##VIDEO ID:F1wG45-lsY4## e um I just am gonna ask for residence concerns starting out with a regular business uh first up our residents concerns if there are any residents with concerns any online no so moving on to chair update um I just wanted to quickly say that um act you know the town of Acton with the help of the Town Ed EDC um office had a s successful restaurant week and we're um also starting November 23rd which is Friday um through January 15 2025 is act in shop local shop small and if you go to the town website um under the economic development page you can click on links to see which uh shops are participating and what kind of deals that are offered um and that's all for me on to the town manager thank you uh we have uh several little updates for you one I wanted to just read to you from my inbox it's related to a dog hearing that we had here uh this fall uh where the board found a dog to be uh deemed dangerous the the owners of the dog appealed and that court process is still underway um but we wanted to share that uh going forward the police department and Animal Control Officers will be working to together to implement any punishments and according to general laws for fail failure to comply to the order that was set in place on July 8th 2024 in determining that the dog Romeo is a dangerous dog as defined under Mass General law uh chapter 140 section 136a um the owners that reside at 71 School Street uh will be uh they'll contact them and going forward uh be issuing any fines that uh de deem appropriate uh this wasn't on the agenda uh tonight uh if the board wants to have a discussion about this we certainly can add it to a future one but I wanted to just raise this now because I know a bunch of questions came in over the weekend uh from the public on this thank you and there's a free movie screening a documentary screening tomorrow night uh which I encourage you to all check out on our website um it's sponsored by the de office I think you'll hear more about it shortly members Alyssa thank you so I wanted to update the board with the uh drama that has concluded with the health insurance trust so um our consultant Gallagher uh went to bat for us with Blue Cross Blue Shield and they have agreed to stop demanding $500,000 prepayment so the $900,000 that they already are holding um that belongs to the trust they will pay the claims that come in during the runout period um and not charges interest for um late payments uh the only catch is that they won't be doing a Reconciliation after the six month from the July 1st switch over um which was planned to happen and return funds to the trust so we'll just have to wait until the end of the 24mon runout period um and then the remainder What's um not needed to pay out those claims will be divied up according to the split between the school district and the town um so that's good news uh rebates are being still coming in and being paid directly to the trust so Blue Cross Blue Shield isn't holding on to those and I also wanted to let the board know that the citizens Library governance advisory committee will be uh meeting next on December 3rd 3:30 in the afternoon um to finalize our report and recommendation and we expect that to be on the agenda um to present to this board on December 16th last week on Wednesday we had a public forum it was well attended I thought it was pretty productive we heard a lot of questions um and concerns from people so hopefully um we'll be ready to go with that recommendation and the board can make a decision about next steps so December 16th um and one more uh update for the public um from the water district they are conducting a service line inventory that's mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency and um many households in town received a notice that the material that their service line is made from is unknown to the district and so they're seeking residents assistance in identifying that material it's um some scary wording on the notice because it comes down from the regulatory agency and it says you may have lead in your pipes which um freaks people out but the um the appropriate steps for the public to take are to to assist the district in um identifying what material their pipes are made of they can definitely get a test to test um for lead in their water if they choose to um but if any assistance is needed they can call the water district office um and they'll get uh an assistance with with taking care of um whatever they need to do to to identify the material that their pipes are made of find more information at act andwater decom thank you I have to just interject your post on social media was really helpful and it had a display just copied and pasted from the from the district's website yeah but it's it's some it's wording that the district cannot change they have to send it out exact they can't can't modify it at all um so it does um cause a little bit of panic um but they don't the the district I've heard the manager say that they don't expect to find any service lines that are made of lead um but because it's unknown they really need to to make sure that they properly identify the material thank you Dean so the uh applications were received for uh Community preservation projects um the first meeting to start dealing with these is tomorrow night here in town hall downstairs um kind of rough numbers it's about $3 million worth of requests we have less than $2 million to expend so um it's going to be a rough couple of months for the CPC and there's going to be a lot of folks who will be disappointed but uh at some point in the process I will deal with the chair um we need to put an item on our agenda uh so that the select board can provide their own prioritization for Town Projects uh I'll have to check the what timing is required under the Community preservation plan but I think late in December early January U I'll get some more information out to everybody that's it thank you thank you any other other member David Ju Just a Little Bit of detail on the documentary that um the town manager mentioned a few minutes ago uh the documentary is called who we are a Chronicle of racism in America it's sponsored by um the uh Dei office here and the Dei director and a bunch of um Community um uh groups along with the Acton's Dei commission um it's playing tomorrow evening at the Maynard's Art Theater place at 6 o' thank you Jim um we recently discussed a sustainability policy so I just want to let you know it has been uh Rewritten um and we hope to get to it soon um not not a lot of changes but um I tried to capture what was said in the meeting and and uh in in the new version um the next thing is just a thank you to all the pole workers and the police that made the election here work so well uh we almost had an 80% turnout which is just you know astonishing but it tells me that Acton's going to continue to stay involved in you know National and state electoral politics and and and stay engaged um uh I know that some people have sort of um a mix of a mix of reactions to the election there's been a certain amount of you know shock awe denial bargaining anger all that you know your basic stages of uh and um but what what I'm what I'm seeing is that you know Acton's going to keep uh being engaged after after a little bit of recovery um in terms of local local involvement in local government um I wanted to mention that the volunteer coord ating committee is down to three members out of five and that's um at seven if you include the two Associates they're involved that they could have um if they had more members they could get back up they could get back to being involved in helping to recruit people uh for the Committees in town I mean recruiting is up to all of us uh but the VCC uh the volunteer Coordinating Committee used to be able to be a hub of of information and recruiting and and they can't do that at the at this at the with only three volunteers they're just able to keep up with uh you know the applications that come in uh so I just wanted to note that that's it thank you onto our public hearings um our first public hearing um at 710 will be continued from today until December 16th 2024 at 7:10 p.m. um that is the application of ahc Inc and Thomas Bak bro for a site plan special permit under zoning bylaw section 10.4 at 358a and 358b great Road the proposed project consists of construction of two additions to the single family dwelling and the re building of the office space into mixed use building consisting of retail space and three dwelling units and you can go um to the town website and see the application materials if you're interested and we have one minute till our next public hearing John if you have a is this a l do you have a moment yes one minute I I was going to mention I forgot to earlier that I just wanted to call attention to the consent agenda okay the board recently adopted a new policy for handling one-day liquor licenses um whereas the chair or the town manager can approve them them uh and the the policy states that if we do that we would then file a report and that's shown as item number 26 um so it doesn't technically have to be approved and we can talk about whether it makes sense to to have that there or not but we just that was our first attempt of of adding it to the agenda thanks thank you okay on to our second public hearing um notice is hereby given that the select board will hold a public hearing on November 18th 2024 at 7:15 p.m. in the Francis fauler hearing room 204 act in Town Hall 472 Main Street and remotely bya video conference and call in on the application of rbsb Incorporated DBA Ro Brothers Supermarket for a change of beneficial interest and corporate reorganization of Ro Brothers at 305 Main Street Acton from a computer please click on the link to join the public meeting www. Acton mass.gov meting slsb or from a telephone dial 6468769923 and enter webinar ID 5039 91 18785 telephone users may dial star9 to request to speak after joining the meeting computer and app users may use the raiseed hand feature to request to speak uh do we have someone here from Ro Brothers online mebe there's a hand up yes Andrew Upton good evening everyone how are you I'm doing great with me uh is my colleague uh Alexander Fury who will help to answer any questions if there are any but I'm I'm glad to give you a brief overview of of both applications great um or do you want to just uh say what you are um here for I'd be glad to uh the the first one uh number four on your agenda is an application for a change of Ben beneficial interest filing which is a corporate reorganization of the uh roach Brothers entity that holds the liquor license uh they're changing the name of a parent company and they're inserting a holding company uh all of this application is in anticipation of application number two where they were trans for a portion of the company but it's got to be reformatted a bit for tax purposes in this first initial application uh in neither application will there be any change to any aspect of the operation of roach Brothers uh the staff and manager will stay the same the hours the floor plan uh it's just a corporate change the first time and it's the second one which I can explain in more detail is a transfer of some of the stock to a new party and with that we're glad to answer any questions thank you for that m i could also mention excuse me that uh as you can see from the application this application has been pre preapproved by the abcc because it's such a complicated structure and because it's occurring for all nine of the roach Brothers Liquor licenses in Massachusetts and another dozen roach brother stores that don't have definitely a compendium any uh questions from Members Jim no it took me well staring at you know level one level two level three level four this is a very complicated structure but um I believe I understand the basics well enough uh to just go okay they're reorganizing Alyssa thank you um I think was it Edward Andrew Andrew sorry um I just have a question out of curiosity um because there's so many locations um what would be the uh effect of any one of the licensing entities whether it's a select board in one of those towns or a city council um denying the application not that we will I just was curious what happens it's so complicated and you have some many locations I assume you need a positive vote from all of the licensing authorities in in each town or city where the shops are uh we do need a positive vote um and I can tell you that so far we've gotten seven out of nine positive votes um and I believe that's really the reason that the abcc asks for a preapproval process when there's this many licenses they want to make sure that it's exactly right because there's so many and there's so much at stake here and that's why we did it with them before it comes to the local board to give you a degree of comfort uh that it's all correct thank you any other member questions no do I hear a motion oh any from any questions from the public no any online no this is Fury I I represent roach Brothers as well with Andrew and I just want to just emphasize that there are going to be no changes in the day-to-day operations of the roach Brothers in Acton uh we really value our uh that uh that community and I think we've been a good uh neighbor in that community so I just wanted to just Echo that thank you I move to close the public hearing second all in favor I I yes I and I move to approve the change of beneficial interest and corporate reorganization for RB sbw Inc doing business as roach Brothers Supermarket at 305 Main Street in Acton second all in favor I I so now to tackle the um second portion a change in beneficial interest and transfer of stock RBS BW Inc DBA Ro brother Supermarket 305 Main Street Andrew you need a brief summary of this one yes I would love one I always love summaries great now that now that we've approved the reorganization for corporate purposes this is the actual transfer of 51% to a new owner so some of the roach brothers are selling their shares uh for estate planning purposes uh and they're being purchased by Michael bazo of the bazo company along with his uh Employee Stock ownership plan so he will buy 51% um as Alex said on the last one it'll be the same for this one the staff the managers the hours the floor plan there are no plans to change any aspect of roach Brothers the senior roach Brothers will still be owners and we expect customers to see no difference whatsoever once this is approved thank you for the this explanation members do you have any questions any online questions No Hands raised M Madam chair thank you Alysa thanks so um you mentioned that the senior uh roach siblings will still be owners um but I was reading that in the application that the reason for the transfer of stock is that they're looking to retire so um can you tell us a little bit about the timeline of that and what changes other than you know expanding and maybe opening up new stores in um in another state might happen at that time um Alex do you want to speak to that I'm not aware of any specific expansion plans I know the bazos are excited to partner with the remaining roach Brothers at the stores here in Massachusetts that's right so so the as you know roach Brothers is familyowned and the roach brother siblings they've um most of their Shares are owned in trust as it is is the the upper level management of roach Brothers this the CEO the president the the executives that's not going to change and none of the employees are going to change so really this is uh as Andrew indicated it's for a state uh planning purposes uh bazos is their current food distribut uh food distri distributor um who is taking a majority ownership interest in roach Brothers roach Brothers has no plans to expand outside of of Massachusetts my understanding is bazos does do business outside of Massachusetts um and the reason that they are interested in acquiring the majority interest is that the roach Brothers uh brand and those stores have been really successful and they uh they really value the communities that roach Brothers is uh is is in so they're going to continue to service all of the existing stores and especially the the Acton store thank you Jim I was wondering if you happened to KN if you happened to know if pizos was the distributor for um Stop and Shop you know I don't know the answer to that question I don't know what their other uh where else they distribute um um groceries too but I I understand that they're a large distributor up and down the East Coast okay thanks it's I'm sure it's a matter of public record I can look it up just curious since we're about to see a big [Music] um uh sort of a battle between stop and chop and roach brothers and I wanted to understand how the new ownership might be affecting that but I can look into that on my own thanks I move to close the public hearing second all in favor I so yep um I'm I move to approve the uh special use permit and transfer of uh stock uh by rbsb W doing business as roach Brothers Supermarket 305 Main Street second all in favor I and I think there's going to be no battle they offer different things so thanks thank you for coming thank you very much thanks for listening thank you so much good evening let's see is it 7:26 um are 7:25 p.m use special permit for 2 278 Great Road country canine Retreat LLC and looks like we have a presentation [Applause] okay quickly I'll read the notice of the public hearing the act and select board will hold a public hearing on November 18th 2024 at 7:25 continue from November 4th 2024 in the Francis fauler hearing room 204 at the Town Hall 472 to Main Street Acton and virtually at Acton mass.gov meeting BOS on the application of Nancy wbski for a use special permit under zoning bylaw section 3.5.1 and 10.3 at 278 great road map E4 parcel 15 application materials and how to participate remotely are available online and Acton Town Hall hello welcome thank you uh my name is Samantha uh I'm the manager at Country K9 at 272 Great Road um did you want a rundown of the application or that sounds great a little synopsis okay great yeah um so we're basically just applying for a permit just to relocate our business uh like I said we are currently located at 272 Great Road we're basically just trying to pick up and move to a new location uh the building we're currently in is really not in the best shape uh it's basically it just trying to move that sounds great I was trying to get my I thought for a moment you were in the building where the Great Road Veterinary was that is where we are correct do any members have questions or Jim well I can report that um when we talked about this at the previous meeting there were some outstanding um septic capacity questions uh and we've heard back now from from Matt Dow our health director that um those issues have been resolved to his satisfaction thank you Alysa thanks so um it's not clear to me from the from the aerial map and I didn't uh go over and visit the site uh before the hearing but do you have an outdoor area for the dogs currently at number 272 uh yes we do okay all right um so it looks like it it looks like the building that you're moving into is smaller and the outdoor area is smaller so you're not looking to grow but to be in a in a building that's in better shape better condition both better shape and it's the outlay of the building if that makes sense the square footage may be smaller but 272 is kind of like an old house so the rooms and the way the building is laid out it's it's hard to utilize um that building over there has a lot more wide open rooms more space to utilize it just makes more sense for the type of business we're running okay um and in the fenced area what are what's the process for um waste disposal so we currently we have a dumpster on site we scoop all feces urine gets sprayed with a hose or just seeps into the environment honestly um and all waste gets disposed in the dumpster how how often is the waist picked up like on a daily two weeks oh not from the dumpster I mean from the fenon area oh multiple times throughout the day oh yeah oh yeah sorry I misunderstood that question I'm like thanks no we don't let it sit for two weeks not a dog owner are you no it's a fair question it's a fair question any other questions excuse me great oh do we have qu online questions nope no hands Madam chair D I move to close the public hearing second all in favor I yes David uh I I move to approve the spe special permit um uh at 278 Great Road for Country canine Retreat um that's it thank you very much yeah we got to vote pardon me I second it oh yeah yeah yeah cool cool all in favor I I I I thank you sorry I didn't heara Madam chair I didn't hear your second yes I have this um uh thought in the back of my head that when it's a special permit like this we need to actually uh affirmatively find uh there's some affirmative findings we have to do we have to agree to about its adherence to the master plan and all that I have no concern about that but it might be helpful for us to um get that uh on the record um so if I was looking at the document I would find what those findings were but I'm not finding it right away Kayla yeah sure if if Kayla's there and can remind us what it is that we need planer Kayla s is in the house can you help us Kayla hi good evening members of the board um if you have open um my memo it's actually at the very end of the memo and it has the five different findings the board has to make um uh Madam chair I move that we find that this special permit is consistent with the master plan is in harmony with the purpose intent of the bylaw the zoning bylaw will not be detrimental or injurious to the neighborhood in which it takes place is appropriate for the site in question and complies with all applicable uh requirements of the bylaw second second all in favor yes I thanks Jim thanks thank you Kayla thanks David so next is our presentation um on tax relief programs how are you CJ hi everybody I'm good how are you good to see you again all right so for those who don't know me I think everyone here does but um my name is CJ Carroll I'm the principal assessor in acting I've been here for about a year and a half um and today I'm going to be talking to you about the property tax exemptions offered um for the town specifically for fiscal 25 though they don't change much um from year to year so um to start off I'd love to give let me know if I get too far from this microphone on the upper deck the upper deck stay it'll stay all right so so um first I want to talk a little bit about who could potentially be eligible for these programs so there are several I'll go slightly in depth um on them in the following slides but um basically seniors over 65 meeting circuit and income and asset qualifications as well as Disabled Vets surviving spouses um and blind persons and individuals in situations of extreme hardship so first ones uh senior exemption uh likely the most popular in terms of how many qualify and how many utilize these programs um the the primary to are Clause 41 so Clause 41c specifically is for a persons 65 and older um in actin so so at the state level $1,000 is the amount for Clause 41c there is um an option locally for towns to or municipalities to double that amount which Acton has taken on several years ago prior to my time um so the amount is $2,000 for this up there you can see as well I won't go into it line by line but um the different um income and asset restrictions as well as you know residency requirements um similar is the senior tax deferral there are not many um and and we'll go into why a little bit in in the other programs offered but the senior tax deferral is not offered as as or not as taken as much in acting and a lot of that is because you know it does it does put a lean on the home and it does require pay payment later when the property is transferred um so the other the other options are the Clause 17d that's surviving spouses the amount is less it's uh $700 the reason that you see that um strange amount is a cost of living adjustment which I'll talk about a little bit um later on and how that relates to town meeting next week but um then you have the senior circuit breaker based tax credit which is something that I do hope um in future visits to the uh to to educate people a little bit more on because it's a program that I think could definitely be wider utilized and while there is an extra step in there um the the amount that that the taxes could be Exempted is huge for for for folks so that one is based on the senior circuit breaker income tax credit through state income taxes and um while that qualification does need to be met in the prior in come year after that um and and and those amounts are up there as well to some extent after that um the taxes can actually be Exempted up to 50% and there are some adjustments off of that that need to be made as such as other adjustments that were already made to those taxes but you know it really is a great program that that we don't have you know there's there's close to 400 people in town at least who qualify for this and already received the credit and we only have a couple dozen in the program so next is disabled veterans and surviving spouse exemptions by surviving spouse up there it is different from the surviving spouse 17d um that that does mean surviving spouses of individuals whose spouses were died as a result of their spouse's service so that whether that's police or fire or disabled veterans um if that person passes away due to their service whether killed in the line of duty or complications after that person does receive a full exemption for their real estate taxes for as long as they own that property until they remarry um the Clause 22A through e is for disabled veterans still alive um and those amounts vary from $800 to $3,000 and and there's a few different variations and that depends on what type of disability they have oh and then I do want to talk a little bit about Article Five at special town meeting just to give a very quick summary on what that is it essentially adopts a cost of living adjustment similar to what you saw in that 17d where each year the Consumer Price Index adjusts a certain amount I believe last year was something in the range of three and a half or five 4% and so that amount that you see both on the income requirement side if if applicable and then also on the benefit side increases by that amount each year and that's what would be implemented with Clause 22i at town meeting if voted um blind persons fairly uh straightforward if you're blind and you receive the necessary certificate you get $500 as an exemption and real estate state taxes Community preservation act exemption so um with some also income restrictions um you can have your CPA sech charge waved um and that CPA search charge is essentially 1 and a half% of your property value minus the first 100,000 times the tax rate so the last one um specifically that I want to talk about is hardship exemptions this one is at the discretion of the board of assessors um this is exercised um for people who are in situations either medically or financially or both who really Dire Straits um and it's it's something that is looked at Case by case um on an individual basis and determined you know does this person need this and and to what extent so I just wanted to um talk a little bit about numbers and acting because I think these are really cool to see and I I do think that it'll be something that um a lot of people will be happy to see so um like I mentioned before Acton adopted um the local option to double the exemption amounts listed in each of the respective Clauses um also wanted to talk a little bit about what the overlay is um not going to do a whole lesson on it but essentially it's the fund that funds both abatements and exemptions largely exemptions at least in Acton but it's that amount that is set aside each year within the budget um that that does both cover us for individuals who um contest their property value and are correct and that is reduced and then it also funds people who receive these exemptions for the most part um so if you look here I looked at the I found recently that the Department of Labor Services actually uh publishes the it's called the mgm1 so the amount that each Town grants under each clause for an exemption that amount is listed um in the DLS data bank and so I wanted to put up here some surrounding communities and and how much they are each exempting to folks in need whether that's disabled veterans or seniors or or lwi income um and I I thought it was was pretty interesting because the only two towns that um even come close were Newton and Lexington larger community um and about I believe it was around 70 or 80% of their um exemptions are deferrals so that amount is to be paid back to the town so again briefly because it'll come up again next week at the classification hearing just after town meeting but the residential exemption I wanted to give everyone a refresher because I know it comes up frequently and I know that it's something that every year when I think about it for the first time I need to scratch my head and think how does that work again um so essentially it's different than every other exemption because the other exemptions that we talked about here were either based on a qualification such as a disabled veteran or blind person or means tested which means the the means that you have what what you own and what you make as income directly impact your ability to qualify so the residential exemption is different um because it directly shifts the tax burden um of the tax levy within the property class within that residential property class from lower property values to higher property values so and then it excludes from that non-owner occupied or rental properties um so the way that that works is it exempts a certain amount on each qualifying property so say a pretty standard amount you might say would be 10% so 10% of the the break even point you might call it of that Community say it's $700,000 if 10% were voted in $770,000 of each qualifying property would be Exempted meaning that a hypothetical $100,000 property would be for tax purposes worth 30,000 and a $2 million property for tax purposes would be worth 100 or 1.93 wordy slides I'm sorry so how would this impact Acton I think it's important to talk about um so I listed here the the the primary impacts that you would see in fiscal 2024 because we don't have all these fiscal 2025 numbers just yet um you'd have probably a break even point of $760,000 and that's an important number it's an estimate but it's an important number because that at that point above that is where you would see a tax increase for individuals and below that is where you would see a tax decrease and however far you are from that point it is proportionate so you then see because each of those qualifying properties would be worth $770,000 left you would see a tax rate increase so that would shift up likely from 1667 where it is now to 1829 um so there'd be no overall impact on the tax levy as I mentioned before that's not how this works it Direct shifts within the class so non-owner occupied tax bills would go up 99.7% that would be for any Apartments you might see condos that that aren't um occupied by the owner um so about 40 almost 41% of single family tax bills would decrease um about 59% would actually see an increase um on the condo side um and this is speaking strictly about if every if everything were owner occupied which it is not um 7 6% or so of condo bills would decrease whereas 24 or so would be due to increase from this um it's also likely worth noting that rent payments would be likely to increase due to non-owner occupied tax expenses increasing that's everything thank you thanks for for all that information was helpful all right any questions or Jim um just a comment first because I give this little speech every time you come um it's it's fundamental to Acton STP is we we look at an average of what's used um and we just use that so um while I believe we did bump that funding slightly due to the override um in general it's funded based on recent years usage and so I don't I don't foresee that being an issue and we do there is there is always um if you're doing it properly there's always um a liability amount set aside that's reported to the Department of Revenue each year um that pads that overlay a little bit that ensures that if we were to lose a large ATB case or if something were to go Ry on any other end that we do have that backup just so that the rest of the budget isn't impacted by overlay fluctuations um the um it seems like the hardship exemptions um sort of opened up uh the the the opportunity uh for um households that might not meet strictly the criteria and the other um so uh before I encourage more people to do that can you speak a little bit about um how privacy is handled um yeah so that's extremely important both legally and obviously to my board and and US within the department um and and I think what's really great about the way that it's done specifically in our department is um there are a lot of seniors especially um who are providing a lot of extremely sensitive information um and there's a lot of people who have built a really strong trust for the department but also specifically for Marty within the office and there's a lot of people who will come in I'll come and help them and they'll say I'll I'll be back tomorrow when Marty's in you excuse me so that is it is really great to see yeah she's a treasure um and the last question was uh since you were talking about the residential exemption um is that what conquer just did and do we have any knowledge about how that's worked out or not yeah so it is what conquer implemented um something that I'll touch on a little bit um in the classification hearing conquered was the first Community to um U ize that outside of cities and um traditionally vacation communities so you're going to see it down the cape a lot you're going to see it in cities um I think that I did speak to Meredith who's the assessor in Acton um to see you know you got to check in on the other assessors in the area but then also just to see how that went um how it was implemented um things like that are always a struggle in the first year so there was that aspect of it but then I I think there's also much more of a split now in terms of the opinion both of the select board over there but then just in general of the folks involved in in in the community and and who and who listen to select board meetings and who attend classification um it's pretty split on whether or not it should be implemented again um and I think a lot of that just you know I don't want to speculate but a lot of that I think has to do with the portion of it it's not means tested the other thing that concerns me is the impact on renters uh as then you called that out in your presentation which was really helpful and you know 30% of people in act and live in apartments those are our tend to be our you know low to moderate income uh folks and if if we're if we implemented A system that was going to tend to raise their rents that's not really a direction I'd be interested in but thanks of course David can I just conf confirm my understanding of the residential ex exemption I'm not advocating for it but basically if I say this in my own words putting the rented properties aside you take 90% the taxed value is 90% of the assessed value and then the levy is the residential portion of the levy is divided among that on that basis rather than the 100% of the assessed value is that correct almost the so the only um the only thing there is it's 10% of of that break even point or it may be the median those two numbers are typically very close to each other but um so say that break even point or median we're at 700,000 70,000 would be that 10% and and you all would vote on that amount but 10% is a fairly standard amount to vote in um it can be from 0 to 35% so that 70,000 is a fixed amount so whether your property is worth 200,000 or your property is worth 3 million that 70,000 is applied across the board and and that's how that shift happens so that 70,000 is a huge percent of a $200,000 property but it's very small percent of a $3 million property so that new increased tax rate has a much higher impact on the higher value properties because that decrease proportionally is less thank you for that Lissa thanks for the presentation it was really clear and helpful um I was a little nervous when you said you have to try and figure out that that Resident how does this work how are we supposed to figure it out um I was surprised that only a couple dozen are taking advantage of the circuit breaker credit when we have 400 folks or households who um qualify um how big is the effort to reach those folks uh can we send a letter out can we go to places other than the senior center like maybe to some of the 55 plus um Housing Development to get folks aware more aware yeah I think I think any ideas like that um in terms of setting a targeted letter I don't think it's something that we know who those people are and and that 400 is a very rough number I could be plus or minus quite a bit um but I think yeah any Outreach we can do outside of the COA I also think focusing when when we do presentations whether it's it's coming here or it's going to the COA focusing on that one specifically is important because um I think it's easy to glaze over the fact that it's it can be up to 50% that's a huge amount you know the average tax bill in act and I don't have it calculated for fiscal 25 yet but I'll I'll have that number for you next week but last year it was $4,000 so that's huge um and one other thing I wanted to mention on that um acting's a little bit interesting you may hear something about a senior means tested exemption that other communities implement this is essentially the same vehicle with a lot of the same um restrictions and a lot of the same ways of implementing the only difference is one it is directly through the overlay um rather than being another shift like a lot of other communities utilize it and two it's actually the vehicle that's used for it is that Clause 18 hardship so when you look at our stats on how many Clause 18 hardships there are the circuit breaker is built into that and I think a lot of that is because when this was implement M there was no State mandated way of implementing the senior means tested act and and this was again before my time but act and implemented this before the state sponsored it so it was it was pieced together through another Clause the Clause 18 that already existed thank you C oh two people online go ahead hi this is terara from up here massav and I please don't put my name into the zoom um it's a private company uh let them go through the public info request if they want to know um otherwise if you put it in I consider it a violation of my privacy that aside I encourage people to sign up um the town uh Hall appears to be very careful about the information so if you think you qualify please go down you if you may qualify at least just go down and have a conversation they're very nice and they'll respect your privacy they won't be everybody telling you about your private information anyways I hope that uh we can avoid forcing people to apply um and that we can find a way to automatically give the circuit breaker people the discount to avoid having to come down and bring a whole bunch of stuff a lot of these folks are elderly um there was some talk about a process where the state would uh send a letter to them if they wouldn't give us the list if they wouldn't give the town the list of people and so that we could automatically give them the discount to ask the state to send a letter to each person so that they can sign it and send it to town hall so that they're automatically qualified and it's very very easy um relative to conquered law it doesn't say I I couldn't tell whether you're proposing to bring something to town meeting uh like Congress law but I think it sounds worse I feel like we've done a much better job having flexibility uh in Acton's um program and allowing the discretion to be made by uh the assessor and um uh I I just hope that you don't make it to even more strict it's already strict enough I think um relative to the I just have two more things uh the tax increase will probably result in rent that was an interesting thing to hear because when the town wanted a tax increase it said it will not likely affect rents so I I hope that you'll reconcile that in the future um and relative to the landlord exemption can you explain to me um what number of units or buildings already get the exemption is it large complexes only small number smaller complexes is it affluent you know uh expensive rental places because it feels to me like the removal of a tax exemption for landlords that doesn't live there sounds really attractive uh remember most lowest income renters are not receiving they're not they're large complexes so anyways if you could give some more information and um that would be great thank you oh CJ do you have a so just just in the request for more information I wasn't completely clear but I do want to answer whatever question you might have um so if you if you want to reach out I can provide a little more clarity on that definitely I know it had something to do with Apartments my basic question is is what I what you asked me for tonight is this just the standard votes that you ask for every year is it you recommending anything different so this isn't the classification hearing this is just a presentation to to make sure the select board and anyone else who is interested is is informed on the on what's being offered I only brought up the residential exemption because I know it's always a topical conversation this time of year and it's implementation Wise by far the most complicated type of exemption so I just wanted to make sure the information was out there and that everyone understood it well thank you I think the reminder is great before the class you know the classification hearing so thank you so much um is there another person online with a question yes Jeff you should be able to speak thank you very much um Jeff Burg 26 Alcott Street um a question and then um a comment if I may the question is the select board has as one of its short-term goals U relief tax relief and I'm wondering um what is the process that the select board is going to put place to address that is it going to be just to reach out with people who are not taking advantage of current situation and laws or is it to look for different laws and different minimums and maximums or things of that nature so that's my question and I'll comment later pardon me sure uh thank you I so I think this presentation tonight is just an example of how we're uh advancing that short-term goal uh another example is article five which is on the special town meeting warrant it's a a new uh tax relief program or an increase to an existing tax relief program that um the select Port have put on the warrant for the town people to to uh consider thank you John okay well then may I make a comment please yes um so obviously everyone agrees that taxes are pretty high in acting and it's hurting a lot of people um in their ability to stay in town um there's if the pie keeps getting bigger then um it is very difficult to to pay for so uh I know the select board is going to put equal effort and the town manager to work with the school committee to try and mitigate the increases of expenses because um there's only so so much milk the cow can produce and um we've got to we've got to really look at the other side of it the expense side but the one thing that I am concerned about is there are various um well-meaning um efforts within the town to have everything whether it's uh Green Space whether it's to have people to have homes with low income whether it's to help uh expand um renting uh in in town to have a more heterogeneous um Community all of which are well well-meaning and important but I go to some of those meetings and there's never discussion about the impact on taxes um and I find that to be a very uh problematic that we don't always have um on the list of things the good and the bad um well what would this do if we um expand the number of people who don't pay taxes because they have very low income housing well they have more kids in the schools and I think if you do the math if you have more than one child in the school or even one child I think at one point you're paying uh Less in taxes than it costs us to educ that individual so if we expand the number of people who have children in the town um our school uh taxes will go up significantly I'm not saying that's not a a good thing I mean I had kids that I brought through the town and now I don't have kids and I'm paying to subsidize people who do but I think that that we always need to keep in in our Forefront how does this all add up be because at the end we wake up one day and if we don't work hard on the expense side we don't work hard on the right balance of people who can afford $ $20,000 and people who can't afford that kind of money then we'll uh paint ourselves into a corner and we'll have overrides which barely will get through and perhaps next time we'll never get through so I wish to uh just encourage you to encourage the various subcommittees and other groups looking for um different aspects of how to make the town Greener or um more balanced in in in kids without kids more balanced in income that we always try and write take a good balance um of what that means to the to us thank you very much thank you Alissa um CJ can you confirm whether it's accurate that the town can request from the state a letter sent out to qualified households that they can then bring to the town those qualified households for the circuit exemption um that exactly I don't know um my concern with that is that these exemptions are protected by believe it's Clause 38D under chap chapter 59 although I may be wrong on that which is does very strictly prohibit any sharing of any income or personal financial information it's it's really very strict about who can have that and who can share that so at least on the town level in terms of the circuit breaker income side um on the state level I don't know but on the town side I when I did first hear that I I did wonder if it would be possible to implement with those uh with those confidentiality restrictions that we have to abide by so if the board agrees I would request that we direct staff to look into that because it sounds like it wouldn't be a violation of um uh sharing the financial information if the state were to communicate directly to the qualified households and then that would just be a nudge for them to to come to the um to the town hall to the assessor's office and present whatever information they need to apply it seems like that would be more effective than you know hoping people will show up wherever we are or be listening to the meetings when we're discussing it so if that is is truly something that exists um and it's a means of reaching more folks who are qualified without the town having that knowledge I think we should pursue it so would that be a thumbs up yeah thumbs up thank you CJ I appreciate it thank you all bye see you next week sorry our uh next presentation of prelimin preliminary level services estimat and capital needs thank you uh members of the board I'm your town manager uh John mandera we're in the budget process we kicked it off this year in August and uh we promis to give eight or nine presentations and I think this is the third presentation and uh all in the effort to continue the work uh that we started last year of of having the discussions that we usually do downstairs have those discussions more here with all of you with members of the public as well um so this year we asked the department to give us uh level Services budget requests and highlight any programs or positions that they need to do their jobs um they were asked to advance priorities that were select board goals and look at ways to improve customer service and ensure Equitable access so uh here we are today with um the presentation of what uh we came up with so just to reiterate the goals that we have uh that the board adopted there are seven short-term goals uh tax relief programs being one of them others related to uh infrastructure uh finishing the park and some work on policies and our sign bylaws and then the long-term goals are looking at our fire department and how it's uh operates and deployed and then several other things that are consistent with the way the board's been uh prioritizing our work so we have all that information and then we started uh first with capital uh so sorry not first with capital we as we prepare the FY 26 budget we need to look at all things that go into it and the biggest things that we come up with and it's a theme from last year is health insurance we we with the board support and the union support made a huge change in our health insurance uh and even with that we're still faced with with likely a 10% increase in our health insurance costs this year it would be much worse if we hadn't changed uh so that's sort of the uh the Silver Lining but it still continues to be a fixed cost that um takes away from the rest of the uh the things that we're trying to do here if it costs us uh it's going to cost us approximately $850,000 just for health insurance and pension increase year-over-year that's a huge chunk of what we would typically use to to uh do other things so it's something that U I'm asking the board to help us prioritize uh the budgets and I just wanted to raise that again here tonight uh other things that in addition to health insurance we have contractual increases for personnel we have uh costs for supplies and services that are going up I think that's a theme that you'll see later is that supplies and services are going up more than we want them to um and so we're going to try to find ways to mitigate that but that's where we're at right now uh then of course we have evolving service demands we have people that want uh the streets and the parks and the sidewalks and the playgrounds and everything to be maintain better uh we do our best but I think there's always people that want it to be better and and so do we um and so those are some of the things that we're trying to do within our level services so when you look at Capital uh the biggest number that you see here is the Department of Public Works facility this is a preliminary cost estimate based on the schematic design uh the building committee met last week uh and made a commitment to really really work on this number that work hasn't happen yet although uh it's underway and I think there's some really good ideas that are already being considered as of right now the number is 47 million that's a project that is a select board priority and uh we hope to advance it um some other big projects that are uh been requested from departments are Town Hall HVAC and electrification project that's something that we're investing arpa funds in to do the design work for and so we're preparing to do this big overhaul of this system which was built initial parts of it a long time ago some of it in the in the '90s in in in both cases it needs to be replaced with something more modern and to achieve the board's goals it needs to be electric that's an expensive Endeavor we would borrow for that uh the Hayward and main intersection that was on the docket last year and it made it pretty far down the process and it was taken off at near the end uh but that's still a need that's been identified and a funding that uh needs uh needs needs to move forward other complete streets in sidewalks projects were always proposing and in this case a DPW put forth 1.9 Mill milon worth of complete streets and sidewalk projects the a fire engine needs to be replaced and again as I mentioned we normally we have a multi-year replacement cycle but because of the lead times for these things we're now condensing the authorizations so that we can actually Implement our our replacement cycle because you can't just ask for one every other year because you'll get them all five years later so we're going to we need to replace a fire engine it's it's got a few years left in it but we need to get the authorization on the books um at this upcoming town meeting uh the library and the Town Hall Parking Lot maybe you park there tonight um it needs to be improved for pedestrian circulation certainly for traffic circulation and uh it's the condition is isn't great either and so that's a project that's been discussed the select board uh endorsed or adopted or approved or supported a design that the Public Works director brought here recently the library trustees I believe like it as well if there's an interest in funding it it would be over a million uh we also completed the facility studies last year um and one of the many projects that were identified were replacing windows in in the three old fire stations that older fire stations that we have um so that's a request that's on the docket here uh the food pantry is going to be starting construction at 19 Maple Street uh this winter based on the lease that the board entered with them however in parallel we are still working on improving that site for the purchase the the purpose that it was initially acquired which is for uh commuter rail parking um and to do that redesign implementation of the new pedestrian and traffic circulation and at the same time provide parking that for the food pantry that is separate uh that project would need funding to move forward again uh we're going to be talking about storm water later tonight last year the report from um one of our Consultants said that we need to invest um nearly a million dollars a year over the next 10 years to catch up with the infrastructure needs that we have for storm water last year we did I believe 800,000 uh the DPW director is proposing 850 this year uh another item is the public safety radio project uh we funded phase one of that with mitigation funds from the avlon development and that is underway it should be happening this winter uh but Phase 2 is just as important and there isn't any additional funding available for that so we would ask that it be uh considered this year at town meeting so that's um approximately $13 million worth of borrowing not counting the DW building uh in addition to that there was $2.5 Million worth of uh projects that we would typically look at as free cash projects our Public Safety facility was built uh 20 approximately 20 years ago it did not have sufficient um locker room space for uh female police officers I mean it was sufficient then uh but it it no longer is sufficient and in and so we're looking to renovate the uh building to uh make more space of in the women's locker room and also some other adjustments that need to be made at the same time we need to continue our Cruiser replacement program uh that uh Cruisers are more expensive now to not just buy but to fit up so you used to be able to get them for 50,000 and now they're closer to 70 uh to replace but we also supplement that with green energy uh funding grants so we think that we can get three uh with that uh Public Works transport station they they need a front-end loader that would likely be funded through the transportation Enterprise but it's just here for your to see so you can see it the carpets at the Memorial Library were installed at during the renovation and um they've reached their well they still work but um there's an interest in in uh replacing them uh and sometime soon and so that's a $200,000 approximately project uh if you've noticed we use electronic message boards to tell people about what's happening uh whether it's urgent things um or sort of town pro pro programmatic things we've had one of these trailers over at the corner of 27 and uh Great Road for years as far as I can remember um and we think it's a good spot to put a permanent one so there's a process with that we understand but uh one of the things that we would need is funding and so that that's what this is it's an electronic message sign board that would be permanently installed there hopefully it doesn't cost 175,000 but I think it's more expensive uh than than you would guess um other programs replacing a backo again more public facilities Replacements uh the library's bathrooms are also uh heavily heavily used that's the building gets thousands of people through there um it's a very very busy building and the bathrooms need to be replaced um and they be made accessible as well there's Ada related improvements that we could make if when we replace those fire uh need needs to replace the handheld radios we're replacing the infrastructure that supports the radios but within the next few years we need to replace all the handhelds uh they needed a command a command vehicle and again our facility study identified a need to replace roofing systems on several of our buildings and we think it makes sense to do to hire a designer and put together a design package to design six of them in this case at the same time and then we can figure out how to fund them once we have the designs so that's a lot I think that's there's even more I'm not going to go through all these but so there's several projects uh some that you may remember from last year or the Fourth of July celebration uh that was approved at the recent town meeting so we have fireworks uh funded uh for the coming July 4th uh this request would be for the following year um and other items in here um town meeting clickers uh the clickers we have work very well uh but there are a more modern version available which we think would be a benefit for us to uh pursue and so we're looking to replace those in phases phase one starting this year and um earlier this year the board adopted new transfer station fee schedule and there was an interest in some type of program um and here's $110,000 to to fund that program to to provide a lower cost transfer station sticker access that's the capital and this I already mentioned um that there is likely uh going to be value engineering done to this number or there will be value engineering done to this number but the current cost estimate when you include not just the construction but when you include the design cost and the OPM cost and all the other things you need to do when you build the building it ends up being just over uh just under 47 million uh that would be something that we would propose I would propose that we fund through a debt exclusion and because we wouldn't be able to cover the debt payments within um the existing Revenue structure that we're working within so I just wanted to raise that up this year the bo uh departments have also continued to ask for Staffing to meet the needs of the operations that they oversee um this is a table with a few colums um the positions that were requested uh from in public safety were a new fire prevention officer a new police Lieutenant um fire prevention officer is pretty self-explanatory it's a position that we don't have and a position that we need um there's more we could be doing in that area and having a dedicated resource for it is something that the chief wants and I think I think I do too but it needs to be we need to figure out how to fund it uh police Lieutenant uh we have uh two lieutenants and and a third Lieutenant is being requested to help some of the newer and emerging um responsibilities that they have at the police department uh related to records and higher level UH responsibilities Rel it's particularly with the body cameras and the footage and all the things that go along with that we're finding that the higher level supervision is needed to help manage that program uh as good as it is it it's created additional work uh and a need for additional um administrative support the fire chief has also requested um eight firefighters and paramedics um we did apply for a safer Grant I don't think we we we I don't think we were awarded the grant because we didn't hear that we did um but the reason for that is our fire stations currently operate with only two people in each of them and it's really having a huge impact on our ability to operate the department and um so one way to address that would be to add more Staffing um and when you hire firefighters they work in four shifts so if you just hire two you're really only funding firefighters for two days out of eight days uh so you really need to hire you you need to hire in in groups of four um basically to be able to fund seven days a week of of a new position uh the there's a need in administration for more resources and human resource Human Resources um our accounts payable office could use some part-time support our it office is buzzing and there's a lot going on there they they're looking for help with office management and help desk technician and then uh benefits Administration uh we share currently share a benefits person with the school district and um going forward we think funding is needed to make that work better uh and the COA is is looking for a new Outreach and volunteer coordinator that's over a million dollars in Staffing requests uh it's not something that we put in the budget request just because it it would knock it out of of of of a realm of something that that I think is worth discussing uh so for tonight's purposes there were preliminary adjustments made to the level Services budget which are shown on the on the final column of what we have in the budget that you'll see probably on the next slide um yeah that's pretty small sorry uh but I'll hand this out uh after and and put online but basically um this is the fi25 budget and then it shows how in the Department's requests how things are increasing and trending I think the things I want to call your attention are uh the big the big increases are 29% in waste removal costs that's actually the cost for hazardous waste day it costs um that's going their request right now we had one hazardous wayte day funded in the budget they want to fund a second one that's what that 29% cost increase is is to fund a second hazardous waste day um another notable one is supplies and services as I mentioned earlier a 23% increase in a normal budget I will go through and make adjustments and reductions to those that hasn't happened yet I wanted I should have probably said that earlier uh as I mentioned before instead of spending time downstairs at the conference table refine these budgets I'm showing them to you mostly as they were presented to me um and just for s for communication purposes I still intend to spend the next weeks refining those numbers uh and any direction or guidance or input I get from you tonight will help with that process uh other notable increases are utilities 0% increase the reason that's notable is that uh utility our utility costs are increasing but we have an Energy Efficiency fund which is funded from net metering credits and other sources that we used to that we're using to offset our electricity costs mostly and that is having the effect of mitigating any increases that we're seeing so we believe that we'll be able to keep our utilities budget relatively level for the next few years even as we continue to Electrify our facilities because of that um funding that's set aside for that purpose um next page is kind of a breakdown that you probably could read better than the previous page um all in all the requested the requested budget items it were about a $2.3 million increase over last year um if you leave Capital as it is that that's equates to more than between a five and 6% increase in the budget um that's not that's not a budget I'd bring to you um for recommendation but that's what we have in our level Services requests so I just wanted to share that with you tonight um we are assuming that we will be able to work with the semetary commission and and with the select board on the two offsets that we introduced last year and have those come back um in this coming budget we're assuming that the subsidies that we provide to the rise operations we'll have a moderate increase of 3% um the capital that we did last year we just carried forward there's a chance that out of that huge list that we just went over that in the end it's less than this and and so then the the 5.6 would actually be less um but there's work that we need to do to reduce the operating budget and that work is starting um after we hear from you um I think that was the last slide oh this is the next steps so seeking initial feedback from the select board on the capital and the Staffing in particular I think some of the other things I I think I have some ideas for but that's really where I'm looking for some support and help and and and feedback and then also um seeking guidance for a budget Target we will have our next ALG meeting uh we're actually talking about it later in this meeting but we'll have our next ALG meeting um after special town meeting but before your next regular meeting so right now in the ALG there's a there's a total increase of 2.75 uh for the town spending which which is um different than what we have here so I just wanted to if there's any guidance you want to give on targets and how that's reflecting the LG plan I'd like to hear that as well and just a reminder we are having a budget workshop on the 16th it will be the night that I do present the capital plan that I think makes sense um and then I will present kind of a next version of um where we're at with refining the operating budget and then I just want to spend time hearing from from you all on what that looks like and the next step after that would be presenting the recommended budget and capital plan on the 13th our goal is to actually finish that just after the beginning of the year and publish it in advance a week in advance right the 8th I think and get it to all of you and the finance committee at the same time um so we have a lot to do in the next six weeks um but it's something that we do every year so I think we'll we'll be okay I just I look forward to your input and feedback on what we've discussed and uh I appreciate your your time tonight thank you John and hopefully it won't be eight iteration of the budgets like last year was it eight or nine no I I we're planning to do eight because I think it worked I think um it's not going to be as variable hopefully in the end but these presentations bring it out to the public and I get really good impa from all of you so I want to do the uh Maple Street parking lot changes um does that happen out of the parking lot fund or out of General Revenue normally we we in previous pre- pandemic we would have done that out of the parking lot fund that's correct we typically would do it that way and that's something that we would consider here uh just a little bit strained there um the parking Revenue hasn't come back entirely uh but that's definitely if not all of it some of it definitely would would come from that yes yeah so the the parking lots are beginning to fill we may want to look at parking fees again at some point uh We've you know and since the pandemic we've only reduced parking fees to try to attract people people back um maybe those some of them might need adjusting um especially if we have expenses there that you know we need to cover um you know that's what that's what the fund is designed for so um the second thing is for for me there are a couple things that um both on the capital side and the hiring side in the in the fire department you talked about Windows for the three older fire stations and another shift uh of firefighters for me I would like to see a a plan for the fire stations before we talked about anything um you know certainly before we talked about renovating any older fire station um you know I'd like you know I don't want to renovate a fire station and then say oh we don't need one of them uh a year after we renovate it that certainly doesn't make sense and then uh before we hire a staff which assumes an a number of firefighters I'd like to understand how many stations we're aiming for on the long term um because obviously that affects that that number so um any anyway uh to me uh you know cart horse thing um uh I you know I'd like to understand the the the station Plan before moving forward with either of those things thank you thank you Dean yeah a couple items um and I sent something to you uh the other day uh once we talk about utilities brought back to my mind um I think we need to spend some time and money um hopefully from the Energy Efficiency fund to uh go through our whole street light inventory um you those got swapped out to LEDs I think in excess of 15 years ago uh numerous outages throughout the town um even the lights that are still sort of operational I think they've arked down and we don't seem to be getting the lumens out of them um that we would expect I know it's been complicated because I believe our our vendor that's been providing Services doesn't want to do it anymore uh we had an arrangement inter Municipal agreement with Welsley I understand they've they're not interested in doing that so it's a complicated process but uh certainly as we encourage uh traffic calming Traffic Safety trying to get more people on bicycles and out on sidewalks um and not having decent street lights anymore I think that's the problem so I I hope we can come up with something on that and hopefully it's not something that's going to go directly to the budget uh when we swapped those out before I believe we paid for the entire uh replacement process out of the Energy Efficiency fund it was one of the the first major um expenditures from that fund that's one related to utilities and I think this is important as we get into the discussions about Public Works facility I would still like to see kind of a balance sheet we made a lot of assumptions on going to an auto electric fire station in North Acton and you know how much the solar was going to offset everything and I expect there's probably been some increase in maintenance costs because the systems are so much more complicated than what we have in the other three stations so if possible we could get a spreadsheet on that now that we've got you know a series of years that we can base these things on so I'd like to see that um because the same sort of questions people asked about all of those sources and use of electricity North Acton fire station is probably going to be discussed again for the Public Works building uh we certainly have fewer options now with the the changes in the bylaws but I think it's important that we be able to answer those questions and lastly as far as the Personnel requests uh and all difference to David's comments about the fire department I believe the last time we've added a firefighter EMT position to the fire department was in 1988 and you think of how the town has grown the services have grown um you we now theoretically can run three ambulances if we can keep three of them running uh even consolidating some of the stations we just need more people on the engines and more people available so personally I would prioritize uh adding those firefighters regardless of what we're going to do with reorganization and I would prioritize that as the highest Staffing need thank you Alysa thank you for all of this and I will definitely like David have to review it um again once it's um in docu share I agree with David about looking at the plan for the stations and whether or not we will be keeping all four open rather than closing one because I know we discussed that a bit last year and the and the renovations as well the window replacements um because we don't want to renovate a building that we that may be closed um so I also don't know whether or not we need more people um so Dean saying that we last added um paramedics firefighters in 1988 and the town has grown um but I'd like to I'd like to better understand um the the need for those additional shifts um and I had a question about the the HR director position does this undo the reorganization that happened a couple years ago uh thank you the reorganization to create the administration and finance um director who oversees both HR and finance uh in the end it doesn't undo it um but it restores part of it that so we we're able to turn two positions into one and uh we need to think about bringing three quarters of one back uh so and a lot of it has to do with secession planning and some of the work that we're doing if you've noticed uh it's it's been an evolving uh organization in the last few years in particular and we're doing our best to put people where they need to be to to be successful to recruit people in positions that make sense to oversee which groups and um we're preliminary preliminarily seeing a need to have someone Focus solely on human resources just because just because of the way we turn things over and um I'm happy to talk more about that later in the budget season so I have a question about the we can maybe talk about this during the DPW uh project update is that on the agenda every time um but I I wonder the the contingency for both design and um and the soft cost is 25 million what happens if there is not a need to expend that and we're we're already borrowing so we would be authorized to borrow to a certain amount and then we do so in um tranches or whatever groups chunks and so if in the end we understand that we're not going to need $300,000 for example we it would just it wouldn't be borrowed and we we would know that um but you know as we get to the kind of final borong we'd say all right wait a minute are we sure we need the rest of this or can we dial it back by a little bit so thank you Jim um thanks for this um I I really appreciate you're bringing the slightly raw numbers to us early on in the process and um you know and and laying out for us um you know the work that you and staff are going to need to do to bring them down um I I don't have a particular number in mind um I'm hoping that will emerge as the you know as the ALG reps continue to talk to each other but I do agree that it's it's important soon to have a a Target percentage um for growth so that we can you know you guys can work to it um y me you you have enough you have enough now because you you know you need to bring it down but as as you get closer to the number you you want to know where the number is um couple of small thoughts um when you mentioned the LED lighting uh Dean it it it it occurred to me that um um green communities grant funding might be appropriate since they fund did a lot of uh you know lighting upgrades in the past and if those things are 15 years old there's probably a good case to be made for uh you know for doing the upgrades and having the state pay for it um the other question I had was um uh is there already a separate funding source uh set aside for um you know the day when the public safety facility heating system fails because it's near the end of its life and we need to do a replacement there is not a specific funding source we recently made some repairs to it um and um we continue to monitor it there you know after 20 years you start to worry about how much longer you have um but I think uh when we compared the levels of um systems that needed investment this this building Rose above it uh in terms of urgency because I think those systems are even though they're nearing the end of life they're more manageable to to addressed than than some of the issues that we're having here um so the the short answer is no uh but you know the facilities department does have funding for short-term U repairs thank you and the the last question was one of the themes that came up uh last year uh as we were wrestling with um you know Rising costs on both the school side and the town side was that um there there were a number of um efforts we could imagine to save money but they required multi- years of investment in research before really making the kind of structural changes that allow for lower costs um you know the kind of things where we use technology to uh you know replace the need for hiring new people by by by using technology in a smarter way and I'm wondering where where that sits in your process where um you know where where where might you be looking for ideas um and are there any ideas that have already come to the surface that that we uh could expect you know might require a couple of years of an of of you know thinking investment and changes but would ultimately result in a lower cost structure thank you that's a good question I know that the finance committee is is engaging in an effort right now to so look at and explore things like that um in terms of Technology reducing our costs it's interesting uh as we Implement a new technology while it it it's more efficient than the way we did things before it creates new things that we now have to do um and so there may be an opportunity to consolidate some of those new things that we're doing as we Implement these new technologies but um we haven't found the Sweet Spot yet um one thing that we do think is has been successful and we're continuing to explore as as re as soon as tomorrow I have another meeting about this is regional regionalization efforts uh we're doing things that our neighbors are doing in some cases doing them better in some cases uh having more resources or whatever the case may be there's opportunities for us to share um and we've done it with um electrical inspectors we've done it with veteran services um other things that I can't remember but we have more of those efforts that we're exploring uh tomorrow and and going forward and we do think that that is an opportunity to uh reduce costs but you have the same level of service and maybe sometimes even a higher level of service thanks that's that's it for me David yeah just two two quick uh follow-ups for this building um this building's hbac there are grants available for that will cover some of that isn't that right yes with with um energy related upgrades there are grants everywhere that we're pursuing uh some the the ones you're used to like the green communities program they would fund a large portion of the cost to do weatherization for this building which you know you need to do before you upgrade to elect electrical system make it weather tight uh so there's grants for that there's grants through the the federal inflation reduction act where 30 a portion of the investment that we make would be uh refunded uh through a tax credit that's available to communities now uh for electrification project so there are those grants and then there are just Green community grants that that we know uh are available now and will continue to pursue other ones thank you and then the um when we finally get down to you know uh uh to working on the budget presumably you'll have for us um a prioritization of the Personnel that you think are um the most important um right I mean that's kind of your job to to look across the whole organization to absolutely I think and a lot of times what we do in this period is move things around so you know you noticed a a part-time request in finance and we say okay well gez then that person just took a job in another Community maybe we can shift some things around and be able to meet that need without having to actually add a new position to the budget so we do that now uh and we'll do that and before I deliver a budget to you on January 8th uh that work would have happened and and what we what I put forward would be what I recommend and I am hoping to get more feedback from you next time and you'll have stuff in advance so maybe that'll be better for you great thank you thank you John appreciate it next on our new special business uh cons consider request from act and housing authority to wave additional building permit fees for mcmanis Manor project hi Kelly hi my name is Kelly Cronin I'm the um development director for the ACT and Housing Authority um so uh back this summer we came in front of you and asked you if you could wave our um building permit fees and the conversation it wasn't clear what our cost was going to be and you all had conversations about like how do we figure out what to wave um and you all talked about the school department and how you were able to wave those fees for them except for what the out-of pocket costs were for the town so when we applied for the permit um I reached out to John and had a conversation about you know how do we figure out what the out of pocket costs are Etc the total cost was 212,000 um and the 100,000 that you guys agreed to makes it 112,000 um and I asked if we could get this on the agenda because our insurance costs that we thought were going to be about 50,000 for Builder risk are 173,000 for Builder risk um and that doesn't include liability and that's just for the construction period so we have to pay for insurance while the building's being constructed and it's way over what we thought it was going to be um which is not surprising given what's happening in our country with insurance companies and what they're paying out so we're just here to see if there's more that you guys are willing to wave to bring the cost down thank you Kelly um John do you have uh yeah thank you so I think uh this is something that um the board periodically will consider requests like this from um whether it's a Housing Authority or or other um organizations that are providing a public good uh so we defer to the board on how you want to proceed in terms of uh third-party costs that's a little bit difficult to um estimate but I did talk to Ed Mullen our Building Commissioner and he says that expect to do probably uh 400 inspections on a project like this um in a year and this is likely to take more than a year and so uh it's a significant um amount of work that they'll be doing they are employees of the town so it's not a specific third party cost that we'd have to pay uh but it is a resource that would be used so I'm happy to estimate what that is or uh or you could um let me know if there's anything else you wanted to discuss about that so you're really you're just asking for wave in in permit fees or or whatever not a dollar amount per se right so um the school department is another we're Town agency so um I don't know whether parks and um all those other departments have to pay building fees when things are constructed um and we were comparing our that's a $70 million construction project we're going to be about a $24 million construction project um and we're just asking to be treated like another Municipal entity um and to not have huge fees for the construction period thank you David so I I just want to be uh clear John so I I think for the school district we we did what I would maybe refer to colloquially as on a time and materials basis right so any third party inspections you know we we covered all those so the town didn't lose money on them I'd I'd like to do the same thing here so when you when you're talking about the 400 inspections and their Town Personnel are you not envisioning any third- party inspections where we would have to pay a contractor an inspection contractor to comeing in an inspect um I think that's that's as of right now yes that to answer your question we're no we we contract with Littleton for our electrical inspector but that's a fixed amount that we pay it's not based on the number of inspections that he does so um no I think the only uh as of right now I'm not aware third party cost that we be paying but the the thank you Alissa thanks Kelly um so last time we discussed this we were aiming to um provide for you uh an a matching support to en encourage the state to put in more funding and I think I read from one of Senator eldridge's announcements press releases that they were able to secure an additional 2.9 Million in tax credits for the project so that number seems like a very big number I was very happy to hear it but it didn't really um the announcement didn't let me see where that you know what footing that put the project on in terms of your overall costs and and how close it got you and so if you can provide a little bit more detail about that sure and I'm going to not tell you exact dollar amounts but the original construction cost was supposed to be about $18 million and our contractor budget is $22 million between 21 and 22 million closer to the 21 million side so that increase is paying for the difference in the construction costs not the soft costs so our soft costs have gone up a lot because we've had to redesign um uh we did value engineering so we redesigned to bring down the cost on the actual construction the time lag um for the project also brought the costs up um you know we did some work on the sewer project to help the town um with the application and then the design part of it on our end just our site not not the sewer site so the the 2.9 made up the contractor fee costs not soft costs okay thanks that's very helpful yeah yeah yeah um Kelly it's great to see you here yeah um uh let's see so I think when we were talking about this um last time we were uh remembering how the town used to do things with permit fees where we were paying an EXT you know per per per inspection uh for electrical inspections and it was a lot of money um now that John has renegotiated that so that um you know it's essentially an employee cost for paying a fixed amount of money I'm I'm much more comfortable than I was back then with just simply saying that we would um be waving the the the uh the the building permit fees um except for you know if we do find out there are some thirdparty costs along the way then you know we'd want to get reimbursed for those but in terms of how you can you know plan um I'm I'm comfortable with with returning to a standard of um just waving the inspection fees David um uh John with the you know to Kelly's point that hey know that uh we should be operating like any other Municipal entity um would the um uh DPW project pay inspection feas or they are they in the in the the the the budgeted cost for the DPW project yeah I I think they that the DPW project wouldn't pay fees but that's a project that we're funding hopefully through through our town meeting um appropriated money appropriated by town meeting voters the the Housing Authority doesn't operate that way we we don't operate we don't appropriate money for the Housing Authority it comes from the state so it's not like we're appropriating money for the BP DPW building and then using some of that money to pay us a permit fee you know that it is that's an internal transaction this even though we're partners with the Housing Authority it it's not the same technically um from a policy standpoint it can be whatever you'd like so I and I'm willing to May pay more of the Fe fees I just uh don't want to get caught paying outside fees um and uh which did happen in the case of the school and so I I don't know as a percentage what they were but I I don't mind waving a large you know more of the fees here um but you know uh uh you know for you know to cover the the fees that would be collected for uh to pay for our own inspectors but um um I I'd like to leave some in reserved to pay for um any any contracted work we have to do Dean yeah I agree with David on that I I can't believe that a project of that size is not going to require some outside expertise in the way of Permitting um yeah if if our building inspectors um feel or if you feel that that the building inspector should feel that they can handle this um then I don't have a problem with waving the fees that would normally be paid to the town but yeah the outside inspectors I'm thinking you know geotechnical inspections I'm thinking you know there's probably some some HVAC inspections need to be done uh that might be outside our field of expertise structural steel if some of that's going in there probably needs uh outside eyes so I think it's important that we not get saddled with paying those costs but if if you feel that we can eat the costs out of the uh basically the building department revolving fund then you know go for it David yeah and in in addition to the ones that Dean mentioned I'm also just concerned a little bit about overall capacity right if they're 4 inspections and we have other things go you know people are putting additions on their houses or a company moves in bu building and we have to just hire external contractors just to cover our own you know just regular inspections um you know I think we need to leave a little reserve for that I I I don't mind waving another 50,000 or something but um uh again I I I don't want to get caught so that we're losing money on this I was just wondering if we should just wave a dollar amount uh instead of you know inspections as they come but that's my opinion so I would suggest um if everyone is comfortable with it to wave only the fees that would be assessed with Town staff services rather than a dollar amount because otherwise the Housing Authority will just have to come back to us if if it goes over 50 or another 100,000 so if everybody's comfortable with the internal work um specifying it so we don't get stuck paying third party um fees as we did with the the school construction project just specify that in the motion David that may be difficult to for everybody to plan for Budget wise it may be simpler just to say that we weigh $50,000 of additional fees so for it's a to be a total of $150,000 in in fees that that leaves us about $60,000 in in reserve uh that for paying either because we've used up the capacity of our own inspectors or because we need as Dean was pointing out specialty inspectors um the specialty inspectors are not cheap so I would I'd be a little hesitant to go any more than that but you have a motion um so I I would move that we wave um uh an additional 15,000 $50,000 $50,000 in um uh inspection fees for the McManus Manor project I'll second all in favor I I I'll obain thank you very much thank you thank you Kelly moving on to um number 10 authorized purchase and sale agreement for 19 and 35 weatherbe Street this is the uh property acquisition that's uh the subject of the special town meeting next week and we have been working with Town Council and with the seller to finalize a purchase and sale I believe it's in the packet for your review uh the ask is that you authorize uh me to sign it on your behalf um I'm happy to answer any questions about anything in it uh or around it we are acquiring um two Parcels of land um for $3.6 million plus um we're also uh paying $50,000 at closing for costs associated with um cleaning up the site and there's other timelines and things like that that are in there that are important to our grant and to the seller do we have questions or are we just authorizing you to S to yeah David I move that we authorize the town manager to sign the purchase and sale agreement uh that's in the packet for 19 and 35 weatherway Street second all in FA I I I yes unanimous thank you John thank you uh number 11 authorized purchase and sale agreement of 348 352 Main Street thank you so this is related to the project that we were just discussing the Manis Manor um the town currently owns that property uh the Housing Authority has a has an option that it's exercised to purchase it or a portion of it from the town and we're still finalizing the purchase and sales but where it is it's in pretty good shape uh we have it in the packet in draft form and uh I'm asking the board to authorize me to sign that as well uh to allow the housing authority to buy the land from the town and to build Menace Manor David So when you say it's in draft form uh what changes do you expect uh to the copy that's in the packet it's pretty close um I don't know Kelly do you have any so that's a big change it says there's nothing material nothing material other than the number of units but we're going to fix that yeah so um the the conditions and the terms are going to stay uh pretty much as you have them it we're just going to clarify that it's 41 unit that they're building um yeah so so maybe we could authorize you to sign it um uh after Consulting with the chair on the final version is that okay and then and then she can decide to bring it back to us if she thinks the changes our material enough to come back to us works for me sounds good yeah Alysa and then D so I noticed that um unlike 1935 weatherbe where it had the p pns had a line for the town manager signature this pns has five lines for the select board so is that going to be removed because I don't I don't think I see a line for you John sorry well um what would you like what's your preference maybe some board members who have served long than I have can like I was comfortable with the 1935 weather because we're handing it off to the Conservation Commission not signing that but is typically an arrangement like this better signed by the board or does it not matter Jim yeah I want to take credit for this one yeah can someone please man explain this for me um yeah so it seems like we might need to adjust the motion slightly to to authorize the town manager to sign on our behalf or to introduce electronic signatures or we could just walk into the office and sign it we can bring back a a finalized version this was just make sure that it was in front of you if there was any red flags other than the signature page that you wanted to uh bring up we would do it and then we could bring this back in final form for you on the second we actually meeting Monday night we could even do it then uh I'll talk to the chair about that so we could move to approve it tonight uh pending final changes and you bring the paper copy to us at our next meeting that's even better David I move to uh approve the pns agreement for 348 352 Main Street um um pending final changes and that the uh the final paper copy will be brought to us at a future meeting second all in favor can I say Alissa so I didn't get an answer to my question is there an advantage to having the board versus the town manager authorized I'm guessing no but just want to get that question answered John I the board would sign the deed ultimately um I think this the only reason they do have the time man to do is just for efficiency so we can do either way whatever the board would like to do thanks great all in favor oh Dean do you have a question uh I'll bring it up after we take the vote okay I in favor I I yes yay so so my question and it has nothing to do with signing the the pns is that you know see there's a million dollars coming back and I I hope that that finds a place in your budget presentations or in your long-term budget thinking I know there's a couple of options out there but I hope that and I don't need an answer now but just factor that in everybody's looking at that money it's actually only $999,990 we got to get that $100 back someplace so moving on to discuss Water Resource advisory committee and feasibility study so originally this was going to be oh sorry David hi guys generically okay originally this was my understanding was this was originally on the consent agenda and we had asked our liaison if she could speak to Fran and move it as a discussion item because we didn't want to assume that you might or might not have questions so we put it into a rather than a slide presentation we did it as a single page and we all entertain questions or explanations that you have introduce so um the the the proposal from the Water Resources advisory committee um is pretty straightforward answering um the objectives or deliverables for the work that they will be able to do and um John also sent around to the board the technical Memo from Woodard and Curran and their now phased approach is is in alignment with sort of a pause on their work to let rack take the driver's seat um with their support and there's you know still funding available um in their investigation for them to offer that support um the one thing that I wanted to make sure to clarify and I thought it was important to come off of the consent agenda is we had talked I think David you mentioned that it will be critical to have a staff person um clearly assigned so that we can ensure that that that the effort going forward is well coordinated um and I don't know um who that might be um because I know that and Andrea has different priorities um and I also know that chin R has um been to a couple of rack meetings so I guess maybe John if you have someone in mind or you can let us know later if you want to discuss and think about it more or maybe Tom John so is a request to have a person assigned to support rack is that what the request is Staff a staff first say what were we looking for so they know who to go to um so that's you know clearly laid out if they have questions or need to make requests sure yeah we can uh we can talk to team we got some some moving parts that we can have to contend with but uh we'll we'll get back to you on that good okay that's great thank you David so it may not be necessary for them to be there at every meeting I don't know but but but I think someone should be assigned even it even references that in the one one page or um do you guys have a time frame it does not be a committed time frame but do you have a just in your mind do you have a time frame for this exercise I mean is it 3 months is it a year and three months or no we we once we get start the holidays are coming up so we we thought we probably would not get started till January is time frame at best um we thought we'd probably need at least three to perhaps four months yep and I think I said that to you maybe two meetings ago in that four month time range we're still thinking that way thank you by the way I'm sorry I should say Dave we're also assuming maybe it's not good to assume things we marked a couple areas where we would need outside help so we're assuming again you shouldn't assume we're hoping we would be able to obtain that outside help so I I I assume that that's the outside help isn't a problem or that know the you mean um or someone from dpaw would have we would need some I know whether would be chin or whether it would or I don't know which it would be we would we've given them uh an MC tool that we think is pretty good to help us get a handle on dollars we think it would help them get it does require work because you've got to fill in the blanks and it will do the calculations and projections according to the according to mapc that we're using them as a point of reference it will take staff time from either Corey or or chin probably and we don't know if that's available so we don't want to we can't we can't make that assumption that's why we're hoping we get a liaison that could negotiate or discuss because we don't feel with the right people to to do that we're not part of the staff no I I really appreciate that I just want to get the Tom Andrew's reaction yeah I just think that we had had initiated an effort to work with a consultant to take on this work and I think we said makes sense to kind of set that aside and have the advisory committee work as take it as far as they can but if they need support from a consultant it seems like we're circling back to the path that we already started which I'm fine with um so what if you just work with the consultant would that solve would that be the issue would that be the answer Jim reading the memo it looks like they will need uh specific help from DPW uh and then some a short little bit of legal help from Town Council uh and then finally uh support for um public Outreach of those three things uh the public Outreach is at the end of their of their five steps and that that seems like the place where it most might might most naturally flow into the Consultants work because they you know they were already planned to do uh public Outreach as part of their work so that might be the transition point to uh to to bringing in Consulting help when we go out with public Outreach can I speak sorry wor no can I address it to J um when we go out to public Outreach we're going to our plan is to go out with a vanilla flavor and a chocolate flavor and try to get feedback from town residents because there are definitely advantages we're only going to right now we're only planning to go out with two flavors both sustainable flavors but there's advantages and disadvantages to each you know one would be like a separate organization the other would be more than likely in the form of of a revolving fund within somebody's budget and there's advantages to each and we're going to chart it here's each one and we're going to go in non-biased and we we want we're going to try our best to position ourselves as non-biased and listen to the feedback and ultimately come back to you and tell you what we found that sounds much more straightforward than what I was imagining so some might not need a lot of consultant support um we might need somebody to help us organize some of it right and and we had heard or I wasn't here but I played the tape and I had heard that there was somebody or or some availability of Staff uh to help us create Graphics uh we're going forward with that assumption that they can help us create the graphics we might need so I I I think Jim your approach makes a lot of sense uh that uh um you know uh we get as far as we can with support from the DPW and if there's things at the end that we need to go out to for a consultant for then we can do do that at that time I think it's are there any more questions I know it's probably not the conventional way I love the idea of rack doing the work um I think that's pretty cool um so we work pretty cheap yeah yeah yeah um great thank you Jim if it's helpful to have a motion I'm certainly happy to move that we um support the uh the plan of the rack to do this feasibility study second all in favor yes I I thank you thank you thank you thank you so 13 update from Public Works building committee Dean so uh the committee continues to uh to do its work uh we've had a couple of uh we did have a meeting about two weeks ago uh in this room with the presentation from the architect and uh we did have some neighbor input as well that uh we're dealing with a lot of the the issues that were raised are actually more related to Traffic patterns and uh you know the impact in the neighborhood of the existing operation the and you know access to the transfer station what happens is a lot of folks in order to get to transfer station drive down Forest Road and they're not under route two so you know that's that's an ongoing situation that has been occurring for well over 50 years and uh you know the folks that have purchased those houses they there um are you know moving into an existing situation that there was you know comment made that you know you forc this building into a residential neighborhood um you know that that's a discussion that was certainly had back around 1968 so we not changing a lot of things but certainly you know the and we we hope our plan is to with the new faity the way it's being designed we will actually mitigate some of the the noise that's coming from the existing site so we hope to make that better but there's certainly some issues there that'll will be discussed and we we hope to deal with them uh I know the engineering department has put out some traffic monitoring devices to see what the actual situation is out there right now we'll certainly be looking at you know shielding and buffering and Landscaping between the new building and uh and Forest Road one of the issues that people raised as well we can see the building more than we used to be able to well some of that was know storm damage impacts of that microburst u a year ago and a lot of it is that the extraordinarily High deer population have browsed out all of the understory and that's not unique to that site I can just look in my backyard so you know trying to figure out a uh some sort of naturally occurring vegetation that deer don't like uh with the population levels as high as they are they'll pretty much eat anything including Cactus I think so that's a challenge um the town manager has uh released the uh the number of 47 million total project cost that's certainly a number that we're going to be worth working hard to bring down there's a lot of value engineering going on with that there is uh one way that we think we can manage the cost better is if rather than have a phase construction if we can build the building all at once which will require moving everybody out of the existing facility and moving them to a new location temporarily for um 18 months maybe certainly a cost of that move but it could facilitate getting the building built quicker and cheaper and might actually allow some some interesting things we could do that might lessen some of the impacts on the neighborhood as far as the final placement of the building so those are all actively being pursued the uh the town manager and myself and various staff members and folks from West and Samson have been looking at alternative sites uh to move to so there's a a couple of possibilities out there um as we develop some better ideas on that all that can be factored in so um you know it's a really high number but we think it can brought down and the the word from W Western Samson and that number was derived from two separate estimates from two separate organizations combine those two they like to come in with a high number and then come down from there rather than you know have a sudden oops gee we underestimated 5 million we need to add it back in at the last possible moment so that and there are also a lot of you know gross assumptions are being made at this point of design of the of the project so it's going along um as these projects go uh you know I I've served on a number of building committees for Town buildings uh this one here the library at public safety building and it's it's pretty much the same trajectory as we normally see um our next public meeting of the uh of the committee is going to be on December 12th at 7 p.m. here in this room we hope to have some more highly refined numbers at that point uh also have more opportunity to to get some input we've had some time to to ponder things that have been raised by certainly the neighbors uh certainly a lot of very valid concerns that have been raised by the finance committee about the the cost of it and uh you know I think at some point as part of the value engineering we have to look at the building its functionality for the operations that we moving into there immediately and then the the next phase is you know how much growth do we need to factor into the building so we don't have to come back again and I think the other factor that was alluded to briefly during the presentation the existing building shows a design with a number of mezzanine spaces to use for storage um for outside entities being other departments other than Public Works uh had some recent discussions with some other departments about some of their storage space needs um there a critical need for storage for fire department in particular for a lot of the Emergency Management supplies that they don't really have a good place and where they've got it you know it might be spread out in six different locations which is really inconvenient if you're trying to find all this stuff in the middle of a hurricane so there's certainly a need for that uh I toured a uh a member of the school committee through the building the other day with Corey and we came across this pile of Records the size of a small automobile and he said yeah these are all engineering records we had to move out of Maple Street and they're just sitting in a garage Bay and you know all due respect for his organizational ability but I think it'd be a hard time finding a piece of paper out of that pile and I don't think that's at all unique I know in past years we've had the same kind of situation with financial records assessor records all that kind of paper that a certain amount of has to be retained in its original form and some of it eventually can be discarded but it requires um staff time to uh digitize all those records so all that plus all the other storage stuff um just think about how much stuff you've accumulated in your house I mean I've lived in my house now just 50 years 50 years this week and I think of what I've acquired in that 50 years um and the same sort of thing has occurred in all of our operations so I think when we start looking at it it might look looking at the building people might be tempted to say well it's you know you got way too much storage space well there's a need for all list and you got to look Beyond just the immediate operations of DPW and Engineering there are other departments that need that kind of space so those are all things that we'll be uh be working through in system um Tom has been excellent with the facilitating all of this I want to thank him once again for his hard work on it and Tom if you have any you'd like to update that I've missed certainly thank you very much Dean um I I don't I just want to reiterate the uh December 12th meeting um we'll host that like we did this past meeting November 7th over Zoom as well and if there's uh any questions beforehand they can send it into the um DPW email that's posted on the web page as well uh if you visit the website and want to learn more if you scroll all the way down you'll see uh the DPW project called out at the bottom of the page click that and you'll find all our presentations our meetings and all documents that have been provided to the public too so thank you thank you thanks Tom Jim um question for Dean um we've talked in the past about the need at some point for um something like a campaign right there's lots of meetings there's you know materials there's um you know PL just whole rapid planning and response things and I I wondered whether uh you would whether you're thinking uh what you're thinking about that was is that a separate group from the committee uh and uh when does if it is when does that group sort of get going thanks um so a couple of things one of the items that we did discuss at our most recent meeting and we'll probably tackle this in January is uh have an open house down there at the facility probably on a Saturday that uh so people can walk through and see we did have a series of those open houses during the feasibility study but it's time to now folks are realizing this is a serious project so we we certainly want to do that um the committee will certainly take on a lot of the information U dissemination I have been approached by one individual who's uh offered to assist uh in developing a um basically a support campaign um because it will you know theoretically uh depending on where this goes you might end up having to get uh you know political support for it uh prior because we do have to get that vote done before town meeting so um and it will be on the ballot before town meeting so we do I did one individual that reached out to me and offered some assistance there so I'll be pursuing that probably over the next few weeks and see what comes up have a chance to talk with the other members of the committee um you we want to to provide accurate information and advocate for the project but don't want to step over any lines where we might be impacting a a vote the ballots so that's kind of a fine line you need to work out thank you I agree and I think an independent campaign group is is definitely a good way to go with that um yeah they can they can operate nimbly and quickly and um um wow so that's the that's the town election time April end of April yeah okay not a lot of time time for a big campaign so um looking forward to participating in that in any way I can but I'll talk to the campaign folks not to you David I I completely agree that we should not short short change the storage space you know uh I think you know I know I know of and I'm sure there's things I don't know I know of places that things that are stored in various places around town and some of the buildings we might decide to you know to get rid of you know to we could sell three School Street or you know who knows um and so um uh I don't think we want to Short change ourselves there on a new on a new building and the the incremental cost is for making that mezzanine longer is is small any other questions Alysa so I'm I'm really glad to hear that the there's some exploration of of moving it from a phased project to a single construction period um for the potential savings even after space needs to be rented I think um I'm wondering in addition to exploring that um if there is exploration happening or planned for getting the Financial narrative into place to answer the questions about you know why we need to keep the vehicles inside for instance um just you know what are our cost savings by extending the life of the vehicles and I think you know there were a number uh maybe three dozen questions that the finance committee presented about this um project so getting the answers to those where where does that stand will any of those um any of those numbers be available at the next meeting or is that coming later well the folks from Western Samson did come up with an opinion memo specifically based on their experience with other towns as far as the the longevity of you know preserving the existing equipment in a climate controlled environment so that's that's available um I reviewed it you know a week or two ago so we've we've got that the next step that I really is going to require the input of the Town manager asking staff to provide this is and and I've kind of spoken about it in conceptual terms with Corey about how much time you actually lose every single day with doing the tetris with all the vehicles back and forth and that's going to require somebody to go out there and develop a spreadsheet and stand out there with a stopwatch uh at the beginning of the day at the end of the day um and that I'm not in a position to to to UT anybody from DPW to do that but I'm hoping the town manager and assistant Town manager can facilitate that so we can start to develop that number because I think that's I know from my own experience in that building which ended eight years ago um you would lose at least a half hour of productive time every morning and every afternoon just jocking equipment around and you know the other piece of it as well that U we were talking about the other day when we were looking at some alternate temporary storage sites situations with existing uh snow plows with either uh dump truck bodies or preferably sander bodies sitting on them in an unroofed environment in the middle of a snowstorm and you get 8 Ines of snow in the body of the truck and then you have to put sand and salt or salt into it uh that creates a problem ultimately you load them ahead of time and you still get a bunch of snow on top of it which certainly impacts the effectiveness of the deicing materials you're putting out so that's you know another issue that is hard to put a number on it because you never know how many snowstorms you're going to have and you know how much snow you're going to have and what the impact will be on that so but it's really important to keep those things in mind that you know being able to to roll the equipment out um it's hard to put a number on that uh but it's it's more a situation in my opinion with especially with storm damage situations and snow storms and such um when the police department says we need sand and salt on the streets do you want it out there and 20 minutes or do you want it out there in 2 hours and I think we'd all prer for it to be there immediately if not 20 minutes from now and if we have problems with getting the vehicle started and having to clean them off and you know then being able to load them up with materials then you're into the 2hour range so police identify that there a has situation and then takes hours to respond to it that's a real problem and it's I don't know how we put a number on that but as far as the the tetris situation I think you know I looked to the town manager for assistance on asking folks to get out there with a stopwatch and calculate the numbers from there well I do remember the hour per day being mentioned um maybe during the the last tour that was the tours that were held um so maybe not a spreadsheet as needed but just a multiply an hour times the number of Staff who are working on it um and the the numbers that you can't come up with it's just advantages um like you can add deiser to a truck that's dry rather than full of snow um maybe that can just go into an FAQ because I think I suggested doing an FAQ that was available on the site is the Weston and Samson memo already up on the the DPW facility project page I don't know that it is I know the town manager sent it to me but I don't don't know if it got posted we sent it to the finance committee um entirely and um if it's not on the website it will be David the other thing which the um uh finance committee is interested in is the uh um uh the operating cost of HVAC Alternatives I know you alluded to that Dean in earlier remarks so that that was that was another thing that they were interested in if there's anything I can do to help prepare either that number or any other numbers I'm happy to do that thank you uh as as they're going through the design uh they're going through the Western sson is doing s of the same process that was done in the school project is figure out what's The Sweet Spot how many geothermal Wells do you need to put down um if your average situation then you know how can you add Electric heat to uh to top it off so that process is kind of ongoing but certainly uh you know I know you you weigh in heavily as well on the North Aon fire station so prob that same sort of effort is something we're going to have to put together and the the difference is now because of the laws that were bylaws who have passed overwhelmingly town meeting is that a lot of these things are not optional so we you know the decision has been made um it's even if town meeting wanted to change the bylaw I think now that we're affiliated with the state program I don't think we could anyway so it's it is what it is um but certainly it's going to be important to have as much documentation as possible I not interested in fighting any battles have already been decided but just a reminder that there is a waiver process in our bylaw just just in case that ends up being relevant thank you he questions moving on to update from act and leadership group so ALG hasn't met recently so um do you have anything to add or no I think John do you have anything to add yeah I would just mention that we we have been getting some additional uh revised estimates I think we have a number for certified New Growth that CJ will be sharing um maybe even before the next ALG meeting um and just sort of following up on what I mentioned earlier um the the board did provide Direction earlier this budget season to put a number in for the DPW facility once we have it and I guess we can technically say that we have it now um as an exercise I provided to the finance committee and I think to the board what it would look like if it was a $40 million project um and so that number is clear we haven't done that same exercise for what it would look like if it was a $46 million project would you like me to do that and include that number in the ALG plan or would you like something else in there I'll defer to you well I I think probably the 46 million is probably the better number to put in and we'll explain that we're working hard to bring it down but um I'd rather have a High number and drop down from it um you know from a negotiating point of view you might think well maybe that's a good stick to make sure that we beat the price down to 40 million but I I don't want to play that game at this point so I I think the 46 is probably the number okay and it'll have a corresponding expense on and revenue so it will have no impact on the on the LG deficit it's really just for transparency purposes to show what what's coming um the only only other uh consideration for maybe the board members to weigh in to to the two Representatives is um Talk of the target um you know the level Services was up near five um not really considering capital in a in a substantive way we're showing um two two 3.75 in oper operating but overall spending of 2.75 do you want us to just let that ride until after the budget presentation in December and then we can make adjustments to ALG plan or do you want to uh have this plan uh adjusted now thinking that it may change anyways David I think that has to be a prime point of discussion for the ALG members this time um with an eye towards both um setting uh budget increases for the two entities and towards closing the deficit number for this year the deficit number for this year is not huge but still we have to we we can't have it right so um we we have to you know begin to close it so I I think that's the the the prime prime importance and just for everybody's information everybody in the public and everything the uh the DPW facility would show The Debt Service for 46 million not the 46 M so uh in for the runout years starting in FY 27 I think the plan goes up to 29 so in 27 28 and 29 it will show the the uh the financing models Debt Service for that year um so anyway yeah it but it won't show the number 46 thank you D yeah I think John if probably if we our next ALG meeting is on the 27th of this month um probably if you come in with that percentage number that you presented to us tonight about five plus percent I think we're we're not going to vote it probably but at least um let them know because I'm sure that our partners in the schools are going to come in with the same thing and let us know where they stand and you know what a reasonable expectation is and then we have to drop back from reasonable expectations to unreasonable expectations I was of the Let It Ride Camp too was let it ride 2.75 keep it the same rather than no no okay just let it ride and then move down from there but okay I was going to suggest leaving it at 2.75 and and see what happens Jim the related question then is um how how much of of of the unused Levy capacity we would use our Target as the board last time we discussed this was to not use any of that unused Levy capacity if we want to start talking about having increases this high as 5% then certainly we're going to need to use a whole bunch of that capacity so I'd rather air on the side of um continuing to Target um you know the the numbers that are in the spreadsheet with the understanding that we you know we haven't gotten there yet we because we're still early in the budget process we know we need to you know the manager and his team need to you know do the hard work of of of you know going through the budget and uh and cutting it I I I would prefer not to starts setting the expectation that yeah yeah we can just we can keep the number high and just use up some of this this uh this unus ly I will strongly agree with that any other discussion or um David so I just want to be clear on the 2.75 the budget increases in the current model for operating for both entities are about 3 and 3/4% um they're 3.78 in the case of the town and 3.8 in the case of the school district the lower numbers in for both entities 2.75 in the case of the town and 1.59 include Debt Service things and the reason why the the school districts goes down a lot is because we're dropping the senior and Junior High School Renovations debt so um anyway uh uh so I just want to be clear that we we're not so the the comparison for the numbers that John presented earlier this evening is roughly 3.8 versus 5.8 right that's a lot right that um but I just want to emphasize that we were talking about you know op expenses in the operating budget which we we have to reconcile and that is the number actually that uh ALG usually focuses on um of course the whole thing has to balance but there isn't usually too much flexibility in uh The Debt Service because the debt service is what it is so you adjust the other numbers um um to make the whole thing fit and then that 2.75 number in the case of the town or 1 Point um 59 in the case of the school district is just for reference right because it's it's a calculated number in the spreadsheet it's not an input number into the spreadsheet thank you yes so I will will amend what I said um I strongly agree that we should keep the numbers that are in the spreadsheet rather than adjusting them up based on the presentation tonight because um we didn't review it ahead of time seeing it for the first time I don't think we should jump up to that um because we just heard tonight that that is not something that's going to be brought in a recommended budget so why bring it to to ALG just keep um the spreadsheet as is and adjust it going forward sounds good I I agree with that and in fact I think ALG needs to bring those lower a little bit be for targets right usually ALG assigns targets to the two entities and we're currently $1.4 million over the tax revenue we will collect um and so the targets have to be lower um in order to fit um so so um we you know so I I said they're about 3.8 now for both entities they the target might have to be something like 3.5 in order to fit um but um I mean I I haven't proven that and adjusted the spreadsheet but um usually ALG assigns targets to the two entities and then the two entities come back during budget season and say this is what we did and um and then each each entity can make their case like uh you know um uh uh John was talking about the extraordinary expenses this year you know was posted to last year that are the biggest increases which where we of fixed costs where we don't have a lot of choice thank you it's helpful um so that was what you were saying earlier was the priority for the next ALG meeting okay thanks any other discussion no moving on to discuss special town meeting articles so we did a postcard that was mailed out to every household hopefully received it um and then we posted the warrant uh in the normal way that we normally do we'll be sending out a news flash tomorrow just kind of reminding people in case they miss the mailer that the special to meeting will be a Monday um there are a few changes to the article not to the articles but to the motion that we'll be asking the board to consider so I wanted to walk through that if that's okay so article one um nothing changed there but for article two nothing there either but for article three we have a an agreement with that Union um and we work worked we worked very closely with them and um we got that done so that's really helpful that's our Public Safety dispatchers so uh for article two the motion will be moved to dismiss for article three the mo the motion will be moved to authorize as collective bargain agreement and also to appropriate for the first year costs this is something that we don't typically do um or we don't often do I guess I should say we've we've done it before but a lot of times we have the budget um approved the same night as the contracts so the budget reflects the contracts uh in this case we're needing $15,000 to fund the first year contract the first year of the contract rather so we I'll be prepared or um and I can help Dean be prepared to speak to the contract on town meeting floor as questions come up and I will share the same with the finance committee um soon if if they're meeting tomorrow or or sooner so I guess the the question I have for the board would would be would you be cons would you consider changing your recommendation because right now you have it as deferred and would you consider changing it to recommended based on the information I just shared for article three David um can I ask a question first um the uh first year is that uh this fiscal year so fiscal year 25 that's correct yes and so you we appropriating that out of free cash $155,000 out of free cash yes to to service this agreement for this year yes great um um I think we should recommend it um I don't would you are you planning on changing the online copy of the warrant or is just something we will say at town meeting um I probably shouldn't change the warrant I think we'll just be able to report at town meeting that in the Motions document so we'll distribute the Motions document and the Motions document will say the new motion and it'll say if the board and the finance committee have an updated um recommendation okay I I I move that the board recommend article three second all in favor I I Anonymous thank you and and usually for article two we would move to take no action yeah that's I think the motion will be mo moved to yeah move to dismiss or move to take no action yeah traditionally here we we say move to take no action we'll uh we'll make sure of that there are no changes or new information that I that I was going to bring forward about the other articles but I'm happy to answer questions or talk through any of them if uh that would be helpful Dean yeah on uh on article four I'll be making the presentation uh with that um I was wondering if people think it would be useful to have graphics with this uh you know PowerPoint presentation I don't particularly see the need to do it but um if we need to you know put picture of an ambulance up on the screen while I talk to it I need one of you guys to come up with a picture of an ambulance I don't know what else we might need I did have a lengthy conversation with the fire chief today and got a lot more background information that I can fill into people um I'm expecting a lot of folks that going to come for article one get it voted and we'll be talking to an empty room but I'll be prepared to to give them all the details of the condition of all three ambulances and how many miles are on them and how old they are and all that but um it'll defer to the to the rest of the board if you think you know full-fledged PowerPoint presentation is worthwhile or not David I think it is worthwhile to have a one pager just like that you would have a one pager in the capital article at the annual town meeting I actually I think the picture of the ambulance helps it just you know otherwise it's abstract um and um you could have a picture of the old ambulance or whatever you think is is appropriate or or a picture of our newest ambulance or the model we intend to buy but um uh I I think it it is helpful just just like you have a one page in the capital article okay I'll reach out to uh staff to I can fill in a lot of the information that that I've gathered that I think we might be able to fit into that one pag or and be ready to put that together thank you Jim um John in your Capital presentation I think you used the phrase fire engine is there a separate issue at hand about getting a new fire engine or is this just kind of the same thing the no the fire engine we think we're comfortable waiting till annual to ask for that authorization uh but the ambulance were not got it thank you David uh I just like to I don't know if any members of the public are still watching at this hour but um if anybody's interested I recorded um a pre-presentation for article one it's on acting TV um and so if anybody is interested in um the the background on uh 19 and 35 weatherbe Street um they can just go to the ACT and TV YouTube they told me also they were going to put it in their round robin to play on cable um but you can get it when you want it on streaming nice thank you I plan on doing an a a little presentation on um the the yes the veterans tax exemption and I haven't done it yet I'm figuring it out and um I'll have a a presentation at meeting not sure if I'm going to do act in TV um I I agree with David that a photograph helps make it um tangible and maybe instead of a stock photo of representing ambulance an ambulance and and Veterans maybe some photos of the ambulance and staff um here in Acton and maybe a photo of the veterans breakfast at the high school um for for your presentation and I are we allowed to talk about um I know we voted to recommend article one but I'm feeling a little nervous since we just talked about not impacting a ballot vote but this is different because this is our warrant yes so um so I heard a couple of um comments in the community about article one um that uh were not accurate about this purchase um some some folks are thinking that it was a very shortened timeline I heard the expression um that we're ramming it through and I think that's because people don't start hearing it discussed in in public until the the tail ends so I just wanted to remind folks if they are watching or watching the recording later that um acting conservation trust has been working on acquiring this property for you know a couple of decades I think um the inform the all the details um the numbers um in case I misstate them are on the ACT and conservation Trust website um it's a priority parcel in our open space and Recreation plan um and also folks are are worried about potential liability from anything that's found on the land that's a completely reasonable concern um but you know sharing that we're part of the the negotiations or doing you know due diligence and the purchases contingent on not finding some terrible environmental hazard that will cost the town a lot of money to to clean up so there's um a lot of great information um in David's video but also on the ACT and conservation Trust website and some walks that people can go on to learn more and ask those questions thank you for mentioning that Alyssa David yeah I I list the walks in my recording and so you people can go there but the the real reason for The Rush is the half million dollar Grant expiring at the end of the year so um we could wait until next year and we just wouldn't have the half a million dollars but it's not really a rush it's just a rush to the end we've been working on it for many many many years any other discussion on the warrant exciting onto town meeting uh Dean yeah not specifically for the warrant but we are going to um have a select board meeting tax classification hearing right after the expiration of town meeting and I didn't know if there was going to be anything else that you Envision to put on an agenda normally you and I would meet with with John and Tom tomorrow but I don't know if that's necessary and I don't know if if there's anything else that might need to get put on that agenda or if you want to have that meeting tomorrow to discuss did you want to put the DPW on the agenda I mean we could put it on I'm not I don't know how beneficial that would be um but we could certainly put together you know 5 minute presentation but know I didn't know if there was anything else that you envisioned coming up at that meeting I can't Envision anything at the moment can you John no it's a little tricky having a meeting um after a special town meeting um and so I think we'll try to keep it to a minimum but the there will be a need to have I think we already announced the time certain didn't we after the meeting 7:15 No 7 no the uh public hearing has been already scheduled right Lisa 7:15 okay so we have to this town meeting is at 6 if it takes an hour and then the place clears out in 15 minutes we jump right into it but for some reason it takes 20 minutes and then the place clears out we'd be sitting there for 45 minutes waiting for the meeting to start in that casee you may want to have filler um like a presentation or not um or we could just you know I I don't know I think you're right it's it's hard to know who's going to be there who's going to stay and whether it's worth putting on a big presentation or not because then it could be to a small crowd it could be good to have like an introduction yeah yeah David and I don't think we need a pre-own meeting meeting we oh we you know before the annual town meeting we always have but I guess you could call one if you thought was there was an urgent thing that you know we had to change recommendation or something but um uh I don't think we know of one so I don't think we need okay right do you agree that's a there was a question mark at the end um so um okay so Jim just as a reminder Rel away I'll be relatively far away so I'll need a zoom way to be at these at the at any of the select board meetings that night okay great so 16 approve reallocation of arpa funds thank you so this is a process that we started to several summers ago and we're nearing the end and as I promised we're going to spend every penny of that funding and we're actually getting to a point now where we're seeing a little bit of um room opening up in some projects that we got to the finish line for and the the the cost structure doesn't make sense to spend the full allotment that we had allocated because of phasing um the biggest example is the project that Tom Tom and others are working on with the electrification design the 570,000 that the board allocated for HVAC improvements um certainly would have been useful but we also don't want to contract more than phase one of a design project right now until we know that we want to do phase two and if for some reason we contract through phase two and then we change our mind the Opera money just disappears so uh for some strategic reasons like that uh we have some money freed up so I can run through and and I owe the board a list of all the great things we did with ARA that's not what this is and and I want to spend more time on that because I think it's really exciting the work that that happened in the last over the last few years but uh in terms of exactly what's allocated but not contracted uh we have 250,000 for mcmanis Manor but that's we're working at that should be done in the next week or two but it's technically not under contract we have [Music] um uh just under $400,000 in the HVAC thing that's not contracted however we're about to sign a contract for 295 of that so uh about 170 Surplus the Woodbury Lane 17 Woodbury Lane we are out to bid right now we just issued an addendum today uh sub bids filed sub bids are due tomorrow or or Wednesday rather and the bid opening is December 5th we're optimistic that the funding that we have including the 400 from ARA will be enough but we've already asked CPC to consider more funding for some of the landscape design that we just have a feeling that we're not going to be able to afford um so there's a need for even though we haven't contracted the 400 yet we know there's a need for more um the community recreation amenity next to mcmanis Manor we spent just under $20,000 to do some preliminary design work that contract ended and we're not going to continue that for several reasons um so there's $225,000 that remains unspent in that account and just because of what I I think I mentioned it recently is that we're trying to get the mcmanis manor going and the sewer project going and the dog park going and we really didn't want to add a fourth thing to try to figure out and so I think once we get those other three in a better spot will be in a better position with with the whoever is in in interested to advance that other Park the end there's 25,000 left over um South Acton wastewater treatment uh we changed that from what was initially allocated for we changed it to groundwater recharge site investigation and inii work that's all under contract um sustainability initiatives Andrea and her team did a bunch of really cool things with that funding including um EV infrastructure and um housing U new new energy efficient appliances for housing and and businesses anyways she's finalizing paperwork and there between 30 and maybe a little bit more than 30,000 that she hasn't spent and contracted yet so what we're estimating right now is just around 200,000 that's allocated but not contracted and uh most will not be contracted unless we rush to do something uh there are as you would guess a lot of places that we would recommend or that I would recommend that we reallocate that to both to meet needs but also that we know we can do and we know we can contract without a bunch of extra work uh and those are uh the dog park 17 Woodbury 53 River three projects that the board has put them put behind the board has been behind we've cobbled together all kinds of different funding sources to get them completed and uh if we had $200,000 that we wanted to reallocate I would recommend that we focus on those three efforts to to reallocate those $200,000 and I don't have an exact breakdown but that that would be my initial recommendation um and I don't it doesn't need to be approved tonight uh but that's I just wanted to give you an update where we're at we'll come back probably December 2nd with a more refined list and some of the stuff better um you know finalized but that's that's where we're at right now and we'll get it done but we'll spend it even if you don't like any of these things we'll find three other things to spend it on um because we we don't want to turn any of that back have the 31st as a deadline right December 31st 31st for it to be on a contract but I really want to figure it out um you know before your December 16th meeting I want to have I want to be able to say every Penny's contracted sorry yeah if your of your three favorite projects there to allocate that I'm kind of torn being leaz onto the dog park you know we don't have bids back on that um but on the other hand looking at the the disconnect between the total number of requests to CPC and the total number of dollars we've got um you you could you could split a third a third a third and I think you probably wouldn't be wrong um I I think it's just it's not likely that those couple of CPC requests that for the River Street and for uh ASA parin or 17 Woodbury um will get fully funded it's just the numbers aren't there but uh you know I think those are some really good projects it really it advances some projects are already going it'll get them finished or closer to the Finish Line David So are are you comfortable waiting till the next meeting uh you know I I you know at that point you're 25 days away from the the deadline and and includes the Christmas holiday I mean would it would it help tonight if we yeah it would so so so that there's one that I would ask that we already know we we have a $177,000 design contract that we already have under contract for the dog park we could if you approve that reallocation right now that's we could take care of that it would be one less thing to think about and do you need specific votes for us or could we vote to allow you to spend it between these three projects at your discretion I think that would work and then we'll double check with Teresa and the and the people that we need to on that in the meantime but I think that would work I mean I'll make that motion in a second but I would love if we voted that and then if you came back to us if there was if you had extra time you could tell us what you intend to do on the um on the first meeting in December and we can object if we don't you know like what you're proposing but I I'd rather give you the authority to to move those along um and to sign those contracts and get them out of the way before the last minute should I move that yeah you should so I I I move that the uh Town manager be allowed to spend any remaining arper money on the um uh dog park the 17 Woodberry uh project in the 53 River uh Street project at his discretion I'll second that all in favor I I I Alissa are you I'm abstaining also I feel like my brain is not working at the right velocity to make this tricky decision so three in favor two extensions before we move on do you have an objection that we should take into account um well I wasn't on the board um when the original arpa allocations were made but I was certainly at that Podium opining on them um I think that the one that I do support is the 53 River Street project but not arpa funding on the other two so I just am choosing not to vote in favor is May I you don't have to answer me do you just just not favor those projects Oh no just not the the the F the funing from arpa yes I I realize that um the federal government or whoever created the rules um those are allowable um expenses but just philosophically understanding the reason for the the funding to communities um you know in direct relation to the pandemic yeah I get that water infrastructure and broadband and all of those things are are allowable Jim and if I was trying to articulate um what my exension was about it would be that um I I think I'm looking I I I think I need that um you know the compelling chart of of all the arpa projects and and how the money's been spent and that would help me get a better context for um you know what what to do with the remaining money um but I didn't want to stand in the way of making making progress on this because I agree there's some the timing uh is critical here so I just didn't want to get in the way of that I I I'm happy if John brings you know you know I just wanted him to have the authority to move forward if he could but I'm happy to have him come back and discuss it so that we can weigh weigh in F further you I I I might be with you and that there might be and maybe with ls as well there might be other things that I would spend it on except that it has to be under contract right so we can't really do it for taxi service or things like that that doesn't work for this this case um and so I um um but anyway um the town manager now has the authority but if he wants to bring it back in the first meeting um in December we can discuss it again yes John is there a possibility that you'll find out um from Teresa that you do need uh a vote from the select board as the allocating the original allocating Authority in terms of like the grant requirements yeah if I had to guess I think she'd want to see exact numbers uh for each allocation okay um so yeah I I I agree that I'd like to have that come back to the board so sorry in in in that case and since they brought it up do we want to authorize specifically $117,000 for the dog park because they said they had a uh a contract to pay now I think what we what was done was fine I just think that the exact numbers should come back to the the board before the end of the year but I understand the timing issue and wanting not to wait until the 16th in order to who knows how long it will take with communication to get contract signed are we good moving on review progress on select board goal to implement traffic calming policy so this this could be a really long conversation or could just be the beginning of of future conversation I think I wanted to just call attention to a couple traffic Comming initiatives that director Cory York and and the the team over there implemented uh one was that we have a trial going on Spruce Street that little section near the school uh of speed bumps speed temporary speed bumps uh it seems to be going okay so far uh two we just completed a nice section of sidewalk on Willow Street between summer and um another Crossroad over there uh which come they did it quickly it turned out really nice uh and they're finishing the wall for the Taylor Street sidewalk which has been a long project but we're we're we're getting closer uh it's looking really good uh so those are some traffic cming things and Gardener field itself I think is a traffic calming uh issue because we now have a it's a scene you can see you drive or walk by and you see it you notice it and maybe you slow down uh because of it uh because uh the team has now finished the landscaping or nearly finished the Landscaping clearing a beautiful metal Archway with granite pillars um and I think the steps were being poured today um so it's coming along and the traffic coming policy is in the packet for your review I love the idea of it being the beginning of a conversation do we should we send comments via email instead of discussing it tonight or do you want a little bit of feedback tonight we can I I would just add that the transportation advisory committee is scheduled to discuss it on the 20th I think which is probably tomorrow or the next day it so that that is another opportunity for public input on that they're the group that you know they're taking a big role in this so I just wanted to get it to you all as soon as we had it are they well I was thinking initially of carrying this over to a next next meeting just because of the topic and the lengthiness because it could be a lengthy conversation thank you yeah so we'll go on to the consent items um number 18 approve Northern Tier rail trail rail will take out Trail support letter uh approve meeting minutes October 21st 2024 approve policy for Town Council review of Citizen petition articles hold 21 approve letter of support for 495 Metro West partnership redo application 22 approve 2024 2025 private way plowing 23 approve 2025 select board feed fee schedule hold 24 accept donation of $293 from Nathaniel Stanley as a surplus from Eagle Scout service project fundraising to be deposited in conservation division Scout account number 314 6550 25 accept donation of $700 from Acton Mass Women's Club in Incorporated towards the community service office serve program 26 accept report of one-day licenses approved Josh Gould Miracle field Nara Park November 8th and 9th 2024 David I move to approve uh consent items 18 19 21 22 and 24 through 26 inclusive second all in favor yeah and Alissa you held um what did you hold 20 20 the Town Council review um so I talked with David about this um over the weekend on um item number one I am suggesting that in the second sentence that it say that we insert the word subsequently um between should it and pass so that it's clear that the opinion from Town Council is coming ahead of town meeting yeah so Town council's opinion on the effect of the petition should it subsequently pass at town meeting will be presented to the select board and made available to town meeting members David um I think that's fine and if we pass this uh then I I will get an updated copy to Lisa sounds good so I move to approved consent item 20 ased edited second all in favor I [Music] yes y another oh 23 sorry David we're not finished yet uh thank you um so I I I can not not do this now if people really don't want to do it um I uh I just want to get to the fee thing here license Fe schedule memo um no that's the wrong thing um so I we we talked a little bit about the um gaming machines being much more expensive to license than the um uh the pool tables and I think that's that's just odd and wrong and and so I was wondering if we just wanted to change the uh billiard tables to be $20 per table and the automatic Amusement um device to be $20 per machine so it's 20 and 20 um and 20 to 25 was about the average for a Bayer's table and other in the the memo so you know people agree I'll make a mo motion to um um adopt the fee schedule with those two changes and those two changes again are changing the bill your table license to $20 per table and changing the automatic amuse Amusement device fee to $20 per machine can I see Alissa do we have automatic Amusement devices in town yes Y and B oh yes so like every ski ball machine is $100 okay that's ridiculous agree David don't you think compared to a pool table I think it's not fair for those businesses right I I mean I think $10 is more than fair for a Bayer table I'm just wondering how actum buol drum is still in business paying that um give them a break during the pandemic anyway I I I think 20 and 20 is fair and and more on line with what other towns do Dean yeah um I I before we vote this I I'd like to see um how many such devices there are how much revenue we're bringing in and how much revenue we're going to be deferring it might not seem like much but you know at this point every dollar counts and the uh the simple fact is that you know the price has been high for quite some time and they seem to be doing okay so I you know I just don't want to walk away from money on the table without knowing how much money money there is we're talking about what the financial impact is Alissa I I will note that I noticed that the fees were higher for cities than they are for towns so for instance Lexington is 20 and Sudbury is 20 but Framingham is 100 so maybe that's it south is 100 could be the size I I don't know should we bring this back to another uh consent or Absolutely I'll get a spreadsheet thank you thank you thanks L yeah thank you so I move to take take no action on the select board fee schedule this meeting second all in favor uh to take no action I I and then can I move something else can I I move to adjourn second all in favor I yes