[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.]

[0:00] Not quite as chilly as it was the other day.
[0:07] Recording in progress.
[0:09] I like that sound.
[0:14] Okay.
[0:17] Welcome to the Yarmouth Select Board meeting for December 16, 2025 at 6 p.m. in the Yarmouth Town Hall hearing room.
[0:25] At 1146 Route 28 South Yarmouth, to those that would like to be watching on Zoom,
[0:31] Please know that you just need to go to the town website and the information will be there for you to be able to join us
[0:38] Would you like to all stand now for the Pledge of Allegiance, please?
[1:00] First off, let me just say very warm. Thank you to Joyce Flynn for in
[1:06] and giving us all a lot of chocolate here tonight.
[1:10] There was an elf outside and he gave me a bag.
[1:15] Okay, starting off our first item is announcements.
[1:19] Do we have any announcements for this evening?
[1:21] Liz?
[1:21] Sure.
[1:22] I would like to announce that as a select person, I have office hours at the senior
[1:27] center on December 18th and January 15th.
[1:33] every third Thursday, every month at 3 o'clock, so if you can get this out, you'll know that's
[1:41] when you show up at Senior Center and I'll be there, too.
[1:44] So if you have anything you want to bring forward, I'll be there at the Senior Center
[1:49] December 18th, which is next week, and then January 15th.
[1:53] I also wanted to do a quick shout-out to Amanda Lima.
[1:56] I'm on the Cape Cod Metropolitan Planning Organization, and they noted her finding a bike rack that
[2:05] was missing in the comprehensive collection of bike racks across Cape Cod.
[2:09] So Amanda's paying strict attention.
[2:12] Also, I wanted to note, the Judah Baker Windmill has had a great year, and there are volunteers
[2:20] who are there taking the tourists through.
[2:23] And I wanted to say thank you to them, too, for their volunteering.
[2:27] Thank you.
[2:29] Okay. Thank you, Liz. Do we have any other announcements today?
[2:33] Just following up on Liz, I think we're very fortunate in this town for the great volunteers that we have with Historic to do just things like the Judah Baker.
[2:44] and tonight is kind of a good example of my thanks to our volunteers too because I
[2:50] see the library committee is not here nice and early unfortunately we'll have
[2:56] to make you wait for a little bit. Do we have public comment?
[3:02] I see some hands that
[3:04] are up. Christopher Garen? Yes, good evening. Season of feeding. Yes, go ahead.
[3:13] Oh, thank you.
[3:16] The proposed resolution discussed during the December 2nd
[3:19] Yarmouth Selections meeting gave the serious public safety
[3:22] questions about the Yarmouth Police Department's
[3:25] ice engagement policy that a positive decision among the town
[3:28] people that may possibly engage in the safety of the police
[3:31] officer.
[3:32] I support Yarmouth Police Chief Lennon for many reasons.
[3:35] And one is his demonstrated public outreach and open
[3:38] door policy to guarantee clarity and answer frequently
[3:41] questions about the police department. The good news is Chief Lennon has publicly posted
[3:47] the ICE engagement policy on the department's immigration facts at the US web page stating
[3:54] Yarmouth Police officers may accompany or assist ICE agents to maintain public safety
[4:00] and protect bystanders during federal enforcement action. However, Yarmouth Police Department
[4:06] does not participate in civil immigration enforcement or detain individuals solely based on ICE
[4:11] retainers. Maintaining public safety appears to be Chief Lenin's prime directive when accompanying
[4:16] or assisting ICE agents. Nowhere does the department's homepage indicate that police officers will
[4:21] interfere with federal enforcement action or arrest and engage in a physical fight with ICE agents.
[4:27] During public comment, 26 people spoke. 15 opposed the resolution and 11 supported it.
[4:33] Public comment, Speaker of the Night, was a supporter of the resolution and a parent
[4:38] member of the Army for everything.
[4:40] Speaker Number Eight directly contradicted Chief Lenin's publicly posted policy by predicting
[4:45] if ICE comes to town, quote, it may come to a fight.
[4:49] It may come to a situation where you'd expect our quick department to interfere with ICE
[4:54] less.
[4:55] Yes, I believe that it actually happened, end quote.
[4:58] This occurs at the one hour and 25 second mark of the YouTube video of the meeting.
[5:02] YouTube video of the meeting further shows that the Speaker Number Eight received
[5:06] the clause and handshakes from the resolution supporters when he finished. This prediction
[5:11] of violence against ICE is confusing because the proposed resolution does not include a statement
[5:17] advocating this. In fact, the statement completes with the first public comment speaker who was a
[5:23] self-described member of Yarmouth for everyone and apparently the brief spokesperson. To summarize,
[5:28] this spokesperson represented to the board that the proposed resolution is clear and
[5:31] understandable, plain no interference with law enforcement,
[5:34] and that its members met with police chief Lenin
[5:37] to confirm their support for the police.
[5:39] The number of subsequent opponents of the resolution,
[5:41] however, raised specific concerns
[5:44] that the resolution would confuse the public
[5:46] about the police department's role.
[5:48] The paraphrase, the 20-second speaker
[5:50] explained that a symbolic resolution
[5:53] could misinform the public,
[5:56] could misinterpret the instructions
[5:58] about the armed police officers
[6:00] is not to cooperate with federal authorities.
[6:02] As a 23rd speaker, I raised the confusion
[6:04] caused by speaker number eight statement
[6:06] in question whether the police chief or the officers
[6:09] were aware that they were expected to interfere
[6:11] and fight with ICE.
[6:12] Nevertheless, no one, no one who spoke
[6:15] in support of proposed resolution
[6:17] during the meeting addressed the public safety issue,
[6:21] potentially endangering armed police officers
[6:23] or disavowed the speaker number eight statement.
[6:25] In conclusion, you have heard both sides.
[6:27] unity is non-existent for this proposed resolution. 15 opposed 11 supported. These 15 people who
[6:35] opposed the resolution represented various voting groups from working age to retire and
[6:40] apparently spoke as individuals and not part of an organized group. You heard these opponents
[6:44] commonly advocating for peace, order, and compliance with the law because they are
[6:50] the ones actually concerned about public safety for everyone in the Army, including
[6:54] its police officers, first responders, firefighters, business owners, and everyone living in Yarmouth,
[7:00] which is in accordance with Chief Lenin's publicly posted policy.
[7:05] These advocates for everyone in Yarmouth who opposed the resolution asked that these laws
[7:10] be enforced equally, even when the suspects happen to be in violation of a federal immigration
[7:16] law.
[7:16] They opposed on the record and did not advocate violence or predict that they expect
[7:22] that Chief Lennon would have to order his officers
[7:24] to risk their lives to interfere and fight ICE agents.
[7:28] As a result, the proposed resolution
[7:30] is a very serious question.
[7:32] Therefore, after the legal opinion
[7:34] is completed and considered, I respectfully
[7:36] request that this board deny the resolution specifically
[7:39] addressing Chief Lennon's public reposted ICE policy.
[7:44] Prior to the board's decision, however,
[7:46] I ask that this board please request
[7:48] that the legal opinion clearly discusses
[7:50] and specifically explained, one, Chief Lenin publicly posted
[7:54] ICE policy.
[7:55] Two, Yarmouth chain of command, should ICE come to town?
[7:58] And he was ultimately responsible during a public safety
[8:01] emergency.
[8:02] And three, the legal requirements and expectations
[8:05] of the people of Yarmouth should ICE come to town?
[8:08] And what are the penalties for violating him?
[8:10] Finally, I would also request that once the legal opinion
[8:13] is issued and the board reaches a decision,
[8:16] the town administrator written how
[8:17] of continuing his successful efforts
[8:19] to modernize and improve Town Hall's communications with the public, produce a short video posted
[8:25] to the town's website, specifically explain the legal opinions explanation of the three
[8:31] previous issues because the people of Yarmouth need to know for their safety. No one should
[8:37] want to turn today's confusion into tomorrow's chaos. Thank you so much for the opportunity
[8:41] to speak.
[8:43] Thank you very much. I see a hand up for Manny's mind.
[8:51] Yes, good afternoon. Good evening, Madam Vice Chair. Tom Niccanello speaking.
[8:58] Manny's mind.
[8:59] Yes, yes. We're doing something different for next year.
[9:03] Anyways, I just wanted to see a couple of comments. Thank you very much.
[9:08] You know, we made some history a couple of Sundays ago with a great little event up in
[9:14] the north side.
[9:16] It's been going on for many years, but the Historical Society and the Chamber of Commerce
[9:20] really pulled it off.
[9:22] And you know, that tourism preservation revenue fund really works well on the off-season
[9:29] to bring our community together.
[9:32] With the Christmas Troll and the Winter Carnival and the parade, I mean, these
[9:36] These are the events that our community needs to feel together and appreciate each other.
[9:43] During the summertime we have a massive flux of people and our residents can't get out and
[9:48] enjoy our restaurants and shopping.
[9:50] We don't want to wait three hours for dinner.
[9:53] But these spring and fall events are truly, truly remarkable to our community and to
[10:00] help it, you know, move in the future with some good stuff.
[10:05] So with the Chamber and our own town administrator was there did a wonderful job
[10:10] I heard the voice was calling so pay attention for that and then my my second comment
[10:17] Madam Vice Chair is tonight you're you're going to be looking at the CIP budget and you're gonna have you know
[10:24] those wonderful volunteers that spend
[10:28] Marathon meetings put in this work together, but I just want to point out
[10:32] So on the first page, I think it's the 16th line, we're talking about stormwater.
[10:40] And, you know, stormwater, you know, here we are, we just had our first snow and it's going to rain,
[10:46] and we're going to have stormwater problems.
[10:48] And I believe you all recall just a few months ago, Amanda Limer, a wonderful town engineer,
[10:55] stated the fact that we have five-plus years of backlog on stormwater problems.
[11:01] We have residents that every time an event happens, whether it's snow or rain,
[11:08] there's always an issue in front of their house and it's the same thing over and over again.
[11:13] So I'm in to say it is probably five plus years backlog,
[11:17] but I think we all know it's more like 10 plus years.
[11:20] So the line item once again is $200,000.
[11:25] I think this should really have some time amongst the select board members
[11:29] to have a discussion on stormwater.
[11:33] Everyone's worried about the sea level rising and everything.
[11:37] Well, we have stormwater flooding happening right now
[11:39] and it's been happening for a long time.
[11:42] And it's really important that we should address that.
[11:45] The budget should be looked at.
[11:47] I don't know if we can afford it to increase it.
[11:51] We're very cash-strapped our community.
[11:54] We have a lot of things going on in the future,
[11:56] but stormwater is extremely important.
[11:58] And with that I'll wrap it up and wish you all a good night and Merry Christmas and looking forward to next year. Thank you
[12:05] Thank you, Tom
[12:08] Okay, I
[12:10] Don't see any other hands up on the screen
[12:15] And I don't see anyone coming to the podium. So I believe we have come to the end of
[12:21] Our public comments moving on now to our next agenda item
[12:25] We have change of manager sons of Aaron Cape Cod
[12:29] 633 route 28 West Yarmouth to Catherine Fitzsimmons as manager right
[12:37] up with a big tray of chocolates are
[12:42] How are you good evening?
[12:48] Hello, hey, we heard you
[12:51] Okay, you probably don't need this anyway. So yes
[12:54] Yes, could I ask you to speak into the mic because it's for the television audience as
[13:00] well.
[13:00] Thank you.
[13:01] Thank you.
[13:03] Okay, so I'm right now the acting manager at the Sons of Aaron due to the passing of
[13:09] Mike Shea, who was our previous manager.
[13:13] Just a little background on me.
[13:14] I've been with the Sons for 18 plus years and many different functions.
[13:19] Kitchen manager, function manager now acting bar manager and club manager.
[13:25] I've lived in Yarmouth for 10 years.
[13:28] People might recognize me from the parade committee.
[13:31] Do you have any questions for me?
[13:35] Mark?
[13:36] No, I don't.
[13:37] Joyce?
[13:38] No.
[13:39] It looks like you've been certified by Officer Renzi,
[13:42] and it sounds like he thinks highly of your knowledge.
[13:45] He's very, very nice.
[13:46] He's very helpful.
[13:48] I'm all set.
[13:49] Great.
[13:50] And I am.
[13:51] Thank you so much.
[13:51] I've set.
[13:52] So thank you very much.
[13:54] Good holidays.
[13:54] All in favor of the change in management?
[13:57] I don't think we even have to vote on it, do we?
[13:59] Yes, you do.
[13:59] We do.
[14:00] Okay.
[14:00] Do I have a motion?
[14:02] We approve as submitted.
[14:04] You're not a practice for a while.
[14:05] Yes.
[14:06] Second.
[14:07] Okay.
[14:08] All those in favor?
[14:09] Aye.
[14:10] Opposed?
[14:11] It passes unanimously.
[14:14] Congratulations and thank you very much.
[14:15] Thank you for your time.
[14:21] I see Bob moving toward the computer, so he's getting us ready for the next item on the agenda, which is Capital Improvement Program.
[14:35] Sandy, how many hats are you wearing tonight? You've got capital improvement, you've got the library.
[14:45] Same goes for Ken.
[14:47] Just one, just one tonight.
[14:48] Just one tonight.
[14:50] And
[14:56] who would like to start us off?
[14:58] Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.
[15:06] Thank you for having us tonight. So this presentation is the official handoff to facilitate budget and capital discussions for the annual town meeting in the spring.
[15:16] I'd like to introduce my committee, even though many of them couldn't be here tonight.
[15:21] My name is Sandy Fife. I am the chair. To my left is Ken Smith. He is our vice chair. He is from the Planning Board.
[15:29] George Perkins is from the Finance Committee, and then we are members at large include Andrew Laird, Danielle Newcomb,
[15:38] Lindsey Petro, and Joseph Jamal, and each one of those may wears many hats also.
[15:48] The Capital Budget Committee is charged with reviewing all capital items initiated by the departments.
[15:55] It makes recommendations to the Finance Committee, the Board of Selectment and Town Meeting.
[15:59] We are a seven-member committee, and we are appointed by the Finance Committee.
[16:08] The committee's recommendations take the form of a five-year capital plan and a 10-year facilities plan as required by the Charter.
[16:17] Tonight, we are here to provide an overview of our preliminary recommendations and to answer any specific questions that you may have on any other request.
[16:26] We'll try.
[16:30] As you know, the capital budget is separate from the operating budget.
[16:35] And it's comprised of priority capital items with a value of $10,000 or more, or a useful life of five years or more.
[16:44] This
[16:47] is our fourth year using the cloud based system, we miss billed.
[16:54] It starts with the departments entering their requests and
[16:57] then it moves over to the town administrator who reviews the request with finance and
[17:02] recommends items to the CDC.
[17:05] The system facilitates a more rapid movement of the capital plan that we had in the past.
[17:12] And it captures all requests both for the annual town meeting warrant and the fall town meeting.
[17:22] This slide highlights the October 1st delivery to the Capital Budget Committee by the town administrator.
[17:32] And also the December 1st delivery by the Capital Budget Committee to the Finance Committee.
[17:36] committee. To meet these deadlines, it requires weekly meetings over a concentrated period
[17:41] of time. Once the Town Administrator approves the projects, the CBC initiates its liaison
[17:47] approach, assigning one or two members to meet with each department reviewing the equipment
[17:52] and discussing projects in detail. Then each department appears before the full committee
[17:57] to address any changes or outstanding questions.
[18:05] I know you've seen this before, but for
[18:07] the public. We do have a rating criteria which is made up of two different scores. Significance
[18:14] and readiness. It's a weighted score. Significance gets 70% and the readiness gets 30%. So to
[18:23] give you an example of how that works, we rate from 1 to 4. 4 being the highest.
[18:29] If we rate something of 4, it means it will remedy a health or a safety issue
[18:35] or mandate. And under readiness it means they also have plans and permits and
[18:41] studies and cost estimates in place. The rating criteria is on our website for
[18:48] anyone who wishes to review it. We will show you the rankings further on in
[18:55] the presentation. This particular slide, I know the print is very small for the
[19:00] public but it is available on the website, shows a listing of the items
[19:05] we've recommended from free cash. The total from free cash this year is $5,126,440.
[19:14] The first column actually shows what we recommended for the fall town meeting. It's kind of being cut off.
[19:22] We will be available to answer any questions on any one of these particular items. Many of these items you have actually seen before.
[19:32] The next slide shows the items from the fire ambulance receipts.
[19:38] At the fall town meeting, we addressed replacement of an ambulance number 56.
[19:43] Moving forward to the annual town meeting, there are five items from the fire ambulance receipts.
[19:50] The Engine 47 may, I'm not really sure if that will come from fire ambulance receipts
[19:57] or if it will be a borrowing.
[19:59] but there'll be more discussion on each one of these items as you review your annual town meeting warrant.
[20:06] The next items are from the Golf Enterprise Fund.
[20:09] Four items approved by the committee moved forward at the Fall Town Meeting.
[20:13] And the reason for that is they do those projects over the winter.
[20:18] There also will be four items at the annual town meeting recommended.
[20:23] The Bath River Park and Lot expansion, which adds 55 spaces, golf course furniture,
[20:29] and accessories, and some new technology with a new top dresser and a sprayer.
[20:38] The next item is from the Water Enterprise Fund. Several of these you see every single
[20:44] year. The distribution systems improvements, which do improvements to the water mains and
[20:50] improves the flow and quality, and then production system hardware, which is the
[20:56] SCADA, which controls the pumps and the chemical feed.
[21:01] So those items you see every single year.
[21:03] They have two other items to replace two pieces of equipment.
[21:08] We can answer questions on those if you have them.
[21:13] This slide shows recommendations from other financing sources.
[21:18] From the tax levy, roadways improvements is an item we see every single year for
[21:23] $1.1 million.
[21:24] dollars packet landing project was funded partially from free cash this is
[21:31] this grant total that they were able to get a $2 million grant to offset that
[21:36] cost the next item the library facility you will be hearing more about that
[21:43] tonight this item although we did make a recommendation on it there is a lot
[21:49] more information we will be needing and talking about this more after the
[21:53] the town meeting warrant comes out where we have more firm cost estimates in the grant totals.
[22:00] Last item is chapter 90 roadways.
[22:04] Each year we get money from the state, which is estimated this year at $840,000.
[22:12] So the total recommendations from the committee this year is $35,667,069.
[22:21] It sounds like a lot, but that doesn't include the library project.
[22:27] Many of these items, I won't say many of them, some of these items may change.
[22:32] Funding sources may change as more information comes forward when the town meeting warrant
[22:38] gets prepared in January and February, and the committee will once again meet tonight
[22:44] writing in February to review the town meeting warrant once the board releases a draft.
[22:52] This slide shows just basically our recommendations by division.
[23:02] This is a 10-year plan as entered into the portal.
[23:06] As you will notice that some years may look inflated basically by large projects.
[23:15] We're very excited moving forward on the 10-year plan that the school department has purchased the portal.
[23:21] And they will next year be giving us a five and 10-year plan, which is something that we haven't been asking for for the last several years.
[23:29] The new administration over there, they're going to make it happen, so we're excited about that.
[23:36] This is very tiny.
[23:39] It is available on the website.
[23:42] You do have a copy.
[23:42] Basically, these are our recommendations in order.
[23:46] We discussed the ranking process with the two scales of significance and readiness.
[23:52] All the projects recommended by administration have been ranked and no projects fell below
[23:59] the 3.0, which is usually cut off.
[24:03] So this is just a listing of the rankings for the board's review or the public if
[24:09] they want to go on the website.
[24:10] Sorry, it's so small.
[24:13] So each year the Capital Budget Committee identifies, has observations, have discussions.
[24:19] And this year we've identified four recommendations, some of which you've probably seen before.
[24:26] On the first one, we always ask if we could have an earliest submittal,
[24:32] which would be difficult for the departments.
[24:35] You don't want them doing capital during the summer,
[24:37] but we don't really see the capital until September, so we have September, October,
[24:43] and maybe two weeks in November. And then we have to have everything all done. So it's really
[24:49] kind of rushed. So an expanded time would be great. The second consideration is
[24:58] a discussion on a standard escalation factor, especially for vehicles. A lot of times the
[25:05] departments are asking for a vehicle during the summer or the fall it has to come to us
[25:10] and they don't get that vehicle again for a year or two years and they're trying to fit
[25:16] them into a 10-year plan also.
[25:18] So if standard escalation factor may be something that would help the departments.
[25:24] Each year we have a discussion on utilizing purchasing power between departments for rolling
[25:30] stock and that would only rarely work for certain departments because there's a lot
[25:34] out of specialized equipment that is unique, like fire and police.
[25:38] But for other things like trucks, utilize and
[25:43] purchasing power may save the town some money.
[25:48] And I mentioned we are emphasizing our five and ten year plan with the departments.
[25:53] And as I mentioned, the school is going to refine their capital budget and
[25:59] which may make for a better plan next year when we do our presentation.
[26:04] What are the next steps?
[26:06] We've already gone before the finance committee and presented our plan.
[26:11] Tonight, we're here before the board and moving forward, we will be reconciling the
[26:16] plan to the annual town meeting warrant for any changes and we'll be back in front of
[26:21] you in March with the final plan and to answer any questions.
[26:26] Well,
[26:30] as I've stated before, the Capital Budget Improvement Plan is a foundational document
[26:36] to facilitate discussion.
[26:38] So I want to acknowledge and thank Department Heads and my committee for all their time and
[26:44] their effort.
[26:44] I also want to thank my finance director, Jen, for her input this year.
[26:50] The capital budget process is a collaborative approach across the entire organization.
[26:57] And a lot of time has gone into this for both the members of the Capital Budget Committee but also for all who participate.
[27:04] And to date, we've put in more than 15 meetings that have occurred between the capital budget,
[27:11] the liaisons and the departments to come up with our preliminary recommendations for the upcoming year.
[27:19] So the next slides were put together by the town administrator and I'm going to turn this portion of the presentation.
[27:26] go one more not
[27:31] there Bob
[27:35] yeah
[27:39] thank you Sandy that was that was awesome I
[27:51] do want to just take a minute to thank Sandy Ken the entire CIP committee and
[27:58] the town departments for for all of their work you know I couldn't be more
[28:01] proud of this group and their efforts.
[28:06] If you recall, going back, you know, it started a few years ago.
[28:10] We established the goal of making our capital improvement program here in town, a first-class
[28:16] financial planning tool that goes beyond, you know, establishing the budget, but really
[28:22] creates the data that we need to make this a financial planning tool.
[28:27] And I know, you know, Bill brought us the cloud-based system that provided some of that
[28:32] infrastructure that we needed.
[28:34] But it was really all of the, you know, roll up your sleeves, hard work of pushing the
[28:40] departments to have a longer-term viewpoint and having the committee there to shepherd
[28:45] that whole process through and to work directly with the finance director, Jen Mullen.
[28:52] And I'll tell you what, I think that you can see from this effort.
[28:56] It's evident.
[28:57] When you just take a look at the in-year package, the entire capital improvement program and
[29:03] now has a separate project analysis sheet for every single project throughout the years,
[29:12] I think they've really done a great job and I wanted to focus on a couple of things.
[29:19] I mean, there's two real critical parts to the CIP.
[29:22] There's the annual budget that we appropriate using free cash or whatever other revenues
[29:31] are available.
[29:32] There's some in the property tax and the smaller projects moving forward over time, what we're
[29:39] going to see.
[29:40] And then there's the second part of it, which is the real heavier side of the CIP
[29:48] that I want to focus on for a couple of minutes that involves the 10-year forecast for all
[29:54] of our upcoming community facilities projects, and that is the area.
[30:00] That we need to move from the capital planning piece to identify these projects into the financial
[30:09] planning mode that we can begin to develop implementation strategies for how we're going
[30:15] to get these projects done. And that's what the work of the CIP has enabled us to really
[30:22] do. So I want to kind of focus on those issues. And again, these are larger construction projects.
[30:32] It's all going to require bonding. It's going to require debt, long-term planning associated
[30:38] with this. So what happens is that these larger projects, which the committee working
[30:46] with the departments has identified, they filter through the CIP where they're identified
[30:52] right straight to the finance director, Jen Mullet,
[30:58] who with her team begins to work on an analysis that involves the town's long-term debt,
[31:06] ability to pay, the means that we have over time,
[31:11] and what we try to do with that process is to begin to put together some strategies.
[31:17] And I want to show a couple of slides that point that out a little bit.
[31:24] And I want to call the Selectman's attention to, in your packet, there is a copy.
[31:32] It's a photocopy of the presentation that Sandy just gave.
[31:35] And if you could go to the last page on it, it has some of the information that I have up on the screen,
[31:42] but in a more comprehensive viewpoint, the critical projects that we've highlighted that
[31:51] are all going to hit this town over the next 10 years that we need to begin planning for
[31:56] are outlined on this sheet.
[31:58] And the one that's on the screen is a portion of the overall sheet that shows a complete analysis
[32:06] of debt service from 2026 to 2064.
[32:12] And it also includes every single project,
[32:15] what all of the principal interest would be for bonds.
[32:18] It analyzes the current existing debt
[32:21] and what tax rate impacts would be on any new debt.
[32:27] And this sheet is good for folks just to be oriented on it,
[32:31] but I do want to show that there's a much more comprehensive sheet
[32:35] that obviously doesn't fit up on the screen.
[32:38] But the key points are that over the next 10 years,
[32:42] the projects that the town needs to grapple with are as follows.
[32:46] We have the first one is the library project.
[32:53] And hopefully, there's roughly a 45% grant that's associated
[32:58] with that project.
[33:00] The second major project we're looking at
[33:02] is the Bayberry Hills Groundwater Recharge
[33:07] to support phase one of the sewer.
[33:09] We've estimated that's gonna be an additional $35 million
[33:14] over the phase one cost,
[33:15] and we need a financial plan associated with that.
[33:19] We've factored in that we know there's a feasibility study
[33:23] starting for the elementary school.
[33:25] We'll be discussing that a little bit more.
[33:27] The estimate for a total project
[33:29] grant is there with the 57 percent grant if we participate in the SBA.
[33:37] We have a new fire station and headquarters that we have to plan and that is estimated
[33:43] at 40 million.
[33:44] And don't forget, we get through with all of that, we are staring down the barrel
[33:50] at wastewater phase two in the amount of 60 million.
[33:54] So there's a lot of projects.
[33:56] projects. These are what we consider to be the major projects. It doesn't include things
[34:01] like new baseball fields. But these are the buildings. And these are the items that are
[34:07] all the big ticket items that are really confounding the town.
[34:12] So in planning, a couple of points on this chart that show up, when we plan for these
[34:20] larger projects, there's a couple of characteristics just to keep in mind as we move forward.
[34:26] But first and foremost, obviously, with so many needs, they can't be accomplished all
[34:30] at once.
[34:31] So we're going to have to do some staggering, and we're going to have to time these so that
[34:35] over a period of time, we're able to accomplish them.
[34:39] Just folks should know, especially if you're in favor of any of these projects, it all
[34:46] requires time to get so many large projects done, and there's capacity.
[34:51] but the biggest capacity issue that we need to address is the financial capacity.
[34:57] So obviously, you don't have that in any one given year.
[35:01] And the second critical item, you can see that when a project is approved, often there's
[35:09] a three to four year lag between the actual time a project is approved and when it shows
[35:15] up on the actual debt that the town has to begin to raise funds to pay for them.
[35:21] When you talk about these building projects, very often you have a situation where here's
[35:28] a project library that's the first one because of the timing of the grant requirements.
[35:33] It shows up first on our list.
[35:36] If that is proposed for the Springtown meeting, say it's approved in 2026, we don't see
[35:45] bills coming through until 2028 and 2029 and even then those are only the
[35:53] temporary financing for interest only you don't start paying off the actual
[35:59] principal payments hit start in 2030 and then move into 2031 year into the the
[36:08] meat of that similarly on a Bayberry Hills project if that was approved
[36:14] next year it doesn't kick in till debt service payments start in 2029 and it
[36:22] doesn't gear up until the later years but also you can see what a huge impact
[36:28] we're able to finance this with the zero percent interest that comes from the
[36:34] SRF program and there are also some of the loan forgiveness and the waterways
[36:42] fund that we use that contributes 25% to that. So similarly with all of the projects, they
[36:52] need to be staggered out. The impacts don't come immediate. So when we start looking at
[36:59] some of these major impacts, that occurs when more than two of these projects is in
[37:07] its full debt. And as you can see, it's not until we get to these years here that
[37:13] we're particularly concerned about, 2035, 2036, that we begin to see the multiple projects
[37:21] lining up.
[37:22] And that's what we gear our planning efforts toward.
[37:27] And so I thank Jennifer, I mean, without her expertise, you know, the financial planning
[37:33] wouldn't take place and she could have this controller as easy as I could right
[37:38] now.
[37:39] this is all the work that she's poured into this to help us lay out the debt service analysis.
[37:45] Now I want to show the previous chart in a graphical format that includes the entire
[37:53] range from 2026 to 2064 and what that looks like graphically represented in terms of an
[38:03] analysis of the projected town's debt service.
[38:08] And there's a couple of issues that really are a little bit striking in terms of where
[38:16] we are and where we need to be.
[38:18] The first one being that, you know, Yarmouth is a very unique town with unique challenges
[38:24] and a history of how we got to where we are today and where we need to go.
[38:28] So the first issue that doesn't make things necessarily easy for the town is the fact that
[38:38] our recent history shows the town has chosen to make an attempt to reduce the spending
[38:47] on all of our community facilities, these buildings, until such time as we figured out
[38:52] about how to move forward with the wastewater project and it was a situation that when that
[39:00] project came up in 2012 and was rejected by voters, the town knew that it was still
[39:05] the largest single capital improvement public works project in the history of the town
[39:11] and it wasn't resolved.
[39:13] And I think there was a conscious effort at that time to take a lot of these projects
[39:17] that we're known about that were not moved forward in order to preserve the
[39:24] ability to take on debt and address that wastewater project. So what you'd
[39:31] normally see in a similarly sized community is a level of community
[39:37] facility investment that would have a baseline maybe in this range that would
[39:44] be fairly constant. In the normal type of financial planning exercise, you would have
[39:51] a situation where the way of the bonds are structured, they start higher and go lower
[39:58] over time. And had we continued to invest in this time frame, we would, number one,
[40:05] have some projects that were completed. But more importantly, we would have debt
[40:11] that was declining and we would be able to replace debt in such a manner as to
[40:17] try to have level debt going across but that's a luxury we don't have. The blue
[40:24] represents here and it starts in FY26 with the existing debt and we have very
[40:32] low existing debt with the exception of the middle school which was time to
[40:38] replace the high school and here it shows we've been able to take on hang on
[40:44] let's go back if we can we've been able to to take on the DPW facility which
[40:52] shows in the blue and what we need to do is to come up with a plan rather than
[40:59] replacing debt because we don't have any debt to replace we need to ramp up to a
[41:05] level that meets the town needs and from there have a declining debt strategy.
[41:13] So it shows an extra challenge that we have to the town.
[41:19] How do you plan to meet all of these needs without a lot of existing debt now and make
[41:26] it so that the town's needs are met over time?
[41:29] And that in and of itself is really the critical financial planning tool that goes hand in
[41:38] hand with the capital improvement program when they identify these projects, then we
[41:44] kick in and try to develop some strategies.
[41:46] And then the projects right now, keep in mind when you have this capital budgeting,
[41:52] the only part of it that's approved is the first year.
[41:57] So the real, I guess, strength of the capital program is it projects out these future needs
[42:05] and seeks to provide some information that we can use to develop future strategies.
[42:13] Is this program going to move forward?
[42:15] Our project's going to be addressed.
[42:18] And so as we do that to try to come up with strategies,
[42:21] It's important to look at, as we just showed in the last slide,
[42:28] Yarmouth has very unique needs.
[42:30] So we need to have strong financial goals and policies that are financially sound,
[42:37] but we need to do them in a way that analyzes the uniqueness of the town of Yarmouth
[42:43] and the structure of our town and how we need to move forward.
[42:47] and in doing that I put this chart up because it shows a little bit of the
[42:54] type of things we need to look at that this is an analysis that shows the
[43:01] structure of some of Yarmouth's property tax key statistics benchmarked in the
[43:10] context of our other neighbors here on Cape Cod and I know it's a little
[43:16] difficult to see but you know we've got the towns are born all the way down at
[43:21] the end we have Yarmouth and there's a couple of key statistics that I just
[43:25] want to go over with you that this chart really shows that I think are very
[43:31] unique to Yarmouth and provide the basis that we need to consider to
[43:36] analyze some of these some of these capital needs so the the first key
[43:41] statistics if you take a look at this column here shows the average single
[43:46] family value in all of these communities and it's fascinating to me to see that on
[43:52] Cape Cod it's by quite a margin the town of the Armit has the lowest average
[43:59] single family value at single family home excuse me thank you single we're
[44:09] We're talking about the value of the average single family home.
[44:14] Your home is missing.
[44:15] I get it.
[44:15] Proper.
[44:15] See a single family.
[44:16] I want to insert that clarity sake.
[44:19] Absolutely.
[44:21] So I mean, take a look at some of the towns.
[44:26] It's interesting.
[44:27] Chatham, what are the differences in the home values
[44:31] between Chatham and Yarmouth?
[44:34] And at 1,674, it's, you know,
[44:39] Their average single family home is over twice what the average is Yarmouth is.
[44:45] And, you know, you wouldn't expect to see such a disparity, but it's there.
[44:52] So we have to take into account that we have much lower values than...
[45:00] Some of the other communities that we're dealing with somewhat on the side that gives
[45:07] us a little hope is that along with the lower single family home values, it also makes the
[45:17] average single family home tax bill is one of the lowest on the Cape.
[45:23] We come in at 4800, 4818, and if you look at, you know, most of the other Cape Towns have
[45:34] an average tax bill much higher than we have, and the state average we didn't put in here,
[45:40] but the state average is much higher as well, and so at least folks can take some comfort
[45:48] from the fact that generally our single family tax bills are fairly low. But the other critical
[45:57] aspect of this that has to be figured in, although the single family tax bill is relatively low,
[46:05] when you begin to look at the income of the community measured per capita,
[46:16] It really comes into focus that Yarmouth is by far the
[46:24] lowest income community at the
[46:30] income per capita in our community is $44,804 and not too far off from a couple of the
[46:42] communities, like born is a lower income community and East Ham as well, but we're the lowest
[46:51] by quite a little bit.
[46:53] So the critical point is that
[47:00] our approach needs to factor in the relatively low income
[47:07] income and the low values of the property into the town and what that really means for us
[47:15] is clearly if we develop any strategies to move forward with these projects we need to
[47:22] try to work to protect the interests of what is a large segment in our community of homeowners
[47:30] dollars with fairly low income and fairly low property values so that they are protected
[47:39] from the growth in the property tax and right now we're hanging, when you look at the statistics
[47:45] of our average tax bill as a percentage of income, we're about middle of the pack.
[47:51] So we're not the lowest, we're not the highest, but we need to retain that middle
[47:57] of the PAC status and not all of a sudden have a situation where with low incomes you
[48:02] can create a situation where people are overburdened as property tax as a percentage of their income.
[48:10] Because keep in mind that the property tax is the most regressive form of tax so that
[48:17] people generally pay a higher percentage of that tax to lower your income, which
[48:24] which is different than the income tax, which is a graduated tax, which people pay more the
[48:31] higher income they have.
[48:33] So our system is a little bit on its head, and all of your financial planning needs
[48:37] to take into account these lower income residents, because we're talking about the impact
[48:42] of community facilities on the property taxes.
[48:46] So with all of this information, it's a little difficult to kind of find some ground,
[48:52] but there are some potential strategies that we can point to that we can look to
[48:56] and I want to kind of move I can get this to work let's see and if we can get
[49:03] some people from Provincetown to move to the army.
[49:07] I want to show this other chart
[49:09] now I'm not going to jump into the absolute weeds of all of these different
[49:14] numbers, but the reason that I put this chart up here is to just recall the meeting that
[49:23] we had on September 9, 2025, when the Board of Assessors were in to present the tax rate
[49:33] classification hearing when the Board voted to approve the town's tax rate.
[49:37] They presented this chart, and it was really a hypothetical analysis that showed what is
[49:46] called a residential exemption, and this sheet they had in your packet, and we talked about
[49:54] it briefly, but what I'd like to do is bring this sheet back up and talk a little bit
[50:01] about this in terms of what we're facing for capital needs here in the town.
[50:08] The residential exemption is a tool available to local communities,
[50:12] and a number of Cape Towns have implemented this,
[50:16] which shifts the burden of the property tax from single-family homeowners
[50:25] that are year-round residents to single-family properties that are seasonal and also single-family
[50:37] properties of high value. So it is specifically geared towards providing some property tax
[50:46] relief for low-income, year-round residents.
[50:51] And what this chart essentially shows here is that somewhere in our average, if you did
[50:58] a 10 percent, you're allowed to go, I think, up to 35 percent, but a 10 percent would save
[51:06] people in this 239 sort of range.
[51:14] Let's take a look at this is the second part of the chart that the Board of Assessors provided to you if you adopted a residential
[51:22] exemption at 20%
[51:25] You could essentially when you're hitting in the money range of the average single family home, right?
[51:32] Tax bill for the town of Yarmouth you're saving people maybe $400
[51:37] But granted when you get up to the higher values
[51:41] there is an additional amount let's get back to where we were yeah
[51:50] we want to
[51:50] save that money get back to the right so what I'll do is it for this point I
[51:55] think this this residential exemption has been has been discussed but never
[52:00] brought into the context of our overall town financial planning and I'd like
[52:05] to do that now to just demonstrate what the relationship would be I've
[52:14] provided for you an example of the residential exemption impact on our community facilities
[52:20] improvement for the average Yarmouth taxpayer that is based on the chart that we showed.
[52:29] Now I want to go back to a second on this chart, what we talked about because of the
[52:37] principles of it, it takes a while to ramp up these projects.
[52:40] If you take a look at the property tax impact, the highest impact of our overall planning
[52:48] process comes right here.
[52:51] That falls in FY 2037.
[52:57] So what this chart does is it starts with the highest property impact if you put all
[53:02] of these projects together.
[53:05] And when you do that on the chart that I called your attention to that has the property tax impact of the overall program,
[53:14] what it shows you is that the combined property tax impact of all of these five projects that we've outlined in the 10-year plan
[53:22] is about almost six cents on the tax rate.
[53:28] So it's worth $5.72 or $0.572 per 1,000 evaluation.
[53:38] And that's just tax rate jargon.
[53:42] What that means to us human beings
[53:45] is that on that average tax bill,
[53:49] So the cost to the average taxpayer in $2,025, all of these numbers would have to be escalated
[53:59] to $2,037, but the relationships remain the same.
[54:04] So using $2,025, the cost to average taxpayers of that total program, this .572 per thousand,
[54:11] is $389.22.
[54:14] So you adopt all of these programs, the tax bill for an average taxpayer is going to go up $389.
[54:24] Now, when you take the average taxpayer savings, and we just showed those two examples,
[54:30] and again, you know, you can go higher, but we want to stay in a more conservative range,
[54:36] at a 10% residential exemption would shift the average taxpayer that's a year-round taxpayer
[54:45] would shift tax burden away from them by lowering their valuation by the tax bill would go
[54:52] down $306.20 which would mean you'd be able to get all of these projects and might throw
[55:01] win some ginsu knives for a total of the difference.
[55:08] Let's go back the difference of the three eighty nine to the 306.
[55:12] So about eighty three dollars of an increase in taxes to pay for all of those projects.
[55:19] Now, if you went further and did a 20 percent resident residential exemption,
[55:26] That would shift the tax burden away from that average taxpayer, a total of $472 in 83 cents.
[55:36] It illustrates a way that you could potentially move forward with some of all of these projects,
[55:44] but also protect the year-round lower income, lower value property taxpayer.
[55:52] Now, granted, this does not make this money go away.
[55:56] It simply shifts it to seasonal properties and higher value properties.
[56:01] So someone winds up paying the $306.
[56:10] I don't think that was me.
[56:12] But that was my last slide anyways.
[56:14] I think the projector shut down.
[56:19] I knew the projector, and I wanted to take it.
[56:22] So you need $300 for a new projector.
[56:24] Now, at this point in the process,
[56:28] I want to say clearly that we're not
[56:31] looking to make decisions on the next 10 years all at once.
[56:38] And the way this is set up, we have a few years
[56:43] till we get to the years that these projects are going
[56:47] to go forward.
[56:47] But the first one comes up this year, which is the library, which shows the property tax
[56:53] impacts of that associated with the grant, and it all works together.
[56:59] But what
[57:02] I am saying is that there are potential strategies that we can discuss at the policy
[57:12] level with the leadership of our financial team and Jen Mullen, who's done tremendous
[57:16] work on all of this, the Board of Assessors and our assessing staff to lay out potentially
[57:23] some strategies to get through this in a way that protects the local taxpayers and again,
[57:32] this is long-term financial planning, so there's nothing this evening that requires a vote,
[57:37] but I would say that we have some important next steps.
[57:40] what we'd like to do is engage with our financial team, our assessors, the capital team finance
[57:47] to lay out and determine if some of these strategies may be pathways to how we achieve
[57:57] that ramp up and begin to meet some of these needs.
[58:01] So I guess that's how the financial planning works together with the CIP team.
[58:05] And that's kind of where we're at today, so I would turn it over to you guys.
[58:11] Sounds great.
[58:13] A lot to think about, Bob.
[58:16] Isn't it?
[58:17] Let's go to each of our individual select board for any of their questions and comments.
[58:23] Starting with Mark.
[58:24] Sure, thank you.
[58:27] First of all, I want to thank the Capital Committee for the work that it has done for us each year.
[58:37] We're just incredibly impressed with the level of effort and the work that you put into this,
[58:43] and then being able to present it in a way that makes it easy to understand.
[58:49] And it seems like each year you're getting better and better at it.
[58:53] So once again, thank you for all of your great work.
[58:59] And your work is basically to start the process.
[59:02] So I'm not really interested in going in the weeds on some
[59:04] of the capital items that you've identified for a meeting.
[59:07] We'll have plenty of time to discuss those later on.
[59:10] What I'd like to do is focus my comments,
[59:12] principally on the presentation
[59:15] of the town administrator.
[59:17] And I just want to commend you, Bob.
[59:19] This is something that we have talked about as a board
[59:21] having to do and to initiate for quite some time and it's obvious we have a town administrator
[59:29] that's very good at handling and guiding us in terms of how to wrestle with these questions,
[59:34] so I really appreciate all the time and effort that you put into this.
[59:38] It's clear that this is sort of a, we go through this in an iterative process.
[59:44] This is an ongoing analysis and review and what Bob has laid out to us tonight is a variety
[59:55] of scenarios.
[1:00:00] There are areas that worry me that we have to deal with, because we're sort of making assumptions
[1:00:05] that there are things going on in the world that we can continue to count on. And the reality
[1:00:10] is that there are things that, at least based on my travels to Washington, D.C., based on
[1:00:16] my travels in Boston at the State House, there's a tremendous amount of nervousness
[1:00:24] about the funding environment that we're in right now. I hear that on a regular
[1:00:28] basis because the work that I do in addition to teaching at the college, I'm heavily involved
[1:00:34] in raising funds for environmental projects on Cape Cod, restoration projects.
[1:00:40] And so I'm always talking to people in the governor's office, our legislators, others
[1:00:45] in terms of the prospects for funding for those projects and some others.
[1:00:50] So I get very nervous about the state and federal funding climate that we're in right
[1:00:55] now.
[1:00:57] As we know, wastewater has been a number one priority for us right now.
[1:01:02] We've made a huge investment and a huge commitment to that,
[1:01:05] but the President is trying to zero out the Revolving Loan Fund program
[1:01:09] that we depend on to finance wastewater.
[1:01:14] The House, their version of the budget on wastewater is not much better.
[1:01:19] They've only made marginal improvements there.
[1:01:21] So from a wastewater, again, our wastewater program is sort of predicated on the assumption
[1:01:27] that the federal government will continue to be able to honor the commitments that we've
[1:01:33] basically been relying upon in terms of going forward with that project.
[1:01:37] If those dollars go, we have some tough decisions to make and we may end up having to finance
[1:01:45] the costs on our own dime.
[1:01:47] So that changes, again, the plan, and that's one of the reasons why we have to be prepared to adapt.
[1:01:57] Conditions will change, things will change, and we just need to be prepared for that.
[1:02:02] And at the state level, quite frankly, they're almost, at least the impressions that I get from legislators,
[1:02:08] is that they're sort of holding back waiting to hear and find out what the federal government's going to do.
[1:02:15] We know we're going to take huge hits on Medicaid at the state level, but we don't know yet how that translates in terms of what will happen or could happen with the state budget.
[1:02:26] But there's a high degree of uncertainty at the federal level and at the state level in terms of commitments that we rely on in terms of these kinds of projects.
[1:02:38] So I'm very concerned about that.
[1:02:41] My question for Jen is, when we look at adding significant, let's assume just for the sake
[1:02:50] of conversation, we're going to do all of these.
[1:02:53] The residents want it, we go to town meeting, we're looking at full steam ahead on all of
[1:02:59] these items.
[1:03:00] What does that do to our bonding situation, our pursuit of a triple-A bond rating?
[1:03:07] because, quite frankly, we're going to go from $1 million to $7 million annually in debt
[1:03:13] service.
[1:03:14] And that's a pretty big jump.
[1:03:16] Yes.
[1:03:17] Good evening.
[1:03:18] It's a good question.
[1:03:20] Right now, the $207 million waste water project does take up some of our bonding
[1:03:25] ceiling, if you will.
[1:03:28] Normally, the bond rating agencies, if it's exempt debt, because the voters have voted
[1:03:34] for that and they voted to raise the funds over proposition two and a half, so they're
[1:03:41] all in.
[1:03:42] They said, you know, we're going to want you to raise our tax rate.
[1:03:45] And the ceiling doesn't really affect us because it's your levy ceiling so high.
[1:03:51] So you do always have a lot of bonding capacity, although 207 does have some of it in there.
[1:03:59] But you know, the bond rating agencies have been changing over the last few years
[1:04:03] and they look at things differently, and they do look at the overall debt.
[1:04:09] So I really can't say what the – what would be the effect on – I would expect to maintain
[1:04:17] a double A plus bond rating.
[1:04:19] I don't think our bond rating would go down.
[1:04:21] And you wouldn't be voting these projects right away, but it wouldn't really have
[1:04:28] much of an effect because it is excluded from proposition two and a half.
[1:04:33] Does that answer your question?
[1:04:36] You're welcome.
[1:04:36] The answer is we don't know.
[1:04:39] Thank you.
[1:04:42] The, I'm glad you pointed out also information about the income here in Yarmouth Bob.
[1:04:50] I think that's important to note that, you know, as a community we're on the lower
[1:04:55] and looking at median family income, household income,
[1:05:01] we tend to be on the poor side in terms of our overall average.
[1:05:04] And I think that's obviously a factor.
[1:05:07] The thing that I think we need to be thinking about as a board and going forward
[1:05:11] is, you know, how do we engage the public in this conversation?
[1:05:15] Because these are obviously very, very important decisions for us,
[1:05:18] but they're also quite frankly important.
[1:05:20] It's an important area of community involvement, public involvement,
[1:05:23] getting our residents aware of the financial challenges facing the town.
[1:05:28] I was sort of making a stab at it when we were debating, not debating,
[1:05:32] but discussing the local comprehensive plan that, you know, as a community, as we grow,
[1:05:37] you know, we have to look at the costs of growth and the costs of development.
[1:05:41] And there was a time when there was a need to sort of factor those into our local comprehensive plan,
[1:05:48] but Bob and the rest of the team assured us that we could start dealing with this now
[1:05:53] in a separate exercise, and I'm glad we're finally getting into it.
[1:05:57] I just want everyone to know I'm just very, very nervous about the next few years in terms
[1:06:02] of all the uncertainties both in Washington and up at the Statehouse, and so I'm nervous
[1:06:07] on all of these projects.
[1:06:08] I'm nervous about where we stand with wastewater.
[1:06:10] I'm very concerned about the library.
[1:06:12] I'm concerned about fire station and even schools.
[1:06:16] So I take a very cautious approach to all of this.
[1:06:20] But I think this is a healthy first step, this exercise,
[1:06:23] and I'm glad we're starting this conversation now.
[1:06:26] It's long overdue. Thank you.
[1:06:28] Thank you, Mark. Joyce?
[1:06:31] Well, I don't have Mark's level of understanding of the financial side of this,
[1:06:38] but I was sitting here thinking that one of the consequences of going to a residential exemption
[1:06:45] might make our community a lot less attractive to people who just want to buy a house and make it an Airbnb.
[1:06:54] And some of that's under the radar and we would never know.
[1:06:58] It might drive them to Dennis or to some other town.
[1:07:04] I also am worried about people affording housing here.
[1:07:08] So, I think it's good to keep in mind the income level and figure out strategies to work around not burdening the poorest people.
[1:07:20] Liz?
[1:07:22] Thank you. And wow, what a body of work. Thank you.
[1:07:29] I notice, of course, one of the big notes that I would make is that the muck, of course,
[1:07:34] is not on this charting at all at this point.
[1:07:39] We're hoping that it would be a private partner, private company that would carry the weight on that,
[1:07:44] but I think we need to be kind of aware of that, too, is something we have to deal with
[1:07:50] because we can't keep paying to maintain Matiki's school, either.
[1:07:53] So, at any rate, I wondered if we could go back to the, there's a slide, I don't know
[1:07:59] if we can, the data review by funding source for the 10-year plan.
[1:08:05] I had a question on that.
[1:08:07] I liked that slide.
[1:08:08] That was my favorite slide to use as a summary of where we're at.
[1:08:16] I think that one's a point.
[1:08:19] Yeah.
[1:08:20] So I know most people can't see that very well.
[1:08:23] But I did notice that there's a stabilization fund that we've been paying a little bit of
[1:08:30] attention to, and I see that there's an appropriation on the capital stabilization.
[1:08:36] Is that what I think it is that you're making an effort to maintain that stabilization fund?
[1:08:54] Hello again.
[1:08:55] So I just want to point out that when we put the capital together this year or the
[1:09:03] way that the process is that department heads put in the CIP. And I'm not sure. Is that 2
[1:09:13] million, 250?
[1:09:14] Yes.
[1:09:15] Okay. So really what some departments did, and we review this every year, they just
[1:09:21] picked a funding source of the capital stabilization fund, and we need to review it year by year.
[1:09:27] But if you recall last year at Tom meeting, we did transfer some money into the capital stabilization fund because we do want to start, you know, making that you're earning more interest on that.
[1:09:41] Exactly. I'm not sure what the projects are in 2028, but the thought is to keep putting money in there for that reason.
[1:09:51] And there's also line item grant other, 3,787,000.
[1:10:00] Part of the grants, when we started using the EZCIP,
[1:10:07] everything was entered.
[1:10:08] So if we're paying something for a grant,
[1:10:10] doesn't necessarily have to go to town meeting.
[1:10:13] I know part of that 3 million is a grant
[1:10:15] that we're looking at right now.
[1:10:17] I think if Parker's River Landing,
[1:10:19] they just were approved $500,000 from CPC.
[1:10:23] And so we wanted to show the full project, which would be over $2 million.
[1:10:28] And so it doesn't necessarily have to go to tell meeting, we'll apply for the grant.
[1:10:32] The Parkes River grant, though, is, I wouldn't say that we've received it, but because
[1:10:40] they paid for design, I think it's the seaport that we're applying to, they're,
[1:10:45] you know, most of the time they'll definitely roll that over into the construction.
[1:10:48] And so we'll be putting that grant in in the spring, I believe and then the scent the septic enterprise
[1:10:55] I see we start to see it as a funding source. That's hookups million
[1:11:02] Not sure I know that they're doing some capital over there, but I'm not sure what the septic enterprise is
[1:11:08] I mean what that no, you know, okay?
[1:11:11] And then the water enterprise
[1:11:15] going out. That starts at $809,000 and then it goes up to $2,800,000. That's not the sewer.
[1:11:24] Well, I will say some of the SOAR project, as you know, they're laying the connection system,
[1:11:33] the SOAR pipe, which goes lower, and then they're laying water mains at the same time.
[1:11:38] And so there should be something in there for maybe phase two.
[1:11:43] And then the other is that there are some other water main projects that the water department
[1:11:48] has been looking at.
[1:11:50] I know that they're looking at water main down in 6A and so yes, that would be in there
[1:11:56] as well.
[1:11:57] Okay.
[1:11:58] And I know we're going to get into the details more when we look at the individual budget
[1:12:03] with the department.
[1:12:04] So I just want to say thank you.
[1:12:07] This is great to have the look forward, I think it's critical, and I'm so glad that
[1:12:12] the school district is participating now in that as well.
[1:12:17] So those are my questions, and then just thank you.
[1:12:22] Thank you, Liz.
[1:12:24] You can stay right there, Jennifer,
[1:12:28] if you don't, because I think some of what I'm
[1:12:31] going to talk about.
[1:12:32] First, I want to say thank you very much.
[1:12:34] Thank you very much to Capital Improvement. That's a lot of hard work.
[1:12:39] What you've been able to put together with the new way to formatting.
[1:12:44] I know Bill started it and we've got Amy here to continue on for us with Bob.
[1:12:52] The projections are much clearer for us and I think that people are feeling more confident
[1:12:58] confident that what is coming up for capital are truly needed projects that have been rated
[1:13:06] and the individual sheets that Bob was talking about make a tremendous difference and thank
[1:13:15] you.
[1:13:16] But I'd like to mostly talk about what Bob was talking about and that's why I'm keeping
[1:13:21] you up there Jennifer.
[1:13:24] Like Mark, I am not just nervous, I am scared to death about what's going to happen with
[1:13:32] our funding sources both from the federal government and from the state government.
[1:13:37] We've made a commitment of $207 million to our wastewater and if we find in those projections
[1:13:44] we will be relying very heavily on those federal and state monies and if suddenly
[1:13:50] we're not going to be getting those, then we're going to have to find alternative sources
[1:13:58] for that funding in order to make it happen, right?
[1:14:02] So if you want to talk about what's already been voted, the $207 million waste water.
[1:14:08] So that started on the 2023 IUP, and it's $50 million a year.
[1:14:13] And so we've been working for, right now we're in, so we have four $50 million loans.
[1:14:21] And I'm going to get to the answer to your question and I'm just laying it out of, to
[1:14:26] leave some of this fear on the 207.
[1:14:30] So we borrowed $50 million increments.
[1:14:32] We've already spent the first $50 million.
[1:14:35] We're in the second $50 million right now.
[1:14:36] The first $50 million has gone to the trust to bond because they bond and then we start paying principal on that.
[1:14:45] We are getting the principal forgiveness. There hasn't been a no to the principal forgiveness.
[1:14:52] We're working with the Clean Water Protection Fund. As far as I know, they're still funding that 25%.
[1:14:58] That, that is the
[1:15:00] A main principle forgiveness in the 207, because they're going to fund 25%, they're taking in the
[1:15:05] money from the portion of the short-term rental. The state, the trust, if you will, we're in
[1:15:13] a tier two community, that's around 6.6 principle forgiveness. So right now we're in the second
[1:15:18] 50 million and I expect that we will still get that principle forgiveness. Now that's
[1:15:24] That's half of the 250 million, it's about half of it.
[1:15:28] So I'm just alleviating the fear.
[1:15:29] I don't know what the future brings, but I do know that the trust has committed to fund
[1:15:35] that 207 million at 0%.
[1:15:38] And when you think about it, just the 0% is a huge reduction other than if we were
[1:15:46] going out to market ourselves, that would be at 4%.
[1:15:49] So you're saving millions and millions and millions of dollars at the 0%.
[1:15:53] I don't see right now the state not voting that they do they don't like to say right
[1:16:00] away okay we're going to vote the 0% they wait till they actually bond and then the
[1:16:04] board will vote the 0% but I just want to leave alleviate your fear a little bit on
[1:16:08] the 207 for that portion of it okay can I just go ahead I think I think it's good
[1:16:16] to have this conversation about wastewater I represent Yarmouth on the Cape and Islands
[1:16:20] water protection fund board. And we've been, we as a board are very concerned about where
[1:16:26] things are going because quite frankly both the funding that's provided there is connected
[1:16:32] to the SRF. So my hope is that Yarmouth can continue to take advantage of the Cape and
[1:16:40] Isles Water Protection Fund for subsequent phases and more work. But if there's an
[1:16:46] impact on the SRF, it has a direct impact on the Cape and Islands Water Protection Fund
[1:16:53] because in order to be qualified for the Cape and Islands Water Protection Fund funding,
[1:16:58] you need to be on that part of the intended use plan and eligible for SRF funding and
[1:17:04] securing SRF funding.
[1:17:06] So there is a relationship, but it's not for the 207 million that we've already
[1:17:12] been committed to.
[1:17:13] It's going to be the concern for me, at least, is for the subsequent phases and the subsequent commitments.
[1:17:20] One of the things that this town has done a great job on is coming up with a very creative financing plan for Phase 1, the 207 million.
[1:17:28] A lot of work went into that by several select boards.
[1:17:34] There's a huge run-up to that.
[1:17:37] We've been able to create a revenue stream.
[1:17:40] But here's the deal. We don't have any new revenue streams to finance phases two, three, four, five, and the rest. That's the thing.
[1:17:51] We're going to become more dependent on some of these other sources to the extent that they're available for us to help finance this.
[1:17:58] But our debt service at the moment, unless we can come up with other revenue streams, which we have yet to identify,
[1:18:06] We're going to have to start looking at the tax rate and property taxes.
[1:18:12] And we have been, it's been a policy of this board to avoid putting wastewater on the backs
[1:18:21] of property taxpayers.
[1:18:24] So we have yet to figure out the financial game plan for phases two to what, nine?
[1:18:32] Two to nine.
[1:18:32] So, two to nine, we have not yet figured out the financial plan for that, all right.
[1:18:38] If we're forced, because of cuts in federal funding, to implement the phases without any
[1:18:47] other revenue streams or some of the other sources that we've been relying upon, we're
[1:18:51] going to be having no other place to look but property taxes.
[1:18:55] So all I'm saying is that that's where I'm coming from.
[1:18:58] It's how we finance future commitments, future phases.
[1:19:04] We're locked into the Waste to Outer Program.
[1:19:06] We've made a commitment.
[1:19:07] We've got a plan.
[1:19:08] We've gotten time meeting to pay for phase one, and the voters have been incredibly supportive
[1:19:14] of that.
[1:19:15] The big question is going to be, with the funding situation becoming more complicated,
[1:19:22] how do we figure out a way to fund phases two through nine?
[1:19:25] Yeah, I'd just say one thing, too, to add is we're certainly not alone.
[1:19:29] This is a cape-wide confrontation, so.
[1:19:33] Well, it's a – if I could just add, it's a national problem, but –
[1:19:36] Yeah, but I do think that it's important for us to realize that it's just not – it's
[1:19:40] not just YAR methods.
[1:19:42] So the realities of this are – it's not a small town going help, it's a big
[1:19:49] issue.
[1:19:51] Sorry.
[1:19:51] Joyce?
[1:19:52] I just wonder if there isn't like a tiny income stream, it would be nowhere near enough for
[1:19:58] a phase.
[1:20:00] If people were able to get an assessment of what their hookup fee would be, even if they
[1:20:06] were in future phases, if homeowners could just pay it forward, if the town could figure
[1:20:15] out a way to accept that and use it as very small partial funding of all the big expenses
[1:20:24] coming for soaring.
[1:20:27] Madam Chair, I think that would be a nice arrangement to work out, but it doesn't have
[1:20:35] any impact whatsoever on any of this that we've been talking about or what we're looking
[1:20:39] at going ahead.
[1:20:41] Those are costs that are – hookup costs are largely on the homeowner to begin
[1:20:44] with.
[1:20:44] But they're not, we don't have to come up with the financing for them to do that.
[1:20:48] Most home owners are using the county's aquifone program to help cover the cost of financing
[1:20:55] sewer hookups.
[1:20:56] But there's no reason why we couldn't find some other way to be helpful to people
[1:21:00] or create another mechanism.
[1:21:01] You don't think it would help to have people sign up and give them money in advance
[1:21:07] toward the sewer project years before they were expected to?
[1:21:12] Is that what you're talking about, a fund that's earning interest?
[1:21:16] I would rely on Jennifer to use it the best way.
[1:21:20] We have been pre-funding, and we've been putting into a wastewater stabilization fund
[1:21:25] where we earn a market rate, which would be more than bank interest.
[1:21:29] So we've been trying to really pre-fund that.
[1:21:33] The hookup fees, I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but when a homeowner hooks
[1:21:37] up to the SOAR it's upon them to pay that that they have to design it and then
[1:21:42] hook and pay to hook that up to the connection that goes down the street and
[1:21:47] so that's on them it doesn't go through the town it's nothing that we pay it's
[1:21:51] something that they have to pay in order to hook up I see so the money for
[1:21:56] that this is what I wasn't getting doesn't really go to the town it goes
[1:22:00] to you know someone who puts it in exactly they paid the contractors
[1:22:05] just directly.
[1:22:06] Okay.
[1:22:07] Jennifer, you talked about the short-term rentals.
[1:22:11] What was the income that we took in
[1:22:13] for the previous year on short-term rentals?
[1:22:17] I don't have that in front of me.
[1:22:20] I really, I don't know.
[1:22:22] I'm sorry.
[1:22:23] It should be, you know what it is?
[1:22:25] We send out a report every month, the revenue trending,
[1:22:28] and everything's in there for like the last five years.
[1:22:31] I just don't know what we took in
[1:22:33] for the short-term rent. I just don't have it off the top of my head because it gets split.
[1:22:38] So 25 percent goes into the general fund and I think it's 75 percent gets put. I will
[1:22:43] tell you for the wastewater, the projection I think is about 1.4 million a year from
[1:22:48] short-term rentals to go into the wastewater stabilization fund.
[1:22:53] Okay. And you're feeling comfortable with that number?
[1:22:57] Right now. You know, we did get the revenue trending report and we do have some positive
[1:23:01] of news on the rentals. However, sometimes the state, you know, we get a nice little
[1:23:08] bump in a quarter and then the next quarter it kind of goes down. It's like a timing
[1:23:11] issue. So, you know, it's really hard to tell with your estimated receipts. I tend
[1:23:19] to look more around April is a really good indication of what's happened the last seven
[1:23:24] or eight months. But when you're looking in November, it's really kind of hard to
[1:23:28] I mean, when we put the revenue trending report out, I think it was in October.
[1:23:35] The state was like two days late giving us, and we had put a note in the e-mail, late
[1:23:40] giving us our state aid, you know, that money, and, you know, it filters through them.
[1:23:47] So sometimes it's hard to tell.
[1:23:51] Okay.
[1:23:54] When we look at all these projects that Bob is talking about that are on the horizon
[1:24:04] and we're looking at bonding, which predominantly that and grants I'm assuming are going to
[1:24:09] be the ways to fund those, if I'm correct. So when you're looking at bonding, like your
[1:24:15] mortgage payments. You've only got so much capacity.
[1:24:21] And looking at what Bob's talking
[1:24:24] about, I mean, particularly when we get to 2037, and we're looking at the millions at
[1:24:30] that point, aren't we really, if we went ahead, let's just say we did all these projects,
[1:24:37] aren't we really going beyond our funding capacity?
[1:24:41] When you say funding capacity, I guess the way of the bonding.
[1:24:46] How many bonds, you know, like when we go to the bank and say, please, see, I have a bond?
[1:24:50] Well, remember too, by 2037 we will have paid off some of that 207 million, which really,
[1:24:55] the 207 million comes to like 145 with the principle forgiveness, right?
[1:24:59] So as that goes down, that will go down.
[1:25:03] I think the way that I've always looked at it is, you know, this is a plan.
[1:25:09] And it does look overwhelming because we've put all these projects in there and then we gave you a plan and said
[1:25:15] This is what we're looking at but plans change
[1:25:18] You know once you vote a project it takes time to get the design done
[1:25:22] The construction started and so it doesn't hit the tax rate right away
[1:25:28] So at any given time that that can change. I mean this goes out to like 2064
[1:25:33] So I don't think it's going to go over our bonding capacity
[1:25:37] capacity because our capacity is big and remember we're going to be paying off the bonds.
[1:25:42] We structure this in such a way as that the interest declines over time which creates
[1:25:47] a window or a capacity to maybe put in additional projects and our values when you think about
[1:25:54] it too because your bonding capacity has to do with the values of the town and so
[1:26:00] they'll probably in 2037 I'm sure they'll be higher than what they are right now.
[1:26:04] And again, plans, again, this is just a plan just to show you and every year when you look
[1:26:11] at this and you put this on the warrant to go to town meeting, you have a robust discussion
[1:26:16] about this capital facility that we want to do or we don't want to do.
[1:26:21] I've always kind of, I've looked at it as not what can we afford but what are the
[1:26:26] taxpayers willing to pay and the priority of what they're willing to pay.
[1:26:30] And so we just laid it out that can change, you know, it's the beginning, you know.
[1:26:38] Those biographs are going to change, you know, a lot of this is going to change.
[1:26:42] It puts us in, and what it does too is it gives us the control of the borrowing capacity.
[1:26:47] If you're going to do any type of capital facility plan or any type of planning, you
[1:26:53] need to have a debt program and you need to be able to manage your debt.
[1:26:55] If you're going to manage your, when you manage your debt, you're able to incorporate other projects.
[1:27:01] You know, where a year where you might have a huge biograph that goes down, you can put in a capital exclusion.
[1:27:07] But you're managing, what you're doing is you're getting a level of comfortability from the community of what they're willing to pay.
[1:27:14] You keep that debt at that level and you put in new projects.
[1:27:17] It's going to take you a while to get there because as you can see, we have a very low debt payment now.
[1:27:23] But this is just the beginning of the conversation and it's not, I don't think it's meant to like scare anybody,
[1:27:29] but this is how we would put something like this together and this is what people are talking about.
[1:27:34] You know, this is what we're looking at, you know.
[1:27:38] I'm going back to what you showed for projects.
[1:27:41] That's really not all the different capital projects that would be coming up for the town.
[1:27:46] I mean, I look for instance at this building right here that we're in, Town Hall.
[1:27:51] I see that we're going to be needing expansion or new building, and that isn't even factored into this yet.
[1:28:01] Right, so what we're saying is we're not based on everything that's going on right now.
[1:28:06] We're not planning to do a town hall.
[1:28:08] We're, you know, full here at town hall.
[1:28:12] We're potentially, if we do do a library, you know, that could impact us by having some additional
[1:28:20] meeting space across the street. The idea would be is that if that buys us so that we
[1:28:27] don't need a new town hall for 10 years, then we could implement some of this other stuff.
[1:28:33] So largely what we're focusing on is the community facilities we know we'll need in
[1:28:39] the next 10 years, but think town hall. You could redo the senior center at some
[1:28:46] There's, you know, also things that we've identified, you know, ball fields and recreation
[1:28:50] that, again, we're trying to work with the matakies that if we did a public-private partnership
[1:28:57] to increase the number of fields that we could have programming on, that might take our
[1:29:03] actual town investment in new fields, put that out 10 years, you know, so we do,
[1:29:08] we are going to have a ton of other needs, but what we tried to do is get the major
[1:29:12] buildings we know we need within the next 10 years but it's probably not
[1:29:17] exhaustive you know other things could come up you know like within five years
[1:29:21] right you could say well you know we changed our mind we we want to do
[1:29:25] this and so now the 10-year plan you know would shift well I know that can
[1:29:30] always happen I mean we could have a boiler that blows up tomorrow and
[1:29:34] changes what buildings need to be done I understand that part but there
[1:29:40] There's an awful lot of things to think about, and for myself personally, as a member of
[1:29:48] this board, I'm thinking of the impact that my decisions now are going to make on the future
[1:29:57] of this town.
[1:29:58] And what in
[1:30:00] The end is going to be within the best interest of the people that live in this town and what
[1:30:07] is really going to be the affordability for the people in this town. I mean those are two
[1:30:12] things that are kind of important to me. Thank you. Any other discussion?
[1:30:18] Can I just add a footnote to this? I just want to call to the Board's attention a recent
[1:30:22] report from the Mass Municipal Association and it looks at what municipalities across
[1:30:29] across the Commonwealth are facing in terms of added costs and changes in terms of state
[1:30:36] financial assistance.
[1:30:38] And essentially, the headline in the stories coming out regarding this mass municipal association
[1:30:46] report suggests that all communities in the Commonwealth are facing a fairly significant
[1:30:52] financial crisis or crunch.
[1:30:56] And I'm happy to make sure that if you don't have a copy of that report, I can send it to you.
[1:31:00] It's easy to be find on the M Mass Municipal Association website.
[1:31:04] But it was just released a few weeks ago.
[1:31:08] And we've been discussing it, you know, among other associations and other groups.
[1:31:15] As you know, I'm the president of the Cape and Islands Municipal Leaders Association.
[1:31:19] And we've had some discussion about this.
[1:31:21] and we anticipate putting it on our agenda for an upcoming meeting.
[1:31:26] So, FYI.
[1:31:27] I would also query how much of this is related to our current administration in Washington,
[1:31:38] which is, if there were a change in administration, would there be some relief?
[1:31:45] With respect to the Mass Municipal Association report, Madam Chair,
[1:31:49] Thank you. You noticed I needed some more chocolate to keep me going here. The analysis
[1:31:58] was not necessarily focused on what's happening in Washington, D.C. It's largely trends that
[1:32:04] haven't improved at all. For example, Yarmouth, as you know when we look at our budget and
[1:32:08] our revenue situation, we get very little state aid. But there are other communities
[1:32:13] that are seeing declines in their state aid. Our state aid has sort of tended to
[1:32:18] be relatively flat, is that correct?
[1:32:20] Yeah, that's correct.
[1:32:20] Yeah, and the good thing for that
[1:32:23] is that we're not losing revenue
[1:32:24] that we, you know, and have to deal with planning
[1:32:27] and picking up the slack on that.
[1:32:29] The reality is, is though, that on the Cape,
[1:32:31] we've been pretty much on the short end of the stick
[1:32:33] when it comes to getting state aid to help offset
[1:32:36] our operating costs to run the government.
[1:32:39] But this is an analysis looking at basically trends
[1:32:41] across the Commonwealth.
[1:32:42] The big problem has been decline in aid
[1:32:45] in a host of areas involving schools, education, and a host of other areas.
[1:32:52] And the fact of the matter is that under Prop 2.5, we can only increase property taxes
[1:32:57] to a certain amount or rely on an override.
[1:33:01] And what's happening is we're seeing this today.
[1:33:03] In fact, we've discussed this as a board this year, for example, our personnel costs,
[1:33:08] health care costs, energy costs.
[1:33:10] If you look at our cost across the board, you're going up even more significantly over the two and a half percent.
[1:33:17] So what's happening is more and more communities are having to dig deeper in terms of financing those expenses.
[1:33:24] And it's beginning to catch up. There's very little wiggle room.
[1:33:27] And more communities are going for overrides than ever before.
[1:33:30] I just would finish with my, I had meant and I forgot to applaud Bob for the residential
[1:33:39] exemption bringing that forward and I would encourage this board to very strongly consider
[1:33:46] that as something, this is a town that while we have some wonderfully larger capital rich
[1:33:56] properties, we do have the facts on that chart, which means that we have the lesser
[1:34:05] valued properties and low incomes that is the heart and soul of Yarmouth, and we need
[1:34:11] to take care of them.
[1:34:12] Thanks.
[1:34:13] Well said, Liz.
[1:34:15] Okay.
[1:34:16] Well, thank you very much.
[1:34:17] Thank you.
[1:34:18] Appreciate all the work.
[1:34:18] Our
[1:34:27] next item that we have on the agenda is for the discussion and vote for the library
[1:34:34] update and approval to submit the grant application.
[1:34:39] Hi, Judy.
[1:34:40] Well, hello.
[1:34:46] You're wearing your capital budget.
[1:34:48] No, Pat.
[1:34:50] No, I gave that one back to Sandy.
[1:34:56] Well, good evening.
[1:34:58] I'm Judy Connors-Tarver, and I'm the Chair of the Library Building Committee, and
[1:35:02] And I want to introduce our members.
[1:35:05] I'm not sure if we have anybody online, because I can't see that far.
[1:35:12] But Tom Pendleton is our vice chair.
[1:35:15] If I could interrupt for one second.
[1:35:18] No, you don't have anyone online.
[1:35:20] Okay.
[1:35:23] I don't.
[1:35:23] She's not a member.
[1:35:25] No.
[1:35:25] She's not a member of the machine.
[1:35:26] We're happy you're there, Jane.
[1:35:29] So, Tom Pendleton is the Vice Chair and his role as a South Yarmouth Library user.
[1:35:35] Sandy Fyfe, who just vacated, is our secretary and she's our link to capital budget.
[1:35:44] Susan Britta, who's not here tonight.
[1:35:46] No, she's here.
[1:35:47] Oh, she's here.
[1:35:48] Hi, Susan.
[1:35:49] Is our planning board representative.
[1:35:51] John Greco is our construction industry representative.
[1:36:00] Vicki Ginato is our West Yarmouth Library user.
[1:36:08] And Dorcas is our select board rep.
[1:36:13] We also have ad hoc folks,
[1:36:16] Mindy Harrington is youth services director at the library.
[1:36:20] Joseph Lebrac, who's the Circulation Director, and David Aronson, the Library Director, over there.
[1:36:28] So we have a very active committee. You can see we came in force.
[1:36:33] And our purpose tonight is just to update you as far as the submission to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners that's wrapping up.
[1:36:46] When we were here before in early October, we were getting a little bit nervous about meeting our deadline, but we're there.
[1:36:56] So in the interim, we have presented to the planning board and got a lot. I'm sorry, I didn't introduce Tim.
[1:37:06] Good news. You're sitting right next to me. Tomorrow this is from our owner's project
[1:37:14] management firm, Accenture. You're sitting right here. Could I give
[1:37:18] me a kick?
[1:37:19] No, I don't think you got introduced either. Judy, go ahead.
[1:37:23] Oh, yeah. I thought it started there. Yeah, I'm good. So we presented the planning
[1:37:31] board and they were very happy with what we had. But since then, the team has worked
[1:37:40] with site review folks here at Town Hall. There's been a lot of program discussion with
[1:37:47] library employees and their personnel to incorporate suggestions, ideas, challenges
[1:37:56] to try to change a little bit around with the overall building design and we've
[1:38:05] had an overarching kind of issue with parking and traffic flow. So that's all
[1:38:11] been going on. I think that's about it. Yeah. In addition as needed, conversations
[1:38:23] were happening with Amy and were happening with our representative at the
[1:38:28] Massachusetts, the MBLC. So I'm
[1:38:35] going to introduce Matt Odin who's here from
[1:38:39] Odzelo, sorry, and he's going to just give a rundown. It's a very brief
[1:38:44] presentation. I think you have it. Yes, but we just wanted to carry on
[1:38:52] with where we were just to get to there, so we're not going back.
[1:38:57] Nice to see you guys again.
[1:39:00] It's been a couple of months since we were here last.
[1:39:03] Just before we get into the slides, I just want to mention, Judy talked about pressure around the deadline.
[1:39:10] We plan to submit in the next week and a half before everybody breaks for the holidays.
[1:39:16] The submissions are technically due on the 31st, but we're going to get them in early.
[1:39:19] We're in good shape.
[1:39:22] We have been working hard with the committee, with the library staff, the NBLC, different
[1:39:29] agencies in town, and our consultant team to get us where we are.
[1:39:35] And so we're in very good shape for submitting.
[1:39:42] We had a productive meeting with Mark Grills, the building commissioner, following a meeting
[1:39:49] that we had had a preliminary meeting with the Site Plan Review Committee to talk about
[1:39:53] the overall site plan, which you see up on the screen here.
[1:39:58] The meeting with Mark resolved questions about how to interpret zoning for parking.
[1:40:04] And I think we have settled on a plan that everybody feels comfortable with, which will
[1:40:11] be a shared parking lot between the MacArthur Building and the library on the site of
[1:40:17] the existing 48 car parking lot for the MacArthur building. We are going to replicate those 48
[1:40:23] spaces and we're going to provide 80 additional spaces for the library. That's using the
[1:40:29] state guideline from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to determine that
[1:40:33] parking count for a library of this size. That gets us to 128 spaces. That's the
[1:40:39] minimum and that's what we're going to submit to the MBLC. We are also designating
[1:40:44] area for expansion, we think the site can hold up to about 169 spaces.
[1:40:50] We are going to go in with the minimum amount because the NBLC holds you to the number of
[1:40:57] library spaces.
[1:40:58] We want to make sure that we are giving them only what we are obligated to give them.
[1:41:02] We can always add more, but we're showing them that we can provide the minimum required.
[1:41:09] We have also coordinated this with representatives of Mandelima, Matt, whose last name I don't
[1:41:17] remember from the fire department, some of the other site considerations, fire access.
[1:41:26] We have a couple of fire lanes, one on the northeast corner of the building that is
[1:41:32] accessed from Route 28 up in the top right corner of the screen, another one that comes
[1:41:38] in along the south side of the proposed library between the MacArthur Building and the library,
[1:41:45] and from those two places we can get to everywhere we need with hoses around the building.
[1:41:50] So we feel like we're in pretty good shape at a schematic level with the site plan.
[1:41:56] Similarly we've been developing the building plan again with a lot of back and forth
[1:42:01] between staff, MBLC, and our internal team to make sure that we're accommodating all
[1:42:10] of the required shelving for the collections, the required seat counts, getting all of the
[1:42:15] adjacencies properly resolved, and getting the square footage to a place where we are
[1:42:23] feeling like this is at this level about as efficient as we can make it.
[1:42:27] We are now at about a 25,000 square foot building.
[1:42:32] That includes the program.
[1:42:35] It also has incorporated all of the we've
[1:42:38] had back and forth with our consultants
[1:42:40] about mechanical equipment.
[1:42:42] We're still evaluating different systems.
[1:42:44] This will be an all-electric building, fossil fuel free.
[1:42:47] We don't yet know what the mechanical system will be.
[1:42:50] And so we're trying to provide space
[1:42:52] to cover a range of options from air
[1:42:56] cool to air water systems, to geothermal systems, all electric, but different space requirements.
[1:43:03] So this allows us some flexibility in terms of determining ultimately what system we'll
[1:43:09] move forward with.
[1:43:15] And then just updating you, these are views that you have seen before, but we've continued
[1:43:19] to develop them as the planning has tightened up, as we've addressed some of the site
[1:43:25] considerations.
[1:43:26] So this is an existing view of the aerial of the site.
[1:43:30] this is the proposed view with the new library expanded parking and you're
[1:43:38] seeing here that this is the fire access lane on the south side of the building
[1:43:43] fire access on the northeast corner the main wing of the building is under a
[1:43:49] single roof adults and community with the children and teen wing running
[1:43:56] East-West access from parking is via this covered entry porch in the southern end of the building.
[1:44:08] And then some views, a view approaching the building from parking. There's a covered entry porch
[1:44:13] that gets you from drop off to the front door. We're seeing the community wing on the right
[1:44:18] with a 120-seat community meeting room at this end of the building. The wing to the left is
[1:44:26] the Youth Services Wing.
[1:44:36] Moving closer to the building, this is the approach as you're
[1:44:40] walking along the entry porch towards the front entrance. You're seeing into the lobby.
[1:44:46] This is now as you've entered the building into the lobby. As you can see, we're conceiving
[1:45:00] Sustainability, economy or speed of construction. There are a lot of great benefits. It's also
[1:45:08] a material you can leave exposed. You don't have to cover it up, and so it brings a kind
[1:45:12] of natural warmth to the interior.
[1:45:16] Very open, light-filled. We're trying to bring in as
[1:45:20] much natural light as we can, reduce dependency on artificial lighting. This building, as
[1:45:26] you know is sort of oriented around the wooded center of the site, which will remain, and
[1:45:31] that really becomes an amenity for this public building. So all of the public spaces face
[1:45:37] out onto that central wooded area.
[1:45:46] Moving into the children's wing, this is a view
[1:45:49] from the staff desk, looking into the space. High ceilings, expansive windows, plenty
[1:46:00] of natural light and views. There's a community, or I'm sorry, children's program space just
[1:46:05] to the left.
[1:46:08] View of the adult wing, this is at the opposite end of the wing, closest
[1:46:13] to 28, looking out towards that central landscape.
[1:46:21] And then a view from 28, looking towards
[1:46:25] the building, obviously that wooded central area is a kind of veil between the heavily
[1:46:31] traffic road and the library so it helps create a kind of sanctuary in there with outdoor
[1:46:39] reading areas, outdoor terraces and porches.
[1:46:42] We have a pedestrian connection, bridge connection that gets you from 28 along that, alongside
[1:46:50] the adult wing, that gets you all the way back to the central lobby.
[1:46:54] So whether you're coming from parking or coming from the street, you're arriving
[1:46:58] at the same place, supervised by the main circulation desk, an evening view of that
[1:47:04] same vantage point, and then this is on the kind of center, wooded side, looking up towards
[1:47:11] the building, the children's wing in the foreground, adult wing in the background,
[1:47:17] an evening shot of that view as well,
[1:47:23] and that is where we are.
[1:47:25] And so we, as I said, we're planning to submit in the next week and a half.
[1:47:30] The MBLC will take about a month to review.
[1:47:33] We will then go through a third-party estimating effort with our estimator.
[1:47:39] That will take us through the month of February.
[1:47:43] And at that point, we'll have pretty well-defined costs, even though it's a schematic level.
[1:47:49] There's enough information that we'll be able to get a pretty detailed estimate.
[1:47:52] But the good news is that this is a fully funded project through the state.
[1:47:57] Yarmouth is in the first group of funded libraries.
[1:48:02] So assuming that we meet their criteria, which we fully expect that we will, and assuming
[1:48:08] a successful town meeting vote in the spring, we – the money would – the grant money
[1:48:14] would be made available immediately.
[1:48:16] Really, we would start at that point a roughly 12-month design process with the expectation
[1:48:22] to wrap up construction documents by summer of 27.
[1:48:29] Take any questions?
[1:48:30] Matt, you had one more slide in our presentation that we got, our board packet that showed
[1:48:35] the program.
[1:48:39] Yes, that slide was up there.
[1:48:42] Do you want me to go back to that?
[1:48:43] If you would, please.
[1:48:44] I think just so that,
[1:48:51] that one, kind of just do a quick overview of what this is showing,
[1:48:57] the interior of the library.
[1:48:59] So it's, so a radial plan with a central lobby entry point is here, a circulation desk in
[1:49:09] the middle with good oversight of the three main wings of the building.
[1:49:13] The youth services wing, which is children's and teens.
[1:49:16] The yellow is the adult wing, which is running north-south.
[1:49:21] The red is the community wing.
[1:49:23] Behind the circulation desk we've got the staff suite and then utility spaces, public restrooms.
[1:49:30] It's designed like all of the MBLC projects to allow for off-hours access,
[1:49:36] so the community wing can be made available off-hours with the rest of the library closed.
[1:49:43] There would be a point here that you can secure.
[1:49:48] There's an off-hours entrance, so you would have access to the 120-seat meeting room,
[1:49:53] a 600-square-foot classroom, and then all of the ancillary spaces that support that,
[1:49:59] a kitchen, public restrooms, et cetera.
[1:50:03] Okay, when you say the 600-square-foot meeting room, roughly,
[1:50:08] what would that, you know, if people were going to reserve that room in the community, how many people could sit in that room?
[1:50:18] I think it depends on how you set it up with furniture. If it's, you know, it's going to be tables and chairs, most likely.
[1:50:26] So I would say that's probably a 25, 30-person room.
[1:50:31] Okay. To 30 people. And then the auditorium is 120.
[1:50:38] The auditorium is 120 seats, I believe.
[1:50:42] Okay. And then that has a kitchen with it as well?
[1:50:45] There's a kitchen at a pantry, really. There's no cooking or anything there.
[1:50:52] There's a counter, a sink, a refrigerator. It's really a kind of staging area for catered events.
[1:50:59] And that's directly adjacent to the meeting room here, but also accessible from the public
[1:51:05] corridor.
[1:51:06] Okay.
[1:51:08] I open it up to questions from the board, starting with you, Mark.
[1:51:13] Sure.
[1:51:13] Thank you.
[1:51:14] And thank you again for being here tonight.
[1:51:17] Do we have a project budget or at least a parameters of a project budget that sort
[1:51:21] of loyal all the costs?
[1:51:24] Okay.
[1:51:25] Okay, so that's kind of what Matt was just talking about, those numbers would be coming.
[1:51:31] For conversations, we've been using kind of this industry standard of $1,000 per square
[1:51:36] foot.
[1:51:37] So that's the construction costs?
[1:51:38] Yes.
[1:51:39] So what about the other costs?
[1:51:42] Okay, so do you want to just go over that again?
[1:51:47] Tim should actually address the budget, the Accenture is going to be developing
[1:51:52] the project budget.
[1:51:53] but it's early, so we don't really have a...
[1:51:56] Yeah, there's, again, it's...
[1:51:58] At this point, we like to kind of keep things
[1:52:01] in percentages of we don't have hard costs yet,
[1:52:04] we don't have an estimate yet.
[1:52:05] Soft costs typically come in around 25 to 30%
[1:52:08] of a construction budget.
[1:52:10] Right, so for, assuming, $1,000 square foot,
[1:52:13] 25,000 square foot building, right.
[1:52:16] I don't, I can't do that kind of math
[1:52:17] off the top of my head, right, but we're...
[1:52:19] $25 million construction budget,
[1:52:21] A soft cost budget of around 30% of that combining the two will give you somewhere around $38 or $39 million of a total project budget.
[1:52:32] So we're looking at a total project cost, including design fees, site work, contingencies around $39, $40 million.
[1:52:40] Is that what we know?
[1:52:41] I think it's going to be less than that.
[1:52:43] 32?
[1:52:43] If you apply that, that's 32.
[1:52:46] That's what we've been looking at.
[1:52:48] I'm just trying to understand what what we're looking at see soft costs design
[1:52:54] everything fully loaded 32 so we've been working on with the grant was you know
[1:53:02] in the 40 plus range so percent of the total project yeah just in terms of the
[1:53:10] grant just everyone understands that the way the embassy the way the grant
[1:53:15] works is they base it on eligible costs. Roughly 98% of construction costs are eligible.
[1:53:24] Around 50% of soft costs are eligible. So once we have those numbers, we can plug them
[1:53:31] into the calculator for the grant and figure out what, of those eligible costs, you know,
[1:53:37] what is being funded by the state. They have a funding calculator. There's, you
[1:53:45] million is at this rate, the next five million is at this other rate, and so on. That rate
[1:53:50] goes down as the dollar value goes up. And so it's a cumulative effect. It's not like
[1:53:56] this is the number and we're going to pay you 40% of that number. You plug everything
[1:54:00] into their calculator. It works out to probably in that 40-45% range. That's what we're
[1:54:08] estimating.
[1:54:09] Yeah, I'm just trying to understand what we're dealing with top to bottom in terms
[1:54:13] of overall project costs?
[1:54:16] Yeah, and we don't know, because, I mean, 32 million is a good placeholder, but that's
[1:54:22] using the $1,000 square foot benchmark, which may or may not prove to be the case when we
[1:54:27] get it estimated.
[1:54:29] We'll know more in February.
[1:54:30] By the end of February, we'll have a construction cost estimate that we were just talking
[1:54:35] about even doing two independent estimates, potentially in reconciling.
[1:54:41] We will, at that point, once we have the construction budget, we can extrapolate out the budget numbers that, you know, the soft cost numbers to put on top of that.
[1:54:51] Contingencies will be percentages based on the construction cost values. Everything is sort of based on those hard numbers.
[1:54:58] Once we have those hard numbers, we can put together a pretty good and accurate budget and also figure out what the NBLC reimbursement would be.
[1:55:08] Okay. That's helpful.
[1:55:10] Okay. The other part of the budget is that we have to have fundraising.
[1:55:15] We're required to have fundraising.
[1:55:18] So we as a committee can't do that,
[1:55:21] but we do have some community members who are actively working on that
[1:55:25] can contacting local foundations
[1:55:31] and other kinds of fundraising folks who can guide them.
[1:55:36] So that's kind of going on in the background. It's not official yet.
[1:55:39] That's helpful. That's good to know. What's the expectation?
[1:55:42] I forget. It's a percentage also.
[1:55:46] I don't know that there is a percentage requirement from the state.
[1:55:51] It's just a requirement that private fundraising partly offset the obligation of the town.
[1:55:58] It's got to be a benchmark or a standard or something.
[1:56:01] As an example, East Ham set up a foundation to do this when they did their project that
[1:56:06] was back in 2016, I think.
[1:56:09] They raised around a little over $2 million at the time.
[1:56:13] So that gives you an example.
[1:56:15] That was $2 million on, I think, what was at that time an $8 million project.
[1:56:24] Does the application require any discussion of the private fundraising?
[1:56:28] fundraising?
[1:56:30] The application does not.
[1:56:31] It does not.
[1:56:32] What we are submitting in the next week and a half
[1:56:35] doesn't have anything in it about fundraising.
[1:56:38] It doesn't.
[1:56:39] So where does the expectation of that come from?
[1:56:45] Well, it's part of the parameters.
[1:56:47] Yes.
[1:56:48] It's one of the...
[1:56:49] It was part before I got involved.
[1:56:52] So I inherited that information.
[1:56:54] Typically when...
[1:56:55] Me too.
[1:56:56] Listen, I've been doing grants and fundraising
[1:56:58] fundraising for a long, long time, for a lot of communities and heavily involved in the
[1:57:02] federal government, typically they're strings attached with any grant application. I'm surprised
[1:57:08] that there aren't any strings related to fundraising on this.
[1:57:10] In this phase, in this phase there aren't. So you're talking about the next phase?
[1:57:18] I'm just talking about, yeah, I'm talking about, I'm trying to understand as much
[1:57:23] as I can all the various aspects of the project, what the overall budget or projected budget
[1:57:29] is likely to be, what some of the strings are that are attached to any, again, we're
[1:57:34] at a moment where we're going to be submitting a grant application. It would be helpful to
[1:57:39] know some of the main components of the application and what we're submitting and also
[1:57:43] if there are obligations on us that we need to basically sustain. And I'm just trying
[1:57:49] understand what the fundraising obligations are. I've heard this a lot that other private
[1:57:53] and other communities, they're expected to raise a certain amount of money from the community
[1:57:58] and I'm just interested in knowing what the expectations are on us and from whom or whom.
[1:58:05] I have not heard about any minimum requirements other than the requirement that there be a
[1:58:12] fundraising effort, a private fundraising effort. To my knowledge there is not a minimum
[1:58:16] amount that needs to be raised, and that has been my experience on other projects, past
[1:58:22] projects with the MBLC. The grant is different. They've changed the way that they structure
[1:58:27] the grant, this grant round. This is the first grant round under this new structure,
[1:58:32] so I don't know if that's changed. But my past experience has been there is not
[1:58:37] a minimum you have to hit this number. Okay. That's helpful. One of the things
[1:58:43] Things that I've more or less have talked about when we've had prior library conversations
[1:58:48] is the importance of public engagement, public involvement.
[1:58:52] I think as a board, we've sort of made it very clear that we're interested in seeing
[1:58:56] a plan that has broad-based community support.
[1:58:59] How would you evaluate or assess the community's support for what's being presented here
[1:59:04] tonight?
[1:59:08] The people I talk to are very supportive, but then I have a certain cap on my head.
[1:59:13] So, I would not say that's at all scientific. That's totally anecdotal. And what occurs in
[1:59:26] other forums, I don't know how widespread those are, just noisy they are. And I can't really
[1:59:36] speak to that. We have made a lot of effort to be out there. We brought today our presentation
[1:59:44] boards with us. They've been in the South Yarmouth Library. They were up for the cookie
[1:59:49] stroll. That was our target to have them up. And they did generate a lot of interest
[1:59:56] Just from being there and so I think that's the thing
[2:00:00] We had the first set of plans. That generated a lot of interest because people can look, they
[2:00:05] can point, they can understand. And just as you're trying to understand the intricacies
[2:00:11] of the funding, folks just need to understand where is it going to be, what might it look
[2:00:17] like, what kind of services will this offer for my town? So this, we only have one set
[2:00:26] right now but we'll be getting other sets to get those around and then after we
[2:00:30] have more information like from the estimators and so on we'll start doing a
[2:00:36] little more outreach into the community. We have a meeting this week with with
[2:00:43] Lori Sullivan here at Town Hall just to see how we can develop some more
[2:00:50] programs, whatever she can do for us to help us get the word out.
[2:00:55] We'll have about two months from the completion of our estimate, which we're expecting by the end of February.
[2:01:02] We'll have about two months then from that point to spring town meeting,
[2:01:07] which gives us a number of opportunities to engage the public and to do it with real numbers.
[2:01:13] I mean, to answer the questions that you're asking tonight, we will actually have some
[2:01:18] numbers that we can talk about, and I think it'll be important to talk about.
[2:01:21] Now, how much of the design that's being submitted, how much of its fungible based on, or can
[2:01:28] be modified based on public input and public involvement?
[2:01:31] It sounds like there hasn't been much, that that's something that still needs to be
[2:01:35] done.
[2:01:35] So the question I'm asking is if the public's engaged in looking at this, and it's
[2:01:40] obviously a very impressive presentation, you know, well, how much of the design can
[2:01:47] be modified or adjusted based on public input?
[2:01:50] Well, the design is based on a lot of public input that was done by disruptive construction,
[2:01:58] if I say, okay, thank you, creative work.
[2:02:02] They did a lot of that and went out into the community.
[2:02:05] So that's what this is based on.
[2:02:07] This is actually the response to the community input.
[2:02:13] So once this gets submitted, I think we don't have a whole ton of wiggle room because it's
[2:02:21] already based on data that was collected.
[2:02:25] So you would say that this is embraced by the community.
[2:02:27] This is a project that's embraced by the community, the comfortable with the design.
[2:02:32] By those who participated and gave suggestions to the prior study, have their input represented
[2:02:48] in this?
[2:02:50] If they didn't participate in the last things, probably then their input is not represented.
[2:02:59] I'm just looking for the answer. Yeah, no. Like I said, when we've been saying that we...
[2:03:04] It is. If you didn't participate, no.
[2:03:08] No, I hear what you're saying. This board made a priority of having a local comprehensive plan.
[2:03:14] And the first meeting with the planning board, it was like we need to have a robust public participation,
[2:03:19] public engagement, public involvement. And what did they do?
[2:03:22] They had a robust public engagement and public involvement.
[2:03:25] The local comprehensive plan. We had more meetings than I think anybody was.
[2:03:30] I think people were worn out by the time the whole public involvement process was done.
[2:03:34] But I'll tell you the plan when it came to town meeting was probably and almost universally supported.
[2:03:41] So I think included a library and it included library service.
[2:03:46] I understand that. I think we've said the same.
[2:03:48] We sort of made sort of laid out the same sort of message for this project as well from the very beginning.
[2:03:53] I think the challenge has been you've had a lot of curveballs thrown at you at the very beginning
[2:03:58] and if there's anything, it's sort of cut into your ability to engage the community perhaps to the extent that you would like
[2:04:04] and that's no fault of yours. I don't want to make it sound like I'm blaming you for anything.
[2:04:08] I think you folks have had probably more curveballs thrown at you than maybe any other committee in this town
[2:04:15] and I think you've responded reasonably well.
[2:04:18] I'm just trying to get a sense that once that effort gears up to what degree the community is going to have a real say in
[2:04:26] What you're doing or is it's basically going to be this is the project take it or leave it when they get the town meeting?
[2:04:32] so
[2:04:33] I'll try to answer that. Thank you best. I can mark
[2:04:37] There are certain things that we won't be able to change after this gets submitted to the PLC
[2:04:42] We can't reduce parking. We can't change the site
[2:04:45] We can't really change the square footage of the building.
[2:04:49] This building meets a program.
[2:04:53] We've made changes to that program along the way as we've worked with the state and with the staff
[2:04:58] to make sure that this is exactly what everybody is expecting and needs.
[2:05:04] We've had to make a couple of adjustments to the library building program.
[2:05:08] So that process ends with this submission.
[2:05:11] and we submit that we're saying this is the collection size,
[2:05:15] this is how many seats we need,
[2:05:17] this is the square footage that we need
[2:05:18] for each of these different areas.
[2:05:21] Those are then pretty much locked in.
[2:05:24] We can't really make changes to those.
[2:05:28] There are, this is a very difficult site, as you know.
[2:05:31] We sort of backed into this site,
[2:05:34] given the curve balls that were thrown at us.
[2:05:37] And so there are limited options
[2:05:40] in terms of how you can put a library on this site.
[2:05:43] So all of those are the things that are kind of fixed at this point.
[2:05:48] But is it a brick building, is it a woodclad building, is it, you know, some of the sort
[2:05:56] of finer grain design decisions, we have a year of design ahead of us, right?
[2:06:02] That's a lot of time to think about things, develop things, engage the community.
[2:06:07] The community engagement doesn't stop at town meeting.
[2:06:11] It doesn't stop at the end of conceptual design.
[2:06:13] It goes all the way through the other phases of design.
[2:06:16] So we fully expect that there will be a public process as part of that next step of 12 months
[2:06:22] of design.
[2:06:23] There are also meetings with Site Plan Review.
[2:06:26] I'm sure we'll be back to meet with you guys again.
[2:06:30] We'll meet with the planning board again.
[2:06:31] So all of these are opportunities for the community to get involved.
[2:06:37] There can also be an outreach program during that time.
[2:06:41] So in other words, there's a lot of opportunity, I think, to get people to offer opinions.
[2:06:48] But there are certain things that are fixed that we can't change.
[2:06:52] So to help us out here, what are some of the things that the public can have some real influence on going forward?
[2:06:59] But not to suggest, and I grant you, Judy, what you've said is that there's been a lot
[2:07:04] of public involvement in developing the program and developing conceptually the priorities
[2:07:10] and so forth.
[2:07:11] I get all that.
[2:07:12] I get all that.
[2:07:12] What I'm asking is what's going to be left for the public to sort of chew over and
[2:07:17] provide real creative and helpful input to you on?
[2:07:21] Yeah.
[2:07:21] I mean, I think like happens on every project, there are going to be different aesthetic
[2:07:27] viewpoints.
[2:07:28] So it's going to be a question of, does this represent what most people think would be
[2:07:34] a nice looking library?
[2:07:36] Is this, you know, how do people feel about what it seems like it will be like inside
[2:07:42] for users, for staff?
[2:07:44] And is that something that they can get behind or not?
[2:07:47] And if not, what is it about it that doesn't resonate with them?
[2:07:50] And how can we change that?
[2:07:53] We want to make sure that it's inclusive.
[2:07:55] we want to make sure that it's as welcoming as it can be that regardless of your background or your, you know,
[2:08:04] it's a place that feels like home. It's a kind of civic living room for people in Yarmouth.
[2:08:10] It offers tremendous resources, as all public libraries do, to residents, free internet, access to information,
[2:08:17] engagement with community, program space, there's, I think we have 12 to 14 different
[2:08:24] meeting rooms in here of different sizes from single occupancy study rooms to group study
[2:08:30] rooms to medium-sized meeting rooms to the large meeting rooms. So there's a tremendous amount
[2:08:35] here that the community gets out of this project and we want to make sure that in
[2:08:41] In addition to that, it's an environment that people can get excited about.
[2:08:46] We hope that that's where we are now.
[2:08:48] Maybe it isn't to everybody's taste and we'll look at it as we get into it.
[2:08:53] I think that's where there's probably some latitude.
[2:08:57] I wish quite frankly we could grant you like another 30, 60 more time.
[2:09:03] I feel like we put so much pressure, or let's put this like this has been so much
[2:09:07] pressure put on you to deliver a lot in a short period of time, that it sort of made
[2:09:12] everything compressed, and I'd have to say you've done a remarkable job in an incredibly
[2:09:18] compressed period of time with a lot of curve balls thrown at you.
[2:09:22] But we have said, this board has said over and over again, the importance of public
[2:09:26] engagement, public involvement in the major decisions like this, in a sense that the
[2:09:31] community has a role to play in helping facilitate design choices and to be a
[2:09:37] real partner in all aspects of the project.
[2:09:40] So I think your comments are very, very helpful in that
[2:09:44] regard.
[2:09:46] Now, my understanding, and maybe this is something, a
[2:09:49] question that others can answer.
[2:09:51] But when you said you're going to submit, I'm assuming
[2:09:53] it's on behalf of the town in this select board, correct?
[2:09:57] That's right.
[2:09:58] Actually, I think David Aronson, the library
[2:10:02] director, is the one who's kind of manning the store.
[2:10:05] He is the primary responsible party for uploading things through the website for the grant.
[2:10:15] We are playing a supporting role, but most of the documentation is coming from us.
[2:10:19] So we'll be coordinating with him.
[2:10:21] There is a form that went around for circulation from the town, library director, committee
[2:10:29] chair, architect, OPM.
[2:10:35] Is there a form for the select board to sign?
[2:10:38] There is not.
[2:10:38] That's interesting.
[2:10:39] Does it require it?
[2:10:40] There's not.
[2:10:41] That's interesting.
[2:10:42] Because my understanding was that we, I mean since we're the body that accepts and expends grant funds.
[2:10:49] You're not accepting that.
[2:10:51] You're not accepting that.
[2:10:51] I already did.
[2:10:52] No, but typically we already did what?
[2:10:54] You already accepted it.
[2:10:55] Right.
[2:10:56] Right.
[2:10:56] Right. Well, in many cases, when we're going after a grant application, it's common for
[2:11:02] the board to vote.
[2:11:04] So we're here tonight for that.
[2:11:07] The agenda item is to approve.
[2:11:08] So if you don't approve it, they're not going to submit it.
[2:11:10] Okay.
[2:11:11] But just to be clear, the grant, this is a follow-on to the grant application.
[2:11:16] The grant application already was submitted, and you've received the grant conditionally,
[2:11:21] The condition being that you satisfy the requirements of the grant, which is do this work, the planning
[2:11:29] and design piece, submit that for their review to confirm that, yes, you've done what we've
[2:11:35] asked you to do, and then go to town meeting.
[2:11:38] At a town meeting, you are asking the town to vote to accept this grant.
[2:11:45] So the NBLC does not require that you do a vote. That's a local decision. So if you locally decide we want to take a vote because we want to convey to the town where we stand on this, then that's up to you to do.
[2:12:02] But it's not a requirement. We're just kind of tying this up and sending it in.
[2:12:09] But the administrator just said we as a board can vote to submit or not to submit.
[2:12:13] Yes, it's a local decision.
[2:12:15] Okay, I just want to make sure that that's clear with everybody.
[2:12:18] But we probably could just send it in.
[2:12:21] We could just send it in because we're just following through.
[2:12:28] But it's nice to have your vote.
[2:12:34] I know it's a little odd, it was odd to me too, Mark, but that is what our directive
[2:12:39] was.
[2:12:40] If there is going to be a construction grant to build a library in the town of Yarmouth,
[2:12:45] it will be the town of Yarmouth Select Board that will make a decision whether or not
[2:12:47] to accept that grant or not.
[2:12:49] And it's very common for the board to be consulted in the beginning before it
[2:12:54] submits an application.
[2:12:55] So just to let you know what we're used to here.
[2:12:58] But you already submitted the application.
[2:13:00] I understand that before. We did it before. Right. I get it. So I don't mean to dominate
[2:13:06] the conversation. I'm going to yield the floor for my colleagues. Thanks for indulging me.
[2:13:14] Joyce. Oh, well, I mean, this is the darkest point of the year. We're almost at the solstice.
[2:13:21] So, I mean, I'm dizzy with delight at those illustrations with all that natural light and
[2:13:26] in sunshine. I've followed this process and it seems to me you've done lots of reaching
[2:13:32] out. I mean, you've had, there was the building committee, there was before that the thinking
[2:13:37] about committee. And I think, you know, if you were a library loving person in Yarmouth,
[2:13:44] you would have to have been underground or in a coma not to know about this. I don't
[2:13:49] think that people will be doing much tinkering with the design because the
[2:13:56] revised design is so well thought through and it seems to have something
[2:14:01] for everybody and I think I picture a December in the future when we're all
[2:14:08] going to be fighting for space in there because it'll be so much prettier
[2:14:11] than other buildings. So thank you for all your work and consider me a big
[2:14:16] supporter. I think it's beautiful. Thank you. Yes, wonderful. And I got a little teary there
[2:14:26] because it has been a long process. And I see Linda out in the audience, Linda Callahan.
[2:14:32] And when we first started talking about this, and Will Rubenstein, I believe that there
[2:14:40] There has been a tremendous amount of information that's gone out to the public.
[2:14:47] And I think it, because it's been over such a long period of time, that we kind of lost
[2:14:52] track of that process.
[2:14:54] And so I foresee, though, that as Matt has spelled out...
[2:15:00] It's not over, and that the, it's kind of like the wrap of what the building looks like
[2:15:06] is still something that can be discussed and what kind of rugs and will, or is there too
[2:15:15] much window? Those discussions can go forward, but as, when I'm looking at the layout slide
[2:15:26] that is was left up. That's really what we discussed with the community and the
[2:15:35] decision that has been reached is based on community input is that picture of
[2:15:43] all of the different elements that are going to be that have been considered
[2:15:48] and are going to be included should we get the grant while we've gotten the
[2:15:53] grant, but should we vote once we get the numbers to go forward?
[2:15:57] So I'm thrilled, and I think having it across the street from Town Hall is going to be fantastic
[2:16:05] and next to the MacArthur Building and having the fields there, I was there with the Seaside
[2:16:13] Festival and having the library right there for things like, I think Yarmouth is going
[2:16:20] a benefit to such a degree to have this tremendous facility, and I can't wait for the fundraising
[2:16:26] to start because I'm going to write a check.
[2:16:30] Thank you.
[2:16:31] Thank you.
[2:16:32] A couple of questions.
[2:16:36] Starting with, you're talking about the grant submission goes in now as of December
[2:16:42] 31st, but then you also start talking about, well, we won't really know the square footage
[2:16:47] in the construction costs and so forth for town meeting until February.
[2:16:53] My question is this, where does that fall?
[2:16:57] Is that still part of that grant funding?
[2:17:00] How is that being paid for?
[2:17:02] This is stipulated by the NBLC.
[2:17:06] They did not want to do cost estimates until they've completed their review.
[2:17:11] And I think the thinking is, if based on their review, changes have to be made, there's
[2:17:17] something that you haven't done that they think you need to do, they don't want the
[2:17:21] estimate to already have happened.
[2:17:23] They want to make sure that you're getting everything exactly the way they want it
[2:17:26] before you price it.
[2:17:28] I don't foresee any major changes in our case, given the back and forth that we've
[2:17:32] had with them.
[2:17:33] We feel like we're in a pretty good spot with them.
[2:17:35] like, you know, I think the estimate is going to be based on this package that we send them
[2:17:41] with, if anything, very minor edits. But that's the plan that they've set up. And so they
[2:17:47] take about a month to review. So if we submit at the end of December, we're thinking we
[2:17:52] won't get comments back from the state until the end of January, at which point we
[2:17:56] start the estimate. It takes about three weeks to do a cost estimate. It takes about
[2:18:00] a week to review that information, make sure that all the assumptions were properly accounted
[2:18:06] for.
[2:18:07] And so that takes us to the end of February by the time that we think we have a kind
[2:18:11] of reconciled cost estimate.
[2:18:14] Right.
[2:18:14] But what I'm asking is this.
[2:18:18] To pay you, to pay our consultants to do this piece from January to town meeting,
[2:18:26] funding. Where is the funding to pay you coming from? Is that still part of what we, that
[2:18:34] the voters approved at the, at town meeting? Or is this an extra that you're going to
[2:18:42] be knocking basically on our door or Bob's door to?
[2:18:46] The estimate is included.
[2:18:48] Is included.
[2:18:48] Yes.
[2:18:49] So this work would be-
[2:18:49] So this work would be-
[2:18:50] We have an estimator already lined up. His fee proposal is part of our comprehensive
[2:18:54] of design team fee as is our time to manage that effort.
[2:18:59] So, that's your question, that is, that's covered as part of the-
[2:19:03] Great question.
[2:19:04] Okay, yeah.
[2:19:05] So, I mean, for the sake of the people watching at home, there isn't any more money being
[2:19:10] expended by the town until we get to town meeting.
[2:19:14] That's right.
[2:19:14] And allow the people to decide where they go from this point on.
[2:19:19] That's right.
[2:19:21] Also, I love the design boards, they're fantastic.
[2:19:27] You've got them in the South Yarmouth Library.
[2:19:29] My question for you is this, where are the ones for the West Yarmouth Library and for
[2:19:35] Town Hall?
[2:19:36] We just hadn't ordered them yet because we had to get that first set here very quickly.
[2:19:44] But they are on order to have at West Yarmouth?
[2:19:48] We are planning to print additional copies to have in other locations in town, yes.
[2:19:52] Okay, and do you anticipate a date when you'll have those by?
[2:19:57] Probably by next week.
[2:19:59] Okay, great. That's kind of my question in that if we're submitting this effective December 31st,
[2:20:05] I'd want to be able to know that everyone is having an opportunity to see it.
[2:20:10] Is it on the website? If I may interrupt, Dorcas, sorry.
[2:20:15] I'm sorry.
[2:20:16] The board's on the website.
[2:20:18] Not yet, no.
[2:20:20] Because they think to be on the website tomorrow.
[2:20:23] Well, websites are all well and good, Liz, if you use a computer.
[2:20:26] But we've got a lot of people in town that don't.
[2:20:31] And I'm just thinking, I'd love to see one over at our senior center.
[2:20:37] Town Hall, the senior center, West Yarmouth and South Yarmouth.
[2:20:42] I think that's hitting your big points of where it should be.
[2:20:48] If you go all the way down to the very beginning of this, for me, it kind of is all being based
[2:20:57] and correct me if I'm wrong, but this is kind of being based on the fact that this
[2:21:02] design and the reason the library board approved it is because they were looking at this as
[2:21:09] our one central library for the town.
[2:21:11] that
[2:21:15] was our charge yes okay so that's coming out of the original premise and
[2:21:22] yet what we saw Judy when we saw the number of people that responded in June
[2:21:28] was overwhelmingly that they were going to still see a West Yarmouth branch and
[2:21:37] And, Celia, in addition to this.
[2:21:42] That was their desire, yes. We heard that.
[2:21:45] Right. So, I mean, that...
[2:21:47] But that doesn't affect our charge. Our charge was to present to you a design for a library that would serve the needs of the community.
[2:21:59] And that was based on, we talked about population a lot the last time we were here,
[2:22:06] but it wasn't just on population, it was on programmatic needs.
[2:22:10] So programmatic needs and population and a fluctuating population in the summer,
[2:22:19] what would a library, a modern library look like to serve those needs?
[2:22:26] And so I think we've heard kind of a revision of how West Yarmouth Library actually functions.
[2:22:36] This became more clear to me recently that the library views it now almost as a branch anyway
[2:22:48] because the major collection, the major traffic, the major circulation is at south.
[2:22:54] So there's more demand for space coming in West, particularly for children's programs,
[2:23:05] and they just can't do it.
[2:23:06] But with a library that belongs to the town that would have beautiful spaces for kids
[2:23:13] and a dedicated story hour room and access to outdoor play,
[2:23:19] That that would take the pressure off West Yarmouth to be all things to all people there
[2:23:27] But I do go back to the fact that that wasn't our charge and that that really belongs with you folks
[2:23:34] to determine if you're going to
[2:23:37] operate to buildings
[2:23:40] And I do I do have to say I love our libraries just as they are
[2:23:46] I really do but part of the reason I love the library and that you love your
[2:23:52] library is that our staff does such a wonderful job and they keep their game
[2:23:58] faces on all the time and they are service oriented but the challenges
[2:24:05] they work with in space mostly space but just space and leaky sinks and all
[2:24:15] kinds of other things that they deal with to provide us as the customers, if you will,
[2:24:21] of the library. The library patrons only see the best of those folks. They are absolutely
[2:24:29] wonderful and it's always a great experience. But if you walk into any of those libraries,
[2:24:35] you know there's no place for them to really go and work. So to have the community that
[2:24:42] we want to have, where people will learn together, where people will be happy, where we will be
[2:24:49] interacting, where we will provide a beautiful municipal building that says, we're Yarmouth
[2:24:56] and we're proud. I really urge you to just support this and we will find a way. We will
[2:25:04] find a way. I'm much more hopeful, Mark. I'm much more hopeful.
[2:25:09] I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to put you on the hot seat, and I know what your charge was
[2:25:15] and what all of you did was commendable, but I'm still going back to, I hear you Liz, that
[2:25:21] we really had community involvement the first time around.
[2:25:25] But what was shocking to me was the amount of response we got over the summer from the
[2:25:33] the library building committee of people saying that they absolutely want West Yarmouth to
[2:25:41] stay, number one. And number two, what was astounding to me were the number of people
[2:25:47] that said that they would never approach before for input. I mean, that was in a
[2:25:54] lot of those emails and, you know, presentations that we had. You know, people saying I didn't
[2:26:02] get a chance to participate the first time around.
[2:26:06] And if your whole premise is based on a central library, it's food for thought for me, and
[2:26:15] certainly for discussion among my fellow board members, because there seem to be like
[2:26:23] two concepts, you know, like that we have three branches in town and we don't talk
[2:26:29] about Yarmouth Port because quite honestly the town doesn't have to pay for that, fortunately.
[2:26:34] They have their own library association and board that pays for that, but the town is
[2:26:41] paying for South Yarmouth and for West Yarmouth.
[2:26:46] And what we were really hearing, and this isn't really to you, this is to everyone,
[2:26:52] what we were really hearing is we want to keep West Yarmouth overwhelmingly and
[2:26:58] And we want to keep South Yarmouth.
[2:27:01] And so then the question comes to play, for instance, with your design and I guess my
[2:27:09] question would be, when we get before town meeting, that's where it's going to be up
[2:27:17] to the people to decide one way or another.
[2:27:19] Absolutely.
[2:27:20] I mean, I'm sitting here knowing that it's not costing anyone a dime between now and
[2:27:27] when everyone is going to sit down again and talk about this at town meeting.
[2:27:32] But at town meeting, we're going to have to have an awful lot of information available
[2:27:40] for the people to be able to make an informed decision.
[2:27:44] And at the same time, we, the Board, are going to have to look at, from a capital
[2:27:49] perspective, particularly after the news that we were getting from Jennifer and Bob
[2:27:54] and the capital improvement today about our continuing debt, how much can we afford to
[2:28:01] actually spend?
[2:28:03] So like for instance, immediately comes up a question for me, are we going to have to
[2:28:07] staff bigger for this new library or are we taking just the existing staff of South
[2:28:13] Yarmouth and moving them into this library and then staying with our existing staff
[2:28:19] and West Yarmouth staying there? Or by nature of this building and the size being so much
[2:28:26] larger than South Yarmouth, do we need extra staff? There are a lot of questions for us,
[2:28:33] I'm afraid, to go into this. And cost, quite honestly, is going to drive an awful lot
[2:28:39] of it. So when I hear you, the library board is telling you that you're not going
[2:28:48] to be able to make – they want to actually finalize what they're going to allow and
[2:28:55] then that you have to go ahead and put together those construction costs.
[2:28:59] But when you're putting together those construction costs, some of the questions we're going
[2:29:02] to have, for instance, is you're talking about having an all-electric building.
[2:29:07] What's the cost going to be to put the solar in to help to fund that electricity?
[2:29:12] What's the cost going to be for all
[2:29:21] those mechanicals, the actual space?
[2:29:24] Do we really need a 120 space auditorium?
[2:29:28] I mean, there's an awful lot of question marks there for us that I think we have to have firm, hard numbers
[2:29:36] so we can sit with the townspeople like we did when it came time for wastewater,
[2:29:41] And everyone is fully informed before we get to town meeting that this is what it's going to cost.
[2:29:49] So like all the questions that we're asking tonight that we don't have an answer for,
[2:29:54] we're going to need to have an answer for.
[2:29:57] By the time we get to town meeting.
[2:30:00] We have a lot of data, though, on programs that were run in the Leonard Room and requests
[2:30:07] for programs to be run that could not be run. So we have a lot of that kind of data. We have
[2:30:14] a lot of data on attendance at children's programs, and some of those had to be run
[2:30:20] outdoors because there's no room. And then if it was raining, all of that program doesn't
[2:30:27] happen where you if you have a facility yes you can continue and you can have
[2:30:33] your programs. I know there was a conversation also earlier with well if
[2:30:38] we're going to keep West to open then take that square footage and lop it off
[2:30:44] this design because then that where that was presented at one of our meetings
[2:30:49] and it was like well we can't do that because again this was our charge
[2:30:55] This was the information that was gathered from everybody who participated.
[2:31:01] And I wonder to,
[2:31:05] you know, I love town meeting.
[2:31:07] I love the representative government, the direct access we have and this pure form of
[2:31:13] democracy that we have in town.
[2:31:15] I just absolutely love it.
[2:31:17] It's cumbersome, but we have a responsibility to be informed, too, as citizens.
[2:31:25] We have that responsibility to be informed and when people say, oh, I didn't hear about it,
[2:31:34] maybe they didn't.
[2:31:36] But there are things that they were paying attention to that were more important for them.
[2:31:43] And now when this is important, they're going to pay attention.
[2:31:47] And that's our chance to say things like, this is what your new library can provide for you.
[2:31:53] And we intend to be out there doing that.
[2:31:58] Yeah, and Dorcas, to your point about cost, we will know costs by the end of February.
[2:32:05] And solar is one thing that we can add to that list of questions about cost.
[2:32:11] And absolutely, it is a logical tie-in to an all-electric system.
[2:32:17] It would be great.
[2:32:17] the building has sort of been designed thinking about, you know, south-facing
[2:32:23] roof, that entire use services wing, south-facing, but even the adult wing we
[2:32:29] think could have some yield benefit for solar. We're obligated by code to
[2:32:33] provide a solar-ready building, so at a minimum it is designed so that it can
[2:32:39] receive solar. Solar is an eligible cost. If the town decides that that's
[2:32:43] something that they want to build into a construction package.
[2:32:47] We can do that.
[2:32:47] We're doing that on another MBLC project now that's going to open up at the beginning
[2:32:51] of the new year.
[2:32:53] They decided to buy the solar as part of the – put it into the bid documents so
[2:32:57] that they are getting the MBLC reimbursement for that cost.
[2:33:02] You know, that's a bigger conversation about the right way to do solar in this
[2:33:06] town.
[2:33:07] You know, I don't know if there's – some towns have a municipal array
[2:33:10] that funds all of the public buildings, others do it building by building.
[2:33:14] There are a lot of different ways to procure solar.
[2:33:18] The tax credits have changed for solar, so now I think nonprofits can actually get a
[2:33:23] tax credit where they did not used to be able to.
[2:33:26] So the calculus has changed a little bit.
[2:33:28] It used to be that that was a great donor opportunity.
[2:33:31] Private donors would donate a solar array, take the tax credit, so there was sort
[2:33:37] of a win-win.
[2:33:37] And so there's a lot to talk about solar specifically,
[2:33:41] but we are planning this fully expecting
[2:33:45] that somehow solar will be on the roof of this building.
[2:33:48] And we should talk, we can identify what that cost is.
[2:33:51] And then we should talk about the different ways
[2:33:53] that that could be achieved.
[2:33:56] So I think we need to be able to tell the people,
[2:34:00] this is what, this is all, if you vote yes,
[2:34:04] because once we vote at town meeting,
[2:34:07] Then we're locked in, aren't we,
[2:34:09] to go forward with the building?
[2:34:13] Right, so they need to know at town meeting
[2:34:17] what they're locking into, total.
[2:34:22] And not coming back.
[2:34:24] They have to pay a lot of attention before town meeting.
[2:34:26] Well, not coming back later and saying,
[2:34:28] oh, by the way, there's an extra cost for this
[2:34:31] or that, we're just gonna have to have it all there
[2:34:34] for them.
[2:34:35] Of course, yeah.
[2:34:37] One other thing I want to mention related to solar, but really any kind of green feature,
[2:34:44] the MBLC also offers a green library incentive program, which is a reimbursement program that
[2:34:51] pays 3% of the grant award with a minimum $100,000 grant.
[2:34:58] So, in our case, our estimate is that the town would get a $400,000 reimbursement.
[2:35:07] This would be after the building opens, you have to – there's several different pathways
[2:35:11] to demonstrate compliance with the requirements, but we're very confident that we can achieve
[2:35:19] one of those pathways.
[2:35:20] One is get LEED Gold certified, but there are other ways to do it.
[2:35:25] That's a reimbursement. It would be $400,000 that would then offset the cost of a solar
[2:35:31] array or some other aspect of the library that contributes to the sustainability. So
[2:35:39] that's on top of the grant award.
[2:35:42] Well, I have to say thank you. You've done an amazing job. It's been a pleasure to
[2:35:48] work with you on whatever way this comes down a town meeting you we kept
[2:35:55] throwing things at you and you just kept going sure we'll figure that out and
[2:35:59] came back and had a solution so it's really been amazing now I think it
[2:36:05] comes back to us on the board I thank you all and approve the submission of
[2:36:12] the grant formally we have to wait for somebody to get back here here he
[2:36:18] Can I make a motion? Well, he's in motion.
[2:36:22] Okay.
[2:36:23] I make a motion that we approve the submission of the library package to the MSBLC.
[2:36:33] MBLC.
[2:36:33] MBLC.
[2:36:35] Second.
[2:36:36] Do I have a second?
[2:36:36] Do I have a second?
[2:36:37] So discussion, Mark.
[2:36:39] Yeah, let me just add another item.
[2:36:41] I think I'd like to address, we have to address head on this question about the
[2:36:46] West Yarmouth Library, because the reality is that in your meetings there's been enough
[2:36:52] talk and speculation that perhaps the West Yarmouth Library is somehow either going to
[2:36:57] go or be a casualty in this.
[2:37:01] And I think somehow that message is out there, and I think we as a board need to really
[2:37:07] address that and make that fundamentally clear, that as far as we're concerned there's
[2:37:11] there's no intention in terms of the advancement of this project to see the end of the West
[2:37:20] Yarmouth Library. And I want to address that to my fellow board members. Does anybody here
[2:37:24] on this board support a project that ends up with the loss of the West Yarmouth Library?
[2:37:31] I just would have to respond that I think that there's a fiscal reality to keeping
[2:37:37] West and South and having a new library that we will need to confront because it will involve
[2:37:47] more staff.
[2:37:48] There's no way it can't.
[2:37:49] And so how do we – how do we handle that?
[2:37:54] Do we – as residents, is that part of the residents' voice at town meeting, they have
[2:38:03] have an additional cost on the warrant that says, yes, we want to keep these other libraries
[2:38:11] going at this cost, and we're willing to shoulder it.
[2:38:16] Yes, Joyce?
[2:38:18] I just wonder how much concern there is about keeping the South Yarmouth Library open, given
[2:38:25] that the new Central Library would be in South Yarmouth.
[2:38:28] I mean, I think I've heard mainly concerned about keeping the West Yarmouth Library open.
[2:38:32] So, we're really talking about one branch library probably rather than two, if I could.
[2:38:40] I think comments about restoring or keeping South open are related to not doing the project
[2:38:48] at all.
[2:38:50] Ah, wealth!
[2:38:53] Yeah, I think if there's a library that needs to be replaced, it's the South Yarmouth
[2:38:58] Library.
[2:38:58] That's the way.
[2:38:59] I've always looked at this project.
[2:39:02] I mean, we all love it. It's wonderful, but it's outlived its purpose.
[2:39:09] It's time to be repurposed to something and some other way to support the community.
[2:39:14] But I think the message that is out there in the community that we have to confront
[2:39:20] is that moving forward with this project somehow undermines and weakens the prospect
[2:39:27] of the West Yarmouth Library.
[2:39:29] And there's a perception in the community that if we vote yes to this, it's going to
[2:39:33] be meaning a vote against West Yarmouth.
[2:39:37] And quite frankly, Liz, your comments don't help in that regard.
[2:39:41] They don't.
[2:39:42] But I do think that that's a reality.
[2:39:45] If we're going to have the discussion, is that not part of the, it's a fiscal discussion.
[2:39:51] How do we keep both libraries staffed?
[2:39:56] Well, that's the problem that I have with the motion is that we're only, unless we
[2:40:03] nip this in the bud soon, we're only going to continue to perpetuate that view out there
[2:40:09] in the community.
[2:40:10] And that's why I can't support the motion.
[2:40:13] To go forward with the application.
[2:40:17] I don't want to be sending a message in the community that somehow we, the town of
[2:40:25] West Yarmouth is in jeopardy, the West Yarmouth Library is.
[2:40:28] It's not.
[2:40:29] And I can't support it either.
[2:40:31] Well, and I would just make the note that if we don't go
[2:40:35] forward with the grant application, then we have West
[2:40:42] and South Yarmouth libraries forever, forever, because this
[2:40:45] grant is now will be closed for another five years.
[2:40:49] And the West Yarmouth Library, as lovely as it is,
[2:40:54] is not a modern librarian, will not, does not provide what we are, some of us were hoping
[2:41:02] the town of Yarmouth would have, which is ample meeting space and a place for children
[2:41:10] and grown-ups to gather, and we just won't have that, because West Yarmouth can't provide
[2:41:16] that.
[2:41:18] But you're also saying that we would be out of this grant process, but it's not that we're
[2:41:24] closing the door forever.
[2:41:25] We're opening the door in the future.
[2:41:29] Not with this grant, but there would be another grant process that we can submit to.
[2:41:38] It's only a possibility.
[2:41:40] But we might not be looked on favorably by having gone through this.
[2:41:45] far and then walking away.
[2:41:47] Well, we've done that.
[2:41:48] But this project can coexist.
[2:41:51] This was already discussed when you selected this site.
[2:41:56] It was predicated on the discussion
[2:41:58] that this facility may coexist with the West Yarmouth
[2:42:02] Library, not the South.
[2:42:04] It replaces the South, but it can coexist.
[2:42:07] And there's absolutely nothing in this proposal
[2:42:10] that threatens West Yarmouth.
[2:42:14] I think what the committee is saying, that's the select board's decision that we can keep
[2:42:19] West Yarmouth.
[2:42:20] In fact, what this building will do is create the opportunity to do some of the programming
[2:42:28] that can't be done at West, and so it takes the pressure off of West so that it can
[2:42:32] exist as a nice branch, but it doesn't have to have all the children's programming
[2:42:38] and the other things.
[2:42:39] So submitting this grant application is not a threat to West Yarmouth.
[2:42:45] It's a decision of the select board to move in that direction.
[2:42:51] But yet I heard, I already heard, like Liz was starting to talk about fiscally,
[2:42:58] we have to look at the fact that we can't really handle both.
[2:43:04] I mean, that's a question. It's not a statement.
[2:43:06] No, I know it's not a statement, but Mark is absolutely right, and I support what he's
[2:43:14] saying, that there is a feeling in this community that unless we absolutely put it to a vote
[2:43:21] that we're not closing West Yarmouth Library, that's what the people are here.
[2:43:29] I'll tell you that's what the people in West Yarmouth want to hear.
[2:43:32] Madam Chair? I think one of the troublesome points about this conversation is that you
[2:43:39] don't know what any fiscal challenges will be in 28, 29, 30 that might cause you to reuse
[2:43:50] any of our municipal buildings. So looking forward 5, 8, 10 years, you don't know what
[2:43:58] those challenges will be. Remember when we had the floods here and we had to scamper around
[2:44:06] and there are just going to be challenges that we can't foresee. We can foresee some
[2:44:14] of the challenges that Bob outlined earlier. So I think you're almost creating a difficult
[2:44:22] situation for yourselves. We did not create this. No, by saying
[2:44:27] saying, we will not close West.
[2:44:30] No, but I'm saying that somehow out of your meetings and your discussion, it's permeated
[2:44:36] in the community, because this is what we hear, is that this is part of a plan to ultimately
[2:44:42] undermine West Yarmouth.
[2:44:44] That's what I'm saying.
[2:44:45] And this kind of very weak affirmation of support for West Yarmouth only worsens
[2:44:54] the situation.
[2:44:55] You know, we all know that in this community, at least I do, that people
[2:45:00] People love all of their libraries, and the libraries play an incredibly important role
[2:45:05] to the vitality and the energy in each village. And what they're looking for is they're looking
[2:45:13] for not just the select board, but also the people that work, that we appoint to serve
[2:45:17] on committees to reflect that commitment. And what they've been hearing in those committee
[2:45:23] meetings is not that. And that is, I'm just telling you, this is undermining this project
[2:45:29] And the only way we can get at least this project moving forward
[2:45:33] is not only just to support the application,
[2:45:35] but to reaffirm our support for the West Yarmouth Library.
[2:45:40] Well, Mark, would you be willing to break that into two proposals,
[2:45:44] like have a vote first on whether we're willing to support the West Yarmouth Library
[2:45:48] and then move on to vote on the proposal?
[2:45:53] I'm speaking to what I'm hearing in the community.
[2:45:56] And all I'm saying is that this board needs to understand that.
[2:46:00] If we go forward without addressing and reaffirming our support for West Yarmouth, the perception
[2:46:06] is going to be that what we're doing is we're under, by voting to submit this application.
[2:46:12] And it's still one of many other steps that has to proceed.
[2:46:16] I mean, this doesn't, we've got town meeting and in fact there's not even a decision
[2:46:20] on the application.
[2:46:21] We need to get an application that gets submitted and approved.
[2:46:25] But there's a perception somehow that moving forward with this undermines the future of the West Yarmouth Library.
[2:46:32] And my argument, as is to the board, is that we just should put this to bed.
[2:46:37] We did not create this perception. It was created elsewhere.
[2:46:41] In West Yarmouth, I would guess.
[2:46:43] No, it wasn't created in West Yarmouth. It was created.
[2:46:46] I watched the meetings. I get the videotapes. I watch the discussion.
[2:46:50] How do we put it to bed, Mark?
[2:46:52] What we do is we vote and I'll make a motion, unless we are, I guess we have a motion on
[2:46:58] the floor, but I don't think there are going to be enough votes.
[2:47:01] I'm happy to offer another motion.
[2:47:03] Well, just, do you want me to withdraw my motion?
[2:47:05] If you withdraw your motion.
[2:47:07] I do so.
[2:47:08] Okay.
[2:47:10] My motion is that we support and endorse the grant application being submitted on
[2:47:18] behalf of the, for the new library, but we also reaffirm our, the board's support for
[2:47:25] continued use and long term, continued use and the continuation of the West Yarmouth Library,
[2:47:31] that we reaffirm our support for the future viability and the use of the, the West Yarmouth
[2:47:36] Library.
[2:47:37] Second.
[2:47:38] Is that appropriate?
[2:47:38] Is that, is that do it?
[2:47:41] Okay.
[2:47:41] All right.
[2:47:42] That's fine.
[2:47:42] Second.
[2:47:43] All right.
[2:47:43] Any discussion on that?
[2:47:44] I would just note that I'm I am I foresee some of our South Yarmouth
[2:47:51] Users being upset by this, but I will definitely support the West Yarmouth Library
[2:47:58] Okay, all in favor. Hi. Hi opposed
[2:48:02] Thank you all very much
[2:48:05] And that answers the question have there been a vote vote by the board to
[2:48:10] Affirm West Yarmouth and there was a vote by the board to affirm West Yarmouth tonight
[2:48:16] Thank you. Thank you.
[2:48:20] Yeah, here. Good job, Tim.
[2:48:29] All right, moving on to our next item.
[2:48:36] I see you right over there in the corner. I know that.
[2:48:41] Yeah, no. But our next item is the discussion of the ME Small School Replacement Feasibility
[2:48:47] Study.
[2:48:49] And in addition, we have the pleasure of having
[2:48:54] the Chair of the Committee present with us. And I'm going to turn it over at this point
[2:49:00] to Mark Forrest. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me give a little
[2:49:05] bit of an explanation for some that may not know. When I was appointed to represent the
[2:49:10] select board on this committee, I made it abundantly clear that I would not be acting
[2:49:17] on my own, but I would report regularly to the full board and want to engage the board
[2:49:23] and discuss with the board various aspects of the committee's work.
[2:49:29] And so that's what
[2:49:31] But this discussion is in part, this is my way of bringing together us so that we can
[2:49:37] update you.
[2:49:38] I can update you.
[2:49:39] I tried to do this once before, but it was suggested we make it as an agenda item.
[2:49:43] So I did, and I wanted to extend an opportunity to others.
[2:49:48] Now I've invited Will Rubenstein and Rich Simon to join us, and I'm glad Thomas
[2:49:55] is here.
[2:49:56] He's the chairman of the committee.
[2:49:58] I understand Dr. Smith couldn't make it.
[2:50:00] he had another commitment, but the intention here is just to make sure that this board
[2:50:04] is informed and aware of how things have been progressing and understanding some of the questions
[2:50:10] and some of the concerns that I've raised.
[2:50:13] I have not been able to attend every meeting.
[2:50:16] The meetings are scheduled while I'm teaching at the college, so I've only been able to
[2:50:21] participate in portions of the meeting.
[2:50:25] And so, I'm always bending Will's ear or Richard's ear to tell me what I missed and what I need
[2:50:33] to get caught up on.
[2:50:34] And so that's why I invited them to be part of this conversation and I'm glad Thomas is
[2:50:38] here as well.
[2:50:39] So...
[2:50:40] Mr. Farris, if I can just comment on that, you know, I was disappointed that I was not
[2:50:45] originally approached or invited to be a part of this tonight.
[2:50:48] I would expect that a chair of a subcommittee would be the person who was directed
[2:50:52] to speak on behalf of that committee, that members of a committee would not be approached
[2:50:56] directly. As if a patrolman was approached to speak on behalf of the police department,
[2:51:01] I would expect that the chief would be, you know, asked ahead of time. So I do want to
[2:51:07] make that known that if there is discussion or questions about anything with the school
[2:51:12] district or subcommittee that the chairs of the appropriate committees are approached.
[2:51:17] No.
[2:51:18] Because they're the authorized people to speak on that behalf.
[2:51:20] Sure. I apologize.
[2:51:22] And I'm glad you're here.
[2:51:24] And if you'd like to take the floor first to sort of talk a little bit about how you think things have been progressing and where we're at,
[2:51:32] I'd be more than happy to recommend to the Chair that we yield the floor to you first.
[2:51:37] I'd be happy to hear the questions and concerns that you may have so that we may answer them.
[2:51:43] Okay. Before I do that, I'd like to at least let Richard, I invited Richard and Will to make a brief presentation.
[2:51:53] They've sent me some material which I forwarded to the board.
[2:51:56] I'm assuming at the meetings they've probably been shared with perhaps other members of the building committee,
[2:52:01] but nonetheless I think it's helpful to hear from them.
[2:52:05] And so I'd like to yield my time to Richard and Will Rubinstein.
[2:52:10] I've I personally have been concerned about enrollment projections in the enrollment numbers
[2:52:15] I've raised that before at meetings and I've shared that with the select board, but
[2:52:20] Some people have actually spent more time looking at this question than than I so
[2:52:25] Like I said, I'm interested in here from from them
[2:52:28] We as a board rely on them for a tremendous amount of work here in our community and
[2:52:35] And I have enormous respect and trust their judgment and their analysis.
[2:52:41] So thank you, Madam Chair.
[2:52:44] Let me, Richard Simon, precinct 2, Chair of the Finance Committee, as well as a number
[2:52:52] of other committees, as well as a member of the Emmy Small School Building Committee.
[2:52:59] Mark, thank you for the invitation tonight.
[2:53:02] I think it's important to put this in context.
[2:53:08] Comments that I'm going to make tonight are results of my own personal work.
[2:53:14] They do not reflect the Finance Committee's view.
[2:53:18] The Finance Committee, though, is very supportive, as is the Select Board,
[2:53:23] in finding a solution for the Emmy Small School.
[2:53:28] We supported the motion that was made the article for the 1.5 million feasibility study unanimously.
[2:53:37] And part of the reason for that is if you're going, whatever we do moving forward,
[2:53:43] you would like to have somebody else's money, in this case, the MSBA's money, 57%, available to us.
[2:53:51] And so the process that we're going through is a well-defined MSBA process.
[2:53:59] And we're in that phase where, up until this point, the staff, you know,
[2:54:05] the school board, school committee has done an amazing amount of work.
[2:54:11] They've already delivered all of the major things that are required.
[2:54:17] to get approved for the feasibility study, and there's no guarantee that you do get this,
[2:54:21] but the staff has done an outstanding job of getting, Mark Smith and his group have done
[2:54:28] an outstanding job of lining everything up. Everything that was required to be submitted
[2:54:33] to be approved to go into the feasibility stage has been done, has been signed off on.
[2:54:39] And really, I think I need to reaffirm that that is excellent work and that, you know,
[2:54:46] we owe a debt of gratitude to the school committee and to Dr. Smith for making that happen,
[2:54:52] because I think at this point it's in the hands of the MSBA.
[2:54:58] And if we are fortunate, we should hear soon.
[2:55:02] Yeah, the requirement is by December 26.
[2:55:05] The last two documents were submitted this morning and accepted by them.
[2:55:08] So we do have a couple of days for them to respond, if something doesn't look right, but
[2:55:13] the last two documents were submitted today, again, as previous groups discussed, trying
[2:55:19] to get it before the due date, with December 26 being the day after a holiday, all items
[2:55:24] were submitted this morning and accepted by the MSBA this afternoon.
[2:55:28] So we're just waiting for any feedback from those items.
[2:55:31] So the reason that that's important is to, in order to do the full feasibility study,
[2:55:38] which goes into answering some of the questions about what is the best way forward,
[2:55:44] you want to have that funding, that support from the state to make that happen.
[2:55:50] And so, like I said, I'm very pleased that that has already happened.
[2:55:55] The next part, the rest of this is related to...
[2:55:58] Can I just interrupt for a second, and I want to just comment on Thomas' comments.
[2:56:06] Is there any – this was a question by one of our board members, and that is, is there
[2:56:11] any reimbursement from the state on any of the feasibility study funding that have been provided?
[2:56:18] The feasibility study hasn't been approved as of yet, but the feasibility will be looped
[2:56:23] into the possible refunding of part of the 57%.
[2:56:27] So the 1.5 million would be eligible for that.
[2:56:31] And part of what was due today was
[2:56:33] how that 1.5 million will be utilized,
[2:56:36] how much of it for feasibility,
[2:56:37] how much for OPM, how much of it for design.
[2:56:40] So that's what the last piece of it
[2:56:42] that was submitted today.
[2:56:43] Thank you.
[2:56:44] That's helpful.
[2:56:45] So now comes the next part of it.
[2:56:47] It's really sort of the math that goes into
[2:56:50] that type of feasibility work.
[2:56:53] So there's, as Mark mentioned, there's a question about enrollment projections.
[2:57:00] The MSBA uses a formula that's based on a well-documented, well-articulated process that looks at...
[2:57:09] Robust.
[2:57:10] Very robust.
[2:57:12] That looks at birth rates or births, which then translates into kindergarten enrollment,
[2:57:21] which then goes through the whole process of what basically rolls through the whole 12 years.
[2:57:29] And so the interesting part about that is for most communities, the birth rate to kindergarten rate is one to one.
[2:57:43] Ours is much less than that, which sort of raises the question.
[2:57:46] The next part is, in most cases, seasonal housing represents perhaps 2 percent or less
[2:57:55] of a community.
[2:57:58] So the formula is really sort of built around the year-round housing basis.
[2:58:04] But the year-round housing is equal to total housing.
[2:58:07] In our case, we're already at 36 percent seasonal and it's going down.
[2:58:14] So those are some of the questions that when you're getting into the enrollment,
[2:58:20] fine details is a part of it.
[2:58:25] Next part is going to be coming really sort of when we get down to the design phase
[2:58:31] when if you look at other programs
[2:58:36] to figure out what the costs are going to be for these types of schools,
[2:58:39] There's a, I've actually looked at a database of 77 prior elementary school, I know, because
[2:58:50] that's what I do.
[2:58:52] So it turns out that the MSBA standard is about 150 square feet per person.
[2:58:58] And the cost per person per pupil is someplace between 50 and 100.
[2:59:04] But there's a wide range, right?
[2:59:07] So 150 is MSB guideline.
[2:59:09] There's examples in the research that say,
[2:59:13] some people go up to 300 spar feet a person
[2:59:16] and a quarter of a million dollars per person,
[2:59:19] per pupil for the cost.
[2:59:21] So there's a huge set of issues related to that,
[2:59:24] making sure that you stay within that MSBA standard.
[2:59:29] Because one of the things that's really happened,
[2:59:32] and I've noticed this in the data that they produced,
[2:59:34] used to be the reimbursement rate was like 59% and it was reimbursed at 88%. So only
[2:59:44] 12% weren't reimbursable. Now it's gone crazy. 25% of projects have scope exclusions. Basically
[2:59:56] you're supersizing yourself. And there's lots of examples.
[3:00:00] One of the most famous ones of recent days was Lexington example, which was a $660 million
[3:00:11] project. They did come in at 150 square feet per pupil, but then they supersized. So they
[3:00:19] added a 48,000 square foot field house, extra 20,000 for central offices, extra supersized
[3:00:28] gym, a supersized auditorium, so that added roughly $120 million just for that.
[3:00:35] So that's part of why I think as we move forward with the process, we do want to look at that.
[3:00:42] And I think the final piece is making sure that we look at all the options.
[3:00:48] So obviously one of the options would be repairing emmy small, I don't think that's
[3:00:54] on the table. Replacing Emmy Small as a K-3D would be another option. But another set of
[3:01:00] options would be to take a holistic look at the current envelope that we have, all the
[3:01:08] buildings, because they are buildings with classrooms. And so one of the things I think
[3:01:12] we should be doing as a committee is also looking at the broader facility implications.
[3:01:18] And that's, and that was sort of the point I think Mr.
[3:01:23] Rubenstein made that point at the meeting, our last meeting, is that we do need to have a robust set of options, just not one option.
[3:01:36] Thank you.
[3:01:40] So my perspective on this is, as someone who served on the Dennis Yarmuth Intermediate
[3:01:44] Middle School School Building Committee, as a member at large, and yes, I'm a member of
[3:01:51] the planning board, and like what Richard just said earlier, I don't represent the
[3:01:55] planning board, but one of the things that's serving on a committee like that enables
[3:01:59] me to do is to fly 30,000 feet off the ground, and also as a parent of a student
[3:02:06] in the district in addition to getting the perspectives of being on the planning board.
[3:02:10] I do speak individually, but I do in addition to what Richard said, I see bigger challenges
[3:02:18] than just this project. We just spent 45 minutes talking about a project that is coming
[3:02:24] at us to the tune of I'll just use around numbers $30 million before reimbursement.
[3:02:30] We also have phase two of our sewer system, which will be not 207 million, but it will be, let's say, 60 to 100 million.
[3:02:40] And that's very preliminary numbers.
[3:02:43] We also have, as it relates to sometime in 2027, as we know the department, the DEP, told the town of Yarmouth that they could have a sewer treatment plant
[3:02:59] to the tune of 375,000 gallons, yet what we need is discharge for a million and a half
[3:03:08] gallons.
[3:03:09] I'm using rough numbers, but I'm pretty close.
[3:03:12] So now, unfortunately, through no fault of the town,
[3:03:17] sometime in 2027, at a town meeting,
[3:03:20] there will be a conversation about the town of Yarmouth asking its taxpayers to spend
[3:03:26] around 30 million dollars as it relates to using Bayberry. And all of that is very well
[3:03:31] researched in partnership with the DEP despite the fact that they're forcing us to do it.
[3:03:36] And done through amazing, amazing consultants that we're working with right now.
[3:03:42] All who have good intentions. All of those projects are coming at us in addition to this
[3:03:48] one. And this is not a judgment about whether we need to do something at ME Small.
[3:03:55] What
[3:03:59] I did say at the very first meeting in September and I said it with peace and love
[3:04:03] and I say it at every meeting and I will continue to say it is that we as a community have to
[3:04:09] have the most open mind that we've ever had when it comes to figuring out how to it's
[3:04:19] not even solve how to handle the situation that is any small that is nobody's fault
[3:04:27] but yet we are the ones together that have to handle it.
[3:04:33] And so I firmly believe that there are more radical solutions
[3:04:39] that can be discussed and chewed on by not just this group,
[3:04:45] but clearly the Dennis Yarmouth Regional School Committee,
[3:04:48] and yes, even our friends across the river,
[3:04:52] because the very fact is we have not included the town of Dennis
[3:04:56] in any of our conversations and I understand that there's a legal and sort of practical
[3:05:00] reason because it is a elementary school project and therefore this entire feasibility study
[3:05:06] and the possible solution of how we handle the future of enemies small is a Yarmouth
[3:05:11] problem.
[3:05:12] I don't personally agree because the truth of the matter is we're in a regional school
[3:05:18] district and we have buildings with classrooms.
[3:05:20] When I moved here in 2004, I don't need to repeat what the school set up was back then.
[3:05:27] Okay? But there were a lot more schools, right? With very distinct grade configurations.
[3:05:35] So I guess what I would say is in the year 2025, both communities have come a long way
[3:05:41] in terms of which grades have to go in which schools.
[3:05:45] And can eighth graders go into high school?
[3:05:48] Yep, they sure can.
[3:05:50] In fact, based on some of the data that I've seen and that Richard's provided,
[3:05:54] and to my, I know, has seen and others can certainly take a look at,
[3:05:59] if we think about our school district as buildings that have classrooms,
[3:06:05] my personal thought, and this is just personal,
[3:06:08] is that we can move everybody out of M.E. Small.
[3:06:13] And we can do that by August of 2026.
[3:06:17] And if that sounds too radical, I'd even grant you August of 2027.
[3:06:21] And that can all be done in a parallel timeline, in a parallel universe,
[3:06:26] while we still try to handle what to do about consolidation
[3:06:32] or a brand-new elementary school.
[3:06:34] I don't know what.
[3:06:35] Now that is a radical idea, but it doesn't mean it can't be done.
[3:06:41] Now, part of the inertia involved in the way that our town and our friends in Dennis and
[3:06:49] the school committee have to operate in is that we have a unique structure where there
[3:06:54] is a regional school committee and the regional school committee has a ton of power granted
[3:07:00] to them by, you know, through the agreement.
[3:07:05] I will end on this.
[3:07:07] I think the fundamental issue and why we're having this discussion tonight and why things
[3:07:12] got really sideways seven, eight years ago between our two towns is because we have
[3:07:18] a fundamental problem with our regional school agreement.
[3:07:23] And until all the responsible parties can come together in the interest of the children
[3:07:29] as well as the employees of the school district, I'm not really sure how we're going to
[3:07:36] handle these problems because we have a regional school agreement that I don't know if anybody
[3:07:40] has actually taken some time to read. It is ripe, I would say, for further discussion.
[3:07:52] And yes, I'm going to use the word amendment. And that is not a judgment on the chair of
[3:07:58] the school committee who is sitting to my right, who I consider a friend. That is not
[3:08:02] not a judgment on Dr. Smith, but until we go way up higher than 30,000 feet, until we
[3:08:10] go to 50,000 feet and we start to work with our friends from Dennis and try to understand
[3:08:16] the issues that they're facing on a more severe level as Richard can attest in terms
[3:08:21] of their seasonal housing numbers and their dwindling population, I don't understand
[3:08:27] and how we can sort of try to solve this little problem.
[3:08:32] It's not even a little problem.
[3:08:33] This little problem is the problem.
[3:08:37] And part of the challenge is, which
[3:08:39] is what you were just discussing earlier with the library
[3:08:41] issue, is the timing of all these competing deadlines
[3:08:46] and all these interests from all these groups.
[3:08:49] Now, I'm being a little glib, and I really
[3:08:51] don't mean to me.
[3:08:54] The school committee and the select board of Yarmouth and the select board of Dennis need to form some sort of working group tomorrow.
[3:09:03] To start working our way out of these, the situation that we're in, it's not anybody's fault.
[3:09:11] But this, but our friends at the MSBA have a set of standards that are going to be very tricky for us to try to convince them that they're wrong.
[3:09:22] When you look at the Lexington High School project, those kind of demographics and those
[3:09:27] kinds of – the way that they approach that project, they actually were able to negotiate
[3:09:32] with the school committee, I believe, in Lexington to shape some of that building despite
[3:09:38] some of the, let's just say, extra requests that they eventually recommended to the taxpayers.
[3:09:45] years. But unfortunately, MSBA doesn't account for seasonal housing. And we're a community
[3:09:53] that has up to 35 percent seasonal housing and our friends across the river even more
[3:09:58] and getting worse. So part of the challenge is that we as both communities and the school
[3:10:05] committee need to come together. Not just to fundamentally look at the agreement, which
[3:10:12] By the way, it has some really glaring emissions that Tracy Post has pointed out, I'm sure
[3:10:16] to all of you, including the fact that the new intermediate middle school is not even
[3:10:20] in the most recent version of the regional school agreement.
[3:10:25] Again, that's nobody's fault.
[3:10:27] But these kinds of things have to get put into a working group as soon as possible
[3:10:34] because we owe it not just to the people that are parents of kids who are in the
[3:10:40] schools now, but we owe it to the hundreds of employees who depend on us for their jobs.
[3:10:50] And I'm excited about the challenge, but I'm also a little bit worried, as I know all of
[3:10:56] you are.
[3:10:57] And I just hope that as we move through this process together, this is an opportunity to
[3:11:04] to not solve a problem but to put forth this bigger, bigger issue, which is how do we educate
[3:11:12] the students in Dennis and Yarmouth and employ these hundreds of people and do it in a way
[3:11:18] that we can afford?
[3:11:21] So I apologize that I went into a lot of different pockets.
[3:11:26] But unlike Richard, this is why we're friends.
[3:11:32] is that Richard is chocolate and I'm peanut butter.
[3:11:36] Because Richard has forgotten more about school enrollment data than I'm ever going to learn.
[3:11:41] But at the same time, that gives me the freedom to say,
[3:11:48] we got to do something about this, and how do we galvanize?
[3:11:51] And I do look to our elected leaders, and I include our chair who is an elected leader
[3:11:56] and the other three members who represent Yarmouth and the fine people who represent Dennis.
[3:12:01] I challenge our elected leaders to do something about it.
[3:12:05] Because this timeline that we're on is very much defined by the MSBA.
[3:12:13] The MSBA sets the rules about when we can submit and what that means and where it goes.
[3:12:19] But in a parallel universe, these bigger discussions about the immediate efficacy and safety of the students
[3:12:28] students and the staff at any small, not to mention the future of Ezra Baker, not to
[3:12:32] mention, I'll say it, seventh graders in the high school, like all these things have to
[3:12:36] be put on the table. And I understand that that might come a shock to some people. But
[3:12:41] when I first moved here, Wixen was fourth grade to eighth grade. Lawrence MacArthur
[3:12:46] was a school that was open, like this is a community and sort of Dennis that is
[3:12:51] used to making radical decisions about the future and the home of their students
[3:12:56] and their staff. So despite what I'm saying might sound a little bit incendiary, or the
[3:13:02] fact that maybe our new intermediate middle school should become a third to sixth school,
[3:13:07] right? Like just because it says three, four, five, six right now doesn't mean that those
[3:13:15] grades have to be there forever. They're buildings with classrooms and we have a responsibility
[3:13:19] to help educate and staff those places in response to the demographic challenges
[3:13:25] challenges that we have, and in addition to the fact that we have a partner.
[3:13:29] We have a partner across the river that I hope we'll start to engage on a parallel timeline.
[3:13:35] Thank you.
[3:13:36] Madam Chair, may I ask a question?
[3:13:40] Well, I heard, loud and clear, what you were saying, and I noticed that you see the
[3:13:46] answer to this in revising the school agreement between the two towns.
[3:13:52] Can you just mention a couple things you think need to be addressed in the school agreement revision?
[3:13:58] I won't profess to understand all the mechanisms in which I would improve the actual school agreement.
[3:14:04] I think it's more of a request to have a dialogue between the school committee and both select boards.
[3:14:15] That's something very different, though.
[3:14:19] I guess what I'm saying is revisions to the regional school agreement would come out of
[3:14:24] a working group of let's say two members of from Yarmouth and two members from Dennis
[3:14:29] and a few members from the school committee working together to then make recommendations
[3:14:33] back to both of all three of those organizations about how to amend this regional school
[3:14:37] agreement.
[3:14:38] There's some like little tiny practical things that I think should be addressed.
[3:14:42] But the way that the school agreement is written, those amendments have a process.
[3:14:48] And they can come from the school committee or they can come from, I believe,
[3:14:51] 10% of the registered voters from either town, and then it has to go to town meeting.
[3:14:56] So I guess what I would say to your question, Joyce, is...
[3:15:00] It'd be much better if there was one package of amendments that went to the towns or went
[3:15:06] to the school committee or came from the school committee to be considered by the towns. You
[3:15:09] know, we have to work all this stuff out as opposed to here's 14 amendments and I have
[3:15:13] them drafted. I don't have that.
[3:15:15] Well, that's not exactly what I'm asking. I mean, I'm in favor of dialogue, of course.
[3:15:21] But given that you feel so strongly that change is needed, could you mention like one or
[3:15:27] two things that you think are key things that ought to be investigated in the dialogue?
[3:15:33] Well, I mean...
[3:15:36] Well, you can start with the fact that you just said the intermediate school isn't in the agreement right now.
[3:15:41] Sure.
[3:15:42] I mean, I think that's important just from a legal standpoint.
[3:15:44] Just, you know...
[3:15:45] Oh, and I think Richard may have a couple others and I can throw a couple in.
[3:15:48] Tomant, you know, it's not like the school committee itself doesn't think about these things.
[3:15:52] I know that they do.
[3:15:53] I know that they do.
[3:15:53] Pre-K should be referenced in the...
[3:15:56] It's not.
[3:15:56] At this point, even though we run a pre-K program, it's not referenced in the agreement at all.
[3:16:02] When was the last time that the school agreement was amended?
[3:16:06] 2019.
[3:16:08] 2019?
[3:16:09] Yeah, and I'm not sure how we missed the intermediates. Again, it's nobody's fault, but somehow the intermediate middle school just wasn't included.
[3:16:15] Chair, I'm a little confused because it's on our agenda, upcoming agenda items, so it's
[3:16:23] not, it's something we've been, we're headed towards, and tonight I thought we were talking
[3:16:30] about-
[3:16:31] And we're small.
[3:16:32] Yes.
[3:16:33] So I'm a little confused.
[3:16:34] That's my fault, Liz.
[3:16:35] Okay.
[3:16:35] Sorry.
[3:16:36] So I'll speak at the pleasure of the chair.
[3:16:42] One of the things that's kind of important to say about what's happening tonight is in
[3:16:48] order for us to talk to each other as opposed to what people outside think we all get on
[3:16:56] the phone and talk to each other every day all the time and we can't do that.
[3:17:00] And the Sunday brunches.
[3:17:01] We can't do that.
[3:17:03] We have to have it on our agenda.
[3:17:05] We have to have an open meeting.
[3:17:08] And so not that any decisions are being made sometimes on what's on our agenda.
[3:17:14] It's just that we're going to talk about these things.
[3:17:16] And this just opens up an opportunity for us to start to talk about it.
[3:17:25] I'm sorry, Thomas, that you weren't invited.
[3:17:28] As the one that actually set the agenda, that really is my fault.
[3:17:31] I'm sorry.
[3:17:33] I guess I just assumed things that weren't in place.
[3:17:35] And that's my fault.
[3:17:36] Because what we do want is very open dialogue.
[3:17:41] What we do want, I'm sure I speak for everyone,
[3:17:44] is that we want to start sitting down and talking about it.
[3:17:47] I was so encouraged over the last couple of years
[3:17:50] with Dr. Smith joining us in seeing the discussions on budget,
[3:17:57] where we actually had both towns and school committee together
[3:18:03] talking about budget long before it used to be that it was just a done thing and
[3:18:08] it came before the board and now to you in February right you have discussions
[3:18:12] in September right right and now what we have is a really I think a very
[3:18:17] dynamic working community group that's starting to look at that and the
[3:18:23] dialogues are opening and the more we can do that the better and I think
[3:18:29] we've all been talking I know I've heard my counterparts in in Dennis
[3:18:32] talk about the agreement, and I know your fellow community members have as well.
[3:18:38] I mean, and our chair, who of course, unfortunately, is not here tonight, would be the first to
[3:18:43] talk about it.
[3:18:45] So I think we all agree well that there needs to be an opening of dialogue on that.
[3:18:52] And what concerns me a little bit in this is, like we just had that whole conversation
[3:19:00] about the library, you know, that in some ways we were kind of lock-stepped into doing things a certain way
[3:19:09] because that's the way we had to do it based on what the state wanted done, or we didn't get the money.
[3:19:16] And it's kind of the same thing going on for this one, too, in space.
[3:19:22] because I learned, for instance, from the planning board when the library came before then,
[3:19:30] that there are actually some leeways that you have in the library planning process
[3:19:36] that are not allowed in the state education process.
[3:19:43] That we're even more in lockstep of what we have to do.
[3:19:49] And what we all need to do, it's almost like this needs to be something that's like an
[3:19:55] ongoing conversation that we're talking about maybe even every five weeks or so,
[3:20:05] that we just keep bringing it up.
[3:20:08] It's not something we have to discuss for an hour and a half and make you poor guys be here at 9.30 at night.
[3:20:14] But we need to start talking about this, and it's to educate us what's going on.
[3:20:23] It's to educate our folks listening at home about what's going on.
[3:20:30] Because the more that they know what's going on, the better.
[3:20:34] And the more that it's discussed here in the open, on TV,
[3:20:41] be as opposed to via social media or whatever else anybody wants to do, the better.
[3:20:49] So on that point specifically, the Emmy Small School Building Committee meetings are recorded.
[3:20:56] There is a dedicated website.
[3:20:59] It needs to be updated because they just changed web design.
[3:21:05] So a lot of that is available.
[3:21:08] We've also, I've specifically asked to have certain, or to add the enrollment, you know,
[3:21:16] to give the entire committee a view into some of the enrollment issues and, you know, certainly
[3:21:24] we'll be asking for agenda items related to school construction costs and trends and
[3:21:29] that sort of information.
[3:21:31] So I think the process is potentially there.
[3:21:34] We just have to keep working on it.
[3:21:36] And I appreciate Mark sort of asking
[3:21:37] to have this brought forward today,
[3:21:39] just because I think it's important to know
[3:21:42] that we are working on that information.
[3:21:45] Well, certainly enrollment's gonna drive
[3:21:47] pretty much everything.
[3:21:49] You need to know how many kids are gonna go
[3:21:52] to the school in order to know
[3:21:53] how big a school you need.
[3:21:55] Right.
[3:21:56] Well, like I say, the short-term answer is,
[3:21:59] it's $150, 150 square feet per student.
[3:22:03] we have about in in district right now roughly 2900 I believe enrolled say
[3:22:12] 3,000 you know so we should have roughly 450,000 square feet of space you're
[3:22:20] talking about the whole school district whole district now we currently have
[3:22:24] of five hundred and six twenty four. Yeah. Six twenty four. Six twenty four. So we have
[3:22:30] a little bit of maybe spare space. Is there because I I there was a very long letter from
[3:22:40] Dr. Smith in our package and the MS now it's not the library MSB MSB they have their
[3:22:50] own way of calculating the enrollment. Is that why you're here is to suggest that we
[3:22:58] need to look harder at this?
[3:23:01] Again, we cannot change their rules. It's their rules. But I think, again, having the
[3:23:09] information about an alternative approach, maybe we're going to recalibrate our thinking
[3:23:16] a little bit. And again, this is really for probably 25 years down the road.
[3:23:21] If you look at the, so one of the interesting things about enrollment is because it's always moving forward.
[3:23:28] So we already have 11-12ths of the answer for next year.
[3:23:35] Because you only lose one year, you add one year.
[3:23:38] So the trends tend to move, shift more slowly than rapidly.
[3:23:46] I'm also curious as to where we're supposed to, where are we putting the ME small students?
[3:23:52] Well, there's 225, roughly 225 full-time students, K through 3, and 75 pre-K.
[3:24:03] So that, you just hit the nail on the head.
[3:24:06] So, if you had to find space for 225 students going full day and 75 divided by 2 because
[3:24:17] it's half day, so, you know, 30 whatever students for the pre-K program, open your mind.
[3:24:25] Look at some of the options.
[3:24:27] We'll see.
[3:24:27] Again, I don't know what all those options are, but I suspect that there are options out there.
[3:24:32] Okay. I just have a hard time picturing that age group at the middle school.
[3:24:41] So that's not what even anybody suggested.
[3:24:44] I'm glad to hear that.
[3:24:46] No, it's just...
[3:24:47] And I don't need to extend this conversation.
[3:24:50] It's just it was a statement that was made.
[3:24:52] And I know we certainly had enough people at town meetings saying we shouldn't have kids there.
[3:24:59] Like I said, everybody, I mean, the select board, the finance committees, the school committee,
[3:25:06] the school staff, everybody says we need to have those kids out of their ASAP.
[3:25:12] The public voted that.
[3:25:14] So that's not the question that we do.
[3:25:18] And again, as to Will's point, the sooner the better.
[3:25:23] My hope, Madam Chairman, is I just wanted to at least begin this conversation here.
[3:25:28] I had no intention that it would end here and there were no votes. No, but people need to understand
[3:25:34] the significance of
[3:25:36] This enterprise that we're embarking upon in my hope is is that when dr. Smith has some time we can continue this
[3:25:43] Conversation, you know with him being present and obviously all of you and and other members of the committee if they're interested
[3:25:50] But I think from my point of view
[3:25:53] I want to make sure that as the board's representative that this board has
[3:25:58] a real grasp of the things that we're wrestling with, and I appreciate everybody being here
[3:26:04] tonight to at least begin the conversation and then we can talk more about how we move
[3:26:11] forward, how we address things.
[3:26:13] I think the biggest thing moving forward will be, you know, everyone's point about
[3:26:17] the feasibility study is what do we look at, right?
[3:26:20] You know, I know we don't automatically need a bright, shiny building.
[3:26:24] I know everyone says we don't need everything new, you know, but that's an option,
[3:26:28] right to build a standalone building new behind the current location. That's a possibility.
[3:26:33] There's a possibility of adding on to Station Avenue Elementary and do it in an expansion there.
[3:26:40] Anyone who drives any type of vehicle on Station Ave, adding an additional 300 people.
[3:26:45] Are you looking at me, the school bus driver?
[3:26:47] Adding an additional 380 people there at the same time. I don't know how I feel about that.
[3:26:51] Or looking at properties that we have throughout the town or a site
[3:26:56] That could house possibly either the Emmy Small community or redistricting the town and splitting
[3:27:06] up Station Avenue and Emmy Small.
[3:27:09] The thing that concerns us about moving further and further away from the current site is
[3:27:14] the same concern you had about the West Yarmouth Library.
[3:27:17] If you take away a school from that section of town, last night they had their school
[3:27:25] concert, their winter concert. There was more people in the Ken Jenks Performing Art Center
[3:27:30] than were at town meeting. There wasn't one seat open. There wasn't parking, as Ms. Wood
[3:27:37] Public found, there wasn't parking for miles. That tiny school that we have has such a
[3:27:43] large community. And to take them and move them out of that area, or move them too
[3:27:50] far would be it would be a concern you're here so yes so we look forward to
[3:27:56] having more like I said once we get accepted and we are able to start
[3:28:00] bidding stuff we definitely want to make sure that you guys are up to data
[3:28:05] where we are on you know hiring someone getting an idea and then you know
[3:28:10] making sure we're all comfortable with the feasibility study of what they're
[3:28:13] looking at and you know as well said everything has to be open right we
[3:28:17] We have to look at all the options.
[3:28:20] When we have engaged the town of Dennis, we're in the process of getting on their town meeting
[3:28:24] for a feasibility study for that building, celebrating a 100-year birthday in a couple
[3:28:29] of years.
[3:28:30] I believe.
[3:28:32] It will never fall down, but what's inside of it.
[3:28:36] So there's discussion of what to look at that.
[3:28:39] As was mentioned earlier with the capital stabilization plan, we have now entered
[3:28:43] our five-year capital plan into the system the Town of Yarmouth does and we're working
[3:28:48] through that so that we know what we're paying for, we know what we'll be looking for from
[3:28:54] the town.
[3:28:54] So again, we really made sure that we're being fiscally responsible to both towns.
[3:29:01] But we understand that there's a lot of things coming up that the Town of Yarmouth
[3:29:04] has to pay on, that we'll have to pay and the taxpayers will have to pay.
[3:29:08] So we're cognizant of that.
[3:29:10] So that's why we will look at all the options.
[3:29:12] And again, bring it to town meeting and let, you know, the town decide what is the best option.
[3:29:19] Can I ask you a quick question on the agreement?
[3:29:23] You know, Will's quite passionate about the need to look at that.
[3:29:28] And have you, as the committee talked about this at all?
[3:29:32] We have not.
[3:29:33] And I can add that as an agenda item.
[3:29:36] Because the only people that can open up the agreement is the school committee.
[3:29:39] Right.
[3:29:40] So, I haven't heard, you know, what I would recommend is that there be a letter from each
[3:29:46] select board requesting and then I can add it to our agenda, you know, to show that there
[3:29:52] is a want and a need.
[3:29:54] That's terrific.
[3:29:55] Thank you.
[3:29:56] Thank you.
[3:29:57] And kudos to Dr. Smith.
[3:29:59] I'm sorry.
[3:30:00] It's not here with us tonight, but he's a breath of fresh air, and I don't, in any way,
[3:30:08] my apologies to him as well. I knew no decision was being made tonight. I knew it was just the
[3:30:16] opening of a door. So please, send that along to Dr. Smith.
[3:30:22] The same situation him and I had is we were unknown of what the full idea and purpose
[3:30:27] of this was. And obviously, now we know it was just like the same thing with, we can't
[3:30:33] speak without speaking in front of each other. So having the information, having different
[3:30:37] point of views, knowing what's going on to date is important. So we can make sure that
[3:30:41] we have that.
[3:30:42] So that you know, yeah, as long as I'm on this committee, I'm going to be wanting
[3:30:45] to have a conversation with the board about all the things that we're talking about.
[3:30:49] And I think it's terrific that you're able to make it and be here and participate.
[3:30:52] So little past my son's bedtime. That's why they might be sitting behind me. I can't see him
[3:30:59] Okay, yeah, we have plenty of chocolate
[3:31:06] Thank you very much appreciate it
[3:31:10] Okay, next item we have on the agenda is
[3:31:15] Update on the dispatch
[3:31:18] We've got Police Chief Kevin Lennon. I saw him there.
[3:31:24] Here he
[3:31:34] comes.
[3:31:38] You coming up, Scott?
[3:31:41] Come on up, Scott.
[3:31:50] He's working his way in the zone.
[3:31:53] No, thank you.
[3:31:57] Good evening.
[3:31:58] Good evening.
[3:31:59] Give me a filter.
[3:32:06] Everyone here after 9 gets double chocolate.
[3:32:11] My dentist was frown on that.
[3:32:14] Okay, I was, oh, here's Chief for Rescue too, and Assistant Chief Scott Smith.
[3:32:21] Assistant Chief, so great to have you with us.
[3:32:24] Thank you.
[3:32:27] Hi there.
[3:32:28] Now we put you on so late.
[3:32:29] I'm sorry about that, guys.
[3:32:31] It's okay.
[3:32:31] Good job.
[3:32:32] It's been an interesting evening.
[3:32:35] I turn it over to you.
[3:32:37] Thank you for having us tonight.
[3:32:38] We're going to do a brief update.
[3:32:42] We like it already.
[3:32:43] That even briefers than you thought?
[3:32:45] Yes, yes.
[3:32:46] On the Regional Emergency Communication Center.
[3:32:49] So I know we were supposed to come a couple months ago,
[3:32:52] but things got stalled.
[3:32:53] But we are moving forward.
[3:32:55] We had a very positive meeting yesterday.
[3:32:57] The fire chiefs met with the three town administrators,
[3:33:00] HR directors, the DPW division commander,
[3:33:04] not commander, but director over at the town of Barnesville
[3:33:08] to give us an update on where they are.
[3:33:10] There's been a lot going on in the background,
[3:33:13] especially over in the town of Barnsville.
[3:33:15] So we're gonna bring up a quick update on what's going on.
[3:33:20] So just remember this all started back in 2022
[3:33:22] when the town of Barnsville approached the town
[3:33:24] of Yarmouth and the town of Sandwich
[3:33:26] and asked if we wanted to be part
[3:33:27] of a regional dispatch center, which we agreed to.
[3:33:30] So a feasibility was funded by 9-1-1.
[3:33:33] The study was done by the Collins Center.
[3:33:35] At the end of the study,
[3:33:36] they determined that a regional police and fire dispatch center for the three towns
[3:33:42] was something that we should move forward with.
[3:33:45] So what that will do for us is we know it's going to improve our dispatch services, it's
[3:33:49] going to improve the working conditions of the dispatch staff, and it's going to decrease
[3:33:53] costs for the towns.
[3:33:54] There will be a decrease overall.
[3:33:57] Some additional benefits, supportive supervision.
[3:34:00] I can speak for the Armistice Department right now.
[3:34:02] We do not have a dedicated supervisor for our dispatch.
[3:34:04] dispatch, we have sergeants that are liaisons, we have a lieutenant that's a liaison, but
[3:34:09] we do not have a supervisor who's actually a dispatcher as well.
[3:34:13] So this regional center will allow personnel to move to the town of Barnsville and then
[3:34:18] attain positions that they will never attain, at least within the Army Police Department.
[3:34:22] We don't have the funding for a training person, we don't have the funding for a supervisor.
[3:34:26] So our dispatchers today with tons and tons of experience will be able to go to
[3:34:31] to another place like this center,
[3:34:33] and then be able to move up.
[3:34:35] So we'll see that.
[3:34:36] Co-worker support, there'll be more people working.
[3:34:39] The police department, we staffed two dispatchers
[3:34:41] from eight o'clock in the morning until midnight.
[3:34:44] The fire department only has one dispatcher.
[3:34:46] You go into a regional center,
[3:34:47] we're gonna have multiple dispatchers working,
[3:34:49] and when that major call comes in,
[3:34:51] they're gonna be able to pull additional resources.
[3:34:53] And the other nice thing about it
[3:34:54] is when we went to Duxbury
[3:34:55] and we talked to the leadership up there,
[3:34:59] where the WREC supervisor is also trained to be a dispatcher.
[3:35:03] So if it really happens, like the unfortunate trench collapse that we had, they would be
[3:35:08] able to pull additional resources and then help with handling the calls.
[3:35:13] Abilities for basic physical needs, the center, the design of it has a kitchen, locker rooms,
[3:35:20] a gymnasium, or a workout center, a recovery room, if one of our dispatchers has to
[3:35:25] to handle a very serious call.
[3:35:26] There's a place that they can go for a little bit of time.
[3:35:30] Ability to handle job complexity and ancillary tasks.
[3:35:34] Coping resources, that would be the room.
[3:35:36] Again, opportunity for promotions and supervisory positions
[3:35:40] and then opportunities for training positions.
[3:35:42] Again, just speaking about the police department,
[3:35:45] we have a sergeant who handles all the training
[3:35:47] for our dispatchers.
[3:35:48] We would be able to take a dispatcher,
[3:35:50] move them into the center,
[3:35:51] and then that would become their focus.
[3:35:52] working on the day-to-day training, the recertification, and then employee advancements.
[3:36:00] Chief, is there anything you want to jump in?
[3:36:01] I'm good.
[3:36:04] So the milestones of the project in July of 2022, we did the study.
[3:36:09] In 23, it was completed.
[3:36:12] In March of 2023, they did a staffing analysis and cost benefit.
[3:36:15] That report was done and it was show that it was favorable for us to move in this direction.
[3:36:21] In July of 23, which was FY24, the town of Barnsville is the host community, so they're
[3:36:27] the ones that are writing the grants.
[3:36:29] So the town of Barnsville received the grant for $373,000 for architectural services.
[3:36:36] In FY25, they got another grant for $238,000.
[3:36:39] That was to extend the architectural services and then start looking at engineering.
[3:36:44] So while this was going on, we, the chiefs, we got together with the town administrator,
[3:36:49] of the town of Barnesville and Sandwich.
[3:36:51] We went and we looked at a couple sites,
[3:36:53] I think, where we could land the dispatch center.
[3:36:57] We looked at the, an area off of Bursha's Way in Hyannis.
[3:37:00] We looked at where the old Hinkley Home Center is,
[3:37:03] kind of near, is that,
[3:37:06] I know, road, right in that area.
[3:37:08] We looked at station three.
[3:37:10] And where we landed was the piece of property
[3:37:12] that is next to the Barnesville Police Department
[3:37:14] right now.
[3:37:15] And the nice piece about that property is,
[3:37:17] It already has curb cuts out on the Finney's Lane.
[3:37:20] There's already gas, water, and electricity right there.
[3:37:24] So it's, and it would be separate from the police department,
[3:37:28] but there would be a fence around it so that it's,
[3:37:30] it's almost in the perimeter of the police department.
[3:37:32] So that location seemed to be the best.
[3:37:34] So they've been working on that in May of 2025.
[3:37:38] There was a building design review meeting.
[3:37:41] So what we've been telling our staff as this is going on
[3:37:44] is that they will be involved in the process.
[3:37:45] So we met with the architect, we met with the designer that was hired by the town,
[3:37:50] and they put up some very loose plans of what the facility could look like,
[3:37:55] and then our dispatchers were able to go in and say,
[3:37:58] did you think about this? Did you think about that?
[3:38:00] Can you move this? Can you move that?
[3:38:03] They looked at what they did up in Duxbury,
[3:38:05] and we took the tour of the rec center up in Duxbury,
[3:38:08] and speaking with the director up there,
[3:38:12] where he was very, he was generous to walk us around and say if in hindsight we should
[3:38:18] have done this, in hindsight we should have done this, and they had a more difficult process
[3:38:23] to deal with than we are because they were expanding in an existing space.
[3:38:27] So they ran out of real estate because we're building this fresh, we have the ability
[3:38:33] to take it from a larger scale and kind of pull it down if we have to.
[3:38:37] So that meeting was very successful, again we allowed our employees.
[3:38:41] the ones that are going to be working in the facility to actually sit there and have input
[3:38:45] on what it's going to look like and how it's going to function.
[3:38:48] And then in FY26, they received another grant for 861,000.
[3:38:53] That is to, excuse me, that's going to be coming up.
[3:38:56] That is for more architectural and design services and then an executive director position.
[3:39:02] So we just, the next line right there that's actually updated, they posted the position
[3:39:08] yesterday.
[3:39:08] today. So when working with the town of Barnstable, they drafted it up, they sent it over to Sarah
[3:39:16] O'Reilly who then sent it out to the town administrator and the chiefs. We got a chance
[3:39:19] to look at it, did some research on our own, made some suggestions on what we thought the
[3:39:23] position should entail and then put it back over to the town of Barnstable. They agreed
[3:39:27] to it and it's been posted. So the goal is to have the position filled by the end
[3:39:34] of January, we will be a part of the interview process. So in the meeting yesterday, the
[3:39:39] town administrators and HR, they talked about how that process should go and what it would
[3:39:43] look like and who would be involved. So the chiefs will be on at least one panel. So
[3:39:50] the idea would be get the applications in, have HR, the three HR directors review the
[3:39:55] applications, make sure we're getting the most suitable candidate, put it to a panel
[3:39:58] of chiefs, the interview is done, and then make a recommendation to the town administrators
[3:40:02] so the final person to be picked.
[3:40:04] So if all goes well, that position could be filled
[3:40:07] by February or March, and then we'll start moving
[3:40:10] on developing operational committees
[3:40:12] and then start getting a little bit deeper into the weeds
[3:40:14] on what happens after that.
[3:40:16] So the next big grant, the application is going to be due
[3:40:20] roughly March, and if everything goes well,
[3:40:23] that grant will be for the beginning of the construction
[3:40:26] of the project, which will be a couple million dollars.
[3:40:29] 901 will only fund what you can get done in a fiscal year.
[3:40:33] So there's a lot of work to be done, but we are moving at a pretty good clip right now.
[3:40:38] There's been work going on in the background, more for the town of Barnesville because again
[3:40:42] they're the host agency, so we have been supporting them as needed.
[3:40:46] But now once we, once the executive director is picked, that person's going to be charged
[3:40:52] with really getting everything up and running, taking over the grant because no department,
[3:40:57] The town of Barnsville has been doing a great job, but the fire chief and the police chief,
[3:41:01] they don't have the bandwidth within the departments to take on this, so we're looking for a subject
[3:41:06] matter expert to take it to the next level and really start getting us going.
[3:41:10] And then once we get that happening with the grant for the building, we then have to
[3:41:16] start working on policies and procedures, SOPs, because we're going to take – the
[3:41:23] The fire is better at their policy shifting from to department to department versus police
[3:41:30] because we're not as coordinated as they are.
[3:41:33] We're a little bit different.
[3:41:34] Some still use 10 codes, other use plain language.
[3:41:38] Barnesville may have a different code for a car stop than Yarmouth doesn't sandwich
[3:41:41] us.
[3:41:41] We need to start working on all of that together.
[3:41:44] And that is stuff that has to happen in the background while the planning is going
[3:41:48] on.
[3:41:48] We talked about a subcommittee for radios and technology.
[3:41:52] I was at a meeting last week looking at three different CAD vendors for our Dispatch and
[3:41:57] Records Management.
[3:41:58] Pick a vendor, it's 18 months to 24 months to get that program up and running.
[3:42:05] So there's a lot of work that needs to be done, but I think we're in a good position
[3:42:09] right now.
[3:42:10] We are moving forward to the hiring of the Executive Director is going to be key,
[3:42:14] and that position is funded through the grant.
[3:42:18] So right now there's no expense to any municipality at this point.
[3:42:21] Great.
[3:42:21] That's good news.
[3:42:24] Well, the great thing then is your executive director is going to be on board when you
[3:42:28] need the most right at the very beginning to get everything shaped.
[3:42:32] That's wonderful.
[3:42:33] Well, that was the thought process.
[3:42:33] And a lot of that came from Chief Burke, from Hyannis, and Chief Chalice, that they want
[3:42:39] to have that person on board.
[3:42:40] The person is going to be a department head for the town of Barnstable.
[3:42:44] And we want that person to come in and be able to have their say and as things
[3:42:50] things move forward instead of getting a bunch of things going and then taking somebody and
[3:42:54] dropping them in and saying here we've already done this for you, now you figure it out,
[3:42:57] the person is going to come on and they're going to work with us in conjunction with
[3:43:01] us.
[3:43:02] So the position reports directly to the town manager in Barnstable but there's an operations
[3:43:07] committee of the chiefs from each town that work with that individual to make sure
[3:43:12] that we are all of our interests are being met and that we're moving in the
[3:43:15] right direction.
[3:43:15] That's fantastic.
[3:43:17] Any questions, Mark?
[3:43:18] can you explain who the chiefs are that are on the committee the names who are
[3:43:23] they the Yarmouth police chief and the arm of fire chief okay the Barnsville
[3:43:28] chief chief genie chalice okay and chief Peter Burke from Barnsville from
[3:43:32] Hyannis fire okay chief Burke from sandwich no relation behind me
[3:43:38] sandwich police chief very good chief Burke do you have anything to say it's
[3:43:43] great that they have you here in Yarmouth and and we very much appreciate
[3:43:47] all your hard work not just in your own community but representing chiefs in the
[3:43:52] fire community around the Cape and around the region and in the nation you
[3:43:56] do a great job and it's great to have you here and it's great to have you
[3:43:59] involved in this project quite frankly.
[3:44:02] This is a great group to work with so this is one of the big things in my career that we want to see happen.
[3:44:10] Thank you for all your help.
[3:44:12] Thank you. Does anyone have any questions, Joyce?
[3:44:17] I have one little one of Chief Lennon. What's an SOP?
[3:44:21] Sorry, Standard Operating Procedure.
[3:44:24] Policy Procedure SOP, so it's really like if you get a call, this is how you respond.
[3:44:30] So police are a little worse, a little different than a fire.
[3:44:34] The fire service, I would say they're a little more organized than we are when it comes to stuff like that because
[3:44:38] your trucks are bigger yeah they have a lot of mutual aid and it's always so
[3:44:48] great to have you all here thank you oh it's wonderful sorry we kept you up so
[3:44:52] late sorry I would say probably six months we could have probably plan on
[3:44:58] coming back and have a little more information
[3:45:00] The director will be appointed at that time and maybe bring that person in to just talk
[3:45:04] about where we are.
[3:45:05] If I could just say, Madam Chair, I think that would be terrific. I think this is one
[3:45:10] of the projects that we've been sort of starving to learn more, and so it is great that you're
[3:45:15] here tonight, but don't beat, don't let the fact that we stay up late and intimidate
[3:45:19] you.
[3:45:21] We'll try to put you early on the agenda.
[3:45:23] Yeah, we can certainly do that, but we appreciate this. I think getting an update on the
[3:45:27] design of the building and how that's progressing. I think that would be a big help in definitely
[3:45:32] meeting the executive director. I think that would be a great opportunity as well.
[3:45:36] It was so exciting to be able to go to Duxbury and see it in operation that day and to think
[3:45:43] that we're going to have that for the future here in the Cape. It's just tremendous.
[3:45:47] Thank you. We look forward to it. Thank you.
[3:45:49] Thank you, okay
[3:45:55] moving on burn building transfer, I think I think our fire chief is probably staying right where he is I
[3:46:05] Didn't say much in the last one, so
[3:46:09] Now you get to talk so madam chair, I'm gonna excuse myself from this discussion
[3:46:34] Thank you, Madam Chair. For those that don't know me, I'm Michael Dutton. I'm the new County
[3:46:38] Administrator. I say new. I've been there for a little over a year. And this project
[3:46:42] project has really taken center stage for a number of years within the county. And we
[3:46:48] are here to give you a little bit of good news for those who haven't been on the board
[3:46:54] for a while. This project started in earnest, I think, back in 2017, and is just about
[3:47:03] at fruition and completion and ready to be turned over to the town of Yarmus, which
[3:47:08] which is very exciting for the group sitting at this table.
[3:47:11] So I will introduce former State Fire Marshal Steve Cohn, who can give you a little bit
[3:47:17] of the background of the building.
[3:47:20] And then the Chiefs can talk a little bit about the agreements they have regionally.
[3:47:26] And Paul Rosala, who's our assets and infrastructure manager, if you have any questions about
[3:47:33] the building itself, he can certainly answer some of those.
[3:47:36] So I'll turn it over to Steve.
[3:47:38] Thank you, Michael.
[3:47:43] I was sitting here in 2022 when we first met with the board.
[3:47:50] And at that time, the former Fire Chief,
[3:47:53] Simonian, had worked with us at the county level
[3:47:57] and had offered the site behind station three.
[3:48:01] As Michael said, this started back in 2017
[3:48:05] when I had just retired at State Fire Marshal and myself
[3:48:08] another gentleman from the county wrote a FEMA grant and were awarded $600,000 to
[3:48:15] have a structural burn building within Barnsville County. At the time the
[3:48:21] intent was to have it be the centerpiece of the rebuilding of the
[3:48:25] old Barnsville County Fire Academy in Hyannis behind the airport. But as a
[3:48:31] result of environmental issues that had been uncovered over there, the
[3:48:38] facility was shuttered. And with the pandemic on the doorstep and not being able to get
[3:48:47] contractors who were DECAM certified to move the project around. Here we are almost into
[3:48:55] 2026, and we still are in the process of getting this completed. But as Michael said,
[3:49:01] it's a very good report tonight. We thank the Board for the willingness of Yarmouth
[3:49:07] to accept this building, the location of it.
[3:49:10] And we have gone forward and been able to complete the building
[3:49:15] with the exception of the live fire component
[3:49:18] that will have to come as part of phase two.
[3:49:22] But it's very clear that the building as it sits there now
[3:49:25] should not remain vacant.
[3:49:27] It's got tremendous capability today
[3:49:31] for the regional fire service community of the county
[3:49:34] to use it and train on it.
[3:49:36] and the Chief will talk about that in a moment.
[3:49:40] Are we going to show that short video
[3:49:41] or the pictures of the building too?
[3:49:44] Sure.
[3:49:46] No, just let's just go forward to it.
[3:49:49] So this is what the the building looks like
[3:49:51] now completed behind the Station 3.
[3:49:55] It was designed to simulate a basic two-and-a-half story
[3:49:59] building very typical of the type of structure
[3:50:02] that you would find here on the Cape
[3:50:05] and with an attached garage
[3:50:06] And the chiefs would speak to the fact that many times fires occurring attached garages that then extend into the home
[3:50:14] So the scenarios that can be built around this are very realistic. So the building is is totally completed now
[3:50:23] structurally
[3:50:25] If you can move forward there chief
[3:50:27] Just a close-up picture of it
[3:50:30] What's on the roof
[3:50:33] that those are just panels that there's nothing out it's not like solar or
[3:50:38] anything like that it's just the construction of the building and the
[3:50:42] stairwell that goes up to the back allows for training to occur and entry
[3:50:46] into that building form a standpoint of tactics from a second floor and this is
[3:50:54] a couple shots of the inside of the building the one on the right is the
[3:50:59] of the second floor, which is open for search and rescue
[3:51:03] and other evolutions.
[3:51:05] The picture on the left-hand side,
[3:51:08] what you see there as something attached to the wall
[3:51:12] and then white tubing is the zero visibility smoke system.
[3:51:18] This is a water-based system.
[3:51:20] It's the same as what you would find
[3:51:22] if you went to a theatrical setting.
[3:51:27] It's non-toxic, it's not anything that would cause any injury upon inhalation to firefighters,
[3:51:35] and it dissipates extremely quickly, so it isn't going to morph out into any type of
[3:51:40] a neighborhood environment.
[3:51:42] It's very safe.
[3:51:43] But what it does allow us to do is to get that building down to zero visibility,
[3:51:48] which is very important for fire training because that's the environment that they
[3:51:51] have to enter a structural fire.
[3:51:56] this we did some testing over there a few months ago and again the picture on
[3:52:02] the left is the actual building that's the the look of the smoke when it when
[3:52:06] it exits the building after being fully charged inside with firefighters going in
[3:52:12] the picture on the on the right I've added to this and this is the next
[3:52:16] phase of our of our project and that's to get the live fire into the
[3:52:21] building, so that that is a picture of what it would look like when one of the props,
[3:52:26] which is fed by propane.
[3:52:28] And think of it as no more than a backyard barbecue grill on steroids, because that's
[3:52:34] really what it is.
[3:52:35] It's just a large, propane-driven fire.
[3:52:39] No contaminants, there's no runoff, there's no overhaul necessary to dispose of anything
[3:52:45] that had been burned.
[3:52:46] It's a very clean environment.
[3:52:48] And what we hope to have when we finish here is a burner on the first floor and also on
[3:52:54] the second floor.
[3:52:55] There are two burn rooms in the building.
[3:52:59] And if we just show you a very short video, this is what would happen.
[3:53:03] This would simulate a kitchen fire.
[3:53:05] Well, that's a bedroom fire, excuse me.
[3:53:15] And that simulates a flash over where fire gets up into the ceiling and then comes
[3:53:20] across.
[3:53:20] So it's a very challenging fire for firefighters to deal with.
[3:53:24] on
[3:53:28] the right, we injected some smoke into this, so that's what would be both the smoke-filled
[3:53:34] environment with a live fire in that room.
[3:53:47] So I would just end by saying that most of the funding that has come since the FEMA grant
[3:53:52] has been as a result of a legislative earmark that Barnstable County has been successful
[3:53:58] in getting each year and very much thankful to the senator and representatives from the
[3:54:04] county who have fought for that earmark year after year at the State House.
[3:54:09] So in talking to the Fire Marshal's office today, the next round of that earmark should
[3:54:14] be available to us within the next two to three weeks.
[3:54:18] The county office will process and manage that, but it's going to allow us now to
[3:54:23] get into getting that live fire into the building itself.
[3:54:27] So at a time, I would hope in the near future, which I might say would be 12 months out,
[3:54:34] you know, maybe you'd like to join us when it's totally finished with Phase 2.
[3:54:38] But the real point tonight is that to get this building in the hands of the fire service
[3:54:44] and let the Chiefs and their training officers do what they can do best
[3:54:48] and expose their firefighters to the training.
[3:54:50] And I think the Chief will talk about that for a moment here.
[3:54:54] All right. Thank you. And I just want to, you know, I would feel terrible not mentioning
[3:55:00] the level of effort and help that I've gotten from the people that are sitting next to me
[3:55:04] now because we wouldn't be here. And the Marshall has been relentless in getting this
[3:55:09] cause done. And his passion for this is remarkable. And obviously with Michael joining us, this
[3:55:15] project was well in hand when I started here in 2023. But the building that you
[3:55:23] behind the station and we're there now and we're getting to the point where it's getting
[3:55:27] exciting and Chief Burke from Sandwich who's representing the Cape and Islands Fire Chiefs
[3:55:32] Association who have been really important in pulling this all together because it's
[3:55:36] going to be a regional project. And then obviously with the Assistant Chief and the
[3:55:41] Deputy Chief now here, the other piece with that is that it's going to directly
[3:55:46] benefit the Yarmouth Fire Department in allowing us to do a lot of training
[3:55:49] training in-house and also allow us to share that as regional assets so we can do a lot
[3:55:55] of training with our mutual aid partners like you brought up before.
[3:55:59] Excuse me, Chief, for interrupting you for one second.
[3:56:01] But would you like to introduce your new Deputy Chief?
[3:56:05] Sure.
[3:56:06] Sure.
[3:56:06] He's hiding back here.
[3:56:07] But he's not official official, but we're putting him to work already.
[3:56:11] But this is Lieutenant McMahon who has been promoted as of the end of this month
[3:56:17] will be the new Deputy Chief of Training, which is fitting for what we're doing here.
[3:56:24] Welcome. Thank you. And congratulations to Scott, Assistant Chief.
[3:56:30] Yeah, that's great.
[3:56:32] So just to kind of go through this quickly, because I know we've been here all night,
[3:56:36] is just to talk about just about the type of training we'll be doing there.
[3:56:42] And I think we listed a lot of interior search and rescue, which we can do without the fire portion,
[3:56:46] but obviously the fire portion makes it a lot more realistic and fun, I guess is the other
[3:56:51] way to look at it.
[3:56:52] But also a lot of May Day down firefighter rescue ground and aerial ladder placement,
[3:56:59] the building will allow us to be a lot of realistic training scenarios by using our
[3:57:04] ground ladders and also working off of our aerial apparatus.
[3:57:08] Obviously hose handling is a big piece of that and with the smoke and with everything
[3:57:13] Anything else that really allows us to train in a very realistic environment and where we
[3:57:17] have to manage the door and allow, all that is a key component to how you train how you
[3:57:23] want the actual event to go and if it's a lot more realistic it makes us better.
[3:57:28] So navigating the smoke, live fire, and it does also allow some technical rescue aspects
[3:57:34] with repelling and roof entry type work and the way the building is designed also
[3:57:40] allows for some – for a lot of creativity and designing scenarios for us to train our
[3:57:46] firefighters.
[3:57:47] Great.
[3:57:48] So –
[3:57:49] I – the Chief mentioned Chief Burke, but I think it is important that we do realize
[3:57:54] that he's done tremendous work with the other fire chiefs across the county so that
[3:58:00] there is a total partnership here, and maybe if you could just speak to that for a moment.
[3:58:05] Yeah, real quick.
[3:58:06] So I've been involved from the beginning, eight years.
[3:58:08] I was in front of this board four years ago with the initial agreement.
[3:58:12] So for the board members to understand all Cape Departments are in, including the islands, all paying the same fee.
[3:58:20] So there's a kind of a entrance fee. And then when you use the building, there's another set of fees.
[3:58:26] No impact to the town of Yarmouth. You're the host.
[3:58:29] But we have complete buy-in. We've had significant chief turnover in the last four or five years.
[3:58:34] doesn't matter. Each department that comes in with a new chief are all bought in because
[3:58:38] this is a regional asset, centrally located, this side of the bridge, state of the art,
[3:58:44] safe, clean technology. So there is just 100% support. I just want to make sure that I emphasize
[3:58:51] that. And the fact that the islands are involved in paying and part of this and for
[3:58:56] them to be able to come over here and use it I think is another critical aspect.
[3:58:59] So, the Chief's done a great job.
[3:59:02] Marshall Cohn has been the driver on this.
[3:59:04] Yarmus the perfect location for this geographically.
[3:59:07] And the Cape Chiefs can't be more supportive
[3:59:09] of this moving forward.
[3:59:12] Thank you.
[3:59:14] So I think, Michael, the hope is that there's an exchange.
[3:59:21] Right.
[3:59:21] So I started by saying that.
[3:59:23] Get to the mic first, please.
[3:59:26] I started by saying that we're
[3:59:28] sort of coming to the end of this long process, we've got a little bit more work to do with
[3:59:34] the live fire, which the Marshal explained. And our hope is that within the next several
[3:59:41] months we can turn the building over to Yarmouth. And so it becomes an asset of Yarmouth.
[3:59:49] The firefighters, the chiefs, the islands and the Cape departments can use it. So that
[3:59:55] That is our hope, even though there's not live fire in there currently.
[4:00:00] There will be, but as the Chiefs both said, there's every opportunity to use that building
[4:00:05] right now for any number of different training scenarios. So our hope is to turn it over. The
[4:00:12] sooner we turn it over, the more quickly that they can use it. So that is our hope going
[4:00:17] forward.
[4:00:20] Okay. And if possible, I think this evening we'd like the approval of the select board
[4:00:26] to authorize the town administrator to prepare the documents to take control of the facility
[4:00:32] on behalf of the town.
[4:00:34] Okay, and as always, I have to ask, is there any cost to us for doing this?
[4:00:42] Wow.
[4:00:43] That sounds fantastic.
[4:00:44] Well, I'll entertain a motion.
[4:00:47] I make a motion that we approve enthusiastically what has been presented to us today.
[4:00:53] I think we have to be specific to that.
[4:00:55] and to authorize the town administrator to authorize the town administrator to proceed
[4:01:05] on this.
[4:01:06] Thank you.
[4:01:06] Do I have a second?
[4:01:08] You do.
[4:01:08] I have a couple of questions.
[4:01:10] And then we have discussion.
[4:01:11] A second.
[4:01:12] Liz.
[4:01:14] After the concerns at the previous fire academy, fire facility, will there be any
[4:01:21] spraying of the chemicals for putting the fires out?
[4:01:26] No ma'am, just water.
[4:01:27] Just water.
[4:01:28] Just water.
[4:01:29] And I tried to emphasize and I think it's important that this is new technology.
[4:01:35] This is state of the art.
[4:01:36] This is as clean as you can get when it comes to fire training.
[4:01:40] The older academy and many of them around the state and around the country,
[4:01:46] burn straw and wood pallets.
[4:01:49] Yeah.
[4:01:49] And it's very realistic and it's needed for the type of training that those academies do.
[4:01:55] But we recognize very early on in conversation with the town manager and with others that
[4:02:02] because this is Barnsville County and because of many concerns that would come with the
[4:02:06] aquifer and water or anything else that this is strictly the barbecue on steroids,
[4:02:14] water-based theatrical smoke in water.
[4:02:17] Okay.
[4:02:18] And there's nothing more to it than that.
[4:02:20] Great.
[4:02:21] Happy to hear it.
[4:02:22] Well, it's a very important question because the environment is very important to all of
[4:02:27] us too, even the ones that wear the uniforms.
[4:02:29] Yes, yes, indeed.
[4:02:31] In fact, we've had conversations about our concern over the uniforms themselves and
[4:02:36] the effects they've had on fire workers.
[4:02:39] And administratively, who's going to be in charge of booking the sessions and so
[4:02:45] on?
[4:02:45] Sure.
[4:02:46] So it'll be handled through the Armth Fire Department, specifically through our training
[4:02:50] officer, our training deputy, and we're going to work out exactly how we do all that.
[4:02:57] We use a similar facility, and we've been using it because of a lack of resource here
[4:03:02] in Fall River and New Bedford, so we kind of understand how that works, and we do
[4:03:07] have agreements through the Cape and Islands Fire Chiefs Association, so they'll book
[4:03:12] through us, they'll pay us, and it'll all be managed through ours.
[4:03:16] Okay, so there's a fee involved with it, and so the time that you're putting in on that
[4:03:21] administration will be compensated.
[4:03:23] Yes, yes.
[4:03:24] Now there's an annual assessment that'll go towards that, and also to any repairs or any
[4:03:29] other work that we need to do to the building, and then there's an actual use fee for the
[4:03:33] day.
[4:03:34] Right, sir.
[4:03:34] Thank you.
[4:03:35] Yep.
[4:03:36] It's so exciting to have so many talented firefighters here.
[4:03:40] Any questions?
[4:03:41] I have no questions.
[4:03:42] Thank you.
[4:03:42] Neither do I.
[4:03:43] So we'll call for a vote.
[4:03:45] All those in favor?
[4:03:46] Aye.
[4:03:46] Aye.
[4:03:47] Opposed?
[4:03:48] Mark is abstaining on this vote.
[4:03:51] And thank you all very much.
[4:03:54] We appreciate you being up here.
[4:03:55] That's official.
[4:03:56] Thank you.
[4:03:57] Thank you very much.
[4:04:01] Scott and Chris, congratulations on your new role.
[4:04:13] OK.
[4:04:14] Next on the agenda, we have a discussion vote
[4:04:16] on the National Grid gas storage tank replacement.
[4:04:19] Thank you for your patience for waiting all this time.
[4:04:24] We're kind of not doing it at the time we said we would be doing it.
[4:04:27] She's in an hour.
[4:04:33] It's all you pacing.
[4:04:36] Trying desperately to stay awake.
[4:04:39] I don't do well sitting still, you know.
[4:04:43] Thanks for being here.
[4:04:45] Where's the woman who's driving us?
[4:04:49] Wow, there you go.
[4:04:54] I hope he hit you up for a little help.
[4:05:03] Thank you to the select board. My name is Matthew O'Brien. I'm representing National
[4:05:09] Grid and the project as the outreach coordinator, outreach specialist. Joining me today is Brandon
[4:05:16] Maloney. He's the project manager and Joe Carroll, our community guru here. So we'll
[4:05:25] Just to keep it brief, I know it's been a long night, but really been eager to sit before
[4:05:32] the board and just provide some information on what the company's identified as a really
[4:05:38] important project and need for both the town of Yarmouth and the Cape.
[4:05:44] So briefly going to run through our presentation here on the South Yarmouth LNG tank replacement.
[4:05:51] Just from a geographical standpoint, if you focus on the map there, that shows our supply
[4:05:58] chain, and you'll see on the far right is our South Yarmouth, that green dot is South
[4:06:05] Yarmouth tank located on White's path, serves about 120,000 customers on Cape Cod using
[4:06:11] pipeline gas, the South Yarmouth LNG tank, and some small portable operations.
[4:06:18] Geographically, you know, Cape Cod customers are at the end of the supply chain.
[4:06:22] And the South Island LNG tank is the critical backstop for ensuring that the reliability,
[4:06:30] ensuring the reliability of gas service to these customers.
[4:06:35] So in terms of the supply, you know, the gas in the tank is in liquid form.
[4:06:42] It's been, the tank itself has been in operation since 1972.
[4:06:45] And on the coldest days of each year, the gas is then vaporized and sent through our pipes
[4:06:50] to supplement the typical volume used to serve customers on the Cape.
[4:06:56] In fact, the tank provides more than two-thirds of the gas needed to serve the approximately
[4:07:01] 30,000 customers located within our service territory to the east of the facility.
[4:07:06] And without this gas, it would be difficult to reliably serve winter heating customers
[4:07:12] on Cape Cod.
[4:07:13] So
[4:07:16] in terms of the project need, the LNG tank has been in service since the early 1970s
[4:07:22] and is regularly inspected.
[4:07:25] The most recent series of inspections indicated that the tank is approaching its useful,
[4:07:32] the end of its useful life.
[4:07:34] The inability to operate the facility during the winter months would lead to the
[4:07:38] the curtailment of, like I said, approximately 30,000 gas
[4:07:43] customers east of Yarmouth.
[4:07:46] As you can see, Brewster, Chatham, Dennis, East Ham,
[4:07:49] Harwich, and all the way up to Orleans.
[4:07:52] So in an effort to solve this, we explored a series of options.
[4:08:00] Just going through, we first looked
[4:08:02] at utilizing portable LNG.
[4:08:04] We found that there was an insufficient amount of LNG trucks available during the winter
[4:08:11] to meet customer needs without South Yarmouth supplies.
[4:08:15] Then we looked at new gas transmission, but there's no new proposed gas transmission pipelines
[4:08:22] in the area.
[4:08:24] And thirdly, we looked at electric conversion and energy efficiency, but there's a low
[4:08:30] probability of customer conversion to electricity and an inability to address this with gas energy
[4:08:37] efficiency.
[4:08:38] So what we landed on was the tank replacement project, and it's the only remaining viable
[4:08:44] solution that the company saw to maintain supply for our existing customers.
[4:08:55] So our proposal is an on-site replacement of the existing 2.1 million gallon tank
[4:09:01] tank with a new 1.7 million gallon tank. That's approximately a 20% reduction in volume.
[4:09:08] And because of the need to ensure continuity of service, the new tanks can be built adjacent
[4:09:14] to the existing tank and then the old tank will be decommissioned once the new tank
[4:09:20] is operational. While the new tank is smaller in capacity,
[4:09:25] it's going to be taller to comply with enhanced safety requirements that were not
[4:09:29] in effect when the original tank was built in the 1970s. This project that we're proposing
[4:09:37] is going to take approximately two years.
[4:09:42] So we have some visual. Here you'll see the
[4:09:47] existing structure. As you can see it's built below grade so there's a trench and it's
[4:09:56] It's located, if you can see kind of in the top right, there's the existing structures,
[4:10:02] the larger white, and then up to the right is the proposed new tank on our site.
[4:10:13] This is a simulation of the new tank.
[4:10:19] Just to highlight, you'll see the trench that I explained in the previous image.
[4:10:23] This tank is going to be built, what's considered on-grade.
[4:10:27] So there was no need for trenching or any other safety requirements.
[4:10:37] Here you'll see a visual simulation of what the current aerial view depicts.
[4:10:44] There's the old tank.
[4:10:49] And then this is what, you know, the visual simulation of the new tank.
[4:10:55] You'll see it in the top right there.
[4:10:58] and then you'll see we have safety fire road upgrades to the north that you'll
[4:11:07] see there's a little bit of clearing involved within our property for the
[4:11:13] upgraded safety requirements.
[4:11:19] And then finally this is once the old tank is
[4:11:22] commissioned. This is the aerial view with the new tank, fire road, stormwater
[4:11:31] protection, and the bottom right there.
[4:11:40] So in terms of next steps, this is why I
[4:11:43] was eager to present to the board this kicks off our community engagement so
[4:11:47] you know this this is going to be where I'm going to go out into the
[4:11:52] community explain the project need, introduce the project scope, take
[4:11:56] community input, you know, Brendan and the team, we're going to be on-boarding construction
[4:12:02] and engineering vendors and completing our design. And going forward, you know, I'm
[4:12:09] going to be point of contact within the community in terms of all outreach and, you know, we'll
[4:12:15] begin our communication schedule. It begins really with a website that we'll share
[4:12:20] with the town where folks, if they have any questions, you know, all updates
[4:12:25] would be posted on there and then subsequently mailed and or hand delivered by myself to
[4:12:31] the neighborhood.
[4:12:33] So as we continue to develop and move forward with this project, the community will be
[4:12:40] updated in accordance with any new construction developments or anything.
[4:12:46] In this town we have some very active neighborhood associations.
[4:12:50] So is that your one of your goals is to go out then and to meet with each of the associations?
[4:12:55] Absolutely, butters, neighborhood associations.
[4:13:00] Really anyone that is interested, you know, we cast a wide net starting with the neighborhood,
[4:13:07] but it will, you know, extend to those associations, yes.
[4:13:12] Part of the process was actually meeting with the fire.
[4:13:16] On a regular yearly basis, they bring their apparatus around for training visually on that.
[4:13:22] We actually just completed a training effort with them at their station.
[4:13:27] So we went to them just to go through, gather some input from that.
[4:13:31] Obviously, the building commissioner going through this, that next step was to come here from the informational.
[4:13:37] And this is all collaboration, we just want to engage everybody.
[4:13:41] and as Matt mentioned, that next step is going further onto that.
[4:13:45] So it's just simple steps to keep going, but it's going to be kind of growing up from that.
[4:13:53] When I mentioned the neighborhood associations, I mean beyond the abutters, I mean the town
[4:13:58] of Yarmouth, because when folks hear that there's going to be a gas tank replacement
[4:14:04] in town, I think they all need to be informed.
[4:14:06] We're here for all the community from that in, as Matt Suwani, he has that in, Billy,
[4:14:11] my team, we're all here from that side.
[4:14:15] And it's, as we just experienced from cold days, you know, it's a vital component on
[4:14:21] it.
[4:14:21] And what we're trying to do is the prudent step.
[4:14:25] We listen to a lot of dialogue tonight going through.
[4:14:29] And what we're trying to do is be proactive so we're not here saying, hey, time out,
[4:14:36] We got to be we got to be doing something totally different, right? We have to do it quick. We have to go this what we're trying to do is engage
[4:14:42] Everyone in the town
[4:14:44] For where it is. So I walked through the steps. Yeah, and it's just not just the butters. We have a butters right there
[4:14:50] It's all commercial on that side, but we're going through everything from that in so it's that concept
[4:14:56] Yes, actually keeping you here tonight was actually a good learning
[4:15:00] Experience for you on community contact.
[4:15:02] Yes, it was very enlightening, engaging, and I've learned a lot.
[4:15:09] The other thing I'll add too is we do open houses as part of our outreach.
[4:15:13] So it's a lot of information gathering in the beginning from this point on.
[4:15:18] So we rely on multiple different outlets from an outreach standpoint.
[4:15:23] Again, like I said, the website really, it can be shared with the town.
[4:15:27] You know it really starts that process and then we have a dedicated communication schedule and part of that is you know
[4:15:34] meeting with those community organizations
[4:15:37] Having open houses, you know hosting where we can really go in depth on the project bringing project experts in
[4:15:43] so the the the point and
[4:15:46] Just to piggyback up what Joe said it is really to start at start here with the information
[4:15:52] And then every step of the way, just make sure that the community,
[4:15:57] that's in my capacity, that the community is aware of what's going on.
[4:16:03] Okay. Mark?
[4:16:05] Thank you. It's great to see you.
[4:16:07] I can attest firsthand to National Grid's commitment to community involvement and community engagement.
[4:16:16] I appreciate your approach to this job.
[4:16:19] I've seen national grid sort of in action, and I very much think that this is, you know,
[4:16:29] I don't think we'll tax you as much as we taxed everybody this evening,
[4:16:33] but I think the fact that you're accessible, you'll be doing open houses,
[4:16:38] you're doing the outreach, knocking on doors, letting people know what's going on,
[4:16:42] I think it's terrific.
[4:16:43] And I think it's terrific that the grid is heavily involved in updating its infrastructure.
[4:16:48] This has been an ongoing process that the company has been engaged in for many, many years.
[4:16:55] It's incredible the amount of investment in new, modern, safer infrastructure.
[4:17:03] It's just amazing what's been going on.
[4:17:05] So it's great that you're doing this here in Yarmouth.
[4:17:09] I certainly appreciate what you're doing and I appreciate your approach.
[4:17:13] It's great.
[4:17:14] So thank you.
[4:17:16] Now, do we have a vote to make?
[4:17:17] I noticed that there was something about a vote on our agenda.
[4:17:20] Do you need a vote from us?
[4:17:21] No.
[4:17:22] Okay.
[4:17:23] That's good.
[4:17:23] Thank you.
[4:17:25] Comments, Liz.
[4:17:28] Yes.
[4:17:29] I just want, I noticed that the new tanks can be slightly smaller in capacity.
[4:17:33] Yes.
[4:17:33] And I think that's great because right down the road you have the Cape Light Compact
[4:17:37] who's working feverishly to get us to not use so much gas and to get more renewables
[4:17:44] going.
[4:17:45] And when I go home tonight and I start my gas-fired fireplace,
[4:17:49] I'm going to whisper, thank you, national grid.
[4:17:53] No, that is critical, right?
[4:17:55] And as a company, we're falling along that.
[4:17:58] But as we all know and have seen, to get to that final point
[4:18:03] where everyone's reaching is a little bit off in the distance.
[4:18:06] And we need to at least ensure that our current customers
[4:18:11] Oh, yeah.
[4:18:12] I'll count them where they are, especially as this cold starts coming.
[4:18:17] Yes.
[4:18:18] It's coming.
[4:18:19] It's here.
[4:18:19] And I would also note that National Grid is the funder, partial funder of our energy manager
[4:18:26] that we now have here in Yarmouth, our part timer.
[4:18:30] Now, as Mark mentioned, we try to step forward in the community and be part of it.
[4:18:36] I know we've done, and there was some, you know, earlier questions, we've done a lot of customer advocacy meetings, you know, around the Cape.
[4:18:46] I think we've reached probably around a dozen already in and around trying to make sure everyone's comfortable, learn the new things from that end.
[4:18:53] I know that, you know, recently some of the stuff, a lot of hits have been coming on on food.
[4:18:58] We just made a $25,000 to the Cape Cod Food Pantry as well, you know, from then and so
[4:19:06] it's something to be part of, you know, the community again, as Matt mentioned, this is
[4:19:12] just that step.
[4:19:13] We want to involve everybody for doing this.
[4:19:16] Great.
[4:19:16] Thank you.
[4:19:17] Joyce?
[4:19:18] Mr. Phil, could you make sure that whoever does the publicity for the open houses sends
[4:19:26] an invitation to the select board I think we would love to come. Oh yeah no
[4:19:30] question. Yeah like I said I mean the website is you know we we typically will
[4:19:34] share it with the town so that you know if things get posted that we post you know
[4:19:41] it can just be another avenue for for folks to get eyes on it so we
[4:19:46] certainly every every invite you know every update will be going to the
[4:19:51] select board as well. And for the scope of this project Matt is you know
[4:19:54] That's a point of contact and doing all that while we still have myself and Billy.
[4:19:59] I know Billy has been, you know, having involved, so you have multiple points in that one,
[4:20:04] but you'll be updated with it all.
[4:20:06] Thank you.
[4:20:07] If you need a few more guys in tomorrow, the next time you come, a few more people.
[4:20:14] We didn't have any uniforms, so that was, you know.
[4:20:18] I do know, as just being on the project, you know, I can speak to the work
[4:20:22] that the project teams put in. So, you know, Brendan was eager to join us as well and, you
[4:20:30] know, there's been a lot of study and examination on this from an engineering standpoint. So,
[4:20:35] thank you.
[4:20:37] Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
[4:20:39] Thank you.
[4:20:39] Thank you.
[4:20:41] Thank you.
[4:20:42] Thank you.
[4:20:43] And take some fuel with you.
[4:20:44] Thank you.
[4:20:45] There's only some candy there.
[4:20:47] It'll keep me up.
[4:20:54] Okay. At this point, I will turn it over to our appointment chair. Thank you, Madam Chair.
[4:21:02] We have a robust list tonight.
[4:21:06] First, I'd like to propose I'll give them a chance to
[4:21:11] get out. There you go.
[4:21:28] So for anyone who's been worried about the well-being of the
[4:21:31] Energy Committee. We are doing really well. We're up to six members of the, well, with
[4:21:39] the two proposed tonight, we're up to six members of the seven maximum. I'd like to
[4:21:46] propose Barry Margolin as a member of the Energy Committee, a three-year regular appointment
[4:21:55] that would run from January 1st, 2026 to December 31st, 2028.
[4:22:02] Second.
[4:22:04] So moved.
[4:22:06] So moved.
[4:22:07] Yep.
[4:22:08] So moved.
[4:22:09] Discussion?
[4:22:09] Second.
[4:22:10] Yep.
[4:22:10] All in favor?
[4:22:11] Aye.
[4:22:12] Thank you.
[4:22:13] Then also for the Energy Committee and also a returning member from a previous year,
[4:22:19] I'd like to nominate Susan Starkey for a regular three year appointment to run from January
[4:22:26] 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2028.
[4:22:32] So moved.
[4:22:33] Second.
[4:22:34] Any discussion?
[4:22:36] All in favor?
[4:22:37] Aye.
[4:22:38] Aye.
[4:22:39] Now, this next paragraph is all people from the planning board to represent planning
[4:22:47] on other committees.
[4:22:48] The dates are all the same except for the final one.
[4:22:52] Would you like me to make a combined motion?
[4:22:55] That sounds wonderful.
[4:22:57] Okay.
[4:22:59] I nominate as Planning Board Representative Positions
[4:23:03] Deirdre Gakwin to Community Housing Committee
[4:23:07] Joanne Crowley to Community Preservation Committee
[4:23:10] Peter Slovak to the Design Review Committee
[4:23:13] Susan Britta to the Drive-In Utilization Committee.
[4:23:17] committee. I didn't even know we still had that. And to the Library Building Committee,
[4:23:22] Ken Smith to the Land Disposition Committee and Water Resource Advisory Committee, Will
[4:23:29] Rubenstein to the Community and Economic Development Committee, and those would be for
[4:23:35] this calendar year, January 1st through December 31st of 2026.
[4:23:41] 2026. So moved. Second. Discussion? All in favor? All right. Then one final appointment
[4:23:50] from the planning board to another committee and that's Tom Pendleton to the capital budget
[4:23:56] committee and that will be made effective May 1st, 2026 to run through December 31st,
[4:24:03] 2026. The odd timing is because of the devotion of our volunteers. Somebody who's leaving
[4:24:11] the committee has a project to finish and it's going to work through April on it.
[4:24:18] Second?
[4:24:19] Discussion?
[4:24:20] All in favor?
[4:24:23] Okay, then exciting.
[4:24:25] We move down to the Public Arts Committee and our very first appointments.
[4:24:31] I'd like to propose Marianne Agresti for a regular three-year appointment to run from
[4:24:38] January 1st, 2026 to December 31st, 2028.
[4:24:43] So moved.
[4:24:44] Second.
[4:24:45] Discussion?
[4:24:47] All in favor?
[4:24:48] Aye.
[4:24:49] Thank you.
[4:24:50] And I'd also like to propose Mary Velbin for a regular appointment of two years to
[4:24:57] run from January 2026 to December of 2027.
[4:25:02] So moved.
[4:25:03] Second.
[4:25:03] Discussion?
[4:25:04] Aye.
[4:25:06] All in favor?
[4:25:06] Aye.
[4:25:07] Then finally, we have reappointments of two constables, Constable Paul Rooney and Constable
[4:25:16] John D. Serkham, both currently serving to be reappointed for calendar year 2026, January
[4:25:23] 1st through December 31st.
[4:25:26] So moved.
[4:25:27] Second.
[4:25:28] Discussion?
[4:25:30] All in favor?
[4:25:31] Aye.
[4:25:31] Aye.
[4:25:32] Thank you.
[4:25:35] Thank you very much.
[4:25:37] Now we'll move on to the approval of the minutes for the February 4th, 2025 meeting.
[4:25:42] I move we approve the minutes February 4th, 2025.
[4:25:47] Do I have a second?
[4:25:49] Second.
[4:25:51] Discussion, all in favor?
[4:25:53] Aye.
[4:25:54] Wonderful.
[4:25:55] That's passed.
[4:25:56] And moving on to upcoming agenda review, one thing that Joyce has brought up is that unfortunately,
[4:26:04] She would not be available for the 13th of January and is asking if there's a possibility
[4:26:10] that we could move it to either January 20th or the energy manager update, you mean?
[4:26:19] The energy manager update?
[4:26:20] Of the meeting.
[4:26:21] Of the meeting.
[4:26:22] Of the meeting.
[4:26:22] Of the whole meeting.
[4:26:23] The whole meeting.
[4:26:25] Okay.
[4:26:26] How does everyone feel about moving it from January 13th to January 20th?
[4:26:31] Anyone going away on vacation or anything?
[4:26:33] So that's the Tuesday following in the Martin Luther King Day holiday.
[4:26:38] Or the 27th.
[4:26:41] This is funny to have the two meetings.
[4:26:43] It would be a lot harder.
[4:26:45] That's further away.
[4:26:47] I think that it would be better to do January 20th.
[4:26:50] Yeah, I can't make it.
[4:26:51] You can't make it.
[4:26:54] I have another commitment that night.
[4:26:56] Okay.
[4:26:57] Well, I can zoom in.
[4:27:00] I'll be zooming in January 6th and January 13th.
[4:27:04] because when we made these plans, I never thought there'd be two adjacent weeks in January.
[4:27:10] Well, we'll keep them the way they are then. Sorry, Joyce.
[4:27:14] I'll just have a little squeaky electronic voice.
[4:27:18] Let's just hope that you don't cause the fires out in L.A. the way you did the last time you were out there.
[4:27:25] I didn't bring them, I swear. We looked down from the plate and saw it.
[4:27:30] Okay, moving on to the agenda items. How does the meeting look then for January 6th?
[4:27:39] We have the golf fees hearing, annual fee use review hearing, which I think is great having that on,
[4:27:46] because we did say we wanted to make the commitment to having that January every year going forward.
[4:27:52] so it's great to see that.
[4:27:54] We have a tentative for a budget workshop, and then discussion in economic development,
[4:28:02] community and economic development committee update, special event funding recommendations,
[4:28:09] and discussion on Title V tax credits.
[4:28:14] Is that pretty well filled up then?
[4:28:18] I would say that budget workshop and everything that's going to be a big meeting, especially
[4:28:24] the economic development, I think, because this is going to be our first chance to really
[4:28:27] start talking with the new people about where we're going from here.
[4:28:32] Yeah.
[4:28:33] Okay.
[4:28:34] I would like to propose that we add, in the consent agenda for that night, a letter
[4:28:41] of support to the Attorney General in support of our zoning by-law changes.
[4:28:48] Those were sent to the Attorney General, and I think it would be helpful for the Board
[4:28:52] to be way in in support of those zoning amendments.
[4:28:56] So I'd be happy to-
[4:28:57] As a consent agenda, so-
[4:28:58] As a consent agenda, I don't want a discussion on it, it's not necessary because we've
[4:29:01] already been on record.
[4:29:02] We're just supporting it.
[4:29:03] There's no need to do that.
[4:29:04] But I'm happy to work with the Administrator on a draft letter if that's okay.
[4:29:08] That sounds correct, Mark.
[4:29:10] Thank you.
[4:29:13] And depending on where grant deadlines fall, I would love to have an update from the energy
[4:29:22] manager.
[4:29:23] But it may be that there are no deadlines in the winter.
[4:29:28] It may be that they're spring, but I just would love to know what's going on because
[4:29:33] there are all sorts of grants that I'd love to hear what she thought of.
[4:29:37] The energy manager is on the 13th choice.
[4:29:41] Oh well, I'll listen and I'll talk in a little squeaky voice.
[4:29:46] There you go.
[4:29:48] Okay, any updates?
[4:29:51] Well, before we move on, I just wondered, there was a priority on the discussion of the parks and buildings.
[4:29:59] things.
[4:30:00] Mostly the park's management. And that was supposed to be a priority because we're going
[4:30:06] to be having.
[4:30:07] Do we have that slated somewhere on our agenda?
[4:30:11] I don't think so.
[4:30:12] Well, I think what I would recommend, I would agree with Liz that it needs to be a priority.
[4:30:17] We just need to find a place to stick it. And I think we need to really work with
[4:30:22] the administrator on when to bring it up because there are two major park-related topics.
[4:30:28] One is having – we can't open up the drive-in site until we have a plan for the management
[4:30:35] and the use of that.
[4:30:36] Right.
[4:30:36] That's what we were thinking.
[4:30:38] Right.
[4:30:38] That's been hanging out there for a while.
[4:30:40] And, you know, Kathy's been wicked busy on so many other things that my sense is
[4:30:47] that part of the challenge in getting it all done is just staff time.
[4:30:52] And I'm not sure it needs to be set up so that we can – I'd like to deal
[4:30:56] with that and have a broader discussion about how we're managing and handling park issues
[4:31:01] across the board because it continually comes up, you know, especially on the park areas
[4:31:10] that have invasives, fragmites, and other sort of, I would say, more heavy maintenance.
[4:31:19] But I think it's been a while since we've talked about our parks and how they're being
[4:31:22] managed and how they're upkeep.
[4:31:23] Yeah.
[4:31:25] And we may very well have to have a conversation with the administration.
[4:31:29] It may very well be that there may be more staff or more resources needed to support that.
[4:31:35] We should probably go through our budget workshop first.
[4:31:38] So do that on the 13th?
[4:31:40] Yeah.
[4:31:41] So I would defer to the administration.
[4:31:43] I think you're rushing it.
[4:31:44] I think let's go through that and then let's pick a time and figure out.
[4:31:48] And, in addition, I know that we're starting the project now of working on developing some
[4:31:57] proposed policies for the management and operation of the new Parker's River Landing Park.
[4:32:04] But that's not going to be done by the 13th, so we need a little more time to do that.
[4:32:08] And but we're working on it and we have a team and then, you know, I think on
[4:32:14] the budget we need to have a real talk before we start adding positions.
[4:32:23] I'm just saying it's going to be significant discussion and we need to
[4:32:28] do it when you feel that we'll be ready for it Bob. Can we cross off regional
[4:32:34] dispatch update? Is that what we had tonight?
[4:32:39] Before we go too far let's
[4:32:41] resolve the park stuff when do you think Bob that's likely to be in February or yeah I would I would
[4:32:49] say let's get let's do the budget workshop and we need to get oriented right toward that and then
[4:32:59] maybe that February 3 meeting yeah let's let's put that in there maybe a first cut at a park as
[4:33:06] River Park Plan, Park Management Plan, tie those together. Does that make sense, Bob?
[4:33:15] Having the conversation together at least. Yeah, I was thinking, I have to kind of check
[4:33:21] we don't have a draft yet on Parker's River, but my concern is the idea that we're going
[4:33:29] to be adding new people to just do overall park management, that we should at least
[4:33:34] start having that discussion and we should do it we should have our budget
[4:33:37] workshop first and then start talking about that because there's a few things
[4:33:43] we'd like to add and one of the one of the big things that we've been talking
[4:33:48] about you know there's facilities managers park managers that honestly we
[4:33:55] don't have any money to do any of it so I'm really really concerned see what
[4:34:01] But my hope is that in having a conversation, I mean, maybe part of the argument is that
[4:34:05] we use revenues derived from activities, you know, in a fund.
[4:34:11] You know how, like, we try to make sure that we can cover the past sub-inspectors?
[4:34:16] So let's put it on for February 3, and then we'll try to be ready for it.
[4:34:20] Okay.
[4:34:21] And have a substantive discussion.
[4:34:23] Where's our short-term rental studies?
[4:34:26] Where's that at?
[4:34:28] Short-term rental study.
[4:34:33] It's still working on revisions.
[4:34:35] Getting the draft prepared, the next step is going to be presenting it to the Select
[4:34:39] Board.
[4:34:39] So we just need to figure out the right date.
[4:34:42] Yeah, we're going to be talking about that, I think January 20th at finalizing it.
[4:34:48] And then so sometime after January 20th, we're going to have the team from the Donahue
[4:34:54] Institute in to present it to the Select Board.
[4:34:56] So hopefully with some possible recommendations.
[4:35:01] So in the fair treatment, it's going to come back after the lawyers have reviewed it,
[4:35:10] endorsement.
[4:35:14] Is it?
[4:35:17] That's the plan.
[4:35:21] It wasn't sent up the river forever.
[4:35:26] You talking to me?
[4:35:28] Yes.
[4:35:29] I'm talking to you.
[4:35:29] The question?
[4:35:30] Well I'm not really talking to you.
[4:35:32] I'm talking to the town administrator.
[4:35:34] Okay.
[4:35:34] Well, no, I – you know, if you guys don't want to vote it, don't put it back on your
[4:35:39] agenda.
[4:35:39] But we sent – we sent it to town council to comment on, and we gave them a summary
[4:35:45] of what the various issues – and asking DeLion and they're reviewing it now.
[4:35:49] So we'll have it at least share with you.
[4:35:52] You'll have to decide whether you want to put it back on for another vote.
[4:35:57] Yeah.
[4:35:57] Let's have that conversation after we hear from Council.
[4:35:58] Yeah, we definitely want to have the information first.
[4:36:01] My understanding is that council actually reviewed the resolution in Bonstable and raised some
[4:36:08] issues.
[4:36:08] Oh, I didn't hear that.
[4:36:10] Okay.
[4:36:10] That's what I'm trying to find out.
[4:36:12] We should find out what those legal questions might be or what they are before we...
[4:36:19] Do we know how soon we might hear?
[4:36:24] I was not given by town council a date that he would be finished, but he got all the
[4:36:30] information and then he asked us to, you know, retype it, send it so it was in a
[4:36:35] Microsoft Word format so he could make amendments and things of that nature, but
[4:36:41] I do not know exactly when he's gonna be finished with it. I mean we're still
[4:36:47] waiting on the legal review on the comments. Yeah. Yes. Parcel by parcel.
[4:36:52] Right. Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to have the residential exemption? Yeah. Discussion?
[4:36:59] discussion? I would recommend thinking through on the timing of that. I really, I do think
[4:37:06] it's not a rush job. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, we need to come to some consensus on
[4:37:12] how we're going to go forward with the capital projects, all right? Because that, that,
[4:37:22] that in and of itself, all right? That's a discussion that should be on the agenda.
[4:37:27] Right.
[4:37:27] Right.
[4:37:27] So it's done the capital projects, an extension of what Bob was talking about tonight.
[4:37:37] We have to discuss that.
[4:37:40] Yeah.
[4:37:41] Right after the budget workshop?
[4:37:44] I think we're going to be ready for that conversation until maybe after town meeting,
[4:37:49] but we do have to have the next phase of that conversation, at least setting priorities.
[4:37:57] And I do think one of the things that was helpful is, Bob had mentioned that, you know,
[4:38:02] that was just an initial cut at the capital projects, particularly the big ones, right?
[4:38:08] There have been other ones that have been talked about.
[4:38:10] There's muck floating around out there.
[4:38:13] I think quite frankly what we're going to need to do is, and this is a collective
[4:38:19] exercise.
[4:38:20] It just can't be just unloaded on one person, but I think we should be brainstorming
[4:38:24] in thinking through what are the other projects that are likely to come down the line.
[4:38:28] We talked before about an oceans capital or coastal capital project because we got some
[4:38:33] coastal improvements that are necessary.
[4:38:36] I think we really have to start, and again, this is all looking long-term, but one time
[4:38:44] a couple years ago, we were talking about doing a coastal capital project, and I think
[4:38:50] the RUNPON restoration project was folded into that as something.
[4:38:57] So I would love to know what more is envisioned for the restoration of the upper Bass River
[4:39:03] watershed.
[4:39:04] As you know, we've been getting periodic briefings from the friends of Bass River about
[4:39:09] some other great work that they're doing, but you know what?
[4:39:12] That translates into projects and improvements that are needed, and those cost money.
[4:39:17] They've been getting grants for those.
[4:39:20] Yeah, but there's no one that does 100% grants anymore.
[4:39:24] You have to have matching funds.
[4:39:26] And again, given what's going on in Washington,
[4:39:29] to assume that you're going to get grants for anything
[4:39:34] on the environment, particularly environmental protection,
[4:39:37] I think that's something you want to be careful about.
[4:39:40] I'm not suggesting that we don't do restoration
[4:39:42] of the upper baster or watershed, don't get me wrong.
[4:39:46] and I just think we need to identify those projects
[4:39:48] and get a sense of what they cost
[4:39:50] and what some of the matching requirements might be.
[4:39:53] I mean, so I'm just...
[4:39:55] Back in my days of being the chair of recreation,
[4:39:59] we were hearing about the fact
[4:40:00] that there was a lot of work that needed to be done
[4:40:02] on the beaches.
[4:40:04] Right.
[4:40:04] That capital work that needed to be done on the beaches,
[4:40:08] you know, restoring the dunes
[4:40:09] and just some of the walkways,
[4:40:12] the access points to the beaches, everything else.
[4:40:15] I don't think we've really ever looked at that now in a while ago. We did have some kind of master planning work done for rec
[4:40:22] I'm not sure how much we finished at Sandy pond is sandy pond done, you know, and we have a new field analysis
[4:40:29] Right. No, Sandy. Yeah, the whole like what potentially could be it's in. Yeah
[4:40:37] Yeah, lots of different options and yeah, so we we may need to cover in the buildings exactly
[4:40:43] So we may need to have – we may not have the cost estimates on this, but we're going
[4:40:49] to have to add some placeholders for some other projects on this.
[4:40:53] And the thing is, if you add up – let's say there is a need to go forward with the
[4:40:58] coastal projects, capital item and a rec capital item.
[4:41:03] You know, after a while they all add up, and you could end up with a fairly significant
[4:41:07] chunk of change.
[4:41:09] And again, I mean, I hate to be the –
[4:41:11] You have to prioritize.
[4:41:12] Yeah.
[4:41:12] I mean, I hate to be the wet blanket or the skunk in the garden party, but I think what's
[4:41:17] going on in Washington, you know, I mean, they still have to have a budget and they still
[4:41:22] have appropriations bills with huge cuts in the Minsum areas, so I just get very nervous
[4:41:29] about spending right now.
[4:41:33] The entire environment shuddered when Lee Zeldin took over.
[4:41:40] Okay.
[4:41:41] Do we – what do we do about the feasibility of the usage of MacArthur School and the Finance
[4:41:47] Committee?
[4:41:50] I thought that the reason the Finance Committee didn't appropriate the funding or said no
[4:41:55] for town meeting was because of – they didn't have some information or something?
[4:41:59] No, they said because the lease doesn't come due until 2035.
[4:42:04] They see a time a much broader horizon.
[4:42:06] They think that we've got time.
[4:42:06] We can deal with that later.
[4:42:07] We've got time to deal with that in the future.
[4:42:09] So the idea of looking at that in the context of a library alternative, as you can see, the
[4:42:14] library alternatives really didn't get the kind of vetting and analysis that we were
[4:42:19] looking for.
[4:42:21] I honestly pitched the commons on the commons because I happen to think that MacArthur is
[4:42:28] an important public building and a public facility and should be repurposed for
[4:42:32] a more broader public use.
[4:42:34] I have nothing against the collaborative, but at the moment they're giving a – we've
[4:42:38] at all these needs and a few ways of addressing them, and I think we need to, you know, take
[4:42:44] a broader approach.
[4:42:47] So one of the things that we may want to figure out, Bob, is do we need to have a discussion
[4:42:51] on the fact that we are now going to be a – we have the option to be a seasonal
[4:42:56] community?
[4:42:57] Do we need to put that on the agenda for a discussion in terms of what that means?
[4:43:00] You're supposed to vote it.
[4:43:02] Aren't you?
[4:43:02] We have to vote it at a meeting.
[4:43:03] But before we do it, we need to have a conversation about it.
[4:43:05] And we also have.
[4:43:07] I don't think Joyce knows that.
[4:43:09] Did you hear that we were, that they added us?
[4:43:13] We got to add it.
[4:43:15] So with the delta funding that's available from the commission,
[4:43:22] one of the major projects that we applied for
[4:43:27] is to conduct an analysis of some of the benefits
[4:43:31] and whether there's detriments to joining in
[4:43:35] with the seasonal community and to also develop ideas, potentially, if it is a positive to
[4:43:42] get that designation, how could we possibly leverage it?
[4:43:45] So we are going to find out, I think, very quickly if we're going to have some funds
[4:43:50] to help us do that, and I think coming into the select board and discussing it would be
[4:43:55] a great opportunity, but we need to figure out if we're going to just analyze it on
[4:44:00] our own or if it's going to be a little study that we complete.
[4:44:03] Okay.
[4:44:04] That would be a great background thing for people to know about as we head into thinking
[4:44:09] about whether we do residential exemption.
[4:44:13] So that's an item to stick on the list of other unscheduled items.
[4:44:19] The seasonal communities.
[4:44:21] We're going to be forced into having to deal with that because it requires a town meeting
[4:44:25] vote.
[4:44:26] Seasonal communities.
[4:44:30] And
[4:44:33] there was a request from Drew Krause from the Yarmouth Housing Authority to put together
[4:44:41] a committee regarding Forest Road.
[4:44:43] Right.
[4:44:43] So we've got to talk about that.
[4:44:45] Is that an agenda item?
[4:44:47] An agenda item.
[4:44:48] Yeah.
[4:44:49] Well, that shouldn't be put off.
[4:44:50] Well, I guess you could.
[4:44:51] No, I think we have to figure out where to slot it.
[4:44:56] All right.
[4:44:57] Thank you very much for joining me.
[4:45:01] You know, the other thing that, while we're thinking of where to slot that working group,
[4:45:06] well, my sense is the sooner the better, right?
[4:45:09] Want to put that on January 6th?
[4:45:11] Yeah, I think so. I think that makes sense.
[4:45:14] The, um, Yarmouth housing?
[4:45:17] Yeah, we should, we're going to have to identify a couple people to be part of a working group to sort through that whole thing.
[4:45:27] There's also the letter to the school committee asking them to add to their agenda that we
[4:45:37] start working on the regional agreement.
[4:45:42] I think we should have that as part of the broader school update and discussion.
[4:45:51] I think given what's going on over there and given this, I think having even a 15-minute
[4:45:58] update and discussion on the agreement and what's going on with the feasibility study
[4:46:04] and inviting, I mean, if Thomas wants to come and the superintendent wants to come, that's
[4:46:09] terrific.
[4:46:10] I don't think our meetings and our discussion should be held hostage to their availability.
[4:46:14] They should always be welcome to come to our meetings and our discussion on school
[4:46:19] stuff.
[4:46:19] I think they didn't, again, it's communication,
[4:46:22] so they didn't know about it, I think,
[4:46:24] is what they were saying.
[4:46:25] And I didn't invite them.
[4:46:27] I largely wanted to use it as an agenda item for us,
[4:46:32] but I also, I don't wanna get into this,
[4:46:35] but just since we're there, I'll be real quick.
[4:46:38] I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to continue
[4:46:40] on this committee.
[4:46:41] They meet on times when I'm teaching at the college.
[4:46:44] All right, so when I show up at their meetings,
[4:46:46] I come at it almost at the end,
[4:46:48] or three quarters of the way through it.
[4:46:50] I don't think I'm serving the board well.
[4:46:53] That's the main reason why I wanted them to come here
[4:46:57] because I may find out my schedule at the college soon
[4:47:00] and I may find out that I can't continue on it.
[4:47:02] You're gonna be reveling a wrestle
[4:47:03] with the decision of who to appoint,
[4:47:05] who to put on there as your representative
[4:47:07] and you need to have some idea of what's going on.
[4:47:10] All right, so that was my real purpose for this,
[4:47:13] was to make sure that we can at least,
[4:47:15] that you have some grasp of all the varying issues that, you know, your representative
[4:47:22] on that committee is going to have to be prepared to deal with.
[4:47:26] Like I said, I don't-
[4:47:26] Should we have somebody else then?
[4:47:29] I will know.
[4:47:30] I will know in a couple of weeks when I get more information on my course schedule for
[4:47:33] next semester.
[4:47:34] Okay.
[4:47:35] But like I'm saying already, they're not, they're not, my schedule changes and I have
[4:47:42] more time.
[4:47:42] Then great.
[4:47:43] We'll see.
[4:47:44] I'll know soon.
[4:47:45] So I'm putting you on notice choice that we may have another appointment.
[4:47:50] Oh.
[4:47:51] Well, I can dream school castles in the sky.
[4:47:55] There you go.
[4:47:55] Bingo.
[4:47:56] So do we want to send off the letter to the school committee?
[4:48:02] I think that's an item to discuss when Tracy's here.
[4:48:04] I would put that up.
[4:48:06] That's something that's been very pet.
[4:48:08] Yeah, she's got a lot of history on this.
[4:48:12] Did it go on the third, maybe?
[4:48:18] Added to February 3rd?
[4:48:23] Well, it's, it's, you know, it would be, what, school, schools update.
[4:48:31] Do you see that?
[4:48:32] And Dash would be update on the feasibility study and update on, you know, discussing a letter,
[4:48:40] letter to discuss agreement, kicking off an agreement review process.
[4:48:47] Third.
[4:48:47] Yeah, I mean should we schools update we can always move it but stability and
[4:48:53] yeah and agreement okay so we'll schedule our school feasibility update and
[4:49:02] agreement are we gonna try to have the the superintendent and everyone there
[4:49:10] we should see them invite them come but we need but we we need to have a
[4:49:15] conversation. Again, I don't want them to be the ones holding us hostage. We just need
[4:49:22] to invite them. Just say we're doing it on the third and they're welcome to attend.
[4:49:32] Is the town commons feasibility study going forward? We're waiting for legal counsel to
[4:49:38] give us some information on all the legal title issues to the. Yeah, it takes time.
[4:49:46] Do we have an idea of when they might do that?
[4:49:50] I think we'd have to get an update from council.
[4:49:52] It was supposed to be done by the end of December.
[4:49:57] Oh, which is rapidly approaching.
[4:50:00] So once we get an update on that and get some report on that, I'm sure we'll be able
[4:50:04] to work on getting a committee together.
[4:50:07] Now my recommendations to this group for committee would be that we have people
[4:50:12] that are familiar with the site because of those nice ladies who are in in
[4:50:19] Sipkins I don't have any objection then there's the whole other aspect of just
[4:50:26] the the architecture and landscape design you know consultant with the
[4:50:32] principal consulting help would be on landscape architecture design designing
[4:50:37] something that meets the obligations and provides the public benefits.
[4:50:45] I
[4:50:49] will say that as we roll it out.
[4:50:50] Okay.
[4:50:51] I'm fading fast, folks.
[4:50:54] Want some more chocolate?
[4:50:55] I have to be up and tried.
[4:50:57] It's been rolling.
[4:50:58] Yeah.
[4:50:59] So why don't we move on to individual items?
[4:51:02] I have one.
[4:51:03] Okay.
[4:51:04] I checked with Susan Warner, Assembly of Delegates.
[4:51:09] she reports that she's now the chair and she would come in if she has anything
[4:51:18] that she feels is pressing and get on our agenda. Otherwise, she wasn't going to
[4:51:25] make – she's – she heard me that we would like more reports from her. She just
[4:51:32] didn't have much to offer right now other than she's just taken over.
[4:51:35] Okay. Good to know. Anybody else have any individual items?
[4:51:41] Nothing here.
[4:51:42] I'd accept a motion to accept the consent agenda.
[4:51:46] So moved.
[4:51:46] Second.
[4:51:47] All in favor?
[4:51:48] Aye.
[4:51:49] Aye.
[4:51:49] I wanted to just say that I was very excited to see on the consent agenda.
[4:51:55] The Witte Museum is going to get some cleanup through this easement agreement.
[4:52:05] And I think that they are a terrific asset.
[4:52:08] I was at the museum very recently,
[4:52:11] and they were the host for a tourism forum event,
[4:52:15] and it was great.
[4:52:17] So I'm glad that they are going to get a little cleanup
[4:52:20] and that they're working with us.
[4:52:23] Okay.
[4:52:24] Bob?
[4:52:25] Okay.
[4:52:26] I had a few items.
[4:52:28] I was going to bring up the Housing Authority correspondent,
[4:52:30] so I'm glad we talked about that already.
[4:52:35] And we're just going to mention, we talked about, we're going to have the budget workshop
[4:52:43] on the January 6th.
[4:52:48] I think it's going to be a very interesting discussion.
[4:52:54] Just a couple of points, I'm really concerned about the budget.
[4:52:58] that we did have the preliminary meeting
[4:53:01] with the Dennis Yarmouth Regional School District
[4:53:06] and I think they were pretty emphatic
[4:53:08] that they were not considering living within 2.5%.
[4:53:14] I think the numbers they were throwing out
[4:53:16] was something like 8%.
[4:53:18] So that's a very big number.
[4:53:20] And in addition, the thing that is really causing me
[4:53:25] a lot of concern that we haven't dealt with in the past,
[4:53:29] a year when the, you know, the DUI had a bump up.
[4:53:33] But also, we have 30 new students
[4:53:37] that are attending Cape Tech.
[4:53:39] Tech, yeah, the Tech School, the big one.
[4:53:41] And that, just on the formula alone,
[4:53:44] never mind increasing their school budget.
[4:53:46] They're usually very cost-conscious,
[4:53:49] but just with the kids alone, that's $672,000.
[4:53:53] So that's an increase that we would normally use to fund town departments.
[4:54:00] And then, you know, so with those two things, you know, we're way over on the budget.
[4:54:08] So I'm really concerned there's a lot of initiatives we'd like to achieve.
[4:54:13] I'm having trouble finding any room to add anything to the budget that I know you guys would like to see and support.
[4:54:18] So just know it's very very tight year because of those things and in addition, you know our revenues
[4:54:26] With this economy every says, you know whose fault is the economy?
[4:54:30] things are slowing down in terms of the non-property tax revenues that type of growth that supports us, so
[4:54:39] We see costs rising revenues slowing. It's going to be a very difficult budget year
[4:54:45] So we're I'm working on that just almost like full-time right now trying to prepare for a submission to you
[4:54:53] by the end of this year, which I'll have
[4:54:57] And
[4:54:58] We have the meeting with the Reveley surety tomorrow morning at 9 with council, right?
[4:55:04] So we'll report whatever progress that that we make but you know our goal is to
[4:55:11] have some support so that we have confidence that it's not business as
[4:55:16] usual and that that is going to be addressed so that's going to be tomorrow
[4:55:20] now there's another meeting tomorrow that we've been successful in getting
[4:55:24] DEP to grant us a regional meeting on the point one foot standard for the
[4:55:34] groundwater mounding, which that standard that they're applying, we feel, just outrageously,
[4:55:42] is what's costing us $35 million for the Baybury Hills situation, and, you know, they feel
[4:55:50] that they're simply protecting the wetland resources.
[4:55:53] So, you know, we've got a substantial disconnect with the MAS DEP on that issue, but-
[4:55:58] When's that meeting?
[4:55:59] The meeting is going to be at, I think it's 1pm and if you're interested, I have a zoom
[4:56:09] link.
[4:56:10] They-
[4:56:10] Can you send that to me?
[4:56:11] I can send it to you.
[4:56:14] You're going to zoom in from here?
[4:56:16] Yeah.
[4:56:16] I'll be here.
[4:56:17] Maybe I'll-
[4:56:18] Stop by.
[4:56:19] Stop by.
[4:56:20] We can zoom in and-
[4:56:21] When?
[4:56:21] 1pm when?
[4:56:22] I think it's 1pm tomorrow.
[4:56:24] Let me just double check the time on that.
[4:56:26] Let's
[4:56:29] see if we can get that taken care of right now.
[4:56:36] Is anybody going to the Hyannis Marina Party?
[4:56:40] No.
[4:56:41] I think we get that because we're select board members.
[4:56:47] Okay, it's 1 p.m.
[4:56:54] So if you want to just come, we can do it.
[4:56:58] I'll stop by.
[4:57:00] I'll be here.
[4:57:01] So that's the big thing.
[4:57:03] and know what I just wanted to mention quickly the we had the Christmas
[4:57:09] roll I'm glad someone brought that up what a great opportunity is a good
[4:57:12] community event and I did as I promised I showed up and sang spread joy good
[4:57:19] will throughout the community and so that's something you don't see every
[4:57:25] day. Who knows? Is there video? I hope so. I was all kinds of video. Tracy Post was was
[4:57:32] all over Facebook and social media with it when when I ever broke out the boss. I
[4:57:40] was doing all of the Christmas tunes and then I did a Bruce Springsteen song
[4:57:45] for her because I know she's a rocker and she wanted to hear that so I was
[4:57:49] like one of the hits of the show that so there's video of that I know
[4:57:54] circulating around. Yeah, we're going to track it down.
[4:57:58] I will entertain motion.
[4:58:00] Some to move to adjourn.
[4:58:03] Second. All in favor.
[4:58:05] Aye. Thank you.
[4:58:09] Recording stopped.