Capital Improvements Program (cip) Committee - Regular Meeting

Yes. Okay, I'm sorry.

Giovanni's on his way. He's going to be a little bit late, and we understand Kate's not going to be available to attend tonight. So this is the first meeting of the CIP committee, the Capital Improvements Committee. It is June 9, 2026. It's 6 p.m., and... We'll call to order. We have obviously the members present, three members present. Kevin Gray remains nameless in terms of a name tag. But nonetheless, he does have a name and he is part of the committee. And the other names are already indicated on there. So we'll call the meeting to order. And then the first order of business is to appoint a chair and a co-chair. You don't have to worry about filing out a W 4 form because there is no compensation for this. So I know that folks want to rush up to be appointed the chair and the co-chair, but I'll just tell you right now, you don't need to worry about that paperwork. That's good. That's good.

Less paperwork, the better.

Yes. Yes. Even though we are a governmental entity, paperwork is critical. In this case, we don't need it. So I'll entertain any nominations for the position, the august position of chair of this committee.

And I'm an 8 MR. Gray you did a good job last year so thank you haha any other nominations.

We don't need a second for nomination. All those in favor say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries MR. Gray, you're the chair now that you've got to take the the floor here and and take nominations for the co-chair position.

I will take a nomination for co-chair.

Don't look at me.

I will self-nominate myself.

Oh, okay. I didn't think you wanted to do it.

Do you have a nomination for Jeff? Any other nominations? No. All right. So all in favor? Aye. Opposed? We got a co-chair.

All right. Excellent. All right. Next order of business is item B, review and approve meeting schedule. We may not require to have that many meetings, although we have a far more extensive CIP than what I've seen in the documents from previous years. So I'll let you, we figured we'd schedule these out as far as we needed to. If we don't need all of them, we don't need all of them. But I haven't populated these yet because I haven't got a confirmation as to what the schedule is going to be.

so I definitely know from my end I have two dates that conflict with school board meetings wouldn't be a problem time-wise other than if these run longer than an hour then I would we have to leave ten minutes earlier than seven so we may want to do different dates on those two which two dates are those glad you asked I'm calling up the calendar right now I remember looking I believe it's later ones let me see So July 14th was one. And then I want to say it was the September 15th one. Yeah, in September 15th. July 14th and September 15th conflict with school board.

And those are at 7 p.m.?

And those are both at 7 p.m., yeah. So I could do earlier if we were willing to move this earlier, but that's what I have for conflicts.

So now it's you. Do you have any conflicts on those days?

I do not have any conflicts on those days.

I like meetings that last no more than an hour. They tend to be the more productive meetings and they keep people focused and on task. But that's up to you folks.

So I have no problem doing it the same day. I mean, it's a two-minute drive for me, so if we can target to keep it under an hour, I absolutely can do that, or I might have to excuse myself a few minutes early if it's still finishing up.

And that's even if we have meetings on those days, because he said that it may or may not happen.

On the 15th, we might not even need the 15th.

And Tuesdays are up in the air for me. I might be late at every single meeting because it's Tuesday. So...

Yeah, and by September 15th, we'll meet our six-meeting threshold as dictated in the charter, so that would be fine. And Sean, I do agree with you that if we can, or Mr. Chair, if we could definitely kind of keep the meetings very efficient, very targeted, time-bound.

Yeah, I agree, and I think that worked pretty well last year. We kept the meetings moving pretty well. I felt like they went... And feel free to correct me if you disagree, Deb. I thought it went pretty well last year. We kept it on point. We didn't have as much stuff on the agenda on the.

to look at last year as there is this year. And I think it's going to be a dig deep this year, unfortunately.

I think we'll have to spread things out so that we can, I think if we align it correctly, we can probably get like, here's one we really have to dig, and then some that might be easier, put the hard one, the easier ones together the same days, and we can keep the time relatively short.

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, everything went well. I mean, it was heated conversations, but it was all contained.

Yeah. So I think that's fair. That's a fair goal.

And I think it's good that we have that extra meeting because I think DPW is going to take at least two.

That's a big one. It's big, and it's going to end up being a big multi-part project that deserves a lot of time for discussion.

Yeah, and I like the idea of what you said, coupling a medium one with an easy one. So then that leaves the bigger ones, or the harder ones. They're all going to be hard, but yeah, for time's sake.

I think you're right. I like that.

Me too. What about you, Jeffrey?

I know I definitely agree with that and having that schedule it will definitely keep us on keep us on task and ensure that we know what homework we need to do prior.

So that would bring up to me the big question was from last year the form remember we were gonna get a new grading form thing I don't know if that ever got created. I know they were swamped, so.

I have some suggestions on that when we get to that. Okay. And the agenda here. Good.

Okay, so I think, so for now, I think we've all agreed that we're going to, I don't think we need to vote on this, right? It's just a basic confirmation from everyone. I think we all agree that we'll keep these dates for right now, knowing that, you know, we have a relative time block on a few dates and we'll try to keep it efficient as we're going.

So before we get into project submission, I just want to talk about that. The statute 674.6, I'll just read this one portion about that scoring issue. The capital improvement program shall classify projects according to the urgency and the need for realization and shall recommend a time sequence for their implementation. It doesn't actually say that you have to do that as a body. It says the program has to do that. So we could propose that, what we think the urgency is, and you could change that if you deem that. I've got to tell you, to be honest with you, I've been doing this for years. I do not like that scoring criteria. Nobody who's used that finds it useful. And we got rid of it where I was before because it means nothing. And it's how you, the discretion you have for each one of those numbers, it's very difficult to make it worthwhile. A far simpler system, I think, would be better. So if you would like, and it's up to you, we can take the first blush at that in creating a scoring criteria as staff determined it to be, and then you can modify that or use some of the criteria as you deem appropriate, if that makes sense to you.

I personally like that idea just because I found that old score sheet to be... Pointless. Agreed. It was overlap. It was apples to oranges. It was confusing. It just made no sense.

I've always been an advocate that that form has been just overall confusing to the public. And if town staff has the capacity to kind of provide us with a revised form,

say we take it on. I was just going to make it real simple because all we have to do is determine the urgency. We don't have to have a scoring system and the need for realization. Yeah. And then, of course, the timeline is already built. You already saw that. Right. Which can be changed as you deem appropriate. But a far simpler process. But we can do that if that's what the wish is. And again, if you don't like it, you can disregard it and do what you have time towards the end of the process to make it whatever you wish.

And this is what you used up in Lebanon?

Yeah. It was crazy trying to figure that out. What's a one to one person is a five to another. Right.

The project narrative would still be there. What's the benefit? What's the drawback if we don't do this? And that type of information. That's the meat of it. I wouldn't go too. Thorough into it, but really kind of direct in.

Yeah, I think some things need to be added to that form in terms of revenue sources and more definition on that. And then also cost benefit analysis type thing. What are you replacing? We don't have those things. And this is a stock form that everybody uses. But I think some more can be added to those. And I want to see that in there. And I've asked them to add photographs this time so that you can see what they're talking about. And there may be some videos in the future on some of these to help articulate this a little bit better. Because you're sitting in here and you're trying to figure out what these things are. And to me, that piece of paper does not do full justice to many of these projects as to what we're really asking for. Great so this is a what I call a rip a evolutionary process to get better and I've basically sent all the submissions back to people and ask them to make improvements on them. I'm still getting those improvements. We're still missing a couple projects to by the way.

A follow-up question on that is the some from revenue sources right so obviously the major revenue sources would be, you know, would be a tax income or, you know, tax. Actually not. But also, I kind of also want to list the other opportunities for revenue, whether that's grants, bonds, whether that's kind of other types of, you know, impact fees or, you know, even stuff that we do not, the town currently does not have as a revenue generation. think that's going to be important for the planning board to see so we can also kind of advocate say well if we had these programs in place we could get additional revenue from these sources let's work with the council let's work with the school board you know to ensure that you know That is part of the overall kind of guide because I don't, you know, we know that we put these projects on the list. We put a price tag on them. My mind automatically goes, my taxes are going up. But in reality, that could not be the case. And if we have the opportunity to kind of really influence that, I think we should take it.

To echo what you're saying, if some of them aren't immediate, right? They're in the future. So, like you said, impact strees, exaction fees, things like that, right? Which I think we should have, but that's beside the point. The point is, if they're out in the future, those things could maybe change, like we could actually adopt those things, and then that would adjust the... the numbers as to where the money's coming from, right? That's what you're saying, correct?

Absolutely. Okay. Sean, you mentioned that actually not. Right. So what are, can you expand upon that?

I'm going to go through the list right now and I'm going to tell you what, because the form, the form that the staff fill out doesn't really tell you that. That's why I've kicked basically all of them back to staff. Because you're going to see things like on Laffer Field that that's our property. Improvements are being made, but we're not paying for it with property tax dollars in most cases. And those were never on the CIP before. And you're going to see when I go through recreation, those are funded through donations and how they get the different sources of money that they get. We've got corridor studies that we expect developers to pay. There's a whole, and exactions and things of that nature that the planning board has the authority to enact right now. It's part of the statute. So a lot of those things are covered by other sources. All the water extension line projects, those are all programmed for grants. It's like $40 million worth of work. So when you look at the bottom of this list, that huge number, that would be scary as a taxpayer if you didn't know it otherwise.

So is there a way to define it when you look at the overall final budget to say that this is funded other than the tax dollar or whatever the purpose is? Appropriate terminology is this comes from grants, etc., etc., etc. This amount of money would impact tax dollars.

So I've tasked finance with developing a financial plan to be able to implement this CIP over that period of time. So that's their tasking is to be able to show that. They'll give a color columns. This one is funded by property taxes. This one's funded by grants. This one's funded by donations and other sources. And so that you know that and you have a total at the bottom. So you know what percentages of each of that and there'll be a pie chart that shows that as well. So a lot of work has to go in. It's not for you to do, but by the time we get to the end, I want you to have that so you know that. So when we make this presentation to the planning board and the council, they can see how you're going to fund this capital improvements plan.

So, this is my first time on the CIP, so I'm going to probably, forgive me, I'll probably ask a lot of really... Oh, you missed the chair and co-chair.

Oh, don't even tell me, because the reason why I'm on this...

The only reason why I'm on this is I missed the planning board meeting, so...

They thought it would be good for my professional development.

You heard that one before too? So I may ask questions that you might go, this guy should know this already, so I apologize in advance.

All questions are good.

One of the things that always blows my mind when I see some of these budgets that are proposed is that I do have quite a bit of history and background on the development side of it, and just the amount of money that are budgeted for some of these. I mean, I understand that in the public sector, it costs more, maybe more restrictions or whatever that, but It always seemed to me that the amount budgeted for these projects was far outside what the private sector could do or build it for. Is there a reason for that?

Well, you've got to remember, most of these are conceptual. You don't have finalized numbers, so you've got a huge contingency you add on any project like this, and you also get inflationary factors in the out years. So in many cases, you're guessing. In other cases, we've been under-budgeted, like fire trucks, because there was a huge inflationary impact there. They went way out of control in terms of cost. You'd have a fire truck that you would normally spend about $800,000. It was in the CIP for that amount. Now it's $1.2 million. Same thing with ladder trucks. You used to be able to get those around 1.1 to 1.2. Now they're $2.4 million. So the cost just went through the roof in that particular sector.

So I'm not trying to be controversial here, but so we're sort of like padding our budget just to make sure that we have enough money left over at the end of the day to fund it?

Remember, this is not a budget. This is a plan. That's probably one of my learning curve points here.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is what the conceptual plan of what these look like. They haven't gone out to bid. There's no final design in most cases for these yet. And then what happens is on an annual basis, the council, of course, presents a budget. And then that's when you actually program those in, whether they're going to get funded or not. And those numbers hopefully have shrunk down quite a bit. You've got to – you don't have as large of a contingency in that particular year. So this is not a budget. It's just a plan to give you a conceptual idea what the costs are estimated to be that far out without the details and without the vetting process. DPW talked about a DPW garage around $45 million. Well, they got a committee that's vetting that and those numbers are changing. And they were talking about a fuel station. We don't need that. We're getting rid of the ones that we have and we're going to use fuel cards and buy it on the open market. and also buy it from dot right around the corner here so that's like three million dollars that just got cut off of that so that you know as you continue to vet the project especially those larger ones those numbers change hopefully the better not worse well i just from a civilian standpoint you're looking at it i go man i could i could build that that building for far less than what is in this

estimated number and I think that's what you get a lot of feedback from the public, you know, it goes you need that much money to build XYZ, you know, and it's it's my 2 cents on that but if you want I can kind of go through real quick all the projects and gives it just to give you an explanation on those as we

That make sense? Yeah. Sure. All right. Starting at the top, physical security access system, the town hall. That project is actually going to be funded in the next week, so that will probably be taken off. We put it in FY27, but we're operating on a Windows 7 system, and it continues to fail. At 9 o'clock at night, people can get in the building. When you have public meetings, that's a problem. It violates 91A, and it wouldn't open up.

You said Windows 7?

Yeah, Windows 7.

Okay. I didn't realize.

Yeah. So way outdated. So it's going to probably be around $57,000. This is geo-vining part of what you were talking about when we went out to bid. Yeah. Price came in at 57, it looks like, for that. That's like a middle range price for that. So that's that one. So that one's probably going to come off. And then physical security access control systems for DPW, senior center, and town commons. Again, estimated numbers until they actually go out to bid, and hopefully they come in lower. So again, the top one will be coming off, that'll reduce that down to 80. Finance and Human Services, ERP system, we're well past due on that. So we're looking at 286,850 potentially on that one. We're gonna see.

Sean, what would be the risk of, you know what, I'll. No, go ahead and ask. What would be the risk of not incorporating that system?

So right now with that one, we don't have – they're no longer selling it anymore, and they're doing patches at least for now, and it's very outdated. We don't comply with the administrative codes, DRA administrative codes, which we're supposed to. It is law, and we don't comply with those, and we're not able to do multiyear budgeting and projections. We can't do modeling. It's very inefficient in terms of accounts receivable and accounts payable, and I mean very inefficient, with very high error rates, and it's doing some hallucination. I don't know why it's doing that, but it's not producing correct numbers when you put the inputs in. We can't figure out why that's the case. So again, they're not selling it any longer.

So from a risk standpoint, I mean, among just a planning standpoint, there's a security risk if there is a data breach, then the town would be on the hook for far more than that cost right there?

Especially for the banking routing numbers that are in there for the people who pay electronically. All that would be, if that gets breached, there's a significant amount of loss in there. and account numbers for all kinds of different things, that would be a field day for a hacker to be able to access that kind of data on the dark web.

I'm assuming now my ears just kind of fired. I've got smoke coming from my ears right now. I'm assuming that all those are encrypted currently in both... So they're encrypted. I mean, the risk there is still limited, but it's still a huge risk now.

They produce SOC 2 reports. They do SOC audits. They're SAS compliant. It's a Tyler product. And they're getting everybody.

No, I'm talking about our current system.

Yeah. It's owned by Tyler Tech. It's a web-based application. And they are SOC 2 compliant. And they have SAS. They meet all the SAS requirements. But again, the question is how long are they going to do patches? Nobody else in New Hampshire uses it. We're the only ones left. So if we need to make any change, we're going to be at the very bottom of the list. We're going to have to pay for that change in the system. And like I said, they're not updating the program anymore. It's just way beyond its time frame. It's ancient.

What software does the school use for that? I don't know. You don't know? We should know. We should find out. and see if they're updated. Because if you can get a twofer at a better rate, then you should look at it. And it would be in case you need a guy from the town to go over to the school or the school to come over to the town, they can. It's definitely worth investigating if there is... Because I just think I'm a big proponent of cross-training, cross-bridging.

I also wonder if we've updated more recently, if we service the same group, can we get a discounted rate for that?

Yeah. It can't hurt to ask.

Absolutely.

There's no AI assist with this either, and there's no way to do priority-based budgeting with that program.

It's just beyond its time.

All right, moving on to fire department. They put all their items in FY27. I have to look at that again. But a lot of that is the order time now because it can be three years before you get a piece of equipment now. And they've got their replacement list in there. And as you can see, there's vehicles in there, self-contained breathing apparatus. They have a shelf life on those. Station repairs for station number 2, some of that is actually coming in front of the council on next Monday. For some of that work, about $300,000 worth of work, we need to replace the roof there, and the fascia is all rotted, and the paint's peeling off of it. So those things have to be fixed. We do have leaks in the roof, so before we have more damage, we don't have a disaster like the library.

So for that one?

Yep.

So it's fascia, it's roof, it seems high. Is that like an example of something that once you actually go... That's not, that 849 has a lot more things in there.

I didn't approve any of that. Okay. So the three something, that's to do the roof and that we've got in front of us right now, we're proposing to use funds in this year's budget. So if that gets approved on Monday, that'll get spent and that'll come off of this 849. And the other thing is other repairs they want to make to the station. We had both the hot water tanks both failed, and one week we had to shut the station down.

Yeah, no, I'm just asking, is that something that's likely to come in under budget?

It'll depend, right, when we do that. Right now I have to fix the roof, right? The other stuff I'm not. Yeah. They've got it scheduled for next year, but that's probably not when that's going to happen.

All right.

Strike your ambulance stretcher. Those are those automated stretchers that they use now. They lift. They're exceptionally expensive. Townwide emergency communication system upgrade. There's a number of towers that have dead spots in them. And then the Zetron station alerting system needs further improvements to that.

Emergency communications, does that include the police end of it as well, or just happens to be under fire, or?

It's a town-wide system, but it really is the fire channels. It has something to do with the PD piece of it. Leach Library. They've got a children's room renovation. And then they've got other renovation projects. Now that encompasses the 572 that the council is considering on Monday, which would come out of the FY26 budget. So that would reduce that if they approve that. But there's repairs, I think it's $856,000 for roof repair and replacing the HVAC units. One of those hasn't functioned in nine years. And they're way beyond their lifespan. In fact, we have to rent portable units to get the humidity out of the room so the mold doesn't grow back. And we're going to need to keep those in place until HVAC units are up here. But that's going to be in next year's budget, that $8.56. We don't have it in this year's budget. We'll have to figure that piece out.

So now the library is up to what? If this, the two and the two, is like $4 million? Yes.

No, it's like $1.7 million.

I'm sorry?

$1.7 million in that range.

Doesn't that say two?

Right, they are asking for other things in addition to the repairs that we're talking about.

No, no, no, I'm talking about overall, including this, everything we've spent so far and are about to spend.

No, no, that's what I'm saying. It's not, you're dealing with apples and oranges. So they've got some of those things in here and they've got some other things they're proposing, but not all the work that has been done because that work is already appropriated

I understand that. What I'm saying is, in total, of things that have spent, money we've spent, money we're about to spend, and money that we're probably going to have to spend, in total, all of it, one big bundle, is going to be, for the library, would be $4,000, $4 million?

Something under that.

All right, well that's just a example like I could I could build 3 of those buildings for 4 well that that was what I was trying to point at is that for 4 million dollars we could have got it that they put a brand new library in that.

All right, so police department now roof replacement 125,000 actually getting a quote on that now and that may come on the expendable maintenance trust fund they do have leaks in their building and you can see some of the roof damage and take just take a look at a little with him.

Are they using the same roof for all of it?

We're getting quotes. They're getting bids right now.

But are they... When they're getting the bids, are they bidding... Are they all bidding the same people? So that they could say, look, we've got three, I thought I saw three roofs on there, that this, the fire, the police, that's three. And the school one, so now there's four. Like, are we paying to these guys? We got four roofs that have to get done at, you know, and that's the way they're bidding on it? Or is it each one independently?

As I said, REARC, we're putting an addition on. They're getting a roof bid for that. They're also asking for roof bids for the rest of this building, the police station, and fire station number two. So they're bidding. Those are all to bid at the same time.

That's what I was asking. Right. And so they're going out to bid to the same people saying there's going to be four roofs.

That's right.

That's what I was asking. Thank you.

And we'll get the quotes on that.

All right, DPW. Again, they have the town hall roof in there. Again, if those bids come back and we choose to do that with an expendable maintenance trust fund money, that'll get dropped off the list. DPW facility, he's got $50 million in there, but again, that has to be vetted. That's the same number they kept in there before, and there's a whole committee that's working on that. Bancroft Road reconstruction project, 1.6. Hall Road Bridge replacement, $2 million. And then, again, these are the federal funds that are provided to that bridge funds for the Hall Road Bridge project.

I remember when we replaced the Hall Road Bridge. It didn't seem like it was. I must be getting old.

You're dating yourself.

You're catching up to me, Johnny.

There's a scour issue that you can't see. It's underneath the bridge. The bridge looks fine if you drive over it, but underneath this, where the abutments reach the ground, there's a scour issue there, which places it on the red list for bridges. Okay, intersection corridor study, $750,000. There's actually three corridor studies, and I've asked them to break that out. There's the Pillsbury Road East corridor study from Mammoth Road all the way to the Derry Line. I expect Woodmont to pay for that. That's in the range of about $120,000 to $150,000. We've already had discussions with them. uh there is the um auburn road corridor study which we expect the developer lamontane to pay for that they've already provided the first thirty thousand dollar check for that to do traffic data collection which one's that uh it's under it says number 47 intersection corridor study oh okay okay so that's all part of the yeah and then there's the litchfield road quarter study we don't have a developer to charge that off to yet um And then there's other smaller, I won't call them smaller, but there's other intersections that are on a list of 46 sections of roadway and intersections that the Traffic Management Working Group has identified and made a presentation to the council on June 1st. And then there are 17 priority projects that are further narrowed down onto that that need to be looked at and studied so that we can take the next step and either get them in the 10-year highway plan or fund them in some other fashion. But at least they're ready. When we do have development projects that developers coming in, we can say, look, this is what needs to be done at the center section. This is your proportional cost thereof. And the planning board has that authority under present statute under the exaction provision.

John, you should look at the... the council meeting and see if you can get a copy of that presentation that the police did on this it's really really very very interesting and the data that they're going to get from what they're doing and how it reads it's i found it fascinating and it was you should really try to get it or watch it one or the other can you email me which one it was Was it last Monday? No.

It's on our website. Just type in traffic management work. Was it last Monday?

Yeah. This is the last council meeting. You want me to watch the council meeting? Huh?

You want me to watch the council meeting? Just that one section. There's no reason to punish him. So if you go to the traffic page, traffic management work, they have the Excel spreadsheet on there and the explanations there. It'll save you the fun of watching that meeting.

But the presentation was very good.

So Stokes Road Bridge is also another red-listed bridge. We're going to recommend that, and that's in the program for funding. We're going to make a recommendation to the council in July that they ask for the transfer of the money from the Stokes Road Bridge to the Hall Road Bridge. Stokes Road Bridge we're recommending be removed as part of the intersection project with 128 there, and then they'll dead-end that road, and then they'll realign the other end of Stokes Road with the intersection with 128 and 28. and we're working with the state on that, and they'll allow us to transfer those funds to the Hall Road Bridge project, and then we'll have done both of our red-listed bridges, and we won't have any after that.

Can I ask a question on that? So, like, I was just trying to place where Stokes Road is, but it's that little loop road that comes off of 28 and goes back on 28, and then how does that align with that intersection?

It will.

Where? Where?

We're at the intersection.

Of Old Mammoth Road or of Route 28 and 28?

Route 28 and 128.

I just don't see it. It's like over here and one's over there.

It won't be over there anymore.

They'll be lined up. Still don't see it. But neither here nor there.

You should make an appointment to sit and talk with them to get maps of stuff.

Another reason, why would you punish him again? What did he do wrong? Okay.

Just to help him get up to speed. It's important stuff.

So that totals on a $4.6 million right there. Sewer projects, Century Village project, that's $2 million that they would pay for? And also grants from CWSRF, the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Penton Gill Road Commerce Park, $1.5 million. Again, these are sewer projects up in that area. Then South Londonderry Sewer Interceptor Fees II, Area C. That's about $12 million altogether. And then Woodmont Commons Area 18B. A lot of these are either paid for by grants, revolving loan funds, or developers.

So like just so I understand, like when you say like Century Village, they're paying for it. So they're probably assessing it out to the in their condo fees. Right. And it's probably like in lieu of replacing existing leach fields or something like there's some cost analysis.

There is. And there's also, again, CWSRF revolving loan funds that are available for that type of project.

Thank you.

And then we have vehicles for DPW, and there's a whole list that they added a skid steer in there, so that's not on that list yet, but that will come on there as well.

So just to follow up on that, when they're paying for it, why are we budgeting for it? Not that it's a budget, but why is it in there?

It's part of our capital improvements plan. A lot of these, again, have funding sources other than property tax dollars. Everything that you have is supposed to be in your plan. And the reason for that is a couple reasons for that. One, when you apply for grants, they're looking to see if it's in your plan. And also, if you have projects in an area, then you can assess those, in some cases, to developers to make them responsible for those costs. But if you have no plan in which to do that, you can't do that. The other thing that's been added is unassigned projects listed in the far right. They may not fit into the six-year schedule because they may not have a funding source that's been identified. But if we have them on our list in our program, then when we apply for grants, we can say, yeah, it's part of our program. It hasn't been assigned a year yet. We don't have the funding source. And then you pull what I call taking it off the shelf and putting it back in the program. I did that a lot where I was before. They were looking to see, is it in your program? If it's not, don't bother us. If you're planning for it and you've got it in there, okay, then we can fund it.

Because the reality is this would be a document that is backed by data, supported by the town, that can go forward to those, whoever requests this report. Previously, for whatever reason, it wasn't this comprehensive. And I think now we're seeing kind of the drawback of that. now we're now you know there's going to be a lot of conversation on this list here rightfully so um and i think illustrating where the funding source is gets us to those conversations where we can absolutely say yes we need xyz however it's being funded by whatever state fund, if that's, I know it's New Hampshire, so that doesn't really exist, or what have you, but I think this allows us to move from conceptual discussions to factual discussions.

One of the things that's really short here is roads and bridges. In a town of this size, with the road network we have, and this is all you have for projects, and two of these are state-funded projects, This corridor study is really important because this will grow significantly. So when a developer like Woodmont, Procopia, or La Montaigne comes in and says, look, we want to build here. Well, okay, to do that, these intersections are already at level service F. They need significant improvements to be able to allow the traffic flow. They're already at capacity. Here's the data we already have. And these are the projects that are necessary to make that happen. That's when you take those projects off of the NSI projects list and you move them into place and you have a funding source to say, okay, the developer is going to pay a certain percentage of the cost of that because that's what should be assessed through the exaction process or development agreement to make that happen. So this one here on line 47 that talks about intersection corridor study is the genesis of a lot more projects that will come out, not to mention state routes that need Route 102 and Route 28 in particular and Route 128 south. um those have fallen back on the state's list we need to use our advocacy and the political influence that we have to get those higher on the list and get those done so those projects can get into the 10-year highway plan it's really a 30-year highway plan but nonetheless the 10-year highway plan is what they call it well i think that's important because you know that's one of the biggest things we hear on the planning board level is uh you know the infrastructure is failing so

I look at that and I say, well, that is a very small list compared to what we hear. But on the flip side, it's not all the next guys in fault to our responsibility. So I think you said proportionate is a fair thing to say. But then what happens to the other proportionate?

You know the answer to that, unfortunately. Because the taxes are going to, yeah, because right now, you look at the intersection at Gilchrist and Pillsbury, I'll just take those two. They've already been determined at level service F from development that's already there. And we have not taken advantage of the opportunity to assess developers, those costs. So now, Procopia, we have a development agreement drafted with them. They're only gonna pay us a portion of that because that's their impact on those intersections. The rest of it, the taxpayers are now stuck with. We've lost those opportunities. At least the attempt now is to try to, what I say, stop the bleeding and try to make sure that those developments, future developments that go in there, pay their proportional share, but the taxpayers are going to be stuck with that. Auburn Road is another example of that. We're doing the traffic studies now, but if you look down there at certain times of the day, I guarantee you the intersection of 28 and Auburn Road are at level service F. and probably Liberty as well, and then Old Dairy Road where it meets Auburn Road are probably at level service F certain times of the day. So the new developer in there, he can't be held responsible for that. He or she can't be held responsible for that. They are going to have their incremental proportional costs for their impact, but the rest of it's either going to be on us or whatever grants we can possibly get.

But it is the town's responsibility that the citizens are part of the town to keep up and maintain the infrastructure. So if it's already at a level F, you either put up with it. and drive on a level F road or you actually fix it.

Right, but if we were at level A or B or C and we had new developments come in. Well, we wouldn't need to, but what we might do is charge the proportional share to those new developments that come on board. So when we get to the level of F, we've already built up a revenue source to be able to go towards that. And that is something the planning board does have the authority to presently do in statute. It doesn't require an impact fee ordinance to do that. And if we had done that, we would have a source of revenue to offset that. And what has to be paid for by the taxpayer would be much smaller. But now where we're at, we're already at level F. So all of that we own. And now anything above that, the developer adds, they're going to be proportionally responsible for. But we've lost the opportunity previous to that. So that's where we are. All right. All right. And then we had all the water projects. We built on about $40 million worth, $30,453,000 worth of water projects to deal with PFAS. And there's a total of 12 of those there. Well, 13 if you've got 4A and 4B. We've applied for two grants for this year, congressionally directed spending grants, and they have made it through the process, which is encouraging. One with Senator Shaheen and one with Congressman Pappas. So those are going to the appropriation process with the federal budget. And if they're passed, we'll have funding for those. That's 80-20 split. Cost share.

Help me understand that. So 80% of that's coming from a federal grant? Yep. If they get approved? Yep. Okay.

That's the plan for all of those.

Does that ultimately somehow get funded from the person that caused the issue, like St. Cobain? No.

No? No. The reason why that's the case is that the state created the dividing line. High Range Road. The west of High Range Road, they said St. Cobain has some degree of responsibility for. Anything east of that, they do not. The state preempted the municipalities and individuals from the ability to sue St. Cobain. So we are, the rest of it is us.

So where did it come from? Yeah. I mean, I live in the middle of the woods and I get PFAS.

You got to understand that there's like rivers underground. And when you do construct, like this river may be going this way and you do construction. Now the branch goes off this way. And then you get two rivers that are contaminated. So it's going over here. You could have a house right here that has PFAS. You can have a house next to it that doesn't. Another house that doesn't. And the next house does. It all depends on what you're drawing from underground.

I get a well that's 300 feet from another well. And one has PFAS and one doesn't.

That's what I mean. It just spreads. And the more you divide things underground, that we're unaware of what we're... This is how the Army Corps of Engineers explained it to me. The more we move things underground from blasting or building, we're changing, ripping up trees, roots that used to suck up water, we ripped them all up. Now there's a bigger vein and they look for cracks and... So you just it just keeps growing and expanding and then Saint Cobain stuff was in the air came down on ponds and lakes and it rains and it rains and it goes down to the bottom of the lake and that gets pushed into the ground and it goes it was a very interesting I learned a lot I'll shut up.

So these the against the number of projects here are our plan is to fund these with grants but we also have 20% we have to pay for somehow. we don't own our own waterworks we have no way to charge it off in that fashion like other municipalities would we're putting this infrastructure in and we're turning it over to either pennant chuck waterworks uh dairy waterworks or manchester waterworks and then there's all state fund estate revolving fund loans uh pretty much the grants have dried up from the state level so other than congressionally directed spending that's really our primary source for revenue for that So that's that whole chunk right there. And that's our plan on those. So project number 12 at the bottom there, line 78, is one we submitted. That was Congress, that was, yeah, that's, no, Pappas' office was the other one. I think that was Shaheen's. But anyway, and then 4A, line 69, project 4A is the one we submitted through the other legislator. So we'll see what happens with those. Pillsbury Cemetery expansion, they're looking at $400,000 in that all total. And what people may believe is that does not fund itself, especially the way it's set up presently. We don't bring in enough revenue. We don't charge enough to be able to do that. And we're not maximizing the use of our space, like columbariums and those sorts of things. So we're doing it the more expensive way. Plus people are living longer. Yes. But there's still a need, and it's not going to go away. All right. Recreation, again, a lot of these are funded by LAFRA and those organizations, and those are what the needs are indicated there, although they won't be able to fund all of that. And then school district, I'm not familiar with their projects at all. They'll have to articulate those. So altogether, that rounds out to be $176,192,505. And again, there'll be a couple of additions and some changes here and there.

Sean, are we in a spot to kind of categorize these projects in the sense of whether we've committed to them, if they're still unplanned, if they're just conceptual and then deferred.

Well, no, the only time, so every year, again, the council approves a project. They approve a budget, and those projects are in there, funding them one fashion or another, whether that be through capital reserve funds or whether that be for leases in the case of vehicles or bonding or simply cash. So that's done on an annual basis.

That's what will go in front of the council for approval. So these are all on conceptual then?

They are. Except for the ones I told you at the top. Like I said, this one, I'm going to sign the contract on that one for $57,000 probably next week. And that's committed then? Yeah. And like I say, those will drop off once that happens. The way that the statute actually reads, it tells you the projects that are underway presently and any future projects. the technical letter of the statute, but anyway. So that's the list as it is now, and I will schedule departments to make presentations on the respective dates that we have, and I expect to have new sheets coming out with some additional information, and I plan to have a completely different sheet next year that'll have things along the lines of what I would call priority-based budgeting, strategic budgeting, and not what traditionally has been done. It'll be like similar to what ROI type of items in there, what you're replacing, why you have to replace your revenue sources. A little bit more articulation in that. Something similar to what you would see in the private sector than compared to what is traditionally in the public sector. Public value, that kind of things. Anyway, questions about the list as it is for now? Chairman Gray, I'll turn it over to you, sir.

I believe, is that the last thing on the agenda? Can you pull it back up? I don't have it in front of me. All right, so that is it. Other than going to accept this public comment, but looking out across the packed audience, I don't think we have any public comment tonight. So before we go to adjournment, did anyone else have anything that they wanted to discuss or bring up?

I just wanted to say that I went over the meeting dates I will be away with the family on vacation on June 30th so I don't know if the effects doesn't seem like there's a huge group of people here so I don't know if you want to I'm fine if you don't need me there that's fine but if you do need me there I'm gonna be in Italy so I'm not coming back for this. I won't be able to catch a plane.

We have teams and all. We can just teams you in. What's that? We can use teams, you know.

Yeah. I don't think there's internet access where I'm going. I'm in prison now. So I don't know if that matters or not.

I mean, I think we can probably fall forward and close to the date for some reason two other people can't make it because we need at least three. So we need two other people to not make, to have to reschedule. So I think probably okay with that.

Okay. Did we want to give any guidance to presentations of exactly what we're looking for? Because I just don't want one department to come in, give us their life story, and then another just to kind of give us something completely different.

I purchased a stage hook, by the way.

Do you have Oscar music to play them off to? That's probably a good idea what the key points are. I think that's part of what you were getting at earlier. Asking them to come up with more 50s check marks, bullet points type. So I think maybe We all have a little bit of homework the week before. Hopefully we get this at least a week before. The week before, take a look at what's in there and is there anything you feel is missing from it so that we can ask them to have that ready by the time they come to present. That way we're not having them show up unprepared for what we are looking for if we haven't seen it. Does that sound fair to everyone?

Absolutely. Yep. So could you keep it to four slides?

I would love that. Maybe let them know that checking all the boxes about brevity is nice. Concise and to the point is wonderful and looked, smiled upon.

I think real data, too. I want real data. I don't want, like, oh, I looked up online, and this is what it said, or I've heard, or this is the best. I want actual real data, like not... just how you feel about it. So that's what I would like in advance so that I can search what they're saying and so that I can ask intelligent questions.

So when you say real data, are you trying to get closer to a hard number versus just... Well, not just a hard number, but a need or desire.

So like the turf fields, you weren't here either, but you were. And We had a discussion and they were like, you know, all these places have turf fields. And then I said, well, these places don't. And what is the reasoning behind it? You know, I heard more injuries happen with turf fields. And they said no. Then I found out that we're going to have to maintain both fields. Now, that comes at a cost. We'll be maintaining the dirt fields for practice and then the turf fields for the tournaments. And those turf fields got to get maintained and tore up. So it became a whole thing that, like, you can't just say, oh, they're good fields. Because why are they good fields? Like, I wanted the actual information. Why are they good fields? Oh, I thought I was hitting something.

No, no, you're good. Why are they good fields? What happens if we don't make this investment? What's the cost of, what's the loss? Yeah, justification. Justification, pros, cons, analysis, if there's any kind of... know like that what you were saying some regulatory language or regulatory need or compliance need of like why we need to you know do like what's the cost of like deferred maintenance to a building versus fixing it right right yeah we can we can just use the library as an example yeah right so i mean that's i mean but like that would be kind of one of those items too and you know the reality is if we do open up a roof we're gonna find something else i mean

Yeah, and last year at the school, I'm sorry, they had put the high school maintenance that needed to be done, and the pictures that they showed was cement that looked worn away, like it wasn't maintained. So now it's at the point you need to tear it down, rebuild it. Why was that happening? What are we going to put in place? What's the process to be put in place to make sure that doesn't happen again? Because it's cheap. I mean, I've seen Art Salita save things for years. He's just very good at being due diligent that way. And they had put the auditorium in there. And that made it hard because even though you wanted to be for fixing the things at the high school that needed to be fixed, it was inside with the auditorium so you it wasn't split apart and I remember asking could you split it apart because this is something that may or may not be needed and this is something that's definitely needed for safety of children so that was where I struggled and I'm just giving examples and that's why I'm saying it's not whether you're for or against if you have all your facts there and all your details The results should be obvious and there should be no question. It should be just how do we get there. And so that's where I sit.

Just to be clear, you're not going to get details. You're not going to get facts. This is a plan. This is not the appropriation. It's a totally different process. So you don't have that at this level of detail at this point. So I want to be very clear about that. That's not how this works. There's no way that I can tell you what it's going to cost the DPW garage 3 years from now because it hasn't gone out to be we don't have an architect on board yet, you're not we're not having a mission of the hold on you have the information about why you're requesting this project.

Yeah, that's exactly sure I get that part and there's the compliance aspect of why we're kind of doing that. There's the deferred maintenance aspect. From a budgetary, I agree. They're fuzzy numbers at the best. Until you get to that stage of the process. From the process of us prioritizing the projects, that's the information that we need. So I think we're saying the same thing.

Yeah, that's on the sheet that you have anyway. It actually goes right through that. So I think we're saying the same thing, though, right?

Yeah.

Well, I want to make sure we're saying the same thing, because we want hard numbers. You don't get hard numbers when you're putting a plan together. You have conceptual numbers.

So if we just stopped thinking about the budget aspect, I mean, granted, yeah, it's going to come in, and that's where the discussion is always going to go. But from a priority standpoint... I don't know. You still need the numbers.

I think the key is the hard numbers aren't referring to budgetary numbers. They're referring to the data that's backing the needs. So those are the numbers that we're looking for. Like, here's what we want in hard facts is the need-based numbers. We're seeing this kind of attrition. We're seeing this kind of degradation. Here are the pictures that back it. Here's the data that backs it. We know it's going to cost something. We have no idea what it's going to cost. We don't, to a degree, we don't care. I mean, yes, we're going to throw fuzzy numbers on it, but it's more of like we want the hard data that this is needed. This isn't needed. We are going to get something out of this if we do it. Those types of numbers. I think that's kind of what we're talking about.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to say. The justification.

Right. The justification. The hard justification. Budgetary numbers are fuzzy. We don't roughly, you know, within reason, care. That make sense from that point of view?

No, yeah, and that's exactly how the system is set up. That's why the forms are what they are and the information that is there. I'm trying to get more of why do we need to do this instead of that? What's the return on investment for this? Why would I buy this skid steer? Is there another piece of equipment that can actually do the job? And if we don't buy it, then how have we gotten by without it? What have we done? And what level of service is going to change or be degraded because we don't have that piece of equipment?

And that would be that. That's exactly what I would be looking at as I kind of formulate my prioritization.

Well, I thought that's what I said, but I don't know. Maybe I didn't. But that's exactly what I was trying to get at.

I just keep getting hung up on, and I'll adjust my frame of thought on this. I just keep getting hung up on it. we're just throwing a number at it we're saying uh i don't know it's a thousand bucks a square foot but realistically you can do it for 500 bucks a square foot we would still need to prioritize that that would be even something to kind of you know to kind of go down but to your point though that's a good point if it's gonna like

If I can buy a fire truck for a dollar today, or $10 next week, I'd want to buy that today, so I prioritize that purchase today. So yeah, it's, yeah, no, I see what you're saying.

All these things go out to bid. Like this addition right here, they're getting at least three bids on each one of the divisions, each one of the trades. So it goes out to bid, and the project's coming in where we expected it to be, $3.9 million project for that addition. That's what it is. Some of them are overbid, what we expected, and some are under.

Is it fair to also kind of, as we're looking at funding sources too, is it fair to also kind of ask what are the funding sources that could potentially invest in this project?

The form doesn't really do a good job of asking that. That's why I've sent these back to people to say, look, we need to know where the money's going to come from, where we think we're going to get the money from.

even where it could come from.

Realistically, where we think we're going to be able to get it from. Because the commissioner of, in the case of all those water, that's $38 million worth of work there. And the commissioner has already told us that town lenders already received $50 million more than anybody else. You're not going to get any more. You can get revolving, drinking water state revolving fund loans, low interest loans. You can get the PFAS fund loans, but you're in competition with everybody else. And then you also have congressionally directed spending grants, which has nothing to do with them, which is what we're applying for right now. So those are the legitimate sources. Um, You know, we're using a special assessment interest, or at least we're trying to, for water line extensions. So those people pay for that. So property taxpayers are not doing that. So we're using all the tools that we have available to us. But the form doesn't really do a good job of soliciting that. That's why I've sent a lot of them back to say, you know, you've got to figure that out, flesh that out a little bit more.

Yeah, no, I'm good.

Awesome. No, I love that. It's great clarification there across the board. All right, so is everyone good? Does everyone else have anything? All right, so with that, I will look for a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

Second. And second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you much.