so we're recording uh good afternoon everyone today is April 11th meeting of the joint capital planning committee and seeing we have a quorum I am calling the meeting to order
and first calling on the members so I made sure we can they can hear us and we can hear them and this is important because we're conducting this meeting virtually and I see Bridget has joined us so um I'll just call out names as I see them
and Lee has already told us for those who join late that she's going to need to leave early uh Lee I'm here bob here sarah here uh Bridget here
and Holla sorry I'm not Bridget here hala great so I I see that we're we're we're missing one person but um we've got today's agenda is to continue our discussion about recommendations we want
to put in to our report to the town manager's recommendations and reading what Sarah captured Nat's excellent minutes captured you got through most of the FY26 questions um and there was a few remaining discussion items that I think
that is why uh fire department and police are with us that Bridget has raised about FY26 and then on today we'll to the extent we can do it look at the outy years the other four years for any items
we want to lag as to call into question because we're running deficits in those years and so we've been asked by at least the finance committee but also the council to see to the extent we can get nearer to a balance in the out years we don't have to balance so it's to flag them and
then the other item at least on my list is to the extent there is free cash that's extra at the end of the year when we when we uh when we close the books on the current year in the fall we've been
asked as JCPC to identify things that we think should be given priority for where the free cash might go doesn't necessarily mean those will be the priority but not to just leave it to there's free money where does it go so those would be the two main items to
talk about today uh so that that is where we are for today and I believe Melissa the reason you have brought police and fire back is Bridget you had raised some questions about the expense of the communication system you'd looked
at some other towns yes so in and just just want to say just one thing for their benefit Bridget was not a member of JCPC last year when we had a more thorough discussion about what this system is so this is also for all of us to remember what it is and then
Bridget's the questions that she raised by looking at some other towns okay perfect and I just wanted to say to the people joining us today from the different departments that I'd done this for everything I wasn't certain about for the budget but the rest of the committee was on board with the other
one so this one you have some support for which is why you're here so I think the way to begin is just to talk a little bit about what is unique or different about the systems that we're bringing in and why they're so expens why it's it's it's more expensive
than what you can see with a quick research and seeing what other towns have done in terms of their systems so I see and I'll just anyone who's planning to speak I see Gab's hands are up you're on uh yeah I just wanted to mention um
Officer Doug Giri who is our administrative officer who's also our fleet manager and has extensive knowledge in in the radio system he's trying to get in i think he is um Oh okay he's in viewing mode but not a panelist i was wondering if we could let
him in okay i don't see him in the attendees list i just see two people there so um uh Melissa um let me see whether I don't have his email but if it's if he comes
in on the general Zoom please these we can promote him from attendees he can't come in he can't come in on your specific invite because that's unique to you i don't think he can melissa I don't know whether we can
I don't have his email so I can't send anything it should be Gary D so G A R Y D at amma.gov it grabbed the link off the calendar yeah it's it's it's on the calendar um I
just I'll have to grab the link yeah yeah i apologize for that no that's okay okay it'll take I see Lindsay i just sent him the email okay thank you thank you
so Lindsay do you want to jump in while we're waiting for him to join or sure as I said in any order that makes sense to you yeah okay yeah hi Lindsy Strong Fire Chief um yeah I think I'm prepared to make the bulk of the explanation um I've
talked to um Chief Ting um so I want to start by giving a little background so like you said there are some members who were not here last year so I am going to take a minute to talk about the overall project and then me and Chief Tink speak about the cost questions um this project
was originally proposed as one project um couple years ago year and a half ago we met with Sandy Per who was doing finance at the time and he actually suggested we split it into two parts so the literature I think you should all have in front of you about the two different phases that
it was put together under his suggestion to break this project up because it was a fairly significant dollar amount so the way we broke it up was into what we call the infrastructure which was phase one that was funded for FY25 and then phase two which we're here now for for
uh FY26 phase one is what we call the infrastructure which is really the backbone of the radio system it's all of your base stations antennas etc phase two is in technical terms what's called the subscriber units it's really the
mobiles and portable radios that firefighters and police have in their vehicles and carry around um Doug Gary who you're trying to get into the meeting uh was the reference from the police department he knows what the police department needs so he and I actually put this project together we
went to Goosetown Communications a year and a half ago they did a study analyzed our system told us what would be the best way to go about this and when I say best I'm not talking about the top of the line every bell and whistle it's what would improve our uh communications
in the field for police and fire because both agencies do have dead spots uh and do that in the most cost-effective way so Goosetown did a study I think was forwarded to all of you um and that's where this project came about that was then split into two parts and the best
way I can give you an analogy it's not a perfect analogy but if you everybody's familiar with cell phones uh the uh infrastructure which was funded for FY25 is essentially your carrier it's the system that's out there you have your
choice of systems um they all do roughly the same thing some are better than others in different places so that's the system and then regardless of who you have T-Mobile Verizon AT&T you can go out and buy an iPhone an Android a Motorola phone whatever those are what
we're talking about for phase two here the subscriber units the actual portables or mobile radios so we've already in FY25 been funded for the carrier if you will that the actual radio system the infrastructure that
project is underway so if it's not a a question really at this point whether we want to design a different system that train left the station a year and a half ago it's been funded for FY25 and we're moving forward with that this phase two that's before you now is again for all
the portables and mobiles and Melissa am I able to share if I click on this um I hope so okay are you yep can you see this i not yet not yet
no did you get you have to give them permission to share it's not a big deal if we can't do it i just figured it would help give a visual there let me try as a co-host I think you can do it is it possible
um Chief Ting that that Doug is logged in on Kathy's computer that's correct his wife is Kathy so okay her name so it's Liss has an attendee if you could let him in that'd be great yeah debk
okay so everybody can see this picture now yes yes so I'm actually in Indianapolis right now at a trade show for the fire service it's an educational and trade show so this photo is literally taken uh yesterday because all the different vendors are here on the show and I took this photo because this
is what they're selling right now this brand happens to be Kenwood the uh green item right here is a portable radio this is what the police officers and the firefighters carry dayto-day on their person and this is a mobile radio which would be in the police cruiser firetruck
ambulance chief's vehicle etc so again phase one is all the base stations everything you don't see that's in the background and that's moving forward now this phase two is to buy x number of these mobiles and x number of these portables uh for the firefighters and
for the police officers to work with the new infrastructure that we're putting in place and without getting too technical these although I'm happy to answer questions um these are what are called triband radios as so they have VHF UHF 800 megahertz the reason for that is
interoperability uh not only between the police and fire departments uh right here in Ammerst but to also be able to talk to the UMass Police Department who's a different system to be able to talk to the Franklin County towns both police and fire because they're on a statewide 800 megahertz system and all
of our surrounding communities so these radios uh actually and this will tie into my comments about cost are actually three radios in one they're VHF radios their 800 megahertz radios and their UHF radios so we can talk to all of our uh
mutual aid partners in the area so what's before you um now is essentially to buy like I said a certain number of mobiles and a certain number of portables for both the police uh and fire departments uh these radios that you're
seeing now are Kenwoods historically our community uh up until now has been a Motorola um community doug Giri likes Motorola i like Motorola um but I'm going to be very honest they've priced themselves out of the market uh Kenwoods which you're looking at here are about
20% cheaper so we are actually looking at getting Kenwoods because we are you know conscientious of the the ultimate cost of this project so we have we have made a decision to take about 20% off by going to the Kenwood line versus the uh the Motorola line um in terms of the
overall cost of the project I think the communities that were looked at there is no apples to apples comparison you really have to look at what each community has done uh I reached out to the Northampton Fire Chief chief Ting reached out to Northampton Police and
South Hadley Police um you know and what what we found is in the example of South Hadley their system I don't know what the cost of that was but their most recent upgrade was for police only it did not co uh include uh the fire department and looking at their rough
numbers it was about uh half third to a half the number of physical radios that you're looking at right here um to give you a different comparison I think Northampton in terms of the community size and makeup is very more comparable to us uh they are actually in the final phases of a radio system upgrade and
that's coming in at $7 million now to be fair that is um not only police fire it's also school and DPW it's a townwide system but that community is putting forward 7 million to uh put roughly
these same portables and mobiles into the vehicles and the firefighter police officers hands as we are but uh obviously at a much higher price tag um they're going to an 800 meghertz system which is partially why they're uh more expensive and I believe they're staying with Motorola uh versus uh going with
the Kenwood um Chief Tang I don't know if you have anything else you wanted to add about the cost i know you got a lot of data from Chief Gunderson in South Hadley and I'll stop sharing now yeah I would love for uh Doug Giri to chime in he knows a lot more about this than I do he's our resident expert uh if
you don't mind Doug sure uh sorry for the late join i was having some technical difficulties um yeah I I will second what Lindsay said um our system is definitely unique compared to other
communities um something that we also uh our system is a little bit different we actually have two two channels that we operate on we operate on a uh a regular primary frequency that allows us to uh
work with our dispatch center to deal with everyday calls and traffic and then we actually have a secondary channel that allows us to do special events and uh not take over our main frequency for
um those special events so that the standard calls for service aren't interrupted by um that radio traffic that would be associated with the with the special special uh operation so we actually have two fre frequencies that
we use where the fire department has one so we're actually kind of double that amount um we added that to our system probably about 15 years ago because we were having too much radio traffic um so that was an a
great addition to us later so things like the uh the Blney blowout uh we've had these half marathon races where we've used it um some of our detail officers use that channel so they don't conflict with uh primary dispatch
functions um so that really alleviated a lot of our problems with uh too much radio communication on one frequency so that's one of the one of the uh uh not the issues but one of the costs associated with upgrading our
system um uh I'm not sure if Lindsay mentioned it too but back uh probably 10-15 years ago too the FCC mandated that we had to go from a wideband frequency uh position to a narrow band frequency position
which was basically across the whole United States uh the FCC wanted to increase the amount of frequencies available to public safety and by doing that they basically took our our wide frequency and squeezed it down to a narrow frequency which had some
significant performance issues um wideband kind of goes when it transmits it kind of floods an area where now narrow band kind of goes in and is very particular so we have we have some known dead spots in our town and when they went to narrow band
it actually made the dead spots even worse and created some new ones so I know fire as well as us we have very difficult transmissions down on University Drive in the Northampton Road area um we have some uh difficulty in
the uh Belchuretown Road area out by um Logtown Road that area so basically we have a single transmit site which is on top of uh Impelum on top of Mount Lincoln and because of that high prospect when it shoots down it doesn't
go into the little valleys and the dips so it shoots over the top of it so we're definitely having some ore uh radio issues and we've lived with it knowing that hopefully this this new project would come to fruition and uh we
could eliminate those problems and because of that single transmit site we have on Mount Lincoln all these new systems are called Simoccast systems so they have multiple transmit sites in different locations so when it transmits it all comes into from
different directions as opposed to just one direction and if you look at South Hadley they did that with four sites i'm sure Northampton's got multiple sites um I'm not sure about some of the other systems but that's we're basically bringing our communication systems up to
current levels where we have operated with the same system design since I was when I first started in '94 and I'm sure Lindsay could uh support the fact how old our system design is um so therefore
this is why our request is probably a little bit higher than the average because we have not really done anything significant to our system in over 30 years i don't know Lindsay if you can add any more to that yeah um the only thing I wanted to add
I'm going to share my screen again um I neglected to mention this earlier when we were looking at these uh actual devices uh just to give people an idea of what we're talking about these portable radios are running about eight for the Motorola pricing are about eight
to nine and close to $10,000 per unit and these mobile radios are about 10,000 per unit and I know those prices sound astronomical because they are but that's what they cost these days so when you say we you know just 10 of these radios
for 10 cruisers uh that's $100,000 right there so you can see how quick why the cost is what it is that we're asking for this year for the 1.1 million because just 10 of these is $100,000 um and the reason they're so expensive is because I mentioned earlier
they are really three radios in one if we were doing these radios 10-15 years ago we would and did have a separate radio for VHF a separate radio for UHF and a separate radio for uh 800 MHz when that came into uh being in the area so
we would have had three separate radios now they're putting them all into one uh but the C that raises the cost right there's really three separate radios built into that small package and they're also obviously designed for public safety use on those portable radios get brought into fires literally
with the firefighters and they they live a pretty rough life out there so they're military spec for being dropped water uh etc so when we talk about the cost you know when I'm talk we're talking about 9 to $10,000 per piece uh you can see
where that total of a million plus comes from thank you very much um so I'm seeing Sarah's hand is up and any other Thank you for joining us also this was a great
presentation Sarah yeah thank you um and for the refresher because it's been a while um so the die the dye has been cast I gather um because the infrastructure sort of all the
ground permanently installed infrastructure is is uh is I don't know it's on order or you're installing it or what but it sounds like a lot of the expense is because of wanting to operate on three
frequencies and I wonder If the next time is there a move would our would Amoris move towards the statewide frequency the 800 megahertz or whatever it is is the university is on that i
mean would it not be more efficient or at least in terms of cost to eventually be operating on one band or is there too much traffic you need you need to spread out the traffic into multiple bands
that's one question and the second is so is this budget your request given what you've learned at this trade show or or whatever is it going to be adequate assuming it's approved will it buy what you need sure i'm I'm happy to answer both those
questions um in terms of the statewide system I guess I can only partially answer it i you know I can't look into the future uh too far what I can tell you is right now where we are in Hampshire County um there really isn't a statewide system in place to do what they're doing
in Franklin County that's not to say that it won't be there in the future so UMass is on their own system they're completely separate um they have their own I think about one and a couple million dollar system they put in five six seven years ago um Franklin County
has been on a statewide has had their own system countywide for 20 plus years they just went on the state police system um in the last 3 four years whether that's available to us in 5 10 years I can't say for sure i can
tell you right now it is not built out does not have the capacity that you brought up to do that right here in this area uh that's not to say it won't uh be there in the future um in terms of is this enough for now you know to do the job I would say the design is there um
I'll be very honest costs are skyrocketing on everything as I'm sure you know um we already raised this phase two a little bit from what was showing last year because of the cost of um the devices I showed you the portables and mobile radios um that certainly cemented
in our minds that we were going to go to the Kenwood line of items versus the Motorola because uh again those are about 20% less expensive but they do do the same job i have no no concern about that so in terms of buying the portables and mobiles this phase two will
certainly uh be enough to do what we need to do right now uh for the phase one we are running into some overages costwise we're going to have to scale that back a little bit um and then finally build out the last piece of that in the future um but it's still going to
give us a much better system than uh you know what we're working with right now bridg yeah thank you thank you for explaining it and um wow you do have a lot of coordination i can see that maybe other communities wouldn't have as much the
UMass piece just alone explaining that helps understand a bit i had two questions that are still outstanding i noticed a lot of the other towns Graanby and Northampton had to take theirs out to bid and did we do that is like we're locked into this one that's the the deal
and the second one was some of the grants for the state were related to regionalization but then their support grants and I wondered if we'd applied for any of those sure in terms of grants um we have looked at grants we haven't applied for any for radios that we
haven't received we simply haven't applied tried to put money there there are no specific grants for radios you talk about regionalization and that that's a separate um uh thought process discussion if you will there are some smaller communities that are banding together in a regional format ammerst
actually tried to start that project about 15 20 years ago um and it it ultimately didn't go anywhere and you know we're really a big enough community now that it's not something that anybody has looked at um not to say again that couldn't be done in the future um so
there are no grants for us for the regionalization piece of it or support unless we were going to obviously regionalize um we have brought in about a half million dollars in the last 15 months just for the fire department for grants but we did not put in for radios when we apply for grants some of them
are very specific for things some are a little more open and you could put in for radios but we always look at what can we get with this grant and what is the likelihood of us getting the grant and so we have not put in for radios because the cost of this project being
what it is for police fire combined and the price tag we didn't think it was a high probability we would get the grant so we chose to put in for a grant for something that we would likely get and we actually did get it we I'm proud to say we have not had any grants turned
down in the last two years every grant we've applied for uh we've actually received and that's totally just for us i don't know about the police but for fire about a half a million dollars so no we haven't put in for grants um and that's why um because I don't think we would be successful first of all that
dollar amount isn't available and we I'm not sure we would be successful in terms of uh you asked something about are we locked in bidding so for the phase two uh the buying the devices those are straight up equipment off a state bid so we would not have to go out to bid for
those we would just buy them through our vendor we already have quotes from them for the infrastructure phase that we're in now um we are stalled on that slightly because that is on the state bid but there's some
um discussion going on with accounting that it actually falls under a construction uh line which means it would have to go out to bid so we're actually working that through with accounting right now that's why I see Bob and Melissa's hand
are up go ahead Melissa i just wanted to remind the committee to to Lindsay's point um and I can't speak to all the grants that he's done but um as part of the capital that was submitted by um the fire department one of his lines was reduced because of grant funding that
they had so I just wanted to kind of say that he had he was being selective in that um and and you saw the value of that this year i just wanted to ask how long this this equipment will last in other words when
when are we going to see another request for um either the the mobile units or you know the the the base units uh typical lifespan is 15 to 20 years uh and to life uh most we do have some newer radios in our departments the vast
majority certainly what I have in the fire department uh for mobiles and portables are at the 20-year mark or plus and they're what the manufacturer calls end of life so they won't fix them anymore yep yep i'll say the same thing for uh for the
police we we have some newer radios also but they're probably 10 years old now and we have a lot of uh support radios after that are which are 20 to 30 years plus old too same end of life issue but again the focus on these new mobiles and
portables which I I agree with Lindsay it's a 15 to 20 years but I'm sure we probably get 25 years minimum out of them uh the interoperability component is the most important piece here is that we're able to interact with our mutual
aid partners UMass Hadley Son all the neighboring communities because right now we do not have that capability and everything has to either go via through dispatch two or three hands through dispatch through other dispatch centers or we're we're listening to scanners and
with that being said you're you're you're you're fighting to listen to a scanner and your own radio at the same time or an interop radios give the ability to manage that traffic much better thank you thank you for bringing us into
the world of radios for police and fire in a complicated community uh Steve go Stephen yeah thank you uh just just quickly just to reiterate Doug's reiterate Doug's uh message there you know we we I feel very confident saying
that we run a a welloiled you know operation between the police and fire in Ammerst in fact it's it's almost the relationship is almost unheard of compared to other agencies other other communities in the Commonwealth um and part of it is our ability to communicate and work together um and when we're all
going to single incidents at the same time it it is really key to be able to talk to and hear the other agency and know what's going on um it's it's one of those traits of our community right we all work with with limited resources and and we get we continue to get it done um
this this makes it a a safer world it makes our response even faster because we'll hear what the police are saying they hear what we're doing um and we'll be able to talk to them directly uh so so it really is a a a key to to making this operation continue to work and and grow uh in in the with the hazards that
we face and and and you know people you know I'm with the chief at this conference and you know we we sat there and listened to people talk about real critical incidents in communities um face those critical incidents there's nothing more important than communications um and so this is really
a key key to a key to our operation the other thing is I'm obviously I'm actually very much a fan of numbers and data and I read um I read some of the information provided like the Welssley because I have friends that work in Wsley and I wanted to see what does their radio look like um just just to
note the WY request is interesting but it's it's more of a a workstation at the dispatch center request um it doesn't actually encompass some of the the the breadth and the depth of the project that we have but another interesting thing in the Welssley project is that they have a Zetron fire station alerting
system at about $435,000 on a separate request um comparable we actually had a $70,000 request for a station alerting system that that was kind of led towards the the your committee but we was was uh deferred early on in the process um but
I think when you look at different communities and different projects it's very interesting um and I appreciate the data so that's all thank you very much thank Thanks bridget was our researcher on this thank you Bridget so I see
Jason's hand is up so yeah just to bring up the point uh for those who don't know me I'm Jason Rushford um I manage the dispatch center here in Ammerst um the grant funding that is available to communication centers are limited to individual PAPs or 91 entering points
there is money available for interoperability in radios however like the chief said you have to be regional to obtain that money so we couldn't even apply for it on the 911 side of things if we wanted to um I do apply for the support and incentive grant we get about $170,000 a year for that that offset
some of our salaries um but there is no caveat for the radios in there unless we go regional or in the process of developing a regional system so that has been looked down for that road to go down for saving money but it's just not applicable to us right now thank you
miss Sarah yeah just a just a comment about the importance of the interoperability i think I think I remember that lack of interoperability was a huge problem during 911 that the first responders in in Manhattan were
just not able to communicate with each other very effectively and it was and maybe it was that that has driven this um recognition and move towards towards systems that uh allow this interoperability hugely important
yeah I would just I would add you're 100% correct about that um and a big push in the industry now since 911 um and they've made a lot back then it was a technical challenge to be honest they hadn't really worked out the technical side of it uh like I said we used to
have three different radios in our trucks for all the different bands uh they've complete I won't say completely but by and large they've solved the technical challenges although it's expensive and now it's really on communities to buy into that technology much more recently if you remember the
gas explosions fires in eastern Massachusetts uh about wherever that was right before the pandemic Lawrence I believe yeah I believe yeah so I I only bring that up because um they once again they were bringing in fire
departments not from all over the state and from other states down from Vermont New Hampshire and they once again ran into interoperability problems because some communities had bought into it and some had not so it continues to be a challenge uh nationally but and we've
been made slow inroads on it but this radio system upgrade puts uh as I said earlier triband radios uh into every vehicle and the hands of the firefighters and the police and the dispatch center so it uh largely eliminates that issue
uh I just wanted to uh say that um in my in a in a previous life I did a lot of consulting work to the federal government and when the Department of Homeland Security was formed after 9/11 they had a huge interoperability problem
with all their different agencies they all operated on different systems and it was a just a a big mess for the federal government to to to struggle with so I can I can understand that it's a it's a real problem
so I'm I'm not seeing any other hands up um and as I said at the beginning I thank you so much for joining us as a team um it's uh we'll we'll make sure we have really good minutes on this so if in the future anyone asks us why is the system as expensive we'll have we'll
have uh pieces and that picture was very helpful you know to see you know we're talking about something much more than a handheld cell phone you know on the way the way we communicate with each other um yeah they don't give you radios for a
dollar if you sign off that's right so I think um that's it in terms of peace um you know Bridget you had some other questions about longevity of vehicles but I think for right now there's only two we're purchasing this
year so I I would like to come back to that because it's a larger issue across all vehicles unless you want to take it up now well I mean I think we have a guest appearance now uh in the uh regarding the the fleet at the police
department might be your last chance so you know the question really was can they go longer in terms of 100,000 miles 200 looking across different vehicles wasn't it is that the sum short summary of your question Bridget
yeah and I think I mean more than anything I think it's just about like having some sort of fair uniform policy between departments and as a vehicle policy overall i think um you know as opposed to like I think there's a 2012
that makes sense to replace but there's if you go down the big vehicle sheet there's such disparity between departments even on other daily use and I know our ambulance they told us that was comparable but that went to 200,000 miles so I guess my big question is just
like I mentioned in the first meeting like you don't want to buy someone uh ice cream and not someone else in the same you know system and I still have questions on that and then yeah why are other towns getting their vehicles for
so much less okay I can address those issues so yes uh regards to fleet vehicles so we do have a lot of vehicles that are currently uh listed as good or even excellent um we went obviously during
the COVID year I think that was 2021 nobody got uh received any vehicles in town so even when that year came and we didn't have any replacement vehicles we still had to drive those same vehicles so they did drive higher but the problem
is that our vehicles are driven um with some intensity obviously emergency calls um I I I kind of don't agree with the issue that our vehicles are similar to ambulances those ambulances are trucks
commercial rated trucks ours are are are still passenger vehicles with some minor changes for a heavier duty use so they're covered under the Ford we buy Fords and they're basically Ford
Explorers but they call them police interceptors because they're up uh up fit to sustain police use but they do take the wear and tear that your same car does we hit the same potholes we we jump curbs sometimes when we have to um
guys are driving them a lot more intensely to get to emergency calls whether it be a medical call a disturbance call a fight in progress call assisting the fire department with a a house fire um call so they're
they're driven very very aggressively but they're they're driven different than you than the school bus drivers driving the school bus um they are built better than they have
been in the past but the only problem is is you run into reliability issues and I I was reading the the notes that was taken here and somebody wrote in there convenience and I wasn't really sure what convenience meant but
um it'd be convenient if your car was able to show up to the call a met an emergency call whether it's a motor vehicle accident or a child choking or or um something related to that we have
had three or four instances in the last few years where some of our cars that ex where in excess of a 100,000 miles uh broke down in route to these calls and that as a police officer that is the
terrible feeling that you're so close to getting to a call but your car can't make it there and I that's really inexcusable for public safety you have to have a reliable vehicle and I guess what we talk about is reliability on these vehicles like we continue to do
all the scheduled maintenance all the repairs that are needed but the problem is is once those vehicles become unreliable because you don't know what what component of that car is going to fail that's when you start having some really bad concerns
about how well your fleet is so right now our our patrol fleet is pretty well done um we put in requests for vehicles and during COVID everything as as we know came to a stop so we had requests for vehicles and it took me over a year and
a half to two years to get some of these replacement vehicles so a lot of our cars are 2023s but we have some of their 2012s there's a 2016 there's a 20 and they're all in excess of 120 to
130,000 miles right now so now we're getting into this issue of reliability and I know we requested four vehicles this year i think there was some conversation to reduce that down to two i I I can understand the cost
cutting measures but still these vehicles need to be replaced for reliability issues and obviously the costs associated with maintaining them are going to be a lot higher because they're out of warranty so everything that we have to do to those in repair
not just maintenance and upkeep but repairs are going to be high cost uh figures because they're major things like transmissions um drivetrains uh front suspension rear suspension because these like I said these cars are driven almost every day
and they take the wear and tear where a school bus goes out twice twice a day only five days a week goes in the morning goes in the afternoon and then it's not going anywhere on the weekend so the the the the amount of use our
vehicles get is substantial compared to some of these other other town vehicles and I get all fairness i'm not about not being fair i just don't want us to be in a situation where our uh police officers are responding to a call and they can't
make it there number one get there safely and that they don't have a failure where it's going to cause the officer to be injured because of some sort of failure and two that they get there to do what they're trained to do whether help somebody protect somebody
or what have you so um our cost of our vehicles so I I noticed in the notes too that um let me just refer to this real quick um back in 2020 town 2020 town council passed that 10-year capital improvement plan and the police vehicles
were budgeted for 2019 at $40,000 now in 2019 was the last model year before Ford changed their design from one Ford Explorer to a new Ford Explorer so they changed the look so
when they changed that look all the equipment from the previous vehicles could not go into the new ones because the specifications and measurements of the new vehicles weren't the same as the old vehicles so I couldn't take I couldn't take equipment from one car and
put it on another because it didn't fit you had to buy new stuff so the reason why these prices are higher is because we're replacing a all these cars that are the new style with the equipment that fits it two we decided at the town's obviously liking that we went to
hybrid vehicles so the hybrid costs for these vehicles were $7 to $8,000 more than the standard gas vehicle now that price has started to come a little bit closer now the gas is is uh I think 22 to $2,500 cheaper than a hybrid vehicle
um so that's where that expanded cost was and with CO prices shot up for not only the vehicles but also the aftermarket equipment so if you look at somewhere I someone said on here that Northampton was spending 67,000 we actually reached out to them they're
actually they requested 92,000 and that's what their city gave them plus an additional $10,000 for radio equipment um South Havly someone said 55,000 it's actually uh they requested 85 they only got 80 and they're and they're
struggling to meet their requirements with the 80,000 these cars are so full of technical equipment now between radios um incar video systems and uh emergency lighting and all sorts of other safety
features built into the car the prices are that high so I'm I'm guessing after we make probably this year's fiscal year and next year's fiscal year replacements the cost is going to come down because now I'm going to be able to move some of the similar equipment currently in these
new vehicles into the next new vehicles because they're probably going to be the same model specifications every time that Ford decides they want to change the the the look of a vehicle to for the for the public to have a nice new looking different vehicle it changes
it on the police side too which is a tough thing for us to swallow because we have to come up with that money to buy the equipment that fits those new specifications um just looking at my notes here real quick um I don't I'm I'm kind of curious
to see how these new hybrid cars last i think our oldest one is a 2021 right now and it's probably around 80,000 mi so I'm we're kind of curious to see how it how it maintains itself going close to 100,000 if that if at a 100,000 things
look like they're going to last longer than the stand standard gas vehicles of the the teen years um it might be we might be able to keep them longer but we're not there yet to really prove to see if it actually happens but
definitely open to that idea of trying to keep some cars a little bit longer again I don't know what the the the maintenance costs or the repair costs are going to be these are h these are first generation hybrid police vehicles um so I don't know what the battery life's going to be like if it's if it's
going to be still efficient anymore so those are things that that we're going to have to figure out down the road in the next few years but right now we're still replacing full only gas only police vehicles with new hybrid technology so I'd say after this year
and next year our basically our whole fleet will be hybrid which was was the goal of obviously the green communities um efforts here to get totally green sustainable on on police vehicles and we are starting to toy with the idea of
trying to find a fully electric vehicle um if we got if we were going to do four cars this year we were actually going to replace one of the cars cruisers with a full electric vehicle and give it a try but if we're going down to two I'm only gonna we're only going to be able to replace two gas vehicles with two
standard hybrid vehicles um did I answer all your questions so far i don't want to miss anything i think so i'm seeing uh Chief Ting's hand is up as well you know I think one
of the issues is that uh a car a truck and a police car are not all the same you know in terms of how they're used and what goes into them as equipment yeah i mean definitely that's definitely an issue i mean our if you you're more than welcome to ever anyone wants to
come down to our police department and take a look at what what goes into these vehicles um we can show you exactly the technology that's in there and the specialized equipment that goes in there for um obviously our communications our safety transporting prisoners
transporting equipment um there it's very unique when I first started doing this it used to take one day to build a police car at the the company that we use to upfit a car now it takes over five six days to build one police car that's how intense the uh the equipment
installation is these days chief Kane yeah so I just want to mention that our police vehicles are considered as essential equipment um I would consider those to be uh the offices for our officers because they're being used 24 hours a day 365 days a
year so these vehicles are shared amongst all of the patrol officers and so therefore there's no consistency in driver usage and these are really hard miles are being driven um that's the reason we only use vehicles are considered as patrol rated i've heard in
the past um they're they're a little bit more robust and heavier duty i've heard um somebody recommend in the past why can't we just buy a civilian model a Honda or something like that for 45,000 miles for $45,000 and it's just it's
just not possible um so we also maintain a high standard of service at APD we respond to over an average let's say 20,000 calls for service and motor vehicle stops annually so we only have three patrol officers and one supervisor
on the road as first responders we we truly you know Doug has already mentioned this we truly cannot afford for a vehicle to break down um and delay any type of response many of our calls are for medical reasons motor vehicle crashes or citizens that are in some
type of danger so for someone in our in our community to potentially get hurt because our vehicles breakdown is just simply unacceptable um also uh you know I wanted to mention that you know for the past 10 years uh
since I've been in a leadership position you know the budget for our operating costs APD have been level funded every year um within each year even with the rising costs across the board we try to find a way to make things work um we've
been extremely responsible fiscally uh the only two areas that we cannot cut corners on are our training budget and our necessary equipment and police cruisers is probably the most important tool that we have it's the only piece of equipment that is used at every moment
of every day uh even after we had two positions frozen out to help out another department we find a way to make it work so I don't think we should be uh penalized for other departments having fared as well um you know we really do
try to uh be fiscally responsible and this is just a real necessary tool for us um I don't know if Ron Young has anything to add to that if you're there Ronnie I am here Chief i I don't really think I have anything to
add i think that puts it pretty succin succinctly pardon me thank you and I I want to thank you all i I want to get thank you all for responding to questions that were raised and and
for joining us today um it's it's it's a good showing of the commitment to the town and to serving all of us well so I I think I'm not seeing any other hands so I do think um we will write up these
notes and to the extent JCPC keeps having new people every year we'll try to make sure we keep notes um of discussion so you to the extent you come back and have another set of us we can at least read what what the last group
heard um because it it it's something we just don't see every day we we and and we're certainly not on the purchasing end so I'm not seeing any hands up at the committee so I think we can thank um
the all of you from fire and police for joining us today for this extra session and and responding and unless you want to stay you can leave thank you everyone thank you very much
thank you and and Melissa thank you for organizing the group to come i'm just Did we lose any of our members just now one two three i don't think so lee was was on earlier but I think she dropped out okay
ha one two three five okay so the the two the two items um just in terms of our hopeful schedule once we get through the discussion today Sarah has already started a draft of the report which
captured the discussion you had last week on FY26 and has some comments in waiting for some further um explanation or expansion melissa has provided us with the spreadsheet you know and
showing how things changed when a decision was made or recommendation so we're going to be putting in spreadsheets detailed spreadsheets to show um rather than just a summary to show where things that we'll figure out
how to do it you know what was proposed versus what we came came up with um because I I think it'll help both the town manager but others see what we were recommending so today the the pieces were and and Sarah I'm going all of you
that were last week's meeting can chime in but on out here is my understanding of the minutes where people didn't want to talk about them that much but I had several things to flag that I saw and it's not so much a recommend a change in
them is a questioning them and I'll just read off um and Bob your hands up and Sarah's hand is up so before I go into my list I'll get both of you to tell me what I don't know about last week well uh one of the things that came up in
last week or or last last week or whatever our previous uh meeting the discussion was whether we could increase DPW uh uh budget for um traffic calming
measures and uh one of the for example one of the citizen requests was to redo station road leading down to the uh the rail trail and a person just wrote to me saying you know what can we reduce that
to just a traffic calming request so I think we should think about whether or not we can afford to increase DPW's budget for traffic calming i don't know what where it that discussion left off uh we I know we had a discussion but I
don't know that we got to a final decision on that so Sarah and S Sarah has it as a sentence she doesn't She'll know what she wrote but I know I know what I wrote i I thought I know what we decided although nothing's final until you know
we all Do Do you all want me to put this the spreadsheet up or have you all made other changes to it so I don't have the most recent Oh I haven't I haven't touched the spreadsheet but I just wanted to say Kathy we can talk about out years now if you want but but I don't think we have resolved all
the decisions about the cash capital and the borrowing we have to come to an agreement one way or another about this radio um ask about the two police vehicles and about any what we do if
anything with any excess uh funds left on the table now Bob I I believe that the group agreed to throw in another $50,000 for trafficcoming um so that's what I
put into the report that doesn't mean we can't change it but I and I think the minutes reflect that we had Yeah I I think we did but I I I'm not sure that that fully covered what Guilford had had requested 50,000
covers the the Wildwood Cemetery or or some of the other ones or some of the others right well he wasn't requesting anything except some more money if we wanted him to do any of the c of any of the resident requests i need to just I need to go get another piece of paper so
I'm not leaving the room for any other reason i'm out of my piece of paper okay okay okay so I don't know if Kathy can hear us but um uh and so what I'd put in the report and again we can revisit is that we would
add $50,000 to traffic calming and let DPW decide you know based on kind of the their sense of the priorities and the affordability and the ease of you know which of those resident requests to
right address I we we talked about how we didn't feel we could actually decide which was most meritorious or important and that was really should be a departmental decision so can I just Yeah
go ahead over here i'm just play back to you what I just heard in terms of if we write it as add 50,000 and here is a choice of one or two areas that we think should receive priority it would be um it would be left to discretion but I
think it's good to at least mention them otherwise it goes into a big pot um and it gets spent for something called track farming that may or may not be the resident request so I'm hearing that you got down to a few that that seem like
might be higher on the list that's that's what I'm hearing i'm not saying one way i don't know that we said they were higher on the list i hope the draft report indicates the ones we felt were trafficcoming and thus could be addressed by this extra money
dpw you figure it out okay so it was in that category okay I get it so I'm I'm totally comfortable with that as a recommendation so Bridget were you going to We should do one at a time then yeah yeah perfect no I concur with what
um Sarah said i think that Guilford knew which of the projects were doable which were not which ones would eat up the whole budget i think he said that whole extra 50,000 would be taken up by Wildwood but some he might be able to knock off a certain amount but moreover
he mentioned that he's got a queue and so if we let a special request jump a queue there might be some equity issues involved in that so I think saying that um saying it the way that you said it makes a lot more sense than saying one
or two specific projects and so that would take you know Melissa in terms of spreadsheet that would take what I saw happened last week is we ended up with a surplus so that would take some of that surplus down and move it into a traffic calming line and we'll
write it as a recommendation to make it clear i think that the spreadsheet I sent you I I upped that line by 50,000 because that's how I understood the meeting to be going so that's that's already in there okay yep well you know a good way to display this would be to
put um another column in here which is the original FY26 request and then have a column in here that's this is what we we recommend then then then you could you could see very quickly which which
lines changed okay and I can you know once we get through today Melissa gave me the original original a few weeks ago you know the before we moved any money so if we get to a new line I'm you know I don't have to put you through it
Melissa if you know if I get a revised one that time I can do those two columns side by side that I think that makes a lot of sense it'll be easy to see it then yeah that that way you can see very easily what we changed and then what I saw and and sir I shouldn't speak for
you but it was that you let that still left some additional money and did that go to spending down debt service did that go to roads where did that go to right you know to get it down to we were trying to get to a balance rather than generate a surplus where we yes but
where we left it which we can you know we can continue was that let the town manager decide but If we think really we ought to be deciding then we can decide
so I think given what we hear at the council regularly is saying give it to road repair would make some sense rather than because we're the $500,000 on road is quite a bit below what we used to do um what what what we were trying to do
and that's and everything else that I saw on the list was more expensive than the surplus that we have that another it was down to a couple hundred thousand you know So I think that makes more sense i mean that's where I would go but
I'm only one voice on the committee you know we we can leave it the way you just said Sarah let recommend that there's 200,000 put it where you think is the greatest need because Guilford had Guilford had the mower had the had the
$250,000 vehicle that he reluctantly moved to next year i'd be h I'd be happy to put it into into road repair you could put that to the group let's see that would be my recommendation that what however this ends up being that
that that's where that money goes um but Bob I'm seeing your hand is up yeah I could see it going towards road repair or to pay down debt um I think I think um when I look at the
the chart that um the town engineer put putting an extra $200,000 into roads really isn't going to it's just a drop in the bucket it's not going to change anything um doesn't even buy right i mean it'll it'll it'll it's a quarter
mile or you know you know it's it's somebody's front yard i get it i mean um you know I I there's potholes on wildflower where I have to you know maneuver around them when I go anywhere um so I I understand but you know
Melissa can I ask do we have is there debt that we can actually pay these are two options for the town management to think about so I just don't know what do we have debt that we can I know with a home mortgage you can with some mortgage you can prepay it do
we have debt we could pay down so our typical practice here in Ammerst is to borrow short-term money while the project gets started like so for instance the um the chiller at um PD
that's a few years old you know we we funded that and then at the end of the year you know we're like oh we spent half of it so we will do a short-term borrow for the amount of money that the chiller has been spent in that fiscal year and then just a few weeks ago in March we renewed some of those
um short-term borrowings and at that moment short-term borrowings they're one-year notes and so every year we have the opportunity to pay that down as much as we can or pay it off and then when we
go to do the balance of the project we're only long-term borrowing for you know half a million as opposed to a million so that's our our tactic as well a project that isn't spent all at once like a purchase of a vehicle where we spend $250,000 to buy this you know
firet truck or something like that but a project that is phased over several months we'll borrow a portion of the project in um short-term borrowing and sometimes even the whole project that way if we think we can pay it down um in
two quick years or maybe even three so that we don't have to um actually go out to a long-term borrowing and so we're and the short-term interest rates are typically significantly lower than long-term rates so anytime that we have a project that's
around a million bucks um we try and just kind of and if so if we have extra money um budgeted in the debt so we had done some forecasting just for example last year we had done some forecasting for some debt that we didn't end up
borrowing the favorite library project and so um and so because it was budgeted to to pay debt on that project and we didn't have to pay debt on that project we reallocated those monies to pay off all the other um general fund debt that
we had so that we weren't renewing that note to next year so we might have only scheduled to pay um $50,000 down on that debt but we're like "Hey we have the whole 250 right now let's just pay the whole thing off and and be done with it." so that we could save the town money and then that money was available
to do something else in in this year sarah y Yeah um I actually think that we should put this money into capital projects i I think it would be I
would have a hard time explaining why when our capital needs are so huge we couldn't find anything to spend $270,000 on i mean really you know Guilford will be mad right i mean everybody that's that's ridiculous okay
so I think we should put it into roads it can't not pay for anything i mean it's you know it's 50% more than than what we're already getting them you know it so but but the more I think about it the less I want to say ah we don't know
we I mean come on we we're working hard to generate this money for capital projects let's let's put it you know that's what I came in thinking what I had read to but one way we could do this is we could put this one item to a vote on or we could say is this a consensus
because I would support just saying roads put it into roads that we could and Okay so Bob Bob is fine with this yes so that will between the Well excuse me do you want to poll anyone out do you
want to poll the whole group about that well I'm I I can poll everyone the only person who's silent right now is Holla and then Bridget so if if I want to go around the room and get a yes is it the question is yes or no to put the extra
which in is in the 270 range or whatever the exact number is it all goes into roads so Bob and it's yes or no by yes or no on this bob yes kathy say yes sarah
Bridget I I agreed with Bob's previous argument and I also think like it does pretty much cover the mower and the sides of the roads were high last year i could see where they had trouble so I'll vote no but I'm out voted so okay well
that's all right no Holla hasn't voted yet holla if Holla's here paula I am sorry so the so I don't know whether you heard that the question is are we putting all the extra money that we that hasn't been allocated yet into
roads or not so a yes is yes roads a no is the alternative is leave it to the manager to decide roads or current debt but right now yes or no on roads yes okay so and and I can put that in
Bridget we can put it in our the way we write write it it doesn't have to be that every once had put it into roads we can say we had a discussion on also paying down the debt so since the whole thing is just our recommendation right yeah we we we are
as much as we might want to be in the final decision we're not at all so does does that get us through FY26 Sarah and others who were there i think we need to ask Bridget at least if she's
now if she's Oh are you okay on vehicles and radio vehicles well I I feel like on the radio it's a done deal and I didn't realize how much it was already baked into what you voted before but also the
argument was pretty convincing as to the reasoning and for the vehicles I could take the 2012 like split the difference but I saw so many towns doing new hybrid vehicles for like 57k you know like it just seemed like
we're asking for so much for that like so I think with the vehicles I'd be okay with one of them but two seems like honestly the cleanest argument is if you're not doing vehicles for anyone you're not doing it for anyone every other department also is racing to
emergencies it's hard i didn't want to say it with the guys here cuz of course it's very convincing you want to support them but you want to support all the departments you know and there's we have three 247 departments that are using their vehicles just as hard and racing
to emergencies too excuse me dpw and fire gets more emergency calls and EMT than police and DPW gets the same number pretty much proportionately so anyway that's that's where my votes are at okay
so So I think so the radio side that's an okay and then the question is does anyone want to They had asked for four they're down to two does anyone want to go to something less Sarah um I will vote for two for several
reasons one um I I don't think you know we've we certainly in school committee we talk about equal and equity and and in certainly in front of town council or at BCG we've talked about you know it's
everybody's needs aren't the same so the police department's needs at this time are different from other departments needs um So so there's that also I don't see how
delaying of of of trying to do more vehicle purchase all at once is better than spreading them out when you can so that doing two now is better than trying to do two next year along with a whole lot of vehicles for other departments
and then finally I I you know it's I think it's tricky to compare costs across towns or cities because what we're being asked for is the the fully loaded vehicle like literally with all this expensive
equipment and and Chief Ting I think or maybe one of the other gentlemen spoke about how some cities they get the they get the vehicle and then but then they have to spend even more money to outfit it so I don't know that maybe the
numbers Bridget has found are apples to apples and maybe it's like half an apple and they have to go figure out how to pay for the other half the apple whereas we're paying for the whole apple to torture i'll I'll look I I'll comment less but Bob do you want to weigh in on
how I I um I hear what Bridget is saying but I still think the police should get two cruisers this year uh because I do think that um you know I've seen cruisers going up and down the streets and they're drive they're driving fast a
lot faster than even ambulances go uh so um I I I I you know I think it was a compelling argument that we need to make you know we need to heer on the side of caution and replace them more maybe more
maybe more frequently than they need to be but for public safety I think I I'm willing to do that hollow and then I will do it a formal vote Sarah Sarah just so we don't Holla um sure
i'm sorry if I um missed a piece of this argument but for some reason I think moving forward the national government or federal won't have a problem funding the police um looking toward not you know not to be an alarmist or anything and talk about a
militarist state or a police state but I do see that that is a a priority they value differently than education and or other services that aren't I don't want to like associate punitive but just say like so yeah so this is a
tricky one and I might be leaning more towards the one vehicle at this moment but you know my vote is one of many so just so so I will commit for two and particularly um hearing you know we didn't buy any for
there were actually a two-year period when we when we froze it and hearing that Ford managed to change its car design so we can't transfer equipment from one car to another i feel like Ford should be have reserved an assembly line
for police cars you know they can do whatever else they want with a Ford Explorer i mean if anyone's what looked at what Toyota's been doing with the Prius it's ridiculous i mean it's um so you could see that a design and so I think part of what we're seeing is that
a fully loaded car is going to cost more and what we heard is that three years from now replacing that car won't be as expensive because you can transfer the equip unless they do it again but you can transfer the equipment and so I
think it's important since we cut them they already were cut from four to two and to write a paragraph in our report that sees there there needs to be sort of a vehicle policy that's not just driven by by departments
but driven by some knowledge of what's happening outside of Ammerst as well as what's happening inside Ammerst and we did two years ago we had the ladder truck and our truck that we were buying was twice as expensive as the
Northampton truck and they were buying it in the same year and it turned out that our truck came with water and their truck was just a ladder and so they were sending two trucks when we were sending one and their fire trucks don't have didn't need to go as to as many places
you know so there was an explanation on why one was twice as expensive because they actually weren't the same so I'm going to come down to keep it at the recommended the two we got and so I see Bridget's hand is up
so yes go ahead Bridget well I can count so there's no need for a formal vote but um but um what I just wanted to say is that the charter requires that in the vehicle table it includes a maintenance and repair
history for each vehicle too and tracking that year after year would actually if we could mention that that they do that it would help us to have like a a benchmarking thing that's not just like each of our personal opinions about and it's really hard when the
departments come in you want to give them everything they ask for they're doing such hard and important work for the town you know um but I I also know you know my son worked for the DPW this summer and he saved a baby's life racing
to uh you know an an incident and they're also doing the same things and their vehicles are going a lot longer so it's I don't want to personalize it i want something yeah so that's a very good discussion we can add a short piece
on inventory well all we did last year is thank him for doing this is a new thing for the town to even be giving us something with as much information as we're getting but we can ask for to the extent it can be easily updated we we've now at least got whether they're gas or
hybrid and the year they were purchased um and how many of them we have and I have to tell you four years ago we didn't have even a list you know so this we've moved from there seem to be a lot of cars on some of the lots so Sarah I I
see you are hand and bo yeah just a comment about something that would help with you know the a a dispassionate vehicle replacement policy might include something like you know once once the
repairs your annual repair you're spending 10% of the of the current value of the vehicle on repairs you know or whatever the number is but just something measurable about you know at this point you should just get a new vehicle right
because it's you're just sinking too much money in it or something about if it's out of service for more than so many hours of or something then then it's time so so I agree with Bridget it's you know it would be helpful to
have some more quantitative basis for deciding I see so we'll we'll try to craft sentences to that effect on what we're looking for I think bridge just brought up a really good point that we need to
as a town develop a policy on vehicle replacement i mean it it it's it's too health right now um and you know the the council and the finance committee and
JCPC they all get kind of like get arguments you know instead of facts you know and and we we need we need to be more fact-based in terms of why we need to replace these after a
certain point okay so we're staying with the two and we're putting a paragraph in on inventory that we appreciate getting the inventory and we would like to have on vehicles uh vehicle policy well what what the what what what we'll try to do
with Sarah's help is I'll try to write this up as a draft document and then people can respond to it didn't quite the sentences didn't quite capture what we were saying or you know in terms of of of a word editing and flag it as as a recommendation this isn't just going to
be buried somewhere in the report yeah I think we should have in terms of a overall summary we should have a summary of recommendations okay Bob knows I really like doing that so it's much easier when it's only one page
long but summary yeah and then and then we can get into the rest of the report gives you some why we said what we said um rather than you having to read a lot so how are we doing on time i'm just
doing a time check three three so we we're two to 40 40 minutes we have 40 minutes okay so on outears I if people want to hear my list I can give you a list of things that I was questioning not
necessarily saying get rid of um and it's already in the draft so I could remember what what what I was thinking about when I did it so when I looked in out years and I'm not going to do specific years for each puffer pond had
three and a half million in 5th till 27 and another two in 28 which there's just no way we're going to have enough money to do that so questioning you know doing some priority list on Puffers Pond and doing grant raising was what I wasn't
going to say don't do Puffers but between the beaches the dredging the repairing and more it was huge um facility you all last week decided to stay with a million facility goes up to
one and a half and then to two in out years and I was going to recommend staying at a million and let's see what a million got us you know in terms of don't and and part of this is because the nearer we can get to not giving a totally unbalanced outyear people are
asking are we going to have enough money to do DPW you know and if we've got other things on the list that eat up all the money the building will fall down on people's heads is what's going to happen with DPW so that's part of the looking at this so it was going to keep it at
one crocker Farm has placeholders and I don't even know Sarah and Bridget where they came from i mean there's not bad placeholders there's roof and there's Hback so the re what I was going to recommend is get good numbers on Crockett Farm you know so we know the
urgency when and just best guesses on them rather than have them as and I know the facilities person is new at the school so you know take a look at those and I see two hands just Sarah's hand went up and Melissa's hand went up just
something about keeping um keeping facilities or anything else flat over the coming years uh I think I think we're going to be slammed with inflation rising pretty high inflation so we'll
get less for that same amount of money so I wonder if you want to build in some you know 10% you know rather than a 50% increase right but not zero to zero so okay yeah so Melissa I see your hand is up and I
know they gave us a list that ended up with 10 if we wanted to do everything on the list it was a lot more but some of that wasn't prioritizing and what is critical Melissa you know I'm I'm just looking for that used to be 500,000 and
it's Yeah triple so so first is that I I just wanted to let you know that I have reached out to the school department about their long-term capital list and they just they're doing a lot right now so it's just not their priority to get back to me about what they're going to do three years from now so I mean I just
want to acknowledge that you know they're busy i get it and so that's that's why we don't have an answer and maybe that's something they can answer you know in the summer when when there's sort of a reprieve and they're resetting for next year um and then um as far as
the facilities um capital um in fairness they started at two this year and um you know I know that that number is um challenging um but but part of where that comes from is that the this
committee or or or maybe the whole council I'm not really sure but someone had requested of the facilities department to do a full assessment and they've now done that and that's this is just what happened you you know what I mean like you asked us
to find out if the sky is falling and unfortunately the sky is falling so um you know I think that we'll probably have a very similar list when um the new facilities team at um the school does a full assessment of all of their
buildings we'll get a list that's just as challenging so I just wanted to sort of put that out there and then I was just looking at this spreadsheet again and you know just to bring some doom and gloom to the conversation
um I want to remind everyone that the there are some projected debt numbers in here um in the outy years that include some of these big projects that we have coming down the pike like the DBW but um
in order to manage this in all of the scenarios that we had presented um probably 6 months ago now which now all have changed and are no longer valid fully acknowledge that but all of the scenarios that we um are proposing was
limiting the um the years there are crunch years of about anywhere from five to eight years where the cash capital amount was going to be $3 million um and the new project's number which I
believe is the capital's number is kind of bouncing around five or six and so that's why you're you know like that's the problem is that there was no way for me to sort of make it work without cutting what our normal investment in
capital is as far as buying things as far as borrowing things in half and that that's what creates a challenge so just kind of know that when you do this and you know maybe you do cut facilities to a million each but you should probably put another million each in the school facilities right cuz that's what's going
to happen to them too and then you're left with another million to maybe buy a car or two so there's going to be some really tight years and I think that things have changed and evolved you know just in the short time that I've been here where those projects are probably
not as condensed as maybe I had hoped they'd be um I had a really ambitious um project plan to get them moving now um and that delay will do two things one it makes it easier to to sort of it delays
our our short-term problem you know of of those limited years um but it also um we run the risk of what inflation is going to do if we delay um one of those major projects by five
years so just I'm just putting out all the good news no and and and that's partly where I was being harsh Sarah on hold it to a million was thinking that that Melissa had told us we're going to only have three million to to spend once we start these other build you know and
where But you know I these were just ideas rather than I would be fine with you know increase the facility budget by 10% a year and let's see how far we get with it you know it's just that it it's it goes up to 50% and 2 million i'm I'm
just going to give you a a few more so react so Mil River and War Memorial playgrounds there was a beginning discussion on do we need a playground at all at W War War Memorial with it's so near Kendrick Park that what's the need
for it so it was a question of should we just remove it um and it's it's outyear and mil river probably qualifies for CPA you know so and so I was looking for big big number items and in all of them I
flagged them as questioning them rather than saying eliminating them so that people's eyes could go to it and then school buses there was $400,000 every couple years and when Shannon was with us she she thought that
that was put in before the leasing policy came up Bridget and Sarah so it was like we're not on a buy a new electric bus every couple years so it was just a question those were on there a few 400,000s coming up in this 5-year
plan and then and then vehicles just was a big question mark you know I know you know this I have no idea what vehicles we really need but vehicles because we pushed everything off so those were the big items i was looking for $500,000 or more cost items and those were the ones
I came up with as big items and Crocker Farm wasn't to question whether there's a need to do that but just to know whether those numbers are accurate you know somewhere in the ballpark and is the timing about right you know is the roof pretty good or is it about to
spring a leak and so the town's assessment didn't include Crocker i'm not sure why you know but we could ask them they've got this new way of looking at buildings to look at it so that is my entire list on the four years worth of
things where I just was looking at them for big ticket items um Sarah yeah well I would remind you because maybe it's already disappeared from the the list is the um $6 million for the Southeast
Street intersection so no I saw I think Melissa just subtracted it because I couldn't find it anymore on the list but yes I had but that's a change that's a change we've essentially already recommendation recommended so and also the bang center those that's another one
that got Yeah so bang bangs was gone all together at least from this year yeah i'm talking about the out years that Yeah yeah right but then I I I understand that a lot of the numbers
you're talking about they may not be accurate if you know the may not be ready to do in the years they're proposed to be done but I feel like the the the major capital
projects are the are the driver of the bottom lines so it's like the if something about that changes you know it's like then all the problems go away because there's plenty
of money so I guess I would I would qualify any discussion about making changes to the the littleer stuff was you know assuming that the big projects are going to be undertaking as as shown
in this table but if those are cancelled or moved or or they get smaller or whatever then anyway you see where I'm going or bigger there was that you were asking if the numbers were accurate about Crocker Farm
probably not and our favor and I was definitely not removing those it was just you know I thought the word fine i think they're old we definitely need to re revisit them
okay enough from me so this could be written as looking at outy years you know we're assuming that DPW is on the list the big buildings are on the list so we took a close look at these outy years and here's areas that we were at least raising questions about you know
we weren't necessarily saying what to do and the town manager the town manager this will be the first time in I think three years that it wasn't close to balance we never got the outy years balanced the first year of JCPC that I
wasn't on had everything was pushed off from year one to year two so year two was $7 million not balanced and I didn't understand how you could have a capital plan for five years where only one year was balanced So I said could we get a
little closer on the five-year plan to have it look like a plan rather than maybe we should just took like a five-year outlook it's not a it's an outlook so So that was my list and I and what I
what I'm proposing since we're on such a tight timeline is people will get a draft by the end of Sunday if I can and Sarah will see it first to make sure I've captured things that you already discussed and then everyone sends
comments to me and if they're all similar comments then we get a revised draft and I just collect the comments next week you know so that everyone will get to weigh in on is the wording right or not and and the summary and so we can get it back to the town manager who has
to deliver a report a week or so after we've done this but Melissa's on the team here so he's not he knows what we're talking about so then my the one other place we had that was new this year is if there is surplus free cash
which means other than the 5% we try to carry every year um do we have recommended priorities on where we we would want to see it spent um and my list includes the first one on my list
is should we have any idea of what the middle school roof and mold abatement costs I would make it a number one for being in the receiving line for some of that and and three years ago it was the track project the regional track and we
a million went from the surplus free crash to the track project to try to make it viable so you know I don't have a number on this but I would make it so I'm just going to throw them out as my list my second would be uh we just
didn't do the southeast intersection um by the school if we have any idea of what we plan to do it could be number two you know on at least the design of it and uh then I had roads as my third
so I only had three i know I had three areas of with a number one two and three being middle school roof and that's a whole regional school issue and I will say within the confines of this committee I'm fine with Emmeris spending
some money the way we did for w with the track where we just put some money into the pack the pot but there will be other counselors that say we should be at the assessment method percentage you know and we would be at 80% of whatever that would be so those are the three I came
up with when I was thinking about it and Bob's hand is up and Sarah's hand is up yeah I I think I would include some um vehicles in in that list because I'm looking at the list and there's there's 2 almost
2.7 million worth of vehicles in FY27 and we're not going to get all that um and one of that's a pumper truck and I don't know what the the schedule is for the pumper truck but that's 850k but I mean there's a lot you know you've got
the police cars in there you got this electric school bus which may or may not be real um because we have a different policy now or a different system now but you know we we Bob you would do it as vehicle you would do it as a generic vehicles and then
pick pick the mo the critical area yeah i mean yes i mean I I would say that that we can't we've pushed vehicles into next year already and so we can't keep pushing them into the next year the next
year the next year sooner or later they're going to break and we have to replace them so we should we should think about if we have some extra money we should think about what vehicles do we really need to replace uh sooner rather than later recognizing too that it's going to get you know it's going to
all these things are going to get more expensive in the future so if we have money now let's let's spend it on where we need to and again I I agree with your priorities but I would put vehicles on
that list okay and I had originally put the the one Guilopford argued for for this year but you're saying don't be specific he had the side he had the something side motor and I didn't understand why it wasn't a vehicle but he had that 250 right so Sarah and
Melissa both had their hands up on this you call on one of us sarah and Melissa um thank you very much for thinking of the of the middle school um it it I think that would probably be a heavy
lift because if this is like appropriating free cash in the fall there's no way to involve other towns so it would really have to be a gift and unlike the track project there's no public benefit right it's not something
you know anyone in town can go walk around the track and use the you know use the facilities that this towns and CPAC monies are going into but it's it's different from the roof but that that'd be great it'd be worth a shot but my
other thought is that um like I think all the Crocker Farm asks whether the numbers are accurate or or not are are for borrowing except for a pretty expensive electrical service upgrade so
we could Bridget and I could try to find out well I don't know that we can find out in a week you know like whether the $51,000 for copers or the $50,000 for HBAC you know if those are smaller
easier things perhaps to to buy and not so expensive but perhaps could be easily implemented from cash so so Sarah just I'm going to lay back to you and then call on Melissa but you write this
that you know I did think it the one argument I thought on middle school as a public benefit not just the middle school is that it's a heavily used recreation facility you know when we had the aquatics people come in and say "We all use the pool we all use those
basketball courts we use them for the summer programs we use them for after school and this terrific movement program that's been going on you know so that that building actually more more than the high school gets used for
community activities there's an active pickle ball player group that plays there on Sundays can I ask maybe Bridget maybe Bridget remembers that the what's envisioned for roof work at the middle school is not for the entire
roof so I don't recall which parts of the roof are not you know like are not part of the program so So maybe what you're thinking of would be covered literally by the roof but maybe not i I just don't recall maybe I don't no and I'm fine with and I didn't not say
Crocker because I agree Crocker had a bunch of things that were smaller and so I thought of you know I you know it it either wasn't ready or they weren't as urgent you know I am trying to think of urgent things the the use of first free cash should be things that we feel like
can't wait for the next capital joint capital piece but so so Melissa and then Bridget um responding to this you know if there's free Yeah yeah so I was just going to um say I I think Bob um got to
it was that the reason that 27 is so high is that I put every request for a vehicle into 27 like that so these the reason it's so high in um in 27 is that all the requests this year that were the only one that was
like actually reduced or removed is the fact that the police vehicle has been 360 every year and and now you know like so it I didn't put an additional um 180 in their outyear i just um cut it in
half but um so a lot of the pickup trucks and the um in DPW like some of those were this year along with that mower and they were all just sort of just shoved one year out you know when we were making the decision to sort
of make other things a priority other than vehicles this year um so that's why and then um I don't know you said something earlier that Oh I was also going to say that um
you guys had talked about when you're talking about Crocker Farm and the borrowing it it's always my preference um if we c if if there's an opportunity where we can pay cash for something
rather than borrow for it we save an enormous amount of money so like maybe when there's a free cash option and you have something coming up in the future year that was a borrowing you can say rather than um borrow for the Crocker Farm $500,000 or something um we would
like that to be cash capital paid for by this free c you know what I mean like something like that no that would be great you know so Bridget I I like that addition a lot you know on especially since the fiscal year
FY26 has just started and then some of the other things haven't happened yet you know because there's been a delay so Bridget I was just going to say that that I concur with the middle school roof i think it it's in an emergency situation you know the tiles are falling
and hitting people and and there's mold and issues there but one thing is with the MSS MSBA grant is that um the parts that the public use the most aren't included in that allocation and the way
it's designed right now including the parts for Ammerst and the auditorium and so it may just make the most sense to try and do it all at once so I just am saying like let's keep that top of the list and the only other thing I wanted
to mention is that while we can't go to the other towns with the track in the fall with the track we waited and when we went to them they're all coming through with their CPA or with their town meeting portions so in the end
everybody will pay their part it just is you know a timeline issue no so my list the expanded list is middle school roof mold you know if we're ready to do something on it uh Crocker if there is something high on
the urgent list for Crocker Southeast intersection and I'm reading them off not necessarily in the priority order we could shift them uh vehicles something from the vehicle list whichever is the most urgent uh pay down something we were gonna do with debt used cash and
roads you know where roads is always the easiest so I would make it the last because it's it's easy you know it's just a you don't have to make choices if you have another 100,000 just throw it into roads and who knows the state might come through with our regular requests
that they're underpaying us for roads so Bob yeah I I I want to just um echo what Bridget talked about uh doing the roof I mean the the facilities guys
told us that doing a roof peace meal winds up costing more because you have mobilization costs for the contractor uh you know you have pay it two times three times rather than once and so I think if we're going to redo the roof of the middle school we ought to do it you know
we ought to figure out how much it costs and where the money is going to come from and and get it done okay so you all when I draft whatever this these sentences you can make sure they mirror what you know about the you know I this is the first time I've heard
that the roof part you would be doing wouldn't be over what I'm talking about the larger so we can frame it in a way that it's to the larger community's benefit and I Sarah's hand is up and Louis's hand is up yeah well at the risk of making making the list so long that
it's not really useful um I feel bad for Guilford and his roadside mower like I know that was pushed off um did we I think we heard about it though didn't we yeah talk about it
so I could do vehicle could even have it in time to be you know used so Sarah would you do in vehicles saying you know including roadside you know starting with roadside mower you know I don't think it's I don't think it's it wasn't even listed under vehicles it's it
wasn't listed as a vehicle i'm not sure why CPW equipment public works highway highway highway equipment so I would just put in a plug for that i you know I have no idea what
was it this year $2 million i don't remember what the total was it was 250 it was 250 for the this Moorth piece no no i mean last last fall when y'all appropriated free cash
well a big chunk how much was it total total 500 no there was about there was over a million there was o well over there was well over a million left after we put it into the capital reserve we we had two
or three million that went into the capital stabilization fund we didn't need to put in anything into general and we didn't need anything for free cash but there were two or three million i've got the numbers probably underneath my hand over here but the the the council
policy has been put put a large amount into capital stabilization unless there are other urgent projects you know so this is an effort to say you know what else is there um and we won't know until
October maybe beginning of November the closing out of the year is when we get certified free cash um and so we won't know what the number is so none of these can have a number associated with it because we have no idea um right and
then the the way we have received it in the last few years was most of it went into capital and everything else went into roads and we didn't have much discussion about it this year we had discussion um for the first time on did roads need that much and where's was his
sidewalk mower really broken uh you know so Bridget so I just I really support the Guilford's mower because it's a little bit like Russian roulette when the grass is really high and you've got to pull out um and then the second thing
I wanted to mention is I've got a 4:00 meeting across campus so I'm going to leave a few minutes early okay okay so I'm going to put vehicles as a category and start with sidewalk mower that that seem to be on the list for this year you know unless something is more urgent
right because I don't remember Melissa whether that was the only mower we have you know last with the There's a brush too i don't I don't know there's a brush mower which we funded this year okay so we
have it's 3:51 and we do have public unless we've No we managed to outlast our public yeah they all left we've outlasted our public so we we we can end on time and then with
uh with my notes which you you don't even want to see what my notes look like right now but with my notes and then with what Sarah's already done so Sarah you know it might make sense if you look at the FY26 where there were questions
of where we went but and just work on just that section or if you want me to take a stab at it but I'll try we already did revised what you already did yeah you already did you know that whether we already answered some of the Yeah we think we're going there and
phrasing it and then um if you Well we don't have a live document right so like I don't I didn't Okay so don't don't touch it till I I'll send it back to tomorrow i didn't touch the document you sent me other than to read it um I
didn't touch it you know and so I saw what was and everything right now is in track changes mode so I will if you send that back to the extent I work on it at all I'll work on other sections completely you know I'll just pull them into another document and so the goal
will be to try to get a a complete draft out by you know however quickly you can get me your piece but I can work fast and by Sunday night or Monday morning at the earliest that people will see it as a group and Melissa I'll just send it to
you to make sure our numbers are right you know that we're we're we're looking at the right final numbers on the things we did and we're meeting on Wednesday right our meeting is on Wednesday yeah I'm meeting on on Wednesday so that's why I said if I if we can get it back to
everyone by Monday there's enough time for people to send comments in and so we can go over any questions um if there are I don't know whether we have wordsmith people in our team but last
year went very smoothly the two years ago we had people who really cared whether I had two spaces after a period or one space after a period you know so I got rich it is but it ought to be consistent I'll just say yeah you know you know so it was like a level and they
came in later than everybody else's so I had to go back and you know semicolon you know so it was changing you know since this is a recommendation I've never been as compulsive about you know perfecting the spacing in it um do the
grammar should be accurate so that so in any case so that'll be the goal to try to get it at the latest Monday morning where you'll have since it won't be a track change draft it'll just be a draft because we're the track changes right now are on last year's and setting
it up and then we will meet and we'll finalize it and if we can finalize it during the meeting I will send it immediately to Paul and then the council will see it the following month whatever the next council meeting is um that's
that'll be the plan okay um so maybe it's too late to ask this but was anyone taking minutes um I have a form of minutes and there was
okay h there was actually hollow was on the list for last week and didn't that didn't happen but I saw Nat did and he did a really nice job so um uh the answer is maybe not and you know I I
have I have decent scroll and we get the tape really quickly so I don't want to push that on to anybody else so um we'll just you could just send your notes or rough draft to me and I'll add if you like okay yeah so that's what we'll do
you know for So Nat wasn't here and Lee said she won't probably won't be able to make next week either um so it's a question you know so at least the group of us were here and we can hopefully remember what we decided today so well
we have the tape we and the tape is great you know i mean so the minutes don't have to be as rich as they would otherwise be so um I am going to say that we can adjourn the meeting at 3:56 if everyone just the three of us who
four of us can and Hela can you indicate your agreement yes ha's hand just went up we we have a unanimous agreement to adjourn at 3:56 and thank you and thank you Melissa for staying with us and providing a lot of information that we
wouldn't otherwise have thank you very much thanks to the Thanks to the Can I call you after this meeting absolutely okay absolutely bye bye everyone