all right our largest topic tonight is we decided to call the discussion to use me discussion of potential future capital projects other than the high school so we will not have any discussion of the high school in terms of other future capital projects i leave it open for members to bring up whatever projects they find worth discussing i would suggest  candidates for the police station to d p w facility the library incinerator site potentially the community path which is unfortunately conflicting with our meeting tonight people have observations that they'd like to share they should share them now when we will make an effort to have i did a community pass consultants with jeffrey wheeler on the future meeting to try to fill in for the meeting that were not in town and then any other project that might seem important to you i will begin by saying that i found the tour of the police station and the d facility very enlightening for the really the lap of david bordering on atrocious conditions in those two buildings i think the i and i suspect there is wide agreement that these buildings are in a deplorable state so the issue is going to be i think what measures are most sensible given the needs of the community and realistic budget in order to do something about them in a realistic time frame there may be a wide range of views on that and i look forward to hearing what people say the same goes for the library in my view i was able to attend the library meeting last night for a period of time a subgroup of the warren committee and the capital budget committee is going evenings these tonight but i would like to get these discussions started i actually have some thoughts that are purely my own regarding all of these projects but rather than me speak of land i actually would like to begin by hearing what the members of the committee have in mind as a result of our tours and whatever other if you think that all the major boards and committees were convened in january of two thousand to look at all of the potential outstanding capital projects that were facing the town at that time and it was a very very long list so as you fast forward to today be aware that as a town we have built two new fire stations a senior center the wellington school we've done the underwood pool we've done the harris field and track twice we've done the belmont center the propeller road reconstruction we have accomplished a lot and that doesn't even speak to roads sidewalks pipes all of the other infrastructure that we we don't talk as much about we talk about these major capital projects so we've done a lot but where that leaves us today is what i call the big four the four major projects that are in dire need at this point and they are the d p w the police station down high school and the library there are a couple of smaller projects which include the incinerator size the rink and the field house which we've taken off our table capital budget because there are a group of people who have stepped forward who are willing to do that project as a privately funded project and they're really just waiting for the plan for the high school to be clearly defined as to the use of that property so then think has then moved forward so that's off our dime also we're looking when we talk about capital really looking at the enroll and crunch at the schools and how we address that ok so let's go in two thousand and twelve spent a year looking at all of these projects and created a document or a true for prioritizing the project and we analyzed all of the different features they go into what do you do with those projects how many people are served do they have a site is it convenient is it handicapped accessible all of those items we presented that to the board of selectmen and they said great this is really helpful why don't you guys take this and run with it well this will hard for us to do what we did and we continued our analysis of all of those projects fast forward then into two thousand fifteen when the financial taskforce reported our all the various issues in town finances and there was within that financial chance force a capital projects subgroup and i was on that and once again looked at those capital projects and we do believe that that tool that the capital budget committee and produced we at that time prioritized the buildings based on do they have a site do they have an updated plan and where is the cash also what's the need how bad is the existing facility the d b w rockets to the top of that all they need is a little cash behind them is the police station and then high school library we finish that report once again say to the board of selectmen hey guys what you want us to do why don't you go back to talking about it  d then january of two thousand and sixteen the m s b a choose a spell one high school we're going to get our money and we're going to move forward in a way that helped us because we were constantly stalled with we want to go to ford and we want to do something with the library to be done with police station but what about the high school was always hanging out there and so by having that decision finally made we knew ok now we have a timetable for the high school because that's the big ticket item meanwhile what do we do with everything else but will allow a year later and we still have these three other outstanding projects in last year's capital budget cycle we partnered with the board of library trustees capital budget and the library together funded a feasibility study so that they can finally decide what they want to do with their building on the existing sites they report out last night to the public on the results of the feasibility study and dem i understanding is that to morrow maybe not tomorrow night but maybe tomorrow night  board of trustees will make a decision on the three options that were presented last night so they're starting to march down the road to that now leaves us once again with police and d p w with no advocates no constituency to push for them and get in terrible condition needing to forward the question with the police station because they're not as cut and dry or neat as d p w because the police station doesn't have site they don't have enough room where they are so many of the discussions that took place in the financial taskforce and also at the capital budget level is that the police station could potentially move to the incinerator site which answers our outstanding questions what do we do with the site and what kind of camp do we put on to support what the camp differs as to whether you're going to put a lien on it or fields or solar farm or wh and then it'll be a large open space along concord avenue discussions again a financial taskforce we're very strongly supportive of take that strip of land when the electric light substation is decommissioned and it becomes a source of revenue to fund the construction of de vito you and police station at least to get them started so that sort of where we are today we've got a subgroup that has been talking very casually for a while and now is going to be formalized as a subcommittee with myself and  him and floyd and needed to really put our heads together because as we go down the road on the high school and the library we cannot we have to create in my mind a unified play and to present to the town just say this is the sequence this is how we're going to do it and calendar and here's how much it's going to cost because i feel like just putting one or another project out there with out saying to the taxpayers here's the long range plan and here's what's going to cost and how can we make this financially feasible for people that has to be what we do i think that's the good stewardship of boards like this to present to the town excuse me these individual projects just simply cannot happen in a vacuum and they're way too expensive to guess my background thank you  police station the library what we're trying to do while we're trying to determine the process of doing a scene if in fact you want to construct or have to accommodate it's a building can is the light substation that connects to the police station is that it is there any ability for us to use that for either library or nick least ation or somehow so so so i think the problem question just to go back to what you said earlier and really there was also the opportunity to generate revenue from that strip on contracting you just again round figures you have an idea of what that might be we didn't go too much into depth as to what the market value of that is there the look at arsenal street alone at what's being done can we not be equally creative with that strip of land and produce something that is revenue producing for the town but still in harmony with freight into doing foresman so that the three rows of free to our parking are available not clogged up by all the workers whether you buy an all day pass or the business permit holder and then so we're trying to organize a lo i mean we that we can we can put some distance between the question of how to fund these from the from what exactly it's get at the open and the trade off my back and forth just to put it in context i mean we have some experience about going to the voters and asking for four point five a million i mean with the bad that we did that we did that and recently and sort of a ballpark thing and if you did a debt exclusion for that amount you could probably raise about seventy or seventy five million somewhere somewhere within that category and it's you know that's i mean that's the ballpark which also sounds like you like would be the sum of all those other other projects so just to sort of put it in put it in a context to sort of and provide the only solid solid up to the minute number we have is what was presented last night from the library you know the others are estimates and unfortunately you know we understand that sometimes those numbers float out there in the public and they take on a life of their own for their solidified in fact so i just want to mention that i mean this great except for the library now these are very round numbers but you're right you're definitely right in the aggregate appetite for for multiple requests for significant infusions of capital funds via debt exclusion or or however we do it i'm thinking that you know if the high school is ready to go as a debt exclusion measure within a couple of years that we try to package as much of these projects perhaps not all but maybe turned out to be true the size and scope of the project and then i think as part of the campaign for the exclusion then you'll be able to generate some numbers and then i think you're spot on the school project union stuff will be a big ask whether it's a nine to twelve project or seven through twelve project it will be a big ask and it will be a significant cost to your point i think that  point and also if i can comment i think it's why we're starting to feel that it's critical to while we identify what needs to be done and how much it costs that we also identify a new revenue stream so that you can say to the to the task payer and the voter all right this has to be done this so much it's going to cost and it's and it's going to be a big ask tax bill but it's done our due diligence and we have created this in the revenue stream by doing x whatever it is a sale of development or something to offset some of this cost you know i don't want to have this be about the school per se but i have a counter contrary view which is  will be hard to get the other three if we're doing a dead exclusion before the high school and after that it would be hard to get anything else so i think the only possibility of doing it is doing it together personal opinion focusing on is what as for private fundraising for that building and that as i understand it the friends of the library is going to be taking that on as a project and hiring some professional help to sort of feasibility study itself to find out what the possibilities might be for raising private funds for that building scene so it's actually the about the library foundation which is separate from the friends but you're right it has raised nearly two million dollars in the past and  we believe that if we but it's very hard to raise money when you don't have a building or a design for people to latch on to we think that there is opportunity for more private fund raising we are going to hire somebody for the  various projects in light of the tours that we had some of the session that's been going on in town and i haven't really formalized my thinking a great deal but i have some initial thoughts i just wanted to present and let me start by discussing the police department and d p w since we were there most recently  i have some concerns when i look at the feasibility studies because they there are very fine plans and it seems to me that if you were in a world of starting a green field and you had a large budget you would probably build something like what is contained in the feasibility study in the context of belmont where we actually have an existing w site and an existing police station the way i think about it is that we are receiving police services and d p w services and to my mind the right question is what are the critical deficiencies in those building such that any expenditure of money on them would get you the greatest benefit clearly if you pursued every possible angle and came up with a brand new building then everything would be good but it but this seems clear to me that there are certain marginal improvements that are far more valuable than others and push so short of implementing a design that's  proposed in the various feasibility studies we could think about a different way which is what what would be the greatest benefit for a limited expenditure and what would you get for it so looking at the police station a couple of things struck me one is that it's very cramped there's an abysmal lack of facilities for female officers but generally the janitorial facility is one sink and a hallway to take care of the whole building the women shower has boxes piled in it and it's unusable the the toilets are  trudges there's no space so it's very difficult just to come to work that building there is a great shortage of storage space so one of the first things we saw going in the police station was evidence adam correct me if i'm wrong but i think it is evidence to be used in a case that it's been sitting on the floor where prisoners i and initially processed it's sitting on it's a couple of suitcases and shopping bags and other things it's been sitting on the floor making up a good fraction of the very limited intake processing space there is and it's been sitting there since november with no place to put it there's an immense amount of material stored all over the police station to be rich to some of it maybe could be disposed of maybe to be stored elsewhere but it's crowding the place at the same time there's an enormous exercise facility a very nice one it's just gigantic it's the largest single place in the building  so there's a question about utilization of the space generally and once in there and i would combine that initial impression with two questions in my mind one is  question in my mind is if that building and if there is an extreme grade on that site that he must know that when you go there to the point where the alley that separates the electric bike building and the police station goes down a very steep hill there's actually room for an air bridge to connect those two buildings of the second floor and bottom line of this is put that building expanded by an air bridge with an architecture an architectural be suitable air bridge used to remodel the electric light building and use that as an extension of the police station and moreover i know the town clerk's office currently uses some corner of the light really has a storage put that building sums remaining part of that building also be used to accommodate other he's in town government come and i'm sure architects once they're given a suitably defined assignment could figure out how to put an elevator perhaps in the back something along those lines and generally make use of those buildings it probably would be enough space thirdly there is a large m b t a parcel behind the police station that is empty land and i would like to take i will take credit for the original proposal to lay the cables for the substation along the n p t a right way from alewife which at the time i brought that up utility lawyer said it was impossible because the n p t it is not ever part with any of this land but of course they came up with a ninety nine year lease for the substation the land to be hind the police station can hold a lot of cars a just a storage building and many other things that could be very useful and everything it could well be interested in making that both the police station and the like building as historic structures as i believe they are then c p a money could be used for the renovation i read the c p a language where i'm not an expert but it appears to allow very broad discretion to do both exteriors and interior exterior restoration and interior renovation and if money were saved up from the seat c p a for several years that would actually amass quite a fund to take care of a lot of this work so those are my initial thoughts on the police station  p w facility the the building has again some dramatic shortcomings in terms of amenities as i'm sure everybody heard when we were let on the tour it turns out there are no shower facilities or minimal shower facilities for the staff and people come in from doing heavy work including sewer maintenance there's no place to clean up i t's outrageous at the same time the d p w yard does have some empty space behind it empty enough that the community path is proposing taking some of the land as access for the community path seems to me to be relatively straightforward to put a suitable addition on the rear of the main building having adequate changing room shower rooms toilet facilities the toilet for the female staff is in the foreman's office and the entire toilet space is smaller than the tabletop maybe half the size of a table top but that can all be addressed with a reasonable and i think relatively inexpensive addition in the rear of the current building plus including not a break room the place now is also falling but i think i relatively easily addressed returning turning to be more functional aspects of those buildings with the side wall of one of the buildings has disintegrated but the repairing is not a big  deal needs to be done and you would have a functional storage shed afterwards and should last a good long time but the expense would not be three zero which is another detail regarding the police station the police station has its own there is problems with having enough lanes to move from going around in the building but that's partly due to a garage door that is unusable because a truck crashed into it because  door's too small and if there's been no money to fix it but again interest on a reasonably modest outlay that door opening could be widened and repaired and the building could be made more suitable as a place to work and all told i have no idea what these various projects would cost but i cannot believe it would be twenty or twenty twenty or thirty million dollars i think we're talking about a vastly smaller amount of money that would have a very large impact on the daily routine and efficiency of the jungle workflow it may not be a perfect solution if you were going to build a d p w building from scratch you probably would do it differently than the way it was done in one hundred thirty one but i suspect there's the potential for getting a lot more life i don't the c facility i would call that a very good second best solution but i'm not sure that there's been a lot of thought in those departments or maybe maybe there has been i'm not aware of it but these are the impressions i have from  just like to if there's time just mention a few things that i was thinking about that you know could also have the potential to reduce project cost you know i was thinking about the firing range in the police station and the you know was comparatively speaking a low volume lockup and and you know i don't know what capacity we have a neighboring jurisdictions or perhaps with with the middlesex county jail but i do wonder whether whether we might be able to pursue some some off site services with an adjacent door or a nearby  for for a lock for booking and lock up services and again for a firing range which would free up a lot of space within the existing building you know a lot of the space in that building was also taken up by paper records think i you know i realize that there is some some expense associated with digitizing records what i do wonder to what extent that we could you know obtain some longer term savings five moving forwards i agree that those options remain inadequately explored if he'd like building where redone as i'm suggesting that would free up a lot of space and i completely agree with the firing range based on the current knowledge that unless the police are using it every day it seems that we could certainly enter into a shang arrangement with a nearby town and use their range occasionally in fact as mentioned one thought that these may be the only realistic alternatives to the buildings in the relatively medium term given the very march that we're going to have to make for the high school but i think we also owe it to the voters to think carefully with the people who are involved in using these facilities about what the life expectancy of such measures would be because it's true you could make certain  changes alterations now that would have a big effect on the very crisis problem overcrowding with the records or whatever it happens to be in the long run there are change me just as with the fire stations there are changes in modern police stations can't be accommodated by that kind of change right now and if you're going to tell the people in the town we're going to spend you know five or six million or eight million dollars instead of twenty million how long is that the last are we going to come back in seven or eight years and say no we really do need to spend the twenty million and would it make sense to do the temporary things i mean we're going to have to do something because the high school such a big ass we are going to have to in fact make some changes to the facilities that we have now because right now they're deplorable we can't leave them in this state for another twenty five years it just isn't realistic to do that so we're going to have to make these kinds of choices and do some what i would consider to be relatively temporary fixes and the trade off about what that means for the long run and how soon we're going to have to come back and do something different  you've just been motivated to see what renovated new police station offers or to go to lexington i think which was recently done in public or nearby communities just to see what the advantages are having facility just to see what that offers you because you may decide that while maybe all you for to do the medium term may want to just forward what you're really trying to get out and touch it feel it because then you might think differently but i completely agree that this matter has to be studied carefully and i certainly would not recommend spending what will be an appreciable amount of money for something if it only had a useful life of i don't know five years or something like that it's just an open question in my mind what the  potential useful life is if we can spend five million dollars and get twenty years out of it that's something that i think is worth considering but you know we're in the early this committee is in the very early stages of reviewing these questions  from the building communities and the capital budget committee is that that doesn't that then it makes sense to sometimes do it quickly over but i do think for the d p w in particular because a lot of their storage or a lot of their different facilities are literally big sheds that are you know they have heat in the electric just in the water but they're storing vehicles and washington vehicles are working on vehicles that you could es do the rest of them or do with or is suggesting or michael suggesting either renovate them or put the money into just fixing the bricks and making sure the garage door that opened and putting something in the holes in the goldman and i've noticed that in many cases the presentations are showing what they originally thought they were going to have to spend and then they do suicide you know they've gone back and really tried to shrink it down and and make it more cost effective for the towns that they're building in and i think that's just something that we should you know also pursue very vigorously when we go into these projects because if you read you know you if you read the online what a police station should have how much square for corporate officers something that's based off and on finding her and will you know up where it's coming from the police association or it's coming from the architects who have different incentives and we might have and so i think you need to look at that carefully and see how come you can be most efficient you know i appreciate what you're saying and i appreciate the creativity and the attempts to make it work so that we can get this done and get these facilities these into a better shape if not a good shape but let me turn the question around would you be asking the high school or the library to make similar accommodations to make do would you be asking people why bridges say you know we just don't have enough money we don't have enough space so why don't you just not your children services and we'll just we'll just access children services and thereby town because that that's what i hear from me is an equity issue all of these people are our employees we have a moral responsibility to provide them with a working plates that you know has heat and light and running water and adequate bathroom facilities and a safe environment and we're not doing that right now in well this that's why i'm focused on those particular amenities or lack thereof particularly and those two in the police and d p w regarding the high school a i said we shouldn't talk about the high school b i have not at all studied the requirements of the proposals for the high school so i don't have an opinion at the moment of the high school is all about it is certainly i having had two children who went to the high school i fully believe in a major effort is appropriate there and given that we have an opportunity for a significant state match i think we should take  at all possible but i like the thinking that's not really progressed beyond that in terms of the high school project in terms of the library let me just take two minutes to talk about library  same time the proposals that i saw last night one for benefit of viewers who weren't there there was a reservation option for about sixteen million dollars  it was a renovation and expand option for about twenty three million dollars and build a brand new building on the site twenty four million dollars to twenty or twenty two sorry i thought right away didn't make any sense to talk about scratch i had a discussion with the previous library director a number of years ago which say got a decidedly negative reaction but my question was this having come from a life and i could be me and i wife was an academic librarian the majority of books in a library do not circulate  frequently will stay on the shelf for a year or two years before they go out and the library is in a position to know exactly which books circulate because all the circulation records are searched a lot and then there's a very large fraction that make you out one or two times a year the solution i would say the rational solution adopted by every academic library i know of is to take the materials the result of use put them in an offsite depository and then if somebody comes along really wants and they request them and then a courier generally gets them the same day or by the next day in effect that's done in the bomb library to a very substantial degree already because the collection is relatively small compared to many other libraries in the minuteman network and the minuteman lending volume is actually very substantial so by taking still used materials and putting putting them in a deposit torrie it's really equivalent to modestly expanding  reliance on the minuteman network concept but it would free up a lot of space and also as we heard last night literally take a load off the floor of the floor is not really designed to take it's not really designed for as many books are out there and putting the book someplace else would make sense but i but in terms of my mental framework of figuring out what services are the most valuable take space which is almost like  storage in this building and make it program space and weather study areas could be up stairs and have expanded children's every downstairs it seems to me that in a perfect world of course we'd spend the twenty four million dollars to get the new building but i would at least i would at least like to know what the possibilities are for a significantly smaller expenditure but where the building currently as it is could be put to much better use and just as a further for no let me say this and i mention the gas stations at the police station or other areas that seem redundant to me  example when the library discussion last night it was the talk of having multiple meetings spaces in the new building one which would kind of could accommodate one hundred fifty people and then another meeting spaces that responder but in question the necessity of having a particularly large meeting space in the library when in some sense as a town we have excess capacity in and for the desire to have a kind of a coffee cafe even in a on a scaled down concept for the new building one of the beautiful things about the library is that it is a three minute walk from belmont cen have many fine coffee options and i just but again raised the question if he had to look at the needs that were most essential what would be at the top of the list and i think that there are some items in the new plan are quite valuable with others much less so and but thinking about it this way does not get you in the renovation box and it doesn't get you in the new building box but in a third books and all i can say oh it's part of the ongoing program redheads evaluated and decision during what to take off the show you want to put on the shelf and i think you mentioned the floor alone so other people who worked on them much more but just in terms of having a a public discussion that would resolve questions that many people might have i still feel that certain topics will be more important than others for example a number i think the architect brought it up that some people in the audience late some evidence say on energy efficiency of a new building well i checked this morning and the budget for natural gas for the library this year was nineteen thousand dollars so we've of new building used half the energy of the old building we're talking about saving eight or nine thousand dollars and it doesn't make sense to spend twenty four million dollars to save a thousand and so energy efficiency the new building i started the old building actually seen through remarkably energy efficient given its age and with a new heating plan a lot of the benefit probably could be realized anyway so in terms of what's really most valuable in the new plan versus working with what we've got i still think it's something that requires more discussion one i think we have to keep in mind the trigger for eighty eight in which whatever it is accommodation at any of these projects i know that it's a percentage of if you if you spend a percentage of the value of the building within three years so i think it's twenty percent thirty thirty or surgery then you are required to do the whole thing and you know i think if any of these circumstances if we do significant work we're going to trip that and therefore i don't know that it's possible i mean you can't you can't spread this stuff out over ten the elevator requirement for the library i think could be reviewed more creatively in terms of the police station of the main entrance was moved to the electorate building to the like building site rather than police stations so i think it's less of an issue to get to the front door and there could be solutions and i look at an elevator shaft to be added to the back for example which will get which will get you to the second level and provide mobility throughout the whole building so you know but in terms of the full scope of baby everywhere i certainly don't know what they are and if at the end of the day it turns out the the obstacles are insuper renovation as proposed you would find that it represents almost exactly what you're talking about it was it was you know fifteen to sixteen million dollar renovation there may be some things in there that you would find unnecessary but i think for the most part what you described taking away considerable number of books and using that space to expand the areas that need expansion in terms of programming that's exactly what that proposed done well and it takes care of all the a b a requirements which if you know it is a requirement every single doorway has to be changed everything you know there are a lot of structural things that have to  f and if we're doing it really because we're looking for all possible pots of money i think it would be you know it's it's hard to go to the c p m committee and say you know that we've you've you've got you've got a process the other way to go is to think about going to the town meeting and voters and seeing seniors we would want to lower the c p a tax at the same time as we put on them something that did projects and that would that would take it out of love i mean that w large project of a story i agree i was simply thinking about the path of least resistance i think i think i think it's going to be a wrist i mean i think i think there i think i think you'll find i maybe maybe in terms of i think about what the right the right right tax tax rates for those two channels are know they're part of the library because the public obviously uses a more than the d p w yard i mean so i think about this that there's no point in doing some of the projects for the public if it doesn't meet the needs of the public and sort of what we did with the pool where we went to the people we asked what the people wanted and we tried to put it in there i don't want to do this dinky little pool if it wasn't going to just a little kiddie pool was that's not what the people wanted there's no point in this case you know they that the program that you saw last night as i was there with you they laid out what a building would need from based upon what people want and the usage of the library has been just what the fifteenth most circulated library in the state out of three hundred seventeen with a town our size it's like crazy so they believe and they turn kids away if the programs are too small i mean we've all been to programs down there music and lectures and you're standing in the back in that assembly room because there's no way to sit so it seems at some point they exist in renovation one the architect was saying basically just doesn't accomplish the put the point of renovating the library so we have to i think not just look at the money and look at the what you what you can get away with the least amount but what satisfies the program at the least amount and that's a different kind of a different picture and also the a b a stuff of the architect was bringing up the seismic requirements for earthquake control which have to be also added to the library i would suspect some of these other buildings when you start messing with too much of it the one that you know the library has no insulation is as best as a whatever's going on in the life when you start messing with little bits of it you have to do all of it in the boiler shot in the roof is shot at the library as they said last night and the guy said it was not built for the ages quote unquote which i took to mean very cheaply done in the first place so the question is you just put lipstick on a pig with a building that's kind of you know as old as i am unfortunately in the shop but so i think if to look at the best the endgame here it goes with the community path as well i mean if you're building something that so stripped down that no one's going to use of what's the point of the project well i agree i mean that's why i said my own framework for this is examining what services you get as a result of spending the money so i think that gives some really creative ideas mean any idea is a good idea and is worth exploring for sure well let me just add since the community path meeting is meeting tonight and we're not we're not able to be there and adam and i actually were there pre placed seven o'clock and we're hoping that either the consultants or jeffrey wheeler will be able to come here in the fairly near future one thing about all of these projects is that i think it's the nature of things that the people who are most interested in a particular project become the proponents of the attendees in the meeting but they don't necessarily attend meetings for another project and there can be very imperfect communication  across these projects and the one example of that that impressed me in the last two weeks is that the d p w has been thinking about access to pleasant street crossing the tracks both as a second the way to get out of there and plus particularly on a heavy snow fall there they said thirty or forty pieces of heavy equipment go driving down the local streets there and it is an imposition on the residents to have so much equipment coming down your street so it turns out that directly behind the d building even though pleasant street has enormous changes and grade the access to pleasant street is almost at grade directly behind d p w building there is just an issue of negotiating access because there's a privately owned parking for a bit of that but if it was combined for example with community paths because they have been struggling for to find a way to get to waverly street waverly square  it is not insuperable to have a a great crossing there we certainly have a great crossing on grove street and a million other places on earth people have learnt to live with rubber crossings  with appropriate signalling and appropriate signalling on pleasant street is not out of the question that you could use the clark street bridge across a pleasant street the other side go down quarter of a mile or whatever it is and then cross pleasant street again to get across the tracks and make your way to waverly and avoid the need for this extraordinary highway bridge that we we took the tour and it's just this is just another example of something which has not been discussed it may not be worth discussing but i would like at least an explanation for why such an alternative and why shouldn't we consider it as opposed to some of the things that have been proposed for the community path i know discussing cost estimates tonight but i'm concerned that the cost estimates are going to be so extraordinary that they won't be feasible and i for one would very much like to see the community build out because i would like to ride my bike to northampton from here and but to do that we need  something that is buildable and financially feasible so i think that's my last observation for the evening on these projects yes just a question about money do we have a sense of what projects what debt we have and the schedule for which it's sort of being all paid off so that we can have an idea of when we might be able to feed new projects in paramount to figure out what that's going to need for support from the voters and taxpayers i guess i would only just suggest a couple plans because everyone's had a great idea it's above some  new building or whatever and you may want to just consider because i think once you have a conversation about the high school you don't want to fall into the trap of having what we think at the moment is the cost for these projects you may be better served just to sequence them and as they come up on the queue then some more analysis will cost and what the plan is because what i think may happen is you may come up with pricing and some costing will not be the real number in five years even with the cost of the flight just the size and scope might change because again i will only just say i think the high school project is an important project to the town but it will be a significant ask of the taxpayers and i think maybe better serve just saying it's an ask and he's other projects need to be cued up in some fashion without necessarily identifying a dollar of no because then you will live and die by that sword and i'm not sure that's fear that anybody because things change and i would just suggest maybe the energy of trying to figure what a cost might be better off to control what is the next project after the high school when that might be maybe a better sense of time and energy because to try to get precise about the cost thing and the impact on taxpayers i think you're going to drive yourselves nuts i think it's really what is the next project after the high school should be really the question and what's the project after that and then i think you can then noodle down about whether it's a ten million dollars project or a billion minded but i wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to think precisely what the costs are because i think that diverts the energy from the high school project but also frankly is a false talking to the treasurer i don't think there's a significant near term project falling off thank you jim i think that what david said is correct and but i also think that for this committee the work committee that has implications because if we are talking about sequencing things we're not going to be doing it in a short term way it just isn't financially reasonable to think that you know you're going to push things out by five ten fifteen twenty years and given that we're going to have to spend money we're going to have to find a way to do major maybe minutes on these buildings in the meantime and that's going to cost money it's going to cost millions of dollars and we really need to have that quantified for ourselves at some point so some of the things that you were raising as you know fixes to get more bang for the clock we need to look at those as major maintenance things that we need to do in the short term because we are going to be able to do the buildings in the short term we're going to be pushing them out and sequencing them into the future i think i agree with that let me say it's nine o'clock we have another topic regarding the budget we need to cover tonight and what i would like to do is return to the subject more than once before the end of this year and i'm sure it'll come up again next year but i am hopeful that with how to think about these projects because they are very real and i it's naive to think that we ignore them definitely i think the action some necessary action will be sooner rather than later we just have to give our best counsel on been there's been some news on a new growth number from the assessor and assman of state are expected state aid for the next disappear and a question from this committee or from the market about drawing down the council balances in the school of apartment circuit breaker and wondered if you had any  anything to report to us on the three questions actually i think i can give you high level summary so obviously you will be receiving the budgets on monday trying to where we are you did receive the letter from the board of the why and what that will go up may generate a fiscally team so that is a number that be identified by the board of assessors as they do more analysis of the value of the subsidy what they believe is this whole process will be a determination of what the new growth property taxes will get what they proved amount that the overlay needs to be increased so that if in fact is higher than it to supposed when we started this in december by a couple hundred thousand dollars and more to come based upon their analysis of the portion of the substation forever over source when i when i compared what you had in your december twentieth memo with with chapter seventy in general eight numbers you could give us the one percent increase yes ninety three but i thought but i thought the governor's so now because we receive five seventy six it's really only for seventy six because we already assumed one hundred thousand off the top that i got that i just have i just have like a fifty thousand dollars difference but but i guess the question the real question that i'm curious about is do you have numbers on the spending side too and that's sort of stately a projected two and a half percent and it turns out to be two point six which is about forty four thousand dollars increase on the expenditure side for  so they in our model will begin the process we have estimated expenditure in special ed to wish a number of schedule to increase by seven percent that estimate has been reduced to three and a half may be amended as part of the process so that may yield less money go in terms of the revenue side from the general stabilization so where we've been t m was we started the process with a balanced budget of two point two a balanced budget which include using two point two million dollars from the general stabilization as we said in december it was about three million dollars in the general stabilization so you really want reductions and expenditures so which the addition of the state a with the reduction in the school it's estimated expenditures we're down to one point three million usage from the from state aid through the legislative process but the issue no increase in revenue from the growth in may be possible productions and some of the estimated expenditures take place without generally would example of special intuition chris from three and a half percent to zero which generates another one hundred sixty thousand you'll be around a million bucks a work of all from the general stabilization fund as a revenue source for fiscal eighteen which then if you make the assumption you're going to use a million over the next three years basically you can stretch of the use of the general stabilization fund so that's what we'll call them but i think the good news is we had a balance beginning which used to point two million from the general stabilization of the three the good news is we not only do we get it to one point five that are better than one point five because of our ability to get some additional revenues and make some adjustments expenditures we're at one point three as new growth comes in from the assessor's i think there's a recognition trying to use the general stabilization fund because minim revenue as opposed to just making expenditure cuts is far more beneficial because that would reduce the shortfall we were projecting at nineteen so we were projecting a shortfall in nineteen i think when we re updated our projections with these far as possible would you your able to achieve that will mean how the balance budgets with stability for sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen and you would have kept the promise made to the voters which in this budget is the third year of increased staffing for the school department which we we started with tempers issues in fiscal sixteen we had a five last year and we're adding five in the budget for ni eighteen which is what was communicated what the right we also have an additional bus so and we've had stability if this budget goes forward we will have stability in terms of the booking process for three years maybe fo subcommittee on this technical question but as i understand it there is that the circuit breaker account for fiscal eighteen in the school department  projected to have something like nine hundred thousand dollars in it and so way every let me just go through that just can frame it and you can way and so what the superintendent has done is part of an initial model because again i think we've talked a lot about having some kind of safety net in case our special ed costs are larger than what we anticipated either through additional students or placements that are expensive that we didn't anticipate so the circuit breaker is a revolving fund that basically receives the reimbursements that we get from the state and so your special ed budget two pots the general fund pot and the circuit breaker for the circuit breaker pot can be rolled over so what i think the superintendent was trying to do isn't this so development model of the school committee was to expensive placement her there was some room for flexibility to basically cover that but the same time come up with an expenditure plan using the circuit breakers basically reserve fun to allow them to get through fiscal twenty in terms of a sped budget in terms of having some predictability i know that the school committee and the superintendent are really looking at that obviously the number you just said will be less if in fact during the process the school committee superintendant decide that in fiscal eighteen on the increase and spend tuitions is it three point five that might be zero that will reduce that balance by one hundred sixty eight thousand dollars but again i think it was an attempt by the superintendent the school committee to sort of come up with a balance using the circuit breaker not spending that money initially to have a way to have some kind of question but also have an expenditure plan over three years that uses the circuit breaker to insulate budget increases so that's and i think that's changed i think the superintendents really looking at that and the school committee looking at the maybe come up with a different methodology that's abatement and does not come to a resolution so i think they're doing their due diligence they understand that it's part of the process that we have to come up with that value this budget process which will then trains away into a negro from them and it will be in the their budget shortly as well then the senate as i said typically the governor's numbers become the floor on some years the governor had submitted a budget that had some new taxes or new schemes for raising revenue or candy bars yeah i wanted to ask about free cash your nation to the general stabilization fund so last year we took the balance of free cash over three million we put it into the general stabilization fund which we are using some of  for this budget we reduced the amount of free cash that we are using compared to last year where were they exactly interest but i'm wondering how much if do we have any projected uses of free cash during this fiscal year so the we have a sense of how much of a balance who might have i know you can't project that he's but i'm hoping that we can put money into the general stabilization fund at the end of all of this process and so i'm wondering what the projections are for the use of free cash so we are just as excited you know we are increasing our local receipts by three hundred eighty five miles from the which means we're budgeting very close to our actual which means you replace free cash in two ways it's either right about revenues over what you budgeted or expenditures less than what you predict that's how free cash gets replenished clearly you don't want to be  position hoping that you don't spend your budget plan because you have a bunch of them based upon you half of the projected expenditures so again part of our free cash replenish mint has been a good number due to the town treasurer we've been able to y million sounds which frankly is of three hundred five thousand dollars less because we're using more from local seeds and the ability to replenish free cash from our local cities would be more difficult i was also point out that we just received our commitment for fisk over seventeen and over the last few years we've seen the commitment is the amount of bills but the value of the bills that the registry motor vehicles gives to the town so we can build people for the sides we had typically saying that commitment higher than the previous fiscal year this year it's in twenty thousand dollars of last year's commitment all so as i said some point the new cars offset th depreciation and some point it goes the other way we're not there yet but we're using pretty much what we collect in a fiscal sixteen as our eighteen estimate so that's one of our major sources of local receipts so  reconstituted the space committee they're currently looking at a number of models and the location of the markets as we have talked about before if we want the mods and we need the markets on site in september of two thousand and eighteen which is school year eighteen and one thing we need to order them in january of eighteen which means we need to appropriate the money in fiscal eight one of the things i think has sort of emerged as a strategy is as the town goes through a process of determining what the group configurations of the high school might be seven to twelve ways to problem nine to twelve as well as having kids and conversations with the community about where and how many mobs we may need all think the thinking is that maybe we'll hold off on making the mob's appropriations part of the annual budget or in your tummy process and have a special town meeting in the fall we have more information because i would also say the cost of the models regardless of where they are it will be more expensive than they were for the channel because of the site work and to leave work that will need to be done they're not as easy to connect easily connected to the existing buildings so there will be some additional cost so i think the right now the thinking is is to wait to the fall have a special company to get free cash certified which may allow you the opportunity to depends on how you end up to some some more seed money to the general stabilization  i think as you know we were talking about maybe use the proceeds from a cushion bill cushing square parking lot sale one million three hundred thirty five thousand dollars to maybe purchasing the models but depending  hundred fifty to half a million bucks that's not in the low budget so that's going to have to be defined as the cash or unfunded from a portion of the proceeds from the cushion square parking lot sale which which we may just let fall to free cash so i think i think we're in a position now where we're going into the fourth year of the i hope the fourth year after the override nineteen to now want to hear you name may not be one or in addition to the general stabilization so i think that decision probably may be better served in the fall once you have a certified cash number and you see what the cost of the mobs might be so that's sort of on the table for f ther discussion so but again i think the tower is also in a tender place because while i don't believe the treasury is going to market for any modern issues this spring i think that as you if you have a successful debt exclusion well high school and healthy reserve balances is something they want to maintain and saying we don't use for cash to you to put into the general stabilization but i don't think you want to vision where your free cash balances out if you want to so so i think there's a lot of balancing going on here but the good news in the town has some flexibility and again at the end of the day whenever that may  be quite a second we're godless or one that may be i think you're going to be in a year your approach where we have for free cash balance what do we need for capital projects what do we what can we think based upon the dialogue we should put school budget was and i said that we would be working as a sub sub i'm sort of a committee on it we that we did me three times between the unknown and then i also sat in on three of the school finance up to supplement committee members and then had a number of them one on one meetings with the school committee members and slotman and and and i'm happy to say that that i understand where we are we are now a much much better than i did that at the end of our meeting have to wait and wait to find out where that is either i do want to at least change the perception i mean we are trying to change with the schools but the school i'm a spending plan is it really is just a question about the funding and so on so when we talking about you know changing with the with the with the with the with that with the sped number is we are you know the that the special ed tuition number is going to be what it is you know that that's a that's a number that the school and paid out of out of out of the federal grants and state grants is is a less that has to be paid out paid out of the general funds which would lead to a lower draw from either free cash or a general journal stabilization from there's also issues about what the transparency is about about it versus a trade off between that and end of the flexibility and i think the conversations have been very good i mean i think i think i think we in school and committee finance of a committee members understand there's value both in flexibility in in the school having access quick access to funds when a when a bad case comes in that they hadn't planned for but at the same time there there's also a benefit to having the transparency that would come from from either sped civilization fund or coming here toward one committee for access to the reserve fund and so those are the big questions it's really about funding and where these cushion for future sped spendings are going to be placed and it's not a question about what that level of  monday i have not yet decided definitively about whether we should meet wednesday next week but i will decide that soon maybe that monday is sufficient for our purposes but let me let me well let me speak for everybody here that i think we're all grateful and astonished by your level of commitment and diligence david to managing a small but complicated town and  we will miss you and we look forward to getting to know phyllis better because we have not actually interacted with her directly very much but we thank you very much for the years that you've served us