TranscriptCapital Improvement Committee Meeting ~ November 30, 2023

if you're on it's good okay that's for sure welcome everyone to this meeting of the Durham Capital Improvement committee and um tonight we're tasked this is our third meeting for the 24 budget process uh the CIP portion of the budget process and tonight we're tasked with coming up a set of recommendations for the Selectmen uh our rankings to to move forward to them at this point in the process we've uh been presented with the

Department applications and Al their replacement schedules and um we've all uh heard from the department heads and we've gone off and scored each project according to a set of criteria in the policy and then Michelle Very kindly

coated those scores and ranked the projects according to their scores so tonight as I mentioned we're task with coming up with a set of recommendations and I thought we might start by going down the project list and talking about whether we think the projects are in the right ranking we agree with the ranking and whether there any comments on the the rankings and then finally we'll vote on whether to send that list onto the SL is that um that's pretty much the way we've done it in the in the past i' does that sound good to everyone sure okay yeah all right sounds good well why

don't we kick it off with number one or actually Michelle if you'd like to go through the the the list you created M yeah you want me to explain it or just go through the r yeah you just introduce them yeah y you might want to get your microphone really close you're wearing a mask all right so we we had the first one was for the fire department the cad

dispatch this let's let's talk about that about the first one we could go through them one by one um so that seemed to rank really I I think almost no surprises there is my impression that s that to rank universally High MH or to score universally

like so I did include all our individual scores on one of those sheets andk we all had so there were four of us had them in first and one person had it in third right so was like you said definitely top of the list uhhuh

okay um does everyone feel comfortable with it at least for the for the moment in that position I do yeah okay and um you know I don't know what everyone's thoughts were there but I know what I took away from that project was that uh the communication in during these incidents is really important and I know I I listen to uh a good portion of the the uh EMS scanner communication related to the the mass shooting incident in Leon and you know you really got a sense of that and um how important it is for everyone to know what's going on while these incidents are taking place so any other comments or thoughts can I just ask a learning question sure um so

some of the numbers are kind of standing out to me and this is inappropriate to ask them don't answer by any means um but like Paul you ranked it as ones on the social uh yeah um versus some of the other people ranked it higher or even put in zeros at times which I debated can you do a zero or not app you know sometimes I put an NA so I I just want to make sure I'm

interpreting things correctly too when I'm doing my assessment it's a great question and how I think how we've handled it in the past and how we've discussed it in the past that the important thing is individual consistency okay so that because everybody has a little bit of their own method okay and and the criteria are open to a lot of interpretation okay as well as you know how they match the project there's going to be there's so much interpretation you know I kind of look at this in a way we've talked about this in the past a little bit about like the kind of Matrix you might use in a corporate job interview process you know you um you go

through the Matrix and you know you you might score your candidates but you also think about the interview you know you think about the interview and what you know what you took away from that candidate and uh in terms of the fit and all those things and you know I see some similarities there I don't know if that resonates for you at all but um you know the scoring is important but at the end of the day it has to make sense to us that's the bottom line so um but to answer your question directly as long as you're consistent with regard to you know if you gave a project a zero on the social end

um uh you know for whatever reason as long as you apply that on other projects that you think are similar if you because I was trying to make sure sure I was doing it very logical not emotional yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so yes it's hard taking myself literally yeah so okay okay all

right so then um okay Michelle what's next yeah and so then we had the second one um was assessing okay came in a little below the the dispatch the assessing Okay so ly assessing we had a one three twos and a three is that right

yes yep yes so that makes sense it seems to be in the ballpark and of course you know we all know and we've been hearing for years um that our our assessment ratio is low and it keeps getting lower and um this is that we've Fallen now behind I I guess uh where we're required to be by the state and it's been how long since a rebal 15 years yeah it's been almost 15

2009 wait a minut no no no 2009 or something yeah yeah it's been a long time certified ratio at 67% based on what's the Nu numerator denominator like is it like so you want you want to be you want to be between 70 and 10 yeah what's the 70 110% of 100% is like real

value yeah I don't know who determining I guess well that's my question is the fact like but so how do you know what the real value is when the we have an assessment real value so how the real value based off yeah it's the sales of home isn't it so is it like based okay based off sales data right okay and that's why it's so low is because during the pandemic people were selling their houses for much more than they would right I mean they just Skyrock and that really hurts it's been going wild real estate right which everybody's going to have a problem with pretty soon especially when they do the reevaluations is you know how how do you balance what the Market's done compared to you know people's tax bills the mill rate the comparison of eaches is all the times they had expressed when we went to one of our seminars recently that it's going to be a big problem coming up when all these T

do eval which in theory if you're addressing the whole like tax base stays the same you just adjusted no rate so there's some people that are go up and some that are going to go down so but in theory it shouldn't be a huge issue if we keep our tax base the same yeah exactly yeah that's what going to be interesting thing yep yeah it's about uh Equity it's

about trying to make it Equitable and what the town receives from money as a result of of that the town's total you know uh total assessment for what it needs each year it just gets divided among the taxpayers typically yeah okay so um yeah does so that one makes sense people number two I I like seeing it up there CU it's you know it's coming it's got to be done yeah I just one more comment um who's the John name who's the chair of the planning board uh John John talber yeah so he came in the other day and just briefly said I think it was Poland just went out for RFP through their town and it was over $400,000 you see that number seems low to me that what was it 180 is that the number caring right right I should be a little bit low there's there's more populations higher in Poland but it might and it it might be it could be I mean things have really gone out of whack so it's hard to know and Donna was

just throwing it so it it might be low I mean but we're but we're working on the RFP we're going to put it out and then then we'll know and there was only one bidder and they can't do it until 202 uh yeah 2027 Jesus so that's what we're looking at for Poland Poland um I'm trying to remember the name of the company I I know this just kicking myself I can't remember recall who does the um tax maps for the town

odonnell it's odonald yeah but what's what are they under spatial Alternatives maybe but oh I don't know but odonnell and Associates does a lot of these they're right next door in New Gloucester and they they do a lot of towns this size they might be worth just checking in with you know I have no idea you know how where they land compared to

companies but they they might be one that they probably have a pretty good sense for what it's worth okay um so moving on to the next one so the third one was Public Works Capital fund um so the top two were pretty close in scoring and then we dropped a little bit down from 660 to 581 for the capital [Music]

skewed on yeah we we had some high some low some middle um yeah thoughts on that one um for me both and and I look at the the reserves I ranked them exactly the same and essentially if IES across the board because I don't look at it as as I'm not looking at the equipment list and as far as what might come up when it's essentially like each department has a capital need list and assuming that they know that they need it's a matter of um funding the reserve and so it you know it advised everybody in the community so it was just kind of across the board so both of them ranked the same um I didn't try to manage like where they fell within the ranking it was just kind of f across the board yeah that was my my methodology okay I think I always struggle with it a little bit and I think we talked about it last year yeah um I don't know it's hard in my mind it just seems like it's something we should

do always like we talked about the last meeting that we're going to have these items to purchase constantly over the next several years and if we're not reserving for it just seems like it should be something we just do so it's sometimes it feels like it's hard to rank with some of the items that seem like more of a necessity now MH just I don't know it just seems like it should be part of the regular budget that we just set aside money to fund the reserve so I just struggle every time I have to rank our

thoughts again I I looked at it um not thinking about it in general but more literally lined by line where I thought it landed like in the comprehensive plan or um okay you know even like health and safety it didn't rank high for me in health and safety because um I didn't interpret it as like saving community members or safety for community members like clean water might be or something like that um whereas perhaps you could interpret it it's safety for the employees um I did take that into consideration when it was specific items that came up whether it would make the employees job safer or not but that's how you know I again just tried to you know look at it logically line by line you know Community need I thought it was high because if we don't if we don't help the community plan for it now then it's definitely going to be a hard impact to them

later so thanks um I Heard Joe mention an idea I think it was at the last meeting and it was just a sidebar discussion we had I thought it was a good idea and um you know we've talked Jill and uh Peter for the last couple of years about how you know the capital fund is really important it's really important that we start saving especially now that uh

bonding projects is so expensive the bonds are so expensive and U one of the challenges is that the capital fun never ranks that high because the criteria is really kind of more designed for projects and so um Joe had the idea of

or I heard him say the idea and he I'm sure he can talk about it better than I can but this idea of maybe we should think about pulling the capital funds out of the ranking and just giving them you know letting them stand on their own and uh recognizing their importance and give them separately to the SEL right so for for these uh like for these yeah these uh replenishment of the C you know for the for the schedule of the equipment we need it's almost like you you you know back to the level loading it that we talked about in the last meeting of of fire department equipment and um Public Works equipment that you just know you're going to need you're going you know it's it's not really a matter of ranking it it's needed um and it's our

infrastructure that we're we're grading so you know putting that forth as a as an item every year that whatever the number comes out to be when you level load the the budget for the for these these equipments yeah you know putting that out as a separate item and not go through this ranking process might make more sense and I think it's an idea but it may not go right away but something we should think about theut yeah yeah and I think that might better reflect the idea Jerry has to going with the f person yeah I was going to say especially once Mark has all the financing figured out and all the pieces of the puzzle put in right yeah then I think the town will understand it as well and making it its own entity it it seems like we're heading that way and it probably makes more sense from a budgetary standpoint for the town to to look at it in that manner moving forward yeah um and then you're not going back

and forth It's not being compar comped to say other budget items at that point it's just Cost of doing business cost of of running the town right and in a short period of time all of these CIP items will come out of the reserve fund so it won't even be part of affecting the taxes or how much money we're raising because we set the money aside and so it's just a matter of how do we want to spend our savings so I it seems like eventually it needs to come out anyway it's going to need to come out anyway in terms of if you know we go this direction if you level funded each year it's coming out it's right exactly yeah so it's kind of a it's kind of a step you know small step but kind of go that direction you know and that's going to be the first iteration of the budget to see what it looks like uhhuh yeah that's what yeah that's what we're planning on doing yeah so do does that make sense to you Jerry yes absolutely

okay does it make sense to everyone else I saw a lot of nods all right excellent so we're taking it out this year yeah let's take it out um do we rank them both together or do we prioritize one over the other or do we take the ranking that is there which is basically Public Works Capital fund and fire department

I I think the only I guess my knee-jerk thought is whichever one is is on the warrant articles first scrutiny or the most support you know so and I'm not sure necessarily ranking it means leads to anything yeah that's a good question so I mean here's the thing is it does from the perspective of of like the admin Jerry and the selectman and the budget committee they haven't done their budget yet so they don't know yet like where things are going to stand but in terms of sorry so um if they do

this you know if they get to CIP after the budget's done and look at CIP and they only have a fixed amount of money then they could say for example okay well this year that reserve request is going to make it to the war they could you know they have the ability to say that will they I'd say it's pretty unlikely because um pretty much in past years I've always seen both Reserve requests on the warrant so u i me I'm

fine with just putting them both on there yeah and not ranking them yeah and I I think not ranking them goes along with the philosophy that has been getting hinted at and it's not a matter of if one goes on or the other one you know there's not really one is more important than the other if Capital funds are important to be raising for then they're important to be raising for yeah so exactly and and and it's kind of like you know you want to both you know I find it interesting in the scoring like you know both departments are so important so critical to the town it's not like we really want to emphasize one over the

say I found my biggest difference between the two reserves was um who was more realistic in there that's a good point that's the only reason why one got ranked lower is because they were further away from the comprehensive plan that says you need to be saving money uhhuh yeah yeah good point so keep in mind too if if the level funding works and that's the direction we go in and so you're funding the reserves anyway then the questions are like okay do you really need that truck this year yeah and then if you don't you've still funded it so it gives you that flexibility to maybe put it off a little bit yeah something you know now you need it the next year you know so build that balance right so that gives you you know it's really about being flexible while trying to keep the the residents taxes at you know as flat as possible as we go so actually give it's actually better because now you aren't ranking them and

having to buy it necessarily that year and and it gives a chance for the actual vehicles to be beted even better I believe yeah yeah yeah yeah you know exactly you know just because it's 10 years old doesn't mean you need to buy it right but you know you're going to it ain't going to last much longer than that so uh when when we I think it was our first year might have been our first her second year um we did the CIP we held our meetings over at the uh at the Public Works building and it was interesting because um I think Calvin was asking for a bed for a truck bed and he took us out to the garage you know and he showed us you know like the shape of this bed yeah this thing had like patches all over you know and cracks and that you know you really got a sense of it and um the sanding unit I think it just fallen off at exactly exactly yeah yeah and you know maybe at some point um I I agree I think that

piece is still important you know the the ranking and and just not automatically saying building the balance not automatically saying just because of stickers you got right um but maybe at some point in the future you know uh you know you and or the selectman or whoever or this committee gets opportunities to take a look at some of this stuff like for example that equipment trailer like you know I'm just like how bad is that equipment

great sounds like we're all on one page and good idea Joe okay so where does that take us so the next one uh the land use codification okay land use codification all right thoughts that one was sort of all over the place too some high low in the middle mhm I mean a lot of the scoring tended to be that way except for the first few you just had a mix of

well I'm not hearing a lot of comments so I was I was actually just smiling um because when it came to the economics I ranked it high oh yeah okay and um I ranked it high just because I thought that it would how did I think the directly produce I know when I thought about indirectly producing income I thought it would because um we're not not paying a lawyer to interpret what the ordinance is supposed to be saying we're not paying a code enforcer to take 16 hours to figure out what the codes are supposed to be saying you know it's good point um so it I felt it definitely would be a money maker for the town

where it got a slightly higher bump from me compared to other people MH it was supposed to help streamline the codes and yeah and make them make more sense have less people trying to sue us or or appeal decisions and things like that which again takes time and money yeah I think for me where it scored lower was that it didn't rank as high in terms of Public Safety and then I I struggled with this question of what's you know when you start talking about contracts there's a part of me that always wants to know well you know what's the scope of work like I really like like to know like you know what is it that this contractor is going to do what are they going to do are they you know just going to do a legal review are they going to get into for example the back lot ordinance which I'm sure needs like a lot of work or is it just going to be unlegal and is it just going to be a set of recommendations um or are they also

going to suggest language all of the above so they're actually going to suggest specific changes yes yeah okay like we had talked the other day just in that one decision thing there was ambiguity just in that one decision

section they're going to look at that and they probably look at that seven days and say seven calendar days business days what days because it doesn't really lay it out and in that particular case we were look if it was seven calendar days it was well we went seven calendar right we did we we did we did but did we

have to really rush because we didn't know right I mean yeah the the hearing was on Tuesday right Wednesday was the next day you had Thursday as a holiday Friday as a holiday then two weekends do you count them and is it expected that employees or volunteers are going to work on Thanksgiving just to get a letter up so it's those sort of things Jerry where do you think it belongs in this rank the catification oh I think it needs I where would you put it I would rank it pretty high uhhuh so compared to say equip

trailer I know what's on it it is cuz it's two like so different it's two different things yeah yeah did you do your own ranking no I in your mind you must have something well yeah was actually with me and the guys had a little bet going on and see how

you have conflict where thisat you have a conflict of interest where's this cheat sheet how are they doing here so but yeah I want in yeah it I mean it is it is important because the language and some we don't even know where it came from we don't know if it come from some other ordinance and it just got pasted in ours and you know in the in the car they're going to look at it all and go through it and really at the end of the contract period he's going to have a package that he's going to hand over and say this is where this needs work which we'll give to George but a lot of these changes can can only happen at town meeting but at least someone's done the punch list and we can pick out the more the more serious ones here's something I like about it yeah and that is that it kind of takes a little bit at least this I mean I don't think it addresses everything but it does kind of take staff out of the firing line that's

perfect yes because you know it's a it's a third party yeah and they're telling us that we need to do this right is it is it Atty or is it uh a land use uh consultant there are like legal Scholars on the team I know rather than they like full-fledged attorneys I I don't know but it's a team that looks at the whole thing and the legal aspects they probably have a I don't know a legal scholar looking at that have you guys looked at examples of what these guys are providing like the deliverable what they're providing for deliverable just on their website he just showed us what happens when when they when another they did like 23 towns in the state so when they and they put it like up on their website so on the town's website you go to the land use ordinates it goes to the company's website and then you can and then there are other oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you can look at other towns MTH I think

does this there's a bunch there a bunch of them yeah yeah and so then you can actually look at some of those Auburn too I think right you can look at Towns at aim to yours I mean we're a rural town so ordinances change from from municipality to municipality I mean a lot of times they're the same because you got to follow the law right so if you did a Google search you're saying that it's going to direct no so when you go to your homepage the town's homepage and say click on the land use it goes to the contractor's page if that's the service we want to get and then it's right there and it's all laid right out and they manage it the whole nine yards yeah as a follow on from what we're talking about a follow on would be this the company redoing the land use code as well so this is just to have them go through and point out like here's where your conflicts are right but then when you're talking sounds like they dat

actually then rewrite the land use code as well I don't we're not looking for that service okay but I didn't think so but that's why like if why would be link to if they're just pointing out the conflicts in our current code why would we link to so once we complete it once we complete the land use code if and if that's the service they want to sort of maintain it they would maintain it on they they offer that right they offer that that's not probably an add-on yeah that would be an add-on we want to go further we we just have to have somebody look at it to see how I don't know what the right word is how serious it is out of whack with yeah being well having a lot of ambiguity does it follow state law does it even when it references another section of the land use does that tie together yeah there are some there are some issues with with it yeah if especially if you're a code officer oh yeah yeah yeah

yeah spent a lot of your time on this that's a really uh good point which you know was Joe's point with regard to efficiency um yeah uh so one thing that I mentioned to Jerry was that you know often um ordinances or really all the time ordinances and small communities like this are work in progress and what's important is continually moving forward you know that you have a dedicated group of people that are continually moving it forward and continue continuing to polish it it's kind of an iterative process um but what concerns me is that I'm not sure we really have the capacity you I'm not sure we have the capacity to do that ourselves or doesn't

seem like we're doing it and maybe we're far enough behind that this really makes sense have you spoken with John talbat with the planning board about this at all just not the planning Bo but John talet knows I mean we've talked about it in a select board meetings when when I was bringing it up that this is what we are looking to doing yeah so and um did

this company do this in mechanic balls I'm not sure if they did in M Falls we and we only looked at this company to get what does this really mean so we would go out to an RFP yeah yeah so we just needed to just find out how does this work yeah yeah and he came in and he talked to us and showed us how it worked and and even even George the planner is all about this and this this helps him out because now he doesn't have to spend time he doesn't have time to do the research period he just do doesn't have the time so if cuz he's 20 hours a week and he's getting ready for the next the next uh town meeting with ordinances that we're trying to develop now yeah he's trying to put out fires from ordinances that were past last town meeting for people that are unhappy yep you know so he's he's really busy and so he and he can be the guy that kind of like looks at these changes and maybe because they pointed

him out he doesn't doing that now he can maybe make those changes make him fit a little quicker yeah I think it kind of makes sense because um one of the challenges is that you know if George just proposes this these on his own I think you know it may just be like an uphill battle and but if he's able to you know say directly you know we had a specialist look at these right these don't you know aren't in alignment with state law um it makes a lot easier and

you know I've seen it work where you have like if the planner is working with the committee not doing it on their own but working with the committee but that's really time intensive it is it's really time intensive so and there is the possibility if we want to take it further and have this company do it but they they can they can redraft them yeah but that doesn't mean they go into law until it goes to town yeah and then it's we have to decide and then we can how much do we want to take town meeting too you know and how much other the people want to absorb a town meeting if there's too many changes yeah and maybe there's a way to do it so it all gets done but I haven't had that conversation with with them or how other towns have done that to actually get them pass at a town meeting former government Town Town Council governments boom right in the meeting they can accept them and it's all done in one meeting but we don't

have that former government here we have to wait each year to make changes so how the ordinances work there's dictated by state law are there some by federal law and then things we can do ourselves or state mostly yeah and there's some wiggle room with than that you can be sometimes well not some you can be more restrictive than state law sure but not less yeah makes sense if we didn't have anything then it would be state law would apply just by virtue

of being State and put we become more restrictive usually is what towns do or more specialized depending on what the situation is in town in regards to what we have going on and yeah specialize them as you move along do we have a lot of our own restrictions we do have a lot of added restrictions in there and yes you know you get things that are are very kind of like uh you know controversial like back lot back lot was has always been a controversial one and you try to satisfy a lot of people a lot of different voices and it can get really complex I found it confusing when we bought our home and bu so I get that one yeah yeah yeah that was always a Hot

Topic on the planning for back was always yeah back lots and dog barking exactly yes it um uh Jerry now the next one on the list is town office remodel so I have to ask the question you know like town office remodel I look at that and and um I just see that this has

been talked about for a lot of years and um I'm worried about things like you know staff retention um and I think we finally have some we're fortunate to finally have someone here who's willing to do something about it and uh on an affordable plan that

seems to have some motivation and passion to get it done well so do you have any feeling with regard to you know where the two belong in terms of ranking well that I know that's a tough question yeah well the we need to have more office space we have three employees sharing a 10x10 office yeah

and it's not so much the employees it's the code offices permits notes plans on top of the assesses reports and whatever she does on top of the planners ordinances I we can take a tour into the office and you can look at it and you don't see a lot of Des space all you see is papers everywhere because you got three people sharing that office yeah prisoners have more space than that

so it's it's a pro and then you got part-time employees sitting at a TV tray behind the glass when they're here four hours so it is it is important to provide a good working environment because if we don't then that's an issue for staff and staff will find a good working environment if we don't provide one for them yeah that's the that's the down side of it right right you yeah and we know what happens when that starts to fall apart right it's not good yeah yeah yeah and like you said prior years it seemed like we had it was a whole new construction and add-on to the building and just this seemed like a really good solution that was going to be a lot easier or or just like 10 grand to make a plan right you know like to hire someone consult to come in and make a plan well so we have one from 20 it's interesting to read back in 2006 what they said about this building and 17 years later it's worse ah you know so I

mean it might be it might be worth dusting that off looking at it and saying is this somewhere the town really wants to go because you need the space you're growing we're 4,200 now yeah so that back you know back when that plan was written you had a code officer not fulltime you didn't have a planner yeah now we do right you didn't have Co right and this if we was to try to like so

when the uh re-evaluation happens that company has has to come to this office and sit cuz they got to go look at the tax record so you have to provide a space for them uh I mean we can provide this room but there's really no space for that I mean if there's no space if we had to get an intern to help us with stuff yeah you know rather it was digitizing a lot of the paper and get it into look where do we put them we we have no place to put any anyone else yeah it does seem like putting a wall up here is just a Band-Aid it you're now creating a temporary meeting space that really I mean the fire department is nice to let us have meetings there but that raises a lot of questions for me having meetings over there and you know and it doesn't seem to me like that's a permanent plan it's not and that's really that like the technology piece is really important too right yeah being able to share those meetings yeah the

technology piece over there he's got half of it already $500 we can set up the streaming over there that's that's the that's really the easy part but like Jill said it's it is a Band-Aid because we don't really have we don't even have a good boardroom as it is because you can't fit anyone in here right so it's growing you can fit a little bit more with the fire station you know on a temporary basis but the town office Town

Hall should really have a a a boardroom that works so you can bring so the so the uh select board and the budget committee we meet during budget season we can't meet in here it's too crowded so last year I think we went well we did go to the Eureka Center then one time we went to the fire station yeah there's just not enough room I mean so I I see it as a little bit of a Leap of Faith with regard to for example the meeting spaces you know exactly how this is going to work out out but um you know I

just I wonder how long we can kind of Kick this down the road right and it's an expensive can to Kit because back in 2006 the addition to this town office was about 600,000 17 years ago yeah it's probably you know the interesting thing about those projects I will say though it's kind of like well you know you have immediate needs those projects can take a long time to get off the ground but the beauty of them is you know you do it you spend a lot of money you know you take out bonds like I'm thinking about over in New Gloucester that Public Works building forget where that ended up but it was probably around five million and um you know once it's done

everybody's usually pretty darn happy that they got this and the fact that this space is going to be the home of the town for like many years to come there's a lot of Pride there it's a lot of Pride yeah yeah yeah yeah so but you're right it does take time I mean you really it just takes time to get it off the ground it takes time takes time to get Buy in so people you know when you think about the roads right when the roads were terrible you know all the residents ride on that they want those fixed when you talk about adding a bunch of money to a town office that they visit once a year yeah make you know a little tougher sell right yeah yeah yeah but it's you know it it it's a necessity when you're growing yeah you know we just don't have the space yeah I've seen I've seen the uh town of Harrison has put up a big Public Works building right now yeah and then they had done their town office over there

and they they're a much smaller Community than us it came out beautiful with the you know meeting room in the middle and then you know different different departments on either side of the the meeting room where everybody kind of meets in the middle yeah and then they repurpose the town office as the library yeah you know so it was a kind of progression through the through the town there these are really you know they're tough projects too because it's not like you can go out and raise money for them right you know nobody funds Town Offices nobody does there's no free money for that there's no free money for it except maybe like you know the was it the the ARA something I don't know that kind of thing um so uh I'll just throw it out there you know and I know the numbers have landed where they are um but where do you guys

think that this is the right order land use codification and then town office remodel or or should it be should that be belongs yeah even though I you know the way that my numbers came out it was it rank lower but at the same time I mean I think it's a collection of everybody exactly right right yeah what do you think Joe yeah I mean I think they I think it's I think it pretty much just the the order of what what I'm seeing here came out approximately where I thought it would okay I I I I didn't see you know

again you know when you start comparing them to each other we know we want to pull a couple of them out of here and so you know it makes more you know makes a lot more sense when you do that if you pull those those Capital uh request out and then you have this order you're looking at it looks okay um Michelle your thoughts I'm

good with it and it ends up though very close to the equipment trailer we're only off a couple on there yeah um how about you Joel do you think that that order do you agree with that order land use C ification and then town office remodel yeah I mean it it pretty much fits where I had it okay um sounds good

I'm good with it too all right let's move on down to Public Works equipment [Music] trailer um have you had a chance do you know this trailer no you you're a public works SC I know I know I haven't I haven't looked at I I hear it's like the original trailer that came with you know the package carries a lot of weight so I wouldn't be surprised that it that it that it wouldn't have some stress cracks in it yeah over time and going over the roads and that sort of thing yeah yeah yeah I guess fortunately these guys aren't on the interstate right you know but still um

that's a heavy piece of equipment on there and especially if it's going up and down down on bumpy roads right which you know we have a few but DS roads they're pretty good compared to other other towns they really are it's nice so really true huh yeah absolutely didn't used to be that way right yeah we spent a lot of money on that yes we got to spend a little to maintain them because that would be foolish right to spend all that money and then we don't we don't maintain that investment so yeah yep the maintenance is part of their [Music] their uh okay must be getting late it's it's part of their budget plan so yeah they um don't see that getting jipped too too much usually no they're you know it's it's interesting because um the town there are other treatments out there that you can use that are like a third of third of the cost and uh one got done here that chip seal yeah and and from what I heard that

people were not happy with that type of pretty sure that got on stack for Road they did a lot of that they did did a lot of that in pound yeah they still do because it's a like it's so it's a third of the cost and you get a good seven years out of it so you know for you know when I was teaching the classes and stuff you could do a chip seal for like

32,000 equivalent of payment was 100,000 now I got to ask where you come down on crack ceiling I love crack ceiling oh okay yeah me I kind of like that too yeah because that's the that's the byi you get the most bang out of your buck for crack sealing it's cheap keep out the water water from getting between the pavement surface and the and the the gravel that sits on because once that water gets down in there and it sits and heavy traffic hits it it pounds it and it and it and it just weakens it and that's how you get your pow holes to start and water is the enemy so 80% of your road problems can be traced back to poor drainage so if you've got cracks in your road well built roads yeah even well-built roads yeah it'll startop to deteriorate your base so you want to get them sealed up yeah and uh yeah and that's all part of like a pavment management plan you know because if you're going to always be using the most

expensive material out there which is hot mix asphalt y um you're not going to be able to keep up so hot mix this town last year paid $82 a ton we got a quote this year it's 110 all right so you you got 42 mil of Aid road uhhuh so when you do the math if you do uh two miles you're on a 21e rotation roads don't last 21 years you know you you do you do one mile because you want to be really now you're a 42 mile is that is that like a cog price is that a cog bid no that's a that's a that's cont that's yeah that's a contract that's Kooker gave gave him the quote now he'll probably get a little bit better price than that cuz it's a budget number right yeah so they're not going to show all their cods in a in a budget are we going out to RFP are we going out to yes oh it would definitely go out to Bay yeah for that so it's those kinds of questions that you need to ask so if you have to do say three and a half four miles to

keep up with your 42 miles that's like a 10-year rotation well if you do a mile and a half crack ceiling as which is cheap and then you do a mile of Chip seal which is cheap and then you do another mile of Paving yeah you've just done your that's it done you've done it yeah and that's how pavement management works because you're not going to be able to do it with hot mix asphalt on all of your roads unless you really raise a lot of money yeah yeah well um

yeah thank you for that perspective and while we don't you know we don't do the roads piece here but um it's great that uh um you know you guys are looking at it so carefully and trying to think creatively give those constraints well in my past life I would stand up in front of Public Works and kind of teach them how to do payment management plans with the main local Road Center yeah that's great that's great so okay excellent um so equipment

trailer I kind of suspect it is where it is but that's where it's that's where it lives is that is okay okay the next one is Public Works pickup um comments thoughts on the Public Works director pickup and again Calvin came in and talked to us about this um is this a one ton 3/4 ton I

can't remember but um this is the Public Works director pickup and I know I recall it has 129,000 miles it's got some Rust in the Rockers um but my understanding is it doesn't have any big issues at the moment right um I don't know when the last time was it went for an inspection where somebody got under there looked at things like C Corners frame that kind of stuff I think we don't have that level of knowledge but well mik the mechanic over

there he would he would and if there was something like that I assume Calvin would have brought it to our attention right absolutely yeah absolutely and he does plow with it so that does beat it up quite a bit yeah you know any plow truck that's plowing snow well maybe we won't get that much snow and it will maybe last even long but but if it's a big year of snow I mean it does get beat up so yeah yeah absolutely is out there all the time it does pretty heavy duty yes yeah all right [Music] so does that let's see how that played out in terms of the individual rankings just want to take a look here so got a an eight a five a seven a six and a six so two sixes a seven a five and an

eight so um what do you guys Peter you guys ranked it the highest how do you feel about it slipping down you know to an eight are you concerned about the list of everything coming up because I thought that was some of what he talked about was maybe he didn't absolutely need it now but when you see everything coming up and if we're not reserving so I don't know it's hard to sort of decide and not seeing the trailer in the pickup myself you know it's sort of hard I guess to kind of envision yeah and when you take out the capital funds it lands in my ranking pretty much where it lands I think on this one at an eight you know it's really the selectman's decision whether it makes the warrant probably you know and depending on like um where these guys end up on the budget and um you know I'm sure they always want to get as much on there as they get get what on there is they get the needs addressed as many needs add

dress as they can and that's the interesting thing too with the ticket price um you know the three items that are before it are 50 $65,000 so even if you move it up you're almost move moving it up to third place because you got to take a lot of of items off the list off the table yeah no that's a really good point yeah um and then the other thing we talked a little bit about at our last meeting was this idea that you know if you don't buy it this year and we know what that list looks like for the next 10 years um I forget which year it is but in a year or two here you know we start having a major piece of equipment every year so in my mind if you put this at

eight and it doesn't get funded you should be putting more money in reserve right right kind of as we were talking before right so this is a tough one on yeah this would be one of those things that if you had it in the budget say from last year to start saving for it' be one of those things that you go and buy it when you're when you really need it versus have to go buy it next year and replace it it's definitely a candidate for that type of uhhuh yep at it you know absolutely well you know it's great we have the select chair and the town manager here on the committee and um so hopefully you guys can keep that in mind as you move forward board will have to consider that yeah yeah yeah exactly does Mark plan on having the his budget

together before the before you guys have to make these budget decisions oh yeah yeah we're working on it right now as we speak yeah because that could change the amount that you're asking for for the capital funds anyways it it's it's it's it's going to be it's going to look different um the budget than what you're used to because we're doing it um in a

more 2023 type budget way more sophisticated um we're not Co mingling Capital with our general fund money the money's there it's it's interesting you'll all get it's hard to explain without having it up on a projector or whatever how it's all going to work but he has this really nice workbook so as you feed the operating budget it it feeds this budget summary where it shows you how it impacts his taxes I mean it's really nice and uh and then so that's there so you you you have your part of money and it's like okay so how much can we pull more money out of that to feed capital and what does that do to the overall tax impact yeah yeah

so you know without you know you're hopeful that we're g to be able to do this flat funding and not have it be too bad but you just don't know until you stop plugging in numbers to see how it but will he have his his Capital forecast done because when he came and met with us there were some pieces of the puzzle that were missing so it was buildings that we didn't have so we had the equipment for both Public Works and Fire but we didn't have the build so we gave them and they're really placeholders now like if you like if you look at the eure uh building in the shingles you know you're probably looking at a new roof on that in the between the five and 10 year period you know this roof is okay but the the fire department that roof over there is over 20 years old so you might be looking at something there and so we kind of looked at that and said okay well in you know 2040 we're looking at a new roof and we

put in little placeholders and gave that to Mark so we're going to see how that plays out I'm guessing don't hold me to that don't quote me but I'm thinking it's going to be right around 10 or 12,000 a year to fund buildings and then

as you do it and you need a new roof it's there or you need something it's there just like the capital so their placeholders now and and and we have to have as a town discussions on uh you know how much money do we want to put into like the Eureka Center the community center and I'm hoping that they want to put something because it is the community center right I mean that's downtown durm yeah right yeah so you know we as a town we need to have those those discussions yeah yeah absolutely yeah and especially you know if you end up um expanding the staff space into the this room that building becomes more critical with regard to meetings and community space and those types of things right and we even looked at the septics fields the septic fields around here are like 30 years old and when you look at the life of a septic those need to be looked at so you know you put a little of money away even for

for those just but we'll see how it comes out and again we just you just sort of have to look at it and see what what does this look like and are we really going to need it these windows are olded I mean they're wooden windows I mean Allan was in his office stuffing paper towels down there to keep the draft up so you know do we do we replace those not anytime soon but

things get old yeah yeah yeah exactly and again it goes back to that conversation are you going to replace the windows just to build a new building right exactly that's the com that's why we have to have that conversation and it's not one it's a conversation over a PA at a time yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't think anybody who starts those projects in hers that it takes less than you know five years to get something like that done probably more more more on the order of 10 yeah you know takes time it takes time for everybody to get kind of like someone said get ready or understand like for it to sink in right yes you know we need this and we're going to do it we're gonna pay for you know our friend Christine Landes that was over in new gler there yeah went to Chelsea yeah well their town office is very similar to this and they have a population of half of what we have here yeah what are they doing they're doing

they're redoing their town office they okay they're doing a design build and hope to have it done in a couple years oh yeah nice excellent that's good it happens yeah yeah excellent okay very good so um and then then the final one

is the Union Church um who would like to talk a little bit about the union church so you know I think the chat I mean I guess I I'll go from my pers from my perspective you know it's tough because I see there's need there you know I see there's need this is a historical building and now it's my understanding that this is where the old town hall used to be for a period of time that it was town hall and it is it's also right in the center of town but you know you mentioned I thought this was a great point or someone you mentioned it Jill that that building doesn't have a lot of parking and so it has like you know it has a historical value but it has some challenges of course and this is one of the reasons you know I didn't rank it higher too one of the things I struggled with is I know that there's an engineering report out there somewhere or maybe it hasn't been delivered yet but we don't have it you know in hand

but on the other hand um uh Lois did come to us with a very specific request a pretty specific request so but it's really hard when you rank it against these needs and also when you score it according to the criteria which are more heavily weighted towards things like Public Safety and U meeting um important to all the community members you know impacting all the community members like for example um uh something like the assessing or something like um the town office remodel because you know that really does town office remodel I mean everybody comes into this building you know pretty much every and it affects everyone if we don't have staff that has a good work has a reasonable work environment yeah so um yeah that's that's why it's down there on my list for me I think it's the the conversation that keeps getting circled around year after year yeah there's not a comprehensive plan for the church uhhuh

yeah you know and I understand that it's a historical building and we need to try and keep our historical buildings um but you know I even thought of it actually driving up 295 the other day and there's B&M being torn down and I you know I said to my husband I said when was that built because that's going to be considered a historical building and here they are they're just tearing it down to put in apartments or something I don't even know what's or something you know but they weren't even told that they had to like remodel it and turn it into to their school they're allowed to to tear it down and so I think the hardest part is is putting money into something when you don't know what that something is going to be in the end you know and we're working on it I understand we now have like a committee together to try and make that plan and stuff but like you said not having the engineering plan not

having the plan um it makes it really hard to rank it amongst things that you can put your hands on you've got more of a plan and honestly I think that's why the town office remodel didn't rank as high for me in some regards because it's as I mentioned it's a it's a little bit of a Band-Aid it's not the plan um so yeah and I guess um course I'm the

outlier um if you look at across and I don't know I mean from my lens it's not intentionally ranked high it's kind of where where the math based off of like kind of how I set out to do things how it um flushed out it didn't concern me and part of it part of my my thing is that so the way that it's structured we have an obligation to do something but I also agree the fact of like having that vision of like okay what this what is this going to become should probably happen before we start putting money into it but at the same time we also I me if we're going to it die on the vine if you will then we need to absolve the town from the responsibility of it because as it stands we have a responsibility to do something yeah um and that's why like to me it it was okay with the ranking because it's like we can't ignore it so we you know that's um but I also agree that it probably would be nice to have a

vision of what it's going to become what are we going to use it for based off of I mean if it's parking and if it's just it's going to sit there and you know look good or you know look historic I should say so be it but so what do we need to do to to achieve that goal and if it's not if it's going to be people aren't allowed in it because of the structural concerns then okay but let's you know we need to address it so makes sense sorry yeah it didn't yeah

it certainly fell kind of where I thought it might and you know again not being able to serve a large amount of the public you is definitely uh definitely big issue um and and lack of of a plan moving forward um but mostly the you know just access to it is is the big criteria although we do need to we have the obligation to upkeep it which I believe this number currently represents so it's definitely something the board will have to as a as a group with the recommendations from the committee have to look at to see what happens here do we have any sense of where it's um in terms of this St you know stabilizing the building so the building stable yes the building is safe it's very safe it's more cosmetic stuff that needs to be addressed and right now as we're having a meeting the Union Church committee is having their meeting at uh Bill Snider's house okay and they and I believe the the goal is from this meeting is to come

to the the December 12th select board meeting with their recommendations on the building oh interesting nice okay yeah so that could be a little bit of a moving Target right so we're get in there yeah that's good that is interesting an overall perspective of I mean I don't know how this year compares to past years but here you are making

grades and goals as far as the CIP planning committee and yet you have a fraction of the information that is available like on my end on the budget committee you know by the time it gets to the budget committee there's a lot more information yeah yeah so it's it's unfortunate and interesting all at the same time and I think this represents what we know that's I'll say

wrong with the building today this this number is an estimate based on right no and I'm talking that was a comment based on generality you know what I mean it wasn't even based on just the union church but just in general how a lot of information changes between this port this stage of the budget process and the

budget meeting stages yeah well you know from my perspective one of the things that I think is helpful and valuable is starting early and so you know at least I think the idea is you know we flesh out a lot of those questions early on in this process and then by the the time it goes to the budget committee and the selectman a lot of the questions have been answered and the ones that haven't then they can focus on also on the ones that haven't and exactly how it fits into the into the budget but I guess what I'm saying is when I looked at these when I looked at what the CIP ordered things I was under the assumption you were playing with the same data that I'm that the budget committee is playing with and that's not the case w it's usually that far off but

yeah when do you work on budget what's the time difference February oh okay you know so a lot more estimates have come in a lot more hard facts have come in that we don't have this year anyways you know there a lot of things that are still in the works this year like I said I don't know if that's been the case in the past

um it sounds like we have a ranking and it sounds like [Music] um we could use um to refer this ranking onto the selectman and um you know I don't know if anyone would like to entertain making a motion and that's with the suggestion to remove yeah exactly so the motion would be to remove both the Public Works Capital fund and fire department Reserve from the ranking and to present those separately and also to rank to carry the other rankings as presented as scored I think that's it isn't it yep I think so yeah I'd make a motion okay okay um okay so we have a motion by Michelle I'll second it and we have a second by

discussion and all those in favor okay yeah all right so that's 5 Z and I better write down this motion otherwise just looking ahead here okay okay so um I think implied I don't know if I included it in the motion I don't think I did um but implied in that motion is to refer these uh recommendations onto the selectman uh and I'll just make that as a separate motion so if I can get us

uh uh someone to make someone to I'll second that yeah okay all right is kind of discussion all those in favor all right okay so now the last item here that I have on my list is um I know in the past we've sometimes compiled notes in the spreadsheet in the scoring did you get many notes this year yeah so they're all on the individual sheets at the bottom okay so I included everyone whatever I got wonderful all right is there anything particular now uh typically what we do is we do like a onepage conveyance memo I try to keep it

onepage conveyance memo so um you know I'm I'm happy to draft it uh you know we usually don't hold another meeting to look at the memo usually what I do is I send it out before we send it out this selectman and I say that if send it out to you guys and say that you know look does anyone have any objection to this and if you do then we'll probably need to get together in a meeting format and discuss it um if you guys are comfortable with doing it the same way that's fine if you want to do it another way that's fine with me too I'm totally flexible I'm assuming if it's simple grammar or just rewording things you don't need another meeting if it's a suggestion of I if it's like a typo or something like that yeah I do ask that you um email me individually and not and that we don't CC the whole group and don't because you know sometimes it's a slippery slope it can devolve into um

you know these uh reply all email conversations that we really should be having about town business outside meetings so um yeah that's okay what do you guys think all right so I'm going to draft a memo is there anything and I don't recall I haven't gone over the notes carefully but Michelle do you think there's anything we've discussed this evening um other than I know you know we've made this decision with regard to the the C uh the

funds to move the reserve funds to move those outside of the ranking and I can certainly explain that but is there anything else we Ted talked about here that you think is particularly important to put in that's not reflected in the notes I think I would add the what we don't have on the union church because it sounds like we will have that by the time it gets to the commit the okay

[Music] yep that's a good well trying to remember from the weekend but I think most of what was on here was anything that wasn't included in the notes that came in but uh I think we covered the highlights from from these yeah and you know I might say just or take a liberty or two for example on the land use um codification and just put in a few of these points that were discussed tonight I was just going to say that R PR High yeah yeah I feel like there were some good comments that maybe came up tonight that maybe clarified a little bit more at least for me yeah me

[Music] good who this going to be I I didn't remember we going this going to be presented at the next select board meeting um however you guys want it you guys I I don't know if it's going to be the next meeting I guess that's the next question when do you need it when do you want it hopefully not like uh yeah I don't we don't really need it um soon

you got a little leway there so the schedule is so December 12th we're meeting Mark's coming in budget committee is invited Bill SN is gonna present the that meeting um so I don't know how long that Q&A is going to go that that that's probably a pretty sound full meeting as it is maybe the meeting after that we see now that's December 26 oh okay so I don't know where the board stands right now on that date typically you know we haven't finished up until yeah like January yeah so I the plan right now is to have the budget pack ready to go to the budget committee on um January 5th uhhuh maybe we should do

it on January 5th I you know the I know a Friday though yeah but the 10th you doing at the first meeting the 10th yeah are you guys doing joint process this year or separate well I'm going to present to the to the board and then once the decision has been made right okay so once the board adopts their budget then we're going to have the so then that that the because the budget committee is really vetting the select board's budget yeah so that's how we're going to do that I'm probably going to draft this earlier but so do you think January 10th is like sure okay yeah I think it's the nth s think wednes okay by the 1 January meeting yeah

okay all right sounds good all right guys great well I think that concludes the CIP process for this year um other than drafting our memo with recommendations for the board and sharing them with um the Selectmen in the budget committee yeah um I if I remember correctly last year when we did a joint and there will still be a joint meeting with the budget committee and the select board oh okay you came to the uus center I think and kind of I did do do you still want to do that I'm you know I will do whatever you you and um Joe would like me to do so you know you guys let me know what you want and you can look at the memo you can look at you know where things stand with regard to agenda and all those other things and just let me know so part of the reason why it's nice to to have uh budget committee members do a this and a cboard member do this I mean they might be able to speak about it but if the chair wants

to go and do it I mean I would leave it up to Jill and Joe y to right and Joe yeah you need me to have a memory no but we do it any way you want however you want rewat it on he does he does a nice job you know I can watch on YouTube at home yeah sit by the fire we can talk about that yeah absolutely yeah you just let me know okay very good uh do I have a motion to adjourn motion tojn all right second all

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