##VIDEO ID:8HWxmugciqA## okay uh good evening it is Monday December 16th at 6:30 pm and this is a virtual Zoom only meeting of the lunenberg capital plan Capital planning committee uh in accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and will be able to be found on the lunberg access yoube Channel after the meeting uh it can be viewed remotely through Zoom the meeting ID is 909 uh 174 0347 the agenda lists all the topics which will uh be discussed which may be discussed at the meeting and those reasonably anticipated by the chair votes may be taken as a result of these discussions not all items listed May in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by the open meeting law uh I'm calling this meeting to order at 6:31 p.m. is there any public comment uh we don't have an audience outside of the board tonight so yet anyway is there any public comment no not for me hearing none um so uh there were a couple of items that I took as homework uh or one item I took as homework and then um one other item came about out over the course of the last week um so and I would have emailed this to you if it was at all pertinent and I thought would have an effect on your um uh rankings uh but I did reach out to the town manager and the DPW director uh pertaining to the available funds for the cemetery commission relative to the expansion space and the roads in North Cemetery uh the feedback from the DPW director is that the cemetery commission uh has funds on hand that should be able to cover the design work should they choose to use it um but not the roads uh and that they have not taken either matter up as a as a matter of whether they would choose to use their funds for those items uh and they have not met uh so far as I'm aware uh in the interim period uh since our last meeting um so it shouldn't not not a surprise to me but but uh suffice it to say it's more in line it's in line with the the gist of the discussion that we had a couple of weeks ago um secondly um and I don't have the exact number in front of me but at last week's select board meeting the interim Town manager reported that the uh free cash number uh was uh considerably over $2 million which was well above of what he had um uh predicted in our uh meeting that we had in person a couple of weeks ago um he had begun to meet with Ezekiel to do uh some some initial projections uh based on that new information uh however he did not have any uh final estimate in terms of the effect that that would have on uh funding for Capital uh he did say that he was comfortable projecting a a floor of another 250,000 or quarter of a million dollars um which would bring the floor number that that we had discussed a couple of weeks ago um with that additional 250 to uh 1.35 uh so as good as our projections could be at this point uh given the information that we have and the information uh uh that he has avail a to him at this time um if we were looking to to game the system that should be a a planning number that that we should probably be aware of at at this point um I also did ask him about and and this is less pertinent now than it was a couple of weeks ago um about the thinking around the um the policy for OPB as a percentage of uh of available free cash uh and he had not come to a conclusion on that he had not looked at the back at the um the recent budgets to determine how that calculation was made that whether it was made against available free cash or previous years's free cash um but he did generally agree to agree with me that logically it should be connected to available free cash as opposed to free cash that was available uh a year preceding um but but no concluding um position on that at at this point um and so that is all I have to report relative to and I have uh thank you all um I have received your your uh final rankings uh which I will uh reveal in just a moment uh but before I do that do you have any uh questions no okay all right uh so let me share my screen okay so these are the items in order that we ranked them um you can see across the bottom I have an average ranking and a median ranking tab that I will uh reveal in just a moment um but I wanted you to kind of get a first look at you know where the the similarities are and where the the points of uh relative diversion uh are as well um as in all years we uh are generally in the ballpark on most but we do have a few that uh that we're you know have some some outliers um um mostly uh at an individual level I don't see any major outliers that we substantially disagree on like a three to two uh kind of split any questions all right media and the average look there's very few that have any meaningful distinction so that's good yeah so where this will matter uh is if you look at the average ranking um n sorry that did display the way I previewed it a minute ago um and I so I created for the average and median ranking screens I created a cumulative cost uh so that we can sort of draw a line and see about where this lands um and and have a discussion about a you know a projected um uh line that that we may want to be thoughtful about as we move forward uh so in order of average ranking um patrol Cruiser one uh is first uh Primary School feasibility feasibility uh for the driveway and uh parking expansion is two uh the fire prevention duty officer vehicle is three Library HVAC upgrades is four Town Hall HVAC upgrades is five Primary School playground design is six Turkey Hill hot water tank is seven Senior Center flooring eight teen center uh floor replacement nine uh Public Safety uh second floor design 10 Patrol Cruiser 2 11 uh Town Hall window replacement 12 compact backo 13 Primary School generator 14 replacement of security camera and Central server uh 15 Senior Center Parking 16 and if you see here if you to project a 1.35 line that we just talked about your line would be right about here um excuse me NOP it would be one one deeper uh right uh sorry uh one tongue truck this is the um DPW truck uh would be 17 and your your line would actually be uh right here um what is interesting on this one is that um and really nothing below this line comes as a surprise to me um but you do have a $400,000 item uh at 1.2 million so you know where we've got this $400,000 item and we do have some differences of opinion on this one the average here is uh weighted heavily by uh Rob's uh ranking um but you've got a 26,000 and 350,000 uh sitting below that um so that may be something to have a conversation about if we decide to pursue the average so well I mean if that's the only thing I mean so it is envisioned that if we got to the point where we had more than $1.35 million but not enough to give the 1.6 that this would be the town manager's prerogative to just skip over that and get as many as you can below it saying Hey listen that's a bigger item and we can't do it I mean that's my understanding is how it's supposed to work yeah Fair too yep yep exactly true okay so let's look at median ranking um the differences are not substant again I'm apologize the way this is rendering I I had this all prepared like I was prepared for the meeting um so the differences here are when you get to the 1.2 to 1.3 neighborhood the median the the six wheel dump truck actually does drop to to um one place yeah one place to 19 so it it does fit in a little bit more below um below that number but not a lot frankly yep um the the other substantial difference in this one is that um and again I you know it doesn't come as a surprise to me but the primary school window film uh dropped quite a bit on the median versus the average um and from clearly you know on the bubble to outside of the bubble as one member I would say that it doesn't I I don't have any strong feelings about the average or the median which one because they're all so close and while it has you know maybe one or two items that swap most of them are in the same ballpark certainly the the ones that are above the line the coverage I don't think changed yeah they didn't um right I mean and again I think it's going to be you know the deciding factor to your point Tom maybe look it's not 1.35 it's one point for what you know and and the town manager has the discretion to Sure move things around to make them fit um and and you know perhaps our um our rankings would have some bearing there we also do have in median um there are some ties there are two 11s um which we might want to have a chat about if we decide to pursue that uh there are two 13s and two 16s and two 20s and a bunch of 21s and 22s so um so we might if we decide to pursue that we may we may want to have a discussion about those those numbers because they are in fact ties um again because it's all so close I I'm I'm leaning toward using the average uh just because it's a little bit more directional fewer ties there's only one tie I can see in the average of 14.4 yeah well no there's a 20.4 as well I guess so there's two two ties yeah I would prefer the average I really I value the median as a reference point but um as I've said at a previous meeting I'm medians are really intended for a larger sample size than we have here so I think they're a useful reference point point I would not want to use them as the way we determine our list but um I mean that's where I land on it but again they're very similar so eh my bigger concern is about setting precedent be it firm precedent or even the soft precedent for people who might not understand nuances as well in the future okay um so looking if we do go with this list right um row 20 through 23 all potentially could make it above the six wheel dump truck yes just because of the values of them so I think we just need to have a discussion on on that kind of so the the dump truck is heavily weighted by by my ranking uh my thought process aside from putting it so high generally my thought process was I was I was not going to second guess the order of priority that the department put on it so that was first and I I wasn't going to put the others ahead of it and reorder their priority that being said if it's the difference between being able to make the smaller purchases or not making them uh I have I have no problem subordinating the the the dump truck yeah when one one thing I had with the dump truck is and I think we talked about this maybe last week is we have three on order right already or two on order already I don't know two two or three I think there may there may be three definitely two but they may be a third I can't remember and there was four ordered over the course of the last couple of years yeah so I I I just want to avoid getting in a situation where you know we're we're in this um you know I I don't know if it's eight or 10 years from now all of a sudden we're going to have four or five 400 ,000 items that are all right there's no spacing between these these items right yes that is one reason that was my thinking that was my thinking too exactly that reasoning that that's where I landed but um I realize just as I'm kind of thinking about it I wonder what are the turnaround times on those dump trucks now compared to what they used to be because it's one of those that if if it's a if it's a consistent turnaround time then ordering a year apart means they should be coming du about a year apart and with several of those in the fleet I'm not I mean many years we'll have one uh I guess that's kind of that's my only concern there with pushing it off even though I I did push it off with my rankings so I think he said if I remember correctly I think he said 18 months was the lead time that's what he said yep so and that's you know currently five years ago it was four months or something right it was substantially less than that but um given the availability of heavy equipment right now um that's the current current lead time and the other the other bit of context here is for the last two Winters we've had I believe zero of these trucks on the road um so you know in this year we may have one and then we're expecting delivery I believe for the remainder that we have on order outside of the snow season so I think two are due in January if I remember okay yeah um so suffice to say though I mean we've been operating without them without any and we're gonna have four by by next winter yeah that's a general concern I have is the alignment of how many operators we have to how many vehicles we have in our Fleet um you know operations versus Capital but so I agree okay so um again this this may ultimately be some Antics because the town manager has the ability to make these changes on his or her own right um you know um Rob I would leave it to you if you're okay with dropping that to um you know one two three four to to fit in the lower cost items below it um I think agree to that I everyone else here would agree to that but yeah that that's fine with me okay yeah I mean so I don't I don't care because again it's not like if we have $1.5 million and we can't afford that it's going to stop there that's number one and any reasonable Town manager would go to the ones below it and even whatever we put on I mean the a town manager could decide although I doubt it would happen a year like this when we have a new one could decide yeah I I want to get something earlier anyway so um you know it's to start another option here is we could leave it exactly as it is and share that advice with the town manager right exactly which is hey here here you go this is the this is the average vote this is what you know the the way it landed um but you know we recognize that it's your discretion uh and uh do what this as you see fit and you know if if it so happens that the available money is 1.6 then let's buy a truck if it's 1.5 then let's buy something else right right yeah I mean that's my point I mean I I don't I I'm not against changing it if Rob feels so inclin I'm I'm not against leaving it where it is either uh the only thing I always say is the only thing that rais his eyebrows to me is if a town manager comes in and says you know item number 23 is really important and I want to put that up to five then I have an issue with the committee never happened before the most I've ever seen anything moved there's like four positions and at that point I still had a conversation with the town manager saying okay you have to convince me that this needed to move four positions from what a group of appointed people from different committees and commissions uh were on so okay I think we generally agree I would move I'll move that we uh adopt this list based on the averages as presented currently second second okay I'll recognize a second from Rob any further discussion uh quickly yes um can we include the explicit idea that I want to make life as easy as possible for a new town manager so that they're not playing a guessing game and I mean yes it's their prerogative but knowing our thought process might be very helpful so can we basically include a note saying that yeah we get that this may well what may well need to be bumped down in order to fit more things and we would recommend that rather than moving it up to fit the jump truck I will memorialize that in an email to Carter when we report this and copy you all and Avail myself to uh either him or uh a new town manager when such a person lands and I'll remember the discussion during the hearings hearings yep that too great that would be my only thought and I'm very comfy with this then okay any further discussion all right this will be a roll call vote Mr Alonzo I Mr Bowen hi Mr brener I Mr Menard I and an i for myself um we are adopted and uh as I said I will uh put this into an email and share this with the town manager and the department heads um poost haste and the committee I'm assuming too yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay all right I'm going to stop sharing uh okay uh review and approv minutes I had forgotten to remind everybody about minutes we had three sets of minutes uh since the last time we approved minutes in our email um would anybody like to make a motion to approve minutes or would you prefer to wait until we meet again sometime uh in 25 I I looked rather quickly but I found two sets not three sets you listed today as one of the dates oh did I I'm sorry yeah I had a reference to it in email I thought from Danielle so I apologize so I found the other two dates I did I did as well and I reviewed them yeah okay so 114 and 12 oh look at that 114 and 122 correct any questions or concerns no they looked okay to me yeah okay and I had read them when they came in I did not read them today which is why I sent you an arous email okay is there a motion to approve minutes from 11:4 and 122 so moved second all right I have a move from motion from Mr brener and a second from Mr Menard uh any further discussion all those in favor ah roll call though um Mr Alonzo hi Mr Bowen hi Mr brener I Mr Bernard I I for myself okay minutes are approved um find my agenda I went out of order okay uh scheduling topics for upcoming meetings so I have not gone like I did at the beginning of this season um and found a list of theoretical availability between the uh finance committee the select board the planning board and the school committee um I know that those dates should be available uh beginning in January I've just not done the math to figure that out um so assuming we would like to meet and continue to meet in January and February um I will circulate some proposed dates uh and uh try to get a meeting on the calendar for uh sometime in January uh last time we met we discussed a few different topics that we would like to discuss uh principally among them are a review of requests between two and five years and identifying uh possible additional questions concerns or Communications that we wish to make to department heads that we do not consider these to be priorities or inside of what may be reasonable relative to other uh request over the coming years um a report uh uh to the town meeting that outlines what we consider to be things that need to be funded uh inside of the next five years and a potential Delta relative to the fiscal forecast uh and and what we consider to be um available funds for Capital and uh potential additional means of funding to include um you know additional uh exclusion articles or or what have you um and then uh finally a policy recommendation uh on bringing proposals forward uh to include uh some sort of bracketing or guidance for estimates so that we can uh be able to determine the uh fidelity of an estimate and perhaps uh some sort of calculus to go along with that Fidelity such that um we can G potentially give uh more Credence to items that we think are um are more credible uh from a from a um uh from a cost estimation standpoint uh so those are the three areas that that I had um I'm not exactly sure of what the order might be the policy thing seems like you know potentially that does not necessarily have to be ready for a town meeting there may be other things that me we might want to tackle in the way of A Five-Year Plan and and uh financing that we might want to look at reporting out prior to town meeting um but I wanted to open the floor to do those things make sense to you guys and or is there something obvious that I've missed that we should consider tackling as well with with regard to reporting out to town meeting on The Five-Year Plan the financial component of that is that is that beyond our assignment is that I mean yeah so that that's a great question Rob uh and and I think that there may be some disagreement amongst us on that but the the uh the charter stipulates that um the capital planning committee is responsible for um a capital plan like it it refers to a capital plan the plan being the noun it does not stipulate and it and it does um stipulate five years but it does not stipulate whether that plan is inclusive of financing or not sure now it would seem to me that a plan should include how you're gonna pay for it right no I I I agree and that that has informed my judgment on ranking and everything else I mean when I when I put together my rankings uh I I ran the numbers similar to you what was the cumulative total at certain points and it was important to me to know how much we were spending where I was going to put things but we don't completely have that information right so I I think it I think it should be part of what we do but I was sort of throwing it out there to see what everybody thinks so one additional bit of context here that could be informative to our process um and and the charter also stipulates that the town manager needs to submit a fiscal forecast early in the calendar year I don't know I don't recall the exact number of days before town meeting but it basically lands on second part of January I seem to recall um and in the past um when Heather Lemieux was Town manager she would include as part of that fiscal forecast um what is effect effectively a financing Gap um and the way it was calculated was she projected available funds for Capital and then took all of the projected capital requests that have been made from department heads um irrespective of Merit and calculated the Delta yeah um so what what I am suggesting is that we take that bit of information assuming Carter is going to uh report that out in a similar fashion this year uh and add two additional bits of context one is things that we don't think should be on that Five-Year Plan and in terms of items if there are things that we can agree to or bubble items or advice to to um department heads that they need to take a harder look or or what have you whatever we land on um and number two is a report that highlights whatever the Delta is that we think it's going to be and potential paths to closing that Delta uh if the town chooses to do that that that makes sense in term in terms of the first thing that you were talking about the things that we don't think necessarily will ever get funded or don't belong on the capital plan should should we formulate some kind of a policy that that kind of codifies that I I haven't been around enough to know but do things that don't get done keep appearing in future requests from the Departments so do we do we have like a a Hall of Fame ballot if if if if you don't if you don't get funded three times it shouldn't ever come back before us again well the only things that have fallen into that have been the infrastructure buildings that that the the reports the town buildings that the reports were done on that recommended what the work needed to be done those are the only ones that seem to keep coming back so whether it's brook house or TC Paso or the Ridder or town hall if we want to take one as a for instance I think Brooks Brooks house is probably the the poster child for this because it doesn't ever get high ratings here from this committee it hasn't since I've been on it it hasn't before then and is unlikely to in the future although who knows who constitutes the committee in the future but that has one that's keeps coming back and it keeps coming back because the facilities director has given these documents and they keep pointing to them is they and and their position is hey it's telling me I have to care about this until Town says I don't have to care about this I kind of almost obligatorily have to bring it back yeah yeah I think that's a good summation um so that that is one category um and I think that we could potentially come up with some ideas and guidance around that right which is you know perhaps we not be dictated by the vertex study or what have you but rather we're going to spend money on buildings that you know um have either an envelope issue and if it's just you know if it's beyond an envelope then it's um there has to be a plan for the building a use plan or something right it has to serve the citizens or whatever that might be right we we can talk about that um so that's one category the other category that I think um and we were fortunate this year that we didn't have to deal with it largely due to the assist that we got from the federal government in arpa funds um are infrastructure uh uh public work Works projects right so these are drainage issues in particular um that are creating problems in our streets and and as well as Bridges bridges and culverts um and you know are we have streets culverts bridges in lunenberg that are 100 100 years old or more in some cases um there's one on The Five-Year Plan uh on Northfield Road that I think is well over 100 year old bridge um so I think that that's something we need to call attention to um the DBW director has suggested we create a utility model and look at um uh uh storm water uh uh type policy to deal with that I think that that's something that we've got to say look this is a these types of projects are a budget Buster and it's going to be fix a bridge uh or don't fix a bridge and wait for the bridge to go out and then decide if you're going to fix the bridge or buy uh you know buy police cars and fire trucks and um and those kinds of things and they're not really fair trade-offs because they're so unlike um but they all cost lots of money and you know I think that there's a strategic imperative that we tackle this and and figure it out yeah I have no problem with that to to Rob's question earlier about is it our purview about the the four-year uh The Five-Year Plan I would say rob that it really dovetails we we are not responsible for coming up with the number that's going to be projected for Capital but the town manager has to report that out in their fiveyear as as Peter said in their five-year fiscal forecast and we should just take that number and said okay well these are the projects I think need to happen in 5 years and the are the projected Capital dollars available and yeah you guys figure it out where where these are the ones we're short with yeah and to be fair every year we're gonna do what we just did right right like you know that that that's still gonna happen but what this does is it creates a a better Tool uh level of visibility um that you know hopefully a select board DPW director facilities directors uh can take and run with it to to you know do better uh with our money over the course of the next several years and perhaps make wiser decisions as a result of that right great okay so the the other topic that I still think we're missing on is um is a kind of a grant strategy of some sort um and I I still think we should getting some kind of Grant consultants in to help us um formulate the the capital plan as it relates to maximizing you know grant opportunities yeah so in principle I agree with you Chris uh in practice I I'm not really sure where to begin with that right so for example when Chief Sullivan gave us those guidelines around firet trucks that turned out to be uh a little bit outdated um you know I was thinking in terms of like okay well let's look at Fleet Management to go and and better ourselves for for Grant competitiveness um I'm not quite sure where else to point that ship but you know maybe if you have other ideas or yeah I would suspect that there's Consultants of some sort that could come come in and and help us with a kind of master um vision and strategy on that um but I don't know I've not done that research perhaps Carter or the new town manager would would know that um are are you thinking that if a if an expert could be identified we would be the stakeholder in that engagement would that I I think we would be a major stakeholder in it yeah okay because a lot of what we're doing is big are the big projects right yeah yeah I I agree with Chris and I also think it's wise to Loop in uh maybe Carter but definitely the new town manager once we have one because that should be that may well be an individual who can give us more feedback in that direction as well as may have some kind of vision for how some of this could interplay with other Financial things yep yeah not only state grants but federal grants and private grants I don't know yeah okay I will uh add that to the list Chris and um I will circulate a proposed schedule based on availability my here's what I'm thinking realizing that there's a new town manager hopefully coming on there's a budget season coming up with a new town manager and an understaffed finance committee there's like we're we're going to we're very likely to run into a similar situation that we were running into last year um I think if we were well organized we could get good agendas and I could get some materials uh laid out and maybe some meetings with the town manager in advance of that if we would commit to maybe a meeting a month January February March April right if we could get get four meetings in before Town M Town Meeting um you know maybe we could make Headway on three of these four things or two of these four things prior to town meeting and uh I would consider that to be uh a great accomplishment considering the headwinds that we uh we've already faced this year and are probably going to face over the next four or five months sure the only topic I would add by the way and it's a very minor one and that is presentation and spreadsheet format submissions submission format which didn't happen this here so that whoever is chairing and whoever is receiving it it's all in the same format you can copy and paste things from one form to another not have to worry about oh they use different column headings they use different setups and everything just you know come up with a a single unified format and have the department heads fill those in yeah I I agree agree I I had the best of intentions this year and we did get an assist from the library director on this who met with the who met with the um department heads in an attempt to standardize or create a minimal criteria for what is in the presentations unfortunately um any kind of visual standardization uh did not happen and I'm I'm hopeful that we can accomplish that in the future yeah it's one of those things you need needs to be a top down directive I mean it literally template we need to create a template right well we not all somebody does I mean the point is I don't care who does it but for have having to assign for the interim Town manager to assign Mir to do it with no stick and like everybody else is all the department heads are looking at I'm like okay cool great idea I'll just do what I want you know you need it needs to be a top- down direcor I agree I agree okay um anything else on that topic okay uh so please look out for your email hopefully I'll get to this before Christmas because my Christmas week is going to be kind of crazy and I'd like to have something on the calendar for January sooner rather than later um I'll try to come up with some dates that I currently see as holes on the calendar and uh we'll pursue it that way uh so look to your email uh in short order on that good Rob why do I feel like I'm watching a campaign ad for you here I don't know vote early vote often good advice both parts what I'm curious about are you are you in the building that is behind you or are you I that that's my office behind I know it is I know but are you in there right now as you're speaking I am as a matter of fact that's what he asked yeah talk about an outof Body Experience there you go yes yes all right um is there any public comment I would just uh thank you all for uh your patience and cooperation and teamwork uh over the course of the last few months um certainly didn't go as I had uh uh articulated or anticipated or hoped but um nevertheless we uh we managed to I think put together a really good list uh that is extremely well considered and uh and I I appreciate everyone working together to make that happen so thank you very much you're here and by the way as prior chair for two years it never does come out the way you wanted to ever well we're gon I'm gonna keep trying so long as I'm share know Ian that's what we all do right yeah yeah everyone yeah have a great have very Merry Christmas everyone all right is there a motion to adjourn so moved second uh roll call vote Mr brener hi Mr Alonzo hi Mr Bowen hi Mr Menard hi and I for myself we are adjourned Merry Christmas all we will see mer and to all a good night cheers take care everybody bye