which can be found at lunenberg ma.gov has the phone numbers you can use as well as the link to the zoom if you want to join either of those and with that let's rise for the Pledge of
Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for
[Music] all okay oh are there any announcements from the from the board I don't think I have any announcements all right is there any public comment
from the public bronda lysia 181 Reservoir Road um I have more of a question than a comment uh and I'm not I didn't wasn't sure if this I just want this to be addressed hopefully at some point during
today's tonight's meeting it's my recollection that how much we that the fact that we contribute to OPB is um has a direct
impact on our bond rating and I was just thinking about how we're not intent that there's a possibility we won't be contributing to that this year and I so I wanted to know what impact that would have on our bond
rating and especially due to the fact that we could be looking at like 5.8 up to like I don't know the possibility of what 32 million in debt exclusions so
I was just concerned about the our impact to um borrow thank you thank you Ken can you ask them to get two microphones for there and releas one for over thereit thank you uh thank you Rhonda um sitting there
well you guys can brief from there if you want okay well can you one for the table thank you all right is there any other public comment is there any public comment from the board no
all right any um Town manager Andor Finance director reports for us no no okay all right look at that we're already on number six all right so next up is either Municipal design or Parks did you guys
flip a coin to see who goes first okay no well I'll take all the moral support I can get uh good evening my name is Mich Ray Jeff I live at 1170 Mass AV in lunenberg and um here representing the
municipal building design committee good to see you guys again if you can just wait for one second um the presentation if you want to follow along is you got to go to linenberg and made a of boards and
commission lunenberg Municipal design and then there on the left hand side click the top and then there's one more for presentation so I was hoping that someone could share it in the room so I could see it off to my right here so I can I will share all right if the booth
is able to project it to the uh screen off to the right that' be excellent website boards and commissions and then scroll down lenberg mpal Des but before we start screen sharing I
wanted to speak a little bit uh okay first whatever works you can you can speak all right so first good evening I I met with you guys a little while ago to talk to you about this project and just want to give you the update on where we're currently at with this um
let me start I know the last time I was here meeting with you I did a kind of a longer history I I think it's relevant especially relevant now uh to talk about what the problem is that we're trying to solve cuz I think that's before it
starts so going back in time um you know we the TC pasal school and this is where uh some of this conversation Begins the TC pasal school was transferred from the school department part as care and custody of that building was transferred
from the uh school department over to the select board that then triggered uh on the select board side what we could do with that building um that started what we called a TC pasal design Committee in which we looked at how we
could purpose uh TC pasal to be a municipal um building uh and serve Municipal functions it's roughly a 55,000 ft building so it's a very large building uh we engaged in this process funds were appropriated uh in which we had hired uh an architectural firm uh to
be able to conduct some analysis of that building and how we could move in there uh the municipal building before we were called municipal building design the TC pasos uh design committee U met with a variety of community stakeholders um end users people who were Desiring space in
the building and ultimately uh where we landed was um was we had all 55,000 ft basically filled um we had a price tag of about uh 23 million uh we did our
cost estimation about 8 months out of town meeting uh we hit the pandemic and a whole bunch of other stuff costs went through the roof and by the time we were ready to come before the town in May that cost had skyrocketed to about $29 million uh and so it was a
rehabilitation project for the again the trigger there just to State this one more time was that the the building was no longer utilized for a school building it became a municipal building and we looked into how to purpose it as a municipal building we had a very high price tag uh and and that process did
not involve the historic buildings we have here in the center of town so and I'm just going to throw the number 30 million out there cuz that's roughly what it was for $30 million what you were spending was about 14 15 million of that was simply code upgrades and a code
upgrade is building still looks uses purpose everything's the same it's just meeting the current building code um you know things such as uh the building critical Building Systems the boilers need to get upgraded piping in the building is old we know it has lead in it all that needs to get pulled out uh
when you start touching that much of the building you know you got to upgrade the you meet the energy code which is substantially different uh there was no energy code uh when that building was built U so in in again seismic controls where you have to have steel reinforced roofs for seismic controls so you know
we were at a point where again 14 plus million dollar were just matching these code upgrades you know when you think about how to put a building back together after tearing all that stuff apart it was a lot of money spent so that way the building would look exactly the same uh there would be no exterior
difference really in how it looked um but again it was a $30 million price tag I think that from that point uh we were in front of town meeting and we decided to pass over the request for a vote um I think that we understood on the municipal building design committee as
well as uh I believe the select board understood that that that price tag really was just too high um too much money and and again it didn't address Ritter didn't address Town Hall and so it left these other buildings that we were going to you know address
at a future Point um but at a higher price tag I think we also heard concerns about the implication of a project that big on what is phased as a Turkey Hill Middle School expansion that was on the horizon I think we had a date targeted of about
2033 is I could be plus or minus a couple years there um but we understood that Turkey Hill was going to need a significant renovation and and one of the concerns was not boxing out uh capacity in the in debt capacity to be able to address those
needs as a property professional uh you know coming onto a board um as you know what happens is you kind of fall into the lead of whatever the previous board kind of what whatever path they set you on um you know I was a little concerned personally that I I thought we were
looking a little too small um and that we should have been looking a little more broadly nonetheless coming out of that town meeting what we did was we recharged select board being we the select board recharged that committee to being a municipal building design Committee in which it was looking at not
just the TC pasel building but also Town Hall also the Ritter building uh Brooks house uh was part of it as well and uh again uh something that just to remind uh the population we did not have a facility director we did not have Chris
Ruth that kind of high level high skill set level on staff that department was created while we were going through this process uh it is wonderful that we have Chris Ruth just want to highlight that um some processes probably would have been changed if we would have had that position in town and I'm glad that uh I
advocated heavily for that as well as others and I'm glad that the town ultimately created that department so the problem that we're trying to solve initially was how do we turn how do we repurpose the TC pasos but here's the real problem that we're trying to solve in Municipal
Building design committee this building I think people drive by it they've been seeing it their whole lives um you know but let's talk about what it really is like to work and live in this building not live but work in this building we know that all of us who sit on the stage at night it's freezing cold in here
especially when it's cold outside it's even colder in this room uh we have minimal insulation as we know uh in this building if you go into the attic space um you know you can you can see all the little holes that that look outside all the clock winders know it anyone that gets to go out outside knows that you
know this building has some concerns um it is a it was a former church that was moved to this site uh jacked up we added the first floor to it back in the 1800s but this town has never actually built a town hall so certain things have been addressed in the basement portion we
have a dirt floor underneath uh in the basement uh of this building uh we've had in the past uh series of sewer leaks uh that were in the basement of the building so the problem that we're trying to solve is is modernizing the building um trying to make sure that it it it's
properly heated we know we're wasting money every winter when we turn the heat on the staff who work in this building it's freezing cold anyone that's near near um a window uh a lot of space heaters get utilized in this building on a regular basis um it's not ada8
compliant and I know that many people who are in Ada America with Disabilities Act that's the federal law there's a state version I think it's called the aab or something like that um but it's not an accessible building so so if you are a person who has mobility issues you have to come into the building along the
ramp on the side a ramp which by the way isn't even fully on our property um most of it is on the neighbor's property um but you have to come into the building on on on the side entrance and then you can utilize the lift here uh to get to the floor um if anyone wants to go press
that button and see what it sounds like if someone actually were to use that lift in a meeting um you can get an idea that it's it's really you make quite the introduction you um part of what American with Disabilities Act is for and this is law so it's something that I actually agree with and and like but it
is the law is that you have to give people the Dignity of coming in the front door everyone from all Mobility types uh it's really not acceptable to say to someone you know you are a first class citizen you get to come in the front door you are a second class citizen you come in the second and side
door that's just not acceptable uh and so what we're trying to also solve is making sure that our buildings are accessible to all people of all different uh all different Mobility concerns Ritter building Ritter building was a library uh it was a library we built a new library then we repurposed
it as being kind of town hall Annex B essentially uh it's where all of our facility related um minici and we call them in in the Trade inspectional Services it's where the Building Commissioner land use director Board of Health all those types of services are housed at um again you're you're it's a
building that um was built uh was donated uh it was built in the early 1900s uh it's a couple feet off of above grade and so even with the addition that was done in the 1960s which is how currently we enter that building again
it's not it's not accessible um you have to walk up some stairs um how if you were a person with Mobility concerns you need to come into the entrance on the back side of the L use Department knock on the door wait for someone to open it come through someone's office area
before you can actually have access into the building and again you're not giving people the Dignity of walking in the front door which is a problem you say to hey if you are able-bodied and and excellent uh physical Mobility no no Mobility concerns you get the front door treatment um but if you are not uh then
you have to suffer through um you know waiting there I would encourage if anyone wants to experiment with this uh what it's like to try to come in these entrances try try just try uh sometimes you will wait uh especially if someone's on a lunch break someone's not there you're going to wait uh for a little bit
of time so you know think that also with Ritter building you know when you repurpose a building when you change the use of a building uh you know things change there's a reason why the ceilings or the walls in that building don't go all the way to the ceiling the reason is um that it was an old heating system and
when we put the um staff purposes in there we would have had to dramatically change the heating system in the building that was cost prohibitive and so to kind of reuse existing uh the floor the ceilings just the walls didn't go all the way to the ceiling so that we can distribute heat around the building building uh similar to what it was like
when it was an open Library um now we have had some upgrades to that building we have put in some heat pumps some other things to help out uh with that heating system but the problem that we're trying to solve there as well is making it a functional office building making in a functional building that's
that better meets the needs uh of the community so you know without any type of investment into these properties they are deteriorating uh just like in your own home you have to make improvements you have to make upgrades I think these buildings we keep slapping paint on them so they look pretty decent to people who
drive by um but R being an example uh when it snows we get snow into the building um we get rain we get rain into people's offices uh when the wind's blowing it blows papers off people's desks no I think we all can agree that that is wasting our money um but not
just wasting our money let's talk about like The Human Side of this which is you know when you're working in a substandard environment it does not exactly make you think that you're you're there to do the best work possible I'm not trying to say that our staff are not able to achieve and overcome because they are they
absolutely are um but I think we have a responsibility to to give our our staff uh a working environment uh that better meets their needs and better meets our needs um so some of the if I can summarize then the problem that we're
trying to solve is how we can preserve these buildings to be here for the rest of our lifetimes and hopefully everyone's children children's lifetimes so you know as we go through this presentation uh I'm going to show you several things but what I want to
highlight here is is is really some bottom line numbers here uh we have an energy code now that that again didn't exist before when you start touching a certain percentage of a building uh certain percentage of the building's value that that triggers meeting the new energy code uh which means that you have
to upgrade everything you got to fully insulate the building and and so simply just doing those basic type functions you know you're in the millions of upon millions of dollars to be able to do this so I I believe that what the municipal building design committee did
in this process was we tried to take the most cost effective way to solve what we perceived as the problem uh which is if you come into let's say you are someone who's in a wheelchair and you don't know which building to go into and you accidentally come here to town hall and
you should go across the street um it's a problem and and it's a process and that again is not the type of community that I believe that we should be not in 2025 and it's not the community that I think that most people uh would expect and what what happens is when buildings
are not accessible to people they just won't use them and they just don't show up uh I remember my father wanted to come to a town meeting God Rest his soul he refused to use this lift and he couldn't get up the stairs and it's that type of stuff that you know if you are
actively and I think at a certain point it becomes a deliberate decision and I think if you can do something better and you choose not to it is a deliberate decision when you are actively discouraging people from participating in government uh it is not the right approach now one of the things that
we've heard as far as you know why do we even need buildings these days like why can't we just go remote for a lot of the Town services and we've heard these concerns come out of the some members of the community who maybe don't fully understand that we get a lot of foot traffic in these buildings you know if
you're a developer and many people don't ever build anything but if you are a developer you're going to have multiple in-person meetings with someone to go over your plans um you're going to try to design this with your with your Building Commissioner with your land use director with your Board of Health
you're going to talk through all this stuff before you start going through the permanent process you're going to do this in the design phase it's a lot of meetings um you if you ever want to just hey if you question the validity of what I'm saying what I would say is come park outside come park outside across the street and just sit there or Park
yourself in the lobby of this building sit right across Ross from the Town Clerk and observe the foot traffic that actually comes in this building when someone has a question about what's going on with their home assessment that there's someone that they can talk to uh we all know that technology doesn't always work and not everyone's able to
use it um when you have to you know do your registration for voters you can meet with the town clerk you can meet with the assistant town clerk you need to do your dog registration when you need to pay your taxes and you want to make sure that they're paid that it's that it's considered not everyone's comfortable paying bills online and so
government needs to meet the needs of people and if you ever want to meet with anyone in this in this building remotely you can call and say hey can we set up a remote meeting they'll schedule it with you um but I think that what we have is we have to be able to meet people where they are and that's a combination of
imperson It's a combination of remote um but it is going to be here for the foreseeable future these are the problems we've tried to solve so in the most coste effective way as we've tried to approach this is meeting with different departments understand their needs there are some things that quite
frankly I I'll be honest I didn't agree with I did not agree with the school committee uh excuse me the school superintendent when she was adamant that the Ace Program which is 18 through roughly 22 year olds who need additional Services after they graduate high school that they need to be collocated with
their school district it didn't make any sense to me right and and I I it just didn't follow but I'm not an educator right and and when you are in the to me part of government is working together I have to be able to look at you as a professional in your field and trust
that you are the subject matter expert and so at a certain point I have to just accept that you know what you're talking about you have a doctorate you know what I mean I don't I don't have it in education so at some point in processes I think that the committee vetted a lot of the requests that we received uh we
went down from what was a 55,000 Square for request uh closer to about 25 20 I think we're at about 25,000 ft is um so we went down in the square footage we had to make some tough decisions but at the same time we had to listen to the professionals who made recommendations
to us and so what a good plan is is it's always something you don't like and it's something you do like and that's the compromise and so even as I go through what I'm about to go through with you there are parts of this that I don't personally like uh and there are parts
that I really do love um but in community we have to meet everyone's needs and I think that what this plan does uh is meet the needs of the community again in the most cost-effective way so let me show you how we did it if we can start going through these slides we'll walk through them give me one
second so in this process while you're pulling that up uh we were able to utilize so in the past we've had several studies done um I I I don't have the total dollar amount we've spent but I believe to get to the point we're at today uh we're about $800,000 in hold
one second sorry sure I did email mail it to everyone um while um Michel cor started so we've had numerous studies a tap study a Vertex study to look at our buildings uh we had again contracted with a uh design consultant as the TC
pels building uh committee design committee and in this round uh we were able to utilize arpa funding uh uh we were in in the utilization of Opera funding we brought on uh a really high-powered uh architectural firm and
that that included Structural Engineers mechanical engineers cuz what we wanted to get was a work product at the end of this a design uh that answered as many questions as we possibly could which as few uh known unknowns uh as as possible and I like the phrase Donal R FS known
unknowns it's a good one all right so if we can pull up the presentation uh let me just walk you through this a little quickly um because I think that by this point many of you have already seen this a couple of times uh so this is just the overview of what we're going to be talking out next slide please and we're
going to again crank through this keep going yes oh oh stop there site plan all right so what the site plan uh depicts here is it just shows what we're talking about that we're talking about town hall we're talking about Ritter building which is across the street um and we're talking about that that larger
parcel um this is a photov voltaic array what this shows is that um one of the things that we're interested in in the parking lot that we're looking to build across the way is adding solar pan onto that parking lot uh if the federal government stays true to what they've
already passed and appropriated um there is a funding source out there in the inflation uh reduct act uh that provides 75% um payment for U municipalities that install photovoltaic cells this is huge um we in Massachusetts we have a
directive that's come from our governor uh that indicates that municipalities need to design buildings that do not rely upon fossil fuels uh and and we all know that we live in unial world where the cost of electricity is ridiculous uh and so we definitely uh have
Incorporated a concept of um photovoltaic solar panels so that way that helps offset some costs next slide please so there were alternative sites that were studied previously in the vertex report uh and the uh one of the others I mean you know I think I've
heard so much data at this point it's I don't want to be confusing but the tapier vertex we did look at alternative sites previously but in this process as well we did ask our our architect to look at alternative sites um and you know which side of the building should we be on the right side the left side we
heard some concerns coming out of um uh one of the members of the of the architectural preservation district and we really tried to take that seriously U But ultimately you know there were concerns if we were to move this to the side of the if we were to demolish the 18 the 1960 something addition and put
the building there I think the committee voted on this but we were concerned that it would eat the intersection um that you know a large Building located really close to the roads there that that just really decreases that open feel when you come up on the intersection of uh massav
and Lancaster R next slide please all right so this is basically the layout of what the plan is and uh I'm going to kind of show you I know this is a a top down bird's eye kind of view looking at a floor plan not everyone is able to look at floor plans and understand what they mean um so just
to kind of identify what we're talking about here the Ritter building is that building that's right in the middle there um and on the and and to the right where we have that addition that is the Ritter building what we're depicting here on the left uh is the new town hall
uh to explain the shape a little bit here uh and let's talk about that so this building as it sits right now the Ritter building is not oriented north to south uh it is a little bit off uh and then we have school Street which comes down which is not quite a north to south
east to west building either or Road either and so to maintain some level of symmetry when you look at it from the front side or from the you know coming in from um uh from the schools going westbound on 2A uh coming south you know
toward Lancaster AV um even going north uh you know to um center of town that for the most part what you're going to see is a large symmetrical building on the front side uh we needed to find some space we didn't want to have an odd-shaped building where the whole thing is a rectangle that's tilted to a
more north south orientation and so what we did was we squared off the building so that way even though the orientation is not ideal but the building on the front is a bit squared uh and then it gives us and we have Bridges a bridge there and it gives us some capacity on the backs side of the building to really
um I wouldn't say tuck but to uh have the majority of the building uh kind of in the backside so it really makes use of the parcel and that's why there is this somewhat of an irregular shape something that we were also looking at is how we can maximize the square
footage we have numerous iterations of this plan um but what we're seeing here is we met with a different town departments we met with all the key stakeholders here and what the assumption is is that most people will likely enter this building from the side entrance um and not from the front from
the massav entrance but from the school Street side so as we see that kind of Gap that opening that doorway that's where we expect most people to come into the building um after meeting with the town clerk meeting with the um Town accountant and the tax collector that what we did there was we put the tax
collector and town accountant first so as they're they get pretty good foot traffic um and then you have the town clerk next we've also added in additional windows that uh the town accountant function is largely interacting with Town departments where
as the tax collector function interacts largely with the public and so we've created two service Windows here uh that are visible from both the tax collector and the tax accountant's offices uh we've given them glass walls so that way there's visibility into the entire area
and and and it creates a dynamic if you've ever come here sometimes the cue to be able to get pay your bills could be three four five people deep it gives us an opportunity to have a secondary window there so that way if there's a longer line uh that the tax collector
can come and take someone at me with a tax accountant window um we've also been mindful of foot traffic uh and how that also works so we've created that kind of opening uh for the um town clerk so that way we don't have people kind of on top of one another in the middle of the
building you also have an elevator so it's a centrally located elevator that brings you up to the second floor uh where we have additional functions on the first floor as well you have the assessors so it's largely the fun that already happen on the first floor of town meeting now uh and then you have a
bridge that divides the buildings what we expect is that the public is not going to be able to walk from um the um town uh Hall portion into the school um portion that that is not necessarily going to be a walkway but what it
creates is it allows by having that common hallway it allows staff to come in that way it allows there to be shared break rooms which decreases the need for there to be duplic break rooms it allows for there to be U shared bathrooms in the building which also decreases some of that need and that was some of the
concept of of what we were going for uh here um next slide please and uh I wish I had this in front of I have to step over to look at it little it's a little bit uh little bit hard to read but we can go to the next
slide all right so this slide brings us up to the second floor and what we're looking at on the second floor on the uh Town side and I didn't Focus too much on what was going on Ritter but I will explain that on the new town hall um this again is is many of the functions that
currently happen at the Ritter building right now this is largely inspectional services and so what you have here is you have a a larger bull pin that's been created to kind of merge that you know land use has oversighted over planning over conservation uh and so it merges
the conservation and planning or land use departments into one common kind of area uh we also have the town manager that is located on the second floor the town manager's office as we know has has grown a little bit from uh you know 10 years ago so we do have a communication
specialist we have an admin we have the town manager we have an HR Director uh and so we do have a little bit of capacity there um as we look uh down the hall we also have like the Building Commissioner would be located there uh the Board of Health would be located there and something that we was
important to us was future proofing this so allowing us to create enough room so that way in the future if the town continues to grow that we won't need another building but that way we can just repurpose certain spaces for it so the area directly facing massav the front of the building which now is kind
of a holding area uh area to kind of sit and wait that becomes uh could become a future office some of the space that's been designated for storage uh in the uh in the uh planning area also could be converted in the future to a um to an
office and then the whole building is wrapped with Windows um you know I think it f feeds into the concept of how important it is for um people to see natural light during the Working Day on the town on the Ritter building side what we have there on the first floor um
and if we can just go back to slides I do want to speak to the school School uh district offices here if we can just go back two slides and come back to this all right this is it so when you come in on the Ritter side Ritter side is again even though it's two separate buildings that are connected so we have
Ritter building School District we have town hall and the Ritter side you come in that door now you have a nice landing area uh that sometimes when parents need to come fill out paperwork that there's a a private type of um cubicle like office that that they can go into for one toone meetings or just to sit and
fill out paperwork work the Ace Program uh has adequate room and what is identified now uh as the land use area this again becomes future proof if in the future there's a Turkey Hill project and and a decision is made in the future that the Ace Program doesn't need to be collocated here this becomes future
expansion space for the district um as we look um down at what happens in what we call the lower level of the Ritter building it is a partial basement but is not a basement that is just the lower level this used to historically be where the kids section was U but we have our large what we call MEP mechanical
electrical Plumbing room that doesn't change a lot of the the walls here don't change everything we could do to minimize cost was done here um but you have basically um a lot of different um all the different District staff there's a bullpen area for the admins you have
offices some of them are shared offices and then um we have a modernized lift in that building uh if we can go now two more slides ahead so I can just talk to the second floor of the Ritter on the second floor of the Ritter um we have the superintendent's office we have the
HR director's office um and that's basically those functions that live there and then again we also have that initial bull pin area for the admins uh the school department has uh I believe five or six different um um administrative type positions give for
different functions and so they would be located on the lower floor and Upper Floor um areas and again we've created this kind of area to contain so that way if you're using the you don't have full access into all those private records and files in everyone's office and so it's a little bit more controlled on the access side
of it there's a rear stairwell that used to be there that gets eliminated because the buildings are connected now so there's multiple ways of egress uh and so that becomes additional storage capacity one of the cool things I want to want to note is that what we identify
here as a superintendent's office that we do have a time capsule in this building and so I think that during this renovation there's a lot of interest in uh opening that time capsule up and seeing what's in it all right next slide please and uh this is a little difficult to read on the screen so next
slide all right so this one is just going into a lot more this is the basement so one of the things that um we also accommodated for was pack and this was a little controversial and let me just speak to that bluntly um several members of the community have been very
vocal that we should not be in the business of building space for Public Access television um that there uh we've heard a lot of criticism um about that there's a lot of interest in the programming that pack does as it relates to broadcasting me meetings like this
this is how many people become aware of what's going on in town government is the work of the pack uh and there was concern about you know how much how much is is really how much interest is there in the content uh that Pac creates and I think that you know the world that we're
going in where it's a more digital world where most content that we're seeing is online I think that what Pac made a compelling argument for is that if they had better facilities that they could that they would be able to produce the um they would be able to improve upon uh the content that they currently create
as well as create opportunities for other members of the community students Etc to be able to create uh content as well Pac does have some money uh that they can utilize and I think the plan expects that pack will expend upwards of
$900,000 or so to outfit this portion of their of the building um out of their funds so that's not added into the total project cost is is the outfitting of this space um ultimately it is cheaper to dig than it is to build um and that
is the bottom line U pack is looking for space they don't need the windows they need to kind of minimize sounds and so a basement build uh seem to make the most sense um you know I think that the ad here it's a it's a fraction of what it would cost to build
them a building on the site so it also allows us to take um some of those you know the water system the sewer system some of those electrical rooms it allows us to bring them into the basement and take them off of prime real estate on the first or second floor which is a
huge deal um and so it also provides a town with capacity in the future if needed uh for additional storage one thing that this plan highlights is that we have given ourselves a buffer here of distance from the existing Ritter building because as you dig down it can disrupt foundations of nearby buildings
so we do have here a buffer the entire footprint of the new town hall does not have a basement underneath it it is a portion and the majority portion of the new footprint that does so that this slide is just highlighting unexcavated portions and then how the remaining portions will be utilized Iz again
stairwell coming down two stairwells and we have the elevator as well that comes down next slide please and next slide please all right so this is the rendering so this is what the building will look like um as you come up massav and look at it so we have
the existing Ritter building largely going to look pretty similar um with a couple modifications and then we have what this building will look like um we went through this in a couple good conversations our architect did provide us with several options and I think what we were trying to do is is match the
existing style that exists in the center of town we didn't want to have this you know First Bank of Lunenburg type look here we didn't want to have a a congressional building type look um and so you know we are using you know um clapboard type you know look here we are
we do have a covered patio as we go into the center of town there are several covered porches or covered um patios that we see and so it it mimics or replicates that also one of the things that we understand is um when you look at design standards for how to add on to
an existing historical building um one of the the features that the department of interior creates these standards and one of their standards is that an addition to a historical building needs to look distinctively different that you don't mimic something that's 200 years old or 1 years old U that instead you
complement something that is 10 something years old and so I I think that what we have is a complimentary view here um and what we've created in in front of the Ritter building there used to be stairs there so we used to enter their Ritter building from the stairs right in the middle of the building those were removed a while back
and uh I think we all believe that what remains there is a wound or a scar on that building and so what we've done here is we've gotten creative with adding in essentially kind of a layered platform that says to the public that this isn't a stairway in um but it creates a a sitting platform and when
there are those kind of community events or a place for staff to kind of go to and and sit at next slide please this is just a rendering of what it could look like for our 300th anniversary because of course if we uh do this we should be done in time and
what G great gift to give our town but a new town hall for the first time in 300 years uh next slide please so this is just another rendering that kind of shows what that walkway looks like again we're trying to incorporate as much natural light into this as we can um and then understanding
that certain functions do occur in the center of town and that if you know you're having a farmers market and people are out and about and it starts raining that you give people a place to kind of go stand underneath next slide [Applause] please and this is looking at it coming
from the parking lot area the back of the building um so as you approach the back of the um come to the building which is how we would expect most people would be coming toward this building uh is that you have this this walkway to get there you have that covered um
covered patio or covered porch to get to that main or side entrance next slide please one consideration in the layout as well was the fire department and making sure that fire vehicles can get around this building fully and so that
was and and uh and we have we're pretty close to the property lines back there so that was one of the considerations as well or rather one of the limitations in the plan if you were to come in the front door this is what you'd be looking at and this is just kind of a sample I know it's kind of warm colors but you'd
come in the front door uh and and you'd be able to see similar to downstairs we have the different signage you can see pretty clearly um that you have the board of assessors on the right as you go down the hallway you can see the tax collector uh and you can also see the town clerk area as well stairs that
would go upstairs to the inspectional services or you can get to the center of the building and take the elevator to the second floor next slide please and this again highlights um some of the um you know because of the windows and helping get natural light into the center of the building um you
know glass does have a little bit more of a cost on the initial side of installation but it has a much longer cost long term uh for maintenance and so it it allows us to uh wisely find a way to maintain this building uh it's a surface that doesn't need to be
repurposed or repainted and replaced um and again it allows people who are coming down the hallway to be transparent to be able to see government and and know because if you come out the elevator you need to see kind of where you're going so it doesn't just look like a bunch of hallways with with doors
next slide please all right this is the Ritter entrance and so this would be the new entrance to the school department so one of the the features that you saw on that previous slides was that everyone has a Dignity of coming in the door that there's no more first class citizen
entrance second class citizen entrance uh that now you have entrances that are accessible to all and similarly that's the concept here that what we've created is a is a sloped walkway um and that way you allow anyone uh they start at the same point at the base of the stairs if
you have a Mobility concern if you have a stroller you take this slope ramp and it lands you right before the doors if you are able bodied and you're able to walk up the stairs it also lands you at that same spot and so no matter who you are you are at the same Landing point when you come into the building um and
what's been done here is a nice covered um area the doors have been right now the existing doors that are on the RAR of building uh a greater distance they have to be separated a little bit more to be compliant with the ADA rules and so a little bit more distance has been created to make that an accessible
entrance um next slide please and the intent there was to reuse some of the existing fill stones that already exist in that parking lot so this um now we're getting into this building town hall which we are calling the meeting house um and so the meeting
house will largely um footprint wise be exactly the same um but you come in the and we're showing both floors here so we'll just talk about it on the first floor as you look at the first floor what is now the assessor's office becomes a conference room what is now the town clerk's office um uh and the
copy area becomes another conference or meeting room and what is now the um Finance area becomes a large meeting room and so we create four excuse me three meeting rooms on the first floor of this of this building uh we add into the bathrooms we also upgrade and
modernize the lift that's in here uh and we create some storage rooms as well we also keep an office uh uh potential on the first floor so again as one of the concepts who was future proofing uh and I I think that what this helps do is in addition to the meetings that happen at
night that something we heard in this process was that you know AA meetings allanon meetings U Boy Scouts Girl Scouts it provides a space for people to be able to utilize in the community uh during the day uh artists can be able to
display artwork and rent out a room Etc so it becomes space that can have some potential income potential on it as well as better meeting the needs of the entire Community um which there is a demand and need for meeting space in our community the second floor what we
create is what is now the uh Town manager entrance to the office this is how you get upstairs to the clock that we create a gallery here um and so and then what we do in this room is we get this room back to its original footprint so right behind me is where we have the town manager Office we have the HR
director's office those rooms will get removed and so this becomes a larger meeting room to again meet the needs of our community as we advance into the future next slide please just have to wait for the ketchup on my side and uh with this shows is the
before of what it's like to come into the front door and let's just go to the next slide and go to the after so what we're also doing is regrading the sidewalk on the front of the door right now if you come into town hall on the front door there's a step up U which is a problem and so what we do is we we
change the pitch so that way we allow everyone from all different mobilities to have the Dignity of walking in the front door or wheeling in the front door next slide please all right so we're going to quickly crank through these next ones uh
next slide please these are the structural related slides and U we are going to see some stuff in the basement here next slide please next slide please is it just not catching up yeah it's just a little slow on the side yep we're here now so what this shows is the
basement so this view is basically if I were to transport myself to floors down and turn around uh this would be the view looking this way uh so this would be the view looking towards Main Street uh from the basement and so essentially
our exterior wall is there what we have is we have columns in the basement that are roughly about here and so from the wall to a little past me uh is where we have uh our first support columns what we know happens on the first floor right
now is a lot of paper is stored uh in the finance area of this building uh next slide please so what the structural engineer is just demonstrating here is how they're going to remedy uh some of the leveling issues that we have in this building this building is not uh very
level um and so how they're going to do it you know they got to lift they got to replace re rescure some columns uh add in additionals that's the gist of what we're highlighting here so we can just crank through these and next slide please and there is one good photo which I think is of our finance director's
desk yep so let's look at this so one of the things that happens in this building is it's so unlevel we're showing the finance director's desk here on the left hand side where most of the desk in this building especially on the first floor they have you know because it's so uneven from one side of the desk to the other that that most people have to put
you know a couple inches 2 Ines or so to make sure that they can get the desk to be a little more level and uh the way to fix this is by fixing the floor um and so again these are these are structural things that you know I don't think anyone designs a house to have a grade
difference of literally 5T of 2 in that is quite significant um and so again these are the problems that we're trying to to solve next slide and uh yeah this is just speaking to the entrance accessibility next slide please
let's get to we're getting close to the money slide because let's just talk about what this is going to cost us so this is just showing some minor stuff the ramp that's on the side of the building that needs get upgraded and and replaced because we have splintering wood and you know column support stuff like that uh next slide
please and what this slide is demonstrating is what the attic looks like and uh you know what what it looks like in the Attic is we're missing some supports we're missing some members we have some significant wood rot right across the front of the building if you look at Town Hall and really look at it you'll see right in the middle of the
building kind of right above the doors you'll see like a little bit of a dip um and that's because what's on the back side of that is some rotted wood uh and so you know what this does is it helps um correct that uh and and fix some of the the wood rot that we have uh inside
of this building next slide please please all right and then uh Ritter building is in great structural condition generally um that's the gist but let's keep going here next slide but you will have some um some minor uh changes to the to the building
here as well uh again for the most part these are full guts uh to be able to meet the current energy code you need to do a full gut to do it um and so these are full guts and I think the thought process is if you have to do a full cut um to meet the current energy code uh
and and other other things that are triggered by this um you know you might as well make some improvements while you're at it next slide this is just demonstrating the attic of the um of the existing Ritter building uh Ritter building was built for books so it does have a higher
pounds per square foot it is one of the highest standards uh uh for buildings that you get is libraries because of how heavy the books are uh and so this this building is really structurally sound uh next slide please all right and this just kind of
shows um you know as the engineers were discussing this with us the the uh extent of the new construction uh and how how big that actually is next slide please next slide please like I said we're to crank through some of
these next slide this is just demonstrating some of the underpinning that's going to happen during construction um and then this just kind of demonstrates in the new town hall how the new town hall would be built um you know that it's going to be a steel frame building etc etc um but it will have you
know um you know a lot of wood in it next slide all right and next slide I think we're getting the money slide here all right let's talk money so how much is all this going to cost bottom
line about 23 $22 million in the highend so let me break it down let me break this one down so we have a cost estimate of what the actual construction is going to cost the actual construction is going
to be somewhere around 13 or so million dollar however we are a state uh entity we are a municipality so we don't get to do what everyone else gets to do which is just hire a contractor and get it done um that there's other requirements
that are on us so when we talk about contingencies and and escalations you know we know that something this big is going to take some time to build that the costs are going to go up so we need to account for escalators what is the building material cost today what will it be when this project is complete we
need to account for that the other thing is some there are some unknowns here some of the unknowns are um you know how far down the ledge actually is um and and we did not do soil sample so there's going to be a need to do soil testing um
and we may uh I think the information we have is we don't believe we're going to hit ledge um but if we do then we're going to have to you know do some extra work because of that or make modifications to the design uh and so we are carrying some cost related to again
the known unknowns of uh of of of what we do know we don't know and then you also H hit another thing of construction supervision we also have like hazards material abatement uh we know that we have hazards material in the Ritter
building a little bit in this building we believe it's isolated to the windows in this building in the basement only um I think we have some anal of where it's at the Ritter building um but we're going to need to do a full Hazmat survey uh again and we're going to need to
identify what those removal costs are so again these things go into the known unknowns things we don't today know what they're going to cost but we know that we got to carry some money for them we also have to hire um basically a project manager with this dollar amount the
state says we need to hire an OPM uh someone who's going to come in and make sure that we're spending the taxpayer money correctly to the tune of of another 5 to 7% of the project and so um this is a requirement we can't get out of this uh and so this is also here we
also have some alternates here of what it's going to be if we were to move forward with those fov vix cells uh if we were to you know the building code requires us to plan for I believe it's uh 21 EV charging stations and So based
on the parking calculations we have to put in the um roughage the conduit for 21 charging stations we think we're only going to need like two or three um but we still have to plan for them to be able to be added at some point so this isn't putting in 21 charging stations or
the wiring it's putting all the conduit so that way at some point in the future we could put them in and so what this add alternate cost is is if we were actually going to put in 21 charging stations um and then we also have a cost here of the um what was that one
basement U meeting house basement slab that if we wanted to get rid of the dirt floor that's in the basement here and put concrete instead that's what this cost is I'm taking a lot of time so let me try to speed this up here next slide oh this is the last slide let me keep talking then so what you want to ask me about is how much is it going to cost
per household um so at 22,300 assuming the high dollar value here let's go into it if we were to do a roughly 30-year Bond um the average cost
per household would be $33 during the life of repaying that if we were to do a 20-year Bond the average it's going to there's some variance here by the year but generally the average price of the household is closer to 400
uh many years it's about 385 so this isn't a true number in the sense that we have some debt that's already there that is coming off the books so you know what we have to do is is is you know really analyze and I think we'll have these numbers coming
soon is analyzing it with the debt that comes off and the new debt coming on how much is this really adding to everyone's bill because for example this year we know that we have um about $300,000 or so dollars in debt that comes off am I correct on this one I don't see the town
manager in here yet thank you we have about 3,000 uh in debt payments that we're making that are coming off the books and so as new debt comes on like I said it's not it's not quite an ad it's not necessarily a full ad because if debt
comes off U you're replacing debt with new debt if that makes sense I do want to point out I think you're quoting the 300 is the uh under regular debt regular debt but we also have excludable debt corre that's coming off yes and I'm speaking of excludable debt U so I don't
know I don't know what that is I did yeah for that we so that is something we've we met with Bond counsil we did ask for that anal and we do expect to have that soon but again um you know we know that we do have some debt expiring and so like I said it's not a true ad but I think it's fair to tell the public
what this going to cost them and what it's going to cost them if a 30-year loan is about 300 bucks a household if it's a 20-year Bond rather it is closer to $400 a household um what I'm showing here is year one would be the most costly year
514 um and then as you go down year 2 492 year 3 490 um and by the time you get about uh year 202 excuse me 2033 we're at 444 20134 $415 a household and
in the last you know 10 years it's 385 a household so that was more of a graduated uh way of looking at it that they kind of did that analysis for us um so so if we do nothing um which is always an option right
uh status quo everyone loves it so if we do nothing um it is always an option but let's talk about the risk the risk is that these buildings are not sprinklered um we start digging into sprinklers taking off ceilings taking off everything you can definitely do an add on but again once you start touching a
certain percentage of the building it does have other Triggers on it but these buildings aren't sprinklered so the worst thing you can do is H is is if these buildings were to go up in Flames uh there's no there's no natural uh fire prevention uh methods that are inside of
these buildings they will burn down um and then we will need to borrow some money and replace them uh insurance will cover some of it um but again uh you know the other the other thing that we have about status quo and the risk is you know inflation so roughly every two
years that go by that we do nothing we will get a building that is 10% smaller for the same dollar amount or or another way of thinking about that is if we want to get the same you know you could think of that however you want to but basically that's the math is it's
roughly a little more than two years but every two years or so uh the building would need to be 10% smaller uh to keep the price the same you know if you can think of it that way or you get a you know smaller building and then you know 10% smaller building for the same price however you want to look at it but uh
there is risk of doing nothing um and that's always an option on the table uh when we think about what it would cost if we didn't expand the footprint if we just took everything out of these buildings and just kept them exactly the functioning that they are uh we do have
that in another analysis that cost that construction cost comes to and if we don't do a new town hall so if we don't do a new town hall we just touch this building we just touch Ritter we keep them in the existing form I believe in our analysis we have a dollar tag closer
to uh 67 million construction cost which means a total price tag of closer to 15 million 14 million I believe but I can come back to in that one so I mean there is cost there is real implication of doing nothing and there is cost of if we just keep doing business the way we're
doing it but again one thing we didn't account for is if we were what this plan does is it allows us to build a new town hall it doesn't give additional cost for the relocation of Staff during the construction because we're building it
new and it allows everyone to then move move from this building into that building and then we can work on the Ritter building uh and work on Town Hall so minimal displacement of Staff during the construction phase if we were to have to displace our staff for 18 months
to reconstruct this building and a Ritter building there would be a multi-million dollar or a Million Dollar Plus cost that would be added into this project that we are currently not accounting for for that displacement of staff so you know we did not do a lot of analysis on what would do if we didn't
do this plan but based on the numbers we can back out a couple of of numbers to figure things out and we figure out that you know we I can definitely get back to what that backed out number is let me not speak out of turn so I can get back to on that that is it thank you for the
hour uh any questions you have for me right start yeah I got a couple um so just say thank you first because that was a great presentation guys obviously did a lot of work on that um
uh the the rendering that you showed in the funding is that funded as rendered so like the money that you're asking for for the new facility will it look like what the rendering shows so there's a yes to that but there's also a
no to that so let me tell you the yes so the yes is what we are depicting is exactly what we've priced out so our cost estimate is going off of in the photos we're showing that is what we will be buying for rough 22 plus million that is a yes the no part of that is
there's another phase of this so if we approve all this funding at town meeting what then happens is we need to get to construction documents and during that process of getting to construction documents there are always modifications in design because now you know in this
plan this is showing what it's going to look like but we're not accounting for you know where's the wet stack going to be you know and when you start putting plumbing through buildings rooms start getting little you start getting little columns in them or different things and and so those have some cost um you know
to make up square footage you might make additional minor modifications and during that process again you may have members of the public that say I like this but let's just make a little minor tweak you also have changes of membership of boards that members of the boards can also change but I think the
sales pitch to the town is if you sell the town and a building that looks this way it needs to look substantially similar to what it we're showing it that is an AB absolute but I do expect realistically some minor changes coming out of the construction document phase okay yeah now I've just seen
construction documents and then when it's all said and done it's completely it's like this a dog house you know what I mean yeah um so this is adding this would add a considerable amount of square footage to the town you know as far as buildings go and you're adding a
whole new building and such did anybody do a cost analysis on what it's going to take to take care of of that over and above what we have now yeah so the answer the short answer is limited um so it is very difficult it is very
difficult to evaluate um without the specifics of what is your heating system what what you know we have some ideas based on the mechanical engineer but it's very difficult at this phase of the project to give exact costs for what maintenance will be however um as we go
into town meeting I do expect that we'll have certain cost identifi like cleaning costs um some of those basic maintenance one of the things we considered with this walkway was decreasing the need for snow removal around the building because we've put a walkway up that kind of flows into the road um and so that was
something we thought about um we also thought about with the solar panels over the parking lot making snow removal easier because you have a lot of area that naturally won't get snow uh so those things were cost considerations that went into the design but I am not able to stand before you to today uh and
say to you this is what this building will cost to maintain and I think it would be I also think it would be wrong for me to do that uh I think if I were to go back three years ago and say you know this is what the town's going to cost to run in three years from now and this is what the schools going to cost
in three years to run from now I would have been dead wrong and I I think I would be dead wrong to tell you that I have a good estimate of Maintenance but what I feel confident in telling you is that we've considered that and we've tried to do everything we can to minimize cost throughout this building
for maintenance okay yeah I think you'll find the the uh raised up solar panels have the opposite effect you think they actually do because you have to clean them off or they will slide off on people y so I've I've seen that happen at customers and it's it's a lawsuit
waiting to happen tell you the truth um oh just last thing on the car chargers did anybody address rebates incentives with you till so the answer is no um however we know that they exist so what we are
expecting in this uh process is uh it is a code requirement uh we know and I'll stand here today and tell you that you know and I think Onna anyone from The Parks Commission will will concur that you should apply for a grant um once you
kind of have your building approved um so that way you take advantage and actually get to touch that money uh one of the things we know know is that there's a lot of money out there to be supportive to these kinds of projects as I mentioned if the federal government comes through on the IRA we know that most of the cost for what would be a
photo Vota cell would be reduced we know that the state is coming out with a new program that's helping municipalities uh fund municipal buildings similar to how they support the schools they're looking at like a 25% model outside of the CPA for municipalities there's all sorts of grants that are out there whether
they're through utilities whether they're through the government that will need to get explored but in this phase of the process um we don't have that but I think it would be uh as a member as a taxpayer uh I think we will be working quite diligently to find every available
dollar we can to get the ultimate cost reduced okay thank you thank you um thank you for your presentation I'm somewh familiar with that design but um I have a question you said that the
throws extra the total renovated space is going to be 25,000 ft roughly I I don't have that I should have brought that with me no that's do you know of that space how manyy how many how much square footage is will be designated for
meeting space because I know the reason I I'm asking and I'll tell you the reason so you know there's a lot of I I have heard questions about oh we're adding space that we don't really need now but there
is a plan in built of meeting space that outside what we have here there's no other meeting space in the we have a little bit on reader I'm just wondering how much of the new space is meeting space versus Office Space versus what we
have now okay so let me uh let me explain these numbers a little better cuz the the the total square footage as we've designed it for the new town hall is roughly about 12,000 sare ft so that's the ad um but when you you take that you add it to the existing 5500
that's here the 6,500 that's there that's how I'm giving you that rough number of about 25 and you can do my math I'm a little off but that's roughly how I'm getting there so the actual ad is not as significant um to answer your to answer your question um this entire
building um would be reserved for meeting space which is 5,500 Square F feet um right now we have one room that's roughly 1,000 square F feet um I hear someone behind me saying it's 6500 worth so I mean I could be getting flip-flopped in my buildings I'm telling
you it was getting late I have had a lot of numbers in my head so I will owe you these exact Square footages I apologize tonight in this presentation not having them for you the presentation does have the square feet on them list yeah they're all throughout the whole slide four the three conference rooms and oh
gotcha the hearing room all right but it is this it is a notable ad um right now we have this build this room we have a meeting room that's in the R we have two meeting rooms in the Ritter right now that are really small um and so you know we are one of the things we thought
about is if we're removing two meeting rooms over there we need to replicate them and make them grow a little bit another Concept in this again cost Effectiveness was we didn't want to put meeting rooms in the new town town hall and part of that was It's a larger
building to have to heat at night um when you had to heat the common hallways and everything else whereas you know this building it's small smaller and so if you can shut down the Ritter Town Hall at 5:30 6:00 at night every night get those temperatures down you know
it's a cost savings uh whereas you know this building you know you got to keep it going all day and it's just a smaller footprint to heat and cool um as related to the maintenance cost um I know when you're looking to
buy a house just not commercial uh usually new construction will be I think you know plus x x amount for square foot um and and the understanding on that is that for the next X number of years
you're not going to have to do maintenance that you would if you buy a you know an existing home um is there something of similar nature on on the commercial world so that we can kind of do the reverse of how much maintenance
is going to be building versus you know now we going to have three buildings fully renovated versus every time we look at a capital plan that is you know several projects for these buildings so now we're going to be able to kind of delay some of that because a lot of what
we would be doing for maintenance is going to you know we are buying ourselves some of that yeah I mean yes in in the professional world yes we do calculations for what commercial builds cost to maintain however I think that in the private world that there is more of a financial incentive to actually
maintain buildings uh and in the public world I would say the premise that we've been maintaining these buildings is a little false U cuz we haven't been we have not been investing enough money into the maintenance of these buildings we pay the electric bill uh we you know we we pay the gas bill and uh and we
Skip by on everything else we possibly can um and you know I think that part of the design here is recognizing that that's the pattern and so Trying to minimize opportunity uh for there to be areas that need to be maintained regularly like some of the flooring choices for example we're not putting
hardwood floors in the new town hall cuz they got to get refinished and maintained right well um what I'm thinking is you know by doing this buildings with a excluded borrowing we actually going to be able to use what we use for our free cash for Capital
planning for other projects that right now we are squeezing in with capital planning of trying to maintain buildings because at that time I'm going to have three buildings it will eliminate like roof Replacements that may be coming up that you know I don't know off the top of my head what the longterm term Capital plan is but yeah it would
eliminate roof Replacements boiler Replacements things like that but I mean certain things are on the capital plan going into this town meeting like uh window replacements um here or next next door and we were banking on those going through because they are not accounted
for in our numbers uh and okay um the so just I have the spreadsheet open for uh in 2023 we finished paying off the public saf and the
primary um right now in the FY 24 we are we finished paying funny enough the Elementary and high school heating system which is the high school that we demolished a few years ago and the library uh this year is the last year of the
library so all right that's all which means I me if you look at what remains it's largely the only the real debt that we have remaining is for the middle high school that is a significant driver of the existing debt um yeah in the pav P pavement management plan yes we still
have some of that on that yeah okay I two two questions and you didn't take them this time great um I've been working with the city of San Diego on this exact same project for four years it's been voted down three years in a row um and it was just approved last
week for a new build for their City Hall the reason it was voted down is because it didn't really offer anything for the residents that are going to be paying the taxes it was all about offices for all of us all of our city of all of the Town workers things like that maybe a
couple of meeting spaces um they did modify their plans this year to include more residential activities that these buildings can use and I think that pushed it over the edge to get it voted to yes is there any type of plan that you might think of that you could
Implement to kind of give something back to the residents because I I know that I don't go to City Hall that much unless I come here or I come to pay a bill I'm not coming here to like hang out you know sit on the front lawn I'm not doing that so like is there anything that you
can offer for the residents you're going to say hey you're going to be paying $400 a year going forward what what are you going to give them yeah I think that what What the residents benefit from are a couple things number one you know the meeting house when we when we heard and we met with members of the public and we met with nonprofits who said we have
nowhere to meet right and we heard privately from people not so publicly was about like the support groups right like the mental health the support groups we heard about that and we heard about um people who have like supervised visits with their children that that's you know it's not always comfortable
doing that in the police station and so it creates an opportunity for them to be able to do that um we heard from uh the farmers farming community that they want to have a more permanent type home for a farmers market and I think that you know this provides an opportunity uh to really do that but I think the the real
thing uh that I would say is that when this gets done the real benefit is that this is off of our shoulders for the rest of our lives which means that when we got to talk about everything else we can talk about it that we can you know we can do bigger things um if we can
just move on from this um and I think that that leads into what happens with the school right that you know some of the things that we've discussed is a community center and what we want to see in a community center and Turkey Hill would be a wonderful location for a community center it would be um because
it's a large building you have the commercial kitchen that's over there um you know it's it's a pretty building you have the gym so you know you can remove a lot of what's in TC paals relocate it to Turkey Hill separate entrances it frees up that whole campus to be a
school campus if that's what the U public wants but I what I would say is that this is one component that's part of the hole that really frees us up in the future and I don't disagree with you and that's why I think you know a big chunk of this is is making more Community type space the the gallery
that's out here that was something important to for artists to be able to rent that out display their artwork you know it creates that kind of opportunity that today just isn't there but I do again think that one of the concerns and and that we've had is um and we've
talked to the school committee about this is you know I I've said a long time we don't have a problem with what to do with Oldtown buildings we have a problem with what to do with old schools um that we keep we spend so much money on these old buildings and holding them up together by strings that we never intended to be for a municipal purpose
and I think that as we go forward in planning for future schools that we need to figure out disposition before we do new builds and I think that what we're doing here is we're saying hey municipal buildings we have a plan for what we're going to do we're not going to leave a building that's just sitting here so for someone in 10 years from now to figure
out what to do with it that we're figuring out today so and I think it creates a good model for how we should be doing things going forward um so I think what the residents get out of it is a lot they get the efficiency of their tax dollars that that if you do this project in 7 years from now it will
cost you more than $400 a household so let's just get it done now my advice is to add something like that into this presentation when you present it def at the town meeting of what they're going to be able to use the space for individually I think that'll win people
over a little bit in just seeing offices for for folks uh town you know Town employees um my other question is I love the idea of Public Access having their own space um I know they have a certain amount of money in the reserve that pays
for their salaries if they push all that money into the space will the town now be responsible for giving them a budget for their salaries like I think that you know yeah that's our expectation so they're not deficit spending for salaries as I understand it in the pack
that what they do is they get a certain percentage of basically everyone Comcast xinity bills uh and they get to utilize that money for needs and so they've banked this and so it's money that they are prepared and willing to invest in space um and so our expectation is that
they will expend those funds uh for this build but that it won't have an operational impact on their ability to keep doing the great work that they do okay so they're using that those funds to pay their salaries now but they put all those funds into a building they're not putting all their funds they're not
putting all of it they have Reserve they have more than a million dollar yeah okay my understanding is that they have about a million you would you would know more than I but they have about that banked um I don't know what their operational budget is year to year but
as we've worked with them our understanding is that they have about $8 to $900,000 available uh to build out the space okay yeah I think if we go back to their presentation they probably had it in there okay just just want to make sure that they're not putting all their money into something and then they're going to
be like oh no we I do remember them saying that though is that they take the interest off of that money to pay a lot of their budget and so if that drops down they're going to shortfall themselves on the interest so that is something we have to keep in mind
yep that's it for me thank you and uh I will add as well the presentation you saw tonight is a presentation that was prepared by architectural team we will we will have a different presentation I could hear I can feel it from you I don't see it in that there
yeah there will be a different presentation at town meeting y I'm all set good to see you Jay you too please give the misss my regard presentation Michael I'm just having a hard time seeing how a building like
that is going to fit next to Ritter the way it's pictured I mean there's only so much grasp there so how is that going to fit there and not impact the road did not impact so it fits um the answer is as
you look as you look at school street now that entrance to the driveway is is exceptionally wide and that's because there used to be a fire department back there so what when you look at the entrance to school street now where that median is the island in the middle um the road that road entrance will get
decreased so that way it will just be kind of a two-lane road going back and this building will sit on what is currently roadway um that is kind of the left half of that entrance so it is going to eat up uh some of that what is now the entrance into the school Street
lot um but it it it fits but the road gets smaller that's the answer the road gets notably smaller I think if I were to describe because I'm not an engineer you know sometimes you go inside some of the buildings and you walk walk walk
especially in Boston and you're like where is this building there was such a smaller door um that's because a lot of the constructions in the back um so the frontage looks relatively small to the added space but it's really because what he's saying is that the building
actually expands in the back the larger footprint that way yeah so we were utilizing lot lines and and minimum distances so several years back um we created the architecture preservation district and one of the changes in that
and this was done by the voters was to allow structures in the center of town to be closer to the road quite closer to the road and so buildings are able to um you know this would be one of the first builds that kind of takes advantage of the new rules
um but it does allow the the building to get a little closer to the road um but I I personally uh would be concerned if it was on the other side CU I I like the feel of that kind of setbacks when you hit the center of town how all the buildings now are set back away from
that intersection you feel like you get good 360 visibility no matter what direction you're coming from and and that was something that was mindful for why it's located where it's located but it is I would imagine the address would probably be a school street address instead of a main street address
but are you expressing Jean concern about the size of the building it looks too big [Laughter] I don't know how to overcome it um I think that you know we have to work with the parcels that we have and the parcels that we have are here in the center of
town largely uh several years back there was a huge Focus to keep our municipal center here we did look at years ago the select board did a survey for what to do with 30 School Street because we heard from a lot of people they're like why not put this at 30 school street where the old school used to be and we did a
survey at town meeting and again people make recommendations and decisions and you just kind of have to go with it and that builds off but the results of the survey bottom line was it was do you want to see a town hall over there do you want to see Senior Housing over there do you want to see a parking lot with green space do you want to see a
green space with a parking lot and what what one out with more than we did a rank Choice survey um to make sure that we were actually capturing what the majority really wanted and the answer was parking lot in Green Space so I think if the direction was Town Hall then we probably would have
marched in that direction but that wasn't the guidance that we received at the survey that we did at town meeting um but again there's parts of this that we all like and there's parts of that we don't like and so it's how do we compromise on a solution and I I I think this is the best compromise we can get
but I did meet with the historical commission and they they VOC their main concern that they vocalized to me was that was that it was too big for that building that the Ritter building should be the highlight and that we should not be shadowing that building um and that
was their concern um and I understood that concern and they really wanted this to see this at 30 School Street and I think that many people who've lived in town for a while U would like for this to be a little further back um but I think that we also know that there's a lot of interest in the paral crowd to
have more Playing Fields uh to have more green spaces we know that as a town is really dense in the whum area that they don't have Community Gardens you know they don't have a pavilion to have family get togethers and is Ritter better for that or 30 School Street lot
better for that it's probably 30 School Street Lot would be better for that so I think that in thinking about like all Town needs I don't know if the greatest and best use of 30 School Street is a building but the only thing in my opinion that you really can do with that
Ritter lot is a building MH so I wish I had a better answer for you CH Chris yeah um so good presentation obviously I know all the work that's gone into this over the years um I want
to thank you uh I might as well do it now a for all the work you did on this and I don't know that you'll come before the finance committee before you're um you know a citizen again and maybe then you'll never come back I don't know but I do want to thank you for your time on the select board here in this committee
as well and um I have enjoyed our interactions over the years even when we've disagreed it's been it's been good ab I so so I I kind of sent you this a couple things earlier and you you kind of hit on it and I'm not sure if I'm
directing this at you or maybe um Town manager and eie as well [Music] um I think one thing that's going to be important for this town meeting is that we distinguish we delineate the aspects of
operational budgets in the levy that we put on with the excludable debt as well as regular debt and kind of lay out you know the fact that we have policies in place you know that you know we have no more than 4% regular debt we
have no more than 11% excluded debt and no you know in Combined 14% And and that policy has been in place for for quite a while um I think you hinted on you you talked a little bit about it but we don't have it in front of us is what would that look like with this project
as well as um uh Marshall Park project you know would we be approaching those limits or not what would the the borrowing look like um I think you always have to have that kind of excluded debt probably at a pretty high level cuz you know like you've already
mentioned other projects that will come which are like the a new school building at some point um what will happen once we um bring down TC pasos um into whatever state that is going to be in the future um you know it's going to go
on and on and on so I I think that that's a critically important thing for us to get out probably even in advance of of town meeting and then whatever we have for a vote um so not really a question but just something that relates to the the two that we're we're hearing
tonight um I know they were also talking about perhaps the um the track right and maybe that just becomes a regular debt kind of item I don't know the answers to all of those but I think that's a critically important thing to to put out there right um and as Anna had mentioned
you know we have retired some so this kind of just fills it in right so um otherwise um I I think all the questions I had were were asked um and um I I don't have any any other um
questions um it is has been our tradition though that more recently is that we do ask if anyone in the public has any questions uh they have showed up so I don't know if anyone in the audience has
okay Rhonda doesn't have anything for me oh hello Glenn McLoud 436 Reservoir Road just a a clarifying question and U also thank thank you Mr Jeff for all your work echoing the comments of the uh the chair as well as the committee and you
know I do just have a simple question now but that's a a couple times you had said the um the cost per household would be $400 could I write my check for $400 right now and fulfill my obligation go fund me are we going to go fund you can always volunteer money to
the town very few people do but uh I don't know how that works that's an ezzy question but until it's approved 400 bucks just going to go sit there I I I guess I guess my point was and member doll had had brought it up is that it's $400 per year correct
correct yes uh this is $400 per year that's correct and for uh for for quite some time I think when I went over it was 20 years $400 per year if we do a uh two uh 20-year plan $300 roughly per household per year uh on a 30-y year
plan thank you very much and uh In fairness to my following question that $400 per month would that diminish with the retiring debt that is per year not per month
um so what I'm what I'm noting is that uh this is what the the project itself cost is but I think that what we need to demonstrate is how this ties in as Chris noted with the remaining debt um you know we can say that debts going to come
off and that this may not be a true ad ad that's going to be true in several years but when you add in the debt then it is a real ad um so I mean I think the the good way that I'm going to think about it is it's a $300 to $400 add a household and it depends on which option we tend to go with but that's all based on the analysis in the background of
what else needs to come on in terms of do we do this in a 20 year do we do this in a 30-y year it is tied all into that but I do think it's fair to give an analysis of of some of that debt uh and what it what it really adds thank you very much so being at the
selectman's meeting uh on Tuesday I know there was like and again In fairness like back of the napkin calculations as it relates to if if in two years the town went for the um the Cadillac of overrides to fully fund the schools and
fully F fund the uh the town was that number again back of napkin um calculations about $800 per month I'm here tonight to speak to the uh Municipal Building design committee plan uh not about an override uh I can
do some back of the nap and calculations for you uh but I shouldn't all all right thank you for the opportunity to meet with you tonight I know I'm a long-winded person and luckily I'm getting out of politics and so you won't have to worry about hearing this too much
more but uh Chris I want to thank you as well for for really leading a wonderful committee here you've been great to work with it's been wonderful getting to know all the different volunteers here in town and and you know this is an exciting project I know that you know it it triggers a lot of wha ifs but when we think about how we landed here the
cumulative thousands of hours of work across so many volunteers over the last six years to get to this point you know I think it's been a momentous effort and you know my goal here as a property professional was to do my best to tell the town this is what I believe and what
work with others but to get to a point where what we're saying to you is I believe that this is the cheapest best most effective way to resolve our problem uh that has been my mission and getting involved in politics largely uh I wish we would have done more on the
revenue side uh I really am and troubled that my colleagues uh did not see the priority there of focusing on Revenue that non-t tax revenue nonetheless uh this has been a goal of mine to get to this point and if the town votes it down I still will feel confident that we did
our work to give them the best option um and as we look back if we say no we look back on this in 5 10 years from now uh someone will remember when Michael R Jeffrey said this is the cheapest it's ever going to get you're only going to spend more money the more we delay so thank you for the opportunity and I hope
to have your support thank you Mich you know it does remind me of one thing you know we we came in a couple years ago about how important it was to have school air conditioning for the four days a year that it gets hot well the people that work in this town you know
hundreds of employees working in these conditions every single day we should be thinking about them as well so I know it's difficult times but uh we do need people to have a a good working environment and in for volunteers as
well so um I keep that in mind as as comments are made related to the need for a town hall all right [Laughter]
sorry good evening Anita Sher is chair of the Parks Commission and I have with me Karen Menard also a member of the Parks Commission and we will not be as long in our presentation so um the discussion points that um we want to go over tonight with
you are basically to provide you information about the updated design that we have right now for Marshall Park uh we want to talk about the project costs we want to explain to you what we're looking at for funding proposals and what we might be doing for a
fallback strategy um in terms of scaling back the project if needed we do have information about what the project schedule would look like and I'm going to discuss where we are at this point in terms of determining tax impacts for the projected borrowing uh we also want to
give you an update in terms of what Grant application process would look like with this go around and we want to just briefly touch on Park maintenance Future Park maintenance so next slide please so as you're all aware um Parks
Commission has started this project of looking go to the next one please I'm on the next one I don't know what no it's there now is there one after that we're on the one after that the one that has on it okay
yep thank you perfect um Parks Commission started was preo in terms of looking at Marshall Park and what might be needed to be done to make sure that Marshall Park was an a a location that could be used by all the
town's people all ages and at that time they did a lot of public input um informational meetings Gathering public feedback um and looking at options that might be available um in 2020 and 2021 funds were
voted by town meeting um to begin initial designs schematic designs of what a new you know Marshall Park schematic design would look like and uh then the board of Selectmen did provide um some arpa funds to put toward this
project as well that amount was originally 1 million but I'll explain a little bit later in terms of um you know what happened to that $1 million when the town began working with the initial design firm of wola out from from Western Massachusetts um Willa
helped us put together that schematic design that included all the different components of what the feedback from town people said they wanted in an improved Marshall Park at that time it included upgrading the ball fields adding playgrounds adding Sports courts
such as um basketball Etc um walking trails around the wetlands uh canoe launch area and some uh Waterfront um areas where people could stop and enjoy the beauty of Marshall Pond the number that we received at that
time for the estimated project cost we felt was within the town's ability to handle and we were even at that time looking at perhaps getting this to be borrowed within the levy limit not looking for excluded debt however when we got to the point
where we needed to move on and do a a more complete design we hired the firm of rdla out of Boston Mass and their upgraded design which was based off the original wola design we found out that
the cost estimate wola had provided was woefully inadequate it did not include many of the components of of normal cost did not include soft costs um and as we were trying to prepare for town meeting last November to bring this forward to
Town's people then we felt that we were too far off we were not able to move forward the grants that we had applied for then required certain Town match amounts which we would not be able to provide uh with this higher cost that U
we now knew the project would be so as you know at the SP special town meeting in November we did pass over this warrant article and promise you that we would take a step back and look at this so over the past few months we have done that we have been working with rdla to come up with an updated design for
Marshall Park improvements and if you look at the figure on the slide you'll see that the updated design is basically three phases two large phases one final small phase the blue area at the bottom
of that map would be phase one and this would be coming off of massav phase one would involve um construction of a driveway in and a number of parking spaces that would be there it would include the playground it would include
the Sports Court so it would be a basketball court and three pickle ball courts and it would include walking trails around that area I don't know if you can see within that upper large section of the blue portion of the map the skate park
that's being planned and is still anticipated to be built this summer would be right in the center of this Phase One Design and all of the design work elevations Etc would be um worked and so it would tie in FL flawlessly the second phase the green
area on the upper section of that plan includes the men's baseball field and the ladies softball field those men's baseball field would be a major reconstruction of the field including all of the necessary drainage to keep
that field high and dry it also would include some modifications and improvements to the L softball field it would include the necessary um buildings in terms of um announcer booths Etc dugouts um and it would include parking
off of Chestnut Street which is something we've been hearing from the residents in that area is necessary the third phase the smaller phase 2B would just be the addition of buildings the 2B in the Blue Area would
be a fairly large U Pavilion which would have restroom facilities a concession stand and picnic area the smaller building that you see on the left the green area would be just another bathroom facility that would be adjacent to the ball fields for use by people um
enjoying that the fields and the sports there next slide please at this time the Parks Commission has voted to move ahead with all three phases and that's what we will be bringing forward to town meeting in May um I wanted to give information in terms
of the amount of parking um the detail that I confirmed with Karen just before we began the presentation was that in total the parking would be roughly 120 spaces that would be added between the Chestnut Street side and the massav side of the project for those of you who have
not been down to Marshall um and don't know it as well as some of us do um the current parking situation um is a a dirt lot is in the main area it's not there's no lines um and there's no um marked um
handicap spots there and on Chestnut Street we really don't have any official parking over there so it ends up being a lot of Street side parking um which leads to a lot of complaints um because people just don't always have the common courtesy to not Park in literally in
people's front yards um so this would fix the problems that are going on on Chestnut Street putting those folks into a lot but it would also open up um the Chestnut Street side to the main parking Side by a series of walking paths so that people no matter where they Park
could easily access both sides of of that park there were also concerns on Chesnut street with fire access and and others during okay yes there are times when people do double park or park on both sides of the road and um really is
very difficult traffic to get through there safely and Jay you may remember back on when you and I sat on fincom together years ago um Chief Marino actually showed a video during one of our finance committee meetings of his concerns on Chestnut Street of um you
know emergency vehicles being able to access that during sports games he actually had a video camera and um you know as they drove down the street they they recorded it so we could see what it actually looked like so um this would definitely um help alleviate that those issues that are going on there yeah I
mean Chesnut Street becomes a one car passage if one lane one lane if any cars are parked on either side and some of the concerns is not just for the residents during the the ball games but it's actually for the players of the
ball games too because there is no access to the uh men's baseball field from currently from asav so emergency vehicle has to come down just not I'd also might like to make one other comment that we mentioned the playground
facility and we mentioned the walking paths those would all be handicap accessible Universal entrance the playground would be the only one in town right yes no would me for full handicapped accessibility
we the playground over at Wallace Park is um is actually considered an ADA accessible playground as are the um playgrounds at the both of the schools are considered um I was looking back I was hoping someone from the school board
would know but um I they're but they're not fully inclusive and this is this is where the issue comes in and this is sort of what Michael Ray was you know hinting to in some of his presentation there is a very large difference between having something that is Ada accessible
and having it be inclusive and we are aiming for an inclusive playground at this location hopefully that is what we will end up with and if that does happen that would be the only fully all-inclusive playground in our
community okay um if we could go to funding proposal slide okay thank you this one yes thank you so um based on the feedback that we had from the board of Selman last fall um they had said that they really wish that as we looked for this revised
Marshall Park project they would like us to have this project be funded through debt excluded borrowing outside of prop 2 and a half limits and so that's what we are looking at at this time fallback strategy um for this would
be while we're hoping to go ahead with the full project phases 1 through 2B if we find that it's more feasible to move ahead with a smaller project what we would be doing is modifying our motion on the town meeting floor to include
just phase one but with the addition of that bathroom concession stand Pavilion facility that's there next to the bathrooms in that blue area of phase 1 the total project cost for the full
project would be $13 m922 and excuse me $922,000 plus the building it would be $ 5,824 518 I think it's also important to note that if we do move ahead with only the
phase one we've modified the phasing of this so that any work done within that massav side the blue area of the park that would still leave the men's baseball field lady softball field and little league fi field available to be
used without any impact even during construction ction that was one of the things that we had heard feedback from from from the league users was that you know they were worried that even a small phase project would impact their ability we modified the design so that those
areas would not be touched even if we did just the phase one project would the fallback strategy also be excluded borrowing or it would [Applause] okay so in terms of the project schedule
if we move ahead and get a vote at town meeting to move forward we're looking to start with the um preparing the final design package in right after town meeting and that would be finished sometime in mid to late September that would include all the permitting that's
necessary for this the bid process meaning preparing of the bid documents the actual bidding period and the bid review and award period would take place between the beginning of October and the middle of December
construction we would provide a notice to proceed to the contractor who won the award that would happen in early December and that contractor would immediately start providing U material submittals for our approval and would begin purchasing and stockpiling
supplies for the project but the site work would not begin until March of 2026 and if we go through with the full project the site construction would take from March 26 through to May
2027 if we go with the smaller project we were told by the owner's project manager that likely that work of the smaller project could be completed in 2026 with perhaps just the wrap-up activities taking place in
2027 there are post construction um activities that need to take place there's you know punch list contract closeout um and those would probably take place in June of 27 and July of 27 and then anytime you do landscaping at a
project there's always a one-year warranty for those plants and that warranty would stand through May of 2028 next please as you heard with um Michael Ray Jeff explaining what the project for the um town hall and the Ritter building uh
we were hoping that we would have information tonight to give you about what the tax impacts of this borrowing would be we are working with the town manager and the finance director and the town's financial advisor and bond counsel to try to determine what is the
best scenario for borrowing on this project it's our hope that this project would be considered eligible for a 20year borrowing and what we've done to um make sure that we have the correct answer on whether that's feasible we've been providing Bond counsel and the
financial adviser all of the information in terms of what components are part of this project the facing of the project cash flow needs Etc and um matter of fact we just gave them additional information today they have promised that they will get us several different
debt scenarios that we can work with the town manager Finance director and with your board um to try to determine which is the most feasible and most likely to move ahead with but we won't have that information until the last week of March
next slide please in terms of the grants as you know um The Parks Commission was very successful in applying for Grants based on the other project design that we had um and
those grants that were awarded were a park Grant from the division of conservation services for 500,000 and a $1 million Land and Water Conservation fund Grant $1 million when we realized that we were not able
to move ahead with the project last fall because they have very definitive timelines in terms of their Grant activity we had to reluctantly tell them we were not able to take use of their Grant funds they did tell us though that our grant projects scored very highly
and they urged us to make sure that we come back and reapply again once we have this design ready and we know what we're looking at we may not receive as high of a score with this modified project we may not receive as high of of value in
any Grant awards that come forward but we will reapply for them uh we're very lucky that um the town manager has found some funds which we can use to provide um toward a professional grant writer that can assist the Parks Commission in
um applying for these grants but not only that more importantly is to look for other grants that might be out there that would be appropriate uh to apply for under this new design scenario we do plan to hold two public information meetings before town meeting
they'll be in April dates to be determined but at those public information meetings we will have our um design team there to answer questions for the public we'll have renderings and we will have U much more detailed information um in terms of what those
tax impacts will be to the taxpayers and then the last Point um is Future Park maintenance expenses you know we we as you've heard with um Michael R jeffy's presentation how we maintain our facilities moving forward
is important to everybody you know it's takes money to build these but it takes money to maintain these um we already have Chris Ruth our facilities director looking at the standard costs for the different components that would be going
into this park project once he has a list of what those standard maintenance needs would be for each whether it be ball field the building the court surfaces playground equipment that type of thing once he has all that information then he can start putting
together a comprehensive plan and um a cost estimate an annual cost estimate so that we can provide that information to people and let them know that we are taking that seriously and that it is part of the process moving forward and that is basically our
presentation for tonight we'd be glad to answer any questions on the operational side of the park I mean do we ever rent the fields out yes we do and that's part of the fees that we use for for paying for expenses okay and then putting in a
concession stand kind of the same thing renting out the concession stand to so that would be a new one for us um and we would have to um as a park commission sort of figure out how we wanted to handle that piece of it because right now the um the the The Snack Shack for lack of better word that's down there
was placed there by um little league many years ago and um it's not a compliant Snack Shack so um there's it's very limited in what they can do from there so you know if this plan goes through as a commission we'd sort of
have to have a a lengthier conversation on what policy and if there's any fees and and things like that look like who's going to use it um you know that sort of thing so we don't have one of those under us yet so that would be new territory for us curious I I'll just add
that generally speaking in lunenberg concession stands usually go as a fundraiser for the groups that use it like I mean it's not as much anymore but I think the uh concession Center the high school was one that was used for by
different groups when there were events there as fundraisers okay I kind of have a piggyback question um as you know my background is Parks and W so I my heart broke when you had to return and give back yours did ask my husband what mine because I know how
hard it is to get these grants um just to piggy back on his question about generating revenue does the Parks and Rec Department foresee possibly using this for like summer camp programs um things like that that could generate like quite a bit of re for the
town and other other towns could utilize and and pay to come and utilize it with bathrooms and another outlying building it would be a perfect place to have summer camps full day camps things like that um do you have any plans to kind of implement that onto this
property so yep um can you might want to get closer to them sorry I'm not Lou enough for you um me so that's that's actually part of a bigger picture so as um a little bit of history on me when I came on to this
commission eight years ago we were baseball that's it we we didn't have a Rec director um we had baseball fields we didn't offer any programming um all of our Fields needed work um it's the last eight years have been a true labor
of love and trying to get us to where we are a few years ago we put in a Rec director it is my hope that the town will get behind our mission of having a Rec director that will become full-time that will be able to run programming and
this would be a prime location for a lot of her outdoor activities um right now our rec department when they run programming we're using TC pasos and we're using a combination of I believe a classroom and and the gym if TC Paso
turns into something else goes away whatever either partially or in its entirety that leaves us scrambling for space it's really hard when our only other alternative is to utilize School space because they have programming that use it as well so by having this here our
Recreation program would be able to grow um and we also have user groups that you know do would be able to come through to use it it could be another town it could be a you know another nonprofit or it could even be you know a private group that wants to use it from town um we will always as far as I'm concerned and
as long as I'm on this commission try to make sure that our facilities to anybody that wants to use them so there is there's lots of things we can do is there something in the works specifically for Marshall Park no but there's something in the work specifically for our Recreation
Department also might have suggest in accordance with this town hall build maybe you can add some Recreation programs to those larger spaces and you know you won't have to use Pao SCH which I heard is not the best yes have you
been in there yet I have drove by we'd be happy to give you a tour we know the facil is director personally we can we can give you an in-depth tour of that building so as a town hall building if that's new and we have a new park and we have work together you know one thing
that I I'll add that I it's for me it's very important um the in town we have a lot of I shouldn't say a lot in town we do have uh quite a bit of open space reserved through conservation and trails
and in the the difficult time that I have with it for all residents is that it's not very a welcoming place these places are not very welcoming for anyone with a limit Mobility or even with multiple young children because if
you're you know if you're a mom with two toddlers you know you you definitely need a stroller you need place that is accessible um so although lunenberg doeses have a lot of open space we don't really have a community open space space
and and this space was designed with you know adding that element to everything so around all the baseball fields and softball fields now there's walking paths um you know the open bathrooms so it's really the vision
was you would be multi multigenerational using this space at the same time and creating the means for that you know the pickle ball is another use the basketball the the U skate park although we're not building but you know
was added was part of this vision of multi multi- generation used all day long so I do see this space uh hopefully when it's built to be you know to be another live tour Town
Center across the street from you um now not that great I know no it's difficult like right you coming from one side you don't have a way to get to the other side uh the parking on Chestnut streets is very problematic for many
different reasons one thing I'll add um that I also think it's important to mention is that this is our school facilities as well this is where our softball and our uh baseball teams play our high school teams play and it is a
school facility that does not meet any criteria of school facilities that should meet and and we need to do better you know for our kids um so that's I see it as a problematic if we don't have that we will need to eventually having
to build this as a separate thing for the schools um and as an edit Point too we not just that the this is a school facility but also it we do use the school facilities for the soccer
program down the turf so it's kind of nice lunenberg we have a lot of community space that we're able to work integrated with you know work multip across multiple agencies to get deliver a lot to the town and I think we need to
continue that um I love that you know 115 years ago this park was bought to be baseball fields and it will continue to be baseball fields and we continue serving our lunenberg high school and
you know along with the added spaces with the you know the walking p baths the pickle ball the playground you know the community bathroom and parking is a huge thing you know people don't have vir to park I'll tell you I live on Main Street and you you might have parking you might have people walking your
sidewalk too all day long we have people walking the very few sidewalks that we have in town and it's still not ideal because we don't have where Park you know people drive to town center and they don't have where park and go so I'm I'm excited for the to uh what this can
be for the to two vs yes well so just to throw it out there so everybody does know Anna um was on the commission the bulk of this work was done she was she was my partner in crime through the whole Grant process so um you know she's she's very well informed
of this project um as I'm listening to her sales pitch thinking is she trying to sell this to us cuz we we're already bought into it so yes Jay uh no I'm all set answer my question Jay you got to make up some question
yeah we got nothing for you no my only concern was the you know the maintenance and operational cost you sure and you know that is an absolutely legitimate concern the but I will say this the park our parks in general from where it was
when I started on the Parks Commission to where we are now it's a night and day difference there was a lot of work that was not done on our parks and we're still paying the price for that now because there's only so much money in a budget that you know Chris Ruth has to
spend that he's you know he's trying to do he's doing his best and and doing a great job at keeping up with everything but there's still a lot of improvements that could be made I'm sure that the lunenberg baseball program could tell you that there's probably a million dollars improvements that a million
dollars in improvements that they would like to see happen at those fields it's it's not in our budget to do that right now so you know if we were to move forward this project we wouldn't have to do that um I do not expect our fields to
be to go backwards I expect them to continue to go forwards because we didn't have a facilities director when I came on to Parks we have one now and I don't I think the town has learned a extremely hard lesson on the importance of having a facilities director somebody
that can dedicate their time to our facilities and right now we fall under them so that would mean you know any building that gets put up um all of our any field space all of our playgrounds all fall under Chris and he's been extremely responsive when either a
resident from town calls or somebody from the commission calls and said hey this is this is what's going on I expect that to continue and I I have faith that he is putting a lot of time and effort into and thought into what we can do to you know what's going to be needed to maintain this project um if it is
approved so I'm I'm not as if you would ask me this 8 years ago if I had brought this project to you J 8 years ago I would be sitting there with the exact same concern saying absolutely not we need to get a handle on how we're maintaining things I am confident right now that we have a handle on on from the
facilities on the parks right now that we would be able to maintain this um going forward Jay if I were to add something and I um to this line of thinking thought about maintenance and um you know the way I see the town
uh it's a little bit of growing pain because when we moved to town just 20 years ago a lot of work used to be done by volunteers maintenance you know I can name a few people that they were the ones that mold on for before the kids
play um so when I say it's a little bit of a growing pain and part of that growing pain is learning what we need to do is it's really hard to maintain everything in the uh with counting on only on on volunteers and I think over
the past you know 5 years we're trying to learn that because the other tricky thing too is we are still a small town and we can't afford everything so it's really continue that partnership with volunteers the users you know people
that are bringing in every year when we have our you know the Earth they cleanup you know the little league well the youth baseball league are the ones that lead Marshall and you know so so there's a we got to figure out how to do this together um because it's very costly to
do it alone so we need to tap it into our volunteers but also understand ultimately it's our our responsibility as a town to oversee and maintain some of that can I put a plugin for the new town hall cuz I am absolutely freezing right now so I just want to March down
on the record I am freezing when you add new facil cuz you're talking about bathrooms concession stands they were hard costs that come with that utility cost and maintenance cost it's one thing you know volunteering to mow the lawn is different than um you know the utility
costs because one thing I remember from way back is like with the library when they went from the rter to the big library and then they had to come back the following year because they didn't realize how much the utility cost went out yep so y That's there will
definitely be new um um you know as Mike had asked about the concession stand there's definitely going to be new components to this that we haven't as a Parks Commission dealt with before and we are very aware that there is there will be an added cost to you know the bathroom facilities and how are those
run I mean we have um you know not that I want to hash out all the bad stuff that's gone on um in Parks you know in terms of porta potties um but you know we had issues a few years back with porta potties um they weren't being locked and people were going in at night and they were absolutely trashed and
then um a user group or no actually it was one of our camps got down there um to use it and um somebody opened the Porta party door before they left and I'm very thankful that they did and it was absolute trash and that's what their child was going to be expected to use so you know we had to jump over that hurdle
and we had to come up with policy and stuff that you know worked I'm hopeful that a an actual real bathroom will curb some of that um you know what we went through with that because you know hopefully people treat a real bathroom a little bit better than a porta potty um
but that will we'll have to work with facilities to figure out you know what the what the policy and procedure is around the use of those um when they get locked up when they're going to be open um and you know what the overall cost to maintain them is um and hopefully that's something that Chris will be able to
Chris Ruth will be able to bring with him too um you know for one of our upcoming meetings I think Marshall Park is is just so beautiful I love taking my dog in there and I just think with these revisions it's just going to be so much
better especially when you're talking about drainage in those fields um for the kids there's a swiming pool there right now at least there was on Tuesday when I drove by um 90ft Diamond had a considerable um puddle of water um when we had gone in there and
done some test pits to when we started this process um I had gotten a text at one point it was less than 18 in down and we were we were in water so the drainage needs there are considerable and that's actually one of the factors
that's driving up the cost of this project is the amount of drainage that has to go in and to just to answer another question too um that came up at Tuesday night's meeting with selectboard um the question was um do we have to do phase one first if the if the residents decided they would rather have phase two
the answer is yes we have to do phase one first because of the amount of drainage that has to go in over on Phase 2 in those fields we need phase one to come in to for all the retention basins and and that sort of stuff for the storm water drainage so it's it's really not
possible to flip it so the options would be either the the project as a whole just or we could cut it back and just do phase one or if the town decides that we they don't want to move forward that would be the third option so it's it cannot be phase two we can't flip
phase two and phase one right good mhm I mean I know a lot about this project for obvious reasons um but I will say that you know I travel a lot around the world and everywhere you go
there there's a park associated with a town right and I I don't know that Marshall Park in its current state is is really a park right so I do think that there's a lot of value to this you know there there's a lot of folks that want more uh Community um opportunity in town and
kind of putting it around you know uh the pasos building is kind of the de facto thing we do now you um but it's it's awkward it doesn't really work so and then you know I think your timeline if it were to be approved you know it's
it's in time for the 300 year aniversary so I'm sure uh it would get very utilized for that as well um I did have one question on your timeline um it's a little maybe a a little bit of a knit but maybe not you have a start of
5:15 um but wouldn't this would have to pass at town meeting and the ballot yes when's the B is that the 13th 17th was it 17th 1 okay so it it's a little off I mean
it's probably not the end of the world this was based on the OPM before we had discussion about dat of town meeting M okay um and again I just want to reiterate you know I think seeing that projection of of debt um Services is
important for for both of these so I'm looking forward to and you probably don't have it tonight obviously but um it it's critical that the taxpayers can see that things are coming off and things are going back on or
going on yeah and we really got to you know remind everyone that the operational budget and the the levy is different than the borrowing that goes on top of it um and if we want to continue to move our town forward and
and have you know good facilities for everyone in town you know I I think that the you know we need to do some investments in it so and just to that point you know talking about Bond rating and things one of the things Bond rating agencies look at is is a town taking a
appropriate care of all of its different facilities and so by putting these types of projects forward we're showing our doing our due diligence as a town to keep these facilities that are necessary for our Town's people okay um is there any questions from the
public you guys going to have to do the shuffle or something three sters Shuffle Ralia 181 Reservoir Road I just wanted someone to refresh my memory as to how much have we spent on this project so
far like the design I know there was at least one allocation at town meeting three three oh at least one so let me see if I yeah um don't go anyway stay right here um correct me if I'm wrong in some of this
and you as well because you were the ring leader and part of this so it we we initially the project got started with an approval of a capital planning item that was for I believe
$50,000 then we got another Capital plan um another item on Capital plan end up being the Marshall Park survey then so that first 50,000 is what got us started with um wola and then we went once we got through that process we went back to
the town at a special town meeting and it was a $184,000 that got us to allowed us to keep moving and then um we the arpa money had come in originally we had gotten $1
million it didn't matter how many times we tried to move money from one thing to another we could not make what we had work between um the grants that we had gotten and the arpa money so we handed back
750 no 700,000 78,000 roughly of the arpa money we retained about 220,000 the sland were kind enough to give us that is allowing us to complete the design so um so we're just shy of 500,000 if my
how did somebody say your rough napkin math works I was just trying to get it straight in my head I was trying to recall and I couldn't you know come up with a number yeah and you know I can't speak for the building reuse committee's plans and all that kind of stuff but even if this even if this project
doesn't move forward not all of that money is wasted because there is a plan here that can absolutely be utilized down the road I can mark my words right now Marshall Marshall Park needs an overhaul it needs a a tremendous amount of work if we're going to continue using
it even for baseball it just the surfaces need to be redone things like that just need to be done and and you know um so that our our our players have a safe spot to play so at some point it's going to have to be done so if this project doesn't make it through this
next round of town meeting and the ballot there will be usable documents right the money isn't wasted we have a very good plan for I wasn't suggesting I was just curious I wanted the I want the tax understand that you know we we have some of us have been through so many
Town meetings where and and I you know the building reuse is the freshest one in my mind but how many times have we said no to that and how many times have we said how much money have they wasted and I'm not sure it was truly wasted money I think a lot of times we think that way because the project didn't go
any further than it had but I think that you know pieces of it are utilized going forward and I think this is one of those that will be able to be utilized going forward so thank you thank you all right any other questions
including anyone on Zoom all right any parting words we look forward to support from the town's people it's a great project that will really benefit residents of
all ages great any final no thank you thank you thank you all right so the other topics we had originally scheduled um I know or other moneyed articles um which I guess at a minimum
are there any other that we're seeing coming down thank you Mr chairman the other moneyed articles um would be all of our free cash transfers um and those after Tuesday are
very much up in the air um so I think it might be a little premature to talk about where those are going but um okay but nothing else that you know no other borrowings or anything like that we did um just I'm not sure that everybody is
aware there was a Citizens petition that was submitted today um and there is the clerk has verified the signatures and so um that is for an override of a little over $2 million okay yeah I was aware of
that um and then the next topic would be um administrative unclassified debt um we're kind of following the old traditions I don't know if these are the Traditions you want to use going forward but this is the way we do it yeah um I guess the big one on all of
that is you know is will be this debt like we've talked about all today um you know the regular debt has kind of just become part of the operating budget I don't think that's the best thing no it's not the best that it's not the best way to to kind of handle that when you
you want to keep Debt Service as level as possible um so that the taxpayers aren't seeing the impact and like Miss ster said that you're maintaining your uh infrastructure so there's a little over $300,000 that is coming um in reduced
Debt Service this year um 200 let me get mytop hold let me talk to Okay so $393,100 um $284,400 the overall budget is very much in Flex right now
okay okay so but that's as is right now so trying to take as much as possible of the reduction in debt service and keeping it out of the general operating budget okay
um any questions on any of that um I I don't have questions on that but um or requests or whatever so we haven't really seen the spreadsheet with your line item budget is that correct it's in the folder I
think no I I was just there U and I know so eie just made changes to a day I mean I will say that everything is probably going to change a little bit but um not everything I'm probably overstating that
but I believe it's in there is it not um on the main FY budget um all right so I guess maybe your request is let's make sure it's there yeah because I on on your last presentation when you were here last
week I I don't remember seeing and I'm not seeing one now but it could be you know there's so many folders uh oh I see one here okay draft rise projected budget fy2 and this was from 22 well 7 yeah
that's yeah oh okay cuz we then we but your presentation wasn't clear to me based on the presentations and the modifications that you had if there was a new one and what is your newest newest um so yeah I'm happy to drop in the
newest one when it goes to back toown but just to know that it is it it it remains very much in flexible yeah I wasn't just I wasn't sure based on the things that you have talked about it like where everyone had request where
we're lending with the Department's requests so where you were with you know reconciling some of those differences yeah I think the um most of the department requests have been supported
um the biggest one that is very much up in discussion is the payment Management program um and then some other minor changes like you know things things continue to change so for example in the accounting department I was originally
putting in money for uh succession planning as a longtime employee that handles our payroll and benefits is was expected to retire right so um we now since that budget presentation have that employees retirement date um and it it's
no longer a succession plan so things things are changing as as we move along so so um but I am happy to update the drop the latest and just know that anything that you see today may be
different by the end of the weekend sure um and also we haven't seen the uh the capital plan I know it was here but we didn't go through the presentation I'm I'm happy to go if you'd like to do the capital presentation well we were sure like where you are with the money are
you moving money I'm not moving any of the money from the capital presentation I think the question is is that and I know I've been um talking to Mr beardmore and he knows that I am requesting the capital planning committee to meet again because there
were several items that CPC hadn't fully vetted that are on that list um and there's also the issue of the track that is an article that at this point is unfunded so um CPC I think did not
recommend reporting that track so where where is that uh article coming from is it submission from the it's a submission um from the superintendent and school committee um but there's not an
Associated funding availability for it so was that um that Artic that item under the did the CPC review that article I think that as I understand that they oh not really I don't or okay
I I don't recall maybe my thought was that they did review it at some level but but perhaps did not make the list I I don't yeah so I think I think that it I'm happy to go through the capital plan I have not changed any of it but I think really I need the capital planning
committee to convene a meeting so that we can have a full discussion on whether the town hall and items go let me just deal so I'm I'm our representative on the capital planning committee um so we did the capital planning
process um we did our ranking um and we ranked things like the windows here and what was it the roof or something else high on the list right um and then Carter kind of put them off the list he did not recommend doing them and
then there was debate about whether they're actually in the funding for if we were to go forward with you know the renovation of this building um there was discussions to some level I
think on the on the track and and maybe there was more I just I don't recall okay there's a lot going on yeah um we know that at some point we probably need to do something on the track um but we need to do things all over town right so
it's just a matter of priorities um I don't I guess we now have a an article that has no funing Source on that so I do think we should get back together as a capital planning committee and I think
the Tom manager recommendations should be your recommendations not Carter's so and they should be done in light of everything else we have going on um because we didn't know the extent to which we might
have problems this year okay so that may have really changed the way we rank things that may have really changed the way you know maybe we shouldn't even have a capital plan this year I mean maybe it should just be zero this year I don't know I mean well if I if I could just speak to
some of the some of the items on here you know there was so so first I think that it's it's not for a lack of will that the capital planning committee has not reconvened I think that the chair also wanted to get through um some of the school items first and he addressed
that in one of the meetings that there was some other things that really wanted to get through first before reconvening so um there are a couple of items here that um the on this list that the select board has asked me to go to the DPW
director and ask him about the appropriateness of using chapter 90 money to purchase um some of the equipment for DPW um whe to get his opinion on that so if the I don't know how the how he's going
to feel about that but um I'm certainly going to have that conversation there is other funds on here for I'm just going to call out one as an example but um designer services for a playground well if we were to skip that step it just is
going to put out a playground for another year and then we won't have an accurate cost estimate so I think the design work it's kind of relatively low dollar value on the capital plan but if we don't fund it it really slows down the
forward momentum for those infrastructure projects and I think that that's important um but I do think that CPC and I need to have a conversation yeah just an observation is we spend a lot of
time doing an initial plan and then a detailed um um design on things and then we put it on the shelf and then we just go on to the next preliminary plan in detailed design so
Rank and stack everything we've got going on in town right now where do some of these things really fall right I know the senior center right with with the with the parking I don't really even understand that plan and we ranked it high because where they want the parking
is where King's kingdom is right and I don't see a plan as to like anyone even taking an overhead drawing a box around something and saying this is what you be the parking lot and this is where we're moving something well and and TC pasos back half of it maybe coming down and
and I don't think that I I believe that that playground is almost 20 years old I think that it would be ill advised to move and reinstall that equipment um I
think you can rebuild a playground but using 18-year-old playground equipment that that is almost at end of useful life I I don't see why you know that that would be a a good use of funds um and the capital plan is in the the
everyone has exactly yeah um the you know within that like I think there is a request for a design of a playground yeah so that that's for the primary school right I I think this is one of the things we should just fund the playground
well well that's what I'm saying so I think that it's not that easy so so that i i c one of the first jobs that I had as a Town Administrator literally the first day was we had a playground project that we didn't go through a full
design on and so playgrounds are are kind of where I learned a lot about the importance of this because the community had estimated that the playground was going to be about2 $50,000 of upgrades
needed um and and then once the design firm came on it was almost a million dollars for a playground um ese so I think like this playground with port in place surfacing that that makes it
accessible that is very expensive and you do need a lot of design and Engineering work on what is the submaterial for that port in place surfacing and and it's a little more complicated than that because the primary school design playground needs
to be done in conjunction with the feasibility study for the entry and driveway expansion so those two have to come they almost I don't know why they're two different things honestly other than they they came in that way and as as I understand the the entryway
is a public safety issue yes yeah yeah not quite Chestnut Street but well that's just cuz people can't read like do not park here there well you know Chris if you said it I think I don't know if it was this
year in capital plan like sometimes I think we need to hit pause on some of our planning of some of these projects because I think we're getting the kitchen of the senior of the eagle house done now that's been approved for many years yes I think that was at fy21
Capital item yeah it's it's kind of crazy how like you know sometimes we fund things that don't get done forever and having an execution plan is almost as important as funding these plans um so well certainly having Chris Ruth on
staff is I'm sure been a a godsend to the community and getting some of the projects out the door and under contract right but I think though when you look at things and I don't want to kind of call out one particular project against the other but when you're looking at things like flooring
um in replacement of flooring I think it that really considering everything else that's going on that calls out the question of can the flooring wait to see where we are another year so I really I mean the plan is is really what was
planned before I I do think we need a the CPC to convene I do think like the senior center flooring there's probably some Hazard issues at this point but I'm more the teen center that it was just wearing wearing teen center yeah I yeah
but I think the senior center does have some level of um you know trip hazards at this point so again I I agree with you I think Capital plan needs to meet you need to make your own recommendations and put your fingerprints on this um I'm also
concerned with things like I think we're buying like five one ton trucks within 2 years which means that in like six years we'll be buying five one t trucks right so I think the phasing of those is not I I guess I would say depending on when they're coming in
there those trucks are taking about two years from order to arrival so I know one ton shouldn't the trucks yes but not a one ton that should just be with the oh the one ton you're right the six
wheels are taking two years yeah small F 350 shouldn't take two years to get not now it depend it depends on the fit out that would have to happen at the the vendor after the truck is in but on for the body Madigan is backed up for if if it's
going to Madigan let's just say Madigan has a substantial backlog that the trucks are sitting there brand new waiting for the fit outs there are other vendors available that's yeah no but that's something else that we should look
because I think that's a valid thing uh of getting these trucks because I mean I know based on this snow removal uh budget that we had and I know that's not those are not necessarily one ton trucks but you know we run out of trucks all of
the sudden and now you know we have them but it would not be ideal to purchase all of the vehicles in not in a manner that's not spaced out for future replacement pH yeah yeah
there there's obviously things we need to do I I guess I shouldn't have said it like I did but um so um any other questions I guess on the capital plan as it stands right
now okay so here here's what I want to ask um the original plan had us where tonight was our public hearing um which I guess I will formally open a public hearing at some point and then close it um but we were really at the point where
we we going to discuss outlining our report to town meeting I I mean I I know some motherhood and apple pie kind of stuff that needs to go into this um but I don't think we're ready to outline a report for for town meeting I mean we don't have um we don't have any budget
finalized yeah okay so then next week we were going to look at final any kind of final actions that we might have given it to you and then um to vote on articles we don't even have articles yet and and so um right so the select
board spoke about the budget for the first time on Tuesday they're meeting again next Tuesday and next Wednesday depending on how those meetings go with now the new discussion
of a petitioned override and where that may take us I don't see you being able to have fin budgets until the earliest of the week of the
24th okay so I think what I'm going to recommend is that we don't even meet next week I I see no purpose in in meeting next week and then if you're ready for kind of a you know your your final Budget on the
27th which might even be a stretch might be a stretch you know then we're really looking at the first couple weeks in April um um focusing on us kind of being able to do our work of taking votes and and doing a report and making
recommendations um I don't I know we talked a little bit about um the actual I'm opening up the schedule right now warrant mailing and when that would need to happen by um uh count down to telling okay
okay so the goal is to have the warrant in the mail no later than April the 16th the original date for us to send the information to the printer was April 3rd I find that to be very
aggressive and that that is not necessary for a printing house to turn around mailing it I think if if we have the final document to the
printer I would say by the 9th they're pretty quick but you usually meet um usually meet on Thursdays right so right I can talk to I'll email the vendor um and say if we got the
text of this booklet to them by the 11th so if you were to approve it the final report on the 10th if we got it to them the 11th could they have it back to us to mail out on the 15th let me find that
out okay so and then there's also the QR code that you had brought up that if you want to just have some more time with the report that we can embed a QR code in
there okay so if if we were to focus the 27th on kind of the final budget and a review of all the articles that would give us the 3D and the
10th in order to um take votes and finalize a report unless you think there's anything meaningful we can discuss next week but I I think we're going into like you're going into like hell week or
something if you're not already there I don't know maybe it's like I feel as tired as I did during a hell week um so I I hear you um you know I we didn't have time to when when we met
last week we had just received the school committee budget item budget and I have that all changed last night though right um but and I have previous previous Town budget there are and I had
spoken about a few things that I had seen in other report um and there is one more item that when I dug through our historical data on revenues that I kind of want to
speak about and I don't want to take all night I'm sorry but one thing that caught my attention when you go back many many years decad or so is the is the revenue or the deficit of school tuition that we
pay and receive um so so I I you know us that the finance committee would give feedback about the budgets that percentage was and based on your schedule we're not going to have time to see you know a a school budget
again and how some of this so um in 2 I know we used to have Shirley kids come to lunenberg in 2011 um the deficit for tuition of kids that we sent
out and received was $150,000 we are right now on fy2 on the last assessment that we had from the DLS we were 668,000 and and you know and the school is one
that's kind of you know we have a big D set so then I looked at our our uh enrollment data and I look at our current policy and I think our current policy for accepting students in lunenberg
um for fy2 was five kids for grade nine and one for grade 10 in in between classes between n9th grade and 10th grade in average and probably
mostly because of montac um there is an average of 15 students that's going out of lenberg school districts and I think one and this is a discussion that you know if I have had the budget before and an
opportunity to talk about it we need to talk about the capacity of our schools the you know can we level level the services that we are providing by taking in some some extra kids into school choices and try to reduce that
deficit of school tuition and that's you know and I and I'm sure with all the respect you know when we are making decisions that are not relevant to money we for sure don't want to Tak in extra kids we can
offer better education for our kids they're here um but this is something that I wanted to bring to this committee attention that you know maybe this is something we want to perhaps ask the school committee to take a look for in
the future to maybe level or high school um ability to maybe taking more kids and try to reduce some of that budget Gap because an FY 25 I think the latest assessment was close to
$700,000 and that's a big big gap are you looking for for like kids from other communities to to kind of apply to come here or are you looking for like a busing program no no kids school choice Community okay school choice so it is up
to the school committee to accept how many kids they're going to take it in and for this year it was five kids for uh grade nine and one kid for grade 10 and I think and that are you know we got to have a school that technically could
accept all our kids back if they want but we have four years of high school that we are not seeing those kids come back I mean montii alone is about 100 kids that goes there that's 100 kids that we're paying just those but there's
extra tuition on top of that so that $600,000 in deficit doesn't even include the Monti Tac number that's just children their school choice and and um also his special education which there that is a report that does give you this
the breakout of the special education in regular school but I only had access of that for two years but it was not the majority the majority is children that you know go to their charter school or they just go into a different community and I think that you know when you're
looking at a business and I mean the bring this experience that I'm bringing we are talking about leving the leveling off the service that we have we could theoretically have these kids here so is this something that we want to maybe consider in taking more kids so that we
are not at a gap of 2.5 million plus between Monti Tac and the kids that school choice out the High School classrooms and I the the so just we had the superintendent had a year like all
the FY and their grade I traced every school every every classroom and I have the data so and I know it's most of it's multix so for example a class that was 129 kids in 8th
grade it became 120 um there was a class that was 126 kids became 107 when they went to the high school so we we do have that space and that's you know I'm just looking at
how can we help but you know reduce that deficit into the of the school budget what greater of accepting students it's just an open um like Lottery is it no it's uh whatever policy they have but they do have a number so let me just ask
a question just I don't think we're going to get anywhere on this to solving this year's budget issues right but the school committee does make is going to make a decision about how many kids which grades they allow in probably in their
next the next for next year for next year yeah that's will happen before school Comm uh town meeting go I'm sorry Mr archol that's all right um Carol as Shambo 662 Page Street um
the school committee has to make a decision on the number of students to accept for school choice I it's either the first or the 15th of June and typically um this past year we
did not fill those five seats in the ninth grade and by having budgets that cut Here There and Everywhere I don't anticipate we will get those kids we've cut a um teacher at the high school in
every discipline so our capacity to take in more kids is less than it was because we have that many less teachers to do so we did talk about
opening up um younger grades M because we do get a lot of people asking in the younger grades but then we cut a teacher from each of those grade levels as well though we have brought many of them back
that will go be part of the discussion when we when we do it but we we don't want to have more kids and have particularly our younger kids in classrooms of 30 kids so we had to wait
for all of this to settle right and and and I I hear every year there will be a concern about you know do we have enough kids and it it's just historically speaking looking at you know the money that the schools used to take in and the
schools that we're not taking in and the student body um you know we can see that this is a deficit that that has grown we get it we get it right and and now now that we are pressured by for money you know we
get to look at a little harder and you know and see what we can accommodate because it's you know when we had to take kids we used to take it right when we had the the contract with Shirley well with the kids from Shirley they they they either had to go to air or
come here cuz they had no high school right but then once they regionalized right um that went away right I I I think you know one thing when you say you know we have the five St spots open
and they're still open you know if we don't consistently show availability parents there might be looking we do at the high school level we always have spots open in the 9th and 10th grade typically 11th and 12th graders don't change their High School right so we
always have spots open at the ninth and 10th grade e8th grade did you e8th grade we haven't done before but that was part of the discussion but then we had this um uncertainty as to what the class size would be so that is a discussion that
will come up before we make the decision okay I'm this spring yeah but I do want you there um it's getting late and I I know I don't I do have one question for you when when do your budget when did you vote on your budget uh last night
you did what was the recommendation the recommendation as to what to cut what did you vote what did we the exact number did you vote the town we vote the I'm sorry we vote the town manager's number okay we made it balance okay
so you I guess schools would be ready to come back potentially next week is that true we could tell you what we did on on um the town manager budget but things might change between now and then not on the to manager's budget I do not believe
on the amount it won't change but the amount won't CH no I no we voted it what is taken out or put back in should not change between now and next week I okay so should can't imagine so maybe we should put schools on next
week what's the Thought do they have a final budget how yes we voted it you have a final decision on how the money will be allocated or you have the number we have a fin decision on how the money will be allocated okay so I haven't seen the
meeting because it was not avable yet no no it we had a a zoom disaster yeah okay so why don't I um change that decision why don't we have schools come in next week then because I think you if you voted on it last night next week you
should be able to give us a presentation I will pass that along okay all right so we'll do schools next week that the 20th the 20th yeah I know um you're you won't be here but you can
watch it and if you have any pre questions or anything um everyone else is available should be okay okay and then the 27th we'll get more towards final budgets and um
hopefully final Capital plan um and then we'll have to go the third and 10th on votes and um in in reports so if you guys have
ideas on reports email me and just me um you know if you have any kind of thoughts that you want to um incorporate into things we can't deliberate on it outside but I can collect people's people's thoughts on
it um just cuz I I it it it's always hard to get that done in in two meetings um because we can't deliberate outside of out of meeting so can we assess on the
3D about adding a meeting like two meetings the following week to get it done by the 10th I know we've met twice once we could we could do that it would would' have to find Space we could find Space um but yeah I mean if we needed to we
could we could at a a small meeting I want to present airtight things with no holes okay let's let's talk about that possibility on the 27th we'll we'll assess where we are okay um okay so I
will recommend that I change the agenda for next week to to have schools [Music] um um in I'll see if there's any other topic that we want um but schools next
week okay all right so I I just for formality because it's it's on the agenda and it was um posted in The Ledger um can I have a um motion to open public
hearing so moved second all those in favor I I all right I'm going to open public hearen is there anything people generally want to speak about in a public [Music]
hearing uh go ahead Dave yeah thank you Mr chair um just to add on to a comment you made a short time ago uh to the town manager through you um I implore you to take ownership
as the chair suggested of this budget uh you've got lots of input from most all the stakeholders uh the budget sits with you in the charter so it is your budget not 11,000 people's different budgets so
uh I I implore you to you know spend the time you have left in the next few weeks to sit with your financial team Izzy and everybody else you're working with within Town Hall uh to bring your budget forward not everybody else's budget or
it'll be a fiasco on town meeting for thank you thank you Dave um go ahead [Music] John uh hi Chris how are you thank you uh can you hear me okay yeah can you get a little closer maybe to your mic yeah
hold on a second hold on let me fix that and reminder name address all right yep it's uh John Bowen 162 Highland Street is that a little bit better yep okay so I'm actually I'm I
think that um Dave pios uh kind of said it uh right uh you have the information put your budget together and make your recommendations on what you think is best for the town um not necessarily what's best for every department and what somebody wants um there are a
number of different items uh that you raised uh this evening particularly the capital planning committee issue uh the town manager is concerned about that as well I'm also concerned about that because uh there are items on there that you probably shouldn't have on there particularly
with boards that have money um and agencies that have the ability to raise money uh the Parks Commission has an opportunity to be able to raise money uh you could you have just like you have a a a beach badge you get a park badge um
there's all sorts of things that can be done you know that nobody's really looking at I know that's not a popular opinion but when you have an economy like we have this is what you stock with um the schools got to give fees they have to put fees out people have to pay fees for transportation people have to
pay fees to be able to play in sports people have to uh Fork over money for their own uniforms uh things like that you know you're going to have to revert back to some old school ways like when all of us went to school and our moms and dads paid for every little thing
that we did from Pop Warner to you know uh you know t-ball and you know these are just these are just some of my concerns um you have uh the cemetery commission has $96,000 you have a $50,000 Capital plan
item uh you can cut that $96,000 they just want to sit there and expand a little bit of space in the North Cemetery that we have 80 Graves uh we only we we we only get rid of uh by sale maybe three a year if that there's 80 grades between the North and
South Cemetery so that's a project that's you know uh something that can weit in the wings uh I sent you guys a PowerPoint um to your emails uh a couple of weeks ago as I did with the town manager and I'll be presenting that on the 18th um to the select board both of
them the PowerPoint uh on the uh proposition of a cemetery Corporation as well as uh a warrant article with regard to the handling of funds and so on and so forth uh with the cemetery Department uh I just wanted to let you know that
you know these are things that we have to cut and Dave pasos is right Chris you and your board sit down with all the information you have write up your own budget and say these are our recommendations and we're voting down everything else hold your votes on your
budget and if anybody's not in there they get a no vote that's only that's my recommend a suggestion I think Dave hit the nail on the head you guys make the budget as an advisory committee to the citizens for what's the best not for what every department wants or what
every department needs but what's best you know for the financial needs of the taxpayers in this town thanks Chris all right thanks you thank you John uh were there any other members that want [Applause]
to Glenn McLoud 430 6 Reservoir Road I wasn't sure the difference between the the um public now and public comment later no difference I don't know okay uh so I'll keep it short I I just wanted to touch base a little bit up about the um
the building design that it's that is um something that I there's really nothing about that project that I I do like I think the most compelling argument was relative to the ADA requirements I mean I myself come in through that front door a little bit
differently than I would a nor a normal door but I do think that's one of the underlying issues and that that should have been addressed many many years ago um and even looking at the prop proposed design about raising the sidewalk and just changing the doors I mean some of those seem pretty straightforward so
it's it's tough to use that again as compelling as that argument was it's and and does need to be addressed um I'll just keep it short I mean I can go on on different issues if you like but overall and I truly do appreciate you know all
the work that that committee has put in and how frustrating it is for someone you know like like myself to come up and not support the project particularly as full disclosure I am from away I'm one of I'm that guy you know we moved to
lunenberg in July of 2023 specifically because we LED lunenberg it was a a really a nice small town and it's you know it's just it's frustrating and I understand that's how how life goes but it's it's frustrating
now to see that all these big issues you know does lunenberg want to be a different town a big town and and they have every every right to to make those decisions and it's really quite amazing that all of these things are are coming down at once and I will also say that I
am not speaking certainly for any of the employees here in town having you know really not knowing any of them but to your comment about um you know accommodating the employees it's an a very appropriate comment to make and speaking as a um a 29-year Municipal
Employee uh it is very difficult to have a local government as as your boss it's frustrating particularly where I I lived and worked for lived in and worked for the same town but I can assure you as
from my standpoint as as a Municipal Employee the prime AR uh things to be concerned about is making the employees feel appreciated um that they receive a fair fair
pay we realize we'll never be happy with it we always want a little bit more but we just want to be we want to at the end of the day feel as though we've been treated fairly and respectfully and before I forget to mention i' Jump
Around bit I really do feel um um comforted by you know your board going over all these things but specifically appreciative to having the town manager on board during these difficult times I think we're very fortunate to have her
guidance in in this um Quagmire if you will but back to the employees I you know with all of these discussions and without getting into the rabbit hole that you are all too familiar with i as an employee would much prefer to have my
fellow employees with me than to have them um be laid off and I'm sitting in a nice office or vice versa I'm sitting at home laid off uh you know these are very difficult decisions and they you know they're quite frankly
having watched um this the um school committee meeting it is um it's impossible but um I'll stop there otherwise I'll keep going yeah no and I guess what's the difference between public hearing and public comment um I think public comment
public hearing is a little I think more interactive so it is your ability to ask a question and get okay public I thought I was going to get in trouble no public comment you can literally go up there for three minutes and curse on any talk I I promise not to do that so please don't but
yeah but your first amendment rights allow you to do it right and from all the years of watching plug to pack um that I'm I'm well versed on what what is going on in town and at home I would app appreciate when someone comes up and does that I find it entertaining but I
won't do that you know I I don't plan and and and I didn't want to bring it up earlier as a question as it relates to the municipal um building design committee but one of the and and I'll really try not to go down the rabbit hole but one of the things I found particularly troubling was I was fully
invested through the process and it was I was comforted although skeptical of the $15 million Hardline budget cap that they had and it although I I understand the explanation that went through how we got up to the 23 23 million I really was um you
know looking forward to that $15 million cap and that just that just kind of went away um and I and I understand that but and and to into pack um you know I really appreciate the their content coverage and and have um benefited from
it and I also would you know make the comment that I think the town has to in their long-term plans realize that they will need to be supported with Town within the town budget and that I would I would certainly support that okay yeah
no thank you and just for your awareness cuz maybe you're more new to the town you said um I think we've been talking about town hall for over a decade right I mean a you're like our historian I
think so um so there been a lot of iterations more than that I I and that's why I I I state that like a full disclosure I'm that guy cuz I hear that in the in the meetings that you know people come in and and and it's a funny quote that I remember from my years uh
again as a Municipal Employee one of the one of the co-workers had said to us um as we maybe made some comments about our our you know our boss it's the local the local government and the you know the wise old man turns and said you know the
the people who will be running this town in 5 years do not even live here yet and it it plays out it plays out um and you know to the point about PE people from away coming in you know I came in I came from down south west
bro right M oh yeah so um you know so you you you'd understand I mean Southboro Southboro is still a small community but West Westboro is what um lunenberg is what Westboro was 50
years ago and that's it's it's part of what impresses me about the uh about the community but again about the um derailing you know long-standing um programs you know one of my fundamental
concerns too with this Pro uh process or this proposal is and I may have this wrong but it it came out of arpa funds and what I mean by that it wasn't the the voters of town that uh voted at town
meeting with lunenberg tax dollars to form to hire this architect to to create this plan so whether I forget the amount it was was like2 200 thou $200,000 thereabouts was arpa money so um I think
that that that little um that that step or stage I suppose of the process was a little concerning to me like I I would feel a little more confident if the voters had actually um implemented uh authorized funded that specific plan
that's not a huge issue but it's just it's just one one of the one of the problems I I I kind of have with it but but globally I just think it's a a terrible plan and I feel I I I actually feel horrible about that and I am probably being a little more
straightforward with it because I don't actually know anybody I don't know the people on the board I don't know you guys you know so it's it's it's but my comments are from the heart um and it's and it's there's so much talk about um
affordable housing and the housing crisis the conversation really should be about affordable living and there's it is becoming so unaffordable to live in Massachusetts that you know we have we hear so much about grants and
conservation and you know even now with the I'm going down a rabbit hole aren't I but it's like there there is so much there's so much demands on on our individual budgets and I and and I've I've heard several comments I think
everybody everybody agrees that the state is not stepping in and the state is the heart of what the problem is and it's causing us the community members to not necessarily turn on one another but it you know there are some comments from
the the uh during the school committee of some disappointment with the taxpayers for not supporting supporting the schools and know that's that's that's you know that's heartbreaking to hear because I think that is what is happening at the state level and and our
um our uh Representatives our contingent whatever they call them as they're just not I don't believe personally that they are representing their their con constituents and uh again watching the um school committee Mr beardmore has
gone on a a couple of again a gentleman I don't even know I feel weird saying his name but he he he went on some tangents that he was just spot on just spot on yeah honestly I'm a systems
engineer um we have a systemic problem in this state right now right we are going to it is going to break right and I I and I encourage everyone especially I was was disheartened to hear that there although I fully support the the Democratic process I think it's
fantastic that PE cin can bring bring articles I I love it it forces a the conversation but I was really impressed with the meeting at the selectman and school committee the other night where I think they really came up with an excellent plan to to bring all this
important information to the voters educate them so that they can understand and and fully grasp what it is you and the town manager and every other department head and employee is trying to to confront and have a really
in-depth discussion and and and now with the with the Revelation that there's you know a partial override if you will is just it it concerns me that that derails that really I I you know I I thought that was going to be a a great step
forward and and these you know back to the affordability it's a lot of these conversations are siloed I hear that term a lot they they really can't be and and again dabbling with that proverbial Rabbit Hole one of the conversations I I
I would implore um you to have and the town to have is relative to this um uh storm water utility I mean to me and please correct me if I'm wrong but to me that sounds like you're
taking money out of the general budget that which is is controlled by proposition 2 and A2 putting it into something that sounds nice a storm water utility so that's whether they whether they decide it's $40 a year or $50 or $100 a year per resident that's
essentially an override I mean if sometimes an override could like the last one I think was roughly $150 per average taxpayer but to me it's it technically may be wrong but if it's if it's money that would otherwise have in
at even in part in the general budget or appropriated in a a town uh a separate article it's just it's just another monthly bill yeah read now one of the things we are doing is chapter 90 is
funding a lot of those projects yeah um but if we are looking at chapter 90 as a means by which to um take on more of the pavement manag plan then that could be a could be a
problem and I know um Town manager and and Bill bernade DPW director have you know sent us at least some analyses on his initial cut on that but um infrastructure is something this board and capital planning have looked at as
you know a a future problem for the town outside of all the other issues that you know we we potentially have yep and I do love lunenberg roads and I think it was I may may have been Anna's comment that you know you know when you leave
lunenberg cuz you hit a pothole oh yeah and and it's almost a I mean it's actually like a true statement so and again the poor poor town manager like whenever she whenever she even the new guy gasped when she said she wanted to take the
$550,000 like I was like a gas I get it it's a great conversation to have I don't love it but Ro all right I'll walk away so you guys can go home thank you very much I appreciate thank all right um go ahead Dave yeah Chris thank
you uh you muted yourself [Laughter] somehow yeah thank you very much Mr chair uh Dave Paso's uh former resident lunenberg former member of this committee uh presently located in
Jefferson New Hampshire residential highway so that will take care of the people that were complaining about me not presenting myself at the beginning of my comments anyway stop wasting time here first of all question for the chair
uh is there another public hearing date scheduled because there's a whole bunch as you stated before in this meeting there's a whole bunch of stuff that you guys haven't even received yet and cannot be reviewed in an open public meeting until you receive it uh my one
of my big concerns is hearing from whoever sponsors the uh override uh article to fully explain the expected breakdown of that $2 million override that's a that's an essential
piece to before it goes into town meeting in the ballot I believe um Mr I don't think as a citizen petition we can demand that citizen to to to explain
things to us no you can invite them though ask and I ask but it's it was just you know we can't demand no yeah so I would say that irrespective of the two and a half question we certainly uh will
plan on another public hearing I would Envision it probably to be April 3rd um because uh April 10th we will be finalizing everything so and I don't
think we'll be ready for the 27th but it would either be the 27th or April 3rd I guess I what I'll say um yeah just one other quick comment if I could Mr chair uh and my other concern for there needing to be another one uh is that as
the town manager mentioned this evening the articles that were put in by the superintendent and the school department are presently sitting there as unfunded articles those need you know maybe that will change before your next public hearing but I see that as seriously
problematic um yeah I I agree I mean the qu the question is do we leave town meeting with a with a balanced budget um right we shall see right yeah um no all good points Dave as
you know I I agree with everything you said so yeah just one quick one and then I'm done for the night um just want you to be aware if if you haven't had a chance to watch the backend back end of the select board meeting the other night
after they sat there in workshop with the school committee negotiating back and forth as to how they could fill gaps and and use uh free cash and all this other stuff which I still believe is very dangerous but maybe you can get away with it um lo and behold later in
the meeting in their meeting uh that it was really the first time I believe that town manager and the select board went through the budget similar to the way you guys went through it this evening and they went through that entire workshop and halfway through
their meeting not realizing that the cut to the pavement management line was to balance the townside budget it was a revelation that came up if you watch the video the Revelation that came up in the middle of that part of the meeting and uh you know so
they're and and my take after that was they were all in panic they want to push back the DAT of town meeting they want to push back the DAT of uh the ballot uh all kinds of uh you know knee-jerk reactions and uh in the past the finance
committee is the one that has kind of cooled the Jets on some of these committees by keeping a breast of what's going on and uh just be as much aware as the finance committee as to what's going on in these other committees because
it's just going forward too fast thank you and I'm done I will not come back on tonight all right thanks thanks Dave I I think a lot of people especially late at night have knee-jerk reactions to things it's natural to to talk to think and come up with things so but somehow we
have to get through and to town meeting um and we will all work to to get there so all right any other anyone else want to here be
heard okay I would entertain a motion to close public hearing so moved second all right uh all those in favor say I I I all right we're out of public hearing all right um we were going to do new business of
outlining the finance committee annual report um I have ideas floating around on my head as to what we need to do on it I do think there's got to be some level of talking through prop two and a halfs and levies
and Levy limits and um uh excluded debt um our policies and stuff like that probably um as we talked a little bit about today um and then you know as we start to take votes on things you know reflect what our
recommendations are collectively or or or even if we're not even if we we have differences which you know is is good that's democracy um but again I I think if anyone has any ideas that they want highlighted on it just send me a note
and I'll um I'll start to think about it or you know if you want to say it now but okay um I think we talked through anything related to Old business we have minutes that were dropped in from 220
did everyone look at those I oh you got to check the the minute Bud uh folder sorry I didn't oh yeah yeah okay yeah well they were in the email yeah she may have done both I I've lost track she she
usually emails them and drops them in there yeah Sunday the 9th she emailed when was the email Sunday the 9th she emailed them okay I'd like to stay up with minutes um
but um I did you get a chance to look at him mic yeah okay all right i' entertain a motion on the minutes motion to move the minutes of February 20th second okay um any
discussion all right all those in favor say I I I um oppos I didn't hear Anna did you vote he said I okay all right and I good with it all right 220
approved all right any committee reports if everyone um if anyone hasn't seen that joint meeting of the school in um select board which was under the select board's meeting it was in the
beginning um I might recommend watching it if you watch it on YouTube you can put it on one and a half speed which does make your laugh sound really funny um and uh you can you can get through it at a little bit faster um and
not lose anything so um I don't think there's any other committee or does anyone else have any other committee reports okay um any actions or topics for future meetings I think we kind of talked through that um if anyone thinks I
missed anything again just let me know and I'll get it on the agenda we'll do school committee I'll verify it but um that will be the plan of record next week and if we could have those with a little bit of events it's it's kind of hard to absorb a budget and then meeting
a minute or later yeah I know um yep okay um any final public comment from the public all right Karen Menard 672 page stre um I'm
here so I'm going to make my public comment in person instead of from home in my bed in my pajamas um you know as I listen to guys talk tonight it's bringing me back to a year ago when we were discussing grants so I want to throw a couple of numbers out there
because I think that numbers to understand what's available for Grants is important for people to understand this is one Grant alone this is from the mass office on disability which is the Ada Grant a grant that could be applied for for planning and
project the school playground the Marshall Park playground in FY 24 three 93232 is the amount of grant money that went out to communities in um FY
25 it was 4,910 668 that's a total of 59 grants 25 were for planning and 34 for projects if we don't push our town
Administration whether it be um the schools facilities Parks anybody to be applying for these they don't there's money out there what's the worst that can happen they're going to tell us no okay so be it I applied for
the Ada Grant by myself on a probably proof Reddit before I sent it off um but I applied for it by myself we didn't get it but I don't think our project was strong enough to get it and that was okay but we applied for it we're never going to get something that we don't apply for so when Capital planning sees
these projects come through one of the first things that should be asked are have you investigated the grants available and did you apply for them and at some point somebody's going to have to say if you didn't apply for them don't come to us looking for money we're not going to give it to you we're not going to rate your project high enough
if there's money available we should be going for it on the um for the land and water um Grant and the trail um the park Grant I believe it was something like a just over 27 million that awarded in grant money for parks
and conservation land last year alone how many and we went for it obviously but this is the first time I know of that Parks had ever gone for a grant like that so you know I think we need to put some emphasis that is State money it's our taxpayer money in the end of
the day but it's state money um so although we don't get enough from you know the Chapter 70 stuff you know there's we can fight for that but the same time we're not even fighting for money that's available and we need to be fighting for that so I would urge you
guys to you know say to these people that coming before you um the last thing that I wanted to throw out there was um and if you had asked me this if I supported the building reuse project a few years ago would have been an absolute I would have been a no just
because I couldn't see the TC pasos building doing what I thought it needed to do but the last year or two especially with Chris being involved in um Finance committee has been very eye openening in terms of meeting space we don't have it um you know a great
example of this is and there is a there's a problem that we have with the way we have to secure meeting space and I know that's something that town manager's been made aware of I've complained about it to her assistant um many times Chris has complained about it but at the end of the day that's a
process that can be fixed but we can't fix the meeting space that we have available we are we are having meetings the Parks Commission is a great example we are a five member board meeting in the upstairs meeting room at Ritter there's five of us and they were probably 10 to 12 members of the public
there that room is no bigger than this stage and there's stuff in that room we need more meeting space I don't know how to get it and the other thing is is that Michael Ray is not kidding when he says to you that we do we have Ada accessible
buildings on paper to get into that building if there is a meeting only only in the downstairs meeting room at Ritter the only way to access that if you are um in a wheelchair or if you can't do stairs is to knock on the door and hope
that somebody downstairs is going to hear it which means our our meeting was not accessible to the public we can't do that any longer we have to have accessible buildings where everybody every member of our community I don't want to hear that oh my 85-year-old
father was able to get in well that's fine I know a 35-year-old woman that couldn't get into this room one day because that where our elevator comes up was blocked we can't do that anymore we know better it's 2025 we have to do better
and by doing better it is going to mean expending some money on things that maybe we don't want to expend it on but we have to make our buildings accessible to everybody and we need to have better meeting space so that people like us aren't spending a tremendous amount of
time Trump jumping through hoops trying to to figure out where we can even have a meeting so that's all that's my say for tonight thank you I'm driving myself home I drove my own car I don't know but I will put to plug Ru Donuts on the table for everybody Rhonda I'm going to
make a comment about the they're really good they're really good I eat like four yeah we were watching you thank I just make a comment about the you know the original 10 of the grant
writing services position was to look for grants that uh the part uh regular full-time you know like department heads apply for the regular grants that they know are out there it's usually like
other boards and commissions that have a hard time finding grants and that was part of the the uh reasoning behind getting grant writing services with someone that when we have something that comes up you know like Marshal Park and we say to them to go to find a
consulting company grant writing company that would go look for those grants that you that money that you talk about and hopefully uh their expertise would make it easier for us to get grants the crazy
part on that Jay is that um when that Grant um writer subcontract whatever you want to call it was put in serves Parks had already started to apply for our grants yes so we knew about it and correct me
if I'm wrong but I don't believe anybody any other group has reached out to use those not $1 has been spent not $1 has been spent Parks is you know our chair has initiated it but no other group has reached out to try to use any of these funds so and I I think it's really a
matter of until somebody you know on some of these boards that are making some financial decisions starts holding people's feet to the fire to say if you want Town money we also need you to be you know applying for all of the other funds that can be available I will
guarantee you that I will be standing in front of town meeting requesting money for Marshall Park's project but I'm also going to be saying to you we are going to apply for every single grant that we can possibly do the number of hours that I personally spent that Anna personally
spent on these grants I think there was our first one and now mind you it was the first grant that I ever applied for I think in the first the 2 weeks before it was due I was well over 40 hours of volunteer time putting this in um it's
leg work that I think is worth it um you know and if there was another group that said I you know I'm interested in applying for a grant you know do you have any information for me I would absolutely share it and I'd also be sending them you know the town manager to say there's grant writing services available um but nobody holds them to it
um you know I I feel like I sent over to the school the Ada Grant and I very it's possible that I didn't but you know that to me is so simple so self-explanatory and for somebody that's written grants before that's probably the easiest one we could do um so you know I don't know
how to get people to actually expend it so I know that the money is there and I know what the intent of it was it just it it didn't we're a year in and it didn't it didn't get the ball moving and you know I it would be nice for for some of our projects to be funded um
partially by you know some outside funds versus all inside so yeah I I do think we need some kind of policy procedure or something on on how to um how to use some of those funds for it
because hopefully it does pay for itself and maybe it becomes more in the future if we're able to to get a return on investment on it um okay John hi John Bowen 162 Highland Street real quick you got speak up again John yeah
uh yeah that's okay uh John Bowen 162 Highland Street um um I actually agree with Karen um on that I know on Tuesday uh the town manager can contest to this that there was a discussion with regard to the grant writer position and people
who can write grants and that you know Michael Jeff's made a point that you know a grant really isn't free money so much so as you have to maintain what you get when you get that kind of money for a particular project so if you don't
have any kind of Maintenance or any kind of followup plan or anything like that you go for a grant you get the grant you build it and then who do you hand it to oh here you go Bill berad take care of it oh here you go Chris Ruth uh take care of that uh uh uh oh uh here you go
town manager yeah yeah yeah that's only a increase of $30,000 uh a year just to be able to manage that new Grant of that free money we got and we really have to be very very careful about what we ask for because if we ask for something we can't maintain it it's
just going to end up like the Pao building and I I'm just saying is that that's just an you know an overall thing and again if a division like the parks department conservation Cemetery they have money in their coffers use that go
find grants go find money Okay and like I said raise fees okay raise fees fees to enter the park fees to use the park fees to use the beach they do that you know what I mean and you know things like that you know dogs get licenses
okay we got dog licenses that gets paid that goes to animal control and a portion goes somewhere else I can't remember where but just my thoughts but I kind of agree with Karen you don't go looking elsewhere before you start asking the town for money you don't get the money and I agree with Karen thank
you all right thank you John any uh final public comment from the public any public comment from the board motion to adjin second third all right all those in favor say I I hi
thank you all grandfather had an Old Farm like yeah uhhuh