okay we're recording so you can go ahead okay today is April 4th and this is the joint Capital planning committee meeting um and my my first order other than calling us to order seeing that we have a quorum at 4 o'clock is to make sure everyone can hear and be heard so I'll just call out names on as I see them on the screen Bob present Lee Lee just uh we can't hear you I can see your mouth [Music] moving last Zoom call I was on starting at two had the same thing happen Okay well let's try Eugene because we still can't hear you um oh I could hear lee oh you can hear yeah I could I couldn't I could not could I I think I heard I heard can you hear me now yes yes I there we go okay Sarah Sarah and we hear you and Anna yes okay so we are we are at a point where we're uh working with recommendations that'll go in the report and Sandy has listened to the conversations that we've been having as well as he's had additional conversations with staff and department heads and as uh sent us a revised five-year summary plan and a revised list of projects for both the FY 25 year and all the way through 29 and it miraculously balances so in in fy2 so Sandy I I you know I went through to figure out what had changed and what had moved but I think it would be good for you to kind of walk us through it um and the other thing is um I started to do a draft of the report so people just know the schedule we have um today we turn to our own recommendations and then in theory next week we review the draft that I write in Anna Anna checks and reworks and we make it final um because that's our last meeting and I realize that we're under that's a quick turnaround time but I think depending on how efficient we are today it's doable um thanks to what Sandy did um so so Sandy it's the the time is all yours thank you very much um so uh yes we do have a balance plan uh both in FY 25 and overall over the five years there are in future years some deficits in some years and some surpluses and others um so just bottom line where we've gotten to where we need to be um I have heard feedback from some of you um there's still one thing I need to look at so there might be a little bit of a tweak to come uh I will get to that in a minute um but I thought what I would do is first just talk generally about what I did to get things in balance and then um show you the specific numbers and show you the the pages uh we had sent out a draft version earlier today and then um I was double-checking some of the debt numbers and realized I needed to change some of those so those ended up moving numbers around a little bit in the out years but not in fy2 and it brought the overall deficit actually down some all right let's just start um I'd say the major things that I had to do uh where fy2 was move certain projects out of fy2 into future years and or change them from being paid for in cash to being paid for by debt um I think particularly when I did that in the out years those are uh part of a plan at this point in other words this doesn't mean that in FY 26 or 27 we we absolutely have to borrow for you know the crocker School roofer but it means to have something reasonably in Balance now that's what we're planning to do and then a year from now when you guys are all going through this you can relook at it see what resources you have see what projects have come forward or dropped off and make new decisions about how you want to finance things um so that's what I did there were other things that um some of you had questions about for example the sidewalk plow I pushed that out two years because um just in talking to people I got the sense that DPW had put that there as a placeholder not that they absolutely had to have one right away so that got pushed off two years same thing with the north ammer um traffic study uh there it's pretty clear that um that was both a place holder and probably a little bit too early even to be a placeholder um for a variety of reasons um some of which has to do with maybe we wouldn't have to spend money for outside consultants for something like that and actually do the engineering inhouse which emmer often does and some of it is just the consensus about what that project's going to look like and how we try to line that project up and spend money or do work on it inhouse with the town's plans at some point to apply for another massw Works Grant which will substantially pay for any changes that go on up there so anyway so there are some things like that that were just premature there were other things like the um tablets at the Civil War Memorial tablets $150,000 that when I talked to uh this guy named Bob parent who I don't know if any of you know I I don't think I've ever met him uh he uh he's doing some part-time work for the town around a lot of cap Capital Management projects and he was in touch with the construction company for the library that told him a we didn't need extra money to to kind of fortify or strengthen the place where those tablets were going to go they're very heavy but they're going to end up as it turns out on the bottom floor so that they don't need to reinforce the flooring and so forth which is a concern and that they in fact had already designed designed some space so we didn't have to spend money on that sort of thing so I put that off a couple of years figuring that uh also what he said we weren't going to be able to move those in there until the library was really fairly much constructed that and we wouldn't be moving them in there in the midst of construction so I put 50,000 in in an oute just in case we need something so there were various things like that um and so now I'm going to start to share the latest and real version of this um you are all learning something that I first learned when I started doing budgeting for the city of Newton back in 19 99 I think it was that um anytime you talk talk about budgets at particularly this time of the year you just wait a day and the numbers change until they just have to be finished it is also something that I teach people and you I teach a budget course at UMass and I tell them there are two kinds of numbers there are real numbers and there are budget numbers and those are not necessarily the same thing so things do change Le Lee did you have your hand up yeah I because I'm the minute taker so I have self-interest in this I'm G to take notes but will will this version be posted to us so I can print it out again tomorrow if I need to thank you thank you I thought it would just wanted to make sure Kathy and I touched space and she thought it would be better to just go through it now agreed agreed so I'm going to start to share my screen all right so you can see this now where my can you all see the it says final draft yep okay we can and what you just did to make it a little bit bigger probably is I can see it fine but just it's Pro oh so this is different from what's in the packet this is yes okay okay so so I will Point down in the corner it says 44 yeah that's that's why I say that yep and what changed Sandy I'll tell you I looked at it quickly it's FY 26 in the later years that changed at least from my quick look at it so yes it's these numbers that changed 25 really didn't change I always kept that in balance and um so we have $374,000 deficit for 26 a small deficit in 27 we actually have surpluses that get fairly big in 28 and 29 which means the plan overall has a um surplus of uh $451,000 um we could um get rid of that Surplus by for example there couple of projects that are on the plan which I will point out for FY 29 that are currently down as being borrowed one of them is for $400,000 for example and so if I didn't borrow that and use cash instead then we'd be pretty much even so um I uh you know part of it is the feedback I'm eager to get from you as to you know just how balanced you'd like to see this um all right so um this is just how it looks I will stop now and ask if people have any questions about these numbers but then I'm going to go into the list of all the projects and you can see where things are so Sarah I see you have your hand up yes thank you so well I'm using my cursor but nobody sees it the number that we need to focus on for today am I right and thinking it's new projects 4 million 136 548 that's what we need to whittle the list down to in order to be yes I mean really it's this zero number here at the very bottom left um zero means that um you're in balance that that there's no Surplus or deficit you're you're balanced that all the resources up here including you know tax money and CPA and state funds and so forth match all the spending that's down here so resources expenses they have to come out to zero but the thing we the only thing this group has any control over is new projects right or is that not yes that's true okay um yes uh okay and and if if I could jump in Sarah when when Sandy says that the that 4,100 one 4.1 million is Cash projects so what he's done on his list it says the $900,000 chiller is going to be borrowing so it's not taking anything out of fy2 so if you look down the project list Bob was asking Sandy it the project list totals six million you know if you add them all up but some of them don't hit the the immediate fiscal year because you borrow the money and then you start paying the debt does that make sense so that's right trying to reconcile those two numbers um right so we need to be tracking the C but if we decide okay we'll borrow something we'll do some we'll fund a project for fy2 through some borrowing is that going to change a number in this First Column or we're not going to um yes let's say there was let's say we were going to spend $100,000 on a giant widget for the town because the town really needs a widget um and we said okay we're going to borrow for it instead that would mean that in fy2 all all of a sudden we'd have a surplus of $100,000 because we're not paying cash FY 25 but in 26 27 28 and 29 the deficits would go up or the surpluses would go down because you'd have Debt Service payments in the future so there wouldn't be any Debt Service in FY 25 for any project that we decide we want because the town and sells its debt late enough in the fiscal year so that we don't have a debt payment during that fiscal year okay okay thank you the the other thing just on trying to do what Bob was doing just before we met officially met um is that 841000 the state aid road is um real spending it's just not a new town project you know so that that's cash spending it's coming in so when you I think I'm speaking right so the 4.13 6 at gets added to the 841 as spent cash spending during the year so the the his column his new column for 25 does add to the same column we're looking at here is is the other way to think about it yep okay all the specific projects yeah any other question so far otherwise I'm am going to go to the sheets I had only one um Sandy and it's not about projects so it's about projected debt so maybe we can come back to it it's the Jones Library um it's um the the ban at some point we have to do some shortterm depending on when when the money is coming in from the library uh trustees and grants so when I don't know whether you've accounted for yet I did say you've accounted for the our 15.8 million borrowing that's clear but that um thing called ban ban is just a constant 50 all the way across and so I just I that's my question is that is that correct it again it wouldn't affect this year um so it's it's a different year so um it would affect the out years and I don't know which out years yeah um and neither do I which is reason one reason I didn't add anything so with the library there is um Town money then there's State money and then there's trustee money three big pools of money um the state money will come in as reimbursement so we have to start spending our money first and then the live the board of Library Commissioners will start to give us its Grant and so forth and then at some point um the trustees money will come in and how and when that is going to come in is not set in stone at this point it may be that the town would have to borrow money on a short-term basis a a bond anticipation note or in this case it would actually be probably a a Dan a donation anticipation note um where so that the town would have to borrow some money until the trustees could move money into the project um the town would have to do that because you have to pay the contractor you know they don't like to wait um you have to pay them as they do their work and they pay up their their employees and pay for their their supplies and so forth um and it isn't clear how quickly the trustees can um come up with their money however that's not to say they they may say hey wait a minute stock market is doing great or we just got a lot more donations we expected we have plenty of money and the town won't have to do that baring I don't know that yet somebody you guys will all have to figure that out some next year that's where we are with that okay all right I'm G to go to the next page unless anybody has more questions um this I realize is small so I'm going to enhance this s can you read that yeah I can't everyone should shout out whether they could read it can't read it I guess would be I can see it is it is okay with it I can see it if you could make it bigger I would like it bigger but it that's better thank you okay this does some so I'm going to hide the department some and so we'll see how this works um this does somewhat remind me of that when I worked in the state house and they were testing the um the uh PE system or uh PA system excuse me where they would which they would use to call Members when it was time for a vote and it would come in all our offices we could hear it and um they said if you cannot hear this please call the office yeah right anyway um so these are the projects so some of the things I did uh were different from what you saw in the original were that um I talked to Jeremiah a lot about the condition of our our roofs and about what um what might be need to to be done when in his original ask he had $500,000 in fy2 and then increasing numbers in the future um and one of the things I just did is I said okay it's a good aspiration to increase your spending in the future however for the purposes of this I'm just going to spend the same amount every year if in the future it becomes apparent that there is some roof that really needs uh more work done or so forth than maybe you know in 27 or 28 or whatever you can boost that amount but um also since this roof it item was really new As A Five-Year Plan in the capital plan from what I could tell I think increasing the number you're going to spend every year um is is a little premature so I did it I we had enough money to spend cash in fy2 so I did that and then I assumed we would borrow in the future again I think a year from now you're going to look at your overall financial situation determine whether you're actually going to borrow this money or or pay cash or some combination and again it's going to depend on how big that roof project is that year um same thing with the chiller replacement their original ask there was $800,000 but talking with Jeremiah it was apparent that that number was a little bit old so I put in 900,000 when we get the final price for the chiller we will borrow up to 900 you know whatever it actually costs um so if it's cheaper will borrow cheaper uh or lesser amount all these other things uh the roof replacement uh at the fire station the flooring at the fire department uh and Town Hall flooring replacement all are the same as was in the plan Sandy if you could SL down Sarah had a question on one um one of the items Sarah you want to mention it because it's one we actually didn't well the shed the shed the mson library shed and then somebody told me it was put off for a year but it's listed in 25 so so when I asked jeriah because he didn't talk about it and if you saw his pictures I said you move that from this year and my memory I'd have to look at the minutes or he he said yes so I see it's on here so um so it's a question rather than is it actually gone from this year because we didn't hear about it oh okay I did talk to him about it because I had a question about what the heck it was because I didn't remember and he just explained that the sheds that they had were old and leaky and they have um say store their you know how he gave us pictures of everything and he had a list that one was missing you know he didn't and it was it was on the initial list but it was missing from his presentation so it's possible he decided it doesn't need to be done this year so well again so when I talked to him about it this last week I asked him about it and it was a it was it's a fairly small thing so I mean we could put it off or not put it off depending on what we want to do or um and if we do then we'll have some sort of a surplus in 25 and then have to decide what we want to do about that um but I I got the impression it something that he really would like to have done at some point in the future and since it was small I just kept it in this year but if the could you have him send us a paragraph then so we know okay so just at least we feel like we we did a kind of review of it I agree it's such a small number um yeah okay Sarah does that make sense to you yes but I actually have a have a larger question if I get so I maybe I misunderstand what's going on are we supposed to be deciding during this meeting what projects need to be cut or is what we're looking at for fy2 is balanced it's balanced you may say Sandy your recommendation makes no sense to me I want to do something different but okay okay this is my attempt to give you a um a working plan and then get your feedback in case there's something about it you don't like okay so the reason the the grand total at the bottom is more than $4.1 million which was on the first page as new projects is that in this yellow column includes borrowed Amounts is that right yeah and it includes $841,000 St okay I thought I thought we were having to come in and decide I've been busy Crossing things off in my mind so think of it this way well this is good news thank you the yellow line total is the size of the house you're buying the first sheet shows your mortgage payment every year so you're buying a million doll house but your mortgage payment is going to be $2,000 a month or whatever it is yeah I get it I get it so thank you Anna your hand went up did it go up and then down again it did my question's a little bit later on I'm GNA I'll I'll jump in later I think okay um again uh other facility stuff uh I'm not going to go through each one just to say I didn't make substantial changes to these uh to um I think this was for finance at I'm sorry I just have to remind myself uh for their um facilities management software this is all fire stuff um I think yes um so one thing I did do is I moved the radio system out a year and I listed as as borrowing and I moved it out a year because the fire department made a presentation to us but when I first asked the police department about it they said they didn't know what it was that worried me a little bit so then um I did get a little bit more feedback from them and but I frankly sent them both a note this week I said listen I I've done these radio Replacements in other towns I know they're big projects they take many years there are a lot of components and um I just don't think you guys have a solid plan together at this point so I'm going to put it off a year uh and um I think you need to present a more solid plan to Paul and to the next Finance director in the jcpc um also this was the first year it had ever shown up and that always makes me nervous when a $2 million project shows up out of the blue um so I um that that's that's why that's out a year um I think that was it for that one okay so I see both Anna and Bob have their head up so Anna yeah I mean I think I've got I've got big concerns about pushing this out a year given the the areas around us and UMass switching to the other type of radio um for this coming year and I was wondering if you had heard any more about um the leasing program that they had mentioned for the radios versus just the outright purchase um that was something that was mentioned I think quickly as an as a possible option um for this but I I do worry about sending it out a year I also don't necessarily think that and and maybe this is my naive coming in but I I don't know that people need to have tried and failed to have to then get a project approved I think it's I I don't necessarily Mark that against it um I and it does sound like I'm curious what we didn't we heard from from police but we didn't hear directly from dispatch and so I think that would be a helpful perspective too um and I know that they were rep that police was representing dispatch but I I don't know that this was coming just from fire even though police didn't necessarily talk about it so I I guess I'm a little I'm I'm concerned about it getting pushed out a year um I know it's a big ticket item but we're also approving a lot of little ticket items that we kind of keep saying well it's just not a big amount but at some point those add up and and I I think we I'd like us to look critically at those and uh not necessarily knock off something that's major given the the I mean all of Franklin County is shifted all of you know all of you mass is Shifting so I I'm worried about this so I just want to make clear my concern about something showing up for the first time isn't that I think you said something about having something show up and then get knocked knocked back as if it's just that if if this is really the big deal that some people say it is why didn't they know about it before why did it take till all of a sudden now like these things don't happen overnight if there's a major shift in technology uh people know it's coming and uh I do worry that sometimes salespeople are able to convince department heads that they need to do something right away but and it isn't necessarily the case the amount of backup that I saw about the plan I thought was fairly minimal minimal I did not you know the police did not ask for it um and didn't when I asked them about it they did not again they first told me that they didn't know what it was and the idea that the police and fire haven't including dispatch haven't completely coordinated together on this tells me that they need to do some more work and have a better plan so that is my recommendation I um I do suppose if it turns turns out that this is a big deal um you know that is something that um I suppose they can come back and make their argument to to Paul and have him change his mind it's also just frankly at this point I I told Paul this is what I was doing and um being able to get him to focus on this stuff now given what's going on in his personal life that he's out for the next couple of weeks is is limited I don't know how much you know about that but he's got some family medical issues that he has to deal with so that just that that kind of put me in a box but I I appreciate what you're saying Anna I I just they didn't make the case to me that that this had to be done now no I appreciate that and I and I think um I definitely am I'm trying more of engaging in the discussion around it because I do worry about it getting pushed out I I hear what you're saying about folks you know encouraging them to to do it quickly but I um I I'm I'm remembering back to the police presentation and they seemed clear on it at that point um so I'm just I'm trying to understand that that piece a little bit um maybe I misunderstood them but we can go to Bob and Sarah okay Bob yeah Sandy um what's the other source in in the um in the fire thing is that is that the ambulance fund yeah in that case yes other can be a variety of things but for fire it is ambulance okay thank you Sarah yeah so two things one i' i' I'd like if Anna is willing to explain what it why she's worried she worried about pushing it out and I don't know if you mean you think the current system is just going to collapse or there's some interrup communication problem between ammer and other areas other cities so that's one thing and two what is a drone I didn't hear about any drone that's another one that's at least it wasn't called a drone we did well that's in that's in the next year too so they didn't we didn't get a we didn't get a lot of presentations for things that were a year out you're right sorry I should have noticed that all right so Anna I wonder if you're willing to say yeah of course and I I thought that they talked about the thermal imaging thing I think I thought that's what the Drone was um but maybe anyway anyway whatever um Sarah to to answer your question I don't I don't think it's Calamity but what was presented to us uh they talked about how they um there were some dead zones where they weren't able to receive uh Communications from um dispatch as well as the way that their radios now do and don't function with um Franklin County and UMass because those two organizations have shifted over to the digital system so while it's not an entire like it's not like they're trying to use carrier pigeons um there are zones where they're not able to receive communication was what I remember hearing um and that that communication is is now not consistent or um always it they don't necessarily talk to each other across those counties um so that's what that's my recollection and they cited they said I think specifically like areas on University Drive like there are some areas where now new buildings are going up too I know they're not going to be you know habitated within the calendar year but um I do think that that's a consideration as well they're populated areas so one suggestion um is we can MO through is we can write up the report to say it was recommended that this be moved to be developed further with more information but we we think the town manag should also focus on whether we can wait a year you know we can we can leave it with a I mean Paul has he doesn't have a whole lot of time does he he has a budget that he has to present in May and then but for the capital plan um that doesn't get discussed publicly until June so there's time to say I I'm very much persuaded that it should wait a year to get further developed I think it's very problematic when you have um a sales group offering you a an almost $2 million system um and if if if I was told this is exactly the system that a bunch of other people have done then also the implementation costs in namers could be lower because they've already tuned it in so that's what I wasn't quite sure of on the the the need to do it right away as opposed to work on the details of it more um there's you know when they gave us the pieces there's the the base receiver and then there are all the mobile units so also how many mobile units do you need um so some of that was driving up the cost and some things you could lease and other things didn't make any sense to lease so it had moving Parts in it so I'm comfortable doing this the way Sandy has recommended I also think that if it got move back into the 25 line if we're borrowing for it and we borrow at the very end of the year we we're mainly hitting FY 26 not 25 that's the year that's still showing a deficit but that's okay you know I mean it's kind of okay um as so we can Anna that's what I would suggest is writing it up with some question marks um I'm wanting to make sure this is the right move yeah that makes sense okay Jean Eugene yeah on this same line item because it's it does sound like a really big project just from there's like a lot of moving SPAC uh pieces base stations um antennas if I recall correctly in different locations um probably like a huge amount of tuning even if they've done it to some of the adjacent places that that we're going to try to plug into from a communication standpoint is this could we also find out is yes if we if we Finance it it mostly hits fiscal 26 but even still it's probably big enough that it probably would go across two fiscal years I don't fully understand how like would isn't this big enough that you probably would have two separate items in two separate fiscal years is that on my that's an excellent question I asked that in an email to the Chiefs and I haven't gotten an answer back yet okay which can I mean I don't mean I really don't mean to be critical of staff I think they do excellent jobs but again when I've done this before there was a committee to a committee together of police and fire and dispatch and they reviewed all the components and so forth and I'm just got getting answers to the kind of questions that I would normally ask about a project like this including can we spend it over two years or you know bu like what are we buying when and you know uh and uh so yeah when you put it when you put it that way that we haven't had all of the potential departments that would be impacted by this like fully on board and knowledgeable about it that you know that that also kind of sets off some alarm Bells a little bit from is the $1.9 million the exact system that we need so yeah we I think we do need more information I do agree with Anna though that this is a a potential you know response time safety thing um that could cause some adverse problems you know if some kind of worst case scenario happens in the next year and we we don't move forward with it too so I want to be cognizant of that I guess I would just add one other aspect to this and then I will move on we don't really have a police chief now I have an acting Chief I don't know if he will become the chief or not I really don't know anything about that but I do think that a police chief needs to put his or her impr premature or imprimer however you say it on this project so um with that I'm going to keep going to um uh these are the police projects um again I think they're pretty much in line with what you saw before I don't recall changing them much I see Hands coming up so Eugene oh I just had to put mine down I'm sorry okay yeah now the only question I had and I I know later on they've got the the Cruisers in there why is there nothing in FY 2728 and 29 for the police I can't imagine they won't have any requests I do think that has something to do with not having the chief at this point maybe yeah yeah okay so we should we should be expecting some requests uh in the out years yeah I I I think it's just going to take another year for them to get their act together to be able to do that fair enough you know the other thing is we've split some of this Capital that relates to police like the chiller the $900,000 chiller and the roof that's all in another bucket it's police but it's not here and then down in vehicles there's 360,000 so so it doesn't really add up it's like this is the police other category and and I did hear them say the record management system they could definitely live live with that they've got for another year that they're not quite ready um so that to me was not just permission but but saying yeah it's next year out this year that's the $400,000 one yes that good point um this next section I skipped the head too fast um this next section is um oh yeah there's a whole bunch of stuff for Crocker Farm now I put a lot of it as borrowing uh I lump some of it together um I I don't know know the Dynamics of of this I think there's some political issues and there's some um facilities issues uh I I come from a place and and when I worked in ammer we had a single facilities Department that coordinated projects in town and school buildings that don't no longer happens and I did ask Jeremiah the town facilities person what he thought about these things um I would just say uh I think on the one hand they may need to do this work at Crocker Farm I don't doubt that that that could be true again I'm not sure that I've seen the studies to show that that is um in fact what needs to be done the same way that Jeremiah is doing studies for Town buildings and having all the roofs analyzed and then given a a recommendation for each roof and he'll have that in during the next fiscal year and you can look at that and make decisions um I don't know that the school department has done that and I think somebody needs to ask that question um the other thing that I heard from some people is that there's a feeling in the crocker farm community that um you know Fort River Wildwood was getting all this money and its Crocker Farms turn um so I don't know what's driving that and I don't want to speculate that that is what's driving it but I do I do think in general it is never the case that you spend Capital money because somebody deserves it you spend Capital money because buildings need it and so I do think that conversations need needs to be had in town uh you know I'm doing this hours a week and so I don't have the time to do that kind of stuff um and but I do think that you and the staff next year need to have that some of that conversation with um the school department about spending on that that location and also frankly whether uh this stuff you know what the timing of some of this stuff is it it should all be just one big project so if you're replacing HVAC equipment oftentimes that's on a roof so how you know do you do the roof first do you do the HVAC equipment first and it very much depends on which equipment it is and uh you know it's very site specific there's no one right answer to that uh it just raised a lot of questions in my mind so having said that um they are on the plan the way the schools asked for them I put them under borrowing because they're very expensive um and that's where we are Anna Anna so sorry Sandy the last sentence you said they're on the plan the way that the schools asked for them and I was just trying to pull the other plan are these dates the dates that the schools initially indicated I think so yeah okay that's what I thought because I think for me the the question is is there something preventing jcpc from asking those questions which I think you know Crocker farms in my district I'm gonna always Champion Crocker farm and um I also know that for example the crocker Farm playground is something that's been being requested and worked on for a number of years through CPA through you know it's this has come up in number of places um these are not I think this is in different ways these Crocker Farm requests have come up often um and so I'm curious if there's anything preventing us from as gcpc from requesting written responses to specifically the question about the strategic planning around the the capital um or the infrastructure so the roof and the HVAC and the timing of those um is that something we'd be able to do I recognize that we're looking at this plan today but but I think just setting ourselves up well for the next even the next iterations of this um it'd be helpful to get those responses I would say those are very good questions to ask and that is a good thing for jcpc to do so I would say yeah as you're going through this same process next year I that's partly why I'm trying to flag it for you now because it raises those questions in my mind and they may came about come back with great answers I mean I just left it on the plan but I did I do think um it's a lot of money and somebody needs to look at it more carefully so just you know one response Onna again you know in the report we're writing we can also pull things out to send them directly to a group but this we're talking about their own request is out two three and four years and it suddenly hits two and a half million a mill you know really big amounts and one of the things rert said is that if the msba accelerated repair program opens up some of this could turn into a grant we would have to pay part of it and so he can only there's some questions he won't be able to answer with more certainty than a a spa a placeholder um and if the roof is failing or not failing you know in a the hbac equipment because what one of the things I noticed is this is a totally different spending plan than last year totally different there were a lot of smaller when I say smaller they were $300,000 pieces there weren't any $2 and A5 million doll pieces so this is a shifting a shifting way of thinking about Crocker that I think is so much in motion that it would be good to flag it as something that we the town is going to need just more information on um and and playgrounds can go to cek you know so you know and you know so we and we'll have a model accessible playground at Fort River and even the playground amount accessible playground just so people know the accessible playground equipment at Fort River was $500,000 not $800,000 you know so just a you know having looked and that's real those are real numbers in terms of what they're buying so I think he was doing his best to put placeholders in yeah I think we'll have model playground until we build this even more model one a Crocker thank you Bob yeah I I'm wondering how much of the the money that's listed as schools not specific to Crocker is actually anything but Crocker I mean we're we're going to basically build a new elementary school so we should have new everything in that school and we shouldn't have to replace HVAC and you know exterior doors and things like that so I don't I I mean I'm not saying that they're not real but why shouldn't we I mean it's probably on the next page of you Sandy um why shouldn't we you know we've got all this stuff in here I mean maybe copiers and and technology equipment but you know exterior doors furniture replacement electrical system certification I mean that's all going to happen as part of the construction I would think uh so anyway I I I will note that there are a lot of things here that are um blank as opposed to previous years right so the schools definitely did not ask for as much this year as they normally had in the past um and then other than that um yeah I guess um you know they they didn't talk that much in their presentation about uh the future year so I think those are again good questions for the committee to get more information on as you go forward yeah I yeah I recognize that they didn't we didn't talk about this but I just noticed that you know what they're asking for in out years would seem to only focus on crock reform we shouldn't need any of these maybe some of the you know as I say some copers or some things we may need for the new school but Bob that's a good one to pose as a question says you said you're looking at the fire the fire alarm well that's listed as Crocker but everything after that is energy management Tech equipment copers um and that will all be new in the new school the thing that won't be new is anything that's trying to coordinate between the schools you know so is all the furniture Crocker so we can we can we can just pose these as questions you know I just don't know it just it would appear it would focus we're going to need it for Crocker and not necessarily for the new school yep Sarah I wanted to say if you go back to the previous page just about the crocker Farm playground um my last year on CPAC which was at least two I think was two cycles ago now I think they asked for this and they didn't get it so so maybe it's all in here now as opposed to partly CPA money and partly jcpc well and it could end up being split somehow depending what C CPAC decid yeah I don't know if they try it again with CPA or not well frankly I think jcpc could encourage them to do that say Hey you know we've got a lot of needs and well I think that's what CPA how about you go to jcpc well yeah but just because they do it to you doesn't mean you can't do it that uhuh okay Lee yeah I just I I I thought I understood now I'm confused because I W I was assuming that everything on this page that's now up from uh you know roof to generator replacement was all for Crocker on the assumption that that the new school had its own budget and everything that was part of the new school has already was already taken care of so yes Lee it's these things here are all Crocker okay but I'm going to move down the page the next page and then these things are all School generally okay so I think that was Bob's point is okay we have a brand new school why do we have to spend money on do yeah he's cut off the very first column so the fire alone system is Crocker and the rest is just called schools ah okay and this is something you actually do have I mean or you can yeah yeah I'm just the observation is that there's a whole bunch of other things um that is called schools and the other thing to remember none of it's Regional Schools this is that's in a whole another for all sorts of interesting reasons right so whatever this whatever these expenses are wherever they belong they belong to the town of ammer not as part of the I get that all right well I it's hard for me to see how some of these in fact I think I remember the exterior door discussion and I thought it was exclusively about Crocker but yeah sure let's get more information okay excellent um we're now into uh if everybody's ready into DPW um and these are pretty much uh along the things that they asked for the only thing that's different is this item for sidewalks and in the future they ask for $50,000 a year Paul Bachman said um that a he thinks we need to spend more on sidewalks than 50 and that in other years jcpc apparently has sometimes added money so what I did is I just used that as my my um default bucket if there were if there was any extra money I just dumped it into sidewalks so that's why it's an odd number 17948 who who does Capital At That level but that's why it is there uh and uh yeah other than that it's pretty much what they asked for in this section uh you have another question Anna then um so I apologize I missed the the DPW presentation could someone refresh me on the um field maintenance and what fields that that entails that's that's uh Regional Schools in particular and they split the field maintenance over two years last year was a piece of it and this is the second year and this is not um this is Norm grass fields not uh turf fields uh so we Haven an explicit what it is it's it's it's a a a piece of equipment that's big and wide right can do the the pieces as opposed to a plow or a tractor oh no I understand and so so is this factoring in the either addition or removal of grass at the regional level in terms of when we look out a couple years uh I'm I'm thinking about the decision that's being made uh by the school committee about this and how that might impact the need for Capital costs um around around remember Fort River is going to be reopening and yeah 20 acres of grass or five 10 acres of grass will need it's not going to need that's not the region so how is that how is you said this was for the regional the school this is for the for all of it yes the DPW does field maintenance for the town right as opposed to the schools doing field maintenance whether it's regional so because Fort River I I said more they also do the fields the mil River Fields you know so it's Fields um it's fields and so the reason I said more the around the Regional Schools those large Fields is because for the next year and a half the Fort River Fields will not be be out of service we be out of service is the best way of thinking about it you know you're not going to be out there uh maintaining it and is this um does this get the grass to the level required to play All Sports for example I know field hockey um requires a much lower uh Mo versus soccer that's what was described to us okay thank you and I apologize for missing that meeting thank you right can I add something to Anna Anna asked about the whether this has anything to do with the proposed artificial turf I want to I want everybody to say artificial turf because grass is Turf so anyway um if if there is one artificial turf field it's only going to be one out of all the grass fields in town so so I don't think it'll make an appreciable difference we'll still need the mower we'll still need the mower and I don't know what if anything might be needed specifically I mean I believe there is some equipment needed to to roll or whatever is needed for an artificial surface but thank you we're not we're not there yet thank you um if there are no other questions I'm going to move on to the next Department um and this is um conservation I just have to remind myself um so in a similar vein to what I did with um the roof uh proposals from facilities I took what Stephanie had proposed as a dollar amount for sustainable projects for fy2 and I left that amount the same in the out years because um again in the at the time I did that we I was looking at a fairly big deficit over the five years so I had to reduce it so um I thought at this point for planning purposes just stick a number in there that um you know you know the town will commit to and if over time Stephanie comes up with more specifics and out years that number could change but um it is a reduction from the amount that she put forward um even though I do think sustainability projects are very important for the town I just thought for something that was new to this plan at these big numbers we shouldn't automatically be increasing the number every year um other than that um I think pretty much uh these are the things that um conservation ask for Anna so I would rather have taken the excess from that we had added to um sidewalks and instead bump up the conservation number instead of cutting it I think that would be my my preference are you saying you only did that in the out years you haven't done it in this year I only did in the out sorry sorry i50 is what she asked for for asked for 250 and she gave a specific it's in B it's in the yeah that's what I thought and then you're saying she asked for three like more than that in the in the future years yeah okay so it's not necessarily we're not locking into that you're just oh my God sor my dog just caused Havoc um knocked my entire charging thing out of the wall uh you're saying but but a future jcpc would make that decision we're not locking ourselves into it right and just so people know I'm I've got all these microscopic sheets in front of me but the original ask was 400 400 400 500 in the out years you know so so what he's done is just straight lined it across to the 250 um thank you and she can always come back with a bigger number in the future if she needs yeah thanks and it what she did was I thought terrific this year um on giving us very specific things she was going to do with the money um I agree all right I'm going to move on next to planning um so uh I did leave that that big hundred in for those Consultants because that was the conversation you had with uh Chris and so I went with that uh downtown parking I put that out a couple of years because a I needed to balance the budget in 25 and uh also because I just thought there have been so many damn parking studies in ammer okay that's all I'm gonna say about that I already talked about the Civil War tablets I I think this will uh end up giving them what they need and I left the demolition for the clubhouse at Hickory Ridge uh because I know Paul says he he thinks it's becoming what in legal terms they call an attractive n nuisance um that there's worried that kids are going to start getting in there and somebody's going to get hurt so I do think we needed to do that right Away Great Sarah your hand is up yeah I'm not persuaded about that $100,000 for zoning and feasibility studies is an appropriate use of capital and I'm as interested in zoning as the next person um and understand the importance but I don't see that that those kinds of studies lead to the eventual production of a town Capital asset I mean it well it about zoning you mostly you're changing what private property owners are are going to do so I I convinced me that this is appropriate right I I'll give it a shot and you tell me how I do okay um for one if it is common and has been in amist and it's in other communities where I've worked to put uh Capital study money in a capital plan uh because if you don't then um you you don't really have a source for it there's not you'd have to increase the uh planning department budget by let's say $100,000 next year which and then it kind of it's one of those things where your the planning department budget would be going up and down up and down every year and uh because otherwise they just there's just not money in their budget to do these sort of things these studies uh sometimes have a major effect on things like zoning but they may also have impacts for things like uh how the town looks at you know traffic flow or you know whether to put a traffic circle in an area or how much more traffic is going to exist in an area because there are zoning changes and so forth so it's hard to predict with certainty what the whole scope of these changes is going to be until I actually do the studies um that's about as much as I know as being a non-plan but again I I would say you heard Chris talking about the kind of things that she wanted to do so I will leave it at that Kathy's gonna try give it a stab too no no I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in on the amount um I could see fif you know this is the planning department got a 100,000 to talk about potential uh design changes in the downtown zoning and and took them two years to hire someone who's an expert on design you know to actually put not just it can be 60 feet tall but that some kind of and it should be set back from the street you know for to to make some recommendations to US based on input and my I don't think much has there's been that that much done and the list she gave of these are such technical terms but professional development Park we've got places zone for that do we is that useful or not we keep overriding it we've got flood plane Conservancy which is different than flood PL I'm not sure why that's not an internal staff set Al that's I have a different question on this that do we need an outside person to come in and look at this um so what what is interesting about the University Drive uh example is is that uh two buildings are being proposed for a corner That Couldn't normally exist in that zone and everyone agreed on a variance and just said sure we're okay building a building that's taller and various things and it didn't require going outside that could be between the planning board and the staff so I wasn't sure Sandy about the 100 you know whether she needs 50 because there's particular expertise out there that we don't have um um or does she staff up for a year is she I know they've been down a staff Anna may know more about the staff person is this a temporary staff person who knows a lot about certain things I don't know but I didn't I didn't quite understand why we needed an outside person to do some of this work Sarah so I do think the work the thinking needs to happen but um what they did was remarkable on univ Drive they took the whole overlay thing and were quite creative on suggesting ways to change it all staff so Anna yeah I think the answer Kathy I don't I don't know details about the hiring process for that other person but um I'm guessing it's if you want it done within the next year we need to hire a consultant to do it I think that that's my understanding is uh there are so many requests from the town the council from everyone that um they need to hire Consultants to do some of these projects and and this is one that would get a consultant for so I I don't think it's a matter of lack of expertise I think it's a matter of bandwidth um and I I think that we could say we want internal staff to do this but then it's not going to get I'm gonna I'm going to guess it won't get done for a while because of the all of the other things that they're currently doing so um that that's my understanding Kathy is is really it's about the bandwidth the staff have okay and I I just wouldn't want to see it you were you here an I can't remember who spent on the council but there was a whole thing on 40 overlay there was a consultant hired we did a whole bunch of meetings and then it went nowhere I don't want to see us repeating things that we've done that took a lot of everybody's time and then didn't move forward and that was a consultant that that was you know it they weren't a bad consult they weren't a bad consultant it's just we we have all that thinking in in a file cabinet somewhere at this point did did it not move I was not on the council at that point but did it not move forward because the council decided it wasn't a project they wanted to pursue or did it not move forward because we just didn't act on it because I feel like that's sometimes a consultant will do all the work and we decide okay based on the results we don't want to do this my sense they didn't it wasn't clear that the best there was a downtown particular place it wasn't clear that had been thought through well for that and they didn't look as well at some other places that people wanted to have considered so you know this was the Housing Trust it was a lot of people were involved in this so it's it's so Sarah's question is about use of money for studies I don't mind a use of money for studies of I think it's expertise we don't have and what you're saying is we're short staffed so so I think maybe again if we keep it in this line we we want more of an explanation before it goes out to bid for the Consulting on you know what kind of person what what are we hiring because they're different kinds of people for some of this stuff was talking about unless there's a senior planner out there who wants to work for amist for a year and they're gonna snap that person up yeah or is it something that we decide is not a priority so we don't want to consultant nor do we want internal staff time spent on it right I think that's it kind of gets back to what the council was talking about at our Retreat which is we we send a whole lot of stuff to staff to work on and we need to pick which ones we want them to actually be spending their time on um I don't know if it's underst staffed or overburdened or a little bit of both but yeah they're mismatched yeah exactly the math isn't mathing on that one okay okay I'm Gonna Keep moving yeah um the next project oops are these two playgrounds which I think in the original were much closer to the present and my conversations with Dave Zac and Jeremiah both made it clear that neither of these uh playgrounds at mil River Memorial Pool or excuse me or Memorial Pool or M River were um ready to roll anytime soon so I just dumped them to the end I made them borrowing so they have no effect on the bottom line because the borrowing wouldn't start until 30 um if you wanted to put the whole plan back much closer to balance I could change one of these to cash and then would would be basically even in over the five years so that's that's what's going on there uh I just bumped them out because I I got the impression that they weren't ready for uh Prime Time H is this one also an instance of by bumping it out we are giving them the opportunity to fund these through for example CPA funding uh and then take it off of our roster because these seem like great projects for CPA funding and I'm sure that they've thought about that and have other things in the pipeline that they're going to go to CPA for but that is still an opportunity for this and it may not even show up down the line that is exactly correct and and and they said that quickly Anna when they presented this you know it was like a they already have a piece for war memorial from CPA so you know they could get another piece um okay um these next things we're now getting in things for cherry Hill a u fixing the bridge that um Kathy has to slog across in in wet weather um a used lawn mower uh in the future some dredging of the irriation pond there uh and then in the in the future a couple of other pieces of equipment so fairly modest frankly oops um we are now into um vehicles um again the big thing that I changed here was to move this sidewalk plow out to 27 um other and I did leave the um police vehicles in at four a year and um I don't know in the future if you're going to want to buy four every year I just put it in there because that's what he asked for and um it didn't make that much of a difference in the capital plan as it was so you know I didn't care about it too much um I do think once there is a new Chief in place you're going to have to ask him or her about the condition of the vehicles how many miles they have on them and uh which is really for Cruisers the the key thing how many miles do they accumulate how many hours of running do they accumulate in a year um given that they a couple of years ago couldn't Buy any and another previous year couldn't buy as many as they otherwise would have been allocated I went with a four for FY 25 and figured that you guys can figure this out for future years um and that I think was the only [Music] um oh and I changed the source for the parking vehicle to the transportation fund from the general fund and there are lots of hands oh yes starting start with Eugene I just had a real I'm not sure this the correct venue for this question going back to Cherry Hill um is and there's might be a place where these numbers exist Cherry Hill is probably a net positive because they charge fees right so correct I just I was just just kind of like looking at their website um so I mean like that 75,000 is probably easily covered by the money that's coming in for the fees yeah it's interesting that you raised that because during the budget hearing we had um Paul had was starting to ask a lot of questions along those lines about you know how much uh Cherry Hill does cover and it does turn out that they do cover in fact cover their expenses so your question is very timely cool and that's that's that's the new good news Eugene because they used to be they used the fact that everyone else closed their golf courses and we we increased green fees has ended up meaning I don't know whether they have enough to pay for this kind of extra you know for peace but so well I will say the the Cherry Hill fees go into the general fund I think we used to have a separate fund or evolving fund for Cherry Hill or something and because the finan are so precarious at one point it was brought back into the general fund but so the fees just flow into the general fund now just like other I I'll I'll probably just take that offline and just see if I could see some numbers there but like if they're the only group here that actually pays for themselves that's that's amazing it's somewhat weather dependent true true true so Bob yeah also um one of the things that Ry said was when the when the bridge goes off it's Moorings they have to shut the course down and they lose all that Revenue so I think you know we we definitely the bridge is and you you gota you got to have a mower for the greens so I don't see either of these as being a a a real big thing what I do have an issue is with is the greens mower in the uh vehicles um I don't remember seeing that before maybe it was there certainly we didn't really talk about Vehicles very much but um as as I recall Ray's position was that a new mower would be around 70,000 so this looks like a new mower but it's for the middle school yeah the same question Bob I don't know what this one was um yeah but I don't know I don't might be that original mower that he didn't change to the used one so that may be extra money I was thinking maybe it was a duplicate one was listed under Cherry Hill and one was Because unless someone tells me I don't think there are any greens no there AR any at the middle school oh they're they have a new putting class I mean let me ask his original cost was 71 for Cherry Hill but then he found a used one for 35 so it is it is um it felt like a duplicate and I didn't remember it and he did say that field hockey requires a very you know that's what that's what I was asking earlier about the mower the high school so maybe this one is for field hockey you know it's at high school it's not they don't play at the I don't believe they the middle school did they cut it at the middle school I I don't what I guess I don't know okay anyway I think we need to we need some clarification on this so and it's mly or two of them or just one and you know and if it's for either the high school or the Middle School it shouldn't be ammer shouldn't be paying for it all alone so I'll I'll I'll send them an email when this movie when this movie when this meeting is done um and then the other big thing I did um is I moved the fire building excuse me the DPW building out a year because I I mean maybe it will move up quicker maybe you know uh I'm wrong about this but I just don't see any movement on it the other thing about uh this is that ultimately the borrowing for this will be broken up into phases so there may be if if it does move up earlier there may be some initial design work that needs to be spent in FY 27 and then the construction follows uh but um my understanding is there isn't even an agreement at this point on a location uh even though I know this is an important project I moved it out so I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's toes by doing that but that's what I did I have I saw that you had done that so I I just have you know a question when I bounce back to the summary of all of this there is room and I think Sandy we can write it up the way you've just described um but there's room if it should move to we're ready to go in FY 27 rather than 28 the borrowing cost would hit FY 28 which is a year you're showing a surplus yeah um so it's it's a um so it's sort of if since you don't see any in 27 um so that was my looking at this and you know of course fortunate we don't have to do a 10-year capital budget you know to see what does fy3 look like you know and FY 31 as DPW comes online and but you know um so if if people are comfortable with just saying that's what's happened but you know I've started to do a draft is you know and it's got blanks in it so since we have to get you a draft by next week um we can mention this as put put it out and then in the in the revised 10-year Capital uh 10-year Debt Service you can see what the debt would be if it moved a year earlier than a year later and since those are in the Super guesstimates because we don't even know whether we can get it for 30 million um you know so said one in Arlington for 42 although it is a bigger DPW well yeah you there was there was a grandio plan originally in Amis for a really big DW but it's being scale back so are people comfortable with with what what he's done um so I just want mention one thing I didn't do is I didn't put any money in for the citizen articles right that's what I was gonna raise that one um and the other thing so maybe we can talk quickly about that and then if you could put after we finish that discussion put back up your summary because we're generating surpluses and out years and so my question on that at the school people will like this question is do we need to be at 10 a half% for capital in 2029 you know yeah because it's generating a half million dollars in Surplus or do we leave it with that assumption right now but do we point it out in the report because that half extra half a percent came out of operating budgets you know so if if it could be 10.2% or 10.1 you know something else um rather than uh you know get to roughly balanced but don't get to because there's there is a tendency to uh spend it if you show it um you know so so that was a question I just had on the um the Sandy's magic with the numbers moving some big ones off altogether like 450,000 for the intersection and moving others around have now generated a surplus in 28 and A5 million surplus in 29 and a half million overall you know by the assumptions that are in here so I I I do want to show if you can see this multicolored page this does show The Debt Service in the future so that's one of the things I did this morning was update this so it is in what I'll send you and and then uh as Kathy was saying we do have a surplus and again part of the reason is um the heck is it oops I didn't want to do that part of the reason is that um I had borrowing for those um playgrounds uh at War Memorial and mil River and so if I put this back to cash that would get rid of the Surplus and keep us very close to the 10 and a half% okay so if you think having the Surplus that big Surplus out there might cause political issues then we can easily get rid of that and now I will go back to the um this sheet so as you can see there's about a 451 ,000 Surplus if we added $400,000 in cash in 29 for one of those pools and or playgrounds and it all just balances out I I leave that for others to respond to you know I you know it's it it actually would be the one of the first times I can remember that we've focused on out years to this ex you know to this extent in terms of worrying about because that clearly could be a decision you know just do it in cash because the other thing everyone might or might not have noticed but we don't have to deal with the big buildings the fire station doesn't exist in the tene because the Assumption as of two years ago is that we would have enough in reserves to pay for the fire station with reserves um so right now there's no fire station with that service at all so I see I do think you should mention that in the report because some people will be looking for it like where did it go so Lee's hand is up and Bob's hands up Lee you're on mute I had it up and down because I think I substantially agree with you Kathy I mean unless there's some real reason to show a surplus I think there are so many ongoing chronic demands in town um and as you say there's some big ticket items that you're just speculating I mean we can only speculate about what they're going to cost so I think it's better to show that you know that we're not in great debt and that we're balanced but not that we're generating a surplus which we may not actually be able to do although it's lovely to show it I mean I I understand when you're putting a a budget like this together and you come out at the end and you have a positive number it makes you very happy so it's a political decision so sy's quick solution to it was to not have the two playgrounds be Deb right yeah yeah I would have I I'd take one of them off and then that would basically leave you with a a slight Surplus in 29 and an overall surplus of $51,000 which it's close enough for government work so Bob yeah I was just going to say um I I'm I'm neutral about it I I don't believe any numbers Beyond fy2 uh so you know if anybody's making decisions based on what we're projecting in fway 29 I think they're crazy so I don't I don't I mean it's fine to show it as being in balance or to show it as being a surplus but either way I think it it matters that much so so again you know since we're short on time because we started late and um we don't want to keep meeting until the end of April we could leave it the way it is but make this with notes that in if we did the playground The Sur it would be a balanced budget that so there's a choice out in the out years of debt financing or not for playgrounds would be I I think my inclination would be to do one of those play grounds as cash make it look pretty balanced and then that's fine I mean I as I say I don't have I don't feel very strongly about it but I you know I don't believe any of the numbers that we have no I don't I don't either Bob since since from year to year the next year changes so we're not even good for two years of this so Sandy is that fairly easy for you so you just get us a different yeah okay Cas um so should we have a quick or not so quick discussion about the resident proposals yeah sorry raise my hand that's okay go go for it yeah I I think we should I just remind me what was their total cost 50,000 it for the one that put two of them at each of our schools and 4,500 so it doesn't even meet the capital threshold for the one Street where a resident has a street where people speed and end it up in her front yard on a regular basis you know or another near accidents if it turns out that the $71,000 for the mower at the middle school is a duplicate then there's money in there to to cover the cost of these things so I mean I'm not sure that we can build it because I know you have to get traffic studies and all sorts of things but um and the police have to agree but it seems like if if we have the funding this year we should go ahead I think they were both reasonable projects so Anna and then Sarah yeah I I strongly endorse the one by the schools I think that that makes a lot of sense and I I think that it's a really good um use of the resident requests um I have concerns about the other one just in terms of and I the the concerns that I have aren't good enough to disqualify it because we don't have a current process they did exactly what they were supposed to do um but I think the fact that we don't have a process is is a problem um for for traffic calming measures and it's something that I think we need our Council committees to focus on um because we're going to get requests everywhere and anywhere and and I don't um I think you know what what was just said about having engineering studies etc etc um I agree with that but we also have no process to say they need that um and so I think that's my concern right now is is we need a process before these come to jcpc or jcpc can be the first step but then they still have to go through another process so that we don't completely you know negate the ability of these signs to slow people down because they're everywhere and anywhere um so I I just want to express that and then I don't know about whether or not something meets the the threshold for capital in terms of Resident requests I I don't know if that is I I don't mind the idea of Resident requests not having to meet that threshold because we are kind of the only Avenue that they have for that type of request so I that that doesn't bother me necessarily that it doesn't hit the 10,000 mark because I think many Resident requests may not but I am very bothered by the the lack of um process Sarah Yeah couple things um I don't want to hold the lack of process against residents with good ideas you know and and there are dangerous roads in town so let's just do it and maybe that will stimulate some action on on whatever process needs to be developed but thinking about the school the signs for the schools I'm all for school safety and and maybe we discussed this and I forget I mean the Wildwood school will come down in a few years won't need signs there and meanwhile at Fort River we're probably going to be having I mean the the traffic is going to be so disrupted anyway and they're already signs telling you to do this or do that I I I don't know if it's use put signs there before the new school is finished so I I I don't know so S I like the idea Sarah your question then is the the two time so you came up with a number 10 by counting them where with some of them so the there's I also think I also would be in favor of funding at least that piece and Anna to address your and we need a process one one possibility might be that we say you know the school should figure out exactly how many and where and then there should be a process on deciding where else and we open up a line whatever they're called Dynamic he had a name for them Dynamic whatevers um we open up a line so that those can be purchased and over the next year we see where they go um the state put one here on the road I live on when they lowered the speed to 45 and it it actually has helped lower it used to be 50 it has helped lower the speed from 60 to 50 because people see that they're five miles over the speed limit you know when they when they come zooming by but um they would otherwise ignore the change in the speed limit where it's 50 just a little bit up the road so you you you can almost see them start to Break um uh so so but it would have to be what you just said there'd have to be where is the best use for these because if as soon as they're everywhere people ignore them um I so Bob's thing was like open up a line for as much as 70 I was going to say open up a line for 40 or 50 with the the schools being the first piece of it and then and's other way of doing it if 71 is an overestimate put it all into sidewalks you know I mean it shove it over shove it over if we've got a sidewalk at least allow people to walk on it yeah Anna so I think um the first to the first point I I understand where you're coming from and I'm curious about the opportunity for looking into signs that are movable um because we know that um there are plenty of places in town that could use them so I I that's a question I have for I guess for DPW on are these signs able to be picked up and move to another location installed again or they really once they're in they have to be destroyed when they're not useful anymore um because I would I still think that even though it's a couple years out uh especially you know by Wildwood I think that would be particularly helpful um there is you know there's one by kushman daycare center that's movable the police put it there oh yeah I was part of TS so with that whole and so it's been sitting there you know I think it's going to be sitting there till we agree to do speed humps or something else there so so I I do think something like that I I think some sort of speed sign I would like to see happen at the schools um and and I recognize the Merit of possibly doing a a removable one um and then I think Kathy to your point I um I still think that TSO in conjunction with uh the transportation advisory committee needs to come up with process I don't think that we should limit any sort of I I think your idea is an interesting one but I think we should open it to General traffic calming measures not just speed signs because some places they're looking for something else and we'll end up with lots of different funds for lots of different things um but I I do think it's an intriguing answer I I actually kind of feel like leaving the resident request as the opportunity for that allows people to work within an engineering study to get what they need versus just limiting it to one thing um but I and and I agree I'm not I am not suggesting we limit this request because we don't have a process I'm absolutely not saying that I think that in our report however uh I think we need to make it explicitly clear that people are getting bounced around between committies between the council between jcpc there isn't a place for them to go because everywhere else tells them to go to the other place right like we're just we just even said it now when we said well they should go to the schools and the schools should decide to fund those signs right like they were told told to come to us so I I think that we need to honor that Resident request process and we need I don't think it needs to be this committee but if traffic calming is it or if something else is it we need to clearly articulate um articulate this or we need to just take ownership and say yes or no but I don't think we can do both so but you just said about bouncing around it'll be the third if we if we can maybe write it better it will be the third time we've written that advice and I'm not against doing it I know I don't know what else to do though no no but so the question is if Sandy finds that there is this 70 that's a duplicate do we want to open up a line called trackfit calming including speed things for the schools um at 50 at some amount that would allow this to move forward and that to the extent it's not all used for that or it could be a mix of stationary and mobile to extend it's not all used it could be used for other caling advice but the first thing would be for these resident requ the resident requests around the schools I'm okay with that I it wasn't necessarily what I suggest I was suggesting individually funding these as they were asked I worry years that that would limit um other resident requests that aren't related to Traffic calming if that makes sense so you were going to go all the way for the so Jeremy asked for 10 and Janet asked for one I was saying we should I believe we should fund those this year yeah uh Janet's was not school related no I know no she just had she just had one on the road right but I it sounded like Kathy was I I was gonna limit it I I don't I'm not strong on this Sarah on limiting it to just the schools because it was coherent to me that you would want to do this there I did wasn't sure you needed two at each place and I wasn't sure you needed any at for River in the short term so my question on that was was it 50 but if they're mobile um so I'm I see Lee's hand is up I do think though Kathy sorry just my last point was I do think that we still should have either a traffic study or an engineering study done before they're installed um so that we're not determining where they go specifically but I think if we were giving that area I I think that folks who have much more expertise should be deciding exactly where they get placed okay so I see Lee's hand is yeah I just have a question about the possible nature and status of these public requests are they are they restricted to being about traffic calming or no okay no it's just it's okay so this is just for this year we have these two requests they happen both to be about traffic cing and so we're so to give you an example last year we had um a bike one of the bike stations that put a new one in we've had crosswalks they've often related to roads because people can't it has to be town so can't just say I want a porch on my house or something know it's been speed humps yeah hting traffic lights um adding a s doing a sidewalk study to put a sidewalk in on a doesn't have a sidewalk so it's largely revolved around Road and walking safety in town um because I think those are more amenable to the no notice of a a resident Capital request you know we could have people asking for an additional swing in a playground you know I mean it's just we never it there's no limit to what the proposal could be we just haven't had it but is is that part I mean is that a partial explanation for why there's not been like a process because these public requests can be about so many different things I think the issue that has run into is when it's traffic coming it's brought by someone who there's a specific street that they have a problem with as soon as they name that street someone on our own committee could say I have I have a problem just so shouldn't we have a way an example is there's an intersection with a traffic light you can avoid the traffic light by going down this street than this street which is narrow without any sidewalks and cars go zooming around so there's more than one of those in 10 and the people who came with help us um so the question was do you just do it because they knew they could come or do you have a plan on where they should go and what priority so we just an said we we we haven't responded any of them because it's like where where were they supposed to go and meanwhile we set up this fantastic possibility of residents coming with ideas um so that that's my long or short the only one that's made it through since I've been watching was the sidewalk study for East Pleasant and that was done by DPW and we haven't seen the results of it but they did eventually do it and they warned us it would be expensive to do the sidewalk Sarah you know but we have a where it would go and how it would have to cross the street somewhere at DPW um but they've never proposed doing it um well can yeah I mean sometimes there's you know sometimes a certain amount of sort of AD hacking can't be helped Maybe and but so I mean and it seems you don't want people to get caught in the washing machine going round and round forever but if if you have a a place where you have a committee that considers Capital proposals and you want to make room for individuals who can't quite figure out where in the structure of town government their request fits it it might I mean maybe jcpc is the best place to come with the stipulation that you know we're sort of doing what we're trying to do today is say we have this much money it will cover this request and here's the process that now needs to be followed to make sure that the police are on board or that the schools are on board or the Neighbors on Southeast Street are on board I I mean I don't know try to write it up as a draft and see what people I'm trying to figure out what what to put in the minutes no I just say you can say long discussion about res it's all selfish It's All About Me can I ask to the ex to the extent I mean it sounds like maybe we're going to say yeah okay we'll give money for these but we need somebody needs to do traffic or engineering study well does that cost money or does that can that be done by Town staff because otherwise you're just taking a b like the best placement the police could weigh in on it and they they can act pretty quickly speed humps and changing Road configurations is something bigger so this um so especially with Anna's idea that some of these could be mobile you know that they don't have to be forever in the place they went it's it's just someone what what did Jeremy Jeremy when he came he's the one who said the the 10 he went to Guilford and he said I like the idea as long as it doesn't come out of my budget so that I just don't want to say that we shouldn't say for these specific requests first we need a traffic or engineering study because that sounds big and expensive and for formal if it's simply great idea we're happy to fund it work with the police to decide or whomever to I mean the residents can't take Town property and and install it somewhere I mean it has to be done with and through a town let me let me let us try to do some wording you know staff involved in decisions about location you know rather than call it a a giant thing and then people can react to that um and I see sy's hand is up so I I just lowered it because I I was going to say what you just said I just staff will be involved in decision and then yeah I mean I I I think you any of these things you we haven't had a process where where uh DPW and police have really looked at this stuff if we put a certain amount of money in for traffic calming and signs it would allow departments then to move forward during the year uh and in the report you can make specific reference to these ideas and ask them to take a look at them Anna I I'm guessing that what we're going to get back is can you please be more specific about what staff involvement means um because I think we've dealt with this with safety zones right now where they're saying um a a traffic study like they'll say a traffic study was done which means a police or speed study excuse me was done which means a police officer did the radar gun but they want an engineering study for something that is anything beyond just that Lit sign because they need to know about the flow of traffic and all of that so I I do think that they're going to come back and say please be more specific but uh I think we could start with that I'm just I'm not anticipating that that's going to solve the the issue that we're dealing with here which is getting stuck in this circle of we can try to problem is it's a difficult issue there's no easy answers to these things and tradeoffs um they put speed bumps on one of the major roads next to my house and now the other major road is full of traffic so you know uh which is why we shouldn't do it willy-nilly like that's I think that's well that's exactly right and that's why I I do think jcpc is not the right place for people to come and ask for this you do not want that headache Charter Charter review but I do think saying you know you've looked at this at this point you're going to set aside some money and ask that this be looked at so that if DPW and police decide okay actually it's a good idea we can go ahead and buy some things then they have the cash to do it so I so Sandy you'll get back to us whether that 71 was a duplicate and then if if it wasn't Bob there is still we could take it out of this extra sidewalk money you know we could make it 50 or or 55 since the total of the two requests was 55 we don't have to go to 70 so we'll just open up a piece and try to word this in a way that makes everyone comfortable um and let me just I'll describe the process that we've we've been under a time crunch in the past so it's this isn't unusual it's just a little bit later so if we can get you a a decent draft um in terms of Fairly literate and I'll write a first version have Anna Anna go through it then when we meet next week if everyone comes prepared with line edits verbal edits or something I take them all and get to a final but we don't have to meet again we just get to a final that way and this becomes a recommendation it's a recommendation to Paul we're not the decision makers here you know with to the extent some of the rationale for what has happened since day one today to this day is Sandy has gone out and gotten more information is making advice to us so we can reflect that staff came back to us with recommendations that enabled us to get to very near to a b well we're at a balanced budget for FY 25 and the other the out years look good too and then we can focus on where there are question marks if if that and so so it will be when you get the draft I'll send it in words so people can mark it up if that they're more comfortable doing it that way those that aren't comfortable can get get come with comments any other way and there are there is a way of mushing everything together um that's probably more efficient than the way I do it but um you know since so it will be mainly to It capture our thoughts here um on where we didn't have quite enough information or where we still need to know more about out years um does that does that process sound okay to everyone okay and to the extent I mean the minute takers have been amazing I have to thank everyone you the minutes are all now posted with Bob's I sent them in today so to the extent the description of the project is in the minutes um I will borrow from that um and and for people to say I'm not sure that's what I heard the zoom is out there Zoom is just painful to try to figure out at what point in the conversation whatever you're interested in was being discussed but the zoom for all meeting Zoom has been posted I just checked that today too so I think I'm just checking to see if we have any we do not have any public so there will be no public comments because there no public and Sandy is here and Jen stayed with us Jennifer stayed with us the whole time Lee is has a hand up no didn't mean to and you're muted so I don't know what you're saying I'm always muted I will do my best to get the minutes for today to you tomorrow if that would be helpful you know and anyone and and feel free to ship them to everyone I mean they're useful to me because I'm I'll be drafting um and Sandy do you does does everything make sense to you I mean I have some notes but you probably took notes as we went along correct yeah and you're muted oops oh I uh I had some internet problems all of a sudden so I had to get on on my phone so um yeah I think it all makes sense I'll look into those unresolved issues I will give you a redone draft um with the numbers we talked about and um obviously contact me individually if you have any other questions otherwise I think we're in good shape okay and and what I've have what we have included is this summary table and then we now have this very nice fiveyear of all the projects so we can just decide whether we're sending all of that through or not um you know Shan always Shan and our other staff I never knew who did this figured out a way of how to get these big documents into one document you know bring them in um since some of them are horizontal and some of them are portrait but and any case well I I won't worry about that because this is just going up to Paul so as long as he sees where we where we landed I know how to do that Kathy I can help you out great thank you so I want to thank everyone and it is I think we're amazingly we're ending in time again I just want to offer up my personal thanks to Sandy Sandy you've done a tremendous job Sandy it's amazing together for us and I really appreciate jcpc was always my favorite committee when I worked for the town so no you've been amazing Sandy I just can't I can't even imagine with what what you had to start with was is I I think I have all the proposals not quite sure not evidently not exactly and I I loved it when said I've got Sean's spreadsheet but I'm not exactly sure what he was linking it to yes yeah so so thank you very much I mean you still got a lot for the final report we've always put the you know the other things that we've seen in pieces the vehicle list and some of this other stuff has been in Paul's final report um and we didn't spend any time talking about that because there's not enough to talk about anyway but uh that's been an innovation that's much appreciated by the town to see all the vehicles we own um so no which I you know I did send that updated version to you guys so it is now current okay great thank you all and we are adjourned at five minutes need a motion to adjourn i i s oh right thank you second okay quick a quick vote thank you Bob Bob yes Kathy say yes Lee Yes Eugene yes Sarah all right Anna hi we are adjourned and thank you both and thanks all too good night good night right