noting the time in the presence of a quorum I call this meeting of the act and finance committee to order the first item as always is public participation and I see our select board member of the public is uh coming to the microphone good evening uh for a number
of reasons I believe that the proposed DPW building design is in the taxpayer's best interest the proposed building is a good value it sies to be adequate now for offices shops natives for some not all of the desk space rent and utilities would cost tens of thousands of dollars
a year while remote operations would make the department less run less efficiently also common spaces uh would need to be duplicated the current design is based on the work of the feasibility study and study committee it's what was presented to town meeting when we asked for design
funding the design uh funding was supported by super majorities of the select board and finance committee a significant redesign now would mean wasting that $1.2 million that's a lot of money even a medium redesign would
require more money Town must be given a chance to vote on what they asked for by the way the resultant design is actually about 10% smaller what than was shown in that study construction inflation is running almost twice overall inflation it'll
cost taxpayers about a million dollars more each year that we delay Plus cost to design a different building so if we wait a a couple more years it's likely to cost us $2 million more if we begin again in 2029 it could cost us $6
million or more more DPW equipment needs to be protected from the cold and um precipitation for a number of reasons first efficiency daily time spent organizing the equipment in the too small garage putting on plows
outside Etc takes time away from work equipment on trailers that aren't going to be garaged has to be unloaded and stored every evening and brought out every morning second longevity the dpd DPW Crews take excellent care of our equipment we have some trucks that are
about 30 years old uh crew members feel bad if they have to leave equipment outside since everything doesn't fit equipment that we don't often use in the winter um doesn't get a place inside town meeting recently allowed us to buy
a new bucket truck and chipper that equipment worth over $100,000 is stored under an overhang but exposed to the elements this is analgous to leaving your lawnmower outside during the winter only lawnmowers cost a few hundred
dollars third Readiness DPW are First Responders when we have a big winter storm Police and Fire require the DPW to get around we don't want to be in the position where we can't begin to Salt the roads until we scrape ice and snow from about a dozen trucks that are too
tall to reach without a step ladder never mind keeping the freezing rain out of the Sanders as an example the dpw's excavator which is not often used in the winter is stored uh out in the cold this winter we did need it though but the the
diesel fuel had gelled it took the mechanics a full day to get it operational finally dpw's and other communities all keep their equipment out of the elements some do keep them covered in unheated spaces and use block
heaters the block heaters cover the engines but not the Hydraulics a separate unheated canopy may be cheaper to construct but it would cost more in the long run our plan is to have a minimally heated garage just big enough to house the equipment that we have and no
more the wash bay and tight tank are included in this design mostly to protect the environment the water in nearby stream shows increased connectivity likely due to increased salt content the evidence is circumstantial but the salt may have
come from past DPW operations our salt stocks are well managed now the wash bay is such that we don't is is so that we don't add any environmental damage a key concern of many Town residents we have similar washing arrangements for our fire trucks
to remove fire residue it's no Taj Mahal but the proposed design is what it is to satisfy the needs and expectations of acting residents I believe it's an excellent value I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them so at this time that is our second
act to our third item on the agenda do we want to have the DPW conversation now with the select board member here and swap our agenda items yes okay we're going to go down this path Greg I saw you first and then Christie and then we will go down the go down the
table David you indicated that um the current design is 10% smaller than what than what was shown in the design study so uh which is what town meeting vote voted to give us money to design so
at that point the feasibility study showed I think a 52,000 square feet if I'm not mistaken at the time of town meeting what was the estimate for the building I believe we were told Ed $32 million or something
was the the ballpark idea before the design went ahead yes of course there have been now that goes to the construction inflation argument right so the construction inflation has gone up in the intervening years and the the
building cost I think now is $37 million and it's for $43 million project cost so um it's gone from 32 to 37 since the the feasibility was study was done in 2021 so that's not apples apples it's 32 to
37 not 32 to 43 that's correct 32 to 37 okay thank you okay um I would like to say that I think that your argument about not going back now and reviewing and not going back and making a change
now is a sunk cost fallacy what was brought to the town meeting was $1.2 Million to move ahead with a study what the select board chose to do was to direct specifically to only move ahead with a
building you guys couched your language couched your task to the subcommittee to only focus on what the previous committee had decided and the previous committee had decided to building so technically you are correct you are
doing they are doing what you directed them to do but I would argue you are not doing what is in the best interest of the taxpayers what should have happened was a true needs assessment and a feasibility of how to address those
needs you've stated that there's no facility in town that can handle these different these different components that is an assertion I'd love to have seen the study the statement that that declares it my understanding
is there is a car dealership in town that is about to become redundant and might be for sale now it may not be able to have the lift to to lift the largest of our trucks but we already have a lift that can handle the largest of our trucks furthermore it is you sir who
have said repeated L that you do not like the amount of square footage of unused commercial space in town it is by far cheaper to convert existing space than to build
it at the absolute most expensive prevailing wage of all the towns within X number of miles which includes Boston and cabridge for for the town of Acton so it is absolutely in the taxpayers interest for us to be to have discretion and to plan
the best way to do this and going ahead and saying that the most expensive way of building building is the most effective way of meeting the taxpayers need is also fiscally irresponsible to say that we have to
move forward now because we don't want to make any changes at all because it's going to cost us 6% more if we do it next year that's absolutely true if you make no changes at all but wouldn't you rather build the right size building and and meet the needs of the taxpayers
rather than say well it's it's just going to cost you more if you do it later I absolutely reject the concept that this building is the right size and I reject it for a number of reasons we
have a DPW building it's not pretty it's ugly it would be great to have something different but money doesn't grow on trees what do you need for the people in the DPW building my read of the situation is
you need an appropriate space for changing and mustering I grant you that the current building does not meet that need I also firmly believe that if you
get the people out of that building and turn the rest of the building over to storage space and indoor storage space for your equipment that you will meet the indoor need therefore it would be wiser to look
at an individual building that meets the Personnel needs rather than raising an entire building scraping an entire site and building a gigantic building at the most expensive method possible with the most
expensive uh uh source of short term source of electricity I will also grant you that over the life of the building it is possible that your energy saving initiatives may break even there is some
evidence that it doesn't I'm going to let Karin speak to that if she would if she choos to chooses to do so so therefore I think it is absolutely wrong for you to stand up and say that this is the most coste effective way of meeting the needs of this town
um you all also said that our trucks are 30 years old okay my understanding is that most of these trucks should only have a useful lifespan of 14 to 16 years when asked about this at an ALG meeting the town manager said we're not going to try
and calculate the cost of another two or three years savings when he said that what I heard was it's not of tangible Book value if you're not going to bother to calculate it then we can assume it's zero
furthermore we have the Weston and stampson memo that talks about specifically how some generic 30 30 piece of equipment building 30 piece of equipment Fleet would save approximately $4 million by by being
indoors are you really trying to say to me that you think it is worth 2 years merely 2 years of the cost of a 30-year bond to protect that what dollar value are you attempting to put on the
collaboration that you have just spoken of in the comments that you just had now how expensive is zoom what's the likelihood of being able to have everyone on an open meeting all the time there is no reason to build out anymore
in this day and age furthermore there's just the very real case of the year after it operating override we cannot afford this and you should not be asking for something that we cannot afford you have a sunk cost fallacy you've not
proven your numbers for the value of the building I don't understand I do not understand why you are bringing this to town meeting absolutely so the study committee which included two people from the finance committee recommended that
we do this that study committee recom uh set aside um replacing any uh buildings or other structures at the transfer station but did recommend this building and recommend this
building based on the feasibility study which was done before that um this building is not oversized this building just meets the size needs we have now it is doesn't house anything else that kind of thing um the building that we have is
not even um uh adequate to uh house the house the trucks and and other equipment that we have I just in my um remarks I said that you know some things are outside that
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars um and one side of that building the concrete block is literally being held together with epoxy that that building does need to be raised uh that that's just the fact I um and I understand that we're a municipality and have to pay
prevail ra uh wage but that's the way it is the the there isn't another place in town there's no other building that is big enough to house the equipment that we have is there a place that we might get it serviced maybe um but there isn't
a place to house it um and so and I didn't say that the it's the lowest cost thing but I believe it's the best value and in the taxpayer's best interest and this is what that was presented to the taxpayers when they asked us when when we asked them to give us design money
and they voted to do that and it was recommended by a super majority of this committee super majority of the select board you said there were two members of the finance committee that were part of this I believe Mr bordon was the representative to the first feasibil uh the the the first of the meeting of the
Committees um and Mr NY was the representative to the second committee the second committee had precisely one meeting March I believe it was March 31st and then the next meeting was in in September by the way I still don't see those meeting minutes posted on the
website nor do I see a record of that meeting having taken place though that meeting is the day that you guys chose your your uh construction manager so that's an oversight on the website that I strongly recommend you fix so to say they had two members of the finance
committee is not entirely accurate one Mr Burton was did say that something had to be done I do not believe and I will let him speak for himself I do not believe he ever signed off on a 43 or 37 or $47 million building and Mr ndi
unfortunately he's no longer with the committee I grant you he probably would have voted for your project unfortunately for you he is no longer with this committee and this committee is still unanimously unless something is changed unanimously against this proposal so be careful about saying two
furthermore The Proposal that was granted at town meeting was $30 million for a feasibility study for the best possible solution it was not a a plan to specifically
build a one a Allin Wonder building so I disagree with your statement that this is what the taxpayers were were presented with and this is what the taxpayers are getting so um before we had our Friday night meeting a couple weeks ago the board of selectman Tom bean put some
documents into a folder for all of us and and I went clicking around and this one is a life cycle cost analysis of the different um energy op options here um the three are you know the base is natural gas the and then there's air
source heat pumps and ground Source heat pumps which is part of the design the the ROI just like skipping to the end um for air source the ROI isga 83% and this is I'm assuming uming that
they don't have an Roi for the natural gas so I'm assuming that the ROI is compared to the Natural Gas um for for ground Source heat pumps the ROI is 52% and it might be as high as -7% if all of
the incentives are paid out which is not a not a sure thing um so that's like the the life cycle but The Upfront costs for the ground source for you know the geothermal stuff is about 2 2.3 2.4 million doar higher upfront
like that's money that could just be taken out and also like I said it's a cheaper heat Source a cheaper energy source um so I don't I still don't understand why we're let's get this like green you know this geothermal green
energy at all costs I you know I think if we're looking for ways to to bring the cost in to something that might be palatable to town meeting I think that's that's millions of dollars that I think we need to look at
so so um that life cycle analysis that was presented to um uh the last uh building committee um uh probably estimated too many geothermal Wells actually it's it's
a a wash right it it'll cost the same e either way it's the the numbers will be so close that it'll be hard to differentiate I I don't claim an Roi for the for this building um based based on that but there we had an Roi for other buildings but this one the costs are
about equivalent um but two other things uh first of all the um town meeting has adopted um the stretch energy code which doesn't allow us to put it in Natural Gas building anymore without showing um that it can't be done another way right
so if you there are certain applications of burning natural gas you know manufacturing processes and the like where electric heating wouldn't work right and so if those can be shown then we can allow the use of natural gas um
so that's what town meetings adopted okay so um I'm thank you how many Geo what how many Wells are in the current plan I know they 40 I think there's 4 so that's in this analysis yeah it needs 30 oh okay so okay so it should be down to 30 okay um so that was about a half a million dollars that's an that's an
estimate I it's so instead of $25 million it's a $2 million difference but as far as the town meeting adopting the stretch law there's waivers and the waivers include Financial um reasons too if it's not financially feasible that's something again I think town meeting should be
allowed to decide if they want to pay an extra $2 million UPF front plus additional cost over the life life of the building if they want to pay more for that um so you would you need to demonstrate that it can't it's not
feasible to do at the same cost what what your the numbers you just saw the difference was 7% assuming that there were best case scenario um 33% more Wells than are probably needed so that's why I say it's
probably the cost as a wash that's not a financial incentive and in this day and age in 2025 you wouldn't build a new fossil fuel building why would you do that right we the the planet is in crisis you know they this year they expected
uh because of linia that um we wouldn't hit a global temperature record last month guess what we hit a global temperature record last month for for recorded history so you know in in this day and age we wouldn't put in a um something that burns fossil fuels so is
it not also better for the environment not to redo all of this and just find some of the other space in town there is not another space in town which will house our equipment there is is there are vastly cheaper ways of
doing this there are you can put up every year the tennis camp puts up a bubble over their tennis tennis courts to keep them minimally heated that is an operational cost that's clearly cheaper than a long-term build
there the building that you're in now is not going to fall down on you and even and if you think it is then it is significantly cheaper to brace it than to raise it this is not the time to spend this
kind of money also on the concept of I'll come to you in just a second on the concept of uh of making sure that we have what what the workers need again I stipulated at the beginning I'm all for us putting in an appropriate building
for personnel to solve what I clearly see as a need but are you going to try and tell me that that this new building is going to generate over $100,000 a year per person per employee inefficiencies more than their salary
that's ridiculous I I reject it outright Mr Jabba I was um planning to raise this at bullet point 3 but I guess we're doing this now that's what I asked earlier okay so at our joint
session marriage counseling um near the end I shared a spreadsheet with all of us and with the select board and um I said at the time that I had just put the numbers together
that afternoon um since sharing it I've discovered that there were errors that I need to correct so let me um correct those because not well I should acknowledge when I
make mistakes but also because it gets to the key question that we're wrestling with right now which is how big a DPW building do we need is equivalent is
comparable what are other communities doing and it turns out the one number that I had that needs to get corrected the most is the square footage for the DPW buildings plural in Arlington the number that I had used in
my spreadsheet was 43,000 Square ft it was for the quote new DPW building and the new DPW building in Arlington is 43,000 square feet I've been there I photographed it I got a
tour um but there were also four other buildings in the project that were renovated at the same time one of them was for municipal IT services so not comparable to what we're talking about but the other three were
for DPW equipment storage so one of the things in the spreadsheet that I shared with you was I think this is a 43,000 square foot new DPW building it turns out it's a
75,0 50 square foot building in Arlington so that's that's one data point that threw off a lot of calculations the second calculation that I was advised to go back and double check my assumptions was on total road
miles and it's public data and those numbers that I got were accurate but that includes um in actin not only the miles that we have to plow the town has to plow but about half a dozen miles we
don't have to plow because they're in um G communities and in the state highway that we don't have to plow the state does that but those are minuscule for us for some other communities particularly on the
cape um unaccepted roads is a huge percentage of the total in their town and as a consequence some of the numbers when you start looking at comparables get thrown way off if you
don't use the accepted Road Miles number which is also publicly available so Mula I I used numbers on the Fly and I had one error in data that I had to go verify and I was
using uh a road mile calculation that uh isn't really comparable now when you plug that data in I know we're spreadsheet jockies right I'll share you the spreadsheet you can look at it I'm going to share you a spreadsheet with three different
tabs the second tab basically says look there's a couple anomalies in here any good business analyst would say you take your really high outliers and you're really low outliers and you throw them
out and so I took any Community whose population was more than 20% larger than Acton and any community that was 20% smaller than Acton and I threw them out and I came in with oh hm the building we
are proposing in Acton is 10% too large and then I got conservative and I know that's going to sound like an oxymoron it's like jumbo shrimp um and I said okay let's just
look at the communities that are within 10% of our population up or down and see how many Road miles accepted road miles they have what they're paying for their you know buildings I did not look
at because that's a number that will change over time okay but guess what square foot does not change over time so that's again the the the metric that I used and using the more conservative list of
comparables it turns out that we're about 13.4% too large so without arguing over how we're going to heat the building or whether it should have this thing or that thing all
which is valid debate I'm just looking at square footage and I think we are somewhere between 10 to 13% too large depending on which list of comparables you want to look
at and if I were at town meeting I would put that list up in front of the community and let them look at it analyze it and figure out why are we building something that is Way Beyond
the and pick the number seven or 14 comparable communities that we want to look at now that spreadsheet jockie talk that's data that's finance committee stuff let me now switch hats and talk
politics and it's straight politics I I I wish I could come up with some other way to couch this but it's politics at our joint meeting when I was initially saying I think we need to cut this by
20% the chair of the select board and I know that she was being serious but whether it was tongue and Chek or not said than I hear 10% and I thought oh horse trading guess
what that's done in politics all the time and what I'm saying is now that I've gone back and fixed the numbers you know what somewhere between 10 and 14% is
actually a prudent number so what I would urge you to consider tonight and I'm sorry I couldn't Sher this with you ahead of time I'm worried about violating the spirit of the open meeting
law is this there are three issues one was how fast we were going to build this thing we resolved that we got 2.5 million knocked off the price by going faster than two years and phasing
it in chalk it up I think we can also come to a reasonable number on what the the appropriate scope of this building should be and the only thing I don't think there is room to wiggle on at least I
don't see it I can't imagine it but maybe somebody else here can see it is timing I still think this is the wrong year to go in for a new DPW building why well initially because we'd
had a really close override last year that's what we were all talking about last fall today we went to the school committee budget day on Saturday in addition to wrestling with
all the problems that they've got to to deal with to come in with their budget uh estimate they also are dealing with $1.7 million in uncertainty over Federal cuts from the Department of Education
which may be abolished and how do you plan for that and so no we weren't talking about that last fall we certainly can talk about it today but I think that is yet another
reason why now is not the time even if we can compromise on the scope even if we've already accepted the fact that we can do this faster and save some money you know I think what we really
really can't deal with is this is the most uncertain time in the world to ask people to say hey trust us this is the minimum we need to get by this is just a lousy time I want to play Devil's
Advocate against that last comment select Martin's gon to love this what do you think about the fact that they're already not anticipating any cost in FY 26 because the bonds won't coming into FY 27 does that change your point of view at all or do you still
think that now is not the time to present it in front of the town meeting um I only have one financial adviser who if I talked to recently couldn't predict the bond market otherwise I'd be moving money out
of equities and into bonds so the answer is nobody knows even the FED can't figure out whether they're going to do another cut or two this year or not because we'll just take tariffs okay what will a I don't know
25% tariff on aluminum and steel due to the cost of our building is it going to happen or will it mysteriously disappear when the 30 days discussion with Canada lapses who knows we are this is just a really rough
time to say let's go forward now a year ago I shared the story with who were members of the board then on what the Marines do when they're dealing with uncertainty they have what they call the
70% solution if you are 70% sure of the information you have instead of waiting until you have 100% of the information 70% you got enough okay we don't have 70% sounds like you're unmoved by my argument but by that I'm I'm I'm
I'm not buying it year yeah uh so I've been concerned as I see the various tariffs and the discussion about um material costs Rising is there any plan on um at what point
the estimates would potentially be revised it seems like we just what we have might be what goes into play in May or What's um reasonable for May or it might be a completely different number is there any discussion about when those
recalculations might happen so if um we decided not to do it this year right then we would have to have um additional design money to make whatever changes town meeting thought we
should make right and um then um that would involve a re Rec cost estimate um right so uh you know whatever we thought we needed to change would would have to be reosto the value engineering right so if it's a value engineering item or
something that we can change right away then that gets reca it right away uh if it's a uh a medium level building redesign then we'd probably need have to ask town meeting for more money to redesign the building or modify the existing design and then that would be
about a redesign I'm just wondering at what point do we lock in cost of materials Etc um uh I could double check with the town manager but very soon after town meeting we we would uh uh go out to bid
and um sign a contract okay so with tariffs potentially in place would there be soon before town meeting potentially a like once we see how things are going if we're looking at 20% of steel or or whatever um is there a plan to do a
recalculation new esate um uh there certainly is not not a plan right at right at the moment um since we you know the the terorists were just put in place what it today or yesterday um but we wouldd have to figure out uh [Music]
um what what it what we thought it meant after a little little while we have a few months before we'd put the the things in place and how much a 25% tariff on a foreign steel costs causes domestic prices to go up does it less than that more than that I mean I don't
know that anybody really knows so um um I mean I could TR try to figure out we do have two two levels of contingency in the project I mean it's probably worth asking the question as to whether those levels of contingency
could cover um you know given that say steel is I'll just say 10% of the materials cost cost if that goes up by 25% what would that do to the overall cost to the of the building so um uh we we but it's a very reasonable question
and I think we should look into it before Town Meeting thank you all right I just have a couple different I have a different slightly different perspective on this um the little joint session we had we were trying to understand where both
sides are coming from uh the way I I view that is that um there is a point where I would believe that every select board member and even the town manager would say the
cost of this project would exceed their ability their their willingness to just approve it as a project now it could be three or four times 10 times the cost everybody would have a different number and uh there for every member of the
finance committee I'm sure we all have different numbers in our head where we would say we would accept this or we would reject it the issue that I myself that I have with this process is that
there is a number um where this project is too expensive regardless of the design um to go forward with and I would imagine that every taxpayer has got a different idea of what the number should be and what the tax impact on their on
their bill they would be willing to accept now at a very high level of this project um I don't see the issue as road miles or size of building I see the primary issue with the project is is the
lack of of looking at staffing needs separately and building needs separately it doesn't mean when you get to the end of the analysis that they don't come back together again but there has been
uh it was referenced by Steve um Believe In The Joint session that there was a study done decade ago and Dean dismissed that as a something to even look at um it it's what my it seems like there is
there's no movement to discuss or think about uh how this could look differently as a project and the the staffing needs I've have been identified are important need to be addressed uh and there are so
many ways to deal with staffing needs and the build if if that if those two things are separated and the building need without staff stands alone and is supported by
all the everything that everybody's presented and everybody can justify the building as a standalone without staff there then I think it is an easier thing for uh the voters the taxpayers to
digest um I think the comingling the projects of the the items U makes it more expensive makes it harder to build uh in a in a faster timeline and I don't feel like I feel like the lack of looking at
this as two different items is a problem um in the way this is being presented to the town that's I guess that's all I have to say thank thank you for that I just want to understand when you say staff do you
mean like office type staff or all staff I'm not going to claim to be an expert on what everybody in the DPW does uh when we walk through the building um they're I I know for a fact that there are people that are in the that there there
has been staff at the DPW that been in this building historically I don't know how many I don't know who they are I don't know how many are in that building uh but I I feel like the like the
staff what the staff like being resident in the building all the time um is not necessary I think that they they're should be workspace for needed work on the Machinery but I don't think they need to have cubicles in a building
that's a garage I feel like there's other ways of dealing with the staff I I appreciate that comment I just want to to to say that that um we don't have very much desk
staff right there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 people total that sit on a ask ever right and of those people some of them have specialty jobs that are associated with the crews so for example the op operations Chief the tree
Warden the um mechanics they really have to be in the same building as the um uh as as the cruise and the lockers have to be in the in the same building as the crews because they they go on and off
jobs and they need to come back and change back in into uh you know shower and get changed back into civilian clothes um the so let's call that roughly half of those 15 so seven eight people the rest of them could
potentially be moved to another place but again we're only talking about seven or eight people we're talking maybe a thousand square feet of this building devoted to their offices and not including common spaces like um uh you know meeting rooms stuff so the there
are three people who are currently in the engineering staff including the town engineer they used to be elsewhere and I think those are the people you're talking about everybody else I think was not elsewhere in kind of my lifetime here um the the DPW director could be
elsewhere um uh uh the the engineering staff could be elsewhere I and I I said in my remarks that we could for some of the staff let's say roughly half of the desk staff we could find office Bas in town and rent for them but there is it means that the town
engineer can't easily talk to the crews and go over plans with them and say you know this sidewalk needs to be done differently um and so there's it reduces efficiency there it means the DPW director when he wants to talk to the crews or wants to talk to the town engineer has to do that either by phone
call or visiting another site and so there's a lot of inefficiency there for gaining back about a thousand square feet I completely appreciate your comments and I I just the only thing I wanted to emphasize is that um we're not dealing with a lot of people where you know I used to work at IBM and we had
what you were talking about in some previous meetings where it was kind of open Office you come in and select a cubicle for the day you bring your coffee cup with you everything is on your computer you hook it up to the monitors they're there when you're done you leave and if you're traveling you don't use a desk we we have such few
people in that mode that there's very few people who could share in that way why do the lockers have to be in the building that has the garage it just why can't they be just 2 feet away in a different building well it if we had
another place for a building but then they have they come back having been on a work site with things so you had to walk from here to there oh if we could if this was the garage and that hallway over there a
different building with showers and locker rooms why can't it be in a different building that could be no that that would be that's my point in the original feasibility study that um it it was a phase plan and so I completely I know we're not doing the phas plan but there
were several Alternatives offered and shown at town meeting all had it the total space but some were in multiple buildings right so we had a a garage building and an office building and a this building and a that building um and that could be and that was done at that
time to phase the construction then we decided that we could phase the construction with the front half and the back half of the building and then at your urging we we decided not to face when you had all these meetings previously uh it was based on different
Financial uh go forward assumptions than we were faced with today so uh if I knew if I didn't have any uh belief that I was going to have Financial constraint I would definitely
try to do something that was more cohesive and made more sense and didn't really pay attention to price so so it it is certainly possible and and Jason alluded alluded to this too and um that to make a a canopy covered
garage and an office building and the lockers would be in the office building and you said like so so just just to summarize my my core point is that I I feel like that from a taxpayer perspective in understanding how this works that there should there should be
very clear understanding as each the need for the uh housing of the Machinery as a standalone and the need of the staff as a standalone that's in my own personal opinion that it should they should stand by themselves be
supported so that people understand why they are spending money on this I appreciate that thank you uh thank you I only have one point I want to make I share the opinion uh with my the committee members that uh this is
not the right size for the building and I think the data that the um Western and Samson provided and the town manager provided also um has some um evidence to support this according to the slides
that Western Samsung provided in 2023 comparing the size of the public work facility with similar communities there are 24 communities on this slide and there 11 or 12
communities that have a smaller size public work facility than Acton were right in the middle on the average which is support by the email sent by the town manager this afternoon suggesting that the square footage of the proposed DPW
building is 5% smaller than their average which also means that we are more or less on the average as supported by the uh number that you provided according to gr number were higher than the average so let's say let's let's just base on the data that provided by
the town manager and Western samon in today's uncertainty uncertain situation would it the um override that was passed by very small marging last year I think it's a clear signal clear signal from
the tax payers that we cannot afford this when with this physcal CH environment I think we should build something that is substantially lower than average lower than average that something that made
the absolute basic need not just something that um um um just on the average or around the average so I think that's a room to cut the size of the building
keep it short Craig yeah um when you get the spreadsheet you'll see there are three tabs the first tab has 20 comparables which is similar to the data that you see there a tab number two
which is the 10% cut has um 13 comparables and sheet number three has seven comparables so um if you want to look at all 20 you know that that is a fair point of view um I discounted it
partly because it includes uh a city like Medford in the comparables which doesn't seem comparable to me okay um ET you're going to uh you're going to have to send that message that uh document anyway because it was discussed in this meeting it needs to be attached to the
minutes as an exhibit anyway so send it to and if you wish to put a a simple paragraph resuming what you have said in this meeting you're allowed to do so that would not qualify as deliberation because you're merely P You're merely stating what you have said in the
meeting and that way we will have it Roland so I keep going back to to well one is I think the town engineer assistant engineer and that should be not in that building to save square footage the secretary and things
like that I don't see that as a need more maybe more of a want the other one that I keep going back to our listening sessions and what is the theme that we've been hearing over and over and over again is the taxes are getting out
of control and if we decide this year well we'll have some rolling up but we're going to spend another you know it's going to add up the taxes again I feel it's going to go to The Ballot Box and it we'll go down in flames because people are sick of paying high absorbent
taxes and I'm starting to think well my son gets out of high school in four years I may have to consider moving if the taxes keep going the way they are because my taxes at that point will be high for a split level be over 15 20
grand a year at that point the r we going so I think we really need to pay attention to how we're spending our money you know we keep getting more and more newer electric vehicles well that comes with a cost then holding on to the ones that we
have for Town Hall staff and again I go back to that point of being how many vehicles do we need for Town Hall they say well we I say why can't the employees Drive their own Vehicles oh we can't do that Corporate America does it every single day they pay mileage which helps covers insurance and everything else and wear and tear in the
vehicle that's I think is a solution we get rid of most of the Town vehicles that we don't need for the for the town hall which has cost savings Beyond registration Insurance maintenance Etc so I I
really feel as a committee that and select board should take this as well is how much is it going to add on to the average tax bill in this town and what's going to happen to our citizens that are struggling now we most likely not going to be as much Federal funding or state money the
way we're going so all these add up and then things go out of control and then we have to come back for an operating override again which if we come for another operating override in the next 5 years I am not according it uh to to briefly answer your question Roland it's about $500 in fiscal year
2027 is where is the Delta on the LG spreadsheet I'll be happy to throw this up on the screen when we get to the ALG portion of this for just for just for the DPW building and and that's how long 30 years 30 years 30 years so it's $2.5
million a year for 30 years put in another way if there are 15 employees in that building we're looking to get a an increase in efficiency of $1 166,000 per employee per year for 30 years if you don't think we're going to
get that level of of efficiency out of the employees then this building does not make sense Mr lens oh hi thank you um have there been discussions about what actually I have two things um have there been
discussions about what the absolute Bare Bones minimum viable product for this project is like you know do we need the truck washes do we need this space or that space has that has that been happening and I know I'm coming into this late uh because I'm new and I've
been out of town for a while but has that been happening at all and this is a question for everyone no so from the time that the $1.2 million was approved of at town meeting to go to conduct a feasibility of what we need they had one meeting on March 1st and then they did
not meet again until September when they presented a $40 million plan that ballooned up to $47 million shortly thereafter before it's now been clawed back to a $43 million observation when you're putting together a development life cycle for something regardless of
whether it's software or a building requirements Gathering sessions you want to do an analysis of of what what our must haves should haves could haves and want to haves and uh so that's that one piece the actually three things the the second
one is uh you mentioned that like the the building has got epoxy holding some of the cinder blocks has there been a building inspection of this recently and has the building inspector said that toly this building needs to be raised or
it needs to be you know a retaining wall or there are this is not safe for use has has that happened at all does anybody know because that that would actually be a big driver of it too not just the we need better facilities but
yeah um fortunately you don't need to have the building inspector come unless you change something so this building would there's no doubt it would not pass any inspection for current building it is totally uh non-compliant with any
current uh standard and um it this is essentially the minimum required building the size of the garage does not quite hold every piece of equipment we have so it's right at the minimum the um we need the wash bay as I mentioned for
environmental reasons we could delete that uh I bet you if we went to to town meeting that they would want it back um we have we need the three mechanics base that we have three mechanics Bas we didn't put in five mechanic space we need the shops where we create signs and
that kind of thing and we we have um uh the the shop space and for the office space there's one empty chair in the um designed office space there's not room for expansion so in this whole building there's a little bit not enough room for
vehicles and one extra seat for someone to sit and then the thank you for that um and this is helpful and then the last thing is an observation um you know a lot of us use social media or we look at social media I have been receiving in my news feed on
Facebook over the last couple weeks uh sponsored posts by some random person that is that has uh it's been hitting like the act in algorithm for complaining about well we're going
to be spending all of this money on the DPW for a building we don't need and yet we don't have any budget for sidewalks and that I don't know if anybody else has seen that on any have you seen that and so going back to your points before and this is just an observation with a
little bit of opinion I feel pretty strongly that like unless there are some changes made when we take this to town meeting it is not going to pass especially if everyone that responds to those sponsored posts is like this is awful
what the hell why do we need this for I would never vote for that so observation a little bit of opinion there so you know there there has to be a path forward but what is the right what's the right uh I would like to say that um I
think both entities at this point have said well let's just let we'll just let the voters decide and um that's a I I think that's a bit of a fatalistic approach but but we are also rapidly running out of time for this
year we raised as a committee we raised our hand in August saying we didn't like this the first mention of compromise out of the DPW building and the select board was in January so there was lost time there um I would also say on the concept
of if we just throw up our hands and say let's let the voters decide I think it's very important no matter what the vote is afterwards to come back and say what do you think the voters said what did you hear at The Ballot Box or at the OR
at town meeting because it's possible for someone to say well I heard we just didn't do a good enough job communicating I heard we just didn't get our message out and this building is absolutely this AB building is absolutely mandatory he just said again
he can't think of anything that he could possibly imagine cutting so that that becomes an impass where you the only way around it is either to get beat at The Ballot Box multiple times in a row or to force this thing
through and leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth about we have just spent $45 million on a building that I cannot justify when we have over $90 million in identified want in the town manager's Capital Improvement plan so
why are we going to spend this amount of money this close to an override when you can't even convince this committee that this building is needed and at the risk of me putting words in people's mouth at the end here we're going to go around the
table and I'm going to ask everyone what their opinion is on this because Scott and I have to walk into ALG tomorrow morning at 7:30 in this exact same room and deliver the opinion of the committee and that that we might be at that point unless there's other unless there are other comments that are wish
to be made at this time has everyone had a chance to speak their piece on this topic okay I'm going to start with you Alex because you the last speak we'll work this way around the table have you been convinced by anything that you read by the town manager today or from what SEL selectman Martin presented to us
tonight do you feel that we should go forward with a 37 to $43 million project at this time oh so many caveats with this um I I I do not feel that we should move
forward with spending that much on this project I do feel that just by going over there and seeing the State of the
State over there uh as an end user that there needs to be significant Improvement of the facilities in the site however uh I do recall having a
conversation with someone when I first before I was on the committee and they were like they told me the dollar amount and I was just getting involved you know just kind of feeling the holy cow that's a lot of money well I'm I'm going not going to
swear my decorum thank you very much uh but yeah I I don't I can't I can't support it in with that kind of money thank you thank you sth um my short answer is I agree with
Alex I can't support this amount of money at this time and the slightly longer answer is that I don't like having this conversation and like in a as a standalone thing there are operating budgets for the school and the town and both entities have Capital
needs and can't have everything and then people have to started talking about tradeoffs um and that's a longer term thing and I don't think any of that's been present in any of these discussions but but again short answer is no um something scottt said resonated with
me this idea that we all have an idea of how much we think we would stomach spending on this and I think back to the fire chief asking for eight FTE and town manager said you get two so what if you know y'all came to us and said we want
$45 million and we said okay you get 10 what can you do with 10 can you meet meet the the immediate needs minimum VI viable product whatever uh terminology you want to use what what needs can you meet with that um but
because that's how budgets are typically done right you're told what the number is and then you see what you can do with that number um and and I don't know what the magic number is for me but other other aspects of our town government are looking at what they have and they're trying
to you know be thoughtful and creative with what they have and this this project maybe because it's a debt exclusion doesn't feel like it's subject to the same consideration but I might be more willing to vote for it if if it seemed like that amount of thought was put into
it that this was truly the best we could do and that there was truly a need but it I just haven't seen that level of yeah I just I I think you'll know what I'm getting at like I don't think I would be able to vote for it for that reason uh I would not
uh be a supporter of the project as it's currently presented um U primarily due to my feeling that uh the Staffing cost is increasing the price and it could be drastically reduced by um rethinking how
staff is managed at this site Roland so I think you know where I stand was I kind of just went over that um got to State it out loud so that the message is loud and clear I where do you stand right now I can't support it at that
dollar value you tell me it's going to be 25 million that's a different story um in the 40s no and again I think it's the wrong time to come back to the Cy we just had 8 point something million
6.8 million was it or 6.6 million override to the operating budget and then say well we now we want to spend 40 plus million and I just don't see how we can do that this year I really don't I mean I'd love
to see a a smaller proposal to come back and as Scott said move the Personnel that don't need that facility to be in there the town engineer secretaries the director things like that into office spaces in the
town um to me the the the magic number will be a number that you can do with down a tax overlay figure out how much money you can pay from your operating to service the DAT and issue a DAT that you can you can service with your operating budget uh and the reason I'm not
supporting override is because I think last year the taxpayers already sent a message that's very loud and clear which is which is that they don't want another tax override um also given the time of uncertainty um the
inflation is not going down as way bad and that also there's also uncertainty with the federal funding if we force this to a town hall meeting to override even it pass or it doesn't we might lose the trust of the
taxpayers and when it comes to time maybe in the near future hopefully not but if that comes the time that we really need override that gets the support from both the C B and the finance committee even
in that case the taxpayers may vote no so with this um disagreement between the C ball and the finance committee with this uncertainty with the sentiment of taxpayers not wanting uh another
override to increase tax I I'm not comfortable supporting this H well you heard a lot about what I think about this you're trying to get ready for a meeting tomorrow morning of the ALG I'm trying to get ready for a meeting tomorrow evening of the DPW
building committee that I am this board's representative to I would have loved to have been able to bring them a compromise wouldn't that be nice I think that was at our lisening session that we held at the senior center there was at
least one person who said can't you find a difference between yes and no and I thought that was worth a college try I don't see that compromise materializing and if that
materialized great then we could make other compromises but without one then I got to fall back to my BAS first starting point which is now this is the wrong time this is the wrong
scope sorry to interrupt were you hoping that a 14% decrease in overall size would be the compromise that was a breakthrough of this committee this evening there were actually there needed to be two compromises one if we got to
14% that would be really big step forward and we're not there the second compromise um is timing I don't think it's this year um I'm understand our position that
it could wait until 2029 MH the compromise would be somewhere 20128 2027 okay but you know no no need to go there if we if if a 13% is a
non-starter okay thank you um I can't afford this we are not living within many people's means in this town and we heard that a fair amount at our first listening session I have a really hard
time like I could 100% believe and the studies looked at it people who know more about this building than me looked at it and said this is what we need and my resp response is I don't have the money for that and there was no comeback around to can we make it more palatable
I have a big concern that this is going to go forward if it fails at The Ballot Box where the heck are we have we just wasted like do we then need to go do a redesign I understand the logic of wait and see if people will just afford it
but then we're still pushed into the inflation um hitch that we're worried about I'd rather have a project Pro go forward that I am comfortable is Affordable for our community members I have too many friends who are retirees who have left the town because it just
doesn't make sense to retire here and I'm not talking about the people who have their kids in high school and then leave I like I've lost dear friends to other places and I've we're reaching the point where I'm starting to consider my retirement plan like Roland was saying
elsewhere it's just I can't do this right now and I'm afraid that I'm in the majority of this town and we're not that this project is toned deaf um so that that's my concern as a a
finance committee member with the goal of representing the taxpayers in a longer term that um I would love for something to be done to bring this more in line I don't know what the affordable number is it's closer to 30 than 40 as a like
Allin number and I don't I mean if you're building your house you have to figure out where the compromises are or what can change and I don't know if that's we just don't do it right now or we figure out some ways that things can be added later but a way to bring if
this needs to happen right now um I would need to hear some creativity on bringing the cost down it could be the same total cost long term or maybe some more stuff later is a little more expensive but we have more money then because we've gotten further along so I don't say no to the project I don't say
no to the ideas that are in it for me it's this cost at this time so I'm not second guessing any of the wise it in there and that's that's what I hear when a lot of people come up with ideas for why are we doing this or that it's an attempt to justify in our minds why like
is there something we can do to bring this down to a level that we feel like um we can afford and recommend to other people as an affordable so that's where I am so no I don't support it at this right
now so I would love for us to be able to get to a position of yes I would love for us to have first of all I would love for of us to have started having the actual conversation about about the compromise closer to August than in late January um at this
time um at this time I'm a no for both timing and for cost uh and I would strongly urge that if this does fail at either The Ballot or The town meeting that you circulate to your other members
that this is not just a well we'll try it again next year and screw it it's going to cost me 6% more we're not interested um I would like to end however with a thank you to you for coming and standing this entire time and coming into a committee that
is uniformly against your position I think standing up and saying what you said at the beginning took a lot of guts because you knew that you were going to you are going to be tilting at windmills the against this committee I do hope you heard everything that we said but I do appreciate you coming in standing your
ground uh against the committee that is now again unanimously against this project so thank you as well I um I appreciate that that all you guys giving me feedback today and I appreciate that
you guys all came to one um joint session and looks like we're going to have a a second joint session and um you know and uh I have to say that I think you know I realized that we're we're very far apart but I think um it
it comes from the point the the emphasis that each of our boards has right you guys are obviously interested in how the town operates and the town operates well but your F focus is on the finances um you know in the select board we obviously want to spend the taxpayers money well but our our focus is on
making things operate um and uh in this particular project that causes us to be here you know sometimes those different points of view were like this far apart but in this case we're we're very far apart anyway I I appreciate all of your involvement in all the extra meetings and everything on the topic of the
second joint com joint meeting um I heard from many of you uh that you could do any of the days I took the Tuesday off the table because we have our own meetings those days um I did hear from some people that there was a preference for the Thursday unfortunately earlier
today I it wasn't today it was Y no it was today earlier today I did hear from the chairman of the uh select board that they have a preference for Friday uh nobody said they couldn't make Friday is that Friday this week FR no next Friday the 28th Friday oh two weeks from this
coming Friday because next week is school vacation week I'm out of town I'm assuming other people are out of town as well for school vacation week so since nobody nobody objected to the Friday I did hear some preferences for the Thursday but since nobody objected the Friday can we can we all nod our heads
and get a quorum for Friday the 28th and I will communicate that back to the the select board chair not very good thank you we're going to we're going to try it again on Friday the 28th thank you again for your time thank you uh probably
seven probably seven okay yep that we'll definitely send out agenda the select board usually meets at 700 we usually meet at 7:30 I'm more than happy to to start at the earlier time
yes okay okay so we have we that was the third item on the agenda we purposely took it out of order I'm sure that the Thundering hordes of the public that joined us in this meeting do not object to us having made such an on the-fly
change to the agenda items so that brings us to the the second item on the agenda which is a conversation about the ALG spreadsheet which I am going to attempt to share at this
time look at that it works okay uh again this is hot off the presses this came in uh I believe right around 4 p.m. today which means that I honestly have not had more than a a cursory look at this
between my regularly scheduled job and trying to get some food in my belly before I come over here for uh the evening meeting as you probably know about the ALG spreadsheet there is a changes tab that discusses anything
that's gone on since our last meeting looks like there are three changes okay positive numbers here F39 so positive numbers here are good for
the taxpayer negative numbers here are bad for the taxpayer the reduction of the Town Capital plan by 37 Grand it's worth noting the looks like the Minuteman assessment am I reading this properly the Minuteman
assessment went down you are correct okay very good so that's going in the right direction and then it looks like the school yes this this the absd assessment went up and that I want to point out
that that that the reason the the result of the assessment going up shows and I want to hang a lantern on this because I'm going to beat up on it later the total assessment the operating assessment of the school district is up
3.12% I believe at the previous document it was like 3.01 or even sub three yes and the vote that they took on Saturday to do that was contingent they understood that the $1.7 million in
federal funds that are at risk could make them have to cut so they thought they would start with uh not to exceed number but if bad news comes in between now and when they have to go to press
for um the warrant uh the number will come down but um um that's so that is an increase from their previous vote but the the thing that I heard was it was a
contingent um understanding that a lot of their so-called Revenue uh estimates are really iffy thank you for that uh clarification yes this is this is totally factual not my opinion on
anything so um uh respectfully Greg I don't think this had anything to do with federal funds right the the federal funds that go to the school district um to a large extent are for um there are number of different grants but a lot a lot of them
are for the uh school lunch program and if that was lost we'd have to charge kids again for school lunches but that's different so this is a result of two things one is and this applies to the town too but the town's numbers are not in here yet that
the Maya health insurance estimates are up by about um 50% more than what we thought they were going to be so we thought they were going to increase 10% year on year they're going to increase almost 15% year on
year so uh the school district already has a pretty tough year uh despite the fact that they're because they're limited by boxboro um and they're making cuts to in my view are almost more painful than than previous years so what
they would like to do here is there are a couple of areas where they believe that state funding is going to come through um and the way that this works um in most years is they just kind of ignore that because the legislature
never passes anything until after the after the their deadline and um then it goes into end and can possibly be used for some expenses onetime expenses whatever is appropriate the following year but doesn't apply to this year this year
with the increased Health inspect inspections they're either going to have to make another pretty significant cut to do that or what they were proposing here is to anticipate that the uh state aid that they expect is
going to come in so it's already in the governor's budget the state aid for uh and there's there's two buckets of State AIDs that are going up one is for special AED one is for uh the other is for the the normal uh I forget what they call it now but it's the normal $30 per
pupil state aid and the governor's budget it's 75 sometimes the legislature goes above that which they have for the past couple of years and in this case um they almost never go below what the governor asks in fact I don't think anybody can remember what time they've
gone below so they're expecting to get 75 but it's not cast in concrete the legislature has not voted or anything so what the school district is proposing is to be if they don't have their their budget can never go up so um after now that they've taken
their first vote and so they voted it up a little bit and then they would made a make an in fiscal year modification if the state aid doesn't come through so um uh let's suppose that we
get to August and the legislature says no we're not doing 75 we're doing 50 or whatever it is they would pass an uh a change their budget down from that and reduce the assessments to each of the towns does that does that make sense
that that that is what happened on Saturday and then I asked the question and what are your assumptions on Federal and that's where we discovered that yes we're not quite sure what the state's going to do we think we've got a handle
on it but the feds the superintendent said we we don't know we're waiting we're waiting for guidance well right we we really so this doesn't take into account any federal stuff that's a little bit of a risk but a lot of that risk would result in charging kids for
lunches so um there's other stuff too and I'm not making any claims about that so I just wanted to point out that that 1.7 million is not completely a risk to the taxpayer but a lot of it will be risk to the parents thank you okay moving down other
item other line items that we we spent a lot of time talking about on this spreadsheet um we are not planning on using any of the unused tax levy capacity at this time we are looking to
use slightly more free cash than last year free cash is what we spend time looking at on the reserves tab it is our it is our opinion as a committee that we want to keep Reserves at rout 3%
a 3% floor for True rainy day funds it is sorry it is important to note that this current model this current model eats significantly into that floor so if we if we forecast out even
just one more year we're below L our floor if you could forecast that a couple of years we're down to 2/3 of 1% so that's going that's a question that I have for the committee is are we comfortable using free cash and letting
it go down to those levels then the other item that I want to bring to everyone's attention I I hung a lantern on it earlier so you all know exactly where I'm going before I even say
it if the schools who are cutting again and Su Martin just said that he even even he feels that that is pretty severe cuts on the school side they've managed to keep their operating to 3.1 the municipal
side has as their operating side and I'm fully aware of the fact that the municipal budget operating budget includes quite a number of smaller Capital items that are rolled into it that are more Capital intensive than the than the school side they are taking
this opportunity to try and come with a 4.9% increase so I think we need to talk about reserves I think we need to talk about the municipal side and then lastly do just want to point out that even this
even this that we're at right now is exceptionally close to Balan but not balanced at $130,000 that's not uh that's not usually insurmountable number even this late in the year but if you take that
$130,000 and you play with the reserves number in any way shape or form saying that you don't are not comfortable with reserves going down to 2third of 1% in a couple of years or if you take a look at
the municipal side and say in a prop two and a half world where we've been recommending operating budgets go up by no more than 3% perhaps this is not the year to go up 4.9% and since he raised his hand I'm going to go to Mr lens oh I
wasin you got to put the microphone on yeah sorry I Haven not used to that habit yet um so we have I was out of town after the two workshops s where we got the presentations from
everyone um have there have we we're making the recommendations now or have we started to make recommendations to the various Municipal uh you know cost centers we
ratified our point of view in August of last year okay and it said 3% maximum operating increase year-over year okay so they've made their presentations and we've this is what our we have set our our
Baseline so we need to tell them that we need to that or that they need to come with come to us with a haircut effectively right and I like the comment that you made earlier um about here's you know we want this for our
budget for this year but you know what you're getting that deal with it we don't have that kind of power I understand I understand because like I'm I'm in the budgetary I'm you know at at Olympus I'm I'm going through the budget cycle right now uh and you know I want
to hire 26 people this year and I want to have a budget of X Y and Z but you know the overlords of Olympus have said you can hire 15 and this is what your budget's going to be and deal with it so
I'm going to make it work um we do not have the power to say this is your budget deal with it all we can say is our recommend is that you try and stay within 3% lest you accelerate the need for another operating override in the nearest in the
near future so the question then becomes how vociferous would you like Scott and I to be tomorrow morning when we when we say we recommended a 3% budget we recommend we see the school side coming
exceptionally close to it we see the school side uh firing more people you are hiring was it 6.7 FTE and increasing your budget how how on a scale of 1 to 10 how much of adjacent should I
be tomorrow morning compared to Baseline no this is this is what happens when somebody I've known for more than a decade joins the committee so well now there's a couple things to think about here so one is we recommend you get to
3% and two if we're not getting to that 3% how are we going to build back back the reserves when they're down to 66 right um and that actually also brings up a question that I had and this is this is
not an opinion but it is a it is a question based upon me learning a couple things something that struck me during the the I think I I don't remember which night it was but it was the the nursing
services for the town that something that struck me that I wanted to ask the committee here is that I heard them say or I can't remember who it was that we are one of two towns in this entire state that
offers these services and to me that came up with a why are we doing that and it's not a an opinion it's a if we're if there're 330 plus towns why are we why are we
offering this service and you know it's a significant it's good chunk of change in the budget and are you know is it providing yeah why are we doing it anybody have an answer for that like
is this the service that's Medicare certified and seeks reimbursement it's a home health agency yeah so it's it's potentially a source of Revenue and actually it looks like we might be getting but when I saw I thought it was like aund something, worth of revenue for the year based upon 700 and change
in cost right so it's it's semi self-funding right so largely self-funded um and the reason it still exists is because Town voters wanted it that way we actually tried to delete it about a decade ago
and town meeting vly voted against removing the nursing service so we could try again at some future year but the town meeting was very supportive of the nursing it's also important to note it is important to note that when the last attempt to to cancel that service failed
at town meeting it was an Enterprise fund now it is no longer an Enterprise fund now it is part of the generalized budget and is at the Town manager's discretion MH uh it's also important to know that at the time that
the um that this was rejected from going away it was promised that it would pay for itself and there's been a sign significant reduction in claims in the money they get back because of how Medicaid has changed because of the private management of a bunch of the
plans they get I think last time we talked about it they get $700 per person as opposed to the 1500 or something they would get under Medicaid in the previous the math the underling math has completely changed and as Jason pointed out you
can't identify it in a way that you could previously and I'd also like to say I think we I think discussing putting the nursing service back on the chopping block is a a valid thing for us to do at some time I think it's way too
late in the year to do it this year if we'd like to make it one of a part of our point of view we can discuss that in May uh this year I don't unless unless something catastrophic happens I don't think we need to go after the nursing service this year I'm more than happy to have the conversation later on oh sure I
just this is more of a Recon for me because because you know I my when my mom was over at robinbrook before she went over to Life Care um she took advantage of the of the nursing services for the because it it
was a good benefit um but I was as curious as I as I'm learning more about you know where our tax dollars are going so let's let's review that in the in the after we get through this this town meeting at this time are you comfortable
with with us pushing back to to a 3% operating budget I absolutely am I mean it's two things for me one is are you know our recommendation is 3% how do we get there you know uh and
two we cannot have our rainy day funds go down to less than 1% uh how do we how do we maintain a a a um a floor of 3% are you comfortable with saying that uh
the current current current uh Town Reserve estimate we in we are currently in FY 25 so current expectation is will be at 3% at the end of next year do you are
you comfortable hitting the floor this coming year or are you saying that we should be couple tenth of a percent above the floor this coming year to try and uh to try and lower the trajectory or are you open to the concept that maybe turn backs and we haven't had this
conversation yet so but are you open to the concept that turn backs might be greater than it was this previous year because this previous year everything got eaten up by health insurance and therefore you uh you think that uh we can punt this for another year yeah I I'm a I'm conservative with regards to those sorts of I don't like punting I
like having the I like having the cash reserves so you're you're you're definitely on the conservative side on both points uh anybody else wish to weigh in on this do we want to go around table again nice and brief Please Mr so the um
the model does not include the turn back which is why the level goes down and the the level right now assumes the model assumes that we're spending $1250 sorry 1,250,000 a year in preash
in the out years um we usually turn back um between uh half a million and a million maybe we should first of all change that oute thing to 750 $50,000 a year to choose that midpoint and but we never add the that um number into the
model until uh it's certified by the do which is why it goes down in out years so if you wanted to play with the model you could either set that to zero in which case you're assuming that it's neutral with regard to the turnback or add a turn back in or whatever I just
wanted to point that out that's why it goes down did we use we used to have an assumption of turnback in the model not that I recall I I won't say absolutely that we didn't but that not that I recall um the finance committee has always never wanted to assume until
it was certified so um but we could you know one way to do that um would be just assume zero free cash use in the out years which makes it neutral christe when we switched over to not
assuming that it was certified the projections were taken out uh when we started insisting that they spend only the previous certified amount and not make an assumption about what the free cash would be come spending time they took out the
projections okay yes can uh do you have the dollar amount to get from 4.9 to 3% oh nothing like doing math on the fly so we got uh if we if we're saying that the total town is at 42 yeah and
previous was previous is 40 48 47 right so take the previous year's number of 40 million 847 801 and multiply it by
1.03 you get to 4273 uh plus 42 m7300 so you plus minus that and you take a look at what they they're currently projecting of 42
710 573 we're looking for them to cut 63733 as well as the 30,000 that we are currently that we are currently in the whole
130,000 758 so we're looking for $768,000 in reduction for next year and um two the other part of my question is the I mentioned this at our last meeting
uh that the concept of uh trying to get effect the the real impact of vacancy into their numbers so the if the I I mentioned delaying the new hires by 6 months um and so that
there's seven people roughly um assuming that they're you know he's making a salary assumption take half of that and then that could come off of this 768 so let's say that's 200 Grand so we'
be looking if they did that which wouldn't be any change to their um current plans other than just um identifying the fact it takes time to hire people and building and vacancy into their numbers um I feel like they
should be able to find 500,000 somewhere right I I guarantee they're going to say it's a hard slog I it seems like that's not like a big number to get to Roland so agree with
Alex you know we recommend 3% we've had it in our point of view that we were early this year compared to comparatively other years right and I think we made that loud and clear and so it it as we said last
year we can't keep spending or we're going to end up like we did last year and going for another the uh budgetary override and there's no appetite for that as we found out you know was close enough last year so we have to live
within our means it's what it really boils down to it really boils down to We Can't be doing more than 3% it it's just not going to happen I mean we're not I don't see any more insulet moving into town and paying big fees to get into the town right
so I'm in the 3% cap 3% and um a minimum of 3% for the free cash christe could you please go back to the plan page um I'm going to be unpopular here
and say that I am okay with okayish with the town they have taken some cuts um recently for me the 3% is overall
Minuteman has taken the cut out um that said I 100% think the town needs to make up the the difference the deficit there has to be borne entirely by the town this the school cannot be asked from what they're
going through to find that other $131,000 but um again somewhat with the nursing service there are services that we provide to the seniors that kind of fall on the Wayside when we put so much of our budget and it's not
just seniors it's people who don't just have kids in the school and I think that given that this keeps the overall change in spending um within a within the 3% that it is reasonable for the
town uh to go above that okay uh Karen then Alex so I'm sorry Karin then gang then Alex I would like to see the town be closer to 3% um they went up 4% this
year compared to the previous year and that was in a year when they got an over an operating override now they're going up even more without an override um and I'm also looking at the outy years like both the school and the towns are both pushing close to 4% annual
increases um for 27 28 29 like it's completely sustainable um so I think they need to R it in and you know same concern with the reserves and I said they they they need to start spending within their means within our means about the learning day fund the
free cash um I think the rating the credit rating agencies look at the position of those learning day funds given the rolling that this town is doing or it's about to do um I think you need to keep a help healthy percentage in the free cash the
r day fund secondly um the r day funds are supposed to be spent um during raining days and I don't think that's this is the year that's qualifi that can be qualified as a raining day um so I I I suppose um you should keep a healthy
percentage on the um raining day fund um about the increase as as coring suggest if you look back years ago um two years ago it was 3 28% last year was 4.12% that was a year with override and
this year is 4.9% it's higher uh than the year we had the override and um this is the year that we have the cost saving initiatives to try to cut the town budget this budget doesn't reflect that
um cost uh cutting um incentives of the cost cutting um whale um so I think going back to 3% makes sense and also share the similar concerns with the oute the oute there's a constantly um uh 3 to 4% increase so
that means um because the that's the 2.5 uh proposition though that that three 3 to 4% means that they will need override operating or otherwise so this is not sustainable um than gang what what is your um what do
you feel is a good Baseline percentage for reserves based upon the comment that you just made generally it's been 3 to 5% in most communities okay so so there's a lot of studies on this and uh
usually people say 5% right but depending on the size of the town this percentage varies if this is the town that usually keeps to 35% it's um it's uh preferable to keep similar size unless this is a special year reallying
Co or some other emergencies or natural disasters then it makes sense to spend down the percentage with the plan of building that up right in the near future U but if there's no reason and you spend down for operating purposes then that is a concern I will say that
was a bit of a leading question I'm sorry back in the day equipment Finance we had a reserve of 5% of our of our warehouse lines so um I had a Scott mentioned earlier about vacancy
costs um I wanted to add to that there is in some Financial modeling that I've done and I've seen in the past there is a there is a a uh employment churn factor that you can build in when you
are when you have a lot of vacancies when you are hiring a lot of people uh the cost of recruiting getting them onboarded getting them up to speed and then they quit after four months uh and when you have a 30% turnover
rate or whatever the percentage is for some of the areas that I've seen here in the in the municipality there's a significant cost to that that I would like to see you factored into some of these models if if
that is something that I can help with or there's a possibility because that hits your bottom line when you are constantly recruiting for people uh and when you know when there there is a
turnover vacancy rate that's high thank you um I had I had a comment or maybe two and maybe a question um I think we've at some of the previous meetings the the budget meetings that we had here that we all kind of made some comments
and suggestions of possible cuts um when the health insurance rates they found out they're going to be higher than they expected Town manager had several Cuts prepared it's like why were they in there in the first place if he was ready to cut them um that's that was like they
should just maybe they should should have been in there to start with um I and I also feel like that none of his Cuts include some of the things like that personally I feel are not core functions of municipal government and if you have to make Cuts that's where you go core functions are Public Safety and public education public education has
its own budget um I don't think Dei is a core function I don't think sustainability is a core function um and child care subsidies that's a you know that came from started with arpa money it sounds like and you know that's something that's going to
only grow it's not going to get smaller um and we should pull that out by the roots before it before it starts to um so I guess those those are my comments I feel like we we had those conversations they did their presentations we made our
comments the roof like what do they need to design roofs for what's that 50,000 for but honestly I don't know what is what is that for Mr do you know I don't know what that mean what what are they designing roofs for our buildings all have roofs right
okay I don't know go ahead so I guess they have to do a study to figure out if the structure is still sound enough for a new roof you know if this under under the roof was any degradation to the structure okay so and that's that's one
of the questions I asked it's like well we can get funding or something like that they might qualify for funds okay but as I like to say might ain't is right in other words you may qualify but there's no guarantee yeah
and it's it's the same thing with the street lights right study the street I can drive around the town and show you where they're out or where they're flickering or whatever I wish the one on my street would go out just replace it you know if that's the case we we don't need to have a study to spend a lot of money because LEDs right now are the
most efficient one out there yeah and then so my other uh thing on that was there's money in there uh in it's a capital expense but it's part of the Opera budget and it's to move forward with electrification of this building and if there's a negative Roi
for geothermal and new construction where almost all of the volume in that building is at a a normal temperature that probably doesn't need to go up or down too much there's no way there's a positive Roi retrofitting 160 year old
building and that we need and I feel like we need to see that analysis before they commit money to doing that um and say so those are some things that I think that we could suggest they pull out are you are you brief am I brief no
can you be I will try Okay um I think we are on stronger ground if we tell the select board 3% we we we drew that line it's clear how they get there if they want
suggestions boy do we have them but for us to step up and say I want to cut X and then you got my vote gets us into an interesting zone I'm not
comfortable going now when it comes to core Services Once Upon a Time what we are providing the seniors was not considered a core service this town wants it this town provides it damn it I'm going to fight for it I think it's a core service
maybe that's because I'm over 65 but at the end of the day we are on stronger ground saying 3% figure it out then pick this pick that pick this other thing you know I'm not I'm sorry I'm not saying that like I won't vote
doesn't matter like I said we don't get to tell them what to do I'm not suggesting that we give ultimatums like that but I also feel like they I don't want to be told that there's no possible way they can cut anything so in the interest of making
sure that Scott and I know the voice of the committee um would I be would I be being overly optimistic if if I by saying that if they came back to us tomorrow with
$768,000 in in savings they got to 3% and they're going to ask us for a wait and see let's see what our turn backs is to keep the uh to keep the reserves at 3% if they came back with that huge Jeff would we as a committee
be at consensus if they came back and said we're just going to pick up the $130,000 That's the current that's the current over that's the current overrun we we'll find $1 131,000 in our budget
but we we expect you finance committee to be good with 4.9% on the municipal side are we are we at consensus at that time I got one person saying yes I got a no I've got a question you got a question go ahead uh do you have any
other ALG models any the because this only goes back um just when people are thinking about their 3% Minuteman skyrocketed the town took that hit MH and that's part of why I think
it's reasonable to let them have above 3% they they swallowed that and minute man is finally leveling out to a reasonable number number M so I have much less of a hard time because the bottom line number is below 3% well part of the reason bottom line number is
below 3% let's be very clear it's the fallof of major debt Cycles so do we okay yes um we've got do we know that number for so
it's Ian we're operating within the levy limit we are operating within the levy limmit in fact we're increasing on tax levy capacity so the junior high school debt 1.43 million has fallen off yeah if that
1.43 million had not fallen off the tax impact would be well above 3% so how can that be if we're living within our Levy limit and adding to untax Levy capacity we're
not using any untax Levy capacity we are not using any untax Levy capacity the Minuteman the Minuteman came through lower the operating debt came through lower
um so we're so the the overall the overall tax impact is only [Music] 2% but the but we are we are using a sign ific portion of the 3% that
we allowed under prop two and a half but we're not going above that we are not but we're close to it yes so we're we're saying you know do we want to take advantage of the fact that this is a fortuitous year where we don't have an operate where we don't have a capital
expense it hides the fact that um that we're still that we're still having a greater than 3% operating increase I don't understand how we're doing that if we are increasing untaxed Levy
capacity unless growth was greater than 3% I mean prop two and a half plus growth because minus minute man right minute man goes goes to the goes to the straight to the line so we're good uh New
Growth we're actually saying is going to be slightly less but it's last year's was 1.06 so that goes to the top line so it's it's tight the operating limit is tight with these two
numbers but I but I heard you say the you're okay with the Unis side being a little higher this year I heard Greg say that he would sign off at 131,000 is anyone else okay with signing off at 131,000 CU I'm not I just Greg what I asked is if they
came back and said they want to keep the model exactly as it is right now with the exception of the municipal side will assume a way of solving this 131,000 would we be at consensus and you said yes oh no I think
I was raising my hand to say microphone microphone I think I was raising my hand to say I want to speak but no I'm not I'm not happy with that okay so you're not a consensus with okay we said we'd be a consensus if they cut 768 yes we're
not a consensus if they merely cut 131 right do we have do we want to try and Harse trade this today or knowing that we're going to have multiple ALG sessions because we're not in consensus overall do we want to just go with that as our upper bound lower bound do you need more guidance than that Mr Sullivan
or does anyone else care weigh in at this topic just have a that spread sheeet are the formulas in the spreadsheet everywhere yeah uh could you just take out the 784 of the uh in the operating budget to see what the impact is on the upcoming
years just want to see what happens like if yeah if you go up to where the 4.9% growth is and just reduce the number coming down to that it doesn't matter which number you grab
just yeah do the 4485 reduce that by um just called 770 and then I just want to see what happens to the outgoing percentages does seem like it did you undo that didn't look like it changed at
all those are set the growth percentages in future years are hard wired numbers the 3.78 is that what you're looking for I just yeah those are just written in they're just typ they're predictions they're they're at the end of a formula yeah
that line 36 I need to put an equal sign there give me a second sign yeah there you go still 3.78 all right I guess guess I don't think the math is working that's the uh
that's mass the mass should change go ahead th th those are set so um those are not calculated that's input into the into the form um LG decided that uh the out years would increase by 3.75% for many years I've been
advocating that we set that to three no one agrees with me when I was on ALG copy of the formula that has the calculation across over the U the numbers that are there you know actually do the math as opposed to having the number in there
tell me which one I do just calculate the change here over year instead of using their formula so okay so just do 3% here just put in 3% I guess so yeah doesn't do anything all
right I was just trying to see what the impact of of the change in the current year on the outgoing years and doesn't seem like we can get the numbers to work so uh okay so in the interest of time do you have any other guidance for
Scott and myself going into tomorrow's ALG meeting other than we absolutely think that the current shortfall needs to come out of the municipal side and the closer they get to a 768 change $68,000 change
on the municipal side the closer we are to getting to consensus the only thing I would add I've I've alluded to this a few times if they can identify additional sources of revenue that would be an another way that they could tackle it I don't know
how easy it is to do that but I think something we do if we want to spend more money than we have you look for additional sources of income eventually sell granny silver gang just the number so Scot if you just take 760 uh, from the operating budget
the percent change operating budget goes down from 4.9% to 2.91% right impact of the following years we'll have to we'll have to do some some playing with it go ahead Christie sorry uh the challenge to
finding additional Revenue sources is they need to be ongoing or we don't want to count them as part of the operating budget I'll mention that in the um leaon reports okay okay at this point I think we are good with the second item if any
any other last comments on the uh uh operating budget with regards to ALG for tomorrow morning go ahead um just with regards to ALG guidance I would like to commend the schools for opening a real discussion of structural
changes thank you very much second okay I'm going to stop sharing now oh I shouldn't have stopped sharing I was more too short um meeting minutes of January
14th I believe is the next item on our agenda yes it is um I did get from Roland that he wanted the correction to replace the LED street lights that are not
working as opposed to what street lights why design just replace the LEDs Roland would like that to be just replace the LI street lights that are not working are there any other comments on the meeting
minutes looking for a motion January 14th motion to approve the minutes of January 14th 2025 as amend as amended second we are all in person we can do this by Voice vote all in favor say I I
opposed abstentions that's done okay moving on Lea on reports Mr jarbo I believe you wish to wish to go first yeah there are a couple things F
first of all um I went to the library Board of Trustees meeting last week and presented their kudos for kpi's award um they received them ecstatically and
suddenly we have friends with books I don't know what that'll do for you but um it was uh it was nice to be welcomed as a member of the finance committee to a meeting um like that do you have a picture of this award that we presented
I do and the award was suitably cheap because that was the instructions of this committee and the picture is going to go out with the the library newsletter so they were that
honored second um there is a meeting tomorrow um at noon via Zoom of the economic development committee they did their first preliminary hearing um of their uh strategic development
plan one of the more interesting uh ideas that is hidden in it is for a Cultural District in either South Acton or West Acton which would uh make hopefully
um development of some new businesses in those locations more intriguing and uh hopefully also attract uh State uh cultural development funds um a final version of that proposal will be presented later this
month and you are going to probably want to go see that because they've got some really phenomenal numbers on where our future job growth is likely to come from and so if we want to talk about where is the development going to come from
the economic development that will reduce the taxpayer burden because there's more of a commercial it's centered around where the jobs of the future going to come from where are the business opportunities including what are the bus
business opportunities for existing businesses uh to expand so it's it's a it's a fascinating report and I I urge you to um to to pay attention last but not least I'm going to this DPW building
meeting tomorrow I think I have a sense of this board I will try to communicate that clearly um recognize I think I may be the only lone voice uh singing that song so if anyone wants
to come to the audience it'll be nice to have a two-part Harmony any other other us on reports gang no Alex our lonely eyes turn to you uh motion to adjourn second all those in favor say I I opposed
abstentions we are adjourned