October 15, 2025 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript

October 15, 2025 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee

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It is 6 p.m. and I'm calling the meeting of the Capital Improvement Planning Committee to order. We are in the Council on Aging meeting room. And this meeting is hybrid. So I will read the pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025. This meeting will be conducted in person and via remote means in accordance with the law. This meeting may be recorded and will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon after the meeting is as practical. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so by in-person attendance or by accessing the meeting remotely as a link on the website. We request public comment be limited to two minutes per person. So I'm going to review the agenda and then we'll do public comment. So 6 p.m. call to order on the agenda. Announcements. 6 p.m. call to comment. Members response. 6 p.m. discuss capital and debt policies approved by the Select Board. 6 p.m. continue review of existing capital information, primarily from the 2025 Annual Town Meeting Warrant, and address any member questions. 7 p.m. review and vote to approve the minutes of September 30th. And 7 p.m. topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours prior to posting. And set the time of the next meeting. 8 p.m. approximate time of adjourning. And, of course, all those times are approximate. We'll do our best. We'll do our best. I do want to just note members attending in person are Brad Carver, Kelly Lappin, John Kliem, and Brian O'Herlihy. And Liz. Sorry, Liz. I lost your name. Lasky is participating remotely. That's the hybrid agenda. Any announcements from anybody? Liz, any announcements from you? No announcements. Want to go with that? Yeah. All right. So, public comment. Do we have anybody? I'm actually not. Okay. We're going to assume no public comment. And we have Carol Martin, our Select Corps liaison, as well. Okay. So, we can get started then. So, capital and debt policies. So, I sent everybody the capital and debt policies that were approved by the Select Board. And I just ask that you review them. And if you have any questions, concerns, anything related to those that we need to go over that we should talk about, we do that now. I believe policies are living documents. Doesn't mean they're going to change immediately. But if you have any questions or concerns that we want to air, now's the time to do that. I don't. I thought it actually laid out, actually fairly well, what our role is, and how we interact with the town, with the Select Board, with the FinCon. So, I thought it was actually very helpful. Okay. I thought it was good. Okay. Brian. Go to Liz. Liz. Confirming, no questions on the policies. Okay. I think at some point, it might be helpful to ask Karen Kevney to, maybe using the fiscal 26 numbers, to provide us with sort of the financial impact of the, or how these various debt levels and capital planning levels, spending levels, how they mathematically work out based on the fiscal 26 numbers, just so we have an idea. A, how it works. Um, since it sounds like that could be a limiting factor to us at some point, depending on size of the budget, size of the capital spend. Um, there had been in a draft of this two or three previous fiscal years, and I couldn't figure out where some of the numbers came from. So they, just before they finalize them, they just deleted that. I don't know if they were there to maybe provide some background while they, you know, whoever set these ranges. Um, but, and I'm also not a hundred percent clear, uh, some of them require you to add up the general fund budget revenues, uh, CPA revenues and enterprise fund revenues. It just wasn't exactly clear where you, where you get those numbers from. And, um, so I, it seemed to be the finance director would be the person that hopefully could provide that to us. And hopefully do it at the outset of our process. So we know how much we have. Yeah, I, I don't disagree with that. I would also say that has to be done on a projected basis. Yeah. So any, cause any decisions that are made don't prospectively are going to change those. Right. And, and obviously you have to make assumptions for how those. I mean, the good news is that he's, he's now doing a pretty good three year forecast and a, you know, a 10 year forecast that. Obviously it's more suspect as you get past year two or three, but to the extent he could mechanize it so that those calculations are getting done. Um, I think that would be helpful. Other than that, I, there are a number of, um, little myths and that's that, um, at some point, the extent we are asked to provide input back to the select board, uh, because they're going to get around them, you know, amending the policies. Um, I could provide them at that time that the only substantive one that I noted in the capital, uh, policy is on, um, subsection C, which I mentioned at the last meeting. It talks about the process being beginning in October, the town manager and finance director will request, uh, department heads provide information. You know, my problem being that bylaw requires us to provide a report manager later than October 15th. So, um, I suggest that probably should be July or the latest August so that we'd have the information in September. So we could get that part of the job done. Um, I think town manager is aware that doesn't affect this year. So we're already, we're already behind. Yes. It should be, it should be corrected. You either, either bylaw has to change or the policy has to change because they don't, they don't currently align with each other. Yeah. And I assume the bylaw, that was something that was discussed and that date was picked by whoever, you know, drafted the bylaw. Um, and it seemed a little early to me, but at the same time, given that we, we have a process, then the town manager and the finance director have a process and then the finance committee has a process. October 15th, it kind of sounded about the right date for our work, but, but that's what the bylaw says. Yeah. And I don't remember specifically that conversation, but I do remember talking of exactly that working your way backwards with everything else that needed to happen. Right. After it leaves our committee, we needed to give it more time, but I'm not, I don't feel strongly that that's the date. It's just easier to change policy than it is to change bylaw. So, um, we can obviously send that right. We can send those thoughts actually, Carol, you're here. So you're hearing them. Um, I don't know if you have any. Um, Carol Martin, Lake Road member of the select board. Hi. Um, the select would voted the policies primarily because, um, we were formalizing our financial policies and to be prepared in preparation for our Moody's, um, review. They had noted that as a, a triple a rated community, it's a best practice to have them formalized and written. And we didn't have us. So when we took the vote, we said that if there are any of these small edits or maybe a large one that please send them. Um, why don't you send it to me? And, um, Brian, send me that one about the October thing and then keep track of them. I think the select board will plan on doing one revision. You know, um, so far I haven't knocked on wood hurt too many. So we'll probably do one, uh, revision, like an annual review of them kind of thing. Maybe you have to tell meeting unless something egregious surfaces. So that work. I mean, it's, you want me to send them to you, Kelly? Yeah. Why don't you send them to me? Yeah. I'll send them along. Yeah. So, and, and you can, you can see that that's one that needs to be adjusted. I agree with Kelly though. It is easier to adjust policy than it is to adjust code. Cause we can adjust policy at any time. We cannot adjust, uh, code, but once a year, that time meeting. Yeah. And the, and we should only adjust code if. But it's not feasible for the staff to be able to get that together in that timeframe. Right. I, I wouldn't say we will, this committee is not going to drive a change in that. That would be. A change. Spent a lot of time working on that code. I think that probably the policy is the one that needs to be adjusted. So. Yeah. Send me that. Send me what you want. And then, like I said, CC. Um, why don't you CC Michael and also Kelsey. As well. Please. Thank you. Do you have any questions on these, Kelly? Or are they, you had seen them before? Uh, I didn't. I had seen them before. So there wasn't really anything. But that's probably, that's why I'd rather have your guys' feedback because sometimes when you're too close to something, you don't, you don't see the obvious. Can I just have a housekeeping issue? You know, you've sent us a lot of documents. They're all very helpful. And they're via email. Is there a place where a lot of these documents are going to live so we can all access them in one repository or not? Um, I had, you might not remember I had asked that question. Right. In our very first meeting and I didn't get an answer. Okay. Um, from some staff. I will ask that question again. Right. The, the difficulty is. I think if they're going to be stored somewhere, whether or not that has to be a public place or not. Right. So I will ask again, cause I, I agree with you and even for me to go find all of them, right. To go pull everything together. And then for any of us to go back, it's like, Oh, let me go back to Kelly's, you know, fifth email, um, to find that particular attachment. Um, isn't, isn't the most efficient process. I will ask again. Yeah. I think, um, one thought I had Kelly was, um, and I can't do it until the slide board, uh, where the town manager posts the approved financial policy document, which is 140 pages, uh, would be to add to our pay webpage, uh, a little tab for financial policies and basically just have the link feed to these two policies. Just so it's readily available for anybody that goes to the capital planning website. These two seem most relevant. There might be other parts of the financial policy. Is there a website up for, uh, we have a webpage. We have a webpage on the other, just like all the other committees, if you go to committees, um, back, that's how I got, right. That's how I get to the agenda. And that's where, when I link the agenda to you guys, that's, that's where it is. I had them linked to the town code. I could have had them put two tabs so far. One, linking it to the town code for this committee. And the second, uh, is the list of, um, capital projects that have been, were approved in the five year plan. Um, we don't want it to get too cluttered, but, and I think if you look at the old, uh, look at the FinCom webpage, I, before I went off, I cleaned it up in a sense. And I took a bunch of stuff and I dumped it under one archive tab. But over time, there had been some effort to, um, keep the repository of documents discussed at meetings. And depending on who was chairing the committee, um, they did it or didn't do it. You don't have to do it, but, um, Um, in, in the meantime, I'll ask Brad cause it's a good question. In the meantime, what I can do is instead of sending you attachments, I could send you, um, some links that you could favorite. Right. So that they're right. So, so some, like, so for example, what Brian was just saying with the policies, like we can, I can send you the link so that you can favorite it, um, on your browser. Yeah. I mean, right now. That's just what you want. I'm sure it's have a folder full of, uh, capital, uh, links, but. Yeah. I mean, right now it's not a problem. I'm just proceeding down the road. Oh, it will be. Um, for sure. Okay. Any other questions, comments on the policies? Two things I saw. One was. Oh, what was that Carol? Excuse me. Um, Mr. McCall is, um, in the participants. He's, he's been here since six. Do you think you want to pull him over as well? Yes. Yes. Of course. I'm getting something else. Hang on. He also has a hard stop at seven. It says, but I'm staying with it to the end. At least tonight. Yeah. Sorry about that, Michael. My eyesight's not so good. I can't see this, but that you were sitting in the, in the attendees. John, you've had a question. He's still talking. Yeah. Michael. You're on mute. Michael. And that's all I have to say about that. To quote Forrest Gump. No, I've just, just been in the background listening. I, I, I couldn't find a panelist log in, but I'm just here in case for questions. Thank you, Michael. I think two easy questions. It does say if we're responsible for the inventory list, and I don't think I've seen that unless I missed it in one of the Excel files. Yeah. I don't have, I do not have an inventory list. Are there any useful life guidelines? I know there's an IRS one that's, that's generic, but do we, does the town have guidelines that it uses? Yeah. Those are both, both good questions. And so, Michael, can I ask you on inventory list? I know the onsite insight review was happening. Was that just facilities or is that all capital? Michael, you're muted. Yes, I realize that. That's just major facilities, mostly the buildings and things of that nature. Actually, it's 90% done. They did a lot of it around January. We had to go back and do the COA and it took a while. Those should be posted. Maybe I should post the other ones we already have. We were waiting for all of them. But we do have just the other capital planning list. I know my new IT director had noted that there hadn't been a formal inventory of a lot of our IT capital, such as PCs and things like that. So he's planning on doing that. He did a reverse network where he, one weekend where he went out and pinged to find out all the devices on the network and he's going to go out and inventory. So, so no, we just have the major iOS. I would have to check with facilities and IT to see what they have to date. But we're working on that. But does finances have a baseline for what they consider an asset versus what we actually, because it sounds like you're doing what we actually have report versus here's what finances thinks we have report. Usually there's two. Usually it's what's on the books. Yeah. There's an inventory check versus there's, there's a, what did I put on the books that I own? And then there's, do I, is it actually still here? Right. Yeah. Usually the easier one is what finance thinks you have. And then it's fine. Yeah. I guess I would have to talk to Mr. Kevin. I know we maintain a, like a vehicle listing cause we have to submit that for insurance every year. I'm sure there's, there's what we think we have versus what we would like to have. And you know, I, I can check on that. Yeah. I mean, I only ask what's in the policy and the supplemental policy that we're supposed to. And it's a great question, John, because it's in the policy. Right. But it's not something we can do on our own. Right. We can't sit here and create it on our own. So it's a fair amount of work. I think policy says that the finance director is supposed to produce that for. And to your point on a financial basis, the typical municipal financials don't deal with depreciated assets, but there may be gap disclosures in the town's financial report such that Brian and the general ledger system have all the assets. But to your point as to whether there's a bunch of them for gap purposes that have been fully depreciated that exist or don't exist, that that requires obviously somebody in the staff to go through and constantly be matching it up with what's still out there. But that responsibility, while in the policy does reference us, it specifically says that's going to come from the finance director. Great. So I would... I'll add it to my list. That was the useful life if they have guidelines within the town for what they're using. And then there, I think there's, I think it references the policy. There is some apparently state law guidance. Yes. On maximum lives for certain types of assets. So... There's obviously gap, you know, generally except accounting principle useful lives. But for municipal accounting, again, gap isn't terribly relevant. Yeah. Um, it's cash in, cash out. And I'm, and I even, corporations are two different policies. And we have useful life versus tax depreciation. So they're different. Yeah. Third, third set of lives. Yeah, necessarily. I would just, I saw software five years and it made me laugh because we never considered software good for more than three years. And so I'm like, okay, there's obviously something I don't understand here. I wouldn't, that is not the natural assumption I would make of most things when you, when you see something you don't understand. Um, I will ask Michael again, I'm going to call on you because I feel like you gave early on in the capital planning working committee. I feel like you might've given us something from the state that I can go dig up relating to capital that has useful life. Um, at least discussion of determining useful life, but I can go look back at my email. Yeah. I'd have to check my own emails as the notes. Okay. Excuse me, Madam Chair. The, this is probably not the answer, but in the debt management policy, it does address that long-term, long-term borrowing is confined to a project. That's at least a hundred thousand dollars and has at least 10 years of useful life. That's not your question though. Is it? No, no. The question is for each and every asset we, we own. Right. Yeah. And particularly you want to know it for what you already own. Right. But you also want to know it when you're going to make a decision on what you're going to add to your, your latest capital request. Right. You want to know how long that's going to last. Yeah. Right. Part of the process. Right. And the form it should be. Yeah. Yeah. Going, I think the going forward cards probably easier than the current inventory, but going forward, I think it's a reasonable ask to make. Yeah. If you look at it in terms of like what things are responsible, the person requesting capital, like normally you're the, they're selecting, here's what I believe the useful life is. Here's what these, you know, aspects, right. Versus us trying to go backwards and figure out what it should be. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Yeah. For clarification purposes. For, for our purposes, for a capital asset, we're looking at things over $25,000. Right. So, you know, a computer or, there's probably a whole bunch of stuff in an inventory that has no bear on it. Yeah. I would break inventory when you get broken off. Right. But you have to keep in mind, if you buy a lot of computers over 25, that then falls back in. Well. So, you're going to buy good chairs. Yes. Yeah. So, good point. Yep. Agree with all of those things. I've added it to my left to see what we can find on that. All right. Any other discussion or questions on the capital and debt policies? Those are all really good comments and questions. Liz. Liz, any, anything else on capital or debt policies? This is kind of a cross between what's in the warrant and what's in the debt policy. So, specifically, looking at, so I don't know if we want to table it until we get to the warrant or address it now. Short question is, there's some CPA funds in the warrant that seems to, the project's essentially canceled, for lack of better terms. The question is, is the project from a CPA perspective the same as the projects that are identified in the debt policy? Are those one and the same, or are they somehow in different buckets? It's a good question. It's a great question. So, the view we had, right, was that all projects that require town resources fall in the category of needing to be reviewed here by this committee. Okay. But there is a difference, CPA is different in that the funding source, right, is coming from CPA and the CPA has to vote on whether to proceed with that project. So, it's different than everything else, but the intent, and Carol is going to correct me if I'm wrong, right, the intent is that those projects would be reviewed here as well, because even if the funding source is from CPA, it still requires town resources to move those projects forward, which is a part of the discussion of, do we have, right, when we're slotting all the projects, is there enough resources to actually move those projects forward? And to follow up on that, then, is the idea that we would first make a recommendation and then CPA makes their recommendation or vice versa? I can tell you what I like versus what I think will happen. I think it can probably in reality work in either direction, and I've seen it work in either direction, where there are projects on the list requested by a particular department, and you say, hmm, that seems like that could be, CPA funds could be used. You refer it to CPA. There have also been projects that are taken directly to CPA and come back the other way. The hope is that we're funneling them all, right, in one direction. So, through here and then, I think, to CPA, right? Does it fit the resource plan and then can you secure the funding? Yeah, because their process is that they take applications through mid-December, plus or minus, and then they make a decision on which projects they want to recommend for town meeting, and they need to do that by January 15th of the following year. So, they won't have any of those applications or requests. And they're not, those things typically, they've been referenced in the five-year plan in the past for the FinComs report. That report's typically been done in, like, February or March, which is after those projects have been identified. So, I think, I think CPA projects, we're just going to have to... We're going to have to feel our way through, but I, my opinion is that you would slot the project first, right, priority order, and then seek the funding versus the other way around. And I think the timing, what you're describing, Brian, works for that, because they're not making the vote on, on what they're going to fund until, you said applications in December? Yeah. Yeah. So, that timing works. The problem becomes if you, if we talk about something, we think it's CPA, and they vote against it, right, obviously that, that can draw a kink in things, but... Or, again, the flip side is that they get something in, but they're not going to have that in time for our, sort of, October recommendation. So, I'm not sure at the end of the day exactly what pressure points are for this committee to be focused on with respect to that, other than... It won't be the biggest challenge we're facing. It's good to keep in mind, it's good to think about, but I'm not going to give a... I'm not going to lose a whole lot of sleep over it. Okay. Anything else, Liz? No other questions on capital or debt policy. Okay. All right. So, we're going to move on to reviewing capital, the existing capital information from the warrant. So, we had done a lot of discussion at the last meeting on funding sources, probably... I don't know if it was more... I don't think it was more than we needed, because I think it's the foundation of how we are going to pay for all of this. But didn't get much chance to talk about, necessarily, the other items on the list. So, the report of the finance committee, the bylaw itself, and then the capital plan and associated projects. So, why don't we start with... I'm going to start with the bylaw, just because we just talked about the policies, and I think the bylaw with the policies is what worked together to define what we're doing. So, any questions, concerns on the capital improvement planning committee bylaw? No. No. John? None that I made note of. Okay. Liz? Yeah, I would agree. Nothing in my notes specific to the bylaw. And Brian? Anything other than the disconnect between the bylaw timing and the policy? Nothing other than... I mentioned this at our very first meeting, as to whether it had been a conscious decision to reference capital projects and improvements in certain places, but not all places. And so, when you got to this sort of place where this committee is supposed to be a gate through which projects are supposed to go before town meeting, it only references capital improvement appropriations. And so, it just wasn't clear to me whether that was the Scribner's issue or whether there was a conscious intention not to include, for example, purchase a land or purchase of a building, which isn't a capital improvement per se. Yeah. Yeah. My recollection was not that there was an intentional distinction. I'm going to call on Michael if you think there was an intentional distinction. Not that I recall. I'm just thinking. We're going to assume anything that appears that it is a capital tangible asset. Yeah. If it meets the definition of capital, right? Well, like for instance, I think it would have been helpful, too, to have this group when the select board was approached about buying 14 West Plain Street. Maybe you would have wanted to weigh in on that particular issue that, you know, that acquiring a building for $1.5 million, you know, you know, your contribution and opinions may have been welcomed by the select board. So, I think that's where things outside the norm, things like that come up. Yeah. I don't see why we wouldn't value your input on those types of things either. Yeah. I don't disagree. Just the words in the bylaw leave open if someone wants to argue that they don't need to bring something before the capital planning, urban planning committee, because it's not technically an improvement. Well, I would argue that buying something is an improvement to the town. It might not be an improvement to a particular asset, but it's an improvement to the town. Yeah. I think you could argue the language, right? Yeah. Whenever you see inconsistency in choice of words in different places, it just leaves open the possibility. As long as we know what we're doing. Yep. And the only other time it will come up is if someone tells us, no, we're not, we don't read bylaws the same way you do, so we're not bringing this before you. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, we can, if that were to happen, right, we can comment on it, right, in the delivery of our report to the town manager. So even if somebody didn't want to bring it forward to us, they could choose to do that, and we can comment on the fact that we're aware of a project that, right, are aware of a project that's not an improvement necessarily under the definition, and we weren't asked to opine on it, but we can make a statement, right? My gut would be, because it wasn't brought in front of us, we can't speak to it, but it doesn't fit into the plan that we've created because it wasn't brought in front of us, right? The only thing I had is, and this would be part of my edits to the capital planning policy, at one point I suspect this committee was going to be codified under chapter 19, which is the finance article, and it ended up being codified under its own chapter 20. Yep. So the policy itself still references chapter 19, so I'll include that in the edits that I sent to you. Okay. And lastly, I think I had mentioned that when I reviewed the bylaw in the town code back when we had our first meeting, the town clerk inadvertently had not picked up an amendment that was made on town meeting floor. Yeah. She subsequently agreed that it should have been in there, and has subsequently updated the codified town code. Okay. So that's cleaned up at this point. It doesn't matter if it makes sense. Okay. Awesome. All right. I'm going to go back to report of the finance committee. Questions on anything that's in the report of the finance committee relative to capital? I don't want to talk about the whole thing if I don't have to. No. No. John? I don't remember if this was the right place, but we were talking about is there a bond schedule? We don't have to get that into today, but would they provide one for these projects? Yes. So there is one, and it is in the last, like, huge spreadsheet I sent you. It has it. It's one of the tabs off to the right. So that is the current bond schedule? Yeah. It was the bond schedule up through the whatever issuances they're about to do. Okay. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll ask for the, once he finishes the financing coming up in the next couple weeks. No, that's fine. I just want to make sure that was the entire list versus a lot. I don't really let into the larger projection of funding and like 10 year projects. Like what would the plan? Yeah. There's a schedule. There's a tab that has the existing schedule on it. And then there's another tab that has like, as the projection rolling that together with the new projects being considered. Okay. Got it. But that's something. I'm going to ask Brian for the updated one. And I'm going to also ask if there's a, other than spreadsheet I created, right? Plan to develop it because it goes back to Brian, Brian's first question about the reporting, right. That's necessary in the policy of the guidelines within the policy of sticking within those metrics in order to stick within those metrics, you have to have that projection put together. Yeah. And then one, and I think it should be done by the finance director. One of the things I started to do was take the bond schedule that Kelly referenced, which is set up by, sorted by bond offering date. And I took all that information and kind of rejiggered it so that I could look at the maturity, sort of sorted by maturity dates, sort of across the 20, 25 year spectrum. And ultimately I was trying to get down to see each year how much, assuming you don't tack on new projects yet, quite understand what kind of capacity growth you have older time, which at a minimum, if we tried to level fund, we'd say, okay, each year we know we have this much debt service available to us, make an assumption on interest rates. And I think the projection part of spreadsheet Kelly reference effectively is getting at the same thing. It's just not clear. Yeah. No, the only thing that's not there is, is if you wanted that level, right? That debt service level, what's your difference in capacity, but you can look across the projected debt service and pick your number. Right. If you want debt service to be $7 million, how much room you have. So it's there, that last step isn't there. And there may also be, although I don't remember if it's included in that file, a maturity of the actual obligation. So not just the, what the debt service space is, but what, where does it trail? Where does the actual debt capacity go off? Meaning. So not just the service, but the, but the, um, overall debt, cause that's another metric, right? We have a metric on debt service. We have a metric on debt obligation held. Right. Right. Um, so as I remember correctly, right. The, the capacity doesn't really open up until the high school is paid for. And. Yeah. I mean, that's, I want to say that's like 20. We have another 10 years or so to go. 20, 36, maybe 20, 36. What I might do is send what I did to you. You can look at it and see if it's potentially useful because that's one of the things I was looking for to see where the biggest projects like the high school roll off, which provide the biggest, um, extra debt availability, debt service availability. So I'll send you what I did. And, um, it's easily, you can, I can easily update it once Brian closes the financing next couple of weeks if it's useful. Yep. But I don't want to have to have two or three different debt schedules floating around. Okay. John. Did Liz have any questions on this? None in this section though. Okay. Liz, any questions on the, on the report of the finance committee? Yeah. So on, um, page 19, I think that's still part of that report. And I'm sorry if you guys already addressed this, uh, at the last meeting. But the high school waste water treatment, saw that it pulled out. I can understand the logic there. It doesn't sound like we're holding a bogey for it in the future. But I guess, what is the plan to reintroduce that back into, you know, the capital budget over the next five, 10, however many years out we're looking? Yeah. I'm going to defer to Brian on this since he was a part of income when the discussions were occurring. Yeah. So, uh, two things happened last year. The finance director and, uh, uh, the town manager, but more of the finance director, uh, change course and said that he preferred not to include in the five year plan, uh, certain significant capital projects that typically would go to town meeting as a separate article, as opposed to get funded through the omnibus budget article. And so he pulled out, which had been in the five year plan. He pulled out, uh, improvements to the town building, for example. Um, and presumably would have pulled out the five and a half million of the wastewater facility for the same reason. But it was, that was more pulled out because the town engineer, uh, and looking at it decided that there might be a much, well, I don't want to say much, might be a cheaper alternative. Uh, by using a traditional wastewater system, then, uh, rehabbing a wastewater facility that never quite lived up to what it was supposed to do. And that is still in process to see whether that can get approved by the state and by the town's or to help. Um, but it absolutely is a project, um, that we should make sure is on our radar screen because if, even if that is what we're allowed to do, it's still going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the, you know, could be more than a million dollars. Uh, and, um, we need to make sure that if they want to get that done near term, which they really need to, because right now they're pumping existing facility and trucking it off. Yeah. Which they've been told I can't do. The state says you can't keep doing that. So, uh, while it wasn't in the five year plan, we wanted to make sure it was still on everybody's radar screen. We also prefer it comes in far less than 5.5 million. So when we talk to the town's facility director, Mike Fea, and the town engineer, I think reports to him, uh, we obviously will have to see whether a, he's putting, putting anything in for a request for that. And if he doesn't, then we should ask what's the status, timing, cost projections. Um, uh, does that answer your question? Yeah, no, it certainly does. Um, one more clarifying question on that. Would that reside underneath the DPW budget or would that sit underneath the high school budget? Because I know it's kind of a blend of. Yeah, it's not. Maybe it doesn't matter. Yeah. It's being handled by the facilities department. It's being handled by the facilities budget, I believe. Yeah. That could be wrong. That's, that's the department that would make the request or made the request last year. Even, even though it only services the high school. And, and the, the capital planning document we received, this was a couple cycles ago. Um, but the one that looks like they're a fiscal year 26, presumably it would reside in that document. One of the tabs, I would think that for the wastewater. Yeah. Um, it, it, it should have been in that Excel spreadsheet, even though it didn't get incorporated into the five-year plan that was printed in the word. All right. And this kind of just goes also back to your comment about, you know, making sure we're following up if we're not seeing it there. So that, you know, we're kind of looking at a holistic budget there, but okay. No, thanks. That, that definitely, uh, answers the question. Yeah. I have a different viewpoint than, than the finance director does about article projects being, like, I think that you have to give the full picture. Yes. It's going to get voted in an article. Obviously you're not going to put it in the, in the motion for the omnibus budget, but I still think when we're presenting the overall capital plan, everything has, everything that we're anticipating has to be done. It needs to be in there, even if there, even if it's a separate line item saying it's going to be voted by article. Well, and, and this is a little bit off topic from the warrant, but kind of, again, pulls on a thread earlier made about other things that are their own standalone articles that the townhouse or the, uh, the town buildings, infrastructure updates that were mentioned also being separate. Are, well, is there a list of other things like this where they're not included in the warrant, but, or the, in the current, uh, capital plan, but they're kind of been not pulled aside, but kind of their, their own isolated, you know, standalone objects that we should be considering. So I think most of what FinCom knew about is in the warrant, either in the tables or in the text below the tables or footnotes. And we did so for the very reason Kelly saying to make sure everybody's aware of what's coming. That said, there are certain things that are not there that we are also aware of that have come up. Uh, I'll just give you a couple of quick examples, just cause there are a lot of money. Uh, decarbonization. Uh, the energy committee has been pressing for the town to get along with decarbonization of all the town buildings and the price tag, at least a couple of years ago when we first saw it was put at 10 to $12 million. Uh, so that's, that's an example of one that I would expect. We want to ask to learn more about and understand and, and is it real, not real? Was the town really committed to do it or not do it? Uh, another one that, uh, the town manager himself mentioned in, in some meeting I was in, um, I don't know if it was a real number. He can confirm or not, but, uh, there's been an issue at least over the last three years that, uh, the recreation department, uh, hasn't had any real dollars included in the five-year plan for athletic field improvements, renovations, uh, new construction. And, uh, in this five-year plan last year, the town manager at the very end of the process threw in a hundred thousand dollars a year over a five-year period to do some modest, uh, improvements. Um, but, uh, I thought I heard that Mr. Town manager, you tell me that in speaking with the rec department, they have a master plan of some sort. And that if we built out everything that's on their wish list, it would be like $40 million. Now, I hope that was an extreme, but, um, anyway, there, there's a lot of- Don't quote me on the dollar amount, but I think they have, uh, uh, a list that will take them out, uh, probably decades, um, for a lot of different things. But Ms. Brenna, I'm sure we could get a copy of it. I may have one online here. I can look. Yeah. So that's an example of something at a minimum. I mean, they're kind of out of luck. If, if you hold true to a five-year plan, they're kind of out of luck of getting something brand new other than coming in in the last year. So how many departments have these master plans then? Or master, call them a wish list, I mean, however. Yeah. So we'll see this when we get the request, I think, right? The request and what was in the plan and what, what was in the plan last year are going to be vastly different, right? And so that's really where one of the many reasons this committee, right, was, would deem necessary, was having that discussion about it. This is what's in the plan and this is what we have in, right? Are these the things, not only for department, right? Department by department, but overall for the town that are the priority and of the things that are left over, right? What's going to happen if those don't, right, if those don't happen and I'm going to use, I'm going to pick on fields, right? A hundred thousand dollars a year, I'm going to guess, just based on what I just paid my landscaper, right, isn't going to get you very far in even maintaining the fields you have, right? And doing, you know, let's pick, I'll pick on, right, the fall field, right, when we have to replace the turf, right? That has a useful life, back to your question, John, right? It's got a useful life. We can stick our heads in the sand and assume that it's, you know, going to last longer than its useful life, but most likely we're going to end up, you know, in year 10 of its useful life and somebody's going to say, I need new carpet, right? So I think that's the job we have to do here, right, is getting all of the requests, however big they add up to, and prioritizing them, right, both to maintain the existing infrastructure, which I'm going to argue $100,000 doesn't necessarily maintain the existing infrastructure, and then is there room ever, right, to improve the infrastructure beyond what we currently have? Well, I think, I mean, if we're looking at a 10-year plan, knowing, you know, $150,000 or $100,000 is just enough to keep it from dying, and we have a different option to evaluate, then you have a cost-benefit analysis that actually says, actually, if we spend $2 million now, we've just saved this much. And I think, like, the concern is, is because we're only looking at what we have to do to survive tomorrow, we're never going to be able to make those better choices. And so, I mean, I would even ask, great, have your list, here's your must-haves, here's your nice-to-haves, and here's, here's what I would have if we hit the lottery as a town. Because you might say, well, I saw this on this list, and this actually serves both purposes. But without us all knowing, without us seeing the master list, you know, it's really hard to make those decisions. Agreed. Right. So we need to see, using the example of the field again, we need to see their $40 million list and work off of that as opposed to the $100,000 a year. Yeah, you want, I, I think of every department. The whole thing. Right, yes, I agree. And then categorize, right, then you have to categorize what is, you know, maintenance of an existing asset, maintenance or replacement of an existing asset. What happens if you don't maintain it? What happens if you don't replace it, right? You know, if you're, if it's a piece of equipment that you no longer have a use for, then I don't necessarily need to replace it. But those, it's, it's all of those pieces of information are necessary to decide. Right, especially once we start bringing FTEs into it. I mean, that's that hidden cost that we're pretending that it doesn't cost us anything, but it's probably much more expensive. Yeah, and there's a difference between FTEs, right, people necessary to execute on one-time projects versus people necessary to maintain, right, on an ongoing basis, which needs to go on the operating budget. And that's another issue we've had, right, as a town, where we've decided, as a town, we want something, we agree and we vote on that thing that we want, but we didn't have the operating cost factored into the budget, right, at the point. And we didn't necessarily advertise to folks when they were voting on it what that cost was going to be. So that's, I think, gotten better in recent years, but that was, when I first came on FinCom, was a regular occurrence of, like, oh, well, we voted this, but we didn't put any money in the budget to maintain it. So I think those things are a part of our information gathering, right, and that we shouldn't be recommending capital projects that we don't understand the cost to, as one of my former FinCom colleagues likes to remind me, design, build, operate, maintain, right? We tend to forget the operating budget, and so we should understand all the costs associated with a given asset when we're deciding what to do with it and doing that cost benefit of, does it make sense to maintain it, replace it, right, upgrade it? I just, I think a lot of us, once we figure it out, can be pushed forward to the request, right, which is, based on this, you know, if it's a 10-year life, then you expect your cost to increase as you get to that 10-year life as you repair more, right? So we just give them a spreadsheet and just say, we'll just make this assumption for you. I mean, not everyone's going to know this, right, but I think right now it's nowhere. We have to work over there, right? But I think if that's, if one of our goals is to make this a better process versus just solve this year, that's really where I see the benefit of us getting into it. And I agree with you, John, and I think maybe we can talk to Kelsey in a future meeting. Michael, she's maintaining the EZCIP software, correct? Yes. So that's a new app that the town implemented recently, and that would be where we want to make sure that data collection, right, is occurring. And it did used to be a spreadsheet, but this hopefully should not have to be a spreadsheet, right? It's a piece of software that all the department heads can work in. So maybe I'll ask Kelsey for a future meeting when she's available to give an overview of how that works. I'm envisioning we would be able to have read-only access at least to it to be able to evaluate projects. I don't know that that's going to happen this year, but it should be something that the committee is able to utilize going forward. So just so I don't lose track of the – so is it possible to see the wish list, 10-year, 20-year, 30-year items, as a secondary phase if we lose track of that? Because I do think that is more important sooner than later once we get to the initial look. Yeah. Michael, what's the ask on the table right now to the department heads? Five-year? Yes. So I think for purposes of what we need to do for the bylaw, right, the more time-sensitive, I think we've got to work with the five-year. But certainly, as we talk to each of the departments, my opinion is that's something we want to talk about. Like, do you have a longer-term list, right? Can you share that longer-term list with us? I don't think if it doesn't exist, I don't think we're going to get it right in – For sure, the law is in detail. Yeah. Yeah. It could just be more placeholder, but I think that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Go ahead, Brian. Back to Liz's question. The only other two, one of them is mentioned – both are mentioned in the report, income report.
There is a million dollars. It's not labeled specifically for this, but there's a million dollars out in 2030, which has floated around in different years, which is the school's request for money to do what they need to do to be able to go to the MSBA for potential assistance in funding a new elementary school or rehab of existing elementary schools or doing something with a middle school. And so you have to do some preliminary planning and probably hire a consultant. But beyond that, they have organized – and I may have mentioned this at a prior meeting – they've organized a working group that's currently active. They've just hired an outside consultant who's working with them, reviewing the school building need for the next 10, 15, 20 years. My guess is it's largely focusing on the three elementary schools and looking at different – This is different than on-site-in-site? This is more on, like, the demographic side of what they need? I think they had already done the on-site and in-site. Now they're going to the next step to begin to actually start to plan for whatever it is, and that's part of their processes. Do we foresee, you know, keeping three neighborhood elementary schools and pick which one needs to be totally done over or renovate all three? So they're going to look at all different scenarios, put all the elementary schools in one location. And so that's ongoing and will be so for the next six to nine months. But when they're done with that work, I'm assuming that that master plan for their 10, 15, 20 years for school buildings is going to have to be brought forth to this committee. And while I agree that right now our focus, because of the bylaw, needs to be to make sure we get through the five-year plan, if you have huge projects like that lurking out there in year seven, nine, whatever, that could eat up a lot of your future debt capacity, which could impact what you're able to do sooner. And a similar scenario, we did call out the MWA Happy Hollow Well project, which will be a separate article at the Springtown meeting. And there's a discussion ongoing right now with the select board as to whether or not they want to exercise certain authority they have to shift some or all of the debt service from the water enterprise fund, which would then have to be paid through increased water rates, onto the tax rate. And if you look at that in the extreme, that could be $1.8 million a year in debt service that goes on the tax rate. Well, that could chew up a lot of the percentage limitations that we have. So we've got to keep an eye on where that discussion is going. And so those are the really big ones that I'm aware of. And then this building, it's a five and a half million dollars was the estimate a year ago. And I believe so are these directors in the process of getting better estimates to come forward with an article for the upcoming town meeting. But to Liz's point, and to Kelly's point, we've tried in the report to at least make the public aware. But I agree it would be better if it was all done in the table as part of the plan. I'll need to go in. It's the piecemealing, right? I get it. Because it ultimately affects your ability. We have a policy, right, in front of us that is what we are supposed to be using as our guideline. And the policy doesn't necessarily separate out what got funded by article or what didn't for those metrics. So we can't do the job if we're not evaluating all of them. And I would rather it be clear, right, in whatever tables we're producing, it's all in there. Yeah, I just want to footstomp that. So, I mean, it seems pretty obvious that something's going to fall below the line. We can't afford all of it. So let's make sure we're assessing all things versus, you know, we think we have a complete list and then something pops up. And then we're kind of scrambling, you know, if we have complete information, then at least we can, you know, understanding this is an evolution. Things always can shift on us. But at this point in time, if we have the best information, then we can, you know, make, again, informed decisions and be aware of, you know, what we're agreeing to today versus what we're agreeing to tomorrow in the future. So wholeheartedly, let's make sure we have a comprehensive list. Just keep electric buses in the back of your mind. What was the name of the capital software here? Easy CIP. Easy CIP. I'm going to have to drop off here in a minute, but I did find the email that I have from Catherine Brenna. And they go out to FY47. A lot of it's school related and they renew the capital requests. They do it this year and 20 years later. But it totals $18 million worth of things. It's a lot of playgrounds around town and parks. So, um, she did put a wishlist for the next 20 years out there. She, she did or she went with the recreation commission. Well, she gave it to me what the origins are. I don't know, but I know she, she has been keeping it. So I don't know. All the good news is we cut $22 million off of it. Yeah. Well, there are, it says requests that have come in since, uh, 2024 with no price tags. So maybe, maybe whatever, uh, you heard there's, there's dollar values to those that have yet to be put in that spreadsheet. So. Carol, one moment. I just want to, Liz, I know you need to board a plane. So I just wanted to, if there's anything else before you do that, that you want to get out. Would you say minutes are good? Um, Brian, you saw my note and you responded back about the link. So I would think otherwise we're all set there. Um, I'll, I'll still be on. I'll let you know when I drop officially, but I'll still listening in. All right. Thank you. All right, Carol. Click the one button. Yeah. Thank you. Um, just a note. We talked about the CPC earlier and they tend to have some, um, funding guidelines that they follow. And most of the time it's projects that they feel that the town would not fund. And they also, you'll learn later, they have buckets, but one project that they have been willing to do. And I believe it's in their five-year plan, which is still got a couple of years to go, is that they have been willing to fund the biannual reconstruction, rehabilitations of our playgrounds. And they're anywhere from about $250,000 to $400,000. So part of that list that Michael just talked about from RAC, if it includes playgrounds, there's a strong possibility that you might be able to find CPC funding for, secure CPC funding for that. Uh, yes, and I'll just point out, not all of the playgrounds, um, can be funded from CP, not entire costs can be funded because we've been at least recently been putting, um, rubber on the, on the surface of those playgrounds so that they are accessible. And I believe that was part of the cost that had to be excluded, um, in previous projects, but yes, Carol's right. But that has, that has been what's happening in the last few years and hopefully it will continue to happen. Um, but it would be good to, whatever, whatever complete wish lists there are, it would still be good to have them, um, out here so that we can be aware. And back to Brian, what you were saying about NWRA, right, that, that cost isn't just likely to eat it. It's, it's going to obliterate debt capacity, right, against those metrics, um, depending on the timing of it. But if it's, if it's, I mean, that's, that's a lot of other projects that couldn't get done potentially. Well, from an obligation standpoint, there's, there's not that kind of room. There's not that kind of stuff rolling off. So we were not, it's not as if we're at a low metric right now relative to under what the guideline is, but we don't have. Yeah, that's why I wanted to thank Brian and Kevening, because I just don't know how close we are to those percentages. And so if we, if we got those, for example, and we saw that we are at the limit already, it would seem Brian would want to provide that information to the select board before they make a decision on whether to shift part of the debt service over. Um, so anyway, it's, that's an ongoing discussion, as Carol knows. Oh, that's a good point.
I thought we put it in the, in the warrant. So it's just looking to see.
Yeah. So we have, we have it in the warrant on table 13, but we have that less than a hundred percent on the obligation, right, of obligation relative to general fund revenue, which we're on there. We're only about half. Okay. Okay.
Any other questions on the report of the finance committee?
Just out of curiosity, Kelly, the report that this committee needs to deliver to the town manager, do you, you have a, was it your vision that something that kind of looks like with this four or five pages in the FinCom report, that that kind of what you might envision the report of this committee plus? Um, I think that's a good starting place, obviously, I'm going to pat myself on the back, but right, I'm likely to start there because I created some of those, but I don't, I think it's a good starting place. I think we can add or delete from there. I don't think it's the be all end all. I think what's missing, you know, and I wish, right, if, if we had had more time and more resources, right, on FinCom, what's missing for me is the prioritization. Why are these projects, the ones that we're putting forth, right, what criteria do they meet broadly, right? We talk about it in the narrative a little bit, but we don't get into it project to project. Um, we give descriptions of each project, but in terms of the, why did, why did this playground make it on the list and this ball field didn't, right, we don't, we don't necessarily, um, spend too much time on that in the warrant. So I think that's important to taxpayers to understand why, right, the wishlist didn't get approved. Obviously, they all know we have, we know there's fiscal constraints, but why, why the projects that are there versus the ones that were left off? I think that's missing, um, from the report. And I think particularly where that's a combination of priority because it's health and safety, right, and health and safety should come, should come first. Um, and also resources, right, if we're agreeing to a bunch of projects, it's not just financial resources, but project resources, um, if we're factoring that in, I think we should be speaking to that as well. Um, and it might be that we, we already have in the report or in the warrant, how many projects are outstanding, but I don't think we ever marry the, like, concept you talked about in our last meeting, Brian, like, there was that after COVID, we picked a year, we just like, nope. Everything that isn't urgent has to get pushed out, and we're so far behind on projects. Going forward, though, I think it does make sense to have a, hey, facilities is not going to pick up any, you know, additional big projects because they're working, right, the Council on Aging, right, and we can't reasonably, we're just, we're just adding projects that are getting approved but aren't going to move forward. And I think that's frustrating, you know, it is for me as a taxpayer, right, competing, we debate, we spend our time approving something, and then it doesn't move for a period of time, which not only is that frustrating because it's not moving and you approved it, but also because the costs, right, inevitably are going to escalate and aren't going to necessarily escalate in the same way that you factored in, um, when you approved the project. So, I think those things are the ones top of mind for me that need to get into our report. And, of course, I'm open to, as we go through this, anything else that you guys think is, is important, relevant, uh. Well, that's, I think the FTE piece is a big gap, and I have it highlighted multiple times, but, and I don't want to get into it today, because I just, I know we don't have it, but I think, you know, my experience has always been that, yeah, you can always have so many big projects, but if there's smaller projects that you wouldn't have prioritized, but you can get them done with them, and then you just, you may pull them forward to say, I don't need these resources when we just do these other projects. That way we actually, you know, keep on, and that way we don't just keep pushing everything, we just rebalance. Right. And I think that's always a big gap if you're saying we have to do it, to your point, without that resource understanding, so. So, when the various departments prepare their wish list, or their, their, um, list, do they include the FTEs in there, or is that something we said now? I think the narrative, I think the form asks for ongoing. Yeah, I, I will say the existing form that had been used up until, including last year, is lacking in its request, and more lacking in what actually gets filled out. So, um, I think that's why I want to have Kelsey show us what's an easy CIP, right, and make sure that these things are really, they're easy if you ask for the information up front. They're hard if you wait until you're sitting here trying to, you know, go through all the, sit through all the projects, and you gotta go back and be like, oh, I didn't ask anybody what the FTEs, right, what operational costs were gonna be. Well, I hate to even suggest they're even easy, but I think it's more of a, if they don't, if they don't, if they can't answer them in the beginning, that goes to tell you there's a lot more uncertainty that we should be figuring out in our budget and our plan. Which also goes to readiness, right, which is one of the things I haven't talked about. We talked about resources, financial, and people, but there's also a readiness factor, right? So, if you, if you don't know that, um, probably not necessarily the project that should be slotted in the coming year, right? If you're, if you're not at a stage of knowing that information, um, probably needs to be pushed out until you have the full information. So, I think, I, I, that's what I'm gonna ask Kelsey, if we can look at what's an easy CIP, and I don't know why Michael's dropped off. No, I haven't. I was about to say I am, but I, I will talk with her, and I'll look at the inventory list and, um, get an updated list from Catherine Brenna and mail it out. And I did pick up one, um, FY27 capital request, which I'll mail to you, Kelly, so. Okay. And before you go, Michael, is, I wanted to ask, are the departments using EZCIP to submit this year's requests? No, not yet. Um, we're, we're using just that spreadsheet. EZCIP, I don't think, um, has some of the same fields. We can do some customization. It was a tool that was acquired, um, when one of the prior employees was here hoping to start it, and we've taken it over. But it, it can be, um, the database records can be modified and enhanced to, to, to put whatever we want. So if there's things, readiness, other things, I think we could look at changing what the fields are to make it more usable. So, yeah. So why don't we, for this, we're going to get the, the existing form, right? And I think, John, that's the time to be like, okay, here's what else we need. And then, um, hopefully we can work to have that included in the EZCIP template so that going forward, we have what we need. I mean, I think it's going to become more of a project management kind of issue with updates of here's a schedule. Because, I mean, great plans, right? But it's, it's going to shift. I mean, to answer your question, when I read the form, it just says, you need additional resources. It has nothing to do with mapping of your resources. So, is your question, will projects require hiring new FTEs? The form says that the form implies that it's, if you need to hire or not, but beyond that, it's more of, again, once your schedule starts, things shift, like what's, what's happening for, you know, so for DPW, what's their, they have an annual plan. Like now you have these schedules, like where's your FTEs? Well, I think an example would go, go back to that. If we had acquired that 14 West Plain Street, that building, you'd probably need a new, at least half FTE or full FTE in terms of a custodian to monitor yet another building if we couldn't, you know, split our night custodians around. So that, that would be an example of something, a capital item that might. Yeah, there's, there's two components to FTEs though, right? There's the FTEs you need to implement the project and there's the FTEs you need on to operate and maintain the project. Yep. So there, in some capital projects, right, we hire outside resources to project manage, right? But there's still resources needed within the department. And in some, we, we manage within, but to your point, John, if you've got that mapped out, right, you can, you can slot in and decide, well, hey, I've got some capacity here. Can we? Well, I'm going to hop off, but I'll work on getting some of those documents. So thank you everyone. Have a great evening. Thank you, Michael.
Liz, are you still with us? I am, but probably limited. I'm bored. So I definitely want to let you know. Okay. We'll do. Thank you. Go ahead, Carol. Safe fight. Yeah, I think three former FinCon members here will all say the same frustration with the forms, John, is, Kelly's already laughing. I think she knows what I want to say. There's a tendency to cut and paste because some things like vehicles, right, you request. So some departments, you might get a little more info. By the time they filter themselves down to the finance committee, like Kelly said, the process has been going on for a while and you're getting the other vote time. This committee is at the beginning of the process. So you probably can send them back and say, we need more information, fill out all the blocks. As the person who has drafted the section of the warrant that describes each project for like the last four or five years, even when I wasn't on FinCon, most of them are lacking sufficient information. I'll give the gold star to Tom Holder, the head of DPW. His are usually in great shape, but I would say most of them are lacking and I'm not, that's not a dig at the department heads. I don't think there's necessarily ample discussion or instruction about what's needed and why. And I don't think the form as it stands today is the most useful, readable format. Well, if you don't ask. Yes. Yeah. With this committee being new, I think what's been done historically has inevitably got to change. And that's just, the staff just needs to understand so they can fit it in their schedule, kind of exactly what is needed and when. Can I go back just briefly to the capital planning policy, because somebody said, in section C, it says, when evaluating and designing projects, we'll prioritize them using their criteria below. And then there's a dozen bullets. My question was, are those dozen bullets in your mind priority one to 12? Is health, imminent threat to health safety is the first bullet? And I assume that's always going to be the first priority. I would say, if I remember correctly, health safety is first because it is the most important, but I wouldn't say that the rest of the order was heard in a particular order. And should it be from our perspective? Or enough of them, or enough of them. I don't think the policy needs to be changed. I think we have to, we have to consider the factors for each of those. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's going to be a given that a particular item on that list is always going to be number two and is always going to outrank another one on the list. I think that's going to vary year to year. But what I felt pretty comfortable with was health and safety goes first. And that should, and we've had that discussion, right, too, Brian, in many FinCon meetings of, I don't understand how this didn't make it through from the departmental request to the, here's what we have room for. When it was like, I forget, it was like, you know, a ramp to get into Happy Hollow School, which was necessary because there are students who use the ramp, right, currently. I was like, I don't understand how this isn't, right, a high priority. So, I don't, Carol, you can correct me if you think I'm wrong, but I don't think we gave a lot of thought to the order of the other priorities on that list when we put them in the policy. I don't think we sat and debated what order they should go in. I think health and safety always comes top of mind. Yeah, I think that when Dave Watkins was the chair, he put together a list that may be where part of that list came from for us to try to, you know, implement that. I don't think we were as vigilant on that. Thank you.
Any other comments, questions on the report of the Finance Committee?
John? No. Liz? No other questions. Brian? All right. We're down. Okay. So, we did already talk about some of the capital plan items when Brian was addressing some of Liz's questions. I'm not envisioning that we go through, like, in this meeting, line by line by line, the projects in the existing plan. And the reason I'm not envisioning it is because I think we're going to have to do that. It's going to change, and we're going to have to do it shortly again. So, I'd rather do it department by department when that list comes in. But, that said, if there's questions on specific projects that are on the list that you don't understand, aren't sure what they are, anything along those lines, happy to start having that discussion. Because we can, if I can't, and Brian can't answer them, then we want to make sure they're front and center for when we meet with department heads. Yeah, I did not study enough to really. Yeah, I mean, I looked at each one just high level, like, we wouldn't understand. But, I think once we start comparing and say, okay, I don't know why you'd choose that, that'll lead to questions. I mean, I don't think, there's nothing in there that's like, why would someone pick something like that? There was no toggle hall of schools being built. Yeah, no, I think we're, that, that tends not to be, our issue tends to be, right, too many projects, not enough resources of all kinds. I think my memory is, this list totaled 56 million. My memory is that the request totaled, I want to say 70 million, 73 million. And so there, there are still other requested projects. And one of the other things I started to do, and I got tired of doing it, was I went back 20 years in the town warrants, pulling out all the list of capital projects, trying to get a, sort of a 20-year historical perspective, just because stuff is going to repeat over the next 10, 15, 20 years. And I didn't get too far, I got, I got far enough long to collect all the data. I just haven't put it into a form that it could be potentially useful. Well, that's why the depreciation is so important, right or wrong, at least it should be directionally correct. It is an important pass that I wish had been done years before, because I do think so many of the projects that come up as like, surprise, surprise, you look at them and be like, I don't know that that should have been a surprise. Like we replaced given resource every 10 years in 10 years. So I think there's some value in that, but I would hope, we can do it that way. And or, right, when we sit down with, when we get this list and these requests, okay, what's, if you have the inventory list, right, that's the completion, that's the completion factor, right, we don't have. Best case we compare all three and we go, okay, someone didn't think of this, this was. Yeah, in a perfect world, you look at all three of them, but I think I'd be happy in the near term if I could just get the inventory list and the request list. I'd be like, okay, you've got this inventory. When do we think these things are going to be, you know, useful life through and are they slotted in your plan? And if they're not, why not, right? And if they are, like, what would happen, back to what I said earlier, they are, what's going to happen if we don't, right? Because I think, and again, Tom, you know, give Tom another gold star. He's not here to hear me doing it, but he does a very good job of explaining, right, when he changes up requests. You know, we thought useful life was this, it's hanging on, we've got a good maintenance plan, right? I'm going to push that out a couple more years and we're going to pull in this thing that I'm having a lot of problems with, equipment wise. So he does a really good job of rationalizing, justifying why he's moving things in or out. And I'd like to see more of that as we go forward. But it starts with, do we have a good understanding of our inventory? Do we know when we think we might need it? I think that's really critical, Brian, to what you said earlier about the debt capacity, right? You think you have capacity, but you didn't plan in. These things are absolutely going to need to be replaced and you're going to give a false sense of what we have, capacity.
One of the, I'm going to put, I'll mention Tom getting a gold star in the minutes. Yeah, I mean, some of these have nuances that we'll pick up on when you interview people like Tom Holder, like, and the police chief. I think police cars still get run through the operating budget because they burn through the cars so quickly. And the repaving roads, you know, I don't remember what the balance was, but each year there's been a request for a certain amount of money and he's over five years, he just kept growing that by inflation and just assumed he was going to ask for it. But then they haven't spent everything that Tom meeting has approved. So he's got unspent prior year capital funding approvals for road projects, but he needs it because he's got a schedule of roads that they lay out over a bunch of years. But, you know, the question on that one, for example, would be if we're up against it in the current fiscal year, how bad would it be if we took a pause on funding, you know, 7,800, 900,000 road improvements if he's got, I don't know the number, but say he's got 2 million sort of in the bank that can be used over the next two or three years. Because if you short fund them one year, obviously it'll catch up at some point. But given, you know, the effort to defer and override, et cetera. But those are the kinds of things that I think we talked about last meeting, getting the town manager and the finance director to give us marching orders on fiscal 27 specifically as to, you know, what they want us to do or not do relative to capital in their effort to defer and override for one year. And, but other than that, I think I agree with you that you can go through this list, but based on what I saw last year or everything, and even we got the final list stuff still at the last minute was getting pulled from year four and put in the front end of the plan.
It is an operations research project if they're ever left. Yeah, I mean, that is the only problem with advancing the original ask the department heads to, say, July or August, because it was tough enough when they were being asked in October, you would get their request. And then by the time you get to December, a bunch of other things came up that they were back saying, well, I got to move this over here and that over there. And eventually everything balanced out, but it was frustrating when you had limited bandwidth to get through a capital budget, a five-year plan. And then people started, after they convinced you that they needed it. Had it happen. You know, this year, that year. And part of it was the process. It went into a black box, which basically the finance director did what we'll be doing. Yes. Which is why I asked at the last meeting, is he intending to take his traditional first cut ad and present us his thinking, or are we simply getting the request directly and we're doing what he used to do, and then he and the town manager evaluate our recommendation, which seemed to make more sense, but it's just more work, you know, for us. So, yes, I'm not sure which way I prefer.
I'm fine if the finance director takes the first stab at it, but I, unlike what has happened, I think, in the past with Income, because I haven't had ample time or information to go through it, I do want to absolutely have the discussion about, okay, this is what was requested, this is what you put in, what's the, and why, and then pressure test it, right? What's going to happen if these other things don't slot in? I'd prefer, I guess I'm answering what I said I wouldn't, which I think I would prefer he takes the first stab at it, because he's got, he's thinking about it, the financial part of it, and then we pressure test it from a, does this meet the criteria listed in the policy, right, in the capital policy, right, are we prioritizing this according to those priorities? But if he didn't do that, it would be, yeah, be more work, but I don't know that it's a ton more work. Yeah, I just think it's important if everybody agrees that we prefer that to be the process, that he would continue doing his first cut, I think we'd want to have you communicate that to him so he wasn't operating on the notion that it's now off his plate. Yeah, I think the only problem with that is I think it will delay us seeing anything longer. Well, I assume we could still get the requests coming in since we're going to do the pressure testing, as you said, so we could at least get familiar with what all the requests were, and then he delivers his spreadsheet that says here's where I'm putting them, again, I think largely for financial reasons, and with hopefully the math that shows that this, what he's proposing kind of is within the constraints, but then we go through and talk to Department of Ed's and, yeah, especially for the first, for the first cycle that we're doing this. I mean, he's been doing it for a number of years. We may or may not agree with his methodology or process, but at least he's done it for a number of years. And so at least for the first cycle, it'd be helpful that... If you look at our timeline, I would prefer for this year, for sure. Yeah. But going forward, and we'll have to see how it evolves. Right. Precisely. Right? If he gives us something, and then we ultimately hopefully change it, then I think you'd have to reevaluate how you're putting it in the future, but I think for this year, it makes sense. Right. I agree. Well, especially not knowing the debt service and what he's kind of has, that'll change what you can choose. Yeah, and it's both the debt service and, I guess, well, let me stop doing cash capital, but I guess that's the only one that's really hidden. And that way, if there is a, he and the commander have a particular view on fiscal 27 specifically, I presume he could then reflect that in what he's proposing in fiscal 27. In theory, we should know what he's proposing for, because it should be the fiscal 27 within the five-year plan, but likely not going to be the case.
Any other questions, comments? I think we've covered a lot of ground.
Liz, are you still there? I am. No other questions for me, though. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for you. I think you're still there. I think that means you haven't left. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm glad I could listen in, but no other questions for me. If we go quickly, she can vote on adjournment. Yeah, adjournment. Yeah, adjournment. I did miss an announcement I wanted to make at the beginning, and I'm going to apologize, as I just said, I think before we got started, my email, I got locked out of my town email, so I hadn't been able to check it, and I need to reset everything.
It was approached. I want to let the committee know. I was approached by a staff reporter for the Wayland Post to give an interview about the outstanding capital list, what's on it, how we decide what's a priority, and other items. I did send him a note back but haven't been able to check what he replied, asking if that was possible to defer that article until later, given we just got established as a committee. I didn't feel comfortable giving that interview one without first talking to you guys. But also, I don't know what I would answer at this point, right? I haven't seen an outstanding, a recent outstanding capital list and what the status of those are, and we're just getting going on how we're going to operate. So I don't feel comfortable answering that at this point. You know, I might feel comfortable about that further down the road. So I want to let you guys know that. And like I said, I've been able to get in my email, so I couldn't see what he responded, but I will let you know if anything is different than the way I just described it. But does anybody have? I agree. It's far too premature. It's sort of given in the book. Yes. Yeah.
In the future, absolutely. I want to be able to share that information if we have it. But given this is a brand new committee, I didn't feel like we were far enough along to do that. I think when the time comes, I just wanted you to bring it up again because having been through that process over the years, I have a couple of pointers for you that what you say might actually come out the right way in the article. Yeah. Thank you.
My preference would be that the town, right, answer the questions about what's outstanding. I'm happy at a later date we can talk about answering what our charge and our philosophy is. But as far as, like, do I want to give this status of a project? No, I don't because that's being managed by the town. So I just want to let you all know that. I'm sorry I didn't do that at the beginning. I just want to let you all know that. Okay. Okay. And we can move on to approving, reviewing, and vote to approve the minutes of September 30th, 2025. Brian sent those out for everybody. Anybody have edits, comments, provisions? I mentioned one edit that Liz alluded to. She tried the link that was in the first page in the folded paragraph and it didn't work. And it didn't work because I had a space between the words in person. So I've made that edit. And so except we approve the minutes, it'll have to be approved as revised. I love that, Liz. I love when you click on the things and make sure they work. Favorite cost on the line at work. All right. Anything else? No. All right. Can I get a motion to approve those as revised? So move. We'll second it. And I'm going to do a roll call vote. Brad? Yes. Liz? Yes. John? Yes. Brian? Yes. And Kelly is yes. I just, Liz, you broke up there. I just make sure you said yes as opposed to abstain. Confirming I said yes. Okay. Thank you. All right. So that's, those minutes are approved. Any topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair? Or we don't have anything. And then setting time in the next meeting. So I do have my calendar tonight.
And unfortunately Michael's gone, so I don't know when. It sounds like he said, the commander said he has received one response so far to his capital requests. Okay. So hopefully he'll send that along to you.
So. Oh, can you also, could you maybe ask if he could provide us a copy of the memo that went out? Yeah.
Meeting in two weeks, but I will be traveling for work until, for Wednesday. So then, then I, somebody remind me that we can only get Zoom Monday to Wednesday. For the Zoom nights, Monday, Wednesday. Monday to Wednesday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. For hybrid. For hybrid. We can do full Zoom, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Yep. We can do full Zoom. We can do full Zoom any night? Tuesday. Do full Zoom Monday through Thursday, right? I might, I might hear Thursday. And even Friday, Friday, Thursday. If I'm, I might hear Thursday. If someone else has to sponsor the meeting or administer the meeting. Yeah. Ryan, I think Thursday's the challenge for some reason or other. Okay. All right. So then that, that really rules out the whole week of the 27th then, because unless, unless we're just going to do it in person on Thursday, which. Um, I think if you did it Thursday during the day, someone before, for, for, for the staff that can turn your, turn it on. And then if you want to be host, I think there's something like that, but later on Thursday's out. Yeah. I can't do that. Yeah. Just had more, we could do just an all in person meeting on Thursday. Yeah. But if we don't have anything. Well, only if it works, does it work for, does the 30th work for others? I'm okay with the 30th. Yeah. Liz, are you still there? Yes, I am. Um, if we do it after six or after, yes, in person, I can support. Okay. Brian, does that work for you? All right. So we're going to go with Thursday, October 30th at 6 p.m. in person.
Okay. We have to wear costumes. It's Halloween. The next day it's Halloween, but you can absolutely wear a costume if you'd like, John.
Um, any, uh, agenda topics? What we want on that agenda. You can obviously always directly email me if there's something. But maybe menu in the form, the capital form. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe the memo if you're getting. Well, and hopefully we'll be able to have some, I'll talk to Michael, some of the request items we made tonight, we can go over. And then if we've got some of the department's capital that we can start taking a look at, that would be my, my hope. Um, and I tried to get people to buy into this on the FinCom the last cycle just because of the shortness of time, but it didn't go anywhere. Um, but, uh, we obviously had a four-minute discussion about what our report might look like, uh, whether we might continue to work on at least an outline basis just so that it may be we could advance the report. Yep. Especially if it'll have a lot of questions in parallel and just start plugging things in. It'd be good to know where we're going to, where we're trying to land so that we can get the information as we're going through the process, right? You know, but the report that we ultimately submit. The report that we're ultimately going to submit to Michael, right, it'd be good to start laying out what, what that looks like. I know we talked about it a little bit tonight, but have you guys seen ones that other towns have done? I mean, it's always nice if you can not recreate the wheel. Um, I haven't in a while, but I seem to remember that the town of Northbro does a good one. I've been to a presentation that their finance director had given, um, that's it. Yeah, I think, you know, for this initial report, it's going to be focused on fiscal 27 in the other four years. I could foresee a year from now when we hopefully in that time, the balance of this fiscal year to get out into years 10 and 15, that you get a much more substantive sort of report built out that over time you could maybe update. No, I agree with that. I would say there's sort of the same as capital requests, right? We're going to, we'll break it into what can we do now, right? And what do we have on the, on the wish list, um, for the future? So that we can sort of think forward, but once we get through this year's right, um, recommendations to the town manager, I would expect we would immediately start working on, um, long-term, yeah, the wish list items as soon as we can after that, right? And there may be some, there may be some hurry up and wait moments, right? Where after we hand that over, um, they're going through it, the income's going through it, questions will come back, but it won't necessarily all come back, um, at the beginning. And then as Brian mentioned earlier, then everybody will try to change everything right in the, in the final months before town meeting. So there will, there'll be some back and forth there. Um, if, if you connect with Brian Keveney and he can put some numbers based on the fiscal 26 budgets, um, for those metrics, uh, because we're meeting in person, he probably can't join us, but you can ask him, um, but it'd be nice to at least see if he could get that piece of that project done and to us. So we could all look at it and talk about it and make sure if we don't understand something, we kind of send it back from, um, assuming it at any point along the way here, particularly for meeting on a Monday, um, you know, he could join us and a lot of the more financial questions, he's pretty good at attending the meetings and real time answering questions rather than trying to wait for a week or two to get back from him. Can we, given that we're going to meet in person next time and so that will make it harder and I don't think we'll be ready to have departments come in in any way because we'll want to be looking at whatever's coming over. Can we pick, um, dates in the next couple of weeks that we'd be able to meet, um, just so that I have something to work with, with Michael on scheduling and I want to try to get that to shoulders time. So, you know, and I know we do hybrid. I know some of the department helps it's easier if we do hybrid, um, that might work out too, but, um, the following weeks or the first week in November, um, um, I cannot meet Monday, Tuesday, I can meet on Wednesday the 5th. That's fine. 5th is okay. Brian, is that okay with you? Liz? 5th is okay. November 5th? Yeah. I'll go at 6th. Yeah, I would just say if you hold, if you, if you, if you can hold. So I'm joined as intending. Sorry, who is that? It was there. There, there, there's in the airplane. Oh, okay. All right. Um, if we can hold from five on that day, just in case, if we're going to have folks in, um, if, if we need to have people in, we can try and do that earlier, but I, I prefer six, but, um. And if it's going to be hybrid, they're good to get them on the books for other people to take the time slot, so. Yeah, so that's what I'm, I was going to go ahead and, that's why I was adding one more week out. Okay. Excuse me, I'm sorry, my phone was buzzing. What day did you pick in November? Uh, November 5th, so Wednesday. 5th, okay. Thanks.
If there's nothing else, we might get a motion to adjourn. 744. Motion to adjourn. Second. All right. Roll call vote. Brad. Yes. Liz. Yes. John. Yes. Brian. Yes. And Kelly is yes. Have a great flight. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.