economic devel to says it shortly so this recent yeah all right um welcome 7 o'clock Tuesday May 7th um I always read the agenda sometimes we take things a little out of order depending upon how our Cadence is uh but we always start with Community input then we'll have appointments and resignations vote to wave police station renovation permanent fees fee study report from um our executive intern town meeting and town election public information session Review Board of Health septic regulation proposals initial vacancies and committee policy discussion ta report secetary needs minutes and warrants liaison reports and Community input great these are thank you from Christina and we don't want back um thank you anybody in the audience who would like to offer any Community [Music] input I'm seeing none anybody online Zach the only person me and Zach it's you and Zach okay never mind then all right so um actually I have a little something um tonight is uh Nathan's last meeting with us uh before the elections and um we have a little something to present to him so w but I'll leave it in this so we don't get fingerprints all over it so Nathan um this is uh with thanks and appreciation for your years of dedicated service to the town of carile and we were trying to figure out how many committees I knew you were on planing board no hisorical historic commission I mean what else I mean you've done I was in Highland 2 yeah uh just lots of other small ones the it Comm things like that right well planning board is like lot of things and thank so much it's wonderful anybody else would like to very sweet you all thank you very very much is great is yeah I would say Nathan's knowledge of tribal lore here in unmatched his memory is extremely acute and I'm gonna miss that repository of we are in 2006 we did and you know so thank you very much it's been a pleasure serving the community and uh and just you know thank you for everybody for continuing to elect me and letting me serve you all note to triola don't screw it up fantas thank you for all of your Insight you have always made us think really app thank you and you also have uh added a nice touch of humor yeah most needed and some phone calls from us from time to time the road thank you thank you thank you all so we have the Safety Committee the cemetery committee plenty of other pick a committee any committee reement doesn't work okay I'm not going so next um we have appointments and resignations TR to get this do you like me to make the motion toint I love that I move to appoint Gregory James to the position of heavy equipment operator for the Department of Public Works pending successful salary negotiations and required hiring Administration with an anticipated start date of May 13th 24 second you want to say anything um I love to so Gregory comes to us with a tremendous amount of experience which is nice you know we have some vacancies in the DPW so he's fully ready to go assuming this appointment he worked for the MW as a laborer and then uh two driver labor positions on the um I want to say civilian but that's my other job on the business side not Municipal side so um we very rarely get someone with this much experience to come in and just jump in the job so we're we're very excited because we are under staffed and we have a lot for him to do and to help us out thank you um we have a motion and a second any further discussion all those in favor I any opposed that was unanimous and uh we have one resignation to accept Alex perah who is another one of those guys who has spent years and years and years of dedicated service to this town um we accept it with thanks and appreciation he did mention he hopes to return in the fall yes which is yes much appreciated yes yes yes we're noting that as the public record yeah so can we accept the resignation until fall temporary resum right okay all right uh we're at our 710 um agenda item vote to wave police station renovation permitting fees all right so this one's relatively simple assuming um no major questions so the the police police station building renovation committee I'm going to get that right one of these days and the uh designer are looking and particularly John Maier are looking for permission to wave fees related to any fees we can wave related to the renovation project this pretty standard it's too much for John to wave on his own so he needs to select board to do it so this is waving the fees that the town would charge the town because they wanted to correct except for um any boards and committees that have outsourced their inspections obviously we need to pay those but these are for internal inspections like John's I move that we approve the waving of Permitting fees for the town's police station renovation project second any further discussion does this extend to Board of Health fees or no because they don't do internal inspections they have a engineer all right uh any other questions comments all those in favor I any opposed none okay that was unanimous moving my long Fe study report you're on something else we can put this in front of in front of Z so some of you have met Zach excuse sorry don't want to leave out a board member sorry in the way of Christina did by way of thanking for the fashion show and but you know obviously chief police chief should get one because he was in itust all right sorry Zack all right so Zach um for those of you who haven't met Zach is our executive intern comes to us from UMass which uh I appreciate having gone there myself so Zach is an economics major and we had him look at Carlile fees from a from an economic lens I could say he works very hard as most military veterans do and I spend most of the day trying to convince him to uh come work in municipal government maybe someday in Carlile so uh very grateful to have him this this semester he this is going to be his last week and then uh hopefully we can entice him into profession as he graduates this month as well congratulations welcome my name is Z first want to start off and say thank you for your time allowing me to present this to you guys it's been my pleasure to work on this for this past semester so we'll start with some background information uh first the purpose of this report was to compare and analyze fees between carile and nine other comparable towns we then used the findings to create recommendations on future resles the construction is comprised of the main uh departments and then took their key feed um so it's not all the fees for each department but the main ones that matter the most um and for analysis I took the data put it into spreadsheets and tables um calculate the averages as you guys have seen in the report and I'll be happy to go over um that in further detail if need be moving on to demographics so the populations vary in the talents that I used the most comparable of them were Harvard thank you was Harvard Boxford boxboro Dober in Lincoln the incomes also vary with Carol being among the top most comparable to Weston box play G Dober so Carla also holds the highest degree of Education veteran in marriage status among these comparable towns the person's for household very varies between two and three for all of these towns with par of 2.9 this is an important or one that stands out as it can help us determine fees such as transfer tickets and how much a household may need to buy and then there are special communities just to be considered within the town as well moving on to the transfer stickers and F Farms so fees covered here are transfer station stickers and garden plots uh so data was collected for the price of two transfer station stickers this was done because some of the towns in this comparison had um they only had the option to buy two so car ran from the cheapest of those uh with Weston being the only one that was cheaper so car charges $40 for two transfer station tickets the average was $92 so you can see that it's quite low and then also carow will charge a low price of $25 and shared that lowest price with Bren um and average for garden plots was $44 and you can see talents that provide bulk item fee schedules listed there Carlo does not offer that this is bulk item fees that people bring to the transfer station correct just clarify um so sofa's mates that nature I'll move on to the recommendations so my first one is increase the initial transfer station ticket cost uh will provide more Revenue but I would also maintain the cheaper price for this second one as to not increase too much at one time my second suggestion was to introduce a bulk item fee schedule as it may also help increase the revenue and my third one is to um increase the low cost for the garden plots but based off a demand um if you have a waiting list or higher demand may make more sense to increase it whereas if not um you don't want to force people out and then have vacant plots so moving on to the Board of Health so the fees covered here are soil testing septic well and barn and livestock permits and they represent the cost for residential projects I chose res residential um to better compared to the makeup of carile so carile maintained above average fees with the exception of the barn and livestock PR fees acon had a high soil testing fee that acted as an outlier it brought the average up quite a bit um and Carla is more comparable to Harvard gron in boxboro moving on to recommendations to my first one there's room to increase cost of the initial soil testing Carla is near the top so there's not too much room but I believe there is some room to increase it I believe that the other fees should be maintained um as they are high compared to all the other towns and then just an interesting point to the study 40% of the towns belong to the Joba Valley associate Boards of Health which may be considered in the future uh for Carl The Joint we'll move on to the building department so the fees covered here are new building permits solar gas and plumbing car is very competitive with new building permit fees oh my apologies uh being less than $1 over the average now the range for all of the towns started at $10 per $11,000 project cost and the max was $14 so they were all very similar car was 13 the solar calculations represent the cost to build and install with solar uh car is relatively cheaper than the surrounding towns they're also the only town to charge a flat rate for the building cost uh most towns charge their normal new building permit cost carel is a flat flat rate of $100 the gas and plumbing calculations were based off of the cost of the initial permit with a total of 13 fixtures um Carlo has the most expensive per fixture cost But it includes 11 in the initial and the reason that we did did or that I did the 13 fixtures was that the highest was 11 um and to make sure that new fixture costs were added in there as well I had to increase it um to make it more comparable moving on to recommendations my first recommendation is that the new building current fee may be raised to increase Revenue um as I said before car was at $13 per uh $1,000 cost 14 so there is a little bit of room to move even if you went above the 14 uh my second recommendation would be to maintain the solar prices um as it may incentivize residents to switch to a Greener energy um and overall benefit the town and my third recommendation would be to reduce the included fixtures with uh col gasing it'll bring it more in line with the comparable towns then you also be able to generate more more Revenue through the additional fixtures moving on to the Council on Aging and Human Services and Recreation departments Fe covered here are the fitness classes and transportations offered by the COA as well as the youth and adult programs and youth courses offered by the recreation department the COA Fitness classes are slightly higher than average cost only by a dollar but they also pay the instructor first and then get whatever's left over so so um to address those prices really depends on the instructor's fees more than anything uh transportation fees are recommended donations they're not always collected it's not a you know a fee to go here it's we'd like donation of this amount um Recreation prices reflect a per class price this was done to account for the difference in um the length of the courses that were offered and the car Recreation Department actually offers a very extensive amount of programs um more than I found among the other towns moving on to recommendations so my first recommendation was about reconstructing a fee schedule for the transportation which may benefit the COA and my initial thoughts were that were it was a donation first that it would kind of lack behind the other towns um I did a follow-up study to this and it shows that the donation method is actually more effective than Harvard and box boro's method of collecting fees um so where there are these conflicting data points it may be useful to put a little more research into it um and see what you can find out so my second recommendation is to discontinu services for Boston medical appointments unless on a case-by Case basis um that reduce the price from $30 to $20 and bring it more in line with surrounding towns and also make it a little more affordable for the elderly or the disabled that need to get those rides into Boston and my third recommendation would be to maintain the fee schedule for the recreation department uh they're all similar to the average but these are important programs that teach new skills um help their residents socialize and promote positive Health and Welfare move on to approv not required Z board appeals in termination of applicability so this these fees were found under the other tab table um and the approval not required fees are calculated as no new lots and three New Lots uh du to fee structures of the comparable towns the car anr Fe is slightly above the average uh for both New Lots and no new lots and then CBA filing fee is far below the average cost of the 10 PB and the termination of applicability was the most expensive of all towns compared my recommendations the first one would be to maintain the Aon R fee um it'll help keep car in line the surrounding towns the my second recommendation would be the zba filing fee may be increased um to help supplement the revenue and also bring it in line with the comparable talents where right now it is so much lower uh and my third recommendation is the determination of applicability should not be raised due to its already high cost can I ask you the determination of applicability is that ccom or historic what that is the historic historic yes is there any other questions yes yeah thanks good work um on the DOA so you don't recommend cut nowhere do you recommend cutting Fe right you're only either raising or not raising seems to be your corre is that an inbound thing that you thought you shouldn't cut any fees if they're excessively High comp so the ones that were High um they were which just may sound like a lot um there were no more than 20% the highest one was 20% higher than the average um so where they were high they weren't they weren't you know 200% higher or on back to COA HS you said discontin services for boss and medical appointments unless on a Case by case basis with a reduced price um I'm not quite clear like you said the donation methods seem to be working all right are you saying I mean what are you saying there on the medical appointments um so I'm saying that if you can reduce the amount of rides given to Boston um they could on more of it you know but what do they people do that I mean wasn't the point of having the service so people can get in for their appointments correct it is so what would be the alternative uh I don't have a great answer for you right now you're just saying because it's expensive to go into what is the rationale for the rationale is to cut down on the fuel consumption uh the mileage per the vehicles the maintenance the driver's time it's more to reduce the actual cost of the COA Transportation um that way the subsidies they get and the donations will kind of go a little further um with them they is that so it's I haven't I haven't heard that transportation we just have to increase that line because at one point they had to give the drivers more money yeah well driver shortages the thing okay I I'm I'm I'm guessing that the donation card is you know they ask for five but a lot of people might give them 10 or 20 or you know so that's might maybe why that's working yeah um for the short stuff but yeah but you said zacha reduce go back to it reduce price from Oh you mean don't charge 30 right yeah right now it's $30 I'm saying reduce that to 20 it'll be more in line with the surrounding towns as well as you know like you were saying going into Boston it is a necessity it is something that it's necessity it's worth 30 right because will cost them twice that I mean I guess I don't quite I could see where you say you know raise the price because it's too expensive to go down to Boston for what we're charging I can't see discontinu it or offer a cheaper I that seems like counter inuitive to me right we should price it so you know if it's important enough for people they're still getting a break right right okay I kind of I kind of heard it more as uh try to reduce it see if we can reduce it because it will reduce our cost but we're still doing it right um and then but reduce the cost to the person because it's a better service we want to not be over tring yeah I just don't can't reconcile that with discontinu Services I'm not clear where we landed now so I I think Nathan kind of you had put that in better words than I had but I picked up what I was trying to um get across there was I guess discontinue maybe not be you know like I don't want to end the service completely because I understand that it's something that is needed um and does help the otherly and helps the disabled um but reducing the amount of trips in there just to cut down on the cost for the COA I believe would help and then also it is the necessity so from $30 where it is now bringing it down to 20 more in line with the town surrounding us as well as kind of easing the burden on the you know customers who use it as well I think we need more data for that well and I I just say Zach I think this is great because our board is always asking for data tell all the time get us some data and this is really helpful I where you should be looking for it yeah exactly and but I also you know know that behind the data you know there's also and I don't know if you had a chance to contact any of these towns and talk with them about this because sometimes they can give you some insight as to oh yeah you know we reduced this fee because of XY Z you know that they have a reason and you know I think those are the things that we're going to have to evaluate but this is a great starting point to look at so Zach's pretty modest he he did drive to each town uh he communicated with each department good and uh we talked today about the difference between economics and public policy so if you were to suggest to uh create um a market out of FAL Farm you'd probably be fired as a Town Administrator right six so I'm being purpose but the the idea of analyzing from an economics lens is great because he's just looking at it from Pure Finance as opposed to the some of the public policy decisions which are subsidies and other Investments because the community wants them so good conversation it it's great it's very helpful too thank you for thank you yes is there any other questions thank you very much again thank you for your time I appreciate um this internship has been amazing with the guidance of Ryan as well um I've learned a lot here and having the opportunity to come up here and present to you guys what I did um means a lot and I appreciate it you graduate in May great so you can start here in June thank you congratulations on your coming graduation yes appreciate it all right town meeting and a town election public information SE session I'm going to um turn it over to you Ryan that so I would like to start with um the necessary items on the the Motions so the three necessary items one is is going to be very simple the police station right we'll get through that very quickly the other two are the department revolving funds and the um the amount for the capital stabilization funds so those are um unless you want to change any other recommendations which of course is possible those are the the main topics so we can get through those I will first start with the Department revolving Kelly said she'd kill me if I didn't get this done she's more violent than you people think uh so the this is an annual article so what what this does and I know the select board knows this but what this does is it sets the spending limits for each department and the revolving funds have been already authorized by town meeting they exist and they're functioned and they're audited the um the point here is to set the annual limit which is required by law it's the only thing that's required by law because of Municipal modernization so this has to be done annually the outliers in this request are as follows the Board of Health requested an increase in their inspections revolving fund uh the financial management team agrees that this would need to be hire in order for them to accomplish their mission the kcom building maintenance revolving fund has not been used in a while and is not used so we're just going to zero that out and recommend that you uh remove it from the bylaw in the fall the other change and they're here to uh present it themselves if you have questions are the youth commission so they were traditionally at 10,000 they've exceeded that this year because for many reasons uh great management but also coming out of covid and increasing the programming they need more more spending abilities so 14,000 is the recommendation and finally the deer control committee revolving fund I don't know anything about that but we don't spend any um we don't spend anything out of that revolving fund so that's another example of zero and and um change the bylaw in the fall so by setting it at zero you're essentially um not allowing any spending no spending is happening anyway Kelly heavily Ved this and I agree so does the financial management team so those are the four changes and Kelly also beted the increase is the the requested increases and she knows that they that's what they've been spending that they bring bring because it's a revolving account so you don't want to bring in $177,000 and have $8,000 or sorry 14,000 spending limit and you have 177,000 of obligations because you brought those in it's supposed to pass then pass out y okay so yeah I'm having a little trouble understanding so like we're health they spent they took in 43 they spent 45 so they spent a little more than they took in but they're sitting on a balance of 97 so we're saying let them spend it down if they like what's the rationale for going up to 90 the the worry is they've reserved money for some of the building projects that are going to happen and they going to happen so they think that stuff is going to get flushed out it will be coming and they'll have to spend more okay all right and I know I came in the middle of Lori talking about the youth commission but Lori you took in more than you spent yes and you're you just feel like you're going to have more activity this year that b we have two we we haven't fully paid for the we just got by in May and we've got upcoming June which is the biggest one of the Year okay so because the C I get it I get it so basically from a fiscal Prudence standpoint as long as there's fund balance to cover no it's not true of like school bus but as long as there's anticipated funds to cover it shouldn't be an issue they can't I know it sounds always simplicit they can't spend any money they don't have so this cap just allows them to spend it if they do have it if they do have it like the school bus fund can't overspend they got to collected to spend it's just to allow us to spend what we well in your case you got it and then Board of Health they got it but in the bus they're going to get it they can't overspend till get okay I got and they can only spend it on what it was collected for so they can't go have a pizza lunch on it orever we do a pizza dinner why you is it still $2 well it's actually covered in the cost of okay very good okay okay I'm fine thank you I understand so I also have a question about for health so if I'm reading this right um they're currently set at 70 right they have 97 they have spent 45 so far right as of April one as of April one so there's two months left and there I realize this is for the next year but there's too much two months left they're not going to get anywhere near the 70 right and this no but this service is based off of their inspection cycle and they're predicting based off the the applications that they're facing that they will be spending more in the next couple years because of the projects that are backlogged so this this is an anticipation of spending more it does not mean that they will spend more just allows them to spend up to this amount so what can this money be spent on by by bylaw can only be spent on um what the permit is being the money is brought in for the permit so essentially inspections a little bit more so it's not like Recreation which is a 53d which can incorporate capital and programming it is very restricted to what you're bringing the revenue in for okay so it has to be related directly to that project to that function that was passed by town meeting which is the inspection of Wells um restaurants and other inspection categories it's just it's just a big increase I guess the other question is do they collect more than they actually spend and or what happens to the money if they collect more than they spend it stays there they can spend it the next year well but what let's say but if that project is already finished and gone they're not going to spend let's say they $5 for for project a and they spent $4 on Project a for the inspections what happens to the extra dollar I think what I just heard was it doesn't have to be on that particular project has to be work on that function ah so if it's water testing or if it's some just it could be on a different project that that money is spent on all right it doesn't have to be spent on the project we collected the money for it just has to be spent on something related to that got it okay am I right yes okay yeah which makes accounting pretty tough a lot less hard than if it had to be spent on a particular project well that's true yeah but you have gone through these or someone has and and looked at them and said we have you know reasonable expectations that Board of Health for example showed you said oh we've got this amount of projects and everything and so they Justified it it's not just kind of pulled out of the air we don't have that level of control but they believe right I mean they believe it I guess we'll see and we'll find out next year I mean it's they can't spend it on something else yeah they can't spend on something else and we're we're moaning and groaning that the balances are too high actually would be a good thing I guess if well that might mean that they're charging their fees are too high well that's a whole separate thing but but people paid in based on those fees right yes I just want to know how much is been explored in this and we're finding that it's not there's a black wax called B if you it's just 70 to 90 is I can't do the ma quick that's over 25% is it I mean one of the themes that we discussed this year with the finance committee and the select board was to really dig into these revolving accounts and see how they fit into the finan so I do think we have more work here but I don't think that this approval relates to that this shouldn't stand okay all right good okay that's something to consider for the future absolutely I agree so if the board's willing to support this we'll put it to town meeting votes we don't need to motion hear yes we we want a motion sure we want a motion to support you okay I move that the select board support the departmental revolving funds authorization for uh article 8 at town meeting second any further discussion all those in favor article8 is I should say of this article 8 is the wage and salary yes it us to be article it's article seven so we need a new motion I amend my motion to say article seven does a second uh accept the amendment I have a com yes I do but I have a comment I accept the amendment and there's a typo in article s says Department revolving funds iation let's have fun let's have fun so does this mean we're all set to spend the money for the June nope we're g to get to that next this is next year this is next year get through this one first okay okay so um we need to is there any can I have a vote all those in favor I any opposed okay that was unanimous then all right uh the next issue in here and I apologize for not putting it in the packet directly but the youth commission needs the same authorization for fiscal year 24 because they've already exceeded um you can see the 10,000 so looking for sorry they haven't exceeded but they will exceed based off of their current programming so they're looking to have the FY 24 cap raised to 14,000 which requires a vote of the select board and the finance committee oh but it doesn't have to go to town meetings Okay um is there a mo about that if I so you have spent 8,400 so far you have 5500 left but we'll have more we have more than that because there's fees that have been paid for April fees that are paid for May more so you will have the ability to spend 10,000 this year and still have 10,000 for next year is what your anticipating that's what we're anticipating yeah okay the enrollment varies yeah but it's been consistently which is historically High between 120 and 150 students so they pre-register uh through the rec department so $15 for each student they come in they get tickets that they can spend on photos snacks activities um and so it's been sort of just we're greasing the wheel each time the kids get enrolled and it pays for the snacks and everything so it's been rotating really well but with this particular year because of the cap we have that one more FNL and the cap limits us to be able to access the funds that we made in May to pay for June if that makes sense yeah that's any gonna put the motion on okay so I didn't want to catch your question off all right so let's have motion I move that the select board approve uh the um uh revolving fund for the Youth commission to be increased to $144,000 for fiscal year 24 that's right second any other questions comments all those in favor I go spend your money okay that's unanimous and so pcom will have their vote oh sorry do yeah time do we have a timeline Tom on okay fantastic I think you well they haven't approved it but yeah Fant they will is we're just taking it out of order from timing wouldn't it normally be than us of it yes I think it was the timing of them okay so um just because this comes up in the budget season so this is the spending for the Youth commission which is around 14,000 this year there is an artifact line item in the budget of 3,000 that isn't normally spended because this is a revolving fund expense so do spend more than it looks like in the budget 14,000 this year yeah less um all right second one that is on the easier side is capital stabilization so the budget book and budget presentation recommended to you 300,000 we didn't put that money in the warrant in case we needed additional funding for um or free cash for other projects so if the board is still in support of the 300,000 as presented in the budget book then that would also be a number that you could decide tonight so um is there a motion to fund the capital sa stabalization fund with $300,000 of free cash is that okay motion by Nathan is there second second second Barney okay are there any questions yeah which article is it which article5 so we hadn't already approved this we approved it's not officially yeah it says oh but it says in here select board recommends pass oh we no we recommended uh support of the article now we're looking at the motion the actual number that's going to be put in the motion and we hadn't done that but that's what you've modeled right yes it was but if you needed free cash to move we didn't want to commit to the number I got okay I'm also moving it I all right uh any other questions all those in favor I that was unanimous okay P so you were uh sent information about the police station renovation building project Justin's on the line we have spinny here as well from the committee and the police chief myself so um Alan Alan here yep see Alan okay so the the top line is that the Al I thought you were retired this is what it looks like do as I say don't do as I do okay so there's a a ton more detail behind this Topline comment but the um the summary is that the project went estimated and then reconciled by TBA and then discussed by the uh police station building renovation committee ended up at 3.55 million roughly and the detail behind that increase is available for discussion here and was sent to you um both in the packet and in documents today in memal form and uh in individual detail so I would encourage you to have the committee come up the chief come up and Justin's on the line to answer any questions the what is necessary tonight is the fate of that article uh you did not put a number in the warrant for this reason it was estimated at 3.1 as just a placeholder in the summary just a signal to the community this is of course now higher than that 3.55 um and what you want to do with this article what number you want to put in front of the town 3. he went 55 okay so I mean it should be noted that two items besides whatever cost creep scope creep whatever cost going up there was no contingency in the original number and there was no OPM fee in the original so I guess that's that's right to start I like why weren't those in the original one aren't they standard things um is this from the to that today yes I did see that then think we can put that up on the that's today is which document the memo and the table after scope drawings an estimate 56 204 it's in the memo it's in the yeah so I did notice that and and there was design contingency in the SD estimate but no construction contingency and now the design contingency now that we're at 90% yeah has gone away but we do see it so don't see Jus I would go to the memo because then he cuts out all the pictures the memo has the same table but it's page width does it make sense for one of you to just walk us through the changes what what what what U created the increase we could or I could punt it to Justin that' be great too I'd be happy too um yes excuse me before you start U we need the volume raised up for Justin because I personally can't hear him terribly well okay go ahead Justin let's see if we can hear you okay um a little so how about now uh we're working on it SEC oh we're working on it okay input output volume we need you to talk so we can know if it's working hello can you hear me now not any louder all right I just don't want him to um go off off I can par some of it too which memo was it I think we had this issue the last time too yeah I think we've had it on and off it's a little Annoying try now Justin try it now Justin it worse no it's even worse can't hear him at all now I don't think he's talking St yeah he's Frozen oh he's Frozen okay it might have been him all along oh oh we're Frozen we're Frozen that's problem with hybrid meetings not I guess I can't even say anything because we're not technically in a meeting yeah okay Che upstairs they well he has the uh is land Steward yeah just hand TBA this one yeah second from 1409 yeah memo of PBS esrc on cost estimate but I can't get mine to load because we don't have intern yeah I don't think I have phone on me so I can't phone you can't connect right I'm up you're up they out upstairs yeah yeah the wi Wi-Fi is on but internet is oh that's not a good sign thank you the please IA wait I usually download this to my laptop but this one I didn't didn't um but you're on on oh so what do we I mean legally because we are meeting in person can't we can't sh I was I was just wondering the same thing because I'm dependent on from Zoom connectivity to uh to Benfield Benfield yeah yeah I believe that this this might have happened when we were heree last week on Thursday night not well doesn't seem to be the wifi but but well I mean can we discuss it without without making any motion no okay okay going to a different um we can't take anything else on the agenda either no we tomorrow or no two nights we have to reposted yeah we have to get posted tonight if we want you can't post [Music] after good just continuing continuing it ending the meeting so we can admit Justin yeah admit Justin we like do this I had long you so you didn't have it no right yeah is it you catch it from other people or how no no virus that everybody cares out certainly been under a lot stress no no no I mean I feel like I was in a lot under stress when I was two weeks ago [Music] so guess think it's a c we're going back to the old system this is being so it's a different system oh okay oh no I know it's like too many inputs you want a different computer okay I think did you see that the high school was hacked no happed oh no what yeah yeah they've been working was throughout town meeting too they were working all the Wi-Fi was down really fortunately it was contained apparently to DCS and didn't didn't wasn't a massive you know didn't have a massive disruption but it did for a couple days they didn't have a wifi which was interesting because classes were different without Wi-Fi and and I heard that they actually talked at they don't have a policy of putting your cellones in a basket when you go into class but not at lunch no no at classes I don't I actually don't know that may be a teacher by teacher um did they figure out what happened yeah they had gotten hacked I don't know all the details Lori hunter sent out a describe it more detail yeah wow I know world yeah well this is putting our doing so well did um do you know what happened on the I know they approved the they they overruled the the B common SEL board right on the budget for the school yeah and then what happened on the vote around the naming garison not finding that's the right answer should be Ellen Garris anyone all right we seem to be back um could somebody uh online either text or chat us or let us know actually Justin can you hear us we can't hear you so hang on we back to we're back to that went around in a big circle crash the internet we have to Justin can you hear us yeah but we still can't hear him he's he's we have no audio on our end we have no audio here I know we should oh oh Justin try again so Jerry okay the people on Zoom can hear he okay yes woohoo Justin hello okay and we can hear you this time so that's even better good excellent okay all right would like to know yeah you'd like to know how we got to where we are um so uh if I go back to uh what we presented in December uh that was an estimate based on a combination of revised layouts um in consultation um with Chief amandola and uh and then uh a moderate amount of modification to uh engineering mostly through description um so the estimator was asked to estimate new architectural drawings and Engineering drawings that were from the 2019 2020 era um along with a description of what would be modified what would be changed that we understood at that time and so what they came back with was the uh three well around 3.1 we also had an option in there for doing the entry um which you know we we didn't do so what this chart is showing is in the sort of middle column November 23 estimated cost at schematic design um is what we presented uh back in December with one modification that what was carried in there there were well there were a couple of modification what was carried in there was the furnishings and Equipment allowance was carried what we call above the line it was essentially carried as though it was something that the general contractor would be part of the bid and the general contractor would have use of which means that there was a general contractor markup on it and uh ultimately led to um the 2,919 th000 number that was presented as the cost of doing the work that we then proceeded with uh at that time we didn't include uh the soft costs in any of those numbers so it wasn't at least in what I had provided to you it wasn't known to me that uh the architect fees and project management fees and those things were going to be rolled into this so those those none of those were carried so what I've tried to do here is add those in here so you could see if we had carried these things uh you know some of these things at that time uh as part of the project is where we would end up in the next column over uh May 24 this is the estimate that we've just received and this is based on on a 90% construction document set so revised uh and developed architectural um plans and details uh and uh full uh electrical Mechanical plumbing uh and civil drawings uh as well as security uh system drawings and specifications so those were sent out and then the numbers in that column are are what came back so what we see is essentially a $240,000 increase in the estimated bid cost that $240,000 increase is primarily attributed to uh development um and and um decisions made in the hbac systems uh which led to electrical systems and some Plumbing so the the sort of big three there there are also some uh things that we had in the project that these numbers already take out uh some additional um finishes some additional areas that we were going to to refinish in the building even though we weren't reconfiguring any of the space um and so we have a good list of things that could be put into the project as ADD alternates or we could we could find uh other ways of um of including it so what led to the hbac and ultimately electrical and the plumbing um with the changes in the code in the past four years or between four years ago and now um all of the the systems that were called for in the previous round to be uh either replaced or heavily reconfigured um are essentially uh either uh outdated or you know pass their life they need to be replaced and if they're to be replaced they're not now to be replaced with the old-fashioned air handling units uh and gas fired uh equipment there's the push to electric but they're also the the more efficient uh system so what's in here when we first did this out was replace all of the stuff that was originally called for uh and replace it with um electric heat pumps and fan coil units reusing all of the duct work uh that is in there what remained was essentially a single air handling unit that was serving uh the um dispatch uh are area and a little bit of the office space What also is in the building right now are a handful of spaces that don't have any ventilation air uh right now they're not they're not essentially served by HVAC systems so we have to uh correct that so what what it's led to essentially is all of the HVAC system uh the the air handling uh unit so the energy recovery units um and the heat pumps and fan coils are all going to be new uh and then reuse uh the duct work that is in place the all electric um systems trigger the need to upgrade uh the electric service to the building and so that's most of the increase in the um in the electrical number is uh the additional um or the the increase in the service so new panels that come along with that new wiring um and uh as as well as there's you know a handful miscellaneous because of the reconfigurations additional uh exit signs and and and uh some other devices you know fire alarm and things not as much of a cost as increasing the the service the Plumbing so uh as you might recall one of the things that we're doing in order to find more space in the building as we're removing one of the staircases uh at the front of the building and in doing that we need to add a new exit door off of the existing staircase uh at the the middle of the building and it exits behind the uh accessible ramp that's been put in the gas service to the building is right there where we need to put the door and so we would have to relocate the gas service in order to put this door in so we would have to incur that cost but with all of the hbac systems going to Electric the only thing left on gas would have been the hot water heater so we opted for remove the gas surface to the building swap out the uh water heater for an electric water heater and therefore uh all of the systems in the building become all electric the other bit of Plumbing increase is uh a change in the code that says in the sally port addition to the building we have to add um a floor drain uh uh system which then has to go to an oil water separator which is out uh out in the site so um that's a that's a bit of a pricey item but that is a code uh requirement for um space that a vehicle will be pulled into so those are the main uh things that led to um the increase of around $240,000 um continuing down from there just as you observed before we did add a construction contingency in now knowing this is potentially hopefully heading to construction uh we would not recommend going into a construction project without some amount of contingency this is um sort of an owner's discretion as to how much uh you you want um it is intended and it stays in the owner's hands it's not something that that goes to the general contractor unless we come across unforeseen conditions or uh you uh would like to make a change or modification uh to the project uh after it's bit so that gets to what we would say a recommended construction budget of 3.3 million then we still carry 75,000 for furnishings and Equipment that's loose stuff that you're going to move into the building after it's finished uh the remainder of our fees to carry the project uh through bidding and construction Administration and then because this is a project that is over $1.5 million um state law says that you have to um uh have an owner's project manager uh as part of the project representing you so all of those are what lead to uh total estimated project cost of $3.55 million Nathan I'm G to start with you okay for all kinds of reasons so uh I have a couple of questions um one is um so you you mentioned um when we were talking about the um the 240,000 or 250,000 monthly increase in the direct cost uh you mentioned that some things uh in order to keep that down some things were pulled out could could you explain specifically what is what are we not getting in this design that we thought we were getting um or or that we were getting in the last design what what has been pulled out so we didn't pull out things that were in the last design and are not in this design we pulled out things that we had included as part of our development of the design um in in this round and so for example there there are a few things in the uh in the estimate that we found which are we've changed the way the wall system is built so there's some masonry work that we can easily pull out of the project that's not getting less of anything it's that we change the detailing and it's not necessary to do um in the course of the work because we're creating a a a open Office Space at the second floor we um looked at the possibility of adding Windows into the gabled ends of the building um and so we have those they they're in the design they were estimated um there's a bit of work in in getting the windows in in terms of cutting openings in the walls uh reframing uh and then installing the windows doing new trim uh and and more uh interior uh finish work uh than we would have to otherwise so that's something that we have pulled out of this number um again is something that we could uh add in but we were adding when we talked last time at the 2.9 Million and 3.1 million or something we were adding windows are those windows we were not no we we weren't adding Windows uh back in December yeah we were we were adding window on one side of the building but not the other side of the building uh we had we didn't have windows at that time but that was people had requested that as part of uh you know during the design that we have a look at that but that was not included in the in the number that was presented in December the comment was added on the other side of the building yeah we have there is window on one side there's a window currently on one side of the building and the request was to add to the other side okay um what we what we did was add second window to the side that has a window now and got some Thin windows in above the uh entry ptico okay um at at the opposite side so there is even with um taking them out of the current design there is a window in the Gable and of The Bu so it so it wasn't pulled so nothing's been pulled out on the window question from what we first it or something like that thought that was one of the things that came up for how we were going to be sustainable that we were putting part of that was we're putting a better window in there that's what I remember but but that wasn't included initially you're saying I thought it was okay that was not includ that wasn't included in December that okay yeah that was not that wasn't included in the estimate in December that was that was brought up I think at the meeting in December it was requested whether we could add Windows okay okay were there any other things um yeah the the rest are are uh finishes um um and and casework so like I said there's areas of the building that we are not uh we're not reconfiguring uh offices that are remaining and during the course of of of our work we were asked can we look at what it would be to um refinish the rooms do uh new flooring repaint uh the rooms so um again we included those we pulled those uh out for the purposes of getting to this 3 55 number um we have those estimated and and can sort of can put them back in um and then like I said there were some case workk that we had called for to be built in place uh in the second floor um which we took out of of this uh number uh it's things that can be done as part of systems Furniture rather than uh having a a built-in case work there is one uh line item a $37,000 line item that is a program element that is the type e swinging door the electric door in at the cell and to the extent we would do an add alternate my understanding is that would probably be our top priority add altern um number one but it is a significant I mean relatively significant cost around 37,000 it's not included in this cost as but it's something would be your top priority to add if we were willing to go up yeah okay I mean because this is a cost estimate it's unfortunate that it keeps going up but we we haven't bid this and we don't know what the bidding you know talked about the incline so right okay we wouldn't increase the cost Barney we would bid it as an alternate and hope that it fit in oh within the cost gotcha so we could not do it if it didn't okay uh so another question I I have is in going all electric just so that we for planning purposes what what's the life expectancy of the heat pumps they're very reliable and it's and it's what people are pretty much using nowadays yeah what what's the life expectancy on them I guess I don't know is that Jus in for you it's yeah my understanding is that they're around 25 years and and you're saying that the current air handlers and um HVAC equipment that there is at the end of its expected it it's a it's uh yeah it's a combination of either uh undersized or incapable of of doing the reconfiguration needed or it is at or beyond the end of its useful life with and just following on that on the all electric so the entire building will be serviced by Electric but you have a backup generator is the generator sized appropriately for the new electric loads that'll be on there yeah where the electrical engineers not uh called for the generator to be changed so it it fits within the capacity of that generator and that's that's a diesel generator right yeah yes yes um and the gas will be just capped it's not I mean the meter will be taken out right I I guess met we taking out yeah I I'm just wondering if at any point we would want a gas generator rather than a diesel generator uh are you I I believe they really want you to have a diesel generator they want you to have an a sort of uninterruptible power source for a generator okay could beas it could be but if it's already diesel is really I I'm just thinking for when it when we have to replace that generator if we'd ever okay I would suggest doing it then build the infrastructure now okay well it's not that what I'm just saying is don't take the infrastructure out talking about the gas and infrastructure yeah but it's BL on the door whatever yeah the door can only go in that one spot yeah it can only go inot yeah doesn't the utility decide where they want to cap it don't they don't they bring it out towards the street don't they make that choice I've had that issue on projects but maybe yeah I mean they they may want to they may want to cut it at the street um whether you want to take the pipe out I I think the pipe is going underneath your ramp and everything so my guess is it's easiest to take the meter out and they can either stop it there or they could cut it at the street so in your experience Justin and maybe the committee too I mean on construction projects there's always other things that haven't been foreseen but have you thought about it you know what you don't know well that's that's one that's sort of the challenge of going from schematic design to a a 90% estimate at the same time you're trying to give your select board a number for you know I mean it we've sort of accelerated this process a little bit but that's one reason that I you know the construction condition is important don't see it as voluntary it is there and will probably be used at some level um what the contingency the construction contingency you can't take it out yeah there's always unforeseen and found there cross does that cover increased costs no once the bid comes in when you say increase cost aren the bids you don't the bids protect themselves as well if align items cost more well this I mean part of the the challenge for our cost estimator I'm sure is that um they're bidding a project in a it's still a competitive market and this is a phased construction of a police station that is fully operational at all times so I don't know where fogy put you know accounted for that but I'm sure that that that is part of the the pricing in there so a certain gentleman who often comes up with things who's not in attendance in audience I can came up with something else that said estimator 50324 is there another set of numbers he said it was in our packet said 3.8 million or something yeah it goes up to 4 point something well is there another set of numbers we're not seeing I guess that's question so um this is as we we stated in December a rushed a little bit of a rush process um wanted to try and fit this time this town meeting so Justin got the numbers later than he needed he did everything he could to get it to the um renovation committee reconciled so we did get an original set of numbers that he's continue to follow into what I I think he beli now I'm hearing this I'm asking a simple question is there another set of estimated numbers from the cost estimator that is not being presented where did he come up with these numbers you didn't make them up I'm sure you didn't said they're in the packet I don't see them in the packet the estimator provided us numbers which we then did our due diligence on in reviewing all of those numbers with our consultants and uh which as I explained to the committee the other day either we have a couple of cost Consultants that are doing their work and then we reconcile between the two of them or we have one as we did here and we we have time to reconcile because we do our own estimating in house and work with our Engineers so the numbers that were presented to the committee the other day and that are in this column that you have here uh and we have a division summary as well um are the numbers that we recommend they are the reconciled numbers between what we know is in the project and know and and and what the estimator saw was in the project and we come to an agreement between those but so are you saying I was trying to so Justin got a set of numbers and then reconcile them so the the document that the public safety building renovation committee got was December and then the estimators numbers and then reconciled so there there is a set of numbers but the um they were not reconciled by our but the gap between that set of numbers from the estimate and the reconcile numbers is approximately $800,000 that's a pretty big gap to reconcile if we're going to go and authorize well I mean that's the math unless he made those numbers we're not seeing it that's the thing we're being did so it was the page that has comparison reconciliation I don't know if you I mean we did see it and we walked through it with Justin on Friday but I mean it's an $800,000 we need to know that what do you make of that $800,000 Gap so the the majority of things sorry I'm happy to try to answer if you'd like or please do please that' be great okay I think there was it came out of three three primary areas these things that I was describing before that we took out of the project that we could put back in or we you know uh but there it can be discretionary you get the same project either way uh is one uh big bunch of stuff we call you know the architectural numbers um the others were as we went through and reviewed the mechanical electrical and plumbing numbers there was a combination I think in the estimate that was either unit prices that are higher than we are seeing on similar projects uh or quantities that were that different significantly and as well as some um assumptions made about uh Control Systems um and the ex uh and the extent to which uh we were replacing duct work these are pretty high value items and as we went through that's uh that's what was taken out and that's what I'm saying are the things that I reviewed extensively with our Consulting Engineers who designed uh and put together the documents with me is that on sorry2 of the P 52 yeah so uh question I have is so obviously 3.55 million is disappointing but if we go to town and we say 3.55 million if it's 3.51 million we've got a problem right so how how certain are we is 3.55 million is going to be it's we won't know till there are bids I have just you know cost estimators do do their best you know it's a 116 page set you know he had a few weeks they had a few weeks to look at it we don't we won't know I'm I mean we would we would have loved it if if the numbers seem consistent um but there was some scope change and now it'll have to go to bid I mean it doesn't have to go to bid but I'm just saying we won't know and we can't guarantee it Justin can't so would that suggest that we ought to be asking for additional funds to make sure I mean what how do we how do we determine the you know the what's the right number I guess I would I would change that a little bit I don't think we should ask for additional funds but is are there funds somewhere that we could utilize draw if needed if it's 100,000 or 200,000 More Than This is there something we could draw but I wouldn't want to make it 3.75 because then it's going to be $3.75 million project right because what what we approve is going to be what everybody knows the number is I I really really really think that it's going to cost us a whole lot of money if we can't move forward after town meeting if we can't what move forward after to me so um Nathan you've been sort of a cost control guy I would say so in your comment I hear two parts are you saying Okay I accept the 3.55 but that's it and if it's more you got to find it somewhere else or are you debating the 3.55 I want to push back because there's another way to say what else take out more stuff right yeah I I I think I'm really I'm disappointed it's 3.55 I don't want it to be four right and if we wait any longer it's going to be four right um so I'd rather spend the money now as long as you know as long as the committee is saying yes these are these changes that we've done are really what we need and they're really the smart things that we do as as I understand it was unanimous right um so and you're the ones in the we not me so I have to we reviewed the program we've reviewed with the the design team and with the chief and even with let's say we're not even getting let's say the type door whatever but we looked at it we don't see that either we don't see that there Cuts here I mean it's either you renovate the police station to make it you know uh modernized modernized co- comp accredited um more welcomeing to the community the community room or you don't I mean I I don't really see and then some of it the all Electric System you know there have been code changes and it is the it it it melds with you know the master plan in terms of more sustainable and in the future you could have solar panels to and I know that Dave beter is looking into rebates and that could be some thousands of dollars So yeah so to answer your question I support this you know I support it um but I'm really worried don't do it if if if 3.55 is off by any amount this is just not happening until next fall right so what so just throwing out there what do we do I don't think we should increase this number but that's not quite true so if if um this is authorized then you can borrow this this construction likely Justin correct me if I'm wrong won't start until next spring so you'll have at least two Town meetings to to close any gaps and and I would say that you're going to pay money to to make sure the number is correct you would have to pay up front1 100 $200,000 to get this out to bid and time it so that you would have an exact number and it's still going to cost what it's going to cost so I think the risk is either upfront that the number is off and you have to supplement it or um that the cost would increase while you're getting that number dialed into the exact number when you talk about the money out front to get the bid and everything we've approved money up to this point but we haven't approved that yet and is that all in there it's not it is so um the rest of the architect's cost is bidding in construction management and then you'll have to hire an OPM either way and then get it out to bid so either you're paying up front and then finding out the number is higher or lower than you thought or you're um authorizing it now and then you'll find out when you bit but you're pretty confident on like the architectural fees of another 79,000 that's a pretty reasonable that's what yeah I mean it's required I mean you have to it's I just certainty of how OPM from 90 do we have fit out reasonable expectation we can get an OPM for 90k it's a one-year project it's not full-time so I think that was the the feeling I have one more Cost question which and this must have come out of our Board of Health discussions but there was some reference made to having to redo the septic as a result of this and the upscaled requirements did you guys look at that at all we yes we we oh sorry we we got the the verbal okay on our regulations and um the Board of Health accepted that the the field is SED sufficiently for this work so the relocation a new distribution box and and um uh pump uh box are part of the project already they're in in the um parking lot uh but the the leeching field itself is sufficiently sized and they accepted that because we cut the Locker number lockers cut right with uh reducing the lockers to 21 lockers okay thank you lockers impact the size of the Lee field yes they'll get us started welcome to the go by by floor area and Locker a number of lockers it's a little Locker it doesn't it yeah it can be they can be 21 humongous thinking we should do bigger lockers and have them double up and then you know the idea of privacy any well okay I'm I'm done I'm okay you have no more questions Bernie no Travis no I think but yes not no um so Ryan what you're saying is we get it approved it town and if it's different we need to go back and ask for money right or not depending upon what the Gap is because it was or not the last time we had asked for money we got the bids was greater and we never went back to the count for the police station it's even a dollar over you got to go back to ask right exactly no so there's enough money you have enough contingency in your operating budget okay so you can you can supplement would handle like 250 200 but you could handle 50 pay funds we can sign a bid contract with a contractor that's for an amount that's larger than what this if you have the funding Okay small tolerance yeah right so 25 cents oh yeah I will donate I'll split across and there is the furniture light in them I mean we need some furniture but there is there are ways which is $75,000 so there are there's a little play in that I would say furniture is expensive I know it does I I spec furniture all the time but I'm just saying it's something that you can do over time or you know have another another Pool putting in a pool okay no no that's an alternate item all right my dear um do we have I need a motion um for putting for determining the number to be put in the motion I move that the that we that the select board approved the number of 3,510 1188 to be wait 35 is that not what I just said it's what I read but maybe it's not what I said 3,550 188 that's it um in Article 13 13 or the appropriate article number the appropriate article number is there a second second okay any further discussion before I call the vote all those in favor I any oppos no okay great that was unanimous thank you thank you fingers crossed thank you for your work yes thank you all right so my favorite question to ask the select board is there anything else in the warrant booklet that you would like to discuss change or yeah can we start with number one I'm not so sure we won't be sorry to see you okay um what time is it it is [Music] uh we kind of went past our 805 uh time well we did we had it problem yes we did have an IT problem um we did think we were going to do the ballot questions we need we do need to do those we online whoops yep I'm just I wanted to show you something without showing you my entire email oh um can I just ask a couple of questions about town meetings so are we meeting early we showing up at 6:30 is that still the plan posted and it's being posted okay and then in the war book uh that we're looking at and I'm assuming the motion's handbook handout will be different but it says the name of somebody next to each motion but my understanding is that that that person is not going to be reading the Motions is that correct Town moderator that is correct yeah okay moderator say Kate Reed uh moves okay right we should we should it's still appropriate to have the name you could put Kate's name on everyone from the select board it doesn't really matter okay but you're going to be doing the actual motions right okay anything to make things go faster right okay just clarifying that for everybody okay that's what we did the last time yeah I know but it yeah just to add some difference to the meeting just want to show you the to meeting video that will go live tomorrow about the whole thing just I mean Chief's great but the star of the fashion show in the video is the next presenter try to time it up oh hi my name is James Hall I'm the director of Public Works here in Capital request for the fiscal year 2025 consist of two items the first item is a 2025 Ford F450 diesel powered one T truck with a 9t power angle plow this truck will replace out JY a star so the uh the point of that is this video it has U graphics pictures and descriptions of every article we're going to put this up widely next year we're going to start a little earlier so there's a little bit more lead time but you also have to have the numbers and the approval so um I think it's going to be good so people should watch it if they want to be informed it's about 30 minutes you can fast forward skip it do as much as you want and next year it'll be a lot less me so can we see by any chance who is visiting who is what visiting on online because I'd like to know if there are people that have well questions yes this public information session um so well okay let's do the ballot questions and then I I do want to see if there are people that are either in the audience either our virtual or our real audience who have questions uh for the public information SE session of this part so so we reviewed the town meeting warrant recommendations is that correct I me yes so the three ballot questions are the debt authorization for the firet TRU 975,000 are is the town allowed to exceed proposition two and a half in order to fund the debt for the fire truck the second one is the police station so this will be the whatever's voted at town meeting which is now 355 for excluding that debt um the residents would be asked to support that by ballot and the third question is whether or not the town clerk will move from a elected position to an appointed position so this was approved at the fall town meeting but requires requires a ballot those are the three election questions um the town will be asked to decide on on the 21st um is there anybody who has any question about any of these ballot questions that they would like to have more information on or clarification about uh we did put a letter into the mosquito was in last week about um Town Clerk and our reasoning behind it but this is supposed to be uh you know we're trying to make it so that people have they have questions now now is a good time to to bring them up instead of on the floor of time meeting so that we can address them here I don't see anyone one question I did get that I think would be good for this is what happens if town meeting approves the fire truck or the police station and the ballot doesn't pass so that would mean that we could not exclude the debt so the although the project could still be funded within the operating budget the select board would not have the approval to um exceed proposition two and a half in order to pay for it so it would greatly sque squeeze your operating budget and have strong financial considerations so I'm guessing that the board would reevaluate those financial decisions if the ballot doesn't pass so that excluded the question is important if people support the product or vice versa yeah and debt exclusion is different than an override I think that's another thing that you only can override or increase taxes for the length of the debt not not a permanent tax base increase doesn't other words the Deb exclusion doesn't raise the tax base that later that gets increase by two and a half% only to pay for the project exactly a long time yes yes yes a long increase generational okay so we we've done all the three things items under number five so let's go to the review of The Board of Health septic regulation proposals review of staff and public comments discuss the public uh Board of Health public hearing which is going to be tomorrow at 7 o' um we have been getting a we've had a lot of um emails memos um comments and we did um last last time we met you authorized me to request that they um they were having a um public hearing and possibly a vote a week ago Wednesday um and to request them not to take the vote and to pause until they got all the information that they needed um they did not take the vote they did actually it was two weeks ago day um and they did uh they were going to um like they did uh extend the hearing to the following Wednesday May 1 but then the staff got sick so then they postponed it again till tomorrow um and um unfortunately two members of the of the planning board ones that are most knowledgeable um around these issues are not able to attend tomorrow uh we have also posted a meeting select board is posted a meeting for tomorrow so if any of us want to attend that we can um but when I requested that they allow us to do a joint meeting with them um they denied that so we can go as visitors but this will not be a joint meeting um because the Board of Health didn't want us we can participate in the discussion yeah don't want assuming we're recognized and right so do we need to be a board or just individuals well that's a good question we we can rep posted it so we can deliver we we can deliver it parallel me like you know when the kids kids are so okay we're down to the so um there's there's that uh I have to say I don't know about you guys but I have uh learned way more than I ever thought I would um ever know about septic systems and nitrogen loading and the chemistry of all that I've read to today I read the largest part of a 118 page report um but anyway um we have also here tonight we have Julie and John and who our staff who've written several memos and we can certainly we'll invite them in a minute and there's also one membered Eric from uh that's it from um planning board welcome Eric be good to hear your point of view too and I think what tonight we want to do is um you know decide it there's something we're going to ask the Board of Health once we get there tomorrow I mean I was going to ask them to continue to pause or are we going to ask them questions about the policy and and the effects of their new eggs well what are we going to be going there to accomplish what would be our goals okay and I'm going to throw it open where do you want to start going to start with that Julie and John and their memo latest to find out where we're at before we yeah before we dive in okay a lot of us have been in different parts of this discussion yeah so just you know I like to kind of frame it out for those who haven't been in the minua I mean the Board of Health is certainly within their purview to decide how to treat groundwater and septic and all that that's kind of their thing and they have a certain set of beliefs about that and and that is being transl into regulations that are pretty tight you know are they are they appropriately tight I'm not going to wait into that at the moment but they're certainly sort of tight if you look across other towns and other situations separately the planning board and the select board to some degree and the MBTA certainly and the fair the Housing Trust and all housing things have made it clear that if we're ever going to tackle that social issue of having what Julie calls the missing middle you know well even before if we're going to tackle making housing more affordable in a town like Carlile we have to have certain Creative Solutions and in the past we've looked at accessory apartments and and there are other things and uh and that's what Julie calls and other people call well I guess the missing middle in other words you could build Sky you can build an apartment like was proposed at bant a few years ago that'll get you more affordable units but there'll be other impact costs uh you can close your eyes well you can't close your eyes anymore because of MBTA but you could have closed your eyes said screw you to 40b which we basically did for a long time and let people live on their 2 acre plots or 4 acre plots and that's it and we're trying to read the needle a little bit to get the missing middle to get some way of introducing some housing stock into this situation and the the master plan speaks to that as well and again I will reiterate the Board of Health is completely within their purview to do what they want but it its impact is countered to all those initiatives and we'll get into all the details about whether nitrogen loading and this flow and that flow and you know your eyes will glaze over after a while but but the essential intersection here is a bunch of people in town who put a lot of time and thought into a strategic plan to do a certain social Mission are running headlong into a set of regulations that's absolutely counter to that we don't really have much leverage we just don't have much leverage but people need to know in my opinion people need to know that those regulations first of all and I think we will get get in we don't see our backed by data and are definitely countered to social now they would probably say well but the risk of not doing it our way is that you're going to have cesspools all over the place of you know too much nitrogen whatever again we go back to data so I think it we can we're going to spend some time here on some detail issues it's not going to move them I'm telling you right now but we collectively the town if it's important enough we need to get around getting data I mean Zach got data we like data data drives good decisions so I'm getting maybe a little too emotional on this topic but I we will get dive into the weeds here with John and Julie who put a ton of work into this thing but we're not going to stop we're not experts no we're not going to learn enough tonight to be experts right I so I want you to just bear in mind the the social Mission and how we reconcile that with you know what's being proposed and presumably will be passed by the Board of Health tomorrow and then what I mean that's really to me I don't know I can state it any clearer that's a good Preamble thank you really well I I'd just like to add something then on on that Preamble um uh I've I've had limited conversation with folks about um the regulations um but I've I've U thought a lot about the um sort of role of the Board of Health and the um the direction we want to go as a town in terms of the development we we would like to have in Carlile going forward and um I I think we I think we want to go into the conversation tomorrow night with the Board of Health um to uh see if we can identify uh the kind of key questions that we are concerned about or the key um aspects of the regulations that we're concerned about and be as specific as we can and and and when I say we really I'm I'm going to be relying on other people that know a lot more than I do about these issues um but to be as specific as we can be about um either the the parts of the regulations that we don't agree with or the ones that we um don't understand uh or or the parts where we need more information um and I guess I I feel pretty strongly that right now uh we we want to try to keep the door open to finding a resolution that the Board of Health uh feels is meeting their mandate to protect public health and that also we believe um is in the best interests of the the future of the town that doesn't so that the regulations don't um um limit or circumvent uh things that we might be saying we want to do as a town going forward not circumvent but that's right block that's that's a good better way of saying it so um and I just want to add and which may have unintended consequences yes because yes um but I again I it probably sound a little bit like paana here but I think if we want to um reach a resolution reach reach an outcome that that is more acceptable to um those that have concerns now as well as allowing the Board of Health to do their job we want to try to approach the conversation tomorrow night with that attitude as opposed to we don't have any leverage we're in a hard place we don't like what they're proposing that I don't I'm not I don't feel I'm in a position to to say that right now given my understanding um and so uh any anyway that that so that would be my uh my goal for tomorrow night would be to uh approach the conversation with the Board of Health as uh a real discussion about what the regulations mean and also clarifying what they don't mean and and then seeing where we come out on that I just have a quick question just about tomorrow night if if we were not um if it was not agreed that it's a joint meeting are there meetings open to public comment or this is a public hearing that they have it's a public hearing we may be limited to one minute yeah yeah I mean there's there's two different just to elucidate so the the original ask from two weeks ago was as uh Kate said don't take a and by the way planning board would like to have a joint meeting they didn't have a joint meeting that night they had individuals but they weren't I don't think they were I'm not sure they were posted it wasn't all of them anyway so the Board of Health did agree to that and scheduled it for May 1st and it was going to be a joint meeting with planning board and Board of Health and then Linda got sick somebody else got sick couldn't make it blah blah blah so it was bumped up it was bumped up but now the Board of Health I'm sorry planning board can't make it I don't think Eric himself can make it tomorrow right yeah he cannot and and and Addie who's also she's in Italy she's very right so the people who are the most knowledgeable can't make it so so then we said well gee can we stand in as a proxy for planning board and have the joint meeting because we you know we have Julie and we have John we can you know we can deliberate and we can it's not as good but it's something and they said no they just said no so but this doesn't have to go to town meeting right so what no no no no no but well that's a different situation but before we go down that path all I want to say to clarify is I think we felt I don't know I felt maybe that it was important to still post it as a meaning for us because when you don't have it posted you run into worry that you're sort of deliberating with yourselves we don't have to worry we we might only get a minute but we can chime in I can chime in right and I did invite them here for tonight as well yeah right and and you see the outcome and the Rush by the way is because one member is rolling off the board and they want to get the vote done with this board there's absolutely no I mean zero time imperative to rushing this up especially given these issues and I will say that publicly yeah it's a selfish move to get it done by a timetable by an individual that has far-reaching consequences for this community it's [Music] ridiculous so I'd like to um well Travis you haven't had a chance to just I don't need to picate but I just say no I I David I thought you did a nice job of saying this is kind of a it's not necessarily A Clash but it is it's it's you know Public Safety and people saying you know we're going we're here to defend or protect the water supply and the you know nitrogen loading and make sure that versus you know a another concerted effort to expand you know housing options within carile and so those two things are coming together and I think Barney you have a really good approach is to say you know let's get some specific specific things that we may not understand and address those and you know hopefully we can you know have some further discussion on this issue rather than have it come to a head tomorrow night but I I tend to believe from the information I know to date that is this this train is moving forward and you know and so all we can do is just you know do our best to kind of listen and bring up the issues that we think are concerns and then I think you know if that's the case than than over the next year if we think that this is a continued you know important issue then as a select board you know we need to take leadership on that and and work towards it and let me build on that because that there is a path forward in my opinion I I think the train is moving they're going to vote that's that however however we can in our budget Authority if we think it's important I believe Undertake and we would like their support but I'm going to propose undertake a real study about car carile does have unique geological features housing features that so forth we're one of the few towns with 100% well and septic in our residential so there's a lot of reasons why I think legitimately the Board of Health says we got to tread carefully we only have one water supply you mess it up it's forever messed up I that's I believe sort of the the elevator speech of their position and I don't think it's wrong we only say let's get data let's get Carlile data not comparable data this is not like forgive me Zach it's not like saying well you know boxboro does this I mean this is us our geology let's take data it costs some money we get money we got money right we just gave 400,000 extra to the police station this is pretty important I mean this is up there with everything else water supply is like one of the most important things we have so I believe it's worth and I don't want to say for now for tomorrow but if we make this a focal point in our strategic planning in the summer I think we can figure out a way to to design fund study hopefully get Board of Health to be part of it commitment to analyze data to revisit the regulations with data and say what is the best thing for Carl nobody wants polluted water right it's not about that and nobody wants unbridled development we just got to carve a reasonable path that supported I I guess I still don't see why they would not or should not be asked to revisit or to to get that data before they change the Rings start with hold off there they we're not going to irreparably and irretrievably poison our water in the next 6 months during the time that we could be getting that data and make some informed decisions we've asked them to do that right that's what we've asked them to do so so I think then it's okay so then what right so let's just presume that these regulations are going to go into place that a one minute thing from us isn't going to change what we've already been asking them to do right so we haven't we have not um offered to do to fund a study no up before now so but we don't even know how much that set would cost or anything right now I don't think so um the the worst thing that so if I mean are we we're just presuming that these regulations are going to be voted on tomorrow right well well I I believe that's don't have the ability to stop that we do not well second piece what you said is true the we don't have sort of any legal or statutory ability but we have our leadership ship ability I mean that's my point about how I think we should approach tomorrow night which is as a conversation about these regulations and and try to figure out tonight what are the key uh aspects of these regulations the changes that they're proposing what do we what what is what do we believe the impact will be and are we correct in in our thinking about what that impact will be be because I know you know Julie and John have done a lot of work analyzing the regulations uh I know there was some conversation last week with different members of the staff and then I know the the uh some of the Board of Health members met you know we all saw the memo that came from the planning board yesterday which was trying to answer some of the questions that have been raised did I say Board of Health no you said planning I'm sorry from the Board of Health yesterday trying to answer some of these questions I am not able to to read that and understand whether they're actually answering some of the questions that um members of the planning board and our staff have had so I would like to know that uh tonight yeah um and I think I think we need to use our our uh our leadership Authority and we'll see where we get to tomorrow night so should we hear from Julie and so John can we the question to Julie and John is have your concerns in the latest Memo from the Board of Health have were your concerns um adequately addressed or do you have anything else you want to say or yeah or well that was that's a basic question though we need to have answered but uh yeah so what I read in their in their memo was they acknowledged um our concerns but did not make any sub substantive changes to their regulations that's how I read proposed regulations yeah that's and when you say they acknowledged your concerns did they answer them did they address them did they give a explanation or a justification for why they wanted to go ahead with the proposed regulation in in some instances yes um but again with no data really it was um the way I feel reading that numo is we made up our mind and we're moving forward thank you for your time thank you for your uh efforts looking at our regulations it's more or less how I read it as well and Julie yes I agree with what John said so there were some instances in which they provide provided their justifications um for some of the changes they made and and acknowledge that I had asked or the planning board had asked specific questions but I didn't see any substantive changes to their regulations that would address some of our primary concerns MH and Eric you want to weigh in here as a member of the planning board uh I can't tell whether I want to weigh in as a member of the or just as a c of the town okay okay I'm gonna I'm gonna let that lie for now but um certainly as a citizen of the Town um I think this goes back to what what you all started with in your kind of collective Preamble which is and I I I've said this to several people I would be eager to stand at the front of the line to approve these regulations if I felt like there was imminent danger to our water supply or degradation to our environment um I just don't feel that way and I feel like this is a ready fire aim situation or or at least a ready fire and we're the ones hoping to aim right um I I I was a biology I was environmental science major in college um I don't know what you know certainly Julie and John know more about the manu's regulations than I do but as a as a scientific mind no policy in my opinion should be embarked upon without some sort of scientific method and rigor and data collection and I agree that carile has unique geology and we have a unique ethos and atmosphere here in our town which we want to preserve and and you know if I was able to be there tomorrow night and have my my my peace I would start by saying thank you to the Board of Health for endeavoring to preserve our environment and to protect the health and safety of our citizens um I just would try to compel them to press pause on what seems to be a rush to policy making um that does have far-reaching consequences as we all know and understand and it it again there doesn't seem to be an emminent threat so you know we have this one of the things that is I think fundamental to their argument is that we have both private Wells and septic systems in close proximity to each other on every or most Parcels in town which should mean that we have the opportunity to collect relevant spe site specific data at each site each property right by testing water coming out of these Wells and measuring actual flow that's going into the septic systems these are fundamental um uh parts of the equation that they're basing this policy on right the Assumption of flow rates you know what currently 110 gallons per bedroom per day versus 165 right there's data to suggest that we don't even come close to these flow rates and so you know the assumption that going to 165 is it's not assumption but the the the logic behind it just seems um not that it's impossible to be accurate we just don't have the data um I had a long conversation with Addie Brady uh last week and you know she's citing some data that seems relevant um the Board of Health dismissed her during that data at the at the last hearing um as being flawed for some reason I don't know exactly why um but again I I feel like why wouldn't we want to collect the relevant site specific information that would help us all feel like we're making a thoughtful conscientious science-based decision on this matter um and you know it it just I don't think it would be expensive although I do think I like I think it was David that suggested you know maybe one of the outcomes from tonight's hearing or this meeting is to make even though I'm sure there's some other approvals that have to be done but to make a commitment to the Board of Health to fund a study of some number of houses in a geographically either kind of equally distributed um geography across town or concentrated around known specific geologically unique areas of the town that would likely have different or unique characteristics for uh absorption of of nitrogen or lack thereof um but areas of particularly High um groundwater um which also poses you know as we mentioned several times in their document and and you know does pose a complication um as again as I've mentioned to several people recently I feel like um a blanket policy [Music] seems um sure the right word is I I wouldn't adopt a blanket policy when we have the ability to um potentially impose site specific characteristics or site specific spefic um regulations um you know as far as I understand it John please correct me if I'm wrong but um I believe you have to do test pits for perk rates at each new location um or when any septic system is proposed to be installed is that correct that is correct so in the process of Excavating test pits for perk rates we would get a really I think at least you know in uh relevant um perspective on soil characteristics in that specific location which could inform the type of and size of system that would be appropriate for that area and I realize that there's you know deep below the the depth that is required for a test pit there could be specific geological features or characteristics that could impart different you know um limitations but I I feel like it this is a start in point you know and again if if if someone you know gave me the power to to affect the situation right now um I would approach it in a more scientific and more sight specific way not a blanket policy um without data based what seems to me purely on anxiety and fear albeit in the best interest of the environment in the town but just there doesn't seem to be a need to do this Tom tomorrow and um I can't help but feel like there's an ulterior motive given how I think inappropriate this potential outcome is um and not going to be a conspiracy theorist here but it just it just seems so unnecessary that I I can't come up with any other logic path um to justify it um when we have so many smart um accomplished scientifically minded folks in this town um that's that's just where I'm landing you said it really well said it really well thank you Eric that was really I wish we could have recorded that and played it tomorrow are we not recording it is can you play are you allowed to play somebody else's comment as your comment it's public what it's public um no but I mean could we replay his little clip tomor ask about I know there's some hands up but um Julie I think I give you credit for it but maybe it's Ryan but didn't we fund or didn't you procure a study a hydro geologic study and could that be used in conjunction with this or altered to to use it to this study this type of thing so that's a great question um I did apply for a community planning Grant on behalf of the Housing Trust about a year ago um and the scope of that Grant is a little bit different than what we're talking about here but I do have a call set up with someone from the state who administers the grant program just to kind of start asking questions about if we were to switch the scope what would be required so that's the to be determined great if you want B let's I just want to be sure that um our staff don't have anything else that they would like to tell us okay DeBry um I'm just going to talk environmental point of view from a different environmental point of view um about carbon every time we disturb soil we release seal2 into the atmosphere and um so obviously building a larger septic system is actually not good for the um for for the climate um and also distribution tanks if they're larger tend to be they are made out of concrete which is possibly one of the best the worst U materials that we can use so uh just basically oversizing anything in the building industry is not good for the pilot and so this is a proposal that oversizes um systems uh unnecessary so it is another aspect that should be considered from the environmental point of view as well as and I presume the of Health are concerned about climate change too yeah I'm want to build on that and I don't have data but maybe John or Julie can elaborate but there's another risk to oversizing which is the undersized flow that results right the regs to my understanding the RS which go back a long time go back to old big tank flush toilets and old style washing machines and you know things like that and today's appliances and I would guess most carleans have a lot of the modern stuff much much lower flows so I if either of you guys can speak to the and this is something again that a study might come up with the risk of too low a flow for an overs speec system oh yeah I'm GNA just Echo what you just said exactly um you know when tile 5 was passed we were on you know n gallon flushes and 55 gallons for load of laundry dishwashers would I think an average of like 25 gallons per per load all of that the codes of pluging codes uh have pushed all that down and the average appliances in a newer household that you know you far less less water that's less taxing on the septic system um but it really goes back to the data the the one study that we found actually Addie um found uh that the board Health dismissed showed um you know some of these developments between 22 gallons per day per bedroom and I think the high was 104 if I if I remember correctly so the average gallons per day per bedroom in that particular study was 68 gallons per day so it goes back to you know car is different from what was studied there and I think it would be uh in every body best interest to get real data on carile homes other thing that I just wanted to point out I did a little bit of math with the census data and I think it's like 2.6 um somewhere around there people per dwelling here in Carol and uh you know most of these homes are larger with five bedroomroom septic systems and they have two to three people them but but the the the impact of that John like so you have this big overdesigned system and and low usage is there any risk to functionality if you're not pushing enough water through those big systems absolutely you know your efficiency drops both at the tank itself and at the leeching field the leeching field needs to create a a Biomat below it which actually does the filtration of the effluent um if you don't have enough flow through it you never create a good solid Biomat so it's less less efficient you know and there's tons of studies out there on that so an undersized septic system um Can fail and it fa you know when it fails because it backs up or it um comes to the surface an oversized system uh tends to just be less efficient so there's a sweet spot and you know tile I've tried really hard to to look at all the different situations and scenarios and give that 110 gallons per day um and again there studies that say that that's oversized and what and what is it the um the Board of Health regulations are proposing so um it it's a sliding scale but um so for three bedroom subject system uh the title would require 330 gallons per day here in carile they require 495 gallons per day under the existing I'm sorry 50% more than D RS for up to a three bedroom sub that's the current regulation or these new revised ones in the regulation the new revised ones um hit the what they Define as multi-unit which is two or more units so a house with an accessory apartment a two family conversion um with 165 Gall per day per bedroom you would I mean basically from the social impact if I understand correctly if you were thinking of creating if you if you had the ability to create an accessory apartment out of your dwelling but it put you in a whole new class of you have to redo your field like you're not going to do it you just won't do it and we've already kind of looked at the challenging and thin economics of just doing the apartment anyway or the and you know it'll say people just won't do it it just won't happen and and the now the flip side is and this is what I think Board of Health would say if you know is we don't want to backdoor one acre zoning but there's other ways to manage that so you know I think that's where collaborative collaborative work to meld all these things together as Travis said these are Big Time issues for the town that are colliding but they don't have to collide and that's really the disappointing thing is that the in my opinion the Board of Health has choose chosen to ignore these others I mean I think the point David is that they might Collide but we don't know we don't well we don't know and there's ways to nuance again if you just take Eric if I say with my socialist hat on I want to make sure that people have the ability to do accessory Apartments so we can you know allow some people to live here that couldn't normally live here whether it's elderly parents or it's a family from you know Refugee family who knows what and then the other side will say well all you're doing is you're back doing one acre zoning and you're going to wake up one day and you're going to have day facto one acre zoning cuz everybody's popped that sort of separate house on the same thing there's ways there's other ways there's bylaw ways there's there's ways to work those problems and not just go head long as you said into a change in rag till you've kind of figured that out and and we have to also remember the two ACR zoning was because they wanted to protect you know they wanted to have enough room between the septic and the well and all that um because many Lots my lot's two acres I could never put another house on I've got too much Wetland there's no place I could put yeah put stuff but if there were two acre lot uh that could tolerate that um why not it's the only the reason for the two acre is not to have houses spread out but even if you know John how many how many accessory apartment permits have been approved in the time it's been 35 Julie correct me if I'm wrong my numbers here but um I believe that the accessory Pro and bylaw has been in effect for 35 years and to date uh 34 have been approved okay one a year yeah we're running for the didn't actually get built yeah so our hair's on fire for one if you're going to read anything know just about the two acres zoning and you know I agree it's two acres you have to have a septic you have to have a well um I believe just from back when I was on the planning board with the other thing we talked about was but you also wanted to the flexibility if one of those failed you could easily put it somewhere else on your property and not you know you could have another well and have some flexibility in where you put it and still have it farther away from your septic you yeah you always you had to have a reserve um space for the the septic that's right so so what do we want to you know for for tonight um it seems to me like what we could do tomorrow is we could offer this study ask them to delay offer them that we would you know that we would support trying to get this study um seems to me like that might be all we can do since they've decided they don't want to have a joint meeting with us so I'm not sure how much they will listen to us but um it seems like that's really the only carrot we can offer um to ask them to just delay this right and to and to sort of make the case that Eric is making so eloquently that you know it's it's that we're not an emergency situation and so right I mean just to make the case about why these reg those two go directly together right done an emergency let's work together on the funding to try to make this to be able to try to BU able to do it so we can demonstrate to the town we really really thought this through and here's the data that that approves it yeah I think that's it other than that the only thing we could do is just voters will vote and and then we you can still do the study the regulations can be changed right right regulations change one way they can change other right I would I would suggest that we shouldn't die on the hill of no but the regulations are already oversized and this is going to I know but I think the path forward is but I think that's a that's a difficult thing because it is that that's their call right so it's kind of like saying you're not doing your job don't presuppose the outcome of the study yeah I I'd say right on the day like erck said okay er's raising his hand yeah do the technology um in terms of a uh is there an easy mechanism to be installed um to measure gpms coming out of a well or or GPD I guess gallons per day is it gallons out of the well that you want or the gallons into the septic they're the same gallons Iration yeah two the two small meters are actually for you know one in there's some pretty inexpensive and accurate meters that can be installed so in that situation you put two and use a differential to to know what's going on the right and and you know this was um yeah so I'm just wondering if again we can figure out um in a different time what the appropriate sample size is um but if the select board was willing to fund the installation of a hundred of these things I don't know you know again sample size you have to figure out um in a in representative households to understand how close to that 110 are we actually coming up against you know is it are are we at 50 are we at 60 or are we at 120 you know like there's this just seems like and it seems like it's in their best interest because to your point John like if the biom mat's not being created and the you know we're oversizing systems and we end up in the same scenario feeding dog food to our septic systems that we do to the school that that's that's seems insane Insanity yes can um John or I mean besides the flow rate if you were to say core sample P the mat the Biomat I mean let's say you identified in the study you know lowf flow households and then you go out to the field can you core sample and see how effectively The Field's working by flow rate that's yeah that ends up being a destructive test yeah no you do test Wells I don't know I don't know how you would do that David um I I think what you would do is test Wells and then you test the water coming out of the test Wells that are down down flow um out of The Well of the property well that's that's a better way yes because um you know I've been I've been reading and you know onethird of the nitrogen um is coming just from the atmosphere of the nitrogen loading one third comes with nitrogen then there's one part that comes from the uh septic and then there's three parts that come from fertilizing the grass over the septic SE so you know I think you're right you do the you test the water in the well and you uh measure the flows in the septic and if there's contamination of the well you know you got a problem and if there isn't any contamination of the well what's the problem so it seems like for tomorrow you know just just wanting to make make sure that that you know that we we move forward in in a concerted way you know we're all together on it um that we would that we would say we understand what you're trying to do uh that you're trying to protect our environment we've we've you know we we have concerns about uh the data and we've heard from citizens concerns about the regulations and so we would like to offer that you delay this and work with us to design a test and uh and we will work with you to fund that test reasonable size test so that we can demonstrate to the citizens with data the importance of what it is that you're trying what what you're trying to do right what's needed you know not saying you're wrong but it's import what you're what you're trying to do let's help you get the data that proves right what you're trying to do great I'm in favor of that I am too so we all just need to be agreed that we would help come up with the funding yeah yeah might have to scale it based upon what we think would could and maybe you know Julie May Julie may come up with grant funding either the the current Grant can be repurposed or an additional Grant or we find the funding we find the funding that Ryan offered right funded and I heard I Chief amandela would match right there's a match yeah no he was going to do half of it half the quarter yeah and is this I'm just thinking about um the Board of Health you know seriously considering this does it make sense to in advance of their meeting tomorrow night from the select board send a proposal uh about this to them so they can all see it ahead of time and think about it rather than it coming up out of the blue at the meeting tomorrow night I mean it can't hurt it's not again I think we have to think in terms of the study and our ability to do that can happen regardless of to tomorrow's outcome the main thing is for the and this is the hardest part really I I actually don't care if they pass or don't pass as long as they're open to reviewing data and amending Based on data and I'm not there yet with that this particular board yeah you have to be data driven okay you have to be data driven to accept data as part of the decision making process and you know I wish it were different but I don't see a data driven board and I don't know how to solve for that so then if we it's almost better just to have it come up as part of the right there'll be many conversations have it come up as the personally but but I don't know but have it in writing so that it wouldn't hurt I I wouldn't hurt to to to float a proposal it just makes it more more real and also gives those people some people they're they're you know hearing it for the first time their reaction might be different than right I think it's a good idea I think it's a good idea actually and um it just has to be a couple paragraphs right just send a note to their board and and uh and to Linda and then you know you can reiterate it WR or could we ask Ryan and Julie to wouldn't have me S it I think Kate either I think Kate should write it and send send it on our behalf yeah that makes me feel a little uncomfortable but well well how would you like to do it or do you even think it's a good idea David to do it because they're proposing it is that why yeah there you go good excuse good excuse as any okay fine I won't have time time time to write anything tomorrow but I could review something you could what I could review something tomorrow we can't R it we can't even have the two of you do it only one of you can do this two of them can write it two us can write it cannot not an open meeting L okay well how about that's which is also why writing these letters I'm gonna I'm gonna ask Eric then Eric would you be willing to work with either me or David to draft something can you do that conceptually yes I just don't have time I'm sorry I've got meetings starting at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning and ending with an event it's going to be over at like 10m yeah um I think it's more compelling coming directly from the select board yeah we just can't do it in time that's we well one one can write on behalf of the board one can be authorized to write on behalf of the board or not feel knowledgeable enough to do that um I don't get why two people can't because of open meeting wall as soon as you have two more than one person doing anything comes under well no so I should revise that so you authorize two people to write to them that's allowed as long as they're not sending it to everyone else yeah that's true yeah yes okay right all right I I can do it in the it would be really bad if you created something and then sent it to yeah I think it's short very short yeah just very short as a result of our discussion last night um we would like to make this make this proposal yeah and we would like further with you at the meeting tonight but here's here's a quick summary of what are we having tomorrow morning suggesting again and is Julie are you in the office Julie and John are you guys in the office tomorrow morning okay yes I think we can bang it out tomorrow morning great okay and we'll we'll use we'll need some maybe some detail from them we'll send something to the boards Tom be great okay all right good okay excellent um thank you all thank you thank you thank you very much for coming guys all right um I propose that maybe we um skip the initial vacancies and committee's policy discussion and do that another our teties close to our our TA our schedu time yeah uh ta report okay okay westford's override failed oh we did did huh just tonight was it tonight yeah I'm hearing that second hand but I believe it's what's that from Kelly how much he over think it was a good bit yeah yeah all right so we're going to the TA report I don't know anybody that scorting it what is this this was a long one it's packet oh yeah yes yeah no kidding it's Gate's fault not even a chuo cape guess I'm sorry I didn't hear it I just I'm I'm a little exhausted last so everyone here is familiar with the um records man management and land use cubicle project that's happening here in town I know I keep Haring on them but they are important U big dates May 22nd May 21st and May 23rd the health department and the kcom department will be remote and limited access as we reconfigure their cubes we're working diligently to get their records together and to digitize as much as possible and then once this part of the projects done I will be turning that arpa money back over to arpa whatever's left over from the records management project with the idea that there would be some type of request in the future to manage a records project that would be more encompassing I think we've done everything we can do um short of organizing all of the records in town you heard about Gregory or excited to welcome him to the DPW still looking for another driver labor at the DPW and land use Municipal assistance which would support the kcom and Sylvia will be interviewing next week showed you the town meeting video that was exciting um it'll be live tomorrow okay so the uh Q3 financial report I'm going to give you very high level but please feel free to dig in so this is a review as of March 31st you've seen this report now a couple times so hopefully you're getting used to it the main takeaways are that um we have spent 71.6 1% of the budget as of March 31st that's nice I saw so 76% um or 75 is the expectation so what does that mean that would generate because this doesn't include the school side so if you apply that 71.6 1% sent to the operating townside it would return somewhere between 400 and 750,000 in free cash so more more than we anticipated we try to generate around 300 I will caveat this by saying there are still a quarter to go and a lot of expenses to do but we we do believe we'll outperform uh expectations and generate some free cash some concerning items include uh continue to include group health insurance which we've adjusted in the fy2 budget but is still a problem in FY 24 same with with liability insurance and you're aware of the Vocational School deficit so all of those are included in that assessment of A4 to $750,000 return on expense in terms of Revenue we are right where we thought we would be um under under projecting Revenue by about 1 to 2% which is a turn back of somewhere between 250 and 500,000 so combined in addition to incumbrances and projects need to be done we're anticipating in around a million doll free cash Certification Number the ideal Target is somewhere between 5 and 750 so we're a little bit over which is good but worth more analysis in next year's budget process are we being too conservative are we appropriately budgeting Etc the I won't read every capital and professional uh Services line but this is your line by line on current capital items still categorizing Cory Auditorium is red although we have contracted with the good side of the the goods and services side of the budget and now we have a um good cost estimate on the EC side so we think this project is going to need somewhere between 20 and 50,000 more depending on how the electrical construction bid comes in it's better news than we thought but still uh got some work to do to finish this project where's that money come from cash uh the schools have requested uh since they turned back all that arpa to then use some of the arpa is there enough arpa left there would be you could also use the fincom reserve for this for this particular project what whatever happened to the elevators because we were supposed to have a report and that was supposed it was due Friday so what was do last week for the last weeks it's gonna come and it's GNA be great oh it's Christmas but you know come on uh Town reserves you're familiar with this figure it's so this is our financial monitoring so this is important I like to go over it so Town reserves we are over our projected amount about to spend some at town meeting but still within the over the 12% threshold cash is being Recon reconciled at the appropriate uh timing so we are reconciled as of March 31st which is as good as you can get the internal auditing Kelly and I have gone over some procedures to start this at beginning of the fiscal year per um what she wanted to get done and what the financial audit said we should do so this is checklist we go to each department we check to make sure they're following policy and then provide you an internal audit report by department and then departments are now reconciling both cash and I'm sorry not cash both revenue and expense which was another item from the audit so that is good we can check that box and as you know the external audit is done both the town audit and the one-time audit for the arpa funding the finding from the arpa audit was that we need today you'll be shocked Financial policy so we have crafted one and we'll be bringing one to you to publish we'll need it for about one more year and then ARA money will go away and we won't hit the threshold needed for the single audit anymore so we'll publish the policy use it for one year and then we won't e it well until the next time if there's more arpa that means the world has to hell again we we don't know we we used to get FEMA money that we used to have to do single aits for so FEMA what FEMA thing did we have well we've gotten it in the came to us before Umpa before arpa you don't remember you know when trees would be down and Tre being down storm response so a lot of a lot of data at at the end of this report this is uh expense line by line as you're used to seeing it in the budget um identified by colors of course and then down here you have um your continuing appropriations of what you would see as capital so marriage licenses are running 50% is that under or over under Revenue yes we're having a marriage deficit a we got to do something about that let's go because we're an aging population live marriage is short if you notice without it is kind of talk cheek but the red ones are not um they're not concerning items they're smaller ticket items all of the revenues that we need to perform are performing so there's a lot of red but it's not concerning I will call out this is uh of of particular importance why we continue besides just good financial management but the numbers we still want to be conservative with some of the numbers so if you look at the investment earnings we anticipated about 20,000 and we're bringing in 134 the market has been performing well if we can continue to perform that way great but that's not something that and then uh line by line so we're calling this open checkbook so every line in the budget is included in this report for you to review and see um full transparency in our budgeting that's nice picked up 114k that's good that's where you left huh we asked for this this is great Ryan um really good for us to review and glad you're doing it all so quarter three I would say is the most important right so that's where we either are in trouble or not and where we can start projecting our free cash and compare it to our budget assumptions right before town meeting so I feel comfortable recommending to you that we are hitting our targets uh budget advocacy so the house version and today the Senate Ways and Means also passed U the same numbers here so the state is um recommending at least this the house and the Senate so far they still need to reconcile the budget an increase in school aid under Chapter 70 from $30 a student to 104 so this translates into $40,000 for Carlile Public School and even more for the Regional Schools so this would bring your budget under 3% tax increase like we were saying hasn't been passed yet and it's it's not good practice to say it's going to pass because a lot can happen the state revenue numbers are also up this quarter so this number becomes more solid in my mind however if you'd like to contact the Senator Senator Barrett and say this is really important uh this is about the only help that Carlile gets besides chapter 90 is is this 70 so so can I ask you 70 question in the revenue line the budget was 1.38 million and we've collected 1.04 million and are we done collecting for the year or is more coming in more coming so so we'll be I mean that's an amount off a cherry sheet or something right we should we should just hit that right on the nose numbers will come in where they're at yeah ones we really are concerned about our excise stickers U transfer stickers marriage license marriage license yeah $250 under budget we should also though I have to say um keep an eye on the high school budget because in their long memo about why they couldn't come get to the 3% um cap that the conquered had put on them um one of the things was less money from the state and if they get this money I'd like to know what they're going to do with it and if we're going to get it back reduce the budget Som for so yes the EV Chargers in town so uh as of May 1st I have approved a change in the cost of EV Chargers from 65 cents a kilowatt to 30 cents a kilowatt so previously Steve bask was managing this for us his only instruction was to not to not lose money and to cover uh long-term capital so I put together a working group of some smart folks including Sarah and a couple members of the uh ESC to analyze this so we looked at it regionally and did some some class analysis that we will be bringing to for final decision so what I approved was a twomon pilot so that you can get some data which has been a talking point tonight in terms of what um price sensitivity does to the cost of the Chargers so hopefully the reason why we're doing these two months in particular is uh teachers are still there and several teachers in a a survey we did said they would use the Chargers at work if they were available and they were cheaper so we're going to test that price sensitivity and bring you that data and then we'll make a decision or the select board will make a decision on on what to do in terms of a charger policy we also want to capture some long-term costs and it's important to note there is no Financial mechanism for capturing the revenue for this so it dumps into the general fund and doesn't create some Surplus that we can use for Capital so we either have to add those prices to the capital plan or create a um revolving Fund in order for it to pay for itself so a few nuances to figure out I have one other question about those because those have a very low um rate of charge charging La is a triple charge um is that has that also been changed is it charging faster now those those things so you're going to get a whole presentation on this but that that is governed so that we don't get demand charges um it's all part of there has been no no discussion about subsidizing these Chargers and I think that would be a pretty meaty conversation in the public so the governor is part of making sure that it doesn't cost any money so this part of the policy that needs to be discussed Governor is the wrong word I just some of the people want not wanting to use those Chargers because so slow they're so slow yeah so it's a it's a definitely a policy discussion at this level of whether or not like what you want to do there how much risk you want to take Etc so I only approved the Gathering of data because I did not think it would have a financial impact good man all right natural gas also Sarah's been doing a lot of work for me and she's great so um we are out of compliance with our natural gas contract we knew that we're into the summer months where we don't spend any natural gas we are trying to combine with the schools so that we're more competitive our our accounts are not worth much the school's accounts are worth more than ours we're trying to combine into one broker and vendor and Sarah has done research to make sure that we only select vendors that um do have some um some sustainability Consciousness although this Market is not the same as electricity so they're not fracking we're trying to we're trying to pick um Greener companies while still maintaining cost so we would we would not at this time say we would sacrifice cost for for green but we do think we can combine it into a good recommendation I have also in conjunction with the coun and aging car public schools and gleon Public Library um authorized small Pride flags on the center rotary and a banner over School Street to celebrate Pride 7 to 10 days prior to the event this is again Coast sponsored by the schools and the cohs and the gleon public library for an event on May 31st to include a parade I will be um trying to attend that as well I know it's in trouble expect it's in trouble I guess if you read City in the woods they gota I'll go to Banton we're already on in the next one right okay sorry we're doing dog yeah dog parkies uh we're hoping to get a private funer to close the gap on the procurement that came in in higher than expected shockingly um more to follow in the dog park talked about Cory Auditorium Greeno Greeno Barn results come in on the 9th okay some important discussion points for the board to remember excuse me sorry important discussion uh you'll be reorganizing at your next meeting and we've already honored Nathan you are now pumpkins congratulations um so you need to reorganize so that camera for good to time me yeah no you still do uh online donations which you've talked about friends of Center Park Agreement which you've talked about for the hanscum Air Force Base private jet expansion discussion per your request I reached out to massport they said they do not provide Personnel to meet or answer questions with the public but they did direct you to their official website where you can get information so they will not be sending anybody they don't send any money any Town not ours they were very clear about that so um that's odd that is odd I would think they'd want to generate support yeah they want a unified message they said so you can go to the website that's stupid that is dumb another reason not to pass I fulfilled your request no I know but I mean yeah so there's three Financial policies in your packet another eight coming so part of the summer we'll be trying to get through these so our next audit is clean but before you go too far I want to know if we're putting this on the next agenda or not Travis wants to know yes yeah we said we would didn't we well but we said we would when if we got this so now that we have this information you still want it on the agenda yeah I think we should I think we do I mean I I did feel strong I do feel strongly that you should hear like both sides of whatever the issue is and that's why I wanted to make sure when you reached out and that's what we get so you actually reached out how what's the method of reach out called the director of massport for okay representative she directed me to uh someone who's handling these Community requests and that person sent me this website just said this all your answers are on the website they said they don't attend public meetings because there's been so many requests that they want one message and it is all on the website so I guess we have to study the well that link you should probably look at the link right it's pretty it's a pretty significant website okay but it's not the person answering I'm I'm just trying to understand what we so a number of us attended that webinar I don't know what would you call League of Women Voters yeah so that presented one side it was one-sided I'm not saying it was wrong but it was one-sided is that material going to be available for prep I mean we should have it sounds like we should have be a link to that in our packet and a link to this and then we should all read up undertake to see both of those and are isn't this also something requested by the ESC that we Rec that we consider this again yeah remember we got that request from them yeah so yeah so if the and is the outcome and it may not be coincident with the first time we look at it but if we eventually come up with what I think ESC would prefer which is we don't support it in some fashion where does that message go does it go anywhere does it go up the back to the lady who told us to read the website I mean what do we do with that yeah it becomes part of the the the U the group that is opposed to expansion is collecting the results from all these different town votes so they can say you know all the surrounding towns said no oh there's something to be signed okay I see okay so we should have get that letter that well in the packet so that right right would have some sort of a template yeah right they all sign the same letter Christina or they each send a letter that's sort of the same okay we should yeah it' be good to know okay okay there are three Financial policies in your packet um my my general plea is that we're going to be doing about 11 of these in the next couple months so if you the more we can get feedback the easier that proc process will go and we want it to be to your liking and please know they've been vetted by the financial management team and finance committee all right uh staff recognition so um you all saw the sad news with Sergeant Ian Taylor of the bill R Police Department who tragically gave his life in service to his community so our officers um and I think you would agree that it was not only necessary but something that that that Brotherhood does assisted Bill r with shift coverage and attended several support events to make sure that the community and the region felt uh the support from Carlile so behalf of the entire staff wanted to offer our condolences to the family of Sergeant Taylor and continue to offer our support for um what is I I I don't know if I have the words so um thank you to the police department for taking care of that on behalf of the town for um Karen our dedicated veteran director she became an accredited veteran service officer for the National Association of County Veteran service officers so this is someone who is accredited to work with the VA on behalf of our veterans she primarily does va work in town because the chapter 115 program which is another part of her her job is uh income based so there there are not a lot of veterans in the community that that need assistance if they did we would provide it but the VA is a place where a lot of support is needed in car so she is um as connected as you can get to help our veterans in that sense lastly uh there a picture of some tree work the DPW did um been doing a lot of touring of as you know the winter ends going around looking at potholes and the like DPW is doing a lot of work responding to a lot of requests this resident sought assistance removing these trees and it was gone the next day and she was very impressed with the DPW so I thought I would pass that along you're here some quick notes the town meeting so we talked about the meeting before the town meeting then there's the town meeting and then there's the election on the 21st there's the first Nathan free meeting on May 28th and then um I will be going to some professional development on the cape then leaving you uh to do what I was supposed to do in March which was my military service in El Paso June El Paso yeah it's going to be pretty bad I hear the classrooms don't have air conditioning so I'm [Laughter] [Music] pumped we're meeting at 6:30 on the 13th is on Monday is that what we agreed to yes correct 6:30 and then just one thing I'm noting on our May 28th uh agenda you've got an executive session in there for 6:30 so is that something we should make sure we put on our calendars yes starting early an executive session to discuss the uh re engagement with the dispatch unit that's the uh 28th I had it in the wrong I had it in this week quick note on that we will be um finalizing the contract from fy20 to FY 23 which has not been signed and then dispatch yes and then working on fy2 24 and then the two follow on years so quick five years of work at that executive position okay okay all right thank you Cemetery Deeds we have to take care of who would like to read those I'll sign them once we voted the good motions oh yeah sorry okay you're good at that Barney well let me here we go all right I've got them I move to transfer land in the public burial ground of the Green Cemetery described as follows deed 818 lot d371 Graves one and two to Roger vanel former resident deed 819 lot d402 Graves 1 2 3 and four de Martha supnik 106 heeld Road lead 82 1 lot d332 Graves 1 and two to Matthew Burell for parents former residents deed 88 deed 822 lot d335 Graves 23 and four to Sharon Brown of five Garrison way deed 823 lot d330 Graves 1 and two to Christopher Ferrari 95 Hemlock Hill Road deed 824 lot d389 Graves one and two to Lee swin at 72 suffk Lane we don't have a lot of marriages but I guess we're anticipating some deaths y okay some of them have happened second is there a second there is I have a question okay is I noted that they're either living here or there's some tie to their residency is that a Criterion for yes getting the D the cemeter they had to have lived in car the OCC of the Grave or the okay the buyer of the deed theer of the deed but they could bury whoever they want in it just questioning it's a good question I don't know I think so okay I actually don't know the answer I'll I'll get to you I mean like in the Matthew Burell case I presume he does not live here but he's buying it for his parents who did live here so I guess that's okay like you can live here and buy it that's obvious you can have lived here and buy it but you could also not live here but be burying somebody who's lived here is that I'm I'm assuming you have to have lived here in order to to have the deed ah so you can't not have lived here and buried somebody else here okay so it's implied with Matthew Burell that I guess he lived here when his parents lived here it's just that it doesn't doesn't give an address for him and I'm just just asking I will get you that answer I'm curious I I know though that um I'm sure it's fine reconstituted Cemetery committee will certainly go this that's right good job for Nathan in his retirement yeah Cemetery the new he he was paying but he was just buying it for his parents though just a question I don't care know okay yeah we're running all right we got still have do we need to take a vote on these Deeds uh yes okay all right all those in favor I that's we have the minutes yeah I didn't get around reading minutes I was reading septic bre I didn't read a I didn't either okay so you want to push them off the next or CU that bad we can push there is a typo Nathan Modell I don't know if that's I don't know if that's the current or the former selectman select person okay so uhing Gretch what's that take these up at the next meeting yeah you guys do want to get marri we could do them at the meeting before the yeah we could do them um we don't have any other business before Nathan still part of it yeah that's fine I read them the town meeting so try to read them folks before then so that we will put that on our agenda for the town meeting okay meeting okay got it okay there are a lot of things in there to back to anybody have any Le reports uh well I would say the the um the town meeting study committee had its final meeting before town meeting okay we have a whole bunch of action items there is a little video clip that's being pushed out there's posters that are going to pop up around town um there's one more we've had a series of now three letters to the editor the third one will come out this week and we'll speak to the poll that we're going to do we have a nice jot form enabled you know a smartphone enabled poll it's a pretty interesting survey so we're hoping that we get a lot of data from that that we can plow through in the summertime to give us better insight into um and U and I think I mentioned it before but Wayne has agreed to speed up a bunch of the stuff in the beginning so we get started faster so I'm looking forward to a seeing if our Outreach efforts have actually increased participation and be you know if we have a Snappy or town meeting yeah yeah clearly our little information session at the beginning wasn't appreciated necessarily in terms of getting through the other stuff are we ready to adjourn uh no um nobody else has a Le's own reports we have um Community input oh excuse me and you can't leave before you sign these anyway no I wasn't going to leave I just uh any try to wrap it up Genie Jerry and Christina only last of the moans here y okay nothing nothing from Genie nothing from Jerry there a lot to say thank you for joining us yeah uh I will uh entertain a motion to adourn so moved and the second second and move that's it in favor thank you very much thank you thank yes enjoy your you found freedom for