##VIDEO ID:HVJ2XFmx890## call to order the uh Tuesday December 10th meeting of the Carlile select board um we're going to just to quickly review the agenda um have Community input uh then we're going to have a conversation with representative Simon catalo who's here then we'll have a joint meeting with the finance committee uh to discuss the fiscal year 2026 budget presentation um at 8:15 we're planning to have a disc discussion of on the council and aging Human Services um just a discussion of what our last meeting when we discussed their um uh Community Center um we'll have appointments at 8:45 where we're going to uh the employee appointment of Ashley Cody the U Town Clerk and then we'll have an annual town meeting discussion at 8:55 um and that'll include the town administer a bylaw discussion as well as at 9:20 we'll have the American rest plan arpa funding status 9:30 will'll review the fire station designer selection RFQ we Town administ report warrant and minutes and then liais on reports and again at the end we'll have additional Community input um but first I'd like to call to order the select board meeting and uh take a roll call vote I don't know he's not on attendance yeah um so um I just by since there's no online um we have four four members in attendance Kate Reed Barney Arnold Travis Snell and Scott triola um David Modell is out um so I'll start with Community input um we typically limit Community input to one to two minutes um and you can come forward and address uh comments but please introduce yourself first and your street address I know there's one person here who's interested in speaking and if there's a second uh we'll we'll move to that and we'll go online um you want to come forward and please introduce yourself y that'd be great I'm steuart Johnstone I I'm from conquered actually 91 Pine Street conquered but I operate the cross country ski concession at greater Farm State Park and uh we we have a parking crisis um a new situation with the redesign of the parking lot at 1018 L Street has created about half the capacity that it used to have and this is uh an area we used to park about 200 Cars it's now 105 cars those spots uh might get recycled three or four times on a busy day so this is a sizable amount of people coming that won't be able to park now um basically I want to ask the board a question um would it be feasible possible to have the ski concession utilize marked parking spots along Church Street at Spalding field and the parking lot at bad Davis Field for for skier or parking and if so I would investigate shuttle service options um we do have you know winters of all kinds two three Winters ago we had a day when over 2,000 people showed up in ski so the the loss of 400 spots is going to hurt on some days it won't be very much but this would have be you know occasional days during the winter months so that's my my question to the board great um do are there any quick questions relative to this I I think what we'll do is ask that you know I'll I'll communicate with you and get a plan together and maybe we can have you come back and um we'll review it at our next meeting okay on that because this is not on our agenda it's part of public input we cannot discuss this tonight but yeah you chairman has indicated that I'll follow up with you directly then thank you for coming all right appreciate it um Harris you want to introduce yourself sure uh good evening uh Russell Ruin pbrook Road um on behalf of more than 30 Carlile residents who signed the petition for the carile street dedication program so far uh I would like the select board to consider the new policy and I would like to Pro provide a very brief summary of the program the names of streets in carile were generally chosen decades ago but some of those names names no longer reflect the values of the people who live here now fortunately many municipalities have come up with an simple and expensive solution Street dedication programs are there people places or things of cultural significance that deserve recognition in our daily lives should one of the roads intersecting South Street have the honorary name of Adams Lane since James and Priscilla Adams the first English settlers to carile lived there in 1662 should one of the streets Crossing Indian Hill Road have an honorary name that shows respect for the Region's indigenous people should one of the streets in town be named Toby Road in honor of the enslaved carile resident who reportedly died in the famous battle of April 19th of 1775 Street dedication programs have five common features across the country first honorary street signs are not Replacements but rather temporary additions typically for terms of 20 years second the honorary street signs are distinguished by shape color and position from the official signs so that emergency services are not misled third if two-thirds of the owners resigning on a street can agree on a name they would s submit an application that would be approved by the select board unless the name was found to lack cultural significance to carile or was obscene indecent or profane fourth uh donations of residents on the street generally cover the costs of the sign and installation about three $100 to $300 and fifth honorary names are permitted are not permitted on arterial roads a street which goes through the town center or crosses Town Borders or affords a primary means of access from an arterial Street to at least two other streets the residents of Pinebrook Road would like to be one of the first applicants to the street dedication program with a proposed honorary name of mikino road the alanin word Miko uh means turtle and turtles are important animals in indigenous cultures and pinbrook road is the clo is close to Turtle Rock a recognized IND indigenous site in Great Brook Farm we hope the town of Carlile might see what other municipalities already understand that street name dedication is an inclusive and Democratic process for honoring the past I hope the select board will consider scheduling a full presentation and discussion at a future meeting thank you for listening thank you okay um if you would give that to um Ryan that will be included in our minutes verbatim good volume thank you yes great are there any uh people online are there in public comments just okay seeing none I'd ask representative catalo to please come forward welcome to carow pleased to have you here so glad to be here and to the members of the select board thank you so much for inviting me um it's it's a delight I think a lot has happened since the last time that I've come before you and uh I remember being so excited to appear it was the first time I was getting to appear before any Municipal board as a member of the House of Representatives and um in the past two years I've just loved representing carile I love how engaged the residents are I love D I love how they reach out to me um I love how many of them come to office hours and I want to thank the town staff for hosting my office hours every six weeks or so in this building sometimes in this room and I just want to encourage members of the Carla Community to continue to reach out to me I had a few prefatory things that I wanted to kick us off with and I know you have a lot of uh topic areas that you want to discuss and questions and I'm eager to get into those um as well so um first of all I think that I've learned a little bit about how these meetings can be effective since being elected and having uh sat or stood before many select boards and school committees and other Municipal bodies in Acton and car and Conquer and chelsford the towns that I've represent that I represent and I know you are you know you all know what you're doing here and uh and I think that our meetings and conversations have been very very productive but I just want to say first of all that I understand that you're in an impossible situation right now the Confluence of inflation and prop two and a half and some other conditions have made the management of municipal government impossible and I know that the state is not filling the Gap um so I just want to get that out on the table that I understand that um and you should consider me and of course Senator Barrett to be your Advocates another important Advocate that you have is the mass Municipal Association and so I and I know that Ryan is excellent at communicating with that group but when I think about how um carlile's voice can be heard I think it's really important to make sure that it is heard with the MMA too because I've learned that each budget cycle the MMA comes out with its priorities and those really are the municipal priorities by and large I as one of 160 members of the house and one of 200 members of the legislature will do all I can to um advocate for this community but that entity and probably other similar entities uh can help Elevate those needs so if you can get what you want embedded in those priorities that makes it doubly effective you have more than one or two voices on that stage um I want to give an example for you and for the public for you as a reminder for the public uh perhaps not as a reminder of how this could work really well so last last time I came in here at the beginning of my term you told me about how the economies of scale I think I probably told you about all these different Grant programs and you said look the economies of scale does not work for carile we don't have like all these back office Busy Bodies who are able to write Grant applications and and do the research to find out and so one of the priorities actually this this session and I gave Governor Hy a lot of credit for this was a federal basically a federal funds Bill uh by coincidence I actually sat on the federal funds Committee in the house it was a house only committe and we held the hearing on this bill Carlile was uh recognized by the secretary an GOI who testified on this bill specifically about the need for communities like Carlile uh to have some more support from the state in accessing in particular the IRA the inflation reduction act uh monies that are going to be flowing hopefully flowing to many states and of course among them Massachusetts and so we passed that through we've had some Communications about making sure that Carlile can get connected to what I think are going to be considerable services in order to access uh matching funds and other funds basically what that bill does is it Taps the state's rainy day fund which right now is in very healthy fiscal condition uh to spend some money to access those federal funds and carile is exactly the type of community that that is geared toward so um excited to see you know what I can do to facilitate that but just as an example of how I think this process can work really well um also want to thank the town for and Ryan and I meet every year before I go in for my request for the budget um I just want the public to know that and for you of course to know that he's very a very effective Advocate on that um and we will continue to do that as we enter the next uh budget cycle um I think that's all I have and again very happy to answer your questions great thank you um so we had put together a list of questions actually each of the members submitted different things I'm just going to kind of go through them sure um because submitted them so um the first was special education costs continue to increase at an unsustainable rate due to increases in outof District tuition costs Transportation costs number of students on the IEPs Etc are there discussions or in iives at the state level to further assist Massachusetts towns in managing or mitigating special education costs yes um this is a major problem it's a major problem in every municipality I represent there is a strong Coalition of legislators that think that this is a major problem one of the main drivers of this issue is on top of the inflation that we're seeing in cost increases that we're seeing across the board the costs of these outof district schools are Rising by crazy amounts now they may not be crazy on the merits they may be totally justified on the merits but in relation to the increases in public school cost they're going way way up and the reimbursement is not keeping track with that so um there are a couple of bills both of which I've co-sponsored both of which I think are strong and both of which I expect to be refiled this session uh they're both supported by the and priorities of the Massachusetts Association of school superintendents each um 525 was this session um it'll probably have a different bill number next session in January when it's refiled by representative kushmer of Fitchburg and that's to increase the special education circuit breaker reimbursement rate from 75% to 90% um and then there's another one H 527 to just the approved cost thresholds so neither of those made it through they were both sent to study but you know voices were heard and um I hope that we're going we're going to see movement either in the passage of legislation the legislation that's embodied in those statutes substant substantively or perhaps more likely through uh the state budget process there's also um there's also another bill and I don't have the um number here so I'm going off of memory but to create a commission to study this issue which sounds like a silly thing but ultimately we have to do that because the the scheme is not working right now um and I I think we need to do something to re in the costs of the out of district schools the private schools they're just charging an amount that while it may be fair on the merits is way too much relative to everything else um it doesn't go directly to your question but the 70 increase is something I've been um very vocal about especially for hold harmless communities we did see although you're going to kind of like laugh at it there was a historic increase in Chapter 70 including for minimum a communities we went up from 60 to $100 per student uh I expect you know we're going to continue to Advocate when I say we the Coalition of legislators who cares about that issue are going to continue to advocate for that we did see um an increase in Regional School train Transportation by of 2.5% um over last year so um this is a priority special education reimbursement is a priority for me and I know that it's putting a lot of strain on on our school districts and towns yes Simon since you're you know co-sponsor of a bill I mean it's a two it's certainly true that the out of District providers are increasing their tuitions at a greater rate than the general R so clearly an issue but what's driving at a district is a lack of resources in the regular ed schools to provide that service for those children and in particular you know from personal experience there's a lack of creativity in my opinion on how to say group like conquered Carlile at the k through eight we can't match kids and put them together to get critical mass to actually provide it in in District most of those parents would prefer that their children stayed in District so I would urge you as you're considering that issue to think about the flip side which is the way the most effective way to reduce out a district is to provide the right things in District and if a district can't do it itself there should be mechanisms and we're so balkanized in our 351 Town system that those kind of obvious Solutions are just not being pursued in my opinion um I agree with you I think that's part of the reason we have to study these issues I will say that um in conquered we have seen a very significant reduction in outof District placements and I think it's been as a result of conserv concerted efforts I think um there are probably some solutions at our disposal that the state can be a better partner on all right um so on number two uh the cost of Municipal Building Maintenance project has increased substantially over the past several years and has outpaced broader and inflation are there any discussions initiatives at the state and local state level to change Mass procurement law to address these costs and increase and allow for more competitive bidding process I just add to that I mean this is a something we're really dealing with front and center I mean we manage a budget and we're working you know within our town to do our best but there are these Capital costs that just keep going up and we can't seem to get ahead with you know we're we're talking about you know we're right now funding police station um and you'll see some of this if you can stick around a little bit on the budget presentation but you know we're talking about funding a fire station which needs renovation for all very Justified what I think are Justified reasons but we need some help you know and and and I think that you know if there are ways that that the state can help that would be that would be helpful to to everyone so I don't know just adding some context yeah th this is this is a great example of why it's really good for us to have this meeting now one thing that I'd ask you not to give you more homework but um there is this Municipal empowerment act that the governor has filed it has many different Provisions some of them deal with procurement um for example it would raise the threshold for competitive bids and remove some publishing requirements um it would clarify that chapter 30b enables groups of cities and towns to award multiple contracts through the request for proposals process and purchase supplies and services from collectively bid uh contracts and that's something that if if not directly we have kind of indirectly touched on in in some prior conversations um there is also separately from that H 3127 which is a procurement parody bill for for chapter 30b um it would do a number of things including increasing the procurement cap for municipal purchases under chapter 30b from $50,000 to $100,000 so if there are any particular items within those proposals that you think would be more uh beneficial to Carl more relevant to Carl than others I'd love to have that input you know the municipal empowerment act did not make it through despite you know significant political Capital applied by the governor this time I think there are probably some Provisions in that bill that are going to be harder to enact than others and what I'd love to know from carile is you know what are the what are the things that are the most important and then I can you know apply pressure the best way I know how um we were still interested in the advocacy for the msba equivalent for municipal buildings so where do you think that stands so there are a couple proposals out there um there is a bill 3802 house 382 that made it all it was reported favorably from committee and it's all the way it's before house ways and means now so it's made it almost like as far as it can go before coming to the floor now there are I've learned there are a lot of bills with house ways and means now but that is a good sign um and I've heard that from before the time I was elected that this is a really good idea it's something that our communities need it's not just Carl by the way in my district uh chelmsford's a really big advocate for that as well so um I will I do what I can and and this is on my list um but I I'd also I think that's a good example of like as you're interacting with the MMA make sure that that's on on its on its list as well of priorities usually they you know they got an organization like that has like three three to four um and I think that's that's a good one and worthy representative I know you've heard this from me before but this one is particularly important to car so the the small towns the towns that don't have the ability to spread taxes over a commercial base or or a big tax base a $21 million building is is not a lot of money for a building anymore but in a town like this where the average tax bill would go up $800 a home in order to fund that 20 million dollar in projects you can't get that through so if you had the choice between funding special education and making sure students get education and funding the building you're always going to pick the education in a small town because you you can't do both you can't increase taxes that high on both so the biggest impact I think the state can make in terms of tax impact in small towns is helping with infrastructure yeah if you can take the infrastructure that's looming over us out of the picture then you can fund the regular operating increases and even the ups and downs of Education can be handled you can't tack on the buildings and you you can't tack on the road deferred maintenance and then still ask people to continue to pay the taxes in a place where you can't you can't spread the taxes out as we're looking for pots of money I I do think that that's where that the IRA the federal funds bill is is going to come in um because there's going to be a scramble to spend that and to get that um and uh and I you know I want Carl be at the top of the me too now will that be affected At All by the new uh Administration DC and so is that why we're trying to get it out and distributed before January 20th it's a great it's a great question which I can't fully answer but I will tell you that there was a big rush in the legislature to get this done regardless just because it was time um and so I think there was a sense of urgency no matter what was going to happen in the election there's a lot of uncertainty now about what will happen with some of the priorities of the last Administration um I would say that uh sometimes sometimes urgency whether whether it's backed by fact or not can be a good forcing mechanism so I hope that you know everybody's just rolling as fast as they can in that direction no matter what suppose um which of the members ask number four yes you want to you want to just eliminate that one a little bit um sy so this is more of a legal question um about the NBTA um three U communities act U because the law says um that it has to H we have to have a zoning ordinance or bylaw that provides for one District of reasonable size blah blah blah um subject to two things one that uh this 15 AC units per acre and various other things and two that it be located not more than a half mile from Commuter Rail station subway station Ferry Terminal or bus station if applicable and my question is does if applicable mean um if that's possible and if it's not possible it's not required or does it mean that uh no matter what that that it's only only yeah I guess that's my my major question what does if applicable mean in lawyer language um with all due respect I feel like this is probably a question for Town Council but I think what what I can do on this is make sure that you have as clear of an answer as possible from EC's point of view I know what their point of view is and what is that that no matter what you're going to have to have whether you have a station or not or a bus stop or not um you have to have this Zone um but I mean we don't even have a um border which is within three miles of a station you know let alone a within half mile of a station so I I'm I guess I'm ask asking also what you think about you know for instance the med uh Medford suit which I think is also kind of around sorry M yes sorry I it's been a long day so I apologize so look I think just to zoom out on this issue for a second you know it is it is clear that Carlile so this this law was passed on under the baker Administration and um I it's funny because I I heard about it a bunch in Carl when I was running for office because it had just passed at that time and then really nothing for a long time part of the reason is that Carlile is a I forget exactly what the characterization is but that it has more time than some other other communities all three of my other the other towns that I represent have gone through their Pro or they're at a different stage of the process now um and it is it is clear it was clear when the law was enacted that carile is differently sit situated than I think other towns with its same characterization under the MBTA communities act um and now there's been this kind of interesting twist which is that there's this lawsuit that injects a lot more uncertainty about what the enforcement mechanisms are going to be um I I can't predict what the SJC is going to do there and I can't do anything that's going to give you a good gauge of litigation risk um as to any particular language in the statute you know I I feel like what my role is in this process is to find out at the right time what the town needs from an advocacy standpoint which will likely happen interfacing which with eohc and I'm very happy to engage at that point in the process my understanding of where the town is is it's still kind of the town is still getting together and going through that very difficult and laborious process and figur out what it wants to be and where it wants to be with respect to this uh challenging situation um so you tell me where you want want me to engage in that process and I will you know do everything I can to be effective in that thank you um we are going to kind of Move Along here but the next was the impact of the mcast removal on the high performing districts like ours and more generally how does the dees then under progress of lower performing districts yeah so I'm way more concerned about the second question you know I think um with respect to the first question I've heard some concerns although I'll admit that I don't fully understand them yet and that's not to say that they're not um valid it's just I've heard some concerns that I'm seeking more information about in terms of what this is going to do for certain students who do not or cannot pass the mcast once they're old enough to graduate high school there are C it like triggers um certain benefits or educational opportunities that now without an mcast requirement they may not get so that's something that is going to need to be worked through it's no secret that before the Massachusetts Teachers Association decided to make an effort to put this on on the ballot there were already discussions ongoing with all the key stakeholders with respect to what we're going to do about changing the state standards for graduation those conversations did not were not able to continue because there was a decision made to make an effort to put this on the ballot and that kind of stalled everything out I think we're going to continue to have that conversation I don't think that this ballot measure and if I have anything to do with it this ballot measure is not going to be the last word on this issue uh because we do need a state standard for graduation in Massachusetts it is one of the reasons that we have the best public school system although it's not perfect in the entire country is because when you have a graduation diploma from a Massachusetts public high school you know that that actually means something I am very concerned about the seriousness with which the mcast is going to be taken as a u Equity measurement tool uh in schools now that it's not a graduation requirement and I don't think that that has been paid sufficient attention because one of the reason one of the ways that we figure out what's happening in these school districts and one of the ways that we knew you know when we did the the grand bargain in 1993 for um a lot more State funding for schools mcast was part of that bargain it's because we need to know what's going on in your districts if you want the state to be a financial partner right so um you can probably see how I feel about this whole thing but I I just do not think that this is the end of the story I'm very concerned ered about the second point that you raised uh even though it's not uh particularly District specific I know that a lot of people in carile care about educational Equity across the state and making sure that the bottom isn't falling out of some of these lower income school districts yeah thank you we have two more but one of them is you know an opinion your views on the mgl the you know uh auditing and does that help or hurt is that um I guess the question would be does it help or hurt what I part of it has to do with you know how it's going to be conducted and what's going to be conducted um you know personally I feel really comfortable with uh you know I'm always trying to get better but I feel comfortable with the work and the communication that I have with my constituents and I feel like that relationship has been really strong um so I feel like I have nothing to fear at the same time you know it's very important to me that we are not distracted from some very important work that's going to be happening and when I say distracted I mean politically distracted mhm um from some very important work that's going to need to happen over the next two plus years so that's you know my my focus is going to stay on the issues and I'll let folks who want to focus on that focus on that um we have one last question from a member of the board how can the Commonwealth and particularly the mgl protect the mass environment our c cens and even non-citizens under a trump Administration um so I think that I'll there's kind of two aspects of that question um and I first don't want to lose the opportunity to mention that we just passed a landmark climate Bill the second one that we have in three years the core of that bill was to change sighting and permitting and reform it to make it easier all across Massachusetts and fairer to uh build up clean energy infrastructure and I think that uh based on and I think that that's relevant too to the second part of the question it's it's interesting that when the IRA and the chips and science acts came down who got most of that money like 80% of that money went to went to Red States right that's not a political statement it's just a factual statement this is under the Biden Administration why did that happen because they just have better rules and regulations and less red tape when it comes to developing clean energy infrastructure in those States so it wasn't like a let's do this as kind of a bipartisan handout it was that those States uh were more ready to take advantage uh and build up you know that clean energy economy and Massachusetts I think there's a recognition that we have been behind on that and so uh this that's going to help quite a bit for every type of clean energy project that's going to be feasible as we look towards the next Administration now I think it's no secret that uh offshore wind is going to face some some challenges uh probably or at least that's I think how their stance the administration stance is going to be but that doesn't mean that we're going to give up on that I think there's still going to remain a lot of opportunities for solar uh out in Devon there's some devons there's there's some really cool stuff happening with Commonwealth Fusion so I think there's going to be um there will continue to be a lot of opportunities um something that I know a lot of Carl residents care about because many many car residents have reached out to me is what's happening at hansum and we did uh really grateful to my house colleagues and the house delegation um fought for uh language that I drafted to change Mass ports Charter for the first time since 1956 to force massport to um incorporate uh environmental considerations into its decision Mak as into all of its exercise of decision-making Authority that's not necessarily determinative of what's going to happen with the hanscum expansion but I think it significantly changes the state of play uh we uh fought and worked to um object to the deir the uh draft environmental impact report that was submitted by the project proponent um and it was turned back by the EA a few days later um and so that's that's project is in limbo but that was part of the climate bill that we uh that we pass and that Governor hey signed into law just I think last week um happy to talk more about that but that's that's kind of where we are on that I think that's great um these were questions that were prepared by the board so we appreciate your time um if you have a few minutes I know you have another meeting to go to but we are going to have a joint meeting with the fincom and talk about you know a launch into a summary budget discussion and I think it might be helpful for you to see firsthand you know some of the things and hear that if if you have time but I want to say on behalf of the board thank you for coming we really appreciate for your very much yeah I really really appreciate all you are doing you are not paid enough none of you are um I I just want to reiterate like how much I understand that you're in an impossible situation right now all of our Municipal municipalities are we're seeing that get really tough in some communities around here and you know I just hope that you continue to see me as your Advocate to do everything I can and if it's okay I just want to do Shameless plug for Carl residents to reach out to me when they have issues about the RMV unemployment insurance anything related to a state agency my office can help it's simon. Catal Mah house.gov and also to pay attention in the mosquito or on social media for the office hours that I hold here uh at the office at the Town Office great thanks so much and I will stick around for as long as I can uh yeah you'll see in the new budget that we're giving ourselves 100% raise yeah okay great zero times 100 thcom takes all the cookies all right so if thcom you want to open your meeting and sure we can front and center yeah well it's easier because makes sense to me speaker just can pick you up easier and the cookies are there did you want us to take the cookies um Ryan do you control the zoom I do Victor sent me a message that he was in the waiting room I don't know if you've let him in yet or not see the one called phone I think potentially he said he was physically calling so and I will let him in okay Nathan went over to the dark side huh hello hey yeah hi Nathan hello good to see you all your face too so um I'd like to do a roll call meeting uh a roll call to start the finance committee joint meeting night Kachi I and on Zoom sherg ey leang I all right thank you all right I'm up so I'm I'm going to walk I'm going to walk everyone around a little bit but here here's the general plan so I just want to talk a little bit about the fy2 24 closure so there's three dates we talking about FY 24 closing we're in fy2 and then this is all about FY 26 I just want to talk about budget performance and fy2 24 the process that gathered this budget doc doent and then I'll go through the the budget document systematically to provide context so first looking uh very briefly at fy4 why this matters is for understanding how expenses expenses performed and how Revenue performed in order to inform some of the later assumptions that are in in these budget documents so in closing fy2 24 we see that um we UND spent by 2.27 % which equated to about 500,000 which is right around what we're targeting to do when we spend maybe it's a little bit more so you you don't want to spend every single dollar because we do have to generate some free cash and the budget does need some resiliency but you don't want to go so far with that that you're over budgeting and uh doing that and doing that on purpose so then on the revenue side we exceeded our our estimates by 3% which is a little over a million dollars so combined those two returned 1.5 million in free cash and if you remember our discussions we're looking to generate somewhere between 500,000 and a million in order to fund Capital plan Etc so Revenue which I'm going to show you here um way outperformed what we thought so there is there is some conservatism there and there's also some one-time exceptions that I'd like you to understand so looking at revenues one thing we like to see in my Revenue charts is everything's green so green means everything overperformed uh yellow would mean we have some worries about it and red would be it underperformed so every Revenue category performed well there's a couple in particular that I'm not sure that we can rely on and one of them is earnings on investments so we expected to earn $20,000 and we earned almost $200,000 so a lot of the um the extra Revenue came from there now Sandy is reporting that our investments continue to be up in FY 25 so it's not going away but that is historic in terms of our performance on uh on that side we also performed very well on tax collection and um a couple other another big feeder was motor vehicle excise tax not surprisingly since the value of everything went up we're collecting more on Motor Vehicle excise tax so now I want to show you local receipts which is one of our when you said we overperformed on tax collection is that by virtue of doing a better job collecting taxes or is it just more taxes both so it's getting the taxes that were owed uh in a re and making sure that we collected a very high level so I I will give Carl a ton of credit for a lot of things but carings pay their taxes so it is helpful so this is um numbers soup here but I'd like to call your attention to the bottom numbers and they're very tiny so I'm going to talk about them so five six years ago if you look at what we said we were going to bring in for local receipts and then what we actually did uh town was doing about 90% And best practice is 85 to 90% on your projections because Revenue can go up and down you want to make sure there's a little bit of a cushion and if there is a little bit of a cushion then you turn that into free cash for other spending purposes meaning you underestimate by 10% is yes so a lower percentage down there means we did more than we were too conservative correct so the three the last three years last year in particular 65% and and the two years prior 70 and 79% so why am i d excuse me but column D is the most recent Year yes okay someday in our journey Ryan I'll teach you how to freeze your pain so we can titles on the thing okay I like I want to talk about it but I also want to show you that it comes from somewhere I'm not really I know that's not great but um so the the point of showing you that is there is some conservativism in our Revenue projections which would which is something you should think about now the more the less conservative you get with this the more likely it is you're not going to generate free cash which is going to create a capital problem okay so which which problem do you want to address right now we're jing a lot of free cash to help with deferred maintenance and buildings Etc um but it's squeezing the operating budget if you go the other way you're not going to have as much free cash to play with in order to play with as the wrong term in order to uh fund Capital but some people would say you're over taxing right unless you have a plan for it so we have more Capital than we can afford I just have to be disciplined that yes all right and then to talk quickly about process so you all met and talked about goals for the budget process for FY 26 we went through exercises on financial forecasting and capital planning in order to inform those goals we sent all of those goals to the Departments and the people that create budgets in town and then they sent their requests to include their operating budget requests to include their Capital articles and their warrant articles so all of that was gathered into what we're calling draft one of the budget to present to you tonight in terms of analysis of that draft we did some analysis with the liaison and myself meaning any questions that people had they met with their Liaisons or they met with me to talk about what would be appropriate asked for and in those discussions might have shaped a little bit of the budget requests that you see in front of you however in this draft we did not and I say we I mean the finance team did not did not edit anything did not change any of the requests we're presenting you the full requests so there was some influencing on not over requesting but we didn't say okay this is more important than that or do any prioritization we're leaving that to you has have you guys seen this nope oh okay still getting used to the not yet so this is this is just all guas the same time this is just the gathered budget so now I'll get into the budget just wanted to give you a little context so using that process the uh overall operating budget increase assuming no changes no analysis no Cuts would be a 5.18% increase okay and this would result in a 5.0% rise the average tax bill with recent goals being 3% tax increase so this is significant increase to the level that some would consider an override in other towns so we have we have excess Levy capacity so we have the ability to bring this to town meeting without going for a debt exclusion but this would be well above 2 and a half% a bigger increase than is normal excuse me this is not just operating it's operating and capital no just operating operating I wanted to clarify the fun part yeah right oh so just operating okay so what I'm going to walk you through is the available Revenue projected expenses the debt the tax impact of all of that operating then I'll get into Capital proposed Warren articles how that impacts Our Town reserves and then what's next so I talk a little bit here about excess Levy capacity and also the the fact that the town has used free cash in the last two years in order to offset the the tax rate so in increased use of free cash in the operating budget allows for the tax rate to go down or becomes another Revenue Source other than taxes local receipts or state aid and I showed you the revenue for a reason so this projection in this budget to include that uh that tax impact is built off of assumptions that have state aid increasing by 1% we just heard the representative talk about they not going to be a huge amount of state aid increase 1% is probably a little bit low but two % would only yield 30 40,000 to carile so it's not going to save us um in fact when they talk about state aid it's one of the least impactful things for Carlile because we just don't get a lot unless it's the on the education side so that increase from 60 to 100 and students really did help the town um and that's where we can provide our biggest advocacy so local receipts has a 2% increase built in uh based off of conservativism and historical average that is where you could you could lessen the conservatism in order to drop some of the tax impact numbers but for the sake of this presentation that is the Assumption that's built in 1% for state aid 2% for local receipts it also as you see here does not include any free cash or other one-time funds to help offset any of these these costs so I gave you the high level 5.1% increase in town spending um and I want to talk about some of the some of the highlights and all of this will be turned over to the finance committee for their analysis and meeting and I'm keeping it at a very high level but we did go through each line Kelly did a great job putting putting all this together for this presentation so some structural changes to the budget that I want to make sure that you're looking at and are aware of we did create and pull out a human resource budget this was a budget neutral exercise but we pulled from all the places where Human Resources um to spend money to create a human resources department so we pulled money from the select board the town administ the treasurer and the health insurance line items and put it under its own its own budget for transparency purposes we also continue to create the facilities Department budget as we've been requested to do so this is making sure that we have a strong understanding of the towns side combining everything on the town side under one facilties budget the school committee is aware of this they're doing that on the school side although those is already pretty mature and the goal is for FY 27 to combine the two under Town control that is that is what I've been directed to do so far of course you can change that we've also combined the planning and zba budgets uh the unfortunate loss of our town clerk allowed us to reconsider the zba position and we move that under the town planner in the planning office so the planning office handles the zba staff support now so those budgets were combined uh so far all neutral in terms of cost increases and then animal control so we're having difficulty finding Animal Control Officers so we have worked with the police department um and you'll see later they're going to request a 13th officer this year and we're going to roll Animal Control under that officer's um job description so taking the animal control money to help offset that I'll get into it but the 13th officer also is going to create some dispatch redundancy and then I do think in future years we can Farm out our Animal control officer to other towns as a revenue source for the town but more to come on that and uh definitely something for the finance committee to consider all right so some expense highlights from all the department requests a 4.41% increase for the carile public schools is the current number that I have that would equate to 582,000 in new spending so to put that into context for you a million dollars in new spending is about a 2.7% increase on the average tax bill so the the school request alone is almost 60% of a normal year ask so last year the new spend was about a million so that's about 60% of the new spend um in in that area and I'll try to do that for each one of these so CCs is a 3.5 8% increase however that does not include the declining debt that the regional school has so without the debt it's a 4.24% increase on the Regional High School budget why that's important a lot of the discussions on the capital side talk about how our declining debt will allow us to absorb more Capital costs uh John Valentine talks about that a lot with his long-term projections so this is that declining debt so if you're replacing the declining debt with new spend and I'm not I'm not editorializing on this but that capacity is going away because of operating costs shouldn't be doing it shouldn't be funding operating costs well it's this is the way you present it so conquer's guidelines to the schools are based off a number without debt for that reason because they have a plan for the declining debt and we should to but I understand there's a lot of um pressures on the schools as well I'm not commenting on their budgets at all I did include this the only thing I included on my own was a 2% townwide Cola and I included that in this so that you could see what that impact was rather than saying what are you going to do I included one in and you can adjust it or take it out Etc but I wanted you to see that number implied into the budget and this does include a 1% increase for employee employee performance as if if they get a meets expectation review then we built in a step scale in the in the wage scale we've been talking about that for a couple years all right some employee changes in the budget so there is a request from the Board of Health for more staff hours there's a request from the fire department for an increase in the EMS coordinator's wages um based off longtime low colas and and job performance there is a combination of the two Public Safety admins into one full-time position we're doing this in in a cost neutral way in fy2 but it would have an impact on FY 26 so why why is this important the public safety admin does HR and payroll for all public safety it's pretty complex on the fire side with the call and any police admin it's very complex position so we don't think that we would be able to hire part-time people to do either into the future so combining them into one full-time uh professional role and then eventually rolling in dispatch as well would allow that person to be connected to HR and Finance in a way that would strengthen the um strengthen the entire town in terms of following policy Etc I'm requesting that we add a budget officer title to the town accountants position this is for her own personal growth but also the position's growth and would be um a move towards eventually having a finance director back in Carl over a multi-year conversation about it and uh doing it correctly which is building a finance department I talked a little bit about the 13th officer for the police department so this officer would be focused heavily on animal control and would also reduce or it would eliminate the town's use of part-time officers so uh the part-time officers are budgeted at 75,000 the the Animal control officer is budgeted at 10,000 so this is it sounds like you're adding a person but it's really adding about half half an officer or less because of the other revenues that go into it um we also I'm supportive of this the state is moving towards certified officers so the idea that a part-time officer would would be something that we could hire I think is going to go away in the next four or five years so this is a this is part of a plan to move towards making sure that we're not just caught one year having to do a bunch of things U because of State requirement ments or or other things and I also said this earlier there is a need for animal control in the region and one of the things we talk about with regionalization is is adding on to other people's Services I think we can host it and get revenue from this and I'd love to talk to the finance committee more about that but U Westford other towns would be interested in using our Animal control officer and we might be able to use this to offset police costs if we were the ones that were to build this up talked about adding zba staff work to the town planner um in this increased her the positions ours I'm trying not to talk about people from 33 to 35 and this is budget neutral it's actually a savings because of the zba wages are being rolled into the planning budget and then there's a small I'm adding it here for transparency but we've been focusing a lot on professional development and sustainment so um each department has a little bit of an increase in their professional development all right uh the biggest whack we took this year in the budget is a 28.63 increase in the middle sex retirement assessment so that's $420,000 of new money from that there is an option that we're going to have to discuss during this to smooth that out so make it 19 and 19 rather than uh 28 and six but you pay a premium to do that so it would help us in FY 26 but would be more cost over the two years they're calling it a smoothing option but it's really just borrowing money from them in order to pay the assessment later our health insurance has indicated that 10% would be a good number to budget for uh we continue to have poor performance on the health insurance side plus the increase in health insurance costs that everybody is feeling uh we believe 10% is the right number it does include a 1% increase for health insurance splits as was previously committed to uh committed to talking to not to doing the uh Board of Health is um we talked about that there are is a little bit more money for cranberry bog maintenance if you remember last year 16,500 was put into a warrant article to help to help really dig into the cranberry fog maintenance and other Town mate townland maintenance budgets to really dig into that and figure out what it costs uh the end result was about a $6,000 increase in their uh their budget line but we feel like we have a strong grasp on that maintenance line now that we can build on which you'll get a presentation about the DPW ask for 10,000 more in vehicle maintenance they've already spent their entire vehicle maintenance budget uh as of now and they're still 6 months to go um luckily we have winter funding to help get them through the majority of the remainder of the year but they're going to need more funding in the future for vehicle maintenance the cultural Council asked to match their state Grant in the in the budget process so they asked for uh $5,700 to come into the operating budget to help them with their Mission this does hold debt capacity level which I'll talk about during let during the debt conversation and I did throw a good news Bullet at the bottom here there was a decrease in vocational spending uh we fully committed to a student through their vocational education and they are graduating so we're happy for that and that we were able to give that but that does reduce the cost we have one more student in the school and they will graduate and come off the budget in FY 27 so assuming no one goes in there'll be a big savings next year either way you pay for the van to go to the vocational school so that cost stays the same the only thing we're the decreasing is the U tuition Ryan can you thatb uh increase for the 28% is that just a one time and it goes away next year or 27 so it goes up it stays up then it's 6% and then they reassess every two years got it so middle sex and this is very unscientific but they are they are not in the top end of Retirement Systems in terms of being fully funded by 2037 so we can expect that to continue as they catch up I have another question about the increase in employee uh sorry um investments in the board of health inspection Staffing is that the extra Staffing they had in their budget or is this additional gaing so that that's an error I'll take that out of this so they had their additional Staffing request that not in inspectional Staffing that's that shouldn't be there that line this line should should not be here yep okay all right let's talk about debt so some upcoming boring needs the fire truck that was authorized last year 975,000 because of new emission standards and inflation is about $325,000 short so in order to buy that truck 3 years from now they're now requesting uh 1.3 million in in cost so we won't be borrowing for three years for the fire truck but if we agree to it now and sign it it'll only be 1.3 and not whatever it's going to be in 3 years the admission standard is impacting an entire large Fleet so they're not producing DPW trucks right now trying to catch up with standards and emissions and the fire trucks uh they're estimating 60 to $150,000 in cost per fir Tru just to meet the emission standards so a lot of this is that which was not known when we pric this um at town meeting and the fire chief if he was here would say he also was scared to ask for a million uh just because he thought it was it was a it was over what he needed and he didn't want to hit the million dollars and he wish he'd asked for 1 Point 1.2 it probably would have been too much at the time but anyways we're going to be talking about the fire truck elevators we've tried to make you all aware of the elevator issue we're currently building construction documents to bring a bid to town meeting for three elevators one in the school one in the library and one here in the building and that cost is going to be a million dollar so we'll be borrowing for that and then future borrows on the proposed Capital plan include the town hall roof and rtu the entire dispatch radio system hbac Replacements in the grant building and then eventually the fuel system at the DPW so this is a chart that shows the um impacts when they come on the budget so you'll notice in FY 26 there's no impact so there is there is money in the debt line that that could be removed if you don't want to hold the capacity for future borrowing but then borrows start to come into play First with the elevators and FY 27 and then most of the stuff I talked about in FY 28 and then the fuel cells in FY 29 so this is better seen in a chart I'm sorry a graph so gray would be where we are now in terms of borrowing the orange would be what is being proposed in terms of debt and um if we didn't hold it constant blue is where our debt is going so declining debt if you don't borrow money if we don't borrow money yeah and that number on the left is the annual cost of the debt annual cost so it translates into operating savings if it declines yes so to to meet the overage this year there will be a I'm sure wanting to pull back the the debt line in order to drop it because we're not borrowing but if you do that you're going to have to increase it again so it'll be like adding something to the budget so you could either use that that pot of money for a small cap and handle some of the items on the capital plan or use it to lower the tax rate and then and know you'll have to spike in a couple years and can you translate so the difference in capital spend let's just use the years in front of us so if we decided we want to keep that service equal and I realize there's timing issues but let's pretend we waved the magic wand at 25 to spend Capital to keep the Gray Line at that Debt Service how much borrowing capacity is that between the blue and the gray uh this year it be about 50,000 that's like nothing but out in 235 that that 600,000 enables how much 6 800,000 so the existing debt is in the second column so without doing anything it drops from 1.2 million okay so maybe I can try another way so in other words you're saying if we were to hold the debt service line constant then we would be able to no it doesn't translate how much what size borrowing like what project could we put in there that would like what size project would make thead line level how many millions of dollars the existing debt is the ex the interest payment right no service and interest the service yeah yeah so so how many what's the principle that we can borrow yeah that's right in order to pay that same amount so what is 800,000 an annual 8 million okay good all right sound like a fire station about 100,000 per million fire station light yeah yeah yeah assuming we don't do trucks and elevators and glad Nathan's here today too because I totally channeled you yesterday when I was reading about the overage on the police station now is coming in at 3.1 all right so a million in new spending like I said is about 2.7% tax increase in the average tax bill or $463 on the average tax bill for each resident just something to put things into context so here is the um impact of the operating budget on taxes and this is an estimate using a levy tool that that Brian and I created in order to help you estimate the impact of budget decisions so everything above the revenue line is the entire operating budget is line one and then those other those other costs are driven by state mandates so overlays is abatements and exemptions uh State and County charges they give you state aid and then they take some of it back and uh same with cherry sheet offsets so all of that is estimated at historic rates in order to create an expenses line of 37 million Revenue comes from wait uh no not a revenue no it's not Revenue it's expenses expenses that add ATM budget sorry okay gotcha sorry the next one's Revenue so the next one is revenue there's that state aid projection and the local receipts projection we talked about earlier that combines with taxes in order to create the revenue that pays for these items the um amount to be raised on taxes is the difference between these expenses and this Revenue which creates makes it more assuming no free cashen had a chance to look at this what's that you had zero for free cash yes no free cash that's up to you so what does this summarized to be a proposal you skip you kind of skipped over that back you don't you don't like when I talk about this David because it's it doesn't matter to Carlile because we have excess Levy capacity it just creates basically the coming year we need to raise 33 and a half million bucks is what we're saying in some from some Source no that's how much we can tax oh okay we can tax higher we can taxx higher we can tax so what we can tax is 3 million plus the prop two and a half plus the growth which equals our Max Levy but we never use that number we use excess Levy capacity so uh it's I think more helpful to use what the proposed Levy increase would be and what that impact is on the average tax bill so you'll see here everything proposed in the operating budget is a 5.07% I guess I'm missing a St so can you go back up to the h fire way at the tippy top I mean you said right there budget request so if we just took like what you know today line one the 36 37 million that's like rolling up everybody's requests without having scrubbed it right yes so maybe a better way to say it is if everybody got everything they wanted today we need to raise 37 million and the state will give us some so we are at 33 and a half million right that is what we would have to raise through real estate taxes to pay for all this stuff if all the state aid and everything came in right now you're going down to the next line and saying okay if we did that this is what it would cost the average tax right yes I would it's not the 36 is the point that we're talking about3 yeah we understand that now okay you also consume a quarter of your excess Levy capacity yes we'd be using a lot of excess Levy capacity I will caution that um the scrubbing is is not going to yield much without without pain so um there's going to be some difficult choices here can you remind us last year like the pre-c scrub to the scrubbed did we go from 5 point I don't remember I don't think it was I don't think it came in at 5% four to three four and chains to to three and change went down a percent percent yeah so we could expect to go down Le to PR is that typical each year it's getting harder with um well with the two School the two schools and the and if you took the two schools and middle sex out of it then you're left with I mean cutting people but you're also we didn't add any Capital project this is just operating or this is operating it's just operating yeah that was going to be my question like how do we think about this with those big capital projects out there well that's the whole point you know so we're starting yeah you need right he's going to that it's a good question right to Capital I tried to reorganize it to think make a good straight man we start with five right so better all right so um car departments submitted 3471 million in requests for FY 26 alone okay I can I'm not going to go over each each thing that'll be part of the budget process but um there were things added and changed and prioritized during the fall budget process and those things are now in the budget the biggest ad the budget request to the capital plan is a $220,000 request to replace the cad system for dispatch and the police department which is um an end of life increase that was not on the previous Capital plan so it is creating creating some pain so here is the rolled up list of capital with each item to be vetted by by you and the finance committee I'll remember I'll remind you that we talked a lot about road maintenance that's one line in here here is the cad system here and then the elevators that we talked about are down here so all of that equates to the to the 3 million how far off is that from before you started this process based on your 5-year Capital plan the 5ye capital plan from the fall to now or from last year to now from last year's projection in other words kind of like how much got added through this process that wasn't in not much not much to uh most was on there yeah good CAD is the biggest ad yeah okay okay so financing this and we'll talk about war articles in a second but to finance this some of the offsets include chapter 90 CPA debt and then other is the ambulance Reserve fund essentially for for some of those fire requests would net a balance needed from free cash of 1.8 million so if you took all the the article requests and you took out all the other ways to pay for it the only other way to pay for it is free cash or borrowing if we could do more borrowing too which would have more operating impact all just raise the TA when you say borrowing you don't mean excluded thatt you just mean yeah whatever what whatever way you want it to whatever way you went well so there's really three things right there's free cash there's take on debt and there's raiseed taxes that's just taking some of the ambulance fund or is that that's not depleting the ambulance fund it's not depleting it so it brings in about 100,000 a year it has about 400,000 right now using 130 of it would allow it to continue to grow to eventually pay for the ambulance that it needs to replace so using it judiciously would be helpful it's also a source to help offset some of the tax impact if you want okay that was what my next question was going to be is like are we making sure that we will be able to purchase an ambulance next time yeah so we're encouraging you to use it but not so much that you don't eventually pay for the ambulance so show those bullets so all those bullets I don't you have like eight bullets those are all your suggestions or of how if you don't do those those are in the budget these were the suggestions we vetted during the fall working group and they were accepted by the Departments that were proposing them departments just want their stuff how how you choose to pay for it is they're not going to box for instance like uh the rcom wants a pickle ball court and they're expecting the town to pay for that um the budget expecting to use a CPA they were so they they they already were planning on using CPA funds of course which comes out of the taxes it's like it's its own presentation um trying to show it totality if approved approv we have the chair right here okay um so included in that number was you'll see 94,000 and Warren articles so I'm going to go through these again this could be its own presentation but here is the draft very draft warrant article uh warrant for town meeting so you'll see some of the normal normal things on there OPB is an actuary study that we have to do every two years so we split that bill in half and ask the town to support it each year there's no new budget impact from what we've already talked about for any of the capital articles or anything like that until you get to the planning board who's requesting um some consultant support for their mbtk communities work the Board of Health is requesting funds for a mosquito monitoring program and um this one again could be its own presentation but the chos is asking to support the senior tax uh program so the town pass an abatement program a couple years ago and that's going to carry a cost on the overlay we've been funding that through a internal program first that was funded by arpa and then was funded by um CPA or the CPC and now it will likely impact uh the tax base to a level that we're not sure yet we're still doing analysis but we think it'll be 50,000 so you can add that to the budget that we already talked about so that would become an ongoing part of the operating budget yes if it's not funded through zpa funds or um free cash we forgot to ask Simon because there used to be a bill that was floating around um that was would have uh reimbursed towns for whatever money they are losing from the senior tax program that anyway but okay right so all of that is summed up on this chart so the 94,000 from the warrant articles um plus the capital plus all the other sources of funding Nets a deficit you can call it of 1.8 million to be decided and none of this includes the buildings yet correct okay so let's talk about the impact on reserves so this free cash estimate of 4.8 is based off what we just submitted to the state so it's not final yet but it is it is a strong estimate if you add the stabilization account which has been growing due to interest you have a total Reserve level of about 6.2 million so if you take your 12% Reserve Target that gives you a cash above Reserve Target of 1762 which is a little bit less than the balance that's here here's the projected free cash use which see there'll be some some deficit there that'll have to be controlled then if you used it all if you use free cash for everything that was asked and you paid for everything which is which would never happen in any Town ever but if you did everything that everyone asked uh your reserve levels would be just a little bit below your target so 11.66 meaning sorry 1. you used up all the 1.7 or eight million saying you paid for everything right you would be eating into your reserves a little bit well you said that's the excess you had over the 12% right but what that leaves you I mean the think of it simply let's just say we did that it cleans up all those Capital items but what doesn't it do it doesn't address a 5% operating budget increase it doesn't even start to talk about the downstream borrowing we're going to get into with our various Capital project y okay so um here's what I think are the large budget discussions that you'll need to consider and of course you will have your own opinions on what is large and small and in the budget but whether or not to smooth the retirement assessment will be important uh do you want to buy yourself some some time some wiggle room but pay for it in FY 27 so instead of a $420,000 whack it would be a $300,000 whack each year but how much more does it cost to do it 100,000 100,000 the cost what do you mean by cost no the eventual cost would be premium to do that oh premium oh yeah no that's too much stupid that's a huge percentage that's ,000 basically they're making $100,000 interest on how can they do that 600,000 we should just borrow the money then so this is why no no we would just borrow the money and take their and then do it that way yeah that's why I put this as bullet one of the large discussions to come that's a no that's a no doing what else so finalizing the health insurance coverage finalizing the school budgets Cola and benefits discussions is always something the structural HR changes um and onetime revenue use I think yeah but Ryan I mean those are tactical responses to the bigger problem which is you like I said I mean yes we we're fortunate that we have a nice surplus of free cash we can have a policy discussion about whether we should be at 90% of Revenue projections or 80% you know okay fine but at the end of the day that relatively small amount of free cash that helps us but it doesn't the two big issues we have are we're running operating budgets at five four you pick your percentage but well over two prob two and a half right two half% and we're looking at a $3.5 million police station which we're already on the road to borrowing for about to get into you know somewhere in that $10 million plus range of a fire station we got I'm sorry councel on Aging but you probably picked a really bad time to come in and ask for another building and we haven't talked about DPW well okay but regardless and we've got a DPW disc so that to me is the the major thing we have to get like our brains around like how are we going to do all that and what's going to give if we do this okay so um everyone in the room is well aware of the timeline but January is when um so now is when I hand this over to the finance committee from the Departments for your work and recommendation back to the uh select board in April and then May is right now the projected town meeting the buildings kept coming up so I just wanted to show you remind you what we talked about in the fall and are you guys having your departmental meetings have those been scheduled yet January 8th and 9th so here is the uh annual cost to the operating budget of buildings based off some assumptions 5% borrowing um useful life terms of 20 30 years and the average tax bill impact so police is approved and will hit the average tax bill starting in two years of about $150 per home so what does that equal about 3/4 of a percent of what the operating budget impact is and then fire and DPW these again assumptions would be the equivalent of if you look at kind of the median before it starts a decline again it's about what this budget projects for an increase so it's a four to 5% increase on the average tax bill in addition to the annual increase but also Ryan so back to the like where you started we talked about if we didn't do any of that we have a declining balance which by 35 which I presume is sort of the bottom of this chart would be $8 million of borrowing capacity which itself is I forget what it was but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of that much money right yes so again it would be useful in that first chart to Overlay these things and see where that line goes 15 you know that very beginning chart yeah yeah talk about the the cost of the borrowing carrying the borrowing CU it looks like oh GE 800 like that's a ton of money but maybe it's not as bad this is nonbuilding debt so this is that curve we talked about the slide with the gray line that we were talking about earlier the gray yeah is that was non-b building debt though no that was to that was total debt that was mostly building that's just the cost of carrying well what it shows is so it's old buildings plus old buildings right so yeah there's always other stuff in there but I mean the big drivers of buildings right so if you go a couple $2 million things and next thing you're talking is real money right right but the Big Driver downward is not that the Big Driver is because the building cool buildings are getting paid for so if you overlay these other buildings in there I think that would be a useful graph I and I I guess I think we need to continue to carry about a million 250 in our operating budget for debt um keep the Gray Line well that's what it that's what we would see when we had those buildings it may not be as bad as you know last gra shows well I guess what I'm saying is even as things are are declining if we keep that in our budget and put that into free cash it'll be there for the when it spikes it's just stabilization yes so you should the other table you showed at the height of borrowing we needed 1.8 million right on the other slide right and so this is saying we've got I don't the spreads like 800k or something so that means that we only need an additional yeah right exactly so it makes the mountain not as tall still doesn't doesn't address a 5% slope in your operating line which is a concern but but it helps us rationalize I mean again I'm saying a lot of negative things but you know we know we need a police station we're pretty certain we need a fire station if you've walked around DPW you're going to come to the conclusion we need to do something there these guys certainly have a case to make for you know something for seniors so yeah you know you got to AR there other things also already taking up some of that difference like the fire truck and other trucks and things like that as we go along that Tak some of that and then next truck so that's 1.3 million already taking up of that's a third of the police station so that c may not be quite as big no no that's right that's right let's see so in this analysis this for what do you call it the plan a or something draft one draft one there's no you didn't remember we had the effort last year we wanted to scrub all the the what are the accounts that the oh yeah the revolving revolving accounts you you didn't assume we're going to get anything we we make as we meet we may find that we have other Revenue sources that you have that you haven't yet accounted for is that true I think it helps I don't I don't think we won't get millions of dollars but okay and in addition so what what's uh if IRA funds come when would that be 27 would we expect to see anything in 26 because something should happen this year like do we have do we have any knowledge of what that might bring so there's a few hopeful Horizons um green communities and climate leader can help defer some of this Capital cost for sure if we can commit to that the IRA I think will help and then the reason why we spend so much time investigating RADS and culverts Etc is because we want to position ourselves for for Grant monies and we we've started to grants Culvert grants and other grants so we think we can bring this down with the staff that we have but we wanted to see the full picture so that you're making decisions in that context um because you're going to find yourself in a real big problem in a couple years and this this your budget here had for FY 26 had what 800,000 for roads yes out of which what half half of that is out of the Town budget that's where you deing or is that no that's going on no I'm not talking about the money I'm talking about the when we were seeing maintain maintain maintain it's maintaining yes but we didn't Nathan since you left the board we got on to coverts which is whole another sort of undiscovered liability that that pass that was discovered every yeah yeah so that was twice twice as expensive because we discovered it so we're trying to not not discovered discover them by right close your eyes having them full then what the so what was the software that came out of the book you have to recapitalize the cad the cad all right so how how do I know that there's not five other software softwares that need to be recapitalized in the next year and a half like can we do I it's it's a lot of money to not have been aware that it was coming on so it seems like there's a need for some sort of study or analysis of all the software That's essential for the town and when it's coming due so we don't get caught $200,000 if surprised if I was Town Administrator for a day I would not fund anything that wasn't on a plan if I had this problem so if a department came to me and said hey I discovered this software that I need because it's out of life for 10 years then I would say no I agree that they need departments need to plan but yeah it's a Auditorium lighting part two y right the sequel oh gee I need this thing and I need it right away all right well that's why we're working towards this Capital plan right yes so I think we've made good I think we're doing well but I think I absolutely Echo their point which is we got to be tougher in the Departments their job is to is to come bring that stuff early got to spend more time thinking about yeah all right we have other things tonight this is really important but um unless there's anything else like to uh kind of wrap up the discussion all right so I'm going to put everything into uh one drive and share all the documents that were submitted to the finance committee be great I'm going to keep uh Kelly and I are going to keep control of the the main spreadsheet so you can work on drafts and we'll just manage it for you but that's the plan whatever else you need let us know thank you Ry are you guys doing your Marathon sessions yeah January 8th and 9th yeah thank you all right so we'll close our meeting and then we have another meeting upstairs follow us up so oll call close I agre Victor show work guy okay thank you thanks for you guys it be fun the ne the numbers better abely you want a stretch jumping off the roof yeah this the first well and I think um I think it's always important but I think this year particular it's also taking multie I still May some decision yourself yeah they're cookies up here they're Girl Scout cookies um and I gave presentation sense I'm going to have some hope you absolutely I'm sure there's other examples of that thanks where we have to look at yeah setting one time expens lot I'm good thank you inspirational all right you good yeah I'm good I read I one these babies okay oh David are you coming back I'm just okay good I'm following following him to the water thing all right pass this down to yeah I signed all right um moving on to our next item which is uh Council on Aging and Human Services Community Center discussion so we met with them an open session uh on November 12th and um we had talked about we'd listened to their thoughts on not only the community center but some of their programmatic needs um I will start by saying that you all received and I shared the email that um Tony had sent um she said asked the request that the discussion of the cohs space needs to be postponed uh to a later meeting date U they'd like some advanced notice and and then um being allowed to discuss among themselves and she had a point of clarification to request the appointment of a committee to explore the creation of the community center within 10 year I think that was a request of us but um if there are my opinion is generally I had hoped that we could just have a discussion and reflect on what we heard um from the Council on Aging Human Services but if there's anyone on the board that would prefer to go in a different direction I'm happy to entertain that um in your packet I had put together just kind of a couple of questions to to think about and I think you know this comes up in the context of we're trying to put all these pieces together for budgetary needs as well as Community needs I mean we did a master plan and we certainly have the caram community and you know caring community and seniors are an important part of our community I mean we're all in this together um but we need to kind of put these pieces together and I just thought it would be helpful to you know kind of reflect on that and see where the select board is on that discussion um to that end I had a memo in there um got to pull it up here um and I I sent that to everyone does the select board support the proposed Community Center and if yes you know how would we like to move it forward and if no you know are there other ways to meet this um and the the CEO ahs's and the town space needs so I don't know Barney you're a liaz on there I'm kind of put you on the spot yeah why don't you you know kick off your thoughts on this on what we've heard um well I know that the um cahs uh working group you know has put a a huge amount of time into uh looking both at the past history and then trying to you know analyze um what kind of program you want to offer going forward and and also describing some of the issues right now in terms of space um and I think those are those are very real um concerns um for me uh look thinking in the context of the town's overall budget and what we're looking at you know in the next 5 to 10 years um I I'm not ready at this point to support um or or to to signal that we are definitely going to move toward um building a community center in town um and one reason for that is I I totally support the idea of of it being a community Center as opposed to a a center just for seniors um and you know I understand that the for you all you were saying very clearly in the presentation a couple of weeks ago that you didn't feel that you could um be the group to work with other constituencies in town and really determine um who who else uh uh would really support the idea of a community center and could actually specifically provide information about how they might use a community center um and so I think it's I think that is a key component for me which is um having uh seeing if there is strong support for a community center from other um element ments of our town and I I think when I think about other projects that have moved forward uh it's typically been uh you know the a group that is uh most interested in making it happen and they are out organizing uh to build a constituency of people broader than their own um kind of self-interest group to support the town making this investment um so I you know I'm I'm I'm in this demographic and I I can certainly see myself you know in five years or so or 10 years wanting to participate in in Co COA activities um so it's not that I don't see the need for it and also from the uh information you provided us with I mean it is clear that it's a growing uh con constituency here in our town um I I what I what I I think I've talked about this before I'd like to see um while it's not the perfect solution I'd like to see us figure out a way to provide some additional space for some of the program needs or to address some of the um space needs with our existing Town spaces and again I fully recognize it's not ideal and when you described you know this program is located here and this one's located here and keeping track of all of that you know I recognize it's not ideal um but I think for a town with our uh financial future at least near term over the next 10 years um I I don't think it would be responsible for me for for me personally I don't think it'd be responsible of us as a select board to uh in a sense endorse the idea of a community center as a new building here in town I I just don't think it would be responsible yet are there other I'd love to hear comments in the select board well Kate you know I I'm the one that wrote a greed about how I thought uh it's a good word kate uh it would be nice to see some efforts to bring program together you know in in our um available spaces that we have um as well so I guess although I maybe don't feel as strongly as you do Barney I think I'd like to see see some efforts you know what can be done before we do the CU I'm not convinced we've really outgrown all of our spaces yet and I hate to add more spaces that need to be heated and staff especially sta I mean it's not just the space you know you you have to staff this thing now and maintain and Main and Main it and maintain it so I i' like to see our our facilities fully you know really fully used I mean this town hall certainly is but I think we have other spaces that could be used as well uh I agree I think um so one thought and one question we you know in when we were in the beginning thinking about the police station renovation and the potential fire station we talked about how we could make the Town Center more cohesive and we're going to use spaces that are not actually in this building we also need to address the uh mobility of the constituency especially the senior constituency which is parking and walking and I think again you know in in sort of the virtual community center that uh Kate had proposed a year or so ago maybe two now um some creativity around better parking better walking in this little area would be useful I mean not so that's the comment the question is the churches and maybe it's something we should Explore More fully with the Town Council I know a gentleman who's actually in the audience right now was very uh vocal about sort of church and state separation when it came to quid proquo of plowing versus using but really what can we do if the the churches have good spaces and what and they're not occupied all the time m what legally can we formalize with them to take advantage of that and what can we offer them you know I mean that would be that's another thing I think worth exploring about sure thank you okay Scott I mean since I've been on the select board most of our time has been spent trying to grasp and prioritize the needs of our Public Safety buildings in our DPW and I I you know I think the concept of a community center is something of course we all support the question is prioritization and we're struggling with that just among our Public Safety buildings trying to layer in um a community center where would that fall in the prioritization um you know I think it's after some of the public safety things we're looking at it's after DPW um I haven't been as close to the work that's been done to date you know I I don't know what other communities have have done in terms of what the cost of these community centers are what the what the financing of these community centers are you know the is public private is that an option that we've looked at um it strikes me as the type of thing that the community has gotten behind initiatives like the castle like Gleason is this something that could be funded in a different way I you may have looked at that it may not be feasible but it's it's something that um seems like it has potential to to at least offset some of the ask um and so looking at that might make the project a little more financially feasible for the town I don't again I don't know what's been done to this point to look at that part but in terms of adding another building project to first we have to tackle police and fire and then shortly after is DPW and I I just think that's going to consume us financially and from an operation standpoint at least for the next how many years six seven eight beyond your tenure yeah yeah um but you know getting creative about it in terms of the financing grants I don't know what's out there I don't know what these things cost it's probably way more than I think it is um but is this something that could be funded outside of the Town budget yes in all of our documents we have specified that we feel that we would be able to get a fair number of RS and do some private uh fundraising so we do not ever expect the town to pick up the full bill right but if we never get on your priority list because this is the third time we've come through in the last 152 years if we're never on your priority list we don't have a chance in hell the master plan lists this 63 times the open space I think it was 20 something MH but the you know just on the master plan which I put a lot of hours into myself um there were no uh costs associated with any of those recommendations and that's the part I think that we're you know we're trying to figure out now is um you know as Scott's saying what are what are the priorities right now uh and over the next five years we've laid out we know that there two you know the police department dep and the fire department and it's not that we want to pit people against each other but you know we don't get on your list ever we may as well just drop on of the race well there's not I would say you're on our list because we're talking to you frequently about it I think in the being on the list part is also a pretty honest assessment of Alternatives that don't involve in new building which is what you're hearing from this side yeah let me ask one question just because what you guys said does CPA have a role in this kind of a project only if it's outside outside meaning in the out in the area you know CPA can't fun can't fund a building building yeah it's unfortunate my sense is from this discussion that we're you know as a board kind of saying that it's not a priority for us as a board to put on a capital plan at this point Barney brought up a good point though about building community support and that entails you know getting building constituencies and I I know there's a real desire to have us be that board that says we're going to support this and we're but I just think that based on this discussion there doesn't seem to be the near-term support for this at this time and so I think it's helpful to kind of get that out there in the in the public but Jerry I can see you want to speak so please um I I think thinking of this as a request for a building is the wrong way to look at it I think this is a planning issue and it it's they short-term needs and their long-term needs and we're never going to be able to address any of them unless we start looking at the problems and plan for and so the question that I would have board is how does the town go about addressing those planning needs um Scott raised good questions can it be funded in other ways yes probably but we need to look at those so who's going to do that looking is it the COA is it the select board is it some other committee I I think we need to go without planning for this in some organized way and I think that takes support from the select board at least in acknowledging the fact that this is something the town ought to be looking at and it takes support from the constituent communities the COA HS being a large part of that but other ones also just three comments on what Jerry said so number one yes but you know does take like what you're hearing from us is go out there and get some other groups like build the momentum to make that part happen that's number one number two the playground and I believe the library were like really focused efforts by certain individuals who are completely committed to the public private partnership and it takes somebody you got to find somebody like that that's not really our job that's somebody coming and saying hey I'm going to do this prior to that it was lis Lamy with the regional building I mean somebody who was really Dynamic who said I'm going to go out there and get some funding the third thing um is well I forget the third thing um oh no the third thing actually the most important thing I'm sorry is going back to what Tim halt said many years ago which is and this is for us what really are our priorities clearly Public Safety is a priority we've got to keep our citizens safe clearly education is a priority we have to educate our children children and we've got to do a few other things like dump trash and pay our bills and blah blah blah beyond that and we've decided and master plan helps us you know open space and some other things we really need to put those other things into context and so we do owe that piece I think that right and I think that the using spaces that we have at least in the short term is a if there are unmet needs for facilities you know that's a great place to start for that if you have anything else um I yeah we're going to we are going to wrap up it Carol I just wanted to make a comment that kind of BU ver said if there is some sort of level of um official sanction that yes we are moving towards this even though it's going to be a long process or whatever you could start fundraising that's one thing that we can't do right now is we can't do any fundraising and I know that there's seniors I talk to them all the time who are really behind this who might leave like a legacy gift or something and you know it takes time sometimes to collect funds for such a project so just something to consider sure well things like the Bey Center we had a bey is a you know a donor who didn't even have a land didn't have the thing but just said I really want to have this happen and that if you can find that again it will springboard and I think grow organically but I don't think at this time based on what I've heard tonight from the select board that you're getting that kind of support from the select board on this community center but I I guess I'll say for myself though um I'm I'm very committed to looking at uh alternatives for um coming up with ways to provide more space for the COA and it will not as I said before it won't be the ideal right where you have everything in one b building but uh you know the notion of working with a church to figure out is there space there that we could actually use on a regular basis for cahs activities or are there other options for spaces that um we already have that that the town already has but that are not utilized fully um that we can we can um figure out a way to you to if they need uh you know uh renovations for example the Highland building right if there's some way to have a piece of that be designated space for the cahs um it's going to be cheaper than trying to um pay for a brand new building not well in general uh renovating an existing structure is less expensive and I know you've been inside as have I but um I'm just saying we need to explore those options and I really think that that's a smart way to go over the next you know four or five years to figure out are there some Alternatives uh using the space at Benfield which is completely underutilized um I know there objections you all have gone through a lot of this yourselves but is it all or nothing for the cahs or can we can we help you figure out some um uh you know way to use what we already have to meet some of your needs right okay I do we do have to move on I'll take one okay Mary CH 74 Carol Drive okay bar when I listen to you it sounds like you're saying either or and what we're saying is both the needs I've studied a little bit of of some of our AB buding towns that put are putting in senior senors as we speak okay it's a 10 process the select board gives a charge the Committees like members of fincom and reccom and all those uh you know different groups you're asking us to go off and get all those people I think there would be more power behind it and we're talking 10 years like I said and J was saying let's get on the agenda for something that's 10 years out in the meantime yes let's at all these other buildings because we have needs between now and 10 years now so it's not an either or but I'm hearing that I think it's it's parallel and we I think it would be much more powerful if we had a charge from the select people we could go off and do the fundraising because the town is behind this get a committee together that's our group and fincom and all the other groups and find out what all the needs are because it is a community center it's not a senior center even though uh maybe a lot of you see a lot of seniors there but it's one of it's going to be one of these buildings where if you build it they'll come you know kind of Ryan Ryan there's some people in the waiting room sorry okay well I do want to move on here because we have a um another important appointment tonight um that we have but I think it was important to have this disc discussion yeah it's fair to take it up something we should I just think it's really you know they're asking the board for the board's View and I think the board now has the five of us have weighed in and given our opinion board will change over time maybe there'll be you know in the future boards or whatever there'll be different level of support but other than that I think going forward and gating Community Support is best you can David some examples of other groups that have done that um so um I do want to move on though because we have a employee appointment that is waiting in the room um so would you like to kick this off thank you yeah so the as you know the town has transitioned to a appointed town clerk so we talked as a board about what type of process we want to run and what type of person we'd like to see fill that role so tonight we are presenting Ashley Cody to you as a candidate for the town clerk position and so she doesn't have to brag about herself I will so Ashley has seven years experience in town clerk's office most recently as the assistant town clerk in the town of Bedford I can't say how highly recommended she is and also has a very clear vision for what she wants to do in the role and also to to serve in the community so I'm hoping Ashley can introduce her who herself to the board the board can ask some questions and we are recommending that should be appointed tonight as the uh First full appointed town clerk in Carlos's history um I I just want to jump in and say I was uh privileged to be on the uh selection committee and I just have to say that cream did rise to the top and I thank you so much thank you for having me tonight it's a pleasure and um thank you for you know your kind words about me I appreciate it great are there question um so just going into a general introduction about myself uh my name is Ashley and um I'm was serving as assistant Town Clark in Bedford um just generally speaking uh I live in Massachusetts uh in one raised in Massachusetts live in methan with my husband and um you know we generally love Massachusetts and uh spend a lot of time outdoor and have been in Carlile and Lexington and Bedford walking the trails and uh yeah we're just really excited to uh live here and I'm really excited to serve in one of our municipalities great are there questions by the board welcome Kate anything you wanted to say about the selection or how the you've already said it I think I said it well and we you know we had a good a good pool of applicants yes um and then we we uh the selection committee went through independently we all you know did some rankings and then chose to interview three people and uh we had a a rigorous process yes we did so um and it was a unanimous U Choice by the selection committee maybe you if you could take a minute and just tell us about what you think coming in and what you may want to try to accomplish while you're um our first appointed to clerk absolutely so I think initially I'll want to take a look at you know of course familiarizing myself with the bylaws of the Town familiarizing myself with the kind of time frame on different issues uh getting a calendar of events ready for deadlines related to you know the town election the uh caucus getting this census ready will be the first priority I think but also just getting a kind of a general feel for the town and its needs uh getting to know all my co-workers and staff and what their you know needs are and um you know goals are and working with them on that so yeah I'm really excited to just get a feel for the priorities and the needs of the town and to just dig in I want to mention that um she's also an archist that she did a lot lot of our education and our and something that we can use in this town for sure absolutely I'll be happy to dig in and get the records in order careful great so assuming at assuming uh the board appoint Ashley tonight which it seems it seems likely to do Ashley would be starting this month we've also asked Rosemary to stay on for a couple weeks you all know Rosemary has done a great job to help with the transition we have full confidence that Ashley knows how to do the job it's the carile stuff that she needs to be cut up to speed on and then Rosemary has tentatively agreed to help us with some of that archiving so taking advantage of of her skills and Ashley's skills while she's getting transitioned is part of the plan so very excited to get going wow great fantastic do I hear yeah like to I'll move that uh we appoint Ashley do you say it coat or cot uh Cody Cody Cody Ashley Cody to the position of town Club effective December 16th 2024 I'd like to second that there any further discussion all right seeing none I'll take a Voice vote all in favor I any opposed none Welcome All Right congratulations than you very much December 16th is next week yeah woohoo it's coming up fast good great well thank you for coming on tonight we appreciate your time thank you for having me I'm really excited to be getting started thank you good by see you soon y have a good one thank you okay ATM all right um moving along to annual town meeting discussion we need to vote to set the date of the town meeting oh yeah so yeah let's hear it what we have we going to do it on a Sunday right that's what what did your group end up you said you were certain looking at are you well we so yeah let me um let me recap just quickly well first of all I should say I did not post this as a joint meeting um I think I don't see the whole Gallery here but I believe Wayne is on I believe Don drinkwater's on do you have the full Gallery you have Nancy as well and ny's on so um is there a way to show the whole uh and I don't know if Mark went over to finom so he's going um so I think we're under a quorum so people can chime in because Wayne is actually not a me an official member and he's welcome so anyone from the town committee who is willing who wants to speak can do so I believe well regardless they could anybody can Chim in they can CH not deliberating we're not deliberating reporting right so um I'll remind us that uh at I think it was at the last meeting trying to loose track here prior to the last meeting I sent a note to Travis that outlined where we had come as a committee we had sort of ended the data Gathering phase and we' reached the conclusion that these are some things we want to try um I believe if my timeline is correct uh we had our last selectboard meeting and we kind of informally agreed that that was the direction the selectboard wanted to go we had a regular town meeting study committee meeting and the consens was that's great but we've got we have to do a little more work before we're really ready to kind of present everything and the kind of work that we expect to engage on starting next week is to look at like there were a lot of recom I just gave you the very highlights but there were a lot of recommendations and we want to kind of codify them and figure out which ones we really want to try and give you sort of a whole package uh so we'll do that in separate doesn't need to be we'll come back another time with that I think the main thing though that came out of our process which I did articulate last time was first of all set the date and if it's going to be a Sunday and if we're going to make an event then there's Logistics we have to talk about and whose responsibility so that's one thing to touch on and the second thing which is very important to uh Wayne is put a fence around the warrant process so that we can be done with it early and really move into socializing we have done the February 11th deadline right so we've done that part so I guess that part's done um uh so there we are took your recommendation and right boom boom boom so um have to do the Sunday uh I don't know does uh Wayne or Nancy do you anything you want to add to that I don't think so okay yeah just the one thing I would add um in in our discussions with other towns um and the The Experience on weekend meetings it's a little bit hard to interview and talk to people because um some towns try went to weekends as Carlile did during the pandemic in order to have outside meetings and so it's it's a um uh you sort of have to go back to pre you know 2019 uh and previous to sort of understand what a more steady state condition would be um the town that has most successfully done uh weekend meetings uh uh seems to be um Lincoln um which historically has theirs in late March um what I had heard in talking with some other towns is uh some other towns experimented they were you know week nights and they moved to weekends and you know people complain no matter what you do no matter what right some towns reported not much of an impact in a discussion with our Town Council Tom Harrington um uh he said that in his observation and experience over the years that the earlier you do it in the spring with the more successful a weekend meeting can be because it is less likely to conflict with sports so so um uh at our last the last meeting of the committee the committee heard that and said okay um that's you know certainly sounds plausible um but if we're going to start I the consensus of the committee was if we're going to start let's recommend that we start um and if we find that you know May 5th um has too many sports conflicts and so forth then the following year or the next meeting we can consider you know do we do we move the entire schedule back so that it's say an early April weekend meeting uh but obviously that that affects the entire calendar it was too late to recommend that you move up town meeting for a month so that's why the the committee heard Tom's cautionary note uh nonetheless suggested Carlile let's go ahead let's give it a try yeah I would say two things on that one is as a parent of kids who've been playing sports forever and some many of you have been there there's not much going on generally on a Sunday afternoon number one number two in this case particularly as we try to Overlay activities for children because we discovered that babysitting on a week night is not answering the mail I think it's very important to have nice weather yeah and take advantage of our great castle if it's inclement we can contingency have the gym but to say Mar no that's not going to do it so I think I personally am excited that we can have a nice Sunday in May and we can have an event yeah was there any preference between the two dates that were we didn't express it but it's May 4th or May 8 well I would say I would say where Tom is going where Tom Harrington was going earlier is better like the longer you go to may now you're really starting to get into stuff so my my personal preference only would be May for plus I love the Star Wars Star Wars but but but really no I don't think that okay I'm just asked and did we determine that both the 4th and the 18th the school auditorium is available reserved all of it we have the school like reserve lock down okay yes okay okay um is there anything else the 11 yeah you wouldn't want to do it at the 11th CU that's Mother's Day right that's not those two and the last one in May is Memorial Day weekend options so I personally like but the other thing Travis say I alluded to in the beginning and we don't have to do it tonight but I think as we sift through this now we pivot as uh Brian who's really good with phrasing by the way said we we're moving to operationalizing this right so operationalizing the meaning now uh pivots to what should the tmsc do what does the daytime government want to take on what do we want I mean there there's a whole communication plan we already kind of talked about that we're going to try to work with the proposers but in planning a meeting having events you know there's logistical things and I don't know I don't want to speak for the daytime government but there is work to be done we yeah so just want to leave that okay any anybody else go ahead see if anyone else Don is the other member who's on all way if Don wants to say anything he can raise his hand okay uh no I really don't have anything to add to it David I think you've expressed uh our thoughts very accurately okay great thank you uh I just going to say given what we're going to discuss in a little bit about the um the RFQ and the timing for the fire station if we think there's a chance that that could be ready that work could get done in time for spring town meeting I would I would just go with the 18th rather than the fourth to give two more weeks that St uh when we talk about that I don't know if you know something new Ryan or because I noticed in the RFQ you know if you look at the timing at the end they still say town meeting is June 2025 so that's a fair point it's tight yeah but I guess to give them as much time as possible and that's they're prepared to say right now no we can't to give an answer if it was going to happen it would likely need to be the 18th but I I'm not sure that it has enough of a chance for for me to recommend that you move the meeting because of it I'm not sure that two weeks does it and it's let me ask this uh I think it's looking more uh likely that we'll have a fall town meeting because I'm not sure planning board is going to make the May deadline and deadline for NBTA and I know they're still going to well I don't know but I think they might still want to do an Adu one in the spring but I'm not sure but anyway with the this spring or spring year this spring um so but I'm wondering if because the um normally we don't you know want to do Financial things would we not do the fire station then or would we go ahead and do it anyway well maybe we should settle on the date I mean does it well maybe you don't two weeks make a difference the end the meeting can we wait I hate to have you have a whole committee here three it doesn't affect it doesn't affect what we do so could we wait and then vote after we talk on the talk oh tonight tonight is that what you yeah that's what I'm suggesting right just to see we don't need we don't need to take the vote this minute if we let's talk about the other one see if it has anct come back and okay I do think it's important we set a date we will set a date tonight but I just think why don't we postpone it and have our discussion well I guess I'd like to clarify that though it sounds like we've making a decision to do it on a Sunday I think so I I'm supportive of that you are excited about it like try seems like everyone yeah the recommendation I think it's a positive recommendation and I mean listen June 1st um yeah why we're are we committed to may I personally don't think we should win for Jun if the if the fire station is going to be a big topic if we if we push it the fall we're going to have to bake that into the budget story in in this town I mean it's going to take a little extra work but I don't think we would want to not bring it up in Spring and then say Oh fall here we could vote I would say this let me recomend if if if at the end of our fire station decision we think we really want to make a go of doing it I would actually S I would suggest we actually don't pick the date tonight we go back to the two people who AR on DEA and Brian are much more in touch with the parents doing a lot of that for the parents I would want to hear from that constituent group what how June is weekends in June the only challenge we have is timing because we're now not going to meet till January I know but you've already framed a warrant what do it Pace if you're going out to June what I mean to say is if you're really considering the 18th of May that's two weeks later than today the fourth right and even into June I think it probably isn't it's okay to wait but but but really the thing I'm trying to say and maybe I don't know I I just feel at a loss because one of the drivers is giving the the biggest the loow hanging fruit of participation our parents who say I would love to go to town meeting but these reasons right and they seem to be okay with a Sunday but when you get into the June Sundays you know where they go into their Beach Graduation May I think is okay I think both sides of May are okay I would tend to agree if I were but I I think that the question is do we do the beginning of May or the end of May now I'm Barney has convinced me that the end of May might be the right answer 18th but not do we need to wait on that decision if we if we decide it's that but I'm saying if you think really June I I'm not that's think that's I'm I'm warming up to May the 18th I'd love to hear is anybody else on the committee want to weigh in on that this isn't deliberation I know well they can Del I mean they can weigh an opinion we're not I I think May 18's good I I like that either way would be fine yeah uh but we look about when we think about the weather we're going to be in a little better weather on the 18th than we are going to be on L the 5th to the 6 uh the earlier days possibly um I I have a video of May 18th this about 20 years ago where it snowed so well there's the gy yeah my kids were getting married June 1 and I was a little concerned all right I'm cool and so it goes the 18th and then we're we're contemplating as one one EV and do we have a backup in the event that it was weather or just for timing and everything else well is it I don't know is how do you do it now what happens now when you pick a date of town meeting on a Monday Wayne's on he can chime in do you need a backup date mean for a that would be prudent oh I see for a second night that's second get everything you you've got someone at the table with um some military planning experience probably deeper than mine I suspect he might agree that having a backup plan is a good idea um but yeah I mean you just like never know you know a pipe breaks or something weird happens or right so Wayne what do we do now goes long well normally what we do what you know the plan is is that uh if it you know we always make sure that we're reserving at least one more night so if it's a Monday night meeting um we're sure that we've we've scheduled for two and you know the time five or six years ago when when we knew we might be at risk of possibly going over to three we at least knew whether the the um the school was available so Faith your faith in Ryan's military planning is true he's already reserved Monday night so that aners foll Monday the day after day but but timing wise we're trying to fit it into one day I think yeah I think yes I think of timing wise the idea is one one day okay so um and and just to answer I forget whether it was Barney or or Kate's uh earlier comment um the there's no no prohibition at all on U bringing a financial article to a special town meeting in the fall um the the concept is is simply the required Financial stuff must happen in the spring okay anything else can happen in the fall okay so special projects can go in the fall address and then the last observation I would make um uh is if you recall what happened with the police station where you know you had estimate you know the estimate came in you know like the afternoon um before the you know the last regularly scheduled select board meeting before the the meeting and the number was higher and um the select board was quite pinched and trying to figure out what to do so um you know whether it's moving it to May 18th or saying we're just going to do it at a special town meeting in the fall make sure that you give yourselves adequate time so that you don't sorry for the pun get caught in a fire drill at the last minute okay thank you which is good for off my question was timing up yeah so I think one of the nice features to me of the weekend meeting yeah let me say the week day meeting is strength you really can't start before 7 maybe 6:30 and then you get the back end nobody wants to be there after 10: or 10:30 in the Sunday you could say all right we want to be done by seven let's say picking that day and based on our agenda we can back the start time do we have to set that I don't think so so yeah I think if we in my opinion I'm you know I won't say statutorily but if we wait because the war's open we wait to see what we have y we kind of figure out based on our experience how many hours that should take when we back into 2:00 1:00 three you know I think we have a lot more flexibility that way to kind of tailor the length of the meeting to the agenda because we're don't not constrained at both ends we can say we don't want to be later than say seven right you know because the kids go home or whatever but the other and it's late that's another reason to have it's late longer kids are going to want to so we kind of have to head this discussion did you you quiet it sounded like the 18th yeah trying to put my only concern is that if we don't have the fire station information we're presenting a budget and capital projects in May we're going to have to account for the I know we can do stuff in the fall we're allowable to do that but everyone's making budget decisions and prioritizations and tradeoffs in May and so we're going to have to figure out how to account for that if we don't have that information right so you have to reserve budget information for something you don't know how much is going to cost now you can't do that right no but you I think you have to put it into the story line as right is a capital project right but I took and this is really not part of the right town meeting thing this is more now on the first station but if you don't make budget room for it you just say notionally it's going to cost X to do this what happens in the fall where do you find that's the problem right where do you find the money if it's over what you well this is B borrow if it's even Not Over You can't even put a you can't put a number unless you I guess you could you can put an estimate number not to exceed right yeah okay fa enough all right why don't we move forward here I suggest if we take a vote on this how about I I'll move to set the date of the 2025 annual town meeting uh for Sunday uh May 18th right Second Great any further discussion seeing none oh did you no it's not on that particularly I have a followup question after vote okay great so Voice vote all in favor I I None opposed all right it's going to be the 18th um I have a question just for us and also for Ryan um the event part of this not the town meeting part but the outdoor event part um um how do we think that's going to get organized and Ryan do you see uh that there are Town staff or a staff person available to help with that or do are we thinking we recruit some folks that you know like the idea of putting together some sort of an afternoon event um you know probably some uh School parents or whatever um any thoughts on how we see that getting put together I think it would be helpful to have a super volunteer supported by staff yeah so someone who put together the idea and then we execute it would be ideal so we will I will say that uh as I mentioned earlier we we are going to spend a session or two in our next set of meetings to call through all the recommendations we'll include this we'll get them categorized in terms of things we want to do and what it takes to do them and we'll come back um you know having labored Gretch and can attest to my incompetence labored as a share doing my own minutes and organizing me it's too much for me personally but uh we do have a high energy group but it would be really great if there was a staff resource that we could say here please do this do this right now I go and they're like oh I'm sorry not my job and then I go back and I do it and I'm told I do it wrong and you just it's very inefficient for me right now to organize I'm just not like Oran it would be great to tap one of the parent groups P or whomever that yeah you know we'll try that we'll try that they'll know what's best for their and if if they're involved it might help yeah it would help right a lead I think go to a group that historically doesn't attend and asking to leave might be well but yeah I'm just saying that there's things to do that if the daytime government could make yeah a resource available it would be that's okay moving along we did want I I have a before you do that Scott the town administ byaw if you saw it in your packet I ran it by Town Council they added one amendment in there which was relatively minor but added superintendent in there because superintendent does I thought that was a good um so if the board is in agreement I think we'd like to I'd like to propose this is a warrant article and I'd like to then have each member of the board uh float it to your uh various committees liaison and on certain ones like I think the um the elected boards the elected boards I think um I'd be happy to go with you um and and what I was hoping is maybe you could reach out to the chairs directly say that you'd like to um you know have a few minutes at least at an up coming meeting of theirs to just present it um and they could share it in whatever package they have ahead of time and then um you know you make an appearance there and you just take you know five minutes to talk about it and you know see if there's any comments I think what we're looking what I would be looking for and I hope the board would look for is if there's something we missed if there was something that that we didn't think about um you know that would be helpful in that discussion but I think we have to socialize start so if there's a motion to you know put this forward I think I need a motion rather to no you don't no okay well I meantion War you don't have to or just to support it I think we all support this right well then we should and I would rather um well I'd rather not have a motion to put it on the warrant until we could had because it's no visualizing it as what we as what this is what we've supported right now can you give us any feed I think that's a good so um seeing that I will send around the final which just takes out the red copy of that well that'll also be a good reminder to go do our homework okay well I'll send that while we're talking all right good all right moving along so arpa there you go pass that down updated so um this will be the final arpa set of motions and there's four of them let me just walk you through what these are motion one is a list of uh budget adjustments just to free up some some money that we know is going to be available and and move some money around this is all at the request of the project owners so route to sustainability has an extra 85 bucks that we can uh put back to unallocated all right um the co AHS uh requested that we move um $400 from online mental health counseling to nutrition support just just to ensure that everything is paid out by December 31st and then um he just walked out but Town Hall records management um there's excess funds in the records management for for just based on what can be accomplished uh Ryan had been looking into using that to fund some additional reconfiguration costs um and so we would be transferring the excess funds um from management to reconfiguration with an asterisk and that is that he has he would have to get that money obligated um by December 31st which means he needs a contract and he feels he can do that he's not sure but that's where the next motions come in okay so motion one makes these budget adjustments motion two would allocate all the remaining available funds to the carile owners project which is in the back which would go towards the opms for the various uh buildings motion three would say any and I I ran these by Kelly um any previously approved arpa funds that are not obligated Pro prior to the deadline would be automatically transferred into the OPM project so if Ryan is not able to get those funds obligated by the 31st we would automatically move the funds over to OPM so we wouldn't we wouldn't lose them and then motion four would allow us there's a provision now that if you have funds that are obligated um but for whatever reason after the deadline you don't need them so say you entered into a contract you get some money back you can move those to another project you can do okay that's so this this would basically take anything that comes back we're not put it in the OPM so is there a reason why motion two is 146,000 doesn't agree with yeah it's the $85 from the route to sustainability event if we approve motion one we have another 85 $85 in okay thank you and are you good Ryan are you good with the moving the 20 20,000 over to reconfiguration and if you can't get a a contract sign it would go to bopn Project y okay y awesome so you want some motions to be put out there yeah and I think you know motion you know you probably just you say uh okay I move um motion one as um presented in the select board meeting December 10 2024 AR promotions memo second I'm sorry that was my my bad any further discussion where were you sending us our homework I am I'm sending your homework I I'm going too fast for you no I got bust you were F any further discussion seeing none I'll take a Voice vote all in favor I I None opposed you just agreed to raise our I know I didn't right to double up 100% yes um I move motion two as presented in the select board meeting uh dece December 10th 2024 our promotions memo second any further discussion seeing none all in favor all right I Mo I move motion three as presented in the select board meeting December 10th 2024 our promotions memo second any further discussion see none all in favor and motion four as presented in the select board meeting December 10th 2024 arpa motions memo that five times second second any further none um all in favor none opposed right folks pass thank you we just need to change the number to add the $885 right no no no all done was already that presumed pass great excellent good work thank you arpa committee right now we just need the IRA funds I know I know was just thinking that okay I want to go on records 9:30 we're going to be on 930 well done that review you did thank you review of the fire station designer selection RFQ we got some information from Ryan on this and yeah I didn't read that looks like you put it on the screen there Ryan so I got comments from Scott so I'm gonna display his comments hey guys come on I think it's a good way to actually work through this document y but of course many if you may have comments and Barney you sent some this tiny stuff so I I have some other comments but I didn't send I have comments too so do you want to scroll through or how do you want to don't I'm assuming you don't have a problem with the ad no this is the second this is my first packet from today this is the the one that we got today right correct yeah yeah I I had no time to read this today I mean I've been on my running do you want me to make my account do we prior to diving in do we have to further the higher level discussion of are we the committee or we already decided Well that's in here it says the car School select board will appoint a fire station building renovation committee and we have to decide that I think well we can I'm just saying in our last discussion and as presented by CMS we were deliberating or considering whether we would be the committee or we would appoint I think we want to be the committee so we've already decided that I think we do because we decided okay I agree I just was trying to remember so we don't need to cover all right so background so one of the things that's top of mine for me is given the last procurement process is that we include information in and avenues of questioning in in the RFQ that we can ensure we ask the designers um so you know looking at it through that lens my comments on the project background were um I think it's important to include a brief overview of our water infrastructure including the lack of town water and hydrants the Reliance on system than how good our kids are at school yeah I think it's important to include our current ISO rating um and also trying to lay the groundworks for cost Effectiveness maybe just in a very brief statement just somehow cite the challenge that we're you know this is in the context of these other building projects that we're trying to balance funding for so I'm just trying to set the stage of like cost effective and some of the challenges we have versus because I think when we talk to designers we want to make sure we're we can ask them about their experience in these areas um and I thought that was more relevant than talking about how we're educated an affluent in in the schools yeah agreed I agree good good which also might lead lead someone to think say 10 million but yeah we can do more so going to get rid of that pink or that gray my only other comment on on on this part of it was just that uh you know the whole thing about the climber lead community and intends the project to maintain a high level of sustainability I think that should also be included in the project objectives it wasn't wasn't one of the objectives wasn't one of the goals yeah and I think I have a comment in there about that but I think it's important to not not for the the background but to make sure that that carries over into the project objectives especially as it relates to trying to secure grants and and and take take advantage of some of the potential um funding sources through climate leader and and I think when we talk to designers we want to make sure that we have designers that are thinking about that too y so you want to remove that from the background and including go keep it in the background want to keep it in both places copy it and put it in the other place too or just as a goal to uh project where the project objetive yeah just add add an object objective number six should that be objectives plural yes or is it one objective with six goals you know is the objective me the goals I had a lot of comments on the objectives um I don't know if other people want to chime in the first objective again to expand the facility capacity to accommodate a long-term on call volunteer fire department I see that as a as a means to an end that that the goal is I just want to be clear about the goal and and and this might be word smithing but you know the goal is on attracting and retaining onal fire volunteers um expanding capacities of means potential means to achieve that and maybe this is just semantics but rephrasing this not as our goal is not to necessarily expand the fire department our goal is to is to is to have a facility that can accommodate how about the to to support longterm on I think that because you don't want to prejudge that we're just going to expand right that what you're getting yeah it's the goal that's a mean a potential means to the goal um so the goal is to uh accommodate a long-term onc call volunteer fire department and then figure out how to do that promote promote or promote support and promote support and promote okay whatever yeah I did I know we've had a lot of discussion on this but I I come back to you know the one objective measure is do we want to State the a goal of just maintaining our existing ISO rating but maintain seems like a low bar well maybe it is we don't want it but we don't want it to go down by the same token no I mean as good what I'm saying is it's not going to go it's not going to get it's not going to get worse but the goal is not to get better either right you know remember how the chief sent us that followup which I think why abolutely right why you even if you're not going to either improve it or if there's no risk of depring it and you're not going to improve it why list it as a goal it's not a goal it will not go it will not go down as a result of building a better fire station I mean it will not get worse as a result of building a better fire station it could get better but we've said we don't want to worry about that so so don't list it if you're going to list it you should list it as evaluate whether there are improve there are things we can do within the context of the building that would improve it it's a different discussion a little off track I mean last time he Neil said you guys are getting a little well he said that but I mean you've been you've been the recipient of some of the back and forth in had um Travis I think there's room there to do a separate study that doesn't really influence the building project so I unless we're going to put unless we're going to put Improvement I wouldn't leave I wouldn't even address it I wouldn't address it so it wasn't in here to begin with so why we talk okay I I recommended adding oh you did okay sorry I'm sorry I'm getting tired um to lose the threat of the conversation I would agree that I don't think we should put it in because it does put emphasis on it where we don't really want that to be um been careful Travis and the goal was there is the comment to add that to the project background because I do want to ask the designers you know I want to have the ability to ask them have they worked in this type of community with this ISO rating all that stuff right yeah you could put that in as background it is that was included as part of the background was it okay to provide for the proper health and safety of the firefighters I didn't know if we should say something about meeting um if there are any specific requirements or safety standards that we should add in there to be a little more specific this is where I thought it was that we need help determining what is I mean the chief I rely on him personally I mean I think he's great he knows what he wants to do I just want life some expert to come in and say yeah he's right on Target and this is what you need or push back and say this is not what you yeah the difficulty we get into though on that I agree with you but I think all of these if you look at all of these except for the now added environmental one are about number five about the back to the objective they're all just about maintaining making it attractive to be a non call firefighter in this right get better work spaces make sure it's safer make sure the gender Equity they're all worthy yeah what I'm trying to say is that and we do want to challenge the designer but what you know they're going say well sure of course that's better if you want if you want volunteers of course you want to make it more welcoming I mean it's not like a code thing like right we're not putting things I I do take Mr lavery's point that the police station at some specific things that if you don't do those things you your accreditation is in Jeopardy you can go to a designer and say what do I have to do to make a jail cell compliant right and what don't I need what do must this is not that this is all squishy goals right but we're gonna end up at a point where how do we prevent and this is what I think is so important for this process is how do we prevent a designer from coming in and this is why in theory we have our OPM but but it comes in and says oh you wanted all these things and the designer comes back and gives you a 15 or2 million project and and we're saying you know what we've kind of got an idea of a budget right so do we want to put that in there yeah I think we put the budget in um I mean I I did some editing too but I do think that needs to be in there so that they so the I'm saying the experts but you know somebody is helping us make those tradeoffs ahead of time because I don't think we're going okay so to go one layer no I agree but I'm looking at these like five things now so number one is way too squishy to for anybody to say well that what does that mean to expand to it doesn't say anything number two I'm going harking back to things Brian told us when he initially presented his sort of bar napkin plan right mhm you can be a little more granular on that right he made that thing remember there's zones there's like The Hot Zone and so I think you could present an expert uh with that concept like we don't have that today and we recognize it there has to be a place where people take off their contaminated gear and then there's a neutral zone and then there's the workpace I think we could present that and say we feel we need those three zones what's the most e economical way we can achieve it given the building we have and that's number two so number two I think could be more specific number three can be specific right we got to have basically equal facilities for uh genders and non-binary and all that again we can get a recommendation um and then four I think and then six not five well five and one are five and one are kind of the same thing yeah they're the same thing in this it's like squishy I don't I mean we we we should put one of the two maybe I would prefer four to one over one but I I think in challenging a designer to give us a feedback of that is going to be hard say I don't know you know make it a nice space right so anyway what I'm saying is two three two three and four we can put spef we can challenge the designer on specific of so the chief has a very specific definition of would be attractive to the workforce and it's not it's not nice facilities it's facilities that would allow someone who doesn't live here to spend time here and ser but that's that's number four that's number uh number oh no it's not you're right where's the work number one five number five so Workforce attraction isn't isn't nice facilities it's facilities designed to House people who don't live here so he should say that then we should say that we should say that we should say that yeah so to specific can attraction retention by providing um space for working and sleeping for those that don't live in town right well there's a component of those who do live in town but may want to I think if I recall what Brian was saying if you live in town and you're working from home anyway and your job involves basically just being on the computer you might say fine if it's a if it's a meable enough space and I'm on call that day I'll just sit at the fire station and I'm there already yeah so it's not just the out of town and I'm looking at this through the lens of the RF the responses we get are going to be specifically addressing these objectives and we want to make sure we're articulating the right objectives so we can ask them about it because if we don't put them in the objectives then right it's probably not we can't probably ask him about it right so totally agree I I think it's important just that we get the scope of these qu these objectives right just so we can open that Avenue of conversation with them so keep going well I just was wondering because I can't really read it from here here you want to see no no that I mean ours I can see I can't see Scott's more markup than marking markup thank you so I mean it's okay I see you know I didn't know if we wanted to site I wanted to be more specific on health and safety if there were specific things we we need well how can we be more specific with health and safety we know we I mean one of the key things was the um setting it up so they can be decontaminated right when they come back from a fire in a safe I don't I don't have the right words for that but right setting up that zones that zone yeah do you need that for a credit like are those no but it's I see it's you know because those the fire materials they're using are toxic but it's not like the you need to do this to stay right I don't think I don't accreditation for a fire station he's saying they're moving towards that so I put to meet current health and safety standards for firefighters I would say current and anticipated perhaps if they're moving and if he's a subject matter expert he should know I say they should know yeah we can ask them then we have things that we can ask them what do you anticipate that there might be what's the current okay gender Equity within that's sort of that's fine that's that's fine I mean that what else were you going to say no I just didn't no like what do we mean by Equity do it mean an equal amount of space for both I don't think it's n okay yeah I don't I just didn't know there was specify thatp there's no accommodation right now for women or they have no separate space at this point right no separate no again a subject matter expert should be able to tell us yeah the comparable towns who presumably have some female and some non-binary participants right seek in a space and we should be able to talk about that before I thought was two points there's to carefully consider existing space I think we should we want to that's one thing and provide adequate and appropriate truck store like to me that's pretty squishy and well I mean here's where we can say like do we want to give some direction about how we're going to how we want the current space to be considered well we certainly want to utilize I mean that almost goes about saying but we we want to utilize the current space of the degree possible I think it is an objective again that was raised by Brian that because we are a town that we let me see if I can say right because we frequently have to truck in our water as opposed to places that have hydrants it's pretty important to have the truck that holds the water like be at a certain temperature right so that aspect definitely let me ask let me ask this do you want a designer that comes in and says I'm going to completely redesign your existing space and build no no no no no I agree with this so should we try to direct them to say about our existing space I mean we do we want to utilize it uh as it is do we want to like minimize the work done to I don't know if we know the answers to those but I don't want designers just blue skying so so maybe the way to put it then is to careful consider um best practice for using uh existing you know reusing and re leverage the current facility to the maximum before adding to it right before adding and we could say words right um including providing um uh what did we say truck storage again I don't know if I'd say storage but that basically we want the active fire equipment to be well now we're being prescriptive I think where Scott's going and Kate's going is just more General but utilize the current facility to the maximum degree possible and then add new space where the current facility is it's either inadequate or will be cost ineffective to R something like that and we I'm sorry what were you saying about the fire trucks whether they there's some well do we want to say specifically we don't feel there's a need to provide storage for the historic fire truck and the um what's the other one that we hold on to that U right that end up in the parade but they don't get used for fire well the chief would tell you that that's the glue that holds the volunteers together I'm just I know you reporting um yes yeah we're not saying get rid of it we're just saying put it in the tent yeah that's what well want to be prescriptive do we say anything about the trucks or do you just say leverage the existing space to the maximum think yeah I mean listen so early in the process well yeah but for which trucks I mean if come out in we decided that the antique fir truck is not necessary for the health safety and Welfare of our town um do we want to spend money on a building you know to garage that truck in you know what it the RFQ describes later on that the designer meets with the select board and then some other groups maybe that's where we as a select board can say you know consider if the current space doesn't allow for storage of all the existing Fire Equipment we're okay with the remind me we're going to give this document they're going to come back with proposals we're going to weed it down or CMS will help us weed it down to three or something like that we'll actually interview those people right so I mean it'll come I think and then even then we're going to base our presumably our recommendation on our general feel for which one seems to be the most in tune with what we want right and then we're going to start with that person and we di in so I don't think we need to be so prescrip yes okay so I like the maximiz existing only effective new space it's necessary to me and I I thought number five was kind of redundant to number one where it's to your point David it's kind of like that's the point is to R train and five is more specific than one right yeah because you're telling them you want the living space and I if our goal is to challenge challenge their experience more specificity will help them say these are things that if if you give them number five then somebody could say these are things that sounds like yours have adopted that have been positively received by on call departments eliminate yeah eliminate one and five yeah okay all right I hope this isn't become a camel it is but that's be all right camel yeah it's an Anil horse design byed and then you addil you guys like which is really really mean to the camel the camel's really amazing water hey don't mess with the cam keep going we're running uh my only other comment was somewhere I I was saying like somewhere in 1B or 1 C I'm coming back to this idea of I want to know whatever whatever the design is this is what's required this is what's desirable this is what's optional right so in the suite of the design elements and the recommendations I want I want to I want to know like is this to meet like is this deemed as essential for whatever purpose is this something that's a nice to have if it it's you know or is this something like the antique fire engine might be optional like it's not right or you know like I want to know what what they see is Mission critical versus uh specific to carile versus good for the community yeah and where are you saying that one number of functional responsibilities Personnel but are you proposing to give them those things now no I I it was just a comment in looking at what would be delivered so not under architectural like I want some prioritization of programming Design Elements right well I guess I I'm a little again let me go back so we give them this overall thing we interview them we score them we pick them that's all pretty much generic we will get specific on some things we'll say what have you done here and there and you know it's isn't it only then once we get going that do well let me ask this are they going to quote it is the quotation Envision to be here's my price for 1 a here's my price for 1B and so forth and that we and and which of those do we want to have ready for a town meeting presentation whenever it is and how how deep into this process do we get to present a town meeting right well I think this is saying we get to a schematic we get yeah we get to a schematic so one C so one A and C has to get whether it's fall spring whatever AB one A and C are the things that have to get done to be able to present to the town meeting yes here's a schematic and here's a reasonable Fidelity cost of the B one C right and then D and all this other stuff are then we go out to bid and it's right% more yes yeah and then well and then I think it was Neil that raised it whatever recommended is that you stick with that same designer for phase two but you're not actually right it says language in that okay is that the intent that doesn't answer no this answerers what Scott's raising Scott's raising it well it does in a way because I think we don't need to I don't know unless we don't like the things listed in like 1B we don't have to say n that'll come out later you don't have to say that well okay I don't it just seems like it's got a ready these are generic things right I was going to say is this a generic list do you think this wasn't sort of made per specific to I'm assuming like under e where it says flexibility and expandability when I saw expandability I thought H now what does that mean are is that because we're saying we want it to be built in such a way that down the road if we needed to expand it it allows for that expansion or is this or is this because I don't recall that we've said that but or is this just boilerplate language I agree I don't think we have said that it's all boilerplate so so we could take that out I mean I think flexibility this from it gives them too many things to then go off on tangent so I think we want yeah that's okay all right so let's go back however flexibility yeah particular flexibility in what I was thinking is um you know some of the non garage space yes workpace could be designed in such a way that you know you could use it as a meeting space if you need it or you could use it you know I don't know what that means but maybe you have sliding doors or I don't know right that gives you some flexibility use it for different things so I forgot you mentioned the prefabrication if you wanted them to to look into that as a know as a possibility is that I forgotten if that was in there I I have a thought on that which is I don't know whether I took this from something else or but the something about that the town wants to work with a designer who likes working with many different types of building materials and his interest and to control costs or something like that um and you had that under which section we could put that in the objetive it was space requirements I don't know I had it under objectives I had preference for costeffective facility Solutions EG preab we put that right Rel you know what that there's something the board just generated that we said is important wasn't on there and I think that's important yeah absolutely we put it right up front up up top at the objectives so that they know that whoever this designer is that we're not just saying oh whatever you think and everything that's why I eliminate all the rich town stuff up front I also said exterior should be very Thrifty Town exterior should be plain and functional not de did you I did well but I don't know that that's that may as a followup I don't know that's yeah I mean that's sort of like don't house the antique fire truck in I mean that'll come out in the discussion but I think I'm still I think we're getting good work product now on program objectives and I do understand that the very first step well the very first step is to meet with everybody so that's work plan and then the second step is take a look at the site and tell us what the limitations are so I think that stuff's okay D before you keep going though on the objectives are we're going to add that in yeah we should do yes that and do we what was your language Barney I thought that was great well I don't know if uh I said um the town wants to work with a designer who likes working with many different types of building materials and to to control costs but I think we gravitated to control cost aspect of yeah I have one I have preference for cost effective facility Solutions relative to design Aesthetics oh yeah that's okay okay so you do that yes that's I like that better than plain exterior well that was that was a separate item I understand but also it opens the avenue to ask him about that yeah yeah yeah no but I think that puts right up front what our priorities are yeah and that's important we're not looking for the Taj Mahal yeah all right while he's typing yes I think now also I'm sorry you go ahead well I was going to say we I don't think we've said in here any sort of says project cost estimate well don't we want to say something about not our goal is not to exceed 10 million yeah we've avoided saying that but I know NE said right front he said he doesn't think we can do it for that but I think that's I think we should give him that direction well really so one should be budget cap of $1 million number one yes is that may weed out some entrance right off yeah some people may see that that's kind of what we see in this they take out life of them their own the yeah designers so should we say that first y I think we should okay so do it relative to design Aesthetics so Ryan the new number one is uh athetics as e see and the first very first line which is not one of the bulleted thing says includes an addition SL anex 2 and integrated renovation I mean it's saying right up front that expecting an addition right how else the fire department project includes um oh yeah right I what well and we've said uh number four uh maximiz and only add yeah new space so number four maybe number four covers that well maybe instead of though at to your point Barney you should say the Carl fire department project um of the Fire Department Station stated goals yeah should meet the following stated goals just and forget the the including yeah so strikeout includes an addition Annex right to an integrated renovation the car fire department project um period should meet the following goals yeah right maybe they think it yeah and the first one is um keep it or is it the last one keep it under okay well right or not I mean keep it thinking about that that I mean the push for all of this is number one right well then it should just be rather than maybe it should just be a paragraph like right there paragraph right the select No No it should be an objective well well the select well yeah okay should be right up front we then we can clearly state to number one no number one I think number one number one no I was saying you could put it the last because it's kind of a catch all you you tell them dream big and then by the way do all this for do all this for $10 million or you get seven Lucky Seven yeah an engine seven number okay so um zero resp the goal is to keep the project we get no proposals well no we'll cray cray they might come and tell us not exceed 10 million yeah all right okay okay that's it's it's an objective you know we may not make make it but you know we you want to put 12 you don't say it you won't make it right ex so I want to go it's late and we really should Happ it soon so thanks I think um excuse me but you ran over the part yeah I want to go right I want to go to a selection committee well before we get I mean just on this section so objectives okay as I was saying yeah work plan of course they're going to meet everybody's going to tell you that they're going to meet with all the keys you know stakeholders blah blah blah and then they're going to look at the environment and the site and say this is what you got but there's a disconnect between Phase 1 a and then suddenly we jump into programming 1B I'm I'm kind of missing a step like they do the background and then it seems like we convene and we talk about because it is true that in 1B pretty much everything there except for n is motherhood statements it doesn't mean anything right it's really the conversation we have after they've gathered the data and said here's the site you got and here's what your stakeholders are telling you and here's what you said your objectives how do we meld that into giving them Direction on 1B it sounds like 1B they come out this is the problem right oh here's my plans look it looks great it's ataj Mahal don't you love it right we don't want that we want tell us what you found well in your research and let's talk about how that fits our objectives and how to get there you don't need all the det all those things are in there obviously right so Scott well this is where I was having some kind of prioritization of here's here's all the elements and I want to know how they map to each objective and what's a must have versus may I may I suggest so I think a accomplishes that but I think if you want to make it more clear well then you only need a you don't need all that other stuff then you say you just don't don't proceed until yeah until a is complete you just mark it but really this is you mean a a here one BA do a page break and just say objective dot do dot dot dot doia not to proceed until well what about space requirements though because that's part of the but I guess so what this is It's So if you don't include this then when they give you a cost and you come back and you say I want you to do site requirements and needs they're going to say okay it's an additional cost so you're you're saying this is the scope but don't okay so let me try we stay clearly upfront what our objectives are yes then we say the next thing you're going to do is go talk to stakeholders and the thing after that is you're going to look at the site and then the thing after that should be BAS come back and tell us how you can meet the objectives B based on what you've heard and then we have a discussion and then I guess we want these things to be part of your what okay initial I don't really know what proposed program is is that because it won't be schematic yet it'll just be what is 1B what is the work product at a 1B is it a plan program what is a program program decides what they're going to design what does that mean tell me in like English this room is used for meetings right so they going to say you need a a 400 foot room with six windows they're going to be that specific no it won't be with the six windows but they'll say for these functions you need this amount of space for those trucks you need that amount of space and right okay that's what the program is so in advance of a schematic design these a through maybe B through n they're going to give us a document what are we going to get out of that I don't really understand it because it seems to me like you should come up with a schematic that says this is or several schematics that say these are the kind of things that would meet those objectives then we drill down into it so programming is what do you want to accomplish in the building is a and then they're going to come back to you you're going to agree on programming and then they're going to come back to you with a schematic design that meets the program okay we had this for the DPW I don't know what those criteria were the same was I think so we didn't get this granular this is this is what we eventually did we just went through this process of the MFC for the DPW for what building for the DPW building to to look at it as though okay as though if if we are to do a new building there this is MFC D the MFC what what would it take and you have to do a site survey you have to look okay what is space do you have available where could you fit things so that's what he Brian is saying some of this but to the extent that you can limit this you're you don't want to make it too narrow so that then it's all add odds but at the same time you want to be specific so you know what you're getting right so C [Music] E I don't even know what some of this stuff is H what are those things those are what you said you wanted uh before this it's what the Architects found out when they did all their um interviews and all this stuff they they discovered that these are the space requirements um that this space should not be too far away from that space because you have to go through a contaminated space to get that's C okay so that makes sense so B A we already decided that's the first thing you do B and C makes spense Mak sense D is more background right isn't that that's well again that's that's some of the that's some of the stuff that they discovered they find out how many volunteers you have and you know what their their responsibilities are okay so they're reporting on all the things that's so I think those things are really okay all right then we're wearing them down all right wearing down no no I mean it's this is like this is the key phase right this is the key step the thing is it's important for us to understand what are too make sure it's right siiz okay so to Ryan's point they come back with so maybe the one editorial thing is just that there should be maybe Phase 1 B should be limited to item a and then Phase 1 c new Phase 1 C would be actually architectural programming there's got to be a step between between the site plan in Phase 1 a and us getting back and saying in a very high level what do you think where you going with this uh I don't rather than them trundle off and get all this granularity and we like well we don't want that because expensive there's now maybe that's just in the process of dialogue maybe yeah but all any any big any project building project needs a program a programming phase where they get all this information I think setting that cap or that is helpful because then they're going to work to that and if we're really Beyond it they should come to us sooner later say you know we're we're not going to hit this do in the thing here where it says the designer must receive the Committees written approval the updated site and environmental analysis and the updated architectural programming prior to progressing the subsequent work activities maybe we should say that during during the architectural programming if it becomes evident that we can't do this project within the stated budget that they need to come to us and give us an end room report or something like that so that we can do we they're going to do that anyway aren't they we have an hour right so this comes down to trust a little bit so the the architect you're hiring this is what they need to do to program what you're talking about is whether or not you trust what they say you can add that Clause but this is what all AR the reason you don't understand is because none of us are Architects so the The Architects do the programming and they're going to bring that to you they guarantee you some of the things they're going to say you're not going to want and it's going to be really whether or not you can with them to decide whether or not it's so they present that we weed some things out maybe before they progress to scheme that yeah oh yeah well that goes without saying I mean in terms of building won't work without that in terms if if site survey costs one unit of one what does programmatic planning cost and what does schematic cost give me like relative cost and effort to your experience very similar to the OPM so the OPM was 450,000 and the the first to get us to town meeting was 80,000 get us to town that part's relatively cheap the initial this is what we're doing now all of this yeah for 80,000 I don't know no that's the OPM no that's the OPM cost we're going have a sep yeah that's what I'm asking designer designer I think it'll be similar is what I'm saying so it'll be 400,000 is to get us how far through no it's another 80 to get us to town meeting to approve additional funding so 160 between the OPM and the designer okay so not really that much isn't it $10 million project and that would get us a schematic no us the programming we get us the program get us no it give you a schematic schema show what it's going to look like so 80 we can get all the way what you're telling me is you can get all the way through NO phase one for 160 you got the you got the OPM and you've got right we already have the OPM so this is additional the guys we're interviewing we're hiring the guys to hire these guys the we hired the guys to hire these well but we're going to interview well some Committee of people is going to interview them one we already committed a sensy 320,000 I mean 520,000 whatever 480,000 I'm sorry it's late we already committed half a million dollars to CMS to guide us to two town meeting and that we're going to go through all this we're going to spend another 80k is that I'm heing is let's say no no no we're not giving CMS that much to get the town meeting we don't have that okay I don't know I don't understand well it's do you want to walk us through it do you know it or not isn't that their fee for the project well you showed us lay their Fe for the project really the town meeting the arpa is covering cover it gets us the town meeting gets us town meeting 140 that's for both of them for both of them oh is we going be able to obligate this yes in time well it depends on if we don't we go tonight we're not meeting till January that's why we have to finish this up all right yeah we're the schule is we're going to finish this tonight they're going to then the OPM is going to take this is going to go get the bids go out or how many groups they're going to help we we're going to show us all of them we're going to likely select three maybe we one in January look at the schedule at the end January 17th I know I understand that I don't understand how you get the arpa money the arpa for the opms okay fair enough okay I don't know um I'm G to be specific again and just look at one thing under that um list of architectural programming I think um K where it says project development scheduling I think we got to say uh to uh to meet a May uh 18th town meeting deadline or whatever you want to call it right I think we got to put that in there yeah some of that I thought it was development of the whole thing meaning how long it would take if you use this if you built this whatever they come up with this is the how long it's going to take you it's going to take well well that's fine I'm just saying somewhere in here all right so I'm going to try and take us up okay up to the call the select board level so the theoretical select of so town meeting what you said you wanted to do was to bring a reasonable estimate of cost to the voters so that you could get design money right yes right so then then you could actually do the construction documents in design and bring the total final cost at a different town meeting right so all you're trying to accomplish here is all you're trying it's a lot but the the programming needs of the building the basic schematic design and a relative cost assessment yeah that's all you're getting done for town be right which is why Neil thinks they can get it done because for an architect and an OPM and a building decides it's not that complicated so okay all right it's really really the most difficult part of this is for you all to to agree to the programming so this document is supposed to get you a second expert that you can use to get to agreement on programming so they can tell you okay now we have to design this and it's going let's do it okay all right well then you know that calendar down there still says June 2025 so you have to correct that it has to be changed to May yep okay and and then there's still the paragraph in there that says that we're hire we are appointing a design selection committee which we are not you are the design select right okay so so the selectboard shall act as the you have to have a DSC and you're picking yourself okay so we can still say I notic there was six copies of the proposal I don't think you need why do you have to have some paper copies that's what I said so I said take that out of there do you want them to handle the cost so when they hand them out you don't have to print them oh oh okay we just look online we're all doing this but okay anyway that's would love that if everyone would just agree to the boiler in here has facts too please submit your facts you can take that out stone tablets please bring six Stone name address tell and fact numbers that's been around for a while okay all right whatever we'll give you my AOL address for that all right I think we've done it here y any everyone agree so we you are going to correct the June so the most important part of this document we didn't talk about didn't talk about which is the design selection criteria but is like before isn't it isn't it the yeah the rating that we talked about yeah where are the design advant yeah yeah here um wouldn't we be the same kind of thing focus on objectives right yeah right right design I think this is you did before right isn't it like the op are you're saying that the text of what highly inv vagous would mean that we we should be focusing on what highly ADV advantageous did did you do this or did see AED this all right that's fine did you review it I did all right then we done do you have any comments on it no I mean you're happy with it I am good it's just when you sit down and we're handcuffing you a little bit you have to remember number that you agreed to I know but it's all relative it's all relative right you think you're going to be able to rain Us in forget trying to give you the you forget but at that meeting you're like well we should have had a chance to review this this is your chance I just want to remember you is there a reason I not to get too great is there a reason number four only has a b and c yeah I wondered that too as opposed to AB it doesn't have a not advant C or unacceptable yeah it has oh yeah that's right it has an unacceptable it just doesn't have a not add I think that's one of the key ones understanding of the project project goals yeah you probably need to put you need to put a SE not adantage yeah and the other thing I just for our Ben from last time the quality of references add email in there to what they're giving us oh yeah good call oh yeah cuz I we had a hard time reaching references without emails will be ignored seriously yeah a good one yeah um question is as this are we gonna have to do this again depends how many we pick do what again oh go through the ranking you mean no no no the email reaching out to oh references potentially but if it's email it's it's a lot easier is all right it it gets our Buy in CS can do it oh I like that oh yes even better we' asked them too why can't they just pick the freaking because we want to pick them that's why we're okay all right and they'll help us pick the best war so Ryan you're going to finalize all the Sy I mean you have the objectives now you have to tweak a few things here and push it back out to them or what just need you to agree that this works so that what I'm hearing we've already done the objectives we agree on the programming um you're going to clarify that that select board will act as the design committee design selection committee we got to change the calendar to make and how far in advance because it says schematic be completed by June and for a June town meeting like how far in advance of the schematic being done do we need it to present the town meeting like should we say may one is the deadline I don't think we have a lot of control so when we know we'll we'll know so one of the questions you can ask the designer is can you have this done by April yeah yeah okay and if they say they yes of course we can then you just decide whether or not you believe you believe okay all right okay all right anything else Ryan you kept us on track he makes this process not me just so you know yes yeah but you don't need us to approve the document right no okay good okay great we have you have our feedback we give it our y okay great thank you all right let's move on um wow we are still more to do well it's Town Administrator report if you want to hear it or no we read it read it I did I have to say that might be new there's warrants a minutes we could do that next time because I I haven't a chance to the aison reports I don't see anymore and now we could come up with Community input is there anybody from the commun oh hold on I just have one youon report um just um one I was looking at the school committee agenda they're having their public budget hearing tomorrow oh so I'm just going to attend that I would dearly like to know what's driving that budget well I know it's driving the budget I just don't know what the process is because the last meeting was I don't know what happened between the last budget presentation and this budget presentation there's only been there hasn't been any meetings but they're having a public hearing so I don't know I'm just curious what the process is and it's only allocated 15 minutes on the agenda so but and is it is the included in the packet is there a proposed budet is it the same as the last one no it's what it's similar to what Ryan had in his but it's lower than the previous one so or whatever I don't know what yeah yeah I don't know what conversations have have happened so I'm I'm going to attend that and I I think com's aware of it as well okay I'm not sure what the process is I don't know if the I'm not sure they know yeah I think they're yeah Ryan I will give you time because I just if there's something you want to talk about yes yeah we don't mean to I'm gonna have to record The The podc J separately but the that's fine it's late U but there are three things that I do need to tell the the board so oh right we need a motion about Gretchen too first of all the the tax rate was reported incorrectly to this is important for public information so the at the tax classification hearing the tax rate was listed as 13.22 uh that did not include the free cash um in the do submission that was voted at town meeting so we don't feel like although it met your goals that we could just not do that since the town voted on it so the actual tax rate is 1318 which lowers everyone's taxes so we made a mistake that helped everybody let make more mistakes make more mistakes we got a lot of mistakes we need to make um included in your packet is the quarter 4 so this is the end of year really for for fy2 24 since June that right of I mean the quarter so it's May April June May April June of 24 this year okay reason why it's important is because it's the end of year which is what informed a lot of the intro that I had about the budget uh some things to note in our financial monitoring just pay attention to the financial monitoring section A lot of the audit recommendations have been implemented and the uh free cash numbers matter which was part of the the discussions earlier um I did approve old home day Town land usage you did delegate this to me I just want to make sure you know that all the signs and stuff you're used to that so just two more things I'm asking the board to vote to support naming Gretchen gallamore as the voting representative at the Maya annual meeting yep I'm not gonna be able to make it so she's going to serve as my proxy you have a motion on that yeah I move to name gret and gallamore as the voting representative at the miia annual meeting second any further discussion all Voice vote all in favor I None opposed the library trustees met last night I'm meeting with Martha this week to to talk about Library funding but I included a pretty significant chunk of information there about how costs have increased shockingly for the library renovation project so they really need to get um their arms wrapped around funding I it's their call I'm just helping support and sharing information with you but this obviously has implications on CPC money and other Financial aspects and looking through um just staff recognition is important to me so Jim Hall 30 years yeah that's quite a lot of time yeah making sure that everybody's safe on our roads so Jim's great and I just wanted to point that out John Maier is officially a Building Commissioner again so that's really good news and the City of Salem recognized the carile fire department for assisting with a 172 acre fire on October 26 you remember when we were going through the droughts there was fires everywhere um and Carl I was specifically called out for their ability to respond as one of the very few call fire departments that were included in a giant mass of firefighters so we can again be proud of them that's it so I I have one question Ryan on this TBA report on the fire station where we're now seem to be up to 3.55 million the police station police station I'm sorry that's what was voted at town meeting that was voted the 3.55 yep okay thank you on the upcoming dates um January 14th looks like our next meeting I would like to add an executive session ahead of that if that's possible the reason being is we have to decide if we want to um renew the ta's contract and we need to kind of make that decision if we're not going to before February 1 and I just think it would be important to have a a executive session and we can then in that session likely discuss how we want to intered as a board and who may might want to you know appoint to lead that charge so think about that so 630 6:30 on the U I will not be attending that meeting I'm going to be in France 6 hour time can't do a remotely 6 hours you could be at the executive session I can be at the executive session and maybe still be awake depending upon whether I have well we'll see what kind of high-fi I have 14 okay well I'll talk to you like to connect yeah fire so that's a joke include the January 8th and 9th as the uh departmental com put those and are they doing it similarly start the afternoon where they they'll have a schedule out though of who's coming when we have the schedule already and people are we're welcome to drop in if we want to public hearings and nobody ever attends you want to send it right except for me usually that great I have it too I guess I could send it yeah if somebody would send that there would be nice but usually they start at 3 and go till 7 it down and have pizza somewhere along the line right oh you're going for the pizza I always go for the pizza hey who cares about the budget all right all right we got to we got to keep going here right um so the 14th 6:30 y got it um okay um last would be public input unless there's anything by the select board anything else okay uh is there any public input we're at the end of the evening not from me what got you got your in I thought if I didn't say anything that you guys would like is he really there yeah I had it out you're written everybody's going to chime in saying the same now but all right thanks John thank you thank you all all right um so I'll take a motion to adjourn moved right all in favor I I okay we're done