[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:34] Welcome to the architects report on the condition of the town buildings, and also some options for this building. If you remember the last time we were here, June 8th of last year, I was a lot of discussion on what to do with this building. Suggestion was made, request was made that we engage an architect's firm to see what would fit in here. A layout and detail of basically from where we are going through the sawtooth section for a senior center, community center, and at least a couple of the town offices,
[1:03] and also registrars.
[1:07] After that meeting, we put out a request for proposal from architectural firms that were interested.
[1:11] We had four or five applied.
[1:14] Interviewed them all and chose Antonazi associates.
[1:17] They felt they were the best qualify, their experience, best match, what we need.
[1:21] Tonight they'll make their report.
[1:24] They assess the condition again of our existing town buildings.
[1:28] to see how adequate they were for our needs, to see if they're in need of what they need
[1:32] as far as repairs, rehabilitation, or major improvements.
[1:37] And then they also looked, of course, at this building, what would it cost to put the senior
[1:42] center or community center in here, what would it cost to put all the town offices in here,
[1:47] would they fit?
[1:47] Of course, we knew they would.
[1:51] And then tonight they'll present those, their recommendations, their findings.
[1:56] With that, I'll turn it over to Paul Lissy, he's the senior partner lead architect on
[2:01] this project.
[2:01] Paul.
[2:04] Thank you, Bob.
[2:08] Good evening, everyone.
[2:09] Thank you for coming out tonight.
[2:11] My name is Paul Lissy.
[2:12] I'm one of the principals at Antonazi Associates Architects, and with me tonight, I have Steve
[2:18] Henebri.
[2:19] He's a project architect that worked on the project with me as well, and I'll introduce
[2:24] the other team as we go through.
[2:32] Let's turn it on.
[2:32] That helps.
[2:33] Okay.
[2:34] So our agenda for tonight.
[2:35] We're going to discuss the process that we went through to get to this point.
[2:40] We're going to go over the findings that we came up with and also, and recommendations,
[2:47] of course, what we recommend going forward.
[2:51] You'll see what, there's some things we feel that are sort of no-brainers, you know, things
[2:58] that we should do, things we shouldn't do, so you'll see as we go through how we arrive
[3:03] at that.
[3:04] And then we'll leave it for questions.
[3:06] So as I mentioned, I'm Paul E.C., I was a Principal
[3:09] and Project Manager, Steve Henterbury,
[3:11] and also on our team, our in-house designer,
[3:14] Patty McKeon, she's not here this evening,
[3:16] but she was at a big part in the design work
[3:20] and the space programming and interviewing of the staff,
[3:23] and also our mechanical engineering team from CES,
[3:27] and lastly, our structural engineers
[3:29] from Michael Horton Associates.
[3:31] So those are the, that's the main team that we had in evaluating the buildings, we evaluated them to architectural systems, the plumbing, electrical, mechanical, structural, basically from top to bottom, very, very thorough.
[3:46] We won't show you all that in detail, but you'll get a gist of it.
[3:49] So, we worked closely with the town, with the first
[3:55] equipment, of course, and with Bill, the town planner, and Leon,
[4:00] the zoning enforcement officer, and also we interviewed the different
[4:04] department heads from all the different facilities.
[4:07] So, we got a good sense in speaking with everybody, even custodians,
[4:13] just hear everyone's, you know, opinion about the condition of the building,
[4:18] and also their space needs, so we'll get into that.
[4:20] So it's not just about the physical condition,
[4:23] but also the spaces that they're lacking, perhaps.
[4:29] So first starting with the process.
[4:31] So we did the assessments of the building,
[4:33] the physical assessments, and we did the space needs interviews.
[4:37] So we actually met with the different department heads.
[4:39] We came up with a very detailed list of square footages.
[4:44] We looked at what the existing square footages are
[4:46] compared to what is really needed, and we documented those differences, and you'll see at the end how we arrived at the different requirements.
[4:59] We did some design work, we did a conceptual layout for this building, actually two different layouts for this building, to see if it can work with moving some of the town offices, some of the facilities to this former elementary school.
[5:15] And then, of course, we had to put pricing to it.
[5:18] We need to know what this is all going to cost, right?
[5:21] So, that was the next step.
[5:23] And lastly, the options and recommendations.
[5:30] So, we did the assessments for the six buildings.
[5:34] If you're not aware of it, some of you may be more aware than others.
[5:37] But the main town hall building, the old town hall, the community center,
[5:42] the senior center, the municipal annex, which is basically the social services facility that most of you are probably familiar with, and then this building as well, okay?
[5:51] So those were the six buildings that we assessed for both condition and space needs.
[5:59] So we're going to just give you a sense of the different types of items and issues that we found.
[6:09] It was nothing really, you know, that was of surprise.
[6:12] It's things that you would normally find, right,
[6:14] over the years, roofing that needs to be replaced,
[6:17] windows, you know, upgrading your lighting fixtures
[6:20] to make them energy efficient.
[6:22] If you need it, you know, they need a new, you know,
[6:24] hot water heaters or more energy efficient mechanical systems.
[6:27] So I'm not going to read everything here,
[6:29] but just to give you a sense of the sort of items.
[6:35] You know, this happens to be the town hall, again, those are the types of improving handicap
[6:41] accessibility, appointing masonry, things that you would normally expect, you know, in
[6:48] a building of this age, right?
[6:50] So nothing really unusual.
[6:53] Same thing with the old town hall, which is on the same property, you know, windows, that
[7:01] sort of thing, right?
[7:03] the community center, so the community center is pretty, it's aged, and it needs some upgrades.
[7:13] Just a little bit beyond some of the others. It was an old firehouse, really never been upgraded,
[7:21] and so in addition to those components that the roofing and windows, it really does need some
[7:29] freshening up, if you might say, beyond the typical, so that's the community center.
[7:39] And then the senior center has some unique challenges as well.
[7:43] Beyond the typical, beyond the windows and roofing and so forth.
[7:49] The issues here are mainly that it's essentially too small of a facility, really, to house all
[7:55] the different functions that it needs.
[7:57] there's just one main room. There's no way of separating it. There's no spaces for other activities to take place.
[8:07] If there's one thing going on, it interrupts other activities.
[8:12] Even the director doesn't have an office. Her office is basically in the foyer and in the hallway going out to the second entrance. There's no separate meeting rooms.
[8:23] And then lastly, parking is an issue.
[8:26] There's hardly any parking on this property.
[8:29] And what makes it even worse is there isn't any room for expansion.
[8:33] So, you know, so this building along with the community center
[8:36] or two of the buildings that certainly are of concern.
[8:41] Next, we looked at the social services building
[8:44] also known as the municipal annex.
[8:47] And again, this one does have similar issues
[8:50] issues over the years needs to upgrade, typical roofing, windows sort of thing.
[8:55] But one thing that was unique about this one was that you have two floors that you can't
[9:00] access without going outdoors.
[9:03] You have to go outdoors and either go around the building or go up an exterior stairway.
[9:09] So in addition to the standard upgrades, we would propose adding a stairway, an enclosed
[9:17] stair tower that you could be able to access both floors.
[9:20] And obviously that would, for convenience, but also for,
[9:24] well, fire safety is not so much of an issue because you do have two exits from both floors.
[9:28] So it's not really about fire safety and building code.
[9:32] It's more of, you know, for convenience so you don't have to go outdoors to go from one level to another.
[9:38] So that's the municipal annex.
[9:40] And then this building, this building we looked at it more as
[9:48] a what's called a change of use because I believe we all know that this is not going
[9:55] to be a school any longer.
[9:57] So with that in mind, we know that the building code and the fire code, once it becomes
[10:04] a different use, whether it's housing, whether it's office space, anything other than an educational
[10:11] facility. Once you do that, it triggers the codes and you have to bring it up to all
[10:18] new standards. So as you can imagine, that's a costly proposition. So I didn't, you know,
[10:26] we didn't list everything because it's really substantial to accessibility, even things
[10:35] that normally would be waived, you know, would be grandfathered in because it's an existing
[10:40] condition that all goes, you know, none of that is acceptable. There's no waivers. Once
[10:46] you do a change of use, everything has to be upgraded. So handrails, guardrails, anything
[10:52] that's not code compliant to today's code, once you go make that change. So, and of course
[11:02] there are those, you know, standard upgrades, windows and so forth as well. So you'll see
[11:08] how that is reflected in the cost as we go through.
[11:12] So now I want to get into the space needs a little bit.
[11:15] So as I mentioned, Paddy McKee and I interviewed the staff,
[11:20] the department heads in all the different facilities.
[11:24] And I touched on this already a little bit, but so we focused
[11:28] on the town hall building and the municipal annex
[11:32] and the senior center because the other space wise,
[11:36] is the community center is not so much of an issue and also at the old town hall is really
[11:43] not an issue of space needs necessarily. But these three buildings, starting with
[11:49] the town hall, you know, today they make it work, right? But there's some issues there.
[11:56] You have departments where you, you know, to actually years walk in or someone, you know,
[12:03] wanting to see the town clerk or whatever it may be.
[12:07] In most cases, you're standing out on the hallway
[12:10] to have a discussion with folks.
[12:13] So, you know, there's issues with that, right?
[12:15] There's privacy issues, there's security issues.
[12:18] A lot of projects that we're doing,
[12:19] renovating town halls, one of the most important things
[12:23] is upgrading their spaces for security.
[12:27] Tax assessors, town clerk's offices,
[12:30] is they want to, you know, they want to have a barrier
[12:33] between the public.
[12:35] It's an, in many cases, many town halls
[12:37] you walk in and you're right into the space
[12:38] without any sort of barrier.
[12:40] So that's something important.
[12:41] And they also need additional storage space.
[12:43] There aren't any offices for the custodial staff.
[12:46] There's literally two, you know, two toilet rooms.
[12:50] So they, you know, they need some additional space.
[12:54] Yes, can they make it work?
[12:55] They're making it work, but in planning for the future
[12:58] and to provide to them what's really required to have them function efficiently for their
[13:10] space and safely, we recommend adding additional square footage.
[13:17] At the municipal annex, the social services, again, that's so much an issue of space,
[13:28] but
[13:28] At least the meeting room, there's no place for anyone to meet in that space.
[13:33] There's a couple of private offices, but no real meeting room.
[13:37] And then that stair tower, I mentioned, right?
[13:39] Adding a stair tower so that they can access the building without having to go outside to go from one level to another.
[13:45] And then lastly, the senior center, I sort of already mentioned already.
[13:49] They have no conference room, they don't have additional spaces.
[13:52] It's essentially one big room, so it doesn't function very well as a senior center.
[13:58] Okay, so now I'll share with you some of the designs we did for this building, and we
[14:07] really did one design for this building.
[14:12] The other design I'll show is not really a conceptual design, it's more of a just what
[14:18] we call a block plan just to see if square footage wise, you know, everything would fit.
[14:24] But this design here, you'll see that it basically is taking the,
[14:34] here we go, okay.
[14:36] So we're currently in this room here,
[14:40] in this multi-purpose room,
[14:42] and we are basically proposing that this area,
[14:46] there's a kitchen, you know, renovating some of that,
[14:50] and becomes the community center, okay?
[14:53] And then adjacent to the community center, this area here that you see in gray would be the senior center.
[15:00] And so you'd have the senior center and community center in this wing here, right? And then adjacent to that, we have additional two other spaces. These are two spaces that are currently now in a different buildings, not even in any of the buildings we talk about. There's sort of isolated elsewhere in town, and that's the state trooper office and the registrar voters. So I think it makes sense to have them, you know, with some of the other town facilities.
[15:26] So this is a design we did for this building showing that we can have a community center,
[15:36] a senior center, and state trooper and registrar's office.
[15:40] And the rest of the building then would be potentially for other uses.
[15:44] Whatever those other uses may be, we're not necessarily here to discuss that,
[15:48] but we're just focusing on the town facilities.
[15:55] So that's what we're saying we're calling option one.
[16:00] This is the lower level, again, no town offices on the lower level.
[16:04] Then we have option two.
[16:06] So option two is including the same areas we just discussed, the community center,
[16:13] the senior center, and the state trooper and register of voters.
[16:16] And the rest of this building also would receive all the other offices that we just talked about.
[16:23] All the town hall functions, the social services,
[16:27] all the different, basically bring everyone here.
[16:30] Now obviously doing that, we solve one problem, right?
[16:34] And we create another problem,
[16:36] because now we'll have five empty buildings instead of one.
[16:40] But that's another discussion, right?
[16:43] But what we did, this analysis is to determine,
[16:48] you'll see here color code, it's just a different department's
[16:51] of the community of the Town Hall
[16:56] and all the different departments.
[16:58] Just to see if they could physically fit in the building.
[17:01] And they do, you know, they do fit within the building.
[17:04] This is the main level that we're on now.
[17:07] And then the lower level has some additional spaces
[17:12] and we also would have some additional spaces
[17:15] for future growth potentially.
[17:17] And this is the gymnasium here.
[17:18] And you have some mechanical areas that would not be utilized for programming area.
[17:26] So those are the two options that we're calling option one and option two.
[17:29] So option two includes option one within that, right?
[17:34] So, now looking at the cost estimates for what is being proposed here.
[17:41] So looking at strictly the improvements to the five buildings, the town hall, the old
[17:49] Town Hall, the Community Center, Senior Center, and the Municipal Annex Social Services.
[17:54] We're looking at nearly $4 million in total costs.
[17:59] Now that includes escalation over time, right?
[18:05] There needs to be time to design the improvements, to bid it out.
[18:10] So you're looking at, you know, at a minimum, probably a year away.
[18:13] So we're anticipating, you know, cost increases, of course, it also includes contingency because there are no designs for this, so there's a design contingency, and then of course a construction contingency.
[18:27] So, you know, these are fairly conservative numbers.
[18:31] So this is simply to take care of those items that we talked about that are your typical improvements, right?
[18:40] If you look at each building individually, they're not huge dollars, but they do add up, right?
[18:48] We're talking about five different buildings here.
[18:52] So that's the cost for improving the five buildings.
[18:57] Now, we also looked at the additions, right?
[19:01] The proposed additions,
[19:03] if we improve the buildings and we added onto the buildings as we discussed,
[19:10] that would be an additional, roughly $6 million.
[19:16] Okay, now we talked about the senior center not having really not having land for expansion, right?
[19:26] But we wanted to include this analysis to show you what the cost would be to improve all these buildings.
[19:33] So
[19:36] these are two cost breakdowns here for the different scenarios.
[19:49] So here are the options now that we've looked at, right, in summary.
[19:54] So option one is basically moving the community center, senior center, registered voters, and
[20:03] state trooper to this building at $9.5 million.
[20:10] That's the cause for this building to just move those folks here.
[20:17] Then, if we looked at moving all the town departments that is building,
[20:23] and if you recall earlier I mentioned, that's a change of use so that triggers a lot more work.
[20:28] It's not just making alterations to the building to just fit everyone in here,
[20:33] make it so it's laid out properly, it goes way beyond that.
[20:38] So, you're looking at nearly $32 million for something like that.
[20:42] And then lastly, we looked at just renovating the existing buildings and expanding.
[20:51] And that's the number you saw earlier, the 9.8 million.
[20:56] So those are the three options that you have, that we looked at that seem to make sense.
[21:04] So, then, now we're going to suggest, we're going to make some recommendations based on our findings.
[21:15] We're recommending that to move all the town departments here just is not practical.
[21:23] As I mentioned, it's very costly for one, nearly $32 million.
[21:28] And then you end up with five empty buildings that you need to do something with.
[21:33] right? So we're not recommending option two. We're recommending definitely option one which
[21:41] is moving the senior center, community center here and along with that either a 3a, 3b and 3c,
[21:48] right? So the 3a, 3a is moving everyone here and renovating the other buildings. 3b is moving
[21:58] moving a community center and senior center here and renovating and adding on to the other buildings.
[22:07] Or option, I'm sorry, recommendation one and three C, which is just moving everyone here and not doing anything to the other buildings.
[22:19] So we're not, we're not recommending any one specific, but we're near, we narrowed it down to this, to these.
[22:27] We're basically sort of by process of elimination.
[22:30] We're saying that moving all the departments here is unrealistic and has its own issues.
[22:38] But we do recommend moving community center, a senior center here because of the challenges that there would be in renovating and expanding those buildings.
[22:51] So that basically concludes our presentation.
[22:56] I know Bob, if you wanted to add anything at this point, I don't want to add.
[23:02] If you're going to open it for questions, if you have questions, please step up to the microphone.
[23:07] Thank you.
[23:11] Suggesting you go up to the microphone for questions.
[23:13] Yep.
[23:17] I think it's a great presentation and thank you.
[23:21] I'm sorry.
[23:22] It's just on.
[23:38] My only question was, it's a little hard to look at this without understanding what
[23:45] you could recoup if you decided to sell the buildings.
[24:00] Then we have empty buildings, the question is, are the empty buildings worth anything?
[24:05] And therefore, what is the net cost for the town?
[24:08] And I think that's one of those things in order that really have a balance to view.
[24:13] I think these are great, you guys have done a lot of great work.
[24:16] But in order to really have a comparison, you kind of have to look at saying, okay,
[24:21] we move everything here, we spend a lot of money here, we don't do anything, we sell them.
[24:27] We move some things here, we sell some things, we keep some things there, we sell some of
[24:33] those things, net, net, what's the thing?
[24:35] So the all I'm just saying is I think that would be a good, absolutely, we didn't obviously
[24:46] take it to that level because that requires other, you know, doing, you know, a good work.
[24:52] Thank you.
[24:52] Thank you.
[24:55] One of my questions was posed by this gentleman right here, and then my next question, maybe Mr. McGarry can answer, what is the current staffing and use of the large building such as the public annex? How many people are in there on a daily basis, staff wise?
[25:10] the municipal annex has the clothing locker on the second floor there are a couple of volunteers there whenever it's opened the first floor and social services at social services director
[25:22] Becky I know you're here an assistant for her you know I'm missing anybody they're
[25:32] they're shown on the plan for what ones it could be moved in here but the last time we talked I talked to them they're happy with where they are on the
[25:42] plan they're down on the lower level.
[25:44] No, where are they currently?
[25:46] Where are they currently?
[25:47] They're in the white building.
[25:48] Park and Rec, I think, is still in the white building.
[25:50] Youth and family services has a lot of space
[25:52] in the middle school.
[25:56] And I'll just throw out one thing.
[25:59] If they keep that, we don't want to move,
[26:02] I've already asked Paul, this is not materially effect
[26:06] the total renovation costs for this building.
[26:08] Because the big costs are systems and up the code,
[26:10] It's not remodeling a certain space for a certain office.
[26:14] No, I understand, but community center, right, what's the staffing there?
[26:20] There is no staff, it's a room space that's open for use and senior center currently.
[26:29] Senior center has the director and when they're open, obviously staff.
[26:33] So my theory is to go along with the sale, the recruitment of sales,
[26:37] What's the savings and consolidation of many office buildings throughout the town and operational costs?
[26:43] Heat electricity, lights, power, all that.
[26:48] We have a lot of buildings and in this current climate and most of you on Facebook have heard my pitch.
[26:55] In this current climate, whether you're a Democrat, Republican, independent, everybody has a niche about something.
[27:00] I think it would be best if we move our town as a whole to this center and we get everybody in the public eye and under one
[27:07] roof regardless of the clause. We're going to have to spend money to update this town. Mr. Warner gave a presentation at the middle school about bringing we're not going to get
[27:16] business into this town unless we bring life into this town and the way to get life into this town is have our elected officials that work for us here in this town.
[27:22] When you walk in and they like they see you there's no place to hide up on field park drive. There's no people scattered throughout town bring them
[27:30] here.
[27:42] If you only bring half of, you only use half of this building as you, one of the
[27:46] options are, I assume the other half then would be, have to be open to a developer or
[27:52] it would, it would just sit empty or. We've got a couple of proposals to present next
[27:57] week when we have the, when we have the meeting over at the high school. But yeah, that, we
[28:02] just ask them with fill these spots, see if all the offices would fit here including youth
[28:08] and family and HK RAC, they all do, but not designate.
[28:13] If all we use is the wing we're in now basically, we can decide what else we might want to do with the rest of the wing.
[28:19] We might want to fail off a commercial use, we might want to, there's been a number of ideas floated, we didn't ask them to identify those.
[28:26] Second question is, I think we got a $7 million grant from the state for this building.
[28:32] Correct. What restrictions or requirements of the town does that put on us for using that money?
[28:40] Well, that grant, and we'll talk about this in detail next week as well. It's a $4.5 million grant.
[28:46] It was submitted as a community challenge grant to put senior housing here, the wing that we're in as Paul has described,
[28:54] and a couple of other improvements to their property and sidewalk to the center.
[28:59] this
[29:03] is a little intimidating because I know HKTV might be here and I just
[29:07] wanted you can't hear me oh my goodness okay well I just wanted to say that I'm sure a lot of
[29:22] you went to elementary school here you as most of you are part of the community I'm new here only in the
[29:28] past couple of years. That being said, I know that this is a strong community and that
[29:36] there are a lot of folks in town that have different skills and talents.
[29:41] And my question is, as part of this proposition, are any of the folks that work here in town,
[29:48] like contractors, other people, like, is there input or even services going to be employed
[29:54] with building that like if we're having a community center and we're having like a town center.
[30:00] In the folks that live here and have businesses here contribute to bringing this town center back to a usable center. I guess is my question. $32 million. I know maybe that's to some people not a lot of money, but to me that's a heck of a lot of money. If I had a million dollars, I would be very happy right now. And when I hear that, I acknowledge that it probably would cost that much.
[30:29] to make a building like beautiful and modern and all those things but and then I'll get I'll
[30:36] sit back down but I was wondering what are the bare costs to get this building usable and could
[30:42] we have a stage plan where you know maybe five years from now we we can already all those buildings
[30:47] here but in the meantime you know we get some paint on the walls we make sure the heating you guys
[30:53] all know the heating system here is horrible we probably spend like a fortune on oil every single
[30:59] What are the minimum costs to make this building workable for the folks who want to use it now?
[31:08] Anyway.
[31:08] Yeah, we didn't look at that.
[31:10] We looked at obviously the senior center and community center being moved here.
[31:16] And then, yeah, if you're looking basically just to make those minimal improvements,
[31:22] we haven't looked at it to that detail.
[31:25] So it would be somewhere between the 10 million and the 30 million.
[31:28] I'm sure everyone who is old home here, when you get somebody to try to improve your house or maybe you want to remodel your kitchen,
[31:34] they say, oh, you can have these knobs, you can have these designs.
[31:37] Right.
[31:37] But then you end up looking at the Excel spreadsheet, taking out your Sharpie and being like, well, we can't afford that now, maybe later.
[31:44] I guess, is there any way of bringing that 32 million down to a more reasonable amount?
[31:50] Not to say it's not reasonable, because I know that.
[31:52] Yeah, well, I mean, again, that's, that number is to move everyone here, right, to move all the departments here.
[31:59] So, yeah, there's obviously some, you know, middle ground, right, potentially.
[32:08] I've got kind of a concern. We got $32 million here. I spoke with the superintendent of schools last week.
[32:16] They're talking a hundred million dollar renovation program or a new school.
[32:21] I don't know if everybody's aware of that here or not.
[32:24] I wasn't.
[32:25] That kind of took me, you know, a hundred million.
[32:30] Now we got the Rossite property down there.
[32:32] We need a town garage.
[32:34] How many more million dollars before we go broke here?
[32:38] I think we should be careful, folks.
[32:40] I really do.
[32:43] Everybody complains about taxes.
[32:44] this isn't lowering them
[32:51] I'm not sure if this reaches
[33:02] Oh I don't think
[33:06] Thank you for your work I have a question about the old town hall
[33:11] over $8,000 and that building the old brain very candy
[33:15] what kind of work
[33:18] No, I believe that was for the existing town hall not the old town hall I believe I believe let me let me go back to that slide
[33:55] I do do we have ownership of the building or to spend that kind of money or just wanting
[34:00] out how that was how the course was working down on that.
[34:07] I get your sense of the ownership question the ownership of that building is split between
[34:11] the town and the nations and it's not split by floor it's I've not read the deed or what
[34:18] have been told is every square inch, half of it is ours, half of it is the
[34:21] masons, we're on the hook for maintaining the whole building. The good news is
[34:25] that million dollar figure, you can probably drop off about $40,000 because we're
[34:30] redoing the first floor windows right now. And for those of you who are wondering what
[34:34] was going on, that's what's happening with that up at the old town hall now.
[34:43] We're dealing with the jail, the state transferred the jail health property to us and that included obviously the jail all the way up to the recreation facility, 20 or 30 acres on the other side of the road.
[34:59] The restriction in the deed is if any of that property is used for other than recreational or non municipal uses, the state gets it all back.
[35:09] So we are, we're stuck with the real estate underneath the annex, that doesn't mean we can't knock it down, it doesn't mean we can't approve it, but we can't, as some of us thought initially carve out a lot there and sell it.
[35:24] The senior center is different, we can sell the senior center, and the town office building is different, we can sell that off.
[35:35] community centers impacted by the waiting event there and parking that might be a problem.
[35:44] I mean, we can reutilize some of the buildings and we can sell some of them like the town office building.
[35:51] There's no market right now for office space anywhere.
[35:54] You may have seen the article in the criminal couple of weeks ago, maybe about a month ago,
[35:58] So they're expecting a 37% vacancy rate in office space in Hartford, which is I believe
[36:05] a record for them.
[36:11] Bob, I just wanted to, I don't know, I need a mic.
[36:12] Yeah, for two reasons.
[36:14] One is being recorded.
[36:15] That's this mic and the other ones will people can hear.
[36:19] I just wanted to clarify Bob, oh, two mics, okay.
[36:24] I wanted to clarify what you said about the space for youth and family services and HK
[36:31] I wasn't totally sure what you said and you mentioned something about us having office space at the middle school, which we don't okay
[36:37] Youth and Family Services doesn't have space there
[36:39] So I wasn't sure what you space
[36:41] Space is available here, and that's all built into the cost if you want to oh
[36:48] So I thought when I I thought when I saw the map of the first floor we were you were saying
[36:54] Senior Center Community Center Police
[36:57] register our voters.
[36:59] That is a baseline option.
[37:02] Then the option two included moving all the town offices here.
[37:07] In option two spaces there for HK Rec and Youth and Family.
[37:21] Did you say, under some conditions,
[37:25] the state could get the old jail back?
[37:29] Yes.
[37:30] Good.
[37:32] I've been accused of calling that building a white elephant.
[37:35] I will deny that, but I will agree with the sentiment.
[37:40] But that said, it's all the property goes back, and that includes a jail,
[37:44] ill-recreation fields where the ball fields are.
[38:09] So, yeah, as the first person, I guess it was Tim, that said, I was a little confused with the comparison.
[38:16] So, if we don't move the, so we either end up with a few bank-banking buildings,
[38:23] or we end up vacant back here, that's what it is.
[38:26] So to just say, if, you know, it's not that we only end up with vacant buildings if we move everything here.
[38:32] It's if we don't move them, then we end up with vacancy at AGF.
[38:35] Right, I mentioned one versus five right now, yeah, one building here versus five other buildings, right?
[38:42] Would you say that having all town services in one building long-term would be cost saving in terms of maintenance and repairs rather than fact building?
[38:51] Yeah, there's pros and cons to every, right?
[38:54] And would the, again, that number is,
[38:57] you know, it's the mind-boggling, wherever it is,
[39:00] 30,000, 30,000, yeah.
[39:03] We're getting a deal, it sounds like,
[39:04] with the schools, what they're spending.
[39:06] But I'm one, one, two, three, four, five, four.
[39:10] But will you be making your report available
[39:13] to the public?
[39:14] Will this be made available?
[39:15] And will there be a breakdown, a general view?
[39:19] To see how you can get a number?
[39:20] Yes, we do have the detail cost.
[39:22] I just clearly it's hundreds of pages.
[39:24] Yeah.
[39:25] Yes, absolutely.
[39:27] Yeah, we've made that available.
[39:29] So, and I also did you think of,
[39:32] I mean, I guess use is like for town hall that seems,
[39:37] maybe not offices is not the best,
[39:39] but maybe housing.
[39:40] And there's a need for housing in our town.
[39:42] So had you considered how some of these uses
[39:44] that we vacate might be used, or is that not part of it?
[39:46] We didn't go to that level.
[40:01] I hope
[40:15] nobody brought any stones in here.
[40:19] Let me get out of the way before you talk, please.
[40:22] I have enough problems right now.
[40:24] Okay, so I went here, my daughter went here, my younger son went here.
[40:31] They're both in their 40s now.
[40:35] I
[40:38] hate to put it this way, but I didn't see any figures for what it would cost to raise this building.
[40:49] And I don't mean lift it up.
[40:54] I mean, there would be no building here at the end of the process.
[40:59] Yeah, no, we didn't look at that.
[41:00] Because the cost of renovating it and bringing it up to code, I can just imagine.
[41:06] I mean nobody knows is there asbestos in here, is there lead in here, I'm sure there is.
[41:18] So to have all of that abated and the new roof, because it's going to be intense to bring
[41:30] up in the electrical and the heating. I mean all those costs are just going to add up and up and up.
[41:41] And as I say, I hate to think of it but I think it should be looked at. It's never been seen as a possibility in any of these figures.
[41:59] And I think somebody should work up a cost at that point so that we can make an informed decision as to as much as I hate it, but I'm sure this is not popular.
[42:18] That's why I said did anybody bring any stones in here?
[42:22] Yes.
[42:26] HGS would be a memory.
[42:30] Thank you.
[42:32] Careful.
[42:33] Yes.
[42:44] There you go.
[42:46] I just, just a clarification.
[42:48] So the full report has all the estimate in it
[42:50] more than just one page.
[42:52] You're saying?
[42:52] Yes.
[42:53] Does it also have the detailed program?
[42:55] So all the extension components?
[42:57] Okay.
[42:57] So we will, we'll see that when it comes up.
[43:00] I know 30 millions a lot for a lot of people.
[43:03] But just a reminder, it's not really $30 million because you're spending $10 million to the same to the spaces we have.
[43:10] So, think of it more like $20 million. That's still a lot of money, but just in perspective, you're either doing $10 million or you're doing $30 million.
[43:21] Right, thank you.
[43:35] My feeling is your option number two is the best.
[43:39] this. Having all your offices in the town in one location is vital.
[43:47] Right now they're
[43:48] scattered throughout the town. There's other offices too that could be moved here.
[43:54] And long term, there is, as somebody pointed out, savings along with maintaining one facility
[44:00] versus six facilities. Getting the troopers in the center of town is vital. If anybody
[44:08] is going to use tatham. They did this exact same thing with their elementary school there.
[44:13] That building is alive and there's people going in and out of it all day long and all night long.
[44:19] They have meeting rooms there for all the different groups in town to use.
[44:26] The gymnasium is open. You probably go there. Now there's kids playing in that gymnasium.
[44:32] So you have all those people coming there during the day, during the night. We're trying to
[44:37] revitalize Higginham Center. All those people will be driving through Higginham Center.
[44:41] Going to the restaurants, going to the market, going to all the new facilities we're talking about building down here.
[44:48] Yes, it's $32 million. We're talking about a long-term investment.
[44:55] This isn't going to be paid off over five years. They would bond this and I don't even know how.
[45:00] We can go out for it, but this is a long-term project, and you would get money back from getting rid of the other buildings. I'm not going to say it's going to be very much, but it would be vital to the revitalization of Higgins Center. And that's my thought. Thank you. Thank you.
[45:47] So how much per square footage is your renovation going to be?
[45:51] It's in the five to six hundred dollars per square foot.
[45:56] That could be, no, I don't believe it's.
[46:00] Do you want it to do the math first?
[46:05] It might be 49 if you gross.
[46:09] It might be 49,000 square feet gross.
[46:11] 49. No, it's it's either 39 or it's total 40,000. That's with everything. But in terms of
[46:19] usual space, I think it's less than 40,000. Yeah, I'm not sure I'll talk about my head, but yeah,
[46:24] the 4,000 square. 44. 44. How much average. Yeah. The point is square foot cost or. So, yeah,
[46:36] I don't think they're 800.
[46:37] I got 800.
[46:39] So the point is, if we're going to get a renovation
[46:42] on our house, do we go with, if someone comes in and says,
[46:47] hey, you can't do this, because it's going to be $500,000.
[46:52] Liz was out in shoes on architects.
[46:54] She knows you probably get a few estimates.
[46:56] So your estimate is one estimate.
[46:59] Are there other architectural firms that
[47:00] might come back with a different estimate?
[47:02] Yeah, well, I'm not estimate.
[47:04] I'm not, you know, the contractor, right?
[47:06] We're showing a budget, we don't know, we didn't do a design, it's a conceptual budget.
[47:16] But it's a high number so it's kind of a sticker shop number.
[47:21] The cost to do renovations on public buildings are in that range in the $600.
[47:28] $400. East Canada was about $400. East Canada was about $400, so it was about $400.
[47:36] Yeah, it was about $200, $2018. Yeah, yeah.
[47:41] You might want to look at the document. You can stand here for that.
[47:46] Here is what I would say, if anyone wants to seriously change the challenge in numbers,
[47:51] work with me on the website, go hire an architectural firm and an engineering firm
[47:55] or find your buddy to have the credentials and come back with a number.
[47:59] I'm sure we can get different numbers and that's fine, but this is the one we've paid for.
[48:05] So Eric, if you want to find someone to come up with a different set of numbers, by all means, please do.
[48:09] I'm sorry, just to clear, but that's the project cost, not just the construction cost.
[48:13] Okay, so that includes all the fees and all that.
[48:16] Do we, in terms of bidders for the senior housing?
[48:24] Have we put that out to bid?
[48:26] We've put it out as a proposal, yes, and I will be discussed next week.
[48:29] Oh, and we have, we have some bidders for that.
[48:31] And we picked anyone.
[48:32] We discussed next week.
[48:33] Okay.
[48:34] But have we picked this?
[48:36] And we'll be discussed next week.
[48:38] If bidders are picked, that's if that's public information, isn't it?
[48:43] I wish she never knew that.
[48:45] Yes.
[48:45] That is.
[48:47] Next week.
[48:48] Next week.
[48:49] Okay.
[48:50] So come out next week.
[48:52] The future.
[48:52] If you want to have any question, I want it's coming out.
[48:55] Next week.
[48:57] Okay.
[48:58] Okay.
[48:58] That's it.
[48:59] That's it.
[48:59] Thank you, sir.
[49:00] So yeah, it's a private class.
[49:02] Not a private class.
[49:03] The numbers.
[49:05] Okay.
[49:05] Um.
[49:06] Hey, we're new residents.
[49:09] Oh.
[49:13] Well, I know I just feel safe and happy here, you know, so my just, first of all, really,
[49:26] we have an incredible area here, there's no doubt about it.
[49:31] The coyote blue was it, and the road runner, you know, we got to play this up, got to do
[49:39] something exciting about that. My real point is, you know, we're from out of
[49:46] state. We don't know anything about anything. And we're excited to be here. But I
[49:51] think the reason is that the area is beautiful. There's such records,
[49:58] opportunities, the schools, holy cow. I mean, this is a great area. And so I think
[50:04] I think it's worthy of investment.
[50:06] I just don't know what to invest in,
[50:08] so all y'all are gonna have to figure that out.
[50:11] My real question goes back to the 2018-2019 town hall
[50:17] three-day meeting that I was reading that on the web.
[50:21] It was really interesting where people got together.
[50:24] And is this an alignment with the prior consultation
[50:30] recommendations?
[50:31] Is it in alignment with what the community spent days coming to look at?
[50:42] That's for you, Bob.
[50:45] First of all, ma'am, welcome to town.
[50:47] Let me give you a moment here.
[50:52] Secondly, the event you were talking about actually was held here in this room.
[50:56] And at least the first day, I was here only for the first day, there were three.
[51:01] It was a stretch of the Higginham Center Visioning Study.
[51:04] It did include some recommendations for this particular building.
[51:08] We have explored most of them to this point.
[51:11] I can't say off the top of my head all because it was a 90 or so total recommendations in that study covering again all of Hayden Center here, the Rossi property down Route 81.
[51:24] So yeah, those are being incorporated.
[51:26] There was not that study didn't get terribly specific on what to do with the building.
[51:32] It was it was a visioning study it was a long higher level, but that's awesome on our website to Hageno vision visioning study
[51:40] You're welcome to look at it
[51:46] sure
[51:51] so
[51:52] what we
[51:58] We did another meeting that you should look at because there was a meeting here that was standing room only last June
[52:04] And it was pretty incredible because there were maybe
[52:06] 250 people here and the amazing thing was they spoke with one voice, like someone would
[52:11] say something and the next person would build on it, it was a beautiful, one of the best
[52:15] experiences in my 30, almost 30 years in Vietnam. So look for that one too, I don't know what
[52:20] it was called visually. It's a June 8 meeting. It was like a public hearing. It's on the
[52:26] website. Yeah, so look at that one. But what was said at that meeting was fix all the
[52:32] roofs, don't sell the building, don't put the housing in back, put everything in town hall
[52:37] and here let's create a civic center.
[52:38] So that was really cool and I'm turning total blankets to what I really want to say.
[52:44] I know what I'm going to say.
[52:47] So at that meeting, like a lot of the conversation was about the exterior space and there were
[52:52] questions in terms of, you know, if the housing went in there, how would the parking work
[52:57] for that with people coming in to use the playground or using, are you familiar with
[53:02] with that study and because I had hoped that this was going to be not only space building
[53:08] space utilization but also site because that's so important.
[53:11] Yes, it is.
[53:12] In fact, I believe there's some work, some design work going on at this time, is that correct
[53:17] Bob?
[53:17] Yeah.
[53:19] Again, tonight was just, what did the architectural firm find for the building?
[53:24] We'll talk, it lives to what you want to talk about that's all in next week.
[53:28] Oh, because it just seems like it's, the contextual firm should have been hired for it all because there's other parts to this.
[53:36] What other parts?
[53:39] Next week.
[53:40] We'll give you what we have on the outside.
[53:42] This was just, the request was made on the June 8th meeting your reference to get an architectural firm to look at space allocation in the building.
[53:53] It's for everything, yeah.
[53:58] Yes, certainly parking has to be considered so far. I'm to look at the space
[54:03] Inside the bill we'll have more we can talk about next week on the ground
[54:10] Not at this particular time, no, but I agree that eventually that has to happen correct
[54:16] Absolutely
[54:31] came up and said $30 million, but if we sell other buildings, then we could make money
[54:38] off those, and I love a good deal, but it's pretty sharp.
[54:44] Would we be responsible for the renovations to those buildings?
[54:48] Would we have to invest millions of dollars to renovate them in order to be able to sell
[54:52] them?
[54:53] So we wouldn't have to do so much in it.
[54:56] Let's go for it, okay.
[54:59] All right.
[55:02] So
[55:07] can you clarify, when you were talking about the three options, and one of the options
[55:13] was renovate the existing buildings and you had a cost number for it.
[55:18] You said quickly that while there's a number for it, there may not be the allowable space
[55:25] to do those.
[55:27] Could you revisit that?
[55:28] Yes, that was specifically for the senior center.
[55:33] Let's see where we are.
[55:40] Well, I don't have a site plan in the senior center.
[55:42] Well, here's the senior center, of course.
[55:44] So, yes, we put a cost to it, but physically,
[55:49] it doesn't work on this site to expand.
[55:53] There's not enough space to expand the building,
[55:55] and there's not enough parking.
[56:01] It's prime real estate.
[56:04] If you want to drop by my office, we can talk.
[56:08] I
[56:16] hope that all of these questions are happening in this service, which I think they are.
[56:25] What do we do to make this place a great place?
[56:27] I don't mean to speak for Bob or for the architects, but I think you're seeing a piece of it, meaning
[56:34] We're seeing here is if he did all this stuff, some big numbers.
[56:41] What we're not seeing then is, okay, then we have a bunch of empty buildings.
[56:45] If we sold them, we'll reduce that cost from $30 million, I'll make it up $1 million.
[56:50] And then over the next 20 years, what's the reduction in maintenance costs for the town,
[56:56] which is going to obviously impact covering whatever bond we might get to get that?
[57:02] And I'm not necessarily supporting this, but I think what we ought to live with tonight
[57:07] is there is an opportunity to consolidate here, to create a place that is a center for
[57:15] a higginum, which we're trying to do.
[57:17] And then, therefore, galvanized traffic that might then have a radiating effect, as I say,
[57:24] in real estate or an associated effect, if you like, that term better, on places like Rossi
[57:29] and schoolable to become better places to be.
[57:32] So I think all I would hope we would do is say,
[57:36] based on what we're hearing tonight,
[57:37] how can we take this and make a holistic view
[57:40] and make what we're seeing better?
[57:43] Because I think this says there's hope for,
[57:46] notwithstanding the fact that if someone wants to raise
[57:48] the building, and I hear that notion,
[57:51] if we want to keep the building, what can we do?
[57:54] So it's a comment, not a question.
[57:58] Thank you.
[58:07] I've got a couple of comments.
[58:10] Thank you, great presentation.
[58:11] Thank you for the effort.
[58:12] We appreciate it.
[58:14] And thank you, Bob, and Bill, for bringing in the architect.
[58:18] It was actually my recommendation at the last meeting that we had in June that we bring in an architect to look at the property.
[58:25] We were talking about a bunch of different things with, and we still are.
[58:28] Or might be, we'll find out more next week.
[58:30] But there was, you know, a developer for senior housing, and it's like, well, what if, yeah, we have anybody look at the property
[58:35] you to find out what it might be capable of or what we could do with it.
[58:39] It's right literally in the center of our town.
[58:42] Some people call this the village, some people don't like when we call this Hagenham Village
[58:45] or whatever.
[58:47] But it's right in the center of our town, right, 154-81, we're right here.
[58:51] The whole town literally revolves around this area.
[58:57] So I think that bringing the town offices down to the green in the center of town where
[59:03] Where everybody knows where it is, traffic comes by a lot of people, a lot of activity.
[59:09] I think that's a great thing.
[59:12] I think that the vibrancy that having a town center, we're right now we don't really
[59:18] have a town center.
[59:19] You look at all the towns up and down the river and we're not old saber, and we don't want
[59:24] to be old saber.
[59:25] We're not chest or we don't want to be chest or we're had them and we want to be had them.
[59:29] But a lot of all these other towns have things that are desirable and we can make them the
[59:34] had a version of some of the really nice stuff that some of these other towns have, right?
[59:39] And I think that bringing the town offices, consolidate them into one space, it'll bring
[59:44] efficiencies not just in facilities, maintenance and management, which yes is important, you
[59:49] know, the actual dollars and cents of it, but what about, you know, networking and having
[59:53] these people literally working together and water cooler talk, right, in town departments.
[1:00:00] We're not meeting with each other. And our own ease of doing business with the town, right? You come in and you want to get your dump pass, but you also want to talk to the First Elecment or you want to, you know, check the town records. I mean, having all the town offices in one building, I think, would be, would be really great. So anyway, that's why I recommended we have an architect look at this. It was not to figure out exactly what the project costs were going to be. I have a, I have a background that's what I do.
[1:00:29] is development. Architects don't budget projects. Contractors do. Architects can
[1:00:38] tell you hey this is our vision and this is our plan. That's what we pay
[1:00:42] architects to do. But contracts will give you the price. And oftentimes through my
[1:00:48] career what I find and no offense the design professionals budgets are not
[1:00:54] not necessarily spot on where we're going to end up.
[1:00:59] So they're a good targeting point.
[1:01:02] They get us into the range of, hey, this is approximately what we're talking about for
[1:01:07] order of magnitude, but it's not what the project is going to cost.
[1:01:10] I can tell you that right now.
[1:01:15] I think I've heard a lot.
[1:01:16] I'm not on Facebook.
[1:01:18] I try not to do a lot of that social media stuff.
[1:01:22] Try to spend time with my family instead.
[1:01:23] But I've heard a lot of chatter through the people, the parents that we stand at the bus
[1:01:30] stop with, and other people I've talked to in town.
[1:01:34] And there's a lot of emphasis, I think there's a lot of current in this town for coming
[1:01:39] up with a cohesive plan.
[1:01:42] And we've heard it even a couple times tonight, and I love that concept.
[1:01:46] But whether it's HES, or the Rossi property, or the former state garage, right?
[1:01:55] All these things, there's desire for a cohesive plan.
[1:01:59] And I think a part of the resistance that we're hearing as a community, and we're feeling
[1:02:04] as a community, is it seems like some of this stuff is disjointed, like we'll talk about
[1:02:10] the Rossi property, and then we talk about HES.
[1:02:13] And they're literally next door to each other, but we have separate conversations about them.
[1:02:20] And I don't think that's the fault of anybody's other than it's really hard to have conversations with 300 people at the same time.
[1:02:28] There's a much smaller group tonight than we had back in June, but probably in June we had 300 people in this room.
[1:02:36] Right, and it's just really hard to have you especially large
[1:02:40] Conversations about widespread spending things with a ton of people so I think Bob and Bill are doing a great job
[1:02:47] I think that some people think that they're hiding behind their desks or you know that they're not being transparent with the community
[1:02:54] I can tell you and I've also got some public service history
[1:02:58] Their jobs are not easy to do what they do and stand up in front of a lot of talented and smart people like you
[1:03:05] is not easy. So I think we need to realize that they have really hard jobs to do
[1:03:12] and they're trying their best and give them a lot of credit for what they are
[1:03:16] doing instead of continually throwing them under the bus, right, under the wheels
[1:03:21] of the bus. The last comment I want to make tonight is as we talk about this
[1:03:26] cohesive plan and as we try to figure this out whether it's HES or the Rossi
[1:03:30] property. The rest of what we want to do to take it in the center is budget wise and a lot of
[1:03:36] people have brought up budgets tonight as well. I wrote an article for the newspaper. A month
[1:03:46] or so ago, a lot of you probably didn't read it and that's great, fine. No offense is taken. I did
[1:03:52] write it because I wanted to write it. I wrote it because I was asked to write it. And the reason I was
[1:03:56] So that's the right is I'm going, I spend a lot of time paying attention to stuff, and I went to pay attention to the school discussions.
[1:04:03] And when I looked around at those meetings when we were talking about the schools, I was disappointed, there's, they're really sparsely attended.
[1:04:12] There's not a lot of people paying attention to what's going on, and I'm not going to go off even further on my dietrived night.
[1:04:18] But I do want to just drop a couple of bombs on the room.
[1:04:22] The $100 million dollars for the school projects that were discussed tonight, that is the very, very, very low end of the cost range.
[1:04:34] That is the, literally, let's repair the buildings so they don't fall down cost range, $100 million of maintenance and repairs.
[1:04:43] The high end is, let's build new schools, let's consolidate campuses, let's start doing some of these other stuff beyond just keeping the buildings from falling down.
[1:04:55] And I think what, I don't know what the proposal is going to be.
[1:04:58] I'm not on the board of ed, but the range that they've been talking about, I think we're probably going to end up around 200-ish million dollars on the school campus program.
[1:05:11] And there's probably going to be some discussion and a recommendation to consolidate at least a school campus out.
[1:05:19] So another situation like an HES where we abandoned the school and I'm not saying abandoned in a bad way.
[1:05:26] I'm not trying to speak here with no emotion about the school program.
[1:05:30] But just so we're keeping that in mind as well, there's a lot of money we talked about tonight for this property.
[1:05:35] We have to think about the Rossi property, but we also have a big, big nut that is coming
[1:05:41] down the pike at us from the school program.
[1:05:44] And just like we need to think collectively about the properties in Higginham Center,
[1:05:49] we also need to think collectively about the budgets and what that means.
[1:05:53] So if we spend 32 million here, that's a big number.
[1:05:58] I don't think there's anybody in this room who doesn't think 32 million is a lot of money
[1:06:02] because it is a lot of money.
[1:06:03] It's a lot of money to everybody here, and it's our money, right?
[1:06:08] But that's going to be added to a lot of other projects and a lot of other money.
[1:06:13] So again, just not to go way off on that, but that's something that we also think collectively
[1:06:17] about, the town and the tax dollars, and the rest of the improvements that we have to make
[1:06:21] as well, and the school district is going to be a major, major suck on funds in taxes.
[1:06:29] Thank you.
[1:06:29] All
[1:06:42] right,
[1:06:52] a couple closing comments.
[1:06:54] If 32 million doesn't scare you, please see me, I'm going to check book.
[1:07:00] Assuming that's not going to happen, I'd like to thank you all for coming.
[1:07:03] Feel free to email my office with any questions you think of.
[1:07:07] Like I said, the report will get posted on our website, and the next week we'll take
[1:07:11] a look at some options for the idea, right?
[1:07:14] What's the time for next week, I hope we're doing a
[1:07:19] couple of years, in any of our conversations
[1:07:23] that spoke about a water truck?
[1:07:25] I talked about it.
[1:07:30] I think what this gentleman talked about.
[1:07:33] A lot of truck is probably coming to town.
[1:07:36] A lot of truck is coming to town.
[1:07:40] They are between a million or two to a million.
[1:07:43] Plus, you know, you're not going to put it out in the yard with a tariff over it.
[1:07:47] So that becomes another building or an addition or something that we have to keep in mind here.
[1:07:53] And you and I talked about the town garage.
[1:07:56] That's still up in the air too.
[1:07:59] How many million dollars are we talking about?
[1:08:02] I really don't know and I don't think you do at this point.
[1:08:05] Do you?
[1:08:06] Now one thing Ron I was going to talk about next week is kind of highlight some of the capital projects
[1:08:12] we know around the horizon things we should do.
[1:08:15] The latter trick might be one of them, town garage certainly is one of them.
[1:08:21] There's a number of things that the school will be in part of it, and we don't know that number at all.
[1:08:27] But we can show you what some of our town needs are and what the capital costs of those are.
[1:08:34] Because it's not just, I think this is your point, it's not just the 32 million or
[1:08:39] the 9 million or whatever for this building, it's let's look at the whole nut and
[1:08:43] about let's start differentiating between what we need and what we'd like to
[1:08:50] have. And if we can get the like to have that's wonderful or if we can get
[1:08:53] somewhere between them that's wonderful but we do have to keep in mind the
[1:08:56] need. We need services like from our town garage. Everybody needs them. So we
[1:09:02] got to give them a place and what they need to start with.
[1:09:09] I'm not sure about
[1:09:10] this one yet? Well, I am sure. I know what we talked about.
[1:09:16] I'll be glad to. Oh, yeah, thank you,
[1:09:19] dear, for reminding me. Why bring it? Why should bring me? I don't know. But that is next Wednesday,
[1:09:28] 630, at the HK auditorium. In the back, sir.
[1:09:32] What do you fill me in on what do the tax revenue of this town were talking about here?
[1:09:39] How much do we bring in?
[1:09:42] All right.
[1:09:43] Our total budget is about $38 million.
[1:09:47] And how much does that go to the schools?
[1:09:49] Well, the school system takes 72% which in their defense is typical for a regional school
[1:09:54] because we looked at it and you can't make a valid cost comparison to the town school districts
[1:10:00] So it's because they can read, they can categorize their money differently.
[1:10:05] So town and the board of head funds are matched.
[1:10:07] I assume they're about to say about three quarters of your tax dollars in Connecticut support the schools.
[1:10:14] About 92% of our total revenue from the town comes from property taxes.
[1:10:22] So do the map that $29 million is roughly if it's 90% of the $32 million budget.
[1:10:36] I have to speak with the superintendent of schools, he says that Adam is getting hammered
[1:10:43] by the, not the equal split between telling where, and Adam, something to be done or something
[1:10:55] to the Board of Education to bring this place.
[1:10:58] And I'll close up, but that's beyond what we're talking about here.
[1:11:03] We pay the school district based on a percentage of students are had on students versus killing
[1:11:08] work.
[1:11:09] That's set out by State Statute.
[1:11:11] The State Statute also allow for the towns that are part of the district to agree to a
[1:11:17] different funding ratio in the state has to endorse it.
[1:11:22] I don't know what all is involved in that.
[1:11:24] I don't need them.
[1:11:24] I do know if I was a slight wind of a kilo more than I'd say, don't even come to my door with that and that doesn't mean we can't try.
[1:11:31] That's what I'm saying.
[1:11:32] It will take a while.
[1:11:33] I think it should be nothing that happens right now.
[1:11:35] I think it should be tried to give us a break.
[1:11:43] Anything else?
[1:11:45] Let's wrap this thing up.
[1:11:46] Again, thank you all for coming.
[1:11:49] May I be happy to talk to you if you want to come up here with me?