Capital Improvement Planning Committee - Regular Meeting

[Music] The let's see the March 31st meeting of the capital improvement planning committee is called to order. I am Jeremy Graves acting as vice chair. I would like to do roll call. Uh just please answer present if you are here. Uh Kyle James. Do we have time? Leor Bram here. Greg Maher here. Marimo here. Brian Morgan here. Sue Robbins here. Evan Brousard, I'm here. And Jay is We don't have to have roll call. No, I know we don't, but honestly, I haven't been in the room with all of you in a long time. There you go. Okay, I was pretty good on name. That was pretty good. Yeah, but thank you for making me spill the beans on that. Um, okay. So the first order of business before us is a reorganization as we find ourselves without a chair. So I would take nominations for chair. Mr. Chair. Yes. I would like to nominate a slate of officers. Sure. I nominate Jeremy Graves as chairman. Brian as vice chair. Greg, you want to take clerk again? No. I haven't got to do anything. my first meeting as clerk and you're already trying to push me out, Sue. Oh, are you clerk? He was elected clerk last time. So, yeah, the the website never got updated. Oh, he was elected clerk last year and I finished the meeting doing the minutes because I started the meeting. That confused me then. So, Kyle Kyle is clerk then. I second. Cool. All right. So, we I'm sorry. Who is the vice chair nominee? Brian Brian. Okay. So, we have a combined ticket, a slate if you will, of Jeremy Graves for chair. Uh,

Brian for vice chair, and Kyle to continue as clerk. Uh, all in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed say nay. The motion carries. Congratulations all. Congratulations, Mr. Chair. Yes. I just want to say congratulations, Mr. here. All right. Thank you, Mr. and Limo. Uh, the next order of business is to hear from our dear colleague, Mr. Brousard, regarding the the town plan. The And and if we can Are we supposed to stay? I thought we were doing that. We're not doing that. We're not on camera. I think we're supposed to bow our Oh, you're on camera. We're taking it out. Let's just put that out there early, Mark. Just a little bit. So, Evan, the floor the floor is yours to do with go back to my usual. The intent is to review capital needs list and process and touch on the five-year plan. Yep. So, thank you so much. So, I'm going to start um just by going through the fiscal 26 capital totals and plan. Um, you can see them and we are on camera so maybe don't, you know, crack one open yet. Below too soon. Below the It's a lovely polar seltzer from Okay. West Massachusetts. Very aggressive. Um, okay. So, what we're looking to do in this this fiscal year is spend about $2.5 million. Um, the totals are in front of you. Um, and they break down as uh 250,000 for parks and cemetery. That's about 10% of the allocation. Engineering is 125,000. Fire 445, they make up about 17%. Highway almost 30% of our total allocation at 735. Um they have a couple of big ticket

items that we'll get to in a moment. Uh municipal center is uh $80,000. That's a 3% of the the total. Police 11% at 287. public schools 540 at 21% and recreation at 4% with $100,000. So, as we break this down, our we have two main sources of uh capital funding in this particular budget. Uh we're doing $961,000 in capital stabilization that funds about 38% of the total cost and the rest is free cash at 62% which is about 1.6 6 million. What did you say was the balance for stabilization? I didn't yet. You didn't. I'm going to get to it though. Okay. We're gonna That's on a different presentation. Oh, that when I got to the third slide, I was like, Sue's going to ask me and I'm not on that slide. We'll come We'll come back to it. I I promise. Um because I'm going to pull up the actual uh capital program here in a minute. Um, so to just run through the list quickly and anybody that has any questions, please feel free to stop me. Um, so we have a n number of of different items here. Uh, starting with the cemetery department. Uh, they have a new garage. It's about $120,000. Um, it's really, when we say garage, it's a it's a poleb barn shed type of setup. So, it's a butler building essentially is what it is. non-inssulated, non-heated, no bathroom. It's literally just for storage. Um, as the town has grown and as equipment has gotten bigger, we find ourselves not with enough uh we don't have enough room to keep everything inside. And they last a lot longer when you keep them inside. So, that's what we're looking to do. They also need to replace one of their one ton ton dumps, uh, which comes in at about

$130,000, which is wild. Uh when my family sold our business in 2008, I think I could get one for about 45,000 with a plow on it. And that's craziness to see that. But anyways, that gives us a total cemetery and parks department outlay of uh $250,000. Engineering. This is something I shifted out of the operational budget where it uh most likely should live, but we are pretty tight this year as I'm sure you're all aware. So, we continue to fund our MS4 stormwater compliance. Um, this is a contract that we have with a local engineering firm, um, which helps us navigate the federal storm water compliance that we're we're mandated to do. Um, so some of that is our own people. They have, uh, it's actually kind of neat. They've got tablets and they go out and they check all of the outfalls and flows and if you get rain over a certain amount, then you go and check the flow again and you log it all on this iPad and it helps build the database for us to be able to report it out. So, it is pretty neat. Um, the fire department. So, we are going to look to pave station to the parking lot. We just did a full renovation of that building. Came out very nice. Um, but over the years there have been a couple of uh subparking lot failures at that building and it's all been torn up and and it's pretty patchwork so it needs to be redone. Um, replace engine one. This is a lease payment that continues. This will be done in fiscal 27. Uh knock security key apparatus mount that is um so every commercial building gets a Nox box. This is us putting a sister box in every single piece of apparatus that we have so that the there's not just rings of keys everywhere. These will be dedicated units that are just mounted in each and every truck so that when we get to the site we know exactly how to get get access. Um, and you previously said

there was like log tracking and logging and all that for for the keys. Yeah. So, they have it. I I I don't know if Excel is the what I would use, but I don't know what fire departments using. Maybe they have a fancy part of their their software, but um yeah, they have to log each and every key separately and there's a key usually outbox on the building. However, if the building's on fire, you generally don't run up and start typing in your code to get a get access. So, um, this is just another way for us to do that and keep better track of of those items. Oh, I thought you had said that the boxes themselves that we were putting in were they they those do. Yes. Yes. Correct. Thank you. I I misunderstood. Yeah. Um, fire station one and two were looking to get sheds. Again, this is uh we continually get new equipment. The trucks and apparatus get bigger. Then we have less space to store everything inside. um both um station uh two actually, sorry, station one is obviously the one in the center. Station two in our Renault, they actually lost some storage space because we did make a fully accessible bathroom and locker room area. Um so, um this is kind of just a an offshoot of that project. And then station three, this is the last $100,000. We put $100,000 into station three in fiscal 25. We will do the same in fiscal 26. And then station three will be fully renovated. Um so that gives us a total of 445,000. Highway department. Uh as I said before, we have about 735,000 in spending. That's two different units. One is a sixheel dump truck that has a catch basin cleaner. This is actually part of what I was talking about with uh our MS4 storm water. Their truck that they're using now is pretty close to the same age that that I am. It's uh it's been around a long time. They have rebuilt it. Um, did a beautiful job on it. But it's a clam

shell truck. Um, so essentially what that does is you drive it over to the basin. It's got cables that come out of it with a little spade. It goes down the hole. The spade grabs it and puts it in the back of the truck. Um, so you love this stuff. I do. I find that to be very uh interesting. So uh that's about 300. We're estimating about $375,000. Now, that may come in uh quite a bit less depending on a number of factors, which is what's available, um what units they're actually able to deliver. We may go with just a one tonized truck instead of a six wheel, which would save us quite a bit of money because we're not really because we do it so often, we're not moving enough debris that it really requires a six wheel. However, you also we we may wind up getting pushed into a six wheel because of the unit that we have. The crane unit is a certain weight and if we can't get that on a one ton, it's it there's a lot of variables there, but the maximum we're looking to spend is Are we still buying our trucks through the state? Yeah. Well, depends on Yes. The short answer is yes. Um whether they're bid list, source, well, we look at a whole bunch of different purchasing options, but yes, we are utilizing um usually a no bid. Okay. Process. So, is this reusing the existing catch basin cleaner? No, we would we would put that to to pasture that would be done because you said you depend on So, the the truck and the catch basin cleaner are separate but are still purchase. Yes, correct. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Um will will this have other duties at times when we're not cleaning catch basins? This will be a dedicated truck to do catch basins. So, we don't currently have a need for this truck to have a plow on it. Um, and this truck would probably be a 25-year asset without a plow on it and a 10-year asset with a plow on it. Um, so we're really looking to just leave this as a

dedicated unit that that this is all it does and we won't need one for quite a long time. Okay. How how how often do we are we cleaning catch basins? Pretty much throughout the summer. I mean there's uh I can't I want to say there's 1100 catch basins that we clean but I will get back to you with an exact number. I might be confusing that with another outfall number that we have but um it's it's going pretty much all summer. There's one dedicated staff that that's pretty much all he does throughout the summer is go around to catch basins, open them up. So they're they're doing it pretty much every day and it wouldn't make sense to try to share with another town or anything like that. Um, so there there is we we've we're open to having that discussion. Currently, we we don't think we could get there. So there are towns around us that have a vac and so back trucks would get this job done a lot faster, but they're about a million dollars between a million and a million five, right? Um, and the problem that we see with that is not being able to control the schedule, right? because we're under strict compliance with that MS4 uh storm water system, we really want to have control. Okay. Um but we we have discussed that and we'll continue to discuss it, especially as we find out where we're going to end up in the queue by the time we get all of this speced out and ready to go. As you know, firet trucks are about a four-year lead time. Um, we're anticipating this is between 12 months and 24 months, but with steel tariffs and all these other things going on. Last time we had steel tariffs, that is what really that pushed us out about two years right off the bat and about a 30% increase in price. So, yet to be seen how that impacts, but that's all part of the the conversation. And what's the remaining life on the equipment we have now? we can get through a year to two years, but it

it's, you know, the sooner the better essentially. So, um it's it's uh if anybody ever has time, go up and take a look at it because they really did do a nice job rebuilding this old truck. Um we think we've got at least two years of service that we can get out of this before we have to do another rent and make another before we put real money into it. Right. So, um, that's what we're looking at is that looking at, um, you know, just rebuild alone. You know, we don't want to put 10, 20, $30,000 in this truck. We want to get this truck across the finish line and then get the new one to sl to slot in. So, um, but if we do get a a time that's 24 months, we can we we feel like we can make it last. Okay. But, um, if it only comes in at in 12, that would be okay. That would be okay, too. Um uh and then we have a um one dump truck replacement which is uh 360,000. Um I do have to ask Kevin because I don't understand what the spare wheel dump truck means. Um I think it's the additional dump truck that we keep that gets used less than all the rest and then gets put out when other trucks are down. I don't think it's like when you read it though it seems like there's a spare wheel on it. I don't think that's what it is. I think it's just the spare comma wheeled dump truck. I've seen some trucks that have another set of wheels that's just a little bit higher. They do. Those are for different weights and we don't run any of those. So, I I literally think that when Kev typed it in, there's no comma is I think where we're at. But, um I believe it's just a six wheel Mac that we're replacing. Our oldest Mac, um which I think is the last one we have that doesn't have the stainless steel lines and all the things that we've we've been doing that's gotten us quite a bit of longevity out of those trucks. All right. A municipal center. Um, this is a software upgrade for um, the system

that runs this entire HVAC system in this building. Um, it is very outdated. They will not service it anymore. They won't support it anymore. Um, and we've been we've been limping by for the last probably three years of of just doing things our our own way and trying to make it work. But we're at the point where um you know if we have some pretty major failures uh if we have a major failure especially in the cooling system we there's nowhere for us to go except to up upgrade the software. This is such a sore spot with me. Did we finally pay off this project? Uh it I believe it is. Yep. I hope so. I believe it is. Okay. I think we we discussed this last year. I can look at the debt schedule again, but yes, it it also was confusing because it wasn't called Honeywell building upgrade. It had some other name attached to it. Um, but yeah, we really don't have a we we really have no Okay. no choice. So, they've been sending us parts but won't they can't remote into the system anymore. So, every time they come here, it's like $1,500. Good. Grief. Yeah. So, and it is what it is. There's no other software. There are other software options, but the cost of getting them to talk to the system we have is, you know, half a million dollars. So, we don't want to do that either. So, I think this is our least worst option. Right there it is again. There it is. Okay. Uh, now we get on to the police department. So, the the police department has more capital uh than they've had in in past years. Um they do have a new chief, and I think the new chief is looking to to open up some different directions here. Um so, we do have the Flock LPR camera project. Uh that's a $70,000 project. That's two years um worth of the product. That's about $30,000 as an operational expense

moving forward. Um what this does, if you're not familiar with it, is it will put 10 cameras throughout the community um pretty much on the entrances and exits to um to Grafton uh especially in the more higher trafficked areas. And when you have something go out like a uh bolo, a silver alert, an amber alert, um it automatically is capturing every single plate that comes across the line or leaves the line and then gets reported into a system that is shared with uh multiple other jurisdictions more and more every single year. Um we just visited um we've visited a couple of wrecks and police departments in the last few months. Everyone is running flock. So if you get into this system, you can now see what they're putting out as well. So So did you say 10 cameras? It's 10 cameras is what we're looking at right now. And those are um we won't share a map of their deployment, but we did spend quite a bit of time with the flock folks um figuring out the the pretty much the highest traffic or um even some of the lower traffic areas, but that see the highest amount of um interaction with police and people coming from the city or somewhere else. So, does one camera cover both directions on the road? Depends. Okay. So there are um ones that are unidirectional. There's ones that do they actually going to grab both lanes coming and going with one shot. Um so we did that in as many places as possible, but there are some places where we're trying to get um multiple different roads that kind of come in feed into one area and we're trying to grab grab different spots. So So I I just wasn't sure if the 10 cameras meant five locations or 10 location. No, it's 10 locations is essentially what it is. That's probably a better way to put it.

Um, so we are going to be in 10 separate locations. Um, it's a very I I've been wanting to see this for quite a while and I know that there's, you know, security concerns and people are worried about Big Brother and all of those things which are valid concerns. Um, I love this for the the missing child, the Amber Alert, the Silver Alert. Um, you see them all the time. You know, even for our seniors that are battling, you know, Alzheimer's and dementia, they get in the car and the family doesn't know where they went. These things ping you every time you go across the line. So, they don't do speed. They don't do they don't do tickets. So, if you figure out where one is, you can go as fast as you want. It's not gonna It's not going to No. Thank you, though. Good advice, Mr. Tom. They're always pinging. Um there is a data data management profile in there that after a certain number of days and the chief would we'd have to talk to the chief because that that's not my area of expertise but certain amount of data retention and then those roll off. Um there's a whole bunch of uh parameters of what that can and cannot be used for. So there are legal pro protections in place so that they can't just start tracking you everywhere you go. Um, but you know, if you get flagged on a bolo, it it'll pick you up. We uh, as you all know, I I don't live here. I live in Mson. Um, we have four of these cameras now running. And, um, about three months ago, they picked up two gentlemen that had left New York City and come up here and we're just going from town to town, breaking and entering all their all along the path. and it pinged in the center of little little Mson where they were in the local Walgreens and wow cops were able to pick them up. They had been been flagged in a number of other communities trying to figure out where they were. So we want that. Yeah. There's a lot of different there's a lot

of different success stories with it. Um so the 70 750 Yeah. covers two years and then the 30k for operating expense afterward. Yeah. Is that an addition to the 70k or that will that start like the third? This covers that's year three is 30k essentially what it is. So what we're doing is this covers installation and two years of service fee to the company that owns the cameras. The nice thing about this is what I think is a nice thing about block is that uh they own the cameras. We we pay for maintenance. We don't deal with networking. We don't deal with any of that stuff. a car goes off the road, takes one out, that's their problem. They got to come and and do it within x amount of time. Um because we really don't have the technological infrastructure to handle things like this. So So that's the that's a subscription. Subscription. Yep. It covers everything. So that would go ahead. Oh, just they're So they're plugging into some level of town infrastructure or is it all hosted by them? It's all hosted by them. So each one I think I think it works off each one has a cellular unit that's reporting back to to their infrastructure but um you have access. Yep. And you can create agreements. So I I reached out to the Mson chief when we started to look at flock when when Chief Manardi started talking to me about flock um to see what that looked like for them and they're currently partnered with 50 other communities in the Commonwealth that are reporting data live. So again, um, anytime we're we're tracking you, they use it to build cases a lot of times, too. So you'll have, say, a heroin dealer in Grafton that's going to Fitsburg every Thursday to pick up product. They can ping them, leaving Grafton, hitting Fitler, turning around, coming back. That's totally hypothetical. We haven't We haven't done that here. Actually on Wednesday. It's actually Yeah, exactly. Um, that is an

actual case. It just didn't happen here. Yeah. Um, but they're able to actually use that to to say, "Oh, you were you were in Fitsburg at this this time and then officers observed you in this location." And it's pretty neat. All right. So, that would become an operational expense in FY28. Yes. Yep. Um, taser replacement program. This is something that lives in capital that really is an operational expense, but it's been here since we we made the switch. Um, if you weren't here at the time, um, we were buying tasers every seven, eight years. The problem is every time that a new taser comes out, they don't service the other taser. There's a lot of costs that go into tasers for maintenance, upkeep, uh, the cartridges. Every time you use a cartridge, and you're mandated to use certain number of cartridges every year, for for training purposes, it's a whole thing. Um, so what we did was same thing like we're doing with the Flock cameras. We have a lease agreement with these tasers. New taser version comes out, they give us the new tasers, our taser breaks, they give it to us, we get all the cartridges are built into that price and we never have to worry about it. So, um, it's kind of like like if you think about it like Office, right? Now, you can't buy Office everything's the subscription service, you know, all those things that are are moving in that way. That's pretty much how everything's been moving for us, too. And if that'd be if that should say lease in the description just Yeah. Yeah. I can make a tweak to that. Um cruiser, how long have we been doing that? This is year I think we're going into year three of year of a five-year agreement and then we'll I I I'm assuming we're going to keep doing this because it has worked out very well according to the folks down at PD. Okay. Um, fun fun piece of information that I I think is interesting. Um, you can't take your

taser home with you at the end of the day. You can take your firearm home, which is which is wild to me how that gets regulated. Anyways, um, cruiser replacement program. So, we're currently looking to do two more cruisers in fiscal 26. The fiscal 25 cruisers have not arrived yet. Um, they will be delivered in the end of March. So, that's going well for us. Yeah. Yeah. We know they got a few hours. We know couple hours. We we know. We know. So, hopefully anytime now. Um although they they did just call and ask us questions about the basic uh setup that we asked for. So, that was a little concerning today. So, I I would anticipate we're going to we won't see them both until May would be my guess. Were these hybrids? No. So, we have not we we like the economics or the uh yeah the economics and the eco-friendliness of the hybrids. We don't like the amount of times that they're out of service. So, we have put a pause on our hybrid purchases for the time being um with the hopes that maybe we can we can revisit that or go to a different technology when the next iteration drops. But, we're losing cruisers for three months at a time. Wow. Um, and it's not exclusively the hybrids, but it's been predominantly the hybrids. It's either hybrids or it's the transmission cooler in the transmissions on the Ford Explorers Go. Well, I'm hoping sometime these cruisers will find a permanent home. Yes, they've been bouncing back and forth from operating to capital. Me too. Me too. I'd like them to live in the operational budget, but that's where they um this right now is speced for uh one explorer and one Tahoe as we did in fiscal 25. We're going to pilot a couple of Taho over the years and then see um kind of which gives us less problems and less uh operational maintenance costs.

Um does that mean we have to get all new equipment or So interesting thing. So, the older cars that were rolling off need a new they're going to need new equipment anyways. So, this is why we decided now would be a good time to try a couple of Taho. Um, I would also imagine that in the next probably 3 years the Explorer will get an upgraded interior and then none of our stuff will roll over anyways because that's what they've consistently done. Um, so there are some things that are universal that we just move over, but um, yeah. And I think well I don't want to I was gonna say I think the Taho were only doing half cages so that it's not as expensive. Um but then I remembered that might not be correct. The chief was just updating me on some other things. So anyways um yeah 70k per per vehicle pretty much. Yep. Yep. Um I think it actually winds up being 60 and 80 because the Tahoe winds up being more. Okay. Um so Chevy did an interesting thing. They they got everybody into Taho's police um because they were 12 grand cheaper in fiscal 24 than the Explorers. And then once everybody bought into them, they now are 10 to 12,000 more than the Explorers. But we are hearing good reports from other communities about lack of downtime um the space inside for all the stuff, right? We continually policing gets more and more and more stuff. So, um we'll give a we'll give them some some trying. We'll see what happens. um suppressed patrol rifles. These are commonly known as silencers. Um they're not so that we can moonlight as assassins. Um they are merely uh for the the only purpose they serve is to try to protect the hearing of the officers that use them. Um, so there are incidents, uh, rising incidents I should say, of officers needing to deploy their patrol

rifles and then suffering hearing loss that is either, um, pretty severe or or permanent. Um, which, you know, we start to look at there's a human cost and there's a capital cost and the capital cost is going to be cheaper than if we have to pay somebody out on a permanent disability for their rest of their lives with with hearing loss. Do they have to attach the silencer or is it So the what we're what our plan is is to I say are like I have a part of it but what our plan is is to trade in the service rifles that we have currently for models that already come um with threaded uh suppressors on so we will be able to replace the suppressors should we need to. Um but that is the tradein plus the new units entirely. So, um, they've been switching out service rifles a couple a year to try to keep them serviceable. Um, but this is just going to be a fresh start with the suppressed units. So, um, and hopefully, as the chief says, we'll never use them and we don't have to worry about hearing loss anyways. So, besides training, which we're already using PPE. So, um, and then the last one is a UPS, uh, also known as an interruptable power supply. That's generally or, uh, that's that's really just a giant bank of batteries that lives in the basement of the police department. So that if we lose power, that unit carries power until the generator kicks in without spiking power into all of the critical infrastructure that they have onto the public schools. Is that replacement of an existing one or is that okay? Oh, yeah. Um, so I think uh I'd have to go back into uh our notes, but I think we put about 7,000 into the existing system we have about four years ago, right when I started. Um, but we're at and that was really just to get us to end of life. Um, they had told us you're very shortly going to get to end of life

and you're going to have to buy a whole new system and that's where we are. So, do you know if it's a like a power conditioner that's changing feed into the system? My my understanding is that it's sine wave. So that uh when it it's a immediate cut over sine wave essentially just means that it doesn't feed power back or spike. Yep. And then carries you over to the next. It it literally it's $25,000 that hopefully never lasts for more than 20 seconds. Sure. Um but the generation seconds that keeps everything from crashing. Yeah. Right. Yep. Exactly. And probably being damaged in the process. Do we do any monitoring with that? With what? With the backup power supply on a truckable power supply. Uh yes. So we do have testing protocols in place for the UPS's and we have uh generator protocol that gets run. We actually have a contract for that and they go around and change all the oil once a year and start it and do all that. And then I think I I want to say it's every single one that we have runs once a week for a certain amount of time. This is the generator for the municipal. No, this this UPS is for the police department. Oh, police department. Yeah. And so huge generator. They do. The problem with generators is there's a lag between when the power goes off and you need to bridge the gap. Um and that's how they spec the building was a full UPS. So that does the entirety of the building and it can do it for hours. So, they have had um Chief Mar was talking to me about a time when they went down for a significant amount of time and this was able to keep the building up until they were able to move over. Um, and I assume it'll last even longer once they're not running dispatch out of it. Um, what I think will happen is I don't know that it'll last any longer. I think that our next iteration can be significantly smaller is is what I how I would characterize that. We can probably back that down. Um yeah, because everything they can do, especially with the new regional

dispatch, the software we're looking at, you can do primarily everything from anywhere. So, um you know, if we ever got into a major outage or your police department gets hit by a tornado or whatever, um they can they can switch almost everything over to mobile and run the whole thing. You can actually do all your functions right out of a phone now. It's wild. Um, it's like my job. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty It's pretty neat what they can do. Um, all right. So, public schools, we're at about 540,000. There are some stadium lights. We're switching over to LEDs. That's 160,000. That 160,000 is not just the lighting. It's also a whole bunch of wiring repairs that have been um kind of done ad hoc over the years, and this will get those back to where they need to be. Um, roof repairs. This is districtwide. um that's $200,000. There's also the metal roof replacement project. Um that's $80,000. There's a water heater replacement for 40,000 and a new fire panel and devices for 60,000. The metal roof is for which school? Milbury Street. Yep. Milbury. All right. Any question on any of those? All right. Lastly, we have the Ferry Street playground replacement. This is um poured in place surfaced playground. So, that's it's an accessible playground. Um the nut into the capital plan is 100,000. The total project cost is 378,000. So, they did apply to CPC for the remaining funds to make that go. So, very hopeful that that project moves forward. We've had great success with the the hybrid um accessible playground that we put up at Norcross on North Street. Um and so we have this one and

then we'd also like to do the same thing for airport park. So they're all older playgrounds, but they all the port and place surface should be a great addition for those. Okay. Any questions on any of that? Need to go into uh here. Are the schools thinking about putting metal roofs on other buildings, which I think is a good idea, but you want me to go or you metal roofs? No. No. That's not what I've what the conversations that um Jay and I have have had. roof replacements are imminent on some of these these spaces. Um, so but no, the metal roof replacement that we have on here is because the portico looking part of it already has a metal roof and so we're going to we're doing like material to fix that. What I've seen, um, I haven't done a roof here, but I did a school roof before coming here, the year before I came. Um, and they're all membrane roofs like we already have. Um, but they they build them all up with foam, uh, essentially now to get better R value. So, I would assume that that's the direction that we're going to wind up going in is a foam roof with a membrane over it. So, Leon, are these roof for 200,000? Is that for North Grafton? That is for running around fixing leaks at all of them. It is just trying to keep us from being disastrous. It is not. It's Yeah, it's suffers a lot. North Grafton is a mess and so is North Street. Well, they all are. All of the roofs are bad. All of them roof replace the roofs. So, um that's a great question because it is a lot of money and it it's an enormous amount of money. Yep. So, um that is something that that Jay and I have

started to discuss. There's no real great plan in place. I'll be honest with you. Um, so we started to discuss kind of how to how to get even even get our heads around how to do this because we do have a number of schools and they're probably 5 million plus. You know, they're crazy money for roofs. So, um, one of the things that we are we the Jay needs to, um, do some more due diligence on is the accelerated roof repair program from, uh, MSBA. Um, yep, MSBA. and um see what we would be eligible for and when because there's some there's some pretty good pots of money out there from the state which could sometimes up you know they do 50% of the cost and then we would be able to to look at that. We have that looming and then we're going to have uh we need to have a conversation about turf fields. Yeah. So you put turf fields in when you did the the high school. They have a shelf life that I believe you're already pat. So, you know, these are things that are going to going to need to be replaced, but the $200,000 should take care of a lot of the major leaks that we have and and and sections that are bad. Um, and hopefully again give us some time to try to figure out what to do. Um, let me go one step back because I probably should have led with this. So, um, the town, we've been working with a roofing, um, assessment vendor. And so, they're currently building a report of every roof in the town of Grafton. Um, municipal roof in the town of Grafton municipal school, not your roof. Somebody's on your roof, call somebody. Um, no. So, we we are um pursuing that actually very rapidly now that the uh cold weather is gone. Um, and we are

also doing a thermal review of four different roofs. Um, one of them being uh, so there's two schools and two municipal buildings. And I can't remember which two schools. I apologize. Again, we could I'm sure it's North Craftton for sure. It's North Street. Definitely be North Street and I I think the middle school, but don't Yes, I No, I believe you're right. I believe you're right. So, they were a combination of worst ones and also what we could fit into the grant. We got a $10,000 grant to do this. So, it w up being I think 11,000 to do four buildings. So, we'll do those four this year and then we'll move on to to other ones. We're going to do thermals on every single building that we we maintain. Um because that'll inform both how what we use when we replace it and and you know where where we potentially are seeing damage that or there there is damage that we're not we're not seeing currently. So, um yeah, we hope to have that by the beginning of summertime. It should really shouldn't take that long. And then is the plan to go out to bid for the work on that? And once you get the reports um to try and get the cost to try and see how Yeah, exactly. So that'll help us drive cost once we know what we're up against, then that'll we can then get our get our um estimates in place and and start going from there. The schools have been doing patchwork on these buildings for so long and it almost seems like we should make it a priority and get them done and over with because it's just maintenance of a building is so important and it damages other things that's underneath it. So yeah. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Um but can I put that down? You agreed with me? I he's a non- voting member. It's that mean I mean essentially I always agree with Sue. It's the same. You're a wise man. Highly recommend. Dave Dave taught me

that. Uh that was my first meeting that Dave was in. He's like just agree. Just go with her. Just go with it. Smile enough. Um so Sue, you had asked about stabilization and free cash. So stabilization is about 5.1 million and free cash is about 4.4 million. Wow. I haven't seen free cash like that in a long time. I don't know that you've ever seen free cash like that from as far back as I could. I think we've got up to three million one one year. So what what would our goal be for those? Um we're technically at our goal. We're supposed to be 10% of the operating budget. We're at 11%. So we're in good healthy shape there. That's first. Yeah. Um, we are, uh, I'm not projecting that we're going to have as much free cash coming in. And actually, I can't say that we will have a very good free cash next year because we've got some really big building permits that have come in that are going to close straight to free cash. So, UPS alone just on the building permits a million dollars. Um, I just got a check uh, two weeks ago for two 270,000 for a building permit. So, you know, that's going to drive your free cash pretty well, right? until that that um you know dries up. Eventually it will because that's how that's how it works. Um we've also done a really great job the finance team at chasing interest. So we budgeted like $200,000 in interest last year and we were up over 750 um of them just literally chasing interest rates which is good which is awesome. Yeah. Good. So um that's also not heard of in the municipal world. We're usually, you know, 0.02% or some ridiculously low amount. Originally, I saw OPED on capital, but I'm assuming that's not going to be I put that on there for ease of discussion and then there was, you know, some some discuss, so I pulled it out of there. Okay. We're still planning

on doing that. That's a $300,000 OPED transfer. That'll be its own warrant article. It was always going to be its own warrant article. And it has been in the past. And it has been in the past. just I that's what I thought because I said to Craig I said that's not No, I just put it in there because it was it was quite honestly a very easy way to show everybody how what we're doing. Um the other thing that's not listed in the current plan that I just showed you is a borrowing request for 1.4 million for a new firetr. Um that firetruck is expected to be four years away. Um so we would authorize the borrowing today. Um, but we're not expecting to spend any of that money. So, we'll start paying somewhere around 2030 probably. Yep. Yep. So, how much capital do we still have to look at? I mean, I think one time it was like 20 million. We still had capital. Let me pull that. So, as it sits right now, we've got about 14 million outstanding. Um, I will tell you that that's not a great number. Uh, and what I mean that it's not accurate or I'm very um um not where we need to be on our five-year capital plan still. We have very good two-year plans. We're still struggling going out past there. We do have some some items in here that um you know do show up um but they're they're almost entirely wish list things. They're not actual replacement schedules. Um and so that's something that we really need to drill down on in this fiscal year. Um because we just we really still haven't gotten it. We're better than I would say 2021, 2022, but we're we're still nowhere where we

need to be. We don't have This is not unusual. Every town has a huge number for We do. That number is probably $30 million would be my guess. Okay. Because we don't have roofs, we don't have facilities, we don't have um even our even our equipment schedule is not great. Um, we did spend a lot of time this fiscal year building an asset inventory and we've been able to really ma really make that a robust document, but extrapolating that to the capital plan has been a challenge for us. Um, and it's partially because, this is going to sound a little disingenuous, but it's partially because your department had to do a great job of saving money. That they have a hard time telling you that they bought the truck today, so we're going to plan on getting a new one in 10 years. Because they go, "Well, maybe we'll get 12. maybe we can get 14 and that's all great, but you still put it in at 10 and then you deal with it later. It's kind of getting that uh to really sink in. Um like we were talking about the the uh cleanout truck for the it it is ancient. You go look at it. It's like that 1980s styling. Um it's really cool. They did a great job with it, but you know, it's hard to put that stuff into into your your capital in any real way and have it show up appropriately. So, I have some department heads that are really getting into it and have done a great job. Shannon at the senior center is one of them. She's plugged in some things that, you know, the senior center needs a new kitchen. It needs it today, but looking at all the rest of the numbers, well, we're going to do that in fiscal 29, you know, um or 28, whatever she had picked. Um there's a there's some of that starting to get in there, but there's other things in there that I would I mean, you can go on to clear gov and look at them. They're all there. I don't put a lot of stock that that's where they're going to stay. We really need to do a better job. So, some departments are still struggling with fiveyear plans. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. And and some of that is honestly that's on me not having the time and the to go sit

down and and do this. You know, we still do. We're doing the our department head meetings. We're talking about it consistently. It's just a matter of um I I actually did this with Highway. We did an exercise um so entirety of DPW actually but was at highway where we talked about what do you got for capital? Well, I don't really have anything in the next five years. What about that? Well, yeah, but we don't know. You know, it's a lot of that and it's just it's just because they're not accustomed to doing it. It's not because they they can't do it. It's it's getting people to recognize things as as capital. In fact, one of the conversations we just had was about um over here on Hudson the cemetery, the fence is in atrocious shape, right? Looks horrendous. I walk over there all the time. Um we need to do the whole thing. We need to stop doing two sections of winter. It just doesn't it's just not working. They have the greatest of intentions. It's not working. So, I had said, "Look, you need to go get a price, and then we'll put that in for fiscal 28, and then we'll move it if we need to, but we're you're never going to do the whole offense by yourself, and it really needs to just be done in a way that gives you 10 years of reprieve at least, right?" So, we're starting to have those conversations. Um, it's just a matter of capturing them all and getting them in because we haven't done any of that for a very long time. Yeah. when I was It's been a long long time, but there used to be a capital book that all the departments would pass in and you could go through a five-year plan. Yeah. And each page and why they needed it and Yep. how long they thought it would last. And for some reason that was all dropped. So, yeah. And I haven't I I haven't picked it back up in a real meaningful way either. So, it's it's definitely it's something that needs to be done better. Um, and I think the asset inventory, as I mentioned, is something that's going to get us there because we can put it's getting people, again, the fence is a capital asset,

right? It has a a life. Maybe the life goes five years either way, but you should be able to look at that and go, you know, well, you got a vinyl fence. It should last 15 years at at minimum, right? Not, you know, other things not re not withstanding somebody drives a lawn mower through it, right? Okay. we're going to have to replace a section. All of those things, those are going to happen. Those are things, but as far as the useful life of the asset, we can we can document all of those things. Um, so we're getting there, but and then we're going to build it up and we're going to put it in here and it's going to be too much money and we're not going to fund it and then the departments are going to be disappointed and then they're going to stop doing the capital plan. Not that I've seen that happen before, but we're we're getting there. Yep. So, what is the 5.2 2 million number. So that's that's got everything in it. So that's your 1.44 for borrowing. It's your oped. It's it's everything that got included in the entirety of the of the plan. Hold on. Let me show you. See, that's how I get Yep. So, um, essentially what it's doing is it's grabbing things that we may have in here that have a recurring cost later on or a full project cost. So, like the $278,000 of the playground that we're not funding is in that other delta. Okay. But, so we've spent a great deal of time even getting this to where we are now, but we have a we have a lot of work to do. So, are are there things that you would have liked to have done this year that you just don't think we're able to do or are you pretty confident that this is um I would have liked to have done more of the school's capital plan. So, we had had a conversation, Jay and I, over the

last summer when we had the roof failure up off of um North at North Street School. Yeah. um about you know that was we wound up doing a $550,000 in additional capital for the school. Yeah. And you know our conversation was more or less about the equity of I got department heads that are that are not doing emergency spending in the middle of the year. They're waiting and the roof is a different topic. I'm not saying that we should we should have waited or any of those things but you know we do need to have consideration for and he was very understanding of it. we move the money up. So in the in you know if you look at it in the in the a year's span it's it's a million. It's 1.1 million that we've put into school capital. But the school does have a a laundry list of things that we haven't been able to achieve. And I that's really where we're where we're faltering in in this particular plan to be frank. School's always been like that. Unfortunately, it's tough. They've got the most square footage, so they're going to always be that way. That's just the nature of the beast. Um, but yeah, I mean, realistically, our plan was, and this is our plan, was to be between 800,000 and a million in each fiscal year. Um, and again, because we we did the I think we did 800 in fiscal 25, you had the 5.5 or 550,000. Now we're we're over. So, um, but yeah, hopefully we're back into the schedule. We're at a million next year. Um, so do you have other projects that you think we should know about at this point

or what we might see next year? Sure. Let me bring up um so this is going to be confusing unless I get rid of those. So, let's look at the capital plan as it sits right now. Um, so, as I said, Council on Aging's got a couple things I'd like to We may be looking at pulling that 14 passenger van forward into fiscal 28. Right now, it's about 105,000. Um, they think they can get to fiscal 29. It really depends on a lot of factors. We'll see what happens when we get through fiscal 27 about, you know, return on investment costs. Um, is that do they have more than one vehicle now? Two. One's a PVPA. I always want to say PVPC, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. Uh, so PVPA um or WRTA, right? WRTA. WTA. PV PVTA is Pioneer Valley. Yeah. Familiar with that one. Yeah. My bad. Uh, WRTA. And then we have one that was a a uh partially funded or or mostly funded by a local dentist. Um which is pretty neat. So we are running those two all the time. And uh now we have the minivan which is also in use constantly. We're doing a lot of trips. Um so but the minivan's probably a 10 year asset. We're only in year two I Is that the one that gets plugged in all the time? Yeah, it's the it's the plug-in hybrid. So, we're still recycling cars from police department. Nope. Nope. Not doing that anymore. Um Okay. They are genuinely destroyed by

the time we get them. Um and then we we nurse them for another five years, which is which is great if you can, but you know, we're we're getting tradein values of 3500 on these vehicles. And the cost for repairs for the last one we had up here was $5,000. So, um, what we've did was we bought those Chevy Traverses as a as a not Traverses, Equinoxes. Equinoxes. Equinoxes as a stop gap till we were able to get better supply of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. Um, and so we actually do have $75,000 in grant money for electric vehicle purchase. So, we'll be looking at that. Um, and we've been just been trading in the cruisers on the You might get a Tesla cheap now. They're They're everywhere. Um, yeah. So, we're we're we're exploring a number of options, but we do have those three vehicles. What I'd like to do is do two electric vehicles for the building department and and make them all electric. Um, they're going to hate that. I haven't told them that in person yet, so don't tell them yet. Um, but no, that's my that's my plan is to electrify car, right? Uh, no. Tom uses his They all use their own vehicle, so that predates me. They get a stipend every year to use their own vehicle, and I'd like to see that go away and for them to use a lettered town of Grafton vehicle to to go on site. So, yep. I re I really don't like, you know, pulling up in your personal vehicle, which may be very nice, and, you know, it's not it's not ours. So, I'd like it to have a blue plate on it and a little townrafted seal on it. a building official on it. So, yeah. No money for my ferris wheel on the common, huh? They keep shooting it down. I don't know what to tell you, Sue. I'm working on it. Working on it. I should take it to CPC. You should. I was

thinking we could maybe just do a ropes course in the meantime. Do what? The ropes course through the trees. Like ziplining. We could do that. Right. You got enough trees up there. That would be fantastic. Mark's on board. I'm on board with the big I have the equipment to go along. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. So, any questions for me? Any more detail you want to see? Quick question just so I'm make sure I'm understanding it and writing it down correctly. I also stopped halfway through my other question for Greg, but sorry. Next question. Sorry. Um, for the borrowing quest for 1.4 million, that'll be a warrant meeting. Yes. Fire truck is four years out. We won't start paying on it until it the production starts or until we receive the fire truck. Until we receive it. Um, usually, um, and we don't have the contract yet for this, but usually how it works is that we have to we have to pay for the truck in its entirety upon delivery. So, what we do is we do a a ban, uh, bond anticipatory note, anticipation note, and then write them the check and then go out to bond a year later. Um, depending on where rates are. So, the the truck that, um, I think it was engine one that we bought right when I started, um, we've only been banning that. We have no intention of going out to bond for that because the ban rate is so good right now for where we are um that it doesn't make any sense for us to go and try to bond that small amount of money. Um so what we look what we look for is packaging, right? So we're doing a $1.4 million truck and then a $5 million roof. You would try to bundle that together and then you would beat the ban rate. But right now with that truck only we owe, you know, 420,000. It's cheaper just to ban it, right? Okay. Um, so Greg, you had asked about other other just one in that same area. We have 1 point was it 1.4 last year as well for the fire engine. That was 2.5. 2.5. Okay. But that was a debt exclusion. That was excluded debt. This would be non-excluded debt as our current plan. Um, so we look like we we

feel like we have the capacity with some of the other things falling off. Okay. Um, so we have a loader in here for fiscal 27 that's 350,000 and another um sixheel dump truck replacement of 350,000. Those are on the horizon. It's another basin or is that just on because it's on the same uh it's on the same line. I I think that's that's an error to be honest with you. I think that's supposed to be its own line. Like it just got included. Yeah. By accident. Um, yeah. And I think that's your biggest stuff besides airport park and an ADA accessible swim dock that we haven't done yet, but that uh Adam is really pushing me on that ADA accessible swim dock. So, which is a great thing to have, but it's expensive. It's about $150,000 for us to do that. Um, it does have other capabilities along with it where we'd be able to have a kayak launch right right off of it. It's it's much wider. maybe we'd get a bit more use out of, you know, the Silver Lake area. But, um, those are so pretty much it for the kind of big things that are on the horizon. Um, as I mentioned, uh, Shannon has the kitchen in here at fiscal 29. Um, do you have gone out for an estimate on that end yet? No. So, I we had discussed just putting $100,000 in there. So, it shows up on the capital plan and we know it's going to be $100,000. I mean, just the industrial equipment that's in there. Um, but we would look to kind of make the space more functional with more modern setup. So, they're doing a lot of meals out of there every day. We have we have a a security camera watching the back door and we do catch people going in and out of the cooler and it's just non-stop they're they're making food in there. So, it's pretty Wow. pretty good. We have a very lively senior center. Amazing. Yeah.

I answered your question, correct, Kyle? Yeah, you're good. Okay, everyone. All set. That's good for me. Thank you, Evan. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Uh the remaining item is to review and approve or mainly to approve the minutes from our last meeting which was December 22nd of 2022. Um I think that would be a typo on my part. 23. It's still it was it was a while ago. It was it wasn't that long ago. 23. Yes. Because we did not meet in 24. That's true. We did not. That's wild. We'll work on that this year. Um, yeah. So, I guess just call for approval on that or is that the traditional call for a motion to approve as amended? Second. All right. Uh, all in favor? I. Any approve? Any opposed? All right. Motion carries. I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Second. We are adjourned. [Music]