Capital Improvements Program (cip) Committee - Regular Meeting

Officially call to order the CIP committee meeting for June 30th, 2026. Going through the agenda, we're going to go right next to new business, which is the beginning of the project overviews and presentations. Before we do kick into that, just a reminder to anyone who might be tuning into this video, this is a, what we're trying to achieve here is to create an advisory document for the town council and school board to use. It is advisory only, and the goal is to basically help to order and prioritize the major capital projects. in the town between the two boards so that we can try to keep a nice stable level tax base and property tax base by spacing them out in a known way. So with that, if anyone has anything else they want to add, feel free. I just have some preliminary items. Please do.

So you have a new prioritization form that I provided that the departments have been using. Hopefully that meets your needs. If it doesn't, obviously let us know. The nice thing about a process like this, it continually changes. We have some updated information on two of these projects, and parts of those or all of those might come off of the CIP list if they get addressed. Like the first one you have actually is coming before the council on July 20th. If they approve that project, then that will be removed from the CIP. And the cyber services project, part of that has already been addressed. It's under contract now. So those things will get removed as they get approved in another fashion. We don't need to continue to have them on the CIP.

Okay. That's great. Wonderful. So with that... Is there anything else you want to add, Sean?

No, that was it. I just wanted to make sure. Is there anything else that you need from us in terms of materials that we're providing, those sorts of things? I know DPW has a couple of the projects they have to split out in there.

Yep.

So that's still coming. We don't have that yet. But other than that, those are the changes thus far.

I looked over what was on the agenda for tonight, and it looked good to me. I don't know if anyone else had anything else they wanted from that beforehand. Perfect. Okay. I agree. So with that, let's go ahead and go right to the first presentation from the police department.

If you don't mind, I'm going to try to stand because all this gear doesn't fit in the right chairs. Just grab the mic there if you would. I will grab the mic. Good evening, CIP members, Councillor Paul. We've been tasked, as you folks know, with CIP projects for the police department. I wanted to just reiterate some things before I get into this for way of history. For the better part of 20 years, the police department has maintained its building, and as you folks can tell through the tours and time over there, we take great pride in renting this building to work in, if you would. It's not ours. It's all of yours. But we treat it as if it's ours. make sure that that facility is running the most efficient way possible it's up to date it looks good it's clean it feels good we believe that having a good building to work in produces better quality work by your people too and that's not easily done with police you need someone to manage that you need someone to oversee that that has an area of expertise within that And that man here is our fleet, excuse me, our facilities maintenance supervisor, JR Valenti. JR oversees the entire building every single day, preventative maintenance, scheduling, et cetera. And I'll let JR introduce himself real quick.

JR Valenti. I've been with the police department now for five years. I've been a Londonderry resident since 2005. I've been in the building trades probably since I was eight years old. Grew up in a family business. My grandfather started a business and then my father with his five brothers worked the business. And then I came up and summers were not an option for me, so I went to work. I've been in the building trades full time for about 25 years, MAS license holder, construction supervisor, ran a bunch of projects, houses, all that. Mainly more on the residential side of things, but I've done a little light commercial too. It's not really much different. So with that said, been taking great care of the building i am a resident so money matters here uh i try to do as much as possible myself with my skills and background so uh try to keep the taxes down

What he's talking about a lot of those things we've had projects happen and I'm gonna get to the roof stuff here As you folks know from our tour We talked about the dispatch facility and other renovations within the police department things that JR has done to with financial oversight For example, building things like this rather than buying them. The amount of money this man has saved, the PD, the taxpayers, is unbelievable. So when this project was presented, CIP for the town, I spoke with the town manager and then assistant town manager, Kelly Caron, about what the need might be for the PD. Our budget is very well managed by JR for the day-to-day, preventative maintenance scheduling, electric, all these things. But this is one of those projects that's gonna come up here near future, that we feel we should probably get to it ahead of time versus the latter. I don't want to rain on the parade of other buildings in town that are not as good or have been as maintained as well, but yet we have an example currently that's being challenged by the town with a roof problem or leaking or mold or whatever example you want to use. We're trying to get ahead of this and not have it happen. That building is 24 years old. Most people don't realize that, but it's 24. It looks better than most houses after 24 years. We want to keep that. When that building was built, it was probably $5 million. Now it's probably $30 million. So we presented to you for the CIP to look at replacing the roof shingles, entertaining some solar option for the near things that we've talked about before, about how else can we save our electric bills, et cetera. We think now is a good time at the direction from the town manager and then assistant town manager, Kelly Caron, And with JR, why not now? This is one of those things that in three years, if we neglect it, we're going to be in a different situation than we could be if we address it. The costs are going to go up in three years. Why are we going to do that? It's just like when you know your vehicle is coming up for an oil change, why would you risk either not getting it done or blowing it off? You need to address these things for maintenance purposes. That roof, again, is 24 years old. Could we get by? Maybe. We had a roof leak this past winter. We had to have Shady Hill, a local company, come in and go up on the roof and get all that stuff off. We've had a couple small leaks throughout the years in similar areas or that similar area of the front of the PD. So we felt as though this project is worthy of your time and attention, especially for the residents of this community. We understand, especially from the PD side of the house, there's been a lot of asks. Budget season's right around the corner. These things don't go away. And the asks don't seem to stop. And I understand that. My pitch to you as the police chief in being financially responsible in that mission of mine is to come before you, share with you what we're looking at, and get your feedback. We're hoping that you folks would agree that these buildings are important to maintain. And while we do do that, I just don't have $100,000 sitting around in a slush fund to just go and write a check and fix this tomorrow. But I think with the collective brains that sit before me right now can give us some direction. So with that long dissertation of the need for a roof, that's where I stand.

The other part, too, it's important to remember is that we're going to be having the roof done on the building right behind me here and to get the best bid price to do as many roofs as we can because we're also looking at doing the town hall roof. And the other part of that is we have an opportunity to take advantage of solar. If you're going to do solar, you want to do it when you put a new roof on. And then we have a 30% tax credit that's going to go away. and we've got a return on investment of about 2.7 million dollars over 40 years if we do the fire station number two this roof and that roof all at the same time and we get the economies of scale and they're already deployed here to do that so now is the time to do that that will be coming before the council on july 20th asking the council to use funds out of emtf to do all these roofs at the same time and take advantage of those opportunities

Thank you for pointing out the solar part. I know you and I have talked about this before. And it's important, right? Because I think a lot of people dismiss that. But there is a long-term cost savings here. And I think that if we share that same philosophy with the residents that, as the town manager just pointed out, Yeah, 40 years is a long time. But again, it's still X amount of millions of dollars. That's no small number. And if we can address this now, there is long-term benefit and savings. And then maybe we can get other buildings in town to jump on the same team.

I'm thinking about the solar impact. I remember last year when I was helping the library with their budget, one of the things I looked at when we were talking about increase in costs of certain utilities, electric, The rate of inflation on that was almost double what it was for regular CPI. The cost of electricity is increasing significantly faster than other things. So the solar aspect of it and the cost savings is gonna be huge. It's one of those things that you make the investment and then you get it paid back to you later on down the road. And being able to combine it with the SAU building, and other buildings that need new roofs, you get the cost savings there, the timing feels good for it.

So yeah, timing is great, right? It's everything. And aesthetically, they'll be all the same if you get all the same color and all the same stuff. But the net zero is very important because I have a funny feeling not too far in the future, we're going to be having to look at heating systems. cooling systems not just you know if we can get all of that and get rid of oil go to electric heat and you can get enough electricity from your panels you now eliminate and have a net zero energy bill for the whole town which would be great to be able to turn everything over Right to to work that way.

It's a good thing to think about too. You know those things that we easily dismiss in our day-to-day lives especially when running businesses like this because it is a business we're given a budget we have to come under and so on um to that point counselor paul you know we often think about this as a pd and we have our command staff meetings and we as i've shared with the budget committee members we always find ways to cut and save like that's part of our mission most of the command staff gets annoyed with me at times because i say no to a lot of stuff too

Well, that would mean you wouldn't be in a good boss if you didn't get annoyed at you. That's what you're supposed to get annoyed at your boss.

That's in the book, right? And about the electric stuff. So many years ago, maybe four or five, Counselor Paul and some other people started, I always forget the name of it. The Utility Committee. The Utility Committee. And they came to the PD. And that was one of the things that we talked about. I think it was Mr. Breslin or, if I recall, asked me, like, will we pay for electric?

And we were like high fives, I believe.

which people don't realize, $5,000, they'd be like, oh my gosh, a lot of money. We have two buildings, and they're two big buildings. This one is run 24-7, right? So that draws a lot. We were able to change, get out some old ballast, reduce it to LED. We put motion sensors in rooms, things of that nature. We've changed ceiling panels, as you guys heard me talk about before. Those things we can control on the inside at minimal cost at that time because JR does it. uh... for the long-term cost savings as you were referring to again i don't know what that's gonna look like in forty years and also look like in ten years i won't be intact here in ten years to tell you what that savings was but what i can tell you is that as jr can uh... definitely qualified the statement there's not one thing in that pd building maintenance line that has stayed the same uh... since he's been in charge of of that's what we're seeing uh... the costs have gone up crazy. Every single thing that we talk about goes up.

So looking in the future. Correct. That's a task for you to think about getting the heating and cooling over to all electric. I mean, you have to see how much you're going to generate. Yes.

I mean, there's a whole... Yeah, I was told the numbers weren't as great as like town halls because we're 24-7 operations, but... Like one of the things is our AC unit is an older unit, and I'm sure technology changes, everything gets better, more efficient. So when that time comes around, that's going to be a cost savings too, long term.

But when you're putting in the solar, you should be talking to the person and figuring out, will we need special plugs? You know, kind of like you need special...

Yeah, those are all great things that you know what I mean?

Like you want to do it and then we could budget a little here a little bit as we move forward doing what we need to do.

You know what I'm trying to say? I know exactly what you're saying. We're trying to forecast shadow and see what's coming ahead of us with that project. And, and that is smart. And that does make sense. And that reminder is good, because these are some of the things that I don't always think about. But that thing will remind Jr. And this will be on our talking points.

And then JR needs to take all of that information and present it to FIRE library so that they have, I mean, not for anything, I feel like you're a little bit ahead right now because they've been behind. But you know what I'm trying to say. I think at the end of the day, you have to think of it as we're one town. This is one municipality, be it school or whatever, police, fire, it's all one. And it's all coming from the same pocketbook. So we really have to be mindful. And if you can share your knowledge with somebody to help them catch up to speed, that's always a good thing, I think. Why redo it? Why pay somebody to do what you've already done? To do it over here and to do it over here and to, you know what I mean? That's kind of silly. It's redundant.

And it's true. And so those, Sean, did you say that you gave them or they have the costs?

The council does. These folks don't have that. Okay.

So again, you know, the number being what it is, three years from now or two years from now, it's not going to be that. We all know it's not going to go down, you know, so that's why we're here before you today.

I just want to say when I took the tour of the station, I was incredibly impressed by the cost savings that went into it and the services that was provided because of that cost savings. Obviously, it's a roof. It's a critical need. You don't want to delay that aspect if the council does want to take up the cost. The collaboration of you know doing all the roofs, you know, that's their prerogative to do so Hopefully they do But with that said I mean I agree with the proposed priority classification of critical You didn't kind of mention that this is you know in a two to three near term need but you know, obviously that's kind of you know that's Structured, you know with you know, what you discussed earlier if we're able to kind of get this at a better price And the council agrees and Jeff thanks for noticing that too because that two to three year thing.

We're not pros Neither is anyone else This man knows a lot about building stuff. So again, when I was talking to the town manager about it, and you can look out from the second floor windows over here, you can see the cupping of the shingles. You can see an area where a shingle or two is missing. We know that it's coming. You know what I mean? That's why when I was mentally saying, OK, and writing down two or three years, you know that's great but as the town manager said too like okay what if it gets worse over the next two or three years now i'm coming to you guys in three years so you know with the support of the town manager realizing that this is an issue and you folks here today you know obviously there's a lot of things to spend money on town there is there always will be i think this is one of those things that we should address

It's not for you. So are you going to strip all of the old stuff off and make sure that the wood underneath is?

I believe that's on the bids. I haven't seen. I didn't look at the bid. I'm just asking because I think that's the way you got to do it. Yes, it's going to be. I know it was spec to have ice and water shield for the complete roof, which is your basically a secondary membrane that definitely will protect anything that penetrates into the shingles. So I think that was listed on there.

Well, I'm thinking because if you're putting solar panels, you kind of want it to be underneath the wood be good. And you can't see that until you take off the roof and make sure that the nailing and you think I did this, but I don't.

Usually most quotes have a 10% to 15% contingency written into the quote. So it's possible that contingency would cover that as part of their initial quote.

For the most part, everything I've seen on the building looks good, so all the flashing and all that, I don't see any problems that they're going to uncover from it, but I'm sure they always take into consideration that because stuff does happen. These would be licensed installers with insurance.

It looks like the quotes that we got were very reputable companies in New Hampshire.

John, this may be a question for you or Justin, sorry. But would there be insurance savings as well? Because I know my house, my roof is 10 years old. And when my homeowners insurance quote came back this year, it was almost $1,500 more for the year because my roof is now over 10 years old. And that's why they raised my insurance rates. I, of course, went shopping for new homeowners insurance. But I saw a rate increase because of the age of my roof. Would we see a rate decrease due to a new roof being added onto a building? Is that something they typically do on commercial or government-owned buildings? Or is that just like a residential thing only?

They don't do that because we're an insurance pool. We're an insurance company. Primex is our insurer that does that. So they don't do that. But I think it's important to recognize that. just a few thousand feet over there we spent a couple million dollars because the roof and all that so to spend 190 to do a roof here because that's i know you have 100 125 it's actually the quote committed 190 because it has ice and water shield all the way to the top um it's that investment compared to the cost when you've got Not to mention health problems with people and all that. You know, this obviously is a worthwhile investment that needs to get done.

Yeah, and with the solar package, I think the return on investment was seven years. So then after that, you're going to pay for the roof and everything else.

And does the insurance, Sean, cover the solar? Because sometimes that gets funky, like...

Yeah, because we're going to own it. Because we're going to own it. It's not a PPA. It's not a purchase power agreement. We're going to own those panels.

Okay. And how good are they for? Do we know? What's that? How long do the solar panels last for?

I think there's a 30-year warranty on the panels themselves.

Yeah, it's the black panels. It's not the silver ones. They used to be 20 years. Yeah. Okay. I'm just curious. Yeah, I know. It's a good question. They absorb more light than the silver reflective ones, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's good, I think it's smart. Again, I can't speak for the council, I'm sorry. That's okay, we'll come back. Hopefully if all goes well, this will be off your list and you won't have to worry about it.

That was my next question. I was like, if this does go, this probably doesn't even make it to the CIP list.

So I will belabor the point. I'm in agreement with everything that's been set up here. I think it's a fantastic plan to move forward with. One thing I will say, even the cost of electricity has been going up to your point, Kay, almost double already. we are um unfortunately at the mercy of the entire northeast when it comes to power and with the 10 of the world's power already going to data centers and that going nowhere but up at this point i don't foresee power even staying at doubling i'm thinking that's going to become more and more precious commodities so i really love the idea of getting ahead of that starting to decouple ourselves from the cost of electricity at least as much as we possibly can right like So that's fantastic. And to what everyone else is pointing to, again, I don't want to take up too much time, but get ahead of this before it becomes a major problem, before it becomes a million-dollar project because we've got to replace things in the walls because mold grew and this rotted and all these things happened.

Yeah, and that makes me feel good, too. Like, we have this open gov thing now, and we actually can follow documents and see when this happened, who was the person, when should we be checking it. We never had that before. We talked about, I mean, the school kind of, you guys are ahead of us, but You know, we never had that really before, that real data as to like, okay, this is warranty. Maybe before the warranty runs out, let's get somebody in here to make sure it's okay and get it fixed. So I think that's good, and you're right about electricity. If we could even get the side parking area fixed, solar panel over the parking lot you don't have to plow as much and and you have charging stations and We the more we can do as a town to get it here because as Sean said that rebate pro I'll call it a rebate program that the federal government has is gonna be running out and Hopefully Sean we won't do what Rockingham County did put it in the operating budget the rebate check We will not do that

Well, it's a tax credit we apply for. So we'll get revenue back from the federal government because we don't pay taxes. So what happens is we have to fill out an IRS form, and they're going to provide us that money back. It's unassigned revenue that comes in.

Right, unassigned revenue. You're not going to put it into the operating budget because that's what they did. And now they're short $5 million.

I don't normally do that. That's not a good practice in my view. It's revenue that offsets what you have to raise in property taxes. That's how that should be.

Yeah, because that's what they did, and now we're – NOT IN A NICE SPOT. HOPE JUSTIN'S GOING TO YELL AT ME. HOPE JUSTIN'S GOING TO YELL AT ME. HOPE JUSTIN'S GOING TO YELL AT ME.

NO, NO, WITHOUT GETTING INTO NO, NO, WITHOUT GETTING INTO NO, NO, WITHOUT GETTING INTO FURTHER DETAIL WITH THIS AND Obviously, as it evolves, that's what we'll discuss. At this point, my recommendation with that check would be to put it on a warrant article to refund the expendable maintenance. That way, we're not retaxing the taxpayers for this. That's a good idea. But in order to put money in that, it needs to be voter approved. Even though it's because of this, we can't just put money in it. It has to go to the voters to approve it.

Okay, but that's a good idea. Thank you.

which is absolutely out of the scope of the CIP. No, but you need to know that that's not true.

Great information, for sure, though. But awesome. I think at that point, I think we are wrapped up with this one. Great job, guys. Thank you so much for coming. We appreciate you very much. Next we're moving on to I believe it was the cyber cyber services.

Yes I'm the cyber services director for the town Thank you There we go. We're looking at the replacement of the badging access system for the town hall and then extending beyond that for other properties within the town. Current badging system in the town hall is probably about 15 to 20 years old. It's running on a Windows 7 computer. Yes, that was the look I was looking for. And it's using Prox cards, which are easily cloned and broken. So on top of that, the system does not operate reliably given its age and Yeah. So we're looking to replace the system here in the town hall initially and then move out to other properties such as the senior center the town commons building where we are currently using keys exclusively and keys grow legs and walk away and basically those buildings might as well just be left unlocked. We have no reporting no no data on them. Altogether the entire project will run six buildings and 28 doors. Again, we have an aging prox badge system. We have very little in the way of an audit trail. And the school building, fire building, police all use different fobs. And again, uncontrolled key copies. So what we're looking for is a system that will give us all of our credentials in one system, complete visibility of what doors people are using, the ability to time control access to doors, leaving them open during the day for regular use. Expand this as we need as we add additional doors and buildings and facilities. and then allow the ability to have cross compatibility with the badge devices across the police system the school system the fire system and of course our system And then in addition, we'd like to add the ability to allow guest access. So when people borrow the senior center or this room or one of the other rooms here, we can give them time limited credentials that will allow them to get into the system or into the building without having to have somebody from the town hall sitting here.

Like a hotel key almost?

Almost like a hotel key. It would be a QR code that they get on their phone. They just scan it in front of the reader. It's just temporary. And then it just temporary lasts for however long we schedule it to last for. And then it goes away.

That's good.

uh... so it's a standard badging system uh... it does never control doors it's got smart readers not the current old-school prox readers uh... has the ability to mobile device so cell phones could be used as your badge uh... it's cloud so we're not putting anything into our data center and running our own electricity and and power and what not we don't have to upgrade any servers uh... we can link it to our uh... video system so we can tie door events to our camera system and then again we have reporting structure on who has come in and who has left um when guest badges have been used as opposed to keys right now or just doors open and close and we don't see anything The facilities in scope are the town hall, initially. This piece is already under contract. These 15 doors will be being done in the next couple of months. We would add the library so that when they go to open that, again, the front door, the employee doors, and a couple of internal doors will have badge access. It'll be open during the day for regular public use, and in the evenings and weekends, it'll be closed down for secured access. The senior center we'd be looking at four doors out there the town commons the Technology room back there with the speakers and all of that right now. They have to go to the fire department grab the key I'm sure there are many copies of that keynote floating around because it's annoying to have to go to the fire department and get the key So if we do that as a badge system we can either have Properly badge volunteers, or we can give a guest pass to appropriate people as we need. And then, of course, the cable access center across the street. They're also keyed. And then the athletic fields, they have a space they wanted to badge up as well. This will spread over several years to keep the cost down per year. So phase one is, again, this building. Phase two, we'd be looking at the senior center. Phase three, the town common and cable access, and then the athletic fields in the fourth year. Total costs, 150,000. 58 of that is already committed to this year. So it's barely a capital improvement project, but it does hit the number.

Is there a fee every year that you have to pay for this service? That's not included in this, right?

That is included in this for three years.

For three years. But then after that, what is the estimate?

I know you can't- The estimate is somewhere around $6,500 a year for both features. Okay. The guest feature as well as the general operating feature.

Well, I think it's good because you know who came in by the card. So if you came in and did something, but somebody else came in, at least you know that and say something went missing, right? I hate to say this, but and then they say, well, you were the only one here. Right now, they can't prove anything, but when this thing happens, they can say the only way you got in was through this card.

Through this card.

So that really protects our equipment and whatever else we have in here.

Not only that, it can protect our people as well. In the event of a, say, active shooter type of situation, we can lock down the building. We've reduced the scope. We originally had many more doors and a lot of auto closers, but to keep the cost down, we reduced it. We did put in several choke points within the building that we could secure the second floor entirely. We could secure the clerk space and basically it would just leave people in this space. So it's a security feature, but it's really to enhance the security that we currently have. have with our Windows 7 machine and easily hacked badges.

So that $6,500, that encompasses the ongoing cloud costs?

The $6,500 a year encompasses all the ongoing cloud costs. If that were to change significantly, the platform this is built on is open source. So we can change the provider at any time after the first three years.

That's excellent.

Yeah.

That's actually very reasonable considering what the options they have. And if you think about it, if you're trying to run your own local system, the cost coming into that are not going to be significant between the options they're giving you and the cost to run your local service is not going to be significantly farther than that.

We looked at three other systems. One was a little bit less expensive. but didn't offer the interoperability. We couldn't have the badges from the other system. And the badges that they could use, honestly, were not particularly secure. They were hackable. The other two systems we looked at were obscenely expensive. One quoted us for just the town hall, nearly that amount for just to do this building was $150,000.

It's important to remember that the school is now going to be occupying this space. And we have shared space, including these rooms. So they need to be able to access our building. And so they'll be able to use their access card. We'll get them throughout our building, the different places they have to go, because we do have shared space. And it's going to be compatible with that, which is a key feature.

and of course the town hall can't have the same system as a school we have to be separate for for legal reasons but they can use their one badge we can program their badge into our system we can program ours into theirs and allow access through for for them to use our conference rooms and our break room and move sale here

What about the new DPW facility? Is this the type of security system that we'd want them to have in their building in the event that that passes and we get to build that? Absolutely.

It's not in this list right now simply because we don't know the entire scope of what that project will be. When it is, this will simply extend to that building. We'll have another cost as part of that build out to implement this system there. It will probably be more than $58,000 given the size of that building. But yeah, until I know what they're looking for, this solution will have the ability to do things like license plate readers so that they can have electric gates. When the trucks pull up, the gates automatically open if it's a feature we want. We can do biometric law access here so we can turn it on that With a correct reader that we'd have to acquire The system can recognize your face and use your face as a badge Not something we're going to do because there's a additional cost but We're we're tier two down from that but again Depending on what the scope of that DPW building is, we can allow for whatever they need under the ages of this open source hardware and this cloud-based system.

What's the operational plan once these are implemented?

It'll be operated by the Cyber Services Department. And it's the same vendor that the school board is using for their security access systems. School has two different systems, one for inside the building, one for the perimeter. So the vendor is very cognizant of what their requirements and capabilities are and will be able to support us and ours hand in hand with theirs. Any questions?

Yeah, we need to modernize Windows 7.

That's what I came on board for.

From a safety perspective, obviously, it makes sense. Maybe I would also like to, I mean, not maybe, it does. Getting rid of manual physical keys is also something that is very much needed. I do wonder, you did prioritize the cable. I'm across the street, the cable studio as phase three versus putting that in phase two. I'm just wondering what the amount and the equipment that's in there.

if that kind of if like what was the reasoning for that phase i guess the reasoning was primarily driven by um the fact that the senior center has a lot of guest access okay and guest access is completely unmonitored and is handed a key so um Whereas the cable access building has fairly good control over their keys. So we figured let's target places where maybe there's not quite as much value in the building, but there's a lot larger access risk.

And I noticed that you had rec at four. I mean, it's just one door, right? I mean, to me, it's like a town common thing.

It's the same sort of, they're looking at, at, um, how much they actually want. Excuse me. Um, they were talking about rebuilding perhaps one of their buildings and they're like, we think what this is, what we want. Um, it's a fourth year, so it may change a little. It might become two doors might, might be none because they've decided that they don't need to keep their materials there. Um,

but i wanted to make sure that they were included um so they'd have the security that we have in the rest of the town yeah are these so the athletic facilities they include probably the lava fields over there and do they include the building over in west soccer

We looked at that. There is no network connectivity over there, so the cost to do that would be not insignificant. It would be possible with cellular and other things, and if that was something we wanted to drive towards, we could certainly unify and do that and the drop-off center with their gate and all of these other spaces. We wanted to hit a... rational target first and then if we decide that this is the way we want to operate our town we can expand beyond that okay yeah i i'm very aware of the no cell phone signal up at the soccer field i spent a lot of time over there in the spring and fall i believe the police department does have a camera over there and i think there may be wi-fi in certain areas but i'm not driven by by cyber services of the town somebody needs to give us a password There is a camera hanging off of the kitchen building.

Oh, it must not be real.

It's possible.

That's right. I agree with Justin. But I did sniff a Wi-Fi signal over there.

Okay, so it must be working somewhere. Maybe the Longinary Soccer Club has access to it. Yeah, that's probably what it is.

There you go. For those watching at home. Yes.

Oh, it's state police. Okay.

We'll move on to ERP before we disclose any further of our security.

Yeah, really.

All right. Thank you. You shouldn't be on Facebook watching your kids' soccer games anyway.

Thanks for that.

I think we're good on that one. Thank you so much for your presentation. It was great. And moving right along brings us to our third and final one of the night, the finance department.

Yes, so we can make this quick if you want, but I also have a longer version. This is your current ERP system.

This is on our calendars till 9.

We're good then. I can talk about how bad this system is for quite some time.

I'm going to silence Jeff at this moment.

So this is your current ERP system. This is a projected budget spend. Our ERP system was projecting $134,000 to be spent throughout the year. The actual amount at that point in time was $589,000. That's not good or accurate. I don't know how else to phrase that. So I will give credit to myself and my staff. We do a great job of hiding these issues from coming to light. The problem is this ERP system, I'll be honest, I'm going to struggle because I've always been under the impression if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. That's why this can be a very short presentation if you'd like because I don't have much nice to say. That being said, this is an issue. A lot of the modules I pull from the ERP system and then I manually check them and make sure that they are accurate. We pay about $90,000 in support service fees a year for me to not trust what they're giving us. There's a budgeting module that I use Excel for instead. The newer ERPs, there's all the bells and whistles. And I'll be honest, you don't need all the bells and whistles. They're nice to have. But I would like an ERP system that keeps accurate numbers. Now, the additional reasons. So it's an aging system.

From an audit standpoint. What? I mean, from an audit standpoint, I mean, the case, that definitely is theirs.

So the audit standpoint, that's one where essentially when I work with the auditors to do it, the base information is good. It's projecting. For example, we have encumbered funds for the library. We had to delete that purchase order today and redo it because for whatever reason, the system decided not to actually account for it in the budget. That's about $900,000 that, as I'm going through, I'm looking and saying, we should be a lot closer to year-end numbers than we are. And it's because that purchase order, while it was registered, it didn't actually account for it in the budget. So we had to go and redo it, and it now accounts for it in the budget. So it's a lot of duplication effort and verifying and checking. The audit standpoint is a great point. We're able to pull the documents and kind of give them two or three to get to the actual numbers. The system, as I've mentioned before, they're no longer selling the system. They've informed us they're going to keep maintaining it for the time being. However, they are going to sunset it at some point. They have plenty of vendors currently. or not then plenty, but they have them across the country and they're kind of encouraging them to move on to their newer software and they're hiring people to assist them with that transition. As I mentioned, there's duplicate entry, there's manual workarounds that at this point I've become so used to them that I don't even consider them workarounds anymore. They're what we do because what the system does itself doesn't work. Obviously this will be run by finance. One of the other aspects we're gonna work in is the human resource aspect because we've run into issues with the Department of Labor and timekeeping and all that. There's also modules out there that will assist with recruiting process and maintaining personnel information and things of that nature that our system currently, again, it has capabilities. I don't trust those capabilities and they're likely not gonna be as accurate as they can be. As I mentioned, it's no longer supported. There's gonna be a sunset they when I say no longer supported They are still offering us patches here and there one of the best examples I can give is New Hampshire retirement system They recently switched how we submit that information. That's one of our larger expenses every month we told them probably 18 months before the switch where New Hampshire retirement said that if you don't switch in time, you'll be fined the last month we were harassing them to get the import for us because we are the only town in new hampshire that utilizes the system so we go to the bottom of the barrel of importance when we need some one-off that is specific to us justin just to clarify um not clarify but follow up on that point there basically when you my experience following up with a vendor to kind of do these

Yeah, critical. We would check with them monthly, a significant amount of manpower to do so. And it's never on that vendors priority list as much as it should be. So right there is a manpower savings.

Um, as i mentioned we're looking to bring everything kind of together with hr and wherever else we can as i've said the reports we have i don't trust um so having a system that i'm actually able to run a report and send it off will increase our ability to share things more widely where it's you know i've dealt with residents calling me saying hey can i get this and i'll send it to him be like by the way if you look you may see this weird kind of thing and all that um i guess i'm lucky that the residents trust me in that regard but that should not be the case i should be able to run a report and send it off without having to adjust things and handle it and just hope that they trust that what i'm presenting them is accurate as i've mentioned since they're sunsetting it they're currently providing security upgrades I don't know how long that's going to last. I'm not going to say they're going to cut it off this year or next year. I'm not going to lie to you guys and say that. But if they're sunsetting it, sooner or later, they are going to say, thank you very much. Have a great day. It'll account for everything there that you see, procurement, personnel records, recruiting, onboarding, performance management, benefits, timekeeping, payroll. Just another knock on our system where, as you guys are aware, we're switching over fiscal years tomorrow. We have things that happen every year that we switch over. Our system had issues with it again, and all four of my staff spent over half the day yesterday adjusting all of that. So that is four people for half the day doing something that is an annual recurrence that should not be an issue. That means that we were not focusing on other things. And as you can imagine, as finance director on June 29th, not being able to focus on financial year end things, I was not thrilled. I apologize to anyone that called me yesterday.

Are those, all those different modules you just had up there, are they, are those currently being done by different systems right now? I know, like you mentioned, they're uniting them. Are they all fragmented in different systems that this is gonna kind of?

So a majority of them are within New World, and some of them are in what I call essentially a New World sibling. So it's the same head company, but it's separate and it integrates with the New World system. THIS NEW ONE THAT WAS BROUGHT INTO A SINGLE PLATFORM AS OPPOSED TO THAT'S THE HOPE THAT COME TOGETHER EXACTLY THAT'S THE HOPE WE'LL DO AN RFP TO MAKE SURE THAT IT ALL GOES IN AND THAT WE GET THE OPTION THAT WORKS BEST FOR EVERYTHING WITH SOME OF THE OTHER SYSTEMS WE HAVE LIKE THE CLERKS BUILDING DEPARTMENT WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT ALL OF THOSE INTEGRATE IN WHICH WILL BE ONE OF THE FACTORS IN MAKING THE FINAL DECISION SHOULD WE MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS IT'S OVER 100,000 AS THE INITIAL COST IS ABOUT 250 TO 300,000 DEPENDING ON WHICH VENDOR WE GO WITH. THE ANNUAL COST I'M EXPECTING TO BE ABOUT BETWEEN 75 AND 90 DEPENDING AGAIN ON WHAT MODULES WE HAVE AND WHAT SUPPORT THEY PROVIDE. THIS IS PART OF THE STRATEGIC PLAN THAT I PRESENTED. And one of the other aspects is we want to make sure that we're preserving the information we currently have when we transition over. And that's actually one of the concerns I have if we push this off, which is why you're seeing me again after mentioning it throughout the budget season is we want to be able to have a choice on what software to go to. We don't want them to say we're all done so now you have to go to this one and then we're back to having a system that doesn't work for the town because we had no choice.

Just a really quick question. So you said earlier it was like $99,000 a year.

I think it's about $90,000.

$90,000 a year. And it's the same cost, but it's a newer system with more bells and whistles and accuracy, correct?

So that's the support cost.

Oh, that's the support cost. So you're paying right now a support and a...

So once we get the system, there's about $286,000 that is for the system onboarding, transitioning things over, and giving us a system. After that, it's going to be between $70,000 and $90,000 for the annual support cost.

Okay, and then you still have to pay for...

That 286 is a, it's not a one-time, but it's a...

Your annual support stays around the same as what I was trying to get at. Yes. In a long about way.

Yeah. Sorry. You buy the car, your insurance, you still have to pay for it.

Yeah.

That's essentially what, you're buying the system, you still have to pay for the support.

But that's good. I mean, like it stays the same. So, I mean, you get a bump.

And it's one, some of the vendors that we've spoken with, they tie their support increase to CPI or something else where our current vendor is 5% have a great day, which I disagree with, but that's what we have to deal with.

I know some people do it by use, too, average use. Like if you have people calling us every day, seven times a day, you're getting charged a bigger amount of money than somebody's once every two months somebody calling in because you're not abusing the system or needing that.

Well, I mean, that's one. It's, again, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. But there was a point where we stopped calling support because they weren't helpful. Right. Which, again, that's not ideal for your ERP where you're trying to find.

I feel your pain because this is how my system is right now, and I can't jump to a new system because I can't.

Yep. It's not a small amount of work either. I mean, you look at this, and essentially this is we're going to have to duplicate our work for about a year and a half.

Transferring all the history.

Yep.

becomes a huge.

Is that included in that 286? Is that the part of that professional services to help move that data?

Yes. Yep.

So that's good. That's like your implementation partner. Yeah. Yep, that's good.

that's them coming on site um it doesn't include all of their you know the stay hotel whatever they charge for that but it does include them coming on site assisting during the first payroll during all this transitioning everything in so it's the actual the actual work correct yeah they make sure to put a little disclaimer in their quote that uh it doesn't include xyz which is essentially all the TRAVEL COSTS, I GUESS IS THE BEST WAY TO PUT IT.

THEIR PROPOSAL SAYS IT'S ABOUT $17,810 IN ESTIMATED TRAVEL EXPENSES FOR THEIR PEOPLE TO COME HERE AND DO THAT.

THIS PORTION, AS I'VE SAID, IT'S, I'VE ALREADY COVERED A GOOD CHUNK OF THIS. OUR SYSTEM DOESN'T HAVE A LOT OF THE NEW AUTOMATED TECHNOLOGY AND ANY OF THAT FUN STUFF. It will be a time saver and then some. You look at it and right now we're manually entering all of our AP invoices. There are systems out there that you scan the invoice and it pulls the information for you and you just have to verify. Rather than having to go in and type in every single one, which, Dan, I'm not complaining about that because the other thing is nice to have. It's not a need. But if we're switching and it's the same price, we might as well be looking at that. Essentially, our system is stuck in the old age, which is part of the reason why they're no longer selling it. Covered most of this already. Like I said, one of the bigger issues I have coming up is going to be the cybersecurity. You'll get this. This is where a lot of our information is held. And once they stop issuing cybersecurity patches and upgrades, It's concerning to me because you look at it and this is where payroll is, so this is where people's personal information is. This is where vendors' information is. This is where all that stuff is held that at some point they're going to stop offering security patches for. Again, that's not tomorrow. I'm not sitting here screaming wolf, but it is a concern since this company has told us we're done selling it.

Justin, I noticed when you mentioned cybersecurity, the cybersecurity services director just walked out of the building. He doesn't like hearing this. But, you know, it's a huge risk not having a lot of this, you know, a system that meets our needs. It's not like you're going to go for a corporate system that is used in ways you would be looking for a system that serves municipalities. reduces our risk, reduces any risk of additional fines and additional investigations and so forth that a data breach may expose. So yeah, I think this is critically important.

And it makes you guys be more effective, more efficient, more accurate. And in the long run, that saves the town money. Yes.

You're able to have us focusing on other aspects rather than making sure that did the purchase order go through.

And maybe even overtime, you know, because I got to get this done during budget. But now it's easy. So you'd be able to. So I think that in that, you have to take that into, I don't know how many hours it would save on a whole, but I think becoming more effective, more efficient, and being confident about your efficiency then turns around and saves money in the long run for the town. You know, Justin's not like, I need 20 more people because we got to hand do all of this into Excel. You know, whatever. It's no, we don't need anybody because we have this great system. And so therefore.

We're all good. That's exactly what you said there, too. It's like right now, I feel like we're paying the exact amount for a system that you have to go back in, check everything the system just did. So why are we throwing away money on that? You could be effective in what you're doing, to Deb's point, and get a new system and paying the same recurring cost, only it works.

And I mean, it's one, you can talk with anybody that uses the system. I don't think you're going to have anybody say a nice thing about it.

budget brain so one of the things I saw that you said that it would have better forecasting capabilities what would that look like like because I saw how you were you know they said a hundred thousand but it actually was five hundred eighty nine thousand dollars how would that be better

So hopefully it'll be accurate to start. But right now, essentially what I do is I pull our budget performance report and I had a couple different Excel documents that I have created and established that allows me to, all right, well, this was payroll for the last week. How many are left? This is the average expenses. These are the known expenses based on all of that. A lot of those systems have that already, where all you'd have to go in and do is adjust. We know we have a lease payment that already occurred. They're calculating that out, adjust for that. Do it based on three years, three-year history, five-year history. There are systems that actually, if you go look at three years and we have a lease payment or a bond payment that occurs every August, they know that that's not going to reoccur again if you're doing this in December, so they take that out. So it allows you that type of access. Our software claims it does that, but again, it doesn't.

It depends on what it's thinking that day.

I've run the same report and gotten two different numbers.

I feel your pain. I've got the same problem.

That would be part of the

The RFP request is to make sure that it integrates in.

Okay, great. Because I wanted the two systems to talk to each other because I think that would make budgeting process and all of that a lot more smooth. And so I'm just thinking, you know, from a workload perspective, but also from selfishly a budget committee perspective, how we get our data and where it gets pulled from. If they all talk to each other, that just makes me more confident in the data and those types of things.

So it's one, I'll be honest, I mentioned I don't need all the bells and whistles.

Yeah.

Just because I'm looking for an ERP system that I can actually trust the numbers. However, the bells and whistles would be very nice to have because it'd be very beneficial and essentially what I give you now would be increased significantly because I'd be able to run the reports to then hand to you rather than having to run a report, adjust it, make sure it's accurate, do all these different things before it gets to you. And then if you want to make a change, I have to then go back to step one and do it all over again. Where if you want to make a change, I now just have to enter it into the system and it takes care of it.

Do any of the ERP systems nowadays have like an AI integration? Like, hey, if we were to do these projects, what would that kind of look like to the budget or that kind of thing? Cool.

So we'll be negotiating several contracts in the upcoming years for CBAs. There are ERP systems that will allow you to look at the positions and make the adjustments now. So this is what a 2%, this is what a 1%, this is what all of this would do, and this person, that's step one. By the end of the contract, it'll be step three. With these increases, this is what it'll look like. Right now, I do that all by Excel by hand.

So you forecast . Yeah.

Which is an OK tool, but that's very, very manual and very labor intensive. Yes.

Yeah.

OK, cool. No, that's awesome. Thank you.

Anything else?

All right. So with that, I believe that was our last presentation of the night. Finishing off going through the agenda, we do have the approval of the minutes from June 9th, 2026. Did everyone get a chance to look at them? Anything stand out that needs to be corrected? I look for a motion to accept the minutes. So moved.

Second.

And second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Motions are accepted. Minutes are accepted. Other business?

I only have one thing. So my work schedule asked me to take a couple of business trips. And they happen during weeks where the CIP is meeting. And so I wanted to either see if we could. One of them is July 13th. Okay. the week that i think that meeting is on the 14th with a library presentation i wonder if we can roll that into the meeting in the 20th or i can just miss it and the other one is august 18th the week of i think it's that i'm going to be gone that tuesday so but i didn't know if we could either move the meeting or we can leave it as is and i won't be there but i just wanted to

Are we set up for virtual options? I know in the past this committee Zoom in.

Yeah, I'm happy to zoom in or call in or whatever. That's Mr. Mulholland.

I think that as long as the... We can Zoom her in? Yeah, as long as the... We have the technology.

We have the technology? Are you sure?

Oh, I am sure. Okay, okay.

I can zoom in. I'm happy to zoom in. Are you on vacation or work? It's a work trip.

They're business trips. Because vacation, we don't allow that. No, no.

They're just business trips. This will just be like my other business.

Your day job.

Yeah, my day job. My other day job. Great.

Awesome.

Then I'll zoom in.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

Any other questions? no public comments anyone like we've only got people who've already spoken but if anyone wants to come up on anything else I guess we'll close public comments so for a motion to adjourn