Select Board November 18, 2025

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the select board meeting of November 18th, 2025 in Giuliani room at Town Hall. Welcome everyone who's here and watching on Zoom. The meeting is in hybrid format and some participants may join via Zoom. The meeting is being broadcast live on Comcast Channel 8 and Verizon Channel 40. and on wellesleymedia.org and will also be available for later viewing on Wellesley Media. Here in Giuliani room from the Select Board are Vice Chair Tom Ulfelder, Secretary Coletto Frank, Kenny Largess, our Executive Director, Megan Jopp, and our Assistant Executive Director, Corey Testa. We believe Beth Sullivan Woods will be joining us momentarily. and our first agenda item is citizen speak.

We have four people who have requested time in advance and I'll turn it over to Megan and Corey.

The first person to speak is Joel Hollenberg. If you could sit at the end of that table. Great. Thank you.

Marjorie, do you want to see if there's anyone else? Just so

How many other people are here to participate in Citizen Speak whose names we don't have yet? Okay, so we'll take 15 minutes of citizen speak, and Mr. Holmberg, welcome. We'll ask you to keep your comments to three minutes, please.

Can you just press the button on the microphone so the TV can hear you, thank you.

Good evening. I'm Joel Hohenberg. I'm a Wellesley resident. And I put together three quick pages of talking notes, of talking points. My goal is to definitely cover the first, but I left behind copies for people to see the others if we can get to them. So let me... move along here. So my intention is to cover issues that are close to me and to the more than 2,900 people who signed petitions regarding trail access to Centennial Park at the 40 Oakland Street parcel. As we understand it, this land was deeded for recreational use by Sisters of Charity in 1881. This was before the term conservation land began in the mid-20th century. The adjacent Sisters of Charity complex is in transition where we really need holistic planning to help maintain and protect Centennial Reservation and its actively used 40 Oakland Street adjacent parcel.

The 40 Oakland Street parcel has hosted generations of Prime Forest Path visitors for more than 60 years. The parcel makes up 75% of the trail loop when hiking at Centennial Park. Trail access at MassBay, Wareland Road, and Maugus Avenue and it parallels Abbott Road to Butters. Trails maintained and log clearing is provided by Town of Wellesley with permanent markers, signs and trail bench fixtures. Town of Wellesley has supervised trail use and has corresponded with the state on maintaining the trails for more than 60 years. Massachusetts state officials have protected the land as conservation land. The state has advocated against abutters and visitors who do not follow standard conservation land guard guidelines like planting daffodil flowers that are not native to the forest, moving rocks to make a daffodil rock garden that's 10 foot by 10 foot in a 40 acre forest.

using an electronic leaf blower to clear leaves off trails to make them easier to walk on or not allowing abutters to cut down trees that are encroaching on a butter's private property. The state land is widely available to the region around us. More than half of the trail visitors are Massachusetts residents that live in Metro Boston and Metro West towns outside of Wellesley. the trail hosts more than an average of 3,000 visitors weekly. The state is in an initial negotiating stage to conserve most or all of the forest while mandating that 180 residential units are built on five-acre MassBay parking lot and possibly using a minimum of forest with the intention of designating the balance of the 40-acre parcel as conservation land.

Town of Wellesley is really in the best position to legally serve as plaintiff to argue that the parcel is in fact titled 97 land and not surplus land suited for disposal to a private developer. So I have a list of MassBay related plans that factor into all of this. The MassBay parking lot has been primary parking for students since MassBay's Wellesley Hills campus was permanently established in 1973. It makes little sense to designate the parking lot as surplus land. MassBay President Podell is striving to make the campus improvements for the students. President Podell at MassBay's October 8th open house shared that public colleges do not fundraise with the private sector. In fact, Framingham State, Salem State, and MassArt, all state colleges have successfully fundraised to build new buildings in recent years. Yes, sure.

In wrapping up, there are a number of other talking points that relate to MassBay and the plans ahead of us. And I really strongly believe that to represent the people of Wellesley, the select board really needs to take a closer look at what we're doing, what we're not doing, and relinquishing all control to let things just go the state's way without any challenge to this new law that hasn't been tested. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I am going to butcher this pronunciation and I apologize.

Thank you and my apologies for being late. Thank you. I came here to try not to read and try to speak from the heart. My name is Pedro Devoyac. I'm a professor of computer science at Northeastern University. I was... also Associate Dean of Research at Courier College of Computer Sciences until this year. And now I'm on sabbatical at the Broad Institute. will be going back to Northeastern very soon. I lived here for about six years. And before coming to Wellesley, I've heard all kinds of things about people of Wellesley, that they talk down at people. And I don't think I've heard almost anything positive. and all of it turned out to be false. I have been nothing but accepted here and as you can see here by my accent I am

I was born in Serbia, I'm Eastern European, lived under different regimes and came here to the United States in 1999 after the war in old Yugoslavia. Anyway, I came here to speak in opposition of the proposal to sell the land. I think it's a rush proposal. I have not heard anything. are viable, to be honest. Everything that we brought up in the meetings with the state and president of MassBay has been on shaky grounds. That was proposed, for example, ideas that They said, oh, we will preserve the trees. The greens are of paramount importance. But then they also want to build a lot. Then we asked, what about traffic? Oh, don't worry about traffic. That will be taken care of too. Well, what about crowding of schools? Oh, you should not worry about that either.

But when you put two and two together, It just cannot be said that there is no viable plan for anything. And that land is really precious. People go there. There's a community there. This is not a place that's just an underdeveloped piece of land. There's people who come there not just from Wellesley, from nearby towns as well. There's a lot of hikers, dog walkers, even mountain bike riders that I've seen there. and it's a community just like some other places are communities such as churches or bars or stadiums. This is also a place where people hang out and create a community and develop bonds. Going back to what I heard from a previous speaker, I was very disappointed by the plan from MassBay. They want to sell the piece of land for fairly cheap. Let's say, as far as I understand, $75 million is what they were trying to do.

And this land, after development, might be worth a billion. and so to not even explore private partnerships is beyond me. I think that's the real way to go about it. I work at Northeastern. just the partnership with Northeastern would bring enough money. I was actually making a little bit of a calculation. Enough money to MassBay, if just you take 100 students from another campus, I'm just giving you a simple way to raise this amount of money. 100 students for 20 years, I think, would raise this amount of money. And splitting equally with a school like BU, Northeastern, or something else. So there's many other ways to raise the money that they said they want to raise without destroying the beautiful environment. There's not many places like this around here without destroying the community that goes there.

and so I just hope that we will put an opposition to this plan or at least make the state come up with something that does seem appealing because right now nothing, nothing has been proposed that makes sense to me. So thank you. And I'm also willing to answer any questions if there's any to use my time.

This is the public's opportunity to address the board. We don't engage in dialogue at the Citizen Speak. Thank you.

Leslie Hanrahan.

Good evening. I'm here tonight to urge all of you to take the necessary action to remove the 40-acre MassBay Forest at 40 Oakland Street from the surplus land inventory list. The House and the Senate are now taking amendments to the BRITE Act. the act that allocates fair share surtax revenue for capital improvements for colleges and community colleges. This would be the perfect opportunity for our state officials with the strong backing and support of our select board to craft an amendment removing the forest at 40 Oakland Street from this surplus list. We ask you to request that Representative Paesch and Senator Cream take this action. Almost 3,000 constituents from

the very first community to have 40 acres of forested land disposed of as surplus under the AHA have petitioned to have the forest of 40 Oakland Street removed from surplus. Natural lands and resources should not be fast tracked for disposal by exempting them from environmental protections and local bylaws. Massachusetts leaders have been unequivocal about the importance of forested land. Our own Governor Healey has stated, our lands, waters, and wildlife are at the heart of what makes Massachusetts so special. Protecting it isn't optional, it's essential. That's what she said. Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer has emphasized that the natural environment is our first line of defense. against the impact of climate change, and that the more biodiverse our forests and wetlands are, the more resilient they are. These statements apply directly to the stewardship of the 40-acre MassBay forest.

The EEA has classified the land as prime forest, the same designation as Centennial Park, Centennial Reservation, and the adjacent Article 97 protected land. Building houses is not more important than protecting the environment. The only change from DCAM's initial September 16th proposal is shifting 180 units of housing from a floor to a ceiling. This is unacceptable and does not meet the expectations and concerns of constituents. Neither do the assumptions outlined for the visioning study that simply parrot what DCAM has said from September 16th, that the land is surplus, 180 units is a given, and that the entire forest cannot be preserved. These assumptions ignore local and statewide conservation values and do not address the negative consequences of arbitrary housing calculations.

This is not a precedent that we in Wellesley should be setting for ourselves or for the Commonwealth or for generations to come. Please request Representative Peish and Senator Cream submit an amendment to the Bright Act to remove the forest at 40 Oakland Street from the surplus list. Although the deadline has passed for the House, let's not miss the opportunity to submit and pass an amendment in the Senate on behalf of our town and your constituents.

Thank you very much.

Hi, good evening, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm Raina McManus, Tumal Haran Lane. I'd like to read for the record a statement sent by the Friends of Brookside last Sunday to our distribution list. Dear friends, you may have seen an update circulating last Thursday from our State Representative Alice Beisch and Senator Cynthia Cream. The update indicates that the State still intends to build 180 units on Oakland Street, and this is unacceptable. We acknowledge the work of our local and state representatives, but respectfully this update does not address the important issues we have been writing, meeting, and petitioning about. Friends of Brookside's position as articulated in the petition now approaching 3,000 signatures has always been that the 40-acre forest should not be categorized as surplus land. The only way to protect the entire forest is to remove forests and other environmentally sensitive areas from being categorized as surplus under the Affordable Homes Act.

removing forests from surplus land supports Governor Healey's ambitious biodiversity and habitat goals rather than undermining them. We reiterate that the 40-acre forest should never have been added to the surplus list. Additionally, the Wellesley Select Board has designed the upcoming Visioning Study Workshop based on the following assumptions. The entire 45 acres, including forest, is surplus property. The minimum density for this land is at least four units per acre or 180 units. The town does not have the ability to preserve the entire forest. These assumptions ignore local and statewide conservation values and do not address the negative consequences of arbitrary housing calculations. This is not a precedent that we in Wellesley should be setting for ourselves or the Commonwealth, and we implore our elected representatives to see the big picture and act on our behalf. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you very much, everybody. The MassBay project is not on our agenda tonight, so it will not be a matter for discussion in the rest of our meeting this evening. We thank you for coming and we urge you to continue to write to us and your state representatives. And for those of you who at home may not know, we are hold a visioning session. This is and the town's opportunity to provide input to the RFP that the state releases to potential developers. And the more people we have at the visioning session and the more people we can canvas, to ask for input, the stronger our input will be. The state has indicated they will hold the release of the RFP pending our visioning statement and the results from it. So we urge everyone in Wellesley to attend. It's December 8th at the high school from 6.30 to 9.30 p.m. Okay.

Our next agenda item is the Executive Director's Report, and I'll turn it over to Megan.

Thanks, Marjorie. Just a few brief updates. Just to add on to what you said about the visioning study, I would just recommend people arrive early so that we can start at 6.30, so doors will open at 6. and we look forward to people arriving for that. Also wanted to remind folks that we will have select board office hours on Thursday, November 20th from 12 to 1.30. Those can be held in person here at town hall or virtually. just email sel at wellesleyma.gov and we can schedule that for you. Also a reminder, free parking will begin for the holiday season on Monday, November 24th. This will be for all two hour meters across town. And also just noting the holiday stroll will begin, not begin, will be held on December 7th. we had sent out the W select board

I'm sorry, the Citizen Speak has ended. Please send your questions to Megan and Corey and we'll do our best to respond to them.

the town had submitted the W which went out to all residential Properties. And as part of that, there was a communication survey. So that has been very lightly Taken. So we would really appreciate folks taking that and will help us and inform the select board's decisions and funding towards initiatives moving forward with Communications. So we ask people to fill that out. The survey will be open until December 1st. There are hard copies at all the libraries, Main, Fells, and Hills. on Aging, and at Town Hall. And the survey can be found online. I also wanted to let you know that I did receive a text from Congresswoman Clark that indicated the town, largely through the Natural Resources Commission, with the Charles River Watershed Association, has received $500,000 towards...

A tree canopy study that they had applied that grant for. So we'll get more information shortly. But we want to thank Congresswoman Clark for all her efforts on behalf of the town and Charles River Watershed Association. And then the last thing I did, I want to just thank Representative Price and Senator Cream, not only for their efforts towards MassBay, but as we've received complaints from constituents in particular, about some mass COT sidewalk access and safety concerns. Those have been corrected at Route 9 in Oakland. as well as ADA compliance has been enhanced along Route 16, really actually in Newton, but that provides facilitation from Wellesley essentially to Newton Wellesley Hospital. and so we want to thank MassDOT for their quick work in rubbing those and for the advocacy of Representative Paish on that. And that's all I have Marjorie.

So Megan, I'm curious, we've had really strong attendance at Citizen Speak. Do we have a way to have citizens register so they can get email updates like we've done on other housing projects?

are we doing that we do we have an email that's 40 Oakland Street you can go online to the the MassBay site which allows you to register and that's a listserv that we send out any information you would receive that So that's currently been in effect.

And then we also encourage people to sign up for the select board agenda. So every time an agenda is posted or amended and updated, they can see what's in real time is going to be discussed.

Okay, thank you Megan. Our next agenda item is the Consent Agenda. On the Consent Agenda are appointments to the Wellesley Affordable Housing Trust, the newly established Wellesley Affordable Housing Trust which took the place of the Wellesley Housing Development Corporation, and also appointments to the Cultural Council, as well as a one-day license for the Wellesley Historical Society's holiday party. on December 10th. Has there been any request to remove an item, Megan? No. Okay, thank you. Colette, ask you for a motion, please.

Move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

All in favor? Aye.

bear with me while I scroll. I know, I tried to insert page numbers and it didn't work. Okay, our next agenda item is to welcome our Facilities Management Department Director, Joe McDonough, who's here to present the FY27 capital budget for FMD. Hi, Joe. Thank you for coming.

Good evening. Is that any better? There you go.

Okay.

All right, sorry about that. Okay, so very excited to be here. You know, this is my Super Bowl. I say it every year, but it really is. So a lot to cover. I want to leave some time for questions. I know you have a copy of the presentation, so I'm going to try to hit the high points.

Chair, would you like us to hold our questions?

It's fine either way.

Okay.

So this agenda looks somewhat familiar, I'm sure. The highlights, of course, the state of the FMD buildings, I call it the flyover. We look at every building, talk a little bit about how we go about doing capital planning. Then we get into the past projects that have been completed, FY25, FY26. It's always good to get an update on that. I have a couple of slides from Alan Hebert, our operations manager and former energy manager. There's so many projects that are energy related that I think it's really important for you to get some good feedback on why it's important to do this. Then we'll get into the FY27 actual requests. And then I'd like to talk a little bit about major capital projects. So this year, we don't have a lot of requests for individual buildings. You can see there's probably seven or eight. And the total is about one and a half million just below that.

our mission statement, which again, we created this 15 years ago and we live by it. Some of the key aspects of it are to work collaboratively with our partners in developing these Wood, Capital Requests, and again a focus on energy efficiency, sustainability, and I think you'll see that throughout the presentation. So our investment in buildings, and it is an investment. It's not just money that was spent, I think, spending $26 million over 15 years. You can see... what's been done in some of the subsequent slides. You'll see the total investment the town has made. This is important because funds are approved, but you have to get the work done. And we work very aggressively at getting this done. We work to get consultants ready to go for a new study so that we do that work in the spring before the funding is actually approved, kind of so that when July 1st hits, we're ready to go.

We do the same thing with some of these Summer Slammer projects. So the goal here is to get as much of this work done as possible. And what's interesting here is you look at the first eight years of our projects. and we're averaging 46 projects per year. That's a lot. That's a lot of small projects. That's hard to get done. and most of that was because of the deferred maintenance. We're playing catch up. And now the last six years, we're doing 13 projects a year average. So bigger projects, things that we've wanted to do but haven't been able to do, like the LED projects, the recommissioning projects, things of that nature. So the flyovers. Before we start looking at each project, this used to be the wave image, and I think it's probably more appropriate to, in my mind, I still think of the old Hardy Mods project that

we had to repair that as a capital project so there's a playing field there right now and there's a beautiful new building next to it so we spent almost a quarter of a billion dollars over the past 14 years between the major capital projects the cash capital projects and then our operating budgets So, again, we went from catching up with the deferred maintenance. Now we're able to do planned replacement of systems. And you'll see that in a lot of the projects that I'm going to talk about tonight. So the high school, the new high school, and this is something else I started to add to our flyover is the FY26 or 2026, This is how old these buildings will be. And I think we all sometimes get caught up in calling a new building when in fact the high school is 14 years old. and I also started to look at the six-year outlook in cash capital because there were some projects, systems replacement projects that we need to think about not just for FY28 but 29, 30 and so on.

So at the high school, the six-year outlook, we're going to replace the entire fire alarm system in FY31. Limited plumbing replacement, mostly pumps and things of that nature in FY31. and then a limited HVAC replacement, not full replacement. This would be fan coil units, exhaust fans, things like that, controls, upgrades. Schofield, and Fisk. You're all aware we did the 2015 $20 million renovation. For the six-year outlook, we have smoke detector replacements. And you're going to see that. A lot of fire alarms, smoke detector replacement. The gist of it is that it's getting very difficult to find parts for a lot of our fire alarm control panel devices. So we are starting to look at full replacement. And these are about the right time to do that anyway. We did miss the LED train for both Schofield and Fisk. So now we've plugged those schools in there for LED replacement.

And again, we're looking at a full fire alarm replacement. There's a good possibility that we won't have to replace the two-year-old smoke detectors that we'll have put in. You just have to make sure they're compatible with the fire alarm control panel. There's some major projects, the air conditioning project that you're aware of for the four schools, including Schofield and Fisk. And the Schofield roof actually finally hit its warranty, so we've added that to the plan, replacement of that project. it doesn't mean that we have to replace it when the warranty is up but we have to get it in the plan Hardy and Honeywell of course you know beautiful brand new schools we'll be managing those through the operating budget and the cash capital The Upham closed when the two new schools opened up. We call them mothballed, but we have an operating budget. Every other year we're looking at a cash capital budget to kind of get us over the hump. Things happen. We've opened that building up for We had an election last year and we find some things that we have to repair.

So this is to help us get over the hump, the operating hump. The middle school, 76 years old, and that's the main entrance. That's 1950, 52 building. And then the two wings on Kingsbury are 1966 vintage. So generally you're looking at a 76-year-old school. And in 2021, when we did the last major renovation to that building, that was the building systems project, about $14 million. the discussion at town meeting was this project will buy us 25 more years of that building. So come 2046 the idea was that basically that building would be replaced. so we do need to have a long-term plan for that building and you know the question is where do you build it can you build it there in phases, can you build a taller building, and things like that. So I know the question has come up, and I don't think it's too early to start thinking about that.

As some of you know, I sit on the MSBA's designer selection panel, and I see a lot of presentations from architects from various schools across the state, and one of them was Needham. And Needham has a middle school that's targeted for about $300 million. and some of the projects that we have at the middle school in the six year capital outlook. Fire alarm replacement, and two steam boiler replacements. You probably heard there was one of the three steam boilers failed, had to be replaced. You know, working with the assistant superintendent of finance, we're able to identify some revolving funds. So that is in the process of being replaced. We looked at the other two and we said, well, they're 20 years old. Let's put something in the plan just in case. So that's why they're in for FY32. and this is one of the four projects that we're looking at air conditioning.

So the Sprague, who would believe that it's a quarter century old, right? The new Sprague. But time sneaks up on all these projects. So we have smoke detector replacement, parking lot replacement. And, you know, the Bates, the Sprague, and the library. We've put in a lot of work to try to stretch those parking lots out. We've done crack sealing. We've done spot replacing or repair every year. So we've done what we can to get the life. I think if you go to any of those buildings you'll realize the time has come for a replacement. We also have some of the major projects. We have a roof replacement for Sprague. We're currently doing a feasibility study that'll talk about looking at Bates Sprague middle school roofs. And we do have a heating and ventilation replacement project You may recall a few years ago we replaced the cooling side, put a new chiller in the sprague. This is to look at replacing the heating and ventilation side of that project.

Bates. Again, not quite there at 25 years, but it's coming up. So we have a $325,000 parking lot replacement, $782,000 fire alarm replacement. And then as far as major projects, I mentioned the roof replacement and air conditioning. Preschool is a 2006 building, so it'll be 20 years old. It was modular, but I would call it a permanent modular. It's pretty robust. Just take a look at the foundation. It's not like the modulus that you saw in the previous images from Hardy and Honeywell. There is currently in our capital plan, I have a $40.5 million placeholder. and I say placeholder because that's an FMD generated estimate. It has not come from a completed master plan, has not come from a feasibility study and has not come from a design.

there's a number of projects that I feel like it is appropriate to develop at least a placeholder with the caveats that It can vary. Is it 30 million or is it 45 million? I feel comfortable with that number at this stage. The Fieldhouse, half of our maintenance work is done here at the Sprague. You've probably seen it. Town Hall, a beautiful building that we're all in tonight. Police station, almost 30 years old. So there's two kind of major projects coming down the line there. One is potentially replace the generator. And we've done some work on that. It doesn't get a lot of use. It gets exercised once a week. So it has a giant engine that's well maintained. And if we can keep running it, we will. But we have it in the plan. The elevator, just like the old elevator here, you may recall, 37 years old about when we replaced it.

So this is coming to the point where we're going to have to look to replace that as well. So it's in the plan. Fire Headquarters, and Central Station. So you know Central Station is almost 100 years old, beautiful building next to Wellesley College. and headquarters on Route 9 is 39 years old. So I think people have this image that it's the new fire station approaching 40 years. And so we have a couple of projects. This year, FY27, we have a carpeting project that I'll show you some images on. And they also have a generator that we want to keep an eye on and potentially replace. the bigger bearing the lead somewhat here is that we're currently in a master plan with an outstanding architect. And we have a great team, Megan, myself, Chief Mortarelli,

Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor the consultant as part of this plan is looking at a new station to potentially replace the 98-year-old building, probably some type of renovation to headquarters on Route 9. And then, of course, the question is going to be, based on development and projections, would a third station be needed? So I know the consultant will be coming back talking to you, but that's something that we're working on for those two projects. and the main library, again, coming up to a quarter century. So most of the projects in our FY27 capital, the total amount is at the library. One is the parking lot replacement, and one is to finish up the LEDs.

We're basically right now in the process of doing the garage in the first floor, and we're going to do next year, hopefully finish off the second floor, the stack area. So very important projects worth doing. We have a, just like the Bates School, we have a $3.8 million HVAC project in FY32 as well. So I think when these projects are done, the library will be essentially in the same position as some of these newer schools we have, which is great. That's what we want to keep doing. maintenance and capital planning never goes away and I have a slide later on you've seen that kind of speaks to that.

just on the library stairs that it's some of that work is really from the beginning.

Yeah, I have a couple of good slides I'll go over with you. On the parking lot? Yeah, I have a couple of good slides. I'll show you that. That's kind of the reason why in that number, as of this morning, I've been. working with engineering and an outside consultant on the design for the parking lot, just got the latest update. So that number, 640, will probably go up about 120,000. just verbally notified Megan and Rachel. This is the nature of having multiple projects going on at once. But I do have some slides to back that up. The two branch libraries, the two old branch libraries, 98 years old, 172 years old, We are doing a fire alarm replacement system at the Hills. We're able to get the smaller fire alarm replacement system done at the Fells. We're doing that within the operating budget. It's a much smaller system.

Warren, 91 years old, former elementary school, as you probably know. A couple of weeks away, we expect health and rec to move back in there, work to be completed. Morris's Pond, 88 years old. I think you all, most of you know the status of that. we have an $8 million placeholder and that's all it is as a placeholder because when the study is wrapped up there'll be a more reliable number and then when Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Don't read too much into that $8 million number. So DPW, there's eight buildings. There's three at Municipal Way and five at the RDF. In this image, you can see in the top right, the existing admin building.

And I just wanted to show you where the new admin building will be next to the scale. the operations building is 14 years old. Again, we'll handle that through operating in cash capital, no request this year. Water and Sewer, 17 years old, really in good condition, as you can see. And then the Park and Highway Commission. Building, 76 years old. So what happened? Just a quick recap. Several years ago, we were doing a feasibility study. We were looking at renovating the building. in the cost and swing space and whether or not it was a good investment to spend $14, $15 million for a renovation started to come up. and DPW decided to pause that project and develop a master plan to look at a wider area of municipal way. That's almost done, that master plan, and I think the plan is to come back and possibly a joint board meeting, board of public works, select board to talk about that plan.

So I've slotted some numbers in there. So one is that there's a possibility that we'll have a feasibility study at the 2026 ATM. it's getting kind of tight every day that goes by it gets a little tighter we all know the process and the boards you have to go to and the time it takes so There's a $101 million placeholder. Again, that's a number that was developed by FMD based on new buildings, full build-out, including the cold storage area, a much, much greater project. that project could be 40 million, could be 60 million, could be 120 million. That was a number that I felt based on really rough square footages of new buildings, renovations. and I almost didn't want to put a number in there, but it's such a significant number. I think we need to have it in the plan.

So at the RDF, these are the bale storage, recycling, baler building, and the admin building, as well as the paper, wood, and transfer station you mentioned. probably have driven by these. So the news here is that at special town meeting, the new building was approved. And the other project there is that the Baylor building and the old incinerator building are still in our capital plan for FY33, further out. Senior Center, nine years old, all of a sudden next year. So our capital planning approach, as I said, this is probably the most important thing we do that I do. It's planning, feasibility study, master planning, design, design review, and then overseeing construction. all of the projects that you've seen over the last 15 years have really started through this process. And it is long.

It starts in August and it goes all the way through annual and you take a breath and you're back at it. some of the things to think about by Article 14 that governs PPC projects over half million dollars fall under the PPC building projects they have on multiple occasions kicked those back to us and we've done them. So that's worked out. Our construction staff led by Steve Kagosian, We have three licensed architects, two professional engineers. We have a pretty robust staff overseeing these projects. and then just clarification, FF&E, fixtures, furniture and equipment, each individual department has to carry that in their budget with the exception of a major project like the town hall renovation where FF&E is included.

So the major construction projects in FY25, the RDF admin design and the Warren HVAC, again, started in the plan and in the process does work. So you've seen this, the RDF at a special town meeting, top is a rendering from the architect, drawing rendering, then a kind of perspective image below. And lower left is the manual. The manual is the plans and specs. So a lot of work is done by the design and construction staff and myself Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor if it's not shown on the drawing, it's a change order. So we spend an awful lot of time reviewing drawings, reviewing specs, construction approaches, schedules.

And I think this really benefits the town in the long run. because you get projects that aren't being delayed in fewer change orders and better quality. And I firmly believe that's a direct result of the staff we have and our involvement. So this is the Warren. Top left, you can see one of the hallways where a lot of the work was done, new fan coil units, new ductwork. Top right is above the gym. That's the mechanical penthouse. and that is chock full of HVAC equipment right now. There's not a lot of room to move there. This is new VRF units, new dedicated outside air systems. Lower right you see some as part of this project we did some minor office modifications. You may recall shortly after COVID began restaffing in the health department so we put up some temporary Walls, and made some modifications just to get more staff in there.

These are more permanent modifications with more reliable HVAC support systems for those spaces. and then lower left. This is kind of important to think about for future projects. Any project that has a construction cost that's 30% or greater of the assessed value, and that's the value we get from our own assessor, Triggers full compliance with accessibility requirements. So this is just one example. You may be familiar with that ramp in the lower level at the Warren. and the code consultant during design measured it and it was off by a few inches or half a degree but it did not meet current code. So what we had to do in that image you can see is we had to chip out concrete, lengthen the ramp. And that's just one example. Things like lifting or raising grab bars and toilet heights and partition openings. So it's a significant thing to think about. We have a couple of projects coming up where that may come into play.

So this is a project that, frankly, we're really proud of. This was an FMD maintenance and custodial staff effort the feasibility started July 1st. So we were able to buy, implement pilots at the four schools, three window pilots, one VRF pilot, heat pump pilot, We had our custodians collecting data temperature every day, three times a day. from the start of school in August all the way through September. They measured it at different locations across the classroom. We also brought in an acoustical consultant to measure ambient sound,

and I'm happy to say that it was generally very well received by school staff, the report of the consultants, students feeling the relief from the heat. and Granted, it was not a particularly hot summer, unfortunately, for the test, but very favorable. The reason we did this, and it was a $30,000 effort, but we felt it was so important because there's two options we'll be looking at with the study, and we're going to meet Thursday. We have another meeting. One is a lower cost option, the window unit, that we feel addresses the issues, the concerns. Another is a much higher cost. and we wanted to make sure that the lower cost option would work, would be viable. So we're really pleased with this.

some of the things that we think about in terms of projects and how you measure them and prioritize them are the same things that come up in the Townwide Capital Plan that you're aware of. , Life Safety, Indoor Air Quality, Impact to Students, Teachers, Municipal Employees, Residents and Buildings. talked about sustainability, preventive maintenance, things like the recommissioning that we do are an example, and then when you get to the end of service life. So in the last 13, 14 years, we have done some triage budgets, which I'll talk about. And we do need to think about before we invest in any major capital work, we need to think about what's going to happen to that building. So, you know, for example, the park and highway. We don't want to make any substantial investment in that building because we know this plans for either a major addition or new building. And we did the same thing with the RDF.

We held off. Mopo, same issue. We know it's going to be replaced. We took that approach also for the HHU and Town Hall. When we saw these major projects coming, we scaled back a little bit, doing only what we needed to do. I talked about the 46 projects we were doing on average first eight years, 13 the next. What this says to me is that our portfolio of buildings and the needs changes. We always have to change. You can't come in every year and say we're going to use the same approach. and the process starts. We look at the last year's budget and we build off of that. Any new projects that dropped in, we add to it. And as we found out this year, we work really well as a team. I would say working with DPW, FMD, all the other departments in town that have capital needs. We know from Rachel and Megan that this is the number we have to work to. So this year I did.

I dropped off a couple of projects that I felt could be pushed out. So we worked together. So we all realized there were guidelines that we have to follow. Abide by them. Sure. That's something that we put in for these projects, projects where we know something's coming. And we know there's going to be some need. So you'll see we have a triage, a $50,000 triage contingency budget for the RDF. and I have a slide for that to show you why. It's because we thought that project would have been done a couple of years ago and it hasn't. So those systems aren't getting any newer. So we put these in... Like I said, we have one at the FY26 at the Upham, and we're requesting one for FY27 at the DPW. It hedges the operational budget is what it does.

So the process, you know, we engage with the superintendent, assistant superintendent, department heads, F&D managers, Megan, her staff, Rachel, and we're here tonight with the budget. We do advocate for the projects, but just to be clear, we're advocating for building systems replacements, repair. We're not advocating for program changes. That's typically done by the proponent. whoever the proponent is for the project. Very few cases such as the, I think back to the Sprague-Chiller. So we did advocate for that. That was 100% maintenance project. that was not adding air conditioning. So in the air conditioning case, school committee is the proponent and they will advocate for that. So the most recent year's worth of projects. I'll highlight a couple of them.

But first, I want to talk about the work that Alan Hebert does as operations manager because there are multiple recommissioning projects, LED projects. And we'll start with the recommissioning. This is HVAC recommissioning. We've been doing it for 15 years. Obvious benefits, reduces energy consumption, extends out the equipment, right, so we can get more years out of it. and the biggest thing is indoor air quality, which is huge, particularly in the schools, all buildings. We do it on four to five years, sometimes three to six, depending on how new the building is, how big it is, what the needs are. and we've recommissioned two and a half million square feet of building space. We've done multiple buildings over and over again a few times. and if you add it all up it's about a $720,000 savings and it's equal to $340,000

34,063 metric tons of CO2, which is roughly equal to 8.8 million vehicle miles traveled. It's huge. So this is all important because when we talk in December about our operational budget, One of the things people ask, this is great. You're saving all this money. Well, we need it. Last year, FY26, we turned back. Our turn back was the lowest ever. It was 1%. and I want to thank the board because a couple of years ago you had comments about rebalancing, returning back a lot of utilities, whereas some of the custodial and maintenance expenses were going over, rebalance that out. it's worked out great, but as I said, about $100,000 I think last year out of a $10 million budget. So this helps. All this work helps is what my point is. Here's the list of recommissioning buildings. You can see $2.5 million.

We have four right now that we're working on, just ready to get going. The LED is something, the LED program is also really impressive and I can't say how thankful I am to Alan Hebert because he has really led the charge. this is a one-for-one replacement, meaning there's a light there, we're going to take it out. We're not going to try to take it out, redo the ceiling, and add one light for two. It's one-for-one, and it's worked out really well. Obviously, it reduces energy consumption. We've been able to do this without shutting buildings down. We've done it summer slammers, we've done it second shift, we've done it while people are working, and that's because there's some hands-on coordination by Allen with the various department heads. We've installed 8,000 LEDs in that time period, $865,000 in savings over that time period, and huge carbon dioxide savings as well, reduction. and again, here's a list of those projects.

the high school is a great example of almost 3,000 lights. And again, the new high school, why are you replacing lights in the new high school? Well, we missed the LED train by a couple of years. and we've reduced the electricity use by 18%. We did it in two phases and you could see Alan's graph. So not only does it save the electricity, but also it saves in electrician time, replacing ballasts, and custodial time replacing lamps. So some of the projects were FY25. All 17 that were in the plan are either completed or in progress. Here are some of them. Talked about the main library design. and I have some images to show you. The fire headquarters completed the roof. I think I showed you an image of it in construction. We are in construction at the Senior Center Kitchen. That's going well.

A very impressive project this summer doing the school department IT office over. I talked about the LED replacement. I have a really impressive project at the Bates I want to show you some images of. And then a small project, recarpeting at the police station. So this is what we do to vet these projects. So this is the parking lot. on the top left, those are actually my markups of I got a plan from engineering and I literally walked the entire site and I tied that into those photos to work in partnership with engineering who is fantastic to work with. I mean, you're basically getting consulting design at minimal cost. And then the top right is we brought in that sub-consultant because of the issues. You can see here

and I'll have more details a little later on, but the front entrance to the library, as most of you know, has been a problem almost from when that building opened, or at least from when I got here in 2011. put a lot of money at that building fixing that front area, fixing the steps, repairing concrete, and then doing it over and over again. This is the completed roof replacement at headquarters. two projects here in the Kingsbury room at the police station, the LEDs you can see, and then the new carpeting. So this was a project, a summer slammer. I wish I could say we were able to add square footage for the school IT people, but we weren't because they just don't have the space. but we did significantly improve their working conditions, new carpet, new paint, new HVAC, and new furniture. And again, I have to thank Adam Steiner and Joe Hutton and his staff. This is their busiest time of the year.

and cooperating with us and managing to work outside of the office. And the timing is always difficult. You need six to eight weeks. to get the furniture so we're able to work with the assistant superintendent of finance to be able to order that out of a separate budget and then transfer it. So trying to be creative, we're able to get it done, and I think you'll find the staff is very happy with that project. So we're moving towards our on schedule, on budget for the senior center project. You can see a before picture on the left. Frankly, all we're waiting for now is some flooring and some of the kitchenware to come in, kitchen equipment. This project is really impressive. And it started, I think, with the principal who had a large paved area. It was a heat sink. The kids were falling and scraping their knees. It wasn't basketball court. And her idea was let's make it green, working with Dave Hickey and Eilish from his office. This was a win-win.

I mean, we were able to get rid of the pavement, and there's a drainage well there that cleans stormwater. and now we've added some trees. This is an area where the kids can play, get some relief. We're in the middle of a study right now with Simpson, Gumpertz, and Hager looking at four schools, Bates, Sprague Middle School. And this gives you an idea of the level of detail they go through. There are two separate drones flying the buildings. One was looking at roof defects. One was looking at infrared of potential leak areas. And then they go and they take samples throughout the entire roof, actual core samples to verify the conditions. This is really an important project because these three schools add up to, I want to say, $15 million somewhere. And it's not simple because As part of the study, we're looking at PVs, solar panels.

We're looking at MSBA, potential accelerated repair reimbursement. They're now on a two-year SOI program. So in January 2027, we'll be submitting one. But most importantly, what we're trying to do is we're trying to figure out when do we replace these roofs and can we do some lower cost interim measures to push that out? and by that I mean can we reinforce the seams in the membranes, reflash certain areas. So spend a half million dollars instead of three and a half million dollars, for example. So that's what we have the consultant looking at. So it's really important work. So here it is, the FY27 budget, $1,451,000. That will go up about $126,000 based on the latest and the cost estimate we got from engineering on the library. But these are the projects.

Parking lot, LED, going to talk about the smoke detector replacements. We have full fire alarm replacement. the contingency at the DPW and then a fire alarm study. So this is the summary sheet that you may be familiar with. The top half is all the cash capital projects broken out by school buildings and municipal buildings. The lower blue area is the major projects, the debt-funded projects. Keep that image in mind because later on you'll see how that looks very similar to what we have for our draft townwide capital plan. Highlights here, almost $276 million worth of projects on the major capital side. and for the 10 year cash capital, it's almost $22 million. There's 102 cash capital budget requests in the 10 year plan.

And again, this is something that I thought we should start doing is looking out the next six years for these cash capital projects. We hadn't done this before. and you can see the fairly significant projects. And there's a lot of LEDs, a lot of fire alarm. I mean, life safety is so important. We've added some HVAC and plumbing equipment replacement projects. and those elevator and generator repair projects. So I'll go through this fairly quickly. This is a breakdown of the total cash capital request by school and municipal budgets, 296,000 schools. 1,155,000 municipal. I will say this because the question comes up sometimes. This is not about trying to spend the same amount of money or proportionally per buildings. It's all about need. Some years there's more municipal, some years there's more schools. and you can see from FY13, I'm gonna need another slide soon.

So here's the school cash capital, the 296,000 projects at Fisk, Schofield, Sprague and then district wide. Municipal, the 1.16 million, Townwide, the Library, the branch, Hills Branch, Fire Headquarters, and Park and Highway. So smoke detector replacements, that's something that we do on a 10-year cycle. We try to do some of it in-house. We outsource some of it. Here's a breakdown of non-project budgets that we have for the school side. the environmental testing and mitigation. So the middle school, as you know, a fair amount of asbestos containing material, concealed spaces. But anytime we open up a wall or something like that, I'm happy to say that most of the buildings are new and have been removed. We still have situations like this.

So this is an example of why we have that budget. sometimes student services has a new student who has things such as hearing impaired and needs accommodations and whether it's adding acoustical panels in the wall or new Sealing Tiles. I mean, these are things that we do with this space contingency budget. In the custodial equipment, you may recall 2008, we won the National Green Cleaning Award. And part of the reason is things like we have the right training, We have the right equipment for the staff. And they're able to do this. They're refinishing these gym floors. So what this does, it buys us time so that we don't have to do the full sand down to the wood, new game lines like we did at the Sprague and middle school. So by extending this out with our own staff, we're actually saving a lot of money. So I thought it would be worth taking a look at. We talk about fire alarm systems. So what is that?

So this is the high school's fire alarm system. Top left is the main fire alarm control panel. Lower left is a booster panel. to the right of the main fire alarm control panel is what we call the annunciator panel when the fire department comes out responding to an emergency, able to quickly see what the issues are, what room, what the situation is. There's heat detectors and smoke detectors. and then the strobe lights. And also if there is any flow in the sprinkler system, whether it be a frozen pipe or an actual incident, that will also trigger the fire alarm control panel. So there's a lot to it. So when you see those six and $800,000 systems, you're going to throw out the entire building replacing these devices. And in many cases, you have to replace the wiring that goes to those devices. Typically what we're finding is that 20 years is roughly when you have to start looking at it. This is part of the reason why we're doing one of those studies.

So the main library, parking lot, and LED. And this is a better image, I guess, make it to your point about why we need to do this project. You can see the pavement itself. You can see some of the rubberized crack ceiling that we've done. You can see some of the patching we've done. We certainly pushed it off as long as we can. You can see the ramps leading up to the main entrance. We've replaced those spalled concrete areas a number of times. the stairs coming from the Cameron Street lot and the stairs going down from the rear of the library. We had to close them off a few months ago because they were so deteriorated. And of course, the main entrance steps in the stairs So we have a really good plan that will essentially keep the same look of the front entrance, but will put back a more robust, maintenance-free situation, right? Putting in foundations where there weren't foundations. and paying more attention to details.

This lighting project, you can see a plan. The yellow area is the area that was covered in the last interior renovation. But there's still a lot of other lights to be covered here. And we're putting in these linear fixtures, which are very expensive. We put them in the high schools and the classrooms. So if you're looking at that $325,000 and wondering why, a lot of that cost is in those fixtures. And again, you know, Alan Hebert had a number of presentations with the trustees because When you're replacing 20-year-old LED lights, it's hard to find an exact match. You can't go into a catalog and find it. So we made sure that what we put back was agreeable to the director and the trustees. Same thing here. Fire Elm System at the Hills. Again, this is a wood frame building, stone, but the roof is wood frame. So it's certainly something we want to pay attention to. It's 13 years old.

at fire headquarters, the administrative offices. You can see the floor carpeting gets a lot of wear and tear, at least 15 years old, probably older. So we have a project to replace that. talked about the DPW Park and Highway. So top left, you can see our old friend Mike Santangelo. So that's how old these were. 2019, 20, we identified all of these deficiencies. So they're still there. and they won't go away until we build a new facility. So that $50,000 triage is to address things that will pop up with an old building past its service life. Townwide Office Equipment, Custodial Equipment. We have it on both sides, the school side, municipal side. So down to the major projects, which is I think probably of most importance to you. Everything's important, but... start with our staff.

Can't say enough about these folks, what they do. They support the PBC, all aspects from design, construction, they allow, as you'll see, they allow the PBC to operate at a very strategic level and since July 1st, 2017, we had the MOU, which I don't think we've ever had to look at because it's been such a really good working relationship between Select Board, FMD, PBC. a number of projects listed here that have been successful. We've taken on, with the exception of Hardy & Honeywell, we've taken on the owner's project manager role, which is a significant savings. and Steve Glavosian has a very detailed spreadsheet list that backs up all of the savings for the last 10 years.

By having the staff, as I said, it allows the PPC not to get stuck in the weeds looking at drawing A5, detail 6. They can think about, well, do we want to do CM at risk or do we want to do design bid built? $10.2 million savings. Those are real savings. And over the last eight years, and the $276 million, it doesn't go away. It seems like we just had that tranche of Hardy, Honeywell, Townhall. Well, you get a little bit of a break here with the studies and master plans, but those projects are going to be coming back. So some of the metrics. Here's the breakdown of that $10 million. And again, Steve has a very detailed spreadsheet that he updates every year. and when you look at the cost, 3.1 million is the salary cost. So there's your return on investment, 3.3.

some of the grants, $1.6 million. That does not include the half million dollar electrification grant for Warren. We didn't put that in yet. I don't want to count our chickens before they hatch, I guess. So this slide, this is a new slide. And I put this together because I was thinking about the fact that the capital never ends. So I said let's go back to 1985. I think in the first building, there's the 1987 fire headquarters, and then go out 10 years. So that's why I came up with this 50-year period. And I took that list. I know you can't read it, but... to the best of my memory and going through various PBC files and internet search. I came up with major projects, multi-million dollar projects in town. over that time period. Then what I did was I set everything to 20, 25 dollars.

So that you would have kind of an equal comparison of how much money and resources the town has put into these buildings. And, you know, you can see that the trend line shows that even and so forth, right-sizing all those numbers. There is somewhat of an increase. Of course, the outliers, the high school, it's shown there was 193 million, it was 115 million that was built. and using some present value calculations came up with that. And again, these are assumptions. what I'm trying to show here is that the major capital projects don't go away. there's going to be the high school and the DPW, but there'll also be the $20 and $30 million project. So that's about it. This slide is... Joe, can I ask a quick question?

So the numbers you're showing there are basically adjusted for inflation. Yes. Out. So I'm like DPW and fire says 161, pause, roof. So do those numbers tie back to the numbers that are actually in the

That's a good question. So the numbers where it says in capital plan, those are the numbers that are actually in the capital plan. So the DPW of fire is the 101 plus 60. So the actual plan. So these are the major projects coming down the line. I say the next eight years, could be 10 years. could be 12 years, could be seven years. But these projects are either in study currently, in master plan currently, have had a study done or a study is required. So there's a lot of potential movement in when these get done. I took a shot at when we would start design, and that's based on the placeholder dates that are in the capital plan. and then these are the budgetary cost estimates.

And the ones in red, the second column, those are the FMD developed numbers that I had mentioned previously. but you can see there's $276 million worth of projects. I think I've mentioned most of them, Mopo, school air conditioning, Park and Highway Building, Master Plan, Fire Headquarters, Master Plan. Preschool, we just had a meeting, Marjorie and I with the school department yesterday to talk about that. The three roofing projects were right in the middle of a study, as I mentioned, with Simpson-Gumperts. The HVAC projects, we had a study done a couple years ago. We'll probably have to do a supplemental study for the library in Sprague. I mentioned the Baylor Building, Schofield Roof is new, and then War Memorial and the Sprague Tower. You've seen this before. This is the major project financing schedule. And again, this kind of helped us put together that initial draft in the Townwide Capital Plan.

not only does it have the projects but broken out by phase, approximate cost, and how at this point in time or whatever point in time we think we're going to fund it inside the levy, outside the levy, debt exclusion, cash capital. So getting near the end here. So how does the Townwide capital plan tie into what we do? And that's what I wanted to limit this discussion to. As you can see, I took that blue section from the previous slide and basically that data is going to be cut and pasted into the draft Townwide Capital Plan that you see. Now, once it's in that plan, it's a different discussion about where those projects should be, what those placeholder dates. And that's what I expect. As the policy subcommittee continues to work on it, that's going to be a point of discussion.

So just to give people a sense of, I know you couldn't see everything, so I tried to just blow up various sections of this plan, this template. And you can see here it lists the projects, the estimated costs, and then it has the cost broken out by phase. So the third column, estimated tax impact, again, that's a work in progress, but from What we've heard from various committees over the last couple of years, people want to get a sense of what the approximate tax impact would be for these various large projects. Across the top you'll see it's a 10-year plan broken down into annual spring and special fall. I can't remember a year recently when we haven't had. We had any falls where we haven't had a special? So it's become kind of the norm.

Lower left section here, you can see the various ways that we would propose funding it, these major projects, inside the levy, debt exclusion, or community preservation. So the next steps will take your feedback. Take feedback from the other boards tomorrow night. I'm going to be meeting with advisory and I'm sure they'll have many questions about what I just presented to you. to finalize the plan, as an example, the library. I'm going to be emailing Megan and Rachel tomorrow with an updated cost on the library. We will advocate for these projects all the way up to annual town meeting. Hopefully they get approved, and then once they get approved, we go design, build, execute. And with that, I will open it up for any more questions.

Thank you, Joe. I know we say it every time you're here, but I just want to reiterate how fortunate the town is to have you at the helm. it's so far beyond what I even thought was going to happen in 2012 and it's so professional it's so well organized it's so well executed you ask for the money you do the projects you get them done and the town is really fortunate. I just have one quick question before I turn it over. All the fire alarm work is there any risk that new fire department buildings or renovations could change the fire alarm system we're using requiring trickle down changes later on?

So we as part of our design review during design and construction we have fire department review and they have a code consultant that we build that cost into the budget so the code consultant is kind of their advocate does the review of both design and construction phases. So that kind of ensures that whatever we're building, they're on board with.

so they can predict a future fire, new fire headquarters, new fire department building, what you'll need?

We talked a little bit about that with context in terms of the changing needs, but it's really code driven. and we rely on Michael Grant for that guidance. But just to your first point, thank you for the compliments, but I don't think we'd be here without the support of the select board in the town for FMD over the years. We have a tremendous staff. I mean, some of the people I've talked about, Steve Gagosian, Alan Hebert, our operations, our custodial maintenance managers that you don't hear about. Danielle Garepe, our finance manager. I mean, really fortunate to have that staff. Couldn't do any of this without them.

Well, thank you. I'll turn it over to everybody else for questions, comments.

Go ahead, Tom.

Joe, in light of what you just said, I hate to bring this up, but how are you approaching succession planning? And one of the reasons I ask is that I'm aware that there are people who can perform the task, but the issue is your level of organization and detail and planning it's going to be a very hard seat to fill. Steve Gagosian's work is remarkable. You've brought on some very good people, but we're used to a level of performance that's going to be important to try to continue?

So it's a good question. I think about it. I think about myself. I think about key people in our department. And I've identified some people that I'm pretty sure will be able to step in and I will say this too, everything is so transparent, the work we do. If somebody were to step in, for example, to try to do what I'm doing, I think there's enough information they could Of course, no one's going to be as good as me, you know that, Tom. But seriously, I do think the systems are in place that somebody can eventually step in. But I'm not planning on going anywhere for a while.

So first, thank you again. Very thorough, very thoughtful, very complete. So my questions are more things I believe you've thought about, but I just... I don't know if it comes through so clearly in the presentation and that one is grouping projects because I know over the years we've talked about a lot of like minded groupings and cost efficiencies and you definitely have themes in terms of HVAC, fire alarm, paving are there is that kind of bundling embedded in your recommendation kind of Efficiencies and Bundling or is there more of an emphasis on when the need is going to be ready for that?

It's both, and you highlighted all those projects. So the paving project, the plan is to do Bates and Sprague at the same time, economy of scale. the fire alarm control projects we looked at saying we can't do some of these major projects two or three at the same time. We're going to do them subsequent years. The roofing is really the best example. you know not to get into the weeds but this is the type of thing we're looking at is we know that baits and spray can probably do some type of interim work to extend the life but the membrane at the middle school we're finding is kind of deteriorated more than the other buildings. So that might not be a good candidate for that. So we're looking at... for example, is that the first project that we would do through the MSBA's accelerated repair program? Because it's the biggest bite of the apple, it's the largest cost, and if you're going to go for one grant, maybe more, that's the one you want to go at.

So we do look at, try to do all the roofs, fire alarm control panel, paving, absolutely try to bundle them where we can. Because to do these one-off it takes a lot of time for us to advertise, to design, and even the LED projects is another great example. So we hired a consultant who designed multiple buildings but we did those in multiple years. We were due two buildings this year. The design was done as one phase, but then we ended up bidding it out. So we absolutely look at that.

Great, thank you. The second question I have is about Tolles Parsons. So the flooring issue, I know you and I have talked about it and you were doing maintenance until it needed a full repair. and I didn't see it on the list so I'm just is it that we've got it under control and it's in good shape?

I have good news for you. We had favorable bids on the kitchen project favorable enough that I'm fairly sure we can replace the flooring in the two downstairs bathrooms, men's and women's, in the handicap. Our feeling is that sheet vinyl flooring in bathrooms is not appropriate. So we're going to replace them with ceramic tile, which is what we think should have been in there in the first place. So our plan is to do that as a change order to the current project within the available budget.

Terrific. Thank you. So I'm going to ask this because you know it's going to come up. With a favorable pilot on the AC, which I'm thrilled to see you proceed it on. is there a way to move that forward so that it's not in the fall and it's in the spring so maybe there could be more relief for the kids in the coming school year? and you don't have to answer it now but I think it's kind of the elephant on the table.

it's almost the same time frame, whether it's the full VRF option or the window unit, just so. And we are trying to move it forward as fast as we can.

and then okay so for the library. it says parking lot but as you showed the pictures and you spoke it looks like it's really full exterior because it's those front stairs which I will attest have been more than challenging for more than 20 years. So I'm just wondering if the... The nomenclature on that should be maybe more than parking lot, particularly as the price goes up. I've got to imagine those stairs are a big part of the escapade we're about to embark on.

and I was thinking of the middle school which was a million dollar plus project and we called that the parking lot project but you're right it includes parking lots, driveways, cement sidewalk, curbing, stairs, signage, striping so it's

it's kind of the full exterior hardscape yeah that's probably and my last question is not about any of the projects but it's kind of moving forward is there a point in time where we should be taking a hard look at our three-step process? Because I think we periodically hear there's a lot of study money and the projects get more expensive over time. Is the three-step process the right process? or is there some modified process? I truly have no opinion on this, but I do know as we get to larger and larger capital requests, proportionately there's significant study money which I believe you that doing the pre-planning results in a better project

I do think the question about how much pre-planning and how it's arrayed is something that we would all be well served in getting validation or suggested modifications in.

So as a former consultant, I spent half my life in consulting. Frankly, I think doing, and it's really almost four steps, master plan, feasibility, design, construction. I don't know how you could do that in the public bid environment. And I think it's very worthwhile because it gives the stakeholders the opportunity to look at a project this wide, then you go to the next stage and you're narrowing the focus, the type of project you want. So even like the master plan right now with the fire station, we're able to look at everything. When we get into feasibility study, we will narrow it down even more. So I am a big fan of the studies. I know sometimes people feel like it's waste. It's generally, if it's run properly, it's very worthwhile. And I think the best example is the way this master plan is being run right now with Glenn heading up. Glenn was involved in the beginning, writing the RFQ for the consultant. He's managing it.

I would just say we have a lot of turnover in town government and at some point it would be helpful as you go to advisory or you go to town meeting. to talk about the role of the steps and why that is still valuable for us because I do think periodically we hear questions about it. And my last observation is I love your new chart with the timeline and the plotting. I think it would be helpful to separate Park and Tree from Fire because your timing on the two is separate. And so having that amount put together on the chart

I think trying to squeeze 50 years into one slide.

The chart is fabulous, so thank you.

Thank you.

I don't have a lot of questions, Joel, but I just want to kind of explain why that is for anyone who's watching. This is the fifth or sixth time that we've had this presentation, and I think that this is a living document. And so we see things come back and back again. and I just want to touch on a couple of things that Beth said. I do agree that the question comes up about studies, but I also think, again, it's money we spend to enable us to make a decision. and sometimes the decision is to hold off on it for a while or to make changes to it but it's money that's been spent in a bigger scheme of this in the universe of projects over 10 years and it's money you have to spend to do that and I do want to just share that the Council on Ageing bathroom work that you were talking about just now was shared at their most recent one or two meetings ago and is in my update but I just want to make sure that that was aired at the council and agents they're very aware of that.

I also want to point out that this is I think there's two parts to this presentation and that's the memo that you talked about before that we talked about a few years ago but here's the you know here's your plan for the year and there's a memo that you send us a couple months ago which is here's my update and here's where we are in the status and things like that so I feel that I don't have a lot of questions on the detail because I feel like we live in it all the time We see it now, we see it in the budget process, we see it as we prepare the termite financial plan. It's just a constant document. But to Marjorie's point earlier, I can't imagine what this was like before it. I don't know what happened without this structure around the process. and maybe just as all towns mature and you become, I think a lot of towns fell victim to the delayed maintenance and had to, you know, do something pretty monumental to either get out of it if they could afford it or they're still dealing with the consequences of that so you know we have a I'd say best-in-class

process, structure, reporting, communication. I don't have other questions because we live it all the time.

I will say this. I can think back to 2011 in the town's ad hoc maintenance committee. I remember being in the Kingsbury room with a blank whiteboard and talking with the committee and what would an ideal FMD look like? Drawing org charts and if we went back and looked at that, it's pretty close. So that's what it looked like before.

And I do remember as a parent of a child in elementary school, hearing the principal saying, this Joe McDonough guy is awesome. and we're going to get that roof fixed and that was just the beginning of and I remember looking at the plan thinking we're never going to get all that done but we did so it was a it's pretty amazing even as someone that wasn't at all involved in town government at that time

I want to make one additional point about the study money and why the townwide capital planning is so important. if you're going to use the money for study efficiently and effectively, you have to stick to your plan. If you're going to do a study and then something's going to kick off the whole schedule, it could mean that the study doesn't result in a project and you have to do it later at increased cost. If you have a predictable plan and everybody works by the same plan, you know what you're planning. you can predict what's coming up to make the study more effective. So there's my plug for townwide capital planning. Tom?

I do want to go back to the air conditioning for a moment, Joe, because I think it's important to understand what you mean when you say it's been successful. you've been able to properly and securely install window air conditioners for example you haven't tripped breakers and running them the ambient noise is fine but when we go back to the pre-town meeting presentations, there was a lot of data. There was a lot of metrics that were being used, whether they were your standards, the Mass Teacher's Association, or the schools. The question that I think people need to be asking is not if I walked into a room where Joe McDonough installed air conditioners, was the air cooled and did it feel cooler? The question is which rooms didn't meet the metrics, the standards, and needed to be cooled?

When I think back, the only real hot day we had was Juneteenth, which was a holiday. and so I'm not saying I'm opposed or in favor of the air conditioning, but I think we have to impose some discipline in terms of the objective standards that we were using, that we intended to use that we are using and that we measure the feasibility study against. I think that's the only way we're going to be able to decide whether to spend tens of millions of dollars on the air conditioning How we're triggering access and what that cost is going to be and whether we should be planning for new buildings.

Good points.

Okay, anything else?

Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you. And we know you get to do this again tomorrow with advisory, so thank you very much for spending your evenings with us. Okay, Megan, our next agenda item is to discuss and vote. Oh, sorry. Okay, so our next agenda item is the PSI for the Wellesley College temporary residence halls, the traffic recommendation, and I'll turn it over to Megan.

Thanks, Marjorie. So with us tonight are a number of representatives from Wellesley College who was working on this plan. So I'll give a very brief update. This is an internal project to the college campus to allow for continued work on all of their dormitories. So working with the Mass Office of Disability several years ago, they came up with a plan and had begun to execute that largely through what? McDonough was just talking about summer slammers and it was coming right up to sort of the deadline before the students were coming to move back in. and certainly causing a lot of stress and logistics issues with the college but also with the town to be quite honest working with our building officials trying to in a rush, but make sure we're also satisfying all the code compliance requirements. So the college came up with a proposal to bring in temporary trailers.

to basically provide the swing space needed to do the renovations and look at the overall heating systems, ADA accessibility, and overall care of the dormitories. so within this it would trigger a project of significant impact because they'd be demolishing a small structure about 13,000 square foot structure or so bringing in the temporary trailers and those would be here for you know eight to ten years while they completed the work on the buildings so there would be no change in terms of the student population and so although this triggers transportation, certainly our recommendation is that there's no change. and that it wouldn't necessitate further review we did send that to Alan Cloutier who is on here this evening to answer any questions I did put a hard copy of his peer review on there.

Allen did identify just a few notes which Wellesley College did already identify. And as a matter of fact, one of the questions too, which were largely actually pertaining to site plan review, one in particular had to do with the crosswalk the town has actually paved that that was just in such a severe state of disrepair we actually removed the Bricks on that and have paved that. So that's been completed. And then The site plan questions, which would go to ZBA, the college has addressed those. So I don't know if the board wants to hear from any of the college or Alan, who are all here. or whether you know given the sort of unique interior configuration of this it wouldn't trigger in our opinion any additional mitigation.

So we have the peer review report from Alan. We have the materials. Does anybody have any questions? Does anybody want a presentation? I think it's fairly straightforward. I just wanted to raise one issue. Lisa Olney, the chair of the Climate Action Committee, has raised some questions that she feels might be appropriate to ask developers at some point during the permitting process. that are more site plan review, site plan appropriate, but they were not able to pursue that area of questioning at the ZBA during a prior project. and Megan and I had a brief conversation today about whether we might want to consider talking with the ZBA about looking again at site plan

and some of the issues are just asking about the heating and cooling systems that the developer intends to use, how they will optimize EUI in the building. things that are not covered. They're not pertinent to PSI because they're on-site impact. They're not off-site. but Lisa asked if we might want to think about where and whether there is a more appropriate place to consider those questions. So that's aside from this particular project. But I don't think the board has any questions.

I had one question. It was just a curiosity. I thought when we met with the college, we were told they were repurposing the modulars. for different uses. And here it says that they're being brought in and then they'll be removed. And I don't have a particular feeling on it. I was just surprised to read it.

We're going to use them for swing space successively as different dorms are done.

So it just said in here that they would be removed, and I just wasn't sure that was accurate. So they will be removed after the 10 years. Oh, after 10 years. Okay, great.

Not, to your point, just to clarify that in particular for people at home, they're not going to do a project, take them off, bring them back, so they would be a fixture for the next 8 to 10 years while the renovation work is underway. and then they will be housed there. Correct, yeah. Different dorm work.

Yeah, it just didn't say it here.

Anything else? Well, we'd like to thank those of you who are here, you know, to stand by for questions and presentations, but the board feels well enough prepared to move forward. So thank you.

So move to approve the transportation evaluation by VHB dated September 19, 2025 as being professionally prepared Second. Second. all in favor?

Aye.

Again, thank you very much. Okay, our next agenda item is to discuss and a potential vote on the vote 17 request to the select board for a non-binding ballot question on the annual town meeting election. and so I'll just tee it up by saying following the vote of special town meeting regarding the vote 17 citizen petition, The board was asked whether it wanted to put a non-binding ballot question on the upcoming municipal election. And I'll open it for comments and questions from the board.

I have a question, a comment, hoping somebody can clarify, maybe Michael. So I understand there's three ways that this could end up being voted on in the town, for the town. One is what we're here doing right now. The second way is gathering quite a few signatures, I think 1,900 or so. And the other way is to get 10 signatures and bring it to town meeting. Citizens petition to bring this to town meeting in the spring where it could proceed from there. Is that accurate?

So I have a slightly different take on that. My understanding is that there are three statutory ways to put a question on the ballot. the select board of its own accord places the question on. Ten residents petition ask the select board to do it. or it's by vote of annual town meeting. There has not to town council and staff's recollection been a non-binding question that has come from special town meeting. Special Town Meeting does not itself have the authority to do that. So what we have been asked to do is different. I'm looking at Town Council to verify. that it is different than the three statutory ways we are used to. Citizens can put a warrant article for the upcoming town meeting, annual town meeting

and Town Meeting can again vote on the substance of the request but we are asked to do it now.

I appreciate that fact. I'm just trying to make sure I understand the ways in which this could come to a vote at the town level. And one of them, as I understand it, is you could have 10 signatures to get a citizen's petition and end up on the ballot at town meeting and bring up the substance of this issue. Is that... Okay, thank you.

Yes. Do you mean end up on the warrant? Yes.

Which I believe is what happened at Engeltown in the last year.

Yes.

I have a question perhaps for a town council about non-binding because I have received so many calls from town meeting members today about non-binding and If a non-binding vote prevails, it appears to be binding to move forward. And so can you clarify what makes this non-binding?

My reading of the vote that was taken at town meeting is that it would be non-binding still after a ballot question was passed. what this does is it authorizes the select board to petition the general court with a contingency that you're not authorized to do that until a non-binding question has been passed but even once it passes it's still non-binding town meeting can't direct you to file this

So Beth, if it passes, if the vote on the March town election passes, it comes back to the select board to decide whether or not to send it to the legislature to file as a home rule petition?

Correct.

Yes.

So is the reason the... I guess I'll ask it this way. Is the reason... The language about authorization to bring it to the general court was in there because the typical process for a non-binding referendum would be to go to town meeting before you went to the general court.

I believe so.

I'm not sure why it's in there.

Yeah, I can't explain the strategy for the group. That might be a better question for one of the representatives. I'm not sure why they approached it in the way they did.

So what I understood was because it was brought to special town meeting and special town meeting itself could not authorize the non-binding question but annual town meeting could. so the mechanism was to vote advisory called it a procedural vote to ask us to exercise discretion to take it up and decide whether to put it on the ballot. That was my understanding.

My question was why the second piece was in here authorizing us to go to the general court. because I thought you didn't go to the general court until you went to town meeting, that town meeting makes the decision to go to the general court. So I'm just confused about it.

So under Section 8 of the Home Rule Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution, there are a limited number of ways that the legislature is authorized to act on a bill that relates to a single town. One of those ways is by request approved by town meeting. So that's what this is intended to satisfy. By saying to see if the town will authorize the select board to petition the general court, they're giving you the authorization that's needed under Section 8 of the home rule amendment. to submit that petition to the general court and to authorize the general court to act on that. That's why that's in there.

One distinction I should note, so why I believe it went to special town meeting is then it aligns. So town meeting has taken action. So town meeting took action. So you have that to Eric's point that you would be required. Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor and you said in a non-binding question prior to sending it to the general court, you would have to wait till the next annual town election. So under this time sequence, as proposed in the citizens petition, the individuals came to town meeting at special town meeting, received an affirmative vote. Now it is up to the board to make a determination whether you would put the non-binding resolution on. If you did and it was affirmative by a majority vote, the board has the, and so that would be March 3rd.

the Board at that time would have a choice, to Town Council's point, to submit that to the General Council, that you are not bound to do that. The other option would have been a citizen's petition at annual town meeting contingent upon passage of a non-binding referendum. at the subsequent year prior and then submitting it. So this strategy timeline escalates it by about a year.

And the ballot question piece isn't a legal requirement for the submission of the petition. I'm assuming that the purpose of that is to demonstrate interest to the legislature locally. but that's not a requirement. That's something they've built into this process themselves.

Can I say it? Yes, go ahead. So this, what we've just been talking about just now is kind of, as I'm preparing for this meeting, I'm trying to think, and I rewatched her meeting several times. what I heard discussed at special town meeting was a statement to the effect that under home rule only certain items can be dealt with by town meeting and some need state approval including items related to elections. To get state approval you must submit a special act. There's two routes, either Townwide Referendum or Town Meeting Action and Standard Practice is special act through the Select Board. but this was not a select board initiated action. So presumably when that's the case, when the select board takes action to bring a special act

that's a different thing to me and so you know the normal course in this case I think is a citizen's petition at annual town meeting that to me is a normal course for this type of business and not this avenue and I just don't think that that me personally I don't think that was discussed fairly clearly at special town meeting and I'm just going to go through all my thoughts and get it all off my chest. I'm just really concerned that this proposal is seeking to a route that was designed to avoid annual town meeting. because time meeting members I've spoken to, they certainly cited the notion that this was discussed at a special time meeting. But what's the harm? We're asking the select board to look at this. What's the harm with this? but as I said it's not a select board initiative and it's not identified in our work plan as a high priority for the town and we have a lot of complex stuff on our work plan

and before the select board puts anything on the warrant, never mind a ballot, we do a lot of due diligence and it's typically, you know, that would take quite some time, not, you know, however long it's been since special town meeting. and I think we would have done a lot of work before we put it on the ballot if it was a select board initiative. We don't have the bandwidth right now to do that. The ballot opens tonight. it's a really short time to decide and as always is the case you know we have things that arise out of nowhere mass B&D cam was not on our work plan and you know that's something that residents expect our full attention I have to admit I don't love the alternative of placing this on the ballot even though it's a petition at this point because it feels really rushed to me Where's the time and what is the plan for border education? This is not our initiative. I don't have a plan for border education here. and we know from painful experience that there's no town newspaper.

How do we get the word out to educate voters effectively on exactly what the vote is about to Beth's point? the implications you know it's it's a non-binding vote but it ends up that you know certainly feels in some ways that it is binding because I think once the town's voted it would be really hard to say no If the town hasn't been educated, I feel I'm really torn about this. There's a lot going on here. It's a non-binding advisory board that says the select board may submit a special act to the general court. and on top of that we've had repeatedly that the state's not likely to take this matter up and all of that needs to be conveyed like really quickly. and we don't have a plan or a vehicle to do that so I have some other comments depending on I want to hear what other board members think but if we go down this path there's some things I want to state very clearly for the record so I'm going to hold it at that point right now and just see what the board members think

Tom? Oh, Kenny. I thought you were raising your hand.

Can I ask a question of Karush and Anya, if they're the proponents?

Well, we're really here to discuss our reactions to it.

No, I understand, but it kind of goes to what Colette's asking. I won't ask them directly. Maybe I'll ask town council and he can pass that along. So what is the motivation to take an alternative track? Like what's the... What are we missing here? Why not go the traditional track?

I would assume that it's the timeline, as Megan mentioned. They're asking you to exercise your discretion to put this on the ballot because of the three options. collecting 1900 signatures is not simple, and waiting for another annual town meeting is more time. So I think this is the most direct route. I assume that's why they're asking for that. and I assume that the reason for the non-binding ballot question, like I said a few minutes ago, is most likely usually when I see that done before something is submitted to the legislature, it's an attempt to demonstrate interest at the local level. so that the legislature knows that there is that that's likely to be accepted locally. In my experience the legislature recently has been also asking towns to put into

things especially like this that are a little out of the box. A provision in the act that actually requires it actually treats it in a way like a local acceptance statute so that when it passes the legislature, it still doesn't become effective until it comes back for another ballot question. So frequently these things have to go to a ballot in the end anyway, but some people would like to do a ballot up front to try and demonstrate that interest.

I just am struggling with the need for the speed here. That's fundamentally my concern here. It is a major, major shift. And it's going fast. And I... There's no crisis on the horizon that this is supposed to address.

I know I'm talking to you, Eric, but... Marjorie, can I just add that Wellesley's not the first municipality to consider this. Other cities and towns have passed this at the local level and sent it to the statehouse. to this date zero of those bills have ever made it out of committee they've always been sent to a study which is a fancy way of saying they've been killed for that session there's almost no appetite on Beacon Hill for this issue to kind of germinate or move forward so to Kenny's point in terms of rushing it to the state house you know that there's I could bet a lot of money that it's not going to get out of committee so to your point Kenny I don't think the board needs to rush to make sure it gets to the legislature this year or next year

I have two concerns, one of which I share with Colette, which is if we put it on the ballot, We're the responsible party for not only the language, but voter education. And that's a big ask. And it's a difficult position, I think, to put us in at this time of the year. The second concern I have is precedent setting. To take a vote from special town meeting to ask the select board to put something on a ballot that was not our original initiative and how we distinguish between saying well this isn't the normal course we'll do it this time but we're not setting a precedent for when it comes up and how you distinguish among the urgency or priority of questions that we are or are not comfortable putting on a ballot.

So those are two of my concerns. Tom.

I want to make sure I understand something you said a minute ago. In describing the sequence where, for example, it might go to annual town meeting and as a result of a favorable vote be sent to the legislature. But if it passes, the legislature inserts a requirement that it... go on a municipal ballot. You said another ballot. Isn't there only one ballot in that scenario?

So I've actually seen bills recently that have been passed at the local ballot. The request has been made at the local ballot for them to go to the legislature. and the legislature has still told us it's not going anywhere unless you put in a provision making it subject to a second ballot question after it's passed.

Well the reason I bring this up is because I have respect for the proponents. I have respect for the action at special town meeting regardless of our concerns about exactly what was in people's mind. and I'm not as interested in forcing the proponents by way of our action to go collect 1900 signatures. but what appeals to me based on what you've described is the ability for the proponents to get 10 signatures to bring it back to annual town meeting where town meeting within the choice of three alternatives statutorily can debate the substance. It can go to the legislature and if passed it could still go to a ballot question. to see what the town-wide appetite looks like.

That to me seems like an attractive alternative that is respectful to the proponents yet respectful to the statute and to the purpose of annual town meeting and its different rights in this regard than special town meetings.

Any other comments or considerations? Does the board want to hear from the proponents? well this was time for our conversation they've asked us to consider to put it on again this is not our Passing or deciding on the substance of the article. This to us right now is a procedural question and how we feel about taking the action on that procedural question. Are people prepared to vote? Is there anything we would want to know that we don't know, information we don't have?

I just want to say again, I hope if it's a negative action by the select board that the proponents get the 10 signatures, take it to annual town meeting, continue the process and send it to the legislature. I'm more comfortable with one of the statutorily prescribed mechanisms for doing this. and I think that 10 signatures isn't a significant burden to ask to bring this forward. I think it's a lot better than having to get 1900 signatures.

I think it's a viable path forward but it also gives plenty of time for voter education which I think is critical and I think that for any proponent who's listening it'd be nice to hear about voter education going forward.

So Colette, I agree with you about voter education and what it reminded me of was the discussion we had in 2021 maybe about adopting the provision from the state about voter education. And at this point, we haven't adopted the provision. So there is no way to reach out to the community and we know our town elections don't have unfortunately don't have large engagement now maybe these are the kind of tools that get larger engagement but We don't have a mechanism to reach out to the community to tell them that something meaningful is happening. I looked at the advisory write-up again, and I think it's part of my confusion about binding, non-binding issues

kind of not being respectful of town meeting before going to the general court because it was explicitly told to town meeting they were not voting up or down on whether they supported this action. They voted on having us consider putting it out to a non-binding vote. And it was very clear advisory took great pains to say we want people to be mindful that you're not expressing an opinion on this which to me is the opposite of the statutory requirement and that's why the non-binding piece is is confusing to me because it's not clear that we wouldn't go back to town meeting right so that

I think it is so out of the box that none of us understood I still don't know if I totally understand the process but I do think it would be the right process to have town meeting weigh in which seems to be what the legislature mass general law requests that town meeting weighs in and then it goes through the cycle so I don't know, I could be missing something, but the procedural piece is, I think, a little troublesome.

Anything else? Okay, I think we're ready for a vote.

Okay, let me just find my motion. Okay. So move to add a non-binding ballot question to the annual town election to see if the town will vote to authorize the select board to petition the general court subject to approval of a non-binding public opinion advisory question. at a town election to enact legislation in substantially the form that was shared at special town meeting and further to authorize the select board to approve amendments to said legislation before its enactment by the general court that are within the scope of the general objectives of the motion presented at Special Time Meeting 2025. I need better glasses. Tom, going to second that?

Second. I'm sorry. I was thinking about the motion.

I remember where we started.

I apologize.

All in favor? All opposed? Nay. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Eric. We want to thank the proponents. We want to thank you for all the work and the time and effort you have put into this. And please understand this for us was a procedural decision. It is not any reflection of the merits. And as Tom said, you have the opportunity starting tonight. to place it back on the annual town meeting warrant. So we appreciate and respect all the work you have put into it. And thank you for your engagement. All right.

Our next agenda item is to turn it over to the Policy Subcommittee for a follow-up discussion on the Townwide Capital Planning Committee.

Just give me a moment. I'm just going to pull up my notes. Okay so as a reminder we discussed the Townwide Capital Planning Committee the first time at our meeting on September 20th 2025 and then secondly at the October 28th 2025 meeting so included in the packet is a draft of the document for circulation to other town bodies including some comments that I received from board members that were previously circulated to the board so the board's seen these comments before but this is a cleaner version of the Townwide Capital Planning Committee. I wanted to have a clean version, make it all look at with some small amendments that we could kind of agree on that before we do a roadshow to the other boards. I thought I'd like to have a clean copy of the other boards. So board members received that in the Friday night mail.

and basically what it is it's a memo from a cover memo from Marjorie saying look attached here's a memo explaining why we're doing this here's a draft of the plan we'd like to come and meet you However, so there's two things I'd like to do tonight. Get any comments that anybody has on the draft that was circulated. but also since our last meeting I've really been thinking about the board didn't come to consensus on the committee membership and I'd like to take one more discussion at that. One of the two things that I think I heard the last meeting was the options of adding either the NRC and or the library as members of the committee. and I've gone back again to look at what best practices, what our peer towns do and then also I'd looked at initially about 100 towns. I try and look at all of the other towns to see what they do. I didn't find a single town that had the NRC as a member of the committee.

Occasionally the library as a member of the committee, which is really not that common. and I'm going back to looking at GFOA and best practices but what I thought might be satisfying to the notion that there's nobody at the table to advocate for the projects is that adding the director of the NRC and the director of the library as ex-officio and that would change the ex-official paragraph of the draft memo. I wouldn't propose changing anything about adding another member during the period when the projects were being discussed if there was a project you know of significance you know over a million or more coming to the committee so that this of adding of a temporary member so a board member could join to advocate at that time I wouldn't propose changing that but I would propose changing and ex-official staff to include the NRC in the library.

So I wanted to put that out for discussion before we move forward to the next stage. I want to know, the only thing I saw in all those, again today I went through all 90 plus communities I only once saw the CPC had a liaison function but I never saw NRC represented

So Colette, you'd like comments on the proposed ex officio and on the memo?

Yes, if there's anything else I need to clean up before we do this road show.

So Colette, thank you for thinking through that. Adding the ex officio does not address my concern. feel very strongly that I'm not convinced this is the right structure, but I do not believe we should have a project where all land owners are not represented. So it doesn't, I appreciate it and I just don't believe leaving out those landowning entities off of the decision panel is appropriate.

Any other comments?

I don't think it's necessary to have NRC and library as voting members when they don't have projects. Be happy to include them as ex officio so they can hear what's going on and be kept in the loop as to what's going on. It might inform some of their own decisions at their board level. but I've done limited research relative to what Colette has done and have I mean not found anything different than you did. So my position is slightly different than Beth's. But Beth, I'd also like to know if you don't think this is the right process, do you have a different idea?

I'm unconvinced that how we are approaching things is broken. And I have not seen documentation that what we're doing is broken or that this is the solution forward. I don't when I do the pros and cons that does not net out for me so I don't have an alternative because to date as I said we have not had a year as long as I follow town government where the plan has not exceeded the capacity and we have not had a year where we have not come in with a proposal that met the capacity. And I think we're at another year where we're going to have a proposal that meets the capacity despite the fact that last year's plan added up to far more than the capacity for this year.

I would say the other thing is adding an external person to this committee For me, it's more valuable to have the board members on it than have an external person. Thank you. in deference to the concerns about committee size, I would drop that person and put in the two board members.

So my evaluation of part of the point of this is not necessarily capacity, and I'm not sure whether you mean bandwidth and personnel or finance. but all the time and effort that goes into planning. And as you were mentioning before, suggesting we take a look at our three or four step process, we have study, feasibility, design, construction, so much human capital goes into that process that I feel it deserves to be predictable. and reliable and formal enough that everybody accepts it as the plan. So if something comes in that hasn't been through that entire process and all those steps,

after the fact, it has the potential for throwing all that work off, delaying the next step after a study or delaying work and then resulting in more expensive work. To me, the greatest value of the plan is to make it the accepted way of doing planning and predictable.

and I'd say one of the examples of it's not broken is the air conditioning because there's a study done and it was presented to the proponent and the proponent said, OK, thank you. Hold on to that for now. And then it never moved. And if you had a formal process, you would have a discussion every year with that proponent and I think that that would have that outcome would have been different I think that that would have moved along in the process because the proponent would be in the room and say Oh, air conditioning, it's still out in the out years. And actually I think you should start advancing that in. I think it's actually the perfect example of all of a sudden it became an emergency and kind of got pushed to the front. And I don't think that would have happened if there'd been a formal meeting. every year that was looking at the whole plan the facilities director was making that decision on his own because they hadn't heard from the proponent we're putting in a structure to make sure that that's not the case

and going back to the notion of a resident that was one of the most common things I saw it's maybe not ubiquitous but it was very very common to have one or more multiple residents represented just that I didn't dream that that was something that was a best practice.

I like having more residents involved. I'm just saying if our concern is size of the committee, I think one of the things I throw out was just maybe we should just have a capital budgeting finance committee. that's no board members it's finance experts in the community and you know our advisory committee has gotten kind of away from being a finance committee and maybe that's part of what we're Yearning for is a finance committee that is more robust in balancing out a lot of of Financial Requirements. And I can see where that would be really valuable. I'm just, I am not convinced that this is a solution because I don't see the problem that's being described. I mean, we just looked at...

a plan. Joe McDonough has a plan. Every board is aware of that plan. Every board has... Seenet. I believe they all advocate on movement in the plan, and we are available to discuss moving things and it is just that it's a plan if a roof fails it's going to move forward it's not a it's not perfectly reliable it's that everything's there that we know what could come but things slide back and forth and I don't think anything's ever going to change about that I think My understanding is that Joe does an incredibly responsible job of putting a pin in anything that could come up, laying it out,

and he tells us every year I'm keeping an eye on it it could move this way or it could go that way and to me that's a plan and it's

but I think there are some difficult decisions that are going to be made in the future and they need to be made by a committee in the public I feel pretty strongly about that

But we do make these decisions in public. We just had a very robust presentation. And for me, this approach does not solve the problem that several folks at this board are concerned about which is the air conditioning and the fact that the community brought air conditioning forward in accelerated fashion. I don't want to eliminate the capacity of the community to bring forward something that's not on the plan. I think the community should retain the right if we're not meeting their needs, we're not putting a pin in their problems, they should be able to advocate for us.

Just to be clear, that's not part of this proposal at the moment. We haven't talked about any by-law changes, so if you want to leave that, you can leave that. but I do think that the process I separate it from the time meeting action to bring it forward faster I think that the issue that happened with air conditioning is that it you know languished in the out years and then had to get moved forward and I think that would have been a different outcome if the committee was there. and I think it's not a finance committee when we have finance experts here. The CFO's on this, Megan's on this, the select board is our responsibility. This is our committee. and that's another reason why I feel that adding NRC and library to it, that is not what they're elected for. They are not elected to capital plan for the town. they can advocate for their projects but it's not their responsibility to capital plan for the town and the fiduciary responsibility, that's ours.

And so this is our committee to help us do that in a public way with other people at the table.

but permanent building, I'm sorry, public works and schools. are no different than library and NRC in terms of their responsibility for their assets and advocating for their assets. there is just no difference. They may have more assets or more expensive assets, but when you say they're not responsible, their responsibility is absolutely no different than public works or schools.

I think it's generally accepted. that the bodies that are bringing forward hundreds of millions of dollars of capital projects are those bodies.

I agree with the last statement, but that doesn't make them experts.

We're not asking them to be.

Last time we talked about the people that should make up this committee should be people with expertise in capital projects. and finance.

I did hear that. We watched the meeting a couple of times. I did hear that being said, but that was not what I was saying. So we have finance experts. It's CFO. If we bring in a citizen, what we said is either construction or finance expertise, but I certainly wasn't suggesting that members of school committee or the DPW board need to be financial experts. They will be very familiar with what their projects are and talk about the push and pull. so you know I think especially with school committee when you're doing projects on school committee and the interaction with the school calendar and things like that that's important to have at the table that's what you want them there for I'm not expecting them to be you know actuaries, accountants, anything

you know no I mean that this the fiscal stuff is our responsibility I understand that I thought that's what I heard last time but in my ultimately My perspective hasn't really changed. I do think the landowning bodies should have representatives, but I would want to hear from them first because they may have a very different view on it. NRC may say... I don't want to be on that. So that's my initial reaction or my second initial reaction, but I would like to hear from them before I decide anything.

I see this committee's responsibility as partly finance, but it's much broader than finance. It's not only finance. I mean you have you have personnel issues you have phasing issues you have timing issues you have in capacity issues. You have interactions. You have some swing space issues. You have where are we going to move people? What are we going to do? at what time of the year. You can't do it with just finance people. You need finance people, but I didn't see it as solely a finance committee.

To be clear, I'm not saying that I think that's what it should be.

No, no, no.

Yes, you need...

I'm responding to Beth's comment.

Money is obviously relevant, but the allocation of it is...

of Resources in general.

And that seemed to be a thread that came up right at the end of our last discussion, but that certainly wasn't my intention. Comments? Tom?

I'm concerned that we have arrived after mistakes at a construct that works. If you look back at the last owner's project manager, except for Hardy and Honeywell, was the last outside owner's project manager was for Tolles Parsons. and we have now spent nine years correcting flaws in that construction project that were unnecessary and avoidable. When the roof at the police station, the current roof was put on, we saved an enormous amount of money by having and internal owners project manager on that property. And that really opened the door to our realization that we needed to do it in-house through FMD. when the first feasibility study with Morse's Pond was completed we had significant problems with that study because FMD wasn't involved and didn't supply

the person guiding the feasibility study. When it was redone it was a substantially better study that did by the way take advantage of NRC stewardship of the land and awareness of what was required for the land that they owned and control. I do think that there are boards that just because of the square footage that they control have significantly enhanced experience and skill at building projects. I think that therefore the library and NRC as ex officio makes a lot of sense. You can get input from them that I think is of value. The library system is very important and respected in Wellesley. So I think that the ability for the director to sit on this

committee adds value. Certainly, I think having the director of the NRC and with the current person He's an arborist. He's a licensed arborist. He understands the issues of stewardship in Article 97. He can add value and head off issues in his capacity as an ex officio. So I like the construct, but I am concerned about the ability of projects to go directly to town meeting out of order. I think the question is how do we create that order in a way that is equitable, that is objective, and that clearly indicates that there's a greater need for one project over another.

and I think that we're in a current situation where we've had air conditioning come in for the schools and now we're hearing discussions about pause. and there are other ways to address the very significant and important needs within the PAWS program from my perspective certainly. So I'm not sure that that project is one that should be jumping some of the other projects that we're talking about. I think this is also a committee and an approach that could look at the range of options down at Municipal Way with regard to the DPW buildings and say, you know, I really don't think we ought to be spending $100 million. on this one. We can lease space for the land use departments and we can build for 60 million. What we need is functional buildings for the DPW.

So I think that there is a need for a more orderly, it's not a free-for-all, not when we are reaching the edge of our taxpayers' capacity to pay their bills, their tax bills. We are on an unsustainable pattern of growth in terms of our taxes and our expectations financially of our town residents. and I think if we have any hope of having new young families and the ability to come and live here and take advantage of the school system, of seniors who can stay and remain residents in Wellesley, we have to have some way to control the projects, the order in which they happen, the impact on taxation. and I see this committee as a way to do that.

I think if we were, we're dealt the hand that we have, our advisory committee is structured the way it is structured. We don't have a town manager here. And that's not a comment on whether I think we should or shouldn't. I'm talking about the reality of how we I think this is a useful additional tool to try to bring some order and make sense about the financial impact on families. residents generally, small business owners here in town.

to your point Tom about somebody sort of circumventing the system and putting something on the ballot in my opinion if people have a seat at the table and are voting they are far less likely to if they're part of a committee that votes even it doesn't vote in the way that they want to then say, you know what, forget it. We're just going to bring it anyway. I just don't think they would do that. So I think there's actually power in them being a member because you're going to get much more buy-in, I think, than if you leave them out. And I have no data to support that. That's my gut reaction to that.

So there are clearly some differences of opinion in some areas of the proposal, but I think it's ready if the policy subcommittee is ready. to present it to other boards and get their feedback and bring that back to the board and let us consider all of the feedback in a systematic and synthesized way.

The last thing I'd like to say is I truly believe this is our job. It is our job to array those capital projects and to look, Tom, to your point, at the burden and the budget. that's that lies squarely with this board we are responsible for the plan and bringing it forward so You know, we should have more discussions about Joe's plan and how those projects are arrayed out. If we're concerned about the plan and how they're lined up.

that's our job and we should be talking about that but I so I hear you with that I think this is a method for us to do this because right it's not We need to have joint meetings with all the boards. We need to have a joint meeting with the school committee and a joint meeting with the Board of Public Works and a joint meeting with whoever else is bringing forward a big capital project. I think it's much more efficient to have staff do the work they've always done bring something to a capital planning committee which by the way is a best practice that DLS has I didn't dream this up and I didn't imagine that we had a capital issue. We've been talking about the fact that we have a capital issue and we need to do something about it for over a year now and we've talked about it in the town-wide financial plan and talked about it at town meeting so I think we need to do something about it this is the best practice to do something about it and so it's a method for us to have a structured

there's a process, there's a metric, there's tools, there's all sorts of things here for that committee to do their job and bring something to us for a recommendation is still our responsibility. I think we need to move to give ourselves a better tool to do this so that we can have some more discussions and ask some more questions of the other committees not just Joel you know he can't tell us the answer to the questions that we want to ask the other committees so Having this is going to be helpful, I believe. Tom.

But I do want to say, Beth, I think successful managers and successful organizations know when they need additional information. Thank you. Thank you. I don't think that the five of us are in a position to make some of these critical decisions without additional input. I'm not a construction expert. I value Joe's opinion, PBC's opinion. wherever the information comes from to make the best decision I can about projects that are going to have a financial impact.

The end result is that it would be a recommendation that comes to us because it is, you know, when all is said and done, our responsibility. But we deserve to have a multidisciplinary team representing all the areas of expertise that go into making these responsible decisions and to have the plan be predictable.

so policy subcommittee has so we meet Thursday were there any other comments in this document because I'd like to have a clean copy that I send out for our road shows are there any other edits that you want me to make at this point or for Kenny and I to try and work through on Thursday I didn't get anything from anybody okay um yeah I'm just going back to look at my my comments um

One thing I mentioned to Joe yesterday is that the The SMMA study in 2012 ended up lasting 12 years, right, to get through all the school work. and I just mentioned to Joe that at some point you may want to look beyond 10 years when you're dealing with Fisk and Schofield and Paws and the middle school. because that will require a lot of phasing and juggling and... if we're going to do it for the middle school which we're talking a few hundred million dollars it may as well be part of the overall thought process.

Agreed.

Okay, so Policy Subcommittee will meet on Thursday and proceed to gather board and department feedback to bring back to the and select board for a future discussion. Our next agenda item is to open the warrant for annual town meeting. And I will ask Colette for that motion, please.

Sure. So move to call the 2026 annual town meeting and to set the following dates. Open the warrant on Tuesday, November 18, 2025. closed the warrant on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2025 at 4 p.m. Motions due to the Select Board Office, 525 Washington Street, Friday, February 6th, 2026 by 4 p.m. Start of Annual Town Meeting, Monday, March 30, 2026, 7pm at Wellesley High School Auditorium. And the date for the 2026 Annual Town Election, Tuesday, March 3, 2026.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. Our next agenda item is to discuss and vote two sets of minutes, October 7th and October 21st. Thank you, Corey, for circulating the red lines this afternoon 530 very very minor yes they do look fairly ministerial does anybody have any further comments on the minutes

So move to approve the minutes of October 7 and October 21, 2025 as amended.

Second.

All in favor? Aye.

Okay. Next agenda item is the chair's report. I have a few updates as most people know and for the viewers at home. We received a letter from Representative Peish and Senator Cream distributed to their email contact list, which they've been collecting. since September circulated on November 13th that they have heard the resident's highest priority is preserving forested area that abuts Centennial Park. and that if the town was interested in entering into an agreement to conserve much of the forested area, they would not build on quote, the vast majority of the forest. and CAP Development at 180 units, and that the release of the RFP will be time to allow input from our visioning session to be considered.

We have received emails from residents, as you may have heard in our citizen speak tonight, challenging the inclusion of forested land within the designation of surplus. We, our board, and our legislative partners are well aware of this concern and the circulating petition, and the State House and our representatives have also received numerous emails. The parking study on the MassBay parking lot results are not yet in. The Berkeley group and its partners and our staff have begun preparing for the visioning session and are meeting weekly. again that visioning session is December 8th Monday 630 to 930 p.m. at the middle school and as of today we have received no further information on potential parameters for the project

No update on date for promulgating regulations, and we do not have yet a public version of a timetable for release. Megan.

The only thing I would add to that is my understanding is DKM staff has received the initial parking study. I think they had some initial questions to VHB. I think they're trying to do a short turnaround and try and get that to town staff tomorrow in anticipation of a staff meeting on infrastructure for Friday so I don't know if that will be A public document, presumably it will be once it's given to us, and we're happy to post that online as soon as we receive that.

So our original projection was yesterday, but you expect we'll have it by the end of the week. Okay. Thank you. Anything else? Okay. Okay.

How many people are we set up to accommodate at the high school for the visioning?

The high school can accommodate 440 people.

in the public area alone.

In the cafeteria, yeah. It's got seating for 440.

And we're formatted to handle that many people.

We're working on it, yeah.

Yeah.

Tom and I have held our meeting with school committee and advisory today. In our meeting with advisory, their survey about town meeting is still open at least until Friday. They've received 116 responses and are asking respectfully that every town meeting member complete the survey to help them and continue to refine the advisory report. They are also nearing completion of their report on the collection of school data over the past 10 years. The chair currently anticipates a December 10th presentation to advisory. In our meeting with schools, I'll turn it over to Tom for a moment. There's a current conversation about completing the installation of solar panels on Hardy and Honeywell.

Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor in elementary enrollment was down 17 students from last year, but is projected to rise by 24 students for the coming year. and I asked the school committee chair a little bit more about why those ratios are different. Part of it was to account for post COVID effects. and there may be more information about why those ratios are different. I believe the assistant superintendent for Administration and Finance addressed that question briefly, but the school committee was going to take it up again in their meeting tonight.

74% of classes are below guideline and zero are above guideline with no grade closures this year. And an invitation for bid for the new demographic study is slated to be issued this winter. and that's all I have for now from the chair's report so I'll turn it over to Tom.

Thank you. And I will say this is, bear with me, it's a little long and it still doesn't have all the details in it. And I also, Colette is the liaison to the MLP. and also has attended a number of these meetings. So I certainly would ask Colette to add any details that she feels are important. The solar panels for both Hardy and Honeywell were included in the original design for the two schools, and $1 million was included in the original project funding agreement. The project team for Hardy included the PV option and the submission to the MSBA and the submissions to the permitting boards in town. So the intent was that the school would have solar in the near future. The MSBA encourages sustainable design but did not require solar for the project to be complete.

The town noted in its communications with the MSBA that it was the town's intent to add solar after the building was opened. Honeywell is not an MSBA project, but the intent to add solar was evident and drawings exist for the PV array. In addition, both schools installed roof safety railings for people working on the PV panels. The roof was designed and installed so that the warranty remains in effect with PVs installed and the conduits were built into the building. As the projects progressed, PBC became concerned about unprecedented market condition escalation and the adequacy of the project reserves. While additional funding could have been requested at town meeting, the MLP proposed that they take on responsibility for both solar projects. The approach the MLP pursued was not successful and the installation of the PV stalled.

About nine months ago, I called the chair of the MLP board and requested that they renew their consideration of both solar installations. The Chair did so and an effort to identify an approach began. There have been meetings involving the MLP, Select Board, FMD, and the Sustainability Director to try and reach an agreement as to how the town could proceed, but no agreement was reached. In the meantime, Mary Beth Martello identified a $1 million grant that would be applicable to these projects and separately federal tax credits. that could result in an approximately $770,000 payment to the town. Mary Beth began the work necessary to move forward with both the grant and filing for the credits. There are complex considerations regarding timing and sourcing. under federal restrictions on foreign entities of concern, which in this case is China.

Both the grant and tax credits require significant work. the MLP board and staff continued to consider their options for the projects. Recently, without input from town staff, the MLP staff drafted an MOU, which proposed to contribute 2.5 million of We Care funds conditioned upon a successful grant application and tax credits. This was captured in a motion voted by the MLP board that would provide $2.5 million with a contingency that they received the grant money, the tax credits, and the RECs and committed town staff without consultation. This would result in an actual net contribution of only $750,000 and commit town staff to take on responsibilities they had not agreed to. the town bylaw for the PBC does not allow funding to be conditional and requires that funding be in hand.

Therefore, the motion approved by the MLP board would not work. Recently, the PBC included the HHU solar projects on its agenda, and members of the PBC felt that they should be responsible for the projects. FMD expressed concern regarding their capacity to take on the projects, but PPC felt strongly that the projects should move forward under their oversight. After the PBC meeting, Steve Gagosian explored ways FMD could take on the project. Where both school building projects remain open, He called the construction companies and proposed that they each take on the solar projects as a change order using the existing electrical subcontractor. Steve agreed to become the owner's project manager, and this significantly simplifies the projects and the process necessary to complete the work.

Last Thursday, a meeting was scheduled that included Collette, me, Megan, Corey, and Mary Beth, Steve Gagosian, Joe McDonough, Ned Hall, Chris Chan, the MLP attorney, and Tom Harrington. the purpose was to reach an agreement regarding funding and responsibility for the work we did not reach an agreement regarding funding The MLP does not want to contribute $2.5 million without recovering the grant money, tax credits, and recs. This most likely would require PBC to spend some of the remaining school construction funds. the chair of the MLP expressed concern that he could not justify the expenditure of 2.5 million in weak care funds as a business decision. He stated that he could provide green power at a lower cost than the power produced by the solar arrays.

He is willing to continue discussions within his board and would report on the meeting and any funding formula we request. One alternative would be an unconditional contribution of $750,000 from the MLP and the town keep the grant money, the tax credits, and the MLP gets the RECs, which the town can't use. any additional funding would require use of remaining project funds. Marjorie and I, as Marjorie stated, met with the chair and vice chair of the school committee this morning and brought them up to date We discussed their role as the proponent for both projects and ultimately that the decision whether or not to proceed with solar is a decision for the school committee. Toward this end, they intend to ask Steve Grigosian and Mary Beth to go to their next school committee meeting to discuss the projects and the funding.

Thank you, Tom. Questions, comments?

Tom, could you send that to us? There was just so much in there that I'm just going to say that was a bit of a fire hose. And I would like to be able to read through that. And I guess one question I have is... How much money is left in the school funding budget? You don't have to answer this now. And my recollection is that the funding that was approved at town meeting and that went out for debt exclusion assumed that, did not assume any cost for solar because solar was being covered separately. Could we actually use remaining school funds without another authorization from town meeting?

Which I'm imagining town meeting would give us, but I would... feel like we should get authorization because it's a change in the definition of what the funds were to be used for and we sought a debt exclusion for it. So

I believe Stigli Goshen is calculating what exactly is in those funds, and of course it has to be approved by PBC, but the information I have is that there's an adequate amount. in the building funds. And as to your second point, I don't believe that's considered necessary, that it doesn't need further town meeting action to approve the solar arrays.

The other question that we asked school committee was the additional expenses they anticipated would be necessary for the schools themselves from the remaining funds. while the projects are still open, whether there's any additional commissioning or warranty work or punch list work for which they would require additional resources from the remaining amounts.

And have they calculated how much additional funding and when we are expecting the reimbursements from the MSBA? Because I thought... what we'd been told at a previous meeting was that those reimbursements are coming in over quite a long stretch of time.

So you are correct on that, and we actually reached out to Jeff D'Amico on this exact question, and it might prolong that because you need to put those additional costs in on the building, in particular for Hardy, exclusive of Honeywell. Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor it's a two to now, two to two and a half year process for the remaining MSBA funds. So it could slightly extend that duration as they evaluate the solar. but we did ask town council your question with regards to whether it had to go back to town meeting. His initial inclination was no based upon the votes but obviously we need to vet that further as we continue to gather additional information on this. But I would say Tom's summary was excellent.

Can I ask if Colette, do you have any additional?

I don't have any additional comments but I just want to point out how incredibly complex this is because there's we are signing the grant application Mary Beth's doing all the legwork in figuring out what grants are out there and they are extraordinarily complicated she's working with a tax consultant on the tax credits and she's in daily contact I think with DER. And then on the MLP side it's complex too because they have the WeCare program they'd like to apply this to you know Good Sound Projects that are helping the town meet its goals but they also have a fiduciary duty just like us and so they're trying to decide

you know what's the appropriate funding and you know what makes sense and I think if there's a grant and the tax credits it's great it makes sense but you know we can't guarantee that and the spanner and the works are I don't know if that's the right word you use in America. What do we call it? Wrench? Anyway, the complicating factor is you know when this goes to PBC we don't have the luxury of waiting to see if we get the grant when it goes to PBC the funding has to be there ahead of time so they can start the work and so the PBC taking it on has, as Megan has said before, a host of benefits. It's much more streamlined, it can move more quickly. staff and contractors in places it's a great option but they need the money before they start and then that's so now we're in a quandary because

you know MLP has said well you know if we get the grant and the tax credits this makes sense and they support that and they want to support this but if we don't get the grants and the credits they'd have to evaluate it again from their perspective

Right, so that actually, Colette, I'm glad you brought that up because... what it sounds like to me is it's not a matter of if but it's a matter of when and we want to execute sooner but that would be in advance of knowing if we got the grants. But in fact, we could... find out about the grants and then execute the project. Is that not correct? So I guess I'm not understanding the...

You can't you the grant requires that it gives you the green light to go ahead so we couldn't begin these projects if we were notified that we were successful with the grant say in May they would green light the project most likely in June. And if it were June, it would be July. Either of those scenarios work because you're not gonna start the work until the kids are out of school. So we would know that we had the grant plus the 750 from the MLP. We'd have to commit that we do the work. What?

We'd have to commit

We'd have to commit that we were going to do the work. And I think to Collette's point, this needs to be sorted out. And it really is the school committee's and so forth. I think it's a great decision to sort out because it's an enormous amount of staff work for these grants and for the tax filings and there's absolutely no appetite to ask them to do that if these projects aren't going to go forward.

it sounds like we need the grant money to smoothly move this forward, right? If we get the grant money, all systems are go because MLP is on board, PBC is on board, everyone's on board if we secure the grant. The problem sounds like if we don't get the grant, then there's a major funding problem. So I'm not understanding why we wouldn't pursue the grant because if the grant comes through, there's no problem.

to agree with their scenario because it's not our decision to make. And so we have the MLP and the school committee and PBC, who were really the three main parties in this. You know, our involvement, go ahead.

I was just going to say, but the sourcing opportunities change, right, depending on how long we wait, right after July?

Well, it... I wouldn't say that it's inconceivable that these projects could go ahead with the lesser amount of funding from the MLP, but that's a decision for the school committee and PBC to make with regard to remaining construction funds. So there are multiple scenarios that could take place, but they're not ours other than executing the grant application and the tax filing, the federal tax filing.

I think maybe a clearer answer Beth is if you get the grant great if we don't get the grant then the schools and PBC together need to decide is there enough money left in the project funding and is that where they want to apply it

right so the issue is Are we applying for the grant? I guess I'm not clear. We're applying for the grant, right?

Well, we've sent in the notice of intent.

We would be. So what would make us not apply for the grant? I'm just confused, sorry. I'm sure Tom said something in the document and I didn't catch it, but what would make us not apply for the grant?

Well, for example, if the school committee said they didn't want to go forward with solar on the buildings.

Testa.

I didn't see that one coming thank you I think what he said is if we're not going to go forward with this project we don't want to commit staff time so I mean maybe just take some time and read what Tom had it was a lot I mean it's been a lot getting up to speak but the question is to

School Committee is, do they want to pursue PVs on the buildings? Is that what we're asking them?

It's a more... It's a broader question than that, as was described to us. They have a number of competing demands for money. going forward for construction projects. I think they're trying to weigh their obligation to the community with the benefits of solar on these two buildings as an initial consumption of funds. because the public doesn't necessarily separate the funds that they're consuming into discrete buckets. They're seeing the total amount that the schools are spending. I think I have to say I appreciate the chair's recognition of that in our conversation.

Thank you for the clarity. I just didn't understand that component because otherwise I would think we'd apply for the grant.

Okay, anything else?

All right. On that note, we're adjourned. We are meeting again next week, Tuesday the 25th. Thank you, everybody, and good night.