Newton City Council - October 19, 2026

with respect to those individual weighting criteria. But please know that the CIP document can look a little strange for somebody who doesn't know Like in a perfect world, if we were to present a CIP that was funded perfectly you would see it kind of snake from left to right. From top to bottom and it would snake to the left The problem is we're in an imperfect world and what ends up happening is our projects are all listed by priority, but our funding sources fund individual projects that can't be used for other types of projects. For example... We have an enterprise system for our water, sewer, stormwater. You can't use that to pave streets or to build a school. It's got to go towards those enterprise accounts. So we may have a project in stormwater Lower than 10 school projects, but is funded even though those ten school projects aren't funded. That's because it comes from a different funding source or if something is CPA eligible

We all know CPA, multiple different Community Preservation Act funds. Multiple different uses for it but that is a prime example of a funding source that funds projects that may be a lower priority from a risk-of-failure impact to failure but can be very good for community vibrancy. And there's a lot of other sources there that have similar constraints. So buildings dominate the capital need, but there's more to that story. So the reason why I point this out is this is not because I was the building commissioner for a long period of time. I'm not stacking the deck. But what this does point out your complete streets, water, sewer, vehicle equipment. Basically everything else there is evergreen. What I mean by that is every year, every single year forever you will need to make investments in those assets The same thing is true with buildings, but the real primary reason why building shows so much there is two things.

We recently updated the CIP to reflect all of the capital needs for all of our buildings in that five-year period. That's not to suggest that we think we'll be able Anywhere near that much over a five year period, but it's really the intent of it was to recognize and display to the community that we realize that there are capital needs at the Pierce Elementary School and the Mason Rice Elementary School, and our other municipal buildings. And also a lot of those Certainly our school buildings have grant programs, for example, through MSBA. And we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we were not identifying that there are real capital needs in those buildings. So we are wrapping up countryside in Franklin. We just finished Horace Mann, Hooper opened this past year. We were doing some amazing things with our school and municipal buildings. And I'll get to that in just a sec.

Countryside and Franklin, the approved funds were 76 million for countryside and 72.6 million for Franklin we are way way under budget on those projects so that is very exciting and we'll do a financial closeout report with all of you soon Both schools are geothermal, fully electric, fossil fuel free. And we just as I mentioned recently completed both the Lincoln Elliott and Horace Mann School with the support of the city council. And as I mentioned, almost all of you will be on working groups. We are moving forward with the Ward and Underwood Elementary Schools, Newton's two oldest school buildings including the Ward School, which is our only elementary school that is simply not accessible. The Newton South High School project is gonna be moving forward. I'm excited about that, it's complicated.

That is going to be a Rubik's cube but I like puzzles so I'm ready to roll my sleeves up and then we're laying the groundwork for Brown Middle School in partnership with the MSBA So this is an interesting one. I think this has been displayed in the past, but I thought it was displayed a little too much in detail so I just want to go very high level. This slide kind of speaks for itself but we invest a lot in our school buildings and our schools from a capital standpoint, and that's appropriate and fair. and part of the reason why we need to is because we didn't for a very, very long time. And before you feel too morose about that I will just say that we find ourselves in good company because this is something that happened across our country The response to the baby boom, basically between the 1930s and the 1950s schools were built across this country in droves. and then everybody rests on their laurels for a very long time.

And for a community of this size, where Newton really wants to be once we get completely caught up is we should always be doing A school because we have so many of them that if you're doing one school at a time, you're going to replace all of your school buildings every century. That's where we want to be but if you don't do that for 50 or 60 years then you've got to catch up which is where we've been. So 70% or $70 million of free cash since 2023 has been invested in our schools, so a large chunk of our free cash and as reminder to everybody, our free cache is very high because our interest rates are very high, which is good and bad because they're high because the economy's in tough shape. And then 80% or $275 million of our current debt service is for school projects So school projects funded and planned.

So that $70 million of free cash I was talking about, I'm not gonna read through all these but you've got a good list of everything that we've done over the last three years, four years? and then we've got a lot more that are coming. I think what's a little different in this CIP than you may have seen in years past is We did start to sneak in a bunch of smaller school projects and shown with funding, a couple each year for all five years. And these are again, all projects that were prioritized and identified by Newton Public Schools. So this was interesting. This one I will read because I think it's fascinating, at least to me. We have invested about a billion dollars of 2026 dollars in our schools since 2010 Newton Public Schools facilities have a total current asset replacement value of about $3 billion.

So it means that we've already tackled a solid... You know, a third of our replacement value of our schools over a 16-year period. That's amazing. We have a lot to be proud of there. so 15 after with projects at Ward, Underwood South and Brown all moving forward in the coming years we are now on track to to have completed essentially major capital projects at 15 of our 24 school buildings, which represents roughly two thirds the total school building area over a 20 year period. Again that is amazing and this next one I found very, very amazing When the above projects are completed, Newton will have improved the average age of our school buildings from nearly 80 years old to 36 years old over a 20 year period. That is unbelievable for a city of this size with this many schools. That is transformative and that is not hyperbole.

So public safety facilities as we look towards continuing our efforts there. Our police headquarters project, again many of you are serving on our working group there. The big thing over there I won't go too far down the rabbit hole is that it's just too small The current facility is 20,000 square feet. By national standards based on the size of our department we should be at about 50, 000 square feet or more so it is woefully small and they're operating in a decentralized model out of an old garage and a few buildings when there were far more horse and carriages on our streets than there were cars, when they were built. We're continuing our investment in our fire apparatus and our public safety vehicles Why is that important? So our insurance rates, meaning for all of you as residents and our businesses are set based on our fire rating. is one of the factors that gets considered.

So investing in our fire apparatus, for example, directly impacts the cost to Newton taxpayers with respect to their property insurance. We're continuing our investments over at fire stations one and two. Those are the last remaining stations that have not had major capital projects, but we've done quite a bit of work to date and we've got more planned For folks that don't know, this fire station is by their numbers. Fire Station 2 is Com Ave at the bottom of Heartbreak Hill. Fire station 1 is over by The Pike right next to the YMCA on Church Street So emergency communications, several years ago we developed what's called the purple team. We mixed red and blue, red fire, blue police and made purple And we've been investing in emergency communications ever since. It's an ongoing program, obviously critically important and we've made incredible headway on this. or Pavement Condition Index. I'll be the first to tell you that there is no finish line with respect to our streets and sidewalks.

Anybody that says they have hit nirvana, either doesn't know what Nirvana means or they are lying to you because streets and sidewalks are another one that are evergreen. You always need to be investing in these, there is always room for improvement I will also say that one of the biggest things that has hit us on this, while we have certainly improved our PCI or our pavement condition index drastically since the program began. Thank you for joining us. and I do not believe, I'm not a futures expert but I do now believe that these numbers are going to come back down in this particular sector. A little bit of crude oil relief would certainly help us, President, if you're listening. But the bottom line is that asphalt and cement prices are going to stay very high regardless of what happens with crude oil

I will also say, small footnote at the bottom but it's sneaky. Small but very important. We are actually going to begin the process of doing a sidewalk condition index I feel like it's time that we get very much organized as we have with our streets, with respect to how we are investing our limited dollars in our sidewalks. The first step in addressing a problem is acknowledging that you have one. So I'm really looking forward to this and I also think it will demystify, it will help us demystified the decisions we make with respect to how and where we invest in our sidewalks. Village Centers and Corridors. I, again won't read through all of this but we are continuing to do an awful lot of work on this front for folks that didn't catch it you pop onto DPW's web page go to transportation.

September of 2026, Ned Codd and his team uploaded so last month uploaded the biannual traffic calming report So it's got the whole list updated, prioritized. And it's a full explanation, quite detailed explanation with respect to how those projects are prioritized and what data they draw on for that. So good stuff there. Accessibility is built into the plan. Jay, our new ADA coordinator is hitting the ground running and the COD of course an incredible partner with all of us we very much appreciate their advocacy 2022, we adopted the ADA 504 transition plan. That'll be something that we update in the coming years. Of course, we opened the Cooper Center We continue to make investments on projects small and large with respect to accessibility improvements.

And in the bottom right-hand corner, again I will just point out that almost all of the investments we make, almost all not all but almost all the investments have profound impacts on accessibility and universal design. Certainly every building project we do, our sidewalks, streets, intersections, village centers You might make a case that our water, sewer, stormwater may not be really grounded in accessibility but you could make an indirect case I suppose. Climate Goals and help shape our capital choices. Obviously, we've been investing a significant amount of money in are new school buildings with a focus on decarbonization efforts, climate resiliency, drawing down or reducing our embodied carbon, our transportation carbon. I could go on and on but I won't. Transportation. So we continue to expand our EV charging infrastructure and our bike lanes, our blue bikes, consumption and waste.

We are doing actively working on an analysis of expanding our curbside organics and seeing what that could be. We have an incredible solid waste materials management group that is helping us with that and our stormwater. You're going to see there's a lot of synergy between climate resiliency and stormwater, as well there should be. We are actively working on our storm water infrastructure assessment, and we will have a plan ready by late fall 2027. I will just again these are these data points on the right I think are quite impactful. So we've cut 15% or more of our energy consumption in our buildings over the last decade, despite increasing the total square footage by 15%. That's not easy to do. Moving that needle by a percentage point is massive, moving it by that much while increasing your building square footage and all of that increase in building square footage is fully air conditioned, and the previous was not.

That's nothing short of amazing. Six million kilowatt hours of municipal solar. We have more solar arrays in Newton than any community in Massachusetts. We're the best. So bring it on, whatever community you are out there by all means. because I've got more coming. 2050 is our target to be carbon neutral, it's gonna take a lot of work there's no doubt about it but if we continue on the path that we're on right now with our buildings being a large piece of that I think we're going to be in a good position. We're also actively working with Newton Public Schools on things like the bus bid and seeing what options might exist for a phase over to EV buses. We'll have to see what the market looks like But we're certainly going to test that out and see if there's opportunities there. At the same time, we have pretty much completed our conversion to EV or hybrid vehicles on the city side. All right, I'm gonna go through these pretty quickly.

Water, we're continuing to make significant investments in our water system. Details are there. I can go back to this in detail if folks would like Our sewer, we're continuing to cut excess flow. We have reduced before the program from 60% down to 35%, very significant. Again, water-sewer stormwater I'll just hit again there's almost a thousand miles of pipes underground The system is enormous in Newton. Stormwater. So we have an unusual high spike in our expenses for FY28, but this is all predicated on a plug for the Bullos Pond Dam. could be right now, the estimates for the current project are between six and $8 million. We will refine that as we move forward. And most likely that will not all hit in FY28 it would be over time but too early really to nail that down perfectly

Parks, so we are close to cutting a ribbon over there at Albemarle. We completed the Burr School Fuels projects and we've got a lot of exciting things coming up. McGrath, Braceland, Cold Springs Tennis Courts Very exciting, I think, because many councilors have asked for it over the years. Parks and Rec is going to work on their first ever infrastructure strategic plan of all of our fields and parks. All of our and we have not had a comprehensive capital plan for that since then. I think it's about time. And then coming soon, we've got a Crystal Lake project but that'll be easy so. Fleet and Technology Renewal. So again, we're hitting it hard in fleet We have a lot of work happening in IT. Not all this is reflected in the CIP because a lot our IT investments are not capital projects, but I thought it was important to highlight it here.

Looking ahead. So we are going to be opening Countryside and Franklin in early 27, well under budget. We are moving forward with our feasibility studies at the schools and police facility. We are leaning in on our phosphorus and our MS4 NPDES requirements and we are sustaining our street investments, and doing our best to work through those sticky inflation issues. And with that I will turn it over to the council for questions and answers. would you like me to call? All right, Councilor Lucas.

I will lead us off this evening. Thank you Mr. Morris for the presentation and for all those who were involved with it. Two questions You said the Brown Middle School MSBA funding. Would the MSBA fund the whole thing or would we need a debt exclusion on top of that?

So MSBA will not fund the entire thing, certainly not for Newton. We typically I think we will probably see some... Well, I don't even wanna speculate it's a little ways out but we'll see the state would pick up a significant portion of the project I would say, safe to say in the tens of millions of dollars. So it's a lot. We are still actively in construction on Countryside which is an MSBA funded project and outside of Boston. I'm not aware of any cities or towns in which MSBA will fund multiple projects simultaneously but MSBA, it's a slow moving machine because they've got way more demand than they have funds. So my advice to all communities including ours is to get in early and keep trying so that you eventually get it with respect to where the rest of the money comes from

I would opine that it most likely would be a future debt exclusion override when that time comes, but it's far enough out that we would have to take a look at city finances and see what the best approach should be.

Thank you. And then my other question was, this is something I've asked in previous years so some folks here may remember this. The indoor swimming pool is 151 on the CIP. I think it's moved up quite a bit. I hope it has. Just, I'm just hoping that... Not this year, not next year. But there is at least a plan in place for that indoor swimming pool.

Hope is a strong emotion, and I think that it's good to maintain hope. What I would say is while it is still quite a ways down the CIP as I mentioned earlier some funding sources are for specific purposes I don't want to scare the community preservation committee. I'm not suggesting that I know something they don't, but it could be an opportunity for a future partnership in part with CPC Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Farrell?

Thank you very much. This is an extraordinarily impressive report, and I'm glad that some of my colleagues have been participating in its development. My first question is given its scope can when and you have mentioned several times I could go on and on but you won't tonight. And I understand that, but I would like to hear you go on anon. And when will the council as a whole be able to sit down with you and other members of the administration many of these topics. I think there's lots of issues that I certainly would like to know about, and they're probably my colleagues have the same thing specifically in your financial sources Has there been, or do you think there ever will be, conversations about seeking outside sources? That is non-city

Non-state money to support some of these projects. I'm of the opinion that there's a good bit of private money and in fact government money, federal money even though we all think that there isn't any at the moment and I'm just interested to know if that conversation is open and how it's going. Thank you. Thank You, Councillor.

So fundraising which I'll focus on fundraising. Federal funds is a whole other conversation that's a long road, but fundraising I think in my experience it's possible. It's very difficult to talk about it in an amorphous setting because in order for any fundraising effort, in my opinion, in order to be successful you need to know what your fundraising is for. I think what I have seen over the years is that If we're going to talk about fundraising, it's going to be during the project development for a specific project. There was a time where with the Cooper Center Project, for example, there were interested parties in fundraising We actually redirected those efforts towards the Senior Fund, which is the 501c3 that helps fund a lot of the programs at the Cooper Center. So there are many ways in which those private resources can help.

I understand that you're interested, for example in some of our larger school projects. I think that those opportunities exist but what I will say is I'm looking over at Councilor Baker because I'm starting to get flashbacks to naming rights. Um, I'm not suggesting that that's where you were leaning but I do think that as we start to think about the possibility of fundraising, we do want to think if it all comes with strings attached because that is a different conversation than a truly just philanthropic, no strings attached fundraising campaign. Yes?

Quickly, I wouldn't want to get lost in the naming issue. Yeah. I also find it hard to believe that if a city had someone who said, I'll give you $5 million for 10 years and I wanna name this classroom after my mother-in-law that we might not take that money. Or I would like to understand why we wouldn't, but yes and I do understand the funding this sort of operation needs a specific task objective and for two and a half years now I think there is one within the school system that could in fact become a focal point uh Not to get into all the details, but could raise a significant amount of money if we could have that conversation. So thank you.

I'm always open to conversations and I would love to deep dive on anything and everything You name the time.

Whenever you're ready.

All right. Anybody on this side? Councilor Albright, trying to bounce back and forth.

Thank you. I just have a quick question. At some point, could you provide a schedule of the retirement of the debt that we currently have? I think that would be helpful just going forward to know when what we've got already retires.

That is a great point and we actually have it. And I'd be happy to get that to you right away.

Thank you very much.

Great minds think alike. We were looking at the same thing because believe it or not, it's amazing. I feel like I'm still the new guy but some of the projects that we issued debt for when I first came are coming up on expiring so great question. Councilor Wright?

Thank you. So for the schools, Countryside and Franklin they're coming under budget and we did debt exclusions for those so what happens with that delta? Do we not take out as much debt or does that go somewhere else or what?

No, it's a really good question and I'm glad you asked it. And that might be one of those questions that you ask so that the people at home can hear this too because if I were sitting at home, I would want to know. So right now... It's a bit of a moving target because we have all kinds of state and actually federal rebate and incentive programs that we're working through with both schools. We, so during the debt exclusion override back in 2023 we were in the midst of the worst inflationary period that this country had ever seen from a construction standpoint. We made an educated informed guess of what those projects would cost. And we pinned them at $61 million, but we said there's a lot of variables. We're not completely sure. Our estimators, we have two independent cost estimators on both projects. They reconciled their estimates and suggested the numbers that got approved by the city council. Our bids ultimately... and I love this, and I'll explain this briefly in one sec.

Our bids came with a total project budget of close to $61 million after all the rebates come in so we were very close to nailing exactly what we told the taxpayers With the Department of Revenue, the way it works with a debt exclusion override is cities and towns are not beholden to an exact number because DOR recognizes that you're oftentimes talking many years out. It's almost impossible to hit that number perfectly. I will say it is imperative for any community, certainly if you are an elected official or an appointed official your integrity is very important. So you wanna try to hit that number whenever you can So what ultimately ends up happening with that extra money, is we would rescind the bond authorization and drop it down to the number that we ultimately need. We don't sell more bonds than we need So it doesn't mean that the taxpayers are going to suddenly see a reduction in their taxes, but what it does mean is that we avoided a significant increase in their

So good news, but you're not booking a trip to Tahiti anytime soon on those savings. Thank you. Councilor Greenberg?

Thank you. I'm just curious, since Ward School and Underwood are going to be redone, I'm wondering why Improvements to both schools are still in the CIP, like for electricity, windows, brickwork. Why did they show up on a CIP?

It is a great question, and I appreciate you asking that not only for us but also for our viewers at home. So I would love to sit here and say that I guarantee that those projects are going to be funded but there are some steps we need to work through before we can assure that outcome. If for whatever reason, those steps do not prove fruitful we would need to continue to make capital investments in smaller projects, in those schools in the future. So historically what we have done for all of our school projects is we have kept all the small stuff in there until at least we are fully funded with the larger capital project. Thank you.

Councilor Micley? Thank you. Two unrelated questions. The first is on the return of investment in new schools. Has there been any analysis done with the financial return on investment and the educational outcome return on when we take an old school and make it a new school? So like savings from maintenance or better educational outcomes for new schools. And the second question might be more appropriate for the School Committee at a later time, and the second is really about streets Streets is the problem that we hear the most from, from the most residents on. One of those things that people can tolerate but obviously is a day-to-day hassle. What amount of money would it take to get us to 80 as soon as possible? and why is 80 the goal? What are our neighboring towns at? Wellesley, others. How much would it cost to get to 90 to 95? Is that feasible? So like if we put streets as the top priority well how far can we go and how quick?

Great question. So on the first one, This is where I don't think you want me to go way down this rabbit hole, but I can share with you some awesome data that talks about why investing in school building projects are so important. And it really does get to the heart of test scores, ergonomics work environment. and really teaching and learning. But it also, there's some great data. It's a little bit of connect the dots but I have not generated this but that ties it back to home values So there are some really good benchmark reports that have been done, not necessarily just for Newton but kind of more macro. That do connect school investments with respect to ROI that is tied to improving the teaching and learning environment. I will tell you, one of the number-one things actually indoor air and temperature controls. Temperature controls has a significant impact on student test scores,

I think you could probably ask any teacher. It certainly improves their teaching atmosphere, so there's that but there's also programmatically. Look a lot of our buildings... A building that was built 100 years ago was built long before all 21st century teaching and learning concepts existed. We are utilizing spaces that were never intended to be used for teaching and There's a reason why Massachusetts School Building Authority has space guidelines that communities use, quite frankly whether you're building a school with MSBA or not. So that's very important. With respect to is there a return on investment in maintenance, what I would say is there is a return of investment with respect to capital investment. Not necessarily maintenance and I'll explain why. When you get to a building that is way beyond its useful life, you're approaching the century mark. You are starting to have to invest large amounts of capital to keep that building going.

Yes, you have to investment maintenance but the difference is when you build a new building, you do not have that same level of capital investment that's necessary because you're not trying to keep a depreciating asset or a toxic asset if it's too old going. With maintenance... I would encourage anybody who is managing any kind of capital asset portfolio to not fall into the trap of suggesting, and I know this isn't what you're suggesting but to suggest that you can suddenly stop investing in maintenance or reduce your investments in maintenance simply because you have a new building. If anything, I would opine the opposite that you take advantage of a new building to really reset and make sure you are aggressively investing so that you're not caught in a situation like I witnessed over at the old Newton North High School when I went up onto the roof of a building that was built in 1972-ish back in 2007, when I got here and the HVAC looked like it had just not been touched at all.

So you do need to maintain what we have or we'll find ourselves back in that same cycle. On the streets, So I don't think it's realistic to go too much higher than 80. We can benchmark from other communities, 80 is a pretty good target for almost any community. There are many communities that are nowhere near that there are some communities that aren't better shape the Newton, I'm sure. I will also say that sometimes, and I'm guilty of this myself, when I drive to another community very rarely am i getting off the major arterials. So my experience in another community might be very good if they're investing really well in their arterials, which is common. You and I are probably not going down the side roads. I'm making up Brookline's version of Oak Hill Park, so we may not be getting the full experience of what their true road conditions are. So I just say that anecdotally because I think it's important.

I don't think we could get terribly higher than 80, because there's a big cycle. We've got 270 miles of streets here. and I do think at some point to answer your question about how much money would we need, at some We could have certainly used more money. There's no doubt about that. I'd be lying if I said that we couldn't, but I will also preface that by saying at some point you are investing so much money that you're starting to shut too much of the city down. Waltham to their credit I know at one point must have done this because I used to drive home through Waltham and I just gave up because large portions of the city were just shut down for an extended period of time while they were paving. So it is a balance. Thank you. Councilor Leary

Thank you, Josh. Great presentation by you and your team. I have three questions. And actually one of them was kind of similar to Councilor Micley's question regarding the budget for our streets and sidewalks Mine was more, we have stuck with that 9.5 million in funding for many years when I was chair of the public facilities committee and as you mentioned, cost and inflation has been particularly high in the last few years. So I'm more concerned about... You're forced to do more with less money So how are you picking those streets? I mean, obviously some of the worst streets you're going to do. We do hear from residents that these are concerns. I just think it's going to be difficult unless we really look at Thank you.

Yes, is the short answer. We will need to invest more in our streets and sidewalks to keep pace. Otherwise what will ultimately end up happening is we will slow our acceleration towards that 80 PCI that we're seeking and if you took it to the extreme, we'll eventually start to fall behind because we'll lose too much of our buying power. I do think that There will need to be in the future. We'll need to find ways to supplement that we've actually done a lot of it over the last few years, we've been blessed with one time money through ARPA and we've so that has certainly helped and there's been some savings in the department that we've been able to repurpose but what I think is important to consider is that while we look for opportunities in the future to increase funding, it is also important to always be looking at ways

Be as efficient as possible with what we do to spread that money that we have and any future money as far as possible. So case in point, everyone knows I would imagine you all know that i've been working with our teams on some serious process implementation, process improvements from permitting to snow and ice to streets and sidewalks A lot of it is based on customer service experiences. And I could go on for a long time, but I won't on that. But what I will say is that with respect to your question, one of the things that we're looking at How are our bids structured? Are they structured in a way that are attractive to as many bidders as possible? Or for example, are insurance requirements too high and we're making it too difficult for smaller companies to step into this game? Do we want those smaller companies? There are pluses and minuses to that. Are we aggressively marketing our contract to ensure that we're getting as many bidders as possible at the best price point?

almost like an exit interview from a job, are we sitting down with our contractors at the end of each season and saying what did we do well and what could we improve upon? How can we be more efficient? Are you seeing anything with respect to how we are doing this because you are subject matter experts that is at all inefficient? Those are questions we should be asking each and every year, and it's something we're going to do going forward. And there's a lot more, but that's just a little taste of it.

I'm glad you're running a tight ship.

Thank you.

Just two more quick ones. With our now doing geothermal and all electric, do we anticipate saving money on that?

Well... If I could really answer that question, I wouldn't be standing here because a lot of that depends on the futures with respect to where we think electricity costs will be versus natural gas and fossil fuels. What I would say is without getting too political, I can confidently say that fossil fuels are a finite resource. We can all guess about how much there is and how long it will last us but anytime you're talking about a finite resources what I do know from grade school math is that when finite resources deplete, cost goes up. So I would say in the long term we will absolutely save money by decarbonizing In the short term, what we have shown is that in our new and major renovated buildings, we can operate at a price point that is comparable to fossil fuels and in some cases less expensive. So even if it's just a wash, that's enough for me.

Okay, thanks for that. And the last thing is pretty quick. More people are driving EVs now and we have like 33 I think EV charging stations. Some of them are old so as an EV owner myself I went through a bunch of them some of them were kind of difficult or didn't work well. Are we keeping an eye on that or do we have a contractor that does that for us?

Great question. So the vast majority of them are a contractor that does that for us and they'll handle replacement when necessary, but I'm glad you brought that up because well real quick I was just reading the other day that I think this year Total global automobile sales for the first time, well obviously the first because it's growing. 49% of total global automobile sale were electric vehicles this year.

Thanks to China.

We're getting very close to being over 50%, which is amazing. That being said, although you didn't mention it I will just say that many of our solar PV systems are getting up to that 20 year period. That's something we're gonna be watching closely not only because that is our power purchase agreement contractual term but because a lot of those old PV tech, PV outputs are actually have been blown away by current technology. So we actually could have a pretty significant impact. I'm watching like Rumford, for example. Rumford because it's such a large ground mount solar PV system, we may want to swap that out sooner than 20 years because from a simple ROI standpoint, it may be worth the squeeze.

Yeah, I was thinking that maybe we'll have room for compost.

There you go.

Thank you.

Yes, my pleasure. Councilor Getz?

Okay, thank you. It was a really informative presentation and I also appreciated the scoping and how you presented the content differently because it's a lot more sort of digestible and thank you So my general question is, have we shifted the MPS building model? I would like for us to get to a place where we address and not eat up so much of our free cash. for the MPS buildings and look at our other municipal buildings so that we cycle, you know? So that then we have done. And I'm hoping that the buildings themselves You had mentioned that it's a century lifespan for those buildings. But in terms of maintenance and in terms the long-term upkeep for those building, Is it the kind of a different model so that then you can switch out systems and you can really actually sort of better utilize

I know things will evolve and systems will change, and things will be whatever in the future. But I'm sort of wanting that to deplete a bit in terms of the investment in the MPS side to other municipal buildings So I'm just hopeful. Do you foresee any sort of shift coming in the next three decades, that kind of long range planning?

So it's a great question, and I'll spin it a little bit because I think you might have been touching on two different things. But to directly answer your question, yes. I think what you will see when we get through the remainder of these school projects, which is not, believe it or not, not that many in the grand scheme of things because we're operating over a very long period of time. I do think we will have an opportunity to start tackling are municipal buildings. They're much, much smaller. There's a lot more of them but they're far smaller so we could knock out a lot of those in a short period of time There's also a lot of them that a simple prefab structure would be more than adequate. A lot of our parks field houses, for example. But where I thought you might be going and I'll take advantage of it just to answer it real quick is I do also believe that you're going to see a shift once we have got all of our capital inventory, specifically our buildings because that's what you mentioned, to a good stable place in our schools. You'll see us really switch from a

reactive model to a more proactive or preventative model. We are actively being reactive. But again, a lot of that is just the product of chronic lack of investment over a very, very long period of time. So yes. Thank you. Charm.

Thank you so much, Josh. And thank you to your staff. I want to pick up on this question about the useful life of a school building. You did make an insinuation that we would be getting back to a cycle of oh, each building would be built every 100 years But that I think is where we're sort of trying to get out of. We have two buildings that are a century old, so can you let us know like how do you think about the useful life of a new school building at this point?

So it's a great question. What I would say is our previous model was to set it and forget it. We built it, and then we didn't make major investments or major system investments for 70 years in some cases. That you can't do. You do that and you're going to have a very poor asset in 100 years. You really are going to want to replace it long before then. but if we do this hard reset and get all of our school buildings, just speaking to schools for a sec up to where they need to be. And then make those systems replacements when they are necessary, they will absolutely go the distance you can get 100 years But that being said, I will freely admit that if you were to ask me and this is a question more for our school committee members. But if you would ask me what does public education look like in 100 years? I don't know and I could not tell you what I will say is we are building buildings with spaces that are as flexible and forward thinking as possible so that they can

grow and evolve to meet the needs and interests of our teachers, students, parents, educators for many decades to come.

OK, thank you. Second also on the school buildings list I wanted to follow up on some of the questions about Brown because In some of the lists about school buildings where we're going to be making a big investment, Brown makes the short list. And in some other places in the presentation it doesn't. So can you clarify that more like is Brown Is the large renovation of Brown considered to be one of the key priorities for replacing or is that Well, we're going to be doing some HVAC and some other repairs. And then that's maybe in the next wave.

Yeah, so the reason why it's laid out a little differently in different places in this slide is the nuance on each one of those slides. If we're talking about projects where we're establishing working group and rolling up... on board and starting the design work, Brown is not on that list. If we're talking about projects that are moving forward in various stages to lay the groundwork for a large capital project, Brown IS on that but what I know from experience is that depending on the project and depending on community, and depending a lot of other factors It can take a year or several years to get our turn, if you will, our turn air quotes in the queue with Massachusetts School Building Authority MSBA. Yes, you're going to see a small project this next year and some additional projects while we wait.

But I will just inform the city council because many of you were not here although Councillor Albright probably remembers this We were well into the design to replace the Cabot School, and we were making investments in the HVAC because this space was just too uncomfortable. Because at the end of the day there's a generation of students if not a few generations of students that have to deal with what they have while we work towards replacing those buildings. So I don't want anybody to think that the smaller investments we make now or that are identified in the CIP are at all indicative of our It's a yes and Yes and

Great. And one request, there's this slide here I wonder, is it possible for you to actually put an interactive version of this somewhere online so that people can float over it and see which projects are in which place?

Interesting. I don't see why not. It's 2026, we can do almost anything.

Yeah I would love that and I think it would help to make the list maybe a little bit more you know you can be able to really see how things flow into that. When you talk about some of the different projects in the different village centers, where can people find information about what may be coming in some of these different village centres and corridors? Where's the best place for them to access that?

So... There's not one particular spot, although I'm hopeful with our new website we can certainly make it easier. Right now I would say that lives in a combination of locations. Public works, construction projects Planning Department has some of these on their page. And then I would also say, some of this is going to live in the Traffic Calming and Transportation page which is also public works but a different subpage. But I'm happy to send that out to the city council.

Great. And then lastly for me, I noticed that there's a tab here in the back about trees and Street Trees in Urban Forestry. Is that actually part of the CIP? I was scanning through and didn't see anything related to it, I think you can appreciate there's been a lot of concern in the last few months about whether or not we are able to invest enough in making sure that we're inspecting and maintaining the public trees that we have. So I'm hoping you can speak to that.

Yeah, so it's interesting. Trees In another community, trees may not make the CIP. But Newton absolutely loves their trees. I think if we were to develop a CIP document without trees people would say we're missing the mark but at the same time Tree replacement isn't necessarily a capital project, but then I'll argue that there are some aspects of a solid forestry division that do have capital assets. A log loader or... For example, there are trucks and equipment that we need to buy that are capital assets that are necessary to maintain our trees. So it's there because I think we need to plan for it and we're acknowledging that it is a major element of what we do from an infrastructure standpoint, but it doesn't necessarily meet the capital definition. That may be a squirrelly answer because I don't know how else to answer it, frankly.

Maybe it's in here somewhere as like large equipment?

No, no it's there because trees are a major asset. It's just similar to IT infrastructure we're going to acknowledge that there are some things that we need to invest in an IT that are not going to meet the mark for a capital asset because either their life expectancy or the dollar values. But trees absolutely, while they may not be a capital assets, they're part of our infrastructure and we acknowledge it accordingly. So you're not gonna find it as a, I wouldn't consider very much of our tree infrastructure as being a capital asset. You're not going to find a lot of projects in the CIP that would be tied to that

Okay, I'm happy to follow up also offline so that I can better understand where that is.

Thank you. Yes, Councilor Roach?

I too have found this presentation to be particularly impressive, so thank you very much. My pleasure. Very informative and you seem to me Encyclopedic in your knowledge of these various projects and the processes, so thank you. It's been about 20 minutes since we talked about streets, so can we come back to streets? So my understanding is that streets have a threshold and that there's a score associated with that threshold. And once the street goes below that threshold, repairing it goes up kind of astronomically, right? And so whatever that number is and may or may not be related to the 80 number. Whatever that number at score per Segment of Street is a critical number in terms of the cost to maintain. So, the bad roads in Newton are not only bad roads to live on quality-of-life issue but they're particularly expensive Do I have that right?

You do. So there's a percentage of our streets which are below that threshold. We know that we know that the cost of materials right now is very, very high but we also know the cost materials is going way up and you don't have to answer this right now, but it would seem to make sense to me that we would borrow a metric ton of money right now to get all of our streets above that threshold, given that once we do that the cost to maintain it goes very it goes down much lower and we're expecting the cost of those materials to exceed inflation so be an arbitrage play.

So my recommendation is we think about streets more aggressively, so from a financial perspective, we are again arbitraging against the cost of materials. Take care of them now and borrow the money. I get the whole, you know there's only so much street repair we can absorb in a year. I think that in order to do that we might be able to absorb more. So that would be my streets thought Police and fire apparatus don't seem to be anywhere in here. Question mark.

They definitely are.

They are.

Where?

There's no tab for them or are they in a tab?

Oh, no, there's not a separate tab just for the fire trucks but in the CIP you'll see engines and ladders identified under Fire Department for asset category or for department

I'm not the oldest guy here, but I gotta say it's very difficult to read. And what happens is as your eyes get older they become stiffer... No. Anyway okay so I will look line by line and then you talked about, if I understood correctly there's a stormwater report that's coming. Stormwater infrastructure report. Presumably, that will have a significant impact on the CIP. We would not expect that the CIT anticipates all of the capital needs that the stormwater report is going to have. Is that a fair statement?

that is a very fair statement.

Okay, so living breathing document next year the CIP will look a lot different.

So right now, it wouldn't be next year. It would be the following year. We'll have to decide whether that's going to be a supplemental CIP that gets updated in which we typically don't make major changes in the supplemental or whether it would be the following fall, so that would be two years from now because it will be presented about a year from now. Sorry, yes, a year for now.

Okay, and presumably something like the Walnut Street culvert which is related to the Bullets Pond Dam would show up on that.

Yes if it's not addressed as part of the Bullet's Pond dam project because we're going to be evaluating that culvert as part

See, I haven't gotten back to that public facilities meeting so I need to. Okay, thank you and then the last point I wanted to make is to follow up on Councilor Charm's point it would be great if there's a version of this It's basically cited and referenced with the annotations for the various pieces of, the various slides. The slides are excellent but if we can have... agree with your decision to take it up to a higher level and make it more digestible, but if we could have the citations and references to allow us to dig deeper that would be really fabulous.

Absolutely, and I should just point out, I should have said it at the beginning but all of the data that's in that report is in the CIP. So it exists all in the narratives. But I can certainly get you that source data as well. and for example, some of the data that's in the narrative is pulled from our five-year forecast. But I get your point.

Thank you very much.

Thank You. Councilor Gordon?

Thank you so much. This is mind boggling, so thank you to you and your team. It's incredibly impressive. I'm just curious what role the community plays when you are thinking about these projects and if there are opportunities for the community to potentially raise the priority. There are certainly passion projects that each village has, and looking through this I see them scattered throughout and then it sort of goes to Councilor Farrell's question that if there is a passion project or something people would like to see have attention brought to it sooner, Is there room there to look for other funding sources, not necessarily naming rights but grants and other avenues that may not have been considered before? Thank you.

It's a great question and I'll say that you make 0% of the shots you don't take. So what I would say to anybody who is advocating for a project, we have a CIP and I'm not gonna sit here and suggest that we would just upend the entire CIP simply because Everybody screams for one project. But I also truly love democracy, and part of being in a democratic community is that we have all of you wonderful elected leaders You have constituents. So the best way in my experience, not to put you on blast but the best for our businesses, our residents to advocate for projects that they would like to see elevated would be to reach out to their ward councilors, their city councilors and make their interests known. Reach out to Mayor Laredo. He's also one of their elected officials and make interest known Not that I want to put a tremendous amount of pressure on our community preservation committee, but this...I will just put another plug in.

That's one of the reasons that the CPA Act was was because it provides funding for a lot of those community passion projects. And you can look throughout Newton to see examples of that, so get involved. Sign up for a board or commission, run for office. Not trying to create more competition for any of you but get vocal, get involved in the community. There are plenty of ways. So, Councilor Bixby and then thank you. We will go to Councilor Kalis so I'm not ignoring the screen

Thank you, and I echo my colleagues' thanks for the presentation. I'm especially excited about the sidewalks and parks plans that are coming up. So I think a few of my colleagues have raised questions along these lines, but just to put a fine point on it. School planning, so you have lists in the slideshow there's lists of schools many school projects in the full CIP. Over time, this school committee has commissioned reports on school building status and I believe maintained a list of school building priorities of their own How are school communities, parents, PTOs the community at large to sort of think and plan if they're, well let's just, to build off of Councilor Charm's question. If they're not in this very initial list of Ward Underwood and South How are they to think about what might come for them in the future?

So, and I would welcome feedback from our school committee members should they feel so inclined. But I will give you my suggestion based on my experience. Very similar to what I just mentioned with the process for community to get involved, those are small little ecosystems of community in and of themselves. A PTO, I would recommend that they advocate and engage with their principals. Principals then advocate and engaged with the superintendent's office and Liam Hurley in their facilities team. Those are in my experience the best ways for their voices to be heard Very similar to what I said in 2011 when we first sorted the CIP and it was all just risk of failure, impact of failure and no kind of quality of life. We want to make sure that when we're looking at the building systems, which are very important and can impact program in teaching and learning that we're also simultaneously looking at projects that truly are more programmatic in nature.

We wanna make sure that those buildings that are gonna be around for a little while longer before we do large capital projects are continuing to evolve and meet the moment.

Thank you, sorry I'm up and down here. That's helpful to the extent that it is possible to have some much clearer list going forward and sense for these communities about when they might be getting major investment, a new school building or if that is truly off the table for the foreseeable future whatever that might mean so that those school communities can make plans about playground investment or things that the PTO can be doing, or advocating for so there's not and so on. A separate list maintained by the school committee, a separate report out there of conditions and plans from from the city and the CIP that all leave a lot of ambiguity. That would be very helpful, I think for families and school communities. Question on phosphorus control.

To what extent is there room for private, I think investment isn't the right word but to what extent are we incorporating and many, many more non-governmental assets into the phosphorus control plan. Because this is a liability it's not necessarily requirements that we do this work right? We just have to have the work done to mitigate our phosphorus. So is there room for developers or golf courses or other non-governmental entities in Newton to be shouldering some of the burden?

Yeah, so what I would say is it's a great question and one that I'm not gonna give you a very satisfying answer to tonight. The reason for that is we are actively still working. This is a relatively new program. We are still actively working with EPA on it. So we're going to have a better sense of where we stand overall in, I would say the months is probably where we're at, the months ahead One of the things that we're actually looking at very, very hard is our street sweeping. We have a very aggressive street sweeping program here in Newton and it is to date not been something that we get full credit for, for our phosphorus reduction. It sounds like there might be an opportunity to recognize that as part of our phosphorus and as well it should in my opinion because it does remove a lot of it from our stormwater systems. So,

You couple that with our work that we're doing on our phosphorus reduction programs in our actual built environment. I think we have a plan to make really good headway, but understanding to what extent private efforts Thank you. Sorry, I promise. Councilor Kalis, you're up.

Thank you, Mr. Morris. Two questions. One that I give you every year which is the light at Walnut and Center and then probably ties into it but I saw that your second priority was Needham Street. At what point are we taking over and what is the work that's going to be done?

So the light at Walnut and Center with, I'm sorry? Oh, the light at Walnut and Center. I would say, I'm not sure you brought this to me last year because I wasn't COO at the time but I am certainly happy to take a look at the last few years of presentations to see what previous COO responded or how the previous COO responded, but I can certainly get you information on where we stand with that intersection as soon as we finish the meeting.

The real thing is the alignment with Needham Street and those new lights that are there at Route 9.

Oh, I'm sorry. I got you. Okay so yes that is something they are actively working with MassDOT on. So the answer's actually gonna be very similar for both of these. The challenge that we're getting over there with the light in question is that the timing is not being synchronized It is difficult because we're working with MassDOT. Ned Codd and his team have been actively pursuing MassDot to make those adjustments, to continue to refine it so that those intersections are talking to each other appropriately. We are going to step that up here shortly, and it's not just that project because that dovetails right into Needham Street. We're not ready to take over Needham Street yet. One of the things that I think is very, very important as we're considering any project and this is no offense to our partners at state agencies but

Any project where a state agency is doing the work and then turning it over to the city, we need to make very, very careful decisions with respect to when we accept those assets because We want them in perfect working order because as soon as we accept them, they're ours. So we want those things to be flawless. Needham Street still has some work to do So we are going to be continuing our efforts with mass thought to ensure that we are getting a completely finished product when it is turned over to us. Can't give you a date here this evening, but I can assure you that we are pushing hard on both of those as well as a few others.

Okay. I appreciate that answer. Thank you.

Thank You. Councilor Malakie?

Thank you, and like others I really appreciated the presentation. It's sort of a and more user-friendly or intuitive format somehow, and I'm really impressed by your ability to present it all extemporaneously without reading. I had some sort of maybe regular people questions about some of the items. I noticed that number 31 was Washington Street Pilot. And I know there's a meeting coming up for feedback from the public, I guess just next week right? But I was wondering why There's two million in there and FY 29, which is two years from now. So sort of a two-fold question if you get enough feedback to know what sort of and so on.

So if there's any fixes you want to do or changes to make, why is it then another two years to 2 million enough, or given that we spent I guess 4.7 million to get where we are now?

That's a great question. So what we have there for the Washington Street pilot, which is a little plug, we have a community meeting coming up soon. We are going to be engaging with the community. We have some thoughts about how we might continue, there's been several changes to the pilot over several years now We have some additional tweaks that we might want to make, but we wanna get community feedback on those. That would be a modification to the pilot The $2 million that we've put a few years out is our best guess at when we might want to make provided that these next round of adjustments are successful. That is a kind of target year and target amount that we feel is a reasonable number to make the pilot that we have out there a permanent, change to Washington Street because the current system is temporary.

Okay, so whatever fixes come out of the community engagement would be sort of temporary basis and you'd try those out and then this would be making them permanent? Exactly. OK, another question I had to do with building specifically this one. A month or two ago we were talking about the city hall windows and we funded the design work on the first phase. Is that... I guess, I didn't see anything in the five-year timetable for any actual work on the windows and cupolas if the cupolas are included. Do you expect it's not going to happen in that five-year period, or you just don't know the amounts yet?

the latter. So we didn't, we've never put a... We put TBD in the estimated cost for projects but we've not put TBB and the funding in the five year period so in this case where we are, we have just started the feasibility We don't have a number yet, we didn't wanna guess. I would fully expect that we would be working with the CPC and ultimately the city council for construction for both of the cupolas in the first phase of the windows at some point in that five year period will have a better understanding of when and how much in the next probably six to eight months. We might be able to get it updated for the supplemental CIP.

And the same discussion, there was a lot of concern about the roof. Maybe it's in here. I didn't see the roof in here specified, is it?

So the roof, that's a little different. Not to go too far down the rabbit hole but the roof system for City Hall is comprised of two things. One is our slate roof which is in remarkably good condition for being you know, close to 100 years old. And then we have a very small section of rubber membrane. The leaks that we have seen City Council break room, of course it would leak there. That was actually a door on the cupola that the latch had let go and the door swung open, and the rain was just pouring in. Ironically enough we are InDesign on a cupola restoration that will address that problem so that's that one. Conference room over here? That actually is not a roof leak, that is when the rain blows from a certain angle it comes in an HVAC duct intake and then comes all the way down. It took forever because it doesn't come straight down It's like 50 feet over and managed to somehow snake its way down there.

So that one they're prefabricating some modifications of ductwork to avoid that water from blowing in so our roof actually is not leaking, we do have a few locations where we've had some ice damming like ISD that were working on that but overall our roof system is in good shape.

That's great. And also, I noticed besides the police headquarters amount to be determined there is an item for police headquarters windows and doors but nothing in the five year Outlook. Is that an item that would just go away and be supplanted when you, if the if the debt exclusion and the new police station is approved. But does it represent one of the costs that we would have if we did not do the new station? Yes. Basically, yeah, okay. and I guess that's it for me. I was also interested if it's not too much work, and I'm probably spoiled by New York Times interactive graphics but that sort of scatter diagram with risk Consequences. If that could be made, if you could scroll over and click on a dot and see what's that dot, that would be very cool.

I can think of three people off the top my head that have already taken this, downloaded it and run it through one of our AI engines. And it's probably already in my inbox so I'm sure we can manage. Wright might be doing it from her phone right now.

Yeah, I'm very happy to see Bullo's Pond up there at number four and looking forward to the Parks and Recreation study of all the parks needs because I think A lot that could be done for quality of life and happiness with more work on the parks. Thank you.

Completely agree. Councilor Baker?

Thank you, Mr. Morrison. I appreciate really the degree of thought that went into this. As you were talking and explaining this, reminded of the charter which requires a capital improvement plan to be presented But as I looked at it and listened to what you had to say, I don't think the two documents align. The Charter's got it right. I know that will be a surprise to my colleagues who find my fealty to the Charter almost unyielding However, I do suggest that it may be worth and this is not your problem but ours to think about revising that specific section to speak about a capital investment plan rather than an improvement plan because what you've described is a process of not only building things new, but trying to maintain what we build. And that seems to me an important component of this

and also the charter requires, which I didn't see in the document an estimate of the operating costs of each of these capital improvements. Which obviously would extend their spreadsheet all over The Electronic Universe. So it may be that as we think about this, we think what the planning tool is designed to do and in order to do that, think about what elements of the charter really need to be complied with because I think In fact, you've transcended it and we may need to think about what we do to improve this document as well as what you presented.

Thank you, Councilor Baker. Councilor Block?

Thank you, Mr. Morris. This city is very fortunate to have you and your team overseeing all this. My comment is in the community engagement arena I've been getting some complaints lately. I'll relay them. They have to do with pickleball. I'm sure it's high on everyone's list. It's not the pickleball players, it's the people who live near the pickle ball courts. This is not the only city that has identified this as a problem, not an easily solved one. Whether it has to do with the location of the courts, portion of the year in which the courts are made available to the public, the pickleball equipment and balls that are

I just ask that this somehow work its way into your analysis of both the CIP and the operations of the park. So that's it, thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilor Block. I think anytime you're doing a capital plan or a facility plan or park plan site planning is critical so thinking about where you locate assets we do this a lot with our school projects over the years Even basketballs can be a little noisy. Think about where you put those basketball courts to limit the amount of noise pollution. Little things like that go a long way, so it's a point well taken. I will say a vacation up in Wells, Maine and one community right next door I believe has a ballot question this fall about they recently banned pickleball at one of their new locations and I think the residents petitioned to reinstate it because of the quieter pickleballs. So we'll see how that plays out. All right. Councilor, I'm gonna go second round now. Anybody who hasn't spoken yet? Okay, Councilor Charm.

Thank you. This is just a single question, but I know that we're having conversations about Newton Center Plaza and the future of Newton Center I have looked through this list now, I think 10 times and I don't think that I saw anything but there may be something in here. Can you speak to that?

Yeah, it's a great question and this is another one where I didn't want to speculate. We don't know how much money this will cost. There's a chance that it doesn't hit the CIP threshold So instead of speculating and again putting in a project that may or may not need capital funds, We felt it appropriate to leave it out for now. I also shuddered at the thought of trying to describe the project before we engage with the community, I think for all those reasons, I'm looking forward to a community meeting in the not too distant future next few weeks. To really hear from our residents and our businesses about what they would like to see with that project

Thank you. My understanding is that that meeting is coming up next week, is that right?

I believe so. I kind of live day to day if I'm being honest but yes it's coming up very very soon October 29th for everyone listening at home thank you Greenberg, and then Councilor Irish.

Thank you. I went through the list a couple times and I noticed that the place structures for Braceland Park and Memorial are on here, but I don't see any other parks listed for place structure improvements.

So, it's a good question. The two playgrounds that are identified in the five-year CIP are the two playground that Parks and Rec believes will both need to be funded in the next five years and that they don't have alternative funding sources for, meaning that they can't handle it out of their own, that they're not doing a partnership build. but I will openly admit that I think part of doing, Parks and Rec has a very good playground prioritization list. But I firmly believe that the parks and fields assessment that they're working on will kind of reshape everything to that on that end. Quite frankly, very similar to the question that was asked about stormwater. I think when that plan is complete you're gonna see significantly more projects in the CIP Now, that's the good news. The bad news is we're not going to suddenly have way more money but at least we'll know all of the things that we want and that need to happen out there. Thank you.

Councilor Irish.

Thank you. And thank you for all the information and data, which I like to look at. But as I'm looking at the detail on the tables, I'm thinking of maybe a couple more columns not to make more work but in the future even and one might be, because building is just in my mind very broad. And that's as I'm going through I'm sort of making checks about whether it's schools or field houses and things so just where there's a way to categorize where the building funds are. Because it's such a huge, I mean, it's a large portion of the budget and if there's more detail around that and there may be in another version of this. And the other thing maybe even by Location or Ward, just to understand where these things are happening. It might be good for the community to understand were the work is happening, where the investment's being done and just as another sort of layer of community engagement

and sort of understanding how, when and where the projects work.

It's a really good idea. We actually played with this a little while back. I forget the acronym, but we actually had an interactive map with all of the actively funded projects on our website. Didn't get a lot of hits, but it was a few years ago. We can try it again. I will say on your first question though, and I apologize. I didn't mention this up front. Some of you may notice that the CIP book is a little lighter this year. We actually intentionally pulled the sorting by asset type department, all of those elements out. They are all online so they're available for anybody that would like them and we're happy to print them out for you. This was actually intentional because I have had the pleasure of working with many of you for many, many years. And when you all, I've seen not all of you but when you will pull out your CIP books when we're doing budget presentations every once in a while, and I won't name names.

You might pull up a sorting by asset category thinking you're looking at priority ranking and then we're all talking about different projects in different orders so I figured for To keep this really simple, we'll just include by priority in the book and have all of the other filters available online.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

There's got to be more. Is that it? I can go all night on this. Yeah, really. Yes, Councilor Roach.

Mr. Morse 1, Council 0.

I will just say thank you very much for your comments this evening. This next year, one of the things that I want to work on so that when I'm doing this presentation next year. I really wanna try to make this document and these reports speak to our residents and that's no offense to all of you but I want this to be easy to absorb. You all have shared some insight into how we might improve that, I welcome that if you think of things after this meeting or over the course of the year please let me know. And some of these things don't necessarily need to wait for the CIP, we can put something together and put it on our website. I really want people to truly understand both where their tax dollars are going and how we're prioritizing working through our capital needs. So thank you for your feedback this evening.

All right, so just real quick. How do we feel? Do we want a three-minute bio break? Yeah? All right I'm seeing lots of nodding. All right thank you very much. We'll take like 3 to 5 minutes for a bio break. We will be right back.

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Thank you for watching!

Alright folks, why don't we try grabbing our seats here. Tariq's got to get to work tomorrow. We're not recording so I can say that. We are not yet. All right, yeah no really let's get going folks. Let's grab our seats. Why don't we start the recording here? Yeah, let's roll. All right friends, we have two items on second call. The first item here, stemming out of public safety and transportation.

Item 6226, requesting a discussion in ordinance change to the city's overnight parking ban I will start with Councilor Lucas on this item. Sir? Take it away.

Good evening. So this is a continuation of the conversation and discussion from two weeks ago, with respect to the angled parking. I put two pieces of information On your desk, I want you to look at the first one. It's in the upper right-hand corner. It says 62-26. This is the draft ordinance or amendment to the ordinance that was voted and recommended for approval by the Public Safety and Transportation Committee with a six to one vote. There was a question at the last meeting from two weeks ago about the number of parking spaces that are on street angled parking. What I said, Comm Ave in between Center Street and Grand Avenue is 11 spaces. Beacon Street in the Wobbin Village Center 15 spaces

Auburn Street in Auburndale, 28 spaces. Albemarle Road 250 spaces according to the city's website The angled spaces on Washington Street in Newtonville, in front of the Rice Valley building. Those will be taken away so those will be ineligible due to the Newtonville commuter rail station renovation that will take two and a half years. Councilor Baker has submitted an amendment which is the second piece of paper on your desk, which I assume he will need to introduce and that concludes the report. Thank you.

Fantastic. Councilor Baker on said amendment.

Thank you, Mr. President. I want to acknowledge the contribution of the chair of this committee is also my colleagues, Councilor Block and I guess, who thought collectively with us and the law department to produce language that I think solves the questions we were asking. and it's on your desk. And I would respectfully move that as an amendment, and I hope it would pass so we could get this item adopted.

All right. We have an amendment on the floor here. I believe I just need a second for that. We have a second. All right. Any discussion on the amendment? I can't see it. Dahmubed.

Thank you, President Oliver for those of us online I think it's maybe I'm missing something but I can neither see nor hear the language of the amendment

All right, we'll put that back up here for you in a second. Did you see the first what was passed from PS&T?

Yes, I believe so. If that's what was previously shared in the last meeting.

Thank you. We're getting the amendment pulled up here. There we go. Can you see that?

We cannot, but perhaps if you share the screen.

Oh, all right. Hang on. Glad I asked. Yes, that one. Should be able to hit that and share it right? How about that? That's great, thank you. All right we'll give you a minute here. And for everyone in the room this is on your desk so. In the interim, Councilor Wright?

What's the difference between the red and the blue?

I believe that's a fair question. Now, I'm going to pass that along to Councillor Baker.

That was an attempt of varying degrees to get different ideas in one page. And some of them started in red and some of the started in blue, but the amendment really is the language that's colored as opposed to the language in black and white.

All right. Councilor Dahmubed, are you all set with the... Have you had a chance to read through this?

Yes, thank you.

All right, was that your only question or is there more? that's it for now all right so other than that yes sir great thank you Councilor Greenberg

Thank you, Mr. President. So I'm just not clear. Does this angle parking only for that portion of Albuquerque and none of the other sites?

to me, Mr. President.

Councilor Baker.

Yes. In other words the existing ordinance currently allows the overnight parking for streets where there's perpendicular to the street That's not a change. All this is saying there is an additional opportunity for angle parking but in this location only. So we didn't get into the whole question of what are we excluding citywide. So that was the, as a result of a number of backs and forth we had with the law department to find the simplest way forward.

All right, anyone else? Councilor Albright.

Just to follow up on that question, I think the question was does this mean the annual parking is only on Alber Mall? And you said yes. So this means that the angle parking in Wobbin Center and other commercial areas is not allowed or yes, it's allowed?

It's not allowed. Only the one in Avermore.

Oh, okay. Well I don't understand why you've excluded those areas.

Because there were concerns raised about including them and the problem of taking things out turned out to be more difficult than putting one in, and so that's where we are.

Okay, then I won't vote for this amendment because it seems obvious to me that you can set a guideline or rule and if your car isn't removed from the commercial area by some stated time, 7 o'clock, 8 o' clock, 9 o' Clock in the morning they get a ticket or they get towed so it feels like we're giving up. As one of my colleagues just said, this is a minuscule thing to do to solve this problem anyway and you're making it even more miniscule than it was before.

All I can say is that we're trying to solve a problem to get consensus on the council and getting a start. So, I would encourage members to vote for this. It's not the end of the game but it's just to try and fix the problem that was presented in this particular way without extending it beyond that.

Councilor Malakie

I'm just curious, because I'm not familiar with them. What are the areas where parking is perpendicular to the curb?

Councillor Lucas.

The only area in Newton where there is parking perpendicular to the curb is Chestnut Street and Upper Falls.

Anyone else? I see no hands on line. I've got one in the room. Councilor Getz.

Okay, I think that now we're getting into the weeds in terms of just talking through the differences between the pools of potential parking spaces that would be eligible for the overnight It's actually an overnight parking ban residential sticker program. Currently, there is in use in Upper Falls 25 spaces that in 2016 were allowed so then they are eligible for the overnight parking ban. Those are the only ones currently Now, in terms of having reviewed the planning of the parking ban report there was consistency between both the working group as well as PS&T that they would not lift the band in the VCOD. Both Beacon Street and Auburn Street, which are two sites, potential sites, are in the VCOD.

So I think that we need to sort of honor what was reached in agreement in PSNT and the working group that they would exclude any parking spaces that are localized in the VCOD. So, in terms of the public use The Arbomare site, those are 250 parking spaces. It's 82%. So when we were talking about the other sites that you had just mentioned 82% of them are in Auburndale. The other two that I think should be restricted to the ones that are in BCOD, so that leaves the 11 spaces on Comm Ave. in terms of what you were sort of suggesting. Rather than accepting the language that is the proposed amendment, the initial one would allow those additional 11 spaces

All right. So I think that is, oh, I should also mention that we've been joined by Councilor Krintzman online. Councilor Block followed by Councilors Charm.

For those of us on PS&T, thank you Mr. President but for those of US on PS & T who have listened to the working groups report and who have spoken and discuss this. I actually can't tell you how many meetings we've spent on this, and we're not close to done. Proceeding carefully, I think is sort of one of the things that we're most conscious of. And in response to Councilor Albright, Yes, this is a minuscule contribution. Including all of these angled spaces would also be a miniscule contribution

but it's better to walk carefully and slowly, and not make any unintended consequences happen than to have to undo something later. So we're I suggest that we adopt this amendment, we allow this to take effect. hopefully by December 1st, and that the PS&T committee will continue to work on the various proposals which came out of the working group and there are coming out of our discussions. Thank you.

Thank you. So now I've got Councilors Charm, Krintzman and Kelley in that order not all at once.

Thank you. I'm curious for those of you who have been in the numerous PS&T conversations about this, To what degree do we understand the demand for a potential residential parking permit program across different parts of the city? I would be interested to to know, do we have a sense of how far outstripped the demand would be over this supply of 250 in the Albemarle area? and whether there are constituents that would be close to the ComAv and Grant locations would be very interested in having these spots. I think we all probably have opinions, but I'm curious whether we actually have any data on that.

Thank you. Councilor Lucas?

There's a lot of data in the overnight parking ban working group report. It's been attached to many agendas since the end of July, perhaps I think. There's a lot of good data on parking tickets, municipal parking lots. I would... there's a lotta maps. figures, charts and you can take what you want from them but the data is all there. With respect to Wobbin, What I found interesting in the report is that they produced a map of all the overnight parking tickets in the last three years.

There were no tickets issued in Wobbin west of Chestnut Street. For the ones on Comm Ave, and Ward 7 in between Center and Grant. Over the last three years, there have been three overnight parking tickets and then I said this two weeks ago, Auburn Street in Auburndale. There is a municipal parking lot literally around the corner from those angled spots on Auburn street and I think it's 40, 40 parking stalls in the Melrose at Yeah, Melrose Avenue parking lot and only three permits have been issued in the last three years. I hope that helps with respect to the angled parking.

All set? Great. Councilor Krintzman, if you're still there. Alright well we'll come back to him in a minute. We'll go right ahead with Councillor Kelley

Krintzman is back.

Yes, Councilor Krintzen? Your turn sir. and we got them.

I hope you're able to hear me, I apologize my Wi-Fi is going in and out. We got you. We're still on the amendment correct?

Yes sir.

Okay, I plan to oppose this amendment. As folks have said, this is a well let me go back two weeks ago Councilor Lucas articulately and eloquently explained a very small change that was being proposed that would affect actually nothing, but would allow the traffic council to make some changes in a few areas of the city. Remembering that this just authorizes essentially the traffic counsel to act if there is reason to do so and remembering that the City Council still retains the right to have an appeal from the Traffic Council come to the City council. I think we should reject the amendment, this is still going very slowly and it's a very small change but I'm gonna oppose the amendment because I would like these slightly larger small change to take effect, the way Councilor Lucas articulated it. Thank you.

Thank You sir. Councilor Kelley?

I'm still chuckling over Councilor Krintzman who said pretty much what I was gonna say, but I was going to ask a few questions because this amendment did confuse me even more. I voted at the last meeting no because I didn't want to hold it, because as Councilor Krintzman said I think Chair Lucas made a pretty clear case for it last time. And as Councilor Albright said, is a tiny little minuscule effort towards solving the issue that's before us and this amendment, as I'm understanding it now making it even more small and minuscule, and I too will not vote in favor of it. But perhaps once last time, I hate to impose upon you Chair Lucas but could you explain the difference between how many Spots does this amendment provide versus what was before us last time? This is including the east side of Albemarle. and the Chestnut Street upper fall spots, okay.

But nothing in VOCD not on CommEv, not on Beacon Street So if we reject this amendment, we still have before us the original proposal correct? Do you wanna explain the difference numbers wise which is very tiny so it maybe doesn't really matter but I'm gonna vote against the amendment.

Lucas.

So the number of spaces, if this amendment, excuse me, if Councilor Baker's amendment passes it would eliminate the 11 spaces on ComAv The 15 spaces on Beacon Street. The 28 spaces on Auburn Street.

That's it. So 56 spaces. 54 more spaces. 54? I'm in marketing, folks.

Got some math whizzes in the room. 54 spaces, that's what we're voting on with this amendment.

All set? Alright, Councillor Wright followed by Councillor Leary then Getz.

This is probably going to Councilor Charm's questions. One of the reasons why we looked at this, there's no municipal parking lots in that area and in Nonantum and some of their lots, I think it's above 80% or 90% usage. And so they need some parking there when we don't have parking lots So this is what we're giving versus what Councilor Lucas said in Auburndale, there's a parking lot with 20-30 spots and only three are being used. So there isn't the need in those areas, and they have access to parking lots right there. But we believe there is a need in this area, and there's no parking lots. So that's why we kind of pulled this out and said, you know came up with it this solution. Thank you.

Thank You. Councilor Leary followed by Councillor Getz

Thank you, Mr. President. I was also a little confused about this and it seems a real de minimis issue so I'm not even sure how I'm gonna vote but I do think that if we're going to give people some relief for a place to park on the winter parking ban while the winter park is in effect, it would be in places where the need is more dire. But I'm not clear why we are excluding the VCOD when, as I think Councilor Albright mentioned, we could put a timeline, a time limit of 7 AM for them to move their cars and of course there's always the possibility that people won't move their cars, which can happen. So I'm sort of agnostic on this right now, but I do think we have a long way to go to solve this problem and this amendment isn't it. Okay thank you.

Councillor Getz followed by Councillor Baker

Yeah, I'm sort of wanting and hoping that everybody supports this amendment. I think the principle one is that this is the VCOD and I think that we intentionally excluded any sort of, and that's the way I'm reading it in both the report as well as what the chair had mentioned that there was a consensus between PSNT and within their working group that they would be excluded, the VCOD. The second piece is that the proximity and what's happening with the parking stalls that are right there, the angle parking stalls in Moabin Village Center, is the use. Those are used for the parents that are dropping off their kids at Angier. They're used for businesses, it's the proximity, it is the heart of the village center. So for me, I sort of don't see this as a parking angle parking somewhere else in some other part of the city. I see this the village center. So I am sort of thinking that it's contra

to be including these parking spaces in this amendment and I actually sort of believe that we should stay true to what was the intention of trying to identify parking spaces to provide for overnight parking. Now we're going to add another layer of enforcement if in fact those The proximity and those spaces need to be cleared so that then parents dropping off children can actually then make, park their cars and walk the kids to Angier. So I sort of see this as you're adding a layer of enforcement in order to ticket those people and get them out of there so that they can be plowed. you know and so be it but I sort of feel as if this is adding rather than being additive in terms of the 15 spaces that are there right in the village center. I will be supporting the amendment

I just think it's important to get as strong support for this amendment as we can and get the main item done. I couldn't support the main items without the amendment personally because of my concerns about the board seven component, This takes care of it, and I hope that we'll pass it. Thank you.

Thank You sir. Councilor Silber followed by Councillor Lucas

Yeah, I just want to clear up a couple of things. So for starters, the overnight parking ban... The overnight parking winter night permit... Sorry, winter overnight parking permit you must move your car by 7am. Okay, so 7pm to 7am permit. The second is that during a snow emergency which would be sensibly the time one would plow one of these spaces most municipal parking lot, parking is banned anyway. Okay so we're not really solving the underlying problems which is to provide more overnight parking spaces by removing these additional spaces. And I honestly, I think we should leave this to Traffic Council to solve which is why I'm not going to be supporting this amendment.

Lucas. Any other hands before you get going? Because as of right now, he's our last speaker on the amendment. All right.

Thank you. It was always the intent of the working group in their report that Albemarle would be allowed to have overnight parking. That was the intent. and also when discussing the overall item, the winter overnight parking ban if we were going to exempt streets. It would not be in the VCOD or areas that were gonna be car free or car light. So, that was college campuses as well and the VCOD. And two of these are in the VCOD, Auburndale and Wobbin. Thank you. Forgot it for a second. Sorry.

So yeah, I will support the amendment and with respect to other municipal parking lots, I haven't raised this yet because we don't have any solid list yet. But Mr. Morse, who we heard from earlier tonight is going to provide an update to the city council and to the City as a whole on what municipal parking lots will be available for overnight parking including snow emergencies. That list is gonna be updated, maybe by the beginning of November. So be on the lookout for that so you can tell all your constituents who have parking needs during the ban but I will support the amendment thank you.

All right, oh, Councilor Albright.

Sorry I just wanted to add, as Councilor Lucas gave us the tickets data and I wouldn't I would be impressed with that data because the police don't go out at night looking for people who are parked on the street during the winter parking van. They have other things to do. Usually it's complaint driven to give a ticket, and I mean generally if you talk to the police they'll say they don't have time to go around the whole city giving tickets. So the fact that only three tickets were given near the Commonwealth area Doesn't impress me because nobody's complaining.

All right then. Seeing no more hands, on the amendment I think we should... Let's do a roll call on this one please Mr. Clerk.

Councilor Albright? Councilor Baker? Aye. Councilor Bixby?

No.

Counciler Block? Aye Councilor Charm? Aye Councillor Dahmbud? No Councilor Farrell? Councilor Getz?

Aye.

Councilor Golden? Aye, Councilor Gordon? Aye Councilor Greenberg? No Councilor Grossman? Irish, No. Councilor Kalis?

No.

Councillor Kelley? No Councillor Krintzman? No Councilor Leary?

No

Lucas, Aye. Councilor Malakie?

Aye.

Councillor Micley?

No.

Councillor Roach? No .Councillor Silber? No

Aye.

President Oliver? On this motion, the ayes are 11. The nays are 13. The amendment falls.

All right, as to the main item. Do we have any further comments, questions? Hands in the air. All right I believe, oh sorry Councilor Block.

Thank you, Mr. President. I think that the ghost of VCOD will have to settle again on this matter. The VCOD that this city council passed in 2023 expected that there would be that there would be no additional parking made available in these districts so as to encourage car light living. So if that's our policy, we should be excluding the VCOD locations from this item tonight.

So I'm going to make an amendment proposal that we insert the phrase excluding VCOD zoning districts. I propose that we insert that after the word include. Thank you.

I'm sorry, did you say after the word conclude or include? and I'm sorry, I'm gonna be writing this down. You play that language back to me one more time? I've got excluding VCOD districts. and then the rest of the sentence would continue but not be limited to et cetera, et cetera. Correct. All right. And I think it's to the original, not this amendment but the other, the first document. All right, so I have a proposed amendment. Do I have second on that? I have the second. Any discussion on this particular amendment? Yeah, okay.

Here we go. Councilor Lucas followed by Councilor Wright, Councilor Albright after that

I'm not going to support the amendment, even though I supported the prior one. The prior one was vetted by the law department and I'm actually surprised on... Even though I voted for it, I'm surprised they actually offered That amendment. But this needs to go to the law department because all the legalese stuff related to zoning and that It hasn't been vetted by the law department, one. But that's... Yeah, I can't support that on the fly. I do understand the intent but again as someone said earlier tonight, I don't remember who it was, every decision, I think it was Councilor Krintzman, every decisions that the Traffic Council makes is subject to an appeal. I think I said that two weeks ago. I thought it was Councilor Krintzman.

It was Councilors Silber, thank you. So yeah, I'm not gonna support it.

Oh, you just made Councillor Silver very happy with that reference. All right, Councillor Wright followed by Councillor Albright. Anyone else? All right.

So where is this going under A, B, C? Oh right there okay. Okay thanks that's it.

All set all right Councilor Albright

So two things. First, I think that village centers and VCOD in particular deserve their own conversation about the role of parking on the streets. So for that reason, I wouldn't want to get into it with just two that we're talking about here. But the other thing is that the comment about car light You know, I voted for taking away parking minimums because I was given to understand that developers would have the right number of parking spaces for the people they were going to serve. and not necessarily that nobody was gonna bring a car, but that they would have parking for the people that they plan to serve. So I know many of us here would like it to be car light, but I'm not sure that's really What happens? I think people do bring cars.

And my impression was that developers who are working in the VCOD will plan the parking spaces they think that their residents will need, so that may not be the car light So I think we should think about village centers on their own and not have this amendment.

All right, any further comments, questions on the amendment? Councilor Baker.

Well I just have to say if this amendment passes I'll have to move my Ward 7 Amendment and I'm loathed to do that since I think the basic purpose here is As I read the council's intent, a majority of us have said let's let the traffic council sort this out rather than do it at this level. So I regret that I can't support my colleague but I'm not going to support this amendment.

All right, so under threat of yet another amendment. There we go. I see no further hands. Nobody's online either. Can we get a roll call? Oh, I'm sorry, Councilor Malakie.

I'm just having trouble understanding the grammatical aspect here. Can we see that language where it would be inserted and how it would read?

Sorry, being a little cavalier. So it's my understanding and Councilor Block you correct me if I have this wrong but under, I don't know if this is number one or yeah it's gotta be one right? Under delete second sentence the sentence will now read For the purposes of this program, angle parking areas shall include but exclude VCOD districts, but not be limited to on street areas in which parking is perpendicular to the curb. It's a little clunky, but I think that's what we have in front of us. Is that fair? Block. Did I get that right or wrong?

Oh, you got it as right as it can get at the moment. Okay. I appreciate several comments that the law department The law department's assistance was necessary to arrive at the language that the council rejected and that there is that my language has not been reviewed by them and would need to be reviewed by then. I think that it's disingenuous to say that we should have a conversation about VCOD in some other place and time. This is... all of a piece. Everything is interactive, the VCODs, The working group's recommendations, the conversations that are happening in PS&T.

I'm very disappointed that this council seems to want to just let the Traffic Council take some lead on this and to give us the task of appealing their decisions. We're making a lot of work here for chasing a tail as far as I'm concerned So I'll withdraw my amendment. We can go right to the main event.

All right, that amendment has been withdrawn. I don't think I need a second just to withdraw it. So unless I see additional hands, let's take a vote on the original item which is the language that we were about to amend but no longer are. Can we get a roll call vote please?

Councilor Albright.

Aye.

Councilor Baker. No. Council Bixby. Aye Councilor Block. No Councilor Charm. Aye Aye. Councilor Farrell? No. Councilors Getz? No Councilor Golden?

Aye.

No.

Councilor Greenberg?

Aye.

Councilors Grossman? Aye Councilor Irish? Councilor Kalis? Aye. Councilor Kelley? Aye Councilor Krintzman? Aye Councillor Leary? Aye, Councilor Lucas? Aye! Councilor Malakie? No.

Aye.

Councilor Roach? Aye. Councillor Silber? Aye Councillor Wright? Aye President Oliver?

Aye

On this vote, the ayes are 18. The nays are six. Motion passes.

Thank you. So our second item tonight is Item 297-26, amendments to Chapters 22 and 12 of Newton's revised ordinances. I believe I'm turning the mic over to Councillor Malakie or am I going to Councillor Krintzman?

I'm happy to do it, Mr. President. Fantastic. I apologize for being late, everyone. Thank you, Councilor Malakie, for giving the report earlier. Item 297-26. If folks remember, the council had a resolution during the budget and actually made a recommendation to the mayor which the mayor then took on and we essentially funded this position under HHS instead of under the planning. And so, this ordinance change would simply be to move the Commission on Disability from within the Planning Department to the Health and Human Services Department When it came before the committee due to an omission or error, we didn't actually have the ordinance language. It had been prepared and a number of us had seen it but it wasn't included within the packet So on that night, the committee did not have the actual language to look at. Had a couple of questions I think from the old language, the old ordinance language As I reviewed it, all those questions were answered. Everything was handled. We do now have the language.

Hopefully everyone has seen it unless there's a member of the committee who wants to speak up and obviously anyone can speak up. I think we can probably handle this even on a voice vote so I think the language is now everyone has seen it and we should be good to go.

All right, thank you sir. Are there any...

Sorry, the voting committee was seven to zero.

Thank you. Are there any comments or questions on this item? Either from programs and services members, or the entire council? All right, I'm not seeing any. With that said, I do think we can do this on a voice vote, correct? Let's see if we can get away with it on the voice vote. All those in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? All right, I think that's unanimity. All right thank you sir. Councilor Malakie any additional motions for us this evening? Motion to adjourn.

Thank you.

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