##VIDEO ID:1rAmZ8ey3lo## close enough well I'm going to insist that the pool table come in to be examined good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Arma select board uh as per um guidelines that have been established since Co I am going to read a uh the notice to you that this is to formally advise that as certified by General Law chapter 30A sections 18 to 25 and pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 an act relative to extending certain covid-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency signed into law on June 16 2021 as extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2023 the armor select board will hold a public meeting on Tuesday September 17th 2024 at 6 pm. in the hearing room Yarmouth Town Hall 11:46 Route 28 South Yarmouth Mass 02664 the public is welcome to attend either in person or via VIA the alternative um Public Access provided on the town website would you all like to join me in the pledge of the Allegiance please I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you I'm going to move something a little bit out of the uh normal on the agenda uh we have a retirement recognition today for Edmund Burke uh DPW Highway who was uh with the department for 14 years and um Jeff would you like to tell us about Edmund I will thank you very much uh Jeff Colby Public Works director and uh Ned was a valuable member of the highway team and what we find with Highway as they take a lead in many of the highly visible areas of town uh whether it's snow removal or trimming uh litter pickup sweeping that type of thing and uh Ned as we call him was a critical part of that team I would definitely call him a quiet professional he really didn't say much but he got the job done and uh um I think he's retiring a little earlier than he'd like but he's had some you know challenges on the health side so he had to uh retire uh but we really appreciate his service a few facts around what uh Ned did for us he was hired on August 16th of 2010 as a heavy truck driver and then very quickly thereafter in June of 2011 uh he was promoted to a heavy equipment operator and crew leader demonstrating his uh ability to get work done being responsible for teams and working out in the field and uh making sure that all the appropriate documentation and reports were done that uh uh demonstrate that the work was completed so he has done a great job with that shortly after that he became very proficient in as a skid steer operator and that was very helpful because he became one of primary operators and then was so skilled at that uh piece of equipment he was the lead person in clearing snow at least from the town staff standpoint off a sidewalks so it was extremely uh beneficial uh for him to be able to do that for us we also have that effort is supplemented by contractors as well but you know having a ability inous to do some of that was was key to getting the work done uh and then in 2015 he became a uh a sweeper operator and in 2017 he became the lead the primary employee uh responsible for operating uh the town uh street sweeper at that point we had gotten a uh vacuum street sweeper to become much more efficient in uh removal of um debris and um sand on the roads and he was um very skilled at at using that piece of equipment and in 2021 in addition to the lead on the street sweeper he also became the lead on the roadside mowing team as well so he's done a great job for the town of Yarmouth and we uh will certainly uh have some big shoes that we need to fill for um these responsibilities but we have a good Crew That's upcoming and we'll be training the next crew and uh team leaders in that crew to uh take over for him but we really appreciate his service I really appreciate uh the board recognizing uh service of uh employees as they retire and uh unfortunately uh Ned could not be here tonight but I'm happy to accept the certificate on his behalf thank you um Jeff um sorry that Ned couldn't join us but uh I can see that he was a very valuable member of our team and certainly when it comes to it snowing outside knowing that folks like him are out there taking care of us and keeping it safe for us to use the roads and the sidewalks for the kids is great we have an official citation be it known that the town of Yarmouth hereby recognizes Edmund Burke on his retirement as heavy equipment operator effective August 14th 2024 for and for dedicated service to the town of Yarmouth and be it further known that the town of Yarmouth extends its sincerest thanks and appreciation for 14 years of tireless service in the highway division of the Yarmouth Department of Public Works this citation is duly signed by the Vice chair of the Arma select board on this 17th day of September in the year of Our Lord 2024 thank you very much and I Jeff Jeff I'll give this to you and even no he's not here why don't we give him a round of applause folks thank [Applause] you I hope he's somewhere really nice having a great time okay moving on to announcements do we have any announcements today moving on to public comment I noticed that uh Vita Morris has her hand up V can you hear me okay can you hear me now yes I can um okay this is VA Morris and I would like to thank Mr naan ladley for at last meeting uh bringing out the situation with the ReUse of the M School building this has been such a it's almost a disaster considering how long we have uh had this on our hands and the the committee hasn't even been formed this should have been done at least two years ago I would think uh and so what when the students were ready to move into the new building I think the committee should have had uh some ideas of what they would uh uh propos doing uh with the with the building the mades building and now here we we are paying over $200,000 a year to maintain that building it it it really is outrageous I I hope somebody will come up with an explanation of what happened here because and I see that there's an item on the agenda tonight but it speaks about a process for selecting the committee or something like that I don't understand that I mean it's being put up again and again I I I really am uh I'm really very upset about this uh uh now I want this uh uh segue into another subject and that has to do with the school district and uh these uh uh uh new new uh increased numbers of students uh in the district I uh I didn't hear the entire presentation so I wonder if Mr Smith gave you an exact number of how many new students he's got enrolling this fall but what I want to know is where are and I'm gonna demand that this information be provided to the board and through them to the taxpayers uh where are these students coming from who are they I mean are they you know uh coming uh off uh Cape uh uh are they moving into the cape are any of them Choice students I want an explanation what are the numbers and because this seems like a very peculiar situation I don't know that any uh do we know that any other district is in uh uh experiencing the same kind of increase in in their student bodies or what what's going on here I I really would like for you to go after the superintendent and have him come in again and give a more you know detailed explanation of what's going on thank you thank you Vita I notice also that Joe Glenn has his hand up Joe can you hear me Madam chair can you hear me I can indeed thank you uh Joe Glenn from Precinct 6 um for the time being anyway um I don't know if the board has each individually um received my most recent emails um but I'm very concerned if you did get them I don't always know when you do um I know I send them to the general selectman uh box and then I tried to send them to the emails of the emails that I have on record um my concern is with this special election um I think we're doing a great dishonor to Chairman Stone um if we don't have a proper election here I think we're sending a terrible message especially with the the the upcoming Wastewater uh and other Communications that we're going to have have with the people and the vote should be our greatest way to communicate um and you know with town meeting and citizen petitions but the way that this went about I thought that there should have been a public hearing um especially since we're going over the 90day that the charter uh requires which should have uh had the election by November 12th uh now doing the election on December 7th I believe is going to be a day that live in voter infamy um because that what we're saying we're sending Miss messages about the mail and ballots that all of a sudden we were happy with mail and ballots we got 6,000 or so people getting mail and ballots we're encouraging people to get mail and ballots it makes it easier for people to uh not clog up the voting locations which I think there have been poor decisions on that all along but uh we're still concerned about it we're talking about uh having uh people walk across the road a busy road that has had close calls in the past um to go over to the senior center to vote um were're doing all this other stuff but the message we're sending is and we're just enfranchising all of those people who agreed to when they asked for their mail and ballots they checked off all elections in the last election in the town election which correct me if I'm wrong but that is probably the town election where Tracy and and uh uh select uh person um Flynn Jo uh won that election was the highest in a number of years we've had singled digit numbers and turnouts and now we had a great turnout and in a presidential year it would have been a fantastic turnout for Town elections but we don't care about town election and I disagree with the town clerk when she says that the presidential elections are more important no they're not they're not more important to the people of the army okay these the presidential election in in Massachusetts and in the senate elections and and many the elections below it um are are somewhat a foregone conclusion and I would bet dollars to Donuts on most of them um but we're disenfranchising people we're saying that those absentee ballots well we want to do them and you you weren't allowed to change it in other words you couldn't opt out of the presidential election for uh the mail and B you had no way of doing that but you but so it it wasn't important for you enough to opt out or contest that with the state but now you're saying well uh the town election doesn't matter and all those people I don't know how you're going to inform them but if you're trying to save money by a mailing you're going to end up doing three mailings and one's going to cost the taxpayer if if those people who are still going to be allowed to within five days of the election if you have a medical reason or an absentee reason not to make it which a lot of those people do what do we have here we have seniors we have disabled people disabled veterans and I happen to be one of them and i' I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to get people to vote and I've run for elections purely so that more people would get out to vote and it'd be some competition and frankly now you know I'm going to be one of those people who say it doesn't make a difference anymore my vote doesn't count because we're not we're disenfranchising people we're doing things willy-nilly and we're going against our own Charter which says 90 days which should have been by November 12th thank you Joe for your opinions uh do we have anyone else that would like to speak under public comment s my timer thank you good evening Tomic can out from the wonderful Village of Bass River in this great Old Town County Yarmouth U Back in 1889 we had a 250th celebration of our community up on the North side Cranbury Highway it was a great big arch that was constructed and the words on those arches were foremost in Enterprise on land and sea that was our motto back then I don't know if we have one today but if we're looking for a visioning statement for where we want to be in the future always have to look back at our history so with that uh one comment was uh I'd like to thank the board last meeting for the town meeting as you know we've been doing two Town meetings for a while now before that we used to be at a town meeting for maybe two nights and a lot of arttic Articles last year between both spring and fall there was 56 articles the year before was 53 articles the year before was 44 articles so you see how it goes so by having a special El a special uh town meeting this fall is now going to allow our citizens to come out and vote and get back in a reasonable hour because we don't want to have one big meeting with at one time in 2019 we had 57 articles that usually means it's two nights and everyone gets frustrated so thank you all very much for making that happen with two Town meetings per year the business gets done properly last week we also had a tax classification rate and we went to the factor of one uh which was endorsed by the board of assessors uh neighbor to the east has 3.9% Comm commercial tax rate as you know we have 4.7% commercial tax rate what and Barnstable has 44% commercial tax rate so you see the difference the average community in the Commonwealth is 80 residential and 20% commercial you got to keep that in mind also my last comment few months ago we had a election for a select board uh the candidates were asked to go to the culture center for a forum one of the questions that were posed to us was about the Yarmouth housing authority and Forest Road my comment was I don't believe anything should be built in that neighborhood unless it's built with a collection system if you look at that neighborhood it runs from old townhouse Road Long pwn windlow gray forest in that neighborhood there's 1500 homes put a person in each home 1500 people times 4 6,000 people the average water user that we all are uses about 60 gallons of water per day we cut that in half for an average and to get 30 gallons per day per person whether it's sprinklers leeching in the septic tank that equates to 60 million gallons of water per year in that neighborhood and we wonder why there're flooding thank you all very much thank you for your comments Tom do I have any other public comments today at this portion of the meeting I'm going to turn the Gabel over to our licensing chair uh Tracy Post thank you Dorcas I will read the hearing notice into the record the Yarmouth Bard Selectmen acting as the local licensing Authority has received an application from Beauty and the barber 657 Route 28 West garmouth Mass 02673 Michael Pina Ona Beauty And The Barber proposes to add a pool table to their establish lishment which will provide additional recreational amenities for patrons the hearing will be held in person on Tuesday September 17 2024 at Town Hall 11:46 through 28 South Yarmouth Mass 02664 the select board meeting begins at 6:00 pm. written comments will be accepted until 4:30 p.m. Friday September 30th 2024 in the select board's office at Town Hall could be submitted electronically to public comment at yarmouth.ma us verbal comments will be accepted at the hearing this was posted in the Cape Cod Times on September 3rd 2024 so that opens the hearing uh Mr Pina if you want to come to the table and uh talk a little bit about your app you can you can sit at the table or at the podium wherever you feel more comfortable sir so uh basically me and my wife are opening up a Barber Lawn called Beauty and Barber and um what we're trying to do is we have a big enough space so we kind of want to accommodate the the space and um we really are looking to give people you know some little Leisure a little time to like while they wait for their appointments to entertain themselves you know in the meantime um kind of cut to to make the place especially aesthetically pleasing it's not like your typical barber salon so it's a kind of like a high-end classy type of Barber Shop so I want to kind of make it more comfortable make the environment more like relaxed like we don't plan to do a pool hall or anything like that or uh have like people hanging around the area we just kind of want to hand ourselves as a professional business but you know basically that's kind of really why I'm requesting it you know just one one table just one table and it's for for your patrons yeah just for my clients to come in they can um while they wait for their appointments they can play play pool a little bit um just to kind of complement the environment you know and um you sent out not notification I was told that uh we have an affidavit signed uh on your behalf that the notification went out so having um said that I will open it up to the public if there's anybody here in the public that has anything to say for or against this application please uh come to the podium identify yourself for the record seeing none seeing none uh no hands on our Zoom meeting um I will ask if anybody in the board has any questions starting with you Joyce my only question is not of the applicant uh because this seems like a quite logical um uh application in your business and a way to keep people in queue happy my my only question is why are we still licensing pool tables um isn't that something that was considered um kind of dangerous or wild in past decades I am a little puzzled why we're still doing this but I'm in support of this application Dorcas no questions or comments thank you no questions I don't have any questions I can I can answer that question very briefly the Mass general laws um provide that process and require us to have a hearing and they require a permit from The Bard of selectman and you know granted some of these um laws on the books are um a little dated and um so it's it's all required we follow the Mass general laws that's a help because I did wonder with that I'll take a motion to close the public portion of the hearing so moved second any discussion all those in favor I any opposed I'll take a motion on the application mov move to accept the uh application for the pool table approved okay second any discussion on the motion all those in favor any opposed good luck thank you very much much okay we're g to move to our our next item are the folks from um Cafe gelato bertini here if you could come forward that would be great and I'll read the uh hearing notice into the record the town of yarma Select board special entertainment hearing license license hearing the yarma select board acting as the local licensing Authority has received an application from Cafe gelato bertini Patricia Thomas owner who requested to host car espresso and gelato events on September 21st 2024 September 28th 2024 October 5th 2024 October 12th 2024 October 19th 2024 and October 26 2024 with the event time of 7 a.m. to 10: a.m. featuring rich rich expresso stunning classic and modern cars and delicious gelato additionally request to host a live music Friday evenings on September 20th 2024 September 27th 2024 October 4th 2024 October 11th 2024 October 18th 2024 and October 25 2024 with up to three musicians from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on the deck or inside at 1196 throughoute 28 South Yarmouth Mass 02664 the hearing will be held on Tuesday September 17 2024 in the hearing room of town hall 11:46 throughoute 28 South Yarmouth the select board meeting begins at 6: p.m. written comments will be accepted until 4:30 p.m. Friday September 13th 2024 in the select board's office at town hall or can be submitted electronically to public comment at Yarmouth ma. us a verbal comments will be accepted at the hearing this was posted in the Cape Cod Times on September 6th um just before we start I know that you have um notified a Butters did you happen to bring um um the green cards that did you receive any of them back yeah I got received some back and I also um gave she has the receipts but we didn't receive all should I bring it over yeah when when did the mailings go out she probably has it you have it on your end in the on the stamps on the 10th of September 10th of September a week ago okay all right would you like to we're going to take these um separately they're two separate applications we will take the um car espresso and gelato piece first and then we'll talk about your entertainment after okay so if you want to just explain to the board and to the public what your trying to do with that that would be great so for the car espresso gelato we're thinking we' have um car enthusiasts come by to have coffee talk about their cars and just um hang out and look at beautiful cars I guess and enjoy gelato and espresso so it wouldn't be anything where we would have engines reving or anything in the early mornings it's just people coming to talk about their cars and um get ideas like that how many cars are you um anticipating and how do you how are you going to handle uh the parking um the parking lot is it's um it's a big space and I've noticed that on Saturday mornings around that time it's not very busy in the plaza and um we' send out invites I'm thinking start it's starting up right now it wouldn't be more than starting off maybe five to 10 people in this um fall if we get to do it again maybe more okay all right is there anybody from the public that would like to speak on this application either for or against please come to the podium and identify yourself for the record please hi good evening hi Mark Fallon Carter Road it's really just questions right it's not necessarily comments but so you said you know five to 10 cars is there an expectation on how many people and will you know the class of cars be leaving at 10 o'clock um if they this um first of all just for the record the questions are going to come through the board um and it's 10 a.m. it's not 10 p.m. that I said 10 o' okay all right just making sure you understand that it's not it's not 10 p.m. so okay so um they would if they drove their car there and they decide to stay longer in the in our business or to explore the rest of the businesses in the plaza um I think they would stay stay on and um patronize the rest of the businesses around and how many people that they're expecting to attend as the public yeah I think it's going to be hard for her to answer as she said this is kind of going to be like a a little bit of a trial I understand yeah your concern and I think it's a valid question but I think it's going to be hard for her to be able to uh to tell um one of the things that I think is promising about this applications is there's specific dates here so sometimes in these um in these hearings what we try to do is you know obviously we want the businesses to be successful and the neighbor neighbors to be successful so you know having a few dates with a nice trial sometimes works and then you know if they come back to us next year if there's any issues whatsoever um then you know hopefully somebody in the neighborhood will make us aware of it and and you know uh we'll be able to address it then but I think it's going to be hard for her to tell at this point and I I just want to say you guys know local business is on kod is harder in the winter time so we were just trying to get of how to get people people to come in yeah thank you sir um thank you for coming and uh if you do have any issues please don't hesitate to reach out to them directly um to express your concern and uh to us should the application be approved we'd like to hear okay is there anybody else um from the public that would like to speak on this is there anybody on Zoom that would like to speak on this application anybody isn't allowed to speak I don't know if that not sure he wants to speak he doesn't have his hand up you you need to raise your hand if you'd like to be acknowledged I think that's just because the cursor is resting on that particular person he's not requesting okay is there anybody from the board that has any comments on the application chman I I just had one question which was um does the event location have a fire protection system I noticed that that was left blank and that's something that I would want you to be protected from obviously um totally separate from this from this event so it seems like you might want to check um whether you had a sprinkler system or not that's that there's fire codes on that some people are Grand bothered based on the based on their use if I'm understanding it correctly and the age of their building unless they upgrade the in inside I'm not sure that they need to do that so um I would just be careful I would leave that up to the to the fire department they have an occupancy permit and I would say that that is sufficient because um I don't know if they actually would need to do that Joyce just as a select person hoping that it might be a good idea but I you know I have nothing to do with the fire department or licensing in any such way so so listen to the chairwoman of licensing on that um no I I would certainly approve this it sounds like a nice way to uh keep those people with all the fancy cars out of Mischief Dorcas the only comment I have is delicious gelato thank you very much Mark do you have any questions no no questions thank you we have a motion from the board to close the public port portion of the hearing so moved second any discussion all those in favor I any opposed is there anybody would like to make a motion on the application I move that we approve the application is there any discussion on that all those in favor I any opposed that passes unanimously and now uh let's go to the um the posting is the same so the hearing for uh the live entertainment is open um if you want to talk to the board and the public about what you are trying to achieve with with the music that would be great um so we're trying to get people we have a nice deck and we're think we want to have people coming into the plaza um have something else that they can enjoy after walking around the plaza having gelato you know so um it's going to benefit the entire Plaza we recently had a flower truck come there and people we noticed stayed around longer after having gelato and they bought flowers from this other business and they went on to view in other businesses so also with the music this could be another additional uh benefit to everyone in the plaza while enjoying some music it so again it won't be uh 12 piece jazz band um making um a whole lot of noise to disturb the neighbors across the pond or anyone else um in the what's the foot like it's 300 feet distance I think yeah so maybe starting off uh with maybe just a oneperson AC acoustic um uh musician coming in to just have an addition know entertainment in the evenings just another thing that we want to try out again this fall okay is there anybody in the public who would like to speak to this is there anybody yes baa beer you're muted my favorite uh question in these circumstances uh uh is this music going to be Amplified no no well that as far as I'm concerned that was the correct answer anyway that's all I wanted to know thank you thank you is there anybody else from the public that has any comment seeing none I'll take a motion to close the public portion of the hearing so moved discussion all those in favor I any post I move to approve the application okay second that there any discussion on that motion again um for the public if there's any issues uh please reach out this is non-amplified um it says one to three musicians I think uh personally I think three might be a lot so hopefully you keep it quiet and low nice for your customers and um not to disturb the neighbors so that way we can uh entertain this again next year perhaps okay sorry we have a motion a second all those in favor I I any oppose passage unanimously thank you thank you thank you have a good night you as well and I'll turn it back over to Joyce I mean dorus I'm sorry thank you Tracy we're actually moving ahead of time all right as far as uh the schedule goes um the next point the next item we have is an update from Cape light compact do we have anyone if You' like to step up to the table please and introduce yourselves hi good evening my name is Maggie dowy and I'm the administrator for the Capel Compact and with me this evening is uh my name is Marielle Marshon I'm the power supply planner at the KL compact good evening and welcome thank you I understand you're going to be giving us an update yes and we have a presentation we do light is on live with so marial forward so while we're bringing up the presentation the first one is an introduction to who is the cape like compact so I can start with that um for those of you in the audience and from you know the board knows the caply compact is a collaborative effort it's a joint Powers uh entity that is made up of the 21 towns 15 towns on the cape and six on the vineyard so the cape light compact is the town of Yarmouth and 20 other towns that organized um under the municipal modernization Act of 2016 as a joint Powers entity to deliver three uh primary services to our residents and businesses specifically power supply we have we provide a 100% Renewable Power Supply option it's an optout offering for all of our customers here on the cape and Vineyard we also administer the rate payer funded Energy Efficiency programs which offers rebates and incentives to Residents and businesses it's also known as Mass Save Mass Save is the brand um that all of the program administrators are under an umbrella so Capel compact is Mass Save we are the sponsor for Mass sa here on Cape Cod and in on Martha's Vineyard we also advocate for consumers and basically that um means we participate in many Department of Public Utilities regulatory proceedings to represent the interest of gr payers here um in Boston so that we have a a seat at the table so to speak in regulatory proceedings that affect um our electric rates so the next slide and I'm going to start by just going back giving a summary of what passed and then taking us forward and then we're going to end with um you asked to us to talk about energy markets in general so we'll share with with our knowledge and our understanding with you of what's what's happening out there so this slide shows you a snapshot of um who's participated in the Energy Efficiency programs in 2023 the compact operates on a calendar year so we file our reports in August so this reflects the who's participated since 2023 um specifically we've had 215 low-income customers residential over a thousand residential customers and 136 businesses a total of 1,580 customers and when I talk about a customer I'm talking about an electric account so uh 50 over almost 1,600 customers have participated and we've returned in rebates and and incentives a little over $3.1 million to um Yarmouth residents and businesses in calendar year 2023 some of the highlights for 2024 which is this is the last year of our three-year plan the Capel compact um has a three-year budget that's approved by the Department of Public Utilities uh and we are in the last year of the three-year plan getting ready to submit our 25 to 2027 Energy Efficiency plan which I'll talk about shortly but just a couple of things I wanted to highlight for 2024 uh we are offering no cost energy assessments for residents and businesses that covers 100% of um for income eligible and moderate income customers 100% of weatherization so that's air sealing insulation to make your home or business more um comfortable and and lower your overall energy burden it is also available to whether regardless of whether you own rent your home or your business space um and if you're a market rate customers you're that's covered 75% of the cost of that weatherization job we also have uh heat pumps heat pump rebates of up to $10,000 when you're removing your existing fossil fuel system for a whole home heat pump installation or a partial home is $1,250 a ton basically that works out to be about 45 $4,500 um for a partial um installation of your heat pump just two things and if you notice they in yellow uh in 2024 we went after and received an ebike Grant from the Massachusetts clean energy center and I'm happy to say that it is fully subscribed um we paid the standard incentive was 75% or up to $1,200 for the cost of the bike we also had an enhanced incentive that covered up to 90% it was income based and all our vouchers 225 have been um have been issued so it was a great program you um I know they can be passionately for or passionately against e bikes but they are out there you'll see them on our on our bike trail in in Yarmouth so we also have energy star Appliance rebates these are ongoing for room air conditioners air purifiers dehumidifiers and electric closed buyers and these all of this information and the rebates are available on the Capel compacts website we also just are wrapping up cveo um we are no longer accepting new applicants but CVO stands for the cape and Vineyard electrification offering and this was a uh a pilot that we launched in the fall of 2023 it was limited to 100 homes what that we focused on deed restricted properties where we went in in consistent with the state's climate goals decarbonized um the home at no cost to the the homeowner so first we went in did all the insulation weatherization and then we installed heat pumps um paired that with a solar PV again to the goal is to totally reduce the energy burden replaced any fossil fuel appliances um and then limited number of homes 25 of them received batteries so again these homes became not only um carbon neutral but were also resilient in the event of an outage for the those that received um batteries so a new happening that we rolled out again cap light compact went after some Federal grant funds that the state had and we are the coner service provider for the Massachusetts Community climate bank and their energy saer Home Loan program and this is designed again as I said for homeowners um and it's designed to fill in the gaps that the are the kind Caple compacts Energy Efficiency program um where we don't where we don't have dollars for or aren't authorized to spend to spend money so these are loans that are the next slide will go to the eligibility requirements um you must be a homeowner they are targeted towards low and moderate income uh homeowners so less than 135% of the area meeting income in barville County it's 166,000 and then we have Duke so we're providing services to all Three Counties for residents and that live in those counties it must be a single family home or um up to two to four family multif family owner occupied and you have to guarant generate Energy savings Energy savings are done through air sealing insulation uh replacing fossil fuel systems with heat with heat pumps and this is a loan program of 20 years which you go to the next slide um mounts can be as little as 10,000 capped out at $100,000 and it has a 24 month loan term the first and 18 months are interest only so it is a very very affordable way to make improvements to your home it's amateurz then for the balance of the 222 months if you are below 80% of Ami your interest rate is point half a percent and if you're above 81 should say 81 not 80 if it's 81 to 135 your interest rate is two 2% and again this is based again like every Federal program everybody has their very specific details this is based on the income who's ever listed on the deed it is not based on you could have five people in your home that are earning but if it's only Doris on the on the deed that it is it is on your income and this is actually a very um important program it meets a critical need for a lot of our retirees that are on fixed income living it's not about who's in the home even if you have multigeneration so it's a we're excited to offer this um and roll it out with the state so participating Banks here are locally it's just um Cape cut 5 they were selected by the climate bank but also B coast Bay Coast savings and Bristol County Savings Banks are also participating um in the program and what the cap compact does and the next one we'll show all of the all of the many things you can do is we're here to help customer navigate our offices are in Yarmouth they're right located right on Whit's path so customers can call set up an appointment and we will walk you through the paperwork making sure that there there's there are now so many programs available there's the there's our Energy Efficiency program there's a heat Loan program there's the energy saer Home Loan program I'm going to talk about the R Us solar Loan program it can be overwhelming for someone who wants to do something but doesn't know what's the best thing to do so we are our staff is in the office to help you walk through and navigate the best way for you to move forward to make your home more comfortable and lower um lower the overall operating cost of the home so whoops don't go back one so what's available it is a myriad of things from HVAC which includes air we call it air sealing duct work um heat pumps appliances um electric stove health and safety improvements so that you've got mold remediation oil tank removal Clean Energy Technologies you can do your batteries but you can also do batteries with heat loan heat loan is zero% but this one is may have an interest rate but your payments are going to be significantly lower so again we're here to help answer questions and give you best that we can to help you choose the path that works best for you um panel upgrades electric panel upgrades wiring uh solar PV systems again you have to get that 20% Energy savings you can't just use this one for a solar Loan program um lighting some site work some tree pruning so if you're install if you're removing your oil your oil tank and you're going to install heat pumps and you want to install a PV panel it's a perfect match and then but you need some tree work you can also wrap that into um the loan as well as water heating uh heat pump water heaters so there's quite a few um Roofing repairs as well which is also very important sometimes people get stopped because they may have vermiculite in you know or mold in the basement they can't insulate or they've got vermiculite up in the attic and they can't move forward this program is designed again for low and moderate income those making up to earning up to 135% of Ami to move uh forward with improvements in their home and then the I mentioned this briefly this has taken us about four years but we're almost there to the Finish Line to offer um through USDA the US Department of Agriculture Rural Utility Services we applied for a um and received it is a zero interest loan to the caply compact that we in turn then lend we can charge up to 5% interest to anyone who is a borrower right now the loan is Target rate is below 3% this is just for solar on your home you have to be it's a market rate you have to be eligible of obtaining a loans so you have to have a credit score that will um make you eligible for the loan we selected Cape Cod 5 through a competitive RFP process and they are servicing and administering the loan so once we have everything set up you'll you you'll receive your invoices with Cape Cod 5 you'll pay Cape Cod 5 and then everything else behind the scene as we reimburse um R Us loan terms are 10 years and up they're up to 50,000 $50,000 and it's scheduled to launch uh we hope shooting or targeting for end of November early end of October early November launching for this exciting solar PV program so again you've got quite a few options on how to proceed so that's why cap black compact staff are here to answer your questions and help you navigate navigate this so I'm going to talk now I'm moving into talking about the next three-year plan from years 25 to 2027 um and the state Mass General law we're transitioning from Just Energy Efficiency where you reduced your kilowatt hours to decarbonization the next plan will be an Energy Efficiency and decarbonization um plan we will continue with our electrification offerer offers that is the chosen path that the Commonwealth has selected in order to achieve the goal the global warming solution acts goals and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and basically what is electrification it is encouraging customers who heat with fossil fuel focus is going to be on Oil and Propane customers first or electric resistance to move them to heat cold climate heat pumps moving off of those fuels to a heat pump will reduce your overall energy burden you will see savings natural gas customers that that is going to be a challenge because natural gas right now is still a more cost-effective or more affordable way to heat your home um until any till the state decides if and when they're going to change that right now the focus and the target are Oil propane and electric resistance heated heated homes and again as we just an important note and I'll be sending on the Town Administrator an email on this shortly as the climate Act of 2022 um has requires us to stop funding and providing incentives for any fossil fuel equipment including gas oil propane furnaces and burners so they're being um phased out um consistent with Massachusetts uh General law and again this is all towards the state's goal of bringing in um closing down fossil fuel generation plans and we're going to it all kind of ties into the last topic that we're going to talk about and hope you know their target for Canadian Hydro coming down and offshore wind to fill um fill that void as we as they shut down uh fossil fuel plants so the three policy goals that we have been given um there's a big changed the the 22 um climate act 2021 and the 22 climate laws have made it changed how we operate and run local Energy Efficiency programs starting with this three-year plan the Secretary of EA energy environmental Affairs office is dictates provides us a goal on what how many tons of greenhouse gases we are to admit and what our focus is going to be which was a which was very different from the prior 18 years where it was a much more grassroot up um building of the Energy Efficiency plan uh the three go the goals for the next plan that we have been um given by the secretary is decarbonization to achieve uh their gwsa global warming solution act 2050 goals a focus on equity for those that have not participated or have been left behind specifically in our environmental justice communities as well as improving the customer experience which is what I've been talking about having FaceTime making customers able to reach you if they want to do it via email and rebates phone or in person for us for our audience we get quite um we get some significant foot traffic because there are our pop our demographics of our population they're not necessarily comfortable in filling out a rebate for $10,000 on their heat pump they want to come in and talk to someone and say you know what is this for real what does this mean what do I have to do what type of paper work did I install the right one so that they're um and that's what we're here for uh and that's what they're hoping to expand in other areas of Massachusetts so for small businesses um the focus is again supporting decarbonization increasing access by giving different you know just a lot of expanded customer direct option what does that mean pH basically you'll have the ability to do things online if or contact staff to help you identify things in your in your small business installation is now a big tool that was not previously available for small businesses um we've also expanded offerings for renters and landlords bringing more rebates and incentives to the table so that it's also a challenge a lot of our small businesses don't own the space they're in they're rent so it's hard to engage your landlord when the land when the renter is paying the paying the utility bill but now we're bringing more dollars to the table because Bec comes an investment in the building which is a long-term investment for the landlord and hopefully a cost savings for for the tenant we're also prioritizing community- based organizations with providing up to 100% incentives for charitable uh nonprofits that's that with a there's a dollar threshold on your size of your budget information and the forms are on our website but again if a um a religious or a church organization a theater group Community um historic building would like to invest and improve their their building we are now paying up to 100% incentives to to move that because we recognized we heard from the board we and we were able to get this adopted Statewide so that everywhere they're now be doing this in 20 starting in 2025 the compact's been doing it for about six years but it's now being rolled out Statewide um as a result of our success we'll continue to offer Main Street events and partner with nonprofit organizations to get the word out about these programs um and all doing delivery of our small serving our small business customers so this is this is our focus on Equity so if you um low-income customers so customers who are own below 61% 60% or below of either area median income or state median income are eligible for no C at no cost weatherization for their homes barrier mitigation again that could be panel upgrades some roof improvements at no cost and electrification heat pumps that's available now has been um historically all low-income customers are served at 100% what's being expanded Statewide is service to moderate income customers that self ATT testation so if you just say that you're a moderate income you'll get a 100% weatherization and then moving into the more expensive incentives which are barrier mitigation and electrification and that could be mold it could be a panel upgrade you have to a little document there you have to have documentation of your income that you're fall within the moderate income and then those three measures are all at no cost again um and that is a turnkey pathway meaning you'll go through a selected contractor where we've tried to make sure that we've got the the most cost effective equipment and lowered cost if you choose to do it on your own and select your own contractor the rebates are not as generous because there's no cost control um there and then also that we'll continue to offer market rate incentives for weatherization um barrier mitigation as well as electrification so again it just talks about enhanced customer service I've been going going droning on I know you guys about sorry but this is our pathway um to make sure that we're we meet you where where your needs are we're here to find out what the best fit is to make sure that you're aware of all the pro programs that are available and can help you access um what's in your best interest and then works and then the last is also the focus is strengthening diversity in the workforce um we have a big wave of retirees coming in this industry at at our utilities and all of our contractors and um Mass C is doubling down they'll be investing $24 million per year in you know working with our Tech schools and our colleges to train and diversify the workforce so that we have um the trained professionals to install all of the things I've just been talking about also just very quickly there's tons of data on Mass saave website Mass saav data.com anybody really wants to dig into and see who's been served where the money's been spent how how do how does the cape compared to the rest of the state all of that information uh is out there I just wanted to make sure that you uh we're aware of it and then um we we do a lot of marketing we do digital displays ads we do radio ads we have paid social media all again geared towards we participate Statewide in marketing events trying to make sure that raid payers are aware of the dollars the programs that are out there and how their dollars are being spent so we're going to transition into um power supply rates I'm going to turn it over to Mariel and then we're happy to answer any questions on what we've gone over thanks Maggie so as Maggie said at the outset the compact is the default electric supplier for customers on the cape and lars's Vineyard um so that's the supply charges on your bill you also have delivery charges but we're talking about those generation charges the compact has um we Supply residential commercial and Industrial customers on the cape and Vineyard uh we have three different products we have our standard product which as Maggie said is 100% renewable and then we also have two local green products which have higher percentages of uh local renewable energy certificates included as you can see on the slide those are a bit more expensive than our standard product um also as you can see on the slide currently our rate is about 2 and half cents below eversource basic service rate and it is 15% lower than it was in the previous term so our rate uh for residential and Commercial customers changes every 6 months for industrial customers it changes is every 3 months um in this rate this term that began in July and runs through January is uh lower than our previous rate and this rate when we change it and always it's always posted on our website when we change the rate uh we post ads in all of the local papers and on social media so customers can always uh find the rate there and they're of course always welcome to call and ask uh before a rate change if if we're able to tell them what that rate is going to be coming up so to provide a little bit of History uh the compact has been providing power supply since 2002 as you can see on the slide here um this is comparing the compax rate in green to basic service in blue over the the course of our offering a power supply product if you look back to say like 2006 to 2009 the comact had a different pricing strategy we were doing a point of purchase pricing strategy you can see that there were times where our rate was a bit above basic service there um the current contract that we have is with next era Energy Services that contract began in 2018 and it had the the pricing strategy that we are currently using where we change our rate every six months um that contract has been pretty successful in terms of staying below basic service for the past seven rate terms our rate has been below the basic service price and then before I go to the next slide and talk a little bit more about what's going on with Energy prices I just wanted to point out you can see in early 2022 there's a a spike in rates the highest rates were in early 2023 the winter of 23 um that was driven by the um Russian invasion of Ukraine in Europe which um increased the demand for LNG being exported from the US and drastically imp impacted our electric prices so I just wanted to point that out on this slide because it's very easy to see but on a higher level just kind of what is driving higher electric prices uh wi are prices what they are now um as I said our our current price is lower than it was the previous term but prices are higher than they were back a few years ago so essentially we do have two sides of our electric bill we have the supply or the generation costs and then we have the delivery distribution costs the delivery um costs are set by eversource and approved at the dpu those costs are made up of the distribution cost so the costs of delivering power to our homes and businesses upkeeping the poles and the wires to get that power delivered the transmission system also has costs associated with it and then there are a number of public policy initiatives that are included on the distribution side of the bill um including our Energy Efficiency program that Maggie just discussed uh the solar programs like smart and net metering uh there other renewable energy charges the electric vehicle program so there are a number of uh public policy initiatives that we have these State climate goals that that Maggie discussed um these are are driving costs on the distribution side of the bill and then on the supply side of the bill we also o have public policy costs those are the costs of purchasing renewable energy certificates to meet State goals uh like the renewable portfolio standard and the clean energy standard but really the bulk of Supply costs are um coming from the energy itself that we're procuring on the wholesale market and those costs are really driven by um in New England by natural gas prices and that's because in New England about 45% of the electricity that's generated is generated using natural gas and the price of natural gas has increased um it's being driven the the increase in price is being driven by increasing demand as we retire dirtier fossil fuel plants like coal and oil plants more of our generation is coming from natural gas and so there is increased demand additionally in New England we have a limited pipeline capacity to get natural gas into New England which means that in the winter during a Colt naap we actually need to import LNG in order to meet our electric demand and when we're importing LNG we're paying those or competing with that European or Asian LNG price and those are significantly higher than the natural gas price that we're seeing coming through a pipeline um and as I said earlier that those prices were really driven by the the war in Ukraine and the increasing demand for natural gas in Europe which has driven our price higher especially in the winter we see the impacts of that so as Maggie kind of alluded to earlier um the we we do need that Canadian Hydro the offshore wind to come online that should impact prices um kind of reduce that Demand on natural gas and and provide us with additional other sources of Supply in New England and then the last slide just as um you know information for the audience to sign up for monthly news newsletter um and our social media links that ends our presentation and we're happy to take questions thank you very interesting presentation um let me start with Mark any comments thank you Madame chair Vice chair um Maggie it's always good to see you thank you for coming and uh I'm glad uh we asked you to come to talk a little bit about the pricing because we hear from so many constituents who are very concerned about the high cost of energy and I think it's great to shed some light on what's going on um I Al also think it's terrific that you're a resource such a resource for people who want to tap into these programs and uh just it's a bewildering array of jargon terminology and and to have an organization that people can turn to that is helping look out for the interests of the consumer is uh is is is incredibly helpful it's very beneficial and and we appreciate it um it's nice to know that you're on wh's path too so if you're a yth resident that your office is very easy to get to and uh I noticed that on our TV channel we're always advertising uh the cap light Compact and how to call or how to get to your office if anybody needs help so I thank you on all of those fronts um one of the questions that I had for you and it's sort of a question that I hear a lot that comes to me people ask me a lot about the The increased cost of energy and when you look at the the sort of the two components the supply side and the distribution side um you know a lot of people are very worried that the costs on both sides with all the new renewable energy some of it being expensive to what degree is offshore wind having a real impact on pushing prices up um um I don't know how to answer that question I figured I asked that of you since I knew you were coming in tonight but is offshore wind a very expensive source of energy where does that fit within the overall system to sure you can take a stab and also I'll I'll follow I'm not this is not a pro or con we all know that some renewable sources are expensive but also you know when you follow solar energy and what's happening with that technology um I've seen I've talked to solar experts who tell me me that the cost of solar energy is going down so fast that over time that it'll be almost you know almost free which is kind of hard to believe but people are saying that the cost of solar is coming way down anyway let's Mar the wind and then I'll follow up on the solar so in terms of the wind um synapse did just put out an interesting report that we could send I think that that I found really helpful um their findings were that the offshore wind that Massachusetts was looking to contract for would slightly reduce costs in New England um the the contracted prices that we're looking at seem high compared to power supply rates but if you actually look at how it's affecting the wholesale market and the fact that it's it's really like bidding into the market as a zero cost resource because once it's built it doesn't have any operational costs and they're bidding in at an operational cost that operational cost is zero so over the long term it's seems like they should be lowering that wholesale market clearing price which would be good overall for for markets that's good I'm glad you're bringing this up because I think one of the thing I because I've heard this from other sources as well that um the answer is almost who you talk to and where you're getting your information from I think one of the things I'm frustrated with is that in the in the bidding of these projects there's just not enough transparency U some of the bids are submitted and you really can't get a sense of what the overall cost is and to some degree these practices I don't obviously there's probably an interest in protecting maybe proprietary information but to some degree you know the consumer is genuinely very interested and there's a public interest that I think is served by being far more transparent than we currently are um I think maybe this is a question for Maggie and that is is you know what can we do to make sure that we're holding building an accountability in this process now I know this is isn't what you normally do but I'm but you've got years of EXP experience here what can we do uh to find ways to sort of put pressure on the utilities and the other major players here that are perhaps passing on um higher costs to Consumers that perhaps are may not be warranted I think the best thing to do is to because these are issued these are rfps procurements run by do or the common you know state agencies is to make sure that um you know they could make who you know you could go really far and ask for a third party that represents the Attorney General is involved making sure that they're at the table when the negotiations are done um asking asking questions because you know ultimately we pay as rate payers for everything and we you know you're 100% correct Mark is that we should know what we're paying for and what what we get Contract should be um eventually re uh released put on the website there is some information that is going to be proprietary you know you don't want to put your fees so somebody knows what if you're charging X they'll undercut you yeah I we get that that's to the industry but they can do a lot to put stuff public facing and if something has to be redacted that's fine have a footnote but they can release information so that you can see um pricing it's it's important to note that because my head I'm eily go oh my goodness I have a contract for a solar farm in main at 5 cents a kilowatt hour small contract but now and now we're talking wind at you know 18 cents but it isn't you can't make that comparison you have to look at as Mariel said what is the wind coming online going to do to the wholesale market and reducing prices and a lot of it is you know is education explaining that I mean that's the state should be telling and talking about what what are what's going to happen how do these contracts impact where we're going um as opposed to just you know getting a bid sitting it and looking at it and then not releasing everything so we can also Advocate to have more public you know somebody representing the public attorney general at the table who is you represents right payers interest on that um but to go back to one your original question before I forget the thought which is there are so many programs now on residential and even small commercial solar and that is the best way to reduce your overall energy burden which is generating behind the meter so that you using and drawing Off the Grid as little of the electricity as possible there are there will be a community shared solar program federally funded that will come from the state supposed to be in this year I'm thinking probably next year that will be available for it'll be Community shared solar so that you don't have if you can't put something on your roof you can at least uh participate in a solar farm that may be located on the cape maybe located somewhere in in Massachusetts and lower your energy burdens it'll there so there's the R Us loan there's the energy saver Home Loan program um there will be the community shared solar we hope to be able to Advocate we're we're at the dpu tomorrow Mel's up there tomorrow trying to convince the dpu to allow us to implement the low-income Community shared solar program years ago whoever was going to build something can you remember at the transfer station had approached us and we were going to bring those benefits into Yarmouth by lowering rate payers and that got stalled at the department that's what Mariel is up there tomorrow about trying to bring those types of programs back um to help to help all of our rers well I think your advocacy is is is is very well uh in order and uh very much appreciated uh having access to community- based solar is incredibly important and it's great to see that the cape light compact is on top of it um one last an anecdote I was reading a story in the um in the newspaper and I was reading about um a homeowner in Germany being able to go to the store to buy literally two solar panels literally going in there grabbing the panels putting them on their balcony and plugging the panel into their house socket and in turn having that immediately go into the home the technology on solar is advancing so fast that people are now in other parts of the world being able to do exactly that which is just sort of mind-blowing imagine if you could do that here on Cape Cod right go to go to Home Depot or go to local hardware store get a solar panel plug it in and then get yourself off the grid and no time charge you know plug up your refrigerator if there was an outage or a storm no thank you thanks for indulging me in all my questions thank you Mark um Tracy thank you thank you for uh your presentation I get um perplexed with um some of this because while we're being told that all of this green new energy is going to reduce our rates we're looking at your grid that shows us that doing green energy costs more money so since I've been sitting here we've been told that putting solar panels on our building things will reduce our electricity and our our electric budget has continued to increase regardless of every step that we've taken so it's it's a little bit frustrating um not not at you just at the at the overall Outlook um I feel like you know when you talk about public policies the policies that they're putting in place are generally making it more expensive so then we have all these programs that try to reduce the rates instead of just reducing the rates for everybody it's just it's we have one of the highest rates in the country and you talk about distribution we should be spending our money on getting the distribution to everybody lower um and yet we're spending our money on on other programs but you know when you talk about offshore wind we've been looking at this and analyzing the cost of offshore wind since long before Vineyard wind with cape wind um and you know unfortunately the Cape is the one who's taking the brunt of the negativity but we're not getting the benefit from it even the work that comes from it was supposed to be local people they're all from somewhere else you know so even our local people who you know they they sold us a bill of goods that this offshore wind's going to employ people yeah it employs people but not our people you know the people here in the cape are the ones that have to see it visually the fishermen are having to deal with it you know we had the catastrophe um with 38 uh that's you know I think um you know and the state doubles down and I hope that your fruition comes true that it will ultimately lower it in the end I just don't see it I mean like I said as long as I've sat here we've been told with the solar is going to reduce our energy and our energy costs continue to increase so um you know sometimes all these public policies they just need to get out of the way and um and you know I'm all about keeping our environment clean and and doing what we can but at the same time you know the challenge for people especially in the winter you see those spikes go up in the winter when some of our people on fixed incomes they can't they can't handle that we have to do better in terms of public Poli policy and and protecting people with heat in the winter and um and then you talk about we're buying Canadian Hydro I mean we're surrounded by water here why why do we have to import it from Canada I'm just curious why we haven't um gotten more advanced technology on hydro here yeah you you nailed it I don't have answer to it I know that the The Maritime Academy has tried um some but it is an industry that I wish was here or even we have a lot of dams in Massachusetts I I I heard at one point in time that they were doing testing on the tidal um Power on the canal but I never heard anything about it anything it's been a while yeah it's a while if I can answer the question yeah the um at The Maritime Academy that there's a test center that's been established there and there's a marine renewable Renewable Energy Center that has a license issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to literally field test emerging Technologies in the tital energy area so if you have a developer that's looking to field test a particular turbine in the canal to see if they can generate power then you can get setup shop there so it's largely based on um companies and universities that might be interested in testing and developing it that there so that's a it's an exciting it's an exciting project the other thing is on the on the Quebec or not Quebec but Canadian power is just incredibly cheap if you have friends in Canada go go visit them in Quebec and their light bills are incredibly low I once up went up there about 20 years ago and met with a friend of mine and they're like light bill this was in December it was like under $100 light and heat by the way could stay up all night ex exactly well we got to go to bed at like 5 here so I don't know I don't know so the Canadians have really done a tremendous um service to their people by providing them incredibly abundant and uh cheap or inexpensive that also provides a competitive Advantage for them in a host of other Industries but that's another story for another day well so much of it were so far behind in technology I mean I learned a lot back in the 90s living in Germany and you know you talk about in Germany they can plug in a solar panel well in Germany when I lived there that was the first time I lived by the turbines they had you know they had wind turbines far before we did and I think they learned a lot from them um but in any event um just the the total environment overall is just disheartening and you know you talked a little bit about transparency we can't really even see what's going on and I appreciate your uh intellect and um un you know being able to understand and explain it in layman terms because it gets very complic ated and I know even with um the applications for these programs like you said just to have a place for people to go but um again you know all these programs cost money right which I'm I'm great I'm grateful that they're there but just just reducing our energy costs would be a great program for everybody and it seem would cost a whole lot less money I mean they pay people to manage these programs and you know just reduce our energy rates I I still don't understand why you know we're closest to the water we're closest to to hydro and we have we have one of the most expensive the the Ukraine war has affected everybody why is it less expensive to get to have electricity in the center of the country when we're at a port if we have to get LNG from another country we're right here so just the whole thing just it blows my mind that's why it's it's great that we have them to help make sense out of it all so yeah but it doesn't make sense to me if if if if the Central America you know who's not your report you have to transport it they're helping us take of preaching to the choir but but um thank you thanks Tracy T um I'd just like to say thank you for all that you do um and another congratulations on that rural energy coup um to get that uh loan for solar customers or would be solar customers who might not otherwise be able to become solar customers on the c um I I love being surrounded by water but unfortunately our water won't really work for hydro um what's great about Canada is that you've got elevation and you've got water crashing down and that's the kind of uh um energy that you can change to mechanical energy and that you can actually use for for something to generate electricity but ours is beautiful I mean we have lovely water um we do have great wind I'd say one thing about um wind energy which is when you have these wind contracts um they're at least a fixed price for a number of years so that in some ways that that lets you know where they're going but um the whole question of of uh uh incentivizing Renewables is is obviously a very difficult one and one that's faced under a lot of U of climate pressure right now because um we might soon here on the cape have entirely too much water um and I realized that at least one of the people in this room lives quite close to the water so um I'm sure that you're you're very aware of that um I love to see what we could do as a town to uh get even more um Energy Efficiency business going with the compact particularly in the uh commercial area because it always seems like the compact's commercial area um is lagging behind our Splendid um residential adoption of Energy Efficiency uh measures and I would suggest not to put him on the spot that we have um an outgoing head of the Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce in the back row of this audience and that perhaps um you might want to chat with him on the way out because it's possible that some interaction with the chamber could bring the kind of uh Energy Information that that Yarmouth businesses and and we saw some small businesses tonight uh might be able to use and might uh be able to help them to access funds for stuff that would make their businesses less expensive to run I know certainly the refrigeration U efficiency has been a big help to a number of of restaurants because there was just so much wasted electricity in refrigeration anyway I'm I'm proud of the compact I'm proud that the compact was started with barnable County and the town of Yarmouth with select woman Charlotte B ages ago and so I take a special interest in the compact because oh I don't know if the county was the father where the mother if the county is the mother where the father we we we get some Kudos on that as a town thank you you thank you Joy um I'd like to reiterate that having that uh Personal Touch is is so uh needed here in town because it is just overwhelming as a home homeowner to to look at all these potential opportunities and where do I go and how do I do it and especially because a lot of the people who live in this town are not computer savvy uh and so to be able to have someone that will say sure come on down sit down with me and and let me take you through what will work or won't work for you um and what would be to your best Advantage is uh wonderful to have and particularly the fact that we have it right here in town um as Mark was saying to have it on White's path you know um in in Yarmouth is excellent um Tracy makes some good points when she's talking about the the costs of energy and um and how exorbitantly high it is for us here on the east coast and certainly anything that we can do to help advocate for that um to to lower those costs is just critical um we have haven't seen which could potentially cause quite a bit of damage for us here a a really major hurricane for instance is not hit the East Coast um we really haven't had anything beyond a category 3 since 1938 in New England I mean if you look at the statistics so um it's it's something that uh you know could be downright catastrophic for us as far as the energy costs are I appreciate your updates to us um I I look forward uh to the direction that you're going in uh particularly going toward the small businesses the idea again uh I see a lot of business owners here in town who uh rent their property and so to know that there's something that's going to be out there to to uh help them I think it's going to be very beneficial so thank you and please keep us posted on how things are going anytime you have questions or um just let us know we're we're right down the road just down the road thank you very much for coming tonight evening you thank you and the Chamber of Commerce person is the person sitting nearest to the exit I I think that's a coincidence okay update on road construction we've seen that the construction has started up again on Route 28 yes absolutely again Jeff Colby Public Works director I'm joined by Lori rosala Water and Wastewater superintendent Paul chafi and uh Lori Sullivan are here as well to kind of add that uh Communications component that's that's so important um we have rolled in a number of kind of Wastewater update components to this uh presentation just because there's some exciting things happening right now uh you had mentioned the route 28 uh construction restarting so that's very uh important but we're also opening up some critical bids um at this time so we have some some good news to share and want to you know build upon that story uh so with that said we're going to cover a few things we're going to look at the groundwater discharge permit we're going to talk about contract one which is the water resource recovery facility also known as the treatment facility and collection system contracts 2 through six and then as I alluded to a moment ago then talk a little bit about Wastewater Communications which is uh important so the groundwater discharge permit last time we were here uh we had some good news to share that we'd had a a breakthrough with uh Mass C with regard to the permit um but I'm here to say now and that's why we've folded it on this slide is that we do have the final permit hand after the comment period and the advertisement and that that needed to go through uh that was issued on August 5th of this year and that was for 370,000 gallons per day so the good news is we have the permit uh the other side of the coin is that's only about a third of what we need for phase one so there's still some work to do uh we are meeting on a regular basis with the DP staff to talk about the path forward and what that looks like and just going write down the list here uh we we do believe that once the facility is up and running that we can demonstrate that the uh facility of 99 Buck Island Road will be able to take more uh treated effluent in that discharge area than they've currently permitted uh but that aside we are focusing on that second bullet on next steps which is to explore Bayberry Hills Golf Course for uh discharge locations both for enhancing the irrigation that we do currently there with the septage facility using treated effluent on the golf course but also a a dis direct discharge at that location as well and the preliminary information is promising that that will get us uh the rest of the way that we need for phase one but there's still a lot of work to do with regards to uh proving that out we have to do uh a number of um test Wells and um sampling with regards to the soils and the vegetation in that area uh to demonstrate that to De that that's that's the case so there is an additional funding request uh hopefully we can get that on for the fall town meeting to continue that work so we can continue to work through uh that additional discharge needs for phase one and as I mentioned before we're continuing to meet with the EP staff uh to address the concerns that they might have and demonstrate that we have uh locations in which can uh handle this extra uh discharge that's needed uh the Wastewater contracts i' I've shown this before but currently uh it's broken into six contracts contract one Madam chair just what might be helpful is if we go through each section and then maybe ask if there's a question or two rather than wait till the very end because I think some of us may have questions on this particular item I know I do that's a good idea yeah so so Mark yeah thank you um is D asking us to take the rest of the remaining discharge all of that water into the Bayberry Hills Golf Course area or is just Bayberry Hills is one of a number of potential discharge locations I'm just curious I'm interested in knowing more what's where we're headed with this there's a number of potential discharge locations um throughout Yarmouth that have been identified and so we're working with our consultant team which is primarily CDM Smith and right Pierce and horley Whitten who's joined the team on the veg ation analysis side uh to look at all of those locations uh it's just from from my perspective what I've seen early on in this process that Bayberry Hills has significant capacity working um directly with Scott Gilmore our golf director he's very anxious to have additional flow that he can use for irrigation uh he's U looking at potentially uh enlarging some of the irrigation ponds there to be able to handle the increased flow and and the thing that I find exciting about that possibility is that uh that additional flow we need is primarily in the summertime which is also when the irrigation is needed at the golf course so I think you know taking those Peaks and having that handled at the golf course and then a more uh level um flow that might happen during you know kind of yearr round flow could be handled elsewhere such as the treatment plant location at 99 Buck Island Road so I think there's some good synergies there uh also looking at what the most cost effective Solutions might be we always want to keep keep that in mind when we're talking about building these very large infrastructure projects and we already have a a forcemain a pipeline between 99 Buck Island Road and the sepd treatment facility and there is a connection over to the golf course that we're currently utilizing so I think there's some promise there because any of the other locations that we're looking at and there's a number of them that we're looking at throughout Yarmouth there is going to be some additional infrastructure needs some Force man some piping uh that's needed in addition to the discharge uh whether that happens subsurface or with a um infiltration beds that that's a component that's a cost as well but the distribution of that would add to the cost and so if we can use current infrastructure that's going to be a savings for us so that's why I think the Bayberry Hills is very promising but there's at least 13 other locations that have been identified and we're going through excuse me how many 13 at this point 13 options that we're looking at uh and going through and categorizing them looking at how much uh treated affluent uh they can handle and there are locations that can handle more than others uh because of topography elevations to groundwater and other constraints with regards to uh Wetlands one of the big uh concerns that D has we have to demonstrate that there's no impact to his vernal pools and Cedar swamps so that's again why we have the horley Wht component of our uh Team looking at some of those elements and some of those do exist within our community we just need to be aware of that and what those potential um discharge impacts might look like depending on the volume that goes in at those various locations at our last board meeting when we talked about the special town meeting I think it's certainly one of the reasons the factors motivating me to have a special town meeting is this this issue and the need to keep and sustained progress on this um I'm not convinced waiting to a Springtown meeting makes any sense I think this is this the progress on this kind of work really needs to you know keep Pace uh with with um with everything so I'm I'm I'm very much um interested in getting this addressed soon um and it's helpful to know that we're looking at a multiple of options that the study and the investigations that we'll be doing that would be authorized that way we would ask town meeting the fund would essentially look at a whole range of options um most of which you just summarized really quickly tonight so I appreciate elaborating on that that's very very very helpful I think some of us are very concerned that we're kind of what's the term get getting kind of nickel and dimed uh by D and um we've already had costly delays in terms of awarding contracts it's cost us money every it seems like every time we talk to D you might you just can you can just hear the meter running and the dollar signs going up um I complain about this when I'm meeting with legislators and and folks in the governor's office I'm always concerned about what the state's doing to us and making it more expensive we're not and we're not getting much extra help for any of this either so that that's a real cause for concern so I I appreciate uh elaborating a little bit further on this you yeah I do I I I the saying help me help you comes to my head every time I think of D like they're upset we're not doing Wastewater and yet we can't do Wastewater because they are the ones standing in the way um anyway you said 370,000 gallons per day correct for phase one is that correct uh that's what the permit is currently we need closer to a million gallons a day for phase one and so that's why we're maybe a third roughly a third of where we need to be just in phase one just in the infrastructure that's you we're planning to build now which brings me a lot of concern based on that for future phases I mean you know potentially we're going to run out of space um before we complete our projects um and the timing of it you know what I don't want to happen is to be putting it's hard because obviously the longer that we hold off the more expensive it is but to put pipe in the ground and not be able to utilize it is also another problem so if we don't have the permits to be able to handle um you know what the intake is what the outtake is it's problematic so we need more money to investigate that what is the timing you think it's going to take to make up that other 2third I mean I mean we look at the rest of the contracts for phase one that we've got what two more left to go after this right so for what we've already got contracted what is the gallons per day for that when is that going to come online potentially and how long do we think that it's going to take us from to get the other two-thirds that we need that's a great question and it's going I and as I mentioned before I think Bayberry Hills does present us uh with a a great opportunity to get most of the way there uh with that said um 370,000 is not enough but it gets us pretty far with existing flows uh the closer to the million gallon Target is for phase one with some Redevelopment factored in so we do have a little bit of time in order to uh build out the infrastructure continue to work with d to get our permit increased or find uh other locations that would satisfy just requirements uh the other piece is it's also going to take a fair amount of time and we'll get into that a little bit later in the presentation um to even for people to even connect uh right now we are uh anticipating that in 2027 late 2027 the treatment facility will be constructed and hopefully at that time also connected we've got to get the EP to sign off on the infrastructure we've put in and allow us to uh transmit flows to the treatment facility before we can even have those connections be constructed on uh the properties within phase one so we have several years three or four years before we're even going to start to see flows and that groundwater discharge permit is only a five-year permit so it's not we're not going to hit 370,000 gallons by the end of the permit so we're going to be asking for Renewal just as we're starting to receive Flows at the treatment plant and because of that we have a little bit of time to work with them I don't want to lose any of the momentum and I think that's why it's important we continue to fund the investigation of other sites because we have the ear of D we're meeting with them on a regular basis and I want to continue that progress and without additional funding to um look at those other sites we we could be delayed and then they might decide that they don't need to meet with us as regularly uh because we do want to keep momentum and get the additional flow we need but we do have some time okay all right well I agree I mean we have to move forward we have to keep going we have to get the the expanded permit because if not we are going to really um just put a halt to everything how how many years from the beginning did it take us to get this initial permit I mean that's the scary part that's what I'm saying how many gray hairs it's it's taken a long time my hairs have gotten a lot grayer in the process absolutely um but with that said we we're looking at dhy at one didn't have a gray hair at all before he started the proess uh we were looking at other options too so we can't say it was just this one focus on just 99 Buck Island Road we were actually you know partner with other communities and spent some time in that effort so it has been quite a while it's been years uh but we have shifted the focus um to where we are today and we just want to continue that momentum as I said right that's all I have oh I'd just like to say thank you for all your hard work and keeping this on track and to Echo the concerns from the East End of the table um that it's really important for us to keep going I think especially given that we rely so much on a piece of this and some money for that from the state the way that we can prove that we're highly serious is to just get this done as fast as possible and be asking them for the next step um and obviously we would be glad to do anything we could help facilitate that but uh it's good work it's incredibly complicated work thank you thank you Joyce um you made a really critical comment there when you said keeping those lines of communication open I think for a while there here on the board we were really feeling uh in in hearing your frustration that they weren't answering the calls when you were calling and now to have this line of communication with them it's very important to keep that open and to keep that dialogue going um we even had to go to our state legislators to ask for their assistance as well in making this happen um so having that and then staying with that momentum again having our town meeting um staying on course for all of this is just critically important Jeff wanted to go on with your next all right great uh this is the Wastewater contracts as um as you all know it's a very large uh project the biggest the town is undertaken and maybe will at $27 million and because of that it had to be broken up into separate contracts uh there are currently six contracts and we're going to go through each one of those but you can see that graphically represented on the screen here contract one is the uh treatment facility that's at 99 Buck Island Road as we've talked about and cont contracts two through six are also shown on the screen just for point of reference uh currently contracts two and three are the ones that are under construction to see the contractors out there uh today working uh I'll cover this and then I'll turn it over to Lori for uh the collection system contracts but this is the water resource recovery facility there's some good graphics in each one of these slides I think these are very similar to what you've seen before but it does give some perspective as to uh what we're about to construct just some highlights bids were received on September 6th this year uh we do expect to award uh before September before October 31st sorry that's the the deadline for Award of all these contracts uh the construction time frame is a thousand days so as I mentioned before uh kind of indicating what that time frame looks like that's two years and eight months or so so there's a a significant project uh on the horizon here for us for just the treatment facility it's going to take take some time to complete we do expect to have uh several of these um collection system contracts completed before this uh facility is is up and running but it's a matter of timing out the project so we can minimize the impact with getting some of the collection system contracts done in advance of others it's a lot of moving pieces uh so with that said completion in late 2027 as I mentioned before is the target for that this is probably one of the most common questions we get is well you're you're under construction the place would just gone uh in the road in in front of my property when can I connect and that's when we have to explain well we have to have the treatment facility up and uh constructed and able to receive flows and all the pipes connected in the street uh with the pump stations working uh before you can have you connect so right now it's late 2027 and more likely early 2028 before people could be making those physical Connections in their properties we know people are planning for that and thinking about that now which is great we're uh meeting with a couple even this week that want to kind of talk about what that looks like and we're happy to have those conversations but it's still a few years in the future uh before that can be physically um connected to the uh treatment facility uh with that said here's some uh encouraging news uh the engineers estimate for that contract one for the treatment facility was $16 million and as you can see from this table uh nothing's been awarded at this point in fact I was talking with Bob earlier today and and we anticipate coming back to your meeting sometime in early October with uh all the contracts uh to have those reviewed by you once all the bids are known there's still um a bid out there for uh contract 5 that's that hasn't been opened we're actually opening those tomorrow which is is a great thing but once we have all those known numbers and recommendations for award uh we do plan to come back to you with with those so you'll know exactly what makes up the full $27 million from uh each one of the six construction contracts to uh estimates for police details and Paving costs uh as well as construction phase services so we have construction phase services from both uh CDM Smith as well as right Pierce that'll be in that you'll have those numbers for you you know probably in a very similar table but much larger with regards to what those costs look like for your approval Madam Vice chair yes um I think it's great that you're doing that um I remember the days when select boards had to sign off on all contracts you know um obviously with procurement laws being the way they are things have changed and we de we delegate a lot of that but I think particularly for this the nature of this work and the amount of money involved um I I I want to commend you and the Town Administrator Bob rittenhauer for um making this move in terms of bringing this to us because I think it's it's totally in order and um I think one of the mistakes that we made uh in the new procurement laws is basically keeping select boards more or less in the dark on a lot of Contracting there was a time when uh all the contracts would come before boards and they would have to sign off on them and it was it was a level of transparency and openness and disclosure that uh and I'm not suggesting that there's that we have a problem here I'm just saying that there was a time when that kind of openness was very refreshing and very helpful and I think in the name of Reform What would done is we've taken stuff we've taken this kind of practice and sort of put it behind closed doors and again I'm not suggesting that there's a problem inherently with what we're doing it's just that I think it's important for the public to know uh with some frequency about how their money is being spent and who's spending it and I think it's important that boards you know also be accountable by uh having to review and approve and act on contracts um so one of who's probably about a thousand pages I guess yes he's a very large document right right right and no I understand I'm not suggesting that that that the work itself wasn't laborious and wasn't timec consuming but there there was some value and at least creating an awareness and an understanding on the part of the public as to some of these big projects and what they cost and the contracts that are involved and who's actually doing the work so enough of my my speech thank you you said about coming back to the board um our meetings in October or October 1 and October 29 kind of like the bookends of the of the month when would you be considering coming back to talk to us October one or October the 29th would really be too late in the C that's what I figured so we'll be expecting you back October 1 yes and we'll be ready we'll have all the information all the contract all the bids will be open and we'll have some recommendations okay great but before I hand it over to the lur I did want to emphasize that that Engineers estimate was 106 million and at the low bid here you know that's a approximately even with all the alternates added in which we if we were having to make some tough decisions those could be left off that's why it's structured that way but even with that it's $9 million below that estimate so that's really good news because the first couple of contracts we opened up were above the engineers estimate uh this has really helped us get back on track and this was a piece that we were uh very concerned about because it's the largest piece it's you know half of the overall project uh so this is some just some very good news that uh you know really makes uh it in a very good shape for the rest of the the overall budget and the rest of the contracts so with that said I'll turn this over to Lori for walking through the remainder of the collection contracts all right so I'm just going to start with the contracts that are in construction right now that's contracts two and three um contract two is the old Main Street and uh Route 28 the old Main Street section of Route 28 um um and that's Robert bow um so just kind of an update on where they're working now uh they have a crew at on Route 28 at Pawn Street and this says they're moving West they're actually moving East um towards Parker um Bass River um but they will be going west eventually um and then they'll have another crew the crew that's currently on Forest Road will be moving to Route 28 near McDonald sometime in the next two weeks um once they get that done so they'll be having two Crews um pretty much for now for the short term as far as I know excuse me Lori you said they're going to be at McDonald's and moving East didn't we do they came from they're yeah they're moving East they came from left off at that location that means they're going to be going in front of the supermarkets and yes well that'll be okay be yeah in front of sha yeah stop yeah um so there and there will be two detours happening at the same time there until they get too close to have two detours um and then we'll get to detours later um and then the other contract is contract three which is uh Route 20 in sore drive that is ravoli um they are back on Route 28 at se View and moving Eastward um they end around um Skull Island mini golf course that's where they get to and um Robert hour will meet them there um um and then they have uh they're supposed to have another crew starting on Southshore Drive at C view headed towards the red jacket uh they told us that crew would have been here by now but they're not so I'm not actually sure when they're going to be starting at this point and at some point they'll bring in a third crew that will also be on cellro drive when Lori you say cvu AV but wasn't cvu AV already done I mean there's patching that's gone all the way so uh not all the way they need to go um from Southshore Drive North for a section still but they're not doing that right now they're going right now they're doing Southshore um from C view towards the red jacket on sore drive but you say that crew is delayed yes and you have not received a start date from them no now you've given us um when these are beginning when do we hope they'll be able to end these these contracts well both contracts run through the spring of 2026 um but I can get to their progress if you're if you're a if you're a business on Route 28 and you're sort of at some point I mean just be be be prepared this is going to be a long journey is that what you're saying right so they were um both contractors are kind of working in sections so that um they'll do a section and get the sewer done and then get the water done and then get out of that section section so that they can kind of free it up again um kind of like in the in the um spring Robert hour stayed between on Route 28 between Forest Road and um old M they got everything done there almost they didn't quite finish they have to go back and finish the water line but that was their goal they'll get that whole section done before moving on to the next section so that they're hopefully not impacting people for too long but there are they do have to come back many times so they have to put the force the the gravity line in and then they have to come back and put the stub out to people's properties and then they have to put the water line in and then once that's tested they have to put the connections to the water line so they are going to go in front of every customer on Route 28 only waterline is going on water Line's only going on Route 28 they're going to have to you know touch every customer multiple times so does that mean that you'll have one course of work and then there'll be a patch and then they'll come back later and do it or is it going to be so they'll so the the road will be repaired and re not completely resurfaced but patched and then at some point later it'll be dug up and then something else is going to go in right yes right we call it temporary patch before all the work gets done before they do a permanent patch got it okay and one thing I just want to show this picture is of on Old Main Street and the reason why sewer takes so long this picture is a good example if you look at the rungs on the ladder the it's a very deep hole um and if you look at the size of the pipe that's a very large piece of pipe so it's a it's a lot of work just to get set up to put it one piece of pipe in so I just wanted to kind of how deep show what's in the that um I believe that's about 18 feet deep and we have sections that are up to 25 feet deep it exponentially harder the deeper it is um um also as far as timing one thing to note is that I think everyone's aware that mass ot's permit doesn't allow work in the summer on Route 28 but it also doesn't allow work in the winter um from November 15th to April 1st um so that's a challenge for us but we do expect that we're going to request to extend our time to be able to work at least through December potentially into January if the weather allows mot's concern is snow and ice um so if they have to because they're the ones that maintain those roads so if it's going to snow they don't want plates in the road that type of thing but if the weather holds out we should be able to work longer into the winter obviously we want to do the work in the winter if we can there's less people here um so this is just an update of the status this is the lines for contracts two and three and it's the sewer only not the water um and so right now contract two which is Robert Hour project is about 45% complete for just the sewer lines and contract 3 is about a quarter of the way there um and the star I didn't do that yet sorry the Stars just show where they're going to be working or where they are working or should be working over the next month or so one thing to note is that the Forest Road which is top left star and um near McDonald's are not going to be at the same time uh the crew that's on Forest Road will be moving over to Route 28 so they'll get Forest Road done and um then move over there next the remain contracts so contract 4 is the Bass River Bridge area um that's we we the low bid was Robert B hour and we're just waiting for Mast approval to formally award that to them when did that bid come in in that was in August it might have been a little before that we we've had contracts for for a little while um but the deadline's October 31st so we have some time to work through that uh Focus has been getting the contracts five and six on the street uh but we will be um formally getting approval from D to award that very soon very good we're not anticipating then that they're going to um nickol mamus well not only that but I mean just slow down the process M that they're online with us for having this completed by um award time of everyone is aware that October 31st is our deadline and um we're all working towards uh making that deadline work in fact it comes up at our D meetings regularly that if we need help we have uh staff within the regional office that can help us move those forward so uh we're confident on the ability to get those Awards done our our really um critical piece was that groundwater discharge perm we talked about um I think we've now developed some good relationships with the EP staff that if we needed help we could move those forward quickly if we needed to okay good um moving on contract five which is from Parker's River to Higgin croll Road all on Route 28 uh that bid is due next tomorrow um and that estimate is 24 million dollar um so we'll see how that goes tomorrow but then contract six we actually did receive those bids already uh last Wednesday and that low bidder the apparent low bidder was digit construction and their total bid price was $19 million um which is a little a little bit less than the most recent Engineers estimate so that's another good sign moving on to commun there any questions on collection system before we move on before so these are the one the contracts that we're going to be talking about on um October 1st correct okay so it's going to be contract one contract 5 and contract six we'll have all of them in a table for you indicating what all of the costs are are associated with all of the contracts and that's only a piece of the puzzle because the other pieces are related to construction phase services for our consultant team uh police details uh there's a number of pieces on that that we need to U demonstrate to you the total budget of the $27 m244 th000 and exactly where everything is committed to go and because it's early in the process we'll also have a contingency in there that's an important piece to note so there's a contingency for all of this and uh as it looks today pending the bids tomorrow uh we're on target for that budget we just need some time to continue to put that information together and get that to you on October 1st great that's great news yeah really is our project decides sorry I just have questions in terms of logistically I mean we're we hear from the citizens now and I know we're getting into the communication um but logistically when you have multiple we have two contracts now um that are out they working um two different contractors when you have multiple contractors and um work going on at the same time it very much increasingly makes it more difficult communication wise so I'm concerned about how you're going to handle that are you going to be doing team meetings or um you know one can't there's there's a lot of logistical things that go on one can't start without the other one finishing and connecting and um just just the multitude of of the road the you know the length of the road that's impacting at one time are we staggering these how how are we how are we I just want to hear your plan yeah that's a great question and that's essentially why uh We've started contracts two and three in advance by the time we really ramp up with contracts four five and six a large chunk uh of those others will be done in fact uh we did have a meeting last week with the business Community to talk about this upcoming work on Route 28 I think that's on a future slide but I'll jump ahead a little bit here and um the project manager for Robert bow said that um while with some hesitation but it looks like they're on track to finish up before next summer on their contract so so that's an ideal situation they're I think ahead of schedule uh which is great you obviously this is construction and things could happen and there could be some some delays and other impacts that might change that also the weather this winter is going to be a huge Factor if they can continue to work through most of the winter uh that plan will probably be realized uh if there's a huge chunk of uh you know very cold weather or problematic conditions then that might extend things but as Lori mentioned before they have a contract through 2026 so they're well within the contract they're just ahead of schedule at this point and that's why we wanted to show the chart that actually shows the percent complete I think one of the times when we were back before this board to give an update you you asked for that percentage and that helps us kind of anticipate what the future might look like uh but with that said we are trying to get as much done in contracts two and three and and four is a really small contract that also hopefully will go very quickly before contract five and three really wrap up and they're on different sides of the town right so I think that's going to help a lot but you're absolutely right this is a massive project with a lot of moving pieces and a lot of coordination we do meet every other week with the contractors and uh we're going to be ramping up for three more progress meetings with these other four more with the the treatment facility uh so it's very busy it's important to have a big team involved in all of this uh the chamber is attends at all our meetings as well uh but it's it's going to be getting significantly more uh busy and a lot more moving pieces right now we're really just managing the two contracts all six will be going at one time uh again hopefully some of them are ramping down and finishing up While others are starting six Active contracts all at the same time no next year in 20125 during some period probably you know uh late spring all six will be in worked at the same time Buck a up I also want to commend the police Department um they've been doing an excellent job you know they they're kind of johning on the spot out there with the frustrated motorists who are stopping and giving them their peace of mind about where they go and how they get there but the police have been very accommodating um and I I definitely want to send my kudos to them and thanks well absolutely and specifically Lieutenant Bryant he has done a phenomenal job with getting those Maps out about the detours the communications there's always things we can prove I'm sure but the way our Yarmouth police department has been engaged on movement of traffic uh selecting the best detour routes uh looking at the uh turning radius of vehicles and whether they can make certain turns uh coordinating the detours like you obviously can't have a contractor working on the detour route while that's the detour route for another contractor uh there's a a significant amount of coordination that needs to happen and they've been excellent and so we are looking to continue that and and build on that success they've certainly been showing their community policing in this whole thing yes absolutely well it sounds like we're touching a little bit on upon Communications do you want to talk about that L sure yeah we can continue on I think we've already covered some of this but that's all right we'll just reiterate um so as Dorcas mentioned the um police have been a huge Factor um Lieutenant Bryant has been working with the contractors directly to determine the detour routs and then um they been publicizing the detours on their Facebook page um which has a lot of followers so I think that's um a helpful place to post it um we did have that meeting that Jeff mentioned with the businesses uh associated with contracts two and three this week this room was full of businesses business owners um and we basically gave the same a lot of the same information that we were giving tonight um on just the contracts themselves and where they're going uh were there to answer any questions uh seemed to go well um and then we wanted to also uh mention the Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce has been heavily involved with um they come Mary vbon from the chamber comes to all of the con construction meetings so she knows what's going on and then she sends out information to her list um on a weekly basis of what's going on with the sewer so the businesses can get updates through her um and then they also have been working on uh radio and sign campaign to just promote sewer and Yarmouth kind of like a you know bear with us where we're under construction sort of campaign um the radio ads actually started yesterday uh 999 the Q and 1047 ocean 104.7 um so you might hear that if you're on listening to the radio um and then they'll be making new signs for the light posts um on Route 28 um and as always we update ways every day so uh even if you know where you're going um it's a good idea to put on ways before you going somewhere in Yarmouth now La laori you said that the meeting was well attended um here with the Chamber of Commerce but H how was the general meeting the feeling you know the output from that meeting was it positive um yeah May I'd like to chime in I I was there as well on a couple of comments I I mean um I I've been very impressed with the the team's approach on all of the communications this has been an all hands on deck effort from everyone associated with this project from the town and you know we're very fortunate to have the communications team with the um highly skilled technical DPW team and um police working together and in the chamber and um as as they indicated you know Paul was running around that stack of chairs uh setting up all extra chairs there just wasn't enough room in in this room for everyone that was there and um folks were first and foremost um extraordinarily positive um I I think that they appreciated having the information you know to such detail and listen that the thing that some of the things that we talked about that you know just need to be said um under the best of circumstances a project like this with the 18 foot trenches um the entire length of the the key backbone of our community we call this part of the Wastewater the backbone for a reason uh under the best of circumstances this is an enormous inconvenience for everyone Associated um you know with our community especially you know we understand the business community that is out there on on Route 28 and um so you know we've got so much going on in terms of the technology and the website and the ways and all of this but make no mistake about it what we've found through our efforts it is the one onone personal discussions with individual Property Owners individual business people that um is is the difference to making this project um somewhat livable um folks wanted to know you know they had there were a lot of questions was a very active um give and take um people wanted to know um which contractor where they were going to be how it was going to be handled and we had a tremendous amount of information um that that was presented and so you know the meeting was positive and upbeat and and we talked about the the future impacts as well uh for the community and and I I wanted to say one thing on behalf of the business Community folks were um very aware and knowledgeable about the need for this project H you know no one's happy that we have to dig up the town to get it but um people are well aware of the benefits that we're going to acre and working with the chamber um also and I really want to thank Mary has been a critical positive element and you know we brainstorm with um Lori Sullivan the efforts for uh establishing different Communications and messaging it's really critical and um Lori rosala mentioned the radio spots and some banners that were putting up you know that that came from um interaction and brainstorming with the Chamber of Commerce to um spread our message from the um standpoint of the benefits to the environment for this project that people need to have the specific information and the hard data about how the detours and everything is going to work but um those radio spots um and the banners that we have that are going up which by the way have been funded um by the cham um the the banners um indicate you know it's it's almost as if please um you know have patience while we fix the environment you know it gets that messaging out there that at the end of this project that there's really going to be a payoff for the for the town but I I just want to say the meetings that we've held and and that meeting with the the chamber individual businesses that's just like one example I know you had attended the meeting that we had with um the five star bus company and the superintendent of schools and the a business manager out there to um where the the police detailed out how they were managing those detours and um having police on the street able to direct people through and make sure that the buses um get through those detours I thought having that personal information there was no substitute for that um we've had there's been additional meetings that have been on ongoing with some of the larger lodging facilities um I know we're particularly concerned with the red jacket and you know it's actually good news um under our Contracting right because of the um the time frames we're forced to Greenlight um revoli for the period in September to commence construction so that were not responsible for any delays and um you know we had sort of hoped that they wouldn't be out there um you know tremendously quick because September is a very busy month for some of the major lodging facilities but we conducted you know just personal one-on-one meetings with the management of that facility I'm actually delighted that um they're taking a little time um to enable you know on weekends there's weddings going you know and um but you know some of the things that we uncovered by this personal back and forth is that you know we're going to have a detail Officer Down on cvu Avenue that is specifically geared towards ensuring the access to that major facility down there there's specific signage about the red jacket and how do you get there and it's a big node you know that's a hub for activity uh whether it's the um the weddings and big parties they have a huge motor coach trade that means motor coaches need to get down that road around into the facility and um you know also all of the deliveries and things but you know the good news is managing that working with people oneon-one we're out there trying to solve the problems sort of you know before it it becomes um you know a nightmare and and like I say it's it's not going to be um easy but um we're working on this um it's it's a daily thing that that we're all involved and and we just discuss it non-stop it's pretty much almost like a aroundthe clock thing but gives you just a little flavor for beyond the technical piece some of the things we're working on they always say the best solution is more information so the more you can give that information the better I think Madam Vice chair yeah I think this is something I mean we we've been I'm glad you're doing this I mean this is something that we had stressed was important to do months ago and it's good to see that this level of effort is being made um it's the intensity of the the communications the direct engagement with people that is vital in terms of the success of this overall program and it's just it's it's almost like iny face on a regular basis and as Dorcas said more information the better no one's going to complain that you're talking to them too much all right that's a simple um can you go back on the previous Slide the one compliment that I get actually the one that has ways to connect oh where's that one right there bingo I get whoever does the maps showing where the detours are um I hear Kudos all the time people say of all the things that we do um at least the folks that complain and and and have something to say to me um like these little Maps uh so whoever's putting them out um they're doing a good job they're making an impact people like them and they find them very easy to figure out and so whoever's doing that they're doing a good job at least from the people that are screaming at me about all the constru and I forgot to mention um I don't know how I forgot this but Robert B hour um has been a fabulous resource for in-person communications um and a lot of the door to-door work so having uh at least that particular contractor and and we think we've got some other really good contractors that are lining up for um for five and six that that's been a big help too absolutely I think this is the last slide you want to just go through this real quick sure um just a few ways if you want to get more information um we have the E alerts through notify me on the town website um so you can get um any emails of alerts uh then you could also follow the Town on Facebook or other social media as well as Yarmouth police because as I noted it's the police that make these Maps um so they're um the ones you want to follow for sure um and then if you have general question questions you can visit the Wastewater website um which is listed at the bottom of the page um but it's also if you just go to the town website it's at the top uh Wastewater construction um and that will give you the weekly look ahads so the next three weeks of what the contractors plan on doing where they plan on being so you can get an idea of what what obstacles might be in your way coming up um as well as the actual plans for the construction so if you have a property on those roads you can look at those plans if you can figure them out out um if you know how to read plans but um you can see you know where they're planning to put your sewer St where the waterline is that type of thing um and then there's just the general resident information you know when can I connect how much is it going to cost that type of thing on that on the website as well so with that it would be good to see if Paul or Lori have any comments I think Paul might have that radio ad that the radio spot if you'd like to hear go for it yeah definitely is open for business the Wastewater construction project on Route 28 may be an inconvenience but it's temporary and the upgrades will make for a cleaner Yarmouth in the meantime don't let detours get you down download the free ways app today for a smoother ride to your favorite Yarmouth restaurant or shop learn more at yarmouth.ma us and while you're there sign up for notifications to get updates on project status the town of Yarmouth thanks you for your patience and continued support of its local businesses it's a good ad that's a really nice ad that's your media voice media voice um I would say that uh that's great and it's great to keep that going um looking ahead I'm glad we talked a little bit about the uh the financing people starting to ask questions about the financing I think that's going to be the next Communications piece doing workshops and forms and getting people uh adequately informed about what their options are and when they need to be and it's almost like it sounds like people are asking now so it may very well be the sooner the better on that you know and uh I mean I'm glad to hear that there are all sorts of tax credits and other incentives that have been adopted um I think the legislature did some things to make it easier to write off sewer hookup expenses to hopefully we can get some details on that um so I thought when the the tax breaks were made being made available they were just for I a systems um but apparently they've been expanded to include sewer hookups too which is terrific and there's going to be a certain amount of money people can write off each year so I think that and some of the other programs that are out there like the County's Aqua fund program I think people need to know where those programs are how can they access them and when they need to start thinking about doing that so those will be uh a little bit more well probably just as engaging as the ones with the business community so Tracy any other no it's just um what Mark said that and coupled with uh starting to figure out funding for our next phase Al together um so there's just you know we can't it took so long for the first phase and it's going to take so long to get it online but you know the next phase will be fast approaching and uh we're going to have to find ways to fund that as well so Mark you had another point no I think I I I just want to Echo once again we've mentioned this before but I think it can't be emphasized enough Tracy's point about thinking of the future um I've had this conversation with the Town Administrator myself about I'm very concerned about losing momentum on this and I think as a board we need to join with other towns in making the case for more state and federal help I think now is the time to start laying the groundwork for that I think we need to do an analysis a projection of phase two phase three we may need to work with our consultants and our team here to look at that because um you know virtually our our entire Revenue stream that's coming in to cover the cost of the debt is all going to phase one so where's how do we do phase two and I think that needs to be um the game the game plan and we may have to hire a consultant to help us at least stitch together the pieces for that because everybody else is so busy but I think that the thing that um I think I would agree completely with Tracy is now is the time to start putting the scope of work to that together because um I and I'd like to see quite frankly some collaboration maybe with the other managers maybe this is a manager Topic at a manager meeting Bob but um I think the more we're United with barnable and Falmouth and some of the other towns that are spending a lot of money on Wastewater um I think we need to be able to paint a picture that you know we've got we're through phase one but unless we get more help we need to be able to define the kind and amount of help that we need financially um just the planning that goes into phase two that and they're busy now going to be running projects for the next contract I know how many years they're out straight right we know what it took to get phase one so who's going to be focusing on the next phase while they're managing this phase well yeah no I think I think what I would argue is what we need to do concentrated is on the financial of sort of a financial what are our what are our costs and and maybe what are our options I think people need to start thinking about if we're going to replicate the same approach first of all we can't replicate this approach we've already I mean the revenue streams that were tapping into it there not like there's a lot of surplus money sloshing around somewhere just about every dime that we're getting in from from a revenue Source that's being streamed and earmarked for Wastewater is going to be used unless maybe I'm wrong but well the good news is that over like half of phase one is the plant and so we don't have to fund that again so um no but I think it would be nice to be able to start laying out we need to understand what fa paying for phase two is going to look like phase three is going to look like I don't know how much further we can go down the road but we need to at least make some Financial projections going ahead so that we can I I would like to make the case for at least while the legislator is debating uh a municipal modernization Bill and some other legislative vehicles I mean if we need to enhance a local option um you know we at least have some basis to make the case um I know for example um some towns are looking to go back to uh you know a rooms tax or they're looking for added a a bump up on in the Airbnb tax I I've heard that discussed in other towns as a way I'm not I'm not suggesting that we need to look to you for what those options are but I think they're part of the conversation it be so it becomes sort of multifaceted in that whole Finance team we had a whole team that was focused on putting all that together unfortunately now I feel like the Scarrow is going to be a little bit different because like I said they're now managing they're very busy going to be managing these contracts so who team we need a team that's going to be able to help it'll be it'll be the finance team we'll do it yeah they can do it um but we need to start working on it now that's and that's more of a that's more of a manager Le effort uh in figuring out our costs our projections when do you need the money and then figuring out with the finance team how things are looking how do things play out long term because I do think that we need to while we've got see I when I when I look at the broader landscape there what we call Windows of opportunity they going to be times when you can go after money and they're going to their times their lean times and at the moment we've got people's we've got a lot of attention a lot of eyes on Wastewater right now and a Hot Topic it is and so now within the I'd like to think that within within the next six months we should be able to make a case on uh what it's going to cost and what what are our options are for finan ing at least the next two next two phases that's where we're going to need your help because our job is going to be talking to legislators to give us the kind of support that we need from them um all I all we hear on Beacon Hill is local option local option no one's you know now in the runup to finalizing the D regs people were promising us extra money uh but those promises don't seem to be coming through don't seem I haven't seen any anybody backing up the truck at Town Hall and dropping off large buckets of money so um I honestly think we need to craft our own recommendations on where the state can do more to help us that might mean giving us the ability to tap into some Revenue sources that are either capped or may not necessarily be as available as we'd like so those are the measures that are getting really I think we can get attention so I think that needs to be part of the conversation you have any comment i' just like to say um I know that your efforts to communicate about all this are appreciated because there's one person on my block who watches Board of Selectmen for the public comment always and then the rest is of less interest but whenever there's something uh um connected to Wastewater or or water issues with the two of you uh that person Tunes in again later in the in the meeting so all right good to know good work okay so we'll see you on October 1st yes October 1 thank you thank you look forward to it you're all doing a tremendous job thank you okay moving on um we have discussion regarding the M Keys utilization committee appointment process and scope um Bill you very detailed um sent out to us a very detailed report basically I would say on where we are now what we need to do and and how we go about getting it done and one of the things that really jumped out very quickly for me I don't know about for the rest of you was that we have 14 applicants for five spots on the committee we did talk about the fact that we want to um participate in the interview process for those candidates so that immediately brings up question do we interview all 14 of these people or do we put put in some uh shall we say markers that that um on their CVS uh that that they the goals that they need to achieve by that I mean for instance we've talked a lot about the stakeholders you know that um we we don't want to have somebody um who who's basically there for their own particular interest and quickly looking at this uh list I see a couple of members of uh the Recreation Commission that are on this list I see a member of the school committee uh for Dy district and also a member of the school committee for Cape Tech would we want to be saying that those particular individuals should not be interviewed um or or do we go ahead with all 14 now staying with that let's say that we do want to do all 14 you're talking about three nights that it's going to take for us to be able to interview those people 14 people even if you gave them only say 15 minutes a piece you're looking at uh roughly two hours a night for definitely two of those nights and probably an hour and a half of the third to get all those interviews in and we also have talked about and we've had urging from the public that they don't want us to to delay on this but to keep moving quick forward so then the qu another question may be does that mean then that we're going to set up three meetings next week to um interview all these people so that we can come back with a a a a vote that we could make on the first of October well this is an advis it's it's an ADI advisory committee MH so um you know ultimately it's our responsibility in the end still be bringing it back to us I kind of agree you know my first I think that with any of our committees it's always great to bring more new people in a lot of these people that are on here um are on several other boards um I personally would support um and you know I'm not saying anybody has a particular issue but as you've pointed out um there are people that have um you know strong feelings about Recreation strong feelings about housing um that are on other committees already so to me um I would support basically picking out the people who aren't on policy setting committees already or um other committees there's a few of them on here that have done some ad hoc committees before a few of them there's not really enough almost everybody on here is representative of something else um so that's you know if we had five people that were just not on other committees I would just support those five personally because like I said bringing in more people than having people serve on multiple committees I think is is just how how I I would look at this so um I wasn't here for the discussion to say that this board wanted to be involved in in interview of all of them um because I don't think that that's I think that uh you know I I don't need to be involved in as I said this isn't a policy setting committee this is an advisory committee and um I've made my my thoughts known I like the way that this is written because it does take into consideration the emys small property which I think is important I am very concerned with the need um of the school needs still um to really even have them go down on a road not knowing what our school needs are going to be um so I'm I'm hesitant overall um however we can't let it go on so um I guess we have to take a a a path of moving forward but again I'm not any more com comfortable after our meeting with Dr Smith last week knowing what our future for the school needs are you know what happens if we have to use matak keys while we remodel that's a PO that's a potential mhm so um you know I'm fearful of of of that um but we have to start I think there's a lot of work to do here behind the eightball in terms of looking at all of the property and again my personal opinion would be to bring in those that don't serve on other committees as opposed to those who are already on other committees that's just me nothing about any particular individual just as a as a policy of the town I the more we bring in the better okay choice I think that I find myself agreeing with you Doras about uh people who have strong interests about the property um the two members of two different School committees the recreation focused people um you got planning boards you got cedc you got you got all of them if you call actually if you call out the ones that are not currently sitting on boards I think you got three we need then see how those compare to the um the specializations in experience that we suggested might three four no we might have five I don't I don't I don't even I'm not sure I know these people but um Ian Kelly Andrew leard leard uh Joe POA Sharon [Music] wymer Roby White House has put in her name Roby who is a uh Town employee she doesn't sit on any other committee she doesn't sit on any no and then maybe maybe there is five there there are five I don't know if anybody else has any feelings about that but again no no disrespect to any of them they're all very qualified I mean it's great to have this issue because some committees we can't fill right Mark yeah any thoughts um I think I just go back to the beginning when we first started talking about this um it was sort of if you're going to have user groups represented then you you got to have them all right mhm and that I mean you could see potential recreation use here you could see potential School use here I mean you've got a whole variety of uses um you could see advocates for housing advocates for seniors I mean so if you put the committee I I would recommend that if there's a desire to put user groups or some of the interests that could be well served by being at a facility redeveloped of course um uh you can't be exclusive you can't exclude anybody you're going to have to put them all in um on the other hand I think when we were conceiving of this committee my recommendation was is that we have a committee very similar to the drive and site utilization committee where you've got people on there with a zoning background engineering uh Construction you know I think those disciplines you know are incredibly helpful in terms of figuring out what your options are and what you can do and in the reality is is as a group they can engage interest groups and stakeholders you know in terms of getting a sense of what their needs are and figuring out how they might fit or not so um by doing it that way you're not excluding people from participating you know you can organize the process so that all the various user groups can be brought in and make their case you know I forgot to mention the library so from my point I think that going down the line absolutely whoever is on this committee is then going to have to meet with various root user groups which is then going to bring back um some of these but if we're if we go on Tracy's concept of them not being being on a um a policy setting board right now um and you look at there's one gentleman in here for instance that has not served on any committee who has a background in architecture and building development and health care financial management um there is um a woman who has a background in technology um that's what I mean I think we need to look at the skill sets I haven't gone through each of these applications but I think what's important is to get a mix of skill sets that can really help provide some real value um we have um someone that has a a strong background in um Community um Administration in that we have a former director of uh the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority who has um who also C currently doesn't sit on any committee I'm saying that if you go through these you find because our volunteer pool our volunteer pool is these 14 people this is who we have to choose and um there's another one in here that's real estate who doesn't sit on any committees now um and then of course we've mentioned her name Rob White House who is the um assistant DPW chair could I suggest then because you know we've heard concerns from so many people in the community and I personally was taken AB when I realized that this building is not insured you know that that we've got a building sitting there that uh carries liability insurance but if it burns down tomorrow it's gone isn't that correct right and you've already gone over with them um you know like well we have Recreation programs going on in there right now there are various uses that the building is going through but they said back to you that in order to qualify for the additional Insurance we'd have to have it's like a minimum 33% of all of the square footage on a full-time basis occupied it's the entire building yeah we complex I should say and and that's just an onerous requirement what's that requirement about 33% of the whole building to be occupied on a full-time basis and that's um from you know the mass c local Insurance Association full Underwriters and we've had meeting after meeting I dozens of emails on this we have sent detailed reports of usage I purported to have you know the recreation with a full-time um presence there the U Public Safety Training all all the things and the storage that we use and um we're not close to meeting the guidelines right now well how about this suggestion what if we a go back to Administration and ask them to go through these applications see if there are five applicants who have not um or or the total number of applicants that are not currently on policy setting boards with their CV and return those to us to take a look at and see if looking at that we could actually come up with a decision come October 1st why can't why can't we change the charge to put alternates on there and and and pick the five and we could also have alternates I think I think your point about these five um regardless of who they are are going to have to meet and you know gather information from um all the different town communities it's going to be a process but I think it should be a fair and open process of people who don't come with preconceived notions and have an open mind yes having the experience is important but um to me I'm I'm just concerned about putting uh I don't want to say special interest I mean I think it's great that we have people who advocate for affordable housing that's not a bad thing no um for any of these projects but I I I I personally want to have an open mind and we're going to have staff with them who's going to be able to guide them and again um we're going to have updates and check-ins and I mean we've we've done this with with other committees I don't think that there were um you know again I wasn't here when you guys discussed what your your view is so um we could I ask you when you're saying alternates how many alternates are you think would it be the other nine that have I don't know I'm just I think we need to move forward I think we could pick any of these would be great um but again I am I'm more about being more inclusive of people who are trying to volunteer um Madam chair yes the scope has a section in it in which you would gather focus groups and we're hoping as that happens people in housing would get together and form a focused group people in Recreation and things like that and then by virtue of that maybe they appoint a liaison to the committee as we go through that because the difficulty in focus groups is if there's five or six people in that focus group representing different housing agencies you don't want all five or six constantly you know you want to interact with the liaison and they can meet more frequently than you know the committee would so focus groups is one of the standards and and the other you know approach that we're looking at is U they would file proposals based on those sort of focus areas so if somebody wants to see Recreation there that group would get together and say what do we think that is uh housing what do we think that is so that puts you in a situation where you're not it's not some sort of land rush or gold rush for the building and they have competing interests that's really the difficult aspect to this if you use the Clean Slate it means that everybody is going to have a different approach so if we break them down the focus groups we can ask each of those groups to say do you want to appoint somebody that would attend our meetings and then you go back to yours so we might meet every other week once a month but the other groups can go off and master plan do whatever they want within the context of that topical area see the approach approach to me is just different than what we've taken in the in the past and I'm not trying to get stuck in the past and I'm not saying it's the wrong approach but um the work that we did in the ReUse of the other buildings that have become available and of course we had to do John Simpkins twice but um you know the committee made their proposals and then um um this board put basically drilled it down and put RF an RFP out based on those suggestions so there was no master plan prior to that right um but from what you're saying is that in this process anyway so if we put somebody from the cedc and somebody from the planning board and somebody from housing and school you're saying we're going to focus groups with them anyway and they're going to have somebody that's that is going to probably represent their group to the committee so there's really no harm in in in taking and potentially putting the five new people on there because they're going to have an opportunity to participate in these focus groups yeah I mean the difficulty would be is in the housing groups there are so many participants you know uh nonprofits we really need that to get together and say what do we think is the best approach here so it is not you know overwhelmingly that we're a portion of the site is going to be housing and there's five proposals for it you know there needs to be some coordination amongst each topical area which are named in the charge so that's one way of doing it uh I mean we could simplify it and yes have the group come back and say we've had several meetings and here's what we we want and then get more detailed later with the board or have the committee do it but right now this goes through a process where uh I was going to hire a consultant to update all the technical reviews that the school department did to make sure we understand what the current condition is interview the DBW staff who've been in there and have them tell us so that the committee remember would have the detailed reports on is this building worth it kind of thing then after that it's a matter of according to scope going through a process of Outreach you know going to some of these focus group areas contacting nonprofits inviting them to meetings and say you know uh what are your ideas in reference to this proposal now the difficulty with this is the broad Continuum you could use this whole site on one end of the if you barely touch anything other than updating all the the buildings and whatever the school department plan is then you could end up using classrooms to all the way to the other end of the Continuum which is one developer does the whole site so in that approach uh you'd have three sort of ideas not necessarily Master plans but three ideas one is don't do much disruption to the site uh what can we do do and is that valid because there's a cost benefit with this that we want to run the CIP committee and both finance committee want this which is if we own the building and we have uh uses in it how much is that cost going to be what's the repair cost going to be how are we going to bring it up to speed then in the middle you divide it up by various developers you know maybe there's a housing group maybe there's a school whatever the proposals turn out to be maybe there's an auditorium Recreation and at the end of the Continuum it's one developer comes in and says I'll do the whole the whole site so that's one way of approaching it three approaches because the building itself is 156,000 square fet I mean this is a big project the site you know is it 17 Acres or more than 17 Acres so and then we're adjacent to a water supply you know so we probably need sewer on this so there's a there's a lot of moving Parts I just want them whatever it is I don't want it to be dictated by anybody I want them to go in with an open mind and see what we need as a community and what they think is going to be the best reuse of the property um with with no pressure from any particular group I just I want them to feel free to to Really analyze and look at all that the town has done we've done done a lot of visioning we've done a lot of things there's a lot of groundwork that has been done um but I just want I just want them to have that flexibility and going back to your idea though because if I do my count here again I've just gone through all of these applications there are a total of six people on this list that are not currently on policy setting committees which would be five members to the committee and one alternate to um with varying backgrounds what if we just put those together in a packet for us to take a look at I've taken a look at all of them I know I mean I'm fine with that I I think we can having those five six people I'm fine with that again you only again it's going to be a whole Community effort oh absolutely absolutely but we have to start somewhere we have to start not and that's why I'm saying would so Joyce what do you think of the idea of naming these six people then to the committee I'd be okay with that um I'm thinking because of the focus group aspect that uh Bill mentioned you know it's probably going to be important that at least half of them have some ability to talk to groups but um I think I think in a a group of six there's in a very people oriented econom we have they Pro that probably would be true there probably be half of them would be able to do that um that would certainly make for neutrality and we'd uh we'd be able to indicate as a board that we're not pressuring either you know we're open to different outcomes and it happens to be three men and three women oh we're good we're good Mark how do you feel about this I pretty much said what I've got to say yeah I think what I'm interested in first of all I think the people that applied they're all very very talented and I think no one should take offense at anything that any of us have said I think it's it's always great to have the kind of talent to work for him I think the challenge is how do you organize it and draw from it and put it in the right um structure I think that's been the challenge uh to me if you're going to have a core group of five people again I would be looking for the individuals that bring real estate engineering architectural those kinds of experiences to an effort like this because they're going to be in the best one they're going to be the best ones to tell us what we can use uh or in terms of working with a consultant and town staff they're going to be the best ones to help us even the other ones on the list aren't that I mean they're not all no I mean but out of this group of six some of those qualifications that you're looking for are there I mean these indiv indviduals are Ian Kelly Andrew leair Barbara La Joseph POA Roby White House and Sharon wymer I'd make a motion that we appoint U those people that you listed to the committee do I have a second on that discussion Mark Tracy y okay all those in favor I I I oppose I'm abstaining you're abstaining okay I mean that was six or five you you went through six they can name one as their alternate you can leave it up to the committee members to do that because we have to we have to approve the charge with that we also have to approve the charge with that um change making it a five member well plus well there seven there's two already pre two are right there those two fix so out of the other ones we need to amend the charge to have well you could uh make Miss White House the alternate as a representative who actually is overseeing the building I mean uh so there's a direct connection there the person is on the committee that understands what you know the maintenance obligations are and things like that and then it's not a direct connection between the person overseeing The Bu building in the committee would you amend your motion well I didn't make a motion in terms of the charter uh in terms of the um yeah so we need to we need to also um approve the charge of the committee that would make it uh five members plus the two one from the finance committee one from the capital budget and one alternate I'd accept a motion to amend the charge I second as amended I I'm asking for a motion I made the motion I made the made the motion and I was second okay all those in favor I I okay so um if I may I'll just write a memorandum documenting all this so that we have it sort of uh as we move forward the committee and and all that well I've got it all don't worry about it you have it okay well let check them off yeah Jo you want to just give that he's got the one I've checked off the individuals that don't have all right okay so do we have a motion to accept those members to the committee we did we did that first we did that and that's all set okay thank you very much thank you excellent job bill on that um presentation yeah it was um I thought well done I I think what as we move forward we'll have the committee take a look at the schedule and scope and tweak it as they may see fit okay selectman goals we all met on July 20th over at simin school and put together our uh goals for the coming year uh we had four members present at that meeting plus we had um Bob with us as well and um well I'd like to move that we uh accept the goals that we developed that evening and are presented in our packet okay do I have a second on that I'd like to raise a question um which is um I certainly accept all these goals the one thing I noticed though that here at all is um uh the whole question of energy and I'd like us to have as a context for these goals for anything that involves physical property um that we make sure that we are aware of anything with energy incentives that might partially fund something so do you have a specific amendment that you'd like to make for a section on this isn't having being a green Community I know that but that's already that we're as a green is that kind of part of what we have to do yeah I don't I'm asking a question I'm not I'm not trying to I thought so be funny I just thought that that was something you mean we do that automatically right we profess that we are a green Community yeah we we did that at town meeting we adopted the whole concept of being a green community and to work with the Commonwealth to embrace I guess I'm thinking way before I mean I'm think I guess I'm thinking have it early in our thinking it's more theoretical than anything I think as long as you're on the board Joyce we're always going to be thinking we're always going to be thinking of energy if you're here with us oh oh all right you trust me okay okay right okay all those in favor I I I that's unanimous okay we have our goals and choice appointments yes and you will be glad to note that I no longer trying to save paper on this by trying to magnify and not being unable to read on the computer no we have them right here on hard copy um I'd like to make a motion to appoint Brian bragon Smith to the recycling and solid waste advisory committee the appointment would be for a three-year unexpired term which will run through February 2027 do I and William Boyd both of them are the same would be the same otion motions why they're the same they're the same exact thing okay whatever somebody might have an objection or something to one to them individually so do I have a second I'll second okay all those in favor I I I and your second one I'd like to make a recommendation to appoint William Boyd to the recycling and solid waste committee um this would be for an appointment um a three-year unexpired term which will run through February 2027 I'll second that okay all in favor I I thank you Joyce upcoming agenda review we've added to the agenda for October 1st the bid awards for the Wastewater Jeff's going to be coming back with Lori I'd like to jump in and um roach uh asking for appointment at some point to uh discuss for maybe 10 minutes I'd like to have a recruiting fair for volunteers for the town committees and I feel we can um think of better times to do that now that the T special town meeting date and the election special election date are uh are already in in that's on there October one see the first one discussion discussion volunteer fair for attractive committee members oh yes but um I just like to say a thing about the dating of it U which is we will but we'll discuss that next week that's why it's on the agenda on the agenda on the agenda for us to talk about we we'll talk about it then Joyce this is this is like a can I ask a question go ahead okay this is a question how best to publicize we've got the social media and all that is it better to have it further into cold weather have handouts at town meeting or not that's all part of your the agenda that would be all part of the discussion think hard about that dear colleagues okay okay okay do we have anything else that we need to add to the October one no or set how about the October 29 I can't wait for the jingles and events update I'll tell you that I I personally love the jingle I heard it and I thought it was great exciting um or shall we just move ahead with this we've got October one set we can also review again for October 29 okay all right individual items Mark um I noticed on the agenda tonight that we had um a Wastewater update but then on our agenda it just it was a it a road construction and was that a mistake yeah it originally started as the communication for it should said Wastewater construction okay but um there was just so much happening that we morphed it into a full waste water it should have said waste water yeah okay I just wanted to raise that because I was a little bit confused because when I came into this I was thinking okay we're going to where's the where's the road construction and and we obviously talked about it but it was really a much more robust discussion of Wastewater I get nervous sometimes particularly if we're making decisions or deliberating on some aspects of it that we haven't properly posted it so hopefully um when we want to talk about road construction it might be good just to make sure that we have it as Wastewater in road construction commun I mean make it as broad as we can I'm sure that was just a an oversight and I'm sure that we'll have it all detailed for our October 1 meeting that waste water will be back on the agenda okay any other items Tracy no thank you Jo no thank you okay Town Administrator Bob um yes I'll I'll I'll try to be brief but there kind of a big one that it at your last meeting we had the superintendent um had a nice discussion introductory on the Margaret e small school um and he had indicated at that time that he had received you a word that the msba at least on a preliminary basis decided that yit is still alive and they were conducting the next day a site visit and he invited me to attend the site visit with the SBA with him which which I did and um I wanted to kind of report back to the board because the um msba is conducting their investigation as to whether they want to allow the Emmy small project to be accepted this year into their program which would initiate the process where we would do the feasibility study and um you know they were advocating strongly and and I I think there there may be a little bit of misalignment with the thinking of um the way we discussed it last week and and some of the U discussion from directly from that um msba not not the the superintendent's office you know he was having that discussion I thought was excellent he was very well in tune with with what the selectman's thought was but the um the SBA wants more feedback from the town to determine whether they feel we're ready for this project and um I I wanted to kind of um really let you know what what the the issue is that um when we discussed this last week the board was clear that you'd like um discussion in the feasibility and an analysis of the potential consolidation of that me small school into the station Avenue school as an option as an option right now um my understanding of that option would would be that that would avoid the costs of constructing a whole new facility and that we would just make um some fairly minor retrofits to to fit that in um and so I initi went into the meeting with with that in mind to kind of advocate yes we we want to conduct a feasibility study we want to examine um you know the station Avenue site we want to examine another site we want to have the data and we want to have compare it as a community and um it was interesting to me that the SBA at that meeting was strongly pushing for um us to consider what they consider the consolidation of the elementary schools but um in in my view that what they see as a consolidation is not simply accommodating those students at the present site it would be a feasibility study to completely redo the station Avenue school together with the me small school to create one very large Elementary School and um I just felt that their concept on that involved creating a project um let's be plain the station Avenue School in in our view right as we've always discussed it is not ripe for a complete um redo that it's only 20 years old that that I I think a lot of us were under the impression that you know we just bit off a pretty big chunk with the Intermediate Middle School and that we need to solve the EM small school but but we're not in the market for another um you know 850 child school that that we you know bring up to complete modern standards you know that would be another 100 million and and they they mention that and so um I have to meet again with the superintendent to kind of discuss this and get some feedback back to um the SBA and I think it's important to bring up to the board because you know they may very well decide not to I mean we're at the cusp of being in this program now I don't want to uh you know give them the idea that we're legitimately considering redoing the entire Station Avenue School along with expanding its you know size to incorporate the other school um when when that's not really what what we're looking at um so um wanted to bring that to the board to let let you know that it's something that you can discuss at your next agenda I don't want to be adding items to your agenda but it's the type of thing I wanted to mention it now because um they said by you know middle late October they were hoping to get a sense from the town of um what our appetite was for taking on this feasibility study to direct the project and so um it may be that you know we need Dr Smith back in here to to talk about it he certainly you know he's been great with me I I will say um you know we had a meeting we met with u um SBA I think the both of us were a little bit surprised to the extent that they were pushing for the so-called Consolidated School and and he's indicated strongly he'd like to meet with me and get the sense for what um you know the town's feelings are and so I I I think that um we should discuss that and be able to articulate sort of our our vision and um I would you know recommend that if we're not ready to take on whether we combine Station Avenue and EM small at a different site or combine the tube for a major project at the site that that's not really what what we bargain for with the EM School small school that we're looking to solve the me small school but not the combined new elementary school that's all-encompassing and and I um I encourage you to think that through and and and I'd like to um have it on an agenda so you can kind of give me a little Direction and then you know we'll go back and express you know those issues and concerns what we're ready for because that's what they they keep ask are you ready for this are you ready for this and we tell them yeah we're ready for it but we're not ready to rebuild the entire Elementary yeah so that's an issue um it I I thought needs to be on our October 1 agenda yeah I I think so and that way at least I could go back and and and look if if um if the SBA decides that well if they're not going to redo both of these schools then we're not going to let him in the program well then you know I I think that's something that that we confront but I I certainly don't want to sit there and say that oh yeah we're going to do this feasibility study that going to that's going to combine both of these schools into a super school and and you know and have them reserve a 100 million for us you know because I I don't see us going that direction but um that that's where we're at and I'm just bringing you up to speed of the things that we talked about and I was totally floored I I didn't I didn't think that that was coming but when they say consolidation that's what they're talking about so we need to have that on the agenda I think we're all on board and see have us come back and have come come talk to us and um like a case for somebody with a hammer or an agency with a hammer everything looks like a nail he may want to bring somebody from the school committee with him here too you know I don't think I think we want to be inclusive right right absolutely good point and another upcoming agenda item it's just key because this is where the communication went wrong last time M right with the combined school which is what happened they they took from what our vision was into something different and this is exactly what happened right and I think to some degree they may have been influenced by this the school building assistance program oh yeah covering going into their agenda rather than sticking to what on the head that's exactly what they want that's how they operate and what they're looking to create that's what the state's goal is I think is to start have coming in and having combined schools you know so that it's a one11 I mean I I wouldn't be coming to you now if I if I was it was clear I'm glad you brought it up it was crystal clear to me that the agenda from the SBA would be for that a a project of that nature yeah I think we're naive to think that they don't have an agenda of their own yeah no I'm glad you brought it up be happy to what else you got on your agenda okay I I just wan to um say that another upcoming agenda item um is I i' Look to put a uh labor update um to discuss we're at a point now where we've got um you know there's a new Public Safety contract this one the the firefighters were commencing the negotiations on that so um I I would need to just you know do the introductory sessions on that um with the board prior to us sounds good getting ahead of ourselves right and we'll put that on Vice chair absolutely agenda item and put that on for October 29th or do you feel that that should be bring be brought up on October 1st no no that it would be an executive session strategy for and and you know what if if time permits you know we could introduce the topic on the 1 and come back on the 29th I I'd almost like to get a brief an executive session on the on the first on the first like like if we spend a little time just so we can kind of see what the lay of the land is and we may need you know some time to um you know develop some additional information and come back and discuss it we'll be discussing it a lot I'm certain um and and I I just wanted to say a third thing was an interesting um session that both bill and I attended last week was the Cap Cod Chamber of Commerce developers Roundtable and um it was an interesting round table because this one was geared towards the Business Leaders the banking leaders on Cape Cod but also Municipal officials and um talk about agendas you know I personally have you know a very strong agenda in addressing this group you know a lot of people like to criticize the municipal governments for their um approach to being you know uh against virtually everything but um here in Yarmouth you know we've worked tremendously hard to put in place the um mixed use Village oriented sort of growth Center zoning bylaw in the commercial area that that really has been unsuccessful in attracting uh Village Style mixed use development and a lot of the people you know that we discuss it with always say uh well you know we can't get any financing for any of the commercial components and stuff so um I I thought we represented Yarmouth quite well we made a lot of inroads into the banking community that had indicated that they have um programs that uh would Finance uh commercial construction and um and you know we're sort of U broadening our Horizons in you know taking on a little bit of a capewide leadership role in terms of representing what we've got going on in our community what the new zoning is how that would work I mean obviously you know you have all the issues associated with the c c commission and you know things of that nature but I I felt it was important it was a it was a good meeting for us to uh you know some of the people were at the meeting right really aware of what our Viewpoint towards that Village oriented or familiar with the town zoning and um some of the you know people um well I won't get into you know but a lot of people had viewpoints that weren't necessarily accurate and so anyways very interesting um reading there's a lot more to go with that and I and I think some of the data that that you know we can bring back helps inform our comprehensive planning process um and and you know the idea is to articulate strongly that Vision that we have for the town and be able to Advocate um you know for it so well there's an agenda item huh ready for that one I I think to Bob's point one of the advantages we have is we do the rout 28 streetscape project we start looking toward the private sector side of the property line and try to tie in their projects and their investment in that so have them help us make investments in the quarter that uh a people a lot of people focus on zoning but if the developer knows the work that they have to do it's a lot easier for the developer to move forward rather than spending a 18 months trying to figure what out what that is so with the street skate project is going to be important for redevelopment I think well we didn't we authoriz some funding to be set aside to do some economic development work at some point we need to get an update on all that right and employee and employee right which we we're interviewing for now well that's good so that's another potential agenda item Madame Vice chair so couple interesting items that's all I have for tonight okay I'd like to make a motion that we adjourn our meeting tonight at 918 all those in favor I thank you all