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and the BHS cafeteria peer counseling will be hosting the annual st. Baldrick's fundraiser an event dedicated to raising awareness for pediatric cancer research students and teachers can volunteer to shave their heads for the foundation and the proceeds from all the donations will go to st. Baldrick's also yesterday we had our deca chapter compete at the state level and they performed very well as you heard and multiple students were finalists our winter sports are also wrapping up or are in their state tournaments such as our boys basketball team who is in their second round tonight at Waterford High and boys swim and dive next Tuesday all the students are getting ready for their last quarter of the year which is very fast approaching thank you thank you very much napalm up to the total goal for st. Baldrick's did I see yeah Mike Michael is on your counts I don't know how much it is but cuz I'm not their peer counseling list pretty impressive total yeah he's usually almost very successful that's a very lot of volunteers to shave their heads so thanks doctor Burrell having his head shaved again I'm not sure if I'm available that evening oh yeah I have been putting in my time over the years mr.

Burrage I'll say he does any other questions thank you very much thanks stewey if you want to breathe for cake it's all cut up so if anybody wants to get up and get a piece or whatever let's let's do it five minutes okay okay great for cake all right keep it [Music] back next we thank you for allowing a quick break next we have the written correspondence okay we had Howard lasso regarding news project Lauren Delia earned the PTO Jessica Jessica regarding mr. Martina and his fabulous winter concert and Ron Jaffe we had three correspondence regarding a YouTube video an article in beeping one correspondence regarding an article on placa one correspondence regarding a website on the Jesse Lewis choose love movement and one correspondence about teaching coding thank you next we have approval of Board minutes recommend a motion that the board approve the minutes listed below below is recommended the public forum on 160 19 the regular meeting on 116 19 and the special meeting on two 519 second the discussion all right all in favor aye aye next we have the superintendent's update dr.

bill Thank You Collette so was we haven't been together in quite a while so I have a number of things on the superintendent's report and some of those I'll be turning over to Ken to go through a few things to update the board in the public first I do want to again congratulate the board and all those who supported the projects a real win for Brookfield yesterday with the passing of the referendum just so everybody knows the education specs that involve kind of a narrative a lengthy narrative regarding what the the new school will look like kind of the big broad vision that is a part of the grant application as well as a number of architectural design pieces and initial design pieces in in addition to that many forms state forms that need to be completed by the superintendent and a support of supporting architect Jeff was new ski from tech town will be meeting with me on Friday morning and we've already booked time to initiate that process and get going so the work certainly doesn't stop we keep on rolling and we're excited to get started with that so I wanted to make sure everybody's aware that that's going on it doesn't end with a with a passing of a referendum there's a lot of work to still do yeah just starts right the the other thing is I wanted to thank mr.

Lasser and give a shout out to the craft Center the Brookfield craft Center is proud to present its fourth annual high school student art competition exhibition excuse me artwork will be showcased by our students from Brookfield high as well as five other high schools and the exhibition opens on March 9th it will go to March 31st and it went is when it opens it will be a 5 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

reception on Martin large night as well and so if you look up to Brookfield Craft Center you can find out all the information on the exhibition but I wanted to make sure we got a plug in for that tonight the next one is an update on the last day of school a number of questions it's so many delays and our latest missiles and that kind of a thing the board in its infinite wisdom we built in as you all will recall we built in three emergency days part of that was to get us to 185 days so we'd be able to schedule the high school graduation earlier than April 1 but in addition to that it was the built in some makeup days we've had three snow days thus far three snow days that are being made up at the end of the year so our last day of school right now is June 19th we that's a Wednesday Lisa right and but I don't want anybody who's hearing these comments to think that we've forgotten we did have another snow day which was back in November that day was made up on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving so just to remind everybody understand the calendar or aware of it the next piece that I wanted to share with everybody has been a lot of talk with with the new governor governor Moll Lamont in place and some proposals regarding regionalization the board may recall last week or maybe the week before I shared from 2017 the Connecticut regionalism regionalism study pros/cons and some surprises for people as well I wanted to just take a moment in and share a few comments for people to understand with regionalization that comments that aren't ever found or discussed in sound bites on the news those who are proponents of regionalization with regionalization which is merging districts together with a capital R and making them a new region things that aren't discussed in the proposals and really it goes into the to the old saying the devil is in the details and so when discussing economies of scale which is really the reason most people talk about proposing such legislation and regionalizing school systems as a means of cost savings what's not discussed is local citizens having to go through a referendum process to agree to make such an agreement even even possible and the other thing that's not discussed is the legal costs and consultative fees it would take and the time it would take to reach agreement on all the aspects of a very complex organization like a school system it really is a merger where people think of mergers and acquisitions in the corporate world this would be a merger of multi-million dollar organizations so this isn't something like you just say well I went to school I understand schools and we're just gonna merge the schools together we just mix them together and the teachers to teach the kids and it would just work there's lots of things to consider I know that's the simplicity of how people look at it we have to think about things like union contracts and seniority and salary schedules and terminating or acquiring existing transportation contracts or the other service contracts that we have in school systems we have to think about where we bring people together and we have to think about the the value that citizens place on especially in New England and in Connecticut moving to small towns they move to small towns so they don't have to face large bureaucracy they appreciate the intimacy and they value that in their small towns and so there's a lot that goes into this kind of thought the time it would take I mean I don't have any hard and fast rule on this but I can't imagine with thinking of our strategic plan thinking that it took three years just to get to a referendum on one new school project in one town that it could take any less than five five to eight years that put such a plan together even if it was somehow encouraged and or partly mandated by stick and carrot means in terms of state funding so I really want to put that out there and this isn't a new concept in the most recently in the Malloy administration there was a similar proposal put forward it never ever became law and so for decades this has been talked about while we need to do everything we can to save money and work together and we've talked about that many times here in Brookfield how we're doing that in western Connecticut with our neighboring districts whether it's their special education transportation or technology purchases or other things that we do cooperative purchasing that we're already involved in we do a lot with regionalization with a small art where we work together and we share services but we don't combine another thing people don't think about that I have forgot to share it earlier is in regional districts the region owns the school buildings in towns the town owns the school building not the Board of Ed so the complexity of legal services and in trying to figure all this out even if we were able to come to an agreement it's just it's staggering to think about it and so anyway I wanted to just put that out to everybody let them know that this study that was just on two years ago it's a very new study is on the superintendent page on our district websites right there right in the center of the page so if anybody's interested there's really some interesting pieces pieces here and the cost of preparing planning and executing a regional situation could possibly be more than the economies of scale you might achieve and and some of that is actually talked about here how you know you don't just immediately save money like you think you would so anyway I wanted to put that out there and at least publicly give a little opinion on that for people and a little bit more perspective maybe any questions or any comments or thoughts about it before I move on to my other items on the list for the report okay so I'm gonna turn it over to Ken for a few items that he's been working on we'll start with the teacher retirement another piece that's been talked about with budgeting going on with state sure let's that's been talked about by the state and slightly different from the approach of the previous governor this this governor's proposing that they in towns gradually pick up the normal cost or the current cost of the portion of the current cost of the retired retirees from that town which in his proposal would be honored $31,000 approximately should be in 1920 that approximately double that the following here next I have any questions about that I'm sorry who's heard it already so there really understands that just as a clarification because actually First Selectman had sent out some figures today to they're using a base of each municipality paying 25% of the teacher retirement contribution if that districts salary was above average you would slightly need to pay more than that 25% if it's significantly below average then you're in one of the UM Alliance districts and so they pay significantly less brookfield in comparison to irdirc we are 18th out of 21 as far as our salaries so the 18th lowest as far as salaries with turkey however we are still slightly above state average so we would pay with this proposal should it go forward and again it's just a proposal there's about 26% developed over a period of three years of thank you time credits it's gradually introduced although three year period so that is where we're at right now the proposal we know all proposals don't go through I do believe though that the Board of Selectmen have put it into the budget just as a worst-case scenario in case it does go through that the talks are there Hey [Music] the next thing was the time and attendance kind of attendance system has met some of you may recall the last year year before we had a capital bonding item for $60,000 to get a purchase a time attendance system that would integrate with our payroll system in units so we're moving forward on that we're developing an RFP munis does have a product but our purchasing policy does require us to go through the RFP process so so we're going to do that and one of our requirements of course will be that it will work seamlessly with you notice as the work the same as the newest product would we met with the union presidents yesterday just to to let them know what we're doing and to try to get their input on how best to implement such a system as far as what methods we would use to collect the time whether it be computer-based or um print or or swiping the card and if we use devices like that where would we place them so I'm just to to get them thinking about that so that they can be part of the process and make this you know transition as seamless as possible any questions about that and we're reconvening with the the union leadership and right before the april break to get their feedback from they go back to their bargaining units talk to them subbu uh really want this to be successful rollout so we want to troubleshoot so if they you know if the membership who's going to actually be working and utilizing this system a couple of times a day we want to make sure it's implemented correctly so we'll be meeting with them again ken can you skip over Columbus they talk about that afterwards sure the next item is this whole breakfast which I think we've talked about a couple of times prior last month we had what we called advisory board meetings in each school advisory board something required by law we have to discuss get input on the food service included administrators teachers parents staff members at each school and we spoke about school breakfast at each school and it was generally well received and I think most people recognize that it it really does need to be done we're I think we were one of the seventeen school districts in the state that do not have the program right now so I think it's time and we actually went over today and met at the faculty meeting at center school to discuss it with the teachers and give them some examples of what type of food we we might be serving for breakfasts and explain the program to them and I'm going to be doing that at the other the algo very next week and we sought to meet with the high school and middle school to figure out how we're going to do with an elementary model is typically done in the classroom so we really want the teachers involved in the discussion on this so that you know we help facilitate this as little disruption as possible [Music] and my last item was online payments we currently allow parents to make payments through a system called Heartland or nutri kids to focus on my school bucks to put money on the food service account the same company allows that will allow us to have parents make names for anything else we want to do actually so we met with a representative last week and met with the principal's earlier this week also about we're going to start off small with it but we're gonna connect with that company to use it for collecting preschool tuition use it for collecting the chromebook fees at the high school and middle school the high school parking fees and initially the middle school Washington DC trip because is that such a big-ticket item and once we get some comfort level with the accounting and reporting and everything is some of these monies are going to activity count so we're going to general fund we want to make sure everything works properly and there's a counter for properly then we can start opening it up to other other activities field trips and other things that the principal's have identified where they collect money so we think that's going to be helpful there is a fee that the parent has to pay to use it they can either do it per transaction or they can pay like twelve or thirteen dollars for a year and get unlimited transactions so that'll all be communicated to them once we get it up and running that's great yeah that's gonna replace my school bucks by the current it'll expand its assets and it is yes it works with power school too so if for example the eighth grade DC trip any 8th grade parents signing on to power school we'll be able to see that that nobody else will if your trial we get to field trips and you know mrs. Jones's class is going only mrs.

Jones Aaronson will see that in that the option debate if there's a surcharge though will there always be an option not to do it if people choose not to pay the fees yes they can still send a check okay we're just getting another it's good shooting another convenient option okay have a question regarding this school breakfast so so let's say for example so huckleberry the kids enter the building at 8:45 so that put that students be entering earlier than that to have the breakfast or that's just that that's doing her as far as we need more staffing to supervise children the forceful hours or this is this is all part of the initial discussion with the faculties in the perpetual work or all that's a leg antics and when we ultimately go to roll this out we want this to work and work smoothly and we want all those questions answered and these are the question out to scenter school today when Kent note with the fabulous up in breakfast will be available for everyone yes okay it has to be you can't identify those who are identified for free and reduced lunch [Music] and for that reason also it has to be a can't just be a snack it has to be what the USDA defines as a meal which has specific components that have to be met just like just like lunch does just want to make one comment on time and attendance and the online payments time and attendance was a very specific recommendation from Lou Shapiro report from a couple of years ago just as a reminder for everybody that were really at the end of the bloom Shapiro recommendations and really implementing all of them so that's tremendous the other piece is with online payments you notice Ken when he answered mrs.

sturms question it with his parents gonna be able to check we've really discouraged the cash payments and that was another balloon Shapiro report was to get to check or electronic since we have the technology for that again tracking tracking some funds in student activity and really being transparent aboveboard and having a record of everything and making sure we're doing that correctly so those just important pieces there I'd like to just jump in briefly onto Columbus Day when we met with the union leadership about time and attendance yesterday we also talked to them about Columbus Day I had mentioned to the board that if the board is interested going forward in the 2021 school year fall 2012 2020 not recognizing alone a state with a day off of school that we have to talk to the unions because that's a bargaining issue several of the unions have Columbus Day specifically listed as a holiday so that I think the union leadership was in general open to the idea typically an agreement might look like we would write it up where if they don't if we don't have Columbus Day they still would get a floater holiday and be able to apply that an individual basis in working a principal or direct supervisor so I think that'll go in general direction that the board sounds like the board is interested in going at the same time the consequence of not having Columbus say it's important for the board to understand that in this is what we discussed yesterday is you really it all depends on each contract and every contract is different we have six union contracts is a Florida holiday means that the individual employee can take that holiday you know within reason when it's appropriate for them to take it and they would request that of their supervisor what that means is they would be taking the holiday while kids are in school many times with many of them so you you lessen the opportunity to have a full complement of your employees in place when people are taking floater holidays at different times so you're just missing people and so we all know we all you know work in different organizations when you don't have everybody and I'm not saying this is going to be the end of the world by any stretch I'm not trying to be dramatic about it but it will have an impact on day-to-day operations and I want to find that yet but when we're ready to go to the make that decision and we've already hash this out with with union leadership I'll have a further breakdown of what that might really look like for everybody but I want to give kind of a broad vision of the concept was that is a good name for people just let you know I'd be increasing the substitute costs and I haven't even broken that part down yet and I kind of think so you know like everything we do there's always you know there's a yin and yang there's always an impact and we have to think of the entire organization 2700 students 400 employees it's it's a big organization it's a lot to run and any any move we make it has a ripple effect a domino effect it squeezes the balloon over here but the balloon moves over here on the other end so it's it's just way goes I think when we made the suggestion we didn't realize that it was part of a bargaining unit yeah sure sure but doesn't mean we can't go with it so it's just something we need to explore and know everything every every consequence going in so then we can make an important decision and then the last thing I have it's not actually on my report I talked with mrs.

Miriam marshal Miriam our town controller she has she's waiting on the 1718 formal audit report but she talked with the auditor today and she said it was okay that I share we are on the school side of things for sure and I think it goes through the town but I'll speak only for the Board of Education we had another cleaning on it and we always the report on that so again thank you Ken and then thanks to everybody at the Finance Committee all the hard work that goes into that and John's not here thank you Joe so I'll say that as well and that's it for my report is long tonight thank you any questions or any questions I will give a huge shout out to Kent anthem 13 as well kudos there thank you [Music] next we have subcommittee reports first we have two it's been a while since we've had a meeting so several of these committees have met more than once and we have had two security task force meets one on the 11th of January and one on the 22nd of February really the first one detailed more tying up all the loose ends as far as recommendations hardening schools some of these are items that will be seen in the Capitol requests for security upgrades at each of the schools that are going forth in the budget and we did speak and tell about some of those the second meeting as well dan Colville will be going out to check prices on some of those things as well and then we launched more into the threat assessment side of it as far as even looking at certain apps and software that can be installed that will not only protect students from others but also help protect students from harming themselves as well right Eric has done a significant amount of update and research on the different programs and ability of ways that we could go about doing this along with several excellent suggestions from members of the security task force so right now we're just trying to look and see what's going there maybe talk about a modified rollout of a product that would start maybe with the eighth graders and their Chromebooks and then go from there but it's still in the early stages and that's all I have there unless there's any questions okay next we have to finance subcommittee meetings and since Bob isn't here Jen did you want to take that I will we have January 14 okay so on January 14th we can reported that the budget variances were similar to the prior month's report so there was no major changes there dr.

Cipolla updated us on special education costs particularly highlighting the difficulty and high cost of obtaining transportation for out placed students and that's something that she's working on with some partners on how to consolidate and perhaps lessen those costs the committee discussed requesting an on lapsing fund to be established of $65,000 and we agreed these funds would be used for a one-time purchase and Ken reported that with one and a half years left on the current contract with all-star transportation the company wanted to propose negotiating an extension but our board policy requires these services go out to bid so we that request and then we met again in February 11th and can again recorded that budget variances are very similar there was we did discuss a shortfall in Medicaid revenues which is something we continue to keep an eye on let's see we discussed a recent joint meeting with the boards of Selectmen and Finance as well as scheduling some upcoming budget meetings can report at that about the regional efficiency group and studying of special ed and and trying to have a more regional approach to bids on things like Chromebooks and transportation and then can also present it to the committee to budget transfer requests which I think I see in our agenda later right so I guess we'll go over that in more detail to move some budget items over and we discussed a proposal from the town finance director to report certain BOE revenues in the town budget but we weren't ready to make a decision on that particularly we want to Bob to be there to see yes sort of our financial guru and we wanted him there to weigh in on the issue and I think that was that that was the big big news the Finance Committee any questions all right moving on we have policy communications okay so I apologize I'm losing my voice but it's uh we we met in January on the 16th very very briefly I think the meeting was probably about 20 minutes at most um but yeah we had before this meeting but um so our work on the 3000 series has kind of slowed a little bit just because of budget season but the two policies that we are currently working on one is the lunch charging policy which is later in the agenda so we'll talk about that then and the only other one that we're working on right now is the non lapsang education fund policy right now administration is going to be talking with legal counsel I guess a little bit to kind of go over us on the language before we kind of hash it out in committee before I bring it here the only the last thing that we discussed more in the communications part of the meeting was the new school building project mailer which everybody hopefully got in the mail and it's beautiful so obviously did its job so that was it in Roza for nostalgia purposes we Lisa and I have a stack that's probably two feet high of more mailers like anybody would like them we have them in historical right now yes yes the archives I'm so grateful for you all to look at that because I think just within like three minutes of you looking at that you're fine yeah there are different type of than things we're just glazed over that was a team effort for sure thank you and next we have facilities here we met on February 6th and he received a presentation by Hilliard really thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and you unanimously felt that this was a really positive stuff to take it was a proposal to evaluate our custodial services including materials equipment techniques and labor the service would be provided for a fee or through purchasing custodial supplies from Hilliard we really feel that it would add productivity by going over new processes and it would allow us to set our goals at industry standards we requested that mr.

Caldwell compare pricing on the supplies that we purchased most and report back to the committee as next meeting mr. Cole will also reported on the size of projects including the pressbox BHS water project BHS auditorium HVAC HVAC and the closeout of the middle school paving project mr.

Powell also reported that the BHS boiler has had to be repaired but now is back online and we discussed the cafeteria at CES the floor repair the new school project and other capital projects if referendum failed but it didn't and the the portable walkway at the middle school possibly enclosing a lock light to keep bringing the snow from the area did we close out the press box project so it is closed out but it's open in a sense that they are trying to work on the Wi-Fi and there was one other thing that there's yeah it didn't pass final inspection because the inspector said it needed a step outside of it although the company who produced the practice box says their code people say it doesn't so they're working together sort out but it is usable okay so we have a certified great thank you any other questions okay that is our slew of committee reports and now we move on to the consent agenda [Music] recommend motion that the board approved the items listed below on the consent agenda has recommended new hires and resignations second any questions discussion which is the common I know mr. Renda is very happy along with parents and students with having our Spanish French teacher in place and things are working out quite well he mr.

Johnson is a hit so far so a thumbs up there from one of our parents so it's been a long struggle in a shortage area and we're happy to have him it's great question with the custodians because it looks like I know we have to that resigns but we really don't see any new hires yet how are we in the custodial process we have posted the positions okay and one of them it looks like there's just one open right now and one will be open yes okay yes okay and we're also in the process of the setting up interviews for the okay able to cover the positions that are open right now with the three thing custodians that they have for now yes okay but but we need the positions so it gets tiring for those employees who do it in the extra time and work extra hard to make sure they're covering but we are getting things covered but it's not perfect we're gonna be perfectly honest any other questions all right all in favor aye okay new business we took care of item a and B already so we're on to CEO budget transfer recommend a motion that the board approve to budget transfers as requested by director of business and operations can post okay you probably notice that these are the transfers actually these these two transfers are reflected in our budget documents as that case anticipates answers the first one is to transfer budget from teacher salaries and curriculum leader salaries to administrator salaries to recognize the conversion of the special education department at position into special education supervisor positions and this was done late in the spring last year after the budget was already in place for this year and then the other is to transfer savings from teacher retirements from the teacher turnover budget to the teacher salaries budget which gives us a more accurate reflection year-to-year of the actual teacher salaries [Music] any discussion questions all right all in favor aye thank you Ken next we have policy thirty five forty two point forty three okay recommended motion that the board approve policy number of three five four two four three lunch charging for first reading as recommended by the policy subcommittee second but you won't sense and even yeah um so they were resting yeah yeah I'm so lunch charging policy essentially kind of just puts forth some language that will limit the number of lunches that students can essentially charge like without having money on their account after a certain amount and of course trying to collect that debt that has to be written off and then the food service account is going to have to be rebalanced on their end i think that's primarily the gist of it the alternate meal that they will get they don't have money for a lunch is a cheese sandwich milk a fruit or vegetable um so they can't get the regular lunch was that generally is there anything that you wanted you had that was in florida now the only thing i was going to add was that this it's required by law that we have this policy and the policy really reflects what our practice has been already that's exactly what I was going to ask it's like it doesn't sound any different than what they're doing right now this is this was our practice that we put in place a number of years ago when we were trying to there was a number of students and families that had occurred quite a bit of debt to lunch service and we needed to figure out how we were gonna rectify that would put this process in place but how were putting the policy was yeah and there's almost yeah now that there's also some more clarity in here that he's discovered and looking through some of our records that there were instances where somebody had negative balance they were being allowed to charge the second lunch or being allowed to charge on the card items so we've spelled that out in the policy that they are not allowed to do that or get a premium lunch from the deli counter and we've obviously gone through the language on this policy but it is okay policy so it would be easy to update going forward as cable gets their policies regularly okay so this is a first agreed mm-hmm which means that come forward I don't have a calendar in front me all right [Music] yeah because of rain yeah April 4th is nice so yeah so would be tonight so it'll be May okay so any questions or comments Rosa needs to come to you Hasan so maybe let's remain first as I remain being okay before them yeah all right so we have a good month to read up and if you have any questions please get them to Rosa all in favor aye post okay that moves us on to employee pension recommend a motion that the board authorized the superintendent to execute the participating employer adoption document concerning continued participation of the Board of Ed in the town of Brookfield's 457 plan so what this is just so everybody knows I think that title is a little misleading so I want to make sure it's not it's not the employee pensions that have been negotiated through contracts and those kind of things so probably could have titled this employee pension annuity option or something like that and really the reason for this is the company that holds the 457 is changing some of its plan and so with that the human resources director from the town is this is for townie and Board of Education employees there's just some documentation that the superintendent needs to sign the board to authorize me to do that and they would just keep participating in the 457 but there's justifications to the that opportunity for employees to participate there's no cost to the district or anything like that yeah any questions right all in favor all right thank you all right going on the old business item a policy 3160 transfer of funds recommend a motion that the board approve policy number three one six zero transfer of funds for a final reading as recommended by the policy subcommittee first reading was on January 16 2019 second I might get me emails from you guys so it's nice and it's nice and concise I mean again look at our old one there was literally a glossary attached yeah and it just that this this is much easier it's simple but it that everything is there yes all right any other questions all right all in favor okay and that moves us up to the board of education budget estimate this is just an action yep that the board continuous discussion goodness trying to forget where we were last time before this we have we had our presentation joint presentation to the Board of Selectmen and Finance the first selectmen put forth a budget and I think I had sent a correspondence all to you up to that there was a reduction there of $479,000 at the board of selectmen meeting I had a F was able to discuss with the Board of Selectmen exactly what some of those reductions were and that some of our investments that we had put forward were not just nice to have but in all actuality must haves the items that no matter how much is reduced from our budget proposal we must carry on into next year and so therefore you would have to find the somewhere you know that being the pre-k position the speech-language pathologist the special education teacher the two paraprofessionals that we have now that will lose the I'm a funding for and the science modules and the open court reading program so with discussion of that all of those when you back out the 150,000 dollars that we met with a reduction in the services that we contract out at this point that totals two hundred and seventy five thousand two hundred thirty four dollars and the works and weapon did agree to put that back into our budget so the budget carrying forward and I'm sorry I don't have the exact figure with me at this minute but it's it's approximately two hundred forty thousand dollars a reduction from our proposal going forward that does represent everything internet investments aside from what I had mentioned here we can sit and discuss exactly because we haven't really determined where that would come from we can discuss at this point where we would like to see those reductions I I would recommend where we're going to be presenting to or having continued conversation with the Board of Finance next Tuesday March twelfth and I would almost recommend waiting to see what happens there before we take you know look at the figures and see exactly what the budget proposal looks like I'm not sure what everyone here we'd recommend doing as well Collette can you just remind us all the process so from the Board of Selectmen it goes to the Board of Finance and then what happens the Board of Finance will make a determination of their budget and that is what would go up for a county a proposal okay so they really make the final yes yes so we've we've been through so it could change in our favor perhaps you could change either way okay it goes from the first elected to the Board of Selectmen to the fortifying thanks but it's probably smarter to know what what we're dealing with before we make the decisions I would think I would think so that would be my recommendation I believe in ministration right now it's looking at differences of areas especially once we've gotten the first selectins initial budget proposal until we know the exact number we're dealing with it might make sense to wait it's premature but we did have a lengthy discussion with the you know the leadership team yesterday principal meeting our monthly principal meeting we had some conversations people putting they're being creative and thinking about ways we could be as efficient as possible and in other things so but I think we should we just need to see where things land yeah I mean I think it would be great once we serve have that number to sort of hear from you guys like how can we retain our goals so the best as possible yeah well making reductions and sort of keeping that and the forefront instead of just I think sometimes you know we go oh we're gonna snip this take that trim this like let's think about all right what are the goals yeah and like be laser focused on that and then one of the things that we have to I guess live with that sure and what things we must go forward right as I mentioned it's painful yeah it's probably hard to recall cuz it's been a while but I shared a full slide in my presentation on December 5th all of you of all the things we reduce and were eliminated last year during the process to get to achieve the budget we have this year right that was born from a list again created with leadership team and Ken had put together and we had shared that at the board meeting in the process last year and kind of had three phases of where we might go so we're always very specific very open but heavy cuts like this hurt and and I just can't say it any other way if we're going to you know when you talk about $200,000 in our budget that's almost a half a percent of the budget and so you know a little $400,000 is 1% so if funding is rose from the state if arbitrary decisions are made and I know it's not easy and I know we just approved a building project I understand all of that but when hundreds of thousands of dollars are just cut from or reduced from the budget asked which has been vetted too thoroughly over a few months it hurts it hurts and the community and the parents will not be pleased with it and it won't get us to our goals so Maureen Dee Jeff say that significantly the slide that John's referring to I don't think you could talk to anybody in the district and have them say that they don't feel those cuts on a daily basis because we cut we had to cut people and those people provide services and all of the people of the school people that are here are doing without those services and on many days not very well so we don't complain about it because we have an obligation to you know continue to provide the best education we can for kids but know that those cuts from last year are felt every single day and just just as a reminder thanks for reminding me from worrying about that we reduced an administrator position we did our best creatively to create the stand position but we did lose as a supervisor we lost an administrator we lost a custodian we lost the secretary and we lost three part-time clerks and that's just names a few off the top of my head I mean those are that significant services that those people didn't come here and not work they were working when they were here so they were providing services and so when you can't continue to spread people thin and expect that we're going to achieve these grandiose goals it just just can't be done it does cost to have the services but we'll get there and hopefully it won't be as significant as some of us might be thinking [Music] any either okay so we will take a look at that after we get our final number and then again I will remind everyone the next Tuesday the 12th is when that word of Finance will be discussing it forgive me a club but I forget in your presentation to the Board of Finance can we remind them of the things from last year oh we won't we won't be doing a presentation again did that joint presentation the first time this time is going to be more question Q&A there they will have had much more time to go through the details and specifics of the budget I'm sure there will be many more you know questions that are specific and detailed to the budget we've asked them to compile questions that they have in advance so we can answer them and submit them hopefully with a couple of days in advance so they have time to read them as well once we do get those and the answers to that before that all to every room here so you all know what questions specific questions they have asked as well agenda so you know a my to-do list is to make a copy of that slide yeah to pass out and have as the talking points appear so everybody's reminded it's easy to forget what we cut and then we continue to plow forward and do the best we can and provide a great education for the kids so people think it's all sunshine and rainbows and it's not and the reality is when you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars you're talking about people you saw only so many there's not enough toilet paper that you know pencils or crayons it's actual individuals that's how that's how you got that kind of savings that meeting at Town Hall next Tuesday I believe it's here yeah and I think it's police did we ever get feedback on that one is it starting at six o'clock here there's some no no no um we it should be at seven o'clock here it is fibers and ink and that we moved negotiations to here so grab just transitions tonight I could be confused I heard something about six but I think it's supposed to the seven so I wanted to just clarify I need I need to clarify that time it's okay good seven there's no 7:30 Oh interesting okay we'll get clear yes before we notice it definitely okay thank you everyone next on our list is just the new school building absolutely um I just wanted to put out my gratitude to everyone involved I mean this starts way back with a strategic facilities committee you really brought this project to life so thank you so much from there it's such an amazing collaborative effort across all three boards and administration you you did a huge amount of work with it as well and then it's amazing how much the community went forth as well we have the DTC the RTC you doing get out the votes and our amazing PTO doing it as well at just so many organizations working together to to make this happen and this is this is what this is the best of Brookfield this and what it's all about and so I just put out my appreciation to everyone and most importantly to the entire community for for showing their their confidence and belief in this project moving forward I think it's important to know Colette on that that I received many emails from our teachers very excited about this and you know congratulatory and they can't wait they're excited a couple of hugs today actually walking through the building actually with this level shadow I was actually over huckleberry and a couple teachers are just so thrilled and it's really in heard from some former board members who were part of this process before they moved off the board and then I put a call in to a former interim superintendent ralphus Agatha and into Hal Cameron who was our former business director into her business director because they were instrumental in getting things started as well and wanted to let them know where we're at and they couldn't have been more happy so it's been a team effort from everyone so I just thank everyone and I'm just so happy for our students that's just great and for the town it just says a lot about our community that people are willing to be forward thinking and really invests in our students but it's going to benefit everybody in the community so I'm really proud of Brookfield and I did want to elaborate on your point earlier that the process doesn't stop now we don't just you know wipe our hands of it and sit back that there's a lot a lot of work that's going to be going on the application that needs to be done by June 30th is is extensive and long and has been worked on somewhat now as much as we could without investing too much time knowing that the referendum wasn't coming through but it's really going to require something to that extent the Facebook page and the website will still be updated as far as progress maybe not as as much but it will be updated as far as progress with the application if we hear anything else about the state Brampton a and everything going forward with that so we the community will continue to remain informed at any time the email will the new school project email will still be up if anyone has any questions at any time they can still ask during that venue and will be answered the other thing is we talked about a facility committee is working with engaging the community to seek input from people on you know what they you know some ideas or thoughts they have about the new schools and not only questions and you know we're thinking about we know how we might hold forums when we might do that as well as efficiently utilizing some technology tools that are out there where we can ascertain information from people and that kind of a thanks were pretty excited about that and then I heard from some staff they were talking they had suggestions for names for the new school I said we were contest oh that's us no but the great thing about that I don't know if I had mentioned this before we actually have a policy in an annual regarding things and as it stands now it cannot be named for anyone must be named for something geographical and the actual ad hoc committee needs to be formed in regards to that having two community members and representations from administration teachers staff and then if it's a high school it would be students as well that it would big that case they would come up with no less than three and no more than five suggestions which would then be brought to the board and the other board would vote on them so actually somewhat related to that this afternoon I spoke with a small group of second graders a very with a Girl Scout Troop so I was there talking about like women and leadership and stuff like that and a lot of them had just heard about the new school project and so they had a lot of questions about it and it was interesting to see that they they really kind of started out a little bit timid you know they were like they're gonna tear down my school yeah you know what's gonna go on so they had a lot of questions about it and I was able to like answer that evidence are like swing the board's role in it and and then you know of course by the end of it they were if they were super excited especially Bella getting to name the project having a cafeteria it's not a gym that was actually a really big one and kapha janitorial yeah so um I think like maybe if it's possible like you think sort of like the momentum that would still kind of have going to sort of like reach out to more students and kind of I think it's a great lesson in civic engagement too I mean they can use this as sort of like see what happens when it comes from like an idea to something that's like now you know fully on the way to becoming real so I don't know if there's like like an assembly that could be playing with like huckleberry kids or even just something that teachers can say to them to sort of like give them an outlet of you know sort of express their ideas but really have it what would you like to see in the school yeah absolutely and they they loved you know learning about like the whole process and everything really yeah yeah I will face learning getting writing project in there all the time that's great and it all turned up the only other thing I was gonna suggest is a lot of people are asking now so what happens next and what's the timeline and I think they're thinking maybe if we pull out that that slide and you know zoom is on what happens message is a great idea but um but yes I think we need to do that yeah because it's we do have some phenomenal momentum and I just think the best thing one of the best things with this is keeping everyone informed and so we just need to continue to keep people informed because there's going to be a whole lot of hurry up and waiting you know pushing it in that application there and then you know waiting until you know we hear from the state back and everything else or we can keep going on for RFP for architect and all those kind of things that we have to do I did hear one a create a fundraising idea those some that someone that well they were remain nameless talked about in the demolition process perhaps you know you can charge per whack at the hill and we might be able to make a lot of money there so yes oh so I worked in a district where the same thing it's the same concept was done we they built a new school in the back and they took the old school down and they did fundraising yeah they sold bricks drinks of bricks that came out I mean like people right oh yes great it was unbelievable they sold parts of the building and you know it was almost like when people wanted to buy the seats at the old Yankee Stadium a school because people were very attached and people came from you know they didn't physically but they ordered stuff from out of state it was amazing how you know there's ideas where you can take those bricks to incorporate some of them into the new school project into walkways or whatever else so there's a lot of walls and there's a lot that can be done we can be very creative with us and enjoy the process no I was thinking we often stop when something goes wrong and we analyze what did we do wrong how come and didn't work but it feels like this was something that was successful and it seems like it makes sense to pause and sort of analyze what did we do really do well where were all the components and maybe even can we get some feedback from people about you know how did you know why did you vote for you why did you vote YES or how did you learn about it you know be great to sort of capture what was successful about this so we can replicate it for our future our future work great to get back thank you everyone going on to three main points [Music] when we put the new school building project in there yeah well I know I said it was pretty straightforward agenda wasn't it we want to know just just the length talk about regionalization I shouldn't put that out there because Big Talk you know there's but but I think actually that will make people less nervous because I like the idea of the regionalization little R versus bigger and how that's how okay people are focused with okay I just thought the high school students were really impressive I don't know that we've ever had that as a main point but I think I was very impressed with them and they represent what this is all about so I would suggest that we have a point about this the success of our students and how well they present themselves and we have the student leadership that seems to be the theme right whether it's business or the tasks monix it was all student we said we always you know mention when Rosa puts this together we always you know we were over there can we link the video to it and are all convinced at one spot actually yeah practically that works on I think they took a photo over there before they left and then the first presentation on the Rachel's the Rachel's challenge as well well part of them that's it so it was like leadership and community and I think that's that really captures a lot of what we're all here for besides the the academic achievement without that but what do we have that's a great idea yeah all right upcoming events cats enter the PTO meeting is next Tuesday March 12th from 9:30 to 10:30 at huckleberry the book fair is starting March 8th and will run to the 15th the book fair evening hours is next Thursday March 14th at 5 o'clock and the science fair is next Thursday March 14th at 6 o'clock in the upper gym at was skinnier there's an early dismissal on Tuesday March 12 at 11:30 for spring conferences and conferences are from 12:15 to 2:45 and at the high school conferences are on Thursday March 14th Thank You Jay all right executive session recommend a motion that the board entered an executive session for the purpose of receiving a mid-year update on the superintendent's goals and to reveal confidential student matter all right on the saber okay this concludes the public portion of our meeting thank you all for joining us have a good evening [Music]

good morning McAuliffe today is March 11th 2008 it is the 120th day of school this is WDSU news I'm Jean and I love it today for lunch early Chicago hot dogs baked fries baked beans fresh grapes and tomorrow for breakfast Bell will be mini french toast yogurt fresh apples orange juice or milk we have some friends over bringing birthdays Isabelle V please go to the office to pick up your berth Dipper yesterday's thought that question was in the movie The Little Mermaid what kind of animal is Sebastian the answer is a crap the winner is Owen from Team cats better come to the office to pick out your place today's 25 question is if I read three books a day for four days how many books will I read all together remember to write your answer neatly and include your name the class we have a special announcement we will be drawing for the specialist evening our lunch one week sitting with a friend at the picnic table remember if you don't bring your last name or clocks we cannot use your name remember there are many students with the same name the same person you met you and now we're going to be doing Oberto Oberto oh these are portraits like you guys keep going to you find something Mason from Milton from let me see how from Forester no yeah allows you please put them over your buyer I am i employed meet glover the Starbucks will be past account of green side but starting today there will be at wearing lanyards like this collection to collect the green star with a chance to inspect their apples and now we will observe a big pair of Silas to flex unanticipated activities of the day I pledge allegiance to our flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I was meaningful Monday I remember kindness comes every day everywhere thanks for watching bye

[Music] all right I'd like to call to order the special meeting tonight Thursday March 7th of the Board of Finance I'd like to start the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance all right do we have any public comment none perfect all right we're gonna move on to new business and discuss the budget discussion land use is gonna be up first all right my name is Alice do I'm the director of land use I have a very nice quick PowerPoint hopefully I'll just read this too so Shawn understands what we're talking about it asks accomplishments since last year land use Department includes Fire Marshal building health Oh hold on good pause oh there it goes is the container yeah the land-use Department is Fire Marshal building health inland wetlands conservation planning zoning Zoning Board of Appeals economic and Community Development and and that's about it the budgets that I'm presenting tonight are for building health planning which includes Inland Wetlands EBA planning and zoning and then economic development and conservation the fire marshal is going to be presenting with the police and the fire stations on March 14th I'm doing the presentation primarily for the sake of expediency so I will try to answer your questions I'll just read through this the land-use department endeavors to provide a smooth transparent process for development applications whether for the individual residential homeowner or for the commercial developer or property owner pre-application meetings prior to submission of larger complex commissioned applications can be informally reviewed prior submission by our development team services made up of building health fire wetland zoning planning and police and economic development actually this is and the First Selectman intends them as well this has been extremely helpful to businesses interested in coming to Brook fields as we are one of the few towns to have such a group in place meeting consistently to assist in permitting there was a great deal of work this year needed or this past year after the macro burst inmate 2018 as far as determining safety of homes and other structures getting permits going as quickly as possible in helping residents recover from the storm view permit which is our online permitting system was really crucial in processing than the large amount of permits that have come into the office since this storm there are hundreds of permits for demolition repairs residing reroofing propane tanks generators etcetera that we processed it did take several months for many residents to reach payment or notification from their insurance company and as a result there's been a demand for extra help in the office to process these and we're still getting requests for permits as work from the storm is still being completed and actually just this week there's been another demolition taking place for a house that was has been destroyed and some people just don't have the money yet to do it so it has been a quite a long process this is just an example of some of the damages that we experienced what you all of course know about we began the process of transitioning to viewpoint cloud from view permit this past year this should allow us more flexibility and application management and ease for our residents we've also made online permitting much more simple with the ability to pay online as well and it sounds that we're planning on having credit card payment and PayPal or excuse me stripe available on Town Hall we're hoping to get approval for office remodeling as well in order to bring our office up to OSHA standards and to make all staff more efficient as well as having a more user-friendly customer area with computer kiosks and scanners in order to allow customers to submit their permits and other applications online as far as the operating budget all the land use departments have overlapping work and approvals a building permit needs to be approved in almost all cases by wetland zoning health WPC a fire and building and we're all in one office which makes it very convenient for us to communicate with each other as well as the public so what we did was decided that the cost of permitting and satellite imagery work would come out of the land use budgets rather than have some come out of building some from out of land use etc there's going to be an increase in the land use budget and a decrease in the building budget as all the aforementioned costs are no longer shared by the various departments but will be in the land use budget this includes the online permitting copiers and phones another budget change is the cost of legal notices in the Pennysaver and occasionally in the new news times when we have weeks where the Pennysaver isn't published this cost is approximately twenty one thousand nine hundred dollars and is being reclassified for the town clerk's budget to the various individual departments land use posts a minimum of twelve public notices a month in the painting saver for Commission results public hearings and other state mandated postings there's also a reclassification of the administrative assistant for fire and health her salary had previously been through the Health Department but will now be split between fire and health and then also again due to the May 2018 macro burst there was been a large increase in permitting most of this is reflected in the building department and we did add a part-time administrative aide for the increase but I think that's been taken out of the budget by the selectmen conservation and Kirksey budgets have been combined they used to be two separate budgets and there's an overall decrease in those two budgets of 5% which only comes to 1148 dollars but so the one capital expenditure that we've put in for is land office remodel this would be a redesign of all spaces in Town Hall so it would be an overall town hall looking at the entire building with particular attention to the land use office in our office we have between 15 and 20 employees in a fairly very poorly organized space there was money used to redesign the land use faults maybe five years ago however the rest of the office is made up of leftover things that other offices get rid of like dividers we also went to Siemens when they went out of business and we're able to replace some of our worst equipment with things that they were throwing out it's also extremely difficult to concentrate in the current environment with employees helping residents the counter people are on the phone copiers scanners printers employees talking to each other we also have developers lawyers and attorneys come to our office and sit at a back table that we have and it is really noisy sometimes and it's not appropriate really for us to wear any noise counseling cancelling headphones because we also have to help customers and there is some pictures of our office questions No okay you did you say that the bad news budget to be up in the building buildings down there is an error every seeing them in in building department if you look at the original budget for 2018-19 and you look at 53 910 which is which had been technical consulting and is now departments specific outside services its 20,000 and it it transcribed incorrectly as minus two hundred dollars so it's actually a decrease of 30% for the operating cost minus salaries and wages so that was just fail and that was there the rows are hidden and that was me I was reclassifying the trying because we had him all combined in one department and you know I fixed that today so it's 200 it's zero now so it's 23,000 150 for the operating costs for 2018 that was permanent and they now have sixteen thousand six hundred twenty four thirty percent decrease this is a general question and this might be outside the control of the department but the the increases in Union wage is kind of jump out and I'm just wondering is that mandated discretionary so that's on that worksheet that you have but they have all their clerks got that extra bump this year the for the Union so they're higher than 2% I think they got an extra about six thousand dollars the when we negotiated with a union job it have become clear over the years that the job of the assistant town clerk let's say and the assistant town had almost completely melted and merged they were all doing the same thing so our lawyer they asked for an increase to equalize the the assistant level and our town lawyer who works on this Pat Mikhail said if we go to arbitration on this they'll win these people and there were seven people in that position okay that went out okay that's it we didn't wanna go to arbitration and on the off-site they certainly deserved it extremely hard sits deep cut one area that was for the part-time for time in the building the seasonal part-time and seasonally yeah yeah that's a big rocking increases went from we went from zero basically because you know I see them yeah the the storm created a huge influx of permits and we couldn't keep up and whether that will be over okay it's questionable plus we decide I decided to take this out because we just have to limit what we're doing and if we still see increased development increased permits we may need to come back right understand it should start to roll off when you hopefully yeah and with you point cloud hopefully to be able to get by with no is that all the way establish viewpoint clowder you said you got the credit cards it that's still coming yeah that's still coming actually we're right now transitioning to a few point clouds from a few permit probably next month it's a big learning curve for everybody some more so than others sorry you mentioned the money to the capital request for reconfiguring the office but I don't know that was that taken out well I took it out to get help everybody's gonna make that face I'm gonna make I just wanted to make the board's aware of analysis department we have 15 to 18 people in about the same space that three people are in in the town clerk's office they are just jammed and we're gonna have to do something and sometimes if you go to like a coal or Herman Miller they'll design office spaces for you have the hope that you'll buy their equipment I don't think we can afford either of those or you could hire a designer to come in see what people do see what their specific tasks and activities are and then design a space because we're really jammed analysis it's it's crazy and we got to keep these Department these departments together because the fire marshals always talking to the building yeah right and you got to keep them closed and all the files are there in the wall oh we also have the streetscape great no mouse keys in our offices yeah so so so you want to have free services maybe we put 20,000 in yep if we had to hire a designer to sign it okay that's why I couldn't figure out how and we took it out so maybe we can do it first you could have saved two minutes on that Steve yeah very dude miss very much which one all right first of all thank you for the [Music] response and the cruisers also just the snow it's the general condition of the road yeah borders are very very clear when you go to Bethel does your talent well that's our road paving program and you can really see it now visible you know close to the Newtown border ya know go to house it go down up to South this site driving through a minefield the minute you hit new town so I said something to an Rosenthal the First Selectman in Newtown I said can you fix that he says I already have I tell people it's in Brookville I thought it might be a new time policy that they keep their rights like that to sort of damp into traffic and they'll like to lavon's yeah yeah that's ridiculous okay all right I guess so get started but as you all know I'm Ralph Tedesco and this is the Department of Public Works 2019 2020 budget presentation I just like to start off usually for the people don't know itself that well just telling us what our mission is and what we do who we are so basically the fishermen of the Department of Public Works is to provide the citizens of the town of with the best possible services and the most efficient and economical way possible I bet I have a list of all kinds of things that we do under there but I have a couple more slides that I could get into a little bit more detail about the things that we actually do but who we are the Department Public Works is actually made up of two departments where the highway department that's the obvious one and we're also the fifth specific facilities department and the head of the facilities area is Sheldon Conn he's not here tonight but he's kind of James's equivalent on the facility side the highway department consists of a diversified group of 13 individuals with a combined over 250 years of experience so they know what they're doing but it's a good mix we have a good mix down there it's a good mix of older guys and younger guys we're starting to see a little bit of that transition and some of our newer guys are starting to become some of the older guys and some of the older guys are starting to retire and we're bringing new new people into the things so it's a dynamic thing it's something that's continually happening and that experience is being passed on to the new people our basic responsibilities two hours to install drainage for all of our road paving projects we normally pave several miles of road per year so all of that training is brand new drainage when we pave a road all the catch basins all the pipe that we put in it's a brand new system so basically when we reclaim and pave a road the people are getting a brand new road including including the Audrina the obvious thing we do in the winter we've talked about a little bit already is snow plowing and salting the general maintenance of the town right away which is included it's all of the trees that you see any drainage swells that run along the edge of the road there within the right away all the signs anything that you might see in the town right away is something that we're responsible I also like to point out sometimes it's forgotten we're first responders to a wide variety of emergencies snow is the obvious one but a good example for this year is the macro burst our guys were the first guys out there I mean we were working alongside our source during that entire storm we cleared the roads and if we didn't get out there first there would be no EMS they'd be no fire there would be no police to be no response so sometimes people forget that but we're a first responder the first first responder and we're also responsible for the town's fleet the facilities Department like I said is managed by Sheldon Conn and we're responsible for the Town Hall the Senior Center the police department the library town garage Old Town Hall and other minor structures on a daily basis and both do whatever were called upon sometimes we've come to the schools and give some aid there and we're cooperative with the Parks and Recreation Department and whoever may be cause but these are our major responsibilities what did we accomplish this year sometimes people forget but the winter actually ended in April this year and then we were soon hit by a may 15 that microburst the deep that I'll never forget it certainly took a lot out of me as well as a lot of other people in the town but like I said we immediately open the roads we were first first responders we worked alongside eversource to fire the police the EMS we got people where they needed to be when they needed to be there for were sixty-two thousand cubic yards of material collected that includes our roadside picker as well as things residents brought to a yard as well as trees that we cut and things we brought to the yard ourselves so that's that's a lot of material and we on the facility side we had damage to our Town Hall roof we replaced an air conditioning at the replot at the library and a recycling truck was struck by a tree so that was repaired as well bunch of the compliments I put this is actually in your packages I'm not gonna read everything we did but the point of these slides is just to show you that in addition to the bad winter and the response to the macro burst we continued our regular duties as well some of the highlights are we we paved 1.6 miles a roadway we reclaimed and paved we have more to come in the spring of 2019 because a lot of that money was delayed and being spent because of the macro burst where we still almost got to mile done and we cracked seal 2.5 miles of roadway does an MS 4 program the MS 4 is actually a fancy word for stormwater management so that's our drainage system we created a digital mapping platform for the MS 4 program so basically we have a platform you could go on to the website see just about every catch basin in town we're starting to add the pipe work into that system as well and that's a requirement of the DEP of the state of Connecticut so we're trying to meet all of those mandates and get everything done in an appropriate way we maintain a fleet of over 100 plated plated vehicles so we main tagged hundreds and hundreds of dangerous trees removed we're just going through a list of the FEMA trees today I have to do a finger report for the trees that were removed and get GPS locations on basically every stump that's out there and just in the favorite trees alone we have about a hundred trees that removed that's in addition to the normal trees we would remove an hourly basis like I said their residential brush arthas man successfully it was extremely busy this year for a period of time it was open 7 days a week for a period of almost a month so we man that with additional manpower and hours we responded to hundreds of rain as residents generated work orders way more than usual because of the macro burst in addition to the normal 300 or so we get on a regular basis and we replace all of our antiquated vehicles as you know because you give us the money for that I talked about the ms4 and the work order so move on on the facility set we replaced hot-water heaters a number of buildings we're in the process of designing Windows for the library I believe it's been removed from the capital budget but we do have we will have a window design by the end of this year so whenever we do decide to replace the windows rivetti we'll be ready for the big four bid with documents and specifications we completed the specifications for the gas pump canopy which you granted us the money for last year and we successfully bended that project and we expect construction of the canopy in the spring that will protect our gas pumps our new tanks as well as the people who are pumping gas in inclement weather as usual where you play several of the HVAC units in the town hall this 53 units traditionally two of them golf per year so they're probably on about a twenty to twenty-five year cycle and we have that in the capital budget again this year that's a necessity because it's inevitably going to happen on 52 he pumps 53 themed pumps whatever it may be we actually run a hazardous waste date with the town in New Milford it's regional but Google for coordinates that we hold in a New Milford and 600 residents persistent participated while the parking lot lights were replaced at the Town Hall we've got a grant from bright ideas and we were able to replace our inefficient lighting with LED lights which are more Chinese you have more energy efficient so it's a win in two ways we did it for free and we're going to save money on electric and as part of our duties we do daily maintenance at the Town Hall Police Department Senior Center library town garage and park strip and Recreation building their goals for 2019-20 rather than read this it's to do a lot of the same we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do everything we making with different projects and different vehicles so with that I'm done if you have any questions so starting on the on the expenses and no complaints obviously because the overall zero bug up to that to items that go down substantially to not only down to master cook down to three 2015 levels but wondering how that done the same insult in the vehicle field how how how that was well the scent the sand and salt I do expect a bit of a surplus for this year I open to end the year with a full salt barn and based on if you remember about three years ago there was a salt shortage so the prices the price is escalated and they went from like $70 a ton to almost $90 of time so basically for this year I budgeted less than ninety but higher much higher than 70 and priced prices of salt over the years have been coming down so basically that reflects a full salt barn as well as reduced prices so from the soil shortens in the end three or three or four years ago fuel is based on your contract that's about that contract price we contract our fuel Mitchell II got part of it I figured who live and everything Mitchell is doing it this year but we contracted a price and based on average usage that's what that's what the number comes out to something and then on the capital side I don't wanna go through all share a glass session but I have a question specifically without the tape okay and you're in you're out we put in 1.5 million dollar roads are great but half but how do we know 1.5 is the right number should it be 1.7 should be problem with four I mean how do we know that we're basically into a calculation this various methods to pave roads is reclaiming pave which is the most expensive method is milling fills which are less expensive but less efficient cost wise and then this micro pays and things like that so we have a hundred miles of road in town so if you think of it this way since you have a hundred miles of road and they aged one year that means you lose 100 Rulin mile ears now for every method that you use for example reclaiming and paving and 17 so few 17 years so if you reclaim and pave one mile of road you're in seventeen years to your system so basically with all the methods available on the money that you've given me I figure out how much money we could put into various methods of paving and then if the total is 100 that means we are status quo if it totals over 100 that means we're improving our system and so the most people tell me just so what what would the effect be of that 1.5 budget went down to 1.4 out of here put it this way to reclaim in favor alleys approximately $300,000 so if you take 300 thousand dollars out of the budget you're essentially removing 17 to 20 Road mile years so basically you're moving backwards you're adding 80 wrote model years to your system so you're losing 20 miles off of your system you might not see it in a year or two or three but over the course of time as you don't maintain the status quo we have an overall Road rating system it's called the pavement condition index PCI and currently we're at about a seventy so if you don't put the money into your roads and you put a an eighty mile road mile you're it might be at a 68 next year and then the next year you might be at a 65 64 but it's going to be a gradual decline based on the money not specifically what they really do look at is that you're putting enough money into your budget to maintain your buildings and your roads they don't have specific questions like that what they don't want to see is you digging into your general fund or operating expenses they really just like and there is a way gap generally accepted accounting principles has a way that an alternative where you could put the road conditions right in the financial statements but there is no state no town in the state of Connecticut that does that because it takes a lot of engineering costs every year to and a lot of auditing cost to do that you said the money we give you you make work however are we giving enough to meet the goals we should be meeting yeah we've added 100 or 100 plus remaining years every year since I've been getting the 1.5 million dollars comfortable yes I mean that's bad yeah I mean since it's so formulaic you might not have been if it was one point for how many wrote my husband hated well like I said if you base it upon them reclaiming pave which is predominantly the most expensive and you're adding seventy and you give us one hundred thousand dollars less that's probably one third of seventeen so six little loose explode my own ears got me right down that formula and sender come to my office tomorrow well and I think you know with the cost of asphalt we may at some point need to up that number regicide see what the price it's been pretty steady right yes in steady but the good thing about the condition of our roads is that we could do more microwaves so basically if you want to get two more formulation um hey REE claimant pave will cost you approximately a dollar thirty per square yard to do a paving project to gain seventeen-year-old mile years am at a might a micro pave will cost approximately $1 to nineteen ninety cents to a dollar to gain about seven role in well years so if you do the efficiency math on that you'll see that it's more efficient to buy years by doing micro pays rather than doing reclaims and paves like I said milling fills are like the most blessed fish so basically since our rows are in good conditions we could do more micro pave so we could buy more Road mile years at a reduced cost so I think the roads are awesome selfie and intel says old guy I thought I already had it I like the way they emphasize the question of the developers windows I know the last year we brought that I'm just looking at the capital item and there was a remaster $425,000 they've got reduced to $5 yep what does 5,000 get you in library windows every place windows in my house yeah so sue Slater was at the library and she looked at it and we looked at the pictures this is to repair the cupola right on the pass which is leaking rotted wood it's dangerous so I talked to Ralph and Ralph said yeah but we think we can do that for about $5,000 so of those windows we're gonna partly piecemeal it and then when we make a decision because that needs to be done right away so can you believe label this Capitol item from library windows the library Cooper yeah they're always knows in the cupola yeah there are windows oh you're right so we'll put a library Cooper audience it's better if goodness angry all right anything else yes so that so there's two vehicles remaining that were not sure actually if you want to see this nice presentation without James doctoral high-waist away if I suppose it's got some pictures of our viewing with the condition if they're in but this is the truck go on replace justice woods and disturb this place but we do recycle it down system and became the chip truck that you drive around new chips no cyclone alert rough in that position and put a new truck first align vehicle questioning us $230,000 three plates that would 19 2009 teen 2020 which will block budding flow and this this is one of the trucks that's still in the butter themselves yeah this is another truck that's still in yeah it's an all another all season smaller zone clickable one-ton dumpling all season body on back dumps into Tulsa stands public release their private reasons has been rebuilt placed in the back in the cab retina Rodney your question when at $40,000 clicks that was to build 19 2012 Ford and that's like 50 or couple well we I think was we add I'm sure this cos asked every year but any sound Italia what gets rid of her when it wasn't a plan for the those two sweeping quickly one Belfield zircon with the working engine and take a little local website people pick them up second so maybe one of the thousand dollars maybe get somebody wants the engine wheel I mean a cop car it might go to phone you you know that's where to go next this is no longer in the but this was in the budget but the fourth level cut it out so it's a ten-mile truck leave some cosmetic work on the floorboards Fred Flintstone we have a helps welder fabricator bags often try to get another years and a mini excavator we were meant to share these were just up get partner action for different jobs and that again selecting Club though and for the second year school just let them so I go back to that last one and that oh wait that's trees if you wanted to talk about trees we're ready for that too with the excavator I'm just looking at that and thinking about the macro burst and like what that probably would have gonna help the trails are so free we have a larger Aires on our roof joke but when you entities traveling down on about coupes and stuff you're not gonna be looking a little beauty in it who knows what this is more efficient to do that you know swells our office or that store and small drainage projects daily practice they can use for ball full restoration plantation it will be a joint feature quickly how long businesses at least twenty years since the Lexia SF last how often do you rent the machine for $500 a day well between departments we praise you more if we get in the house but the appraiser 10 times a year we know it takes a day to go you know I gotta get it dig forward or go get pick it up right back good a job and I think they forgot was plenty aw you see that doesn't include parking right you stay probably using another truck to drive escapes you still about 10 days a year case we're excited to announce our dollars a year not the one locked cuz parks and refuges in six 120 thousand dollars the spirits to rent good rented every time you kill them look not every can we get the advertiser it's over 20 years if the Bartlet will forget the number I mean instead of saying about 10 days do we have that number something well they don't have one now so that all the rest it when you say the rent think do we know how big times we rented here to get a history of we rented it three or four but we don't we're using more if we had it I don't think I had this if we read it ten times a year it's pays for itself in a few years they're doing it from I think I think what Jesus is trying to say is that it would be a useful piece of equipment and we're operating somewhat inefficiently now even though we're only rented it for or so times this year it doesn't reflect the need for because they try to make do with the equipment they have so although we only rent it at for time that we might use it twenty times if we actually have it and our job to be more efficiently get done quicker and better part directly with more thrills small them being up trees down they were used one to tell him all thing I didn't want to go to bed until mom and I know we read them passage to reduce of all fields I just don't I just don't like James go renting equipment I was joke - no it was more my volume or to rent them than the Honan now I was just Cuban that's all it means that something I guess - with the musical project placement and losing the soccer cousin would be more potential options do you agree it's an additional transit know there would be a definitely a nice piece of equipment to have this for sure this is the town on how their excavators you know we learned you 135 genders great two and a half times sex with it okay he says you do more instruction that's a very weird thing it's kind of productive this guy yeah Charlotte you there you had any questions very rounded treats you would like to talk about that actually actually in our not operating budget is it is a tree budget but you'll see that we increase the the money that we're putting towards trees this year one for obvious reason is the macro burst we're still cleaning up Deadwood and trees that we're leaning over that are not dying and in addition to that there is the what did he call that the mo magic is actually starting around time you see that species are straight but woodpeckers busy they want to give to other layer and those boards in between the work in the wood yeah this notice actually came out from the state of Connecticut alerting us about this creature and we are starting to see their effects that's an example of what what teams were just talking about and if you ride around town and look for that you'll see a lot of that we also the Maples Bank and relish two years we did dry seasons killing off affecting the language this is just some damage from the macro burst some of the things we responded to that was stumped on the side of the road and the bottom ones look like these still River Trail and that's it thank you thanks for having us Parks and Rec like good morning apologize in advance anybody who's a parent here knows that your kids always get sick at the least opportune times and my son was home from school on Tuesday afternoons at home and now the thing is going through our whole house so I tried to time my cold medicine in order to be as coherent and that easy to understand as possible but please bear with me because I am fighting off something right now I have security you know can be contaminating everything before I leave that for those of you and I haven't had the pleasure of meeting my name is Mary Knox I work for the parking BEC Department for quite some time mostly recently was promoted to director back in March of 2018 just in time for the Mac reverse so when people think about the parks department what people know we do is mowing and lawn care and all the parks schools and basically owned properties maintenance and lining of the ball fields the grass and turf including the fields in all the schools garbage removal at the park school properties and other municipal owned properties and leaf removal and fall and snow removal in the winter at school properties and other municipal owned properties what we also do is operation and maintenance of the irrigation systems and seasonal water systems buildings including restrooms at Town Hall Cadogan Park in the town beach maintenance at all the playgrounds at the schools as well as the kids Kingdom in the town beach trail maintenance including small tree removal beautification projects and yes we even hang the wreath at the front entrance of Town Hall every year that is gifted to the town by the garden club we respond to damage to property caused by weather events including wind rain and snow most recently on May 16 2008 een the parks department began our response to the map reversed which as we all know deeply affected numerous facilities including Brookfield High School the Town Hall Cadogan Park the town each and there's the river Greenway so we were dealing with things from fence repairs bleacher repairs turf repairs feeding on the turf and even the Town Hall Christmas tree so we had a lot of different things that took a lot of our attention over the summer and well into the fall these tasks and many more are accomplished with our four full-time employees including working supervisor contractor services and seasonal employees are used to supplement our labor force during peak times throughout the year the other part of our department is a recreation department and what people know that we do we have popular after-school programs especially for kindergartners and first-graders at thunder school and grades two through four and huckleberry we have our Friday night ski and snowboard trips with 150 students in grades 5 through 12 and a dedicated group of volunteer chaperones youth basketball leagues for boys and girls in grades 1 through 12 and special events for the community including our annual egg hunts the Halloween 5k talha Trick or Treat magic shows and many more what we also do is our 11 week concert from the Park series each summer fully funded by sponsorship revenue we're responsible for the seasonal operation of the town park Beach and hiring and training staff to provide a robust aquatics program including swimming lessons and the growth of muskrat swim team we plan and supervise at least eight weeks of camp each summer often with five or more camps running concurrently each week we offer a variety of adult education enrichment classes in addition to adult fitness classes and open gyms we work with the town's social services department to offer program discounts and scholarships to those in need and these tasks and many more are accomplished with three full-time employees myself as director our recreation supervisor Dan Gagne and our administrative assistant was grabbed so I figured if I'm you I don't know what's different from last year so this is what's different we have an increase fourteen thousand four hundred eighty seven dollars in total of that five hundred excuse me five thousand five hundred and seventy is a union contract increase for the parks department and we're also looking to align our actual ot closer to what we actually spend every year so our four thousand seven hundred twenty eight dollars that we're requesting in addition to what we were funded last year is a very conservative estimate and below any actual for the last three fiscal years and they'll spend a little bit more time talking about that on the next slide under projects equipment facility maintenance we have a total increase of sixteen thousand five hundred and eighteen dollars requested of that the equipment maintenance and repair we're requesting a 20-foot equipment trailer at a cost of four thousand three hundred five dollars and a lower deck at a cost of four thousand four hundred twenty dollars which are included in our operating budget visitor for guidelines that account for more than fifty percent of our total increase we have a five thousand dollar new item request and technical supplies for engineered claim product for ball fields and we expect this product to help us reduce a number of renounce on baseball and softball field so basically when you buy a load of clay you're kind of getting look at the draw the engineer clay is going to give us a higher clay content and less silt and it's going to help us firm up the fields and decrease the rate outs we have an additional three thousand dollars in technical supplies to fund replenishing the playground mulch twice per year it's a wonderful slide thank you very much very solid if that could be yeah if I could understand that yes every act every increase explaining loved it thank you I appreciate that feedback so for the parks operating budget ot we can see here in fiscal year 2016 we had a total of twenty two thousand six hundred ninety-four dollars funded our actual miss twenty eight thousand two hundred eighty four dollars and eighty two cents and our cost per crew our for four men would be one hundred and fifty dollars and thirty nine cents moving to fiscal year 2017 we have ot funded at twenty two thousand six hundred ninety four dollars the actual spent was thirty two thousand three hundred twenty three dollars and the cost per crew our for for is one hundred and fifty three dollars and forty cents 2018 ot funded again twenty two 694 more sensing a pattern here ot actual is thirty seven to thirty to ninety six and the cost per crew our for for again is 150 for twenty eight and then for fiscal year 2019 we did receive a small increase I think somebody was trying to kind of make up the difference from any potential salary increases last year we went up to 22,000 147 and as of the end of February were already at twenty two thousand and fifty million dollars so we have less than hundred dollars left and our cost per hour is why is it difficult to predict that number I'm glad that you asked that question so it's difficult to predict the number because storm response is a moving target so as much as we want the storms to come between 7 a.m.

and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and non holidays unfortunately you know we can't control that and so as much as we try our best to estimate what we need you know holiday storm a weekend storm you know the significant storm that we have this past weekend which requires a larger response the Fiocchi throws really quickly and so to be truthful in my opinion we've we've been underfunded for quite some time and our goal here is not to make a tonal correction per se but just to kind of move in the right direction and then look for other efficiencies as well so we're hoping to kind of get closer to where we except I would agree with you and with that request and I did a little I did a little math and you know even to get back to the level that we were funded in in 2016 in terms of how many hours were given we need to be up to thirty thousand eight hundred and twenty eight dollars so again I recognize that we're always looking for cost efficiencies I know that if I were on the board Finance I'd be looking for a conservative numbers as opposed to inflated so I feel like we're asking for just under the actual in 2016 with the goal of you know doing what we can to find efficiencies but recognizing that we may not you know it might be a two step process we might be kind of making headway this year and then we might be coming back to you next year and saying okay we make some headway and now this is where we really feel like we need today we do have some control you know the storms again totally beyond your control anytime Public Works is out we're out as well with a school parking lots but we also have increases that our facilities on the weekends and so we have a lot of garbage Cleanup is one of our more fun jobs that we get to do and since the silver greenways open and we have so many good community events we find ourselves needing to go out on the weekends it's actually better in our opinion to have our own people doing that as opposed to even contracting it out because when they're out picking up the garbage they can go check other facilities where contractor labor would not necessarily give us that same level of a service 2018 is funded at 22,000 that the actual was 37 that 715 and that was found somewhere in the budget so that was from the macro first so yeah so 2080 17 is still $10,000 almost where do we find the money you know our year yeah the type of thing before there were the things that didn't happen that were the programs that weren't able to happen and you know I I can't honestly speak to that because it was it yeah I'm in this position at the time but I I I think your conjecture you know it would be reasonable that I've see their content through operating or funds transfer affirmative are now we're gonna remember a fair bit of this will be reimbursed by FEMA at some point in the future but yeah you're still gonna have these expenses yeah I'll be really as I like the whole approach to the whole thing I like the fact of how its laid out and I like the fact how you're saying you put a little bit more in but you're gonna try to work with it you're not gonna put the maximum in and you're gonna figure it out I think that's the approach we're looking for almost is I'm not wrong and I love the else love it yeah I mean wages the Union sent by Union yes three out of the four of our crew are the now you can ask to with the you know thinking that this is snow removal and that type of stuff do you have the equipment that you need to efficiently use these the crew of you is it for an excavator thank you see fermenting yes we've been very fortunate so we are going to be looking to find some new efficiencies going forward on a bobcat tool cab that we currently use for some snow removal on sidewalks we're going to be looking to perhaps get a Brian strata to help solve the Sanwa sidewalks in that manner going forward but that's not for this budget year yep okay so for our recreation operating budget drivers we have total of fourteen thousand three hundred and seven dollars increase in salaries and wages most of that is found by union contract salary increase much like the land use Department was speaking about earlier there's a more significant increase unusual we did introduce over time for our administrative assistant right now twenty is a conservative estimate she does work at a lot of special events that we have during the course of the year and it's just reasonable to have that in our budget and then our Park and Rec Commission secretary for 10 full meetings and then there's a small salary increase with that as well and all of the other parking wrap excuse me recreation lines total two thousand and thirty-two dollars those can be broken down to an increase from the cost of our software report for our each Rock software an alignment of communication line to what we're currently paying for the same services and then a small increase in cost for the installation removal and the storage of the docks at the Town Beach as well as smallest every repair or so as the docks age we have to replace more teams and weeks and things along those lines so I was hoping to spend a lot of my time with you this evening concentrating on a few of the capital projects so the Board of Selectmen very understandably decided to fund $50,000 into a capital reserve account for the replacement of the birth of high school tennis courts and at that level of funding it would take us about six years in order to have enough in the account in order to replace them so the tennis courts are one of two of the high priority capital projects that the partner mint commission would like to talk about so I actually took these pictures on one of those beautiful days back in February that we had there was no snow and I figured this is the perfect time to go and capture kind of what we what we come to every spring when the courts reopened so the high school tennis teams actually take to the courts on March 16th for their first day and right now they're locked we're trying to allow things to settle back and what's going to happen is that the lines that we see here are either going to settle down or they're going to turn into Crocs and we never quite know which one we're going to be dealing with every March so we do have some constraints of what kinds of repair work we can do and we often need to do emergency repairs which we would just be using concrete and then we have to wait a few weeks and then we have to repaint the courts and those in those particular patches so it's certainly not an ideal situation for the high school tennis team because at the start of their season the courts are not in the prediction that we would walk for them also of note here the cracks that you see I'm not sure how clear the picture is up on the screen but you see some different colors and you can also see maybe some kind of tape underneath and that just shows you that a lot of these cracks that we're seeing again are on the same areas that were repaired before so we're not fixing the problem when we do the crack sealing we get maybe six months maybe a year sometimes up to two years but we're just kind of patching the problem so I hesitate to say that it's it's fixing the issue so the tennis courts are 40-plus years old I played on these when I was in in high school here actually not on the tennis team I wasn't that good but I did do PE classes so our current practice is we do crack sailing we touch-up paint every year and so as I mentioned each winter and spring with a freeze and thaw cycle we have new cracks develop and old cracks reopen and we repair many of the same spots over and over again so there's no long-term guarantee and the average extends over the past few years it's usually around $10,000 in fiscal year 2019 the former director brought forward a proposal for a $550,000 for the demolition of the existing courts and to build five new post-tensioned concrete courts and to light them so recognizing that we might need to be a little bit more conservative in our approach for fiscal year 2020 we're looking for three hundred and thirty thousand dollars just to replace the four courts that we have and after meeting with a contractor he feels at the creative the current courts is sufficient enough for us to build right on top of them and save any potential cost of demolition we would not suggest lighting in the first stage but we could do the very limited underground work necessary in anticipation of a possible light project in the future so you would leave the courts that are there now and just put the post attention right a pop right on top of them interesting yes so this falls under Parks and Rec so it's not in the school's ten-year plan you know it's not enough schools everything outside the school building I thought they seem to have we've been building a reserve at all or is this the first year most post-tensioning it's the style of building them so basically the concrete floats so anything that's going on below the subsurface is not going to affect the surface of the courts and they put rods yes there's a rise on feet and tighten them up and it just keeps it all we have that over cadogan it seems to be working very well yeah it's very much stuff so the question really is you know at what point do we continue to invest in the repairs every year and at what point do we read them and that's a question for the Board of Finance for sure another question they have with the tennis courts is what the condition of the existing condition of the courts is that preventing us from hosting tennis matches that are at the high school up until this point uh you know we've had to do some rescheduling of Hill matches before but we have to be able to fix them and to reschedule and to have post the matches again we're going to the emergency repair so in the springtime in the early spring we're doing emergence and repair work which is is not guaranteed at all and so we're basically this kind of patching the problem later in the season in the fall and the late summer or to the late summer early fall we can go in and do a little bit more crack filling and repair and actually last year we were funded twenty five thousand dollars in order to do some significant crack sealing and then to repaint the entire court all four courts and when I got an estimate for that work the estimate came in at thirty seven thousand nine hundred dollars so so we decided at the time that we would kind of take away tints the approach and that we no matter what we did in the fall was going to likely reopen this spring so we were going to go ahead and address the spring knowing that we already have that $25,000 we probably don't need more than five or six or seven to correct the courts in the short term and then perhaps that money is better spent actually putting it towards rebuilding the new courts how long did a new courts last they're guaranteed structurally for 20 years ah we would need to repaint them after about eight or nine years on to the high school back here so again another one of our capital project priorities is the replacement of the bacteria dat the high school and again understandably the Board of Selectmen recommended $50,000 to go into a reserve fund we had requested five hundred thousand dollars for their replacement so a little bit of background about what happens when you put in a turf field so initially you can see that the the top picture the fibers are upright the infill is high and the field looks like that for about a year so basically the field was installed say the fall of 2007 into the 12 2008 that's what it looked like going down to the settling period years two through five again approximately fall 2008 through fall 2012 the fibers start to settle down they're laying over there holding in the crumb rubber which is what what provides the cushion for the impact and and that's that's the sweet spot of the field for years two through five when you have mature filled for your six through eight which brings us about through the fall of 2015 the fibers are laid over and the info height remains at its ideal level and it can go for about six or eight years from the initial installation so through Chuck 2015 or feel to be considered a mature field and now current conditions in February two thousand nineteen and I apologize because the slides really do depict very very good pictures in terms of what you would see if you actually walked the field but you can see there's actually a lot of worn areas and I didn't bring the measurement tool with me when I went to take the pictures but I did have on my employee lanyard so I kind of use that as a little guy so basically you know when I pulled on on the fiber it's you know about a centimeter less than half an inch so we're having a lot of wear and again this is not scientific that was me picking up one place just out of random but you know we do have some concern that the field is is wearing quite a bit and and we're not sure if it can if it can last long enough in order to continue to just put that fifty thousand dollars away for the next eight years that we would need when was the field the best information that I could get was the fall of 2007 when it opened and so it would have been the spring of 2007 there was it's a little bit hard to to follow the process at the high-school fields as those of us that were in town back then know the stadium field was the first one laid and then they did the back field second but there was a pop of the stadium field so the back field open first and so to the best of my knowledge and ability deduce fall of 2007 is when I believe it was opened and what is the expected I think of what is the thank you so the average is anywhere between eight and twelve years so we're very much at the end of the life expectancy for the field and still it's still supposed to be cheaper to have a turf field than maintaining the grass it's hard to see the one lump sum yeah so you can make a lot of different arguments in terms of the man-hours and the seeding and the cutting that certainly is going to offset some of the cost of having the turf field what's not really quantifiable in terms of monetary savings would be the extra use that the team's really enjoy being able to use the turbo you know with all the grass fields are closed and so you know it from where I'm sitting that's that's an equally important consideration for the turf I think if you look at it a per hour of use a turf field is less expensive but just for to maintain a grass field unless you are using golf course level you know us open level maintenance it's cheaper for grass but you don't get anywhere in years you yeah understood yeah the weather's been a shame we weren't reserving since yeah he's longer since we knew who was a limited life expectancy but gotta start somewhere that agreed and and so when the field was first approved and installed the town actually was aware that it had a shelf life and and it was about ten years and now were on year eleven to twelve and back in fiscal year 2016-17 that might be off by just a year we requested two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the turf replacement and in fiscal year 2017 actually fifty thousand dollars was funded so we already have fifty thousand dollars in a reserve fund which is good news for all of us in fiscal in the next fiscal year again we recognized it as a priority we asked for it and it was postponed it's a big knot we get it you know and then the next year again asked for it was postponed so this year we're asking for the five hundred thousand dollars to fully fund the back to our field again since we are fairly confident that we already have 50 in reserve that could be brought down to four hundred and fifty to fifty what with that of covered is opposed to the five hundred so the five hundred is for replacement of the backfield the 250 would have been wall thank you so we have two trails at the high school and so we recognize that they're both going to have to be replaced within a couple of years and so the 250 times four is going to give us both so why now it really has been a plan replacement from this from when it was installed it's not really a surprise to any of us although we wish it was the project completion if we plan it can be twelve weeks after we award the bed and if we replace the field you know ahead of needing to close it for any reason we have the luxury of being able to plan the construction at a time what is going to be leased interruption to the Scholastic's or schedules and we do have weather as a consideration we do have to be above 40 degrees so as much as we would like to replace it over the course of the winter that's not going to be an option for for us so the choice is you know should we increase the level of funding for repairs I was quoted recently a repair for a single five by ten patches about five thousand dollars so basically what happens is they can take a less worn area of the field likely one of the side and they can cut it out and they can sew it into a more Ward area of the field and we've done that before and when the lacrosse goal creases already so the question is you know how many of those areas do we have on the field how many how much money do we want to sink into repairs and is it better to sink money into repairs is it going to last long enough that we get our money's worth or we just better off going to the replacement that we have when they do that do they take the one piece and put it on edge where they sew some additional you know problems with doing that is you're creating more scenes and anytime you have a scene you're gonna have a scene that's gonna start coming apart as well as the sub-base and last but not least we have one piece of equipment that was put back in through the Board of Selectmen for your consideration and that's our Bobcat toolkit and so basically we consider our Bobcat toolkit our fifth crewmember it's really not valuable to us and last year we spent somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to ten thousand dollars on repairs so again we're kind of in a situation that is it better to keep putting money into it or like when you have a car that is six or eight or ten years old you kind of reach a point and you say okay I'm gonna put on the new tires but if it needs an alternator I'm done I'm moving on so we kind of have to think about it like that oh I believe in and I'm so sorry because our Park supervisor is not here to help me out but I believe it's seven or eight years old so it does help us with many different tasks lifting heavy equipment we're putting on one of the spreaders onto the plow truck there we use it to maintain the silver Greenway to clear off the debris from the path and then for plowing the snowing of snow either from the school sidewalks or from the from the turf a lot of times you sports or and the Scholastic sports are very anxious to get on to the turf fields even before the snows melted and so we do our best to try to clear it off off so they can start their season in mid-march I do wanna thank you for allowing me the opportunity to come and speak may I answer any questions pick one I don't see any requisition here for the tennis court in Williams Park how does that been abandoned no sir that's actually part of our operating so we spend about five thousand dollars a year to recondition it with the Youth Sports that use all of the fields and we activate okay I know as a parent with kids and youth sports that we pay fees and I know that that goes toward cleaner forms of coaching and umpires and stuff like that but is there any revenue that comes from or from the the soccer teams I think that that good to help pay for the maintenance of the fields that they use that are outside of the schools and thank you so as of right now the current model is that the sports groups actually pay for a lot of their own expenses associated with using the field so as an example dumpsters porta-potties Fila finding things along those lines are very common expenses of the sport groups are already cover it's not part of the town's budget in terms of us getting you know a per person charge or anything like that and you know we do get like larger projects basically funded through the sports organizations recently the soccer club put up some additional fencing a lower of attack the LaCrosse club gifted the snowplow removal attachment for the Bobcat a couple of years ago so we do have a great working relationship with them but it's not so much monetary as project given right now what is the model the other talents to use or is that is that the normal for every sports league as they fee for every participant it's $15 per sport per season and they have about I think two million dollars in a fund that they use to replace all their fields it's a self fulfilling fun just keeps going and going going going that's something we've talked about we've considered there would be a lot of pushback on that but it would be a good way a new town doesn't they've had it for a long time and they have no problem with it at all people would say okay fine 875 bucks for my kid it's $15 more and the fields are maintained and they do a very good job there take care of other fields and I know that they're ducking when you travel to other towns and you see like the condition of some of their baseball fields duffle particularly the one overthinking why I mean that's hands down better than anything that we have to I mean I know they've been improvements on our fields in different fields but aren't a lot better than there were 30 years yeah but that's type of model bring us up to a different standard of facilities I don't know you know that's a great long-term question for us to think about we we pride ourselves on having really nice fields here in town as well and I know that throughout the baseball community Bethel is kind of known as the gold standard I have a baseball player of my family as well so so you know we're hoping we do our best we are looking for that engineer clay product we're always looking for for new ways to improve the fields and Chris reviews who's our Park supervisor visit there's a great job in trying to stay current you can do the engineer claims a lot less maintenance for your people yes less maintenance for sure it doesn't fly up and and it also is going to forgive me I just lost my train of thought let's be dry let's be dry but does it stick to the uniforms a lot more that I don't know about 1/2 an estimate or OxiClean special clay guaranteed to never come out probably because they wear white pants any other questions I just have one quick question which which teams play at Cadogan field so I know those fields are beautiful we have high school teams that ever get to play on that baseball field that's a beautiful baseball for sex song yes so cement yeah in softball is used very often by the by the softball league that we run here at Park and Rec and be BSA also does have use of that field for the girls softball program and always wanted to very impressive thank you losing less so I thank you very much I have a lake up off the asking I don't know if it's possible or not this year if we have a surplus in our budget right from the end of the year who are closing out the year we know we're having extra money for FEMA then we're going to be able to put to the general fund about a million if we have extra money this year in the budget can we put it to some of these appropriations like into the fields and put it into the fire department can be taken fifty thousand dollars and put it towards the field instead of dropping into the general fund there we legally allowed to move it to for the fire department some of the truck apparatuses and move it to the park and recs for fields because if we don't have to drop into the channel from bring it out of the general fund can we put the money in and I think I hid under rating and because we have the FEMA money that's coming in can we put that was rated now it is the anticipation of these costs that are coming our way and we have a surplus of two hundred thousand dollars at the end of the year why can't we fill it in the future needs and position it yeah you know we're at the level with our general fund we're about a little over ten percent now yes the FEMA money comes in we're gonna be about thirteen this is what I'm saying so we have a little extra money of this year is it time to put it into these pockets for the projects we know are coming are we still gonna be at thirteen F to the Augustus the pitocin yes that those numbers it's ten I think point 35 last time I looked order that yeah there shouldn't be any any adjustments to the general fund that the I think we're just talking about placement round ones question so we get back to the end of the erected window we're gonna have like the two hundred thousand but I don't know what it is so please they know I don't break down whatever the number is we need theoretical if we could put fifty thousand towards the fields or whatever it's a fire apparatus or things that we need yeah why not would have been reserves how that would work is a number of different ways that you could do it that's committed fund balance by going to actual town meeting and in doing that that would have to be done by June 30th that you could do it as assigned to fund balance by this board and so that that Board of Finance can't change a board of selectmen can't change it if it's going to change somehow it's you guys that change it and what that would do is just take it out of available fund balance and just move it into a separate line you could also within the budget rules go and into a transfer and move it to capital non-recurring but that would take it because it's an additional appropriation that would you'd have to follow the budget rules so we could we could rather than right now just everything kind of over but the fact of goes into unassigned general right we could make the decision to do an assigned to have to do without assigned yeah but we're not right not that we're not funny now you need to have the money in an operating budget going for but we have a little X now if you have a decision right so long then we can have a Royal Rumble button who gets the designer I don't know we're trying to reduce the bonding I just know that we're except rad this stuff coming up yeah I not in the shed with the FEMA money we're already getting in a little extra boost so if we're gonna do something like that together so all that would do is just reclassify it kind of like if you have a savings account those of us that are old enough you had a passbook savings account but it wouldn't authorize anyone to spend it to spend it it would have five zeros okay well every year we go we put forth these reserves and I'm not saying that you have to bring them down and keep the tax without every year you have to reduce it the fire department reduce these reserves if we have a chance to fill some of these reserves right now so now another one of your hot line is how do you make sure that gets tracked and recorded properly we have a reserve now and six years from now it we make sure it's in the financial statements every year so at least once a year get screwed up you know it's just like this year we put the white Alec scholarship it will be in our financial statement because primarily we do not want some future administration making a mistake and using that money for something else right that's what's there and ring-fenced that's the way to do it right this way we're not burning the taxpayers down the road this and the general fund I know it's rainy day funds in decent shape but it's a great idea yeah that's a great idea you know how I mean is there a kind of systemic plan for finding all these reserves in other words when the time comes to make these assignments what kind of criteria are we going to be operating on well you know how are we gonna disperse those and only do we have a kind of long term for the big behind invisible to everybody fire departments come to us with an entire plan it's every one of their pieces of equipment here's the years they want to replace it here's what the estimate the cost will be at that time divided by the 20 years whatever it is and they ask us for now the amount of money that will be needed when that piece of equipment retires and they replace it to replace it fully we haven't been able to fully fund their requested reserves but when we get to that point we should have 60 it's all about a little bit because we haven't hurt I'm not going to be 60% it is for two million dollar piece of equipment that's a big difference now the one thing for the ambulance is we always fund that 100% because we replace them every three years and that's worked out very well just boom we've got the money we buy a new one I think we're below your 50% is that because of you because because of what we've been forcing you do I'm not flaming numbers 11 in the not blamin any but I think we're underfunded a little bit are you doing so if we can catch up a little bit with less pain here you know and so there's somewhere in the in the town accounting system where you can go and see this entire display of reserve accounts and what the zorga they are so pretty new see we have a plates here but there's a route there is a reserve fund set up you just saw the fields right they had a line of four years two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year right I was pretty well detailed yeah I'd like to see you that's our one place where water for the Sun if you reserve if you go if you go to the financial statements I think Schedule B one shows everything that's bonded that the money that's set aside for that I think it is like d4 that shows a capital non-recurring it doesn't show the other you know methodology or any of that stuff it just shows the numbers as of June 30 or 2018 so we've been keeping track of this on munis central when we went to the Candlewood company we told them and we made sure what reserves we had for the new fire truck what we have what we could use although such things and both fire companies agree with us on the number and you can always go back and look at last year's their previous year's budgets but we'd like to keep track of it separately and John would still have approval of the equipment so they can't buy the equipment they have a thought it of course selected in them yes are not talking about you know before of just to transparency control thing all right for any other questions for me okay decent motion to adjourn second you run a hell with me all a favor I like that's really nice [Music]

good morning the color today is March 12th 2019 is the 105 first day of school this is whe news I am Lauren and I'm Jeff today for lunch there'll be baked ravioli tossed salad sliced red peppers fruit salad garlic fried and look tomorrow for breakfast there will be many donuts graham crackers fresh apples orange juice and milk we have some friends celebrating birthdays Neela Johnson and this met please go to the office to pick up a birthday book yesterday's that question was if I read three books a day for four days how many books will I read all together the answer is 12 books the winner is Michael II into the vici come to the office to pick up your friends today Scott that question is in 1995 disney/pixar teamed up to create the first ever computer animated movie starring a cowboy and spaceman what is the name of the movie remember to write your internet and include your name in class we have a special announcement some fourth graders came up with an awesome idea called help the homeless you can help by bringing in coats clothes that don't fit you can't fit snow pants or gloves you can put them in the fourth grade pod in the big boxes please help the homeless and now we will observe a brief period of silence to reflect them anticipated activities of the day please stand for the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all Tolu y'all some Tuesday and remember Kivus counts every day everywhere thanks for watching bye

good morning big hello today is March 13th 2019 is the more than pure 22nd day of school this is WV 18 years I'm Lauren and I'm Karis the today for lunch there will be french toast sticks yogurt cucumbers potato apple juice and milk tomorrow for work for sterile week Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal graham crackers orange tabs orange juice and milk we have some pride in celebrating birthdays Josephus Abbas tml Manuel ili come please go to the office to pick now mister was fun fact question was in 1995 disney/pixar teamed up to create the first-ever computer animated movie starring a cowboy and spaceman the net1 1 what is the name of the movie the answer is torn story the winner is 9 Maya and team blubber come to you have this to pick out your prize remember to write your name and your answer neatly look at your name in class come to the office to pick out your prize okay that's right remember try your abs your Neely and include your name in class this Justin the results are for the mana to do this dormitory the winners are blue stylish Tommy Johnson the Super Soaker stream of interventions some of these several coats overall run art books that that means primary and elementary schools combined as a creepy pair of underwear 177 boats monarch winner for our night rebelled against my gardener now we all observe brief period of silence to reflect on the anticipated play of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God every day thanks for watching let's redo that please

I would like to call to order the March 13th 2019 meeting of the Design Review Board Alexis we have roll call here here board member Kim Lee yeah board member Perkins here we have four that is a quorum thank you well welcome I am Tamara burns the chairperson of the Design Review Board I would like to take a minute today to relay the board's purpose and procedures the design review board is a seven person volunteer citizen board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council the purpose of the design review board is to foster excellence in the design of Ann Arbor's built environment and to advise petitioners on how a project can meet the spirit and intent of the downtown design guidelines we are mandatory review voluntary compliance meaning that projects have to come before us but there is no legal requirement to follow our suggestions one review is required although we've been encouraging and been very successful and having petitioners come two or even three times as the project evolves so from the beginning we wanted to be as accessible as possible hoping that the discussions between the board and the petitioners might help the general public in understanding the design considerations and outcomes and in turn encourage the community put to push for excellence and design in our downtown so we're very happy to be back upstairs where we are being broadcast to a wider audience the procedure of the meeting is as follows first the applicant will present their proposed project to the design review board then the applicant and the design review board will hold a discussion on the design of the project following the presentation and discussion members of the public are permitted to comment for up to three minutes because not a question-and-answer discussion period all speakers are asked to sign in and state their name and address for the record so moving on to our agenda may I have a motion to approve the agenda so this is now open for discussion does anyone have any changes to the agenda yeah I'm just thinking of I think the items that I have Genda is approved moving on to the minutes may I have a motion to approve the minutes it is now open for discussion are there any corrections to the minutes everybody have a chance to look at them mm-hmm okay all those in favor all right any opposed minutes are approved may I now have a motion to prove our recommendation letter this was for six one six East Washington okay it is that is now open for discussion and he changes or corrections to the letter all those in favor any opposed the recommendation letter is approved okay our next item on our agenda is a presentation for the proposed energy Commission's dark-sky or ordinance amendment good afternoon thank you for allowing me to be today my name is John Mirsky I'll introduce myself more fully and the second slide which gives the the participants of the group that's been working on this lighting ordinance so what may be just some brief background well let me go ahead and just you to do the presentation let's see I think I have to do this so there has been a working group that's been working on a proposed lighting ordinance the idea of a lighting ordinance first was floated or came to pass formally a couple of years ago when presentations were made to both the environmental and the energy Commission's and we loosely formed this group it's under the auspices of the Energy Commission I'm the second person shown there I'm on the Energy Commission as well as the environmental Commission and I'm also serving as a sustainability advisor to the city administrator we also have serving Sally OE who is at the University of Michigan in the Department of astronomy we also have two planning commissioners Erica Briggs and Sarah Mills we had also as a technical consultant someone who's got of like a lot of experience with lighting and lighting ordinances at the International dark-sky Association in Arizona and then we also had a woman who was involved with the establishment of the first dark skies park in the state of Michigan so with some additional background is the there's a dark skies association in Michigan and it's comprised of the the following organizations that are listed and they have been also supportive of this process so what's the rationale for a lighting ordinance as you can see light pollution has been increasing at roughly 6% per year and obviously that depends on the locale in some cases that's been increasing a rate of 20% per year light pollution by definition is essentially wasted energy it really doesn't serve any purpose and if you look at the pictures with the red in the yellow yellow increases that shows that we have approximately a two times increase in the illumination levels then what we would call normal and in the red zones it's as high as nine to twenty seven times higher so you can see that there's been a significant increase in the amount of light pollution you also could see that from the satellite photographs and the very first slide that I showed so light pollution is partly driven by cheaper lighting and more efficient lighting you can see that as the dashed line has gone gone down which is the cost of lighting it's been essentially offset by greater per capita consumption of lighting and so because of that we feel that legislation is needed to be able to realize energy conservation as well as control light pollution and its negative impacts so what is the impact of light pollution on the environment in human beings first of all in terms of cicada in rhythms it's clearly disrupted by artificial light at night or the acronym is a LAN that's been determined by the AMA and I'll show you some more information some positions that the AMA is taken and it also disrupts eco systems and wildlife and I'll talk a little bit more about that so first of all on the ecosystem and Wildlife in the upper left-hand corner you see a picture of the number of birds that were killed in just one night when they hit a building in epsilon e in downtown epsilon E Michigan lies in the great wait lakes migratory area where that birds used to fly north and south and in the spring and in the fall and a lot of collisions are caused by illumination at night there is an organization called safe passage which includes the organizations in the lower-left that advocate for light being reduced or turned off during those seasons and lights impact all of the different types of animals that are shown there pollinators insects bees even fish so if there's excess of lighting salmon cannot migrate properly not that we have a lot of that problem here in Michigan but the AMA has also taken a strong position as far as artificial light at night where it believes that light pollution is something that is causing health impacts in human beings as you can see it disrupts sleep it causes glare and I'll show you later in some slides the the safety implications of glare as well as the health implications of glare we're all so it can actually be painful and then also it also has impacts on safety issues as well as for example the design of lighting fixtures and thing like that that would positively impact those implications for those effects so there are three types of a light pollution first of all glare and glare is caused by light reflection within the eye there's light trespass and you can see here where the building in the middle is trespassing over a property line in impacting neighboring structures and inhabitants and then you also have night glow it's clear that more light is not necessarily safe for light over over illumination causes shadows and I'll show you a slide where you can see that someone passing into a shadow is actually it can be hidden glare reduces visibility night vision is compromised and what we really want to see is that the targets are illuminated and not anything else so this is a an example of how glare can actually and in improperly lit areas can actually cause a problem so you can see a student here walking and approaching into a lighted zone and just a few steps later that student basically completely disappears in the shadow and this is not just a case where we have this in the pedestrian only zone but as everyone in a bura knows I think from recent incidents this is also a problem in areas where students are crossing streets or for that matter any any pedestrian is crossing is costing the street also glare reduces visibility so you can see here on the Left cases where fixtures luminaries are not shielded and oops that's in PowerPoint you see it unfortunately in the PDF version you can't so if imagine on the right if you have a shielded a shielded luminary the person I'm gonna move my cursor right here I don't know if you can see it there's a person actually standing by a doorway right here and by shielding that fixture that person is much more easily seen and the same thing here there's actually a person standing right here in a gateway and the glare makes it impossible to see that person and simply by putting your hand up and covering that light fixture you can see the person also different types of light makes a difference blue light scatters far more three to five times more than warmer lights so that causes problems we really want to see a shift away from high high degree Kelvin lighting so some of you may be familiar with the lighting scale for lighting and the warmth of lighting probably you all are given your role on the board and what we would really like to see is shifting more from like five thousand K down into the three thousand 2700 K range particularly for for these types of applications so what we really want our or advocating in the the lighting ordinance proposal is that we only want to light what is needed normal no more than what is needed when it's needed and no bluer than needed the analogy is depicted up in the perennial corner with a faucet you don't leave a faucet running just out of convenience just so that you can walk up and put your hand underneath it you actually want to illuminate or you want to water things or use water only when it's needed and we feel we should be doing the same thing with light for all the reasons that I just described just as a for information there are six michigan state parks that are dark sky preserves there's also one county park up near the Mackinac Straits that is also a dark sky preserved so Michigan actually has areas that are recognized by the Department of Natural Resources and by other entities as being actually an environmental benefit an economic benefit to the state of Michigan we actually have people as tourists that are coming specifically to these sites to be able to observe the dark skies in the evening as I mentioned we feel that this is something that's consistent with the kind of image in the kind of city that DNR at Ann Arbor wants to be some of these discussions about a lighting ordinance actually go back roughly 15 years we found some documents where there were indications that lighting was a concern and there was investigations into a possible lighting ordinance but unfortunately that didn't go anywhere so as I mentioned a couple of years ago this was resurrected the goals of the lighting ordinance is to protect public health and safety that's consistent with Ann Arbor sustainability framework also protecting the environment also there are goals with the sustainability framework relating to protecting the environment protecting energy efficiency reducing costs to the city to public servants and to citizens to support nighttime activities and also to retain and enhance the character of the city this is a rough road map the formal portion of developing a lighting ordinance goes back to August of last year as I mentioned there were a couple of presentations to the energy environmental Commission's prior to that but we had a meeting with the Planning Commission in August of last year in that meeting we were able to recruit two members as I mentioned from the Planning Commission who have been serving on the working group we've been meeting roughly every two to four weeks over the period of the course of that time to draft an ordinance I'll get into some more details here in a second that was reviewed with Councilman Griswald in February as you probably know she has a real interest in pedestrian safety and we wanted to make sure that we had coordinated with her and this month were meeting with three different groups yesterday the ordinance was presented to the Planning Commission in a working session I'm meeting before you today and giving you the background and then tomorrow there's another meeting with the historic district Commission and what we're seeking not necessarily today because we know you have a lot of other things on the docket is to get your feedback on the ordinance and hopefully then in the April to May time frame get endorsements by the three Commission's that are shown here where then we would go to a public hearing on the lighting ordinance with the hope that this would then advance to City Council and potentially take effect sometime in the middle of the summer what we did in our work is we consulted a number of lighting ordinances that are in the public domain and that have been enacted I mentioned one of the individuals on the working group came from the International dark-sky Association they have to model lighting ordinances one dates back to 2011 the other was updated last year in Pennsylvania there is also a group of that's been advocating for lighting ordinances it's the Pennsylvania outdoor lighting Council they have three different model lighting ordinances that we looked at and they have been implemented I believe it is in 24 different municipal entities in primarily eastern Pennsylvania we also looked at the lighting ordinance from Plymouth Minnesota as you can see it's known for its ranking by Money Magazine as the number one place to live in 2008 and as you can see they orden they implemented lighting ordinance in 2004 based on an old international dark skies association lighting ordinance we also looked at a lighting ordinance from Arizona and then one written by a gentleman Chris Lincoln Buell who works at an observatory station in Flagstaff Arizona what we're seeking is input and your endorsement particularly on a couple of areas we think of particular relevance to the design review board is facades and also there's a section dealing with curfews where we're recommending that lighting where it's not really serving a useful purpose only an aesthetic purpose that lighting would be shut off after midnight and then not turn on until until dawn of course we're interested in feedback on any other sections there was a lot of feedback that was provided by the Planning Commission last night and I have but it could forward to you it revised let's say working document of the lighting ordinance based on their comments so there are some differences compared to the lighting ordinance that was sent to you in advance of the meeting and you may want to take that into consideration another thing that was done that may be of interest that I could forward to you is to members of the working group drove around town and took photographs and took a lot of readings of different lighting applications around the city parking lots building facades buildings it may be no surprise that the brightest building that's lit in Ann Arbor is the Michigan theatre with the lighting out front and if you're interested I can provide those to you so that's my formal presentation and I'm open to take any questions at this time thank you very much well I would like to say that as a amateur astronomer I'm really happy to see this going forward I wish it could have happened a long time ago so I'm happy to see the group doing this has has any thought been given to the city of Ann Arbor and the university employs some very sky polluting type light fixtures hum is there any discussion about trying to replace those with something that directs the light only down so maybe a couple of things that I should have mentioned earlier in in response to your general questions first of all this lighting ordinance only applies initially to public and private property so their lighting that's in the public right away so that means street lighting would be handled in a second step so the city has something as you probably know called the orange book I forget the the formal name I can look it up here in a second what is it called again that's the way we refer to it yeah okay I think it's yeah it's commonly known as the orange book some standard specifications and we intend to take up lighting in in those areas in those public right of ways as a second step we wanted to do this first see that there was general support for a lighting ordinance if there was and with the approach that we've taken then take the second step of recommending changes to the to the orange book as far as existing fixtures is concerned there is an exemption portion at the beginning and what the exemption does is it basically exempts all existing fixtures and except for when there are major renovations or there is new construction and we also have a clause in there that says that 10 years from the time that the ordinance would take effect that lighting would have to retroactively Lee be updated so it's in conformance with the ordinance feedback from the Planning Commission was that elements of the UDC which would be include the the the lighting ordinance may not it may not be possible to have what is termed amortization of it pre-existing conditions so that's something that the Planning Commission and the lighting ordinance working group will be looking into but you're absolutely right a lot of the original LED fixtures that the city and the university installed which were these LED globes they're shooting light in every single direction and of course a lot of that is going up into the sky and really serving no purpose whatsoever it's contributing to light pollution it's actually inefficient because we're lighting things that we don't need to light so we would like to be able to see some kind of long-term compliance but that's something we have to determine together with the Planning Commission and the City Attorney's Office and the second question is there any are there any proposals to change the amount of light that's needed for walkways and the egress areas parking lot you know pedestrian friendly zones so yeah those are all regulated by by light trespass and by illuminance values so luminance values are basically the the light intensity that's measured over a defined area so that's we've specified values and we looked at the best practices from all these other different areas and we're addressing those we're addressing parking lots we're addressing athletic fields we're addressing you know just even the kinds of luminaries that would be put at the entrance of a building so we would basically be covering all that if it's on private property and then like I said in a second step for the orange book and public right away I believe a say o township has a dark sky ordinance would it be similar to that that actually didn't come up in our discussions I don't know that they do they I don't know if it takes you do you think it takes the form of a lighting ordinance you need development we've done there we've had to have all the light fixtures comply with dark sky you did okay okay Oh we'll look into that John and I noticed your first goal is public safety in in under your four items your and your first goal as do what is needed so when when architects submit site plans for review it goes through all the city agencies including law enforcement yes are you finding that that there's a differing opinion about what is needed and what comprises Public Safety that's always been the driver well there certainly I mean we saw variances in the very various lighting fixtures or the model the ordinances that we reviewed there isn't just one one common denominator that everybody seems to be using and that's why we we looked at all these different ordinances for example there's also some compromises that we wanted to make in the sense that for example Bloomington Minnesota defines I think it is four or five lighting zones so on top of the normal zoning that they have they go from areas that are basically natural areas to downtown commercial areas and they define lighting zones and then they define what is the allowable let's say illumination levels for each one of those zones and when we talked to the Planning Commission their recommendation this was in the very early meeting was that we not make things that complicated that we simply try to differentiate in differentiate between residential and commercial areas according to the zoning that we have and not have multiple layers of complexity and different types of lining for different areas so does that sort of answer your question or yeah it sort of does okay ask another one then no no no no we're thankful this is great yeah appreciate it we're all supportive of it very good good to hear it so I'll go ahead and forward the latest draft if you will with input from the Planning Commission actually we're trying to meet I think it is Monday of next week so I'll double check on that if it's gonna be later than that I'll send you the update right away I may wait until after that because hopefully we'll cleaned up a lot of things and we'll get you that by Monday and then I can also send you some of the examples with photographs and the illumination levels of current buildings so you have that as a standard of reference okay very good thanks thank you thanks for you support all right our next item is 545 South Main Street and I'd like to first ask Alexis to give her staff report on that thank you we have reviewed 545 South Main Street for some basic compliance with the zoning ordinance and development standards and as well as our take on I have done this before planning staff have reviewed the 545 South Main Street project Dr 1900 to for compliance with the basic zoning compliance as well as the design guidelines first off a quick introduction this is a project to redevelop the 545 South Main Street into a brewery restaurant it's about a 1 acre site 45,000 square feet it currently contains two multi base sheds and a one-story now vacant lumber and millwork building the plan is to remodel renovate expand the industrial building remove a significant amount of the asphalt paving and create a loading area in a small parking lot as well as outdoor entertainment space it's got a few issues in terms of compliance with basic zoning requirements it has a non-conforming street wall meaning that the building is not between zero and ten feet from the front property line it also doesn't comply with the minimum building height requirement buildings in the d2 district requires buildings to be at least two storeys in height it is has a corner that is adjacent to a residential district but it does not have a conflicting land-use buffer or the proper setback when adjacent to residential and the building is in the floodplain two of the buildings are in the floodplain one of the buildings is in the floodway and none of them are flood proofed and they none of them are currently fraud proofed we generally discourage buildings from the flood way my review of the for the compliance with or in furthering the spirit of the downtown design guidelines in conversational terms it didn't look good because there is this underlying assumption of the downtown design guidelines that a design plan will propose a very large project full demolition or at least a significant expansion so that you approach the maximum FA are allowed the guidelines don't really address adaptive reuse of existing sites so in that sense when you compare the proposed project to the guidelines it does not further most of them but there are many redeeming qualities the project is generally a good thing so because of the underlining assumptions and the lack of great guidance we've staff focused on applying the overarching goals of the design guideline and the intent of each level rather than some of the specific strategies recommended overall we found that the site context and planning guidelines talked about supporting a downtown place and supporting the pedestrian experience and so to that end the site could use a better primary entrance the use of the lawn area should be explained the number of curb cuts should be the minimum necessary the use of the shed should be clarified they should be functional and supportive not as merely as decoration particularly in light of the floodplain regarding building elements the building elements call for features and details at the street edge there's not much street edge presence here in summary the issue seems to be the inward focus of the design plan whereas in a downtown you are looking for buildings and functions to be open and engaging outward focus outward facing so a balance needs to be found between adaptively reusing this industrial facility and contributing to the vibrancy of downtown Thank You Alexis I didn't have time to drive by the site so I'm not a hundred percent familiar with it so these buildings are all existing yes yeah there are some existing can existing photographs of the site in the design plan packet and the design team will do a presentation yeah if you would come up at this time and introduce yourselves and your project I'll also take one second to mention which I should have done the staff report was prepared with the original submittal I understand that some revisions have taken place since then and I'm sure that the design team will present those can I load a jump drive into this system is that the best way to do thank you excellent thank you design review board I am a Kurt cattalo from Union joints I'm here with my wife and partner and Stephenson and Eric Lyons our managing partner and Tomas von Stodden from Ivana and architects who drew the plan that was submitted to you before I let the expert being Tomas take over and walk you through the vision for this property I wanted to give you a quick overview of what we envisioned for this former mill site in Ann Arbor generally speaking it's a project that thank you generally speaking this is a project that we've been working on for years actually it's it's like many Union joints a projects that has a long destin'd because if it didn't it wouldn't be something that interested us we tend to pick projects that are a challenge because at the end of the day we know that it'll deliver something you don't find elsewhere and that's that kind of unique and authentic experience is something that matters to us as a little restaurant group when I say little we've been around since 1995 and we currently have about 875 employees working at our 8 locations an ad agency we're an independent restaurant and we have a very independent spirit and we love problem solving so a little look at what we've done is we like to say that that we start with with the challenge and we kind of work our way forward and from 1995 when we repurposed the former Baptist Church on Main Street in Clarkston to the parsonage next door which is Union General to a gas station in Berkeley which is vinsetta garage which is the oldest family-owned service station east of the Mississippi we have a downtown storefront in Clarkson which is the Union woodshop built in 1929 the city of Fenton gave us their first fire hall the Fenton fire hall and we repurposed that and a pump house next to it we've done a former Dairy Queen into a bunkhouse drive through recently and then and checked off something on her bucket list and repurposed to former Hooters in Rochester Michigan as grande cast storage owner we opened recently but I think that all of these places including our home base which is an old Union school that was a forward Factory during the war which was then independence Township also it essentially served as this building does today for the smaller community of Clarkston we kind of pride ourself on taking something and bringing it back to life in a way that respects its heritage while repurposing in a way that makes it viable for the future so I like to say that that we look for buildings that aren't run-of-the-mill and I think it's pretty ironic that a mill would fit those qualities as you know it's an interesting structure and that it is not historic but it's been around for a long time and it has a certain presence and it has something that we're always attracted to which is a patina it has a definite purpose in its construction and a definite character in the way it was built and the way it's weather the history and those are things that an as our lead designer works within the space but more importantly it's something that that we try to tie through the whole experience the food that we serve is authentic the food that we serve is real we don't hide behind edifice and our buildings are the same way we take a very honest approach to everything we do whether it's the architecture the the design or the menu itself I mean we're the kind of Restaurant Group where our servers don't have uniforms we hire on experience we hire on care we want everything to be as real as possible and since 1995 it's paid off for us I mean we serve a very unique version of comfort food in that it's it's based on the basics but it's still amplified and that what we do we do with more care than most would expect out of a dish of say mac and cheese I always say that part of our purpose is repurposing that's why you look at these buildings that we've dedicated our lives to and whether their former churches or former service stations these are buildings that always served one unique purpose but were destined to serve another and I think of the as far as finger Lea is concerned it checks a lot of boxes for us in that it's always served one purpose at no point did it become anything but what it was built to be which is this mill and so for us to have the opportunity to repurpose it it allows us to start with this blank canvas this baseline that we're gonna build upon and that's really what Tomas will take you through if you look at our organization itself as I said it started with the Clarkson Union in 1995 really this this church very communal Hardy ironically built with finger lis lumber from the day it's a relationship that we have that stretches that far back because Cameron Lagoon who's our builder on these projects is from Ann Arbor at the time and Anne Stevenson who designed this was living in the old west side so this neighborhood this area has been on our radar for a long time and the kind of food that we do in Clarks and we think is communal and would have a good home in Ann Arbor I should say before I forget that the descriptions that have come out based on the material that we submitted to the design review board call it a brewery our intention is not to brew at this location when we opened the Clarkson Union in 1995 we had 36 beers on tap because we knew that we could buy better beer that we could brew so that's true today - we love micro brews we really support the craft brew industry and this will not be a brewery it will just be a restaurant that has great craft beer if you look at the Union general store next door Ann and I and our two kids live above it and have for years this is a true general store but again it's baked goods it's individual items it's bath and body its curated and it's built with care and again it's in a form of person and when you're inside you know that you're in a building that's unique the same is true of the Union woodshop this was always a restaurant in downtown Clarkston always on Main Street but when we repurposed it into this wood shop we kind of took that approach that honest look at it and just celebrated what we produce in that space which is barbecue we were fortunate to be the Detroit Free Press restaurant of the year and it's got a national attention for whatever reason that's really because we're doing something that's authentic so whether it's Thrillist best barbecue or Southern Living magazine noticing what's going on in Main Street that kind of attention means a lot to us and our chefs and cooks the wood shop shop is a repurposed space above it that is essentially a bar it's essentially an area that seats 75 to 100 people that is just all inviting there'll be kids playing skee-ball in there kids playing pool whether wait for tables it's just a very inviting and original setting vinsetta garage as I said as the Oh was the oldest family-owned garage east of the Mississippi when we took it over with our partner Casey Crane and it's it's been getting a lot of attention for many reasons but one is because of the food that we do out of there is very in character with the space itself it's big its authentic its hearty it's the kind of food that you would have expected the mechanics to have had during their lunch breaks in the day and ironically when we had the Mechanics reunion for all the wrenches that used to work there they sat in the back room and had hamburgers and pizzas and they said you know the strange thing is is that this was our break room back in the day so for us that kind of poetry of coming full circle means something to us the same could be said as Fenton firehall this was a project that the fentons DDA put out for review and we were fortunate enough that they chose union joints to take over this project so they gave us the building and $100,000 to essentially put the Fenton fire hall in this space again it's three layers it's three levels and we put an addition on there to service the bathrooms because it was a volunteer fire department so they didn't need a lot of bathrooms for volunteer firefighters so this has an addition and it has three floors that are activated I think it's very similar to what what we've learned and fitness what we want to bring to Ann Arbor and that this kind of activation and bustle on these three levels is exciting it's exactly why the city of Fenton chose us the city of Fenton also submitted this project to the Michigan Municipal League and it won the region and then we went up to Marquette with the city of Fenton to present this for the Michigan Municipal League at their statewide conference so it means a lot to the city because again they took this area which was essentially abandoned when they vacated for their bigger fire station and created a little sense of bustle that is serviced in this little park setting and it joins an older part of town which they called Dibble Ville and some new developments which are just beyond us which is the new Fenton and this bridge did exactly what they hoped it would do which is create traffic in this otherwise dormant area so we're very fortunate about it one of the other things that the city of Fenton did is they gave us this former pump house which is on the banks of the Shiawassee River by this waterfall and gazebo in the city park this is something that we run all summer long we call it the pump house it's our handcrafted liquid nitrogen ice cream and again people will be in the park they'll be fishing they'll be kayaking they'll be weddings going on concerts in the park and then this little pump house services them with our ice cream and shakes and such and again it creates an energy in the area that previously was just really a gazebo on a waterfall honcho which is a restaurant in clarkson which is in a former auto shop which then is conjoined to a gas station we made these two buildings into one and created hansha which is a Latin Street food joint and again we have outposts of this at the DTE Energy Music Theatre but it's it's just very approachable very fun and it's food that you'd expect in that it's a taco but we kind of put more care into that you might expect that's why we won the Detroit taco Fest in the city of Detroit two years ago Grand Catherine is an evolution of that in that former Hooters just again a very big restaurant it's 200 seats it's bustle it's on a very busy corner at Rochester Road and Big Beaver and it has an outside seating which is on a very busy thoroughfare but again it creates some energy on this otherwise highly active corridor a big beaver we're very proud of that and that we kept some of these hooter influences but still repurposed it into something that's decidedly unique and then bunkhouse burgers which we just opened in December is a former Dairy Queen that serves little hamburgers sliders off the grill a little quarter pounders for five bucks that car is lying out four and we're very fortunate it's the kind of food that you could see people grabbing and walk into the stadium on game day and it's no different than what we're doing there and Clark's into making the most of it so between an Eric and I we've been doing this since 1995 and one thing that we try to do is every step of the way as we remember that what got us here is is working closely with the community - doing everything we can so that we're not just coming in and serving people food we try to serve the community in bigger ways any way we can and I think one of the reasons that we've been able to do what we do is that we have a very high retention rate with our staff so out of these eight hundred and seventy-five people the core group has been with us from the get-go our cooks became chefs our servers became managers our dishwashers became bartender so there's this evolution and one of the things that we've always been drawn for is giving people the opportunity and we think that Ann Arbor with the opportunity to to bring our talent at the front of the house here and really take advantage of the folks that are able to work here 30% of the people that work at our restaurants work within that zip code and so we think that the the walkability the fact that there's this young labor force in Ann Arbor will make this a special place not just for the people that are running it but for the people who are interested in the culinary arts and want to join us for a longer stint than a summer job what we've been able to do is get recognition beyond our footprint so these are just some of the accolades that we've received and whether it's the Huffington Post or Esquire naming us one of the best bars in America these are things that matter because they just they give us some perspective as to how we're doing in a bigger game and as far as fort finger ly we think this has a really special opportunity to kind of be part of the Union joints family and continue that that passion that we have for repurposing so this is just kind of a general mood book that and put together and it's just kind of the flavors of the joint which is leveraging a patina leveraging and authenticity and making the most of something I mean we know this area and I think that it's fair to say that what we try to do with the space and Anael tell me if I'm speaking out of line is that we want the space to be like the menu itself and that it's something that's at once familiar and surprising so there's nothing in here that's necessarily unfamiliar but the way we do it is authentic and real and inviting and at the end of the day you're gonna know that the experience that we've created at any of our joints is different than anything you could build on a pad site I mean when you walk the fork finger E and see this green space it draws you in off Maine or Madison and it starts this narrative that you're not gonna get if you just pull into a parking lot and admire and then go to whatever restaurant was built on the pad site these are things that matter to us and I think if you look at the way we've planned it you're gonna know that this is something that could only be in this building this is something you're not gonna find at every third exit on i-94 because it's it plays though the building's purpose it plays to what you have here and I think that that authenticity is what makes a difference in the space and the way we do it and just creating this narrative whether it's walking in off Main Street and sitting outside or playing ping-pong or doing putt-putt golf on the green space going to the shed grabbing a walking taco on your way to game day being on the roof and just looking out at the bustle of Ann Arbor and the energy of the city these are all things that that you're not gonna get anywhere else and we're gonna play to all those strengths so I'll turn it over to Tomas now just to really walk you through the the vision for the footprint itself and I know the DRB had some specific questions that he's better to answer than I but we just want to say that we're honored to have the opportunity to to bring everything we've learned in 25 years of repurposing to this specific project and we think at the end of the day it's it's an opportunity for placemaking that we haven't found anywhere else and we're excited to find it here tomash so hello everybody my name is Tomas Johnston from von Stein architects and have the extreme pleasure of working with the Union joint screw an incredible bunch and I actually moved here in 1994 and was very happy when they opened up their first place in 1995 so it's been a pleasure to know them from a distance and get to know them more recently so the first thing I guess I would say before anything is I looked intensively through the design guidelines and I guess there's two ways to read them the one is that we're looking at a position where you're taking something down you're building again but to me the origins of those design guidelines come from conditions like this they come from recognizing the district that you're in the shape of the land the topography the context what you have built around it the railroad tracks the floodplain a river that was there and all these things and so for me when I sort of step aside and I walk down that hill and I come past a residential unit on the on the east side and you roll into the site there's something so natural and wonderful about that opening in in the site and the corner there so I think that there's a lot of ways to look through this so I can read it and say well we're addressing every single one of those things in a way that we think is really dynamic sorry so so anyway so I really so I enjoy that that rub because I think when you look at architecture and development in cities you can really read these things two ways but the origin of them comes from the richness that comes from history I would argue always and the things that the design guidelines recognized our craft and and thoughtfulness in history of architecture that we're all fighting for now in the midst of flat architecture right and buildings that are too tall not set back so that's my sort of starting thing with stuff the site is you guys probably know borders Madison and Main Street that has the cut of the railroad tracks there is the one shed that sits right adjacent to it running the length of it that shed has doors on that is closed the upper shed on the north side is an open shed quite a bit taller different in its posture perhaps peering out over the site and then there is the cast-in-place concrete building which had the old mill shop in it and Jason - that is a block structure with a corrugated and fiberglass second-story on top of that so we do have a second-story little one so that is the context I was a bit surprised and really walking around at how little some of the adjacent buildings have done to address the streetscape and the pedestrian experience and it's something that we've thought about a lot I also think that there's something very important in this district about finding moments when we can preserve and repurpose that structure into something else for another experience and so I love the fact that really we haven't talked about renovation we've talked about repurposing and repurposing allows you to sit inside of something as it was and an experience and reappear Ian sit and I think that's very different than the sort of renovation that comes in and cleans something out to the point where all that's left is a brick right say well that's a nice brick wall but there's nothing about the fact that this was you know a mill site right so important I think to hold on to these are some photos of the site so looking through the upper left hand side is looking from Madison into the site it's pretty boxed in with the way the angle of the street goes and then going across that top is the cast-in-place concrete building that we're proposing putting the second-floor patio space on deck space middle left shows the two-story structure block with the siding on it that's proposed to have the kitchen and take-out on the first floor with a second floor bar and private dining bottom left is the open shed on the north side middle bottom you're seeing from that alley side on the east side the back of the building so those are some contextual photos so this was a site plan that we that we forwarded to you at first and there was some mixed responses to it and they were great really good feedback that we got from Alexis so thank you very much we thought we had some pedestrian issues some delivery issues spending more time walking Main Street we really felt like it was important that that became a really inviting entry off of that side so this is what we had sent you guys since then we've revised that to provide delivery section on the north side with dumpsters in the back and kept the kept the southern parking lot we've also introduced two areas so we now have a separate oh sorry thanks I think do you youngster thank you so original site plan that was submitted revised site plan and so there's a few things that we thought with this one we really liked the fact that it became a more welcoming and framed out entry we can use the old curb cut coming off of Main Street if we do this which keeps the size of the curb cut down quite a bit it also allows us to frame out pedestrian sidewalk coming off the street there so this now is a dedicated pedestrian access here and it really kind of gave us a more contiguous framed out green space to work with in here on the on the Madison side we have an entry that comes actually on the corner the lot here it actually cuts through the existing shed there's an opening in there and then there's a covered bike storage area here and it connects around the side this way so again trying to give something that gave an experience on that's on that southern side of being able to move through some of the history you know it's a tight area but we like the idea of getting that pedestrian circulation to actually activate that existing building get rent giving people in this urban scenario a chance to put their bike on site give some control for safety also for cover there and leads a nice way right into the green space there so that was Rudin's that parking plan it allows us to put the dumpsters in the back on the top side and have ample space for deliveries that upper area we still think we've always wanted to be able to use the north shed in some ways so we think it's possible at times to actually close off the parking on that top side when deliveries are done in the middle of day and use that upper area and activated with secondary seating areas for events so gameday type events we probably wouldn't be parking on that northern part of the site and using that as the place it becomes fully activated love the idea in this low area of getting rid of the asphalt having green space I think one surround at the open spaces in Ann Arbor and I think the most architects the first thing you want to do is put paving down and put planters in and take over right and so I think in a way it's interesting to think about this sort of history of open space and how people used it and so in the olden days if you had a beautiful estate you had somebody set up a table in the middle of the grass and you ate in all the grass now you make a paved outdoor room with a fire pit and a serving thing and a grill and the gazebo and all this and in our opinion it's a bit over built to allow for that sort of freedom and openness and quiet occupation of the space so we kind of like the idea of really especially in the midst of Ann Arbor where there's a lot of hard scape having a large or soft area in there I don't know how much you guys want to get into the floor plans it's really more interior stuff so this is showing the block building with a kitchen in it cast-in-place concrete building largely untouched were we doing the extending the windows and height in here so they've been filled in with some corrugated metal on the bottom over time and so we're doing a bifold wooden door with a true divided light in it this is a wood stove piece here and the bar built against the corner here the building was looks like it was done in lift support concrete so has a really wonderful texture on the walls that comes from that sort of pouring when things are stacked up on evenly so we're trying to kind of go into this quietly so this whole wall is actually an unpainted old wall it really has that beautiful kind of pattern to it so again just allowing the building to come to us and give us a little bit of advice this is showing second floor so we have a staircase a couple different staircases coming up to here some back a house bar area and private vent space there's an existing rollup garage door very typical of a second for the lumberyard we're adding another one over here so we've thought that those could be rolled up and then you're you have connection to that whole courtyard and then again because were low in terms of topography there the idea of occupying the second level in the patio space again allows this other extension and connection to the urban fabric that is really pretty important and I think could be quite dynamic as people are moving up and down into the landscape these are the building elevations so for the most part these are all really just existing openings that we're coming in and putting new new windows into this is a bifold side folding door somewhat reminiscent of an old sort of carriage door with a little bit of a twist with a diagonal fenestration pattern in here again - a pretty flat cast-in-place concrete wall just trying to bring some texture and pattern to it there's two different entries this entry is the one that you would see coming down through the courtyard if you came down Main Street and then there's a new entry vestibule over here that would come off the Madison side existing roll-up door new roll-up door here for that second-story space these are stair and elevator connections and enclosures that come up onto the top of the roof they're a small setback gable section again like the descriptor on this that we would use is trying to think about the old factories or the old mills where you would have a conveyor and that roof structure would somewhat follow that conveyor so it's really kind of let's call it forum follows that function up there the deck what we're doing there is a pretty little edge on the concrete so we're setting the deck back a little bit that patio about 16 inches back so there's an articulation of the old concrete structure in front and then that that patio deck starts behind and again just important to us to have that front concrete concrete piece read through and stand strong again here this addition off this side allowing the concrete piece to run through higher up there we do have an exterior staircase coming down here on this on the far end of the patio space and then this we just did for the sake of giving you some sense of coloring so right so this is white and this this thought for now is to leave this existing red and green patterning that is on that second-story the building these elevations somewhat untouched you're just seeing this addition of the roof structure and the elevator here this is the backside the alleys onto the adjacent University of Michigan building and again this is just a one side sort of service side of the two-story building again looking through the materials here cross-sections which do some helpful so this is the kitchen inside the two-story space a little bit higher dining area proposed entry a little bit lower than that this is the second floor or private dining space with a staircase that connects you up to the to the rooftop these are shed elevations and I can explain a little bit more in these and the mobility art to see rendering wise but what we're proposing doing with the sheds now is this upper shed so this is a view looking in from Main Street you could see here the two garage doors here there's an entry door to take out here this is the main entry on this side parking lot through here and then we have pedestrian access that comes along there this shed on this side by the railroad tracks right now has a series of multi slide doors that are a little bit interstate disrepair so what we're thinking about doing is running a new steel beam in front of them and having the doors slide off to the side so they completely open up and the idea and those shed that shed particularly used to be able to use that as a three season dining area so the shed would completely open occupy it in a way that was pretty quiet so it's gonna have minimal services inside of it and really just cut that asphalt back to the edge of it so the grass where they would just run up against it so here you can see this is from the Madison side looking in parking lot this is the area where there's bike storage and the circulation out kind of comes around this corner the green space in here this is new entry so we felt like it was important to have one you know with the two entries that they each of them has a face that's opening up onto the streetscape scribble identify that you can see here this is the shed while you open now so it's really quite an engaging piece for that courtyard really frames it out nicely so we have a nice dynamic we feel between this dining side the doors and that whole dining side opened up shed can open up on this side this is just kind of a clip and it's hard to get this perspective but here's the sidewalk and this is our proposed pedestrian access going through the shed back in here is is a bicycle storage and you kind of come around that side to the entry here so some of it is you know that's sort of meant if you think about how paths go people take the path of least resistance so in this case at least that we can make this path somewhat enticing and moving through this piece of history the hope is that people will use that pedestrian access more than just going straight through the parking lot and this is just a closer up view so in some cases building element wise right now there's an existing the low roof section or the gorgeous the little transom piece over this so in this case we're really just following that back down and taking what was in filled with metal over time and they're really kind of returning that back to what seems like it would be appropriate appropriate for the time period here you can see the corner of one of the new glass pieces so we're increasing the light by probably 30 40 percent into the building that way this is another view internally so edge of the grass some smokers out here and then access into the kitchen there so that's that's where we are I can certainly go through I mean when I when I sat back and kind of bullet pulling it for myself the the context buildings building elements I mean to me I think there's a way to speak to each of those conditions that's covered in the project if your questions about stuff I can go through things I don't want to kind of pour you it I think so this is this is great it's a lot clearer these new renderings yeah I'm assuming that the buildings are the main building is all designed to be yeah so we're gonna have barricades and a deployment strategy which seems fitting for a middle sight so there will be a bay in the garage and there would be the brackets on the sides and we've gone through and talked to Jerry a bit about it and we feel pretty comfortable with the approach we're taking now yeah and I think even in the case of for example the one shed that's on the tracks we've talked to him about doing some flow through louvers that you know would at least allow the thing not to fly away so we're pretty confident in how that's up now and its really in keeping with the sight and the spirit of the project too there's been historically a lot of flooding in that part of town but more over toward where finger Lee showrooms are and so forth thing has this site talking to the finger laser do they ever remember this site being underwater they don't remember being underwater it seems as though it's come up to the sort of delivery height but not every much above that and it tends to go away quite quickly so there's not and there's no evidence that I can see I mean we've done quite a few flood area projects before there's no evidence that I can see of anything coming up and creeping you would see in the concrete typically you know you'd see a stain line in there so I don't see anything that's ever gotten above that main floor height well I'm I really liked the idea of being able to adaptively reuse a building like this my offices used to be in an old mill building that used to belong to Washington Lumber Company and we had a very nice time turning that into our offices and I'm really glad to see something like this happening with this building instead of just bulldozing it and starting over that's just my my personal feeling about it the folding-doors have the sort of herringbone or are those doors or are they windows they're [Music] their doors yeah so there will be some kind of steps out in front of them to get down to the to the lawn level yeah either a step or we'll have a rail you know we're sort of working through some of the grading issues there and finalizing the heights with with a civil engineer so we're either gonna have a rail and open them or we'd put a step in front of them but they're a full-height door yet yeah with glass yeah and really I mean I think and certainly hit me in the back of the head but I mean in my mind I think that they would probably be built in a way that feels as though somebody set up to make old windows in the olden days right like all windows were built primarily on a jobsite historically they had that sense of you took the router bit out you cut the profile you put the piece of glass and so I think there seems like there's some so I think so I think that you know there's something wonderful about thinking about there's so few things then you know these windows there's just not that many of them the doors to pay attention to them and put them back in in a way where the feel them the weight of them feels as though they could have been there forever but they're new it seems important to us what Jeff said I'm pleased to see the building reused certainly we have a set of rules and guidelines and so forth for all the character districts and this is certainly and they call it an industrial character district but it's in keeping with that in there no it isn't an anomaly there it's not a short building in a very tall environment so I'm all in favor of what you're doing in concept the details I guess the other folks could comment on here but some of the specifics of staff saying we really would like to have one curb cut I'm in favor of - given the uniqueness of this site if you didn't have the railroad slicing across one corner it would be a very different kind of site plan yeah so I think it makes good sense okay I'd like to see a little more imaginative imaginative use of color on on this project personal preference so I don't know if you if in the end it's going to be just basically white and old metal panels or you know some color on the frames of windows and doors and that sort of thing yeah I think that there's and I think there's you know the wonderful thing is there's everyday we make things better right that's what architects unfortunately do until the thing is built so I think that there would be I mean I think that we're for sure gonna color I think the other thing just kind of in our officers looking things then sure Kurt's gonna jump in say somebody said I think until we properly put signage into this so so a little bit of it is if you took a classic old gas station and you took the sign away you would say yeah you know like it just doesn't look good and then you put the sign of em so I would want to be careful about compromising that I love that you're leaving the colors from the historic building and just I would be careful adding color that you'd compromise the integrity of that yeah yeah yeah I mean we're all for all for color we talk a lot about that but just being doing it in a very sensitive manner and you know maybe even focusing on the newer elements yeah I think the other thing to remember is and that I grew up in the 250 year old in and it was all white it was on top of a hill and in Connecticut and so I just remember coming home we had the old glass and you look in and the fire would be there and the lights would be warm and it was so important to have that white crispness to the warmth and color that came from within and now you look a lot of these houses where you know the outside is gray and all these colors and it really kind of has hurt the ability of that inside to feel alive and to you know to feel the texture of the air and I would say that you know in all of the Union joints projects you feel the thickness and the most wonderful way the color of the air in the space is and I think that that's something that you're going to see coming out of those windows it's just really really important to hold on to something I'd never want to try and render so I'll just jump in here that I actually do a lot of preservation work and we're working a couple of old mills right now much bigger than this but um but I love that you're keeping this I'm born and bred in Ann Arbor and you know I'm kind of heartbroken that thing really was sold and even though understand all the reasons but so happy that a you know this piece of Ann Arbor is gonna be there and you know and I think all the comments about the guidelines are really interesting because we really haven't come across much you know many projects like this most of them have been these big like Alexa said you know coming out to the edges of the property to maximizing FA our and I I'm so happy you haven't done that here and and you're making use of what's what's here in you know in a really wonderful way you can see the historic building you can read it you can see what's new but it's contextual and not jarring I I guess just a couple comments I'd like to hear what materials you're using like at the for the guardrail up on top there and then I also like to hear more about the site itself that the the sidewalks and curbs and things seem really urban or something they're just maybe maybe something could be looked at there it's something that really pulls from a gravel yard you know and what what maybe tracks were going through or if there was you know they're sort of a grid or is there I don't know yeah I think that's a great I mean I think that that whole courtyard is sort of the thing that is the most fun to work on and in a way the simplest and hardest thing and I think we've all sort of just been waiting for that moment to work on a little bit we're working we've got a good grading plan so we just have to be really sensitive we floodplain what the flood lane not to mess around too much with how we're cutting and telling that but I love the idea of thinking about that softness you know of I mean walking down the piste oh and right I mean all of those things are amazing and certainly the shaping I think of how the quarter is laid out is something that as we begin to work through a little bit more how that's occupied with the various things that probably will evolve a little bit the the materials so I guess to me when I look at the materials it's a mixture of responding to the site and building in a way that seems in character with the site with also understanding what's happened over time to the materials and that a cast-in-place concrete building painted white is this building built today would look absolutely different than this building does that's been here for who knows how long so the connector pieces that you're seeing up here this is proposed right now to just be a corrugated metal very similar to the rest of the shed language it's going on throughout there glass doors on the end here the rail so right now the upper deck we're proposing to do and would just to have a little bit of softness in in contrast everything's up there we haven't so right now the way we think about the rail is that the rail would be galvanized it would be galvanizing at all and I like it because I love the chalkiness of galvanized in relationship to the to the old concrete building so it has a certain softness and if you think about the sort of history of galvanizing its roads its industrial all right I mean it's all the barricades everything so we're thinking that that would be in galvanized and then the way we've kind of rendered its a date is with a what stainless wire mesh panels so and you guys ever been to the High Line in New York but the whole High Line is just that mesh and I like it because it really allows air to flow and it's actually a clearer visual than even glasses just because you never get reflection off of it and it's so little in terms of the size of it so that's what we're seeing so it's kind of this mixture of the galvanize can say hello and work nicely with the chalkiness of the whole concrete building and then the stainless allows this a little bit more of a like contemporary industrial offset to it thank you I I mean three of us up here wrote the guidelines were running the committee of the world the guidelines and I did just what a alexis did I started looking through the guidelines and I'm always the stickler on this group who says you're not conforming to c3 and and and I realize just as as Alexis said that they don't apply and we were thinking of something like this when we wrote them so I'm I'm happy to throw them out and I'm glad to hear you say though that you understand acknowledge some of the driving forces and and probably our biggest one that we tried to get into the guidelines throughout is the pedestrian experience and and I can see you've given a lot of thought to the pedestrian experience once they enter this sort of secret garden yeah and Alexis is right it's a very inward opening building but I wonder if you can talk a little bit you said you were aware of things like the Allen Creek Greenway and the floodway and other things that are happening beyond the site so what what are your thoughts about the experience of the passerby the pedestrian going by and either bordering Street looking in yeah so I think that um obviously looking in I think it's going to be an incredibly rich environment to look into so in the wintertime you'll see this little fort right that's been shoveled and plowed and their areas that are occupied whether it's a yurt or a 10 or an igloo out there like you're gonna see this little land in there right so I think that that's that same fascination that we all have when we go look at overview of a fort you get up in the tower and you look at it and it's just everybody loves looking a little model of something like that so I think in a way that visual and provides that route that richness I would say as far as the feel of I think there's many things about cities and streets and topography and built environment that unfortunately are put in have to be put into categories and design guidelines that ultimately aren't about that they're more about how your body feels so I would say that to me over time and it's nothing that Ann Arbor can help but Ann Arbor has slowly erased the feeling of topography that's the downside of large buildings is you get so high that you no longer can feel the movement of the land and so the beautiful things left with the railroad tracks coming down and sort of splay now and coming around the corner there the beautiful thing that they preserved is that corridor of topography and land right so we've stuffed a creek below the ground and done things like that but that area the land still has that flow and that movement I would argue goes way back in time and so I love the idea that as you're coming down the street down one side feels really tall and great a couple little buildings on this side you just feel like oh I mean up with the railroad tracks here I come and you flow into that site so to me there's something very natural about allowing that feel in the body and movement and then on top of that you're not just saying oh there's the flow there's the flow into this new occupation of the space think about that interesting yeah in looking at the view that said that sound Green now it sort of typifies you know what fingerless went through was really utilitarian space and got built as they need things and they need another shed to store wood they built one yeah and and so there wasn't a lot of thought so it's it's sort of a real sort of slapdash gathering of of what they needed to provide shelter and and what they build over a long period of years so there might be an opportunity to look for elements to sort of unify and calm that down a little bit instead of keep jumping it up with with more discontinuous elements and in doing more of the same you know the yurts and the igloos and and yeah and everything else I I think there there might be an opportunity here to to calm it down a bit yeah I mean I think then I I don't know how it is for dining but I mean you could almost put a wall tent in there right and the wall tent might be more in keep waltzing so if you think about the hunters tents out west so they can't the old canvas tents like if you were in the military and you traveled across you set up that tent right so there's incredible old canvas tents that you can still buy we bought some for we did a little compound on Lake Michigan up north that's a series of these canvas tents with a deck in them and beds in them and power the people sleeping in the summer so I mean there are I think and if you think about that sort of traditional very traditional gabled roof structure the canvas the porch on front of them the courtyard the fort there are I think there are other things that can come in alignment with that I think it's just looking at the at that how the space is being used from the restaurant point of view and tying that in a little bit but I would I think I would say I'm pretty sure that it's not going to look haphazard than that courtyard for sure yeah yeah and I would say I think that the that trying to I think there's things that bring a sense of order so you know to me there's a couple of things one is responding to the architecture of touching so if you're touching that white chalky concrete but apparently trimming out the rail above it in a way that separates itself but also complements it so we don't feel as though there's just 200 feet of 12-inch folded aluminum Brown trim on the building right so trying to really be sense about those things the other thing is that that repurposing and repositioning I think allows a certain sense of unification of the site so right now putting the green courtyard in the middle and having the concrete building open up on to that more and then having a shed open up onto that you really have a space that can be unified with the occupation of it right with being in there does that make sense another applicant but if you've got any yeah I just was thinking about with this new use it changes that the perception the one can cut through that corner mm-hmm that's been finger lis in the past if we're people coming down mattes and they're coming down state you get onto the corner and turn with this it's pretty inviting to go I'm just gonna cut across that that greensward I like the notion of the green but you might that's one element of what I'm gonna say the other is as people are using the West shed standing in front of it picking up tacos or whatever they're they're gonna be doing in the shed I would think that the grass in front of that might get pretty well beat up mm-hmm you might consider a slice of hard scape right along parallel maybe there's a wide across the front to allow the neck what's it's going to be natural students and so if we're gonna be cutting across it gives a place to do that without through the lawn and it also gives it potentially a useful area directly in front of that shed that doesn't always have to be rejuvenated yeah yeah nothing is a great point I mean if you think about the history of universities and courtyards and the every university puts you know string around the courtyard with the grass grow after all three he said I had one more coming I'm not sure how you're gonna when you get to the code conformance piece if its rehabilitation code or what you're doing but the end Michigan energy code worries me on this billing and how you comply so there might be an opportunity over the North shed for solar energy it seems to be in the right spot yeah yeah and you're not gonna shaded and yeah that's a great array up there so it's something yeah that's a really great great thought yeah for sure the last thing I wanted to ask you is if you would consider coming back for another design session I'm sure you know what the answer now but what do you encourage that so yeah yeah I mean I think it's a great you know I would say it's worth coming back once we've developed the courtyard area some more because I think that really relates to a lot of the issues of pedestrian feel of things and I also think I mean it's it's good on all sides right because we can hear from you and you can hear from us and it's just an ongoing process of working together so absolutely yeah and and I don't know if you know we're all from different so disciplines and our two at landscape architects and our planner are missing today so yeah be good to come back here yeah for sure all right okay thank you thank you okay okay we're gonna take a five-minute break you all right I think I'd like to get started again thank you and we're gonna move in no we're now we're going to do public comment on that on the group that we just saw and if yes project they just heard and let me see your state your name and remember this microphone yeah okay Evan Potts is my name and when these down town ordinances d1 and d2 were written well there were no we were nervous that we the public were nervous about something's for instance height mass scale context in the neighborhood and so forth and we were reassured by the consultants and the staff that the character area overlays would take care of that that that will fine-tune things well this is a character area overlay district and you have another one on your agenda also this is the first time I think I have experienced a situation of a proposal by a developer a situation in which the character area might actually be made being made use of it might actually be useful to us I I assume that each of you has it in front of you as you sit there you're able to quote the intent of the character area for each of these I presume you know that because I know that but but there are other little little things that weren't I don't think we're brought up too well one is Allen's Creek floodplain the fingerlings lumber floods regularly very seriously so how do we deal with that we need to know more about that and and traffic is a something of a problem down there and it meinen matter and so we need to hear a little more about that thank you very much thank you is there any other public comment on what we've just seen hello my name is Dennis Burke and my home would a but and be right off the northeast corner of this proposed development back in 1982 I stood in the same position that these folks did with my architect wanting to do a substantial rehab and development of a house that was in terrible condition and we went through many many architectural rounds and with you folks and eventually we were turned down so my wife and I decided at that time to salvage what we could and build a single-family home there and I've brought up two children and made substantial investments in that property over the years and I've been very delighted about the apartment buildings that have gone up South on South Main I continue to see a lot of residential development and high-density housing on the south side of town on the southeast side and Southwest but I have very serious concerns about repurposing this building for this activity primarily I'm concerned about the noise especially with the terrorists eating I'm very concerned that the sheds would be repurposed and used for special events I'm very concerned about the amount of off street parking I would echo what we've heard over here if you want to see how bad the traffic is in that area just come down there some day between 4:30 and 5:30 and stand at the corner of Madison and Main Street I don't think they have near enough parking for staff and are any of the patrons of the facility I'm also concerned léopold brothers for those of you remember had a brewery that was just an adjacent building to this we had lots of problems over the years with Leopold brothers with noise not only myself but many of the residents this is a residential neighborhood called the police many many times to come and have them turn the volume down and try to quiet the crowd so I just don't think the character of this neighborhood is such that we could tolerate really having this kind of facility in and about the residential with all of us folks there trying to live there all the investment that's been done for residential in that area most of the business places are moving out and in the hours of operation are significant concern two-finger leaves you know closes at five o'clock they're typically not open at most Sundays most of the businesses in the areas do closed typically in the evening and the evenings are quiet in that area of town we do have a 7-eleven it stays open but these are just convenience stores in a gas station but this facility I think would be open till 11:00 maybe 2 a.m.

good morning the house today is March 14th 2019 it is 124 days this is whe news I am Karen and I'm Jack day for lunch there will be deep dish pizza green beans cherry tomatoes apple sauce and milk tomorrow breakfast there be French toast breakfast sandwich pears Beautiful's and milk we have some friends celebrating birthdays today Daniel but yesterday's Bombeck question was who invented the telephone the answer is Alexander Graham Bell the winner is Jack came from three glover come to the office and pick out your birthday book come to the office and pick up your prize this time that question is how many red stripes are on the American flag remember what your internet Li and include your name in class and now we will observe a brief period of silence to reflect on the anticipated activities of the day agents to love life of the United States of America and its you the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all have an apple thursday robobird finest comes every day everywhere thanks for watching bye

[Music] Oh good evening everyone this is Tuesday March 12th I called this special meeting of the Board of Finance order and I call the Association do it okay we are gathered here tonight to discuss the Board of Education budget but first we have any members of the public that would like to give comments hearing and seeing none we'll move on to a bunch of discussion for the proposed Board of Education budget did anyone have anything that they wanted to discuss at the 4th rows or because we did get the tribe board presentation at this a month ago right and we also got the Board of Selectmen scut there was there was something that back when were selecting the first select was covered we have these specific questions I know Glenn and Ricky had a question I forwarded to collect I apologize from the lane getting back to you that I did that side answer back or would that be a good place to start if you have any questions or concerns we weren't going to do that a presentation I guess or so really we're just here to answer any questions you may have or if we need to about anything yes so we got Marshall put together a summary of budget adjustments they just I'm trying to call it up here where the First Selectman I believe reduced the Board of Education proposal by about four hundred eighty thousand and the Board of Selectmen and back about four oh five so that leaves a kind of about seventy four thousand no no actually they added back 275 the other part of it would be the adjustment of relating to the situation which is not actually it's put on to the education side clips it's yes so the they put that get to submit by the action reduction each AmeriCorps ask yes alright see you did mention that last as it right now by the word likely you have any thoughts on that if you would like ignore the genesis of that of that proposal and what I actually discuss with them please I believe the worst our personal Eggman when he put forth the budget to be order selectmen just took out all of the men investments as well as the non lab segment which is how they came out he came about with the 407 thousand hours I what I understood he he had thought that the net investments were all nice to have where in all reality there are some of them that are must-haves and we have discussed that last time so them to the point that whether this budget goes through whether it's through no matter how much this budget is reduced we must include these in next year's budget and so we will have to make adjustments and reductions otherwise and I do have a copy of that as well it was something that was retitled from [Music] [Applause] memories and under those in essence some very related to things that had to happen for bill investments they were connected to so that's not new it's just you know I don't think I all right through so I can remember I can go through these if you like the first one is a pre-k teacher we spoke about that are our numbers are large our classes so much are proportion is not the 50-50 that we need we have to have this teacher in order to reduce class sizes and keep the fifteen percent proportion that we that we are starting to speech-language pathologist goes along with office abuse which pathologist for the preview program the caseloads are too large and by having this this position be able to eliminate the contractional needs or our pre-k program or speech-language pathologists special education teacher at the high school again our special education teachers miss oats are too large they need to reduce finally the paraprofessionals the 88 paraprofessionals these quite frankly is just to stay in compliance of the IPS we have students IPS which necessitated our one-to-one pair and these pairs will be four that we have to give that in order to maintain compliance be great one through five science modules we started the rollout of the Smithsonian science module program this is to to to update our science curricula for the next generation science standards we're going to start having science being tested on the yearly basis in Saturday we have to have a curriculum in order to address what the Muslim City tested on and the great fortified reading program this is one that started great hunt through three it's a it's a necessity in order to continue the valuable literacy skills that were teaching our our students so if we subtract out the contracted services that we will be able to find cushion C's for not only with this but throughout the district then we do get the total of 275 to 34 which is what I have presented to the Board of Selectmen as well what did the Board of Selectmen not add back um well they didn't have back two hundred and four thousand dollars and in their mind that was just the total of the net investments - this - 75 so the other net investments is that what you're asking yeah okay so technically though they're just not in Beck might fit it's not items because ultimately it's the Board of Education decision as far as what to spend the money on but in their mind I think what they had thought would be the other net investments which would be the ASL teacher the strength conditioning coach the extracurriculars at whisk in here there's a business team leader customer s team a program in the world language program thank you does that mean ASL is located behind adoption it depends um I mean but we work with the labor camp right now actually our high schoolers and are already signing up for classes next year and so if we have a significant demonstration of need in the ACL ASL program and perhaps not as much in French say then we may change our teachers to to have my program dr.