so uh in accordance to the open uh requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being broadcast at a later date over the Lunberg public access channel you can also attend the meeting by Zoom which if you're here you have the Zoom code if not it's on the agenda in the uh Lunberg
uh website um the meeting will be broadcast on a later date uh through the local access cable channel and on public access Facebook and will be found on the Lunberg Access YouTube channel within 24 hours of the meeting the agenda lists all of the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and those that are
reasonably anticipated by the chair votes may be taken as a result of these discussions not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by the open meeting law so uh the first thing that's on the agenda after the call to order is
public comment uh is there anybody that would like to make a public comment seeing no one's hand raised after a couple checks uh we're going to the new business and the new business is action item on the FY26 capital plan uh
Dr dr burnham do you want me to turn it over to you certainly okay all right so at our um at our regularly scheduled school committee meeting um last Wednesday evening we had indicated that
we were awarded um a green communities grant uh the award for us was in the amount of $200 plus there are additional um energy rebate savings that could be
applied to the cost of the project the project being phase two of the mini split installation at the primary school um what and I'll let Dr gillson speak to this in a moment as well what
we were not aware of as we were working with the uh committee to submit the proposal last fall um was that the project was going to have to
move forward in order not to hold up the next round of grants that can go in this coming fall um there are other projects that the town is looking to have the green communities grant funding for as
an example um uh hybrid cruisers as an example would be eligible for um for these grant projects uh therefore in a meeting on Friday afternoon with the town manager
uh and the chairs of the finance committee um select board and school committee we talked about the different ways that we might secure the the remaining funds necessary to complete the project this summer
um and um determined that the best resolution was actually to seek to amend the capital plan request for FY26 and the nature of the urgency in
having this meeting today was so that um the school committee could discuss and make a decision um take a vote um as to whatever action they wanted to take relative to this possible solution so that we could um inform the town manager
in advance of the select board meeting tomorrow evening where she would have to present the amended capital plan to them so the proposal essentially is that the school
committee um would request to remove those school department capital projects FY26 that made it through the capital planning process and are included in the
the current version of the town manager's capital plan which she would bring forward to the annual town meeting in May and replace those items with this
one ask the funding for the remainder of phase two of the mini split installation at the primary school if we go this way um and this funding is secure we can move forward get this project completed
this summer get it all signed off and then the green committee is clear to pursue another round of grant submissions this fall um Dr gillson anything to add i think
the total value of the project that was submitted as phase 2 is in the realm of $485,000 is that right that's pretty close i mean it it's $483,000 give or take right um you know
and so um so yes that's correct so the remaining uh balance that we would need to secure funding for uh is 170,000 and Mr beardmore can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the
projects that were um to be incorporated in this year's capital plan at town meeting for the school department included the design study for the playground at the primary the design study for the
driveway revision at the primary the safety window film at the primary um the hot water tank replacement at Turkey Hill and I think the uh uh
security camera central server uh replacement is that the list that you have Mr bemore indeed that is correct so essentially we would take th we would request to remove those for consideration and inclusion in the
capital plan that the town manager brings forward to town meeting and replace it with this ask of the 170 to complete um the mini split phase two at the primary school and we would just bring
these other projects back in the capital plan uh the 10-year capital plan we would just put these uh items that we're rem we are potentially removing this evening uh bring those back in
FY27 in the 10-year school department capital plan mr chairman can I just clarify one one piece sure thank you this is uh Jen Warren Diamond the town manager um the total funding between those projects
were absolutely correct um the total funding between the projects is 146,865 so there still is a small delta there to get you to the 170 that would not be included in the revision uh to the FY26 capital plan
that I share so could somebody walk us through the math here because I've heard I have a number of questions but I heard a $483,000 number i heard
$200,000 in grants and $146,000 from the capital plan there and there's a there's a utility incentive that they also add in and uh the utility
incentive is 113,250 so that's the missing part Peter that um I guess you need to be aware of okay so grant 200k add
113250 into that and the remaining amount is Lunenburgg's um expected contribution of 170k and then the um and what Jen is
saying is that there isundred and um Jen can Can you say that again please sure it's $146,865 in the capital plan and if uh committee members want to look at that
sheet it's I was sent it out on um Friday afternoon yeah we've got it okay excellent so So by my math just you're looking at round numbers we're still $23,000 short is
that is that correct yes yes and does anybody know where the 23,000 is going to come from i mean I'm assuming that and Miss Town Manager and Dr burn
correct me if I'm wrong i'm assuming that this would be something that we could use free cash to do from the 500,000 yes ma'am yes okay
um can we can we go back and rerun the history here because I I I think I have a pretty good understanding of the tradeoffs here um and by the way all things being equal with the exception of the hot
water tank that I think brings some risk to it um I I think that there's a better short-term gain from doing this project than the some of the projects that we have on the the FY26 capital plan so I'm
I'm okay with the tradeoff so to speak obviously this represents though a a major disruption to our process that we have been criticized for uh in and rightfully so in some cases uh for not
following the process and uh I recall two meetings last fall um a capital planning committee meeting and a school committee meeting where Mr blat
came forward and said "We need to get out of the starting blocks here and get moving on on applying for these grants." My understanding until last Wednesday was that this wasn't a you
have to cough up the money to get the grant so when did that come into the picture and were there some people that knew and some people that didn't or or or what because I I feel like I know it wasn't a bait and switch
but I feel like the victim of a bait and switch here uh given what's transpired over the course of the last several months so So I I Oh okay i'll let the the chair so I I am on the same page as you from last meeting and then I got an email from Dave Blat uh after our meeting and
I was I replied to try to get some more feedback and that's when I found out that this sounds like we're going to hold up the green communities from getting more grants next year so I talked to the superintendent and I I mentioned that we should talk to the town manager about this and then we talked to the town manager on Friday and
well the the issue with the issue with the so there's a there's a number of issues here right one issue is the fact that this is going to hold if we don't do the project and we we continue to hold the project as if we're going to do it we're going to hold up the green
communities committee right i I get that but there's the other aspect of this which is and we've talked about this a hundred times every time a grant comes up if we apply for this grant are we going to have to contribute more money to make the grant a thing and and in my
opinion I never knew about the more money literally until last week so my question is where's the disconnect i think I think obviously well I think that you could tell from my comments at
the meeting last week that uh we were unaware of this as well but thought it's okay because based on the timeline to expend the grant and knowing that we had uh already scheduled the mini split
project the phase 2 uh project in FY27 in our capital plan that it still would would cycle through and we would be able to secure the additional funding assuming that the capital plan committee particularly now that we had grant
funding would deem that project um rate it high enough that it it would be funded in FY27 we still felt that we would be able to um actually get the project completed within the timeline of the
grant and that's when um you know We we found out in talking with the town manager that that was problematic because they had plans for submission in in the fall um for for additional
funding for projects on the town side um as well in our conversations with Mr vlatt and the team last year um there were plans to do some assessment at Turkey Hill uh as part of another grant
round so that we could get to a um yet another grant cycle uh in the out years uh where we could do the heat pumps mini splits uh over at the Turkey Hill Elementary so in our conversations with
the green committee we we were under the impression that we were the we were the projects that were in the queue for them for the next couple of cycles um not realizing that there's it sounds like um
kind of like a given that um they would submit for uh hybrid vehicles for the safety department um each year as well so um I I think that we were we were just as surprised i know
that Dr gillson was involved in more of the meetings and more of the conversations than was I so I'll let her speak to um if she had any insight into this i I can tell you that I did not dr gillson
yeah and I can tell you too that I did not either and I think even the date we were um also like we knew that we submitted for the grant um with the help of green communities in the fall um but
it was not even clear as to when the grant was going to come through um the timing was either you know we were I think informed either late winter um spring we we didn't really know when it
was going to come through so um and if it was going to come through like we we just didn't know so I just having been around for a little while and been involved in discussions at finance committee meetings and capital planning
committee meetings and school committee meetings about green communities grant applications the applications generally speaking some years there's off- round uh uh applications but they happen in
the fall they're granted in the spring and you got to expend them to do the new thing and I actually had this thought during our meeting last week but I didn't want to speak out of turn just because I didn't really know for sure and and my only comment is is before we drive forward on whether
we're going to do this or not we've got to be applying for grants but we've got to be a little bit more sophisticated in our planning and communication i I personally feel some responsibility here because as chairman of the of the capital planning committee I feel like I've wasted a lot of capital planning
time you know just because we'd gone through a legitimate process here uh and and tried to offer good advice to the town manager and frankly speaking it's all with respect to the school department stuff it's all null and void
right we it's a we're we're doing we're doing a takeback and we'll see again next year and and I I feel like we're not making good use of people's time by doing it this way and I know that this wasn't planned but this is the net effect
of not being fully communicative and transparent about what we're getting ourselves into here right and I think too that um it everything last fall was really condensed it was very rushed um by the
time we were involved and it was yes this is a viable project and then we had to get all kinds of data and work with um different members of the team to pull together the data to get the application through it was sort of like a sprint to
to get this pulled together um so admittedly there wasn't a whole lot of um time for deeper inquiry as to well how does this play out if we do get it and how does this work beyond the award
so on and so forth um perhaps if it if it hadn't if it hadn't been so condensed um there might have been more that uh emerged through conversation in the process um that would have brought some of this
to light earlier it it also brings to light like maybe if we're in this business of applying for large grants and doing large projects the town needs to rethink the
capital planning process full stop because this is just not this doesn't work the way we're doing same thing for like the police or the fire if they're getting one of these green grants it's like it throws off the entire capital plan because we don't hear about it till later yeah the the
thing with like a a a you know an electric or hybrid police cruiser is it's $5,000 right like and it's it's kind of built the full cost is built in and then if we we get the $5,000 it's $5,000 here it's like there's a major
tradeoff here can I ask a question to Dr gillson yes at the time that we were applying for this grant could we have figured out that we would have had to uh spend the
money in the manner in which we are now talking about spending or was it something that we only learned later on when we accepted the grant and it blocked this the town's grants from activating
we did not know in what what kind of grant we were going to be awarded um at all so we did not know you know that it was going to be anywhere near
200K um and so um I think there um we were glad to be awarded 200K but the next steps then were okay can we pair down I you know one of the things that we did talk about was can we pair this
project down to make it more affordable given the state of our budget and the um what was discussed we had a meeting to discuss that piece of it and so um I think that pairing it down basically
pairing anything down out of the scope that was originally presented um they have to go back and they have to re-review the project and we have no guarantees of being funded so again um I
think that was that was the that was the concern because uh we really wanted to see what we could do to still meet the grant requirements and pair things down and then perhaps go
for another round of funding but we also did not un um did not know what the intention was uh with the green communities of wanting to uh continue to apply for other funding through the for
the town so that was um you know so that's where I think that we we stood in our in our um understanding of the project miss Pazowski can we wait a year even if it does sum
up the works for the rest of the town because I'm having a very hard time pushing some of these off primary school feasibility study for the driveway that's a safety issue that we've been having for several years primary school
designer services playground equipment that's a safety issue for the primary school students and that's the first step in a long process for a safer playground um the I'm having a hard time pushing some
of these out even a year especially now that we're looking at busing fees and we're going to have more parents driving their kids in with the driveway that driveway has been an issue for a while so pushing these off I'm having a hard time with especially considering what a
small percentage of the capital projects are and then looking at the capital projects I mean town hall HVAC upgrades is $113,000 for a building that we're voting to
maybe renovate i'm just I'm wondering why the schools are bearing the entire cost of this if we're going to have to bear the entire cost of it but we're doing it to
benefit other departments in town why don't we just do what benefits us so there's a lot that what you just said there but I can try to comment from from my perspective and I think from the perspective of the capital planning
committee um these items were very well considered oh yeah i know you guys are very good reasons why there are I don't want to not do them why there are town hall
projects on this list um the and they were they were heavily and and debated extensively by the capital planning committee um with respect to the primary school
projects particularly the the planning and the the driveway and the the playground I got to tell you Laura I would be in a very similar position if you had not started a discussion about consolidating schools and closing Turkey
Hill and expanding the the use of of the primary school because that's going to change our parking requirements if we do that as well as our traffic if we were able to go down that path so you know like given the conversations we've had
over the course of the last several weeks I'm not nearly as confident in those two items as I was even two months ago that is a good point yeah because we are going to have to make even tougher choices it's just
being forced to spend $170,000 to put it's at a time when we're down to bare necessities and we are being forced to make such dire cuts suddenly having to spend money on this is putting us in a
very difficult situation and if it could be put off I would rather put it off i think the challenge with putting it off is we're losing all that grant funding so we're actually going to get a project a big project done that we we may not get done in the future it's that
it goes back to the they didn't put AC in the primary school but now we actually have the opportunity that we can get it done where we might not future does anybody know e the the the standalone cost without the additional requirements to
turn this thing into the central controller that this grant requires what that difference in actual cost is to us like let let's say you were to pull out the $200,000 does the UNIL money go with
that $200,000 and are we just left to pay for condensers and splits on our own well maybe maybe we have the answer in the price tag for the first phase of the um of the units because um if I'm
understanding correctly that was maybe $230,000 and so am I right or or that that was pretty close yep and and that included no controllers and no grant requirements and
so the benefit of meeting the grant requirements is that there is a there is a utility incentive of $113 to $150 um and there is also um you know
the the the new price tag um would put it at around $170,000 so So let me let me just see if I can get to the heart of the issue here we're $170,000 out of p pocket
we get a fully integrated system yeah this year versus $230,000 plus in an outy year that we can't guarantee we're going to get because we don't know right that is not an integrated system that has just
individual thermal yeah and the energy savings that we will be able to um to get every year moving forward once this system is
in and talking to our main HVAC systems so for my for my money I So couple of you know just couple of thoughts again this is just me number one it seems like we're going to get a lot more bang for our
buck and we get to finish a project which believe it or not after three years on the school committee I really want finish a project but in exchange we're giving up every single other thing that we had on the capital plan well I mean theoretically
what we would be doing is because that is in FY27 on the capital plan for $230 some odd dollars we're literally flipping right we're flipping the 26 plan with the 27 plan um not to say that this will all be in the same you know go
through the same analytics of the same people and the same prioritization in a year from now but but none of these are falling off the list right it's correct i think the fact that they made the list they're likely to make the list next year well there are some particulars
about this year like there are no capital you know there are no public works projects that that there's a lot of small smaller scale projects that we've were able to fund this year that I don't we've never had 22 items on our capital plan in my in my time doing this
so this is a unique year how many are there normally normally it's less yeah less than 10 yeah I was really list just kept going i was watching the meeting and it it just kept going but then I also look at it as this AC project was likely going to be on the capital
planning project in the future too so you're really just next year so I think you're just swapping the years and again we're getting more projects done we'll have more projects coming out of the free cash and that's also money that we don't have
available that's money that we don't have available to spend on nice to haves i mean I know we need to just really hard decisions totally agree
Mr breeny a little bit this is not a hard decision we are getting free money and we have to spend a little money to get money but when we are talking about an austerity budget where we have to do
things like you know uh cut teachers and consider class sizes I I understand that it's a change in plans but from what Dr gillson said it was not something that we could have anticipated until after
the grant was awarded now that means that what we were told at school committee last week was inaccurate and that's kind of a bummer but I don't feel like it's a waste and I don't feel like it's a hard decision because we got free
money i I just you know like we're swapping orders of priority on things that even among the five of us we didn't have agreement on and had you know one vote or two votes been different we would have been funding this thing in in you know the next year instead of the
year after so the flip-flop here really isn't that big of a deal and I think that the last thing I want to say is Peter's point is is right like we are getting more and we are finishing a project one of the things that this town
has got to start to do is understand that maintenance delayed is not just a little more money it's exponentially more money if you look at the cost for installing air condition when the primary school was built which was the
first project I worked on when I was a new school committee member I I don't remember the exact quote but my my understanding was it was like somewhere between$2 and $3 million it would have been the whole whole school and we waited you know 30 Yeah yeah 30 years
and 25 years and the end result is we're doing part of the school where each part is like four times the cost of the whole thing and so finishing a project in a timely fashion that will keep a building operational and easy to use is something
that the whole town needs to do and I understand that like we're being forced to take some of the free cash but like we're all taken out of the same pot here right like we're getting free cash because the town is giving it to us so to think of it as we're spending our money not only is it not actually true
but it's not even metaphorically true because we're all in the same ship here right like somebody's in the engine room somebody's on deck and some somebody's in the crow's nest but it's the same boat and I think we got to keep that analogy in mind as we make these decisions because pitting the town
versus the school is not a profitable or useful thing to do so I am fully in support of this i wish it would have been sequenced a little bit differently but at the end of the day we need money and this is free money miss Brazilowski is there anything else you'd like to add
i will say I think part of my issue is where it flows downhill to and that when I'm looking at the capital plan priority list it wasn't taken from the bottom of the capital plan priority list it was just the school projects that got taken
out which I understand why because we're changing our ask allocation but that seems very tit for tat to me but I I again understand why but you know um it's a prioritization list but
now Marshall pond weed treatment is going above the primary school feasibility study which so it all gets funded so the line the line is $1.225 million that that's what the town manager is
recommending what you see is a prioritization list that is done that way such that when the town manager is determining how much money is available she can draw a line in the prioritization list and say we can fund this or we can't fund that right so in reality it's like what do they call the
last guy in his class at medical school right doctor it it doesn't matter if you're 22 or or one you get funded if you're in the capital if you're in the town manager plan that That's Yeah we just kicked out number two yeah
i think what it comes down to is in the last hour you're not going to the town and the school committee is not going to steal money funds from the capital plan from other departments no no way yeah it's just it's hard to see these
projects have to wait another year especially when it's safety issues but on the other hand it's really stupid to walk away from this amount of money and free money so yeah I'm gonna vote
for it i'm just grumpy about this is also going to enhance the quality of the services that we deliver in that building as well as expand the window of what we can program and the space that we can program in that building starting next year and probably expand the
lifespan of the building because if that building gets too hot it's bad for the envelope of the building so ultimately it's better for the building and it's better for the kids in the building so no I'm going to vote for it i'm just grumpy about it i think we're ready for a motion
uh I move that we uh vote to endorse the town manager and the superintendent's plan to modify our capital plan request uh and extend that request back to the town manager second
any discussion all right this will be a roll call vote mr scholenrini yes mr pazilki yes mr beardmore yes and a yes for myself thank you everyone uh next on the
agenda is public comment mr beardmore uh I just want to thank the town manager for her willingness to be extremely creative and um flexible in her approach and and collaborative i guess collaborative is
the the word I was looking for um this is very much appreciative appreciated um she did not have to do this she could have just stuck with the plan uh so her willingness to work with us on this is uh is is greatly appreciated by me mr
chairman I'd just like to respond um thank you Mr beardmore but that credit also needs to be shared with our working group that we have started on Fridays i think that between the superintendent uh Dr gillson Ezekiel Ayala uh the finance
committee chair and the select board chair i think and the school committee chair of course I think that if we continue having these conversations routinely we're going to continue to have uh really good ideas that we can uh toss around and hear how terrible they
sound to ourselves before we come up with others that are suitable i recognize that um you know the 11th hour nature of this is not easy for folks to digest but certainly appreciate um your discussion this evening and um hopefully
it's a solution that everybody can at least live with thank you uh I would also say I think the the the current situation of the collaboration within the town manager the superintendent and all these departments has been great so I think uh we're moving in a a good direction any
other public comment any public comment from the public you can unmute yourself or raise your virtual hands dr barnham I would just offer um that after this meeting concludes I'll be
hopping on the uh green committee uh meeting to let them know uh the outcome of this meeting thank you uh in addition we will likely have this as a regular uh meeting agenda item to confirm the vote again in a non-emergency
meeting but we wanted to get this information out for green communities as well as the select board before they meet thank you everyone uh I'll look for a motion to adjurnn at 7:39 p.m so moved second all right there's a roll call
vote mr scullen yes Mr pazowski yes Mr beardmore yes and a yes for myself thank you everyone good night thank you thank you