All right, you are good to go, Kathy. Good evening, everyone. This is the joint capital planning committee meeting. And I am the chair Kathy Shane if we have outside listeners and pursuant to the governor's orders we're conducting this virtually and I'm going to go around just to make sure everyone can see can hear and be heard. And I just want to, I think everyone knows we are recording these. So you'll be able to see them later and I think I'll just do it in order of, I'm just going to call out the committee member names for the time being. So Carrie present Tammy present Peter. Mandy present and Alex here. Okay, so we're missing one member Andy and I have to ask whether we have any willing volunteers to take minutes. Peter, thank you. And one of the things I mentioned just before I'm not sure whether you're already on is if we can post the videos quickly, you know the minutes can be summaries of what we've done, you know, and referring to the documents we were looking at because people can always go and hear the discussion. And I think I will turn the order over to you so you can invite the first person to present and we are going to be timing the presentations so that we can get through a long list tonight and Sean will just let someone know what they're going long, otherwise, you should feel comfortable that you have plenty of time. So I've let all the speakers tonight, give them a general time to use to present the projects that they're proposing so that we can have plenty of time for questions. And I'll just give a little caution if we start running over the a lot of time by too much, just to make sure that we can get everybody in. Yes, that's coming so the first speaker is so that are recently anointed or sworn in sworn in. Appointed. So Sue you can take it away and I don't know does the group want me to bring up the project justifications as we talked through them or just only if they're requested. I don't know whether every did everyone get a chance to see the postings. So, so I'll just bring up if there's a question. Otherwise, just let Sue go ahead and present it. Okay, can everyone hear me. Okay, great. Good evening everyone. So the town clerk's office, I'm going to be reading straight ahead so if I'm not looking at just because I got my script here. The town clerk's office is requesting approval for the purchase of new voting equipment for fiscal year 2022. There are two main reasons why voting equipment is necessary at this time. The most important of which is the future possible implementation of rank choice voting for town elections. And 10.10 of the town charter calls for the creation of a rank choice voting commission, and the charge of which was adopted on December 10, 2018. In researching the voting equipment that would be able to tabulate a rank choice ballot, the commission determined that the town's current voting equipment would not be able to tabulate results in this manner. The major criteria used in evaluating potential voting equipment was functionality, security, audit ability and usability. The chosen equipment would have to also be on the secretary of states list of approved voting equipment. After extensive research in their final reports of the town council on December 1, 2020. The rank choice voting commission recommended the image cast tabulator with election night reporting software and hardware as the best option to suit the needs for both rank choice voting and non rank choice voting. The town council approved this recommendation and forwarded legislation which was filed on February 19 2021 just a couple days ago. If passed before July 5 2021 based on the language in this bill, we would need to implement rank choice voting for the upcoming November 2 2021 town election, which is going to require the new tabulators. The quote of $80,300 we see from LHS associates includes 14 tabulator bundles, which is one per precinct with four spare units for reporting software and hardware. A two year hardware software warranty documentation, including testing guides, poll worker training guides and an instruction to voter poster. Two training sessions are also included a two hour session for town clerk staff and a two hour session for poll workers, all in the town of Amherst. Also included is on site coverage by an LHS employee for our first election, beginning one hour prior to the polls opening and ending two hours after the polls close. The second reason for the need of new voting equipment is the age of our current equipment. This equipment was purchased in early 2001, making it 20 years old. The estimated life expectancy of this type of equipment is about 10 to 15 years. We're already well past the current life expectancy and in fact we've experienced more frequent repairs and breakdowns during elections over the last few years. The vendor has also discontinued this model. So parts are now becoming harder to obtain. So that's pretty much it. The two major reasons why we need voting new voting equipment and I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone may have. Thank you. So I'm looking around, maybe just raise your hand so I don't have to also pull the string of Mandy's hand is up. I don't actually have questions I just want to congratulate Sue for her appointment to town clerk and also say what you just said answered the questions I did have which is why I don't have questions. Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions. I have to not so much about the purchase you know the need for one would be if we're going to try for the November second election to use these and where we've got this reserve fund that we're allocating this is for Sean to this coming year. So would it make any sense to buy them sooner rather than waiting to July, so we can be training so that it's just a question is the timing, and then is there any grant money you said maybe grant money in in the write up and those were my two questions. Well, July it's now February it's almost March, you know, it wouldn't be all it, I think July would be soon enough. Okay, fiscal year 2022 but and the grant money Sean, I know that new grant money was made available but I don't. Yeah, I don't know if this would fall under that. I mean we so we've used the cares act to do some of the upgrades for the town clerk's office for the past cycle, the things that were eligible. I'm not sure voting machines would be eligible, if you're talking about the cares act to. But it's certainly something we can check I just I don't, I don't know if those machines in themselves because we would usually things that were slated to be replaced anyway, they're not going to cover because we were supposed to replace them. I don't think it's going to be a play check. And I just was also asking, I think it came up at the council that whether there is any money at the state level when towns, the voting equipment is falling apart, is there any support for buying new or is that always on municipal budget that you know, so, I've no, I've no reason to think there is but it was a question. Yeah. If there is I was looking through files the other day to see if I could find anything I found nothing. It's certainly worth asking on the state level though which I could do. Okay. Any other questions. So I. Okay I think that's great I think we can move on to the next presentation Sean. Well we are making great time. Thank you so much Sue. Thank you. The next department is Jeremiah's and Rob is here as well if he wants to join in. And it's going to be town facilities. So Jeremiah just give an overview and then walk us through each of the, the FY 22 projects. And you're muted still. I can't. He's, I'm not sharing him. Yeah, we will. Now we can hear you Jeremiah you're good. Okay. Wonderful. Alright, so what I did is I ended up. I know Sean I spoke with you earlier and asked if I needed to put something together but I went ahead and puts a visual together just is going to help me with, you know, my thoughts and putting it all together so if you don't mind I'm just going to screen share and go through each of the projects. So, Sean, can you give him the ability to screen share. Some things wrong. Can you all see that. Yes. Okay. So this is my facilities department. PowerPoint. So one of the first items that was requested was for the police station some interior maintenance. In the photo you can see this is the report writing room of the police department. The room that is included in this request is the operation center. As you can see these spaces are very widely used officers are in here every day, it might be just a few conversations catching up I think they do a handoff from one shift to another, but a bulk of the reporting is done in this space. The request is to get rid of some of these built in worn out cabinet trees is shelving and countertops and sort of make it a space that that's more conducive for their work that they do that productivity and and provide a little bit of comfort because their officers do spend a fair bit of time in here. So just behind where I was taking this photo is their library so that's another space within this room that they provide quite a bit of work. The next is just showing you some of these existing conditions. So the countertop is an older from like a countertop you can see some damage to that and the cabinetry on the right hand side you can see some damage there. And I will have to say that in a lot of this I'm sort of highlighting, I'm highlighting some of the more worn areas. But in general, you can see that the spaces is used quite a bit and really does need some improvements. So this first request was for $25,000 and this would help with replacing all that cabinetry and countertops, get in some furniture in there and really just kind of sort of rebuilding this space that that these officers need. Any questions about this one. You want me to just go through each or Yeah, I think I'm trying to figure out I guess I can hide the screen and look at the hands so if would people prefer going through everything and then just asking questions. Yes, I'm seeing a nod of head so yes, go through and then to extend their questions will focus on those. Okay, and the next one is the chiller replacement at the Amherst police department. So this is a project that I've asked Sean to move forward. Initially we had the roof as one of our larger projects for this year, but I felt that the roof could be delayed, but the chiller could not. So the chiller is original to the building. And it was manufactured I have the placard for it was manufactured in 1989. The chiller is well beyond its ashray standard of service life. Typically we're going to see about 20 years out of a piece of equipment like that and 89 to 21 is is beyond 20 years, and it has served us it owes us nothing. In these past years we had experienced a catastrophic failure in this photo here you could see the tube sheet. So that to she had a rupture in it, and it rendered that chiller useless we were unable to cool the building. I know Rob working with some local vendors was able to get a replacement tube sheet, and they were, they, they got that chiller back online. This, this is going to be a big project. Are we looking at it and saying are we going to replace this chiller with light kind, or is there opportunities to look at the building and maybe change the equipment that helps support our energy in our carbon footprint goals for the town. The request is for $400,000. Depending on what we do, I would have to think that it would only go up. So if we were to look at a full VRF system for that building, which would be the most energy efficient and probably the best for most modern and with the most controls would also come with the highest price tag. $400,000 would would more than likely just get us new equipment that would be much more efficient, but, but replacing it with a light with light kind. It is a hydronic system. So we do have a two pipe system so there's a feed water going out to the field, and then that feed water is coming back that two pipe system is being shared with both the boilers and the chiller. What I did notice about the system over at the police department was, there is a shop feeder for chemicals. And I did notice that that we didn't have a water treatment system for the building. When you're heating up water or you're cooling water, it changes the water. So the higher you heat those waters, you start to sort of agitate those minerals and metals within the water. And those minerals and metals will attack the equipment. So you could have scale that's built up and all of the smaller equipment, the fan coil units, the air handlers, or you can have that build up that happens in the boilers or in the chiller. And seeing that, and then here in this history that we replaced the heating boilers not too long ago, and then we had a catastrophic failure. And in the chiller just led me to believe that it's extremely important that we also close the loop and have this water treatment system program in place. Since me coming aboard I ensured that the building is has an adequate water treatment system and that will help extend the life of this system so we do have beautiful new heating boilers, and now the request is to replace that chiller. So that we have a good operating HVAC system over at the police department. Other pictures so this is what the chiller looks like in the room. And if you could read that year built it does say 1989. Moving on to the banks community center, it's replacing flooring so the request is for $50,000 to continue to update the flooring throughout the building. The community center is the home to the senior center of the public health department and new safety health center. The facility is widely used for senior program and community outreach and for private and public meetings. So this is one of the examples where we, we looked at the floor and we were able to take care of some issues. This is the hall leading into the pole room that was replaced with this engineered wood flooring to the lower side of that that image is a commercial sheet vinyl. After so many years that commercial sheet vinyl will start to delaminate and come away from the concrete, it will buckle and it creates tripping hazards. So I have a few other examples of some of the various floors within the building. So all the way to the left is on the first floor where the senior center is. It's a smaller four by four tile that we see has a lot of cracking through there. It's still secure on the underlayment, but will continue to crumble and that that will be cause for concern. Obviously we don't want any anyone to take a tumble. That middle image is that sheet vinyl and that's in front of the elevator there. So once it starts breaking away, it'll continue to break away and something that needs to be addressed. Now really the only way to repair that and it is very short term is to try to cut out a big section of it and hopefully that you could get enough adhesion in that area. To keep for a safe transition. And then the last photo all the way to the right. It really doesn't look like there's anything wrong here. But this is something that we also need to to consider. So this is room 101. This is a sheet vinyl in this lower half of the image, a transition strip, and then a carpet so that that's just a cut pile normal commercial grade carpet. This room is used for meetings, but it's also used for senior center programming. What concerns me about seeing a space like this with these two different floors is that when you when you have seniors using spaces, oftentimes their ambulation starts to decline, and they don't lift their feet as high. Having these transition strips in the room makes it much more difficult for them to ambulate through the room. Another issue is having a hard surface that transitions onto a carpet surface. Oftentimes if you have wet feet when you're coming going from one type of flooring to another. You tend to have can cause some falls from that so just kind of considering the space, what it's being used for, it should have an appropriate floor that supports that programming. So this is another area that I would like to see changed really help with the senior center, help with that space and really keep everyone safe. Next is all buildings interior and exterior maintenance. The capital request for this is $200,000. And it's for general ongoing repairs needed to town buildings to ensure the facilities are adequately maintained, while implementing improvement improvement strategies that are consistent with the town's energy carbon footprint and accessibility goals. So some of the different areas where this could be used would be be repairs to wall ceilings floors and office space, and also public facing areas repairs in replacement of electrical plumbing and HVAC fixtures. Maintain exterior building envelopes, including masonry roofing doors windows repair replace building grounds, grounds including sidewalks stairways walkways handrails and lighting. So this is an example of a building envelope issue. This is the town hall. It's the four inch granite fascia that's on part of the building. I would have to say that the town hall in all is looking good that envelope, but there are some areas that definitely need to be addressed. The area could use some repointing down in the lower left hand side you can see some vegetation starting to grow. All of these things start to push on that that that masonry on that mortar, pushing it out allows for water infiltration, and then causes greater damage. Several different examples. So on the left hand side that is in the locker room over at the Amherst police department. It's just some dimensional lumber that was put in there and finished. I have had several officers tell me that something needs to be done because they've got some slivers under hindsight so looking at some smaller things so there's big things there's little things but there's certainly a lot of things that can be done. There's also an example here of a walkway where we have that that concrete that's crumbling. In New England, we do have all that winter weather, we need to ensure that the public and in our the town employees are safe. So we are treating all those sidewalks, and over time, it really does affect the integrity of the concrete. On the left hand side you can see some water damage, or that's caused the wood to rot. This is around a window, and above it, you can you can see that there's, there's some repointing that's needed so again we see this water infiltrate in these smaller areas, and it just translates down the building. We have a photo, again smaller projects so we're going from big projects to sort of smaller projects, where we could use this money to enhance. We have the banks Community Center. We have all these windows that are facing the sun gets a lot of thermal energy that passes through sometimes that's great. Sometimes that's not so great. But, but we're starting to see in those windows some cloudiness. So the gaskets of the windows are starting to break down, and that reduces efficiency. Also, we're placing some of those blinds. We, there's, there's a lot of options out there that could help us control the climate within to keep everyone comfortable. Lastly on the right hand side, there's a small corner of some block there that that could use repointing and possibly resetting, depending on the extent of of the work that's needed. Jeremiah, can I add one thing real quick. So the, the new thing that we also added to that bucket of money this year are accessibility improvements. They're not identified yet because we're still sort of going through the report that we got and determining what are the first ones that would be tackled, but that bucket of money would also be used for those and some of those improvements. Yeah, yeah. And there's, there's quite a look as Sean says there's quite a, there's quite a bit in each facility, you can run a report on say bangs and it's nearly 200 pages long and it goes into a great amount of detail with images and such, not to say that there's, you know, a lot that's that needs to be addressed but really comprehensive reports. The next project is town hall security, the request is for $15,000. And this is to continue the efforts on on expanding the building access system. What it would do is it would in, we would be able to install the RFID badge readers to more more of the doors throughout town hall, and all of the associated hardware that's needed for those. Some of the need for that is, for one, it just offers a much greater ease of access for town employees. But we also can help control and tailor each one of those, each individual's badge access so that they can get into all of the spaces they need to. And if there's areas that are that are that are not supposed to, they're not supposed to have access to we can also control that as well. And I will have to say with with all that we're dealing with right now with the pandemic, it also helps us if there was ever a need for contact tracing. So there's the these extra that are the help. So it is $15,000 but it but it's not cheap because we are replacing hardware, as well as this software that we're expanding on. In the image we're seeing a mechanical handset right now. Yes, there there's a lot of issues that can go wrong with these mechanical handsets. For one, it's coding or key access. So you have these codes. There's always the off chance that that someone could, or someone that shouldn't know that that code could gain access to the building. Is it unlikely. It's less likely but but there is still a possibility by using the badge access system, it would eliminate that if a card was to go missing, we could deactivate that card immediately. If a staff member moved on we could we can eliminate that immediately, or if we needed to grant temporary access to an auditor say that's coming to meet Sean. And we could give them a temporary badge, and we can tailor their access for certain days of the week in certain times of the day. So there's there's great benefit to the system. We've done so much with it and I'd really like to continue that. Most of the doors on the inside of town hall have been addressed and have have the building access system, but we still need to finish out the project and look at the exterior of the building. My example, and we have the months in Memorial Library, heating and cooling system. So, building was built in 1920. The furnace was not from the 20s, but yeah I think that shade of brown probably came much later. And the last major renovation was in 2008, and that was to the HVAC system. So in this image, at the top of the furnace you can see the ductwork there. That ductwork is shiny and 2008 new, but the furnace below is much older. So the months in Memorial Library has two oil fire furnaces. One's conditioning the space of the library and the other furnaces conditioning the space of the main hall in the basement area. And it's, they're starting to have more and more issues. They're not very efficient, given their age, but for the most part they're they run well enough. I'm happy and I'm happy that they do have some modern components, beckett burners, I have been in place for probably the last 40 years, or more. They do have that. So we still are able to maintain them, but their efficiency is extremely low. We do have a number of challenges for the hall. It's difficult to heat and cool that large space. And it also, with the way that the system is duct, we don't have a lot of control on it. So it's sort of an all or nothing. So the heat or the cooling that we're providing the main hall upstairs. We're also providing the downstairs. So that that area really should be heated or cooled in a different manner. It doesn't require the same BTU output that the main hall does. So with with replacement of these furnaces, we'd be able to control those spaces better. We'd be able to reduce our, our fuel expenses and just create a better energy efficient building. Projects that should be done and it would be nice to have done conjointly looking at insulation and windows and such, because even putting a high efficiency furnace in a building if we do have a lot of air leakage or air penetration from the outside and it will affect some of that that efficiency. This is a $30,000 request, but this $30,000 request is to be combined with earlier requests for for funds to replace this heating and cooling system. And I would like to see here, since this building is so, so widely used. It's always it's always a busy building is to, to, to put a VRS system in here. If I could, it would be best to put a VRS system, but that $30,000 wouldn't go very far. Maybe just estimating the cost of a VRS system for that building would probably be in a tune of 150. All right, so we do have other funds that that were requested, and really this money is to help to combine that so that we can put the proper heating and cooling system in that in this facility to be able to manage it in monitor this space. Okay, and I have another photo. Here's the other furnace looks like a Sherman tank still runs. But it's not very efficient. So this unit if you if you were to see the return on it. So the heat, the heat registers are going up very high up into the hall and coming from one side, the return for this furnace is underneath the stage. And it's, it's like a modified closet. So it's a plenum style return, you could walk in so it would be more efficient. If it was ducted straight into the furnace. But I don't know that it's possible to make those changes with this old antiquated equipment. But I promise you this isn't my lawnmower, but I found this image and I had to use it. So the last request is for $15,000 and it's to replace some of our grounds and landscape equipment for the buildings. We do have quite a bit of equipment, but we also have quite a bit of building in grounds. The building back at the last building was months in in months and has a nice big yard and a lot of beautiful trees in there and and I will say it creates a lot of work for the staff and the fall season and I and I do want to thank him and his team for assisting with that. But we certainly could use some some additional equipment. We have some small equipment at town hall and bangs police department. At this point this for this season, I've spent nearly $1000 just repairing some of the equipment that I have nets was just for the snow removal season. So that the equipment is getting old. We do have a mixture of gas and also battery options, because again we we're trying to do our best to eliminate some of the older equipment and get some of these newer the new technology some of the battery operated devices. But in some instances, the amount of area that we need to service is just too large for some of the battery operated options. So the intent with the money is to replace equipment that is aged and is now needing extensive repair. I do follow how much we are spending on the equipment because, you know, when we have say a snow thrower at months and that was purchased in 2004. You know, we have to start to consider how much we're putting into vice, how much it would be to replace it. So that would be the request is to replace some of that equipment. And I think that's it. I know Sean that you put in that $50,000 request for sustainability. I don't have a slide for that. Yeah, so I emailed the group before I think what I'd like to do is we'll talk about that one when conservation presents their projects, and Dave is here, and we'll have a write up for that one. Okay. So that's it if anyone has any questions. I'm looking at, you can put hands up if you would like to. I'm looking around the room. Mandy. I'm just going to try and let someone else go first. A number of questions some of which I came in with and some of which raised in my mind as you spoke. So I'll start with the ones that came up as you were presenting thank you for that presentation, the police department chiller. And it goes to that also to the months and HVAC in a sense you know we're trying to move off of fossil fuels. And my assumption is these chillers and HVAC systems are going to last 20, 30, 40 years up towards about the time where we have a climate action goal of being completely off fossil fuels. And so when we're putting these in. What's the additional cost to try and put something in or is it still possible to put something in that doesn't run off of fossil fuels, especially for a chiller. I know there's a lot more, you know, air sourced pumps that do air conditioning at least in in New England. You know and so you talked about that with the chiller at the police department, what would that estimated cost be for more sustainability and from months in. Is there a way to do it and, and if so what do we know what that cost is, or what would you know you talked about the VRF system, how much more would that be, and could we somehow find funds for that. And then I got more. Yeah, so the chiller. If we were to look at a chiller, you can you can replace it with an electric absorb electric centrifugal chiller. So it wouldn't be running off of a fossil fuel, and it would be electric, rather than say like an absorption chiller that would run off a natural gas. So there are electric options. And if you were to, if we were to compare an electric centrifugal chiller versus a large VRS system. I would have to guess that the VRS system for one would would offer so much more control. Than this chiller because you're yours. What, what a VRS system would allow for is you would be able to heat and cool spaces simultaneously, simultaneously with the two pipe chillers, chillers and heating the hydronic system you're doing really one or the other. So if it was a four pipe system that means every fan coal unit every air handler has two coils in it. You could run chilled chilled water or refrigerant through it, or you could do a, like a heated water super heated water. But we don't have those abilities so it is really one or the other. So the, you know the maintenance staff have to go downstairs and flip the magical switch, and we we transition over into heating or cooling season. So yes that VRS system is wonderful. It would allow us to do both simultaneously. It also can sense. If one room is is warm and another room is cool and what it could do is pull heat from this one space and transfer that heat over to the area that's cool and in vice versa so they are, they are really incredible systems. I think if we were to go a full VRF. And I'm just, you know I actually think about this stuff and I go well what is the equipment going to look like, where would it be housed. In my experience, a lot of VRS systems are on rooftops. So you would have this giant box up there that looks like a rooftop unit that you would see if you were able to look across some of the tops of the buildings. So that could be six or eight feet wide and in that tall and 12 feet long. And beside that now you have condensers that takes up a lot, a lot of space, and that's being that space is being taken up on a big flat roof. That is something that the police department does not have. So how would we put that down down on the ground, because really that's our only option. If we're eliminating the chiller and we're eliminating the condenser. Well where the footprint of the condenser is that would offer a space to put other systems. So, by no means am I an engineer but you know it's, I try to think about some of the different equipment. So there are options. So there are options to get away from fossil fuels for the for the police department. And there are good options and then great options and I would say that the great option is the VRS system. It should be a little bit more challenging for months in the VRS system is that air source heat pump system so it's basically just a multi split system so you'd have a nice device. So it could be actually you could pull that furnace out and put essentially a box with an a frame in there. So in that in that a frame, you're just sending a refrigerant through it. And there's a, and there's a fan so it's similar to like an air conditioning system you have the condenser outside, and it's either doing the heating or the cooling. So that would be a pretty low cost way of getting into air source for months in a better way, more efficient way would be as if you had actual fans within the building so if you've been into some may maybe doctors spaces you see up on the wall they have this cassette that blows it that air around. They have other options that that could go into the ceiling. There's lots more sleek looking, and they're able to send the air out a little bit better than I would say than the wall units. So those are options there. I started looking at that for both months and and North Amherst school just to see what what the cost was. I started looking at a design design in a cost estimate for North Amherst, but still based on that I'm kind of looking. Okay, what did they, what did they recommend for North Amherst and so what what would it cost for months. So I think that there are there certainly is options for months and and I would like to explore that because we do have options for the town and I know that Robin I have talked about some of the other projects and we've said well if we stick with a fossil fuel and it is super energy efficient are we doing enough, or could we do more. And if we need to do more than it would push us into these other systems. I just want to, can I follow up. I had the same question many but when you were talking about the 30,000 for months and you said you have additional money. Yes, that I thought you said the total system you might want was 150. So my question is you have the other 120 you know so, you know, so I wasn't quite sure how much we have and how much of what you just described is within at months. So I, I, I brought might be able to answer this to I believe that we have 90 additional and there might be some others other money that's out there so we have this 30 request a 90 that that's already there. I, there might be a little bit. And again, I think that the 150 is just it really is just an estimate estimate based on what I saw at Northammer school. And there are options to bring down that cost, just by the system that you choose. The 150 would probably be having the cassettes everywhere that would be supplying that one of those spaces by replacing the furnace with a heat pump system and using the existing duck work, you could reduce that costs quite a bit. But it might be an option over at the library side, even though that duck work isn't the best, because some of the registers come up right next to counters or sort of behind or near a bookcase where it's, it, it doesn't support the space very well, but it could be done. How close would we get there, what we would be off of fossil fuels, we would have a super energy efficient system, but we wouldn't, we wouldn't maximize how efficient it is unless we went full VRF.  So, so it's essentially, you have a junction box so you have your condenser outside you have a junction box and that goes to say six units, rather than one one condenser outside going to one unit inside. So, just a bigger, bigger system, and they usually have like economizers in the system so it again helps with efficiency. Alex. Andy Joe I know you have more questions but mine is related. No, go Alex my questions are all my other questions are related to out projects, not this. Okay. Okay. Um, So, it's my understanding that the ECAC committee is looking at replacing all of the HVAC systems through municipal buildings or they're creating some kind of recommendation around that. To get us toward our carbon neutrality goal in 2050 and I'm curious how these projects interrelate to that and I don't know whether you're like my husband and everything always sounds like it's okay even when it's not or like, I didn't feel any panic in your presentation I felt like I could keep these things down the road and I don't know if that's your personality, whether that's the real state of things so I'm, I'm curious. Um, because getting off fossil fuels is like this much of the piece of getting toward carbon neutrality right it's all about how energy efficient the buildings are how efficient the systems the plug loads I mean there's there's like way more to getting to that And so I guess my convoluted question I'm trying to figure out is, do we have a bigger planet coming from ECAC that may or may not mesh with this might there be grant funds that we're applying to replace the systems. And if we're looking at the cheaper systems that aren't VRF, are they really getting us to that ultimate goal that we as a town say that we have around sustainability. Can I answer those questions I don't know. I mean it's all I don't know I mean Sean I don't know who that is. Yeah, so there might be some information there that I'm not aware of. I don't know if Robert Sean has any information on that. So, I'll say one thing, and then other people can happen. One of the things we'll talk about with the sustainability improvement money is for things like this where if we are a little bit short on a project to get it to that next tier where we want it to be to be like the VRF system. That's one of the things we would hope to use that money for. In the case of the months in, you know when we get bids in if, if between the old article and the new money if that gets approved and we're a little bit short we would look to that sustainability project to get us enough to do that, do the full project that Jeremiah was talking about. And just to add that we have not seen the report from the ECAC committee so I'm not sure what they're recommending. I guess the follow up maybe for you, Jeremiah is, I mean, again, like these felt like good to do items but not necessarily I mean we've got a lot of, we have a lot of municipal buildings with systems that are from the 1990s and and like that's not a new thing for us that's kind of the bigger issue we're dealing with as a town. For me, I mean I'm looking at our capital budget like we're not going to be up to a high capital budget this year we're sort of in this interim step this year really sort of watching our pennies and so, I guess I'm trying to gauge from your presentation what really was we really need to deal with this this year versus it would be good to deal with it type proposals. And I heard a lot of things that sounded like buckets of money to deal with things that would be good to versus things we have to and again that could be completely presentation style and your mellow personality and nothing to do with actual, you know, high priority needs so I'm just trying to sort of parse out if we don't have enough money to spend. I don't want to recommend that like we don't go forward with something because I didn't fully understand the, how important the need was. So I mean I guess of the projects I mean are they all more pressing than they sounded to me or. Certainly, yeah, the police department. You have to stay calm. The department is a building that we know is a 24 hour facility, and it always has quite a few people in it. That that is probably one of the things that concerns me the most is that that chiller in part part of it is is just the scale of the replacement. It's not it's not easy. I've replaced a 600 ton absorption chiller. But that was on the outside of a building, and it was still a big project. This one's in the basement of the building. So, looking at how we're going to bring a new system into the building and get it set or decommissioned the old one and get it out of the building. And then you have all of the systems that are outside of the building and then then all the connecting pipe. So, so there's there's a lot that that we have to look at is any of itself salvageable, or does it all have to go. So it's the scale of that the PDs chiller that that is probably more concerning months in it. There is a need the boilers and the furnaces are very, very old and I joke I wish you know you could find a that battleship or all of army drab furnace but you just can't anymore. Yeah, but but they certainly do need to get get replaced. I have a follow up on that. Beyond the fact that when I moved to Amherst the house I lived in had an army drab boiler oil burner, and we, we worked with our landlord to get it replaced but I'm the upper limit on a VRF system for the police station. The request is for 400,000. What, what additional would be needed in your estimate to get up to that most efficient fossil fuel number. To be quite honest, I'm really unsure. So replace the request would be it we would be off for for cooling we wouldn't be on any fossil fuels. We wouldn't take care of the cooling season, but when we're heating, we still have gas fired furnaces. They have been recently replaced and they are very, very efficient boilers, but we wouldn't completely eliminate the need for fossil fuels. I really, I'm really not not entirely sure. If we weren't even to look at that I'm sorry Sean I'll let you speak if we were to look at that. I think it would be wise to, if at all possible to leave the, the boilers in place, leave the heating loop in place it provides redundancy. A lot can go wrong as we're seeing in Texas a lot can go wrong when you lose heat. When you lose cooling, you take off your shirt. You know, but you, you can't lose heat because major issues will happen. So to have that redundancy is is very important. And I just wanted to quickly say, many Joe, I jotted that down so that we can get back to you the information, hopefully by the time we're done presentations we can bring back the question so I just put down how much to get to the full VRF system, or even VRF for Chiller only because I don't know, I'm still unsure whether that 400,000 would cover VRF for Chiller. Okay, yeah, we'll bring back more more information on that one. Yeah, Tammy. Yeah. I just like to address the town hall security I mean you showed external doors with key pads I mean as if you're going to keep the public out I'm a little concerned I mean pre COVID that building. I went in there multiple times a week for for meetings in different rooms and going to the town clerk's office people paying bills so I was a little concerned it was like you can armor it, and nobody's going to be able to come in except unless you give them a badge so I'm still a little concerning to me that's, you know, I'm sure that that you're there's some way put the public can get in. Oh, absolutely and what what the system will will offer if we were able to put the building access system on those exterior doors, what it would allow for me to do is is is to program schedule for that door. 8am say town hall is open to the public from 8am and in normal pre post pre COVID times is say it's open or 8am or 9am. And then it's going to close services are going to close up at 6pm. So I can schedule that Monday through Friday 8am to 6pm, so that the doors will automatically open up, and then they'll automatically lock after 6pm. So if we were to have a meeting that that was later than that, or it, I could program that as a special event, and just say from seven o'clock to nine o'clock there's going to be a JCP meeting, and, and then allow people and that way as well so then seven it's open 9pm it's it's relocked. So it just adds even more flexibility more control. Okay, thank you. So a quick five minute warning before we switch over and what we can do is we can take questions. If there's other questions like I said and we can get the responses back to everybody. Yeah, I'm just looking around I had one question on a different topic the $200,000 which when I read it. And then when you talked about it I said, Oh, we're repairing walls we're repairing sidewalks we're repairing. I mean it was a big list, and then I looked at the five year spread and you've got about 500,000 going over the five years. So have you put together a large task list with these kinds of pictures you've got and this amount for this year will get this so much of it done is that the way you know because it's an eclectic group of things that all goes together. I mean it made sense that that would be but so it does become an amount of money that you're managing and then you say now we're going to do that railing with the broken up thing and now we're going to go over here. And then you've looked at over five years will get almost all of it done, or we'll get half of it done or. Yeah, yeah and I will, I would have to say that some of that Robin I have talked about there's some things that I would like to see done. I know that there are there are windows at town hall that need to be addressed, particularly on the ground level, like months in it for the hall there's the large windows that need to be got taken care of. So I do have these sort of buckets of money that I'd like to or are thinking about these projects that would need this like a bucket of money. But how much is yet to some of them I do have some rough estimates for prior to me coming aboard I know one of the inspectors that did a lot of work looking at months and so there's a number of projects over there. So having the heating system but we're also looking at making the building itself more more energy efficient with with looking at windows and lighting and fans and insulation so so. Yes, in a way to answer your question yes I have been thinking about these different projects but do I have a concrete list. So that's something that's being developed, trying to understand what are what are the priorities that's going to fall into the that money, and how, how are we going to address it over the years. I think it's a great. I didn't mean to challenge it because I think it's getting at we've talked at the council that we need to be maintaining things so not wait till it falls apart or till I looked at that little sidewalk thing till someone's foot goes through the hole and they fall over. You know that we'd like to avoid the disaster and so I think having that to do list with a pot of money is great and just as it so what you're saying is you will be able to firm it up as you start to get a sense of how the work progresses I think yeah. Okay. Thank you. I know you're going to go to the next topic but I mean I would really want to thank Jeremiah for the level of detail that you gave more detail than you probably wanted. That's the kind of guy he is, but also we're trying to be responsive both on the carbon neutral, you know, our energy goals and trying to maintain the facilities like the council has talked about by saying we're going to start budgeting money for these things so you don't get into bigger things and, you know, we're like, we don't want to be like showing you all every little thing, but we need Jeremiah to sort of use his, his knowledge to say this needs to be fixed this year. Thank you. Peter.  I would pick someone else's money if I could. I'm going to ask for her. If it's okay to continue, Kathy, the only reason I ask is that, you know, for any department that has a large expenditure, I'm going to, I want to ask the same question. Because, you know, this is all about, you know, I don't see our committee making, you know, multimillion dollar recommendation changes one way or another but you know it's all about the margins and it's obviously a very difficult year where we would much rather put it all at a higher level than we're at, obviously.  Yeah, I would have to hope that maybe in one of the areas if we're looking at the police department's chiller. Again, the 400 is sort of just a it's in some ways it's a guesstimate and, and I certainly know that it could be more. But depending on what we choose and how it is engineered, could it come under and that would provide some of that relief that you would be looking at. But it is, it is hard. I know I tried not to ask for a lot but unfortunately in my, my area on the projects just can get very costly. So, Kathy, maybe do one more question. Okay, I'm looking to see if there's a end up. Okay, and Andy. I was sort of following up on the question was just asked and I guess the question is, as you looked at the needs and you were trying to put together your own priorities. Was it higher? Was it personal safety? Was it what would provide integrity for buildings and avoid deterioration for the longest period of time? You know, what kinds of criteria did you apply? I was going to say that, you know, looking at some of the requests that were already in, I did feel that some shuffling needed to be done. And that's, that's where I had asked Sean if we could move the roof of APD out two years and switch that with the chiller. I don't know that we have two years with the chiller. If push comes to shove, I probably could get it to last that long if need be. But then after looking at some of those critical need areas, it is, like you said, it is to prevent the deterioration of these buildings. We do have a number of buildings that are old. And it's so important to, to maintain those buildings because a little, just a little bit can go a long way. We looked at the repointing as one of the areas that I highlighted in my presentation. Just having that an issue like that leads to bigger, more challenging issues. When the water getting in deteriorates the brick, and that water also gets inside and deteriorates those internal finishes. So when we're, when now we're looking at both interior and exterior repairs that are needed. So if we, we can keep these are buildings dry, we can keep them tight, our roofs are in good shape, then we can fix all of the things inside. So if we have a good roof, we have good walls, we have a good foundation, everything inside that we can, we can work with. But it's so important to maintain that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I think Mandy Scott. I have questions on future ones so can I just mention them for maybe future consideration. I'll write them down Mandy as you mentioned. I think Johnson and town hall had repointing on them in the next couple of years. I would just ask if we can consider them as CPA requests I think we've done that in the past or something. I just don't know. As we talk about moving as many things to CPA request is qualify. And then with the childcare facility. Can we really convert something to natural gas or are we still on a moratorium it's just a random question. It struck me as I thought we were on a moratorium so how are we planning for a conversion to natural gas. Yeah, I will have to look into that and I could get back to you. They're future years so they're not important right now. Okay. I think. I think we just got through Jeremiah's list correct. I'm not. I'm not seeing any other hands up. All right, do you want me to introduce the next speaker. Yes, thank you. It was actually love the pictures. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you Jeremiah. So the next. Next department is the finance department and the assessor's office. And this is a little bit different of a capital request because it's not sort of a tangible thing it's a contract. So, Liz, do you want to introduce your project. I'm going to introduce our assessor. And she has to unmute. There we go. Can you hear me okay. I got my princess lay as the Arizona. Well, I think the easiest way for me to do this is to, you know, present a couple of things the the contractor we're talking about is a cyclical program that inspects measures and lists all the buildings in town. We have 7,311 buildings or parcels in town. And we have approximately 6742 are taxable. The office has inspected 1940, or about 30%. The total that we really need to get inspected is about 4800. So I gave you a couple of scenarios I'm recommending approximately 110,000 but I gave a couple of scenarios so you could see what I've got for estimates and what it would do for us. So I am going to share my screen. Okay, can you see the screen is a shared I hope. Nope, there it is. There we go. Yeah. Okay. So what you're looking at here is a couple of breakdowns now we're going to process it over a three year period. In the past we've budgeted $40,000 a year. $40,000 a year will give us for a three year period 4800 parcels. And that is our target. If we had to do all the parcels in town that was 7311 that's including the exempt parcels. That would have been 182,000. But the office has conducted almost 30%, or 1,942 you can see to the far right. My suggestion is to keep on budgeting the 40,000. I will put out a request for bid. I did actually get an estimate from our existing vendor. His name is Roy Bishop and Bishop of a Bishop and associates has served the town of Amherst for quite a few years, and they've maintained the same rates. But for a capital expenditure of this amount, it would be prudent to do an RFP request for proposal. So that's one of the questions. So let me look at the hands pictures questions. Maybe take down your screen Liz unless people need it. And could we get that as part of our documents, Sean, you sure can. Yeah, thank you. So if we unshare the screen, then I can see whether there are any questions. Any hands up. I'm just going to ask a very basic one which is what is a, what is a cyclical valuation program like, what are you doing on. Okay, we measure and list the parcels basically what we'll send out first is a data mailer that's going to have all the information or the basic information about each structure in town we send them out to each owner of the property. At that point that owner will have that opportunity to notify us if the information is inaccurate or it is accurate. When we see anomalies will go out to those anomalies, any sales that have happened during the inspection process that's usually a two year period, we go to every sale of those properties. I'd like to try and spend a little more time on the tax exempt properties which has been a neglected area and that's not uncommon. Honestly, every community does because, you know, we're all working with very limited budgets and you're being very prudent with your taxpayer dollars. So, the tax exams tended be a little bit neglected. However, in recent years we've determined, especially in tax exams, you can usually find some nuggets of tax or perhaps enhancement what we can bring out of it so it's not a loss to actually do a good inventory of the community to make sure that all the teas are crossed and all the diet, the eyes are dotted so everybody equalizes that burden of tax. Thank you. And so Mandy just to add to that there's a state requirement that every so many years you have to get to the to these properties and so it's five years now lives every five years you have to hit all the properties. That's correct last revaluation here was in 2018. So the next one in 2023. 20 January 2023 is when we have to establish the value so we'll be looking at the sales from 22 and 21 to establish the 2023 value. And I just so when you're talking about tax exempt. Are we also talking about college and university or is it churches. All tax exempt, all tax exempt so would be all tax exempt so that would be churches that would be colleges that would be civic organizations perhaps that act in a charitable function, like the survival center or something of that nature. So in your 7,311 buildings is that count all the UMass buildings. That's everything, but I got a feeling I may be shy of you. No, I just, I mean, I, according to my statistics they have over 400 buildings and we only got 149,000 back in grants. You're wrong with that figure. And Liz that's parcels right the 7,000 is that's a parcel number that is the number of accounts. We're charged per account when it comes to doing evaluation services. And of course, we in the assessor's office are going to do our very best to get as many done as possible to reduce that over that overall cost to the community. The previous assessor was successful in doing that and he was able to encumber funds that went towards this year's interim evaluation expenses and so forth so we would like to keep that trend going. We were able to keep our keep under budget this year, and I'm real proud of our, our, our crew here we work real hard to try to stretch every dollar for you all, so that we can be worth our, we worth our pay. So, any other questions. The only other thing I don't think that you're not looking at operational budget budgets tonight correct. Yeah, just that one. Yeah, so that's, that's all I have to share with you tonight. Thank you every. Thank you very much. You know I'm just thinking of when up what what our old farmhouse is on your books what you have as content so I guess we'll see. Well, usually when I do this process, some of the first people I share the new numbers with our people like you. It tends to have a greater impact on the audience when you're looking at your own properties, it's a little more meaningful. And that way, you know, you can see the impact that will have on the outer community. So, tends to keep you from glazing over when I talk, talk assessments. So, you know, it's not a thrilling job but it's an important job I really enjoy doing for you. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. Thank you, Liz. So, yeah, yes. Thank you and good night everyone. And I'll send that form to you to share with them okay. So our next speaker, I was going to go to Doug because he's quick. He's just got Doug are you doing the copiers or is Jerry doing the copiers. I'll do the copiers. Okay, sorry, Jerry and Sean. Basically, as described in the in the draft of the joint capital playing document we didn't do any copiers this last year they they typically last about five years we have a number of them throughout the district. You know, once we get beyond five years the number of copies, a community support where the repair of them and the warranties on them get expensive and the number of repairs go up and so it becomes cost effective to replace them. We have two slated for replacement, which were technically on last year's JCBC and obviously we've used the copiers less and we still use them but but they they're less. They are printer copiers so that you know we try to eliminate number of printers we have. There's one slated for Crocker Farm and one slated for Fort River. Each of those machines gets on the order of half a million copies a year to give you a sense of the workload that they take on. The other thing that's in that request for copiers is there's a very large, I will say commercial size copying machine at the high school that we use larger volume printing, more, you know, found documents that sort of stuff. And so, each of the districts helps contribute to buying that new machine that's a that machine's sort of base prices in the, I think 40 $45,000 range. And so, you know, we're looking to replace that that machine's gotten quite, it's, I think about eight years old, maybe a little older. It's starting to show its age and break down often and and it's outside the window of being under warranty so it. It's, it's a more expensive repair when we have those. So those are the request for copiers for the coming year. Obviously, you know, we've had low usage this year and a good chunk of last year. I will state this for the sake of, of, you know, I know that you have things that you have to trim out of your, your joint capital planning budget generally. There's a little wiggle room on this I would say these have, you know, relative to some of the things you'll hear from the schools. These are, are an area where if, if push comes to shove a little trimming can be done and we can, we can tolerate that. Again, I think that's largely because our, our usage has been so low over the last year and a half. I think I'll stop there and answer any questions anyone has about the exciting topic of copiers. So, looking around. Mandy. So copiers are also the tech equipment portion for schools that were just copiers right now. I didn't have any questions actually remembered this presentation before we shut down capital last year. I'm not seeing any hands up. So I think we could move on to the next and so I feel divided loyalties. Choose in between Jerry and Sean on this one I feel like they should do rock paper scissors or something to decide who goes next. Whoever turns the screen on first gets to go up Jerry. Oh, Jerry's gone. I can control zoom so I could probably. Jerry's Jerry's more than welcome to go first. You'd rather. All the same to me. The Jerry's is a little bit quicker so I don't know. Okay, not now the pressure's on. Exactly. And I was going to talk, you know, come in on Sean's dollhouse and how pretty it is. So, I spent a lot of time recently going over the devices in and figures I had submitted back in the fall. As you all know it's been a very a typical school year for us. And what that's causes kind of a shift in the priorities and and the expenditures. You know, and we shut down in March we were all of a sudden faced with handing out, you know, several, a couple thousand devices to do families to support and stuff and what it also causes less wear and tear on some of the other equipment. That's what we have in position. So looking at that and looking at expenditures and what we didn't spend because we were shut down for the last year and stuff. Today, I've been able to kind of reallocate some funds and cut some funds entirely so if you look at the, the requests that I had submitted. There were a couple items that have seen some major changes so the big one is projectors. Since they haven't been used in a year we haven't seen the the the attrition that we expected, especially given the age of many of them. Another big change that's affecting this is the reconfiguration of the quads at Fort River and Wildwood, moving from basically four classrooms to two in each of the quads each classroom previously had a projector so we technically have some spares if need be. So that 28,600 I've zeroed out so you can right away take that zero that out. One thing that has changed and has gone up and kind of setting that is the switches. The switches will also tie into the wireless line so the wireless line I've reduced from $55,000 down to $30,000. Okay, in the switch line we've moved from 10,000 up to $40,000. This are multiple. As far as the switches goes one of the things we do have to do is the town fiber starts coming into place. We need to upgrade all the core switches that will allow us to connect to that fiber. So there's monies in there to support that. We have also been able to look at implementing one to one Chromebooks from first through sixth grade or previously we had third through sixth grade. But what this is causing is an increased load and reliance on the wireless. So we are looking to increase the capacity of our wireless network to be able to better handle the additional load. And you say but you went down from 55 to 30 because that's because the equipment has become better more efficient and more cost effective. So looking at the request now as they stand the top line stays pretty much as I submitted for 120,000 and that's to replace. That is most of the of that is for computers. Okay. The staff laptops, when we purchased them a few years ago were off lease then. We've aged since then so we're looking at replacing a lot of the older staff laptops I did an inventory today and if I can find it we're looking at about 110 laptops that are aged out and should need to be replaced and they run about $1000 a piece. By the time you get the laptop in the warranty. We'll still keep in there and even though they're using lap times because a lot of people still use monitors libraries labs and such and we still have some older smaller LCD monitors so the 1500 will basically cover about 10 to 12 monitors. These as we said to 40,000 which sounds like a lot, but it doesn't go as far as you might think. Some of our course which is run upwards of $24,000. So that's going to handle. What we need to do right now to connect to the fiber and to replace some of the other closet switches. I left that in there at 3000 the wireless as I said goes from 55 to 30,000. I've zeroed out the multimedia equipment line as well. So that pretty much the entire request. Okay, can I just ask is the, what's the final number for FY 22, that's being proposed. Okay, just change back to that. Just so I can make sure if I need to update. 194 500. 194,500. Correct. We just got today from Doug, some of the capital balances. As Sean well knows that I don't have access to those. So it's always kind of a little bit of guesswork to see where I stand on the another variable which may affect things going forward to is we submitted some of our purchases under the cares act. So we, I hear back or we know back. I haven't heard whether that is being supported by the cares act. We'll know if we have anything else. Questions. Alex. I just want to clarify that I heard your last statement right. So, funds that you think that you submitted under cares act, if they're declined will be added to the budget or the current budget might be decreased if they're accepted. And that would have, that means that some of the funds that we have booked against capital purchases may become available again, so that we'll be able to decrease, not increase. That's what I was making sure I thought I heard it one way and then I was like, and Kathy can I just clarify one thing real quick. So, and maybe this was a miscommunication on my part. So if people look back at the capital plan, we had pushed FY 21 out. So the number in the capital plan is 148,000. So we'll update that with the new figure that Jerry just stated I think it was 194,000. Yeah, because it was there wasn't a match. So thank you for catching that. Yeah. Okay, sorry, I only had the, what I had submitted which had the FY 22 as, as you were looking at. Yeah, like I said, it might have been on my parcel I apologize. And in terms of the cares act, if at what point. So Peter's question of if you had to give up 50 but at what point would we know whether part of this 194 is covered from another source or could be covered. I know that like in the next month. Just on when you're going to come to us with a balance sheet for this year. Any sense. Right. I don't know I defer to Doug and Sean. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm just. I think I'm done can jump in on this too. He can talk about the school cares my so there's lots of cares buckets right now there's a big bucket on the municipal side and I think there's two or three buckets on the school side. On the town side right now we're waiting to hear back from FEMA as to what they are going to cover, and that will dictate how much cares money we have available because FEMA is the first funding source and cares as the backup if FEMA doesn't cover it. The problem is it's FEMA, and they're really slow, normally, and then you have every community in the country, applying to FEMA, and so it makes it even even a slower process so we've submitted to FEMA requests, and we haven't heard back on either of them yet. And then to complicate matters more this is sort of like an accountant's worst nightmare, they keep changing the rules for these grant programs and Doug can attest to that. So FEMA originally was going to reimburse 75% of eligible costs. They've now changed that to they're going to reimburse 100%. And they're changing the eligibility a little bit and so it's quite possible as Jerry said that there will be more cares money that we can use to potentially cover some of the, some of those it costs that fall into eligible buckets. So we're trying to be prudent and wait to find out that we've gotten FEMA money first before we start spending more cares money. Beyond what we already have. Thank you. Mandy you had said you had a question on this. Yeah, Andy had his hand up first. Okay. Oh, I see the little blue hands are up okay thank you. Thank you. Looking at this number I've heard for a couple months now that many new it and laptops and all were were purchased last spring, and that that would be able to sort of decrease the required purchases for this year and next year for tech for yet in the presentation it sounds like that's not happening so I guess, where is it, are we just what I guess I'm confused and I'm not matching those statements together you know it is what we purchased for schools and students because of COVID, decreasing how much tech we need to purchase for the next couple of years because we sort of pre purchased everything to be able to cover more students or has the school policy changed, so that we're not. We're not going back to which students used to have tech were permanently expanding what students have tech so that we now have more laptops to replace every year. I hope that was kind of clear. Those funds, none of those are for student devices. Okay, so we were able to use the cares money or whatever money is that were made available to replace or augment devices for for this year, which will cover us for the next few years so to explain on Chromebooks again Chromebooks have a finite life. And when I say that it's not because they just die or whatever but Google stops supporting them for updates. So we have currently and this is K 121336 Chromebooks that are going out of support this year as of September 2021 of those about 712 are Amherst devices. We're able to purchase enough devices to cover all of those that are going out of update support, but it also is allowing us to have one to one one through six so we won't have shared devices. We know that you know when we first started going down this path, the science wasn't in about surfaces and the transmission of COVID on surfaces. Obviously we know now that that's not as as as transmissible as it was, but we still like to keep things where students are sharing as few things as possible. Okay, and if you saw the way these come in these devices, you would say well it's a good thing we're not sharing them anyways because it's like Jackson Pollock painting as far as the screens and the keyboards at times. We got one in today that had milk spilled in it, for example, and it reeks and it's not salvageable. So we've had a lot of attrition, unfortunately, this year, we've repaired what we can, but a lot of them because they were older and going out anyways we're just not repairing. So none of the this money is for student devices. However, indirectly, it is to support student devices as we have to look at or we want to look at increasing the wireless, the coverage is good but the capacity could be improved. In other words, when you have every classroom with every student on devices, then we need to have to be able to support that capacity. Whether how the MCAS testing falls and who's going to be in the school is still up in the air, but that's this year. Next year, you know we are likely going to be doing high stakes testing and when we do it, it's the entire grade at once. When we do it at the high school it's every student that's taking MCAS is doing it at once. I know this we're talking Amherst but that's just when I talk about capacity is being able to support that volume all at one time. So 120,000 for computer laptop tablet replacements is not a single student. Those are not that this this coming year is not for students that's strictly staff laptops. As I said, over the years, you know we've done different purchases of staff laptops for the elementary teachers. In the last three or four years we've been using off lease because we didn't have enough money to do new. So the off lease ones are less expensive but they're already a couple years old. So that's kind of catching up to us and we need to look at replacing some of them and as you may know, laptops don't age as well as depth stops. So we're still, you know, running the solid state hard drives now so so we can't kind of increase their lifespan by throwing those in the way we used to with some of the old ones. So, and we also had to purchase a lot of iPads for kindergarten students. We have those we don't have to do them purchase them now, although some are aging out and it's the same way with Apple they just stop supporting older devices and we can't upgrade them. So we've had problems with some of the older iPads because they were stuck at a version of the operating system that didn't allow allow the newer versions to say Google meet, we use Google and to install so that cause problems with some of the devices. So it's really just trying to support the current software and apps that they use. But again, none of this is for that. This is for the teachers. Thank you. Yeah, actually, I think some of what you just said in response to Mandy response to what I was thinking is I raised my hand originally so I had what I've been hearing was that you were doing a lot of reaction to adjusting to needs of the current year as opposed to needs of the year ahead. When we anticipate finally getting back into actually teaching in schools. I just wanted to make sure that future planning is going in the direction we wanted to and I think the answer is a little bit there. No, I think we're actually in very good position we started reacting to the situation last March. And as some of you may or may not know the Chromebook supplies were dried up overnight. The order I put in in June didn't arrive until mid December, for example. But fortunately working with the suppliers I worked with we were able to get the devices we needed to support students, and now these devices are good until the bulk of them until June of 2026 and some of them until 2028. As far as far as student devices go in a pretty good position going forward over the next few years. Peter. It's a little bit of context on some of the good questions are asked. I don't know if this is where any was going but the support of laptops for teachers that's in that's in a steady state, normal non pandemic time that teachers need laptops these days this isn't. This isn't laptops in anticipation of some remote model next year. I won't turn this into a school committee meeting school committee has talked about the fall. And yeah and the Chromebook thing was crazy there was a massive global ethics issue with the supply chain where were those dried up. So that's what happened there. Interesting story. No, we trend we offered laptops to elementary teachers, many years ago we're probably on our fourth iteration of devices at this point, third or fourth. So that's not a reaction to the shutdown. I don't think I see any other hands on. So I think, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we have shown the other Sean now, correct. Yeah. Yeah, the better looking Sean. I'm just happy that I don't have to follow the fire department I think my last three capital hearings have been in in person in the fire department normally shows up with like demo equipment and everything and I just feel kind of inadequate so those similar to other years that do they just run through what we, what we have on here. Yeah, just run through the four projects. Yeah. So we've got four, four projects there. Most of our pretty good goal. The biggest one which is our infrastructure replacements, which is the 162 925 and that are standard stuff that we place on a schedule it's 75 computers a server, some network switches and wireless access points and cleaning up some of the network cabling some of the aged network cable in the 10 plus years old and replacing a few copiers. So we've got that. We've got that document imaging which is a simple we've done in the past. And this kind of a continuation of it that we got a community compact brand to buy laser fish which is a document management system to house all these documents that we've scanned over the years. We'll be sending out additional documents to get them scanned so we can load them into the laser fish system. The next thing we have is the MDT is the base of the computers in the police cruisers. And those, those are, they will be five years old in May, or if I, which are four or five years old this will be five years old next May. And those get a lot of those get a lot of wear and tear, and they, they also, the temperature goes up and down in the vehicle and everything so those. The past that if we try and stretch those out too far they, they start failing, and they'll no longer be under warranty and it's, you know that. And then the last is the library capital which is a similar replacement schedule for them which is some PCs a printer photo copier wireless access point and a security camera. So I don't know if we. Yeah. I'm looking at hands because I had a couple questions when I was looking through this but I'm letting others go first. So, well last mine it was actually on the smaller line on the library side. Not for this year, but looking out several years. If the expansion project goes through and we're constructing a library and it's closed. Do we continue to buy the equipment during those years, or will we put that on hold. You know so this is it went out for each of several years so it wasn't a question for, you know I'm assuming we will be able to open the library up this year. So there's a line item but I looked at it's it's every single year is buying and you describe what you would be buying. Yeah, so I can't answer that definitively but what I can say is this, the numbers that are on there been coordinated with with Sharon at the library so it, the numbers that are on there and the reason you see some of the fluctuation is based on their anticipated renovation. So my understanding is the out year numbers on that are are roughly correct. I think the anticipation is that they wouldn't depending on how long the library will be closed they will be buying equipment to go into the new library. I said it's not. It's not directly affecting the year we're looking at so I just curious about out years. Mandy. So I have a follow up to that one and two others. My follow up is, and this is probably, I don't know whether Sean you can answer this or it needs to go to Sharon, or whether one of the trustees can is it infrastructure like what's on these requests so computers and stuff for the library, something that's included in the soft costs of a of the mblc program that we've seen numbers on such that they wouldn't need to be on the capital plan. I just don't know so I'm curious. So the questions are the scanning that you talked about I noticed this is the last year on the five year plan for that does that mean after this year we're going to be done the scanning that we needed to do. And then the tech replacements the number seems stable so this is the similar question to what I asked on the school side which is. Did we buy a lot of tech for coven and I believe we did. Did this number take that into consideration, such that maybe we don't have to replace as much this year because for next fiscal year because this fiscal year and last fiscal year we ended up buying a whole lot. So, I think to answer I'm in the order of the, the library question my understanding and somebody else probably knows this better but my understanding is the mblc money does not ever the computers in there. So I don't know if there's a difference 14 years ago in Worcester but so I don't I don't know if anybody else has a definitive answer to that. And I can write that one down, unless somebody else knows and just get we'll come back with the definitive answer. Yeah, I would say that you're right that in terms in terms of the eligibility for the grant from the mblc, it's definitely not included. There's a furniture fixture and equipment line that has a line for data equipment telecommunications equipment audio visual equipment books were all of that stuff but I don't know the detail level of that to know exactly how it breaks out so that's about all like given terms of information. And then our other, our other projects. So for the scanning. I can't say for sure if that will finish it off but the idea is that that will. The idea is that we take a lot of the old stuff we have in paper and scan that and then the new system like with the new permitting system. And much more of that is generated electronically and stored electronically that once we get through the backlog of our historic stuff. Then much of the new content is digital to begin with so it gets stored digitally. And then the question as far as the equipment. Yeah, we purchased with cares but the stuff, the main stuff that we bought with cares money was laptops, which we, we deployed a lot of laptops to users to work from home. And we, right at the time we, that was our only way of getting a webcam for people to zoom with so. So those continue to be used they'll be deployed and in many cases will end up using those as a desktop with people keyboard mouse and monitor so certainly to the question of what, if we had to cut something, what we would cut. The computer the number of PCs that we would normally purchase we could reduce that we could certainly reduce that by by 25 or 35. We needed, we needed to cut somewhere that certainly will be a good place to start. Peter. If you had another 50,000 more than you had. Well what's what's the next thing you would really like to do. So what it's one of the things that we're, we're trying to focus on this year is just reevaluating a lot of what we do in terms of security cyber security so we have been trying to use Microsoft, we use Microsoft Office 365 for our email but we've been over with COVID and and everything else we've been with people working more remotely we've been doing a lot more with teams and everything else. So I would say I would say security and collaboration or kind of the two, two big things. And with both of those are most of those are services. So when we add something if we added something there then oftentimes that it increases the operating budget significantly so that's we've been really cautious about what what we add. There's some amazing stuff that if we turned it on for everybody it would be fantastic but our, our bill would go up quite a bit and Sean and Paul would probably be unhappy so. Thank you. Andy's hand is up Andy. Let's say real quick, you blame for everything when you're financially get blame on the school side was blamed for everything on the town. What are you talking about just throw it out there. Yeah. Sean Hannon is the Inet running on budget. Yeah, so far it is as far as the installation. So, so far it's. There's, there's a couple questions as far as where they have to go underground. They haven't done that yet but as far as far as I've heard with everything that they're putting on the polls and everything that's, that's moving along and and they haven't run into anything unusual yet. When's the new projected finished deadline, finished date for that. Well, we've it's mid March. There's, it's a little unclear as far as I'm getting into buildings and some of the underground stuff they haven't been able to do yet just because the grounds frozen. I'm not seeing anything else. I just want to compliment you and your staff, because I think this switch to zoom and managing the security technology on zoom but also put posting the videos, you know, for the first time. The committee committees can go back and watch them, you know, if someone wants to say, can I see something and I know your staff has been getting individual requests from people missed a meeting that want to see it the next day and surge has been respond you've just been incredibly responsive and I don't know how, and I've known, seen you've redesigned some of the web design too so that. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. No, I'm over incredibly lucky we, we, we made, we've had some staff changes over over time and and I think that we just locked or something else that we, we kind of hit hope it at a time that we had that we've had fantastic staff who've been able to just jump in and then incredibly flexible and people who were hired to do one thing and expected to do one thing and and assert, search started, I think January 15. And so it's just the way with everybody they, they everybody has really stepped up and we so been incredibly lucky with that so thank, thank you. Thank you all. So, I'm, I need to check double check to see if we have any public that wants to. There are no public attendees. So there won't be any public requesting things so I think we just got through tonight's agenda, and there are no unexpected issues. Sean has been adding shown should we just automatically look in the packet so is that you see the you'll get all of our, where's the packet where should we look. Yeah, so, so I put. So yeah, if you go to each meeting packet, the projects for that night are in that packet. They're all in there now so you can go out to meetings or the next meeting and you'll see the project write ups. Okay, thank you for doing that and I don't know the people who wanted to get the Excel sheets he did in a recent email attached Excel with all these dollar lines going out so those who wanted that information we have it in our hands. So I think I think I can say that the meeting is adjourned. Thank you all have a nice Friday and we thank you. Thank you.


It's high on the organizational agenda, because we have now reached the threshold where business is changing in real time and strategies that you might have planned for either a year or five years are no longer going to be applicable. You have to be ready to evolve according to market conditions right as it's happening. And so for that reason, you have to put together agile structures that allow your business to pivot very, very quickly. Now unfortunately there's areas like technology infrastructures where you can't pivot quickly because things don't operate together. They're on set hardware systems that you've had for a long time. And so an example of transformation that needs to happen is that digital transformation where we move everything into the cloud in order to be able to operate more efficiently and effectively and much more quickly. I would say the biggest barriers for transformation are organizations that have a lot of hierarchy that have been doing things a certain way for a long time and they're entrenched processes and procedures, lots of approvals required and so innovation gets stifled because the organization doesn't have the infrastructure in place to facilitate any kind of agile movement and therefore it's difficult to have real transformation when you're not constantly putting it at the forefront and making it a priority. So we need to understand the human element to be effective at transformation. The fact is, is whenever you want to make a giant change, you're dealing with human beings who don't love change anyway and might not see the applicability of that change to their job. And so as a leader you must be inspirational, you must have a big picture vision, you have to actively communicate what is this change and how are we going to do it. I think the mechanics of transformation are exceedingly important. How is this going to happen and let's communicate about it as frequently and as clearly as possible and that's the way to get people on board because you have to be a motivator in this day and age particularly because so many people are scared by current circumstances. It doesn't have to be scary but as a leader you have to be the one who gets people excited about transformation, something that's good for people and want people to see it that way. So I'm a workforce futurist and what that means is that I look at trends in the marketplace and try to determine what has the potential to really be disrupted. So things like the rise of contract work, the rise of the human machine hybrid team and other evolving workplace structures and it relates to transformation because most organizations have been operating on somewhat of a nine to five Monday through Friday. Everyone's a full-time employee, everybody's in a physical location and we see work changing rapidly. The thing is, most organizations are not in a position to really move everybody over to that model and so what I do as a consultant is I work with those organizations to one small step at a time, put pieces in place that allow them to take advantage of this 21st century business world where there's so much technology to help us but we really have to use things like automation far more strategically and that's where I come in.


Hi everybody, good morning almost afternoon I'm here to speak to you about blogging today, but listening to everyone speak before me I think I'm in the hobbyist kind of part as opposed to the expert blogging and I wanted to tell you a little bit about How I got started blogging. I do it part-time. I don't do it professionally, but I do it as part of Shoring up what I do as a writer So I wanted to talk to you guys just about how it's possible to blog But not dedicate like all your time to blogging because I think we all have busy lives and sometimes it's hard to To do everything at once. So I was just gonna start with I started blogging a long time ago After I graduated from college. I was really bored at work at the Wall Street Journal so I started a personal blog and Initially, you know, I just went on blog spot Just made up a name and I thought I was only gonna be blogging to my friends and my family members and then it just Really got kind of out of hand because so many people started responding to my blog just when you link to other people's blogs they find you and then it just goes from there and That's when I got my first taste of Blogging for validation, you know, you blog to get to start that conversation But you're blogging because you want people to leave comments on your blog and and talk to you and you talk back to them But with a personal blog, there's a pitfall to that in that you You start blogging things that maybe people wouldn't be comfortable with you sharing So I found that the more I blogged about personal things the more people came to my site So that was fine if it was just my life But you know, I stopped doing that as much when I got married a few years ago because you know I have to respect like my family's wishes in terms of what I share with the world But I mean there's positives also to having a personal blog in that you meet a lot of people who are supportive of you If you're going through a hard time or who are congratulating you if something great happens like when I had my daughter in May so So and also one of the positives of having a blog whether it be personal or professional is that you don't have to be famous you can just be anybody is sitting in this room you can just start blogging and You could get traffic to your site from a variety of ways and I guess we'll talk about that at the workshop But it's a it's a great way to connect with people And you meet wonderful people also So I started the evolution of my blogging started a couple years ago when I started my professional blog and As you can see like this was my personal one on blogger then I moved up to a WordPress which I think was an improvement It's just a easier interface for me to use and a cleaner interface And on this first professional blog I post like the articles I write and it also has my Twitter feed on it Which I'll talk about in a minute but this blog comes in handy because You know what in this age when everyone googles you before they even meet you this gives me an opportunity to establish my Self my presence speak for myself and if people Google me Hopefully this is one of the first things that come up instead of you know some random link about something I did in college or or What somebody else wrote about me or something like that so this is a site people can go to if they want to know About me and it's it's information that I control So this comes in handy in that regard so even if you aren't a blogger But in your professional life like you need to go beyond a business card. It's a good idea. I think to start a blog And from there this has my resume. This has my my articles on it I started micro blogging which is in the form of Twitter and I run at Doha news Which is like a public service that I just started earlier this year Just keeping people up to date. What's going on in Doha, and I just do that as something I want to do I'm not paid by anyone. Nobody pays me to Tweet anything in specific And I love it because I get I met so many people in Doha this way And I've learned so much about what's happening in Qatar And I think it's something that I see T cut there So we should talk about with them in terms of there is no central website We can go to to find out what's going on in this country And there's a lot going on and people always complain that there isn't anything happening But that's because it's really hard to find that information all in one place So the advantages of tweeting if you don't have time to start a blog for example It's great because it's 140 characters and you can do it anytime you can do it anywhere You can you can tweet on your cell phone. You can tweet on your laptop. I Mean got there is very connected Wireless is in all the parks and at the Corniche and you know with my daughter I can hold her in my lap and and tweet or I can eat lunch and tweet or when we're walking outside We can whatever I want to say like recently I went to Had an experience at the hospital because my daughter was sick and I could tweet Okay, this hospital is better than this hospital just in our experiences and that was one way to share with people what's going on In cut there because people are always looking for stuff like that like okay. Where do I go? We're all Most of us are expats here. I think that follow me on Doha news. So But then also I have a private Twitter account that I think some of you had tried to follow But I won't accept your request follow me on Doha news, but my private account I just keep my friends and family Because they're far from here And then also I'm a global voices contributor and global voices online basically it curates the news it curates a conversation and it brings Into focus the conversations that are going on in places that the media might not necessarily talk about So this post example was a cartoon that ran in the local newspaper and people are really upset about it They thought it was a bad taste so I just basically followed what the blog said and what followed the tweets said and And came up with an article just breaking it down what people were talking about So that's another way to use blogs as a as a way to gauge the sentiment in a region So those are just the things I do That's all I really wanted to say I guess it was shorter than I thought but I Mean I'm excited to see all the women in the audience and I'm sure a lot of you have full-time jobs I had nothing to do a blogging But I think a country can be a lonely place sometimes and it's really hard If you don't make a real effort to go out and meet people who aren't in your circle already and I think the online Hemsphere is a really good way to start that I've had a lot of people On Twitter who I hopefully will meet in person today just based on your tweets I think a lot of you are here who I follow on Twitter and follow me so So that's all I have to say Tips for the new people we talk about at the workshop But for example should be a dotnet you can start a wordpress or something And then you can for eight dollars by a domain name. So for eight dollars a year I have should be a dotnet and that's a lot easier to get to than should be a dotnet or She'd be in a 921.wordpress.com. So we can talk more about that later And that's it