if you start okay we're recording now Kathy if you want to go ahead um uh good afternoon this is the finance committee meeting on May 7th and I'm Kathy Shane Vice chair of the committee Bob hegner is with us but he's on the phone so he can't easily see everyone and I'm going to call the meeting to order and my first uh order of business doing that is to make sure all the members of the committee can hear and be heard so I will call out names and just let me know of all is well Mandy uh present Bernie present Andy all as well Bob hegner present and we're expecting Alicia to join us but I don't see her here yet um we have in today's agenda we have two main items with a subset of items of the second one but the first is to hear um um from our annual Auditor's report and I'm going to just turn it over um to either the finance staff who's here with us Sandy poer Jennifer or Holly to introduce this and um let Scott and Scott and um tell tell me how you pronounce your first name na na na take it over and then the second item on the agenda is and Matt is here Matt holay is now I uh he's Matt can you can you hear and hear us Matt Holloway uh I'll wait for him to fully connect um Kath I see you have a question yeah yeah this public comment was on the agenda for the first to I don't know whether you wanted to just move it somewhere else or yeah I I think you should mention when it's gonna happen for people in the public I I think since we have the guests here with us we'll start with that and maybe we'll do public comment in between because the so of the participants the second item is to start with any general comments or questions about the overall budget but then a focus on the capital budget um the capital plan um and I'm seeing a so if people can bear with us I mean does that make sense to everyone um I see one hand up of the attendees but we're going to do public comments in between um right after the auditor's report okay so um the time is yours however you're you're planning on doing it and Athena have we enabled sharing screen if we're doing a share oh and Paul Bachman has joined us as well hi Paul yes you should be able to share your screen if you want to do slides or anything like that okay thank you um okay to begin yes absolutely um good afternoon my Scott McIntyre I'm the the partner at Markham in charge of the of the Amherst audit uh with me on on the call is nad Z and I've known her for a long time I'm not going to attempt that the last name nad Z and I work together uh in the execution of your 50 year 23 audit um I can't recall I think something came up at the last meeting for the finance committee and we get we got pushed off until today but we're happy to be here today to give you a a very quick walk through of our audit of your financial statements and in just a few minutes I am going to uh share my screen and walk through a a a couple of documents uh and hopefully uh give you a little bit of an overview of the audit process and the results of our audit U we'll spend a little bit of time looking at the financial statements uh because there's some key numbers in there uh but I think for the most part the committee probably is aware of the numbers I think it's the more important communication really is how the audit went uh but just before I share my screen and I know it was said earlier I think by Athena um n z and I are with with Markham now um it was all the way back in January of 201 23 that bansen joined forces with a national firm Markham I probably said this at this similar meeting a year ago even though we issued your June 22 statements as malanson but we had joined Markham uh in essence there are so few people going into public accounting right now that we really needed to Avail ourselves of the resources of a of a bigger firm of a national firm um we did this to maintain a presence in New England and particularly the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to continue to provide cities towns school districts with with auditing Services um hopefully you know even improved Ser Services uh with additional resources uh we do think that over the next couple years uh we will be able to escalate the publication of many of the reports that um have now been issued um on the second half of the of the fiscal year we think that they could be issued within six months so with that being said I'm going to take just a second and and share my screen um and what you should see here is you should see the the uh on Markham letterhead dated March 26th um we refer to this in a very common or generic sense as as our governance letter uh what we really mean by that is it's uh we are our Professional Standards require that we communicate to those charged with governance a committee like this um certain things about the audit process and that's exactly what this letter does I'm not going to walk through it in a tremendous amount of of detail but there are some key things in here that to pay attention to we're indicating we've audited your financial statements of the governmental activities the business type activities we're highlighting for you exactly what our responsibility is under all of the standards that we followed we followed United States generally accepted auditing standards we followed generally accepted government auditing standards often times that's referred to as the yellow book and we also followed om or Office of Management and budget uniform guidance that deals with the single audence as a recipient of federal dollars we are required to follow the uniform guidance as well uh towards the latter uh top of the the next page you see we we discuss our planned scope and timing of the audit um you know we it tells you that we did things on a test basis we did not examine every single transaction that went through the books and and records of Amherst uh but we did things on a on a test basis ALS Alo down here at the bottom of page two on an important couple of bullet items um we identifi the following significant risks of material misstatements as part of your our audit planning I'm not that that should not concern anybody because those two over those two risks management override of internal controls and the improper Revenue recognition as the bullet items say they presumed risk so it doesn't matter if it's Amherst or or the city of Lynn uh or the the town of Lexington you know these risks are identified in every single audit and they and it's not even uh Germain only to governmental entities in any single audit of a for-profit nonprofit or governmental entity these are presumed risks that we must identify in accordance with our Professional Standards and accordingly we we must uh design audit steps to test to ensure that there is proper uh there is no management override in of inter inter controls and that there is no improper Revenue recognition so at top of the next page see some significant a audit matters and then we list a number of things these are what very simply call estimates that are Incorporated in your financial statements not going to highlight them or speak directly about them the two that we'll talk about a fair amount when we get to the actual financial statements are your net pension liability and they related deferred outflows and deferred inflows of re ources um just know that those are those estimates are actuar determined and so they're based on um not auditing standards but Actuarial standards that that are uh employed in in the in the conduct of those um of those analyses we talk about independence uh and how we must be independent of of the town of Amherst to do what we do um a relatively new thing that's incorporated into this letter uh required by Professional Standards uh just quick quickly to talk about is the fact that we did perform some non audit Services as a result of our contractual relationship with Amherst um Amherst like virtually every governmental audit that we perform in the in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts we assist the town in the actual preparation of the financial statements so that involves taking the numbers and the book your books and records that are kept in in the general ledger which is you know maintained in accordance with the uniform IAL accounting system which is promulgated by the Department of Revenue we assist you in converting that to in some cases the modified acral basis of accounting as well as the acral basis of accounting in order to create your government-wide financial statements we are required Again by our Professional Standards to highlight that to you that we do this as a non-audit service uh and again it's what we do for virtually every Massachusetts Government that we are we are involved with and it should not be um should not be thought of as a concerning step that we we we we do uh we talked about some uncorrected and um misstatements attached to this letter and I'm not going to walk through them in detail are some proposed audit adjustments we made they are all in ACC they are all consistent with what I indicated a minute ago with the fact that uh the Department of Revenue the division of local Services requires that you keep your books and Records on the on under umis or the uniform Municipal accounting system which differs in many respects or in certainly in certain respects uh from generally accepted accounting principles so the entries that you see there are really just very much conversion entries from the basis of accounting that you are required to keep your books and Records on uh to what we call the um acral Bas both the modified ACR bases and the ACR based financial statements it's really a highlight of the what we call our governance letter again the communication that's required by our Professional Standards to those charged with governance another document that I'm going to speak only very quickly about is uh is what's up on my my screen here it's our reports pursuant to government auditing standards and uniform guidance um so there are essentially two reports in here the first one by government auditing standards that requires us to communicate to those charged with governance uh if we identify any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in your internal control structure based on the audit that we performed and I'm very happy to report that we did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in accordance in as as defined on on page one of this this of this report uh we did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies as a result of our audit work the second report is again a uniform guidance again those are the Professional Standards that we must follow as a recipient of federal dollars uh in fiscal year 23 uh the the program that we were required to test was your was your ARA program uh and so we were required to look at both the internal controls surrounding uh the OPA program as well as the compliance end of things and and were you doing with the money everything that you said you were going to do with the money at least to to date through the period of time of June 30 2023 and similar to the government auditing standards one our uniform guidance opinion on this is is unmodified meaning in our opinion uh if you complied with the requirements of uniform guidance as it relates to I'm sorry there were actually two programs in here I I should have looked down at my notes a minute ago we were required to test the arpa program as well as the Community Development block grant program in fiscal year 23 and so just to summarize again our report on uniform guidance indicated that there were no weaknesses in internal controls identified and there were no instances of non-compliance with the federal requirements for the fiscal year ended 2023 that takes us over to uh really the basic financial statements um and and I'm going to spend a little bit more time on on on this document uh than I did the the other two uh but really we're just going to hit the high high points and I'm going to scroll down to our our opinion um I'm going to stop here and and and not necess scroll through the whole thing uh but this is lack of a better way of saying it this is what you you pay us for with respect to our audit of your financial statements um based on our audit work and again we have we performed our audit in accordance with the United States generally accepted auditing standards as well as generally accepted government auditing standards and based on our work in accordance with this our Professional Standards as you see here our opinions we've audited your financial statements and the second paragraph in our opinion and again I'm not going to read it it's pretty pretty boilerplate information it comes right to us from um our oversight organizations the aicpa in our opinion your financial statements are materially fairly presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in in the United States of America clean opinion technically it's called an unmodified opinion or our opinion is without modification in that your financial statements are in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles certainly uh nothing new there but certainly also I look at that very much as a highlight of of of the audit following the opinion uh is what was known as mdna or managements discussion and Analysis it puts into text and in some cases some charts some of the results of results of operation uh from fiscal year 2023 but I'm going to hop all the way over to um statement on that Poss and um I I don't think I used this term earlier but um I probably have used it in the past where in this in your basic financial statements there are essentially two sets of financial statements both a long-term perspective in a short-term perspective your statement of that position is a long-term perspective on the full on the ACR basis of accounter you see that and I'm going to just my focus here is going to be on the First Column of numbers the governmental activities which is all your governmental funds not your Enterprise funds and you can see it has all your your Capital assets included in here and over on you have your deferred outflows of resources related to pension and OPB I'll probably take questions on that should they arise and you come over to the liabilities and and uh net position segment of the of the statement and you see really what what the focus will be on on on this statement which is your net pension liability and your net opep liability not going to walk into a lot of detail here but in our opinion any conversation about a local government's financial statements uh is not complete without at least a brief understanding of these two key accounts the the net pension liability and the net OPB liability OPB of course is an acronym for other post employment benefits and by other they mean other than pension and that's a long winded way of saying what it's really getting at is retire health care so a couple of things to to point out um with your net pension liability uh that's measured as of 12312 not not as of 63023 like everything else in this document certainly permissible Retirement Systems in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have a calendar year end so the measurement date goes back 6 months from your balance sheet date and as of 63023 again with the measurement date of 1231 2022 your governmental activities had a net pension liability of about $ 46.2 million it's up about $16 million over over the prior year very straightforward reason for that in calendar year 2022 investment returns were not what plans in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts expected though as investment earnings come in less than expected the LI liability is going to go liability is going to go up very simple relationship there I do want to point out that um the discount rate that that the the county system uses is about 6.9% that's consistent from the prior year to the to the year that's under that we're auditing or we're speaking about right now um perak does like to see that less than 7% not that that's a requirement of parak but I do know from conversations we've had with perak that they like to see that discount rate against and that's the expected future earnings of the plan uh something less than 7% and you're at 6.9% on the net opep liability uh again that's that liability is measured as of your year end or or 63023 your governmental activities had a liability of about $ 78.3 million that's really quite consistent with the prior year last year was about $74 million so it's increased a little bit that's because there was a minor reduction in in in the discount rate and again as the discount rate goes down the liability uh liability will increase a little bit I could speak a lot more about the net pension and OPB liabilities as well as the related accounts called the Deferred inflows of resources and outflows of resources but when we get through going through the governmental funds and particularly the general fund and I I'll turn it back to the chair and if there are any questions on on pension issues or opep issues I think I'll be able to I'll do my best to answer them at the that point in time well let's hop over to the balance sheet for your governmental funds most of the focus here is going to going to be on on the general fund the First Column of numbers and the focus will be down here in the in the fund balance section but very quickly before before we do I want to point out two other major funds the first one is your arpa fund um arper of course being the F Federal Grant and I want to point out this liability called unearned revenue of about 8 8 $6 million um Accounting Standards do not permit uh the recognition of Revenue until you actually do with the Federal grant what it is you said you were going to do with it so that's a fancy way of saying is when you spend the money you will recognize the revenue you got the cash up front but you're not permitted to take it to revenue until you do with it what you are expected to do with it so once you spend those dollars this $8.6 million will move from a liability to revenue Revenue very simply if you look at the entire balance sheet you'll see that there's no fund balance that's because revenues and expenditures will always match in this fund unless there are some interest earnings that are that are being kept here uh so there is no fund balance that's because all of the assets are offset by a liability it's not a liability that you have to pay back the only reason you would pay back is uh if you didn't fulfill um the time requirements of it uh the money must be obligated by the end end of this year uh then it it has to be spent a few years at after that only then would this become a liability that you would have to pay back but we're not very concerned about that at this point in time the only other one I want to point out is the capital project fund this is new this year uh and it's a it's a ma major fund um and that's that's a term that's defined by the accounting standards so you see a separate balance sheet and if we were flip over two pages you would see a separate operating statement uh a statement of revenues and expenditures and changes in fund balance so that takes us all back to the general fund where really the balance of this communication is going to re reside you see all your assets up here you've got cash you've got your receivables you've got a prepa prepaid item accounts payable ACR payroll amounts that are due to other funds you've got unavailable revenues and then you have your total fund balance of 25.7 million which is broken down into two components the first component is you're unassigned meaning there are no constraints on those dollars um of of $25.2 million and that's really the starting point for calculating the town's certified free cash uh is the unassigned fund balance there will always be differences between unassigned fund balance and free cash but that's really the starting point then you have your assigned fund balance of a little bit more than $500,000 that is essentially the encumbrances from your fiscal year 23 budget that are carried forward into fiscal year 24 and and will be honored at that point in time but the focus really is uh for most readers at least um I don't want to say all but I I'll say super close to all readers is is looking at the the unassigned fund balance again $25.2 million a year ago that was about 26.9 million so it's come down about a million 7 million 8 uh and that that I think is really to to be expected if you think back to the fiscal year 23 uh budget you Ed several million of of uh of your certified free cash uh towards the operating budget and to your Capital stabilization a capital budget not Capital stabilization please forgive me I misspoke there towards towards the capital budget uh so anytime you are using certified free cash you are essentially expecting the outflows of resources to exceed the inflows of resources now if we flip over two pages what I'd call the statement of revenues and changes in fund balance really an important thing I want to want to point out here and again now very much like the the balance sheet where the focus is in the on that third number Up From The Bottom the unassigned balance Focus here can also be on the third number up from the bottom and you'll see that it's in parentheses indicating that the outflows of resources exceeded the inflows of resources um there's some really nice disclosures in your footnotes that that deal with this issue I'm not going to walk through the disclosures but I want to point this out for the for the community and the and and the committee as a whole is that a lot of focus should also exist on the difference between your revenues and expenditures in other words if we set transfers in and out aside for a minute you see that you have inflows exceeding outflows of$ 75 million and the only reason this really turns negative after transfers is because you transfer it out almost 12.7 million almost all of that is coming over to your Capital project fund that's a highlight to me and that should be should be pointed out to readers of the financial statements that you are financing the acquisition of capital assets through a capital project fund you're doing it with locally generated resources that the 12.7 million that's coming over here at almost 12 million there's a little bit more going on here but for the most part 12 million is coming out of the general fund out of the budget not from not from the issuance of debt but from the budget operating budget the revenues that are generated $12 million is leaving the general fund and coming over here and is being committed towards capital projects it shows good strength in budgeting that you can avoid going to the bond market by by using locally generated dollars toward towards capital I wanted to point that out because some readers will just look at the third number up from the bottom and see that it's in parentheses and uh they could not saying they would they could be concerned with that so I I wanted to highlight this so the community could um you know refer to it and point back to what you did with the with with the dollars it's not as if they were used towards operation you know almost essentially $12 million have was used towards Capital so and I think that's very much a credit strength to to Amur right there so um that's really I'm going to stop sharing my screen for for for a minute um there's really a wealth of other information in in the financial statements there's I talked about pension and oped very quickly there's probably 15 pages of of note disclosures that go into the various assumptions that that generate those estimated liabilities and estimated deferred outflows and deferred inflows um there's also a fund balance footnote in there that talks a little bit more about your unassigned fund balance and the components of it uh but I'll pause there and um I I'll certainly try to answer any questions that the committee may have or if there's desire for me to go deeper into a subject matter I will do my best to uh to be able to do that so thank you very much thank you thank you Scott and um I'll see whether hands go up but I also want to make sure that Matt and Alicia who have joined us can hear us so Matt could you just let us know that you can hear us and we can hear you I'm president thanks Kathy okay and Alicia I'm here thank you that was a tour to force of going through going going through actually quite clear so I'm I'm looking for any hands um and Bob hegner I'm not sure if you can raise your hand so you can just shout out if you've got a question or a comment no no comments no questions okay I have one um I'm not seeing any other hands and it's not it's sort of uh your Insight we're we're funding OPB um and uh and we're funding it I won't say generously but we're each year it's it's a pretty big draw on our fund how um how do we compare for with other communities in terms of what we're doing in our fund balance just in the middle higher lower um and I I should have sent you that question in advance I didn't um you know with the the pension um I have a better sense of what we're doing with pension because we're on our way to being fully funded um we've been told and OPB is is less so so it's it's just a question [Music] um I'm GNA share my screen to to answer the question because I think it's probably easiest this disclosure there's disclosure about your question in there you're you're the answer to your question about how doing compared to your peers is not in here okay this is one of the last pages in your in your financial statements it's called what n and I refer to as RSI or as the the title indicates required supplementary information um in terms of how well you're you're you're doing um what this schedule is telling you is that your total liability is 91 million you have 12 million set aside and your net liability is $79 million or that your 133% 13% funded I I would need to look at 100 sets of financial statements to honestly answer you how you're doing compared to to your peers um 133% without doing that analysis I would say that that's pretty good um it's i' I've seen that number be close to 70% but I've also in more often than not I see that number at about 5% so um without getting doing more homework um do now there is one more thing I want to point out here that I I I I made a mistake a couple years ago by being asked the same question and not turning to this schedule to point it out but I think it's required supplementary information but I think this is what people really want to know it's down here in the schedule of contributions your actuary has determined that um the ADC as we call it the actually determined contribution is about $5.8 million and I don't have it on my fingertips but I suspect that what that means is you need to put in $5.8 million a year for say 30 years I I don't have it on my fingertips to know if it's 20 years or 30 years but instinctively I'm going to say it's 30 what you're putting in is $4.2 million almost $4.3 million so your contribution deficiency is a million and a half per year for 30 probably for 30 years I'll look it up later on and if it's something other than 30 years I'll let the folks in in in the in the administration know so they can relay this to the committee but in my opinion this is what people really want to know the actuary says you got to put in 5.8 a year for 30 years you're presently doing 4.3 you have a contribution deficiency of $1.5 million that would be the Delta if you will that if you were able to put in an additional million and a half per year for in all likelihood 30 years then at the end of that 30-year period you would be become fully funded thank you a long-winded way of saying it but no no that's helpful and you know one of the things I saw a couple years ago is we have we have a fairly generous um retire package when it comes to the Medicare side we're paying a Part B premium in a way that at least in the private sector I'd rarely seen um you know so it's usually just the supplemental so and since I'm I don't want to go into this I who follows Medicare but anyway medicare's B premium has going been going up so it's in addition to the cost of the supplemental um so we had a few years where it was flatter but so I'm looking to see whether there were any other questions or comments I Bernie real quick um some congratulations are in order our thanks to the audit team but our thanks to our finance staff and all for uh um another remarkably good so um Athena and Paul what I'm not remembering um I probably should have had instructions but do we need to um recommend that we accept the report um or do we basically just accept the report so is there an action Finance needs to take the finance no no no the council doesn't need to accept the report the report um according to the Charter the report needs to be filed with the council and then in the past um the council's referred it to finance committee and then finance committee just reports on the discussion that happened at the committee but there's no other Council action that's required okay so I think not seeing any other comments um I I actually F you know your reports have always been clear but this was a very clear report to be able to follow so and the presentation was so thank you very much thank you and I think that's it so we can thank you and you can leave our meeting thanks have take care so now we're turning to the larger budget questions and a focus on the capital plan but I I postponed we postpone public comments so I want to first see if there's anyone in the audience who would like to um make a comment and I see two hands are up um uh Athena are you managing this or do you want me to I can do that Andy has his hand up too so I just wanted to check and see if he had a comment first okay Andy you're you're muted um and Andy did you want to skip your question for now no it it was H it shouldn't be up I'll oh okay your your hand shouldn't be up okay okay sorry so that was the comment all right so um Athena we have one is a phone number and another one is a person if you bring yeah I I will do you want to uh do your Spiel do I want to do my Spiel we we're the public comment okay I I'll do my I'm I'm not good at doing the Spiel but I will do it we we're limiting the public comment to three minutes and we will not be responding and interacting with them but they will be recorded um so with that said uh we are open for public comments and I see two hands are up okay the first one I'm going to take is a phone number ending in 0810 you are the person 0810 you are with us if you unmute um you're yes I'm unmuted I think I'm unmuted yes am I unmuted you are unmuted we can hear you so tell us who you so okay so I just have um couple of comments one is about the school budget um and I I would urge the finance committee to recommend a a 6% um the 6% uh and also to um consider strongly a gift of of an amount um that would uh enable the Regional Schools to go forward without cutting in staff that that directly deals with students um and uh so and that that gift would not count toward it toward the um G Dam's base for the next year it would be a one one term gift I think the town has given gift before um it doesn't count toward the base um and additionally information at least um my understanding from the MMA uh website regarding the state senate budget is that the rural school aid that was cut by 50% by the house is fully funded at 15 million by the Senate who knows how that will go out but if that if the Senate versions prevails um the the increase in per pupil assistance that was in the house budget is is uh is similar to the one in the identical to the one in the Senate budget um that will benefit the elementary schools by about 70 to 90 million um and it will if the rural school aid is kept in it will benefit the Regional Schools by about not 90 million but 990,000 and a similar amount for the Regional Schools if Rural Aid prevails in the conference which would then reduce the amount of of any gift that were be given by by the amount of the increased per puple assistance um so those are those are good news from the Senate budget and uh something I hope that the finance committee will consider U finally I think that with regard to both the regional budget and any consideration of the library project I I would encourage the committee to um to hear from the library trustees regarding the uh the library project in person at a time that's convenient to the trustees um and because I I watched what happened when the fourtown meetings occurred in person a few weeks ago and I I think that those meetings uh tend to be produce better results and uh and are more respectful of the fact that the the body in question is is elected and uh I really think there should be a panel of the trustees that interact back and forth with the finance committee rather than giving them needs three minutes to speak and the same thing I believe should be the case for the Regional School uh committee um that both whatever staff and uh and elected representatives would speak for the regional school committee should be here heard in person at a time that's convenient for the members and I think that that that tends to produce um not only better results but but it also tends to produce I think more better informed results uh because there are there are just too many moving Parts forone who's not directly involved on a basis to to understand and I think it's good to give to have an interactive process rather than a here you know your three minutes and then you have to listen to us talk for for however so um those are my comments thank you very much thank you and um just for the record that was Vino Connor he may have introduced himself at the beginning next is Tony Cunningham uh district one um on the general budget I want to encourage a recommendation to to support the 6% budget for the Regional Schools um as a parent of current eighth grader and an upcoming um Rising sixth grader I think the cuts that are being proposed will really really devastate the quality of the education that the kids are getting um as far as the capital budget goes the financial management policy states that 10% of the property tax levy should go to Capital but you're proposing 10 and a half% so I would say that's not in compliance with the town's own policies and should be scaled back I added up the numbers in this cap capital budget that are for the Jones Library Expansion Project and it's over $1.3 million when you combine the borrowing for the town the a small amount on a ban and the CPA contribution and so I'm hoping that project can be ended and that money can be freed up for other things um the I compared FY 24's projections for this year with the fy2 capital budget and there's a lot of differences which makes me question how the planning is done there's very there's a lot of things in this year's capital budget that weren't even on the list last year let alone on the on the list for fy2 a lot of numbers have gone up significantly and there's a few new amounts that are really pricey that weren't in last year's budget at all um for example the 900,000 this year and a million dollars next year for the public safety radio system replacement and uh $500,000 for roof Replacements um which doesn't specify which buildings it's for uh so there's a number of things that I would question with this year's capital budget the planning department there's a number of amounts for studies there's a I when I went back and watched one of the meetings they talked about a third parking study which I think is a not a good use of limited funds we already have two parking studies I would I would propose a moratorium on studies until we work with the ones that we already have um and then there's uh uh unspent Capital um you don't have the updated list of unspent capital I would really love to see not just three years old but even newer than that because I think there's a lot of things that have been approved in the past that haven't been spent and I think we should be using that up before we allocate new funding especially if it's more than three years old and I think that's oh and Roads and sidewalks very disappointing to see that the contribution to roads and sidewalks being halfed this year so I think if the Jones project can end um we can up the roads and sidewalks Investments again thank you thank you Tony I'm not seeing any other hands up so I'm closing the public comment period sorry that was my timer going off so I think we're now turning to both the overall budget and with a and then a focus on the capital budget so I'm everyone here um of the commit with the exception of Bernie and Matt hollway were part of the the presentation that we had last night um from Sandy and uh Jennifer the team so I'm not sure uh how best to move forward I know Mandy had uh taken on herself to focus on the capital plan and with questions I was chair of the jcpc and I also have questions Bob was on that um including future years so do we want to start with the general budget um any comments questions on it um I'm looking and the screen on faces do we want to have a quick repeat of last night or or jump in I'm up open to any suggestions I I think we should just move on um I can also just go back and watch watch the tape and and oh Kathy I did sit in on a lot of the meeting yesterday so I feel pretty confident okay so the suggestion what we came up with when we were planning the meetings we thought we would focus on at least one piece so it's the um Capital Improvement plan both the coming year fy2 and then the five-year look um in what was uh provided to us and one thing for anyone who's in the audience also for the members here the this there were some errors in the original um wording of specific projects that some lists were kept from the year before that not deleted so paying attention to the list of projects that's in the expel Excel spreadsheet is the fy2 list and uh one of the Innovations in the past um was what Tony just referred to and we we at jcpc did not look at that it was n available but it was the updated list of capital projects approved in earlier years where there was a balance that wasn't yet spent and that um has not yet been updated that is the same list we saw last year but in the past one of the things by looking at that it turned out some of them could be closed out and we could move the money into the current year capital budget um so that that's a piece that I just wanted to note so Mandy I know you had prepared questions so I don't know whe if you want to start out and then I will um see which things you've already raised and then I will U I have some as well yeah um I can I sent my questions over to Athena and Bob on Friday so hopefully um Paul and that they got forwarded to Paul for some potential things but I'll go through some of the things I looked at um as I've [Music] been thinking about budgets I pulled out um questions about whether the capital PR meets the council Financial guidelines and things about the goals right and so when I went through it I did some sort of checking of some Financial guidelines and said does it meet X guideline or Y guideline and our financial guidelines included that Capital be 10 a half% of the levy this year and it does meet that 10 and a half% from our Financial guidelines that we approved in December of last year um that it be progress on the climate goals within our capital budget for buildings and vehicles and I saw that many of the vehicles being proposed for purchasing are hybrids or electrics or have electric uh engine block things and and things like that for making progress on those goals some other things that I thought were met with the pl Capital plan um explicit recognition of instances where budget allocations reflect the manager goals particularly with climate action goals um and the a plan for repairing and maintenance of our current buildings including new ones with inventories of needs so that they continue to serve the community for many years that includes the maintenance facilities fund that I think is expanding in size over the course of the budgets um I'm happy to I don't know whether Paul or any of our finance team want to just answer some of the questions I asked or I can go through them um I don't know how how the finance team team wants to deal with that as we move forward I'm happy to ask them out and see what the answers are or they could just speak to them if they want yeah so we just reviewed them recently um Andy just it's you know Sandy was here yesterday yesterday afternoon so we we may have answers so we can go through them and some of them we we can provide you written responses to we have a little bit more time okay um do you want to just do that or do you want me to ask them specifically and then sure okay so I'm just gonna go from the top of the document down but cath the rest of us don't have a copy of it Bob did so if you do it it would be helpful and then we'll put them we'll put them in the packet so that we have a record of what was asked thank you yep okay so I I'll start from the top of the list I bolded the questions on the document you got but the first one went to a financial guideline of seeking additional Grant funds to capitalize on opportunities to rec some sustainability investment so I asked question about some of the future Replacements um of if there were plans for certain projects that were listed in future years to apply for sustainability grants and I specifically identified the crocker window replacement the EV infrastructure and vehicles and the general sustainability projects as whether there were active plans to apply for grant funding we'd have to I I don't have an we'd have to get our sustainability director in facilities to talk about specifics like at that level what the goal of this budget was to put funds away so that when those opportunities presented themselves we were able to actually and they required a match we were able to act on them pretty quickly so so one of the things Mandy during during the meeting um on C sorry hang on hang on Kevy Sandy had a comment and Sandy go ahead I didn't see your hand in the uh in the current year budget when we know that there's a grant available we Mark that in the plan for the out years we usually just identify what we anticipate the cost of it will and then as we get closer to actually funding that we then start to look at what grants might be available so I think as Paul was indicating Stephanie is always looking at grant opportunities and when they become more real we then identify them and I was just going to um supplement that on Crocker we all flag Crocker the jcpc focused mainly on fy2 but looking at Crocker what we had uh my sense was these were placeholders because there's the hope that the accelerated repair program opens up and that the crocker requests could then be we the early money would help us figure out what the requested and then we could go in because it's a series of pieces including the HVAC system and the roof um and and so those at least my sense is they are placeholders because we don't actually have a good sense of what the number is but we also there may be an opportunity depending on what the accelerated repair program looks like and when it and it's whether we get in the queue for it or not so that was one of the things that came out when we asked about looking forward on Crocker excellent so my next question is related to sort of a similar Financial guideline which was um strong consideration for funding Hound Municipal needs from CPA and cdbg funds and again looking in future years um there seem to be future projects that could apply for CPA or cdbg grants and I was curious whether the intent is but are these just placeholders again and the ones I looked at were Crockers playground the accessible playground puffers ponds restroom and Beach and Trail improvements the general Trail improvements the Civil War tablet display and the war memorial and M River playgrounds so I think that we have submitted some of those most of the projects that went to CPA were Town Town sponsored projects to begin with this year um I know Holly who were you involved in the CPA Pro process and did we have others that didn't make the list we we tried not we tried to match what our requests were to what what the funding was available can can you hear me yeah okay um yes I was involved in the CPA process this year and um I think that every year there are several projects that come to um CPA uh timing is sometimes um a factor but I think that they always try to look especially for playgrounds um they are always trying to look towards CPA as well but I think the intent is to keep them on the capital plan as well so that if they don't get funded they are still theirs placeholders yes so I think the answer is that yes if if it's something's for ible for CPA we take it there um but this is a way to sort of Chronicle what is on the list of sort of our to-do list and and I will say in the discussions of those Mandy actually every single one that you just listed um some of it there may be some State Park grant money as well so it was listed as this is a rough estimate of what we think it'll cost and the the um puffers pond dam is an example of we need to do a certain amount of things that there's probably money to match that money but we have to do something first so those oute projects were um described as potentially eligible for CPA Andor State um which helps which helps in the out years it doesn't help FY 26 per se yep so continuing with fin fincial guidelines items um one of our guidelines was to explore possible opportunities to share equipment and Facilities with neighboring communities the field maintenance equipment I believe is on year two of two in terms of buying new field maintenance equipment um did you explore cost sharing for the purchase of that with the region or any nonprofit sports leagues um and a similar guideline was in terms of when you purchase things the related cost cost for ongoing operating so for field maintenance equipment I know this was a big question last year in jcpc uh will it require the use of more DPW Staffing um particularly when the statement relating to the reason to buy it is to quote maintain athletic fields to a level that has most recently been discussed end quote but may not actually be done right now and what type of costs on an ongoing basis um will those require and are they built into budgets or have we looked at cost sharing those additional operating ongoing operating costs for field maintenance when we buy the maintenance equipment with other entities including the region or any nonprofit sports leagues that will be using those fields I know it's complicated you might not have an answer right we don't have a coherent answer on that right this moment I think that's something we would talk with DPW about but it's also something we're trying to respond to the need for higher M higher level maintenance you know since if we're not going to have a a turf field we know that the level of maintenance for the current Fields has to be increased I think we talked about this at the time we talked about the need for investments in in our fields and that this is part of the response to that um it's very complicated in terms of Maintenance of fields you know we've it's always been a a bone of contention because we have multiple people who are responsible we have DPW have Recreation we have schools all taking care of different parts of the actual same field uh which is kind of uh crazy um so um DPW takes most of the ownership of the major fields and the major stuff but they don't do the sidelines for instance and things like that so yeah sharing information is sharing the getting into cost sharing with the district um on on a piece of equipment becomes more complicated although I have had conversation fairly recently couple weeks ago with Hadley about some of the things some of the equipment that they're looking to buy that might be beneficial to us or we could we might want to share um uh most of the time those things um are they're pieces of equipment that we all want to use at the exact same time say but but it's but you know open to that conversation and also with Sunderland had those conversations that's great to hear because it kind of goes to a question I didn't open that up to other towns but MH uh vehicle purchases I noticed a lot of our vehicles are weekly uses for same departments or different departments but they're the same type vehicle have we ever explored sort of sharing amongst the Departments of vehicles if they're literally used on a weekly basis of once a week in each department to make sure that they could be used on different days so we don't have to maintain and own and purchase as many vehicles uh is that something we're actively exploring so I guess we'd have to know which vehicles we're talking about I don't have the list in front of me but I mean certainly we could address that um yeah I think it's something to think about going forward because we do have an insane number of vehicles I would say we do have done that to some extent like when we bought uh when I was here years ago we bought the electric vehicle for the IT department that was available for other departments in town hall to use so there are are small examples like that that's one that just happens to come to mind now there are other larger pieces of equipment that I know um that DPW and conservation sometimes share but then frankly um the scheduling and timing of use of equipment sometimes makes it hard to share so yes we have done it some and I think we do continue to think about it but I would not suggest that that is going to to make a big change in the amount of equipment that we have because um sharing gets to be complicated I think the budget itself probably answers this one but our guidelines said to provide a strategy that you should provide a strategy to meet high priority needs and that views Capital Investments with a climate lens and so I just wanted to ask you to talk about the strategy that you took in viewing these Capital investments in this plan with the climate lens Beyond hybrid vehicle purchases or anything like that as we move forward so all you know I think putting together um we always look at all those at the climate lens on everything now it's really has been um integrated into our thought process um with any kind of building changes that are being made especially HVAC Stephanie and Jeremiah uh they used to office right next to each other but now they're in very tight um communication with each other in terms of what's on the radar what has to what has to be done what What's um you know what's where is fun munding available to do things um so I think we're and I I mean the beauty of this is our a is our facility structure is 100% bought in on on moving us towards our climate goals so I think that's just um I don't know if there's a check box or or anything like that but they definitely are are there with it yes Sandy could I just give you two specific examples so one is the chiller for the police department that is going to be a heat pump Chiller um originally um I don't think they were thinking about that but as Jeremiah moved forward with the project one of the things he pitched to us for the need for more money not only because the original estimate was too low but just to invest with a heat pump system so it would be more green uh second in regard to the roof replacement program both he and Stephanie have talked a lot about um not only repairing roofs so they don't leak but looking at reinsulating or making sure the insulation goes into those roof Replacements when we do them so you have to take these things on a caseby casee sight by sight basis but I know in the discussions leading up to this Capital plan that those two specifically were talked about uh you know so you can site to people in the public for how their money is being spent thank you I'm getting into little more broader questions now um as we go through some of the guidelines one of our financial guidelines was to be explicit when making tradeoffs where goals conflict with available resources and setting clear priorities and in reading the CIP I didn't really see necessarily any particular statements of any any trade-offs you needed to make in terms of funding any particular projects with respect to the goals because there wasn't enough funding and things like that so were there any tradeoffs you needed to make regarding capital projects as they related to the council goals or anything I know it's a vague and general question but it's part of our financial guidelines is to be explicit as to what trade-offs you're making and so I'm curious what those were and related to that was we all know that the road funding out of cash Capital decreased this year compared to other years um what what is the result of reducing that funding and I know this question is probably for a later conversation at at Town services and Outreach but what's the ultimate goal on road repairs we have a pavement condition index map um what band or rating on that map are we aiming for our roads you know when you say 40 million or 50 million to accomplish all Road repairs is that to get everything up to a 100 and excellent or is that just starting with the ones that are below X number and repairing them up to a a certain pavement condition index you know all of that is trade-offs but I guess that's that's my question is talk about the trade-offs you made you've asked a lot of questions I think Paul Kathy and I could each answer some of that I'm going to start just because I'm a big mouth uh I would say um there uh there were way more Capital requests and plans for spending than we could afford so going through that process we had continually to to engage in tradeoffs and you know where are we going to put money what are we going to prioritize so I'll give you one specific example we've have $250,000 in there for sustainability projects and Stephanie had originally asked that to increase uh you know basically by just in large picture $100,000 a year each year for the next few years and we said well we can't guarantee that I mean we don't have enough money to do that but we will put 250 in each year going forward so I think that was sort of a trade-off between money and yet the commitment that the the council had and that the manager has to sustainability um God you asked so many things I forgotten all the questions m Joe um the big one was about trade-offs and which ones you made and so that that that answered you know a a portion of that but that you did discuss it in jtpc and the other one was about specifically the reduction of Road funding um and so so this year this year when we had extra money our kind of default dump in uh account was sidewalked so sidewalks and Roads kind of go hand inand in the previous years we've put ex the town has put extra money into roads this year the default was to put into sidewalks because frankly we get inundated I'm sure you do too with requests for both roads and sidewalks so there was a little bit of a trade-off there you know could we have put it in roads just as easily yes do they go hand inand yes um I do think at some point I know there's going to be discussion about the Jones and what happens with that if we don't go forward or we go forward in some other plan and then should we dump more money into roads or sidewalks in this plan um again because none of that's decided we're not proposing anything at this time but I do think those are the kind of things that we're going to have to think about so oh and and on the PCI index I would just say generally you want to be I don't know at 80% if you're at 100% I mean every road is R spanking new um and there are curves you can look at for how much annual spending you have to uh engage in in any particular year once your PCI or Road index goes below a certain number and therefore the level of repairs you have to make to a road are much Broad and more complete than if you can simply patch them and do or do an overlay or something like that so if you're basically in the low 80s you can do those kind of overlays and then keep things in reasonable shape uh and that is generally where um where you want to be I don't happen to know what the annual dollar amount is that ammer needs to spend to be in that area um you know I've talked to Guilford about it a little bit I think it's a conversation to have with him in the future um but uh I do think that's also why every year we've dumped more money into roads because just the Baseline that's there isn't going to be enough over the long run to keep us at at at that level so those are kind of general answers thank you I then looked at the budget as it relates to our goals the performance goals that on that big Excel sheet there were and there's a whole bunch that don't necessarily relate to the CIP um but I'll just go through there were a bunch that I thought that the CIP met um seven or so of them using a climate lens um uh reviewing and revising regulations to reduce barriers to operating businesses and proposing a whole bunch of revisions and measures to bylaws for housing for economic development and all of that because it had the funding for planning and and conservation and planning for studies in them that I felt that the that funding was going to trying to help meet the manager's performance goals on those grounds but there were some performance goals that I wasn't sure that I thought could relate to the CIP versus other parts of the budget or just operations in general that I didn't notice or couldn't find a a real clear use of or addressing in the CIP and those were using a racial and social justice lens when making decisions um and beginning to identify and propose revisions to policies bylaws and regulations to dismantle structural racism um and so I'd like you to comment on how those goals were incorporated into the CIP and if they weren't how they plan to be addressed in other ways so the big I think I report every month on my goals on the seven top things that have been identified uh by uh cswg which includes the resident oversight board um which is being funded primarily through arpa funds and so that would not be reflected in this um maintaining the um you know um Crest Department uh and building that into our budget which I think we have we continue to build and and and have the conversations and the same with the Dei Department um you know the Outreach work we've been putting money additional money in for outreach work from uh the Dei Department uh so they have a little bit of a budget to work with when they're putting putting um events together um so those are the actual manifestation of the Investments right um so in terms of you know I think you know we we say that you know we try to in uh incorporate sort of the climate lens and the racial Equity lens when we look at things you know as start to make but most of you know you know I have not been able to really in in um internalize Ro in a strong way like choosing roads to be paved is there a racial Equity lens to place on that and I know intellectually I think there is but I have not seen a good model of how that's been done in other communities quite honestly so I have three more questions two of which are probably fairly easy um want to do a comment on this because um I think multi-use paths sidewalks potentially fit all and I know um even though I didn't think it was a good idea you grabbed a very big share of um the Community Development block grant to widen a sidewalk um that and the designation was it's mainly a student area but it it class it qualifies as a lowincome area so you know thinking about where we do sidewalks should also it's not just roads but where we do sidewalks so it's never been clear to me um Mandy you asked about sort of the priorities in doing this but you know if we bring in a new uh con uh duplex development that has low in the quality to live there you have to be low income to a property that has no sidewalk at all and has no pull out do we think in advance including is there State money that would say okay because of where this is happening there might be State Road money I'm just not sure how that thinking happens within the staff because well yeah so yeah if I may Kathy so that's I'm glad you mentioned that because East Hadley Road is a perfect example where it's repaved new new um A New multi-use Path and also A New Path all the way to gra Park creating a better walkway to gra Park so it'd be easy access Hickory Ridge has the the entire sort of motivation for that was to open up that space for access to the large apartment complexes on East Hadley Road and to build actual Pathways which we're working on um through from East Hadley Road to the Hickory Ridge area which is going to be spectacular and just if you haven't gone up there Now's the Time to go up because the pathways are really getting f um built in in a really interesting way um but we envision that is and also opening up um West pom you know pomoy Village area in the shops there to make it more accessible one of the challenges for the um East tadley Road folks is a is a food desert it's really hard for them to get any place and having it be getting the the little stores in pomoy Village access accessible to them where they don't have to go out on to West Street and then go is one way and then also you know talking with the pvta about better access to the malls and Hadley is another big challenge for us thank you three more questions two of which are fairly easy in past years I hope um in past years the the CIP has had a list of projects that aren't fundable within five years but are on the radar um that seemed to disappear from the CIP plan and so just if we could get that back in the plan or a supplement to the CIP of things that dropped off you know I I I can't even I think the dam was on it at one point um at puffer Pond which now is sort of in debt schedules and stuff in other places but um you know just just keeping that list of things that are on our radar but we haven't figured out how yet to get it in I think it's really important um secondly I just say sure that was just a matter of staff time I mean I was doing the budget and the capital with 10 to 15 hours a week and I frankly just said all right I'm not doing that I just don't have time so next year when you have a new Finance director I'm sure it'll be back as long as we don't lose track of it um the second one is on the debt schedule the Cropper Crocker Farm roof seemed to be on it twice both at 3.6 million if you look at page 30 um two three and a $3.6 million borrowings on the debt schedule labeled Crocker Farm roof or Crocker Farm roof replacement um and and there's not just is that a duplicate um one of the questions is is that a duplicate or are is there some thought of that the crocker Farm roof needs two phases um but the fiveyear plan on page nine has the cracker Farm roof once but at 2.6 million not 3.6 million and so the other question I have is what number is the most accurate since we've got a couple of um discrepancies here are what what numbers are we looking at I'll have to look at the duplication issue I don't know what's going on there on the crocker Farm I think what I did is I just combined two different projects because there was a roof and some HVAC stuff all happening in the same year and just for ease of calculating what the future debt cost might be I think I just added those two together uh and put them all under one thing I mean I I do remember doing that a 3.6 difference then okay yeah um and then the final question I asked last night um that maybe you probably still don't have answers to but it it relates to the library borrowing payments that are listed in the fy2 section for the repayments of borrowing at 1.2 million uh if the project as the borrowing has been authorized doesn't continue uh at some point we're going to need a plan for that money both not just in fy2 but in future years um whether it's what to do with what's already that 1.2 million that's in the fy2 budget if you've got thoughts as to what might happen I know it's really there but related to that um is are you going to be potentially asking for additional debt borrowing for a library repair um would that debt borrowing start in fy2 such that the 1.2 million might need to stay in there for Library borrowing um or it would that Library repair debt borrowing again this is all speculation right um would that be beginning in FY 26 and Beyond it any thoughts you've got right now to how we might be dealing with that in the process given the CIP plan and our deadlines for voting it would be helpful I believe as they taught me in law school the answer is it depends so um I think there if we don't go forward so no decisions have been made yet on the library it's still under review so that's second um if we do not go forward with the current Library plan um it could be that we have a modification for that somewhere down the road it could be that uh even if if we don't go with the current plan at all there's still significant amount of work that needs to be done on that building and at some point we would have to incur the cost for doing that whether that would be uh something that would have to be paid for in fy2 or or not we don't know yet because a whole new plan would have to be if there are no costs in FY 25 related to the library um I would strongly recommend that you keep the money in capital and either put money toward things like roads and sidewalks which would be a possibility or there are a number of borrowings that we um would plan to do next spring and what you could do is reduce the total amount of those borrowings by that 1.3 million and borrow 1.3 million less and just pay cash uh for some of those in other words reducing the amount you have to borrow for future borrowings with the money we have in the budget now we do that sometimes when we do bans and we roll over just a portion of the previous year bans and pay cash um or if you if you just have cash on hand for a capital project It's a combination of cash and borrowing if the cash portion goes up the borrowing portion can go down so I there are things we been discussing without having made any decisions um but I guess my strong recommendation is whatever is done it stay within Capital so that the town continues to invest in its capital resources thanks that was the extent of my questions on Capital then I have some but I'm going to wait and see if anyone else has some Bernie this is Bob I don't I don't have any questions but I want to make a couple of comments okay so ber Bernie hand up so Bob why don't we do you Bob and then Bernie okay so I I I just wanted to let everyone know that um when the first pass through for jcpc the the the the ask for financial investments or Capital Investments was was what about five million above what we had budget for um so we had to reduce that and Sandy worked very hard very diligently with department heads to um to hone these uh requests budget requests in many cases they came back lower uh in specific one specific request we had a purchase of a new uh greens mower for for uh the golf course that we then it got changed to a a used mower um and so there were a lot of a lot of tradeoffs that were done um both between you know in the minds of the people who were asking for the money as well as you know amongst the the the members of J of the um of jcpc so I I I think a lot there was a a long conversation we had about um each of these um each of these uh uh spending asks and uh I think we we arrived at a pretty good place you know for example there was a discussion of the police cruisers whether they could be electric and it turned out that the the police said Gee we'd like it but it doesn't really work for us for a lot of reasons some of it is the design of the police cruiser there's really only uh one manufacturer in the country that designs that builds police cruisers and they can do a hybrid but they can't do electric and the way that they're used electric wouldn't work on the other hand um the parking um Department um they their vehicle was rear-ended and needed to be replaced so um they very quickly said well electric would be fine for that because it stays in town for 99% of its time so th we we we really looked at pretty hard at these things um and I I I I think we had came up with a pretty good plan the other thing I wanted to mention too is the um the improvements on belter toown road are going to make it much safer for children uh many of whom will be in the affordable housing um or the the children that are now in the current apartment buildings uh will um it'll make it much safer for them to go to school and for adults across uh belter toown road so I think that that's certainly a case where we have uh whether intentional or not um I think there's a great benefit for the social justice that's all I want to say thanks Bernie yeah um a a couple of comments and a couple of questions uh I'm G have a tough time following Mandy Joe on this because she very thorough as usual um but the the let do the the the cost of police vehicles has really jumped from last year uh I know we we typical cop car you want to get rid of it at 100,000 miles uh and I also know that these uh just they on a they AR on a lot somewhere you can just go pick one up takes a while to get one um so just like that to the uh is that increase in in police vehicles is that purely being purely driven by production cost by what uh Ford's willing to sell Us cars for uh yeah the police chief did report back to us based on his looking at at costs when we actually buy them we will spend it costs in other words if it costs less than 90,000 per vehicle we will spend whatever the lower amount is but for budgeting purpose he thought it was wise to put in that amount based on his conversations with uh with Ford okay thanks yeah and the the thought about EV police cars are um police cars are designed for a variety purposes that we don't think about like how do you get somebody who's not wanting to get into the back seat get into the vaccine uh I didn't see in just shifting gears uh or the other comment is about sharing equipment sharing equipment in my experience uh is always a nice thought but never works out um I I can understand why people would want to see it but uh apart from some informal sharing that might go on between Highway superintendence and I'm not saying it happens here I've seen it in other towns um a formal kind of share ing agreement uh typic tends not to be very practical because everybody needs the same stuff at the same time uh looking at the Public Works budget there's a I didn't see any narrative on um the allocation for Waste processing and the allocation for storm water management and I'm curious as to what those purposes are also saw nothing about water um if we look at want to look at a climate lmbs and we need to look very hard at storm water management uh every cover is a potential disaster um so I'm wondering what uh what what's behind those two requests I'm JY just to confirm this is in the capital that you're looking at and could you just remind me Public Works Public Works Capital uh facility waste processing 40,000 um I'm not sure what that that's for and then Public Works uh grounds um storm water management $100,000 so storm water management can be a a lot of different things U I'm glad to see it's there but um given the you know given the weather patterns and and how you know the number of culverts we have the number of stream Crossings we have streams by roads um that that can be very Troublesome in the future you can't answer it now I'll you know I'll either you know pest Guilford about it at when I do the review of the highway budget or um folks can get back to me in another time well Sand's looking for it when Gilford presented it to us um when to comply with the RS we put in place that were required by the state there is a series of things they need to do so this was regulation driven on the 100 on the 100,000 Bernie but he did not go into detail on exactly what pieces that means um and uh you know so I think it's a great question because one of the things I've noticed is the number of drains along the roads that are completely clogged so that the water cannot run into into the designated area yeah well there's a there's a couple of different things here I mean my my focus was on um you know everyday roads there's also EPA requirements which were set aside during the previous administration that has now come back into Force about um managing waste water from our run off from our streets and how that gets treated so it's likely that Guilford is looking at um the EPA requirements um that uh uh will will force us to to make sure that we we've created storm drains and the storm drainage system that takes care of surface pollutants and and may even require treatment yeah that's known as the ms4 permit from the EPA yeah uh and I know uh he did talk about the need to do various engineering studies in order to make sure that we're compliant with some of those things and and I believe that's what that money was for okay well that's that that's good but that then opens up question my other question which is you know managing storm weather in other parts of the town and and U you know have we I you know have we looked at every cul in town and determined whether or not it's adequate given what we're we're seeing in flows and and in terms of wayte processing I know we've had some fatb problems I know we had we've had a couple of sore backups I didn't know if that was addressed towards you know offsetting that or you know what that what that money was for so I I'll take that up with Guilford when I do the U Highway Department review the other thing I want to uh that that comes to mind in terms of of groundwater and storm management is the aptly named fearing Brook which I know we have some studies done on uh which is likely polluting the Fort River but that's that's another that's ammer partially underground river which we're GNA have to take a look at at some point so okay thanks so um although I was on the jcpc committee um and Sandy and staff did Yan's work on trying to get us all the pieces together one of the things that we didn't do was what you started to do Mandy is focus on the years Beyond 25 um on some of the items that are in it so I I do think we need to especially since we're looking at a deficit going forward you know that um it's not clear to me that we need to be replacing police vehicles on the same schedule that we have in the past and I know we miss missed a few years so one of the questions is on hybrids they may run longer so as we get more experience they've gotten better um they are as Bernie pointed out they're expensive so you know and so just trying to think through what that schedule is um as opposed to the ask for it so we we skipped them on a year looking forward DPW this year had no vehicles on the list I it had won a sidewalk plow that for $250,000 Mandy may remember it from last year last year we said no and this year we said no again um so it it's right now not on the list but I did not note that the some of the things that are on this shar's list were not on last year's list Big Ticket items um so I I don't know how much all that kind of advanced planning that some of the not eight years out or five years out but at least two years out we have a better sense um this radio equipment um that we needed a new base station we needed new things to be able to talk on VHF and UHF that wasn't on the list last year and apparently it was in the works I mean there were a lot of work going on it's fire it's emergency more generally but um it it was such a big ticket item it was start startling to see it for the first time as opposed to what's coming to us so that was one comment on a looking forward not just for this year the other the other is um on when we're looking at this year that if we can if staff can update the table of past things we've awarded that um there's about $500,000 in schools in that table and that was current as of a year ago it wasn't updated so what what we did last year with jcpc by exploring it we still had Sonia and and Sean but they we got people to say we're actually not going to use that money we're we're only going to need half of it and we could grab that all so I'm looking for ways of enhancing the road budget um we we put the to balance the budget Mandy this year we sidewalks was in for just 50 and we came up with another 150 to bring it up to 190 that was somewhat do we do it in sidewards are roads it's no matter what it's not very much money so I'm just thinking that we we should be looking at that the last comment is more on what this incredible document doesn't show you we've mentioned a lot of things that are being funded by grants that are capital so Bob just brought up the Bolter toown Road improvements um Paul you talked about the multi-purpose Road and stuff maybe there's a way of that's not drawing on our cash capital or borrowing but it's grants that were brought in to explicitly do a piece of work that would have otherwise either not gotten done at all or would have been done with Town money so maybe there is a narrative um for that and then I just happened to know the cdbg piece has this sidewalk piece in it and it was it's over it's like $455,000 it wasn't a small amount of money but just trying we we C CPA does some pieces and we at least get a report on that there might be a way of capturing it is all I'm asking for to show that it's not just this budget but there's another set of money that's coming in um so so those are my comments um particularly the out years I think we had we when we raised questions about them some of them were they were placeholders you know we don't really know how much work will have to go into war memorial I noticed that the crocker form playground is more expensive the whole placeholder than what we're paying for the Fort River accessible playground so we we we're going to have a real world example of one of them that we're putting in um if assuming the estimates come out okay so just trying to to at least do a two-year Horizon of what's really coming at us would be useful th those are my comments and I don't what to do about roads because we really need the state this this chapter 90 being frozen and then we get another 100,000 or 200,000 but we don't get a big kick up and meanwhile uh we have a large State Facility with a lot of cars that's and trucks and delivery Vans that's driving on our road so it's our roads deteriorate fast because of the number of vehicles running on them so th those are sort of observations rather than uh go up back and and redo something so if I I just want to comment on a couple of those things Kathy so we typically have always prioritized um Emergency Equipment in terms of the town in terms of capital investment and I think we were a little cut off guard in terms of the speed with which the radio equipment came forward um because I and I think what happens is sometimes put people start digging into it and then they realize what the actual numbers are um the two-year out planning you know um I want to just recognize that we were pulling this budget together in the capital Improvement program with you know 10 hours of Sandy for about you know five months and um and Jen and Holly pulling things together so recognizing that if we had a full-time person in this position like we had last year uh with a consultant that was Sonia last year we could we will do a lot better once that person once that position is filled so I just ask you for some little leeway on that in terms of what we can provide to you now and you know you know sy's hours are going to be taken up by this meeting you know you're asking him to be at four to five hours of meeting a week and that's that's half the time he's given to us so we want to make this these meetings productive the intervening time is going to be a challenge for us the um pass Capital usually what happens in h you cont trct correct me if I'm wrong at the end of the fiscal year she goes through everything and then that's when we close out accounts you know it's like you everybody has to come in and justify if you if you're allowed to keep an account open or not and when those things come up it usually comes back to the council in the fall we say here's here's some close out capital or whatever it is that we have or and then or free cash or whatever and then you usually do some actions in the fall and that's where we put more money into roads often times um and the grand fund of stuff you know whenever you're right we do a lot we get a lot done um you know many of these projects North Common belter toown Road um Kellog Avenue um all done by by special grants that we've received um we try to announce that but we don't um collect the information one space and I think that would you know someone with time could really pull that together and I think I think you'd be really impressed by that but and then just the other thing I think the police replacement the police cruisers I think that's like that's something we should look at what is the with hybrid vehicles what is the best practice for replacing Vehicles the this we look at this as being something that this is these are vehicles that have to respond in an emergency they you know the the the employees spend 8 hours or 24 hours a day in these vehicles we want them to be you know I believe very firmly that you know office worker should have really good chairs and the you know people should have the right tools and really good tools to do their job on the essential pieces of their job so so I think those you're raising all great points um that we we will keep moving on yeah and I I see Andy's hand is open and I didn't want to um um working with Sandy and your the staff was pure joy and we realized how much they were scrambling but they scrambled in a way that was so responsive Sandy left the picture so he's not here good so we had we had nothing but praise realizing you know it was like coming coming in at in the middle of a process catching up to to get everything in place so uh what Sandy and his team did was pretty remarkable singing your Praises Sandy yeah yeah so I see that both Andy and Holly have their hands up Andy I don't know if Holly had anything to follow up on what's already been said I had a summation thing that I wanted to make sure we include in the report so how is were you H I think Andy is saying um you first yeah and I was just going to um I was going to say almost exactly what Paul just said is that the closing out of capital is part of a year-end process where the Departments have to justify what they have left when they plan to spend it um I will be working on that very soon um it is unfortunately very very close to the end of the fiscal year already so I go straight from budget craziness to end of year craziness um and I can try to work with either Jen or Sandy to see if we can get some updates on the outstanding Capital balances but just that they will be changing in the next couple of months anyways so um you know again apologies for not getting to that it was a very stressful budget season um and we can we can work on that and they will be changing in the next um couple of months yes so Holly one of the things um as you do that what Sonia had working with Sean said if there's a similar purpose that we had in the next year's budget as a line we could repurpose it so it you know Paul is I know it can all come back to cash but that was that helped us out last year on a couple things where the new requests could move away because it turned out it was a school school kind of transfer um so it was I mean either way is fine but one way makes your 20 FY 25 Capital plan eases some of the stress in it so it's that's up to staff to be thinking that out but there were some that were there were ni there were nice matches that was in the same general um category so it could be repurposed rather than brought to freeze cash and then and then figure out what to do with it so Andy um yeah what I wanted to do is to make a suggestion for the final report and um when we write up um the report to the council regarding our recommendations on the uh CIP and that is that um we there there's been a lot of discussion today about things that were needed were that were not funded and um that hard choices had to be made and it gets back to this question that has been involved in our discussions for years how much to spend on Capital and how much to spend on operating and there's always a point where there's pressure to decrease capital and in order to do something that is seen as really important at the moment for operating budget and um I think that we have known from years of experience that that's a mistake and um the policy the the financial policy the town is a minimum of 10% and for the last couple of years we've gone to 10.5 because we felt we really needed it and because we felt that if you don't do the investment in the short run you you may have a little bit more money for operations in the long run there's great costs that comes from postponing capital and delaying our maintenance and um getting into the kind of backlog that we have in so many of our buildings um that we've just been chipping away at now um and when um the former finance committee in the days of our town meeting form of government um came up with a minimum 10% the um at that point we were probably around 6% of our um budget was uh going to U capital and we were U digging a huge hole for ourselves and uh the um hard decision that um that finance committee made was to say we need to move it to 10% in order to get out of this um and uh it has um in the end proven to be right because we're still struggling to make hard decisions on Capital but at least we're um beginning to get out of that hole we were in for many years and um so when we made uh created the guidelines for the current budget process and we um as a finance committee recommended and the council agreed to and included in the guidelines 105% it was with that reality in mind and I think that we need to make sure that we create a reminder right now at a time when there's a lot of pressure on um that we hear about that uh we should be reducing capital I don't think we should be reducing Capital so I'll get off my box thanks Andy um I see Paul's hand is up and Holly I don't know what you had something to add or it just didn't go down so Paul thanks I just I just want to mention two things one is um we've been preparing for a presentation to the bond rating agency standard and pors um this later this week and um the council and the finance committee have multiple audiences and you hear from some of the audiences every night every every time you have a meeting people come in who we serve and and we report to the general public and you hear about the the need for services and request for services but we have other audiences too and one of those audiences are the bond rating agencies because they're the ones who went and very real terms can determine the fate of all of our Capital expenditures so as we're preparing many things that Andy just referenced they care about those things they want to know the financial stability of our town and our finances and they look at you know are you continuing to make contributions to opep and where are you on your pension they want to know what the liabilities are just what you heard on the audit today they want to know a lot about what are you doing for your Capital Investments are you maintaining that because a lot of communities when they start to slide down a bad path they start to cannibalize their Capital expenditures to pay for operating costs and that's a slippery slope and so I think all those things those those core fundamental F foundational things about what makes a town maintain a strong financial footing is what the town of emerest is known for and is seen throughout the state and as having those that sort of self-discipline for making those hard choices so that's one thing and the second one is just a little anecdote as um staff was leaving were leaving the uh council meeting last night Jen turned to Holly and said hey I meant to tell you I just set up the FY 26 budget um files in the on the server and Holly about lost it so we're starting to talk about FY 26 the thing sort of cruel and unusual uh comment by Jen but it's like where we are we start to set up right away Bernie yeah what Paul said um my uh my little brother used to work for Moody and used to be one of those people that would go in and tear Town's budget apart um and it's really important that the town of amist people understand that the town of ammer has to be going concern you have to think um as difficult as it may be you have to think in corporate terms and having work long times with uh tax exempt nonprofit organizations you still have to be a going concern you still have to be able to retain revenues you still have to be able to make plans to move forward and to to cover unseen expenses um there's a lot of a lot that goes into this and I very much appreciate the work that you know well I I do have my criticisms I very much appreciate the work that our finance team uh and Paul does and uh hopefully we will have a new Finance director before too terribly long um we we've sent Paul a couple of couple of referrals from the committee on M so um we'll uh we we we'll press forward but the the meeting with with standard and pors or Moody's or any of the other rating agencies is very critical because if that that can cause we can avoid a lot of costs by having them uh put a seal of approval on the way ammer manages its finances so now I'll get off my so box thanks Bernie um Mandy yeah I just want to Echo everything that was just said by Andy Bernie and Paul and especially in terms of I I think it's unwise if to even consider reducing Capital to do operating it's what got us into this situation to begin with back in the ' 08 crisis when we essentially did that um and we've been digging out for a decade to at least get back into this position and I'd I'd hate to see us go through that cycle again um but I did want to say I forgot to say at the beginning of everything I asked that I actually do when we're comparing the capital Improvement plan to the financial guidelines and to the town manager's performance goals we basically meet them there were a couple that obviously I had some questions about but I do think the plan itself um meets those guidelines and the goals um and so in that sense as we get towards voting later on um there's a a few things we might want to point out but I want to thank the manager and the entire departments and all for putting forth a plan that basically does meet the financial guidelines that were adopted last year um and the manager's goals or at least will help the manager meet his performance goals over the course of the year um and has that thoughts those thoughts in there thank you I'm not seeing any other hands up um so I I um you know other than uh Sandy and others you heard a couple comments on specific tables so if there are line items that are still a duplicate I mean those um as we go in one of the comments we made in the jcpc uh report to the town manager but it's clear in what was just laid out to us is that as we make decisions with some of the big cost items to fund them with debt and as buildings come on we're we're squeezed even more in the out years then we would otherwise be on terms of new projects and cash Capital so as you look out across the uh the even the fiveyear plan and it would look worse if we did 10 years um if and this is assuming if DPW we actually can get to the point there is a new DPW something because it's it's penciled in right now with a number but that's what's starting to have a crunch um so that is one of the reasons we went up to 10.5 you know the large expenditures um to be able to get over a hump it is absolutely putting a squeeze on operating budget so I don't think we should uh put aside that we also brought in an entire new Department in the operating budget which puts a squeeze on money available so as we turn to the other departments we need to be thinking these are choices we're making um and they have consequences so that's a what I was delighted is that we balanced fy2 it came in2 to3 million do in a deficit so that didn't look very good um and the other comment on just on praise way back when before I was on JCP but I was an observer uh my comment was I don't understand how we have a capital Improvement plan that is balanced in year one and has extreme deficits in year 2 34 and five that does not look like a plan to me that just looks like we pushed everything off but we've gotten out of doing that we're we're much more disciplined in you know almost balanced nearly balanced with some identification of where pieces could move and I think that's just a huge Improvement in trying to think through the future um so I have to thank it's a lot of Staff that's working on that including the Departments the Departments themselves are making choices so thank you all and I'm not seeing any other hands up so I will see whether anyone wants to make a motion to adjourn could I just can we just re preview what's going to happen on Friday who's coming in um uh yes so the Friday schedule has May 10 Friday we have we're starting with sorry if I if you don't mind go go ahead Athena we have Sharon coming in to do the libraries at 10 then we have Pamela Nolan young coming at 10:30 to go over Dei we have facilities at 11: Jeremiah Rob and Dave uh the town manager budget little at 11:30 and then we'll have another opportunity for overall budget questions at the end of the meeting good thank you and for anyone who didn't see it um Athena can resend it but each of the next schools both Elementary and Regional are on Tuesday May 14 but there is a schedule with the departments on it um that's been agreed on I and that's that's in your packet for today and um Paul I sent it out to staff both to you and Sandy and Holly and Jen and the staff uh department heads who are coming to attend the meetings super thank you Athena the the police can't make it on the 17th have we rescheduled them that's right they're coming in at 2 o'clock on the 28th 28th okay yep they're on the schedule for a later date they couldn't make it on the date that we had originally chosen that's fine has a hand up yeah has her hand up yeah um we had projected revenues and any questions related to that on today's agenda is that just moving to Friday when Paul is around I think is if that's okay with Paul we'll do we'll do that then sure as long as s's here you know I'm seeing that we have we have it's it's five minutes of four so rather than opening up a new topic Mand I think we'll just move it to that section okay so now any go on sorry I should I should be raising my hand and I keep forgetting um if there are questions about any of those topics for this Friday it would be helpful to have those sooner than later so I can communicate those to the department heads so they're ready to attend the meeting so um I'd have to pull up my notes from the last meeting I know Bob is doing the library um I forget who's assigned the other so I was assigned all the general government sections which includes Dei uh the Paul stuff and oh that's right you sent yes along with a whole bunch of general questions that kind of relate to revenues but I think Kathy was doing some Revenue questions too that's right thank you I had another question which is the timings are great um if we don't say take a half an hour for libraries will we have staff there to be able to move on or are we going to have some dead time like like I I I know I know there's a purpose to the timings but I I've not been to a a review in a while in terms of timing that it does take so is there some leeway in that if something goes quicker yeah usually that the department heads will come at the start of the meeting and i' I've let them know they can just leave their cameras off until the committee is ready to um take up their Department um and I can continue to communicate if it feels like that committee is moving through things more quickly then we can make adjustments or more slowly than we might need to move things around and go we had a department heads meeting this morning alerted the department heads about the upcoming meetings but also that it's not their job to describe everything that's happening in their departments it's really about answering your questions addressing the the key components um it's not a full like we have four people we have two 32 people that's not the point of this so to help them you know having the questions in advice in advance is really helpful to sort of shape the conversation and if I could add to that Paul um I think in the past we had we had asked the Departments to do a little bit more of that and seeing their meetings with the finance committee as a opportunity to celebrate all the great things that they've done the accomplishments that are in the budget and so we're continuing to think about how we can do that in a different format that's not taking up this really tight timeline and finance committee so the one exception on the list for Friday in terms of things we can look look at and send questions in is the library um Athena I don't know whether we have a library budget but if if it's already in the packet um I'll look at it so it's I'm not assigned to it but just the request to get things in in advance all the others are are in the the budget book so I know I know what the line I know what the line item is for the library and then the the budget from the trustees is posted on that upcoming budget page if you want to see that okay great detail and we did ask after the finance committee conversation last time um members said that they didn't want a full presentation and so on you wanted Sharon to come in and talk about um revenues and Staffing and so on so I I shared that with her so she's going to be ready for us on Friday so it is and I already I already reviewed the budget Kathy so I I posted some questions so okay perfect thank you so now I'm looking around does anyone have any more comments I'm not trying to close out the meeting um to close off discussion if there isn't any I make a motion to adjourn is there a second I'll second and I need to go around and do a vote Andy yes Alicia yes Kathy is say yes Mandy Mandy second did um Bernie oh Shakespeare wrote adjourning is such sweet sorrow but I agree Matt Matt if Matt is still there well if we adjourn it won't matter okay and and Kathy is say yes if you didn't hear me so I think it's unanimous that we're adjourning um and we'll ask but it's an I I'm an i okay oh Bob I missed you the phone the phone down at the bottom sorry Bob great no problem I it it is amazing you don't notice there's a phone at the bottom so thank you very much everyone we are adjourned at four o'clock thank you thank you