And you're up, Kathy. Okay, good evening. This is the Thursday meeting of the joint capital planning committee. And we will be conducting this meeting virtually per governor's orders. So one of my first orders of business will to be to call on the committee members to make sure they can hear and be heard. And I want anyone who is public and viewing to know that we are recording this and all recordings are posted, as well as minutes. So I think I will go around the room, my room in order of the pictures that I see and just if unmute yourselves and indicate whether you can hear and we can hear you Alex. Tammy. Present. Carrie. Peter. Mandy. I'm present. Sorry about the minutes, but is someone taking minutes. Yes. Tammy volunteered last week and she confirmed that she's still willing to do it, which is very nice. So I think we are missing one committee member Andy Steinberg who will likely be joining us later. So I think we are ready to start then Sean you might want to put Andy just joined us Andy. I just want to just indicate whether you can hear and then we can hear you. You can just say yes. Andy. Yes. Okay, great. Okay, so tonight, as Sean show has shown on the screen we're going to be going through schools, conservation planning and recreation although I'm curious on whether we have a recreation. I just want to remind people that this is the last of the scheduled reviews of proposals next week we will be turning to recommendation discussion of what we want to see in the report and shown and I discussed he will send some things to think about once we're finished with tonight's meeting. So, and for those who are in the public there's this is information on how to dial in or connect with us and we will be taking public comments at the end of the meeting, not before. So, Sean, why don't you just introduce colon this speakers in the order that you think that we're hearing from them. Yeah, so a couple little things one. The packet had two pages tonight because there were a lot of projects in there. And one of your questions was about where some of the projects words it was it's sort of you don't see it when you first go there but if you scroll to the top there's a second page. And that's where some of those projects are. The other piece is, in addition to conservation and planning. We're going to be talking about the sustainability project that was under facilities but we thought we decided we would add it to tonight. And then I'm thinking we should go with recreation first because they just have one barb just has one project. And the other two are more substantial so barb if you're okay going first which I think you are. Do you want to start. Sure, I'd be happy to start so. So I'm assuming that you, you all have the project that we're referring to the tennis court refurbishment. Correct. Yes, everybody has that Hannah. All right, so just this shouldn't take very long. Basically, it's fairly straightforward. This is the tennis court at Mill River recreation area. And the, the estimated cost for that project is $25,000. Let's see so there are some key things that are going to happen there. Basically, it'll be the cracks, which there, there are beginning to be multiple cracks right now. They will need to be repaired. It will be sealed with a special sealant, which is no provided me with some details on that. And that sealant is referred to as right, right way crack repair system or the system that they use and that that allows for expansion so hopefully and in the future we won't see the type of cracks that we're seeing now that have broken away from, from the pavement. So that's, that's a little more expensive so that's why it's a little bit of a higher price tag, but this also includes the, the painting of the, and then of course putting the lines on the, the tennis court as well. So that compares to the replacement of nets, and the structures that support the nets, the standards, if you will, that support those nets. So I think, you know, basically the idea here is to get this thing, get these courts up to the standard they should be at right now, you know we're getting to a point if we don't take some action there, they're unsafe so I would recommend the opening of this project it's only $25,000, and we'd just like to get on it, you know, as soon as possible. So any questions. Any questions around the room. Looking for hands raised. Mandy has. Andy send this up I just said. Okay. It's not necessarily a question about the tennis facilities. I know they're well used. I would, and it's too late for CPA now I would wonder whether you thought about applying for CPA funds for it, but they're on the future out years. Mill River and the center of town I don't know what one you I guess that's war memorial playgrounds are listed as replacements and two questions on that one with Mill River. It is really loved right now. So, you know, I know there's some improvements that could be done but doesn't need replaced would be a question but but the bigger question that both of them is. Is that something that I know they're on this CIP plan but graph park was paid mostly for from the CPA money I believe so is that something that's on the plan to plan for applying for for those when they come around CPA funds. Absolutely. I think you know we, this has been a placeholder for some time, as far as JCPC. However, you know Dave can speak to this as well it is definitely on our radar to put that proposal through CPAC. Absolutely. Dave did you want to add something to them. It's okay with Kathy. Um, yeah, no barbs spot on with that I think our goal overall has been to really take a look at, you know, the southern part of town, we did some great work at growth park with with the spray park and the new playground we're going to get a new buy uważ kita R We hope through CPA down below. We have the new park CPA funded at Kendrick park. And then we really need to take a look at the playground I hear what you're saying Mandy that no river is very well loved, but it the structures there are very old, and many of them do not need a DA. So we actually, if that money hasn't gone anywhere, Sean and Sonia, I believe we a year or so ago did ask for some design money, Barb, and you were part of that with me. We asked for design money for a new design for Mill River. So we'd like to spend some time on that in the coming year and then come back to seatback and maybe a park grant at the state level to redo the play structures that are north of the pavilion at Mill River. So, if this proposal is funded for resurfacing the tennis courts, DPW is working hard on the new basketball courts. That'll include both 10 foot baskets as well as a couple of eight foot hoops. The other piece of the Mill River playground, Mandy, was safety. We've had a number of children hit by baseballs coming off Mill to the Little League field there. So part of what we wanna do is incorporate some new features to that, make it all ADA and also address some of the safety issues of balls coming off that field. So that was kind of the project. And again, I think in out years we wanna come back to the plan that we worked on for community field and the high school, which included a new playground at what is now, you know, a warm memorial outside a warm memorial pool. So. One other question, have we ever considered skate parks?  I honestly, I never worked on that project. And I think there were many different attempts at that. And I honestly don't really know what happened to it. I do know I've worked a little bit on skate parks like up in Turner's Falls when I worked there and they were a little bit, I will say there was a little bit of a fad element to them in the Northeast. And they kind of came and went in some communities, a community spent a lot of money on them. And then they didn't, I think freestyle, I don't know if that's the right terminology I'm dating myself, but more freestyle skating, skateboarding became popular. So I don't know if the parks are as as popular as they were 10 years ago, but Barb, I don't know, were you involved?  So sort of ebbed and flow, flowed as, you know, there's like just what Dave said is it's just never really caught on, there hasn't been a huge movement of support. So I think, and we've had so many other needs, if you will, improving what we have has been a priority. And so certainly that is weighed in to it as well. I do know the college campuses are providing skate parks free right now with all their paved surfaces. So I know they don't appreciate all the skateboarding, but... I just want to make one comment on the tennis courts because I actually use them, they're up near me. And as Barb knows, one of the interesting things about our public courts is that plywood boards are underneath the nets to hold them up because the apparatus no longer works. So if you think and think of, you have to, when you change sides, you have to avoid hitting the board that's sticking out from the net to hold it up. So I think this is well worth putting this as a top priority because we don't really have, with Amherst College taking some of their courts out of turning them into a parking lot actually, but there aren't public courts in the same way they used to be. So this is a good resource for us. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it forward. Thank you. All right, I think the schools are next. So I don't know, Doug or Rupert, who's going to lead that conversation? I think maybe I'm up, if you can hear me. Yes. So we have a number of projects ongoing. There's a lot there and a lot to digest. I'd like to point out just sort of in general with Fort River and Wildwood, we're kind of in a holding pattern we're trying to push down the road the things that we can, pending hopefully some resolution to the new school building project. But there are things that we need to do to just keep them safe and viable. So if I can just trade pick a little bit from your long list, there's been money set aside to pass for the Fort River Roof Prepare. What we need to do there is cover the valleys we can, we think we can buy five to seven years by covering over instead of stripping out large sections of the valleys where most of the leaks come from and redoing some of the roof trains and some of the diverters around the, the courtyards. We still have ongoing leak problems there. I expect they'll continue. But hopefully this summer we can get a project going that will buy us a bunch of time there. Similarly at Wildwood, that roof is slightly younger but we're asking for some more money there to do less substantial patching but important patching are the same. So those are a couple of big items to be aware of in terms of the parking lots, you'll see money for parking lots. This is really surface patching and filling. It's not a full scale parking lot redo but it's what we need to do to keep them safe. Otherwise we get potholes with accidents and we get ice pockets and people slipping and falling. So they're kind of important from a safety perspective. Then there are some asks there for electrically related stuff. Both Fort River and Wildwood have 50 year old electrical services. We've put some money into getting them infrared scanned and evaluated and we're doing follow up on that this spring. But with the aging infrastructure there, a large catastrophe could knock the whole school out for some time to come. So I wanna try to be proactive and try to get out of the most risky areas for that. Some of the other asks include money for the fire alarm systems. Some of our fire alarm panels are giving us more and more trouble with communication problems, false alarms and all nature things. So we need to do some new place that have some panels there and some upgrade of some of the wiring. And the Crocker Farm roof is a different kind of a project. We have at Crocker Farm some flat roofs and we have some sloped shingled roofs. And the sloped shingled roofs from the renovation that we did 15 or 20 years ago. I think are having some structural problems. We're getting some shingles lifted and we think that it's the result of a problem underneath with the roof sheathing. So I'm afraid that in order to keep the rain out of those buildings, we're gonna have to do some stripping and some structural repair work. So this is just a general ballpark to get us into the area that I think we're gonna end up. Then there's a few other things that are sort of typical annual for furniture repair replacement for the asbestos management and a few other items. But I mean, a lot of this is similar to last year and probably will be similar next year. So maybe I should pause and see if there are specific questions about specific projects. So I'm looking for hands. And just as, so we just went through, Rupert just went through the facility side. So maybe take questions on the facility side and then Rupert can speak to some of the vehicle requests. Oh, yes, exactly. But if no one else has one, I mean, I had some on the, both, I guess on the wiring and the electrical upgrade, to what extent is that just a basic repairing wires or getting system capacity? Or can it also, can it also handle if the electrical system was upgraded and could it handle many splits, some of the other kinds of air filtration things that can be put in walls and are potentially reusable? If you had better wiring and those compressors go outside the building. And I know that we don't think these buildings will be around for a long time, but you can potentially use those units in another place. So I just didn't have quite a sense of what went into the electrical and wiring side. And this is in combination with Univents. I wasn't sure what Univents were. So I was just looking at the combination of electrical wiring and things called Univents and thinking about those are connect or connected because they probably run by electricity. Sure, I'd be glad to try to answer that question. Well, let's start with the unit. Univents first, most of our classrooms have their own individual independent ventilation system for heating and cooling. And so it's called a unit ventilator. Some larger classrooms might have two, a cafeteria might have four, but it sort of takes the place of supply fans and heating coils and so forth. The Univents that we have are aging. We've talked in the past about trying to replace and upgrade. My assessment of that is that because they're built into the furniture and because the piping is hidden, much of it has asbestos insulation, it would be a huge project to try to completely upgrade. So the money that we're asking for is more for in-place repairs. We have motors and fan meals that fall apart, dampers that freeze up, actuators that burn out. So a lot of the Univents replace and repair is for equipment within the housing that's there providing ventilation to even cool and create classrooms. As far as the electrical is concerned, the existing services probably have capacity for additional ventilation loads in terms of how much power is coming into the building, but finding a, there may not be space to add circuit breakers without some work. I'm more focused on replacing obsolete circuit breakers or panels with circuit breakers that are no longer as safe as I would like. And I think in my mind, those are the primary focuses, the main just to try to keep everything as reliable as we can until we can move to a new building. Thank you. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Mandy's hand is up and Peter's hand is up. I'm not sure I saw which first, so I'll just do a minute. Peter's was? Okay, Peter. Yeah, so two questions, one on the Crocker Farm roof and the other on the interior upgrades ADA. So on the Crocker Farm roof, it's really good to see this on the list. We had pretty serious situation one plus years ago to very varying degrees and varying points in the seasons, all three schools. So it's good to proactively take care of this. So when I look at like the five year kind of plan, we have two and a half million for it in FY26. So my part A question on the roof repair is will this get us to that point? Is that the idea here? Is that like let's fix these problems that have been trickling along and we won't have to have 50 to 100 plus in order to do these kinds of repairs in the next five years. And then also, you talked about how, because the shingles are lifting, you might have to get in there and do some more foundational work with the sheathing. And I'm certainly no roof expert, but it sounds like one of those problems is that like you don't know the full scope of it until you actually get in there and start ripping it up and I see you nodding your head. And so I'm wondering that 250, that's a ballpark. Is that like a low, a medium or a high ballpark, right? Is that like, hopefully it's 250, but if we rip it up and it's rat infested, it's gonna be twice as much or is this like a conservative maximum? I just try to think about, you know, how that might impact the future years. Sure. My sense of it is that that is ample for the shingled roof portions, which would be the angled roof over the front side of the building and the angled roof over the second floor addition where the sixth grades are. I don't think that it's pessimistic, I think that it's ample. And what you're seeing down the road is for the rest of the territory, that is the flat roof, which is a big gutter new place because it's eventually going to need that as well.  I think that the repair is likely going to be not outrageous, just nitpicky and time-consuming to tie things together and bridge things that should have been bridged. But obviously, I don't know for sure until we lift it, but I think that it's ample. Mandy. Can I answer your questions? I'm sorry. Peter. Mandy. Okay, thank you. There's a lot of Univent stuff on here and HVAC equipment and things like that, general HVAC replacements. And I always have to ask in this new environment when we've been upgrading and replacing and trying to make sure that air changes are good and air quality is good because of pandemic, is any of that type of stuff that's on this plan for next year that you just talked about potentially fundable by COVID funds? And if so, will you apply for it then? Or if we fund it through this, are we going to be barred from applying for it? I know there were so many strict and I don't know whether this is even answerable. So, but that's one of my first questions. My second one goes to an out year, which is the Crocker Accessible Playground, I think in two fiscal years, it's listed for $200,000. And I just remember that that's fairly new, I thought. And so I'm curious what we need to do to it already that is gonna take a couple hundred thousand dollars that it's already showing up on a CIP. Those are great questions. I don't think I know the answer to the first one. It may be that Sean or Doug would have more information about upcoming potential federal funds. Yeah, I can hop in real quick. Once we get more specifics on the actual things, it very well maybe cares eligible. I know for example, this year, we bought a lot of HVAC type stuff for the schools out of cares. So, yeah, it is possible that some of that could be. Right now, the eligibility for cares goes through the end of 2021. So, I can connect with Rupert and we can try to dig into that a little more and see what pieces of that might be eligible. Excellent, and so in terms of the playground down the road, we have a soft playground surface in the preschool playground, but none of the other playgrounds are compliant with ADA requirements in terms of accessibility. So where we have wood chips, where we have hard playground surfaces or sand, that's not gonna cut the mustard down the road. And so that's, and in all honesty, the, I think it's called the kindergarten playground, the one that's up the hill behind the school is in very bad shape. But we also need to pay some serious attention to what's down in the lower field and the pathway that we use to get there. That ramp is too steep. It doesn't have pause places. The rails are not right. There's a bunch of ADA issues there as well, but we need to address eventually. And as we're doing, because we're expecting to keep the school for quite some time. So it's, I read it as the Crocker accessible playground, meaning the preschool playground that was just done. That's not what it's referring to. It's referring to- The other ones. Crocker playgrounds accessible that aren't. Okay, now it makes more sense. Cool. Awesome. And did I answer your question about other things? I think I missed something. No, I think that was all. Okay. Okay, Andy's hand is up. Yeah, a few years ago in JCPC, we found the solution for some of the things for Fort River and Wildwood, where we were looking at the possibility of either buying equipment that was used, being able to rent equipment if it was short term, because these do have short term, we hope, usages now, or being able to have equipment that was available to share to the building that needs it the most in order to reduce costs so that we can preserve funds for the actual project that we ultimately care about the most. And have you done that kind of analysis for these equipment related requests? Yeah, I've been thinking about that. Buying us time with rentals. Certainly makes sense with something like a chiller, which is a six-figure item to purchase and not necessarily easy to translate to a new building. A lot of the other stuff is sort of custom built in place and it's hard for me to imagine an easy way to find a rental that will take the place of some failed piece of equipment. So mostly what we're trying to do is repair the components. It becomes more expensive as time goes on because more and more things will break. But it's still, I think, our best solution. I think rental is difficult. I mean, you can rent an air handler, you can run ductwork through windows. There are ways that we can do something if we have a catastrophic failure. The beauty of our elementary schools here is or one of their strengths is the number of unit ventilators which are standalone units. So typically catastrophic failure only affects a room instead of the whole school unless you're talking about the chiller or the boiler. So I don't know that rental is a cost savings, but I'm certainly willing to look further into it for the ventilation side of things. Does that at least start answering your question? Doug, did you wanna add to that? Yeah, if I could, please. I think that absolutely that's an approach we can take as far as looking at, and especially around large scale items as Rupert mentioned relative to like chillers or boilers, that type of thing. I think the other thing that I wanted to note for the committee to think about and keep in mind is that there are at those two buildings, Wildwood and Port River in particular, they're 50 year old buildings. And even with a school project that could potentially take one of them down, the other one will be an asset that the town owns and there are significant capital investment that will be needed in those buildings. After that, whether the town chooses to keep buildings or not keep the buildings or whatever choices the town makes relative to those buildings, there are things we're pushing off outside the sort of five year window right now. Total roof replacement, more extensive and significant electrical upgrades, heating and cooling upgrades. We're not attempting those kinds of things. If we were, the buildings were 20 years old and we weren't in the middle of a building project, those would be in, some of those would be more near term as far as the capital plan. So I just want the community to think about that is that those kind of things are kind of just outside that arise and you're looking at but are out there. And one of the buildings, if we're successful in the building project, one of those buildings will probably still be remaining. And as a community, we're gonna have to decide what we wanna do with it as an asset and what resources we need to continue to invest in that asset to preserve it. So that's, I just wanna mention that as context for your thinking as far as out years, even beyond the five years you're currently considering in your planning. Thanks Doug. Peter, is your hand back up or did it just not go down? Yeah. Yeah, another question if that's right. Okay, Peter. Yeah, so on interior upgrades slash ADA is another big ticket item. Can you just talk about what interior upgrades is and how much of that is not ADA?  I know that there's additional money on that in out years, this is the larger one. So if you just talk a little bit more about where that's going. Sure. Interior upgrades is typically a vast array of smaller projects. So if we don't have $150,000, there may be projects that we don't do but it wouldn't be the end of my world. It would just be something to get pushed down the road that we have to address eventually. They include a wide variety of issues that for example, in Wildwood, replacing rugs with tile or replacing the ceiling tiles in an area because of age, staining and things like that. Fresh paint when we need it, we end up having just doors and doorways needing repair or replacement, whether it's an interior or an exterior door, light fixtures that scale. I mean, there's a wide variety of projects that we do under that umbrella. I'm not sure. Let me see if that's enough of an answer if you want more. No, I mean, that's good. I'm just thinking about, I mean, I remember the origin of the ADA study where we identified through a lot of our buildings, things that we really want to do and we had an urgent need to do. And yet it was way too much for one single capital year. And so for a couple of years now, we've been kicking the can down the road on that. And we have this, I just have to call it out. We have this kind of existential problem with how much, and Doug and Annie just kind of brought it up a little bit about to what degree we invest in quality of life for students and staff at Port River and Wildwood. It's like even for things that aren't going to be reusable after those buildings go away, knock on wood. The staff and students are still working and living in them, working and learning in them, sorry. And so right, so to what degree do we want to invest to improve that? It's not answerable question really, but it is something we've struggled with on school committee a little bit in terms of exactly when we up the level of cap available capital funds to do things like major ADA upgrades, which, and when we do some of these, we have great anecdotal stories back about the value of that and has real impact, not on a large number, but on a small number of students and staff can have a pretty big impact. So I was just more curious about like major projects in the offing and whatnot. If I may. So there's a couple of major expenses on the ADA side that I didn't mention that we're grappling with, accessibility in terms of sidewalks and problems with unevenness, trip hazards, wheelchair access, all those things add up and they could easily, we could spend, we spent all that money just on that in some of the schools and not proposing that we do just that, but we do want to make improvements on that front. And in addition, we've targeted at Wildwood and Fort River some particular accessible bathroom issues. Right now there's a study that's being done and we've received some preliminary ideas from KMA which hopefully we will get to put out to bid eventually. It's a summer project. I don't think we're gonna get to this summer just because of the way things are going. I think that would be next summer, but we're looking at in Wildwood and Fort River making accessible bathrooms in the rooms A and B for some of the special programs and in the nurses' office which will make a huge difference in a lot of people's lives, but it's a big structural effort and so it's just going through the design process and our target is the summer of 22. It'll be an FY23 project. And I hope to have more information about that in the next few months. Thank you. I'm not seeing any other questions on this set, Sean, so we can probably move to the next. Rupert, do you wanna just go through the vehicles, the few vehicles that are on the list for the schools? Yeah, I'm trying to find them on my, I have too many windows in my computer. Why do they not show up in this document? It's a van and a bus. Right, so yeah, we have targets on our buses. Typically, we try to replace our school buses when they have 10 years or 100,000 miles. And we've got, and typically we try to keep two spare buses so that if one is down and one's on a field trip we can still function fully. Both of our spares have something like 130,000 miles on them. Well, 120 plus, let's just put it that way. I'm not sure the exact number right now, for a minute. But we need to stay in the habit of replacing those buses. I know this has been a hot topic in the past. Some of the questions about electrical buses has come up and I'm happy to discuss that. But before I surrender the microphone, we also have fans for transporting special needs kids and out of our fleet of those, we have several that are high mileage and quite old, but we need to replace as well as one of our powertrucks is really just being held together with Weldon. Well, Weldon repairs and duct tape. So we have a number of vehicle requests that are failure and I for some reason can't get my document to pop up to get the details. And I'll just say on the special advance, one was on the list for last year, I think I believe. And then one was this year. And since last year's, you know, it wasn't really funded that whole year. That's why there's two special advance this year. Usually there's only sort of one at a time. That's right. Yes, thank you. Well, let me see if I can just reopen it. There it is. Down to vehicles, here we go. Sorry, I was sort of shooting boring there. Andy has his hand raised on it if you want to. Andy. Yeah, I'm just, it is predictable that we'll have at least one counselor who's going to raise the electric bus issue. So probably worth having some report on where that stands right now as far as grant availability and how costs of the fair and that option. Oh, my memory wasn't bad. I was shooting from the hip, but that's what's in the document. Sorry. Yes, so the story on electrical buses is still a question of range and the smaller question of reliability. When you have a vehicle that takes six hours to charge, you really are limited in what you can do if you're draining the battery down to 20% every time you use it. And school buses are still problematic in that regard. Personally, I own an electric vehicle. I drive an electrical vehicle, I believe, in electrifying our vehicles as much as we can. But school buses are problematic because of the range problem and because of the expense. Now, electric bus costs three times, three to four times what a conventional bus costs while its maintenance costs are generally lower. You're faced with a battery replacement halfway through its life, which costs more than another bus. So financially, it's quite problematic. And then the range problem just makes it really difficult for us to function with a large fleet that had electrical buses on it. That said, there are things that I think we all ought to be thinking about. Building out the infrastructure with chargers that do the quick charging, the level three direct DC charging is something worth doing, but it requires a large investment of money. Only they need a forward evil three-phase service, and then they are close to $100,000 to install close to your service. So having fast chargers would help us make our fleet more nimble. There are some grants out there, but there's stipulations on the grants that I've looked at which say that if you're using this money to subsidize your fast level three charger, you have to promise to make it publicly available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And that sort of defeats the purpose of installing it in order to make an electric bus more usable because we can't be able to charge it. So that's kind of a stumbling block. I'm still trying to chase that down. And on the other side, I think it might be possible to look into electric or hybrid vehicles for pupil vans or for service vehicles. I'm a little worried about how a hybrid vehicle would perform for a polytrop because of the wear and tear that put something. But it's something that I am open to looking into further. And I'll just add quickly to what Rupert just said. Dave, Zee and I actually had a meeting scheduled today with ChargePoint to look into just what Rupert mentioned, which was some grants and other opportunities to put in more charging stations. Unfortunately, that meeting was rescheduled. So we will have more information on that at a future date. But we are looking into that. Mandy. Yeah, so a couple of questions. I was concerned about the fact that electric wasn't really mentioned for the vans at all.  Follow-ups on the electric buses are, the bus we have that is electric is one of it. My understanding is it's one of the sort of first-generation electric buses that was produced in some sense. And so the technology over the time has gotten better. So are we still basing our concerns and range issues and all of that and repair numbers and maintenance numbers on our experience with the electric bus we have or on experiences that other districts have had with electric buses that can be bought now? Because I presume the issues are different. And my next question, and then it would be, did you look into the possibility of electric for the sped vans and the accessible vans? And if so, what are the cost differences and what would be preventing us from buying an electric vehicle there if they exist? And then finally, I know we sometimes, we have two districts. And what I don't quite understand is, and so I always ask this is, are these vans just used to transport K to six or pre-K to six students? Is the bus used just to transport pre-K to six students? And is the maintenance fleet, this truck that's on the list used just at the three elementary schools? And depending on what that answer is, I might have a follow-up question. All right, let me see if I can remember all your questions. So in terms of advancement in electric technology, there have not been significant advancements in battery technology, which is the major constraint that I was talking about, which is range and charging time. As companies gain experience, their reliability records will improve. There are now a couple of national companies starting their first year of electric buses. I would just assume that for not to buy a first year electric bus again if we can help it. And I think that they'll have their own reliability bugs to work out over a year or two. But really it's gonna depend on either changes in battery technology or massive infrastructure in fast charging to make it really a viable option for our transportation needs for a bus. In terms of pupil vans, the vast majority, so the pupil vans end up being used both region and district. Most of our pupil vans are operating just within the town of Amherst to deliver Amherst students either to the elementary schools or the secondary schools. But I can't in all honesty say that it's entirely exclusive. What about the maintenance vehicle? So the maintenance vehicles, we have some maintenance vehicles that are owned by the region and some maintenance vehicles that are owned by town of Amherst schools. And they do end up working both areas where we're plowing. We end up doing plowing inside what works for landscape work or picking up limbs and trees or delivering things in pickup trucks to all the schools. So I guess my next question for all of that would be, even if a resident of Amherst is using an accessible van, if they're seven to 12, that's a different district and the costs should be coming out of a different district. So my question would be, do the district share the costs for purchasing these vehicles? Does Amherst elementary school get the benefit of using accessible vans that were purchased by the region? It sounds like on the maintenance side that Amherst elementary schools get the benefit of using maintenance vehicles that were purchased by the region. I'm trying to figure out how we do or do not mesh those funds since they are separate budgets, how do we account for the actual separateness of those budgets and are we as a town taxpayer ensuring that we're not subsidizing three other towns by purchasing things in Amherst that the three other towns in the region are getting the benefit of? There's a lot of bookkeeping in this that I may not have the interest for you now and I'm happy to try to get you some more answers. In general, I can say that the major expenses, operating expenses for the vehicles is fuel and we are very careful of tracking which vehicle is owned by who and who pays for the fuel for those vehicles. So in the big picture, the biggest expenses, we try to be very careful about keeping our budgets of one and separate and responsibility separate. Done. So just to add to that and perhaps Sean could chime in as well because he's experienced in that as well. So there are a number of ways in which we share costs across the district, actually across all three districts including Pelham and so we are required to report to the state our transportation costs, including appreciation on vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. And so those get reported and shared across the districts and so there are ways in which while not directly always supporting Amherst in the capital arena, there are other ways in which the region is supporting Amherst relative to these kinds of things. So for example, all of the staff, all the drivers are region employees. So as such, their costs are largely and we have a mechanism for recording the time they spend for Amherst or Pelham and region and trying to divvy those costs up and report those to the state or required to report those to the state. And so there's some imprecision in that to some extent and there are other ways in which the region funds and does work for Amherst relative to non-transportation things that also support Amherst in ways in which aren't fully and precisely accounted for. So I think there's a little, there's a point with the accounting where you get the cost of figuring it out isn't worth the difference in the price, if you know what I mean. And not to be flip about it, I don't mean to diminish the question because it is a legitimate one about something as expensive as a vehicle. But I think that there are a number of ways in which we're trying to account for those costs across multiple districts and keep an eye on that relative to having each district support each other maybe not as directly on this particular item but in other ways to help balance that out. But hopefully Mr. McGonagall can add a little more detail there as well. Yeah, I can add a few. So I think for these two particular vans we would wanna look at what is the primary use? That's normally how we've made that decision in the past is what is the primary use of the vehicle? There's lots of sharing that goes on just because of the nature of having one central office and one facility department, one transportation department but most of the vans or many of the vans are used for preschool transportation primarily. And so that's why many of them have been bought out of Amherst in the past. So I think for these two particular vans, Doug and Rupert it would be helpful to know again what is the primary purpose of these vans if they are again for preschool as their primary function. And I think it makes sense for it to stay here. If any of them again are gonna be focused more on the region, then I agree with Mandy-Jo and maybe we wanna put that through the region capital plan. So I think that would be the thing to go back and look is what is the primary purpose of these two vans? And for that matter, the maintenance vehicle. Again, the maintenance vehicles there are some region owned ones and some Amherst owned ones so it's sort of a split, but we wanna look at that too. Sure, we can do that. And I think to the earlier question relative to looking at the vans because pasture vehicles are decidedly more advanced in as far as EV, they've been on the market longer they're much more sophisticated. There's greater and greater capacity and opportunity to purchase because they're just more variety there. The one thing I will say about that is relative to the vans that transport these children there are state regulations that we have to comply with. So the vans have to meet what's called 70 requirements around handicap service to kids. And that's when we start to have a narrowing of the options but absolutely we'll look at, because again the other thing with passenger sized vehicles like the vans is that that market is much more mature but and because of that there's likelihood that there are options for compliant vans that fit that EV or hybrid options. So we'll certainly look at those as we go out to purchase these and see if there's an option that makes sense for us that way and price wise with the maturing of the market that the EV vehicles are comparable in price to gas vehicles. And so hopefully the price will not be too different and yet the real key thing is that it's gotta meet the requirements that are necessary for that type of transportation. I think that's it. You know, I just, Doug I know you know this but you're thinking when I was back and forth to New York City these vans are also used by hospitals for handicap access. So there is a large, there's a large, potentially a pretty large market that schools and this which is I think why there may be more availability because you're not just targeting it for a niche market. It's a pretty big market. So I'm not seeing any other questions on this or hands up. So I think we can move to next. All right, so I'll thank Doug and Rupert. You guys can hang around if you want to and next up is Dave and Chris for conservation and planning.  Sure, that would be great, Sean and I can try to roll through that. I did not put together a PowerPoint but I have a couple of just prompting images just to talk through with you. And Kathy or Sean, our main focus here tonight on conservation is really there's just three items. It's correct. We're just talking about the vehicles and then buffers bond. And then I think there's some money in the out years that you want me to talk about as well. And the one thing Dave, I would add and maybe we can teamwork this as the money for sustainability improvements. Sure. And we can add to that. Why don't we hold that until the end? And then, you know, I know Chris wants to talk about some planning money. So yeah, really quickly just a little bit of a contextual just had a couple of slides here and with some some images. So overall conservation, we have two staff, two field staff members in conservation. So I wanted to just orient you a little bit. There's about 2400 acres of land in conservation in town and all of that is managed through my office and with our two staff, our full time staff. We maintain 80 miles of trails and I'm sure you're all familiar with many of those. They're getting a tremendous amount of use here during the pandemic. And that's wonderful to see so many people out there. And I was just talking to some folks who use the trails a lot today and they were really impressed by how many people are adhering to the social distancing requirements and also wearing masks. So it's great to see people out there. We also maintain about 300 acres of open field habitat and that is not in addition to the 2400 acres but that's within that broad number. It includes year round care and administration of Puffers Pond, a very busy place that sees thousands of people visited every year. And then we have about 50 plus. I actually don't know the count but we have bridges of all types from five feet long to 25 to 30 feet long. And in fact, one of our projects this year is to replace the bridge at Amethyst Brook that is a very popular bridge. And we're actually getting a 50 foot telephone poles to span the Amethyst Brook to replace a bridge that's been out, was washed away by a big January storm and an ice storm back in 2018. We have lots of volunteers that work with conservation and then we hire a small summer staff as well. You can keep scrolling, Sean. You know, what most people think about conservation land is beautiful views, wonderful trails, vistas. Here's Mt. Pollux, certainly, if not the most popular conservation area in town, one of them in the top three. And it is all beautiful but it does take time, energy, money and people to care for it. And most of that work really involves people management. We do a lot of habitat management and vegetation management, but people can be challenging and they bring dogs and they bring horses and ATVs and trash. So all of that takes money, time and energy and focus to keep these areas beautiful and clean and healthy. And you can keep scrolling, Sean. Thanks. And sometimes we get surprises out there. Like in 2020, somebody decided to put their hot tub.  So we need to maintain our boundaries. We need to sometimes remove things that end up when people do illegal dumping. And we need to make sure that people respect those boundaries and respect the land that all of the residents of Amherst through the years have paid for both to buy or get as gifts or put tax dollars toward maintaining. So it's really important for people to understand that these lands belong to all of us. Keep scrolling, that'd be great. As I said, Puffer's Bond is certainly in the top three most popular places in town from a conservation standpoint. I love the second slide here with the, if you can keep going, Sean, with the oversized potato chip bag. I'd never seen that before. That was a first on the shores of Puffer's Bond. Particularly last year in 2020, we had a wonderful experience up there with really meeting and greeting people during the pandemic, doing a lot of social distancing work. And we're hoping to, using CARES Act money, repeat that for this year and keep people safe up there. We teamed up with DPW last year to really redo the State Street and all the parking there and try to bring some order to parking. So on our capital list are two vehicles. Our vehicles, current vehicles are 16 and 12 years old, respectively. These vehicles are used, as you can see here, to haul material, pull equipment, trailers. Of course, CARES staff and volunteers in the summer, they're used to plow parking areas or conservation areas during the winter. And neither one of them, they're working trucks. I should say that. I really wanna emphasize these are working trucks. They're not trucks simply used to move people. They move a lot of stuff. And because we build stuff, we maintain stuff out there in the conservation land. And currently they're not safe. They barely pass inspection and they've been on the capital list for a number of years. And we've been spending far too much money on maintaining these two old trucks. I mean, if you think about it, I'm not sure how many people keep their vehicles, particularly working vehicles, 16 and 12 years old. So we have one Chevy, which you just saw and then there's Dodge. And these are the type of things they do.  They're full of equipment, materials when we build things.  It keeps scrolling, Sean. Thanks. Here's just more material, be it organic stuff that needs to come off trails or go to the transfer station or what have you. You can keep going. Thank you. Oh, we got the hot tub twice there. Sorry about that. And then, you know, the staff is very creative. Here's a couple of our staff working with a volunteer to actually, what they did was they harvested timbers up in the watershed. I believe this is white oak and they actually milled the lumber trying to do a sustainable kiosk. And I believe this is that puffer spawn and this gentleman volunteered to make a kiosk for Puffer spawned and they milled all the locally grown timber and then put it up at Puffer spawn. A lot of field mowing, this is our newer tractor. And again, the trucks that you saw previously need to haul this tractor around all over town when we need to use it either the bucket on the front or the brush hog on the back. Lots of bridges. This is a new boardwalk that is trying to get people out of wetland areas in Lawrence Swamp. This is a couple thousand feet long. We do all of this work. We permit all of this work through the conservation commission. But again, these trucks need to be full of lumber. We try to buy as much lumber as we can locally through coals and leader. So, yeah. And I think there's maybe one more slide. Yeah, and I'll just finish up that puffer spawn. These are kind of drone images of Puffer spawn. And one of the requests on our capital list is money to really we're gonna use consultants to come in and help us to come up with a plan to repair the dike at Puffer spawn. Most people don't realize that Puffer spawn has the dam. Everyone's familiar with the dam, how beautiful it is. We have to do annual, excuse me, I think it's every other year. Every two years we hire specialist engineers to look at that dam. We do this to all of our dams all over town. DPW brings in experts on dam safety and the state requires us to maintain all of our dams in a particular, depending on whether they're a low, moderate or high hazard, Puffer spawn happens to be a high hazard dam. And there's actually a dike, an overflow area. If there was ever issues with the water getting too high, there is an area to the north of the dam and it's very subtle. And there's a house on the property and the state is now requiring us to repair that dike. So I did put in a small amount of money to get us started on doing the analysis and the engineering to repair that dike. I don't think the repairs are gonna be a large amount, but it's something that is gonna take quite a bit of study and permitting to get through. So I think those are the last images. Happy to take questions again, looking for really working trucks to replace a 16 year old and 12 year old vehicles. This request, I think I've had this on the capital list probably for three to five years at least. I'm happy to talk about any of the out years if you'd like to, Sean or Kathy. Mandy's hand is up. Yeah, I actually have a question on something you didn't talk about, station road buildings. You had a septic removal and roof repairs on 15,000 for the septic removal and 40,000 for roof repairs for this year. I get to drive by that building all the time and I've noticed there's a lot of vehicles there and that was mentioned. And so I'm curious, it sounds like we're storing vehicles in some of the barns down on the station road farm, both conservation vehicles and it sounded like DPW vehicles. So my question regarding the roof repairs and I guess the building in general is long term, is this something we're thinking of keeping as a vehicle storage place that might allow us to build a smaller DPW building? Yeah, my apologies. I might be looking at a slightly dated spreadsheet in front of me. So yeah, let me speak to both of those. So probably I'm gonna say close to 20 years ago the town purchased the land that currently has the two horse farms on the North side of station road. I'll just focus on the one to the East that is closest to the rail trail parking lot and the railroad itself. So for about 20 years, the conservation department maintained that property. We actually leased it out to a couple of equestrian businesses for a number of years and eventually about two years ago or so, we were in discussions with the company, the business that was leasing that land from us, that building in the land. And it really became evident that without equity in the land, it was just not a good business decision for them to up that again. We also found that even though there were requirements in the lease to improve the building and maintain the building and maintain the fencing, that they really, I guess the short answer is there's not a lot of money in equestrian operations in this area. And it's a very slim margin and they just could not put the money into it. So Guilford, Mooring and I had been talking and what we decided to do was at that time, even though conservation had maintained the leases and relationships and the back land for many, many years, we decided that with all the projects on our plates, including Groff Park, Kendrick Park, that we would use that as a staging area for the equipment deliveries. So we actually use the barn that does have a leaky roof and some problems with moisture and whatnot, but it was not detrimental to the things we were keeping there. So we stored all of the material for Groff Park, the both the playground and the spray park. And then we also did the same for Kendrick Park. And even with those materials in the building, we were also able to get some of our equipment that normally would be sitting outside at the yard at DPW or the yard at conservation into that building for the winter. It is not meant for that. The clearances are not meant for that. So again, Guilford and I have had conversations that a modest investment in that roof would allow us to continue to use that building in the interim for the very things we're doing now. For a variety of reasons, the current building would not suffice for a long-term DPW storage or anything like that. It's a highly sensitive ecological area because it's right on the banks of the Hopbrook, which is estimated habitat, priority habitat and all of the above as is much of Amherst. The reason we put in money for the septic system is that we actually wanna close out the system that is there. There's a tight tank, there is a bathroom there and we need to remove all of that system. We have no intention of having a bathroom there. I think you have seen some vehicles there and that is we are allowing local contractors who are doing work in Amherst to use it as kind of a home base. We also would like to use it as a staging area for the station road bridge because it's outside of the riverfront and ecological, the closest ecologically sensitive areas right along the brook. So we would stage the station road bridge project there. Thank you. Any other questions? I have a question on the vehicles. And it's mainly where we've got a long list of vehicles, Dave, not just yours. So the price for a one ton truck is different on your list than it is on Gilbert's list. And amazingly, his is less expensive, which is not the typically the way it goes. So I'm just wondering when we are buying these, do we do those cross comparisons on, I don't know exactly how many variants there are in a one ton truck and then the other truck that I was just, I then looked at Ford's hybrid truck, that's a smaller version when you were showing and it's not as expensive as some of the prices you're showing. So I know one is the big truck and the other is the smaller truck. So there's some of these new vehicles coming online and a year from now, there'll be an electric one, but right now they definitely have hybrids. So it's a question about the two trucks and price comparisons when we're buying or do departments just buy their own truck, you know, on getting a good deal. And then the only other one I had just on what Mandy was asking about the barn, learning that there is a toilet there and you're removing the toilet and removing the septic tank, there was a recent article on the US is quite unique on there are no public toilets anywhere. It's the scarcity of them. And I'm just, is it usable at all for travelers or you've just decided it's too risky to leave it there? So, but that's a separate question. I'm more of a- Oh, let me handle that one first. This is, you know, this was built as a horse farm during the 1980s. It is not ADA, it is, no one on this call would want to use that restroom. I can guarantee you that. Now or anytime in the future, it is extremely old, moisture has damaged it through the years. It's a barn, it's a barn bathroom and there is no septic system there. The groundwater is so high, there's a tight tank and without going into great detail, we believe that tight tank has failed. So it's a problem that we need to address because we own the land and we need to kind of button that all up and be done with it. So I would be really hesitant to say we want to put a public bathroom there that close to the rail trail and then take responsibility for that long-term. I think DCR has in the past and I'm not sure, I can't quite visualize, but in the past they have had a porta-potty at the trailhead there at the rail trail at Station Road. And I think that's a better solution given the high water table there and that the land won't perk, which is part of having a functioning septic system. Kathy, good questions about the trucks. I would be happy to check our price estimates with Guilford. I think the number that we have in there is pretty solid but I'm happy to check that with Guilford. I do know that, and I'll do some comparison. It really depends on what you're adding to the truck and that those features can add considerable prices. I think Guilford's probably around $65,000, $60 to $65,000. He had one at 80 and his was a one ton truck with a plow. So that was the combined, so I don't know what, so I didn't have to notice because they both said one ton trucks. I don't know enough about trucks to know. So I think this is right in that same ballpark and it's basically we're looking for the same thing. And just a reminder on vehicle, all the vehicles, they'll either be competitively bid where we would put out a solicitation and get three quotes or three bids if it's over 50,000, which this one is, or we would look to a state contract which competitively bid that vehicle. So, we don't go on a auto trader or something and price it out. We would put together specifications and then we would solicit competitive bids. And on the smaller truck, we'd be happy to look at a hybrid. My only caution is really, and I was listening to Rupert and Doug talk about buses. My only caution there is I don't really want to be a leader in picking some of the first commercial hybrid or commercial all-electric Ford or Chevy trucks. I can't emphasize enough that these are off-road vehicles. They spend most of their time on woods roads and in the mud and they don't spend that much money on much time on pavement. So, these are going to have to be very robust vehicles. And I just want to make sure that if we were to go with a hybrid or an EV truck that they are meant to be doing that. Right, you know, the hybrids have been out longer, but I don't know what their track record is for this kind of work. Yeah. I literally just Googled, what is one cost? So, that. We certainly will look at that. And I think the other thing with the hybrids is, what is their hauling capacity? Can they haul a trailer with a tractor on the back? Yeah. And I don't know the tonnage there, but we can talk. But I think the 85 that we have in here for the one ton is pretty consistent with where Guilford is with his one ton as well. So we have two other projects. We have the housing production plan, which I think we would go, we'll go to next. Okay. Hello, I'm Chris Brestrup. You probably all have seen me before. So I have two projects to talk to you about the housing production plan. We have a number in there of $30,000 to update the housing production plan. We have a housing production plan that was finished in 2013. They're generally good for five years. They're something that is asked for by the state. So the state looks at it and agrees that you've done a good job. So the state agreed that we had done a good job with our last housing production plan, but it did expire in 2018. So what we'd like to do is update the housing production plan. I think we had a number in our FY21 budget of $20,000, but when I spoke with Nate Malloy recently, he thought it would be more in the vicinity of $30,000 to have this plan updated. We would probably, well, Sean would tell us what we needed to do as far as obtaining consultant services. I would be inclined to hire the people who did the original housing production plan because they have all of our information and they've worked with us on other projects, but of course we have to do everything according to the proper bidding requirements. But that is an important item. If you have a housing production plan, you can check the box on your grant application and say, yes, you've done it and it gives you certain points. And we are, now that we have Ben Brigger with us, we're like a powerhouse with getting grants. So we wanna keep that track record going and this would be one of the key items that we'd like to have in our toolbox. The other thing about it is that it gives us some sense of what should our goals be with regard to producing affordable housing units. And that's really what the housing production plan is all about. It tells us over a five year period how many affordable units should we be producing every year. And the last housing production plan said we should be producing 48 affordable housing units a year. And we do work very hard to get money from CPA and from the state and from all the sources we can and work with private developers to produce affordable units. We haven't quite met the 48 units a year yet, but we're working towards it. And so I hope that you will agree with this amount of money to hire a consultant to do this housing production plan. Do you have any questions about this? I'm looking around the room. It doesn't look like it. Randy does. Not really a question. And I know I have plenty of opportunity as a chair of the CRC to talk to you about this, but as the council works on its housing, comprehensive housing policy, I would just ask that hopefully we'll pass that at some point this year that that somehow be worked into or given to the consultants or something when that gets done for consideration. Yep, thank you. Okay, are you ready to hear about the second item? Second item is a little bit bigger. And those of you who have been involved in our zoning efforts have probably heard something about this. We did have $40,000 for downtown and gateway planning and zoning. And I think that was money from many years ago. Maybe it was even from 2013. I've been told by accounting that I really can't hold onto that money any longer. We did ask for another sum in FY 21, $60,000. And I was expecting to match that with the $40,000 to come up with $100,000 to hire a consultant to help us with our zoning efforts. We've heard again and again that people would really like to see an effort made to make the streetscape more appealing in downtown Amherst, wider sidewalks, more trees, that type of thing. We've also heard again and again that people want design guidelines in the buildings that are built in the downtown. And we've also been studying the limited business district next to the downtown. So these are issues that have come up many times. We also need help with things like parking and trying to figure out how we can change our parking zoning bylaw to be more in keeping with the pressures that we're feeling lately as far as development. When our municipal parking district was developed, it started off in, I think it was in 1969. And we felt that there wasn't enough business in the downtown and we wanted to give businesses a break by not requiring them to have on-site parking. And that was really related to restaurants and stores. Then in the mid-2000s, we changed our municipal parking district to allow residential development to happen in the downtown without having on-site parking. And that was prior to any residential development being built in the downtown. Now we've seen a real surge of downtown residential development in the form of mixed-use buildings. And those buildings are not required to have any on-site parking. So we'd like to work with the consultant to figure out how can we adjust our zoning to require the right amount of parking if that's the right thing to do so that we can move forward and still allow development in the downtown and the adjacent limited business district. So all of these things, we really need to have consultants help with. We also have a lot of problems with our sign bylaw. So that's another thing that we really can use help with in zoning. So we're doing this big effort to overhaul our zoning bylaw, sort of fix all the things that we recognize are wrong with it and try to put together a zoning bylaw that will carry us into the future. And these are things that we need to have outside help on. Another thing that an outside consultant can do is to once we get out of the COVID phase and we're able to meet in person in public again, potentially run public forums to find out what people want in the downtown. This is another thing that we keep hearing from people who come to our planning board meetings and the CRC meetings is that how are we sure of what we really want in the downtown? We haven't explored it since we explored it in 2017. We had two downtown forums, but that process was not concluded and we didn't have a report come out of it. And we also have a master plan that tells us we want to focus development in the downtown, but we haven't had much help with interaction with the public and trying to figure out what they want. So we think that being able to hire a consultant to help us with planning and zoning for our downtown would really be beneficial, especially with this effort to rewrite the zoning bylaw. So I hope that you will go along with our request. The request is for $100,000. Do you have any questions about this? I do after Mandy. I don't have a question. I just thought for the benefit of the JCPC members that aren't on the council that I would mention that the council has passed a priority to spend consultant money on form-based zoning and design guidelines. And I think this request comes partially out of that council vote. Hey, Peter. I was just curious, like how would the, how would this funding be envisioned to work with like community outreach coordinator and other, there's like a number of related things that the town wants to engage the public on. Right now we have full capital projects, for example. But just in terms of like, you know, public engagement on different major changes in the town and do you envision this as like an isolated sort of project? It starts up, it's done, or is it related to some of the other more permanent things that go on? I think the results of it will be more permanent, but I have participated in a process in Northampton where they have hired Dodson Flinker and associates and they are really excellent at leading public meetings and eliciting from the public. Do you like this building? Do you like that building? What kind of streetscape do you want to see? Do you like wide sidewalks or narrow sidewalks? Do you want to see parallel parking in your village center or your downtown? All of these things, it's easier for an outside consultant to lead this kind of event. What I have experienced here is when I try to lead this kind of event, people look at me and say, you put that building downtown and we don't like that building. So we're not going to listen to you and we're not going to listen to you in a normal way. But if you have a consultant from out of town, they have to be polite to that consultant and they will give the consultant- People shouldn't be meaning to get terrible. So that's my pitch for an outside consultant. Paul was there at our most recent downtown forum which was challenging. So Chris, I have a question that sort of, well, Doug tells with Peter a little bit, but no, it's more, I think this is a terrific idea, so the project. So my question is seeing that there's a major new developer with a project proposed for downtown that's before the planning board. If we don't have a moratorium or a little lull space, asking how wide we want the sidewalks to be, what we want the streetscape to look like, what to do about parking, maybe after the opportunity to do something has gone. So this particular building would take out of circulation quite a few parking spots as did when he's pleasant, without bringing anyone new. So if we want to rethink any of that or even some communities in their zoning have a linkage fee, that if you take spaces out, you contribute to a kitty that would build a garage somewhere, this is something that you're removing 200, where are they gonna go? But so it's a chicken the egg that if we really wanna take a pause and be thinking about this, while a lot of activity is going on, how do we reconcile those two? I think there's still a lot of land in the downtown area that can be developed. There's a parcel right next to this building that's being proposed now that I think the developers have an eye on. There are also parcels that are owned by the Central Amherst Realty Trust that are likely to be developed in the future and there's bound to be a lot of redevelopment, both in the downtown and in the adjacent BL. So I think that the opportunity to use amended zoning to get what we want is still there. The fact that this building came along is kind of unfortunate in the fact that we're currently working on our zoning, but we can't really control what developers propose and I think they've had this in the works for a long time. So we'll do the best we can to get things on as quickly as we can, but I don't think we can fight this particular project. Mandy's hand went up as well. Yeah, I also wanted to respond to that with something Rob Moore, our building inspector responded to or answered a question of one of the CRC members yesterday with regard to that. Hopefully I will get the information right, but one of the CRC members asked what bylaws apply if a project is sort of filed and not approved yet as it relates to some of the zoning we're looking at. And his response was, I believe that the zoning that applies is basically if the permit, if the special permit has been issued, the zoning that is in effect when it was issued generally applies. But once a hearing is notified in the public, once the hearing is put in the paper as being held for a zoning bylaw change, he was implying that that new bylaw would apply to any projects that hadn't yet been permitted when the hearing noticed went in the paper. And so given an answer like that, I can say as chair of CRC, I'm taking that and the members are taking that response into consideration as we look at the planning and agenda setting for dealing with the bylaws that were presented to CRC yesterday and which ones to concentrate on sort of first. Okay, thank you. So any other questions you're hearing from two people that are in the middle of, well, three people that are in the middle of all of this, right? And then, so I think, thank you very much. I think that- We have one actual, sorry, we have one more project, which is the sustainability improvement project. So Dave, Stephanie and I worked on that. And so the request is for 50,000 this year and then there's a placeholder for 50,000 in future years. That's definitely an area, I could see that amount increasing in future years as we have more actionable steps to take around sustainability. It isn't designated yet as to what specific projects it will go towards, but there are some things we have in mind, we've heard about, upfitting some of the vehicles to potentially be hybrid version or putting in the anti-idoling technology. There's the resident capital requests, which again, we have a grants that we're hoping to get for that. But if that grant doesn't come through, it could potentially support a project like that. The charging stations we've been talking about. And so there's no shortage of potential ways that we can use that money wisely in the future. And Dave, I'll turn it over to you if you have any other additional thoughts on that. Oh, thanks, John, you pretty much covered it. The only one I would add is that in my experience working with Stephanie over the last many years and particularly with the Green Community's grant funding is that often to be eligible for Green Community's or other sustainability grants, it's incumbent upon the city or town to have already done some work. And I don't mean to use the word consultants, but often these are engineering studies, these are architectural studies, these are energy studies that need to be done in order to qualify to upgrade the system in building A, B or C, you need to have done a considerable amount of work on analysis and assessment of the HVAC system, the airflow, all of these things. And this is true in our schools, in our town buildings and the list goes on. So this money could potentially be used, some of this money could potentially be used for that. And sometimes that can leverage, we can invest a couple of thousand dollars in having an analysis done and that could leverage $150,000 from Green Communities or other sources. So I know I've spent many hours with Stephanie where we're so close and we wanna apply for a grant but we don't have that pre-work done. And it's not something really that town staff can do. We have very talented staff in our building commissioner, Rob Mora and our facilities manager, Jeremiah, I'm having a brain freeze. A plant. A plant, I'm sorry, I've been a long day, a plant. And they're both very talented but sometimes you need to bring in some real energy experts to do these studies. So thanks. Questions. Mandy. You mentioned the resident capital request and I know it's not currently on the CIP anywhere but it seems to be being leaned on as a project that might be funded and I know the regional school committee and their capital plan had sort of essentially that project there but it had some indication that it would be co-funded by Amherst separately even though we pay for a portion of the regional school committee capital plan. So I guess what they came forward with was just regional school plots of land. And so if it gets funded from Amherst's capital funding or this green communities sustainability fund in addition to the regional funding are we going to add Amherst owned land instead of just regional land to those, I guess the study on feasibility on solar canopies? So I don't think we know the answer yet. I know for example, the grant program that we're looking at for that's similar to the resident capital request. The grant would be for expertise and the people, it wouldn't be for money. There's the way I understand it is that they would provide the people who can do the work. So at that point, we would look to them to say can you do the region as well or can you do the town and then what other potential areas would we want them to look at if they can? So we just don't, I don't think we know the answer to that yet but it's something we'll definitely look into how we can partner for these projects that are similar. I just, and Sean, if you can clarify with Andrew and the two students, I heard them say not just the high school and middle school they wanted to do broader public land. So if there is some way of marrying if the region put in $15,000 for something solar and if we did the grade schools or others but just thinking of what Dave just said to get ready that if we can do some assessments on where things can go and charging stations more generally it would be useful if big grant money comes along. So I heard them, I mean, I know they're high school students so they're originally looking at the high school parking lot but I think they wanted to think more broadly than that. And our grant, again, the grant that Stephanie is working on is a broader, isn't focused on the region. It's a broader community wide focus. So exactly what you said. And I just have a question. When Mandy said it's not on your list when we look at the spreadsheet it doesn't have a little line. This 50,000 could potentially be a placeholder that would do the 25 they asked for. So when we have a discussion next week on our reactions to what we've heard is that a potential? Yeah, okay. Yeah, absolutely. Again, we left it intentionally broad because to Dave's point, a lot of times these things are sort of opportunities that arise where you can make a big impact. And so we didn't wanna say it's definitely gonna be used for this or that. We sort of intentionally left it flexible in that way. Okay. I'm looking around. We, there is, I'm looking around the room for any other comments. If there aren't anyone, I wanna open it up for public comments. We have one attendee. At least last time I looked, we have one. And to see, is there anyone on the committee who has Tammy? On the schools, Doug Slaughter had copier replacements and we did not discuss that. It is something that's coming annually but that was omitted from the school's list. I think we discussed that last time, didn't we? Yeah, we discussed that with IT. Very briefly, but he discussed that during the night. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I thought that was either duplicate or, yeah, okay. Any other questions? Let me just check. So I am opening it up for public comments to the extent we have any. And Sean, you're the host.  So Tony Cunningham. Hi, yeah. Tony Cunningham, thanks so much. I just wanted to make a comment and a bit of a pitch for Crocker Farm repairs. I was on the feasibility study group that evaluated the building and looked at what would be needed in the case of a school consolidation plan. And I know you have the larger project on the pending list page in the capital improvement plan document. I would just suggest that you reduce the higher number on the range to the 19 million 750 because the larger number was for an enrollment of 555 students, which won't apply now in the scenario we're looking at with the MSPA project. And then as far as what you have in the capital improvement plan, line items for Crocker Farm, in the five years, they add up to about four and a half million. The base repair estimates by TSKP were about nine million. So there's a few things missing. TSKP were proposing a complete HVAC replacement using a VRF system. And they had security upgrades, also Salliport entry and glazing and a few other things that aren't currently on your plan. So I just wondered if you could just make a plug for cross-referencing what's in your plan with what was recommended by TSKP and then updating the total on the pending list to have that lower number since I think that 27 million wouldn't apply. That's everything. Thank you. Thank you, Tony. Tammy, did you put your hand up again or is that still? Okay, that's so I saw Sean took notes. I think we are finished for the evening. And I just wanna remind people that next week we're coming together to discuss recommendations and sort of thinking about the draft report. And Sean has offered to send us out some basic framework to be thinking about unlike previous years, we've been given a gift of the requested amounts of money almost match the amount of money we have to spend. So rather than, but that doesn't necessarily mean everything goes on the list or we feel differently. But I think that for me at least it means we should also look at the five year plan not just this year plan. So a focus on this year but to extent there are questions or things to discuss for next week. So Sean, I think you offered to send out some things to think about to the committee. To next week, yes. So I'll send out the summary page again of the five year plan so you can see what it looks like. And then Kathy and I have been keeping sort of the key questions or points that people have been making during the presentations. Not that those are the only topics to consider but just to kind of remind people when we come back for discussion here are some of the things that were raised as questions or issues. So we'll send that out as well. Okay, so I want to thank everyone and I think we can just say that our tonight's meeting is adjourned. May I ask for questions? Put your hand up, sorry. Yes, where? I want to know if I can get a copy of the most recent five year plan that involves the planning department because I think I have an outdated spreadsheet. Yes, you may. I will send that to you tomorrow. Thanks. Okay, sorry, Chris, I didn't see your hand but then I think we are adjourned unless someone's hand miraculously goes up again and catches my eye, but if not, then thank you all for staying with us through the evening. Good night.


Good morning, everyone, Basel Chapman on this Monday, the 18th of December, we're looking at the Dow up 23,000, 37,329. In other words, it went higher than Friday. This is still an extension of the leg, and I'm anticipating this, some kind of a pullback over the next two days, just a kind of a breather, initially, just to see what can happen if the buying keeps coming in. At this point, I've got the Chevron Wave, the short-term trading index was high on Friday, and the S&P futures can rally some, which is doing the S&P right now. In fact, it's up 16, no, it hasn't quite made a new recovery high from last Thursday, but it is up, it's 47.35, very nice action. The QQQ and the X100 trading up 47 cents at 4.0579, also hasn't taken out Friday's high, you're looking at the IWM, that's the IWM, Russell 2000. It's important to see how it holds, that huge gap from Wednesday to Friday to Monday. Yeah, Wednesday's gap is up at 1.9837, up $1.30. Are we starting to see the rotation? Maybe there was a possibility in this coming into the first quarter of 2024. So far, it's acting really well. Looking at gold, gold right now is up to $2.37 silver is, let's see where silver is, down 34 cents, and the dollar is, last looked at it, it was down a little bit, yep, down 16 cents, and 1.244, and we've got crude oil doing very nicely today. We were talking about this 200-period exponential moving average in the weekly, it hit it exactly. Look, every other time it's hit it, it's bounced right off it. So this is a very nice move up 276 and 74.53. Let's go to the bonds. Right now, the bonds are trading down almost 20 seconds at 1.23 and 5.30 seconds. Yeah, we're going to be watching this very closely because if the TLT starts to pull back, which it's doing right now, down 98 cents, at this particular point, that's going to push the yields. And if the yields go, does that impact the HGX in the shorter term? That's the foot of the healthy housing sector. We'll talk about that when I get back on my show to take it to Christmas hour. Wednesday, I do my webinar for subscribers. Check it out on the front page of TFN.