Select Board January 20, 2026

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the select board meeting of January 20th, 2026 in the Giuliani Room at Town Hall. The meeting is being held in hybrid format, livestreamed on Comcast Channel 8 and Verizon Channel 40, and will be available for later viewing on wellesleymedia.org. Here in Giuliani are select board members Vice Chair Tom Ulfelder, Secretary Coletto Frank, Beth Sullivan Woods, Kenny Largess, and myself, Marjorie Freiman. Executive Director Megan Jopp is with us and Assistant Executive Director Corey Testa is joining us remotely. Before I open it up for Citizen Speak, on behalf of the board, I would like to thank the world of Wellesley for a wonderful MLK luncheon yesterday. J.R. Harris

all over the globe and how he took MLK's message of moral clarity and persistence and curiosity, his own curiosity to learn about other peoples in the world and take himself into their lives. and learn from everybody. He's been doing this for close to 60 years I think and it was a full room and we thank World of Wellesley for having us yesterday. Megan, we have speakers for Citizen Speak.

We do. Corey has a list. I think we have someone on Zoom.

Yep. Mr. Solveroff.

Yes, yes, can you guys hear me?

Yes, Kira, we can hear you.

Should I go ahead?

Please.

Okay, so this is about the MassBay Forest Project. I want to start by saying that I... support affordable housing projects. I think they are important and I think they contribute to the overall quality of life. That being said, where you build a Malta-Unix complex. Matters. Usually, and that is and should always be a consideration, usually you would build near public transportation. There is no public transportation anywhere close to the Mass Bay Forest site. If you live there, you have to own a car. With a 180 units plant, and there may actually be more because there hasn't been much clarity of what the plan there is.

That means a minimum of 180 vehicles, more likely close to 300 because many families, as you know, own more than one car. So 300 vehicles on that small road, which connects to Route 9 via small ramps. I'm sure that everybody attending here is aware of the Newton exit of Route 90 and what that's like. In times of traffic, it takes forever to get in and out. And that's exactly what would happen. There isn't any other choice here. That's exactly what would happen to the connecting ramps of Route 9 in the mornings and in the evenings when most cars will have to leave and then get back. So this would impact not just these residents, it would impact everybody who is using these ramps and everybody who is using Route 9 that drives close by.

so my feedback here is yes while affordable housing projects are important the location the choice of location of this specific project is really poor and if it continues forward this is going to impact all of us

that's it from me guys thank you for thank you very much thank you very much is there anyone else here for citizen speak

No, the only other person that reached out is going to come next week.

Okay. Thank you, Corey. So I'll turn it over to Megan for the executive director's update, please.

Thanks, Marjorie. I just had a few items. I wanted to let folks know that the latest edition of the W has been released and that can be found online or hopefully it already went to email boxes because folks have already subscribed. but there's tons of information about upcoming programs in theirs. And this is the second update of January. The first was the select board edition the week prior regarding the letter the town sent to DCAM and HLC regarding the MassBay project. So both of those additions can be found online. Within there, we have a bunch of new programs that are itemized. In particular, the health department has announced a new parent and newborn support services program. So anyone with young children or expecting, we'd also encourage you to reach out. It's a great new program that they're working on. And then lastly, I just wanted to remind folks, this week is the last week to pick up nomination papers from the town clerk's office. that will be open to January 23rd this Friday at 5.

That's for the town meeting member. positions, and papers must be returned by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, January 27th. You only need 10 signatures from your precinct, and so anyone who's interested, we'd encourage you to do that. and just a reminder the Wellesley annual town election is Tuesday March 3rd so the races are gearing up so if you're interested in town meeting please pull your papers this week.

And there are a few precincts for which fewer members than could be on the ballot have been pulled. So we encourage you to join us in participating in local government. Okay, thank you, Megan. Our next agenda item is our consent agenda. On the consent agenda, we have two items. To approve, sorry, forgot my mouse. to approve a name change for the Moggis restaurant

Just when you think you have everything under control. Okay. To approve a name change and a change in hours for the Magus restaurant and to accept two anonymous gifts to the Wellesley Police Department, one for $50,000 and one for $10,000. The name change for Maugus has already been submitted to and approved by the town clerk. The $50,000 gift will be used partially for new safety gear for the officers and the $10,000 gift is in part for the care of Officer Winnie. Megan, anybody request to remove those consent agenda items? No.

Move to approve the consent agenda items.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. We continue to wish Mr. Sorrentis, whom we met recently, the best for continued operation of the MAGUS. and gratefully thank the anonymous donors who support the work and community canine officer of the police department. Thank you all very much. Our next agenda item is a joint presentation with the Board of Public Works, and I will turn it over to Department of Public Works Director Dave Cohen.

Good evening. Thank you, Marjorie. Dave Cohen, DPW director. Thanks for having us here tonight to talk about town meeting article 20, the DPW campus feasibility study. I'm joined tonight by Joe McDonough. who will walk through the presentation, also with us tonight. just checking the room, is Town Engineer Dave Hickey, Glenn Remick from FMD, and also joining us remotely is Jeff Wexler and Michael McManus from the Board of Public Works. So they'll need to call a meeting to order in a moment. and also with us tonight is Matt Doyle and Mike Richards from Weston and Sampson. So Jeff, if you would call a meeting to order for Board of Public Works.

You got it. It is Tuesday, January 20th, 2026, and I'm calling to order this meeting of the Board of Public Works, saying that we have a quorum, myself and Michael McManus. It is 6.39pm and I call our meeting to order. and Michael, are you here? I am here and I second whatever you're saying there. So we are both here and ready to roll. So thank you everybody for having us this evening.

Right. Thanks, Jeff. So before I turn it over to Joe with some more details, thought I would just give you some brief context to this project. So the park and highway building system study was really one of the final pieces of a multi-phase project that started back in the mid-2000s, believe it or not. through the system study we identified about 10 million dollars of renovations that were needed for the 78 year old building actually 75 years at that time by the time this project was revived after covid the estimate had grown to over $13 million. So we decided at that time to take a pause and see if there might be another alternative that might be available to us. And that's when we decided to undertake the master planning process. The key objective of the master plan was to review our entire program and see how it might more effectively fit on the DPW site at Municipal Way.

While we were going through that process, we thought that it would also be a good idea to see if the land use and FMD departments could also be accommodated on the same site. not critical for the DPW operations, but it seemed like it could solve a problem that we knew was coming down the road. And it also seemed like an opportunity to break down some silos that existed and also create a more streamlined customer experience through a one-stop shop of municipal services building at Municipal Way. For a bit of historical perspective, the many phases of improvements at Municipal Way started with a new water and sewer garage back in 2006, and then the DPW administration building, which opened in 2012. Hard to believe that's been 14 years. Other aspects of the site were improved and replaced, such as the salt shed, the park and highway roof, the park and highway HVAC system, and the fuel depot, which we just completed this year.

other phases such as an additional fleet high bay and the storage shed have been deferred several times over the years due to competing needs. And those still need to be addressed at some point in some way. So that brings us back to the feasibility study, which we think is an appropriate next step to address the various options for municipal way and the many questions that are sure to come up as we contemplate the range of options that are available to us. So with that, I'll turn it over to Joe for the presentation.

Thanks, Dave. I'm happy to stop any time during the presentation. If you have questions, we're going to wait until the end. I know based on some of the preliminary questions, you had really good questions, and I hope to be able to answer them. either tonight in the presentation or after. So Dave jumped the gun a little bit here. He didn't follow the agenda, but that's OK. So he's completed the introduction. That's great. I'm going to give some project background. I'm going to go through the master plan that we've received. basically review a summary level of the master plan. I'm going to talk a little bit more about the municipal way offices and the lease that we're currently under and potential lease or try to incorporate them into this project. I'm going to talk about the feasibility study. The goal is to go to annual town meeting and request funding for the feasibility study.

then I'd like to talk about other major building projects and that has a lot to do with the work that I've been doing with the policy subcommittee and Collette and of course some of these are the major projects that the town is facing and how this kind of ties into that and then open it up for some questions So the project began seven years ago. It was not a feasibility study. It was actually four separate cash capital studies. The Park and Highway was an envelope study looking at the roof and the doors and the brick masonry and the structure. There was a separate study to look at the support spaces. and renovating those. Then we did two separate projects at the RDF, one of which was a replacement of the sprinkler system in the Baylor building and that actually was completed several years ago. and the other project was the RDF which of course is under construction.

So we've broken out some work that has been addressed as part of these original studies but I just want to highlight that it was not a feasibility study. It was really looking at Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor That is basically, I'm showing you a photo of this just so you have a sense of what the scope was in those original four studies. It was the Baylor building and the RDF admin building down at RDF and then the park and highway building. So the history again, September 2020, we presented the studies to the then Board of Public Works.

in June 2022 because of Hardy Honeywell Town Hall projects and COVID, PBC notified the Board of Public Works that there'd be a scheduled delay. weren't able to take the project on right then. October 2023, we got some updated costs and presented those to the permanent building committee. and then basically because of a number of things including the high renovation cost, the swing space that would be needed and the fact that that project scope did not address the long-term needs of the DPW. the decision was made to focus on the RDF and pause on the park and highway building. Again, at the time it was around $13 million, pretty significant renovation cost, and for a number of reasons, including the fact that the building was 78 years old, which is one of the oldest buildings we have in town. We have the two library buildings.

The branch buildings are older, but they're smaller buildings. So there was a much higher renovation cost now than it was even in 2020. Swing space continues to be a challenge in the original plan, which was going to be a renovation. The original building system study did not look at that cold storage building that I'll show you a photo of, did not include the fuel pump depot, which has since been replaced, did not really talk about EV charging or PVs that might be part of the project. also one of the things that we found in the study was that the fleet maintenance bay was wholly inadequate and particularly with respect to vertical clearances So the decision was made to prepare a master plan to look more broadly at the entire Municipal Way campus and not just building systems replacement but programming. What are the long-term goals?

of the DPW. So Weston and Sampson was hired summer 2024. Cash capital budget, an FY25 cash capital budget of $135,000 was approved. And the goal of this master plan was to provide, as I said, more comprehensive long-term strategic look at the Municipal Way campus and not just the park and highway building. and as you'll see throughout this presentation, particularly at the end, feasibility studies, master plan, I'm going to talk about a school facilities master plan, All this information is going to be critical to us over the next year or so as we start to look at the Townwide Capital Plan. it's a lot less expensive to to do these studies than to build buildings and say geez you know what maybe we shouldn't have built that so I think getting all this information between the studies that are in progress now

this master plan is going to give us plenty of information so the town can make the best decisions moving forward with $400 million worth of building projects facing us. So the master plan summary, we'll talk first about the operations and program assessment. And Weston and Sampson, again, interviewed all of the staff, reviewed existing documents, including the 2020 Socket Tech report. and they basically identified what the current needs were and what the future needs were, but mostly focusing on the current needs. And you can see a staff summary here. of the full-time and part-time employees is about 127. And then there's six potential future employees. And again, Dave can speak to this, but there's

Right now there's not a hard number on six, but that was in interviewing the staff, you know, what do you see as potential future hires, and there were six. So the total staff summary in the master plan is 133 staff. and then we looked at square footage of the buildings and what would be required. So first we looked at DPW only, we didn't include land use or FMD. So for just the DPW program, we need 123,668 square feet of total building space. That's not saying how much is existing, how much is new. That's just saying that's based on the program, what we think we need. The land use number, the 13,500, essentially came from the annex feasibility study that we did several years ago and paused, put it on the shelf, and land use moved into leased office space. So that's really where that number came from. Weston and Sampson didn't do any additional programming or interviewing for the land use and FMD staff.

But we felt like we had reliable enough information from that annex study that we could basically plug it in here for the purposes of the master plan.

Joe, excuse me. How does that $13,500 compare to the current space at 888?

I think we're about, you'll see a slide. I want to say we have rentable space of about 8,400 square feet, but that doesn't include the common space, the elevator, the bathrooms, things like that. So it's probably, it's a little higher. I think probably because there's more what we call shared core space in the new building. So the total square footage for both DPW and the land use FMD is 137,168 square feet. So again, part of the Weston and Sampson work was to look at the buildings, the facilities assessment. And these are the buildings that they looked at. Of course, the park and highway building, tree and fleet. the Water and Sewer Office and Garage, which as Dave mentioned is new, 14 years old, but it's new, the DPW Administration and Engineering Building, Salt Storage Building, the Cold Storage Shed, and the Fuel Depot.

then they did a site assessment so they looked at the outside bulk storage area up off of Woodlawn, the northernmost part of the site. looked at the environmental restrictions. So as some of you may know, there's what's called an activity use limitation, AUL, on that site. And that has to do with contaminated soils and restrictions from years ago when and some of the construction took place. So we certainly want to avoid disturbing any of that, but that will come into play more when we start looking at things like parking lot and potentially if we were to talk about a garage. other kind of site assessment issues, the MBTA train tracks and some wetlands on the west side, and then the Kikichewit Aqueduct on the east side. So these are the key conclusions from the master plan, that there were major functional inadequacies and space limitations.

And I'll show you some photos to remind you, although you're probably not a surprise. there have been multiple building additions added since 1948 so this is a 78 year old building and as you go through that building you'll see there's you know small bump out additions here or modifications there and no surprise this happens with a 78 year old building. the newer buildings that we don't plan to do anything to, the water and sewer building, the administration building, and the salt shed. Very early on, we decided that there was no Testa, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor it was determined were well beyond their service life and in need of replacement.

And just so everybody's on the same page here, that L-shaped building that you're looking at there is the park and highway fleet building. its current area is about almost 35,000 square feet, 34,840 square feet. and then in lower right is what we call the cold storage shed that's about 9,000 square feet and I would call to your attention just the the parking every time I go over there to try to find a place to park for a meeting. That area is always full. There's always a parking issue there. So these are just staff vehicles and visitors. These are some photos from 2019, seven years old. So top left you can see the antiquated men's bathroom. Lower left you can see parking vehicles is an issue throughout the site. there's just not enough building space to park the vehicles. It's not high enough. It's not wide enough.

And you can see that in the lower left park and tree garage photo. , Shop Space, top right, you can see the welding shop. Again, there's not enough space to safely be able to do what you need to do. Lower right, the vehicle wash bay. One of the things we looked at in the first study was could we raise the roof and extend the walls out and put in a new concrete floor. And by the time you get done doing that to a 78-year-old building, you're not really saving any money. So this is another example. And this is a key part of the operations, vehicle wash bay. This is how you maintain the life of these vehicles, which is a huge part of the total program cost for the DPW. Again, top left, you can see how difficult it is to try to squeeze all the vehicles in there. Top right, very little clearance for this lift truck. Lower left, there's the vac truck, which is really a front line piece of equipment and can barely fit in the door there.

So this happens all over these buildings in terms of having enough space available. into the proper dimensions to be able to safely drive in and out these vehicles. And again, I'm showing you the lower right, the cold storage. You can see that parking is always an issue. Drive down there any day and it's very hard to find a parking spot. So the concepts, the first stage of developing the concepts was to come up with these bubble diagrams, as you can see. and so forth. Thank you very much. identify where various functional aspects of the DPW would be and what the relationship is, the adjacencies. And it was the first step. So what they looked at in the bubble diagrams were these kind of functions and areas.

Administration and office support, employee facilities, workshops, vehicle maintenance, vehicle storage equipment, which is a big area in the wash bay. So we came up with some conclusions fairly quickly. And as I said, the salt shed, which is fairly new, would be too difficult to move that. So that can stay where it is. More so because of sensitivity to abutters and Woodlawn Road, we felt like the bulk storage area to the northern part of the site could stay where it was. We thought it was important that because of the parking is so substantial, it's such an issue that we should look at a parking structure. That does not mean we would need a parking structure, but it would be worth looking at. And I would say this. One of the goals of the feasibility study is to look at all these questions that you raise are really good questions.

and I think that's where we're going to answer them in this feasibility study and this would be one of them as an example. Do you need a parking structure or not? And I think the only way you're going to know that is you do a total count and you look at the AUL areas and you decide can we build surface parking over this AUL? Do we need to excavate and deal with the potentially contaminated soils? So again, this is one of the things that we, the big conclusions that came out of this study. And again, we said the water and sewer building needs no work beyond what we do in cash capital. Same with the salt shed in the fuel depot. administration, we wouldn't have to do any work unless, and I'll talk about this, unless we move land use and FMD into that space, potentially renovate that. move land use and FMD in there, and then build a new admin office building for the remaining DPW staff.

So the only buildings that would be demolished and replaced would be the park and highway building and the cold storage building that I showed you in that previous photo. some of the additional considerations, has to do more with operations. This is really important, the idea about public travel. And you'll see in the layouts, the thought was that This could be a municipal complex. It could be a service for the residents, one-stop shopping, so to speak. But we wanted to make sure that when people came there, whether they were coming to the DPW, to engineering, to any of the four land use departments or even FMD that they wouldn't have to go deep into the site. And you'll see that the office components were located on the perimeter just as you enter municipal way so that you don't have to not having residents or visitors driving around the site, which of course it's the safety issues there. We wanted to maximize the area of the bulk storage to the north.

We certainly needed to accommodate the new fuel depot, and I think we did now that it's open. Full access around the perimeter of the site, and then we also wanted to have full access around the salt shed. So these were some of the goals and considerations in the master plan. So this is what we call, this is a DPW only option. It's kind of the base option. And as Dave said to me today, part of the study was, the master plan was, it was a fit test. can we fit all the building components that in an ideal situation if we could do everything we wanted to do can we fit it in there and that's what this shows And just so you can understand what's new and what's existing, that dashed red line indicates all the new building, new construction. Everything else outside of that would remain, would not be part of the scope of work. So the new buildings inside that red line total about 89,000 square feet.

And if you recall, the existing cold storage shed and existing park and highway building total to just under 44,000 square feet. So the municipal offices. So, of course... FMD, we've been in leased office space since 2015, and it's worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, our lease and the land use lease are both going to end. in June 2027. then we're going to have to go back out for a new lease and I'm thinking it would probably be a five-year lease which is what we've done in the past for all the FMD work. It's a three-year plus two-year option. Five-year lease is pretty typical. So I have a lot of experience. We've done this four or five times now, right, between the land use and some of the temporary spaces. And we had to keep doing FMDs lease. We have to go out to public procurement under MGL 30B goods and services.

So as Dave said, this seemed like an opportunity. And it's not a big part of this project, but it could be. So it's not driving the project. At the end of the day, this is a DPW project. and this is about renovating the Municipal Way Campus or building new buildings on the Municipal Way Campus. If the town decides that this is the right time and it should be built there then I think we can make it happen. but as we talked about in the fire station master plan, perhaps that would be an opportunity to build a new 10,000 or 11,000 square foot building for FMD and land use to be part of that project. But what we wanted to do was look at whether or not it was feasible to bring these five departments into this project. As I said, there was no work done in this master plan for that. We simply took the information that we had from the 2020 annex study.

And we said we needed roughly 13,000 square feet in that study. What's interesting here is the cost. So I actually spoke to a couple of local developers recently, including our current landlord, who is getting pretty much, Haynes Management is getting out of the business. slowly. So they don't have the available real estate that they had starting in 2015. And I spoke to Mary Butler today. And you know, it's going to be What I found is that it's going to be difficult to find 10,000 square feet of space that we could put all five departments. It's just there's not a lot of space out there. So again, we have 8,400 square feet of rentable. Our current lease for both spaces is $222,000 a year, works out to $26 a square foot. So that's fixed for five years. That's all-inclusive.

it's you know janitorial it's maintenance it's utilities so it's it's been a good rate okay it's it's worked out really well unfortunately what I'm finding out now is that um the newer rates could be double that. Two separate developers, one said 48, another one said 58, and those are rates that, that's the rate today. That's not a five year fixed rate. because we require a five-year fixed rate. So the rate will, of course, go up. If today's rate is 48 and 58, you're going to add escalation for a year when we go back out and then it's going to go up even further when you say we want a five year all inclusive rate. So whether it's 50 or 60, we're probably going to be paying double the lease cost. and at 10,000 square feet at 50, that's a half million dollars a year.

that's what we know now we won't know for sure until we go out next February we'll go out with an RFP and we'll solicit interest like we've done four or five other times unfortunately Haynes is the only developer that's ever responded and that's something we need to be aware of. That's a concern I have about not just the cost, but I don't want to find out in February 2027 that we don't have a place to go. some more issues to think about with the idea of the municipal offices. What I call the benefits of land use and FMD working in here. Improved services to the residents, the one-stop shopping by a unified town complex.

and others. I highlighted this in yellow, avoids risk of no suitable space being available. I mean, just what, and you could do your own research to see what's out there, but I think it's going to be difficult to find contiguous 10,000 square feet or 8,000 square feet of space that we could put land use and FMD in. and again part of that has to do with Haynes Management who had over a million square feet of building and has a lot less inventory right now. you know three to five years if we have to up and move we've been fortunate down at 888 been there since 2015 I've had a couple of leases we bought the furniture we fit it up haven't had to do anything for you know How many years is that now?

11 years. There's a cost to having to move every three to five years. One more thing to think about. And as much as it's worked out well, it would be nice to have a permanent home and not have to worry about every three to five years going out for a lease and seeing if you can find a space that you can afford. So these are two of the options that included Land Use and FMD. And in both cases, we show what is the existing admin building being renovated for land use and FMD. and if that's what happens, I don't think that would be a major, it would be more of a fit up. I don't think there would be certainly a renovation cost, but it would be an interior fit up. I think that would be more manageable. Of course, we could also swap where we show the new building, admin, highway, some of the functions.

But it's just, again, to Dave's point, what this shows is that it fits. We could make it work if the town decides they wanted the municipal FMD and land use to be part of the project. And again, that's a question to be determined later. But we can work it into this project from a feasibility standpoint if necessary.

Joe, can I ask you a question? Sure. In terms of the fit-up, does it actually, do the pieces go onto that land? One of the things we talked about with land use is it has tremendous parking needs. And so parking's tight already down on Municipal Way. I agree with that. Moving land use down there brings a whole lot of new vehicles there just kind of because of the function and a lot more residential and small contractors also.

have we looked at that at all on this well actually our experience at the old town hall and 888 is that you know with the online permitting is a lot less. I think my grant said 10% of what they used to get. went before the paper permits, when we had paper permits. So I don't see, I mean, I'm there every day. I just don't see a lot of traffic visitors in that building.

Okay. And then my other question is, have we looked at commercial buildings? One of the things I've been on since we talked about the addition for Town Hall is... Just a small office building that would be effectively an annex but it already exists. It's not building de novo and with so much space available. It seems to me we should also be looking at what's out there for acquisition because the cost, when you're talking about half a million dollars in rental costs a year. for a five-year lease. You're at a $2.5 million building just out of the gate. I think it's a viable pathway to look at with the small office spaces that we have in town

I think it'd be a great option if we could find an 8, 9, 10,000 square foot building that we just had to fit up, could walk right into. I don't know what it would cost to buy that. I don't want to cost to fit that up. it's another unknown just like the cost to lease.

But is that included in any of this?

No, that would be beyond, that's not part of the scope. That's not part of the scope, okay. Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor

where people are remote some days and on and the technology really empowers that. Has that reduced our space requirements?

I would say somewhat on FMD, not significant. I mean, people working three or four days in the office. most of the people working every day in the office there's some people that are you know working remotely a few days I can't really speak for Dave's group but I think most of his people are in every day yeah

I was thinking more of the other land use.

We thought about that, in fact, when we were doing the annex study because COVID had just hit and we were dealing with remote work. And so when we laid that out, there was consideration, just like with Town Hall, right? We have the...

Touchdown spaces.

How could I forget that? Yeah. So, all right, continuing on here. So the feasibility study, right? That's what we'd go to the annual town meeting and request an appropriation for. So we drafted a scope of work. We worked with Weston and Sampson to make sure that we didn't miss anything. So there is a lot of work to it. So the first step is what we call review, confirmation, and refinement of the program. Take the program that's in the master plan and make sure it's what we want. The next item here is really I added this because this is part of the scope but it wasn't maybe so clear. One of the first things we would do in a feasibility study is to look at possible alternates to those concept plans that you saw. How are we going to phase that work? Do we do it all in one project that has two phases? Do we do it in multiple phases where it's several years out?

perhaps some of those future phases would be construction that we couldn't afford to do right now but we want to do later and then you know the budgetary constraints that's going to be Again, I have a slide that's going to talk about the $2,300 tax impact, and we're very aware of what a $400 million program would do to the town, so we know we have to think about that. So that would be one of the very first things we would do is to kind of take a big picture and say, where are we going with this project? What type of options do we have to look at? is it going to be a $10, $50, $100 million project? What is it going to be? And I think I can say this comfortably, and Glenn's here, he'll correct me if I'm wrong, but

I think between Dave, Glenn, and I I think we could come up with a plan that even if it doesn't address everything that's shown right here in the idealized master plan it would make significant improvements. So everything's kind of a compromise, right? What's most important to the DPW for their operations? How do we balance that with the town's financial limitations? And then, of course, we have to look at the schedule. it would be nice to have something in place by 2032 if, for example, we wanted to move land use and FMD out, that would line up nicely. Not saying it's driving anything. But we have time. I guess what's really important to me about this feasibility study is it's going to give us information that we need. It keeps coming back to the townwide capital plan, right? At some point, we're going to look at all of these 11 building projects and the civil site projects.

And we're going to have to figure out which ones we do when and how much we can afford. And having all these studies in front of you, including this feasibility study, is going to give us the information we need. so the site and building exploration evaluation. Most of this work here is kind of what we call expense-related work where you're hiring sub-consultants out, zoning analysis, existing building conditions. So Socotec already did a lot of that. So that's going to be kind of just upgrading that six years later. Site survey, wetlands delineation on the west part of the site, geotechnical and environmental assessments, hazardous building materials. Again, we did some of that already, but this would be more. Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor

the site of the site where the cold storage is and we don't knock down the park and highway building. Maybe we pause that for a future renovation or maybe we do some minimal renovations just so we can get some vehicles in there. So this is why you might need a structural analysis, right? A traffic analysis, site utility and infrastructure assessment, again, continuing. So then we're getting into kind of the main tasks of the feasibility study. Concept design. Fasing, which we haven't really had the opportunity to look into, and I know it's a question you've had. How are we going to phase the project? Sustainability, a number of issues, huge opportunities here, too, for sustainability. We need to look at the... budgetary cost, scope of work, schedule that we would bring to PBC. You know, that's one of the big things when we take the 95% complete feasibility study and we go and engage with PBC.

That's what they want to know. What's the scope? What's the budget? And talk to me about phasing, right? We'll do the report and we'll have meetings. A lot of these tasks are pretty typical for our feasibility study, no surprise. So here's the budget. It totals to $858,000. I know initially we had carried about a million as a placeholder, but we feel very comfortable with this amount, 858. if you look at the top, the architect engineer basic services. This is what is typically called their fee, $380,000. our estimate seems reasonable. The remaining items are pretty much what we call expense work. These are subconsultants or outsourced vendors, cost estimate, traffic study, wetlands flagging, , Topographical Survey. Again, a lot of these tie directly into the tasks.

Zoning Analysis, Hydrant Flow Test, Hazmat Building Testing Investigation, Preliminary Geotech, Phase 1 Environmental. We have a parking garage consultant in here. We don't know if we're going to need the consultant, but we have funds here if we decide to go that route. We're going to look at site utility and infrastructure. I mean, a lot of development over the years. We need to know where everything is underground. and then we have time here for presentations to boards and committees as well as to the neighborhood. We always carry expense for fire department review. They have a consultant, have a 10% contingency. So the total design phase appropriation I'm sorry, feasibility stages, what it should say, 857, 450, call it 858. The project schedule.

So here we are tonight presenting to the joint board, public works and select board. We have a meeting presentation scheduled for February 4th with advisory. I would expect we would be giving them essentially the same presentation you're hearing tonight. The goal would then be to, in February, March, finalize the appropriation. and incorporate any comments from the select board, board of public works, advisory. and hopefully have the feasibility study fund approved at annual. And shortly, if it does get approved, we would begin the procurement, the Mass General Law Chapter 7 qualifications-based Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder,

If that study goes forward, we expect it to start July, possibly a little sooner. We're optimistically hoping we could get it done in a year so that we could come back. And again, this is the most aggressive schedule. It doesn't mean we have to come back in a year, but I typically like to put together a schedule that is the most optimistic and aggressive. because it's always easier to extend it out later. So ideally, if the town decided we wanted to go right from feasibility into design, we could in theory do that in a year. and so that would be spring 2027 design funds would be approved scope of work for that project to be determined right in the feasibility study 10 million 50 million whatever it's going to be

construction funds would be approved two years later spring 2029 annual town meeting that would require a debt exclusion also in the spring 2029. and if you look at two to three years of construction depending on phasing it gets you right 2031, 2032. Okay, so I talked about this previously, the other major building projects. So you've seen this before. This is a townwide capital plan draft version the next 10 years. totals to $270 million, plus Dave has some more projects which is going to bring us close to $400 million. What's important here is that we have studies and master plans in place for a lot of these projects like I talked about, which is information we're going to use. and one of the things we don't have yet that I think would be really important is a school facilities master plan.

SFMP. This would be the second one I've been part of since working with the town. The first one was very successful, in fact. The first school facilities master plan is what you've seen over the last 15 years. Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor kind of conceptually identified in that school facilities master plan, got done over 12, 15 years. So it feels like it's time again to do one of those, you know, the second SFMP. and I know this is something that you've kind of broached with the school department. I think it makes a lot of sense because it's going to give us information that we need in order to be able to do the Townwide Capital Plan. If you think about some of the projects that we're aware of on the school side,

there's discussion about a new preschool possibly at the Upland right there's the air conditioning project there's been discussion about a 30 million dollar conceptual project at the Bates to do a major renovation electrification of that project. There's been discussion about enrollment increases decreases on the east side of town Schofield and Fisk. their 11 years into their 25-year life. And then, of course, the biggest one is the middle school. When we last went to town meeting for appropriation funding for the $14 million building systems program, what was presented was this is going to be a 25-year building. So that was 2021. That means in 2046 or thereabouts, the town will start to look at replacing that building, that 1950 building, right? Close to 100 years by then.

So there's a lot of things, including enrollment, and I believe the school department is doing some sort of enrollment demographic studies now that could be synced up to this townwide school facilities master plan to give us more information. So if that happens, say in the fall, between that new plan and the studies that we have in progress, we have basically everything we need to be able to do the Townwide Capital Plan. and again I know this is sobering but if you take these projects here including the DPW You're talking about potential $2,300 impact to the median household tax impact to the median household in town.

Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor With that, we'll open it up for questions. Do you want me to stop sharing?

Okay. Leave it up for now. Thank you both very much. Board have questions for Dave or Joe?

I just lost my internet connection so you may have to ask somebody else just for a second.

Anybody else?

Okay, I'm back on. So some comments and questions. So it seems from the presentation and the materials that we had that the buildings are beyond the useful life. and some major work is necessary and so there's you know there's poor working conditions there's safety concerns there's a definitely a major project here and I'm certainly not thinking that renovation is the best use of the town's and the taxpayer's funds and resources. So we need to evaluate exactly what you say, Joe, what can we afford? and so I think that this study is necessary so that we can have the information to do that to evaluate what we need and what we can afford. and then particularly what we can phase and so I thought it was really interesting how you talked about look this project really is part of a bigger project that started back in the early 2000s We've already been phasing a lot of these big projects. And so that's something that seems to be continuing here.

So I'm definitely very supportive of moving forward with this. because for all the reasons you outlined, it's a critical part of the information we need for the town-wide capital planning process. We need to understand how we can face it if possible. I would like to and I think it's going to be helpful to get not just the tax impact of these projects but to look a little bit deeper into renting versus Building, when you get more information on what the true rental costs are, and then for the CFO to be able to model that out for us and to say, okay, over a certain period, it really starts to make more sense to build or to own our own facilities. And when can we make that happen, given everything else is on the capital planning? I think it's really important when we do this to leave ourselves flexibility down the road so if we say yes we need to do these things but we need to piece them out a little bit

because if we look at our debt exclusion calendar right now, there's too many happening too quickly. So I think we're signaling there needs to be some spacing of these. and so I do want to kind of alert I thought that the spring 2027 funding request might be too soon because we need to need to do this work and part of what we need to be able to do that work is the schools master plan and we need to give schools time to do that and I think we need to have some more conversations with schools to say okay we've been thinking about this a lot and here's some things that we think need to be covered in the school's master plan and really have some more in-depth conversations with schools, talk about how much that might cost, schedule that out and make sure we have all the foundational pieces of information that we need to then start making choices about phasing, you know, which ones are the most critical from safety, from poor working conditions.

And we've got evaluation criteria to help us with that. but that I think all those things are tying together I don't think I'm adding anything to what you've said in your presentation but these were the things I was thinking about as we're preparing for tonight and I you know definitely talked to Megan about it Can we phase it? Because I think we're going to have to phase it.

Anybody else? Go ahead, Kenny.

Thank you for the presentation. I have two kind of categories of question. I guess the first one is the most fundamental question. If we don't do this, how do you view services being impacted or what services do you think that are being delivered today won't be able to be delivered to the residents?

Yeah, so it's a good question. I think as we look at the work that needs to be done, and I think somebody made the point, I just made a note of it, One of the key elements of this project is this is an investment. It's an investment in our people, and it's an investment in our equipment, which is substantial. and so the facility that we have right now is I would say substandard for our people and as we think about trying to be an employer of choice and fighting in the market for making sure we get the best talent and keeping them here. and so having a workspace that has lockers that are in a proper locker room and not in the lunchroom is one of the key things. So we'll continue to plow roads, we'll continue to pave streets, we'll continue to do that work, and we'll continue to fight for talent

but by delaying it we just run risks of continuing to struggle to bring people on and keep them here and with all the iron that we have parked outside and not in a proper garage We have a long-term sense of the fact that those vehicles just deteriorate a little bit quicker. And for the prices that we're paying for those vehicles, we don't think that's quite right. the building that we have now will continue to make it work. That's our home. That's what we're going to keep doing. But it's inefficient. It's a leaky building. The systems don't work. The basement floods. So it's a matter of you can live with anything, but... We're going to continue to provide services to the town. We'll find the way to do that.

We think the best thing to do is to pursue improvements for our people and for the other investments that we're making with our equipment and our supplies.

Can I add one thing to that? So I'm working on, as you know, a worksheet as part of the Townwide Capital Plan. So each project staff would evaluate the criteria that you're developing. And I actually ran this project through that runner as a test case. and I looked at the unified plan. I looked at the aspects of the unified plan that frankly are supported almost entirely by the Department of Public Works. so whether it's fields and roads and parks and highways, they are critical to accomplishing those goals. So as I'm starting to kind of and a number of other plans that are cited in the document. I think it's really important for them to be able to accomplish that mission.

They need to have proper facilities. Not just for today, but 10, 20 years out. It's hard to do that in a 78-year-old building.

So we're clear. I'm not disagreeing that you don't need new facilities. I'm just trying to understand what is being – kind of is at risk if you don't get them. And the second question kind of dovetails with what you were saying, Dave. So we talked about equipment, for example. We talked about safety. there's one other category I can't remember but it's the same question essentially so I understand I'm gonna use equipment First. So there's equipment that's sitting outside. I drove through there on Saturday. To me, it looks like big, heavy trucks and a whole lot of plows. that are sitting in the parking lot. Everything else seemed to be in a garage, although from your pictures it looks like it's pretty tight. So what data or is there data that supports that when These trucks sit outside. I'm assuming you have a useful life that is actually stated somewhere.

do you have any data that shows that the equipment sitting outside reduces the useful life by X years or something like that? The same question goes for safety. Do you have any stats that essentially show if there was the proper space this number of injuries would have been reduced or something like that.

Okay, so I might turn to Matt Doyle, but I will just say a couple things. Thinking about... in terms of the data. I'll see if we have something in our fleet maintenance group. We might have something like that. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure that we actually have numbers that will say that it lasted 1% longer or 5% longer. But I'll look to see if we have that. anecdotally I know that in the highway garage where you saw a picture it was hard to get that but we have vehicles parked this way and this way and we're cramming them in because we're trying to keep them inside and especially our street sweepers which have water in them and you don't want those outside, especially in the wintertime. But I know of at least one and probably more personal injuries that happened as somebody is trying to maneuver through the puzzle to get to their vehicle to do their thing and winds up hitting their head on a mirror or something like that. We never like to have any injuries, especially lost time injuries. Those can be very expensive.

They're obviously disruptive. So those types of things happen in our current configuration. And I always look at Envy from our vantage point. We can look over at the MLP. and they have a garage that I would say is a really efficient garage with two garage doors, one on either end, they can drive in, they can drive out, as opposed to ours, you saw the picture, with dozens of doors on it that need maintenance and makes the building very inefficient. So those are some of the things that we think about that. I'll see if we have some more data. Maybe I will just check real quick. Matt, was there any data that that you came across during the master planning about vehicle life? Anything like that string come to mind?

Matt, I'm happy to answer that if you want. I can't. I can pass that off to you. Yeah, yeah. Hi, Mike Richard from Weston and Sampson. We didn't look specifically at your town's case, but what I can say is we have done case studies before in the past that clearly demonstrate that. Storing Vehicles Inside extends the life of the vehicles and increases the value of those vehicles. It increases the life of the vehicles by at least three years, if not more. but in that case study what we found is not only were those vehicles taken out of service three years prematurely, they were sold for scrap. The vehicles that were stored indoors stayed in service longer

and they were able to be sold for reuse thereby yielding more money back to the town so there is some advantages with that but also there's some other things that are not clearly accounted for when you're jamming the vehicles inside in in a poorly designed space or or i shouldn't say poorly designed space but not really what it's intended for. What you're also doing is you're risking additional damage to those vehicles. You're risking additional damage to that building, thereby degrading both of those things prematurely as well. In terms of safety, we've worked with other towns before that show that long-term disability impacts a town by, I believe it's twice the employee's salary that's out. if not more I can't remember exactly what that is but I can dig that up but there's also a bunch of other efficiencies that are not really accounted for in that

We do have the wear and tear on the vehicles and the pollution that's generated. We have a great video of vehicles starting up outside versus inside. In the The time it takes to start that vehicle that is stored outdoors is a long time with the employee trying to get the engine running, trying to keep his foot on the pedal. When it's indoors, it just starts right up and that employee can just kind of go off and running. So we have a lot of backup information that we can provide you. I know I just rattled that off very quickly. I'm happy to elaborate on anything if you want me to.

I would like to see that data. The other question I had, it's a data point as well. In the report it talks about the negative impact on response times. Can you elaborate on that and give us some examples of when that's happened?

Dave want to handle that?

Sure. So I think it hints a little bit of what Mike was talking about. So if you have vehicles that are parked outside, you're needing to get a vehicle up to speed before you can go. We're fortunate that all of our water and sewer vehicles are inside in a garage, and so thankfully when it's a sewer backup or something like that, we have those vehicles ready to go. in the wintertime. We try to get those vehicles all inside, but if you drove through, you saw that they're not all there. sidewalk tractors is another example those vehicles there's no room for them inside so so as we're trying to deploy and get out there it just slows down that that process

Tom.

I

My concern is I agree and understand your point, Dave, and Joe, about the quality of the work experience that our employees have. I've said many times that one of the real benefits in Wellesley is having a deep badge, a deep heart medley. and it's not just at the top in terms of management. It's people familiar with the town, the culture, the streets, which is even more important for all of you. We just aren't going to have $100 million to spend at one time. So I think if you're looking at this project, you meaning all of us, The question is going to be, how do you all develop a clear set of priorities through which we can achieve phasing? in this project.

And I think if we're going to do that, then it becomes even more important that we add the fire station master plan, that we really look at the entirety of the campus down there from one side to the other, front to back. And does that have an impact? If we had to expand the central station, How would we do that? What would that impact? What choices would we have? Circulation, parking. I don't see how we can go to the town with the suggestion that we spend money on a particular phase unless we can give a clear, well-considered plan for the entire campus in terms of our goals and what the associated cost might be. so that's my main concern is that we also have a community that values the schools in such a way that we're going to have to answer to

other constituencies who are strong voting members of town meeting when it comes to these warrant articles coming up for consideration by our legislative body. and to that end, I absolutely agree that we need to start. I have said myself to the school committee that we need to, if we're going to look at the air conditioning, town meeting needs to know that we're looking at a masterpiece. Plan as well for those buildings. They have town meeting and the community has a right to know what the plan is and the projected remaining life in some of these buildings when they're being asked to spend millions of dollars on the air conditioning. So my point is not to diverge the conversation to that. It's simply to say that

I'm grateful for the work that Colette really has initiated on capital planning here because it is exactly what we need to consider before we can really justify both to ourselves and also to town meeting the broader community and the debt exclusion how we pick the pieces that are going to go at any one time because you know we talk about 400 million I think that's low I think it's flown by several hundred million in terms of what the total construction is this community could see over a 15 to 20 year period. And I think, Joe, to your point, about what the original thoughts were on the middle school in terms of the length of life. I don't think we're going to get there, not because of any substandard work, not because if we didn't do anything, the building couldn't last that long.

but we're being asked to consider projects that are sufficiently exclusive in a building with hazardous material that what's the point? at some point instead of tearing down that building and building a new middle school. We don't have a lot of land. we have land that is affected by NRC ownership and article 97 so we we really are in a bit of a bind you know we looked Originally there was a thought, well we'll add a wing off the back of this building where the select board is. That's NRC land. and there are rules that they impose that they have a right to impose about land swaps and what they're looking to achieve for the constituency that they represent. It's a remarkably complicated I do have one question.

What is Weston and Samson's role going to be on a continuing basis?

I think at this point they've wrapped up the master plan and supporting us here tonight, answering any questions. So I would think that they would be like any other interested consultant when we, assuming this project gets approved for feasibility. that they would be, one of the firms would be very interested in working on the feasibility study and they would submit a proposal.

In a competitive bid?

Yes, there's no option for the town. We have to follow Chapter 7, which is the Mass General Law and Designer Selection, qualifications-based.

Well, I mean, I raise it because to be perfectly blunt, and I realize they're part of this meeting, after Morse's Pond and after some other experiences we've had with them, I have concerns. about their work product and about their continued advice on this particular project where we're really looking for a level of complexity and accuracy and answers that the community can rely on in addition to us.

Appreciate those concerns, Tom. I don't have any concerns about Weston and Samson's ability to work with us on a complex project, but I hear your comment.

Go ahead, Jack. So first of all, thank you for the presentation. I will say I think the community deeply values what the Department of Public Works delivers to the community. especially after the ice and storm events. I think they know that DPW always turns out and gets the job done and gets it done in a really high quality way. Thank you for having me. It's not the level of workspace that you see anywhere else in town. So I think we should accept that that is the case. And it's very crowded down there. I struggle with the investment, the magnitude of the investment in the master plan because

when we know, well first of all, the other thing I think that all of us value who have been watching the bouncing ball is that the Board of Public Works and the Department of Public Works has been awesomely patient and whenever we say please defer, they step back. So part of the issue we have is... Thank you. Thank you. I would like that not to happen again. I would like to fix some of the critical issues that we have. Maybe it's not everything. We can't afford everything. But I think plucking off some of the pieces would be more productive in making headway than...

stretching it out longer I think it'll be more vulnerable and the thing I struggle with is spending close to a million dollars on a master plan and knowing that that data is going to age out over the life of this project. I think we've got a pretty good handle from the work that's been done about what the big building blocks are. and I would prefer we move into feasibility on the highest priority things it's the exact opposite of what as a strategic planner I think about doing all the time But in this situation, I just don't see investing in a really robust plan that then to execute it by the time we get... Far enough along, we're going to have to redo a lot of that work.

I mean, at least that's what I've seen over time. So when I look at that list... I don't know how many of those items that add up to like $900,000. We need all at once, Joe. That's

Thank you very much. the air conditioning project, the preschool, Morse's Pond. Those are projects that got stale because they were delayed for whatever reason. So once you put a plan, a project in the master plan, you're going to see it every year, several times a year, and you're going to discuss it. Should it stay in the plan? be deferred a year? Should it stay according to the schedule? I think this, and Glenn can jump in if he'd like. I think if we complete this feasibility study, it's good for several years. It will give us the flexibility to say, okay, we don't need to start design next year. We could start design in a year and a half or two years.

I think it's going to be flexible enough, agile enough that we can take the results of the feasibility study and use it for whatever project we ultimately decide the town can afford and best meets with some compromises the goals of DPW.

So all of those things on the breakdown that add up to the $900,000 you think are absolute mandatories and they will be shelf-stable. for the duration of the plan. Because the reason I'm asking Joe is I think we do very good studies, but we've spent $130,000 on park and tree studies. and then another 135 on the master plan here. So we're over a quarter of a million dollars. And now we're going to put another 900,000 in. So I'm just trying to... For me, this means we've gotten stale or not enough. So I'd like to see us scope for action because I think the master plan does lay out. what the needs and the requirements are and now it's a matter of aligning internally on priorities and

Plucking off the pieces in the fashion that have the biggest impact for the Board of Public Works.

Well, it's missing cost information, Master Plan, which is going to be a critical part of the Townwide Capital Plan. So we don't know what the scope of work is yet, and we don't know what the cost is. And I think... you know with other master plans but like for example time you talked about the fire station master plan I think we'll have pretty reliable cost from that when that is completed, and that's going to tie in nicely. We'll be able to look at the DPW master plan, and we'll be able to look at the fire station master plan. We have some pretty good ideas where we're heading on that study. So we'll have the information, but if we don't do this study, we're not going to have the information. And, you know, just keep in mind, we spent a million and a quarter, I think, roughly on the Honeywell feasibility study and a little more, I think, on Hardy because we did Hardy and Upham. So this is not exorbitantly high. This is what you would do on a major project like that. And a lot of the work Will we do everything? We may not.

As I said, we may not have to do the parking garage consultant, but soil borings, environmental information, Sampling and testing hazardous materials from existing buildings. That's information that we're going to be able to use no matter what the scope of the project is, whether it's a large project or a medium project.

If I could, one other thing that I think it's important to think about is that we started this process for the master plan after we got to a point with the initial study which laid out a program of improvements to that 75-year-old building. And so I think the first hurdle that the town needs to jump over is do we want to invest more in that building? And if the answer is yes, then that can take us down a certain path. that would be a lot less than $100 million, but you're gonna have a 80-year-old building that isn't gonna necessarily accomplish what we wanted to accomplish. It'll make some upgrades, which are important. But that's when we took a look at it and said, this doesn't feel like this is a good use of taxpayer money. So that's why we decided to go down this route to see if we could even do something beyond that. And so the important, in my mind, the important question was answered, which is, yes, we can do something different if that's what we choose to do.

There may not be the budget to do it, and that's the reality of it. It does remind me back in 2005-ish when we started talking about the water and sewer garage and the DPW administration building. that at that time we did ask the question, should we just do the whole site? And the total cost at that time to do everything was $31 million. and the town couldn't afford it. So we passed on that and we left the park and highway building for the future. And so here we are 20 years later and this is what's in front of us. we can kick it down the road another 25 years and see what's ahead of us that way and we'll continue to make work whatever we have to. I just think about a personal story when I was in that old DPW administration building in the office with windows that leaked cold air and your hands were freezing while you were typing away and there was no heat. That's just what it was. I didn't think about what it could be. I didn't think about something that would be better.

then we were fortunate enough to get the new building built and it's a whole different world where we don't even have to think about freezing hands while I'm typing on a computer. So those are some things that sort of come along with making improvements along the way. We realize that this is a $100 million project is not where we want to be. We don't want to be proposing that to anybody. and so we think about the range of, we have 13 million dollars of renovations, it's probably 15 million now, up to 100 or more million dollars, it's probably gonna be something in between and I think that's the the feasibility study is in my mind that's that's what's going to help us figure out what that in-between thing is going to be what's that solution that we think we could put in place that would phase something over time that would accomplish some major priorities. Hope that helps.

I just kind of wanted to add to that discussion because I know this comes up. Actually, Jeff's got his hand up. Do you want to take Jeff first? Because we've already had a chance to speak.

Yeah, thank you. Just to reiterate something I a thread I've heard running through this. And so I've been on the board for nine years now. Today is the cheapest this work will ever be. And every time we've considered or looked at these projects before was the cheapest they will ever be. Or I shouldn't say cheap, cheap's the wrong word, the least expensive. But I also understand the frustration of doing studies that then produce something that doesn't provide an answer for one reason or another. and then we're coming back and then we end up spending more money to do something else to try to find the direction forward. So my hope and my goal is that there is a pathway that is consistently moving forward so that whatever expenses we incur as a town,

are useful and thoughtful and lead to the right set of expenses after that to get the product and the solution at the cost that make the most sense. So what I look for is something that can give us a sufficient range of options to have the decision points that keep us from scrapping it at the end of the study. and give us enough options that no matter what constraints we have, we can choose something that solves the list of problems that we all agree exist, right? The challenges that can be improved. So that's what leaves me hopeful here is that what we can come out of this with. would be a sufficient amount of information and a sufficient step forward that we can then say, we know how we would do everything ranging from, doing upgrades to existing facilities, what that cost would be, would they be sufficient? What would that leave us needing later?

And what timeline could we do it on? to let's solve the needs for FMD and land use and put them all on a site and do all of these things. And yes, that's the most expensive option and then everything in between. but that's what I'm hoping for but that's why I also think it's worth it if we can get that at the end of it so that we're not doing what we've done with a lot of things in town over the last decade at least, which is saying, you know what, we've studied it and we just don't have an option that we can move forward on at the end of this. because I hear that from town meeting members, I hear that from residents, that's what gets people frustrated. And it's not even as much, a big part of the frustration about you know well you could have done it for 31 million dollars 20 years ago and now maybe it's a lot more than that the frustration is that we we stalled

right it's it's yeah it's more expensive but it's something stalled out like we couldn't find a way to move forward and now we're stuck with a bigger price tag because we didn't do it when we could have or we didn't figure out a master schedule So there's a lot of great work happening. I appreciate everything that's being discussed in town that the Select Board is discussing about how we can better align all of the capital planning. And yes, we have significant costs, hundreds of millions of dollars. Joe has mentioned it several times. Tom, you asked about what can the town bear. That is part of this discussion, but I think we have to have something. that we can do to get us to the point of making a decision, having a series of decisions laid out in front of us that we can then choose what is going to be the thing instead of just stopping and saying, we got to get back to this in five years. I hope that makes sense. But I appreciate everyone's points and I'm glad we're here discussing this today.

So I agree with you, Jeff, that we have to do something. My question was, is doing it so holistically going to lead us to to not addressing the critical pain points? Are we just going to get in a place where it's going to be hard to address those things which are they're not negotiable they're they're true issues that we have to deal with and I feel like the bigger it gets the harder it's going to be to scope down to pick off those pieces. And it's the exact opposite of strategic planning. I recognize that. I just feel like where we are I think having a plan to address park and tree

in the near term would be really an interesting option to have. That's just me. And I know that I just would like something, right? And I feel like This is too big and it's going to be really hard to get folks to kind of stick with it for the long haul. Something else is going to interrupt this.

And Beth, I wasn't disagreeing with you. I actually agree with the concern because you and I, I think, are both coming from a place of seeing things stall out. because our eyes got bigger than our stomachs for certain things sometimes. And so my hope is that by having a really thoughtful way of planning, It helps solve what you're saying and gives me what I want and hopefully makes us both happy. That's my hope.

Colette, go ahead. I just want to continue that conversation a little bit. So looking back at the project background, there were four studies, two of which resulted in work done, the sprinklers and the RDF. Those were studies that led to a project.

Two of those projects resulted in completed projects done. Right. And two gave us information that frankly brought us here.

So those, and I know there's been a lot of discussions of we do studies and we don't, they're wasted money. I don't consider those wasted at all. I think they did exactly what we hoped they would do. And in the $800,000 that we're looking for, 380 is for the basic services. and then there's a enumerated a number of things I think we're going to have to do in any case. Wetlands flagging, topographical studies, permits analysis, hydrogen flow tests, hazardous material testing, Those get done. Those things add up. But those things need to be done. Board and committee presentations need to be done. So you might want to do them all at once. So I think there is some level of there's efficiency in doing a reasonable feasibility study here rather than picking two or three things to do feasibility on. I think there were... Saving money now and not really in the long term.

And I think that there's a couple of things that really fed into the notion that we've had studies that failed. COVID. I mean that's that's really something that happened to a number of these studies that were really delayed and so and that's certainly true for Morse's pond it's certainly true for air conditioning and so I think we need to think about the bigger picture with the studies. Studies gives us answers to make better decisions. I think it's an investment in making thoughtful planning and you know I think this will give us in the same way that we did feasibility for air conditioning to allow us to make future decisions I think we need to make feasibility here because it's one of the bigger capital items that are on. So we need this level of investment to make good decisions in my mind.

So I sent you 17 questions, and thank you for the detailed responses. We'll share those questions and answers with the rest of the board. We just wanted to make sure that you didn't have anything you wanted to add. before we circulated them because I didn't want to give people incomplete responses. I know we're working really hard on the townwide capital planning committee, but I think there's an intermediate step before that committee starts all its work. and I'd like to see everything on the capital financing schedule evaluated for absolute priority before we even get to that point. I see park and highway as a priority. If adding FMD and land use to municipal way is going to cost $12 million, but we could rent in the short term and we don't have to build a $12 million building.

that to me is not as critical as park and highway. We want everybody to have comfortable working conditions. but I'd also like to see a little bit more information about available rental space. We keep hearing that commercial property is available. I know Haynes is going out of business. but I'd like to see some more of that. By the same token, personally, I'm not convinced and sold that we need a $40 million preschool. So I think we need to look at your absolute priorities along with some of the things that are already on the capital plan and put them all out on the table. and maybe rejigger the capital finance schedule according to what absolutely has to be done. I'm not sure what that does for your feasibility study, but we have too much now to move forward with it all. and I think we need to pare it all down.

But I appreciate all the work. And we've been in that building. I've seen how tight the spaces are for the trucks and the vehicles and I understand the safety concerns. and the inefficiencies. But I'd like to see, Dave, your prioritization of the pieces of the master plan. maybe we'll get to all of it over time like we did with the school over 12 years or 13 years I'm just not sure that we can present it all to town meeting now and that because they're going to ask, what is it going to cost altogether? And we don't want to do a whole feasibility study and then have town meeting blanch at the design phase. That's what happened with the middle school. We don't want that to happen again. So those are my thoughts. Tom?

I do just want to say to support points that you both have been making that this building and the planning that went into this project at Town Hall is a very good example of a number of the points that you both and Jeff have been making. So when we approach this building by looking at a historical preservation, and we looked at the same time as designing the annex at Municipal Way. That cost money to take a look at what was involved, what the costs were to have an accurate understanding of the scope and scale of those projects and the result was that some of the best money spent was to retreat from the annex, have FMD and land use rent, and I do recognize that Haynes and we're grateful to Haynes gave us favorable lease terms. but we ended up pivoting and doing a renovation of this building that I think by and large people feel has been very successful.

each of those decisions were supported by money spent to look at feasibility and options that we had. And we couldn't have made the right decisions if we didn't have that information. So in terms of the output from the feasibility study for DPW and for that campus, I don't think it's the outcome and conclusions that become aged. I think it's the cost that's associated with it, but that's true of anything in construction. Construction inflation in the Boston area runs about 5, 5.5%. So we know that's going to happen. You just accept that. We're constantly projecting forward with a reasonable inflationary factor what we think the cost would be. But the essential conclusions are not what's going to change.

Marjorie, can I make one last comment? I just reminded me of one other thing, which I think is just interesting context from my perspective, thinking back to the original conversations we had in the 2005 to 2010 range. We have drawings from that time when we offered and considered to include the land use groups in the DPW administration building. FMD didn't exist yet, so we didn't include them, I don't think. I think it's just important to reflect on that because the cost of doing that at that time would have been minuscule to add those folks that 8,000 square feet or 10,000 square feet and so I would just, and that is not driving our project, the FMD land use group. It's just an opportunity. It's something for you all to consider. It's for those other boards to consider. I would hate to look back in 15 years

I just think about all the money that could have been saved if that had happened at that time. And so we have that opportunity. And whenever a project gets built, if it gets built, I think it's a real opportunity that could really benefit the community. And so I just want to make sure that you are aware of that and you have that as part of your thinking whenever the right time is to move forward with the project.

Marjorie, I would just say on that point, if that goes into a feasibility study at some point, I would like it to expand to include what Beth is saying, because I think... these departments need space right and so we should look at all the options when it comes to space if that is what we do in a feasibility study not just in that one location.

thank you both very much it's been a great conversation it's a complex issue

I'm actually going to have Dave stay because most of the FY27 budget actually pertains to DPW.

Okay. So we'll go to DPW specific to townwide budget FY27 update. and Rachel is here.

and Marjorie. We're going to leave our meeting open. Oh, did Michael leave the screen?

Looks like it. Michael did leave, Jeff.

Oh, well, I'm staying for the next part. But if Michael's not, I guess I will end the meeting. Or I guess it just ended.

Thanks, Jeff.

Appreciate it. Meeting of the Board of Public Works is now over.

You're on the hook for notes, Jeff.

Yeah, right. But I'm going to stay and listen in for the budget part.

Okay, go ahead, Megan, please.

I do see a couple people here, so I also, if you were here for the 592 Washington Street discussion, We did have to postpone that. We are hopeful to do it next Tuesday. But if you want to come up and just put your emails down, I'll email you both and... I'm sorry, Megan. That's okay. I was supposed to tell everybody. I just saw people sitting here, so I just wanted to make sure. So we wanted to just give a brief update on the budget. So following the board's last meeting, we had some takeaways and some homework to employ. The first was looking at, you know, There was a bunch of questions on capital, including both cash capital as well as... Thank you. We have reached out to all of the departments.

We have asked them to submit sort of their initial cuts or proposed cuts By Wednesday. So we'll have that for the 27th as folks are evaluating that. In addition, the finance department has gone and done a cash capital analysis that looks at funds that have not been expended. to either say, hey, what's your plan for this? Or could that be used as the makeup for this year? Or are you returning money? and so once we have the smaller departments you know we're going to go back to the bigger departments with numbers so more to follow on cash capital cuts at at next week's meeting.

Megan, before you go on, cash capital, is it okay to transfer cash capital from one project to the other?

No, so it wouldn't be transfer. We're basically saying, did you do this? If you didn't do it, you know, are you, and you had like, NRC is a good example. NRC had some work proposed in FY, 27, but they had funds remaining in like FY 24 for similar work. So it's like, well, you didn't spend this money, so spend that money and we're going to reduce your FY 27 accordingly, for instance.

Are you also looking at prior cash capital appropriations for dissimilar projects?

Yes, to say where are you on that? Are you going to complete it or are you going to return it? And those funds would go back to... Thank you. Those would flow back to free cash. You wouldn't hit till the fall, basically. So we're just, I don't have a further update on that. We're working the process on that. The secondary question was, if the board was going to use $100 million, $100 million. I'm looking at you, Dave, thinking of $100 million. If the board were going to use $1 million to close the budget gap once we cut cash capital. Did we want to offset that in capital projects? So I would argue no, is my argument to you, that we have surplus free cash above the 12%. The board's range is 8% to 12%. GFOA is actually 15% and we're in excess of that.

And to even get to our 12%, it's under Rachel and I's initial proposal to close the budget and apply free cash. we still would have 5.5 million dollars to get to the top end of the range which is taxpayer money and I don't see at this point a mechanism or a reason to retain that We were trying to manage it at the high end of the range, given, again, the unknown, above the high end of the range by 5.5 million. Levin, given the potential impacts of FY27 from the trickle-down impact from the federal government to the state budget. which the Governor's budget is being released at the end of I think it's January 28th so we'll begin to know more about that but that's a process in and of itself so we typically continue to go under our assumptions until you won't see many shifts in our assumptions based upon the governor's budget.

So as part of that we went to the boards and so there was really for the free cash items. There's four DPW projects and one planning board project that we were looking at. So just as a reminder, it's the Wellesley High School and Honeywell Field irrigation improvements, the playground reconstruction, and that was for Sprigg, some improvements at Sprigg, some new playground equipment at Perrin and regular sort of safety maintenance at Upham School. We also had the West and Linden intersection design, the DPW campus municipal service building feasibility study, which we just discussed, and then the comprehensive plan funding. So I went to Dave to say, Dave, if you had to prioritize cutting, what would it be? He indicated it would be the Honeywell Field Irrigation Improvements is something that they could defer.

Just as a reminder, that was actually anticipated to be funded with free cash at last year's annual town meeting. We deferred that for other reasons, just DPW for work planning purposes. and then when we got to fall we just deferred it to annual. So previously the board had authorized the expenditure of free cash for that last year. We did reach out to CPC with regards to the playground reconstruction and we'll work to get an application in so we may be able to offset a portion of that. Some of the work, particularly regarding regular safety and maintenance at Upham likely would not qualify. so that would either have to be deferred or funded through pre-cash but they did say they'd be willing to take a look at that application and so we're willing to get that in and do the work on that. The West and Linden intersection design, that is something we've already gone to town meeting for taking on. We find that to be a critical intersection. That would be certainly a priority, I think, for the traffic committee and DPW.

to finalize that. And I would say from the police department standpoint, given the public safety issues that surround that. We can continue to talk about the board's view on funding the campus plan, which is now slightly less than $1 million at $58 million. I just wrote it down to try and lock in my brain, but $858,000. And then I did talk to the interim or acting planning director with regards to the comprehensive plan funding. So the comprehensive plan, keep in mind it was the unified plan, last go around, which was both the comprehensive plan and the town strategic plan. So arguably more than a comprehensive plan 10 years ago, which was $200,000. So $400,000 is actually for the comprehensive plan component about three times the potential cost. So unclear on the estimates on that.

but I suggested a couple things and arguably I am still supportive of funding the $400,000 but should the board wish to cut that back there's a couple options. One could be deferring that to the fall as they Don't have a planning director. The board will be going through the hiring process on that. So it provides a delay to see what the free cash balance looks like in the fall and how we're going to proceed with projects. So there's a potential to delay incrementally. The Planning Board also has $50,000 in operational funding towards studies, and so arguably, they have not agreed to any of this, but we could work with them to see if they could commit over 27 and 28, $50,000 from their operational budget towards this particular project given the amount of work that is within that. So I did relay that to

Brad, and so I'm unsure how, you know, that hasn't been completed yet. But given the free cash amounts, I am still recommending moving forward with free cash appropriations for these.

Megan, could I ask you... that $50,000 they have I thought that was Lower Falls study money Is that not right?

I don't know if they've earmarked it as such, but they have $50,000 each year in operational budget. They have $50,000 today they could use for FY26 for lower falls.

that was just my understanding which so that might be for 26 sorely needed so yeah so again they have 50,000 in this year's budget that they could start that immediately

they also have $50,000 in unexpended capital funds for digitization and $30,000 in unexpended funds for Cedar Street.

Knappert's Last Remembers.

So there was 50,000 for digitization. They're looking into whether they still need that or not. And then because as they've moved, they've automated a lot of their scanning and digitization to begin with. I still think they likely have a lot of files that could be digitized. I'm thinking about the library because I know there's some over there and Jamie's always telling me to get them out. So it'd be an easy way to do that if we expended those. And then 25 for Cedar Street. And that one went back to 20 or 21, right? To 2019. So we've been carrying that for...

I think it would be reasonable for Tom and me to talk to the officers of planning and for you to continue to talk to the interim director. about a work plan. What are they actually planning to do for the next year? And maybe returning that money or applying it towards the comprehensive plan. because I don't think they can do them all in the If the comprehensive plan is their priority, I'd like to see them put all this money that's been set aside towards that plan.

Well, and so tonight, what we really... I knew Dave was going to be here anyway, so I wanted to make sure Dave was here to answer any particular questions about the capital projects for which we're seeking free cash. And then also... and just with regards to the closure of the budget, so at present with Rachel's work on the borrowing, we've reduced and so forth. The debt by about excuse me the deficit by a little over $200,000 so we are at about a million right now to close and we do anticipate that to be lower so the budget currently has a projection of 12.5% for rates for health insurance. So we won't know rates for another couple weeks. but that is definitively on the high end of the range. I'm hopeful it would be at 10 or 11%.

9% would be awesome, but I'm thinking a reasonable could be 10.5%. And that saves us an additional $200,000 to $300,000. So one million at present would be the maximum with the anticipation that that would be further decreased as the health insurance numbers come in. and to be clear, that is on top of the $2.2 million that we had previously anticipated to balance. So it would be $3.2 million or thereabouts $3 million in terms of free cash for the operational side.

Dave, on the playground, how much of that $500,000 do you view as safety related? Ballpark.

Rough, rough ball. Yeah, I mean, my instinct is to say all of it. It's really, yeah, it's all safety related, the work that we would have planned there. Now, there might be some individual elements on the Perrin playground that are okay, but to redo the structure, you consider all of it. So I think essentially it's all safety related.

Well, and the other thing I'd just add to that, because one of the goals we've had over the past three years on all of the playground structures is... both inclusivity, so we've brought them all up to ADA requirements as part of the work we've been doing for a transitional assessment on accessibility. but in addition to that all of these play structures that in particular the new completely new play structures are also inclusive for children with special learning needs children with autism so it's it's Really, it fits into our DEI mission in terms of inclusivity, which is something we've been striving to be welcoming at all of our playgrounds for all of the different abilities that the kids in town have.

So can I just follow up on the playgrounds? So I think it's critical that our playgrounds are safe because children often play there. Unsupervised even and it's not responsible to have unsafe playgrounds. This half a million dollars will complete all of our playgrounds in town and bring them up to I mean what I would consider pretty state-of-the-art except Upham right and Upham is What would you say is happening in Upham?

So with Upham, our approach is that we're going to continue to support the neighborhood by maintaining the playground. But until we know what's happening at that location, I just don't think it makes sense to replace that playground. and so we want to make sure that we're keeping up with the major elements there and keeping it safe.

So it's straight safety at Upham and the others are kind of new...

Well, Sprigg, I would say, is also a straight safety. It's with the play surface. And then as far as Perrin goes, it's under the umbrella of safety and inclusivity and making it standardized with our other playgrounds and making sure that that the neighborhood playgrounds are getting the same type of treatment that all the other playgrounds get.

I was just curious. My son's gotten bigger now. We don't go to playgrounds as much. So I was just curious about the state of... the different playgrounds.

This is the end of the three-year planned, the plan that we had.

And the other question I have is the Honeywell Field Irrigation System. So I think I heard you say It might have been an advisory that it's leaky. So to what extent does the leakiness interfere with the capacity to use the fields? Because on the other end we have... Constraints around field availability and field usage were really overbooked. So can you help me understand kind of the context for the field irrigation? Is it... What will it do for us in terms of helping manage the availability of the fields for the teams?

Yeah, so I think the availability issue is not directly related to the water coming out of the leaks, but more that when there are leaks, we have to maintain them. We have to fix them, and that takes time. So and we only have limited times that we can be out on the field. So we need to take care of those when the fields aren't being used. So it's an inconvenience for us. It takes time. It takes crew hours to be able to deal with. And there's two types of leaks. There are the sort of the minor leaks, the service leaks, but then there's the main leaks. And the service leaks might be a crew for a morning type of thing. And then the main leaks might be double that number of people for a day or two. depending on the scope of the repairs.

So is this in the non-technical version End of service life and we've nursed it as long as is productive and now it's very expensive to maintain. Is that what this is? Okay.

It's inefficient.

Well, and the other thing is, you know, without fixing it, those are the times when the leaks fill up and you've got puddles that then the usability is potentially impacting.

Yeah, I haven't heard too many reports of that, but I'm sure at a time that it happens, there might be a puddling, ponding on the surface. We try to get to them as quick as we can, so try to stay ahead of that.

Where do most of those leaks happen? Is it near the aqueduct or is it all?

It's all throughout the system. It's aged. It's just a pipe that's deteriorated and leaks happen.

So I'd like to propose something to the board. If Dave is OK, with deferring the field irrigation, I would support Megan's and Rachel's proposal to use free cash to close the gap. I'd like to continue a conversation about whether CPC funding might be able to defer part of the playground equipment and absolutely have a more in-depth conversation with planning. about their study money and their comprehensive plan funding. But I think with the hopeful decrease in health and maybe a little bit of tweaking here, can we get there, Megan?

We certainly can. I mean, again, if we defer Dave, just so we're clear, you're going to be at over 15% in terms of free cash.

Maybe better to do them all. I think 15% is a little high.

Can other people have a chance to talk? It doesn't matter because we're talking about deferring it to the fall. It's still coming out of free cash. We're not saying we're not going to do it. were just putting it in a different fiscal cycle. I don't see the... I would rather defer Weston and Linden in the hope that we could get a grant because if we truly see that that is grant eligible and we just missed it last time. I'd like one more shot at applying for a grant on this.

So we are applying for a bottleneck grant, although in our conversations with MassDOT, they want us to focus on the Linden Street corridor and not that intersection. So they've been pretty clear that we would not get the grant for that intersection.

I actually think that's a really important project. It's a huge problem intersection and we have to finish the taking and I mean we're almost done with the project. and it's been through a lot and I'd like to see Western Road people get a little bit more of a thorough route down Western Road. So I take back what I said. I don't think 15% is a good percentage. the policy at 8 to 12%. We said last year we wanted to stay above that because of the uncertainty with funding. I think that's still appropriate. 15% is too high.

I think Rachel, hold on, want to just go ahead.

I was just going to add too, so our reserve analysis, we're being very conservative what the FY26 turn back is going to be. Right now, I'm estimating $6 million. But if we look at revenues to date, we just got our excise, or I should say our calendar year 26 first excise commitment. It's about $400,000 higher than this time last year. , interest earnings. If we look at interest earnings this year to last year, so last December, we were about $3.5 million in interest income. this year were about 3 million. So we're still trending to have far over revenue projections for interest income. We have some pretty high building permit. just over 700,000 for the Babson hotel permit that came in. So just to keep in mind, we're projecting now around that 15% reserves. if in fact the $6 million is conservative, that reserve number is going to be even higher.

So again, we won't know that until we close out FY26 and we have our free cash. certified in the fall, but it is something to consider. Again, the six million is conservative, but it's very likely it could be closer to eight. So just wanted to add that extra content.

That's more support for doing the projects.

So I just wanted to kind of take a step back as to why we're having this discussion in the first place. I mean, last week we had a discussion about... Hey, we can close the budget by using 1.3 million of free cash to attend to health care. And then there was a suggestion brought up that maybe we should offset that with cuts to Spending of Free Cash on Capital, which I think was worthwhile having a discussion on. And we weren't ready to have it last week because I certainly can't react in the minute to something as large as that in terms of a change in policy. but I think we've had I certainly have had time to ask some questions of Megan I watched Dave Cohen's presentation to advisory you know got some more understanding of the projects we were thinking well could could we just postpone them but I think there's a couple of really important things our reserve policy is very important and I think we can justify having reserves at 15% GFOA says it's appropriate I think we can justify that

we have chosen not to put that in our policy for good reason but given the current situation we've talked about you know having reserves in excess which our policy allows that's all fine but I'd be reluctant to be above 15%. and as we're talking tonight, we're talking about possibly applying a million or less. So now we're talking about capital cuts of well in excess of that. I don't think that's a good thing for us to do. what I've learned from Dave's presentation and other answers to questions I've had is you know that when you cut capital you don't cut anything you just defer it and so we're just building up we're just backing it up to next year which we've got lots of work to do and if there's work that is has already been deferred has either safety or other reasons it's a good idea to do it now and I think that if we can afford it which we can we should do that so

there's a long way to say I support the original staff plan because as we're getting closer to the finish line it's being refined we've talked about how volatile healthcare is and so it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be in the same situation next year but we also have to look forward in the next couple of years as to what happens when we get fully funded on OPEB which might really and that was the capacity on the operating budget we talked about so Longway of saying I support what staff had proposed. I'm glad we had the discussion. I think it was good to remember all these things, but I'm with the staff proposal. Others? Kenny?

So I think it's important to remember we're talking about somewhere between $2 and $2.3 million. We're using cash capital. We're reducing that. but we're not using the cash that's in the savings account. It's $2 million to $2.3 million. We keep consistently telling the community, times are tight, we need to, you know, tighten the belt. We keep talking about fiscal uncertainty with the federal government, the state government, all that. I have a real hard time spending that money on discretionary things. like the irrigation, which I understand I've been over there a gazillion times. It does get wet, but I have never seen a practice or a GameStop because of it. We're talking about $400,000 for the comprehensive plan. Like everybody said, we don't have a planning director in place right now. And is that really going to start before the fall?

and then a million dollars on the DPW feasibility study which I do agree that something needs to be done over there. to pay for operating deficit. I just don't think now is the right time to do that. So I think we could slash $2 million from spending out of free cash and basically close that gap. What I would also say is, I don't know why we have policies if we're not gonna follow them. If we're saying eight to 12% is where we wanna be, with an exception for certain other times, 15% seems really high. And I think somewhere I read for every 1%, it's $2 million or so. So if you took $6 million off the table and applied it to reduce debt, how much is that going to save us?

Thank you for joining us. that will reduce the amount of interest payments we make. I understand we're going to lose some interest income on that, but that seems like the more prudent thing to do to me. So in my opinion, we should slash $2 million from the capital spending.

Others? So it would help me to understand when these projects would be executed because I do think we're not actually... Slashing them, I think we're just going to pay for them at a different town meeting. And if we were talking about do we need to do it this year. That to me is a different conversation. So if it's defer, I don't know, Dave, if you were thinking defer to the fall or defer for a year? When you said irrigation could wait, were you thinking a year or were you thinking to the fall?

I wasn't thinking anything. I was asked the question, what would your priorities be? And if we had to cut one, that's the one that I would put first.

So the way I was hearing these deferrals was to the fall. And to me, I would rather give... Town Meeting, a fuller view of what the projects are that we're presenting in the budget than give them less, but then in the fall have a long list of cash capital. And that's kind of how we're looking right now. We're looking like...

The only one I had suggested deferring initially to the fall was the comprehensive plan. Okay.

So for me... The Comprehensive Plan seems like we're going to do it this year because it's a state requirement. So I would leave it in the budget. is the amount, right? I have no way of knowing. I would ask planning what it is, but that's a real expense. It's not negotiable. It's a state requirement. I think we have to do that. I I don't see any way around safe playgrounds you know the irrigation system I don't have any way to judge if that's going to have more leakiness or not. I just think if we're looking at waiting till the fall, I'd rather have you fix it in the summer. when there's less play on the field. Otherwise, I would say it's a deferral until next year and we're going to be in the exact same spot.

Megan, what does the fall town meeting look like?

I know you guys grimace. I really think... We aren't going to mobilize and repair Weston and Linden this spring or summer.

It's for the design. Or design.

Are we going to really get that done this summer? if we get the funding yeah we would move right away on it I think that's a critical safety issue I just really would like us to try to get that grant but I would really like to yeah I guess we're not going to get that grant

We may get it for the Linden Street corridor, which would then sync all the lights, be a big improvement, and that would be sort of the end cap to do less than Linden interchange.

Megan, was there any money from the Bristol project to address that part of Weston Road?

It's very low. I think we have like 50,000 or so in escrow. I can get the exact number. And that's to do very minor striping and such as part of the... Road Safety Audit. Just to the fall question, Beth. Currently for the fall, we have anticipated potential discussion of the air conditioning at $2 million. There was initially in our plan potential for fire station master plan, but I think Joe's actually kicked that to annual. Not master plan, feasibility for the next one. And then we have a discussion on the War Memorial and Sprague Tower. That's $300,000. and then I think the remainder are all either funded through borrowing. We have Weston, not Weston, sorry, Great Plain Ave. We have $4.5 million in that. That's for annual town meeting from a borrowing.

You could skip borrowing that and apply free cash to that. It is an option, too. because that otherwise will go inside the levy as 28th borrowing.

So six and a half million dollars. Is that right?

Well, I mean, if you want to take out debt, that's another way to do it. It's funding. I mean, because keep in mind, that's what we're doing. We're proposing to not have debt.

Go ahead, Tom.

Kulit just said something I think that really is very important, which is with regard to cash capital, you're not eliminating the project, you're just delaying the expenditure. and I think that, you know, conservative once said that sometimes the conservative play is to spend money now. And with these particular projects, you're just going to compound the cost. Over time, if you delay the Honeywell field irrigation, you're at risk for catastrophic failure. You're at risk for a more comprehensive project. You're going to have costs that continue to go up. I do agree that the Weston and Linden intersection I believe somebody last week said that that was really essential for the quality of life for the neighborhoods along Weston Road to try to achieve greater and smoother flow through that area.

So I realize that a week ago I was here talking about cuts and talking about having to demonstrate a certain type and scale of fiscal conservatism to the community and I meant what I said but I think when I apply inflationary costs to this particular list The more conservative play is to spend the money now.

I just want to address the question about if we have policies, why aren't we following them? We're definitely following our policy if we stick to the plan that staff have proposed. If we don't, then we're risking coming outside of it. But we are following our policy right now.

See, the place where I think we're not following the policy, and I don't see a choice this year, so I'm not saying, but applying an extra million dollars for health insurance Thank you very much. free cash to balance the operating costs. This increases it by a third because we're going from 2.2 to well last week it was three and a half but now it's 3.2 so this will be one of our higher years of using free cash or

are savings to balance recurring operating costs because the health insurance, yes, it's increased a lot this year, but that is going to go into the base. They're not going to cut costs. our health care costs next year. We just hope they'll go up less. And so to me, the problem's not the project list as much as it is that our recurring operating costs have risen dramatically and we've quarantined it to be represented in the health insurance but it's that our regular operating recurring costs have risen more than we anticipated. And that's with no new hires. It's with cuts from school committees. are operating costs are higher.

We can't address it this year, but I think that's what needs to be addressed as we budget in the out years. So Marjorie, I'm coming around to the fact that I think

we're not going to solve this problem fiscally by cutting I disagree actually I'm looking at the policy right now so it says free cash may be applied to operating budget if needed by a vote of the select board that's what we're doing and it also talks about as we approach full funding of long-term obligations such as OPEB, excess capacity in operating budgets should be used to diminish or eliminate the use of free cash to balance the annual operating budget which is still what we're working towards. which we've done pretty consistently. It's just going the wrong direction from what we told town meeting. I'm still speaking Beth, I'm still speaking. I've never interrupted you. and I do think that your statement that other costs have risen largely, I don't think that's true. I think it's pretty specific to healthcare. I think we're managing other costs within the 2.5% plus new growth.

Megan and Rachel have been predicting a much higher health insurance percentage increase this year. We had a very low one last year, 3.8%. and that was not typical and we've known all along that this was going to be a high increase year. Almost all departments came in on budget. We reviewed every department that was over budget. We don't have strategic initiatives. We don't have new FTEs. It's basically a level service budget. And unless we're going to cut level service free cash is the best way it's a cost we have to pay and whatever it is next year we're going to have to pay it unless we're going to cut staff and we decided we didn't want to do that so I support Megan and Rachel's proposal.

I think people have raised good questions about we're just trying to get some more information on the timing and the appropriate cost of the comprehensive plan I think we've all said that's a good question

Well, and we will apply for the CPC funding. Right, exactly, some offset from CPC. And so the other question, which I'm not clear on that. The discussion is the support for the feasibility study at the 858,000.

I think we need those answers to be able to do the difficult work of the capital planning. I think we do need those answers at that full scope.

One thing that I didn't say before was, doesn't it make much more sense to establish the committee have a discussion of what the projects within the scope of the committee are, look at recent feasibility studies for all those projects, determine which ones are next. Instead of starting down this path with this one, and then putting the committee in place and establishing a framework because the minute you do the feasibility study, you're essentially saying this is a legitimate project that we think we should be doing. which I don't know that we're there yet. So to me it seems like delaying that after the capital planning committee is established makes much more sense.

Well, that's partly why I suggested we take another look at the capital financing policy and have Dave give us his prioritization of the projects within the master plan and look at some of the others maybe we need to reorder the capital financing policy the way we have it now even before the capital planning committee gets started maybe we've changed our minds on certain things on certain priorities Go ahead, Tom.

My concern after listening to Dave and Joe is that if we don't do that study now for 858, we're going to do it in a year and a half or two for 1,058,000. and the outcome of that feasibility study is going to feed into the capital planning project. There isn't a project there that's well defined and well understood that the capital planning committee can react to. I think that's the point, Dave, that we heard you talk about, which is it's going to help give options and give shape to the thoughts about what that campus ought to look like, what it can look like, and what the various levels of cost. are for that project. So the feasibility study is just going to increase in expense. And the capital planning committee would not have a well understood plan that they can react to about that campus.

Yeah, the way I see it is that the feasibility study will lay out the options that will allow us to decide what makes sense given the realities of the world that we're living in right now. I take Joe's guidance. He seems to feel strongly that that's the appropriate next step. And so I share that opinion with him.

so this is slight tangent but it's related are we essentially saying that nothing can go in front of the capital committee unless there's already a feasibility study they'll tell us what the cost so like if the preschool comes up it doesn't have a feasibility study are we essentially saying that can't be even discussed because we don't know the scope? Because if we can't do the DPW facility without a feasibility study, I don't know how we could do anything else without the feasibility study.

There are some projects that can be evaluated in different ways prior to a feasibility study. You know, PBC does buildings in feasibility design and construction, so feasibility funding is on the capital financing. So the decision has to be made whether we want to move forward with feasibility in order for it to get on the capital financing schedule. But there are some other projects that could be evaluated prior to initiating feasibility. I think the school demographics study and current enrollment figures could help us determine and, you know, looks at capacity in other schools could help us determine whether building a new $40 million preschool is our only option or whether other ways to accommodate the three classrooms that aren't at Fisk now or off-site.

And Joe was talking about potentially doing a school facility master plan, which... I think cost projections were in like the $200,000 range. I thought it would be way higher than that, but it's about the $200,000 range.

Given the magnitude of the cost of all those projects, I think that's money well spent.

To Kenny's point, as I see it, the outcome of the feasibility study will help us. When you saw Joe's larger plan, there's $90 million or $100 million showing right now But for the feasibility, we might come up and say, well, there's actually a $35 million option that feels like it would work. I think as it's proposed, I'll be sitting as an ex officio member on that capital planning committee. It will be helpful to understand what that is so we can compare it to other projects. without doing that feasibility study, we have no idea what that out-year project, that bigger nut will be.

I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just, this is about sequencing. What comes first, the committee or the project?

Sure. Fair question. I think in the first year that's the challenge, but on an ongoing basis, it's not.

It just happens to be this huge change.

it does but I think in this case we're going to have to look at that site, that campus and so I don't think we're ever going to come to the decision that we're not going to do a feasibility study excuse me and remember this is it's this board that this the committee is just advisory to this board so

Well, the other thing is, keep in mind, none of these funds are available until, obviously, post-town meeting until July 1, right? there's still time between now and June 30 for the committee to be established. And so it could be something that actually runs a little more concurrent.

Given everything that's been said, I would support the feasibility study. I do think we need to have all the options in front of us to determine what the best complement of projects would be for the master plan.

So just because I'm going to be redundant, I just want to make sure I know where we're at.

So the staff recommendations would be $3 million of cash capital and with the assumption of $6 million of term back, although Rachel's just indicated it could be higher. it would leave reserves of 14.72%.

Yes, although that number could be further reduced by obviously CPC funding. In addition, I do want to be transparent and say the $700,000 we're projecting for snow and ice could also be higher. I do want to be transparent and say that we're going to be getting a supplemental I expect soon we're coming to you next week and it's only January right and I think February is supposed to be a snowy it's supposed to be a snowy February so so I do want to you know be transparent and say that is only an estimate based on the past

I guess the question is that that recommendation takes us to the lowest point of reserves of the three options that we had. So what I'm saying is I would prefer to stay at the lower end of the reserves rather than build them above 15%.

I'm supportive of that.

I think the only one that continues to stick out for me is the 400,000 for the comprehensive plan. I've heard too much about that number not being accurate. and their lack of staffing, which is not a comment on Brad filling in his interim, but he has other things that he has to do. The uncertainty about whether there's other funding available. It's work that needs to be done, but it's not work that's going to be done between now and the fall.

I can certainly reach back out to them.

I guess the question is do we support whatever ends up being a defensible, reasonable projection for the cost of the comprehensive plan and when the planning board feels they're going to be fully enough staffed to undertake it.

I mean they certainly they put this in cash capital I said it's too big for for cash capital from the beginning so we pulled it out into an until an article. They certainly will have to defend it through the advisory process. So I mean I can certainly go back to them and get additional information for the free cash appropriation and report back to the board next week.

that is the only one that is actually required by law though of everything in here right

Well, it's required. It was 2027, but by the time it's finished, it comes out later than that because it could be a year and a half.

Yeah, it's typically a two-year process, yeah. but it is a tenure requirement, always continued upon funding.

I just think in this environment where we have the community desperately wants us to have more Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Not small development, but growth and planning for the town. I can't see any way that we wouldn't invest in that kind of planning. because we know we have to do it. We know it's been a hot spot in town.

We're not saying that we don't want to do it. We're saying we'd like more information about what a real cost is.

and the use of funds that have already been appropriated or put on budgets.

And the capacity of the board to do it, there's no point funding it if it's not going to go forward for a year.

Well, and keep in mind, a comprehensive plan is not going to do area studies. It might recommend area studies, but that is separate and distinct. It looks at overall land use planning. Okay, so that's helpful.

Good enough? Okay.

Yeah. I think so.

I think you're done with us is a better way to say it.

Thank you in advance for the snow and ice treatment we'll be getting this weekend.

Thank you, Dave. I do want to say one of the storms. I meant to actually send you a note. It was really quite striking, the preparation that you had put in a couple of storms ago. I had to come through Weston. in order to get over to Wellesley. No offense to Weston, they usually do an excellent job in their roads, but it was striking coming off of Oak Street across Glen and down Cliff. The second you hit Wellesley, those roads were safe and Clare, and I really appreciate it.

Was that the Saturday event?

Might have been a Saturday storm, yeah.

So we got out ahead of that one with pre-treating the roads, and kudos to our team. So I'll pass that message on to them. They do a great job.

And the plows were out early Sunday morning. The truck came up my little street pretty early. It was great.

And they were out sanding and salting today early, too.

Share those messages with the people that do the magic.

Thank you, Dave. Our next agenda item is Annual Town Meeting Preparation. We have a couple of... Marjorie, sorry to interrupt. Oh, I'm sorry, Jeff.

No, that's fine. Let me officially go for an adjournment here.

Oh, Michael's back, yes.

Yeah, so let me, Michael, if you could make a motion, that would be great. Yeah, so I move that we adjourn this meeting. great thank you uh i vote yes and how do you vote i vote yes as well we are officially adjourned from the board of public works meeting but the rest of you get to continue thank you both very much and thank you rachel and thank you everybody for your time and for inviting us tonight appreciate it yes thank you so were we supposed to vote on something there no direction's fine when we ultimately have the budget all put together we'll

We will when we ultimately approve it.

Yeah, I was looking more for the approval of reserves, so I think I have some direction.

So the first item under annual town meeting is to discuss and vote the warrant.

So we have the warrant. The only, I don't have the red line version here. Let me just share my screen real quick so we'll just go through it real quick. There was only one real, since we had time to look at it, Joe had one quick fix on actually the feasibility study. He just clarified feasibility under 16. I don't have the red here. just trying to remember, 20, excuse me. He just added for a feasibility study for the construction. So this was slightly modified just to be exceptionally clear on feasibility.

but otherwise there's no other changes to what the board has previously reviewed and so we would be seeking approval and we have a copy to be signed.

Any other comments? Okay, Collette. So move to approve the 2026 Annual Town Meeting Warrant.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. The next issue is to discuss and vote the town clerk salary and Dolores and Megan have done a fair amount of work with Rachel on A recommendation, so I'll ask Megan for that.

Okay, let me just share the screen real quick on this so I can just walk you through. Let's see how it comes up. It's a little small. I can zoom in. But the board had this in their packet. So working with the human resources director who pulled the comparable communities, and current compensation for our comparable communities that were largely done in the class and comp from MGT study. So as part of that, keep in mind there's two types of town clerks. There's those that are appointed and there's those that are elected. So many communities retain elected. Townclerks, and many retain appointed. So we are somewhat split here within the analysis.

Dolores Hamilton has averaged it two ways, one by all, which is average salary is about $126,500. and then looking specifically, again this is for current salary, FY26-122.8. So the yellow box here is what our town clerk currently makes. If we did a straight 2% COLA projection and an anticipated merit of 2.5, she doesn't get merit, but to keep her, so we bake that into the salary to keep her consistent with department heads. and then we also added a service adjustment because the service adjustment last year for personnel working over a period of time, somewhat like a longevity payment, the town clerk did not receive last year because we set her salary in January so when we made those determinations later in the year that was not factored in for her salary so we're recommending factoring it in.

If you go that route, her salary would be 125,381. That being said, when we look at where the town clerk would fall within the class and comp, which is in this area, She would still be below where we would categorize her likely as a group 14. So if we look at... the salaries with the anticipated COLAs of those communities so they've been voted on. I haven't got to town meeting yet but these are the COLAs that are being factored in. The average for elected goes up to 125,493. which is a truer number for FY27 because we're always looking sort of a year behind. So then when we factor in You know, these percentages with COLA, add the 1% and the 2.5 for merit, it would bring the salary up to 129.9.

So we're basically shaken out if you look at the average of either looking at 26, baking in a 2% COLA, and the merit and the 1% service adjustment rate. or looking at the average COLA projections for FY27 with a service adjustment in merit at approximately 129, either 689 or 129.9. So based upon those, the H.R. Director and I would recommend a salary in that range, in that 129 range.

Questions? Go ahead Beth. So I have a couple questions. The first is as a town we invested in the class and comp study. and we placed our town clerk in grade 14, I think.

Well, the town clerk is not in the class and comp study because she's in an elected position. But the deck I had had her placed in the class and comp position. It doesn't have any job experience requirement.

So we put her in and then we took her out? Is that what happened? Yeah. Okay. So she does do a job, though, and the job was graded at a grade 14 originally.

Based upon the duties, correct. Correct.

Right. And so that range, she is fell below, correct?

That's correct.

And we don't have any other employees in this town that are below their grade level, correct? I thought that was like a priority of ours last year.

We brought them up to the minimum, that's correct.

We brought everyone up except the town clerk, which to me seems like an equity issue, that we should not allow that to persist. I looked at that and I looked at the towns based on their population so I did plus or minus 20% of Wellesley's population so there are nine towns that are plus or minus our population regardless of elected or appointed because I personally believe it doesn't matter if you're elected or appointed you have birth certificates, death certificates, registrations, et cetera. And the salary came out, I did it based on the current FY26. and that came out to $127,887.90, so effectively $128,000.

I don't think we should allow that to persist. I don't think we should just kind of build off of where she's been to try to... push it up. I think we should do what we did with all of our other department heads, bite the bullet and create equity in pay scale. and so I would propose we use we calculate her increase based on what should have been her correct base we can't go back that's just not the way it works but I think we should start with 128 as the base, which effectively, if you look at the range, the 128. was the bottom. So Megan, that 126, is that the new, where's the grade 14?

Oh. Yeah, no. Right. So my recommendation would be to look at the grade 14 range to create equity within town. which is what we all agreed was what we were aiming for. If we are improving that pay grade range by 2% to 2.5%, which is what we typically do at town meeting, we slide the range up, that range is going to have a minimum of 127,000 on it this year. I think if we look at her comps, she's at 127 in her Pier Towns, the nine Pier Towns. I would use that as the new base and move it up by the COLA, the service, and the merit.

And whatever that comes out to, that would be her new salary. It's just it's straight math.

Megan, I think you were pointing to the green, but it's the pink that is the recommendation. Microphone.

I understand your explanation of where you think the base should be, but I disagree that we should average all the elected and appointed. We've been through this a few times. appointed positions have completely different evaluations for making that appointment and election is up to the electorate. it's a very different hiring process and I think we should stick with the elected average.

And Marjorie, what is the rationale for adding populations from very tiny all the way up to huge to create an average? To me, it doesn't seem like a comp at all. because when you look at the job, The job you do in a medium-sized town, 30,000 people, is quite different than the job you do in a 10,000-person town.

I wasn't addressing that. I assumed that the HR director was using the appropriate comps for the job.

These are the same comps we use for all of the positions.

I don't want to go cherry picking comps for each different position in town.

Thank you very much. and you're doing it equally well then you should be paid the same as that person. It doesn't matter to me how you got there.

Well, the evaluation wouldn't occur for three years, right, because you're elected with, you could potentially, that has not been the case in Wellesley. Let me just preface this comment by saying that. But you could have someone with zero experience. You could have, you know, someone with a high school degree who doesn't understand law or what have you. And granted, how those town clerks tend to be successful because that does occur. is that the staff that they have are professional and have various credentials. So we've been in a fortunate position. But the point being, there is no job requirement other than being elected.

and I would say that's a big other than I would think that if the entire town picks you to serve in a specific role that is arguably Thank you very much. the person is doing the same job and if he or she is doing a good job he or she will be elected again and if not presumably he or she will not.

I actually think you do get reviewed every year because every year you go before town meeting to have your salary approved. And so if you are not doing The Job, Town Meeting, votes no. So that is a more stringent review than a review that happens at least as stringent, how about that, as any other review. You're reviewed by your colleagues, your peers, and the citizens that you serve. So for me I do not accept the elected versus appointed designation but I do accept that population impacts the job that you do I also accept that our town clerk has a community that requires more support for elections because we have more mail-in ballot and mail-in processing.

and other communities do. I checked, we are the fourth highest in terms of percent of population that vote remote so it's we have a lot of pressure and a lot of expectations and for me it makes no sense to be paying that person or Order of Magnitude, $10,000 less than what we determined through class and comp and what we can do with a straight average of peer communities. So, I'm kind of...

so we've gone through the class and comp we've come up with our peer communities we've been using these all along for every single position that we evaluate and I I think if there's going to be an alternate suggestion of how we should come up with peers, then I think it should be circulated to the board beforehand. I can't follow what you're presenting. I can't follow your proposal. I can't understand it so I think presenting it in the meeting is really not helpful for us to deliberate on that so I couldn't quite follow it and if you this is what we're using for you know we just we're looking at hiring a council on aging director we're looking at these same peer communities they differ but we went through the whole class and comp to say these are our peers and we may well have a higher Mail-in rate than other communities. But if we're going to base it on that, I'd like to have a conversation or more information to say, well,

is that a higher burden than having more people coming to the polling stations? Are there places where there's more hot conversations in polling stations where the town clerk has to you know deal with those situations I think there's a lot of elements to that that we could tease out and say this is harder than that community or whatever but I think we picked our peers for a good reason and I think with the elected versus appointed you know we have our work plan we have our goals we have you know as far as we can we can sort of set you know goals for in our performance evaluation here's your goals for the year there's a public evaluation you really walk through them you know we don't do that with the town clerk and I'm not saying that she doesn't do an excellent job this is not about that but you're setting in the salary for the next person that gets elected and so that really is the base for the next salary for the next person that gets elected and we have talked before that there are different requirements

which may be a job requirement if you're hiring somebody and it's just not if you're electing somebody in the last contested election that we had for town clerk there were two very different candidates I think they would have they would have performed very differently in their role. And so I don't agree with the fact that there's no distinction between the two of them. I think there is a distinction. and I don't want to throw out the work of the HR professionals who are evaluating the salary here and giving us well-considered and well-researched and well-documented and a good packet of what their proposal is and why to have a completely different structure that we've not even seen. It's just presented in the moment. I think if we're going to have big differences from what's presented in the packet, you owe the board members the courtesy of telling staff you're going to do this and circulating something to us so we can think about it beforehand. So Colette with the class and comp.

We agreed when we set those ranges that we were setting them at the 75%. Place, and on this analysis, we're using the 50% place. If you put aside everything else, that's what we've done. We've used a different school of thought. and there was not a single write-up in the packet we received to understand what the thinking was in the recommendations. this is the place that we discuss recommendations. That is the role of a board meeting. Well, that's a very different point. No, I'm saying so no matter how you come at it, one of the things... that you do in research is you triangulate things. So when I look at the class and comp level, when I look at the average of the peer communities, and when I look at even taking the raw average,

that HR gave us and you gross it up to get to a 75% level all those dimensions say that our base is too low it's not equitable and that to me says we have one employee across the entire town that we haven't right-sized the salary for and that's what I'm trying to figure out.

I'd love to hear the HR director's feedback on that. We can defer this and talk. Why didn't you send that question to staff beforehand? It seems like you put a lot of effort into your analysis, picking communities that you thought were appropriate within 20%. I think we're getting into a really bad practice of bringing up big differences from what proposals are, which is fine. but send it to staff beforehand so that we can get information of a full discussion because it's deferring everything.

So, Colette, in fairness, we received the information on Friday night. Right? Every week. No, we received this information on Friday night. Which happens with our pocket every week. Excuse me, I'm speaking. We received it on Friday night with no explanation of the thinking. and there was no I was quite surprised by the time I went through it it was a long weekend I do have other obligations and I think it is reasonable to come prepared to a board meeting to have a discussion and if there's things that come up in a discussion that we feel we need to think more about it is fair to say I would like to defer this to next week. It is not reasonable to say I'm sorry you should have done your work sooner because I can't process it at a meeting. No, but that's what happened Marjorie and that's not

What Colette is saying is that what you're proposing is drastically different than the way we have done every other job classification. in this job classification comp and study. It is a fair question to ask the HR director how she determined to use an average rather than let's say the 75 percentile that we used for the rest of the class and comp. if the answer is that she's not in class and comp and doesn't belong in class and comp, that's one answer. If there's a reason, maybe a consideration that maybe she should be considered higher than average, I think it's fair for the board to know. But I vehemently oppose changing the comparable communities that we use for one position

I think it's very important and very different to consider appointed versus elected. Town meeting votes on a salary. They do not get a job review. Nobody reviews the town clerk. they're looking at a grossing up of a salary from the previous fiscal year. And I don't think it's appropriate to say the whole town meeting is evaluating the town clerk. but I'm going to let Tom ask his questions. We will defer this and ask Megan to talk to Dolores about how she made the calculations.

No, I think your decision is to defer to Astrid Dolores to provide us with some further information. I'm satisfied with that.

I just have one clarifying question. So are we essentially asking that the town clerk was not moved on to the scale last year? and we should when calculating this year move her on to the scale that she would be if she was included last year that's That makes complete sense to me. I think we can't distinguish between elected and appointed in one hand and then not do it or do it on one hand and not on the other. I think we have to take a consistent position. If she's to be looked at differently because she was elected, then I don't know that that applies. I think we should evaluate her on the job she is doing not the position and I think she's doing a fabulous job and I think she should be compensated far higher than the 50th percentile.

So just as a point of clarification, the MGT class and comp would be, the range would be 126, 684 to 171, 023, and the proposal would be within that range. It would be to bring her up above the minimum.

We'll take this up again next week. The next one is the FY26 supplemental for the land use copier, Megan.

So the land use copier is croaking. and Limping Along. So they were able finally after two weeks or so to get Konica Minolta out there. you know they're they are certainly trying to be team players they said to me hey you know we can we can certainly try and wait another year or till we move along and I said so what's going to happen if I don't have a town meeting we wouldn't have the funds otherwise to pay for that so I continue to think we should bring it forward as a supplemental it serves four departments and if it goes down that would not be well but they they I will say they did call so you know we think we could limp through but I just don't think that's necessarily appropriate. So that would be my recommendation to add that as a supplemental.

I'm sorry, my computer's dying.

Mine was just about to die, too.

So comments on a recommendation for a $17,000 supplemental to keep land use in business.

I think land use needs to be in business. I know it sounds expensive for a copier. Can you just tell us, is that pretty standard?

So we just acquired three new copiers from last year's cash capital purchases. H.R., Town Clerk, and our office. So we have a good handle on what the costs were. Kay at the time had and they have a Conica Minolta too so we have a good service agreement with them but Kay had investigated three or four various copiers at the time and through all of our needs. They're the ones. So we know it's going to be 16-8, 16-9 or so, but we don't have an official bid. So 17, as we have the motions, it'll probably be a little more fine-tuned.

I think it sounds like an unexpected expense that we need to address.

I agree. Okay.

Motion. So moved to approve an FY26 supplemental appropriation for Article 7 on the 2026 Annual Town Meeting Warrant.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. So I talked to Megan briefly about whether the board might want to consider articles to recommend to the moderator for inclusion on the consent agenda. Tom and I need to schedule a meeting with him and we'd like him to start thinking about it sooner rather than later. So I think Megan has a draft list. Want to share that with us?

It might take a second. So, can everyone see that? Okay. So we have a couple of sort of consistent players that we typically use. Sometimes we would amend the classification plan. So the classification plan is just showing any highlights or additions or subtractions. Typically we would include that. Some years we have actually included, we wouldn't do Article 5. We would potentially do, there have been instances where we have done Article 6 with regards to the salary, but that's up to Mark. We would do the revolving funds, Article 9. The stabilization funds, I will just, on stabilization funds, just as a point of information. Cindy and Rachel are doing the analysis. We might actually be maxed out in terms of the special education stabilization fund. So we had tentatively had $85,000 anticipated

that it would be appropriated from free cash and then we get that from what's submitted from the Medicaid funds but we actually think we're tapped out and would not need a motion for that so stay tuned we're just finalizing that analysis which It's a good story to tell, to be quite honest with you. So we typically would do the Article 10, the stabilization funds. We also typically do either water, sewer, and stormwater or two of the three of those. Wellesley Media Contributions. Last year was the first year, but I think moving forward we could do that because we received the funds from Comcast and Verizon. specifically for Wellesley Media. And so it is not a general fund transfer. So we would recommend Article 14. We would not recommend any, obviously, of the special capital projects.

We would recommend potentially the personnel policies.

Before you go on, I had talked briefly to Mark about considering the CPC bucket appropriations because they're all statutorily required. So I'd like to ask him if he'd consider it. Yes or no?

So the motion one of CPC? Yes. you know the copier as one for instance is likely an easy one so within our supplemental sometimes if they're small supplementals like that we have legal bills in there the others likely wouldn't be but add modify personnel policies we'll see which ones are ready but likely those are something none of them are financial So we can certainly put those potentially in. The rest are loan authorizations. Uberlift funds potentially may be one. I know this board has to determine the amount if that's something we can bring that back on the 27th or February 4th for the board's consideration. Not February 4th, I'm sorry, February 10th.

I'm sorry, what was the one right before Article 27, Megan?

So I had the personnel policies, 23, and then Uber Lyft funds. The others are all borrowing, so we can't, those are two-thirds votes. Yeah, I got that, okay. and so on. The others are bylaw changes I would not recommend. We certainly can do rescind or transfer debt. We'll have a whopping, I think, $11,000 to rescind at present from MSBA because we just had the big rescind at special town meeting. And then we have no motions. Oh, and appoint firefighters. We have no motion for settled claims likely, no motion for disposal of property, and then appoint firefighters on Article 36.

Okay, does anybody have a concern about us recommending what Megan recommended to the moderator for inclusion and consent? Okay, great. That's terrific. If those all go in consent, we could have a real abbreviated

Special Annual Town Meeting. So Megan, you were recommending some combination of 11 to 14.

Sometimes you can do them all. The only one that may, under Article 11, this would be, that'd be one I might keep out only because we likely might have to do two motions because this will be the first year where we're actually able to use our PFAS settlement funds. So PFAS settlement funds, we established that at the special town meeting. So you don't have to appropriate funds in it. Those now will just flow automatically into it. But you do, through town meeting action, have to appropriate and so forth, those funds. Now, it could certainly be in consent because you can do both motions of consent, noting that that's actually going to reduce your capital expenditures dedicated to the remediation of PFAS within the water department's budget.

I would like to see us pull out water and storm water. Stormwater because it's still relatively new and water because I believe the rates are going up substantially and the community is interested in PFAS.

So you would recommend Article 12, stay in, sewer, stay in.

Yeah, so it would be... be out. Right. So sewer could stay in consent.

Is stormwater not the only one that has kind of flat rates, though?

Yes, stormwater is flat. It's anticipated upwards of 20% to best points with regard to water.

I think Having water out is fine. I don't see the benefit of having stormwater. I think it's established and it's not a big increase this year. I don't know. I mean, I could go either way on it, to be honest, but I think the one, and water's interesting, but

And they did go through an explanation with stormwater. Town meetings heard that.

Yes.

But I agree with water.

Okay. Okay. I have a couple comments on Article 32, the Rio By-law. At the planning board meeting last week, two members of the planning board discussed with the other planning board members the thinking that has evolved in the task force about how to address RIOs and a RIO is a map change, a zoning overlay that increases, seeks to increase permissible density on a real estate parcel. The task force has been meeting since the last fall to consider whether and how to propose to the planning board that the current Rio by-law be changed. Two statements at that meeting need to be clarified. First, the two members addressing the rest of the board said that they have requested a joint meeting with the select board.

That is true that a joint meeting was requested but no specific proposal has been drafted, presented or voted on by the planning board or submitted to the select board to review. I told the planning board chair that when there is a definite and scripted specific proposal, he's more than welcome to present it to the select board. Second, one member stated that there are, quote, some corners of the select board who believe negotiating a development agreement is a waste of time, close quote, and resources and that it doesn't serve the interests of the community. the last time the planning board chair and vice chair discussed it with Tom and me was early December as a vague idea and I mean an off the record meeting We have neither met with them nor discussed it since. Our board hasn't discussed it and we have nothing concrete to discuss.

So I think that's a mischaracterization of positions of any members of the select board. When there is something specific for us to consider, we're more than happy to put it on the agenda. but I think last meeting the planning board jumped the gun in a couple of those comments. In terms of the chair's report, we had a relatively brief meeting with advisory this week. We met with schools last week. We did not meet with them today. advisory. The only thing on their agenda tomorrow is the town clerk department budget and salary because there are three elections this year. the department budget is over guideline and other than that they're just doing liaison reports and that's all I have. So there's nothing else. We're adjourned and we'll be back next Tuesday the 27th.