean, two or three months, they're going to spend $100,000 doing repairs. They were going to. Yeah. You know, maybe that's just an annual type thing. No, no, it's not.
It was in the capital plan. It was in the capital plan to spend $100,000 on that. It's been removed because Tom said they had enough room to do it without. But there's no money. That's what I heard anyway, was that they had enough, but they've spent the, whether they're intending to spend the money that was appropriated under the town manager budget. I think I saw it somewhere, not here, maybe on Facebook, an update from Dave Bernstein, who sort of initiated getting that $100,000 a year on what was done with the $100,000. I believe it had to do with the, it was the women's, the girls' softball field at the high school needed some improvements. There was some sprinklers, right? There was a number of things that got done. And I remember reading it and thinking, geez, having done municipal finance did come for a long time. I was like, wow, they didn't get a lot done for $100,000 compared to what I see when we have looked at projects. It's like, it's funny how we could do that. So the risk, the risk is that the septic gets, is on track to get done and completed in fiscal 27. Although I asked also for a start and end of construction for that. And again, they're still on the planning basis. So I don't even know when that project would actually start and finish. It shouldn't take more than a year. I wouldn't think of a traditional septic system to be built. It's just bigger than what's in our backyard, right? So the risk is that they actually get that project done in fiscal 27 and have disrupted some portion of the field, which will be rough graded and some grass seeds thrown on it. I mean, it's not on the playing surfaces of the infields. And maybe the town could have saved X dollars by bidding out a much larger project on the fields. Although, normally I wouldn't think it's septic. Except the ones that are doing septic and the ones that are building fields are... Yeah, normally not the same. Not using the same. The septic providers will throw the seed on the... We'll put some loan down and throw the seed out. Yeah, you're talking a hundred grand. Let's just call it a hundred grand of savings, but that's a lot of money, but in a two point... That's what I'm saying. I just, I don't, I just don't get the sense that there's going to be a complete rip-up of that whole area. It doesn't sound like... It's going to be an awfully big septic field if that's the case. Yeah, and I'm still, I still have reservations about putting anything on top of, you know, spending money upgrading and putting like sprinklers and other things on top of... ...leaching fields, and then if something happens where you've got to repair the leaching fields... Can you put a sprinkler? Then you've got to rip everything up and, you know... I don't really have sprinklers anymore. Right now, no, I don't think so. But they've been trying to add... That's not an issue there, right? It's so, I mean, they've had to put sprinklers in the console. They're very wrong. They went the wrong direction, right? It's so wet, not only if they had sprinklers... And then in the phase three, phase three report, 2019, I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure the wastewater facility that was built when the high school was built is actually still working. I feel like it was supposed to work. Maybe it never worked because it was supposed to work. I don't know that it ever worked. So I'm not sure that that whole plan, which got put off as phase three, ever contemplated a traditional SEPIC system. So I just... To me, there is some financial risk, you know, some lost opportunity. I just don't think it's millions of dollars. I think, as you say, John, it's... How much is going to change between now and six months from now, anyway? I mean, I think we're all the line, which is it needs to be evaluated. We put it in the notes that, hey, this is important, but we don't know. We don't have definition of what the impact on time it is. I think we just leave it at that. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I'm clearing that in the mouth. Let's go ahead and try to... I don't agree with that? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Once you clear that item out of the way... So we're making that a no then, right? We're going to make that a no with a report and explanation around it.
And do you want to change the ranking to medium, or do people still view that as a high priority, just a no for now? Well, I don't think we gave it a ranking. Didn't we say... Yeah, I think we were kind of open. Maybe you might say, yeah, medium. I believe it was a high. Yeah. I think we left the ranking open. Some people do. Okay. Right. Do you now have the rest of the mediums who have the factor roads? Yeah. Back to roads. Back to roads. The only thing I would... The only way I would put that, I might categorize it as a high is if for some reason they can't play baseball at all. Like if they lose the season, I'd be like, no, it goes up to priority. Yeah. I don't think that would be the case. I want to leave it as... I would advocate for leaving it as medium. Somebody wants to come in here and tell us that they're going to lose a season and whatnot. We can revisit it, but... To a degree, if they're going to do the septic system anyway, aren't they going to lose access to those fields? So they couldn't play baseball anyway. They'll probably do it over the summer. Yeah. I mean, the septic should not take, you know, a year to do, right? This should be a summer... They do it over the summertime and fields are... Yeah. The septic is sand and... They're going to lose... But they're going to lose a year. Every time we build a field out of grass, they lose a year because of getting... You have to have two growing seasons. You have to have two growing seasons. Well, again, what we don't know is how much of the... It's basically the outfield. How much is going to actually be disturbed? I mean, it could be next to nothing. It could be... Which goes back to... You need to try to plan. A slight trench or something. I mean... All right. I just invited baseball, angry baseball parents to come to our next meeting, but... Well, again, it wasn't put in the budget last... It was in the budget five-year plan for fiscal 29 and 30. I think it's redundant, right? Yeah. Last year.
The only reason that it's been brought forward is because the septic was being done. And rightly so. People said, hey, if we're going to disrupt that area enough, does it make sense to combine them? Yeah. It wasn't brought forward, to my knowledge, because all of a sudden, people are saying it's a priority. Well, I'll disagree, Brian, only because there's been anger that it was not, that it was broken out from the original stadium project back in 2018. People that use the field have been upset about it since then. I agree. I agree. I wouldn't say it's upset. They've been advocates for... I mean, but now we're debating what we don't know. I mean, we just don't know. So, yeah, if it was a statute, again, it's not that we're not supportive of the project, it's that there's a lot of unknowns and it's a lot of money and we need the details filled in. And there's not nothing to say that if we've excluded it, that those details won't come in such that town manager and finance director added in as a project and it goes to town meeting. So, I think I'm accepting of that. I just, where we stand today, we do not have enough information to include it. Okay. Email Kelly.
No, I'm getting those emails. All right. So, next up is road improvements.
Brian, you've made it clear you're at zero. I mean, I'm being a little facetious. I mean, I think you mentioned, Kelly, the need to at least be thoughtful about it. Maybe you don't need to fund the whole amount because they have access to chapter 90 money. They have one year at least worth of prior appropriation, but maybe there needs to be a little bit of transition and then back on cycle every year. Yeah. So, I went back to Tom's answers to our questions. And he had said of the appropriations from the town, he had 600,000 that was going to be spent by the end of the fiscal year. And that in addition to that, he had 800,000 in chapter 90, of which half of that was earmarked for future projects, and half of it they like to leave for emergencies, which I understand, right? So, 90,000, right? Okay, 900, 900,000. Okay, sorry. So, they view that as half of that's going to go to future projects that they've got in the hopper, and half of it they leave for emergencies, which I don't disagree with, right, based on... We have a water influx. Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say. That's 900 is what the state has already... That is what's already in their... Current fiscal year. Current fiscal year.
...understanding was, do they take... Because the budget in, I think I was looking at FY24's balance for roads, was bigger than anything we've appropriated. It was nearly a million dollars. And so, to me, that had to have been an appropriate... And it was the FY24, so it was like, well, how did we get... Unless they rolled a prior... It was listed under roads, they're usually separate projects. Or they put the Chapter 90 money in that bucket, in that same account. Before offsetting it with the reimbursement. Right. I couldn't... Yeah, I mean, that's the question I asked, is that the town has to spend the money and then get the reimbursement from the state. That was the last year's approval from the state. No, from the town. Hold on. It was 700, something like that. Yeah, so like 600, 700. I knew it was smaller than what I saw as a balance. So, the only way that would work is if they add, I think he said they get... They anticipate 485. They added the 485 and they had spent part of it right down. There was no top of matching, right? There's not a... Right? Because I didn't... It's not a match. It's not a match. It's not a match. And that was my question. Don't they need to go... We never... We haven't, at least in recent history, asked the town, if appropriate, just pick that case, a million-something, knowing that they're going to get $400,000 back from the state. Yeah. But I believe the response to my question was the town goes ahead and spends the money, but it's spending it without having been fully appropriated. Yeah. It seems to me. And then the state sends the money. No, it's just an accounting... Like, they set up an accounting entry to say, here's what your balance is so that you can see it. But it's based on, right? It's not even a form, right? It's just based on... Yeah. I'm like, Brian, I think technically, I think they really probably should be asking the town to appropriate it with the understanding that there's a reimbursement versus just doing it. Yeah. Which the schools do. I mean, the school operating budget has the full school budget. Yeah. Operating expenses. But that will affect debt, right? Of which the state sends nine million bucks to the town. Right. I mean, what we're looking at is how much debt do we want to approve towards it, right? Because the reality is, let's say, finally, if we approve 1.2, we only give them four. It's still like 400 grand of debt that we're asking to get in 2017, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think what I'm trying to get down to is what is left? Because my thing on any of this, and I'm not opposed to, like I said, having 400,000 for emergencies, particularly given, I felt, as you did, John, I kept seeing water main break announcements every couple days over break. So I understand that. But what I don't want to see happen is, and we've had this on other capital projects, right? We're appropriating capital projects, and it's not getting done. And that either, right, whether that's borrowing, in this case, it's borrowing. We're paying interest. I'm borrowing. So I want to keep that as close, as tight as we can. Now, if he's Tom saying he's going to spend the 600 that was appropriated by the end of the fiscal year, he's got nothing there. He's got 400 to get himself started for FY 27. He's going to get another 400. And he's going to get another 400, right? So my thought was you drop the 831 down by 400. And, you know, Tom can argue it's a different number, but you drop it down so that you're running closer to, yeah, what would be a 1.2, 1.3 total appropriation for the year still. So that's the number I had in my head, too, because you split it half, give them half to see where it takes us, right? Yeah, I was going to knock 400 off. Yeah. And I mean, personally, I know it's a long-term improvement on the road, I guess. I mean, if we're worried about getting approved, we drop into free cash, right?
I want to be careful with that. It was getting funded by taxation for a number of years, which also goes back to the period of time of free cash that's being built up. And then in order to try to avoid overrides to FinCom a few years ago, proposed not funding through taxation. And the finance director generally agreed to do it through debt funding as long as there was an agreement by FinCom that in the next at least five to X years, if you're funding, it'll be done with debt. So I would say it needs to stay, even though I prefer not to have much levy debt, which is why I'm at zero, just because I know it has to be funded with levy debt. And again, to me, worst case, he runs out of money in my road, your road, somebody's road. I blow out another tire on the corner of Sears. It's passed another year until he gets back on cycle. My commentary isn't. Yeah. I don't want to talk about that. I think going forward, doing an annual funding of road improvements makes a whole lot of sense. But this year is just such a wild card. And between the Happy Heller Wealth project and then the operating budget challenges, it looks like 27 is not going to require an override, but the next nine years will, likely. And so I'm just troubled by adding levy debt. And we just took levy debt off to try to help with the operating budget. But that's just me. I'm not going to make a big deal about it if the rest of you want to... Well, again, this puts in the recommendation. I think 400 grand is the recommendation. He's going to have to have the conversation with Al anyway. And they can decide up or down based on priorities. I mean, he may come back and say, I need less. I need the truck. I think that's... Yeah. Yeah. We didn't talk about the truck. Yeah. How do you find the truck in the story with the roads?
Well, my goal doesn't start with 400. I think drop it, you know, 431. We split it in half. Give them a chance to debate it. So give them 400 for the roads. Well, 431. Yeah. No, we can do even. Brad, do you have a view on that? No, I agree. I think the 431 makes sense. I think that makes perfect sense. Liz? I'm not opposed to dropping it or cutting it in half. Um, it's just, it's one of those. I've just had more information. What I would say to you, too. Um, can you expand on that? Like, like, so what goes into the 831 exactly? Well, it's a cost per mile and how many miles. So the town has, I forget how many miles of roads. It's a cost per mile to replace. And they have us on a somewhere between a 15 and a 20 year cycle to road replacement plan. So that doesn't mean every road gets replaced every 15 years, but on average. So for example, I'll pick Clayton Hill Road gets replaced more frequently than my, than Sears Road because the bus traffic on it destroys it. Right. But that's not the average. So they, it's a cost per mile times the number of miles at night. I think we have 96 miles of roadway. Um, replaced over somewhere between 15 and 20 years. So I think I did the math and it's like 17 years. So I think of all the numbers in this, in this chart, other than some of the vehicles.
You could, you could sleep at night knowing that that money will be, it's a good estimate for the projects that they have on their plan to do. And then it, you know, maybe some slated those costs going out and, you know, they might have a little extra that they use to repair. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a good number. It's really a question of where philosophy is that where we're at right now in fiscal 47. Well, and also how, how far in advance are we funded already? That's my, that's my take. They have enough to survive the storm. Cause I mean, this is people and if we don't do it, then what do we do with the people in your situation? That's another, right. So yeah, we don't want to, we don't want to be in a situation where people who would have been doing roads. Although apparently we, we do outside contract. These line painting that's where we have, we struggle with that. Um, so I guess it's the point that we've got a lot happening in the road when it's seven. It just seems to putting out 400 days, kind of a net like a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of it. So yeah, I'll take every little bit I can get. But I guess, I mean, how much room do we say we have half a million to 800? I mean, I say room. I, I, yeah, I, I think. Well, that's free cash. Yeah. Yes. We don't care about adding additional levy debt. But we could move, we could move, there's a few levy debt projects we could move out. Right. So that, that's part of your proposal to add 431 to roads and move roughly 431 into free cash. Into free cash. Yeah. From some items. Yeah. And that would pretty much use up your compliment subject to there being surplus capital to replace. Yeah. I still think you have free cash room. But you saw that truck. I mean, I, I, I think he, I don't think one of them, he wants the full amount of gear and he'd want the truck. I just feel he probably needs the truck more than he needs to. My take was give him 400 of the road, give him the truck. Yeah. Yeah. I think you could get that free cash. Both of those items? I think, yeah. I think. Move the truck into free cash. So you're just trying to say, you're agreeing that you don't have an issue increasing levy debt. Or move something else into free cash if you wanted to push more. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So you're saying move, because the truck's not in here. Correct. It's not in Kelly's memo at the moment. I'm suggesting, based on what you said, 33 is critical. Right. Which is the loader. That's not, because we write. Which loader though? There was H40 swap loader is 370. And then the H11 John Deere loader that he brought forward. So I think that one was the one that. The one that he brought forward. Couldn't wait. Right. And he also brought forward a dump truck. So I think it was those two that were. So that's rows 33 and 34. Yep. For the two that. Right now, none of those vehicles are in Kelly's memo. I mean, that's not a. I mean, at least for his. From a budgeting perspective. His side. And again, I think the top. I'm going to have to. The top holder. We'll have to make a decision. That maybe the take is to give the two. Critical trucks that could be put up for. They're obviously a problem. And half his budget. So that we were saying. Okay. We took 400 from roads. To give you two vehicles. Yeah. And they try to balance that. Yeah. And that's what I would advocate for. Is those two that he had to pull forward. And half the roads. Wasn't the budget with that then? So it drops from about a $1.7 million ask. That's what I would say. That's what I would say. We're saying it's not in 27. So we're saying adding additional to 27. 431 to the roads. And then 475 to the two critical vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because that's not just road. I mean, those vehicles are everything, right? The chaos that just continues to ensue. Yeah. I have on the vehicles in particular. Like I've said before. He had those out. He pulled them in. He talked about why, right? I, I don't want to see. So we have water mean break and you can't do the work that you need to do because you have equipment that doesn't work. That's not a, that's not a place I want to be. So that's the proposal. I'm in agreement with John. That's the proposal in front of us. And just for my benefit, I can't see that the two trucks are described. How? It's the H11 John Deere loader and the H7 F550 dump truck. And the one that's not included? The one that's not included was the H40 loader. Thank you. Which again, it's an even split. Yes, for 715 vehicles. It's getting half. We're cutting half on roads. We're cutting both on half.
The other thing I still don't have a good answer on, and I think we've given where we thought was important on it. I still, I, Nick is also new trying to get up to speed. I think my recommendation to the town manager and, and the finance director would be whether or not he thinks all the existing funding that he's gotten for projects is going to get used on the projects that it was intended for. Or if not, should it be returned, right? As surplus capital and the projects he needs, you know, put forth. Because I, I am a little concerned just because there was so much IT dollars unspent in the report that, that you had. So that was my other, like, and I, I just want to make sure, right. He knows you can't just take money from a project and move it to another one, unless it's, you know, additional funding on the like project. You can't, you can't swap. There's nothing there for IT that's not in the high category. You're talking about simply. I'm talking about in general. Yeah, when he met with us, he obviously, again, had to have time to really evaluate. Exactly. And with the passage of time, there's a good chance that we talked about with him. He may not even recommend now spending that money. Right. Particularly in the IT world, because there's so many things where, like, we planned it four years ago, and the world has changed, and we don't want to do it anymore, right? So I think that's a call out in the MMO. Make sure that, I'm sure the finance director will screw up open capital, as he always does. Yeah. But this is given, I mean, this is a, those are different conversations, right? The finance person questioning whether I should spend it is different than the town saying, go back and say if you really need it, because he might be afraid to do it, or someone said it was important. Yeah, it's... Yeah, well, and there's a tendency, too, you also have to be careful, because, like, well, I don't want to give it back unless I know I'm going to get it on the projects I need it for, right? So I'm open to that. I just want to make sure that that's, that the technical process is happening. Yeah, and I think when he was with us, I think we made that point that it wasn't clear, he's been working in municipal government, that he couldn't simply move money from one project to another. Right. I think it's also good for the town to see, right? Because they're going to say, look at all his money he has, they're not spending, the reality is he may not need it. So it's part of it. Yeah, I'm guessing he needs it, it just might not be needed for the things that he, Yeah. You're more important, right? Thank you. Yeah.
Based on my view of our IT that I've used, I would find, I'd be hard-pressed to be convinced we don't need it. Okay.
Anything? So, back to the DPW discussion. John and I were in agreement. Is everybody else?
Yeah, just again, just so I'm clear that, so we're, the suggestion is the H11 John Deere Loader and the, the dump truck be, uh, approved and the swap load or not. Is that the suggestion? Correct. Yeah. Okay. No, I'm okay. And half the road, yeah, half the road. And half the road, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm good with that. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. Yeah. Half of the roads would get. Yeah. And that's my only other question, if that's all the extras we're adding, what currently is in your draft memo, other than the additional items that talked about earlier in the evening, um, is there any sense that, um, given that, again, the town manager will do what the town manager wants to do, um, is there any sense that folks want to rank order the mediums such that if in the memo we said, this is, this is far as we're willing to recommend? Yeah. The only other one, Brian, is you've got shift commander as a no command vehicle, but that was, that's the car, that's actually the cardiac monitor and that. Yeah. No, my, uh, in my, uh, version seven, I've changed the description. Okay. Okay. That's why I didn't. Yeah. Okay. I didn't see a change description here. Got it. They changed the priority. But other than that, just. My question is, if you want to, if, I mean, for me, the only other things I'd say that, with the rest of the office that are on there with town building on those, as far as I'm concerned, I mean, I can see, you know, it looks like HVAC in the health of the schools. I mean, I, I'd always throw that in there.
Yeah. I'm going to leave that though, as if there's, if there's surplus capital, they can feel, yeah. I'm just asking a question. We feel we want to lay out what, if you decided, town manager, that you have even more money than we think would help them. I, I would, yeah, I agree with Don. Here's your other priority. I would say the HVACs are the one I would do next. There's several of them. It's hard to see it'll go further than that. Yeah. But if it does, then it's just going to pick, everybody picks. Yeah. Well, it's something we're not going to approve because it doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I think, hey, this is what I would add. This is the priority we would add from the list that's kind of that median bucket. Yeah. I think that isn't the website in there, that website, which would be, frankly, it's a medium for IT. Yeah. Yeah. And I, but it was always that. Town manager spoke right up on that one because that's the project he wants to see done. So all I'm saying is if, if, if we feel we want to at least lay out what order in which we would do these things, you know, but again, if we do that, you'll still pick whichever ones. Yeah. I mean, we may leave the ones we have in there. I think IT, we have the governance of maybe which, where you have money and maybe free up that, close those programs and reapply to other IT programs. I mean, that could be cover IT maybe versus- Yeah. The only other one is, and I'm going back to DPW, is we didn't put their radio system upgrades in. So we did school, we did, we did fire and police. We didn't do DPW.
Yeah. Again, I'm fine with what you proposed on the roads, but I- No, I'm not saying we do put it in. I would be more inclined to deal with trucks and upgrades to radios when we're doing all the town radios and just take a pass on roads other than the chapter 90 Monday and surplus. Yeah. I think where I'm at now, Brian, I'm not disagreeing is I'm good with what I've suggested. And if the town manager and, you know, DPW director, and they want to swap it out, they can, they can go ahead. I'm just saying, I would make that swap, yeah. I would like, I don't think, I think going to zero means all progress on road, you know, you're limited on how much progress you can make on roads, and I think that concerns me from a staff perspective. Yep. Right. Maybe patching roads.
Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, we're not going to do this, I mean, we can't, that's for, that's for this forward. If this was, if this was fiscal 28 and we'd have better clarity on the town's operating budget side, and we figured out what happened with the water, I think my view on some of these items would be different. I'm just towing a pretty tough fiscal line, given what we're up against and the unknowns.
Okay. Okay. So we're adding the alternatives that are prior to HVAC, right? I guess we're going to get to the key. Is there a number on that? Uh, there's a couple. This tab, I see, elementary is 14, uh, anyway? 49? 49? Uh, well, on the tab, we're off. 49? That would be fine. That's elementary.
There's a public safety building HVAC, which is 250. I would say I'm schools before I'm public safety building. Um, it's 540 for elementary installation of. Oh, I actually see them. Is there just one of those? There's, yeah, those are the two HVACs. And I would prioritize, I am just not, wasn't sure, because it says installation. If it's adding HVAC versus replacing HVAC, I feel differently about it. Great. Seemed like, I thought when I read it, it was kind of like an additional unit to better coverage. Yeah, I think he, what he said to us, I think it's that of the units on the roof, only a certain number of them are actually working, right? For the school. Yeah, for the school, so. Yeah, he said, yeah, he needs to replace them all every year. Yeah. Yeah, so, so the alternates, it's the HVAC, and if you want to throw the DVD, probably DVD radios in as an alternate, just because of the JCC program overall, it's probably there to do anything. So, no, you're going to deal with this in your draft memo, however you deal with it. Yes, I am. I'm going to just finish up with this Excel workbook, close it up. I'm probably going to take some modification to this schedule to create a section between high and medium to put some of these items we just discussed. Yeah, and I'm doing, just so you know, I'm doing it in my spreadsheet and I can pivot off of it as well. So, Brian James Bromack, how are you? Good, I guess I'm in the wrong room. Do you know where the planning board is here again? Oh, no, that's the wrong one. It's Sanitarium. It's Sanitarium Community Center, of course. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate it. Drive safely. Yeah. Sorry to bother you guys. Hey, Jeremy. That's okay. I mean, I think it's a good person I expected us to get a line, but I was good. Yeah. Well, I only gave us an until seven o'clock to do this, and it's now a quarter after eight. I thought you said nine. I was like, I guess we're all in. No, no. Well, because we, I split with the report, but I actually think we covered a lot of what, we covered quite a few things that are report related, so. Okay, so I'm going to just do one final recap. I'm going to, on this, I'm going to move fields into the medium section. Yep. I'm going to include half of the road, 431,000 or so of the roads in the high section. Yep. I'm going to include those two vehicles in the high section. Correct. The vehicle's going to go up pretty fast. Yeah, I got the funding structure, and then I'm going to take the HVAC from schools and move it up in a little section. At the top of the medium. At the top of the medium. At the medium and high of the medium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. High medium. High medium. Yeah. It's own little section. Okay. Priority medium or something. And then the funding source will stay the same or whatever I have it. What did that have on the HVAC for funding source? It was borrowing. It was borrowing. It was borrowing. Borrowing, but you have free cash on the public safety, but. Did you want public safety also in that, but behind the schools? Yeah, it goes behind the schools. So you'll tell me when you see version seven, if I got it right or wrong at the next meter.
I agree with you, John. It was a good discussion. Yeah. So I think. Okay. So we have to miss the fun part, I guess.
All right. So now I'm going to, let's see, stop sharing. I can get my whole menu bar with the stop share. There we go. Stop share. And let's open up.
And this story is where, when I send this, the workbook out, I've sent it. You may have seen it. I sent it to the ex officio member. So right now I'm all there. Yeah. And Kirsten have seen it. I haven't heard from them, but they're probably going back through the chair. I haven't heard from anybody. Kirsten has replied back saying she was good with it. She did reply back. She did. Yeah. She did. No, she did reply back and say that you had her accurately captured. Some of this won't come as a total surprise when they've been looking at the minutes. Yeah. I did not send them the report because I wanted to have this discussion before we did that. So, all right. So I'm in the report and there's still quite a bit of work I need to do here, but I wanted to get you something to get started with. I did not put the executive summary in because I always do that last after we've actually got
Oh, did I put, do it wrong? Sorry.
I, the IE or, yeah, IE. The funny thing is I thought I, I did that once. No, I thought I copied and pasted it from somewhere. Yeah, maybe.
Mine's usually missing a page.
Okay. All right. So why don't we start with background, Brian. I know you had sent me something. Thank you. That's very helpful. I can, I can amend this to align with it. So it was actually approved. Um, our existence of the committee was approved by the attorney general. Um, I was led to believe it was sort of a default thing, but we actually got a letter proving it and Brian sent that to me. Yeah. And just, you might just because of the length of time after they got approved, it then had to be publicly noticed at least twice. Then there was an issue with one of those public noticing. So they have to do it a third time. So we couldn't officially get going, which I think was the punchline of this until the earliest August 23rd. I think we met on, it says in there in our first meeting. So it was early September.
That at least answers the question of why, why did things seem to be delayed? Yeah. Although that was the intent of this. Although I will also say, even if we'd started on July one, I still think we would have struggled to to do what we needed to do in the timeframe because the timeframe was 15. All right. So my, any other comments on the background? If I make, I'll make some changes based on the technical of when this was approved. So there's some of them that are fired. So in the trimission, it says greater life of five years and the cost. Oh, you're right. Is it four? Five years? No, it's both. Okay. So I thought that was like, if you buy a bunch of small things, it also counted. And a, and a total cost. And a thousand in the aggregate? Yeah. Probably right out of efficiency. Aggregate. Okay. I think you probably just pulled, you gave this. Yeah. I want, I, I, I listed a lot from, yeah, what we already had. I just, we just need to be careful. I mean, that sounds like a, what's on the website might not be totally clear. No, I thought these are documents that were sent out to us. Yeah. It could be on the website as well. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So I just want to go back on members.
Brian, you're probably the best to answer this. I wasn't positive and I saw it written different ways, different places.
Were you and I appointed by the committee, by the finance committee and the school committee, or were we designated and officially this, this select board appointed us? Okay. So we could put designated two, two designees or. Well, that's how I have it. Cause I say this left board appointed us and then I have in the columns who designated. Two of which were designated by. Yeah, I have it. I, I guess I didn't, I didn't throw it in the narrative because it's in the, it's in the chart. That's accurate. Okay. Good. Anything else on the charter mission section? And you guys are free to send, if you've got like Nits and Nat type edits, just send them to me. But if it's, if it's more than an internet, I'd like you to at least call it out in the meeting from a standpoint.
And thoughts on, I've, I've got sort of, I haven't added them, but appendices that I was intending on sort of copying the various documents into an appendix of this just so that everything was in one place and we're not referencing the capital policy, the debt policy. And then somebody who actually wants to leave it has to go like pump them all down. Yeah, I got fired these. I sent you three tables that I thought might end up in a pennies, but obviously with your tables included, two of the things I sent you wouldn't be needed. Okay. Doing up because I wasn't sure what you're going to do. I think, I think one of the tables I sent you was a complete listing of open capital projects. Yeah. As of November 18th, historical record. Okay. Because what happened last year, once Brian, Kevin, he produced, they reported a point in time, Muniz moved on. Then when I tried to go back and reconcile, he said he couldn't recreate. So just, so maybe you could add an appendix and use. Yeah. I think that would be good just because I, I'd like to avoid like any future, like, hey, these numbers don't add up to what, so that they're clear that the open capital. As of the day. Yeah. That would be, you know, just adding that appendix.
All right. So I'm on, any other comments on the charter mission or current process?
The only thing I would add, um, towards bottom, you know, since the committee reviewed the requests,
I'm sorry, since before that. Yeah.
You may have gotten slightly earlier than the rest of us, but probably not much. So I think it'd be helpful to put in that the first got the initial PPW request on October 29th. All right. Okay. I think they were due 30 days after the comment request went out. And we didn't get the other, we didn't get the other ones till November 11th, but I noted in the zip file, they were all dated November 3rd. So I don't know if they went to the family office, November 3rd, and you didn't get them till November 11th. But again, I just think it's relevant in terms of. I think I'll just add the dates I, I received them.
Right. Because in some cases we received like a blank folder for school. So when did we actually get, I'll go back through the emails.
Maybe I'll just put a link. You can see the first, we received the initial submitter from the DBW, you know, October 29th. And over the next two to three weeks, we received the, the rest of them. Okay. You want, you're okay with that versus me just listing it out. Yeah. And then it may not be here is the right place to put it, but obviously we just got some substantive changes for some of these. Yeah.
That may go somewhere else. I apologize, public. I meant to start sharing this as we went through it and I did not.
Okay. I will add that.
Next up is right out of the capital policy, right?
The bullets. They came from, no, I don't think so. They came from, uh, Liz's niceties, but I read them and liked them. Um, but I can, I don't think I could find any. No, the capital policy has it, but it's like a sentence. It's like you should write. Yeah. Yeah. Based off of what we talked about when we were acting exactly like what comes for, you know, so that's. I thought that's where you got them. Let me go back to work. Anyway, I'll, I'll take a look. I feel like the capital policy was light on. It, it mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. This is more how we did. Yeah. I remember our first meeting and asking a question is, are they listed in a capital policy in order? Other than the first one. Yeah. Probably not. Yeah. And I, I, but I like the way this reads. So yeah, I put this sort of in the way I think we thought about it. The order that we, because I moved one of them. Um, but I would also, I didn't want to commit to like, it's strictly this. No, I didn't do like. Yeah. Priority. Yeah. I left that language out intentionally. Yeah. I, I think it was good that way. Is there anything worth adding? Yeah, I think. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, I like the way the current process reads and the way it's set up. I think that's, uh, I think it's very effective. No, I was gonna say if we should add is that, you know, I do not want to make it up again, but the baseball field, that concept of projects that are not fully defined, that we don't, I feel like that should be in there somewhere saying. Yep. I agree with you.
Maybe in financial or just, or maybe it's the last bullet. Yeah. I'll just add a note, um, it's, uh, project readiness as a criteria. I, somewhere I talked in there, I talked about resources and I think it's resources and readiness. Yeah.
Is it resource readiness and open capital or something? I think it doesn't work. Yeah. I, I, when I say resources, I always mean both people and financial, but I don't know that. Okay. The concept of completeness of submission, which kind of goes to the. Yeah. Yeah. It's in completeness. And that'll be more of a longer term. Yeah. It would be hard for me to argue that we completeness was achieved in most cases this year. Um, but I, I give a pass because we didn't make. Yeah. I mean, some of the, some of the things we've now gotten. In fact, asking questions, my view would be the type of information we would hope we get as part of the initial submission. Yeah. I think as I, I outlined here somewhere, I think our request format, the way we're asking for things is, is not our, our current CIP form is ineffective in getting what you actually need. And most people don't fill it out. Yeah. Don't ask why I fill it out. I hate to say it, but. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. The next section I go, I, I, I'm fine with the chart that has the numbers populated. Well, I might suggest on the other items, but on a table, just a narrative. Just do a sentence. Yeah. I'm, I'm good with that. I started thinking I was, and then I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. I was trying to get at the fact there are other ways to fund projects. Yeah, no, I think it's important.
And thoughts on, we have it, I think I have it in one of the charts, but like, I don't know, funding sources calling out impact on taxation. I think it's helpful for anybody who's non into town finance, like understanding that cash capital would be a direct, you know, hit to taxation. Levy borrowing is, is a hit, but free cash and ambulance receipts are not. I, I think that's helpful to have, but I wanted everybody else's opinion. Yeah. Let me probably take a little narrative somewhere. Yeah. I'm able to say, here's the rain. No, these are typically driven by this answer. Yeah. I think it would be helpful to actually take an action to go and refresh myself. What should those categories are for the negative cash funds? So, yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll add, I'll add something there.
Okay. All right. Future improvement targets. I actually, this is the very first thing I wrote. It's. Okay. It's a sensitive subject with the board of public works. I know you took this list from the pin com report, but that retained earnings line item. I, I, what I was thinking is if I add a description that I will put on, because I, I, I want to say this came, like, we didn't make this up. And then make a comment on our understanding is that, um, retained earnings is, is not available currently. Yeah. All right. Let me add that. So I forget. So cheaper process. I mean, I think the two things that still stick out my head, but I don't, first everything to commit us to it, but. Yeah. I mean, open project, open capital project status, health improvement, right? I mean, it's right below it, but we don't actually call it out. We have capital assets, but we don't have to have that over the project status. Oh, yeah. And then the other one was, we want to, some sort of older to say, again, the town building conversation or assessing full scope versus, you know, driving total cost of programs or something.
What would you call that, John? I would call it like understanding. Well, and that bullet on expand long-term capital planning might be including, uh, ensuring that total future costs are, are considered, right? That's right. Yeah. And then maybe saying where, may, where appropriate ensuring that we're revealing, uh, multiple projects impacting the same capital asset. I mean, I don't want to call it two, but that's too much time. I guess probably. I'll, I'll think about how to, yeah, particular asset or. That'll be a part of the first collection, right? So I think the funding, I'm assuming eventually, eventually, but our funding requests are going to extend past the five years. Yeah. That's what the last one is, is that we got to get beyond five years. But I think what John's saying and I like is it's beyond five years with an understanding, a strong understanding of a particular asset. Right. To the extent. I mean, it's the town building. Yeah. In my mind, it's because the five years, you know something that's broken, but that's not right. But if you had a 15 year plan, I would hope the other stuff would end up on there. But it, to me, there's also a pairing of understanding of the town's strategy and direction as to use of buildings, right? Like, great. This building needs all these things. Are you guys planning on vacation, like, are you planning on doing something else? Because that's important. Maybe it's like the, what is the plan for a long-term asset before, you know, maybe it's capital improvements upgrade to the next, something like that. So is there, is the intent to put that on the new funding request? I don't, so I don't think that in particular is something a department manager can answer. And I think that's also a problem with our existing funding, existing CIP, is that it's got a bunch of stuff on it that a department manager wouldn't answer, like funding source. And so they skip over it. I think, I think that question is a strategy question that has to go usually like select board school committee, right? Of what's your use, you know, if we're looking at repairing things at a particular elementary school and school committee is intending to do a building study and build a new building, right? You have to know that in, as a part of, but one of those is a strategic, completely strategic. One of them is, could be strategic, but is likely to be repairs, right? Maintenance of a building. So if we get our information currently from the department heads, but this is really strategic, it's a decision or analysis to be done, decisions to be made. Are we even getting that information? That's, I think there are two different things, right? Improving the CIP is to get better information from the, from the department heads. I think there's maybe a separate bullet here, which is understanding the needs, right? Use needs, right? Of the, of the various town boards, committees, functions, right? But it's a separate, it's a separate initiative. Yeah, it's us. It's us taking the information for someone saying, I need to fix the roof. What else do you have to do? Oh, I don't know yet. Because they're just worried about today and then going up into the town. What's our use plan over the next 10 years? What are your repairs look like? Yeah. And then burying them and saying, well, hey guys, you want to keep using this building, but it's going to cost $15 million. Do you still want to keep using this? But like, does that change? It's, it's the circling back to say, does that change your view on, on how to do this? But I think it's a different body than, so we've got to get information. I think it's probably more to the boards and committees, but. Yeah, it'd be like, we're trying to do new committees somewhere, I guess. Yeah. I don't want to think about that. A good example is the stormwater discussion that we had, which I heard the chair of the sideboard at the meeting Mondays, alert the rest of their members that their board needs to have a further discussion about floating over the next 10 plus years, make sure we know how much money needs to be spent to be in compliance at the end of that period. The good news is, as our liaison, she heard that discussion. Yeah. She's put members on notice, and I said, who does that on their committee? But that's an example right now. We're just seeing $250,000 here, another $250,000 there, but it's millions of dollars. And then we have an asset management plan that they had to approve an invoice for, so that could get done for a grant form or something. Yeah. But that's another example where the department head wouldn't be in charge of that. That's a higher, that's an account manager, select board, school committee, school committee payment. Well, and that's where, you know, before making a bill, it's just understanding what is the actual ask and the intent, and how do we accomplish it? I mean, to me, it's ensuring we're asking questions about multiple days or multiple year capital spends for, you know, that in fact one ask. But is that the vehicle we're going to get that information, the updated capital request? No. And I think it's our budget. I think it's the 10-year budget saying, hey, these all go together. And it's for a building, that's going to be information request meetings. Yeah. Mr. Ryan said, like, if we had, if we start breaking down sections like vehicles, we see them, hey, this is town, but these are all the town building to ask, if it's a certain problem, we say, okay, this is the problem. Yeah. I don't think it's a CIP form. I think that's, it's a little more qualitative, you know, awareness of what's going on in the boards of committees, working with our liaison, right, on the select board, possibly Brian, you working with school committee on like, hey, what's on the horizon? And use-wise. So I, it's, it's not as defined in my head of what it looks like. I just know we need to have better, we're going to need to have better information in order to achieve, you know, a long-term beyond five-year calendar. Right now, it makes it work as improve visibility, too. I mean, that makes it kind of- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. kind of how meeting stuff is done. That's one of the things we want to do is have a joint meeting. Yeah. I look forward to the manager of school committee and make it a working session to talk through some of these themes, concepts and themes. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're the ones that they're going to- Well, they're going to have to do- I mean, so again, queuing them up to, hey, you've got to start thinking about this, it's a bit of a change in the process, absolutely. Like, the schools are working on a separate master plan for the elementary schools. I don't know if they're- I even think we should do that, just having the updated, you know, capital request from like, oh, by the way, we talked about getting better clarity and information and this is how we're going to do it. It's questions now. Well, that's the thing, right? All this is disconnected, essentially, with all these master plans. So that's the problem. Okay. The town master plans. Yeah. I mean, all this band-aids until we get there, right? That's all this is. Yeah. Okay. There's a bunch of notes to expand this section a bit more. All right, both in capital, Brian, I basically just took what you had done. Would you like me to foresee tables in front of these, and if not, I can put in table one and two and fill in blanks and send it back to you? The only thing is, I'm not sure if I'm not going to end up with a table in the executive summary. Okay, I'll wait till you're ready. If you want to just send me- they're spreadsheets, right? Yeah. I mean, I can copy and paste them myself just on your spreadsheets. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I didn't do anything to that, because I love it. I hope you guys like my watermark. Oh, they can only read it in a few places. I just wanted to make sure. Draft subject to material revisions. I didn't want anybody to- I might have a couple of questions on the next section. Yeah. I think I sent you one already in the email. Whatever numbers you decide- Yeah, you're not trying- Because I know you have to update them anyway. Yeah, I'm going to cross reference to what yours is. My only thought would be, well, I have no issue putting the total, whatever the total turns out to be, that was initially submitted. And I know you referenced right after that, 30.6 million. So just do the math for people and just say that it's 18.5 million, which then people can equate to what we're recommending. Yep. And I've already given you my MWA comment. Yes. Do them in and extract. You have to change this during the discussion tonight. Yep. I will change the numbers. And I will- Generally, generally recommended limiting, and then add some verbiage on the two or three items that we have talked about adding in. Yeah. So you want to say the committee recommends generally limiting- Yeah. Generally- That's right. Yes. Okay. So if you have in mind the narrative summary of capital projects- So what we had- I looked at the FinCom report last year and it just had a real couple sentences on what's really driving the six million. Personally, I'm not a math person. I don't love narratives. I love throwing charts out there and just having you see what's there. But I figured once we nailed down what the projects were, I'd probably add a little bit around, you know, major projects being the septic. You start at a high level and say- Yeah. Town flip, schools flip. Yeah. Exactly. Enterprise funds flip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Kelly says she don't want to just put- When they write the reports, generally you do a couple sentences in there, but then there's a table that says the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a just throw the table in person. So you included this particular part of that section. You included the septic under the schools, which I don't have an issue with. It's the place for the high school, but he's an owner. Yeah. So here's the thing. In my spreadsheet, I actually broke the facilities identifier as facilities slash schools, facilities slash rec, right, to who are the other partners. I can do that here, and I'm okay with that. I kind of like it in the schools. Yeah. Just because- It's how we've done it. The reason I left it that way is because that's how we've historically, in FinCom's report, that's how we've historically, we've given facility projects that were schools to schools. And the existing facility was built as part of a high school building. It was. A school building. Yeah. Well, I don't think anyone really cares who's spending the money. They want to know what if you've got everything to have. Yeah, it gets tricky because facilities, like all their other projects are dotted all over, but I tend to separate my, and I think most people do, town versus school, right, rather than more detailed parts. Especially if it's going to have some spending spending. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you drop 2 million into facility, people are like, what are you doing? Yeah. I will tell you that- We don't. Again, I have no issue with this. Again, I think it'll hopefully get a slightly improved chance of passing town meeting, but we're going to add a couple more items potentially here, the schools. Yeah. And my understanding is the operating budget at the moment is, the operating budget is pretty sizeable increase in the school budget and a relatively smaller increase for the town budget. So both operating and capital schools are going to be outsized. But those projects will be called out above as the top projects anyway, right? I mean, you're going to accept tickets that way. I put it below. And we have to do it. Yeah. It's on the next page. Anyway. Which I was going to put in the appendix. I'm like, no, it needs to come up front because you need to know what those are. So is DPW nothing from this current draft? They do, which is part of why I initiated that conversation because that doesn't make sense sense to me just broadly that you've got a lot of assets there. How could you be at no spend? They have a $36.8 million project. Well. Yeah. Anyway. So this, this table will get increased for the town building room, the two elevators things. Yep. I think all the fire alarms, the hot water heater. So what would you group that in department-wise? It doesn't make sense knowing that that's going to be a major topic like school. I'm going to be right. No. The tech, the buildings, the elevator stuff. Are you better off the department? That is going to go in facilities. Okay. It's going to go in facilities, but it'll be on this, this exhibit. It'll show exactly right of the layout. Exactly what it is. Okay. Um, it's not in the summary. And I, I debated if the summary that I have on whatever page this is, is needed. If we then give the next, cause I actually like the next page better. Cause it does the projects. It just doesn't, it doesn't summarize a total for each department. I don't. Yeah. I wouldn't mind not excluding the first table. And I know it's appeared in the FinCom report in the past, but. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Yeah. I think it's redundant and not as useful as the next one. So. Okay. Yeah. I'm great. All right with that, Brad. Yep. Yep. Good. Yep. I got an email from FinCom about, you know, what I, what I keep updating. Would Brian, would you and I keep updating the tables for them? And I said, well, I'm going to update my tables to do our report. But I can't guarantee I'm going to, you know, keep updating them. As, as things change. I mean, I'll help if there's a question, but. Okay. So that'll all get updated. Brian, this reflects. I know this happened when I, after I left InCom breaking out water. And waste water as a separate chart that didn't used to be the case, but that came about. Yeah. Right. Well. Enterprise funds. Yeah. Yeah. They have to be separate. Right. But they weren't for, for many years. Right. That was a decision. That was a change last year. I'm excited. See it all. Yeah. What I didn't have time to do for this and I'm not planning. I may get ripped into helping is in the warrant. There's a description of each and every project that we're recommending for the current year. I mean, that takes a lot of time to get together. So I don't think it can go in our report. I won't. Much less of it changes. Yeah. So I don't want to, I would happily help put it together once they've nailed down projects, but I don't. Yeah. In the warrant that has like the summaries, but the CIP forms. I mean, except the CIP forms generally don't have what needs to do in there. I've been, I've been reaching out to department managers to create the descriptions. Yeah. So. Okay. Um, and then that's, I didn't start. I didn't have enough time to get into the out years. So what I will do next was some of the same tables that we put in the warrant. I'd like to produce for the out years based on where we find medium load. I think the problem is this is cumulative if we medium something in 27. We're not including it. Am I, am I pushing? What's your general philosophy? Am I pushing? I thought we decided, um, given where we are in the process that, um, we needed to get official 27, the town manager. Yep. Um, we needed to continue our work. Yep. Uh, having ranked that we were going to maybe include with this, which is a table I sent to you, which needs to be slightly cheap. So just give the high, medium, lows for each. Our rankings. Yep. That's fine. Um, we put, we, I sent version five of that spreadsheet. It is version six too, but I sent version five after the last meeting to the finance director and copy the town manager saying this is before Christmas. Um, you might want to, you know, our memo is not going to get discussed until after the new year. Yep. Here's our rankings. You might want to get going and filling out your own budget template, which includes exactly what you're talking about. They're going to be making their own decisions anyway. Um, what I heard my instructor say on Monday evening at the FinCom is that they're waiting to get our report, which will include fiscal 27 and five-year plans, which is exactly what you were just starting to describe, which are the, which I didn't tell them we would do. And we, we've, we've said, we've only said that we would provide the rankings. And I know that that was understood because, um, I got some comment back about it. Right. Um, I'm not saying we didn't start out and the charge for the bylaws that we shouldn't in fact be producing a five-year plan with numbers. Yep. Based on how we feel based on all the information we've gotten fit in the financial plan. Our problem was we asked several times for the financial resources in the out years. And what we were told was just use what was provided in fiscal 27 through 30 last year's five-year plan. But it doesn't address fiscal 31. But on my spreadsheet second tab, it kind of showed that at the bottom of the tab. Here's all the requests we got. Here's what we were shown in last year's five-year plan is available funding sources. And every year we were short. So that left open the question. Are we supposed to. We flop. Cut it to cut our recommendations down to meet those. Finance bills or are those going to change based on accounts finance. So. We needed at the last minute you were here down. We said, we need to get something. And I thought what we're going to do is forget. Pretty much done here in this section say, we just haven't gotten all the information. We need to properly assess. We still have $4 million of facilities projects that. We're waiting to find out how much in which years. They're not fiscal 27. And we haven't really talked about. The. Movement of numbers. If we have to move numbers and end up with. You know, a specific table like the ones in here for each year. We can do that, but it's not going to get done at the next meeting or the meeting after that. And. Which is why I suggest the town manager and the finance director get going. Because they're going to do what they're going to do anyway. Right. Yeah. We're going to do our rankings. I'd say put the rankings in this section in the same group. You know, I would say at your direction. We will continue to work on developing a five. So that's what I'd like to do. I would like to put the rankings for the out years. Right. In here. We can put it and I can do it two ways. I can summarize the dollars. Right. That ranked high low medium low. As a summary. And then. A listing with. With everything. In the detail. I would like to and we can issue a report. And then. I would like to go still as a committee. Keep working on. What we think a plan would look like. Now the question is. Is that a futile effort. Right. Because they're going to go change a bunch of stuff anyway. And so. Let's see what they come up with and start over. I don't. I don't think it's completely futile. Only because. We're going to have to do this all again next year. And I would like to know what we. Where we stand on. What we think about the projects. And to the extent they come up with a plan. And we're like. Yeah. That's not what we thought. Right. I'd like to identify that. We just went through a process. Yeah. With one year, which. That's the most clarity. It's just going to be. It's just. Yeah. Yeah. We should do that. We can do that. It's just. Yeah. It's going to take more time than. We know there's a big gap too. And what's the next year's highs. Everyone said they didn't do that. Yeah. But. I mean. I don't want to add more work. My. My almost thought is that. Is our first pass. I mean. I mean. Each year. We're at. But. Do we take what's left. And then say. Okay. In 28. These are having you. High media. Right. Well. After the last meeting. Yeah. After we all. Right. Yeah. Okay. The consolidated ranking. Which is in the spreadsheet. I produced it. The exhibit. Yeah. So we have that. Then we should review that. That's just to say. Okay. So I can. I can update that. No. We did last. We did last week. The week before break. I'll update the exhibit. I sent you that. Consolidated our ranking. Yeah. After the meeting. I'll circulate it. To everybody. So they have it. It's. It's in the. It's in the. Yeah. Yeah. It's spread out. And now you have all the. I squished it down into five columns. Yeah. Focusing on the rankings. And I think I have the dollars in the rankings. Yeah. And it just made it easier. To be concise. Yeah. But what we're talking about is. Then. Do we keep them going forward. And we're creating. You know. One of these tables. For each of the next four years. Deciding what's in. And what's out. Based on our rankings. And I think. I agree with your point Kelly. Given where we are in the process. If they. Which is. I think what we've been saying. For. A month. How management. A structure should. Do that. Based on what they know. Their resource. Allocation. The. We keep working on it. And. I suspect there'll be. A fair amount of agreement. Yeah. But. Whatever they decide to do. They're going to do. Is along the way. We could. Say. We'll provide you with. As soon as we can. We'll provide you with. Yeah. I'm not opposed either. To issuing a report. And issuing. An addendum. Yeah. To the report. But I want to get this. I want to get. FY27 out. Yeah. But just say that in the report. Because meanwhile. I know the FinCom. Is expecting. Not only to get a. Fiscal 27. Capital budget. But they also. Want to get. Five year plan. And. And they got their. Cancel. Because they're going to. Have articles. The operating budget. And so. Seven capital budget. Yeah. And. But. But. The base record. And the commander. Have to be. Moving on their own. In my opinion. On. Yeah. I agree. 28 to 31. I agree. Right. I'll. I'll. Recirculate that table. After I. Update. For. Additional projects. And then. You can. Decide. You know. It'll. Refer to it as an exhibit. Yeah. Or I'll figure out. How much. What. What. If there's a format. Of some of the information. To put it in. Okay. Right. Yeah. Okay. When is our. We hope to get this. Agreed to. Is issued by our next meeting. Yes. At our next meeting. At our next meeting. Yeah. I'd like to be on. Final edits. At our next meeting. Okay. So. Next meeting is scheduled. For. Next Wednesday. Um. It's. Currently. Confirming that. I'll be remote. Yes. It's currently scheduled for. We had talked about. Six o'clock. Um. Is. Are you guys amenable. To 630. Yeah. Have a child. Leading the country. For months. So. I'd like to. Uh. Yeah. Well. Today. Somebody. Is. That. Yeah. An amount of luck. That I don't like to depend on. Is what I would like to say. My daughter. Waited a little longer. That she should. To. To get her visa situated. Um. Yeah. Okay. It came in the mail. Today.
Pardon. Do you have a question Brad? Nope. Nope. Nope. She was just laughing. Yeah. So if we can. If we can push back to. 630. I'd appreciate it. Just. That's fine. Yep. Yep. On Wednesday the 14th. And we're going to be in the select board. Um. Meeting room. Okay. That's because the heat's working tonight. Like. Yeah. Although the select board doesn't work. Maybe after tonight's discussion. We may have a full crowd next day. Yeah. Good. Awesome. All right. Um. Let's. Can we move to minutes? Uh. Before we do that. Brian. Do you think we needed a vote? Um. I mean we got agreement. But we didn't vote. Um. On our rankings. Do you think it's sufficient to just vote. When we get the final report? Uh. I think when we get the final report. Yeah. Yeah. I think. I agree. Um. Okay. Minutes. I have no. New format. This was the agenda. This was now the required. Format. Yeah. Which I just want to say for the public. There we got a new format for the minutes. And for the agenda. And I quite frankly thought the changes were great. Um. It was. The agenda lets me pick the committee name off a drop down. Pick the date out of the calendar. Um. And I sent those comments to the town clerk. And she. And she. Had expressed that. She was happy to hear that. Because a lot of people. Did not like them. Um. But I thought it was pretty slick. And helpful. To me. So. I don't know about how you felt on the minutes. I think in the minutes are fine. I've added. You see I added a. But no. For example. Just to. Add some additional detail. Which they're fine with. I think there were certain. Yeah. I added. I added some things too. Yeah. There was certain key information. They wanted to be consistent across every board and committee. Yeah. But basically said. How. How the rest of the minutes go is up to you. Yeah. So. Obviously. If you all have any substantive questions or edits. You can have some time. I do not. Yeah. No comment. They're robust. And as an example. Every once in a while. When. If we spend time. Talking like. On. Big tables and things. I'll just. Add. Attach the table. Yeah. Right to the minutes. The public's benefit. That's fine. That's fine. Um. I'm actually fine. If you. Attach. The direct. Like. Just attach the whole thing. Addendum to the back of the minutes. Right. That's up to you. Um. Okay. No discussion on the minutes. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes. Of December 17th. Motion to approve. And a second. Second. I wasn't here. So. Nope. That's fine. And we're gonna have to do. A. Roll call vote. So. I'm gonna start. First. With. John. If you. If you. You don't have to. But you can. Yes. Yes. Brad. Brad Carver. Yes. Brian. Brad Carver. Yeah. Liz. Yeah. Kelly. Yes. So the minutes of December 17th are approved. Uh. I don't have any topics not reasonably anticipated. I think I did mention earlier. Select board. Um. Our separate liaison has asked me if I would come to select board. Um. To talk about. Our work. Um. Where we are at. And what our challenges are. And I. Expressed to her. That one. I wanted to talk to the committee about it. But that. I wouldn't. See us doing that. Until we've actually voted and issued the report. And then I would. Um. Provided the committee is okay with it. I'm happy to do that. Once. We have a. Any concerns. No. Um. All right. So next meeting. We said 630. Wednesday. The 14th. In. The flat board. Room. Do we want to schedule. Beyond that. I think I would like to. I get a hybrid room. You probably should. Yeah. So. Can we do the 21st. Which is the following. I just. I'm just. In case there's any. Follow up. I hope. You cannot. Okay. Get out of. That's great. That's great. Okay. Any days that week. Folks can do. Monday. Oh. Monday is a holiday. Oh. It's a holiday. Only hybrid days are Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Yeah. I can do Tuesday. I might just not be. I've got. Three days in a row. Okay. Brad. Can you do Tuesday? Yeah. It was 20th. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Let's see if I can get that. In the event. Medium. In the event. We get done. And. The 14th. And we're like. Hey. We need a little break. Before we take on to the next. We can do that. But just. I just want to have it there. Just in case. We've got any. Follow up. Okay. If we'll finish next week. Do you think you'll get feedback. Probably. Before that. I don't know. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. And. Unless there's a. What was the next. Major town meeting. Next town meeting. For this. Yeah. Um. Let's go ahead and go out one more week. Just so that. In any event. We don't meet. On the 20th. But I've got another one out there. So. Days of the week. Preferences. Are we talking about the. The week of the 26th. Uh. The last week in January. Okay. The 28th. Is the Wednesday. Yeah. I would like to do the 28th. As possible. I'm going to be out of. I'm going to be out of. I'm going to be out of state. From the 28th. Through May. February 7th. Um. Yeah. So. I can do the 27th. I can. Yeah. 26 or 27. I can do. Yeah. I can do the 27th. I can. Yeah. 26 or 27. I can do. Good. Lizzie. Okay. PMVC is meeting. That's nice. Well. 27. Yeah. Can you do the 26th? Definitely do the 26th. Okay. 26. Okay. For us. Yeah. We can go from six to seven. Then that works. Be done at seven. You can start at seven. No. No. Don is perfect. Yeah. That's why we were laughing. Yeah. Okay. All right. I will. I'm just going to get those reserved. And we'll. We'll go from there. Okay. That might be the. It doesn't affect us as long as they have a room somewhere. It's hybrid. You know. Maybe there's been time. You want an article hearing that night. Okay. Yeah. If I, if I can't. We'll go from there. But. If we can't. We said Wednesday. Brad could do Tuesday. Wait. That was Tuesday. We decided. Or Monday. Sorry. We said Monday. We said Monday. Yeah. I can. I can. I can do Tuesday. I'm going to do Tuesday. Yeah. So just in case. If we can't get Monday. I'll book Tuesday. And I'll. I'll do hybrid. But I'll. Yeah. Yeah. No. I understand. Okay. I got a. What is CIPC. Like somebody saw it on the. One of the kids on the calendar. What is CIPC. It's like. Oh, so we haven't been listening to me for the last three months. That's awesome. All right. If you like. Are we. Good. Can I get a motion to adjourn. At. 904. Second. All right. And we have to do a roll call. Brad. Are you in favor of the motion to adjourn. Yes. Brian. Yes. Liz. Yes. Yes. We are adjourned at 904. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad. Are you in favor of the motion to adjourn. Yes. Brian. Yes. Liz. Yes. Don. Yes. We are adjourned at 904. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And I'm going to review the agenda. So this is, as I said, a hybrid meeting because we are in the town building and on Zoom. I have to read the OML statement. So this meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, will be made available to the public on WICAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Public will be excluded from executive sessions. We're not having one, so it's no big deal. Today, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. If this meeting has remote-only access, no in-person attendance by members that are publicly permitted, that is not the case today. If this meeting has remote access, which it does, one may watch or participate remotely at the meeting length that can be found. I'm not going to read this out loud, but it's available on the town's website.
Okay. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so. In person or on Zoom, public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. And so attending in person, we have Brian, Liz, Kelly, and John. And attending on Zoom is Brad. So we will be needing to do roll call vote for any votes that we take. And I'm going to go ahead and review the agenda, and then we can do announcements in call comment. So 6 p.m. is called the Order Review Agenda for Public and Announcements, 6.05, Public Comment and Members Response, 6.10, continue to review of the Excel spreadsheet reflecting consolidated departmental capital requests for FY 2027 to FY 2031, including answers to questions from department managers and revisions to requests and potential vote of the committee's position on ranking such requests. 7 p.m. We're going to discuss content, revisions, and potential vote on the draft of the committee's report to the town manager. I left out of time, but at 9.20, we're going to review and vote to approve the minutes of December 17th, 2025. 9.25, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. 48 hours prior to posting, if any, and setting the times of our next meetings. And 9.30, hopefully, adjourn. So is there anybody in the queue for public comments? So no one there for public comment? One member of the public who I not want to make public comments, so we are all set there. I do not have any announcements. Does anybody else have announcements? Brad, you all set? Yep, all set. Okay. All right, so I want to go ahead and get started on discussing capital. So I sent you guys, I forwarded you a bunch of responses to questions that I had based on our last meeting and based on review of going through the spreadsheets. I had sent out to various members of town staff, and they had sent back, and I think sort of highlights of those, if you didn't get a chance to look at them. Christine from schools did get a quote for the security, which was the radios. It was, as I understand it, Brian, correct me if you think I read that wrong, did include the full request, so not just a phase one or phase two, because she hadn't done the estimate previously. And that amount did come in significantly lower than her placeholder. I think her placeholder was 200 for phase one, and I think it came in at 135 for everything. So that was good news. On fields, I still have a question outstanding, but did try to pull a little bit further on costs that we're currently experiencing as a result of the baseball fields not being playable. And what it seems like to me from those responses is that they are used, but they are not being used for games, that they, whenever they have a game, they're doing an away game. So they're not necessarily experiencing field rental costs, but they are having to pay for bussing, which is costing about $500 per prep. And obviously they reiterated the cost of the septic, and obviously they reiterated the cost of the septic needing to haul waste off site is costing, I think they said $150,000 range. What I didn't get an answer on yet that I've asked a couple times different ways is the question Brian had asked earlier on, which is we have a project that was in the plan originally for FY29. It was called phase three, the high school fields project, which is from 2017, there's a document attached that shows kind of the sequencing of rebuilding the football stadium, swapping the softball and tennis courts, all that those were phase one and phase two were done. Phase three was the baseball diamonds in that plan, it's moving the base, the two baseball diamonds and making room for a multi use, multi configurable rectangle. Sorry, trying to get this to go out of the problem that is in that plan. And the project that was on the docket for FY29 was phase three, which links back to that document, but there was also a second project that was in the plan then and still in the plan now for $75,000 design and $2.5 million of fields to build rectangles where the baseball diamonds used to be. So it seems redundant, which Brian had said from the beginning, I can't, I've yet to get an answer, I don't think you've gotten an answer confirming whether or not that actually is redundant or not.
It seems like that second one should come out, but I can't get an answer. So in the later years of the plan, attempted to drop it to low until we get an answer, if we have it all right. Okay, so that was fields, and we sent a request to IT, because it wasn't clear to me in their requests. We have in the plan, one of the security projects, we have it phased the way that he's got the expenditures laid out. So it was $425,000 total, phased over three years, we have it as three projects. He answered me today, but he didn't really answer my question. He gave me more detail on the projects, but didn't really answer the question of, is that supposed to be one project with a three-year spend, or is it supposed to be three projects? And so I'll follow up again just to get that answer clarified. The biggest thing that came across was, I had asked some questions of the facilities director, and I got back, it was the questions of, do you have an answer to break down on the roof, right? And he did give that back, and he did break it down into phases, but he sort of reworked his whole plan for a few other things that had come up with the elevators here in this building, and swapping some other things out. So it was essentially a bigger tweak on his overall plan than what we had talked about before. So with all of that, I would like to do a couple of things before we get into the report itself. I would like to do a couple things on walking through Brian's spreadsheet, and that is, one, looking at the changes that facilities made, and ranking the ones that we haven't ranked. I would like to also talk about where, if all we have room in capital spending sources, and this is a bit of a tough thing to say, but given the size of the MWRA project, arguably you have no room in anything anywhere, right? But at the same time, I think there's probably some space in things that don't affect taxation, specifically free cash. And so I want to talk a little bit about that. Ultimately, it's not our call. Ultimately, the town manager and the finance committee and finance director will make that call. But I do think there might be a little bit more room to get in a couple projects, and what stuck out to me is DPW, we don't currently have anything in the plan. And I do think, one, we have to revisit roads and discuss roads, and two, it doesn't make sense to me. It makes sense to me to hold off on some projects because of clearing the backlog. Vehicles at DPW doesn't necessarily make sense because those that don't tend to be things that tie up resources for a long period of time. And so if we've got needs in order to continue service, I think we need to, pushing that off doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of benefit from a service standpoint or from helping keep the backlog cleared. So I'd like to talk about that as well. So why don't we start with facilities and the changes in the facilities budget or request.
Let's see if I can move this so I can actually see. Was that all on the 8th, the subject project was called, or is that a separate? No, it's throughout his budget, he made changes. So I was going to... That's not a big thing about the Excel file that came out earlier, right? So if you look at the version 6 of the Excel spreadsheet, I decided the easiest way to do that, just to allow us to continue to track what we've looked at before, it was added column that showed divisions, and most departments are no changes, so I just carried over the total. So the facilities and the schools were the only two that you'll see revised numbers, and you can see it in the spreadsheet, but it's the very first item that I'll just add. What Kelly just said, facilities director, they did what we asked them to do, which is rethink the roofing part of it.
The first six items up there, they're showing as zero in the revision, and what he submitted back, simply left those open. And I, for the moment, if you move to the right a little bit, I simply parked them in fiscal 28, in the revision column. That's not necessarily what he has suggested, and probably an open question for him is, is he still looking at those items to see if there's anything there that he's proposing be funded in fiscal 27, which is most urgently needed? And if not, that's fine. And then, as to what's parked at the moment in fiscal 28, when does he think he'll be able to provide more color on the dollar amounts and timing? Yeah, so what I read in his email, how I read it was that he has to delay it because of other things that have come off here, sounded like the elevators, other things that are going on, and that he was also trying to get better information on cost and exactly what needed to be done. And so it seemed like he sort of tabled it. I think the question for us is, do we put it in FI 28 or in another year? Right. I feel like we should, because it's a significant amount of money. At a minimum, if we don't do that, I think we have to have a paragraph on the town building. But along those lines, and why I could go with either approach is, we know that's not everything, right? And so I think it's still worth, even if you put it in FI 28, I think it's still worth discussion in the report about, you know, there's an elephant in the room here of this building and what it needs. And we don't have a number over, we're dealing with what has to have to be done right now, but we don't have a good concept of what, when, and how much the building needs overall. And I don't think we can go back to the town, as I've said before, to ask for that until we have that whole number. So we can talk about it, what other people's feelings are, do we want to just move it out and do another year because we know it needs work, or do we want to leave it out and call it out as a, you know, this isn't everything, there's more that likely would be needed to bring the building up to standard. I can be convinced either way. Yeah, I think the finance director chose to pull five and a half million out of fiscal 27, 20, 25, I don't know how many more, and it didn't appear in the capital table, so I'd rather pull all in a footnote indicating that there was this aggregate amount to spend. So that is sort of similar to the approach where we would obviously include it in 28, but put it in a paragraph. To say, this is what's left. Yeah. But we still don't know. Yeah. I don't feel comfortable putting it in any other year, because I have no basis on which to phase it. And at least for me, I don't really care either way. I think it just needs to be clearly identified as it's still an open question and highlight, I think, the point you're making, which it's really difficult to look at those dollars outside the context of what's going to happen to the building. Yeah. And if they're staying, what other costs over what period. So I don't know how others feel about it or where they want to wait until you get to the report to address that. But I just wanted to highlight that that's why you see it in the fiscal 28 column. What he did do is identify $310,750 needed to redo the roof, the flat roof over this section building, the gym. And assuming that's based on whatever ongoing conversations he's having with a vendor, focused on fiscal 27 per minute. But the only odd thing I found about that was he gave a lot of airtime to the structural issue over the town manager's office, which is on the opposite side of the building. And that was the one that he seemed most concerned about addressing sort of the waiter. He's got that one programmed in fiscal 28, which he's identified it. But nonetheless, that's his call. And I, it just, it always makes me a little uncomfortable when people, and I'm sure it was based on whatever information he had at the time, and maybe further inspection to determine that. Well, this one's leak actively leaking. This one's actively leaking. Yeah. Versus the other one. It's actively leaking, and it's been leaking for a while. I agree with you, right? I mean, I, based on his comments, I'm surprised to get pushed. But I think, based on, I don't know what the situation in the elevator is, I assume that's up there in terms of safety. So, I would agree. It's not going to safety, you can't, like, the buildings no longer, it won't be ADA compliant. Yeah, the elevators weren't, they may have been in the on-site insect report, I haven't gone through all those reports yet. But, but again, yeah, that one wasn't even on the radar screen, but, and so the only thing I'm concerned about the roof is just have him confirm that he's comfortable, that there is no active safety issue. The phase two. Over, over the town manager's office. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about $150,000, our safety issue, I don't think that, that's not, as things go, it's not the worst thing out here. If it's, he hasn't listed as phase two structural. Well, the problem is, I think, to get at the structural issue, he's, he's, I think, assuming that the roof is ripped off, whatever the underlayment is under the. Yeah, there's two pieces of that. So, he just broke it into the structural roof, et cetera. Yeah. And I don't think he can deal with this structural without doing the 500. Yeah. So, but I'm assuming that he's programmed this way, he must be comfortable. So, I just want to see if we can get him on record to say. Yeah. I wrote it down. Yeah, I mean, I agree with the overall assessment, which is, I mean, yeah, there's no way, just with all the cost, to me, if they missed a half-million-dollar elevator and the cost of something to repair, then that's not a little thing. So, my personal take is, I don't know where our leeway is on this. I mean, I like the idea of one and two. I think those are pretty sound. Like, I mean, the defense was there, right? We know what they were in the structural, the rest is fine. I mean, the roof is straightforward, but I think, yeah, we put below the line, here's what's been identified as additional costs, but our recommendation is that a full building assessment is done, because this is likely a little bit of the bare minimum, right? And I think we identified that elevator, you know, case of the point, elevator for half a million was just added in 2017. Yeah. That would be my personal take, but I absolutely agree with you. I think five million is, you know, I'd be very surprised if it's less than 10 if you really get it to where you want it to be. Yeah. But the interesting thing is, we have 2.8 in for the roof, and the sum of the five pieces, I think, is 1.8. So, I think maybe, to John's point, to that point, Kelly, maybe in the report, a sentence or two. Yeah. Just, just, and again, I understand that, you know, Michael, again, just joined, partly through last year, he was catching up on a lot of projects, really hadn't, you know, he kind of, I think, brought forward, was probably in the file, and they just drive home the point about, we needed to be a bit more rigorous, upfront analysis before presenting proposals to this committee, the town manager, whatever. Yeah. Is that, I mean, is that the right approach for something like this? I mean, he's not, I mean, we're talking about essentially, we're dealing with the whole building, right? He's just, his focus is repair. These items now look more like what absolutely has to get done in his opinion. And so, do we recommend, I mean, do we go with the part of recommending that perhaps this becomes its own, I don't want to call it, committee, right? Like everything else, saying, should there be someone appointed to actually do a full assessment? Well, this, their, their, their, on-site, in-site was an assessment of the building. I think he's just, he's, in his defense, he's scrambling, right, to put together, give, having, new in the role, to take what was protected in the past, marry that with the on-site, in-site, and dig in. So, I think a little more time, he'll be able to do that. But is that, that, get it to what we, like, tell, or is that just repair? Yeah, this is the other question, though. Like, there's a bigger question, which is, and the select board has asked me when we're done with our report to come and, you know, talk to them about what we've, what our report is, what our challenges were. Or, one of the things with your, your buy-in guys that want to talk to them about is, they need to, they need to figure out what they're doing, right, what the plan is for this building. Because otherwise, we're going to start burning into, we're not going to have a choice, right? It's just like the roof. You're going to have to, the elevator. You're going to be spending millions of dollars, and you're going to do it by default. Some cost, and then you're forced to just say we can't leave the hours. Right. So, I think there's two points here, both of which I think are valid. And I think both should be made in the report. Not a long-winded discussion, but just, these are things that became clear to us as we evaluated the site. One, we really need some initiative to determine what future use, because if the facility's director can't do the second part of it, John, which is, over one period, you know, what needs to be done and how much does that cost, because, yeah. Yeah, I think we just approach this, but we don't understand the full scope and cost of this project, just based on the emergency department, right? Yeah. We already see an additional 4 million ahead of us, or 5 million, and we already have a half million added before we finish that conversation. I mean, I don't know how long we want to word that, right? Well, you had a 10% error rate, and we're three, four months into this. What Kelly said, though, it actually is net favorable variance at the moment, because the roofs went from 2.8 to 1.8, and the elevators are in there and a half million. So we're half a million ahead of where we were, but we still have that top six items that, you know. But I have no confidence, and this is nothing, this is nothing against Michael. I have zero confidence that this encompasses all of the demons that are in this building, right? Go ahead. Hey, we're still going for an analysis of all the towns building, so we don't have the confidence that you know. They have an overarching, what's called on-site, in-site came in and did something, but that doesn't get down, from my understanding when we asked him about this, it doesn't get down to the level of detail. It gives sort of, it goes through and says, okay, your boiler is X number of years old. It's probably going to need to be, you know, looking at it from here, it's going to, in this condition, he needs a deeper. That's what I'm talking about. He hasn't had the opportunity yet to go to each site and look at staff and get eyes on-site. Okay, yes, I agree with this, or it's better than or worse than. And so I would imagine everything we're going to get from facilities is going to be, and so he's gone through and- For sure. Do we have an idea of how long? Well, that's why I say those first six items- But I mean, so we could- I think we have to ask Michael, and I think that's in the report, right? I put a future section, sort of what I wrote first, which was one of the things that we, as a committee, want to do, right, when we get beyond this report. And one of them is, and it starts with the facilities director and other department heads, but what is the condition of everything where, like, we need a better underlying understanding of that in order to be well-informed as we're prioritizing. So I don't think we have it now. I don't know when we're going to have it. I'll add it to my Michael- Well, I was just saying, like, the changes that we saw, I would imagine we're going to have more iterations of that just as continues to go through staff. I mean, it's possible when this leaves this committee. We'll have to snap a line and say, based off of- There could be changes from the department heads direct to the town manager. So before we claim, say, that 600 grand of the attic, it's probably part of the attic. It's just not- I'm sorry. Oh, because the attic's in a different place? Yeah. Yeah, it could be. He inflated the attic in a different lineup. Yeah, that's true. I didn't think about that. I viewed that as possibly a different project, but yeah, you're right. Yeah, but he talked about it when he was talking about the roof replacement. He talked about it when they were up there. Yeah. The mistratch. So we're net even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So- Okay, just one thing. Brad, are you hearing everything okay? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I agree with everything you're saying. I think that it's very important to emphasize that we do need a complete building assessment and not just a building assessment, but also just what's the necessary use for the building or what does the town need? And does the current building satisfy it? I don't think it does. And so, you know, where are we going to go from here? It's beyond just a building assessment. It's more of a use needs as well. But I agree with everything everybody has said. So, let's keep walking through the changes. Are we going to stay focused on 27?
Yeah, let's stay focused on 27. I think, you know, on the roof, though, I will comment, right? He's basically phased that roof out over five, the full five-year schedule. So, the pieces are, you know, he broke it up, but it's spread out over a couple years, right? From what it was.
All right. Next was the elevator.
So, he has an elevator specification for 47,000 and elevator upgrade for 471,000, which is basically the design and construction. He broke into two projects. Normally, we do design in one year and construction the following year. So, we're asking for the right amount. He's got them in the same year. I understand why in this case, if the elevator is not functioning. I do appreciate that he broke it out so that we are recognizing that there's two pieces to this. I would probably, though, ultimately, and I'm sure Brian Keveney will do this, combine them just because otherwise you end up with a spend issue if you're under on one over on the other. So, this is good for my cash certification before they have to get a bond, maybe, that we're used to. Yeah, you could end up, I think, in bonding. So, combine them for purposes of, like, it's a, in fact, we combine a whole bunch of things when we bond. But they can do the first part in cash and then bond later. Yeah. I just like, I just like when it's, you're right, you could, I just like when they're identified because we're identifying that there's, there is a step that comes before, right, the actual work. If you, to understand what you just said, would you propose leading this, you know, assuming people rank this, which we need to do, high, such that it finds its way into fiscal 27? Yeah. I would rank both the phase one roof and the elevator at high, and I would, I will ask the question on phase two, right, just to make sure we don't have. Oh, everybody else. An issue. So, is it, is it really late until 27? What? Is it really late until 27? It's not, listen, it's not that far away by the time, by the time they get everything up and, you know, like, contracted, right? Yeah, I mean, the elevator's our worst thing in the world, for sure. Yeah. But. Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's, it's where we are right now by the time they get everything ready to go. It's not that far away, right? It's only, it's six months away. So, one clarify question I would have is the elevator specification. Do we know it's just for the main building and not the one in Children's Way as well, or is that? He has another line for that. But, I mean, the 47, does that cover? But, my understanding was the 47 is the design of both, and then the two pieces were, although, that's a good question. I thought it said it was both. I assume it would be, but. And then the, and then the actual work on the second one was pushed out a year. I said, we don't have, like, a bonus 15K to do the. No. Yeah. So, before we ask about rankings from the others, for our purposes, would we leave this specification broken out to be able to, again, drive home the point about normally? I would leave it in our report, and, you know, if Brian, or they want to combine it, if they can. Great. Is one of the four people on their ranking of those three items? Yes. How do you guys feel about ranking of the phase one roof and the two elevator? I think it's high. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Hi. Yep. Yep. Brian? Yep. Yeah. Perfect.
Let's see. What else was?
Was that everything? I think that was everything for the 27. For his other changes, he did some swapping of things, some in and out a year, and then I believe he also added the tie-in for the DPW building. That, my dream in that, Brian?
Yeah. The DPW and retro commissioning, which you explained to me what the tie-in was before, but I don't remember. And it was $60,000 in FY29, I think, and $15,000 in FY30, that was, yeah. Yeah, I think, again, the out years, we're just moving things out, but there were two small items brought in. Yeah, that was, yeah. Okay. So people want to rank those more upon them. Sorry, which ones? We're still on facilities, the second to last, the third to last. The 87 and the 88, where have you been in your specialty? The building management system. No, it's DPW. 60,000, I mean, fiscal 29. 50,000 and fiscal 29. It's got a DPW BMS tie-in to the town building. It's not a building management system. I don't know what it is. Which would make sense. Like, I have a town building. Oh, building management, that's what BMS stands for? Okay. I would think so. It's a general system. Okay. And I don't know what retro-commissioning is. Does anybody?
Normally, the commissioning of a building would be, after the fact, because everything's running. Okay. That's fine. All right. I think those kind of items, looking at other similar kinds of items, were... We've got a bunch. ...building right at medium. Yeah, I would put them as medium. Because that's what we did on the other ones. Medium works. I agree. Sorry. Yes. Brad? Yeah, I agree. Medium.
I think those are the only ones we need to do rankings on.
Yeah, I believe so.
Is that what it's living? Yeah. Oh, the insulation, yeah. Well, it's out here, but you still have to rank it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I guess the question is, I think people have been leaning towards high for the roof in general. So, I guess the question is, I assume that all roof-related aspects are still high. I would, my opinion is still high, because if you're up there doing the roof, I would go do the roof and not do the insulation while you're at it. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. The only statement I have about the attic, and this gets back to, at what point do we say I've ever just been a green-to-green versus match. So, it's out in 29. Do we need a lot better information in two years about what we're going to do? I know it's a loaded question. I would like to. Do I do? If I was a betting plan, which I'm not, would I take that bet? No. I mean, I think- That's our request. Well, I mean, I think, and it may be, that's a part of our recommendation is, you know, we have all of these expenses that are going into past jobs. Let's just make sure that, you know, the ROI is there. But, especially as these are in further hours. Yeah. I'm having a hard time mapping that the ROI is there, based on how much money we're looking at. And how to replace. Because I, I think my personal opinion is that the money spent on this building is some cost. That it's not necessarily what's needed for- Yeah, I mean, it's just hard at the moment to- Well, so when I think of a roof repair, that's 100% high. When I think of insulating, not that it's a nice to have, because it's definitely, there's definitely a value that comes with making sure we don't have loss of heat and cold. However, if we're going to go and decide to put a whole new town building in place- But if you don't, but if you don't put insulation in the, like- It extends the life of the roof. But to your point, if you're not going to be in the building for more than another five years, who cares? Yeah. But you have to, but you have to make that decision. On almost everything on here for the town building, you have to make the decision, right? This is, even though this is not getting the building to, like, pristine condition, it's a ton of money. And so I don't see how you can go beyond a year of emergency stuff and not have made a decision on what you're doing. Even if the decision is, we're not going to have a plan, it's going to take us five years, you're going to have to spend, right? To keep us functioning for five years, even if that's the decision. Yeah, I mean, I think a decision to stay is a fine decision. It doesn't, it hasn't yet, and no one has yet put up a rational alternative. Alternative, yeah, agreed. With a possible exception of stop and shop vacates that building, it's big enough to, you know, carve it up into a town building. But otherwise, you're left- You stop and shop. It's not new anymore, but yes. But otherwise, you're left with either having a breakup where the schools are operating and the town's operating or, you know, leasing space. But, and if you propose to build a building, a likely timing of that would fall probably somewhere in line with the school coming forward to want to build a new elementary school. Yeah. And so, but I think the only point is it has to have a focused discussion with a decision that people will live with for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I think I'm just going back to when I, some of the earlier conversations was there was talk of having, yes, a new school building, maybe multiple. That was a consideration, consideration for a new town building. This was just, as we have dripped and dropped of investment going into repair, you know, understanding what is the ultimate decision on a new town building. Well, there's no, then okay. I don't know. And I would just say like that it gets complicated outside of like, like Brian said, outside of, you know, there's a building at town center that's big enough, especially if you start talking about new school buildings, because then you start having the discussion of, well, if you're going to build a new school building, would you keep Children's Way over here? Or would you build that building to accommodate Children's Way? When you pull Children's Way and say, let's, I'm going to go even further and pull the school department Children's Way out of here. Well, then you're rehabbing a building. And yeah, you rebuild and it's half occupied. Does that make, and you're heating a building that made that we're attempting to. So there's, they're trying to move meetings from here to the community center. I mean, I think we can do, like, I don't want to say we have to, I think our task is to make sure you just have to make them aware is aware. Yeah. Yeah. So you read the last year items right up in the paper. It was, it led a much smaller, oh, it's only this. And it's clearly not the case. I mean, I actually just re-looked at it. I don't know. Cause I added the elevator 7.5 million already in the book. Yeah. That's what I mean. You have these. And that doesn't count what we've spent. Cause we've spent a bunch on this building. You need to go do 27, 28. I say that is short term. You have to go and do it. But when you think, I think 29 and out thereafter, it's like, okay, well, what do, what is the long-term plan for this building? And if it's just to keep it functioning, upgrade it as we can, but if it's not going anywhere, then, then, okay, that's, that's an answer. But if, you know, we're going to, I mean, forget the hole, we have to go and replace the water and taps. I feel like, oh my gosh, we're not getting any new buildings. We have to pay for that instead. But, you know, it's just, you know, I feel like we should have a better idea of where we're, where we stand three years out from now. Yep. I agree. Okay. That was fine. That was fine. But otherwise, yes, fine.
Okay.
You will go back to fiscal 27. Yep. And then scroll, scroll down to some of these a little bit, so you'll see where the library line items are. So I included the library line items here. He removed. He took out 75,000 and 200,000, didn't he? Yes. 28, 29. Yes, because, and we were concerned those were duplicates. So it looks like he thought they were duplicates. Yeah, because I, I caught that as well. I think that was it on this one. Okay. We've gotten right to the new items. Yep.
All right. Brian, did I capture everything that was changed or we got answers on? Definitely so. Okay. And he, I think, again, it was tough with what he gave us back because he deleted line items that completely deleted the line items that were in there before. So if you look, again, at facilities, there's a line item that originally had, you know, $450,000 for the transfer station repair, and then he had a million aid out on fiscal 31. He completely deleted this line item, but I just hired him out. Like, I don't think I caught that. You just need to look in the, need to look in 28 through 31 to see what, you know, other activity where he might have either phased things or completely cleared him out. So on that note, and I didn't get to putting this in the report, but I wanted, we can, we can talk about it when we get to the report. I did want to walk what was originally requested, meaning like, what did everybody give us right out of the gate before we got any clarification, before there were any changes to, okay, now there's been a bunch of, we've had to ask questions, they've made changes. I did want to show that in the report just because it, it wasn't insignificant in terms of like, Hey, there was stuff duplicated, there was clarification, there was a whole sale. I do think it's, I don't want to spend a ton of time on it, but I do think it's personally, I think it's a valuable part of like, we didn't just take what we got and run with it and plug it in. Right. We had discussion. There were realizations both on our part and on the part of the department managers, which tweaked it in the end for nearly a hundred million dollars with projects. It didn't move it, you know, $15 million, moved it a couple million, but I do think it's, it's a point I want to make somewhere along the way that there was, you know, changes, changes and redundancies and things that we, we cleared up a long way. I mean, it shows value. We're not just a pastor, but we're actually. I think offer a comment on that when you get to the report. I disagree with that. I think the other thing that's right to prove that we need longer term planning, because this is the volatility that everyone says, why we sort of like, this is what we're seeing. And it's not, it's not so much the town's imagination. It's, it's literally been as volatile. I think that's that confirmation as well. I don't know if that adds value, but I think I would agree with that.
I think it's valuable for a couple of reasons. I think one, I think we added some value to, but for the process to work, we prefer, it would be preferable. We wouldn't be having sort of wholesale changes at this stage in the game. We'll let it find out of the process. Yeah.
Okay. So from here, let's talk about, you know, we've just added a few other things as high. We're going to have the schools because there's a couple of, oh, yep. Sure. Changes there. Oh, okay. Oh, he made changes.
Michael made changes, you mean? Yeah. Okay.
So in, go back to facilities for Matt. Yep. Because again, this was difficult for what he sent us. There's a line item. It's after the library grounds improvement line item for fire sensor replacement. Isn't it earlier? You mean the middle school one?
It's right here. It's row 73. It's row 73. The middle school fire sensor replacement. So he had in fiscal 29, he had 200,000, and fiscal 30,000, 350,000. Yeah. So he deleted those. So you see that he zeroed those out in the facilities budget. And put them to school. And then, I'm assuming, because I remember when we met with the schools and Mike Faye was here, we asked about, are they comfortable waiting to deal with fire alarm systems until a later year? And all three of the attendees seemed comfortable. But then he basically added into the school budget, $140,000, 203, an upgraded Happy Hollow for fire alarm. And then a $375,240 upgraded poker, a $409,160 upgrade, a cleave business. And you don't see it in this spreadsheet, but in his spreadsheet, he sent back to us. He also noted in the sidebar that there was $173,189 of existing funds to deal with the Happy Hollow fire alarm, which suggests to me that that project's really a $310,000 project. Yep. So if you add all those three items up, it's $923,000.
They had a, I think there was a $500,000 item that I zeroed out in the schools for the fire alarms, right below those three, so right above that one. Right here, district-wide? Yeah, $500,000 in fiscal 31. That's what prompted us to pose those questions. Yep. So $923,000 is bigger than $500,000, and the only point I'm making by highlighting the $550,000 came out, whether fire sensors are related to fire alarms kind of sounds like they are. Yeah. It may have been a duplicate, but I think the whole budget is probably washed it out. Yeah, it also put it back. It was helpful because it put, I didn't understand why they were up in facilities and not in schools. But middle school never came back, right? That's what it was labeled as, and you're correct, is these are all three of the elementary schools. So I suppose that's the question, you know, were those, what were the middle school fire sensor replacements just not needed?
Yeah, so he was, he was in, I think he had said he was delayed the report, so that made the timing sound terrible surprise. Yeah. Okay. So the question is, I'm assuming, if anybody disagrees, I'm assuming everybody due to fire safety is high for all three of those.
Anybody disagree with that? Okay. So that's the only, oh, and then he added, which again is a new item on the radar screen, a middle school hot water heater system, 359,722. I have to assume, but certainly ask the question to be sure, but I have to assume if he decided to put it in now, this way in the game, something must have presented itself to suggest that they're at risk of the existing system and that they need to deal with it. Yeah. I thought this came up two years ago when the boiler went, that the water heater was going to need to be replaced. So I don't know. Maybe he looked at the outside inside report and it was all that. Although those are separate reports from schools. They are. Yeah. So I think when people, assuming for the moment that it's a risk issue of the current system failing, people generally do that as a high priority? Yes. Yes. Yep. Okay. So I think those are the ones that require rankings. I noticed. There are a couple of, a few other items that he either deleted or moved around. Um, that's like a hot water for the bicycle that we need to bring. It's in and out here. And it's very good. I'm just going to pause back to what we've already said. It's interesting, right? That we get to submit this on time. These are the all being changes. Yep.
Which is a point where we're making our land production. And, and I would like to tell you that this is unique, but this is hard for the course. Yeah. And there are things literally right up just before in that. And in fact, after the warrant is printed, if something happens, it's got to get dealt with. Yeah. The hard, the hard part. Right. And I'm, I want to give Michael a lot of grace because he's coming in trying to do this. Right. This is, there's a lot of public buildings to get your arms around in the short time he's been here, but things like water heater failing, getting ready to fail at the middle school. It's hard for me to understand, right. How that's a surprise in general. And I swear it's come up before. So it's like, it's, it comes down to, yeah. I can't blame it on Michael because he's, he's brand new and he's trying to get his arms around things. But I think this is one that was on the radar. Yeah. The first thing that started too. Yeah. So it doesn't, that, yeah, they're, they're unfortunately don't have any history. Yeah. And it was warm in September. Yeah. And maybe there's more. Anyway, I mean, one thing to probably, because it is because he's looking, I do wonder how much of this is because he's having third party inspections versus someone internal was saying, Hey, it's fine. Right. I mean, fire alarm, all that, right. Hey, do a compliance study because he's digging into it. I wonder how much of that's really tied to him having a third party. Well, again, the schools initially did their own onsite insight reports. He just may not have had. Right. But I thought when they redid for the town, they refreshed the school one. I thought that was the plan. Right. So, uh, as I said, I don't think there's any, uh, rankings other than those items required. He moved out. Did he move out something else? The sidewalks? I think it was like sidewalks and driveways. Yeah. Roadways and sidewalks. He moved. Push. He pushed them out. Right. A few years. And then. Yes. And then. Exterior, interior, door replacement, uh, bicycle water heater. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Bicycle water heater didn't have an amount in what we were looking at before. But it did last year. I looked last year, but it had a ridiculously low amount. In the five-year plan? Yeah. It was like 50. Do I have a number next to it? You do now, but he, cause he gave us one. Well, I put the 450 in, but if it was in the five-year plan last year, I would have put a number next to it and I fixed it. No. It didn't. It tied all these numbers. It tied all these numbers out to the five-year plan. So what it might've been was it might not have had a number in the five-year plan, but I have in my spreadsheet, the full. Maybe it was a request. At some point, and this is where I get into like, at some point, somebody requested this and it came off the list. Right. So it's, it's been on the docket before. Yeah. Now the finance director would be the one that normally would go through and do triage. Yeah. And so, you know, as Kelly said, it might appear in forms that were submitted, but never have gotten into the actual plan. Yeah. So we didn't rank the, I guess we need to rank the high school water heater. Aye. Aye. Water heaters are high priority. Aye. Agreed. Okay.
Okay. Is that everything? I think I, as you were looking at the description there, I think I put yellow highlights in the ranking column for all the items that are required in ranking. So you just quickly scan. Where's your ranking column? Is it over here? It's the green column. It's just a little more one. So the left. Right. Which fiscal year in 27? Yeah, right here. Sorry. So let me just start, if you scroll down, there should be yellow highlighting and anything required a. I'm looking as well. We've been going through. This one there we did, right? Yes, this is high.
And I want it not me. I marked them down on my sheet here, so I'll fill it in here. No, but it won't let me type it in. You may not have enabled it. I can't see the enable button, because I've got the zoom. You don't need to put it in now. Just as long as we scroll down and make sure we can rank each item in the yellow part. You just go back to stills. So I'll put those rankings into this in version 7, and there's also a couple of other corrections I've made after getting some questions from Elliot that don't affect 27 other than a description. And there's two numbers for engineering, there's an engineering department that had $50,000 a year in fiscal 28, 29, and 30 for new vehicles. So I guess we need to rank those, since I put them in version 7, which we don't have yet. So most of our vehicles, I think we had been ranking as medium. And these are not specific vehicles, it's just arbitrary vehicles. So people want to rank those? I'm fine with medium. I would, at some point in our journey of understanding, like, to see the full inventory list of vehicles and where they are, you know, who has them.
DPPW has three more vehicles? No, that's what I'm saying. Well, that's DPPW. Engineering reports to DPW, but it's not, it's a separate line item. And then we missed it in the original submission. I didn't pull it in. It was there the whole time. We just, we missed it. So when you get this, there'll be a one line item section for engineering that has $50,000 and 28, 29, and 30. Yeah. And people feel comfortable ranking those medium. Yes. For now. Yes. Good with that. So now, $1.50 then? Yeah. $1.50. For all three. And we still have more to do on school 20. And I'm assuming next year we'll get more information, so we're going to be asking more information. Yeah. So we'll get a lot more. In theory, we'll get a lot more information. Well, yeah, that's number one on my list. We've got to change the CIP form to the information we want. And then be a good way. The other lesson learned. We're not. Yes. We picked up on that because Ellie was populating her own spreadsheet that she uses to produce tables that are partly being used in the draft report, but also the finance fee they end up using. And there's so many numbers, so many years, that obviously I was hopeful that someone would do a double check. And obviously a double check proved that errors happen. Yeah. Going forward to next year this time, really, everybody should be looking at the detail, but at least two people. Yeah. Everything needs, and so Brian and I have been doing that for each other, right? Like, just somebody's got to do a quality review on peer review to make sure that everything gets captured. I hope two things. One, if we create a CIP form that has got useful information in it and we only accept completed CIP forms, that we can then automate the production of the summaries using a complete CIP form. But until we get there, there's a lot of manual work here in getting this stuff summarized.
Question. I don't want to add more work because, you know, our priority is getting this finalized, but since this is our baseline going forward, to your point of what you said about vehicles, is it worth sorting these a little bit? Do you always finalize this to say within these department vehicles as a section, right? Yeah, so we can do that. I attempt in the spreadsheet that I use to identify categories for each project. Vehicles are easy to categorize. I always get caught up in my own head between things that are building repair versus equipment. Like, you put a new hot water heater in, is that building repair or is that equipment? I think it's building repair, right? But sometimes I get into, like, funny. But yes, so I have that. And I think it's probably worthwhile in our complete listing. So we will have a listing in the back of a report of everything to identify the categories. We can certainly sort that way, too, like, within our rankings, what's building repair, what's new buildings, what's vehicles. Because I think it's valuable in the way that you look at it because there's so many. And then it just, again, I mean, not that we can't sort it, but there's a big chance we continue to go through it. And say, I have another vehicle, another vehicle. I have to type the vehicles. Like, you know, it gives us the sections to kind of say, what's your, versus just saying we're going to rank everything in your group. It may not come down to that. We may say, well, we need to start, you know, each listing. I don't know. And DPW particularly, right? Because, I mean, I think roadway is its own thing, right? It's so much money. And then vehicles are the other. So my highest kind of order of priority of things here, my highest priority is the FY27 capital budget, because that is needed most urgently to develop the FY27 operating budget. Then it's the plan, the five-year plan, because that's going to ultimately be a part of the warrant with modification by town manager, finance director, and FINCOM. And then my third level priority is, okay, did we get this all communicated fully and in an easy fashion? It's important, but it's got to go after actually getting numbers agreed upon by us. Yeah. Okay. You want to go now to the green tab and deal with how we paper these things? Yeah. I just threw them into columns that seemed feasible to me, but you all think, I don't know if you want to go through all of them. Yeah. You really didn't. We didn't really talk about it. No. Yeah. So I think we want to go through it. Let's go through it by column of funding source and talk about it in a couple. I want to talk about it by project, but then I want to talk about it in total. And there is a guideline, which I put, I reprinted in the report that came out of the finance committee's report last year. It's been regurgitated a few times. Interestingly though, it still says, I think six to 800,000 of cash capital, which we haven't been using for a number of years, but it's still helpful. So let's start with borrowing and we'll start with excluded borrowing. So I believe the only excluded borrowing for FY27 we anticipate is that the MWRA project, but that's actually not, is that not because it's water, now I got that confused. Is it water rate borrowing? Sorry. Two things. I'll take this off to you because it's a minor change to report, but I think it's critical. So when, when we refer to the MWRA project, we need to refer to MWRA slash happy hollow wealth project. Okay. The cost is split roughly 40% to the connection of the MWRA and 60% to build a new permanent filtration system at happy hollow wells. So I think it's just question putting the slash HH, you know, happy hollow wells. But anyway, on that item at the moment, if there is no, we're, we're not proposing that anything be funded with excluded debt in the draft report or on this schedule. I suppose if we'll get to the report when we get to the report. So at the moment, the report doesn't include doing the ball field at the same time. So if all we're doing is $2 million septic, well, it doesn't yet. We need to talk about that. Yeah. But if all we're doing is a 2 million septic, that probably is levy debt, needing excluded debt. If, if that was expanded, it's possible that that would, we would call that. It's possible that the select board, because the select board's decision, right, would say those projects are combined for purposes of, of debt. And it's an excluded. Right. Because because of its impact on the operating budget, $4.5 million debt, they just went through the town election, special election to eliminate debt on the old DPW facility. Yeah. So to put another $4.5 million on the levy debt. I agree with you 100%. Interestingly, though, their debt policy that they adopted uses $5 million as the threshold. So that's why I put both those items in here as levy debt. But anyway, as to excluded debt, I think I mentioned this at the last meeting, and I'll keep it short. The, I believe the select board, it was decided that the MWA Happy Hollow Wealth Project debt funding, debt service, should be paid for through water rate. Waste water, water, yeah, water rate. Okay. Normally, if that, and it's the case, that would be water debt, and that doesn't, you don't need a debt exclusion. It doesn't affect the town's levy. Because that's already outside the levy. But I said that there was a pretty long discussion two or three meetings ago where the finance director was expressing concern that if water rates weren't increased high enough and or people started using less water because the rates were going up, you know, significantly, that the town might have to subsidize the water enterprise fund, and if that were the case, that is done inside the levy, which would affect future overruns. So he came up with a proposal, although I'm not sure how wedded he is to it, that the town actually issued the bonds, its town debt, the water debt is town debt, but town debt as an excluded debt, which would require a ballot question, vote, the ballot. And the water fund would reimburse, and the water fund would reimburse general fund 100% of the debt service. That way, if, for whatever reason, the water fund fell short, the general fund could pay the debt service, but it wouldn't affect the levy. But in a reimbursement scenario, doesn't that make it part of, oh, no, because we're doing it as a levy debt, as excluded debt, sorry. Excluded debt. Okay. And his only issue he had with that was that assuming the water fund is reimbursing 100% of the excluded debt service, it actually creates, absolutely anything else would create excess levy capacity, and he was concerned that future folks doing budgets would attempt to use that for operative costs. I sent him something that the OR put out that suggests that if you're getting reimbursement, your debt exclusion amount can be net of, you can take a vote, net of your reimbursement, so there wouldn't be the issue you had. Having said all that, the select board never took a vote on that proposition. He seems to be shying away from it. So at the moment, based on the select board's discussion, although Phil Whitney's still not concerned, he's still concerned that they haven't got to the bottom of that question, because I think he would prefer the whole town getting an opportunity to vote on the project. It's really been a focus of his, rather than just town meeting of, you know, two, three, four hundred people. And certainly he didn't want it to be five select board members voting on it. Yeah, I agree with Phil. I think if they're going to do a $38 million project, it should be at the ballot box. But to get it there, you have to do what I just described. Yeah, I understand. So at the moment, there is no debt excluded debt that will be on the ballot, but it's possible that that particular debt may end up on the ballot. Yeah. But at the end of the day, right, and this is like... We don't control it. Touch on the report. We don't control it. And it's a significant project, whether, I don't care where you put it, right, or how you do it, it's a significant project that's going to affect. Residents and what residents pay. And so it's why I called it out separately and because it's going to be voted as an article. And I don't think it's appropriate to just slam it in with everything else, right? But we have to consider it and the cost of, you know, what can be afforded.
Okay. So there's a bunch of other items that I put in the levy debt column. And again, you all may disagree with some of them, right? No, I had, because I've matched that up to Brian when I was doing mine, and I think I was pretty consistent.
Yeah, I think you... So the ambulance one, though, how come that one isn't in the ambulance? Well, it's on the far right side for ambulance. Oh, the ambulance itself... No, because they can't have funding. They don't have enough for an ambulance.
But is the debt service not servicable with the ambulance funding? I think the finance director said sometimes they will have the ambulance fund cover a debt service. So that's what he said. Yeah, the way he does it actually similar... It's done similar to what you just described, Brian, with the... Yeah, it's a funding back. And that prevents... What if the ambulance fund... Because we have had issues with collections. So what happens if you have collections issues and can't pay it, right? So that's why he did it in debt. And that is, I believe, consistent with how we've done... We may have done one ambulance out of the ambulance fund, but I know we've done fire trucks that way as well. Okay. Okay. So let's just go down. I agree. It's ultimately not going to be our decision, but the wastewater facility and the fields could be bundled and potentially put and excluded. It's a little bit lower than what policy says, but it won't be our fault. We talked about the ambulance.
I did this independently, Brian, from what you had first, and then we were pretty much well matched. It was sort of a... If the project was of a sizable nature, had a decent life on it, and... Or it could be combined, like, for example, the upgrades to the fire alarms, if there was, you know... Maybe that wasn't a good one. There was a few projects that went together that were sizable. They belonged in levy debt. And I think that's consistent with what you have as well.
Feel free to chime in, Brad, if you see anything that you either feel differently or have a question on. Yep. Okay. These are just our recommendations. I mean, the town manager will look at the manage director to tell them how to fund it. So... Yeah. In the road of privilege, that was the net of what we get from the state. No. That is what we get. That is... That is what they're requesting from the town. They also get from the state. And we do need to revisit that, among other things. Because right now, if we were just doing highs, we don't have that in... At all, I think, right? Yeah. So I think we need to revisit that. Yeah, again, for your all purposes, this includes all the requests. Yeah. And... But we're at... In our rankings. When we get to the memo, Kelly has pulled out just basically the highs with a couple of the median highs. Yeah, which I did it just so I could get an exhibit in there. But once we decide... Yeah, we have updated for something that we talked about tonight. Yeah. Okay. So I was fine with all of the things you had as debt. That's most of it.
Okay.
General fund. I need to freeze this because I'm not going to be able to tell you.
We don't have anything coming out of cash capital. Then it's free cash. So free cash, we tend to do shorter term, smaller amount items. That wouldn't necessarily be good candidates for debt.
Although I could argue a couple of these, you know, if we were to do this swap loader for... That one could probably move. But for the most part... Maybe we could track... The HVAC was the other one. Just for everybody's benefit, the free cash balance that's certified at the end of fiscal 24, it was $10 million. And the recently certified free cash balance at the end of fiscal 25 was $11.9 million. It's up by $1.9 million. So knowing that, I kind of erred towards spending a bit more of the free cash. Yeah. And there also will likely be some surplus in capital. Yeah. So open projects. Two things. Yeah. I wanted to talk about on that front. So thank you for bringing them up. One, I think there's probably still some room in free cash.
There's debate always about how much free cash we should have. I asked my AI friend on how much free cash you should have. And for the state of Massachusetts, the recommendation is 3% to 5% of the operating budget, I think. I think we have double that. Now, that said, we, from a Moody's debt rating purpose, they want to see us have larger reserve balances, which is not just free cash. It's free cash. It's emergency stabilization. It's cap stabilization. It's all of the balances. So my issue is I don't know that free cash is the place that it should be sitting. If the town, this is not our charge, but I'm going to give you my view on it. If we need it for a reserve balance as a town, that's fine. I just don't think it should necessarily be sitting in free cash. I think it should either be decided, well, that's part of a stabilization fund. And the reason I believe that is, for those of you who haven't lived here for a period of time, we got a pretty high free cash balance at one point. And voters put a petitioner's article up to have that returned to taxpayers. And it was approved. And I'm not saying I'm opposed to that. I'm just saying, if you think you're setting it aside for a rainy day and you're leaving it in free cash, you're right for being told otherwise. Given how many capital projects we have and the MWRA, I think it requires, and this will be another thing I think might be worthy of discussion at select board is, what's the policy on free cash? What are you doing with it? How are you going to utilize or not utilize it? What's the strategy around free cash? Yeah, I mean, and just to add, again, more educational, in years in which union contracts are not settled, the operating budget usually carries a reserve covered with estimated cost of living adjustment is going to be. And if it doesn't settle, if that contract doesn't settle by the end of town meeting or just before town meeting, what happens to that reserve, it ends up going to free cash. And then next, the following year, you basically have to add two years worth. So, at the moment, my answer is recommended, the site board seems to be agreeable, is to start putting the reserve-run-settled contracts into the general stabilization fund so that you're not raising budgetary appropriation capital and then having to go to free cash. So, that's going to start to help, at least every three years anyway, potentially. Well, it'll manage the future, but it won't manage what's in there right now. Yeah. So, anyway, that's just an aside. Yeah. So, I just, I agree with John. There's a couple that I think could move, but I know, I knew what Brian's philosophy and mine's the same. If we're just looking at hives, we're at 1.3.
You have to put in the range of? Yeah. Well, I think we have, what, 1.5 to 2.
I, if we come back to talk about a few other projects, I would, I would be comfortable going up to 2. That's with the changes we just made. Yeah. Because you had already made them. Oh, that's the total of the town. Had you already, you had already put them in? Yeah, I put the changes in this version. Okay. They were the ones we just talked about, the classic. They should be in there. Yeah. He guessed where we would be. He tied to the green tab. Yeah. Yeah. So, like the elevator. Again, you may not agree with the columns I put in, but. No, I do. They're in there. Yeah. And actually, that's another reason to our earlier, should we keep that split? You have the specification of free cash, John, exactly what you were saying. You've got that cash, free cash, and you've got the elevator itself in debt, which makes sense. Okay. So, those are already in there. So, I do think there's a little bit of room. We can come back to that.
Finance director might not agree with me, but I, I think there's room.
Yeah. I mean, one of my colleagues recently talked about the program. That's like yes or no. It was, can we, can we do a different voucher? Yeah. Yeah. And I, we've got to kind of, we've got to keep that in borrowing to stay consistent. We can move something else. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. All right. Cap stabilization. There's only a few things in cap stabilization.
So, we have the IT project, the additional 100,000 for the firewall. Yeah. One of the, one of the rationales of the cap stabilization, capital stabilization fund was to provide follow-on funding for projects. And that was a follow-on. That's why that, I put that one. Yeah. Yeah. And then the radios at the school. It's kind of an unforeseen. Yeah. But immediate need, and you need to use that capital fund for something. I mean, radio system in general, they're constant, they're constant follow-ups, right? Yeah, I did ask the fire chief about it. I asked everybody, actually, because I was like, there's so many radio line items across the department. And, you know, he had laid it, he had given more detail, which I thought was helpful. But then he said, you know, they would drop off after that. And I'm like, I don't think so. Because if you look at the life of some of the equipment, like it's, it's almost as if you're going to have sort of a continuum of, between DPW, fire, police, schools, feels like you're going to have a continuum of a couple hundred thousand dollars of replacing radios. And you don't want the broken stuff going to the school, if that's for safety. Yeah, and I actually prefer it that way versus, hey, it's all replaced and it's all got to get replaced at the same time. But I feel like we might be putting ourselves based on how we're doing it in that situation. Speaking of radios, I meant to bring it up before. It may be that not all radios are created equal. We did get a, most of the responses we got to Kelly's questions, we got a lot more detail from Tom Folder about, well, where his estimate came from for his radios. And on top of my head, I think he referenced 70 to 75 radios. And when I worked out the math, I'm sure there's other equipment. It was like 8,000 bucks per radio. And then I looked at the estimate that Christine gave us, where she, in order to cover phase two, she added an extra 50 radios into what was probably a handful for administrators. And her quote was 135,000, which is a lot less for radio. And I don't think we didn't get any detail that I saw from police or fire. So it may be that they are, they have different capabilities from even what they're used for. If you look at DPW's quote that they sent, there's a lot of other stuff other than the rate. There's a lot of other equipment. Yeah, so I think the schools is, you know, basically walkie, yeah, walkies and repeaters. And I think the DPW's had more equipment, which I think also has to do with the fact that they've got stuff that's in the vehicles versus portables. So it wasn't that far off. But yeah, I mean, yeah, it's another one of the recommendations of these, this should be consolidated for just to line them. I guess we have five different groups of radios constantly. Yeah, I'm not sure where Christine got her estimate from, whether she went to a vendor. They said hers is from Motorola. They were all from Motorola. And the state has a contract, they think. Yeah. I would prefer that the radio be an IT buy, but that's just because ultimately the IT infrastructure has to support that. And so I wish it was a combined buy, right? But I think we're getting pricing based on it being combined. It just, it's weird to have it all over the place. So anyway, the radios, I guess that's the capitalization stability, though it's growing. I just picked that item to throw in. Yeah. Along with the fields, the town manager request for the fields, which is- And that was consistent with last year, right? Yeah. Okay. So it makes sense to me last year, but- I'm still struggling with Wyatt's town manager versus DPW. It was a last minute ad in the budget cycle last year. Right. But it's not last minute anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And it technically should fall under recreation. Well, but REC doesn't have, this is like a round in circles, right? REC doesn't have any actual requests. I think it's, it's either facilities or DPW. So, okay. I'm fine with the funding sources there.
And then water and wastewater. Brian, Kevin, he said, you really can't do retained earnings. Everything needs to be borrowing. So we've got the water main and MDA area, which we've already talked about at length and a vehicle fall in borrowing.
And then wastewater, same. There was great low pressure sewer in borrowing. And then transfer station. Did the transfer station actually have anything? No, I think I included it because it was a request. Oh, yeah. But we, yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's a disagreement with Tom Holder. Like, hey, it won't keep it done. There's 27.
And that's another one. It's in the same category as the town building or similar category. It's like, there's some thought that needs to go into the future before we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay. And then ambulance was the dive equipment. And this one is actually not the ship command vehicle. It's. It did not change the. You didn't change it here. It's the cardiac. The cardiac monitor. Yeah. So that was one of the things I caught when I was reviewing Brian's. Two line items, one above the other, where on the other tab, I changed the descriptions. I forgot to do it here. Yeah. The ship command vehicle was actually a request in FY28, right? So the 80,000 is really the cardiac. The number's right, the description. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.
I'll change that on. All right. All right. So I think seems, does anybody have any, before we want to talk about DPW, if we want to roads in particular, to the extent where I try and squeeze anything in, else out of free cash. We want to lose like free cash in now. So we live with other projects. We'll be. We can take that aside. We'll assume they go to Levy, or Brian will answer that later.
I would like to at least make sure we've got all the projects we think need to get in here. And if, if it's, I would, I would recommend moving a few things to free cash.
The other thing which Brian, earlier he mentioned is, there's likely to be some capital closeouts. We don't know what that amount is. I've asked and I don't get answered if there's a sense of what that is. But I think it would be good to say, here's our recommendation of projects. And if there was more funds, right, our recommendation would be to go, you know, these, these next one or two or three things are, you know, what we think are next in line. Um, if there were additional funds via surplus capital.
So let's talk about roads first, because I think that's. Well, it's your first question. Are there, are there items that are currently, you know, here's Levy debt that you're. Yeah, could you, could you, could you move to free cash? I guess my, my take is, I'm comfortable the way we have it. Once we make final selection, I mean, Brian, as we go through this, I think it doesn't matter if we move to free cash. I think it's more the other way to maybe, but it will be something that we move to free cash. I have no concern, right? I think I'll get each budget, but after the fact, we decide off on it. I don't think I mean, where it should be to start, but yeah, my instinct, just because of what we, the town just went through and moving the DPW debt to a sluter debt would be if, if folks are. Looking to move. Three, $400,000 more to free cash. I would be supportive of taking out of the, what an item that's in levy debt, right? Yeah, yeah, I think you, John's agreeing with you. I think you just choose after, I don't think it really matters. I mean, I don't think everything, I mean, you can pick any of the basic scenes. The only thing that makes a difference, and this is light difference, and I don't have the debt periods on here, is like, yeah, you probably want to leave the things that have a longer. Yeah, I mean, you want to follow the debt, the capital policy. Right. The debt policy, I think it would have a five year or a lesser. Yeah, the shorter stuff you want, you want to move first. So I'm not real, I don't have strong feelings otherwise. So what I'm hearing, folks are comfortable with possibly shifting something else for free cash, but you're not looking to sign that right this second. So we'll leave it up to the chair to make that decision and inform me and I'll reflect it in this particular. Okay, so let's talk about roads then. Now you're talking about, are there non-high priority items that people think might be funded somewhere? Yeah, and I think, like John said, we did say we weren't going to fund roads at all, we were talking about what the amount should be. Oh, I did. You did, yes. So.
Uh, let's, let's do it from, why don't we do it from this one? Is it easier? No.
Yeah, it's just, you know, maybe can I just do, you don't have a total problem, right? Or did I freeze it? Maybe I froze it. There? No, there's no total. What are you looking for? I was just looking for, if we can look at the mediums without scrolling across to what the numbers are. But I think, um, the mediums start your road improvements. Um.
Right. So my first comment was when I was putting together the summaries, it did stick out at me that DPW had zero capital, um, appropriated. And as you probably have gathered from the way I've talked before, I have a hard time. I have a little bit of a hard time with that one because I think Tom does a great job putting together his requests. Um. You're sort of clear. Right now you're referring to what we're talking about next, which is your draft report. Your draft report picked up as quote our proposal for our recommendation. It picked up all the highs. All the high items. And then in this section, it picked up an IT item. And the field maintenance. The field maintenance. The field maintenance. Yeah. That's exactly it. Everything else below the high priority in those two items at the moment is not in the draft report. So I think we're now saying do the majority of the members feel like we should take any of these other items table to medium when we're not low. And, uh, we'll include those in what we recommend be funded somehow in fiscal 2017. So make sure we're all in the same. Yes. Correct. That is what, thank you for, thank you for clarifying. That is what I'm saying. But everything in column A is identified if it's in, if it's not, or if it's a main period. Yeah. And sorry, I can't. Yeah. Column A is where we racked and stacked. Yeah. We racked and stacked. And I think there was one that was a, is there one that was a maybe that we didn't decide? Maybe it was this. The field monitoring and the field's got fields are medium, but the moment how we put those into a same as a high. And in the high section, the only item not included was the two and a half million dollars for the field. High school field. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm not necessarily going to start there. Yeah, we should start there. Yeah, we should start there. So I, I'm struggling if they, if they tear that whole thing up to do the septic, that we would just leave it and not fill the field. But what I still can't seem to get the answer on is, is there a lesser project that fixes, right? What they dug up from the septic and gets the fields in game playable condition? Oh, what they haven't responded to yet. I don't know if they just can. Once I've asked them, can you on the site plan, which shows the existing area where the two baseball fields are in the proposed rectangle. Can you delineate what's going to be impacted of that area by whatever extension of the leaching field needs to be done for the traditional septic system? Yet, you're not in a position to be able to do that. So it's hard for me, I mean, if it's literally, you know, a rectangular trench that goes a little bit further in the grass area, but I think he did say there wouldn't be anything built under the playing field, you know, the infield area. But without that, it's hard for me to say how much has really got to be put back together once they do whatever they have to do. So I just don't think we have the benefit of doing that. Yeah, I just don't think we have enough information. And the fact that the fact that you got to pay $500 to bus the kids to 10 or 12 baseball games, I do feel bad that the town doesn't have the ability to host home games. But in the scheme of what the town's up against and overall financial picture, I just don't think we have enough information. I don't disagree with your point. I think we talked about it. There could be very good rationale as to why it makes sense to do it at the same time. But I'm not even sure they have to be responding on where they got the 2 million estimate for the septic by saying, I think, the preliminary estimates 1.4, and we added a 35% contingency. And they're still designing. It was clear the fields were, well, this is what they had the last time. Yeah, but you couldn't get an answer on if that's what you had the last time, the last time had the rectangles in it. And there's a separate request for the rectangles two years later. So I'm struggling with lack of information. In the report that Kelly referred to, which was done by an outside engineer in 2017, I think, they had a very detailed list of costs related to a project. I'm still not exactly sure if it's redundant, not redundant. And it wasn't clear how that cost five years ago relates to $2.5 million. So I just, my general view is we just don't know enough. And if within the next month, they can provide enough information to the town manager or the FinCom to justify putting it in. Yeah. So be it. My instinct is it could probably wait. In fact, I also asked the question, which we didn't get a response to. Yes, we know the DEP has been telling us for the last five years, we've got to stop yearly pumping and come up with a solution. But they haven't done anything terrible to us in five years. Could this all get pushed out given what we're up against financially and the big water project? But they even pushed the septic project to fiscal 28 with the DEP's consent. And he hasn't responded to the test. So I still would like the question and answer to that question, but I'm comfortable leaving the septic. And I just, I don't know how we can put it in. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing and I would like to see it done. However, I have significant concerns given how much we're looking, the town is facing expenses, capital expenses, that we're not further along, right, on the detail of the project for something that we want to do in fiscal. Right. We're asking for money in fiscal 27.
Right. And I understand when we give it, that's when, you know, a lot of work will start on this. I just, I struggle with, it's four and a half million dollars. It's the biggest thing on here outside of, outside of the MWA. I'd like it a little more flushed out before we said, yeah, it goes in there. So I, I'm with you, Brian. I, I'm fine with leaving the septic in and leaving the fields out. I would like to put some words around that in the narrative around like the reason, the reason we're leaving it out is not because we're necessarily not supportive of the idea of the project, but because there were still unanswered questions that were significant given the large spend. And also include as your normal design build concept. Yeah. And again, as the school designee, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Kirsteen, in her email responding to questions about the field, it was pretty emphatic that the school would really want to see this done. And so I'm relaying that information, but I know when we met with her, she wasn't that clear yet, but she did speak to the athletic director and I understand they want it done. But our job on the designee of the schools, I think our job collectively as a group are to try to be consistent, how we evaluate and propose things. And again, for all the reasons you're saying, I haven't heard anybody say don't build it in any, under any circumstances. There's a readiness issue, right? So part of the, part of this, what we said we were going to do as a committee, right, is determine priority. And that there were both financial and human resources to execute, right? But it's also, it has to be, the project has to be ready. And I, like you, Brian, we said on FinCom many years ago, one of our big problems we've had as a town is not doing design, build, as separate phases. And we've gotten ourselves in trouble in the past. Fire Station 2 is my favorite example, right? Where we didn't fully scope everything out. And we ended up having to go back to the town three times to get full funding. So I have a hard time with, hurry up. We've got to do this right now. We don't know what we're doing, right? We're going to go ask the town to do this. And we don't have, we don't have it fully. Well, I'm riskier as well with the pilot narrative. If we don't improve it, it's not a field.
I guess I'm not clear why the fields are okay to practice. Not that it's not okay to play. I couldn't, I think I asked that. Maybe I didn't know. Like, can you, can you give me a little more color? I'm like, well, it depends on the day.
I mean, I've been out there. It's something, sometimes it's up to six. Like you just sit right there. Yeah. We also heard that Tom Holder, I think said in a meeting or said in one of these email exchanges that in the spring, I mean, two or three months, they're going to spend $100,000 doing repairs. They were going to. Yeah. You know, maybe that's just an annual type thing. No, no, it's not.
It was in the capital plan. It was in the capital plan to spend $100,000 on that. It's been removed because Tom said they had enough room to do it without. But there's no money. That's what I heard anyway, was that they had enough, but they've spent the, whether they're intending to spend the money that was appropriated under the town manager budget. I think I saw it somewhere, not here, maybe on Facebook, an update from Dave Bernstein, who sort of initiated getting that $100,000 a year on what was done with the $100,000. I believe it had to do with the, it was the women's, the girls' softball field at the high school needed some improvements. There was some sprinklers, right? There was a number of things that got done. And I remember reading it and thinking, geez, having done municipal finance did come for a long time. I was like, wow, they didn't get a lot done for $100,000 compared to what I see when we have looked at projects. It's like, it's funny how we could do that. So the risk, the risk is that the septic gets, is on track to get done and completed in fiscal 27. Although I asked also for a start and end of construction for that. And again, they're still on the planning basis. So I don't even know when that project would actually start and finish. It shouldn't take more than a year. I wouldn't think of a traditional septic system to be built. It's just bigger than what's in our backyard, right? So the risk is that they actually get that project done in fiscal 27 and have disrupted some portion of the field, which will be rough graded and some grass seeds thrown on it. I mean, it's not on the playing surfaces of the infields. And maybe the town could have saved X dollars by bidding out a much larger project on the fields. Although, normally I wouldn't think it's septic. Except the ones that are doing septic and the ones that are building fields are... Yeah, normally not the same. Not using the same. The septic providers will throw the seed on the... We'll put some loan down and throw the seed out. Yeah, you're talking a hundred grand. Let's just call it a hundred grand of savings, but that's a lot of money, but in a two point... That's what I'm saying. I just, I don't, I just don't get the sense that there's going to be a complete rip-up of that whole area. It doesn't sound like... It's going to be an awfully big septic field if that's the case. Yeah, and I'm still, I still have reservations about putting anything on top of, you know, spending money upgrading and putting like sprinklers and other things on top of... ...leaching fields, and then if something happens where you've got to repair the leaching fields... Can you put a sprinkler? Then you've got to rip everything up and, you know... I don't really have sprinklers anymore. Right now, no, I don't think so. But they've been trying to add... That's not an issue there, right? It's so, I mean, they've had to put sprinklers in the console. They're very wrong. They went the wrong direction, right? It's so wet, not only if they had sprinklers... And then in the phase three, phase three report, 2019, I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure the wastewater facility that was built when the high school was built is actually still working. I feel like it was supposed to work. Maybe it never worked because it was supposed to work. I don't know that it ever worked. So I'm not sure that that whole plan, which got put off as phase three, ever contemplated a traditional SEPIC system. So I just... To me, there is some financial risk, you know, some lost opportunity. I just don't think it's millions of dollars. I think, as you say, John, it's... How much is going to change between now and six months from now, anyway? I mean, I think we're all the line, which is it needs to be evaluated. We put it in the notes that, hey, this is important, but we don't know. We don't have definition of what the impact on time it is. I think we just leave it at that. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I'm clearing that in the mouth. Let's go ahead and try to... I don't agree with that? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Once you clear that item out of the way... So we're making that a no then, right? We're going to make that a no with a report and explanation around it.
And do you want to change the ranking to medium, or do people still view that as a high priority, just a no for now? Well, I don't think we gave it a ranking. Didn't we say... Yeah, I think we were kind of open. Maybe you might say, yeah, medium. I believe it was a high. Yeah. I think we left the ranking open. Some people do. Okay. Right. Do you now have the rest of the mediums who have the factor roads? Yeah. Back to roads. Back to roads. The only thing I would... The only way I would put that, I might categorize it as a high is if for some reason they can't play baseball at all. Like if they lose the season, I'd be like, no, it goes up to priority. Yeah. I don't think that would be the case. I want to leave it as... I would advocate for leaving it as medium. Somebody wants to come in here and tell us that they're going to lose a season and whatnot. We can revisit it, but... To a degree, if they're going to do the septic system anyway, aren't they going to lose access to those fields? So they couldn't play baseball anyway. They'll probably do it over the summer. Yeah. I mean, the septic should not take, you know, a year to do, right? This should be a summer... They do it over the summertime and fields are... Yeah. The septic is sand and... They're going to lose... But they're going to lose a year. Every time we build a field out of grass, they lose a year because of getting... You have to have two growing seasons. You have to have two growing seasons. Well, again, what we don't know is how much of the... It's basically the outfield. How much is going to actually be disturbed? I mean, it could be next to nothing. It could be... Which goes back to... You need to try to plan. A slight trench or something. I mean... All right. I just invited baseball, angry baseball parents to come to our next meeting, but... Well, again, it wasn't put in the budget last... It was in the budget five-year plan for fiscal 29 and 30. I think it's redundant, right? Yeah. Last year.
The only reason that it's been brought forward is because the septic was being done. And rightly so. People said, hey, if we're going to disrupt that area enough, does it make sense to combine them? Yeah. It wasn't brought forward, to my knowledge, because all of a sudden, people are saying it's a priority. Well, I'll disagree, Brian, only because there's been anger that it was not, that it was broken out from the original stadium project back in 2018. People that use the field have been upset about it since then. I agree. I agree. I wouldn't say it's upset. They've been advocates for... I mean, but now we're debating what we don't know. I mean, we just don't know. So, yeah, if it was a statute, again, it's not that we're not supportive of the project, it's that there's a lot of unknowns and it's a lot of money and we need the details filled in. And there's not nothing to say that if we've excluded it, that those details won't come in such that town manager and finance director added in as a project and it goes to town meeting. So, I think I'm accepting of that. I just, where we stand today, we do not have enough information to include it. Okay. Email Kelly.
No, I'm getting those emails. All right. So, next up is road improvements.
Brian, you've made it clear you're at zero. I mean, I'm being a little facetious. I mean, I think you mentioned, Kelly, the need to at least be thoughtful about it. Maybe you don't need to fund the whole amount because they have access to chapter 90 money. They have one year at least worth of prior appropriation, but maybe there needs to be a little bit of transition and then back on cycle every year. Yeah. So, I went back to Tom's answers to our questions. And he had said of the appropriations from the town, he had 600,000 that was going to be spent by the end of the fiscal year. And that in addition to that, he had 800,000 in chapter 90, of which half of that was earmarked for future projects, and half of it they like to leave for emergencies, which I understand, right? So, 90,000, right? Okay, 900, 900,000. Okay, sorry. So, they view that as half of that's going to go to future projects that they've got in the hopper, and half of it they leave for emergencies, which I don't disagree with, right, based on... We have a water influx. Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say. That's 900 is what the state has already... That is what's already in their... Current fiscal year. Current fiscal year.
...understanding was, do they take... Because the budget in, I think I was looking at FY24's balance for roads, was bigger than anything we've appropriated. It was nearly a million dollars. And so, to me, that had to have been an appropriate... And it was the FY24, so it was like, well, how did we get... Unless they rolled a prior... It was listed under roads, they're usually separate projects. Or they put the Chapter 90 money in that bucket, in that same account. Before offsetting it with the reimbursement. Right. I couldn't... Yeah, I mean, that's the question I asked, is that the town has to spend the money and then get the reimbursement from the state. That was the last year's approval from the state. No, from the town. Hold on. It was 700, something like that. Yeah, so like 600, 700. I knew it was smaller than what I saw as a balance. So, the only way that would work is if they add, I think he said they get... They anticipate 485. They added the 485 and they had spent part of it right down. There was no top of matching, right? There's not a... Right? Because I didn't... It's not a match. It's not a match. It's not a match. And that was my question. Don't they need to go... We never... We haven't, at least in recent history, asked the town, if appropriate, just pick that case, a million-something, knowing that they're going to get $400,000 back from the state. Yeah. But I believe the response to my question was the town goes ahead and spends the money, but it's spending it without having been fully appropriated. Yeah. It seems to me. And then the state sends the money. No, it's just an accounting... Like, they set up an accounting entry to say, here's what your balance is so that you can see it. But it's based on, right? It's not even a form, right? It's just based on... Yeah. I'm like, Brian, I think technically, I think they really probably should be asking the town to appropriate it with the understanding that there's a reimbursement versus just doing it. Yeah. Which the schools do. I mean, the school operating budget has the full school budget. Yeah. Operating expenses. But that will affect debt, right? Of which the state sends nine million bucks to the town. Right. I mean, what we're looking at is how much debt do we want to approve towards it, right? Because the reality is, let's say, finally, if we approve 1.2, we only give them four. It's still like 400 grand of debt that we're asking to get in 2017, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think what I'm trying to get down to is what is left? Because my thing on any of this, and I'm not opposed to, like I said, having 400,000 for emergencies, particularly given, I felt, as you did, John, I kept seeing water main break announcements every couple days over break. So I understand that. But what I don't want to see happen is, and we've had this on other capital projects, right? We're appropriating capital projects, and it's not getting done. And that either, right, whether that's borrowing, in this case, it's borrowing. We're paying interest. I'm borrowing. So I want to keep that as close, as tight as we can. Now, if he's Tom saying he's going to spend the 600 that was appropriated by the end of the fiscal year, he's got nothing there. He's got 400 to get himself started for FY 27. He's going to get another 400. And he's going to get another 400, right? So my thought was you drop the 831 down by 400. And, you know, Tom can argue it's a different number, but you drop it down so that you're running closer to, yeah, what would be a 1.2, 1.3 total appropriation for the year still. So that's the number I had in my head, too, because you split it half, give them half to see where it takes us, right? Yeah, I was going to knock 400 off. Yeah. And I mean, personally, I know it's a long-term improvement on the road, I guess. I mean, if we're worried about getting approved, we drop into free cash, right?
I want to be careful with that. It was getting funded by taxation for a number of years, which also goes back to the period of time of free cash that's being built up. And then in order to try to avoid overrides to FinCom a few years ago, proposed not funding through taxation. And the finance director generally agreed to do it through debt funding as long as there was an agreement by FinCom that in the next at least five to X years, if you're funding, it'll be done with debt. So I would say it needs to stay, even though I prefer not to have much levy debt, which is why I'm at zero, just because I know it has to be funded with levy debt. And again, to me, worst case, he runs out of money in my road, your road, somebody's road. I blow out another tire on the corner of Sears. It's passed another year until he gets back on cycle. My commentary isn't. Yeah. I don't want to talk about that. I think going forward, doing an annual funding of road improvements makes a whole lot of sense. But this year is just such a wild card. And between the Happy Heller Wealth project and then the operating budget challenges, it looks like 27 is not going to require an override, but the next nine years will, likely. And so I'm just troubled by adding levy debt. And we just took levy debt off to try to help with the operating budget. But that's just me. I'm not going to make a big deal about it if the rest of you want to... Well, again, this puts in the recommendation. I think 400 grand is the recommendation. He's going to have to have the conversation with Al anyway. And they can decide up or down based on priorities. I mean, he may come back and say, I need less. I need the truck. I think that's... Yeah. Yeah. We didn't talk about the truck. Yeah. How do you find the truck in the story with the roads?
Well, my goal doesn't start with 400. I think drop it, you know, 431. We split it in half. Give them a chance to debate it. So give them 400 for the roads. Well, 431. Yeah. No, we can do even. Brad, do you have a view on that? No, I agree. I think the 431 makes sense. I think that makes perfect sense. Liz? I'm not opposed to dropping it or cutting it in half. Um, it's just, it's one of those. I've just had more information. What I would say to you, too. Um, can you expand on that? Like, like, so what goes into the 831 exactly? Well, it's a cost per mile and how many miles. So the town has, I forget how many miles of roads. It's a cost per mile to replace. And they have us on a somewhere between a 15 and a 20 year cycle to road replacement plan. So that doesn't mean every road gets replaced every 15 years, but on average. So for example, I'll pick Clayton Hill Road gets replaced more frequently than my, than Sears Road because the bus traffic on it destroys it. Right. But that's not the average. So they, it's a cost per mile times the number of miles at night. I think we have 96 miles of roadway. Um, replaced over somewhere between 15 and 20 years. So I think I did the math and it's like 17 years. So I think of all the numbers in this, in this chart, other than some of the vehicles.
You could, you could sleep at night knowing that that money will be, it's a good estimate for the projects that they have on their plan to do. And then it, you know, maybe some slated those costs going out and, you know, they might have a little extra that they use to repair. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a good number. It's really a question of where philosophy is that where we're at right now in fiscal 47. Well, and also how, how far in advance are we funded already? That's my, that's my take. They have enough to survive the storm. Cause I mean, this is people and if we don't do it, then what do we do with the people in your situation? That's another, right. So yeah, we don't want to, we don't want to be in a situation where people who would have been doing roads. Although apparently we, we do outside contract. These line painting that's where we have, we struggle with that. Um, so I guess it's the point that we've got a lot happening in the road when it's seven. It just seems to putting out 400 days, kind of a net like a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of it. So yeah, I'll take every little bit I can get. But I guess, I mean, how much room do we say we have half a million to 800? I mean, I say room. I, I, yeah, I, I think. Well, that's free cash. Yeah. Yes. We don't care about adding additional levy debt. But we could move, we could move, there's a few levy debt projects we could move out. Right. So that, that's part of your proposal to add 431 to roads and move roughly 431 into free cash. Into free cash. Yeah. From some items. Yeah. And that would pretty much use up your compliment subject to there being surplus capital to replace. Yeah. I still think you have free cash room. But you saw that truck. I mean, I, I, I think he, I don't think one of them, he wants the full amount of gear and he'd want the truck. I just feel he probably needs the truck more than he needs to. My take was give him 400 of the road, give him the truck. Yeah. Yeah. I think you could get that free cash. Both of those items? I think, yeah. I think. Move the truck into free cash. So you're just trying to say, you're agreeing that you don't have an issue increasing levy debt. Or move something else into free cash if you wanted to push more. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So you're saying move, because the truck's not in here. Correct. It's not in Kelly's memo at the moment. I'm suggesting, based on what you said, 33 is critical. Right. Which is the loader. That's not, because we write. Which loader though? There was H40 swap loader is 370. And then the H11 John Deere loader that he brought forward. So I think that one was the one that. The one that he brought forward. Couldn't wait. Right. And he also brought forward a dump truck. So I think it was those two that were. So that's rows 33 and 34. Yep. For the two that. Right now, none of those vehicles are in Kelly's memo. I mean, that's not a. I mean, at least for his. From a budgeting perspective. His side. And again, I think the top. I'm going to have to. The top holder. We'll have to make a decision. That maybe the take is to give the two. Critical trucks that could be put up for. They're obviously a problem. And half his budget. So that we were saying. Okay. We took 400 from roads. To give you two vehicles. Yeah. And they try to balance that. Yeah. And that's what I would advocate for. Is those two that he had to pull forward. And half the roads. Wasn't the budget with that then? So it drops from about a $1.7 million ask. That's what I would say. That's what I would say. We're saying it's not in 27. So we're saying adding additional to 27. 431 to the roads. And then 475 to the two critical vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because that's not just road. I mean, those vehicles are everything, right? The chaos that just continues to ensue. Yeah. I have on the vehicles in particular. Like I've said before. He had those out. He pulled them in. He talked about why, right? I, I don't want to see. So we have water mean break and you can't do the work that you need to do because you have equipment that doesn't work. That's not a, that's not a place I want to be. So that's the proposal. I'm in agreement with John. That's the proposal in front of us. And just for my benefit, I can't see that the two trucks are described. How? It's the H11 John Deere loader and the H7 F550 dump truck. And the one that's not included? The one that's not included was the H40 loader. Thank you. Which again, it's an even split. Yes, for 715 vehicles. It's getting half. We're cutting half on roads. We're cutting both on half.
The other thing I still don't have a good answer on, and I think we've given where we thought was important on it. I still, I, Nick is also new trying to get up to speed. I think my recommendation to the town manager and, and the finance director would be whether or not he thinks all the existing funding that he's gotten for projects is going to get used on the projects that it was intended for. Or if not, should it be returned, right? As surplus capital and the projects he needs, you know, put forth. Because I, I am a little concerned just because there was so much IT dollars unspent in the report that, that you had. So that was my other, like, and I, I just want to make sure, right. He knows you can't just take money from a project and move it to another one, unless it's, you know, additional funding on the like project. You can't, you can't swap. There's nothing there for IT that's not in the high category. You're talking about simply. I'm talking about in general. Yeah, when he met with us, he obviously, again, had to have time to really evaluate. Exactly. And with the passage of time, there's a good chance that we talked about with him. He may not even recommend now spending that money. Right. Particularly in the IT world, because there's so many things where, like, we planned it four years ago, and the world has changed, and we don't want to do it anymore, right? So I think that's a call out in the MMO. Make sure that, I'm sure the finance director will screw up open capital, as he always does. Yeah. But this is given, I mean, this is a, those are different conversations, right? The finance person questioning whether I should spend it is different than the town saying, go back and say if you really need it, because he might be afraid to do it, or someone said it was important. Yeah, it's... Yeah, well, and there's a tendency, too, you also have to be careful, because, like, well, I don't want to give it back unless I know I'm going to get it on the projects I need it for, right? So I'm open to that. I just want to make sure that that's, that the technical process is happening. Yeah, and I think when he was with us, I think we made that point that it wasn't clear, he's been working in municipal government, that he couldn't simply move money from one project to another. Right. I think it's also good for the town to see, right? Because they're going to say, look at all his money he has, they're not spending, the reality is he may not need it. So it's part of it. Yeah, I'm guessing he needs it, it just might not be needed for the things that he, Yeah. You're more important, right? Thank you. Yeah.
Based on my view of our IT that I've used, I would find, I'd be hard-pressed to be convinced we don't need it. Okay.
Anything? So, back to the DPW discussion. John and I were in agreement. Is everybody else?
Yeah, just again, just so I'm clear that, so we're, the suggestion is the H11 John Deere Loader and the, the dump truck be, uh, approved and the swap load or not. Is that the suggestion? Correct. Yeah. Okay. No, I'm okay. And half the road, yeah, half the road. And half the road, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm good with that. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. Yeah. Half of the roads would get. Yeah. And that's my only other question, if that's all the extras we're adding, what currently is in your draft memo, other than the additional items that talked about earlier in the evening, um, is there any sense that, um, given that, again, the town manager will do what the town manager wants to do, um, is there any sense that folks want to rank order the mediums such that if in the memo we said, this is, this is far as we're willing to recommend? Yeah. The only other one, Brian, is you've got shift commander as a no command vehicle, but that was, that's the car, that's actually the cardiac monitor and that. Yeah. No, my, uh, in my, uh, version seven, I've changed the description. Okay. Okay. That's why I didn't. Yeah. Okay. I didn't see a change description here. Got it. They changed the priority. But other than that, just. My question is, if you want to, if, I mean, for me, the only other things I'd say that, with the rest of the office that are on there with town building on those, as far as I'm concerned, I mean, I can see, you know, it looks like HVAC in the health of the schools. I mean, I, I'd always throw that in there.
Yeah. I'm going to leave that though, as if there's, if there's surplus capital, they can feel, yeah. I'm just asking a question. We feel we want to lay out what, if you decided, town manager, that you have even more money than we think would help them. I, I would, yeah, I agree with Don. Here's your other priority. I would say the HVACs are the one I would do next. There's several of them. It's hard to see it'll go further than that. Yeah. But if it does, then it's just going to pick, everybody picks. Yeah. Well, it's something we're not going to approve because it doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I think, hey, this is what I would add. This is the priority we would add from the list that's kind of that median bucket. Yeah. I think that isn't the website in there, that website, which would be, frankly, it's a medium for IT. Yeah. Yeah. And I, but it was always that. Town manager spoke right up on that one because that's the project he wants to see done. So all I'm saying is if, if, if we feel we want to at least lay out what order in which we would do these things, you know, but again, if we do that, you'll still pick whichever ones. Yeah. I mean, we may leave the ones we have in there. I think IT, we have the governance of maybe which, where you have money and maybe free up that, close those programs and reapply to other IT programs. I mean, that could be cover IT maybe versus- Yeah. The only other one is, and I'm going back to DPW, is we didn't put their radio system upgrades in. So we did school, we did, we did fire and police. We didn't do DPW.
Yeah. Again, I'm fine with what you proposed on the roads, but I- No, I'm not saying we do put it in. I would be more inclined to deal with trucks and upgrades to radios when we're doing all the town radios and just take a pass on roads other than the chapter 90 Monday and surplus. Yeah. I think where I'm at now, Brian, I'm not disagreeing is I'm good with what I've suggested. And if the town manager and, you know, DPW director, and they want to swap it out, they can, they can go ahead. I'm just saying, I would make that swap, yeah. I would like, I don't think, I think going to zero means all progress on road, you know, you're limited on how much progress you can make on roads, and I think that concerns me from a staff perspective. Yep. Right. Maybe patching roads.
Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, we're not going to do this, I mean, we can't, that's for, that's for this forward. If this was, if this was fiscal 28 and we'd have better clarity on the town's operating budget side, and we figured out what happened with the water, I think my view on some of these items would be different. I'm just towing a pretty tough fiscal line, given what we're up against and the unknowns.
Okay. Okay. So we're adding the alternatives that are prior to HVAC, right? I guess we're going to get to the key. Is there a number on that? Uh, there's a couple. This tab, I see, elementary is 14, uh, anyway? 49? 49? Uh, well, on the tab, we're off. 49? That would be fine. That's elementary.
There's a public safety building HVAC, which is 250. I would say I'm schools before I'm public safety building. Um, it's 540 for elementary installation of. Oh, I actually see them. Is there just one of those? There's, yeah, those are the two HVACs. And I would prioritize, I am just not, wasn't sure, because it says installation. If it's adding HVAC versus replacing HVAC, I feel differently about it. Great. Seemed like, I thought when I read it, it was kind of like an additional unit to better coverage. Yeah, I think he, what he said to us, I think it's that of the units on the roof, only a certain number of them are actually working, right? For the school. Yeah, for the school, so. Yeah, he said, yeah, he needs to replace them all every year. Yeah. Yeah, so, so the alternates, it's the HVAC, and if you want to throw the DVD, probably DVD radios in as an alternate, just because of the JCC program overall, it's probably there to do anything. So, no, you're going to deal with this in your draft memo, however you deal with it. Yes, I am. I'm going to just finish up with this Excel workbook, close it up. I'm probably going to take some modification to this schedule to create a section between high and medium to put some of these items we just discussed. Yeah, and I'm doing, just so you know, I'm doing it in my spreadsheet and I can pivot off of it as well. So, Brian James Bromack, how are you? Good, I guess I'm in the wrong room. Do you know where the planning board is here again? Oh, no, that's the wrong one. It's Sanitarium. It's Sanitarium Community Center, of course. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate it. Drive safely. Yeah. Sorry to bother you guys. Hey, Jeremy. That's okay. I mean, I think it's a good person I expected us to get a line, but I was good. Yeah. Well, I only gave us an until seven o'clock to do this, and it's now a quarter after eight. I thought you said nine. I was like, I guess we're all in. No, no. Well, because we, I split with the report, but I actually think we covered a lot of what, we covered quite a few things that are report related, so. Okay, so I'm going to just do one final recap. I'm going to, on this, I'm going to move fields into the medium section. Yep. I'm going to include half of the road, 431,000 or so of the roads in the high section. Yep. I'm going to include those two vehicles in the high section. Correct. The vehicle's going to go up pretty fast. Yeah, I got the funding structure, and then I'm going to take the HVAC from schools and move it up in a little section. At the top of the medium. At the top of the medium. At the medium and high of the medium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. High medium. High medium. Yeah. It's own little section. Okay. Priority medium or something. And then the funding source will stay the same or whatever I have it. What did that have on the HVAC for funding source? It was borrowing. It was borrowing. It was borrowing. Borrowing, but you have free cash on the public safety, but. Did you want public safety also in that, but behind the schools? Yeah, it goes behind the schools. So you'll tell me when you see version seven, if I got it right or wrong at the next meter.
I agree with you, John. It was a good discussion. Yeah. So I think. Okay. So we have to miss the fun part, I guess.
All right. So now I'm going to, let's see, stop sharing. I can get my whole menu bar with the stop share. There we go. Stop share. And let's open up.
And this story is where, when I send this, the workbook out, I've sent it. You may have seen it. I sent it to the ex officio member. So right now I'm all there. Yeah. And Kirsten have seen it. I haven't heard from them, but they're probably going back through the chair. I haven't heard from anybody. Kirsten has replied back saying she was good with it. She did reply back. She did. Yeah. She did. No, she did reply back and say that you had her accurately captured. Some of this won't come as a total surprise when they've been looking at the minutes. Yeah. I did not send them the report because I wanted to have this discussion before we did that. So, all right. So I'm in the report and there's still quite a bit of work I need to do here, but I wanted to get you something to get started with. I did not put the executive summary in because I always do that last after we've actually got
Oh, did I put, do it wrong? Sorry.
I, the IE or, yeah, IE. The funny thing is I thought I, I did that once. No, I thought I copied and pasted it from somewhere. Yeah, maybe.
Mine's usually missing a page.
Okay. All right. So why don't we start with background, Brian. I know you had sent me something. Thank you. That's very helpful. I can, I can amend this to align with it. So it was actually approved. Um, our existence of the committee was approved by the attorney general. Um, I was led to believe it was sort of a default thing, but we actually got a letter proving it and Brian sent that to me. Yeah. And just, you might just because of the length of time after they got approved, it then had to be publicly noticed at least twice. Then there was an issue with one of those public noticing. So they have to do it a third time. So we couldn't officially get going, which I think was the punchline of this until the earliest August 23rd. I think we met on, it says in there in our first meeting. So it was early September.
That at least answers the question of why, why did things seem to be delayed? Yeah. Although that was the intent of this. Although I will also say, even if we'd started on July one, I still think we would have struggled to to do what we needed to do in the timeframe because the timeframe was 15. All right. So my, any other comments on the background? If I make, I'll make some changes based on the technical of when this was approved. So there's some of them that are fired. So in the trimission, it says greater life of five years and the cost. Oh, you're right. Is it four? Five years? No, it's both. Okay. So I thought that was like, if you buy a bunch of small things, it also counted. And a, and a total cost. And a thousand in the aggregate? Yeah. Probably right out of efficiency. Aggregate. Okay. I think you probably just pulled, you gave this. Yeah. I want, I, I, I listed a lot from, yeah, what we already had. I just, we just need to be careful. I mean, that sounds like a, what's on the website might not be totally clear. No, I thought these are documents that were sent out to us. Yeah. It could be on the website as well. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So I just want to go back on members.
Brian, you're probably the best to answer this. I wasn't positive and I saw it written different ways, different places.
Were you and I appointed by the committee, by the finance committee and the school committee, or were we designated and officially this, this select board appointed us? Okay. So we could put designated two, two designees or. Well, that's how I have it. Cause I say this left board appointed us and then I have in the columns who designated. Two of which were designated by. Yeah, I have it. I, I guess I didn't, I didn't throw it in the narrative because it's in the, it's in the chart. That's accurate. Okay. Good. Anything else on the charter mission section? And you guys are free to send, if you've got like Nits and Nat type edits, just send them to me. But if it's, if it's more than an internet, I'd like you to at least call it out in the meeting from a standpoint.
And thoughts on, I've, I've got sort of, I haven't added them, but appendices that I was intending on sort of copying the various documents into an appendix of this just so that everything was in one place and we're not referencing the capital policy, the debt policy. And then somebody who actually wants to leave it has to go like pump them all down. Yeah, I got fired these. I sent you three tables that I thought might end up in a pennies, but obviously with your tables included, two of the things I sent you wouldn't be needed. Okay. Doing up because I wasn't sure what you're going to do. I think, I think one of the tables I sent you was a complete listing of open capital projects. Yeah. As of November 18th, historical record. Okay. Because what happened last year, once Brian, Kevin, he produced, they reported a point in time, Muniz moved on. Then when I tried to go back and reconcile, he said he couldn't recreate. So just, so maybe you could add an appendix and use. Yeah. I think that would be good just because I, I'd like to avoid like any future, like, hey, these numbers don't add up to what, so that they're clear that the open capital. As of the day. Yeah. That would be, you know, just adding that appendix.
All right. So I'm on, any other comments on the charter mission or current process?
The only thing I would add, um, towards bottom, you know, since the committee reviewed the requests,
I'm sorry, since before that. Yeah.
You may have gotten slightly earlier than the rest of us, but probably not much. So I think it'd be helpful to put in that the first got the initial PPW request on October 29th. All right. Okay. I think they were due 30 days after the comment request went out. And we didn't get the other, we didn't get the other ones till November 11th, but I noted in the zip file, they were all dated November 3rd. So I don't know if they went to the family office, November 3rd, and you didn't get them till November 11th. But again, I just think it's relevant in terms of. I think I'll just add the dates I, I received them.
Right. Because in some cases we received like a blank folder for school. So when did we actually get, I'll go back through the emails.
Maybe I'll just put a link. You can see the first, we received the initial submitter from the DBW, you know, October 29th. And over the next two to three weeks, we received the, the rest of them. Okay. You want, you're okay with that versus me just listing it out. Yeah. And then it may not be here is the right place to put it, but obviously we just got some substantive changes for some of these. Yeah.
That may go somewhere else. I apologize, public. I meant to start sharing this as we went through it and I did not.
Okay. I will add that.
Next up is right out of the capital policy, right?
The bullets. They came from, no, I don't think so. They came from, uh, Liz's niceties, but I read them and liked them. Um, but I can, I don't think I could find any. No, the capital policy has it, but it's like a sentence. It's like you should write. Yeah. Yeah. Based off of what we talked about when we were acting exactly like what comes for, you know, so that's. I thought that's where you got them. Let me go back to work. Anyway, I'll, I'll take a look. I feel like the capital policy was light on. It, it mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. This is more how we did. Yeah. I remember our first meeting and asking a question is, are they listed in a capital policy in order? Other than the first one. Yeah. Probably not. Yeah. And I, I, but I like the way this reads. So yeah, I put this sort of in the way I think we thought about it. The order that we, because I moved one of them. Um, but I would also, I didn't want to commit to like, it's strictly this. No, I didn't do like. Yeah. Priority. Yeah. I left that language out intentionally. Yeah. I, I think it was good that way. Is there anything worth adding? Yeah, I think. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, I like the way the current process reads and the way it's set up. I think that's, uh, I think it's very effective. No, I was gonna say if we should add is that, you know, I do not want to make it up again, but the baseball field, that concept of projects that are not fully defined, that we don't, I feel like that should be in there somewhere saying. Yep. I agree with you.
Maybe in financial or just, or maybe it's the last bullet. Yeah. I'll just add a note, um, it's, uh, project readiness as a criteria. I, somewhere I talked in there, I talked about resources and I think it's resources and readiness. Yeah.
Is it resource readiness and open capital or something? I think it doesn't work. Yeah. I, I, when I say resources, I always mean both people and financial, but I don't know that. Okay. The concept of completeness of submission, which kind of goes to the. Yeah. Yeah. It's in completeness. And that'll be more of a longer term. Yeah. It would be hard for me to argue that we completeness was achieved in most cases this year. Um, but I, I give a pass because we didn't make. Yeah. I mean, some of the, some of the things we've now gotten. In fact, asking questions, my view would be the type of information we would hope we get as part of the initial submission. Yeah. I think as I, I outlined here somewhere, I think our request format, the way we're asking for things is, is not our, our current CIP form is ineffective in getting what you actually need. And most people don't fill it out. Yeah. Don't ask why I fill it out. I hate to say it, but. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. The next section I go, I, I, I'm fine with the chart that has the numbers populated. Well, I might suggest on the other items, but on a table, just a narrative. Just do a sentence. Yeah. I'm, I'm good with that. I started thinking I was, and then I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. I was trying to get at the fact there are other ways to fund projects. Yeah, no, I think it's important.
And thoughts on, we have it, I think I have it in one of the charts, but like, I don't know, funding sources calling out impact on taxation. I think it's helpful for anybody who's non into town finance, like understanding that cash capital would be a direct, you know, hit to taxation. Levy borrowing is, is a hit, but free cash and ambulance receipts are not. I, I think that's helpful to have, but I wanted everybody else's opinion. Yeah. Let me probably take a little narrative somewhere. Yeah. I'm able to say, here's the rain. No, these are typically driven by this answer. Yeah. I think it would be helpful to actually take an action to go and refresh myself. What should those categories are for the negative cash funds? So, yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll add, I'll add something there.
Okay. All right. Future improvement targets. I actually, this is the very first thing I wrote. It's. Okay. It's a sensitive subject with the board of public works. I know you took this list from the pin com report, but that retained earnings line item. I, I, what I was thinking is if I add a description that I will put on, because I, I, I want to say this came, like, we didn't make this up. And then make a comment on our understanding is that, um, retained earnings is, is not available currently. Yeah. All right. Let me add that. So I forget. So cheaper process. I mean, I think the two things that still stick out my head, but I don't, first everything to commit us to it, but. Yeah. I mean, open project, open capital project status, health improvement, right? I mean, it's right below it, but we don't actually call it out. We have capital assets, but we don't have to have that over the project status. Oh, yeah. And then the other one was, we want to, some sort of older to say, again, the town building conversation or assessing full scope versus, you know, driving total cost of programs or something.
What would you call that, John? I would call it like understanding. Well, and that bullet on expand long-term capital planning might be including, uh, ensuring that total future costs are, are considered, right? That's right. Yeah. And then maybe saying where, may, where appropriate ensuring that we're revealing, uh, multiple projects impacting the same capital asset. I mean, I don't want to call it two, but that's too much time. I guess probably. I'll, I'll think about how to, yeah, particular asset or. That'll be a part of the first collection, right? So I think the funding, I'm assuming eventually, eventually, but our funding requests are going to extend past the five years. Yeah. That's what the last one is, is that we got to get beyond five years. But I think what John's saying and I like is it's beyond five years with an understanding, a strong understanding of a particular asset. Right. To the extent. I mean, it's the town building. Yeah. In my mind, it's because the five years, you know something that's broken, but that's not right. But if you had a 15 year plan, I would hope the other stuff would end up on there. But it, to me, there's also a pairing of understanding of the town's strategy and direction as to use of buildings, right? Like, great. This building needs all these things. Are you guys planning on vacation, like, are you planning on doing something else? Because that's important. Maybe it's like the, what is the plan for a long-term asset before, you know, maybe it's capital improvements upgrade to the next, something like that. So is there, is the intent to put that on the new funding request? I don't, so I don't think that in particular is something a department manager can answer. And I think that's also a problem with our existing funding, existing CIP, is that it's got a bunch of stuff on it that a department manager wouldn't answer, like funding source. And so they skip over it. I think, I think that question is a strategy question that has to go usually like select board school committee, right? Of what's your use, you know, if we're looking at repairing things at a particular elementary school and school committee is intending to do a building study and build a new building, right? You have to know that in, as a part of, but one of those is a strategic, completely strategic. One of them is, could be strategic, but is likely to be repairs, right? Maintenance of a building. So if we get our information currently from the department heads, but this is really strategic, it's a decision or analysis to be done, decisions to be made. Are we even getting that information? That's, I think there are two different things, right? Improving the CIP is to get better information from the, from the department heads. I think there's maybe a separate bullet here, which is understanding the needs, right? Use needs, right? Of the, of the various town boards, committees, functions, right? But it's a separate, it's a separate initiative. Yeah, it's us. It's us taking the information for someone saying, I need to fix the roof. What else do you have to do? Oh, I don't know yet. Because they're just worried about today and then going up into the town. What's our use plan over the next 10 years? What are your repairs look like? Yeah. And then burying them and saying, well, hey guys, you want to keep using this building, but it's going to cost $15 million. Do you still want to keep using this? But like, does that change? It's, it's the circling back to say, does that change your view on, on how to do this? But I think it's a different body than, so we've got to get information. I think it's probably more to the boards and committees, but. Yeah, it'd be like, we're trying to do new committees somewhere, I guess. Yeah. I don't want to think about that. A good example is the stormwater discussion that we had, which I heard the chair of the sideboard at the meeting Mondays, alert the rest of their members that their board needs to have a further discussion about floating over the next 10 plus years, make sure we know how much money needs to be spent to be in compliance at the end of that period. The good news is, as our liaison, she heard that discussion. Yeah. She's put members on notice, and I said, who does that on their committee? But that's an example right now. We're just seeing $250,000 here, another $250,000 there, but it's millions of dollars. And then we have an asset management plan that they had to approve an invoice for, so that could get done for a grant form or something. Yeah. But that's another example where the department head wouldn't be in charge of that. That's a higher, that's an account manager, select board, school committee, school committee payment. Well, and that's where, you know, before making a bill, it's just understanding what is the actual ask and the intent, and how do we accomplish it? I mean, to me, it's ensuring we're asking questions about multiple days or multiple year capital spends for, you know, that in fact one ask. But is that the vehicle we're going to get that information, the updated capital request? No. And I think it's our budget. I think it's the 10-year budget saying, hey, these all go together. And it's for a building, that's going to be information request meetings. Yeah. Mr. Ryan said, like, if we had, if we start breaking down sections like vehicles, we see them, hey, this is town, but these are all the town building to ask, if it's a certain problem, we say, okay, this is the problem. Yeah. I don't think it's a CIP form. I think that's, it's a little more qualitative, you know, awareness of what's going on in the boards of committees, working with our liaison, right, on the select board, possibly Brian, you working with school committee on like, hey, what's on the horizon? And use-wise. So I, it's, it's not as defined in my head of what it looks like. I just know we need to have better, we're going to need to have better information in order to achieve, you know, a long-term beyond five-year calendar. Right now, it makes it work as improve visibility, too. I mean, that makes it kind of- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. kind of how meeting stuff is done. That's one of the things we want to do is have a joint meeting. Yeah. I look forward to the manager of school committee and make it a working session to talk through some of these themes, concepts and themes. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're the ones that they're going to- Well, they're going to have to do- I mean, so again, queuing them up to, hey, you've got to start thinking about this, it's a bit of a change in the process, absolutely. Like, the schools are working on a separate master plan for the elementary schools. I don't know if they're- I even think we should do that, just having the updated, you know, capital request from like, oh, by the way, we talked about getting better clarity and information and this is how we're going to do it. It's questions now. Well, that's the thing, right? All this is disconnected, essentially, with all these master plans. So that's the problem. Okay. The town master plans. Yeah. I mean, all this band-aids until we get there, right? That's all this is. Yeah. Okay. There's a bunch of notes to expand this section a bit more. All right, both in capital, Brian, I basically just took what you had done. Would you like me to foresee tables in front of these, and if not, I can put in table one and two and fill in blanks and send it back to you? The only thing is, I'm not sure if I'm not going to end up with a table in the executive summary. Okay, I'll wait till you're ready. If you want to just send me- they're spreadsheets, right? Yeah. I mean, I can copy and paste them myself just on your spreadsheets. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I didn't do anything to that, because I love it. I hope you guys like my watermark. Oh, they can only read it in a few places. I just wanted to make sure. Draft subject to material revisions. I didn't want anybody to- I might have a couple of questions on the next section. Yeah. I think I sent you one already in the email. Whatever numbers you decide- Yeah, you're not trying- Because I know you have to update them anyway. Yeah, I'm going to cross reference to what yours is. My only thought would be, well, I have no issue putting the total, whatever the total turns out to be, that was initially submitted. And I know you referenced right after that, 30.6 million. So just do the math for people and just say that it's 18.5 million, which then people can equate to what we're recommending. Yep. And I've already given you my MWA comment. Yes. Do them in and extract. You have to change this during the discussion tonight. Yep. I will change the numbers. And I will- Generally, generally recommended limiting, and then add some verbiage on the two or three items that we have talked about adding in. Yeah. So you want to say the committee recommends generally limiting- Yeah. Generally- That's right. Yes. Okay. So if you have in mind the narrative summary of capital projects- So what we had- I looked at the FinCom report last year and it just had a real couple sentences on what's really driving the six million. Personally, I'm not a math person. I don't love narratives. I love throwing charts out there and just having you see what's there. But I figured once we nailed down what the projects were, I'd probably add a little bit around, you know, major projects being the septic. You start at a high level and say- Yeah. Town flip, schools flip. Yeah. Exactly. Enterprise funds flip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Kelly says she don't want to just put- When they write the reports, generally you do a couple sentences in there, but then there's a table that says the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a just throw the table in person. So you included this particular part of that section. You included the septic under the schools, which I don't have an issue with. It's the place for the high school, but he's an owner. Yeah. So here's the thing. In my spreadsheet, I actually broke the facilities identifier as facilities slash schools, facilities slash rec, right, to who are the other partners. I can do that here, and I'm okay with that. I kind of like it in the schools. Yeah. Just because- It's how we've done it. The reason I left it that way is because that's how we've historically, in FinCom's report, that's how we've historically, we've given facility projects that were schools to schools. And the existing facility was built as part of a high school building. It was. A school building. Yeah. Well, I don't think anyone really cares who's spending the money. They want to know what if you've got everything to have. Yeah, it gets tricky because facilities, like all their other projects are dotted all over, but I tend to separate my, and I think most people do, town versus school, right, rather than more detailed parts. Especially if it's going to have some spending spending. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you drop 2 million into facility, people are like, what are you doing? Yeah. I will tell you that- We don't. Again, I have no issue with this. Again, I think it'll hopefully get a slightly improved chance of passing town meeting, but we're going to add a couple more items potentially here, the schools. Yeah. And my understanding is the operating budget at the moment is, the operating budget is pretty sizeable increase in the school budget and a relatively smaller increase for the town budget. So both operating and capital schools are going to be outsized. But those projects will be called out above as the top projects anyway, right? I mean, you're going to accept tickets that way. I put it below. And we have to do it. Yeah. It's on the next page. Anyway. Which I was going to put in the appendix. I'm like, no, it needs to come up front because you need to know what those are. So is DPW nothing from this current draft? They do, which is part of why I initiated that conversation because that doesn't make sense sense to me just broadly that you've got a lot of assets there. How could you be at no spend? They have a $36.8 million project. Well. Yeah. Anyway. So this, this table will get increased for the town building room, the two elevators things. Yep. I think all the fire alarms, the hot water heater. So what would you group that in department-wise? It doesn't make sense knowing that that's going to be a major topic like school. I'm going to be right. No. The tech, the buildings, the elevator stuff. Are you better off the department? That is going to go in facilities. Okay. It's going to go in facilities, but it'll be on this, this exhibit. It'll show exactly right of the layout. Exactly what it is. Okay. Um, it's not in the summary. And I, I debated if the summary that I have on whatever page this is, is needed. If we then give the next, cause I actually like the next page better. Cause it does the projects. It just doesn't, it doesn't summarize a total for each department. I don't. Yeah. I wouldn't mind not excluding the first table. And I know it's appeared in the FinCom report in the past, but. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Yeah. I think it's redundant and not as useful as the next one. So. Okay. Yeah. I'm great. All right with that, Brad. Yep. Yep. Good. Yep. I got an email from FinCom about, you know, what I, what I keep updating. Would Brian, would you and I keep updating the tables for them? And I said, well, I'm going to update my tables to do our report. But I can't guarantee I'm going to, you know, keep updating them. As, as things change. I mean, I'll help if there's a question, but. Okay. So that'll all get updated. Brian, this reflects. I know this happened when I, after I left InCom breaking out water. And waste water as a separate chart that didn't used to be the case, but that came about. Yeah. Right. Well. Enterprise funds. Yeah. Yeah. They have to be separate. Right. But they weren't for, for many years. Right. That was a decision. That was a change last year. I'm excited. See it all. Yeah. What I didn't have time to do for this and I'm not planning. I may get ripped into helping is in the warrant. There's a description of each and every project that we're recommending for the current year. I mean, that takes a lot of time to get together. So I don't think it can go in our report. I won't. Much less of it changes. Yeah. So I don't want to, I would happily help put it together once they've nailed down projects, but I don't. Yeah. In the warrant that has like the summaries, but the CIP forms. I mean, except the CIP forms generally don't have what needs to do in there. I've been, I've been reaching out to department managers to create the descriptions. Yeah. So. Okay. Um, and then that's, I didn't start. I didn't have enough time to get into the out years. So what I will do next was some of the same tables that we put in the warrant. I'd like to produce for the out years based on where we find medium load. I think the problem is this is cumulative if we medium something in 27. We're not including it. Am I, am I pushing? What's your general philosophy? Am I pushing? I thought we decided, um, given where we are in the process that, um, we needed to get official 27, the town manager. Yep. Um, we needed to continue our work. Yep. Uh, having ranked that we were going to maybe include with this, which is a table I sent to you, which needs to be slightly cheap. So just give the high, medium, lows for each. Our rankings. Yep. That's fine. Um, we put, we, I sent version five of that spreadsheet. It is version six too, but I sent version five after the last meeting to the finance director and copy the town manager saying this is before Christmas. Um, you might want to, you know, our memo is not going to get discussed until after the new year. Yep. Here's our rankings. You might want to get going and filling out your own budget template, which includes exactly what you're talking about. They're going to be making their own decisions anyway. Um, what I heard my instructor say on Monday evening at the FinCom is that they're waiting to get our report, which will include fiscal 27 and five-year plans, which is exactly what you were just starting to describe, which are the, which I didn't tell them we would do. And we, we've, we've said, we've only said that we would provide the rankings. And I know that that was understood because, um, I got some comment back about it. Right. Um, I'm not saying we didn't start out and the charge for the bylaws that we shouldn't in fact be producing a five-year plan with numbers. Yep. Based on how we feel based on all the information we've gotten fit in the financial plan. Our problem was we asked several times for the financial resources in the out years. And what we were told was just use what was provided in fiscal 27 through 30 last year's five-year plan. But it doesn't address fiscal 31. But on my spreadsheet second tab, it kind of showed that at the bottom of the tab. Here's all the requests we got. Here's what we were shown in last year's five-year plan is available funding sources. And every year we were short. So that left open the question. Are we supposed to. We flop. Cut it to cut our recommendations down to meet those. Finance bills or are those going to change based on accounts finance. So. We needed at the last minute you were here down. We said, we need to get something. And I thought what we're going to do is forget. Pretty much done here in this section say, we just haven't gotten all the information. We need to properly assess. We still have $4 million of facilities projects that. We're waiting to find out how much in which years. They're not fiscal 27. And we haven't really talked about. The. Movement of numbers. If we have to move numbers and end up with. You know, a specific table like the ones in here for each year. We can do that, but it's not going to get done at the next meeting or the meeting after that. And. Which is why I suggest the town manager and the finance director get going. Because they're going to do what they're going to do anyway. Right. Yeah. We're going to do our rankings. I'd say put the rankings in this section in the same group. You know, I would say at your direction. We will continue to work on developing a five. So that's what I'd like to do. I would like to put the rankings for the out years. Right. In here. We can put it and I can do it two ways. I can summarize the dollars. Right. That ranked high low medium low. As a summary. And then. A listing with. With everything. In the detail. I would like to and we can issue a report. And then. I would like to go still as a committee. Keep working on. What we think a plan would look like. Now the question is. Is that a futile effort. Right. Because they're going to go change a bunch of stuff anyway. And so. Let's see what they come up with and start over. I don't. I don't think it's completely futile. Only because. We're going to have to do this all again next year. And I would like to know what we. Where we stand on. What we think about the projects. And to the extent they come up with a plan. And we're like. Yeah. That's not what we thought. Right. I'd like to identify that. We just went through a process. Yeah. With one year, which. That's the most clarity. It's just going to be. It's just. Yeah. Yeah. We should do that. We can do that. It's just. Yeah. It's going to take more time than. We know there's a big gap too. And what's the next year's highs. Everyone said they didn't do that. Yeah. But. I mean. I don't want to add more work. My. My almost thought is that. Is our first pass. I mean. I mean. Each year. We're at. But. Do we take what's left. And then say. Okay. In 28. These are having you. High media. Right. Well. After the last meeting. Yeah. After we all. Right. Yeah. Okay. The consolidated ranking. Which is in the spreadsheet. I produced it. The exhibit. Yeah. So we have that. Then we should review that. That's just to say. Okay. So I can. I can update that. No. We did last. We did last week. The week before break. I'll update the exhibit. I sent you that. Consolidated our ranking. Yeah. After the meeting. I'll circulate it. To everybody. So they have it. It's. It's in the. It's in the. Yeah. Yeah. It's spread out. And now you have all the. I squished it down into five columns. Yeah. Focusing on the rankings. And I think I have the dollars in the rankings. Yeah. And it just made it easier. To be concise. Yeah. But what we're talking about is. Then. Do we keep them going forward. And we're creating. You know. One of these tables. For each of the next four years. Deciding what's in. And what's out. Based on our rankings. And I think. I agree with your point Kelly. Given where we are in the process. If they. Which is. I think what we've been saying. For. A month. How management. A structure should. Do that. Based on what they know. Their resource. Allocation. The. We keep working on it. And. I suspect there'll be. A fair amount of agreement. Yeah. But. Whatever they decide to do. They're going to do. Is along the way. We could. Say. We'll provide you with. As soon as we can. We'll provide you with. Yeah. I'm not opposed either. To issuing a report. And issuing. An addendum. Yeah. To the report. But I want to get this. I want to get. FY27 out. Yeah. But just say that in the report. Because meanwhile. I know the FinCom. Is expecting. Not only to get a. Fiscal 27. Capital budget. But they also. Want to get. Five year plan. And. And they got their. Cancel. Because they're going to. Have articles. The operating budget. And so. Seven capital budget. Yeah. And. But. But. The base record. And the commander. Have to be. Moving on their own. In my opinion. On. Yeah. I agree. 28 to 31. I agree. Right. I'll. I'll. Recirculate that table. After I. Update. For. Additional projects. And then. You can. Decide. You know. It'll. Refer to it as an exhibit. Yeah. Or I'll figure out. How much. What. What. If there's a format. Of some of the information. To put it in. Okay. Right. Yeah. Okay. When is our. We hope to get this. Agreed to. Is issued by our next meeting. Yes. At our next meeting. At our next meeting. Yeah. I'd like to be on. Final edits. At our next meeting. Okay. So. Next meeting is scheduled. For. Next Wednesday. Um. It's. Currently. Confirming that. I'll be remote. Yes. It's currently scheduled for. We had talked about. Six o'clock. Um. Is. Are you guys amenable. To 630. Yeah. Have a child. Leading the country. For months. So. I'd like to. Uh. Yeah. Well. Today. Somebody. Is. That. Yeah. An amount of luck. That I don't like to depend on. Is what I would like to say. My daughter. Waited a little longer. That she should. To. To get her visa situated. Um. Yeah. Okay. It came in the mail. Today.
Pardon. Do you have a question Brad? Nope. Nope. Nope. She was just laughing. Yeah. So if we can. If we can push back to. 630. I'd appreciate it. Just. That's fine. Yep. Yep. On Wednesday the 14th. And we're going to be in the select board. Um. Meeting room. Okay. That's because the heat's working tonight. Like. Yeah. Although the select board doesn't work. Maybe after tonight's discussion. We may have a full crowd next day. Yeah. Good. Awesome. All right. Um. Let's. Can we move to minutes? Uh. Before we do that. Brian. Do you think we needed a vote? Um. I mean we got agreement. But we didn't vote. Um. On our rankings. Do you think it's sufficient to just vote. When we get the final report? Uh. I think when we get the final report. Yeah. Yeah. I think. I agree. Um. Okay. Minutes. I have no. New format. This was the agenda. This was now the required. Format. Yeah. Which I just want to say for the public. There we got a new format for the minutes. And for the agenda. And I quite frankly thought the changes were great. Um. It was. The agenda lets me pick the committee name off a drop down. Pick the date out of the calendar. Um. And I sent those comments to the town clerk. And she. And she. Had expressed that. She was happy to hear that. Because a lot of people. Did not like them. Um. But I thought it was pretty slick. And helpful. To me. So. I don't know about how you felt on the minutes. I think in the minutes are fine. I've added. You see I added a. But no. For example. Just to. Add some additional detail. Which they're fine with. I think there were certain. Yeah. I added. I added some things too. Yeah. There was certain key information. They wanted to be consistent across every board and committee. Yeah. But basically said. How. How the rest of the minutes go is up to you. Yeah. So. Obviously. If you all have any substantive questions or edits. You can have some time. I do not. Yeah. No comment. They're robust. And as an example. Every once in a while. When. If we spend time. Talking like. On. Big tables and things. I'll just. Add. Attach the table. Yeah. Right to the minutes. The public's benefit. That's fine. That's fine. Um. I'm actually fine. If you. Attach. The direct. Like. Just attach the whole thing. Addendum to the back of the minutes. Right. That's up to you. Um. Okay. No discussion on the minutes. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes. Of December 17th. Motion to approve. And a second. Second. I wasn't here. So. Nope. That's fine. And we're gonna have to do. A. Roll call vote. So. I'm gonna start. First. With. John. If you. If you. You don't have to. But you can. Yes. Yes. Brad. Brad Carver. Yes. Brian. Brad Carver. Yeah. Liz. Yeah. Kelly. Yes. So the minutes of December 17th are approved. Uh. I don't have any topics not reasonably anticipated. I think I did mention earlier. Select board. Um. Our separate liaison has asked me if I would come to select board. Um. To talk about. Our work. Um. Where we are at. And what our challenges are. And I. Expressed to her. That one. I wanted to talk to the committee about it. But that. I wouldn't. See us doing that. Until we've actually voted and issued the report. And then I would. Um. Provided the committee is okay with it. I'm happy to do that. Once. We have a. Any concerns. No. Um. All right. So next meeting. We said 630. Wednesday. The 14th. In. The flat board. Room. Do we want to schedule. Beyond that. I think I would like to. I get a hybrid room. You probably should. Yeah. So. Can we do the 21st. Which is the following. I just. I'm just. In case there's any. Follow up. I hope. You cannot. Okay. Get out of. That's great. That's great. Okay. Any days that week. Folks can do. Monday. Oh. Monday is a holiday. Oh. It's a holiday. Only hybrid days are Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Yeah. I can do Tuesday. I might just not be. I've got. Three days in a row. Okay. Brad. Can you do Tuesday? Yeah. It was 20th. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Let's see if I can get that. In the event. Medium. In the event. We get done. And. The 14th. And we're like. Hey. We need a little break. Before we take on to the next. We can do that. But just. I just want to have it there. Just in case. We've got any. Follow up. Okay. If we'll finish next week. Do you think you'll get feedback. Probably. Before that. I don't know. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. And. Unless there's a. What was the next. Major town meeting. Next town meeting. For this. Yeah. Um. Let's go ahead and go out one more week. Just so that. In any event. We don't meet. On the 20th. But I've got another one out there. So. Days of the week. Preferences. Are we talking about the. The week of the 26th. Uh. The last week in January. Okay. The 28th. Is the Wednesday. Yeah. I would like to do the 28th. As possible. I'm going to be out of. I'm going to be out of. I'm going to be out of state. From the 28th. Through May. February 7th. Um. Yeah. So. I can do the 27th. I can. Yeah. 26 or 27. I can do. Yeah. I can do the 27th. I can. Yeah. 26 or 27. I can do. Good. Lizzie. Okay. PMVC is meeting. That's nice. Well. 27. Yeah. Can you do the 26th? Definitely do the 26th. Okay. 26. Okay. For us. Yeah. We can go from six to seven. Then that works. Be done at seven. You can start at seven. No. No. Don is perfect. Yeah. That's why we were laughing. Yeah. Okay. All right. I will. I'm just going to get those reserved. And we'll. We'll go from there. Okay. That might be the. It doesn't affect us as long as they have a room somewhere. It's hybrid. You know. Maybe there's been time. You want an article hearing that night. Okay. Yeah. If I, if I can't. We'll go from there. But. If we can't. We said Wednesday. Brad could do Tuesday. Wait. That was Tuesday. We decided. Or Monday. Sorry. We said Monday. We said Monday. Yeah. I can. I can. I can do Tuesday. I'm going to do Tuesday. Yeah. So just in case. If we can't get Monday. I'll book Tuesday. And I'll. I'll do hybrid. But I'll. Yeah. Yeah. No. I understand. Okay. I got a. What is CIPC. Like somebody saw it on the. One of the kids on the calendar. What is CIPC. It's like. Oh, so we haven't been listening to me for the last three months. That's awesome. All right. If you like. Are we. Good. Can I get a motion to adjourn. At. 904. Second. All right. And we have to do a roll call. Brad. Are you in favor of the motion to adjourn. Yes. Brian. Yes. Liz. Yes. Yes. We are adjourned at 904. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad. Are you in favor of the motion to adjourn. Yes. Brian. Yes. Liz. Yes. Don. Yes. We are adjourned at 904. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.