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I remember her.

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Good evening. I'd like to welcome you to the January 8th, 2026, Barnstable Town Council meeting.

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In accordance with Mass General Law chapter 38, section 20. I must inquire whether anyone is recording this meeting and if so, to please make your presence known. Seeing no one, be aware that this meeting is being recorded. Televised live by the town via Xfinity channel eight, channel 1070 and high definition channel 1072. It may also be accessed via the Government Access channel. Live stream feed on the town website, the Mid Barnstable app, and the dedicated Barnstable streaming app. Madam clerk, we have a roll call, please.

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Councilors.

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Bloom here.

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Burdick.

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Present.

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Clerk. Here. Crocker. Here. Crowe. Here. Deleuze.

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She's on zoom.

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Is she there? I can't see her.

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Councillor Deleuze.

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Here. She's on mute.

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Councillor Deleuze.

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No response.

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No response. Okay. Keane here.

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Levac here.

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Lucki here. Pen.

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Shingled.

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Here.

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Starr. Here.

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Here.

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We have quorum.

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Just again, for the record. Council star and Councillor Deleuze. If she appears, we will be on zoom.

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Okay. I would like to recognize Council.

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The room is here.

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Okay. Thank you.

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Okay.

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Okay. Thank you, President Bush. Let me introduce our veteran for tonight. You can see on the pictures there we have a Navy captain, Leonard Len DeLorenzo. And the picture on the left side is of Captain Lorenzo. When he wasn't a captain, he was it was in 1967. And in the background is Naples, Italy. And he's aboard the USS Dyess, 1967. And there he is just a few years later. He's 80 years old and he's still in his uniform, and he's looking marvelous there.

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United States Captain Leonard Len DiLorenzo grew up in Medford, mass. His father was a World War II Navy veteran who retired with 22 years service. His mother was a housewife. Len attended Tufts University on a Navy ROTC scholarship, and was commissioned on the USS Constitution as an ensign in 1966. He spent two years on a destroyer out of Newport, with deployments to the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and the west coast of Africa. He was assigned to shore duty billet in Danang, Vietnam for a year, supporting I Corps of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. After his year in country, Lynn was the assistant Officer in charge for two years of a school in Newport. After five years of active duty, Lynn transitioned to the Naval Reserves. As an engineering duty officer and spent another 22 years in command of units supporting the maintenance and construction of ships and submarines in New England, Connecticut, and Maine. He retired from the Navy in 1993 and lives in Hyannis with his wife, Anne Marie. Let's welcome Captain Lynn DeLorenzo.

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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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Captain, thank you very much for being captain.

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Thank you very much for being here tonight. We appreciate your presence and thank you for your service. Thank you everyone. Remain standing for a moment, please, for a moment of silence. For all those that have served and have sacrificed for our country.

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Thank you.

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Okay, we will move on to public comment. Please make sure you sign in with your name and village for public comment. Public comment is three minutes. Please keep your comments brief and to the point. Written comments are always welcome at Council at Barnstable. You'll note that that's a new email address. All the town email addresses are being changed over to at Barnstable Gov. And the comments will be distributed to the entire council. If you choose to email an individual councilor, it may not necessarily be distributed to all councillors. I wish to remind everyone that no member of the public may speak, with the first being recognized by the Presiding Officer. The public will have an opportunity to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting, and during any public hearing on an agenda item, you are free to express your thoughts, opinions and criticism during public comment. However, your comments should be directed to the Council as a body. Through the Presiding Officer, you may not speak directly to any individual councillor. You also should not be addressing your comments to anyone else in this room, not to town staff, nor to any other member of the audience. Public comment is for the council. We also ask that members of the public refrain from making audible comments during the meeting, unless they have been recognized to speak by the Presiding officer. At this point, it looks like Miss Conley is first in line.

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Yeah, I always like to get this over with. Um. Thank you. President. Councilors. My name is Suzanne Conley and I live in Oster ville. The Massachusetts Energy Facility Siting Board is currently undertaking a rulemaking process in order to implement aspects of the 2024 Climate Act. This involves public meetings and opportunities for public comment, most of which will be totally ignored and the FCC will go ahead and implement the changes they've already proposed regarding the siting and permitting of renewable energy infrastructure projects. These changes include issuing a so-called consolidated permit to cover state and local permits, which means municipalities will lose all control of zoning when it comes to the permitting and siting of large solar, wind and energy backup facilities. FSB will also utilize constructive permitting, which means if they do not approve a renewable energy permit within 15 months following application, the developer's proposal is automatically approved. What an incentive to not do your job. What I want you to be aware of is the position of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs regarding article 97, the Massachusetts constitutional amendment that protects public lands like our recreational beaches, from, as the amendment states, quote, alternate use. At a December 15th FSB public hearing focused on assessing the cumulative impact in site suitability of renewable energy projects under Secretary of Ina. Michael Judge articulated his opinion not for the first time that article 97 cannot be invoked to prevent ocean windfarm cables from landing on public beaches because they are, quote, under the sand, end quote. This is a perversion of the intent of article 97, which is explicitly meant to preserve the people's right to quote clean air and water, freedom from excessive and unnecessary noise, and the natural, scenic, historic and aesthetic qualities of their environment. End quote. Nothing in this amendment to the state's constitution restricts these rights to the surface of public lands with this interpretation. This council's protection of Baby Beach under article 97 and the resolution taken to not support cable landings at doses becomes become meaningless. Please consider standing up for Home Rule and your ability to protect Barnstable beaches by submitting public comment as a group or individually no later than February 13th. Or commenting on this aspect of changes at the next hearing on February 2nd. I've shared a copy of my remarks as well as FSB contact information with the council. By email I thank you for your time and attention.

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Thank you. And that email has been distributed to the council.

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Thank you so much.

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Anyone else for public comment?

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Thank you. I'll sign in after I read the statement. I'm kind of new to this here, so, Mr. President, I didn't even know how to address you, Mr. Chair, or how to do it. But, Mr. Chair, Mr. President and Councillors, thank you for having me. I'm Mike burns, I live at 60 Pleasant Street in Hyannis. I should also tell you that I'm a professional planner and I work on Nantucket, and I have for well over 20 years. And I say that to hope I don't say anything too out of line, because I know that you work with or know a lot of the people that I work with. Um, so I'll say, Happy New Year to you all. Uh, unfortunately, I'm not here to compliment the great work of your staff. Uh, although they deserve it. Um, I'm not here to compliment the great leadership you provide, although I'm sure there are times when it should be recognized. I'm here to ask that you take an issue which relates to safety, our economy, the convenience of the public you serve, that you take all of this a bit more seriously. The sidewalks around the ferry terminals, around Main Street and along the Kennedy Legacy Trail were shamefully hazardous and recent after the recent storm event. Mister chair. All right, Mr. President, the the ferries carry 80,000 passengers a month this time of year. 40,000 passengers are carried on the High Line. And those residents and visitors walk to parking lots, shops and other destinations within walking distance of the terminal. That number is almost three times the population of this village, and it's estimated that the residents of Nantucket spend about $2 million a month, uh, this time of year in Barnstable County. Barnstable also collects and I don't know a lot of these finances, so excuse me if I get this wrong, but Barnstable collects over $700,000 in embarkation fees from ferry users. They collect almost $400,000 a year in parking fees. Uh, Mister chair, I don't I don't I don't know how that funding is carried over and rolled into the general fund, but I don't believe that you're spending that money wisely or at all to improve safety, convenience, or the sense of pride for residents and visitors of the village. Uh, if I'm getting this right, I don't believe you spent 175,000 in the embarkation fees, nor a quarter million dollars in the parking fees, and I would take that $200,000 a year to ensure that the walkways are immaculate, safe and accessible after storm events. Mr. president, I take the I say that in jest. I just say that to ask you to please take this a little bit more seriously and ensure that there are dedicated resources to ensure that rock walkways are passable. Prevent busted butts, broken wrists, cracked skulls, or worse, forcing pedestrians into traffic and having to be clipped or run over by an automobile. There's room for improvement. Mr. president, and I ask that you please take care of this. Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Mr. Ramesh.

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Good evening. Many of you may know me, and may not have known that I have grown up in this, you know, town, as you know. I'm now a 31 year old and now grown up in the village and is still, um, relying on my two feet and, uh, you know, general Ubers or friends around town to get me from point A to point B, and I stand here to back up the previous gentleman and say that the sidewalks are not getting the attention that they need to get in precinct one, for sure. Um, and I'm sure it's not just in my precinct, given that what we just heard from the previous speaker. But it definitely needs to be paid attention to. You know, it was snowing on New Year's Day was, you know, a wonderful event, but for living, uh, not with my parents directly having to get from point A to point B and relying on them. Maybe one thing that needs to happen, but in order for me to get from, you know, relatively local location safely was in, you know, in, uh, could not happen. Um.

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Following the snowstorm on the first or, um, given any snowstorm, now, I, you know, I give commandments to the town to take care of their roads. Uh, the roads are, you know, pristine. They, you know, they are taken care of by the next morning, but by the sidewalks are are second to none not being seen. Um, and they definitely need to get their attention. So thank you very much for your consideration to my comment. And I give you all the appreciation for, you know, representing our town as you do. Thank you.

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Would you just identify yourself verbally for the record?

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Sure. Henry Ramage, precinct one. Thank you.

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Good evening. Councilors. I'm Pete San, resident of West Barnstable. Five weeks ago, Councillor Crowe requested more documentation from the article I referenced concerning the involvement of outside money and influence in local opposition to offshore wind farms. And I want to set the record straight. I did not say that our local anti wind group receives money from outside groups. What I said was quote, local, seemingly grassroots anti groups were receiving massive and varied information subsidies from some of these dark money think tanks. So I'm putting into the record the actual peer reviewed research paper, along with my brief synthesis of said paper. I would like first to distinguish the profound difference between scientific peer review publications and articles, stories and or opinion pieces in newspapers or online. Non peer reviewed writings. Quote peer reviewed science articles are generally highly reliable because experts scrutinize them for validity, originality, methodology, making them a strong indicator of information veracity. Whereas newspaper articles and web publish, non review non peer reviewed information lacks this level of scrutiny. So what were the key findings behind this work cited above? Acknowledging that it had 99 reference sources and was in fact peer reviewed. Who were the important players and actors involved in this? Information that we get from anti wind groups. Figure one illustrates the web network of links between anti offshore wind groups. Research from extensive web searches and organizations literature. The real power players are national and backed by money. The network analysis showed links between national organizations and local opposition groups, such as the one we have here in Barnstable. Table one follow the Money shows many millions of dollars being transferred to organizations from then, which then are a source of misinformation that gets picked up and regurgitated by local anti wind groups. Figure two shows a schematic of top down flow from, quote, fossil fuel interests and dark money donors through both money and influence to climate denial and obstruction. Think tanks that then provide legal support, fundraising capacity, publicity, coalition support, personnel interlock and information subsidies to local groups opposed to offshore wind projects. End of quote. Finally, what is particularly effective for obstructionist activism happens at the town level. Local town bodies do not have the time nor expertise to evaluate the veracity of claims being made by many offshore wind opposition groups. Misinformation.

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Pardon me, Mr. sample you for three minutes. Can you wrap your comments up, please?

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Knowingly or not. And loud voices can significantly influence local decisions and delay society's shift away from fossil fuel energy. So, counselors, please acknowledge the value and veracity of objective science that brings to society's decisions for our future. Thank you very much.

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Thank you. Likewise, your email and attached documents have been distributed to the entire council.

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Thank you very.

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Much.

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Hi, I'm Linda Stevens. Uh, district four. Um, I've lived in Barnesville now about 24 years, and I'm getting a little concerned about things that are happening. Uh, this is not about anything personally about me, but about things I'm seeing happening in the town. Uh, one is the expense of the sewer system, which, if you're in a condo, um, you're considered to be a commercial property, which means that you were not allowed to get an interest free loan to town. That's something I think that should be directed to. Number two. I'd like to know how the census report went out with a major, glaring error about your voting rights. And I asked about it, and I was told that it was the printer's fault. Well, somebody, I think should have proved it before it went out. The third is. I'd like to know what's going on with our annual reports. I went up to the office and asked for the latest annual report, and I was told it's being worked on. So I asked for the previous year's annual report, and I was told that hadn't been completed yet either. And I'm trying to figure out how the town council could make any decisions on anything without having figures and having the public being able to see what's going on, what the votes have been and where the expenses are and what they're allocated and what we're looking forward to in the future. I'm not sure where the problem stems from, but I'm seeing departments that don't talk to each other and nobody seems to know what the right hand is doing when the left hands off somebody else's pocket. I think it's unfortunate. Fortunately, it happened quite a while ago with the affordable housing, which is still an issue. We had a business owner who had a house that he kept vacant for eight years, was given permission to demo it when it could have been fixed up and used for affordable housing. Once again, this department is not talking to that department. I think the whole thing may come down to the town manager, who I assume are paying a good wage to. But I also know this council, not your particular members, at one point went against the contract. The city couldn't work for any place else and allowed him to work for the college. And I can't think you can do both jobs well and do it to the satisfaction of the people that live here and pay taxes. And I think it's something I think all of you need to think about and start thinking more about the people who live here and what can help them more to get through these tough financial times when there's no communication between departments in the public. That's all. Thank you. I'll sign in.

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Thank you.

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Thank you, thank you.

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Anyone else for public comment?

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Good evening. My name is Norma Schmidt, and I'm a resident of Centerville. Um, I'd like to bring up some of the agenda items in the old business, specifically, um, comparing item number 2026 072 with 2026 075. Um, my concern is related to the latter item. I am a resident of one of the private roads in Centerville, and my concern is about the easement plan. There was an easement plan included in the property that is being taken in Hyannis, which clearly shows what the proposed easement plan is. The easement plan that is being set forth for the Buttars on the private roads, as part of the water assessment plan, does not exist.

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What I would like to know is, does such an easement plan exist? And if so, where can it be made available? And how is the plan for the expansion of the sewer project going to affect my property? I understand that there is an easement for water and utilities, But that's it. Nothing has been outlined. I understand that this is a 30 year project, but as one of the members of phase one, there's been very little communication as to tell me how much of my property I have to grant an easement to and where it's going to be placed. Thank you for your consideration.

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Thank you.

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Good evening. My name is Ken Barron. I live in the town of Centerville. Village of Centerville, I should say. Um, I'm here to speak about the wind farms. I am against them. I support people that are against them. And there's been many presentations given by different groups on Cape Cod here that shows the pitfalls of the wind farms and the damages they do to the communities anywhere they are built, whether it's Cape Cod or the East Coast. And people that say there's no science behind it are just, well, categorically, they are wrong. You need to talk to powerplant engineers. They've given many presentations. I am myself in the U.S. Merchant Marine. I've talked to engineers on board the ship. They can give you a full, detailed engineering descriptions on how these things just don't add up. There's nothing good about them, and I adamantly oppose them and support people that do as well. Thank you, thank you.

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Any further public comment? Anyone online? Lynn okay, I will close public comment and move to the council response. A couple of things. Excuse me regarding the sidewalks, you may be interested to know that we are actually having a presentation tonight by the DPW on snow and ice removal and How it went in the process. So that may be of some interest to you. Uh, Kelly. I saw Kelly there. I thought, uh, Kelly Colby, would you mind talking to. Was it Mrs. Schmitt? Have you. Do you know Kelly Colby? She is in the back row there, and, uh, she is the communications manager for the Department of Public Works. And, uh, she is intimately familiar with the CW and perhaps could answer your questions for you.

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Right.

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And, uh, any other response to public comment? Councillor Litke?

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Yeah, I'm right with Mike and Henry. Um, I kind of did an experiment on the 2nd of January. I had to take my car over to the North Street garage, and I had to walk my dog in the morning. So I decided I'd walk back home. And it was a nightmare. An absolute nightmare. This was 2nd of January, so I had a North Street garage right there and well on North Street. So I came down to Main Street. That was awful. I don't know if it's the responsibility of the shop owners to to shovel in front of their stores or not, but that was a disaster. Then turn down C Street, all of C Street with that big sidewalk. Not any shoveling at all, except for I guess a couple homeowners had done it and then walked all the way down around the marsh there, and finally my dog took the lead. He just went in the road. He said, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. It was it was hard. It was it was painful. So I'm with you. That's that's unacceptable. It's absolutely unacceptable that these major sidewalks were not taken care of. So I look forward I saw that that we're going to have a discussion on that. But that needs to happen. That's just a small area. But it's part, you know, one of the main parts of Hyannis. So I know exactly what you're talking about. And you make a good point about the ferry and that kind of a thing. We ought to be right on that stuff. You know, I see people with their suitcases and stuff. That was. That would be impossible. Um, Suzanne. Home rule. Absolutely. I hope that when we have our strategy session in another week or so, we really talk about home rule. It's something we don't talk about enough. We're so enamored with grants and all of the things that come with them in these various programs that are all downward directed. We ought to really think about Home Rule and what that role has to play in this town and what that means. And you make good point. And Pete, Sam, I can't disagree with what he said. There's all sorts of lobbying and, you know, dark money and things in every aspect of life. So I have no argument what what he said. But I also have no argument with what Suzanne said. And I'm kind of wishing Vineyard Wind had been allowed to proceed because we'd really have some data. You know, we don't have data. We have data from wind farms, you know, in Europe. But, you know, that's not here. I'd like to see the data. I'd like to see what it's doing to our, you know, Nantucket Sound, what it's doing to our animals, our our things here. But hopefully that'll be allowed. I think there's court going on there, and I think it was. What? Eileen. Eileen Stevens. Eileen, right. Yeah. Sorry. Um. Well. Linda. Sorry. Um. Beautiful points, beautiful points. And again, I hope that we talk about that in our strategy. What are we as a town if we're not answering to our residents, what are we doing? And it goes back to the home rule piece that Suzanne brought up. I hope we really bring this home and listen to people like you, because you brought up some really good points with your comments there and then. Norm, I agree, you know, there should be a map and hopefully Kelly can help you with that because that it shouldn't just be words. There should be a map that shows you what's going on there. But, um, that's it. Thank you.

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Thank you. Any further public. Excuse me. Council response. Vice president Clark.

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Thank you very much, President Thomas. For clarification, Miss Conley, can you just explain for the record what Baby Beach is?

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Baby beach.

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Is the small beach at the end of we.

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Have.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Councillor Crow.

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Thank you. President. Suzanne, I want to thank you for being here and bringing up this important issue to the town. I think this is a, you know, the the Climate Act and the FSB actions or something. We need to keep a real close eye on going forward. And it really does affect home rule as we're hitting all sides, being hit from all sides and different issues about home rule. And we're losing most of those advantages. So I thank you for being here and saying that. And I also thank Pete Sam for coming up and acknowledging that that he was he realized that there was no dark money here through your organization or others in town, and I appreciate them saying so. So thank you.

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Thank you.

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Councillor shingle.

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Well, I'm not here to respond to anyone specifically. Um, but I just wanted to talk a little bit about the context of energy regulation in Massachusetts. Um, so the the state, through the Energy Facility Siting Board and predecessor agencies have had the ability for 50 years to overrule local zoning and regulatory decisions. And the the law that was passed last year is going to change that somewhat. Um, and the regulations are being proposed. People have the right to comment on that. And if they want to do that, they should do that. But just to put this in context, um, that in the area of large energy infrastructure projects, these are Transmission projects. Large generation projects. The decision was made really a half a century ago to give the state the ability to override local decisions, because we all depend on transmission and large generation projects to get our electricity. So I just I worked in this field for my career. So I just wanted to mention that for context.

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Thank you.

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Any further council with that?

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I just want to say thanks for coming out in the winter night and, and.

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And.

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Really, um, so eloquently, you know, I think all the things I don't want to repeat anything else. I couldn't I agree with what council Lucki had to say. And, you know, we need to pay more attention to our sidewalks, especially as we come, you know, with, with the different housing and things of that nature. More and more people are walking to work using public transportation, whatever it might be. And, and obviously, you know, facilities like the High Line and the Steamship Authority. That goes without saying, but I have a disabled uncle that lives on School Street, and I. I shovel his walkway and I had to shovel his sidewalk because of that. And it wasn't, you know, too happy. But again, I don't know quite honestly, I know this private property rights and different things like that. And but I look forward to trying to find an answer to this problem and solution to that. But more than anything else, thank you for showing up and letting us know of the issue. That and making it more personal, because that's important. And obviously and honestly, the way you did it was perfect, you know what I mean? You know, counselor, for eight years. So I really appreciate the fact that, you know, you took an attitude and we're all in this together, but we need to improve. So thank you for that. And thank you for your comments as well.

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Thank you. Any further response? All right. Madam Town Clerk, did you want to respond to the question about the census? I'm sure other people have questions about the census also.

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Thank you. President. Yes. Um, it was an error, and I take full responsibility. Um, the information was left off of the names of the people and their voting status, and all of that was left off. But that information is located in a separately hardwired system that is hardwired to the state of Massachusetts, to the elections division. It did not. Nothing changed on anyone's information. It was a download that was sent to a third party for the printing. Um, to make this easier for everyone. Uh, If we've asked people. We've talked to many, many, many of our residents and asked them to put down their name. And if if anything is changed, just let us know if anything's changed. Otherwise, it's already in the system. So we just need a signature that nothing is changed and we can work from there. It will not affect anyone's voting at all.

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Thank you.

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Mr..

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Good evening, Town manager Mark Elwes. Happy New Year, everyone. Um, relative.

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To.

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The annual report, staff is working on the 24 report. 25 will just start to be organized. Um, all of the information that was cited is available for the to the public. And I apologize to anybody who comes in. And we can't very quickly actually direct them to the information they're looking for. So certainly, um, we will do that. Uh, the annual report, though, is really a after the fact record. Um, we do it because the clerk certainly wants to keep copies of that. Um, and we'll continue to do so relative to your approval annually for the town manager. I've taught at the college, um, for 34 years. I do it outside of my work day and life here. Um, the college is clear in me doing that as an adjunct faculty member. That if the town of Barnstable calls upon me for any reason, I am here, I do not. I will cancel whatever may be in conflict. So I thank you, but I do have to come to you and ask to do that. And you have formally granted that to me, and I greatly appreciate it. Just to make sure people are understanding of what I'm doing. Thank you. Thank you.

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Okay. We will move on to town manager communications. Uh, you've all received a written copy of the town Manager communications. He has also recorded a video. Uh, town manager's report, uh, which is available online. I will just highlight a few things that are in it. Uh, excuse me. Tonight, we will be having a workshop on financial, uh, fiscal policy revenue strategy for the upcoming year. Uh, At last town council meeting, a question arose regarding information about the Hyannis Water Pollution Control Facility, also known as the Wastewater Treatment Plant, located on Bruce's Way in Hyannis. There's a large amount of information available on the Water Resources button. The Parents of Water resources.com. Or if you would like to talk to someone at the plant itself, they are available at 508790 6400.

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Again, as I mentioned previously, we're going to be doing an overview of the snow and ice removal program a little bit later. We've already heard from our town clerk regarding the census, and the town manager has advised that he has submitted a letter to the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, uh, for review and appropriate action regarding a letter that was received from, uh. Uh, I believe Suzanne Conley. Uh. Regarding EMF readings at Cupples Beach. So he has communicated with her and has requested that.

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They take action relevant to the safety and compliance of the Vineyard Wind project, and that he has a meeting scheduled with the e o e staff regarding this matter next week. Also, the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod has issued its state of the waters report, which is a report regarding the ponds and lakes and the water quality on the Cape, and that that is available through the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod. And finally, that staff continue to work on Lincoln Road upgrades and the town wide, thickly settled areas and business districts 25 mile an hour speed limit issue. We will keep you advised of their progress on those efforts. Any questions for the Town Manager Council?

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Just curious. On the Lincoln Road if there's anything. Because I see Lincoln Road and I know I've written to you guys on it as a really good example for the town where if, you know, we did this in a very public way, it would be a good learning experience for everybody in the town to see what could and could not be done to calm traffic. And I think Lincoln is a great example. So just curious if there's going to be some public engagement or what it looks like.

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There is. And I spoke with Director Santos and then Director Kupfer and, um, I think Jim's sitting back there, so he can certainly share, um, what he may envision. But yes, there will be. And I do think this is a a very interesting example between route 28 and West Main Street. Two of our primary roadways in town, and you know it has everything. A straight, wide asphalt surface that will present challenges to us. Speeding, volume of traffic. Residential housing and neighborhoods and commercial. So yeah, it's a great example and hopefully we can come. We have gone through this. We have had many over the years discussions. And I don't know that we've ever come to a consensus closure on, okay, what are we going to do on Lincoln Road? Um, so we will, we will try to, I should say. But yeah, I agree with you. This is a good example. Yeah. I don't know if Jim got up.

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Right behind you.

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Oh. Wonderful, sir.

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Thank you. Good evening, Jim Kupfer, director of planning and development. Yes. I've sat down with DPW and the team. They're discussing our next steps for Lincoln Road. Obviously we have some short term, um, progress being made with just the simple speed signs. And then next step is exactly what you're mentioning. We're going to be looking to further the design through public engagement first, but looking for to utilize local dollars as opposed to going to the state for kind of the long term, five, ten year out to hopefully streamline that process using our local funding potentially. But it will start with public engagement, because there's a lot of good discussions that have already been had a lot of passionate individuals on the road, but I think it's worthy of all of our time to sit down and talk about what are the priorities and how we can best achieve the positive result for the neighborhood. So yes, to public engagement and yes to hopefully streamlining our design to make progress sooner rather than later.

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Thank you Jim, that sounds fantastic.

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Thank you.

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Anyone else for the town manager report? See? No one. Could I have a motion, please, to accept the minutes of the December 11th, 2025 meeting? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none. As we have two counselors that are here via zoom. All votes tonight have to be roll call votes. So, Madam clerk.

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Councillors. Bloom.

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Yes.

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Burdick.

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Abstain.

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Abstain. Clerk.

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Yes. Crocker.

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Yes.

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Crowe.

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Yes.

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Deleuze.

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Deleuze.

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Councillor. Deleuze.

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Keen.

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Yes.

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Levac.

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Yes.

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Ladki.

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Yes.

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Shane. Gold.

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Yes.

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Star.

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Yes.

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Hamish.

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Yes. Councillor Deleuze has unmuted. She is. Perhaps she's.

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I'm having a hard time with this phone. I abstain.

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Okay. Thank you.

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You're welcome.

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It passes ten.

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Thank you. Motion does pass. Okay. Tonight we have two presentations. One on fiscal policy and revenue strategy by our town manager, Mark Ellis and finance director Mark Milne. And snow and ice operations by DPW, Dan Santos and Rob Stein. So, Mr. Town Manager, I will turn both of those over to you. Thank you sir.

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Mark Mills controlling this one. Correct. All right.

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Mark, tell me when you're ready.

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And thank you for this opportunity. Um, these discussions relevant to budget policy and revenue strategy are critical. I think the timing is good. Were you going back into discussions about your strategic plan? Um, but certainly when Mark Milton gets into the detail of major decisions that we need to make so that we can move forward relevant to program services and capital projects. Um, you know, and he will be making recommendations as to how to proceed. Uh, that will help guide us in part, partly in 27 but 27 capital in operations are fiscal, 27 are actually pretty much in place at this point. So we're talking about 28 and beyond. But certainly it impacts all of it. You know, I'll start just generally by pointing to some factors that you all know, but I think it's important to to refresh everyone's memory and to make sure the public knows. And it is that our town council, um, takes time to establish a strategic plan and a vision for what we, as the administrative side of this government focus and prioritize on and how we use the resources that you do give to us to accomplish those priorities. And that's critical. Every successful, the most successful organizations in this country, even beyond, um, have strategic plans, are clear on their vision. They have purpose when they walk in every day, and they focus those limited resources on achieving the priorities. We do the same. You do the same, and you focus us on the quality of life and unique character in our community. On engaging our citizens, um, and responding to our community when they look to have us accomplish things, I mean, right down to ice on the sidewalks. Um, you know, we do this with an overall sound financial management. You know, open communications. And we try to balance everything. This is all of the challenge here is the balance. We have many demands. We're a complicated and complex community. We have many demands. And trying to find a balance so that we can do everything that's of important to us and then be ready to adapt at any moment, because that's what organizations have to do in today's world. And we've been ready to do that. Mark, you can move me ahead.

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You know, we, um, I've already said we define it through the mission statement that you give to us. That's key to how we proceed. It applies to our entire organization. It's actually on the back of the nametags that everybody wears around their neck. That works for me, because it is why we are here every day. That's the purpose. You walk in the door and we focus the resources you approve for us on the priorities that you set. Um, it's incorporated into our budget and our budget development process every year. in the documents both capital and operating that we give to the council. Council. Uh, next slide Mark.

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You know, and between the manager and the council, you know, it's understood that council formulates policy. So that's what we're here to talk about tonight. We just don't head in. And Mark Milne and I and other staff just don't Andy clear and don't head in a direction and then come to you and tell you that's the direction we're heading on, isn't it? We come to you, you set policy. You set direction. You set priority. We we manage it, we proceed with that. And certainly then you also approve the budget that would allow us to proceed toward those priorities. Those are things the council does. The manager. We manage it. We put on the professional staff to do that. We focus on the priorities that you set and we proceed as stated. And then we have to communicate all the time. And it is a we. It's absolutely a we. It doesn't work unless it's the legislative body and the administrative body working together because we're a complicated community. Next slide Mark.

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So I'll pause for a minute on this, because we are very proud of the fact that outside national rating agencies look at us and give us a triple A bond rating, it's the highest rating we can receive from a financial standpoint. But that just doesn't happen. Happens for everything I just said for the time and the effort the town council puts into being clear on what our mission is, our priorities are and to the best of your ability, putting in place the resources to move toward those priorities. And Barnstable. You know, I certainly agree that, um, strong management. Um, absolutely. This just doesn't happen.

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When we have something like a Triple-A bond rating.

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It doesn't mean that we're flush with resources. It means that the resources that we have and you give to us to manage are managed well. That's what it means. And so a lot of what Mark's going to recommend to you will be to keep us on that path and if not, whatever path we need to take so we can manage it well. And if we can't put in place the resources we need, then we even have to sharpen that pencil more and figure out what those priorities are, what those needs of our community are, and put the resources there. Okay. I can only tell you, though, is if we go into this. That there is in fact. I mean, I hear that a lot when people talk about government. Town of Barnstable is lean. And if we can't put the resources in place which happens, I've certainly worked through that in the various roles I've played over my 37 years here.

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This is going to not be cutting fat, but it's going to be cut and muscle and bone, and the entire community is going to feel it. And they need to be engaged in that. It's not to make anybody scared. That's where Barnstable is. We do a lot. We have an incredibly complex community. We are a destination.

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We have a unique quality of life. And to maintain that, we have to put in place the resources to do so. And I think you'll hear Mark speak to that as he moves forward. So it's critical. Mark, you can move to the next one. A lot of times we stop though at the triple A, and that's why I said what I did when that came up. Yeah, okay, we have that. But we need to understand why we have it and what it really means to excuse me to Barnstable. We also get in the 25th year of a distinguished budget award from the Government Finance Association Officers Association. Mark, you can move on. Yeah, those are all accolades, but it happens because of the town council's work and your staff's work. I also get asked a lot about where are these policies, where they're in every budget since I. Well, I don't know. It's been 25 years since I was director of public works and assistant town manager and now town manager. They're in the budget book every year. Um, you can certainly find a strategic plan there as well. And then you can go to page in this year 63 and 64 and find what those assumptions are that we're going to go into next. And the outcome. Hopefully not tonight, but hopefully in the first quarter of 26 are more policies and then we will manage them, whatever they are.

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Um, I also point out that, you know, we live by a calendar and we put out the budget action calendar. So it's really important that everybody looks at that and understands that. And Mark's going to start to talk about these dates. And I talked about early on about budget fiscal year 27 versus 28. I did that because it relates back to this calendar. We're well into 27 at this point. Um, but Mark's going to lay out some recommendations to y'all that if we're going to do something by 28, we're going to start now.

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I just want to make sure everybody's aware of that. Okay. So I think it's important, and I think I thank President Bush and Vice President Clark for advancing this discussion. But we're at a really important point from our side in managing the resources you give us to try to achieve the priorities that you set for us. I'll stop there, say thank you, and I'll turn it over to Mark Miller.

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Thank you, town manager, and good evening, town councillors. Um, Mark Melton, director of finance, Town of Barnstable. So we're at a point in our, um, fiscal situation here where we're feeling a lot of pressure on our budget. Um, this is not unique to Barnstable. This is being felt across the state of Massachusetts. You've probably seen the recent reports issued by the Mass Municipal Association that were titled The Perfect Storm. Um, and talks about, you know, citing relentless cost pressures and rigid revenue limits and eroding state aid, causing a lot of fiscal stress for communities across the Commonwealth. And, uh, we're no different than anybody else. Um, our pressures right now are that the our current revenue growth cannot sustain our current service levels, and capital needs are drawing those critical resources away from the general fund to, to, um, from the operating budget to our capital side of the budget. Um, we're seeing very little growth right now in the state aid as well as local receipts. Um, 70% of our budget or our main revenue source in the general fund is from property taxes. And that's limited by proposition two and a half in terms of growth on an annual basis, as you know. Um, so we're at a point right now where our operating expenditures growth exceeds our revenue growth, and our current operating budget for fiscal year 2026 is balanced using $8.4 million of reserves. I'm not a long term budget strategy I'm comfortable with. Um, so we need to work our way off of those reserves over a multiple year period, and we're only what's putting the pressure on that operating side of the budget is this large capital program that we have, um, $325 million of identified general fund capital needs over the next five years, as well as another 335 million for our comprehensive wastewater management requests for the next five years. Those are two reports. I've put a couple of links in the presentation here for you if you haven't seen them yet. Um, one titled The Perfect Storm and then Navigating the Storm with some proposals that the RMA is making for the state's consideration. interesting proposals. I mean, certainly they're there. They're proposing that the state, um, infuse some additional revenue into the unrestricted general government aid account, because that has, um, that is about $350 million underfunded when you take inflation into consideration over the past 15 years. Um, they have they cut that revenue or that state aid category back during the Great Recession that we had 2008, 2009, and it's never been fully restored. And that's caused a lot of problems for communities across the state, although Barnesville doesn't get a lot of unrestricted general government aid. However, that's one of their major recommendations. The other interesting one is to make some modifications to proposition two and a half, keep the overall framework in place, but give local voters the option to implement changes, um, whether they be temporary or permanent, with a with a higher fixed cap, such as using the CPI, for example, as opposed to 2.5%, and keep that local control. We talked with some comments this morning, this evening about home rule. Um, so maybe expand the proposition two and a half and provide some of that home rule control or home rule authority over what you can do with your tax levy on an annual basis. But keep the basic framework. So some of the interesting suggestions that you make, they've made. I'm sure you'll hear more about this at the Mas annual conference coming up in January. Um, they're supporting the new local, uh, or new increased local taxing options under the Municipal Empowerment Act that you've all heard about. And they think the state should implement some more incentives to promote regionalization efforts. So here's our local receipt trend. You've seen this at our last presentation I made in September. Um, not we don't have a lot of control over these particular categories. A lot of them are driven by economic factors. Motor vehicle excise is our largest local revenue source, and it's really dependent upon the new vehicle market sales. Um, the cost of a motor vehicle is at its all time high. The average cost of a vehicle sitting out a lot. Financing rates have gone up considerably. So, um, we expect some contraction in these categories, um, over the next few years as a result of what's happening with the uncertainty in our economy that the federal, state and local level, um, investment income will see some contraction in because of the interest rate cuts we're seeing at the federal level, that will trickle down to us and to what we can earn on our excess cash deposits, for example. So there's not a lot here that we can control locally. Other than the fee, what we charge for services and fees and licenses and so forth. But that that is a very small percentage of our overall overall revenue that that funds our general operating budget. Here's the state aid trend. We saw a couple of nice increases in fiscal year 23 and 24. And chapter 78 are result of the Student Opportunity Act that was implemented. However, those increases are gone. We will not see increases like that anymore. And in fact, the past couple of years there has been very modest increases in state aid.

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So that leaves us with the property tax levy. That's really all we have to fund the inflationary costs that we're experiencing in the large capital program that we see before us. Um, again, just a quick review of proposition two and a half and the tax levy, um, the 2.5% increase does not apply to changes in anybody's tax bill, assessed values, or tax rates. That 2.5% increase applies to the towns based tax levy from the previous year. The tax levy can be further increased by new property growth, and the chart on the right here illustrates what our new property growth tax growth has been over the past ten years. You can see we saw a drop from about 1.75 million to just under 1.4 million in fiscal year 26. We expect that trend to continue. Um, and we really need significantly more growth in property, new property development in order to fund our ongoing service levels and to address that large capital program that we see.

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So when a bit more about our tax levy and override capacity. You can see here that our tax levy has increased about on an average 3.5% over this period of time. Um, in addition to the annual levy limits, proposition two and a half sets a levy ceiling for all communities equal to 2.5% of all taxable assessed property. So in Barnstable case, we're looking at a levy ceiling of $655 million, which is $499 million more than what our current tax levy is. The only way a community can access that additional capacity is through a, um, ballot initiative. Over this time period, our tax levy ceiling has grown from 211 million to $655 million more than doubled. And that's at a much faster rate than what our tax levy has increased, which is about 46% over the same time period. So what has led to our decreases in the tax rates? And here's a comparison of tax rates across communities. When you look at the tax rates you see on Cape Cod are well below what the state average and state median is. And that's because the communities on Cape Cod have a tremendous amount of override capacity. And it's because of the property wealth in the area. Um, low tax rates in the Cape Cod region. Again, it makes it difficult for us to convince the state for the need of more state aid, because they look at that override capacity that many communities around the Commonwealth don't have. Not to the size that we have, and specifically to the chapter 70 formula, communities are viewed as having a stronger ability to contribute towards the funding of local education efforts, and so don't do well when it comes to the formulas that I use for the distribution of unrestricted general government aid. And chapter 78. Compared to other communities off Cape, and it's because of the property values here.

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So what are our options to raise revenue? If we were to pursue this group, we could place a ballot initiative, um, before the voters of Barnstable, to continue with the implementation of our comprehensive wastewater management plan with a debt exclusion for the fiscal year 27th through the fiscal year 31 projects. Another alternative, which we've looked at is to place a ballot question before the voters of Barnstable to adopt what's called a water infrastructure investment fund and to finance the CMP projects. And what that would do is add an additional 3% church surcharge to real estate tax bills, like the Community Preservation Act. Does that are specifically dedicated for water related projects? If the Municipal Power Empowerment Act is passed, we would suggest we consider approving any of the of the local taxing provisions and that are included in that act. And if we they are approved, it would be my recommendation to dedicate those new revenues to the operating budgets, which have been feeling a lot of stress. And if we were to do either one of either a ballot or a debt exclusion or a water investment Infrastructure investment fund. We could redirect some of the existing general fund support that is going to the comprehensive wastewater management plan currently, and allocate that back to the operating budgets to provide some relief there.

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Some of the alternatives to raising additional revenue would be to reduce the operating budgets and direct more property taxes to the capital program, specifically to the swamp area of the capital program, so that we can maintain the current implementation schedule. However, the current operating budget, again is balanced using $8.4 million of reserves. The future debt for the FY 27 through FY 31 projects is estimated to be another $9.5 million per year. By the time all those loans are completely issued, which means that we would be looking at operating budget reductions in the neighborhood of more than $18 million to balance our budget, and those reductions would need to be made. It wouldn't all happen in one year. There would be made over multiple years, but we would have to go down that road of implementing reductions over several years. We could consider modifying the implementation of the Comp. I put this bullet in here about investigating IA systems, just to remind us all that we continually are evaluating this option, but to date, there is no viable technology that exists that will help us meet our regulatory requirement to reduce our models with IA systems. So it's something to keep in mind. It's not a solution currently, but we as part of our comp plan, we're constantly keeping abreast about the technological changes that are occurring in that area. And if that technology does get developed to the point where it does remove enough nitrogen, we can certainly consider incorporating that into our plan. However, porting IA systems or mandating IA systems info to private property owners and pushing the cost of this program all on to private property owners would not make those systems eligible. Currently, they're not eligible for any SRF funding, and we need to be cognizant of any change in the implementation plan that we currently have. We have to make sure that that strategy that we choose, um, will not, um, put us in front of any more court actions, or we want to avoid any court orders or regulatory orders that would make us ineligible for financing through the SRF program or. And eligible for Cayman Islands Water Protection Fund subsidies. Because if a community is placed or in place, receives a court order or a regulatory order for the implementation, we can't qualify for financing through that fund anymore. So we need to be aware of that. So when we look at our operating budget, our $224 million operating budget, 90% of that budget is allocated to education, public safety, public works, employee benefits, state and county assessments, and the capital program. Well, if we're going to go down the road of reducing budgets, we're not going to reduce the capital program. We're going to increase the capital program. So that means we've got to really we're going to the areas where all the money is. And that's, um, you know, our three largest operating departments and the associated employee benefits associated with the people who work in those programs. However, we also our reduction strategy would be to identify discretionary spending first. Um, things like the celebrations, funding that we do on an annual basis, not required by law, um, providing grants to our seven village libraries, not required. They're all separate 501 C threes. Um, so just going through every department and looking for that discretionary spending, there's not a lot um, certainly programs that are discretionary, um, in the sense that we don't have to provide certain services if we choose to not provide those services anymore. But I'm talking about discretionary spending, um, that, that, um, where we're not required by law to provide services for um, and then we would look to identify reductions that wouldn't have a negative impact on our revenue generation. We don't want to implement cost reductions that would impact the amount of money that we could take in. Um, and then we would prioritize those service reductions. And without taking all that into consideration, into consideration, one of the things we have to remember is that there was one large area in our operating budget where we are held to by the state. Um, with the mandatory spending requirement. And that's in education. Um, all communities are held to a minimum spending requirements for education by the state. So any reductions in this area would need to take that into account. It should be noted that when it comes to reductions to the school budget, the school committee governs those decisions. Town manager doesn't have any authority over that. Council doesn't have any authority that the town council has appropriating authority, but it can't decide what programs and services, nor can the town manager about what should be reduced in that area. That's that's superintendent and the school committee. They are charged by state statute to make those types of decisions.

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Um, a little bit more on education. Um, the this is a history of our schools minimum education requirement. Just look at the increases that we've seen with the implementation of that Student Opportunity Act and FY 23, FY 24, 9 million, 9 million. Um, that's why we saw the large increases in state aid. But we're not seeing those increases in state aid anymore. But still, we're looking at $5 million minimum spending requirement increases on an annual basis. So what the debt, what does that mean as the minimum spending requirements continue to increase at those rates and we can't correspondingly Increase the school's appropriation to match that they're going to become the town of Barnstable is going to become closer and closer to the minimum spending requirement under state law. And as this chart illustrates, we already are the closest one to minimum spending requirements in comparison with these school departments across the Cape. And you can see in the past couple of years we've lost ground. We've gone from about 30% over the minimum spending requirements down to less than 20%. And that gap is going to get smaller and smaller if the appropriations we provide, school departments cannot match those minimum spending requirements under state law. So something that we just need to be aware of, if we go down the road of reductions, we can very quickly get those minimum spending requirements. When we talk about the quality of life and what Barnstable wants to be, um, I don't think we want to become a community known as spending the minimum amount of on education and being lumped in with those communities, because it just does. I think that would have a negative impact on families desires to live here.

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So moving into the Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan funding, we've built this model, um, to analyze on an annual basis or even on a quarterly basis. As significant events occur. Um, how can we continue to finance the implementation of this program? And we do it in five year increments, because that corresponds with our five year capital program. And so we had another major, um, milestone, uh, occur recently. And that was um, occur recently. And that is the, um, the submission of our FY 27 to FY 31 capital program, which included about $350 million of comp requests. And so we updated this model, and we've had our comprehensive financial advisory committee. Take a look at this and report back to the council on it. And we will do so again. We'll we'll take a look at this with the Finance Committee. And my one of my recommendations this evening that you'll see later is to have them look at what we're proposing to see the and report back to the council. So it includes a number of revenue assumptions, as you can see here. Um, what we can contribute to the general fund and annual basis, what our increases or decreases might be in our investment rate of return, our meals and rooms, taxes, um, subsidies from the Cape and Islands Water Protection Fund and so forth. Um, we also have a number of expenditure assumptions in staff costs associated with implementation of the program. Um, actual design and construction costs and inflationary Projections, and this model helps us again measure that financial performance.

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So this is what it looks like currently with all the projects that are approved through FY 26. The objective of this of what we're trying to achieve is that our annual resources on an annual basis are our valuable resources exceed our, our, our subsequent years commitments. And so the Green Line always needs to stay above the red line. And you can see right now through the FY 26 appropriations that we've made, um, we are in good shape. We can fund everything that's been approved by the town council, which is in excess of $200 million or $300 million today, with the existing resources that we're dedicating to this program. Our outstanding debt peaks at about 210 million. By fiscal year 32, with everything that's been approved to date. So this is what happens when we add the FY 27 projects to the model. We can still do them. Like I've been saying, FY 27 is we can continue to fund the implementation of this program with what we're anticipating for FY 27 projects with the resources that are dedicated. But it's after FY 27 when we really run into it into a problem. So again, here, our outstanding debt peaks at about 244 million by FY 33. But the green line still is above the red line.

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This is what happens when we add the FY 28 projects we run into. We start running into some deficits. Our debt peaks the 300 million by fiscal year 34 and beginning in fiscal year 48. We're running out of resources, and we start experiencing deficits in that year and beyond. So to approve the fiscal year 28 projects without any long term resources to make sure that we continue to make those bond payments for the next 30 years, it's not going to work with the existing resources that are dedicated to this program.

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The chart here shows that, okay, what if we approved all the projects for FY 27 through FY 31, and the voters approved the adoption of a water infrastructure investment fund? You can see here our debt would peak at 450 million. By fiscal year 39. We'd be able to do all the projects. The Green Line stays above the red line. It gets very close to one another out in 2053, 20, 54. Um, but it would work for the next five years. It's a five year solution only. Okay, um, so your six through ten will be looking at something else. And under this scenario, we can redirect about 1.75 million of the current general fund commitment back to the operating side of the budget, reducing the reductions that we need to make to the operating budget and eliminating them, but reducing them. Here's an example. If we chose the alternative to raise revenue, um, by a debt exclusion, we could do all five year projects again. Um, but in addition, we could redirect a greater amount, 3.75 million that is currently being provided from the general fund back to the operating side of the budget, relieving some of that $8.4 million, um, surplus that we're using to balance the budget with some recurring revenue sources on an annual basis.

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So I just want to make clear, I'm not sure everybody knows this. And I just want to make sure it's understood. Maybe, um, um, we commit a certain amount of general fund resources to this program every year. 5.75 million. If you take our fiscal year 26 tax levy of 156 million divided by 590 $0.04, which is $5.94, every penny on the tax rate generates $262,000.

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We're committing $5.75 million of tax levy to this program. That has a impact on our tax rate of $0.22. So everybody in the town of Barnesville, all taxpayers, residential, commercial, industrial, personal property, everybody is contributing to the buildout of the public sewer system through the tax levy. Currently, because we're committing 5.75 million of the general fund resources on an annual basis, and that's about $79 taxable impact on the median residential value right now. So I just want to make sure everybody understands that whether we do a debt exclusion, a water investment infrastructure fund, or we decide to cut the operating budget to redirect more general fund property taxes to this program, everybody in town is paying whether you're going to get tied into the public sewer system or not. And I just wanted to make that clear.

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So here's the tax bill impact from a 3% water infrastructure investment fund. Um, I work similar to the CPA tax. Of course. Um, you look at you take the tax bill for a qualifying property right now at the median value of 633,000. um, would pay would have a tax bill of $2,436. The additional tax that they would incur would be $73 in the year a whip is implemented. So it all comes on in one year. Um, and it's a $73 increase in that one year for non-qualifying property at that same value, it's $129 a year. When we look at a debt exclusion, that exclusion all offers an alternative to gradually bring that tax, additional tax impact on to the tax bills. Because we're not issuing all the loans at once, we're going to issue loans are going to be staggered over a multiple year period. It's going to take about 7 to 8 years to get all the loans issued. As we build out those construction projects and issue the long term financing for those projects. So it takes some time. So here's what the tax rate impact would look like from a debt exclusion. It wouldn't come on the books until 2032, even because we we don't anticipate issuing the permanent financing for these projects. Until then, all the additional projects that we're currently working on, and we have appropriations for those debt payments will come out in our books, but we have the resources to pay those. So this would be for the debt service for the 27 through FY 31 projects that would come, we anticipate, to come on to our budget and beginning in fiscal year 32, all the way through fiscal year 39, and the full impact of the debt exclusion would be about $9.5 million per year, or $0.36, based on the town's current valuation. And that would be a taxable impact of about $130 a year, or about $1,011 a month for the median homeowner in the town of Barnstable. For who qualifies for the residential exemption?

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So conclusion. Here is our recommendation anyway, by the way, is in other words, is either, um, adopt a WIF or a debt exclusion to provide the resources to continue with the implementation plan as scheduled. Um, again, that that exclusion option offers a gradual tax bill increase over an eight year period where the width comes on all at once. Um, the debt exclusion also offers the opportunity to reduce the cuts in the operating budget that are going to be necessary, even if we do this by redirecting $3.7 million back to the operating budget, we're still going to have to make reductions to the operating budget, but they'll be less severe if we shift $3.7 million Back to that. And if the Municipal Empowerment Act is passed, we can consider adopting those additional local taxing options and direct those to the operations as well, to further reduce the costs that are going to be necessary than the out years. Again, those reductions will still need to be needed, but they'll be less severe if we if we do this, some of the benefits from increasing resources, um, for the program are that it solidifies the program. Funding for the next five years doesn't solve the long, doesn't provide us a 20 year solution or a 30 year solution, but it certainly gives us a solution for the next five years. And then by then, technology technology could change or something else could change that could have a positive financial impact on this program. Um, it preserves most of our existing services and, um, budget flexibility If we don't raise revenue, but we continue to dedicate more of our our tax levy to a fixed cost, such as debt service, that reduces your budget flexibility significantly. Um, and support from the community to fund a program like this is viewed favorably by bond rating agencies. If we go down the road a period of multiple years of continuing to make reductions to service levels, and we can't raise additional revenue, they will eventually have a going concern with the town of Barnstable and its ability to fund its current these programs, and we could lose that Triple-A rating if they become concerned to the point where you have this massive capital program, but you're not willing to raise the revenues to do it as opposed to cutting services. And that that could send, um, concerning signals to the bond rating agencies about that, which will, you know, make our borrowing costs are higher. If that were to happen again, more gradual increase in the tax levy as the loans are issued over several years and there are tools available to mitigate those tax bill increases, which we've talked about before, um, adopting a split tax rate most recently in our tax classification hearing that that could provide some relief to the residential class of of tax payers by shifting more of the tax levy on to the Sipp classes, we could gradually increase the residential exemption. Um, we increase it this year, but you can continue. You have about you have up to 35%. So there's another. If you did 1% a year for the next five years, that could be a strategy. Um, we've also there's been concern about what that residential exemption does to affordable housing rental properties. So we've been asked to, to put together, a program that would adopt the affordable housing property tax exemption. So we will be working on that and bringing that forward to the town council before the end of this fiscal year. Um, also in the Municipal Empowerment Act is the suggestion to create a new senior means tested exemption, and that would allow for qualifying seniors to, uh, be eligible for further property tax reductions based on income and asset um, levels. And so, um, hopefully that will get passed through the Municipal Empowerment Act. And we can implement that to mitigate the the tax increases for seniors and the other. Of course, we still have the CPA tax surcharge out there at 3%. Um, that could be reduced. But the one caveat there is that that would need to go to the voters if we wanted to reduce the CPA tax, offset an increase from the exclusion or a whiff, um, as far as ballot timing is concerned. If we do consider moving forward with a ballot initiative, um, it could be placed on a state or local election. Our next election dates are the state election in November 3rd, 2026, and the next local election is November 2nd, 2027. Or alternatively, we could hold a special local election. For the ballot initiative, it doesn't have to be on a state or local election ballot, but we could have a special election. So what are our next steps? Um, I suggest that we request the Comprehensive Financial Advisory Committee to report back on these recommendations. Um, and I know they're busy right now reviewing operating and capital budgets. Um, so, um, considering their workload, um, that would suggest that perhaps we have them report back by July. Um, but we would immediately follow this workshop up with another workshop in February to bring everyone up to date with election procedures for ballot initiatives. Uh, town attorney and town clerk. Um, and clerk have done this before, but it was with a previous council. We have a lot of new councilors, so I think it would benefit all of us to have them come back and provide us some guidance as to what, um, how these ballot initiatives work and what can be done. Um, but if a, that exclusion or a width, uh, strategy is chosen again, I would suggest we place the ballot vote before the town council at your August 2026 meeting. Um, after we get the report back from CPAC and depending upon our recommendation, of course. Um, and then if we are to proceed with a ballot initiative, we would hold that special election ballot sometime in the spring of 20 and 27 Before we approve any projects for fiscal year 28, because we don't want to approve projects of fiscal year 28 until we know we have the financing in place. So I am going to stop there and be happy to answer any questions that anybody might have.

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Thank you.

155
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And thank you, Tom.

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Wow.

157
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Tremendous amount of information there, Mark. Some big decisions to be made. Any comments from the counselor? Keen.

158
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Thank you. Mark. That was a terrific presentation.

159
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And, uh. And you make a compelling case here.

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One question.

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On my part.

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Is we.

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Also.

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Have some significant.

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Capital needs coming up for the schools. Um, particularly in terms of replacement of school buildings or renovation.

166
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Um, do.

167
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They figure.

168
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Into the figures you had there in terms of our projected new spending?

169
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Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Um, they they do not currently. Um, I am looking to right now, we have the capacity to do about $15 million in new borrowing authorizations for projects outside of the CW. We're looking at ways where we can address some of those larger school projects, like the roof projects that have gone before the MSBA. And, um, we think that within that existing capacity that we have and then perhaps an infusion of general fund reserves into the Capital Trust Fund, we'd be able to handle some of the the large school projects that are coming up in the next couple of years. But beyond that, we'll have to continue to work on another strategy.

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So when when we're asking the CFO back then to start taking a look at this. Should we try to fold in some projection on school needs and see if we need a larger override or a larger data exclusion than just something for the swamp?

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Yes, we could, but we probably would want to do those as separate votes. Um, I'm not sure you want to combine them in, um, one question, but perhaps two questions on the same ballot, for example.

172
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Thank you.

173
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Yes, we could, we could, we could certainly work with them on looking what what the school department's needs are and see if we can find finance that within existing resources, or add that to any ballot initiative that we may consider.

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Thank you. Any further discussion? Councillor bloom.

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Thank you, Mark.

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For that great.

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Presentation very much.

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Thank you.

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Um, do you have any information about the status of the Municipal Empowerment Act? You know, how far is that long?

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Yeah. There are three committees that, um, that that act as being, um, that that act is under review by, at the state level. Um, and they're all currently working on reviewing that. There's been some public hearings on those with municipal officials. Um have um have commented at those hearings and they've taken those comments under consideration. And I would expect that we would be hearing something by the end of this legislative session, probably in May or June. Um, as to whether or not they're going to enact this.

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Thank you.

182
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Mac. This is another what if question. Uh, similar to the Municipal Empowerment Act, where would the Seasonal Communities Act work into this? Obviously that would give us some additional funding opportunities, but would it play into this at all?

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It doesn't play into this, other than the fact that I believe under the Seasonal Communities Act, you can increase the residents residential exemption from 35% to 50%. So, um, you know, that could expand that tax mitigation strategy. Um, if we were to adopt that designation, um, you would have that additional tool of being able to go from 35% to 50%, um, for the residential exemption.

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You want to thank you. You mentioned that the presentation was to increase the residential exemption gradually. I think you said was the verbiage. We've only got 5% left. Right. We're at 30 now. We're going to 30. Could hypothetically go to 35. So we can't do it very gradually, I guess.

185
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Yeah. You. Yeah. If you did 1% a year for five years and you're maxed out unless you adopted the seasonal communities designation.

186
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Thank you.

187
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Counselor.

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Yeah, this is a fantastic presentation. And I think again, it ties in. I mentioned earlier our strategic planning coming in, getting the finances set up. And I like the good discussion about the water Infrastructure Investment Fund. I'd like to see a lot more with that. Um, one of the things about that is that it hits the three areas, it hits drinking water, which in our case wouldn't apply because we have the water and fire districts. It hits stormwater. And that was mentioned in the town manager's report. Stormwater is an issue and it could go towards that. It gives us some flexibility. And then the third piece that it does is the waste water, which is where we spend the preponderance of it, I would think. And if, you know, in making data driven decisions and the local comprehensive plan, water was the predominant focus in the interest of all of our community. And again, we had the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod report that we still have the degraded quality there. And the CPA has has been very favorably accepted. And I think a water infrastructure investment fund. I would personally see us really explore that and look at that. I think you're timing on that. Mark is good. It's a I know it comes all at once, but I'm talking about your timing in terms of a special election in the spring of 27, because it gives people an opportunity to get their their heads around. I heard it. Today they're going to be like 11 ballot initiatives on the ballot coming up in November. It gets to be too much, and I think a special election could give it the attention that it deserves. I also know the SRF does not fund. I think I know this maybe some good correct me does not fund design costs for our CW, MP, and the WIFF would fund those design costs. So that again would be a savings in our budget that we're not taking that out of our budget. Those design costs for the CW, MP. So there's a lot of a lot of good pieces to that. And I think, as I say, I think our residents would be much more favorable to that. And I like Tom's comment about the schools. If there was an override, it might be in that area. But really, really outstanding presentation and it's something we need to get on. And I think your timing is good and I think we ought to stay on it and be aggressive with what you recommend. And I would personally really want to push the water infrastructure investment fund.

189
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Thank you. Vice President Clark.

190
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Thank you very much, president. And thank you, Mark, for the presentation. Uh, did I hear you correctly when you made a reference to we're not going to reduce the capital program, and if so.

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If we if we adopt the strategy of, um, of reducing the operating budget as opposed to a ballot initiative, the one area of the operating budget that we're not going to reduce the capital program because we're trying to free up resources to increase the funding towards the capital program.

192
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Okay, I understand better. Thank you.

193
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Yep. Thanks.

194
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Councilor Duluth.

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Hi, everybody. Um, I was just wondering, what does that turn out on a special election as opposed to a general? If we're trying to get people to come out and vote.

196
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Do we have any data stating that people come out more on our general than a special?

197
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Madam Town Clerk, do you have some estimates or feelings on that?

198
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I could give you some information on that councillor to lose, um, a, uh, a ballot that we're going to have in this year. There's a, there's so many other things that are going to be on that for people to read through, to get through the information and then decide what their vote is to throw on something like a debt exclusion or an override. Nobody's going to nobody's going to know what to to do with that. Um, we did this in 2015 or 17 with the Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, and we ended up doing a September ballot, and we went out to all the civic associations and talked about it so that people would know. We talked about it here at the council level. I can tell you that we had a decent turnout, but on a municipal election,

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the turnout is very low, whether it's for town council or the town clerk position or a debt exclusion or it's just not something that people think about coming out to vote. And as much as we try to tell them your vote on a on a municipal ballot has much more impact, I think it will be up to the council to try to convince people to come out and vote.

200
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Okay. I'm just wondering because we do want people involved and, um.

201
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The more people that know, the more will be involved. And people tend to come out for bigger elections than for smaller elections.

202
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That's all.

203
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Thank you. Any further discussion? Council?

204
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Yeah. One more thing that Mark mentioned that I don't think people know a lot about is the affordable housing property tax exemption. I went to a seminar that the state sponsored on it, and it takes away from our taxes. It's not like our residential exemption where it shifts it. It takes it away. But perhaps it's worth it to get affordable housing. It also from my understanding. And that's why I'm looking forward to Mark Diving into this and really looking at it is that you can't restrict it, which means all of our apartments could be in play for this. But if we're getting you can set up to a 200% Ami and maybe a sweet spot for us, I don't know. I always think the 110 120 is a pretty sweet spot, but if we did that, then for example, Hanover. I don't think it's called Hanover anymore. But Hanover, if they wanted to, you know, they could say, well, we're going to get an exemption here. You know, if we do 120% Army. But again, it could really impact our affordable housing in a in a huge way. But we have to know we're going to get a hit on the taxes. And it's for us to determine you can go I think up to 100%. They pay nothing or you could do something smaller. But I think I really look forward to Marc looking into this. When I first went to this seminar, I said, well, that's crazy. We shouldn't even consider that. And then I said, you know, it actually is going to be a darn good way to get that affordable housing that we need with existing stock. You know, so this could really be something good. But we have to look at the hit we're going to take because that money just goes away. It doesn't shift, it goes away. So very serious thing to think about. But getting us the housing we need could be worth it.

205
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Thank you. Councilor Crow.

206
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Thank you. President. Marc. Great. Great presentation. I'm just trying to get my head around a little bit. Um, if we override, what exactly are what percentage are we asking for an increase in taxes? Is it that example you had in your presentation about the median home value was 600 and something and that it would increase taxes on that property. But I need to know what exactly amount you're saying that you'd like to by percentage, increase the property taxes. Does that make sense?

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Yes. Um, so the increase to the tax levy right now, the tax levy is 156 million. Eventually, $9.5 million of additional taxing would be added to that at the peak of the program. And that's about a 6% increase in the tax current tax levy.

208
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Okay. And what would that be approximately for the median home in town.

209
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Median homeowner that peaks in fiscal year 39 at $130 a year, um, for qualifying for property owner, qualifying for the residential exemption.

210
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Okay, so what you're asking in the bottom line is about $130 more per year in taxes. That would put us on an even keel here. Is that what you're asking for?

211
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Yes, that's to the median property owner. Those of course, those under that value would pay less. Those over would pay more.

212
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Okay.

213
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That's the median. That's the midpoint where um.

214
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Yeah, I see.

215
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That more than that and half will pay less than that.

216
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Okay. So 130 $30 a year on top of your taxes. It doesn't seem to me to be a lot of money to put us on a trajectory that we can pay for all this. And that's that's basically what you're asking for on the median property.

217
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That's correct.

218
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Okay. Thanks, Mark.

219
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So really, one of the key issues we have to decide, Mark, is debt exclusion versus the whiff. So, you know, they both have their advantages.

220
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Yeah I know the distinction between the two of those is that the whiff is forever. Um, you know, you'd have to go back to the voters to take the whiff off, just like you would with the Community Preservation Act surcharge. Um, where the debt exclusion has a definitive life. It's until the end of the bond payments, and it's 30 years.

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Thank you for that distinction. Any further discussion?

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Councilor Burdick?

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Yeah. Mike. I guess my question is not so much for Mark, but for the council. So, you know, we have this excellent presentation and we've had presentations like this in the past. And I suppose my question is what is what are you or what do we or leadership or whomever envision as our next steps? I realize we have the strategic planning session coming up, which is the other half of what we already began. Do you imagine or do we imagine that we will come out of that strategic planning session With a definitive timeline or frame framework or direction relative to this. So what? How are we going to continue with this? How are we going to continue to keep the ball rolling? As far as this, you know, our options.

224
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I think two things. One, uh,

225
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Mark has suggested a workshop in February with the town council and the town clerk to take us through the procedural issues. Second, refer this to CFTC and have them come back to us by July with an analysis, perhaps of both. Either you know what their suggestions are and uh, at in July, uh, a discussion and put it on a ballot. Excuse me, a, uh, agenda item for August and, uh, take a vote on it.

226
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Right. So that the framework that's outlined in this presentation we're all adopting now as our.

227
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I would suggest certainly something.

228
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I mean, how do we. That's what I'm asking for. How do we formalize that? Is this enough to say that we agree on this as a, as a, as a as a framework for our continuation of this, this topic?

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I would use it as a framework to keep this moving forward. Yes. So, I mean, I don't think the council has to agree per se or come to a vote or anything else. We will just schedule these events to keep it moving forward.

230
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Sounds good. Okay.

231
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Any further discussion? Seeing none. Thank you Mark. Great job as always.

232
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Thank you.

233
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We are going to take ten minutes. It's 747 when we be back at eight. That's actually 13 minutes.

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If councilors could take their seats, please, we will resume.

235
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I got an hour and a half. We are back in session. Uh, Mr. ls is it Mr. Steven Kelly? Who will be the whole herd? May the the herd approach.

236
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Are we ready, sir?

237
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We are.

238
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Good evening, Mark Ellis, town manager. I'm going to turn this over almost immediately to public works. But I just want to thank you. I think the last time we were up here, um, was, um, you know, from about 2015 snowstorm on DPW. Looked closely at our procedures during snow events. Modified significantly, but I think the last update may have been 2017, so thank you. It's time that our public and you all get an update on our snow and ice program. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Steen.

239
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Good evening, Town council.

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My name is Rob Stein. I'm with the Department of Public Works. I'm joined tonight by my left, Griffin Bowden, the town engineer. Am I right? Kelly, who is the DPW communication manager and is here to keep me from saying anything colossally stupid? And Sean Jones, who's the division supervisor for the highway division. Um, so, as Mark mentioned, we're here to talk about snow and ice, and that's a topic that we could talk about literally for hours. So when we sort of thought about what we want to do here tonight, and that's why we've titled this Snow and Ice 101. This is meant to be an overview. Um, we're going to sort of wave top a lot of things. If there's topics that you want to do a deeper dive on, we can certainly come back at other times and have further discussions about them, but hopefully this will give you a sense of what our program is and how we go about it. I got.

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That. Okay.

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So the outline of what we're going to do today is here. We're going to go through mission and goals. And we'll talk about our responsibilities that we view. Um, we'll talk about sort of our philosophy to that. We will talk about resources. Cost will be part of that. I know I've heard questions about cost. We will discuss that. And then there'll be an opportunity for having an open discussion and any questions you may have.

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Before we get too far into it, I want to start with this one. It's an attention step, but two, it's a reminder. We have had very relatively mild winters for the past four or maybe five winters. Um, it wasn't that long ago that Dan and I were sitting in front of this body in 2015, in fear of the fact we will not be leaving here as town employees. Um, because we ended up with a 30 inch storm with 78 mile an hour winds drifting everywhere, that went on for literally the entire month of February. I frankly, when I, you know, I'll tell my staff and they get sick of hearing it. I went home twice in the month of February, uh, sleeping under my desk, eating there, and we were just pounding forward every single day. We sent everybody home for the Super Bowl and said they had to be back in four hours and don't drink during it and otherwise, in that we just stayed and kept on hammering on it. Lots of things changed because of that storm, and we'll talk about some of those as we go forward. This next slide, just to remind people what the results of that was. That's Main Street. You'll notice Main Street is one lane at that moment. Um, and there is a lot of snow around. And you'll see other juvenile pictures as we go through here. But it's just a reminder that it's easy for us to sit here and talk about our, you know, how we've staffed up or how we've built up for foreign storm may not make a lot of sense, but there's this thing out there that we need to still be able to potentially deal with at some extent. So the mission we have is we approach a snowstorm, is to remove the accumulated snow and ice from town and county and most private roads, municipal parking areas and some town sidewalks and bike paths as rapidly and efficiently as possible. Safety. Mobility of the community is of the utmost importance during an event. The goals we have during an event are. This. The department's goal is during a storm is to remove snow and ice to a sufficient width and depth to allow the public to travel at reduced speeds throughout the town. So I want to emphasize that during the event, i.e. as snow is still falling, we are just trying to keep roads open. They're not pretty, they're not wide. And you will have to travel at a reduced speed.

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Our responsibilities when you get into the snow and ice of IT world, we have 700 public roads. We have 1100 private roads. We have 53 municipal parking lots we're responsible for. We have 90 miles of town sidewalks and four miles of bike paths. Of those roads, they're further subdivided by about 30% of them are considered main roads or collector roads, and about 70% of them are considered secondary roads.

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And let's just go over that terminology, because we use it pretty frequently. And I don't know that everybody necessarily understands what we mean by that. So Main Roads is about 145 miles of them in town. These are the primary roads in town. Um, they get handled differently than the other roads. Examples of main roads will be West Main Street. Cedar street. Putnam Avenue. What we do with our main roads is we divide them into sort of 19 routes, and there's multiple trucks working on any one of those routes. So when you're driving main roads, you're probably seeing a sander and probably multiple plow trucks, maybe ganging up and working in tandem going down those roads. Secondary roads are different. Um, secondary roads is 290 miles. Those those are neighborhood roads. Um, examples would be like Woodside Road, Rolling Hitch Road and Pompano Road. Secondary roads have been defined in the 56 maps, and there is one truck per map. Each maps roughly 5 or 6 miles. Um, so you can see just just in that there's a level of difference in terms of service and what we do to a main road versus what we do a secondary road. So the question that comes up is, well, what's a collector road? I understand main roads, I understand secondary roads. What's a collector road. Collector roads are effectively those secondary roads that act as the last spur that collected all the neighborhoods before you get to a main road. And over time, we have found there's enough traffic on those that we need to treat them sort of as pseudo mains. They're not mains per se, but we treat them to a higher level than we do secondary roads.

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I want to spend a second on this picture. So any time we're dealing with snow and ice, there's there's a balancing act that's going on. And it's sort of a three way balancing act if you want to look at it very broadly, um, you have safety and public safety. That's obviously the primary mission. However, we acknowledge the fact that there's a cost that goes with that and there's an environmental impact that goes with that. How those all relate together is important. And I can't tell you the number of times Dan and I are sitting here discussing about a strategy coming up in all, three of these are starting to get pinged off each other. Um, you know, as an example, if we want black pavement everywhere, we're going to use a lot and I mean a lot of salt that has an environmental impact and that has a cost impact. So there's always this balance that we're trying to do between getting the roads open and safe, that environmentally sound way in a cost effective way.

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As we're looking at a storm rolling up the coast, the things that we're thinking about is we're looking at the forecast, we're looking at potential snow accumulations, but we're looking at intensity how many inches an hour. And we'll talk a little bit later on about how that matters and why that matters. That first picture I showed you of Juneau when you really couldn't. That was from my ERC and I couldn't see my gas pumps. And those of you that know my know my setup, they're they're probably from me to the flag away. And I couldn't see them. Well, if I'm in a plow truck in the middle of all that, I can't see you stop. You can't go. Um, so intensity matters. And when intensity is coming, matters, um, wins. If you those of you remember Juneau, remember that out by, for instance, the Barnstable Airport, the drifting that was going on out there. We ended up have to camp a loader out there doing nothing but those drifts at 149 because the winds were so high. Um, temperatures before, during and after matter. Why is that before? That's going to dictate my road temperatures. So if it's been 50 degrees rolling into this and if that road's above freezing and warm, then I know my first bit of snow is probably going to melt off of it. If it's been zero and snow hits it, it's not going anywhere. Um, during the storm, if it's warm and wet and then going to turn cold, that's going to affect how we're going to approach that storm versus if the storm is cold and staying cold or cold and going warm, which is some of the earlier ones. This year we had cold go warm, which are nice because basically warm solves all problems. Um, so all of that comes into effect. But we're also going to look at sort of time of year sun angle matters. It may be cold in March, but that sun angles got a whole lot more melting power than it does today. Um. Days of the week? Are we in a weekday? Are we in a weekend, or are we on the first, like we did just recently when no one's out and about? Do we have schools that were worrying about, um, timing of the storm? Is it going to happen so that I'm trying to move my crews around during rush hour, in which case I'm going to probably have to pre stage before that because I'm not gonna be able to move them around if there's a lot of traffic out on the road. Um, contractor and staff availability. Is everybody available. Inevitably the answer to that is no. You have people that are down for injury. You have people that are down for things like paternity, leaves, etc. or on vacation. You have contractors that are down, you have contractors, they get caught and they're off and they haven't gotten back. Um, all of those come into the mix in terms of what we have available to us salt equipment and salt and equipment availability, um, that sort of thing. And then this last one, public and leadership's reaction to past storms. This matters to us because really the only feedback loop we have is that, you know, and so what we hear then gets incorporated into the thinking going forward, into the next storm, in the next storm, in the next storm. And you'll see that over the past decade and a half or so, that has increased our response, but probably also has increased our costs. Um, because that's the only feedback loop we're getting. So if somebody calls and says, hey, this is awful, this is terrible, this is why we're going to go figure that out and try to not be that way, because we, like everybody else, don't want to be awful, terrible. And we want to try to do a good job.

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Okay. So tools in our tool bag. We've got a number of ways that we can respond to an event as it's coming up. Um the first is an ice watch. And what this is, is look, the temps are flirting with something that we think we're going to probably need to go out and salt. We don't necessarily know that. Um, but probably the wise thing to do is bring in three leadership people that are going to come in. They're going to drive the talent. At the time, we think that it's most pertinent generally three in the morning. Um, and take a look around and see, do we really need the salt or can we get away with not salting again, trying to balance environment, safety and cost? Um, the next one is a flat out ice call. That is we got black ice in the road. It happened yesterday at 10:10 p.m.. We got black ice in the road. We need to get out and spread salt. Um, that's all. That is the one after that's called Main Road. Um, it's actually scraping. I misspoke there shouldn't say plowing. You should say scraping. Um, what that is, is that is not the main iron coming in. That is just the Salter's putting a blade on the front and then scraping off whatever's in front of them as they're going through. It's not as thorough of a plowing job as when we do main road plowing, but it does remove some stuff. So if you have like an inch, inch and a half, you can get away with a main road scrape with salting on mains. After that, you're into a sort of a full on ploughing event, and most of the rest of this discussion is going to be sort of talking about full on ploughing events. When that happens, we're going to stand up the emergency response centre at the DPW. Um, we will have main road plows come in in addition to the salters. So now we will have those three, 4 or 5, maybe six, depending if you're in the hospital area. Trucks and loaders on a route. Um, secondary road plows will be in, parking lots will be getting activated. And that's contractors sitting in parking lots with skid steers and loaders working on those. And then sidewalks and bike paths happen after the event. And I'll talk about this again. But one of the reasons that happens after the event, and particularly this year, one of the reasons you're seeing less service this year quickly is because the same exact contract, all contractors are having problems finding people, um, particularly drivers, the same exact contractors that do our sidewalks are also doing our secondaries. Um, so they're doing secondaries and we're probably keeping them for pretty much 24 hours or so. They're going home and sleeping, and then they're coming back to do sidewalks. Um, and then we can talk about the one that happened in the first. What really effectively happened was by the time they got back, it was all a sheet of ice. It was 23 degrees when we left and it just dropped from there. So we would have just been bouncing around on top of a sheet of ice. At that point, there was very little we could do with it. Once we got to that stage. In the past, we had the luxury of having independent contractors that were doing sidewalks that were not the same contractors as secondaries, and you could deal with them almost simultaneously, particularly in the village center areas. That's not the case this year.

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So when we came out of Juneau, one of the comments to that feedback loop we heard from people was, we don't understand why you had a hard time with Juneau. It's snow. You deal with snow all the time. And what we realized at that point is that we did a poor job communicating expectations and telling the community, look, one storm is not the same as another and that you should have different expectations depending on the storm. And you've probably seen that snow and ice brochure that we've been putting out pretty much since Juneau. I think we started in 2015 with that thing. We're 14 and and what it does is it breaks the storms into three basic categories. And really the point to that is to say, hey community, we're in this category. These are sort of the outcomes you should expect. These are the things you're going to potentially see as a result of that. How those categories get divided up is by when gear no longer works. So when you go from category A to category B, all my secondary trucks are no longer effective at 18in of snow. They can't move it. They start to slide off it. They start to get stuck in Juneau at the beginning of Juneau. Um, uh, Bob Lovell, Cynthia's husband, who was one of the more experienced guys we had, was out in a secondary truck stuck in a map for six hours and said, Rob, we ain't going anywhere. We can't move this stuff. Um, you know, so so that became real obvious that there's some storms, certain gear doesn't work in when we go from a category B to a category C. My six wheelers are no longer effective. They're running into the same thing. They're hitting off on a bank and they're just sliding sideways. They're not able to push it anymore. And then we're in a category C.

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Real briefly the difference between them. Category A is a normal storm. We're going to get 2 to 18in of snow. It's going to be less than an inch an hour during that period of time over 24 hours. And it will be less than a 24 hour event. The vast majority of what we see is.

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This.

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Category B is when we're going to get above 18 to 24in of snow, but again, only over 24 hours. Again, less than an inch an hour of snow. And what we're going to do is we're going to be pulling out of the parking lots. We're going to putting those rigs onto main roads. We're going to be pulling out of secondaries, because we're not going to be able to do anything besides rescuing stuck plows. And we're going to focus on those main roads, and we're going to keep the main roads open the best we can when the event ends, or when we can finally get back into secondaries, we'll go back. But if you remember right, we ended up having to go back into loaders because basically at that point there was so much snow in there, we couldn't deal with it. Category C is life safety. During Juneau, we had rigs, ambulances with people and patients in them that were stuck that couldn't get to the hospital. We were rescuing with loaders, ambulances, with patients in them. We sat down after that storm and talked to the county and said, we are going to prioritize some hospital routes and if we ever get to a category C again, that's what we're doing. Anything else on top of that's benefit is a benefit. But what we're doing is we're keeping open the routes to and from the hospital with basically loaders at that point, because really that's all that's going to be moving. Plus some of the Oshkosh is at this point. So those are the different categories. There's there's timing that goes with each one of those. If you get the brochure you will see that. Um I did and the issues of time I'm not going to go through on any more depth. But but just know that they exist and that's why they exist.

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Um, allowable levels of service, possible levels of service. Um, this is not a pictures from here, but I think it's illustrative. So if you look at the bottom right, which is sort of we're not doing anything to the road. And then if you look at the top figure that's a road that's black running water, what we call black running water, bare pavement that's been plowed and salted repetitively to get to that. In between is what's called hard pack. Um, the one on the left is hard pack. After the sun has been on it for a little bit. The one on the right is hard packed just in general. Having grown up in the state of Maine, this was the steady state of things we had hard back. That's also when sand gets used, because what sand does is provide traction on top of hard pack, and that's about the extent of what it does. Um, so if we're going to go into a performance planning where we're going to have hard packed routinely, then sand becomes viable. But to date, what we've heard from the community is they don't want that. That hard back is not something they want to be seen or dealing with. So we've pivoted more to more salt, more plowing, trying to avoid that from coming about. Uh, just generally in terms of plow techniques, since we're talking about salt. What salt does is it lowers the melting temperature of water, as you guys know. Um, what it really does for us is it forms what we call the brine layer. It forms a layer of brine on the road itself between the road and the snow. What that does is it prevents the snow from adhering to the road. Um, thus, it makes it easy for a plow to go through and scrape it up. If you don't do that, at some point in time, the snow starts to adhere to the road. You start to get hard back. Now the plow is skipping over the top of that. You're not going to get back down to it, and to try to burn your way back down with salt takes a tremendous amount of salt to do that burning top down does not work well.

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So where are our main road philosophies and approach what we did? We came out of a number of storms early in Dan's in my career, and one of the roads that was always black running water was Bierce's way. And I went up to Tom Perry and said, how come? How are you getting this result all the times. Rob I salt every three passes. And so we've gone to more of that approach, particularly on the mains. You get down a brine layer as you're plowing. Once you start seeing snow adhere, you put more salt down. You continue to plow. As you see snow adhere, you put more salt down. ET cetera, et cetera, etc. and what you've seen I think what you I hope, what you've seen, what we feel you've seen is that those mains are generally, by the time we're at the end of an event, pretty much bare payment, black running water, secondaries. We're not doing that on. That's a whole different thing. Um, the other thing you're going to see on main in the main approach is that we are just initially keeping the road open. At the end of it, we're going back to push corners back to widen roads out to do those kind of things. So but during a storm you may drive around and go, hey, this intersection is not good. We know we haven't gone back to clean that up yet because either the snow is still falling or we're still just trying to keep the roads open. Once we've gotten through that point, then we can get back into picking up corners and that kind of stuff. Um, main traditionally a pre staged as well, because of the fact that your main roads and because of the fact you need to get that brine layer down, you sort of need them there at first flake, if you know what I mean by that. So they get pre staged so that they can roll out at the beginning of the storm.

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Secondaries different approach. Um secondaries are plow only. We're not pre we're not pre brining them. We're just pushing the snow off. And if you look at this picture on the right and this is actually not a really heavy storm and it's actually in the daytime. Take this picture. Do me a favor. Imagine this is nighttime. And then tell me where the edge of the road is. So what we do initially and what we tell our drivers is, hey, your first priority is establish your edges, get in, go down one side, come back out the other side. And if you leave a win row in the middle, it doesn't matter. Just get those edges established because once you have a kerf there, you could kind of start to see where the edges with snow continues to pile up on it, because it sort of makes that mount. This is going to do a foot stomp here, and that's why I put it in red snow stakes help. So people that want to figure out, you know, what can I do to help those plow drivers in your secondary neighborhoods get snow stakes out? Because it makes it so much easier if you're just looking at those stakes going, all right, there's my edge versus it's dark, it's blowing. I can't really see, and I'm trying to feel my way down the edges. That's going to slow everything down and potentially causes some sort of lawn damage. Um, it should be acknowledged that basically, to get one time through a secondary route takes about 6 to 8 hours. Um, it doesn't happen quickly. And then if we're going to have a high intensity storm, i.e. inch and hour or more, then we're going to pre stage the secondary. And the reason why that is, is because as I said, there comes a point in time when secondaries are no longer effective. If we wait and get too much accumulated in there initially, that that's just a problem. If we're going to have that kind of intensity. We need to be ahead of it and just hitting it, hitting it, hitting it, hit it. And what Griffin will be telling the secondary drivers is no brakes. Just go, just go, just go. You just keep going because the moment you stop, you're going to fall so far behind. Remember it takes you six hours to get around, so you're going to be six hours behind any one point, um, or eight hours behind anyone point in a heavy storm that you've got to just keep going.

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Um, the other issue was secondaries. If it if we have wet conditions and we've got significant freezing coming afterwards, there's going to be a conversation in DPW about do we salt them? Um, again that's that balance. Um, and we have heard complaints mostly in the summertime about salt and wells and things of that nature. So we're cognizant of the fact we don't want to be ad lib with that. Um, but that conversation will happen in those scenarios. Again, with that, I'm going to pass the mic to Kelly, who's going to talk about our communications system.

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Thanks, Rob. So this is my fourth season with DPW. My fourth winter, I'll say. And each year we've continued to add on more ways to communicate more robust communications throughout storm events. And we really come at it with three different goals in mind. Number one, being real time, making sure that we're posting updates across all platforms, which we'll look at in just a moment in real time, in varying the types of information and content that we're posting. We look for that high visibility communication, making sure that we're in those channels that people are, i.e. social media, having content on the town website and also using things like the mobile app. We're also taking a really balanced approach at making sure that we're not just informative, but we're also approachable. So you probably have seen a lot of me lately. If you've paid attention to the Facebook story or our Instagram story, where I'm literally there walking through the storm, talking about conditions, giving an update on where we're at in terms of our staging or what stage of plowing we're in, and sometimes even behind the wheel. So I was trained last year to plow, and this year have actually gone out twice, and it wasn't until I was behind the wheel actually plowing when I realized people have no idea what it's like. They have no idea what it's like to sit in the URC. They have no idea what it's like to be out plowing at night in the early morning hours during, you know, a morning commute. So we got to show them that we've got to give them that sort of peek behind the curtains, that they can see that what we're doing is real, it's relatable, and it's happening all hours of the day and night. And then also we come at it with the goal of being very transparent and trying our best to build trust. Part of my job, when I'm not behind the wheel is to also be monitoring our, you know, the social media chatter. We see what's being said. We can sometimes take that information to address issues and send inspectors or contractors out to look at a particular road if someone feels that it's been missed. But we also see a lot of misinformation there as well. So we try our best to make sure that we're leveraging content in good news from sources like the National Weather Service, particularly the Boston unit, and then also just making sure that we're again, showing real time what we're doing here in Barnstable. So I mentioned different tools. We have quite a few in our toolbox. And for the most part, we use about all of these with each storm event. There are some certainly, that are more reserved for emergency matters. But the first thing is as soon as our emergency response center is stood up, we've actually engaged our IRC. We put the Storm Alert banner on the town website, so this is available on the home page of the Town of Barnstable website. And we keep a running sort of chronological list of updates throughout a storm event. So for example, here we have a very small little screengrab from the storm that occurred on New Year's Day. Sometimes it is just 1 or 2 updates, or we'll have longer storms where there can be 5 or 6 updates. This will be sort of a variety of information regarding where we're at in our plowing activity, but also if we have emergency situations. There are a couple storms in years previous where we had a lot of downed trees down wires. We'll include those in our storm updates as well. That storm update on the town homepage really then is sort of sliced and diced, and I like to call sort of content origami and used in multiple different ways and dispersed through multiple different channels. We'll push it out on the My Barnstable app. We'll push it out through social media, Facebook and Instagram. We also send that to the town communications team, and Director Point sends that out to her media list, which includes civic associations and various other public stakeholders, community stakeholders. And then as needed, we have other tools such as the reverse 911 Barnstable Government access, and then any of our updates, there's always the chance that they're picked up by other news outlets, including the radio. And then I'd be remiss to not mention the storm brochure that Rob alluded to earlier, as well as our town storm line with a call and message that's updated throughout storms. So, oh, and then one other thing here that I mentioned, I forgot to mention the digital and social tools is we also have a real time GPS powered snowplow tracker. This is available on the DPW page on the Town of Burnsville website, and you'll start to see us promoting that more widely throughout our public communications as well. And then lastly, I just wanted to touch very briefly on the real increase in our social media content. Why social media? I mean, the answer is pretty straightforward. It's it's meeting our residents where they are, especially if it's a storm where you're stuck at home. Whether you've got kids home from school or you have the luxury of being home on a holiday and watching the snowfall. More often than not, you're probably grabbing your your smartphone or a tablet and you're scrolling social media. You're checking news updates from various sources. So we're going to be there. We're going to be there, you know, pretty in rapid fashion on our story, both Instagram and Facebook. We're going to be on traditional static posts as well, but we really are increasing our use of what we call short form video. So this is Instagram Reels as well as those story updates. We're talking 5 to 8 second clips, really quick bursts of information. We usually use some kind of trendy hook or something to get people to watch the video. And then we provide the more detailed update in the caption. This is working really well for us, so we've got a couple of examples here. These are all just from this last month, these first couple of allowable snow events that we've had. And I won't go through all of them in detail, but you'll see that we have upwards of 44,000 views on one of our most recent reels from our storm coverage. Over the last month, we've gained new followers. We've had an increase in engagement on the town social media, and we continue to just really have great feedback and engagement with the public on our social media channels throughout storm events. So the real time social media updates have certainly been helpful, and hopefully you feel that way as well, and we will continue to be doing more of that, including, you know, videos regarding safety tips and like, like Rob said, how folks can help by placing snow stakes, interviewing some of our personnel while they're out and about. So we look forward to continuing to keep the community abreast of all of the updates throughout a storm. Um, across all of our channels.

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Thank you. Kelly, you already pushed. Okay, so I'm going to come back in now and start talking about resources, and I'll start with personnel. And I just want to go broad and down to sort of the narrow. And then we'll kind of work from there. So the town of Barnstable has roughly 1400 people that work for it. About 900 of them are in the schools. Roughly 520 are in municipal employees. 147 of those are in the Department of Public Works. So within DPW. 29 of those are in the enterprise funded sections. And we do steal ones from the enterprise funded sections, but they generally are working in their own sections. So for instance, the water pollution control guys are keeping the plant there, pump stations, those sorts of things open solid waste guys are dealing with the solid waste facility. Um 20 custodians, custodians are basically assigned to their buildings and doing the walkways around their buildings. So they're not involved in the bigger plowing event. Um, six administration, three are held out for building issues if they arise. One of those is the general form, infrastructures and grounds. He also is double tapped so that if we have a long event and we're all shot at 24 hours and going home, he does the complaints the next morning, um, he's the person that can come in and kind of keep the lights on because everyone else at that point is spent. What that leaves you is there's about 89 people spread between high wage structures and grounds, admin, technical and swamp that are involved in snow and ice. And I just want to emphasize that last piece. A lot of times we're talking about swamp and it's like, okay, there's this expense, it's the swamp, it's regulated. It's mandated by law that we have to do it. You're also getting tangential benefit from it because all those guys are absolutely up to their elbows in snow and ice events as well.

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So an idealized storm or an idealized personnel distribution is going to look like this. We have about 125 contracted pieces of equipment that will be rolling. We've got about 50 town direct labor folks that will be out plowing, operating machinery, loaders, etc. and then we have our fleet maintenance staff that are fixing our trucks that break. We do not fix contractors trucks. Um, you then have about ten people in reserve, ideally, um, because there's yet to be a storm where we don't lose about eight secondary contractors every single storm. In addition, main contractors go down, though not as regularly. But you're never. You're never going to lose one two main contractors. They go down because of breakage. They go down. One time we had a truck literally burned to the ground. You know, they go down for any number of reasons, but at some point you're pushing more town resources into the maps because the contractors aren't able to do it. So ideally, you want to start with about ten people on the bench. What's happened recently because the contractors have been thin is we're starting almost with everybody already in right from the get go. And then what you have to do is at the end, you start, once you're done to one map, you're flipping to another and you're flipping to another. And we're sort of tandem maps trying to get through all those secondary maps. Um, you then have about 20 people that are overhead. Those are 13 inspectors, five people in the emergency response center. And we'll talk about that in a second. My communicator and our safety person. So this is how we're organized during a storm. Um, and this will explain why the town engineer and the division supervisor for highway are here with me tonight. Um, so the Director of Public Works, Dan, obviously has almost has the full responsibility for the entire operations. Um, myself. Or if I am out and not available, PJ Kelliher will act as IRC manager. Um, we have with us our communications team. So currently Kelly is here. Chris Gadd right now is out plowing generally in Cotuit. Um, that's where he's been recently for this entire winter so far. And as Kelly mentioned, when she gets on top of the communications piece, if we're really hurting on bodies, Griffin's pushing her out in the truck as well. On the other side, we have the staff for the IRC. That's my dispatcher. And then we also have a GPS technician. Um, Miro is in there. Keep an eye on the GPS system and monitoring that. Um, the safety officer is there. She also can plow if we need to, if there's nothing else going on. Um, and then we distribute how we actually manage the event. So main roads, parking lots and sidewalks are managed by Sean Jones and Brian Larson. That allows them to sort of right seat, left seat, sleep, rest. Things of that nature. Um, they've got four main road inspectors that they have out there looking at the main roads are broken by sector. There's 19 sectors, as we talked about, in 145 miles of main roads that they're covering. He's got two parking lot inspectors for the one on the east side of town, and one on the west side of town. They're looking at 53 different parking lots in the contractors in 53 different parking lots. Sidewalks happen after the storm. Sean and Brian are responsible for that as well. There's 90 miles of sidewalks. And as I said, at this point in time, it is the same exact contractors that are plowing secondary. So they're not getting to it until we finish the storm, rested them and then get them back. And then we have to see what conditions we're dealing with once that happens. Secondary roads are managed by Griffin Bowden and Amber Unruh. Um, when Amber is not with Griffin in the IRC, last time, she was covering down for an inspector that's out on paternity leave. So she was out in the western part of town as a secondary inspector. Um, there are other. As I said, there's seven secondary inspectors covering those maps. Um, there's 56 maps and 290 miles of roads. Trees. Um, Andrew Bernier, our tree warden, is the person that takes the lead on the trees. A lot of our tree guys are pushed into plowing at this point in time. So we also have an on call, um, an on call tree contractor that's there with us, particularly if we're looking at a storm where higher winds or wet, heavy snow, where we think we're going to get trees and wires and have a lot of that, we bring them on board. Indy manages all of that, and then we have our mechanics, and those are dealing with just the Town of Barnstable trucks. So this is how we're organized at any point in time. Once the IRCc stands up, this team comes in. Comes into place. And a number of people are involved that normally their day jobs really have nothing to do with emergency response or snow and ice costs. Um, I've listed the first six storms here. I think probably the most the best way to have this conversation is with the takeaway box. So if you notice the box, it's surrounded in red. Really any sort of ice event, which are those for our events going out to deal with black ice, it's $35,000 on average. That's what it's going to cost to do that. If we're going to go for an ice event, it's going to be about 35 grand. Plowing events are really more time dependent than snow dependent. So, for instance, that first storm you can see cost of someone costs us a little bit more than half a million bucks. Um, it's because it was 32 hours long. Um, because it was a break in the middle of it, and then it came back again. Um, so length of storm makes probably more difference than snow depth, though. Snow depth can affect length if you kind of know where I'm going with all of that, what it really comes down to is it's about $15,000 an hour when we're out plowing.

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Our contracts are all four hour minimums. So at the very minimum. You're spending $60,000 anytime we go to plow. The reality is it takes 6 to 8 hours to get through a secondary route. It's probably ten hours at a minimum to get through a plowing event. So it's really more likely 150,000 bucks at a minimum when we're going out to plow. Um, so as you're looking at sort of when we respond, how we respond, and back to that balance of costs, safety and environment. These are the costs, $35,000 to go out and do a salting event, $15,000 an hour with probably really a fair way of saying it's $150,000 minimum to go out and do a plowing event.

261
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Okay, so let's do some takeaways and then I promise this is my last slide. Um, so I've been here for 13 years now. Um, and there's a few things that we've noticed, as you know, and, and I've noticed throughout that time, one, the town is becoming much less tolerant to heart attack and much less tolerant inconvenience, and is demanding a higher level of service. I'm not saying you are. I'm saying that's that's that feedback loop we're getting coming off complaints and individual calls. That means more sand, no salt. I mean more salt, no sand. We go out earlier, we're plowing second railroads at two inches a number of communities. When I started this didn't plow until three inches.

262
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Remaining until the snow ends, even if there's only one inch left. Griffin and I have had a couple storms already this year where he's like, Rob forecast has only one inch left. We're allowed to be out. We don't even plow unless there's two. Why aren't we going home? And it's because we've already started in the moment we start and then don't finish. We're going to get barraged with constituents saying you didn't. There's an interest. What? What? So we're responding to that feedback loop. Good, bad or indifferent, that's what we're hearing. And we're salting secondaries, as I said, more often than we had in the past. Our program is highly dependent on contractors, as we've talked about, and contractors are becoming very difficult to secure. Every summer, Sean goes out and canvasses not only the state's rates, but every other town's rates for contractors. And then we set market, and we still have a hard time getting the contractors we need. And what we're hearing this year, particularly from them, is particularly a lot of the landscapers and stuff. They can't get their drivers. They've lost a lot of their workforce for various geopolitical reasons that I've got no control over. And so as a result, now they're hurting for people too. So it makes it even harder to try to get them in and get them out. Now we have basically the same teams doing sidewalks and secondaries. That's why we are where we are. Um, and that's pushing more and more town employees into the game. So that bench that I want to have when I go into a storm, I'm not having anymore. They're all in. Um, and so the moment something breaks, the moment someone falls out, we just gotta wait. That adds time. Um, so you can kind of see how that all works together and creates the situation that we're in. The last piece and I want to foot stomp on this. We have is I think you saw about 89 people that can do this. And we're in as soon as we're all in a plowing event, we're all there. Anybody I've got there, 24 hours later, they're spent. Now, I heard the stories when I first got here. Oh, we did 40 hours and I drove home and I saw a pink elephant and hit a tree. Okay, we're not doing that. Um, so 24 hours, we start cutting things off and saying, we got to do something different. We got to start sending people home. I don't have the resources, and we don't have the resources to do two different crews at the same level of service. Our fear is we start to see a storm, and if we do, that's got a long duration storm, but we're going to probably end up doing is splitting AB blue gold, whatever you want to call it, and just providing much less service, longer time, but steadily, versus a berth to service ten hours sleep and get back a birth to serve as ten hours sleep and get back. Um, that's what we ended up doing to Juneau for cleanup as we broke into a blue gold and we just stayed forever and stuff. So I say that not as I need you to fix the problem. I say that just to. Look, if I'm ever sitting here after a 48 hour storm and you're like, what happened? I just want him to remember, I'm 24 hours. We're out of juice. Um, and with that, this is our newest plow rig. Um, we consider this our aerobic plow rig. For those of people that are interested in health and fitness. We have this opportunity for people, and we're always very interested in seeing if anyone wants to come join us on that.

263
02:41:26,100 --> 02:41:27,801
And what are the rates for that one?

264
02:41:27,801 --> 02:41:31,767
Uh, much less. Much less. And with that, I'll take any questions.

265
02:41:31,767 --> 02:42:24,267
Save some money with that one. Thank you. Thank you. Great update. And, uh, having been out in June, I remember it very, very well, to say the least. By the airport there, the front end loaders were picking up cars literally and moving them out of the way because they were stalled out and couldn't move. So it was quite a storm. Again, thank you for that. I. Tremendous amount of information again. And, you know, I don't think there is an easy answer. I mean, you only have a limited staff, the contractors have a limited staff. And, you know, we want everything done immediately. Uh, if not yesterday. And sometimes that just does not happen. But thank you for what you do. Do. Any questions? Betty. Counselor. Vodka. Excuse me.

266
02:42:24,267 --> 02:42:41,100
Yeah. That was a great presentation. Very informative. Um, just curious, who is your authority for rest? I mean, does the Department of Transportation put out something? I mean, that seems a little bit strange that we don't have a an authority for rest.

267
02:42:41,100 --> 02:43:31,000
So can I skip that question? So the federal highways got some authority and some dictation on that. I don't know of one on snow powers per se. Um, common sense has told us that 24 hours is about as far as we can go. And you have to remember that 24 hours, some of these events start at like 7:00 at night. So the team has worked all day long during their day job. They go home and take a nap, and then they're back at 7:00 at night. And if it goes 24 hours after that, it's really longer, even though they have that nap in between. Um, we're cognitive, I understand, um, I don't have an option short of doubling staff or doubling contractors. And as I said, we're having a hard time getting the contractors we're getting. Yeah. And we're not alone in that. Every other community is as well.

268
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Yeah. That just seems very, very, very dangerous to not have, you know, a very strict policy on rest, but. And you said you can't get the contract. You used to be able to do the sidewalks simultaneously. We started out with the public comments on that. Is that just because they're just not there? They just.

269
02:43:49,968 --> 02:44:02,868
We just didn't get them this year. You know, I mean, basically it's we we put rates, we try to top the market on our rates and put them out and then hope to get in the staff that we need in the contractor group that we need, and we didn't.

270
02:44:02,868 --> 02:44:12,400
Now, how come you restrict yourself just for your life, like you have Kelly out there running a plow? Why couldn't you reach into the rest of the town of Barnstable?

271
02:44:12,400 --> 02:44:45,767
The reality is, DPW workers all have, in their job description, must be available for emergencies. Other workers don't have that, and I don't have authority or jurisdiction to reach into other departments. Now, I have other departments that are volunteering. So we have a person now at Weights and Measures. This comes in and volunteers. Um, one of the IT guys is now talking about wanting to come volunteer. There are people that are doing that. Um, and as, as, as they see those overtime opportunities and as they see those chances, hopefully more people will do that. I don't have the ability to make them do it.

272
02:44:45,767 --> 02:45:10,801
Well, that'd be something I don't know. I'm looking at town Manager ls something to put out to, you know, your military, our military. We used to have opportunities for everything. I mean, everybody was busy. But you would augment. Everybody would help everybody else, and you'd learn that skill. So it seems like maybe we could reach a little further out and get some other people. Maybe some of the folks sitting up here could drive a plow.

273
02:45:10,801 --> 02:45:12,467
We got the Arabic one.

274
02:45:12,467 --> 02:45:42,267
And then the other thing is, you know, I'm fascinated with the hardback versus the pavement, and you're balancing act of the cost and the environment. Um, you know, hardback to me seems very drivable. I'm not sure why we've basically kind of ceded that ground. You know why? Why don't we stick with the hard pack? It seems environmentally friendly. Or it seems very drivable. Um, you know.

275
02:45:42,267 --> 02:46:23,601
I'd like to answer that this way. Is that again, the feedback loop we've had to date is what we hear. Um, and so lacking any sort of guidance from authority above us that says hard pack is acceptable. And so when people call and upset about it, direct them to us. We're going to try to accommodate what the community and what the constituents are asking for the best we can. Um, so that's why we've gone that route. And it's been and we've been doing that steadily over the years. But we could certainly go back to saying that's no longer something we're going to do. Um, but I can promise you we will get. I mean, we get calls now when there's hard pack on anything left on the ground.

276
02:46:23,601 --> 02:46:26,067
What does that do to your costs, Rob?

277
02:46:26,067 --> 02:46:30,868
Um, it's more salt. Oh, sorry. Um.

278
02:46:30,868 --> 02:46:37,868
I mean, I grew up in New England. I mean, hard pack is fine. Like you said, I don't know again why we seeded this.

279
02:46:37,868 --> 02:46:40,667
I don't know.

280
02:46:40,667 --> 02:47:39,200
Well, I'll answer what Rob isn't saying. The town council was not satisfied that we didn't have black pavement. We modified from when I was director of public works to wear what they are doing. It tremendously increased the cost. They were satisfied because the public was not satisfied. So they were responding to their constituents with people calling, saying exactly what Rob's been describing. We did many discussions here before town council modified their ops, and now we move at a smaller or a lesser amount of snow on the roads. We use more salt on the roads, and we try to satisfy the people who are not satisfied unless they can go out, snowstorm or not, and do their normal routine. That's why that occurred was not staff recommendation.

281
02:47:39,200 --> 02:47:55,067
Okay, well, maybe this council needs to discuss this. I mean, we just had a presentation about costs, finances, cuts and services. And here we have this. I don't know, I would like to have a discussion maybe about this.

282
02:47:55,067 --> 02:47:55,601
We certainly.

283
02:47:55,601 --> 02:48:22,767
Can. I don't know who who grew up in Florida here, I don't know. Um, you know, hard pack is fine. I just I've been wondering too. I see, like you said, there's just. What were these streets with all this water? It's like you're on this watery street. Yeah. I'd rather have some hard pack everywhere and get some hard pack on those sidewalks, too, you know, versus having these roads. That's. That's ridiculous, I think.

284
02:48:22,767 --> 02:48:24,067
Vice President Clark.

285
02:48:24,067 --> 02:48:56,267
Thank you very much. President Thomas, thank you for the presentation. I very much value the work that you've done for our snowplows, and I concur with Councillor Laki that I tolerate a hard pack. I think it's charming and reflective of New England, even if I have to tolerate a couple of unsatisfied constituents. Could you let us know about in general, what does the cost of snow plowing do at holiday time and how it impacts the budget? Thank you.

286
02:48:56,267 --> 02:49:20,367
Differential. So I mean where where would impact be on the employee labor side. And I'd have to go back and look at the contract to see what the differential there. I think it's still a, you know, time and a half overtime. Um, so I believe it's the same regardless. It doesn't the contractors, it's it's transparent. It doesn't it doesn't matter what it is or not.

287
02:49:20,367 --> 02:50:12,100
Mr. elles, thank you. Sorry I didn't answer all the questions. We have worked with all staff before to allow them to come in. Rob identified correctly that DPW staff says essential. Beyond that, um, in some cases they are assigned during events to other responsibilities. But we have opened it up to that. But again, it could occur. Um, most of the storm events are snow and a black ice, events that we deal with the big events, but we need to make sure we build that into the program. So I just want you to know, yes, we've looked at that. We've used it at times. Um, it presents challenges, quite honestly. Um, but that's all. So that that is something we can look further at. And I just wanted to make sure you knew that.

288
02:50:12,100 --> 02:50:22,801
Yeah. And could our our volunteers. I'm talking about our work off program folks. And and seriously, could we do that? We're town employees.

289
02:50:22,801 --> 02:50:23,868
Town councillors.

290
02:50:23,868 --> 02:50:25,467
Yeah.

291
02:50:25,467 --> 02:50:48,467
I don't know, and I don't know what licence you need to hold and you would have to be trained and etc. etc. it's not just because we drive cars, it doesn't mean we can plow for the town. Um, so we really need to think through that. But um, in a controlled situation, we have gone beyond the standard DPW. Um, but that's vacillated how effective that is.

292
02:50:48,467 --> 02:51:27,701
Just just a war story on that front. And I'm sorry. It's just me. Um, so we're in Juneau. I'm standing in my IRC, in walks John Norman, who's actually a councillor at the time who was driving a backhoe for Bortolotti or somebody of that nature. And he was out there just bailing away with his backhoe throughout that storm. And then Dan and I ended up up in front of here. There's a long line of people that weren't happy with us, and he saved us because he said, guys, I was out there. This was not a normal storm. Um, the fact that he had been in the middle of it and been up to his elbows with it with us. Um, was of a real benefit at that point.

293
02:51:27,701 --> 02:51:30,267
Thank you.

294
02:51:30,267 --> 02:51:32,667
Counselor.

295
02:51:32,667 --> 02:53:02,701
Thank you president. I just remember having discussions in regards to the hard packed discussion. You know, having been, um, you know, council for a few years now and what I remember and of course, you know, living here for about 30 years, you know, on the, on the secondary roads, when you get an inch or two, a hard pack, it's not necessarily a big deal. But if you, you talk about, you know, I have vivid memories of a four inch hard pack on West Main Street. And then when that starts to melt and people are driving over in school buses and things of that nature, it was a minefield. And I know and at that time I, you know, my first thought was, oh, people aren't doing that job necessarily. And I did call my friend John Norman. And I said, look, I want to make sure I'm thinking about this. Right? And he goes, it's the policy of the town to allow Hyde Park at this time. And he says, and that's what happens and when. So it's it's it's it's it's easy. I mean, you showed a really pretty picture of the hard pack, right? But I think you should have. We should take a picture of Main Street look like that day and how it was a minefield. And people were just like you thought you were off roading on the on the power lines and I in a sedan. So, um, I think you guys do a great job, and I understand. And. Yeah, maybe it's something that, you know, we look at hard pack under certain conditions, maybe a small smaller storms or whatever it might be. Maybe there's a hybrid. Right. That's the hot word right now. So maybe there's something like that we can pursue. But I but I think you do a great job and and maybe it's not you know, maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze to do something like that too. So but I appreciate the presentation. Thank you.

296
02:53:02,701 --> 02:53:05,300
Thank you, Councillor Crocker.

297
02:53:05,300 --> 02:53:48,267
Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Fantastic presentation. And I don't use those words too commonly, but I thought it was a fantastic presentation. I learned an awful lot. A couple of questions. Um, as most of these B and C category storms don't always just affect just Cape Cod and obviously not just Barnstable, in effect, southeastern Massachusetts because of the geography, we stick out. And there are other places that get it bad, as we all know. You know, the areas out in Framingham and further out. I'm wondering what your contact, what your communication is with the state, with Framingham, basically, if we have a big B or C storm and it affects other parts of the state.

298
02:53:48,267 --> 02:54:35,901
So basically our communication goes back to the county. And and the emergency manager for the town is the police chief. So generally when we get into those big storms like the one with Juno, I was talking to chief McDonald routinely. Um, and then he was coming back. At that time, Sean O'Brien was at the county talking to the county, and the county was trying to get us resources. Unfortunately, the resources they were getting us. He sent me down two, three quarter ton trucks. I had a fleet of them already parked that I couldn't use, But but the point of it was that's that is sort of our chain of command. You know, to the military point, that's sort of our chain of command during the event, we go through our emergency, you know, our emergency coordinator, they go back into the county and then it goes up. Um, that's when we do that. The same thing happens when we have wires down. We're going back through that same route. When we have wires down, trying to make sure that the utilities know what's going on.

299
02:54:35,901 --> 02:54:56,000
One other quick question. I think this might be more up with Kelly. A lot of people are cutting the cord with regard to cable and streaming. Um, what's your situation with with people who no longer have cable and can't get the town channel? I mean, I obviously see the mobile apps and things like that, but are you doing any streaming?

300
02:54:56,000 --> 02:55:41,801
Yeah. So I guess what I would consider streaming would be more like the Instagram story, so or the Facebook stories. So we don't really leverage TV by any means. And most of our digital communications are really focused on things you would access off your mobile device. So the mobile app, and then Facebook and Instagram being the primary social media platforms that the town leverages. We've moved. We've pivoted to that short form video on social media for that reason. I mean, I look at some of my friends who, you know, don't work for the WWE and don't have to come in during a storm event, and they're sitting there and they're scrolling and I think we're all we all fall victim of that occasionally. Um, so that's certainly been the mode that we've taken in terms of leveraging video is short form video on social media platforms.

301
02:55:41,801 --> 02:55:48,100
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead.

302
02:55:48,100 --> 02:56:36,067
Lynn Point, Director of Communications I just want to say that one of the reasons why we have this storm line is because we have a lot of elderly residents who do not have any kind of technology, and so they want to call a line and get the information there. So we make sure that we cover it that way. Um, those that do have technology that are not using Facebook and other Instagram, we do have live streaming available on our website, which streams our channel, and during Juno and other activities, we actually created a crawl that went across the bottom of the TV screen so that people would know what was going on, what category storm things are, and things of that nature. So we do. We know that one size does not fit all in communications, and we try to reach in many ways.

303
02:56:36,067 --> 02:56:39,868
Thank you. Thank you. Councillor shingle.

304
02:56:39,868 --> 02:56:57,701
Yes. Great presentation. Very informative. A question about the sidewalks. Now, is the town responsible for clearing the snow off all the sidewalks? Do any businesses? Um. Do they have any responsibilities? Right.

305
02:56:57,701 --> 02:57:08,000
So as we understand it, we are responsible for it. There is it's I know there are communities where the the person that abuts the sidewalk is responsible for it. That's not the case here.

306
02:57:08,000 --> 02:57:11,868
Okay. Is that something that's been considered?

307
02:57:11,868 --> 02:57:17,100
Not. Not at our level? No, I think that'd be more more of a policy conversation than you guys might have.

308
02:57:17,100 --> 02:57:26,901
Yeah. I lived in such a community that the Butters were responsible for cleaning the sidewalks. And, you know, maybe that's something that might be considered.

309
02:57:26,901 --> 02:57:43,100
Yeah, I think one of the huge issues for us, as opposed to a lot of communities, would be that with the number of seasonal homes that we have, that the you're going to have clear snow, clear snow, etc.. But yeah, it's certainly something to be discussed.

310
02:57:43,100 --> 02:57:47,000
Okay. Maybe the businesses or department buildings council. Okay.

311
02:57:47,000 --> 02:58:02,501
Thank you. And just just to kind of add on to that, I've certainly seen it with a requirement is that in a burrow does it and then they don't. And so it's not done. And yeah you can find them. But that still means that people don't have a sidewalk.

312
02:58:02,501 --> 02:58:04,200
Exactly.

313
02:58:04,200 --> 02:58:14,267
All right. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Thank you. Great presentation. And, uh, thank you for being out there.

314
02:58:14,267 --> 02:58:23,300
Okay. We will move on now to orders of the day.

315
02:58:23,300 --> 02:58:29,667
Counselor Vivek, can we start on that end tonight? If you could do 2026 072, please.

316
02:58:29,667 --> 02:58:45,167
Thank you, Mr. President. This is old business. May be acted upon by a majority vote. This is item number 2026 072. Order authorizing the grant of an easement for electric facilities on town owned land at 367 Main Street, Hyannis, as written.

317
02:58:45,167 --> 02:58:47,868
Second.

318
02:58:47,868 --> 02:58:48,901
Tom.

319
02:58:48,901 --> 02:58:50,767
Tom.

320
02:58:50,767 --> 02:58:51,167
Good evening.

321
02:58:51,167 --> 03:00:12,167
Councilors. Tom LaRosa, first assistant town attorney, is part of improvements plan to Town Hall. A new transfer of new electric transformer will be installed during the work. An old coal bin under the existing transformer outside Town hall needs to be filled in during construction. A temporary transformer will be established outside the footprint of the coal bin to supply power to Town hall, while the existing transformers removed, so that the coal bin can be filled in. After that happens, a new permanent transformer will be installed in the same location, along with a new underground electric line. Prior to installing the new transformer and electric service NStar Electric Company doing businesses, Eversource Energy requires that their customer grant an easement to NStar, which would provide them with the right to install and maintain their electric service and equipment on the customer's property. The authorization requested from the town council would allow the town to grant such an easement to NStar. Phenomenal consideration. The easement area consists of 1946ft², and is shown as electric easement area on the plan attached to the vote. After the easement is finalized, DPW would coordinate with Eversource on the installation of the underground electric service and transformer in the easement area, which would be owned and maintained by Eversource.

322
03:00:12,167 --> 03:00:14,367
To clarify, did you say a coal bin.

323
03:00:14,367 --> 03:00:17,868
An old coal bin under the existing transformer?

324
03:00:17,868 --> 03:00:22,968
Right. Yeah, and we don't want that. We don't want to keep that for alternate energy purposes.

325
03:00:22,968 --> 03:00:26,000
Perhaps an Adu.

326
03:00:26,000 --> 03:00:31,767
Thank you. Any, uh, any discussion?

327
03:00:31,767 --> 03:00:39,167
Seeing? None. Madam. Clerk.

328
03:00:39,167 --> 03:00:41,167
Councilors. Burdick.

329
03:00:41,167 --> 03:00:42,501
Yes.

330
03:00:42,501 --> 03:00:43,367
Clerk.

331
03:00:43,367 --> 03:00:43,901
Yes.

332
03:00:43,901 --> 03:00:44,767
Crocker.

333
03:00:44,767 --> 03:00:45,300
Yes.

334
03:00:45,300 --> 03:00:45,968
Crow.

335
03:00:45,968 --> 03:00:46,667
Yes.

336
03:00:46,667 --> 03:00:53,667
Deleuze.

337
03:00:53,667 --> 03:00:59,267
Councilor.

338
03:00:59,267 --> 03:01:00,267
Keane.

339
03:01:00,267 --> 03:01:01,167
Yes.

340
03:01:01,167 --> 03:01:01,767
Levesque.

341
03:01:01,767 --> 03:01:02,701
Yes.

342
03:01:02,701 --> 03:01:03,467
Ladki.

343
03:01:03,467 --> 03:01:04,868
Yes.

344
03:01:04,868 --> 03:01:05,667
Shane. Gold.

345
03:01:05,667 --> 03:01:06,467
Yes.

346
03:01:06,467 --> 03:01:07,567
Star.

347
03:01:07,567 --> 03:01:08,501
Yes.

348
03:01:08,501 --> 03:01:09,367
Hamish.

349
03:01:09,367 --> 03:01:10,567
Yes.

350
03:01:10,567 --> 03:01:11,167
Bloom.

351
03:01:11,167 --> 03:01:20,501
Yes.

352
03:01:20,501 --> 03:01:23,067
Councillor. Dallas.

353
03:01:23,067 --> 03:01:23,968
Yes.

354
03:01:23,968 --> 03:01:29,667
Yes. Thank you. The motion does pass. Thank you.

355
03:01:29,667 --> 03:01:31,167
Thank you. Councillors.

356
03:01:31,167 --> 03:01:36,000
Councillor Crocker, please 2020 607 for.

357
03:01:36,000 --> 03:01:36,667
Under all.

358
03:01:36,667 --> 03:01:38,467
Business.

359
03:01:38,467 --> 03:01:43,501
Item number 2026074

360
03:01:43,501 --> 03:01:58,067
under public hearing or roll call. Majority of the full Council appropriation order and the amount of $4,200 in Community Preservation Act funds for the purchase and installation of 30 hiking trail signs as written.

361
03:01:58,067 --> 03:01:58,701
Second.

362
03:01:58,701 --> 03:02:25,901
Thank you. Okay. We have two public hearings. Tonight's. With respect to the public hearings, I'm going to announce the opening and closing of each public hearing without asking for a vote to do so. However, if any councilor objects at any time, then a vote will be taken to open and close the public hearing. If there is no objection, I will open the public hearing at this point. And I recognize Lindsay Council from the CPC for the rationale. Thank you.

363
03:02:25,901 --> 03:02:27,467
Council President.

364
03:02:27,467 --> 03:02:29,367
Lindsay Council.

365
03:02:29,367 --> 03:03:09,901
At the November 17th, 2025 Community Preservation Committee meeting, the eight committee members present voted unanimously to recommend to the Town Council through the Town manager the Planning and Development Department's application for $4,200 in community preservation, open space and recreation funds for the purchase and installation of 30 trail hiking signs to Market Town asset open space. The hiking signs will be installed by the Department of Public Works in the town right away. Approaching the various trailhead parking areas. With us tonight is Jim Kupfer from the Planning Department to answer any questions or give you more detail.

366
03:03:09,901 --> 03:03:12,100
Thank you.

367
03:03:12,100 --> 03:03:12,667
Thank you.

368
03:03:12,667 --> 03:03:13,467
Good evening.

369
03:03:13,467 --> 03:03:59,267
Jim Kupfer, Director of planning and Development. Just adding on to, uh, Chairman Council's comments. Um, this is a in collaboration with the Open Space Committee. The Open Space Committee has been working diligently with the planning department on updating the Open Space and Rec plan. And while having those discussions, we had a lot of great conversations about our our hiking trails and how to better them through signage and wayfinding. Uh, and so we are actively working with the Open Space Committee, DPW, and our asset management team to properly mark and manage those, um, those signs. So tonight we're asking for the 4200 through the Community Preservation Act Funds for those signs. I'm happy to answer any questions.

370
03:03:59,267 --> 03:04:17,100
Thank you. As I say, this is a public hearing. Is there any from the public who would like to be heard on this matter? Seeing no one witness anyone online. Seeing no one. Okay. I will close the public hearing at this point. Open up to council discussion. Vice President Clark.

371
03:04:17,100 --> 03:04:28,000
Thank you very much, president Thomas. And I very much welcome this. This development. And it will be good news to the Open Space Committee, which meets next Monday. Thank you.

372
03:04:28,000 --> 03:04:35,767
Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing. None. Madam. Clerk.

373
03:04:35,767 --> 03:04:39,067
Councilors. Clerk.

374
03:04:39,067 --> 03:04:40,567
Yes.

375
03:04:40,567 --> 03:04:41,501
Crocker.

376
03:04:41,501 --> 03:04:42,267
Yes.

377
03:04:42,267 --> 03:04:42,868
Crow.

378
03:04:42,868 --> 03:04:43,701
Yes.

379
03:04:43,701 --> 03:04:45,767
Deleuze.

380
03:04:45,767 --> 03:04:47,667
Yes.

381
03:04:47,667 --> 03:04:48,300
Keane.

382
03:04:48,300 --> 03:04:49,100
Yes.

383
03:04:49,100 --> 03:04:49,868
Levesque.

384
03:04:49,868 --> 03:04:50,501
Yes.

385
03:04:50,501 --> 03:04:53,767
Lucky. Yes. Shane. Gold.

386
03:04:53,767 --> 03:04:55,300
Yes.

387
03:04:55,300 --> 03:04:56,267
Sir.

388
03:04:56,267 --> 03:04:57,100
Yes.

389
03:04:57,100 --> 03:04:57,968
Tarnish.

390
03:04:57,968 --> 03:04:59,167
Yes.

391
03:04:59,167 --> 03:04:59,868
Bloom.

392
03:04:59,868 --> 03:05:00,868
Yes.

393
03:05:00,868 --> 03:05:01,467
Burdick.

394
03:05:01,467 --> 03:05:01,968
Yes.

395
03:05:01,968 --> 03:05:03,501
That's 12. Yes.

396
03:05:03,501 --> 03:05:10,267
Thank you. The motion does pass. Councillor Keane, if you could do. Thank you, Mister Council.

397
03:05:10,267 --> 03:05:49,501
Uh, certainly. Mister president, this is all business that may be acted upon by a majority vote. Item 2026 075. Order authorizing the taking of road easements by eminent domain for sewer and water purposes over certain private roads in Centerville and Hyannis, known as Angus Way, Captain Bellamy Lane, Center Lane, Connors Road, Elliott Street, Jamie Marie Way, Kitty Lane, Lil Lane, Longview Drive, Loomis Lane, Marks Path, Old Farm Road, Old Strawberry Hill Road, and Richards Lane. Second.

398
03:05:49,501 --> 03:05:50,100
I recognize.

399
03:05:50,100 --> 03:05:50,300
Hello.

400
03:05:50,300 --> 03:05:50,567
Again.

401
03:05:50,567 --> 03:05:51,767
Councillor.

402
03:05:51,767 --> 03:07:12,367
Tom LaRosa, first assistant town attorney. The town is proceeding with plans to install sewer, public sewers and related infrastructure in certain public roads and private roads in Centerville and Hyannis. In order to install the sewers in private roads, the town must secure easements in the roadway. The vote before you would authorize the town to take easements in 14 private roads in Centreville and Hyannis to install public sewer mains and related infrastructure. To be clear, this is only to take easements in the private roads, the entire the entire private road. Nothing more, nothing less. We will not be taking any easements. And the vote doesn't authorize taking easements in any abutting property or any abutting house lots. These easements are part of the larger program to deploy sewer lines in accordance with the town's approved Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan. The timing timely completion of these takings will also qualify this work for State Revolving Fund, or SRF monies using the eminent domain procedures acquired. The easements will assure clear title to the easements which is necessary to qualify for SRF funding. Because the value of the sewer access to the private properties would exceed the value of the easement. There is no provision for the award of monetary damages.

403
03:07:12,367 --> 03:07:18,567
Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Any discussion on my right? Counsel.

404
03:07:18,567 --> 03:07:50,367
I just we did have that public comment earlier. And I see on the other side of this explanation here rationale. It says any trees, buildings or other structures located within said roads are not included in this order. And the owners have to do that with 60 days. Do we have a level of fidelity in this that we know if there are? Is that just a, you know, a statement that we put in all of them? Have we done a due diligence? Is there anything that someone's going to be on the hook for that.

405
03:07:50,367 --> 03:08:05,400
It's this is standard language that we have in every order of taking. My experience so far, we've not actually had to have anyone remove any structures from the roadway. It's language we have that if we need to address it. If if it does actually pop.

406
03:08:05,400 --> 03:08:05,767
Up.

407
03:08:05,767 --> 03:08:16,000
How about trees that may be close to the edge? Are those going to be damaged or I mean, well digging for the sewer or.

408
03:08:16,000 --> 03:08:16,801
Well, I.

409
03:08:16,801 --> 03:08:25,701
Would think from DPW perspective and they can clarify that. I don't think we go probing to take out trees, just those that would be necessary to complete the work.

410
03:08:25,701 --> 03:08:26,767
Happy to answer that question.

411
03:08:26,767 --> 03:08:32,701
I just know in Centerville there's a lot of trees right on the edge of the road, and people are very attached to those trees.

412
03:08:32,701 --> 03:09:15,501
Yeah, I'm happy to answer that question. Griffin Boden, town Engineer. So when we design these projects, we we survey the whole limit of the right of way and beyond, frankly, so that we have a full understanding of what's there. We try to design all of our projects to avoid tree impacts. Some of the roads in question, frankly, are very tight, so there will certainly be in some cases, in many cases, be the need for living above the road to install the utilities. We do design the utility, the new sewers to be under the improved roadway, really to minimize impact outside of the improved roadway. So underneath the paved roadway. That's not to say there won't be cases where trees may be impacted. Those will be identified. And they would be communicated though. But we know.

413
03:09:15,501 --> 03:09:22,667
That's very expensive for the homeowners to have to take these trees down. If you're taking a large tree down, that's.

414
03:09:22,667 --> 03:09:29,667
But yeah, I mean, we would typically anticipate doing that as part of our construction if it was needed. Yeah, you'll.

415
03:09:29,667 --> 03:09:29,868
Do.

416
03:09:29,868 --> 03:09:30,000
It.

417
03:09:30,000 --> 03:09:30,767
The town will do.

418
03:09:30,767 --> 03:09:30,968
It.

419
03:09:30,968 --> 03:09:36,801
If it's adjacent to the roadway and needs to come down to support the sewer work, we would we would facilitate that.

420
03:09:36,801 --> 03:09:45,868
Okay. Because the boilerplate says the opposite.

421
03:09:45,868 --> 03:09:50,400
Did they have 60 days to remove?

422
03:09:50,400 --> 03:09:52,300
No, I think I saw it. Yeah.

423
03:09:52,300 --> 03:09:55,300
Well, I just I just want to make sure that.

424
03:09:55,300 --> 03:10:05,200
Allows them 60 days to remove the order of taking. Allows them 60 days to remove it if they want. But if they don't remove it, then the the town may remove it.

425
03:10:05,200 --> 03:10:07,000
The town may and the town will pay.

426
03:10:07,000 --> 03:10:08,400
But yeah.

427
03:10:08,400 --> 03:11:30,200
Yeah. So where this will come into play more often than not would be with fences and structures like that, where, um, there are structures that are within the right of way, um, which are within the easement that we've identified that have been placed there over time. But they may be in the way of an activity and need to be removed in order to facilitate the activity. There may be cases where trees are in that case as well. However, if we need to remove a tree in order to complete the sewer installation, we would we would facilitate that. We would contact the the property owner in the case where there was somebody who owned the tree and we would contact, we would we would have that conversation with them and facilitate that effort. We wouldn't we wouldn't send them a notice and say, you need to take this tree down. That that just wouldn't be a realistic expectation for how that would be implemented. But fences, we do certainly try to give a property owner that courtesy because, you know, we certainly want to make sure that if they've spent a lot of money on a fence and they want to have their own contractor move them, um, they have the ability to do so. But in some cases they need to be taken down and we'll try to take care to do so. But, um, people often prefer to do that themselves. So that would be probably where this language would be more applicable, frankly, for our implementation.

428
03:11:30,200 --> 03:11:32,400
Okay.

429
03:11:32,400 --> 03:11:36,467
Vice President Clark.

430
03:11:36,467 --> 03:11:41,968
I'm citizen of town, and I hope.

431
03:11:41,968 --> 03:11:43,567
This is not a public hearing, ma'am.

432
03:11:43,567 --> 03:11:52,701
I just want to make a comment if it's possible. I know it's not a public hearing, but I wasn't able to be here earlier to discuss it regarding the sewage project.

433
03:11:52,701 --> 03:12:03,000
Well, I would I'd like you to do is have a conversation, perhaps with attorney LaRosa privately. But thank you.

434
03:12:03,000 --> 03:12:05,100
Any further discussion?

435
03:12:05,100 --> 03:12:06,467
Yes, I have a question.

436
03:12:06,467 --> 03:12:07,300
Thank you.

437
03:12:07,300 --> 03:12:23,100
Thank you. Thank you very much. President Thomas, the commenter at Public Comment, I believe it was Miss Schmidt was talking about a map. So are the are the are the homeowners provided I'm assuming with adequate information.

438
03:12:23,100 --> 03:12:54,767
And I believe the the the comment the public comment was the concern about, you know, not seeing a plan, thinking that we're actually taking part of our house lot, which there's no plan to do, that all of the plans in the that are in the vote, some are recorded already at the Registry of Deeds. Some are not. Um, they're all complete. They're available if someone wants to look at them. Uh, we didn't provide those plans in there because they also show the same thing. The town would be taking an easement in the entire private road. Nothing more, nothing less.

439
03:12:54,767 --> 03:13:07,601
Thank you. In the roadway. Not. Not on private, not on the property. Any further questions? Discussion. Seeing. None.

440
03:13:07,601 --> 03:13:10,567
Councillor.

441
03:13:10,567 --> 03:13:11,767
Crocker.

442
03:13:11,767 --> 03:13:13,267
Yes.

443
03:13:13,267 --> 03:13:13,801
Crowe.

444
03:13:13,801 --> 03:13:14,901
Yes.

445
03:13:14,901 --> 03:13:17,567
Deleuze.

446
03:13:17,567 --> 03:13:20,667
No.

447
03:13:20,667 --> 03:13:21,567
Keane.

448
03:13:21,567 --> 03:13:22,467
Yes.

449
03:13:22,467 --> 03:13:23,267
Levesque.

450
03:13:23,267 --> 03:13:24,467
Yes.

451
03:13:24,467 --> 03:13:25,200
Blood. Quay.

452
03:13:25,200 --> 03:13:26,501
Yes.

453
03:13:26,501 --> 03:13:27,501
Shane. Gold.

454
03:13:27,501 --> 03:13:28,400
Yes.

455
03:13:28,400 --> 03:13:29,467
Star.

456
03:13:29,467 --> 03:13:30,601
Yes.

457
03:13:30,601 --> 03:13:31,200
Amish.

458
03:13:31,200 --> 03:13:32,601
Yes.

459
03:13:32,601 --> 03:13:33,167
Bloom.

460
03:13:33,167 --> 03:13:34,000
Yes.

461
03:13:34,000 --> 03:13:34,601
Burdick.

462
03:13:34,601 --> 03:13:35,367
Yes.

463
03:13:35,367 --> 03:13:36,000
Clerk.

464
03:13:36,000 --> 03:13:36,467
Yes.

465
03:13:36,467 --> 03:13:37,667
That's 11. Yes. One.

466
03:13:37,667 --> 03:13:49,400
No thank you, thank you. Councilors and, uh, Attorney La Rosa, if you could have a conversation with that young lady. Thank you.

467
03:13:49,400 --> 03:13:55,567
Okay, councillor gold, if you could do 2026 077, please.

468
03:13:55,567 --> 03:14:10,100
Okay. Old business. Uh, roll call. Majority vote for the council. It's item 2026 077. Appropriation order in the amount of $48,250

469
03:14:10,100 --> 03:14:17,167
for burial equipment for the Department of Public Works Cemetery program second.

470
03:14:17,167 --> 03:14:28,000
Okay. Motion made and seconded. Again, this is a public hearing. If there's no objection, I will open the public hearing and I will recognize Dan Santos for the rationale.

471
03:14:28,000 --> 03:14:29,167
Good evening. Town Councilors.

472
03:14:29,167 --> 03:14:30,267
Dan Santos, director of.

473
03:14:30,267 --> 03:14:31,701
Public works.

474
03:14:31,701 --> 03:15:32,267
Town of Barnstable Structures and Grounds Cemetery program, is requesting an appropriation of $48,250 from the sale of Cemetery Lots Special Revenue Fund to purchase burial equipment. This equipment includes replacing a 2012 case 55 B mini excavator and aluminum grave boards. The excavator is the primary piece of equipment used in day to day interment operations. It needs to be replaced and the aluminum gray boards, which are showing excessive wear due to day to day operations, also need to be replaced. Replacing this equipment will ensure the cemetery program can meet the demand and maintain the expected level of service. In accordance with the Massachusetts general finance laws, the town maintains a Special Reserve Fund to which the receipts from the sale of cemetery lots are credited. Subsequently, these receipts may be appropriated for the cost of maintaining and improving the town's cemeteries. This account currently has a balance of

475
03:15:32,267 --> 03:15:41,267
$5.33. There is no general fund operating budget impact as a result of this appropriation request.

476
03:15:41,267 --> 03:16:01,367
Thank you. Thank you. This is a public hearing, as I said. Is there anyone from the public who would like to be heard on this matter? Seeing no one? No one online. I will close the public hearing. Council for now. Council discussion. Is there anyone would like to be heard on this matter? Counsel.

477
03:16:01,367 --> 03:16:08,767
Yeah. I'm just curious. How much availability do we have in our cemeteries?

478
03:16:08,767 --> 03:16:09,567
Capacity?

479
03:16:09,567 --> 03:16:10,767
Yeah, capacity.

480
03:16:10,767 --> 03:16:12,667
Um.

481
03:16:12,667 --> 03:16:13,000
I don't.

482
03:16:13,000 --> 03:16:13,367
Have.

483
03:16:13,367 --> 03:16:19,667
I don't have the exact number of lots we have. We have capacity. And we've actually purchased land recently.

484
03:16:19,667 --> 03:16:20,567
Oh. You have?

485
03:16:20,567 --> 03:17:01,667
Yes. In Cotuit. Uh, another five acres. They're available to us to extend that cemetery. So we have, you know, we're always thinking about that many years into the future. Uh, most, not most, but about half burials now, aren't burials their cremations? And so that obviously we're building a columbarium with the niches and that's taking up, taking up much less space than we need from the burial lots. So that's something that has really, um, taken down that, that need for space left.

486
03:17:01,667 --> 03:17:07,167
Will any of the cemeteries be able to accommodate the green burials, the composting burials?

487
03:17:07,167 --> 03:17:22,000
Yes, we have we've put that into place and that's in our rules and regulations. So we have, at the request of citizens, uh, probably about five years ago, uh, we have developed a program that allows for that.

488
03:17:22,000 --> 03:17:27,667
And finally, how do our rates compare to the private cemeteries?

489
03:17:27,667 --> 03:17:30,467
How do you base your rates for someone to buy a plot.

490
03:17:30,467 --> 03:17:42,467
Well, most of our rates throughout the town, we're not we're not making money. We're basically doing cost recovery. And our rates are less than private services.

491
03:17:42,467 --> 03:17:45,200
Do the privates offer the composting burial?

492
03:17:45,200 --> 03:17:46,567
I don't know that.

493
03:17:46,567 --> 03:17:48,267
Okay. Thank you.

494
03:17:48,267 --> 03:17:56,767
Any further discussion? Seeing none, madam. Clerk.

495
03:17:56,767 --> 03:17:59,167
Councilors. Crowe.

496
03:17:59,167 --> 03:18:00,968
Yes.

497
03:18:00,968 --> 03:18:07,467
Deleuze.

498
03:18:07,467 --> 03:18:10,267
Councillor. Deleuze.

499
03:18:10,267 --> 03:18:12,000
Yes.

500
03:18:12,000 --> 03:18:14,100
Thank you. Keene.

501
03:18:14,100 --> 03:18:14,868
Yes.

502
03:18:14,868 --> 03:18:15,400
Vivek.

503
03:18:15,400 --> 03:18:16,367
Yes.

504
03:18:16,367 --> 03:18:17,067
Blood king.

505
03:18:17,067 --> 03:18:18,100
Yes.

506
03:18:18,100 --> 03:18:19,000
Shane. Gold.

507
03:18:19,000 --> 03:18:19,767
Yes.

508
03:18:19,767 --> 03:18:20,767
Star.

509
03:18:20,767 --> 03:18:21,567
Yes.

510
03:18:21,567 --> 03:18:22,467
Hamish.

511
03:18:22,467 --> 03:18:23,767
Yes.

512
03:18:23,767 --> 03:18:24,367
Bloom.

513
03:18:24,367 --> 03:18:25,167
Yes.

514
03:18:25,167 --> 03:18:25,868
Burdick.

515
03:18:25,868 --> 03:18:26,601
Yes.

516
03:18:26,601 --> 03:18:27,367
Clarke.

517
03:18:27,367 --> 03:18:28,167
Yes.

518
03:18:28,167 --> 03:18:28,868
Crocker.

519
03:18:28,868 --> 03:18:29,968
Yes.

520
03:18:29,968 --> 03:18:30,968
That's 12. Yes.

521
03:18:30,968 --> 03:18:38,667
The motion does pass. Counselor Crowe. If you could do 20, 26 078, please.

522
03:18:38,667 --> 03:18:58,000
Thank you, Mr. President. This is an item of new business. May be acted upon by a majority vote. Item number 2026078. Resolved to change precinct six polling location to the community center at Saint George Greek Orthodox Church, located at 1130 Falmouth Road, Centerville, mass.

523
03:18:58,000 --> 03:18:59,367
Second.

524
03:18:59,367 --> 03:19:04,467
Thank you.

525
03:19:04,467 --> 03:19:10,467
Who is that? You, Madam Clerk?

526
03:19:10,467 --> 03:19:16,000
Um, the reason that we're asking for.

527
03:19:16,000 --> 03:20:08,567
The ability to move precinct six into precinct two. Um, there's varying reasons, but, um, one of them is that there's large potholes. Where in the tire where the handicapped parking is. So that makes us not compliant with Ada right off the top. Um, precinct two is located at the Saint George Community Center, uh, on 28. And there's a lot of space there. There's excellent parking. They have lights at night. It makes a big difference. So I think it would make it a lot better for our precinct. Six, um, residents and voters to have a place to go that they'll enjoy.

528
03:20:08,567 --> 03:20:10,267
And there is a cost savings.

529
03:20:10,267 --> 03:20:14,167
Oh, big cost savings. Yes. At least 2000, if not more.

530
03:20:14,167 --> 03:20:17,267
Thank you. Councillor Crocker.

531
03:20:17,267 --> 03:20:18,567
Thank you very much, Mr. President.

532
03:20:18,567 --> 03:20:20,367
I fully support this.

533
03:20:20,367 --> 03:20:20,667
Um, if.

534
03:20:20,667 --> 03:20:23,467
Anyone has ever been into the gym where the.

535
03:20:23,467 --> 03:20:23,868
Former.

536
03:20:23,868 --> 03:21:02,267
Veritas Academy sits in its former because it hasn't been open for at least two years. Was it 18? Well, there you go. Um, it's, uh, it's not used for anything except for these, uh, elections. And so that building stays closed up. Uh, if you've been inside of it recently, you can see that the paint is peeling off the walls. I would suspect that there's a a mold condition in there, and I just don't think that the election workers need to be subjected to that. So I fully I fully support this.

537
03:21:02,267 --> 03:21:08,868
Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, madam clerk.

538
03:21:08,868 --> 03:21:15,801
Councillors. Deleuze.

539
03:21:15,801 --> 03:21:22,267
Councillor. Deleuze.

540
03:21:22,267 --> 03:21:23,167
Keen?

541
03:21:23,167 --> 03:21:26,667
Yes. Yes.

542
03:21:26,667 --> 03:21:27,467
Ladki.

543
03:21:27,467 --> 03:21:28,667
Yes.

544
03:21:28,667 --> 03:21:29,400
Shine. Gold.

545
03:21:29,400 --> 03:21:30,968
Yes.

546
03:21:30,968 --> 03:21:32,067
Star.

547
03:21:32,067 --> 03:21:33,200
Yes.

548
03:21:33,200 --> 03:21:34,067
Hamish.

549
03:21:34,067 --> 03:21:35,467
Yes.

550
03:21:35,467 --> 03:21:36,000
Bloom.

551
03:21:36,000 --> 03:21:37,000
Yes.

552
03:21:37,000 --> 03:21:37,567
Burdick.

553
03:21:37,567 --> 03:21:38,667
Yes.

554
03:21:38,667 --> 03:21:39,167
Clark.

555
03:21:39,167 --> 03:21:40,200
Yes.

556
03:21:40,200 --> 03:21:40,868
Crocker.

557
03:21:40,868 --> 03:21:41,868
Yes.

558
03:21:41,868 --> 03:21:42,467
Crow.

559
03:21:42,467 --> 03:21:43,567
Yes.

560
03:21:43,567 --> 03:21:45,267
Deleuze.

561
03:21:45,267 --> 03:21:47,000
Yes.

562
03:21:47,000 --> 03:21:47,667
Thank you.

563
03:21:47,667 --> 03:21:49,167
12. Yes.

564
03:21:49,167 --> 03:21:53,667
Thank you. The motion does pass. Counselor. Vice President Clark.

565
03:21:53,667 --> 03:22:19,467
Thank you very much. President. This is new business which may be acted upon requiring a majority vote. Agenda item 2026 079. Authorization to contract for and expend a grant in the amount of $8,190 from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for the purpose of enhancing the town's waste reduction programs.

566
03:22:19,467 --> 03:22:20,467
Mr. Santos.

567
03:22:20,467 --> 03:22:22,667
Dan Santos, director of public works.

568
03:22:22,667 --> 03:22:24,267
Let me second that first.

569
03:22:24,267 --> 03:22:27,067
I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Council.

570
03:22:27,067 --> 03:23:08,968
The town has been awarded a $8,190 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection under their Recycling Dividends program. The grant award was made because of specific programs and policies the town has implemented to maximize reuse, recycling, and waste reduction. The acceptance of this grant will allow the solid waste division in the town to enhance its waste reduction programs through the acquisition of recycling containers, recycling carts and bins, waste reduction and or recycling outreach materials, educational materials, and other related expenses that are authorized in the DEP program. There is no operating budget impact as a result of accepting this grant. Thank you.

571
03:23:08,968 --> 03:23:18,667
Okay. Thank you. Any discussion on this matter? Seeing none, madam clerk.

572
03:23:18,667 --> 03:23:20,767
Councillors. Keen?

573
03:23:20,767 --> 03:23:22,000
Yes.

574
03:23:22,000 --> 03:23:23,400
Lévesque.

575
03:23:23,400 --> 03:23:24,100
Yes.

576
03:23:24,100 --> 03:23:24,968
Lucky.

577
03:23:24,968 --> 03:23:26,000
Yes.

578
03:23:26,000 --> 03:23:26,868
Shingled.

579
03:23:26,868 --> 03:23:27,567
Yes.

580
03:23:27,567 --> 03:23:29,767
Star.

581
03:23:29,767 --> 03:23:31,000
Yes.

582
03:23:31,000 --> 03:23:31,868
Hamish.

583
03:23:31,868 --> 03:23:33,000
Yes.

584
03:23:33,000 --> 03:23:33,601
Bloom.

585
03:23:33,601 --> 03:23:34,667
Yes.

586
03:23:34,667 --> 03:23:35,267
Burdick.

587
03:23:35,267 --> 03:23:36,567
Yes.

588
03:23:36,567 --> 03:23:37,467
Clark.

589
03:23:37,467 --> 03:23:38,000
Yes.

590
03:23:38,000 --> 03:23:38,868
Crocker.

591
03:23:38,868 --> 03:23:39,567
Yes.

592
03:23:39,567 --> 03:23:40,267
Crowe.

593
03:23:40,267 --> 03:23:41,200
Yes.

594
03:23:41,200 --> 03:23:44,567
Deleuze.

595
03:23:44,567 --> 03:23:46,868
Abstain.

596
03:23:46,868 --> 03:23:48,100
Abstain. I believe.

597
03:23:48,100 --> 03:23:51,801
But thank you.

598
03:23:51,801 --> 03:24:00,200
Thank you. And last but not least. Councillor bloom, if you could do 2026 080, please.

599
03:24:00,200 --> 03:24:32,100
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Item 2026 080 is new business and it may be acted upon by a majority vote of the town council. It's it's an authorization to contract for and expend a supplemental Fiscal Year 2025 Housing Choice grant in the amount of $60,000 from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities for waterline improvements on Crocker Street in Hyannis.

600
03:24:32,100 --> 03:24:37,300
Second motion made and seconded, Mr. Kupfer, I believe.

601
03:24:37,300 --> 03:24:39,000
Good evening.

602
03:24:39,000 --> 03:25:57,801
Good evening. Jim Kupfer, director of planning and development. The town of Barnstable was awarded a supplemental grant in the amount of 60,000 to support improvements to the water infrastructure on Crocker Street in Hyannis. This project will fund water infrastructure upgrades on Crocker Street by providing a new water line on a street that currently has insufficient water service, the town is ensuring that there is adequate infrastructure in an area targeted for new investment. This grant will supplement the previous grant of 255,000 accepted by Town Council on November 7th, 2024, resulting in an adjusted grant amount of $315,000 provided by the FY 2025 Housing Choice Grant program of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. The grant is 100% reimbursable grant, whereby the town must expend funds upfront and submit for reimbursement, and there is no matching requirement here. This project is at this time complete, and luckily we do have good working relationships with the program managers at the grant offices. And they, um, you know, worked with us closely to make sure that we were able to, uh, increase our grant to absorb some of the increased costs that are associated with this project. I'm happy to answer any questions.

603
03:25:57,801 --> 03:26:02,200
Thank you. Any further discussion?

604
03:26:02,200 --> 03:26:07,000
Councilor Jim, just in general, where is Crocker Street? Remind me.

605
03:26:07,000 --> 03:26:19,100
Crocker Street is, um, if you're heading down east towards Yarmouth and you take a left on the Yarmouth Road. It actually connects Yarmouth Road and um, Camp Street.

606
03:26:19,100 --> 03:26:21,601
So that's where those the new apartments.

607
03:26:21,601 --> 03:26:22,367
There's, there's.

608
03:26:22,367 --> 03:26:25,501
A couple of new, uh, small developments in that area. Yes.

609
03:26:25,501 --> 03:26:27,100
Okay. Thank you.

610
03:26:27,100 --> 03:26:33,100
Any further discussion? Seeing? None, madam. Clerk.

611
03:26:33,100 --> 03:26:37,000
Councillor Levesque? Yes, Mikey.

612
03:26:37,000 --> 03:26:38,467
Yes.

613
03:26:38,467 --> 03:26:39,467
Shane. Gold.

614
03:26:39,467 --> 03:26:41,467
Yes.

615
03:26:41,467 --> 03:26:42,567
Star.

616
03:26:42,567 --> 03:26:44,267
Yes.

617
03:26:44,267 --> 03:26:45,000
Yes.

618
03:26:45,000 --> 03:26:45,601
Bloom.

619
03:26:45,601 --> 03:26:46,667
Yes.

620
03:26:46,667 --> 03:26:47,801
Burdick.

621
03:26:47,801 --> 03:26:48,901
Yes.

622
03:26:48,901 --> 03:26:49,367
Clerk.

623
03:26:49,367 --> 03:26:50,100
Yes.

624
03:26:50,100 --> 03:26:50,868
Crocker.

625
03:26:50,868 --> 03:26:51,601
Yes.

626
03:26:51,601 --> 03:26:52,167
Crowe.

627
03:26:52,167 --> 03:26:53,300
Yes.

628
03:26:53,300 --> 03:26:55,200
Deleuze.

629
03:26:55,200 --> 03:26:57,467
No.

630
03:26:57,467 --> 03:26:58,267
Keane.

631
03:26:58,267 --> 03:26:59,267
Yes.

632
03:26:59,267 --> 03:27:01,167
That's 11. Yes. One. No.

633
03:27:01,167 --> 03:27:09,868
Motion does pass. Thank you. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Second motion made and seconded to adjourn, madam clerk.

634
03:27:09,868 --> 03:27:12,467
Councillor is lucky.

635
03:27:12,467 --> 03:27:14,868
Yes.

636
03:27:14,868 --> 03:27:15,601
Shine. Gold.

637
03:27:15,601 --> 03:27:16,667
Yes.

638
03:27:16,667 --> 03:27:17,601
Star.

639
03:27:17,601 --> 03:27:18,400
Yes.

640
03:27:18,400 --> 03:27:19,367
Hamish.

641
03:27:19,367 --> 03:27:20,667
Yes.

642
03:27:20,667 --> 03:27:21,868
Bloom.

643
03:27:21,868 --> 03:27:22,701
Yes.

644
03:27:22,701 --> 03:27:23,601
Burdick.

645
03:27:23,601 --> 03:27:24,400
Yes.

646
03:27:24,400 --> 03:27:24,868
Clerk.

647
03:27:24,868 --> 03:27:26,000
Yes.

648
03:27:26,000 --> 03:27:26,767
Crocker.

649
03:27:26,767 --> 03:27:27,601
Yes.

650
03:27:27,601 --> 03:27:28,267
Crowe.

651
03:27:28,267 --> 03:27:28,901
Yes.

652
03:27:28,901 --> 03:27:30,467
Deleuze.

653
03:27:30,467 --> 03:27:31,667
Yes.

654
03:27:31,667 --> 03:27:32,467
Keane.

655
03:27:32,467 --> 03:27:33,167
Yes.

656
03:27:33,167 --> 03:27:33,601
Vivek.

657
03:27:33,601 --> 03:27:35,100
Yes.

658
03:27:35,100 --> 03:27:35,801
12. Yes.

659
03:27:35,801 --> 03:27:44,767
Motion does pass. Just as a reminder, next Thursday night, we have a strategic planning session. So.

660
03:27:44,767 --> 03:27:44,767
Next Thursday night? A week from tonight. Thank you.