Town Council Budget Workshop # 3 - April 21 , 2026

001All right, let's call this to order. Thanks everyone for being here. If we could all rise for the pledge of allegiance first. I pledge algiance 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. >> All right. Thanks everybody for joining our budget workshop this evening, Tuesday, April 21st. Tonight we're going to be talking about parks and wreck and senior services. Uh, I'd like to make a motion to uh suspend Robert's rules and move uh agenda item four, budget review section B, senior services to right after public comment. >> We're not suspending. >> You were not suspending an agenda item. Yeah. >> Apologies >> without So, do you want me to re reward it or do >>

002Okay. Motion to move the the section 4 budget review subsection B senior services to the front of the agenda after public comment. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> All right. So, uh we will be doing senior services uh right after public comment. But right now uh we are at the portion of the meeting that is specifically set aside for comments from the public. who are asked to limit their comments to two minutes. Any person interested in providing public comment via email should email public meetings at rockyhillct.gov prior to 4 pm on the day of the meeting to have their public comment read into the record. Do we have anybody who would like to offer any comments this evening? Feel free step up to the microphone, provide your name and address. Uh good

003evening everyone. Myself Ashish Mishra. I am resident of uh 41 Windy Hill Lane, Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Uh I am here to uh propose addition of cricket batting cages or practice nets at the Maxwell Park in Rocky Hill. Uh I want to sincerely appreciate the town's initiative in building the cricket pitch last year. It has been a fantastic step and is already benefiting a growing number of residents who are passionate about the sport as the usage of the pitch has increased. One key gap has become clear. A full cricket match requires a large number of players which limits how often the field can be used. In contrast, batting nets allows individuals or small groups even two or three players to practice regularly. Cricket nets are a fundamental part of the sport. They provide a safe and

004controlled environment for focused practice, allowing players to improve their skills through rep through reputation without needing a full team. They also help contain balls within a defined space, making them safer for both players and other park visitors. We are seeing a steady rise in youth participation in cricket, including children's and draw and structured training programs, as well as many recreational players across different age groups within town. There is a strong and growing community interest supported by parents and local cricket enthusiast. From a practical standpoint, batting cages are relatively cost-effective and scalable. Adding two to three nets would significantly increase the utilization of existing cricket facility, encourage more frequent community use, and further promote youth engagement, fitness and skill development. So as I said like this is an opportunity to build on the town's existing investment

005and create a more complete and accessible cricket facility for the community and I would be happy to volunteer myself and fellow cricket parents and you know uh community members in any capacity if I could be of any help. Thank you. >> Thank you. Do we have anybody else here to speak on behalf of anything? Any Do we have anything in writing? >> No. >> All right. Last call. All right. Um, so first up is senior services. Good evening everyone. I'm Gina Marino, director of senior services which includes the senior center and transportation. Um, you're gonna go through >> start at the goals. >> Can't really Okay. >> I can't see that. >> Is your screen goals? Is that screen working for you? Uh, right in front of you. >> No, that's not on. >> It's

006not on. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh, goals. Uh, one of my first goals was to create create a welcome packet. The thought was to have one stop where people walk in their first introduction to the town to include programs that would be helpful to seniors. I'm in the process of working on that. It would include um information on human services, library, and possibly go into voting or something else depending on what um what we have available. Uh my second goal was to work with the chamber and work on a uh business plan for co-sponsorships. I'm very successful with local sponsorships, different uh retirement communities, local businesses. We brought in um $19,000 last year in co-sponsorship fees, but I feel like we're missing the boat on some of the bigger businesses that might want to contribute

007to the elderly. So, that's the focus for that. And then I'm also working with Parks and Recreation on the Market on the Hill, which it was our first event last year. Great success. We had a lot of fun. A lot of people came, but we're going to extend the hours, maybe take more people, more vendors to just make that a bigger community event. The >> I go too fast for you. I jumped right into the numbers. you can see. >> Okay. >> The the differences here, I think the the big difference is going to be part-time. If you recall, last year I had requested um two years ago I requested a full-time person. Last year I requested part-time. I'm trying again. I'm putting in for part-time program coordinator. This would help us with all the

008different programs that we have. Um right now most of that is falling on myself which um is a little difficult because we have a lot of programs addressing three different generations. The 55 year olds, the 75 year olds and the 95 year olds. So you can imagine the activity levels are all different. The interests are different. Um and I could use some help in that area to keep our senior center as vital and active as it is right now. Um, that is really the biggest change here. Uh, I asked for a little bit more in training because we all need to have more training and I I wanted to do more with our staff. We do have uh we were lucky we just replaced an office assistant and we have a new office manager. Her

009name is Evet Law. She is sitting in the back. You want to wave? She started a few weeks ago and already I'm seeing the difference. Um she's really organizing things for us. She's learning very quickly. Um some of the staff have called her the sponge because she's picking up on everything that we're doing. So that's great. I think that's the only thing in this budget that you'll see that's a little out of the ordinary. >> Do you have questions? >> Any questions about it? >> Yeah, I have one question, Gina. And I I say this every year. I think how you run it is fantastic and I hear nothing but positive feedback >> with the part-time request and I think this may have come up last year. >> Do you see do you hope for

010an increase in classes or do and or do you see this bringing in more people this position? >> I think streamlining streamlining some of our classes. We have a wide variety right now. What we're not doing is evening programs which will draw in the younger people, weekend programs which is also for the working seniors. I get calls all the time from people that are still working that want to want to do that. Um, and maybe um it would free up my time to look at the bigger picture where I'm dealing with a lot of day-to-day instructors, very time consuming, uh, arrangements for the rooms. There's a lot of things that go into having a class. So, I don't see us expanding that many programs because we are doing pretty well right now, but it's just

011pulling things in, tightening things up, and maybe going in directions we haven't. I did have a a part-time programmer who helped out a little bit who was doing music programs. Um, she started a a jam, monthly evening jam, which not my wheelhouse, but this event went wonderfully. We did the first one last month and we had maybe 20 people, all senior musicians and seniors and some younger people came to listen. The one we just recently had, we probably had 40 people. So, it's picking up some speed. It's those kind of programs that are a little different than the chair yoga or the bingo or the setback. Trying to have something for everyone. That's the goal. Now my next question is fairly loaded and I asked this to other directors too. Forget the budget for a

012moment. If you had a wish to incorporate some sort of service or class or something that another town has massive success with that you would like to bring here. Is there something that the budget constrains you for a for a moment that you can't bring something that another town has here? Trip programs. Um right now we do very little. We do one trip a month. We do out um adventures and dining once a month. That's something that people want to go places. They want to travel. and it takes time to plan them, to have a coordinator go on them, to research where we should be going. That's one area. Another area, and I'm not sure that I really want to go this direction, but a lot of towns do programs for people that have dementia,

013caregiver programs. We do once a month a caregiver program. It's educational. People come in, they listen, they have a free lunch, and they get help caring for their elderly parents. I'd love to have a program where where they could come for an afternoon and have someone take care of the parent, and they could go either educational programs or recreational programs, kind of like a respit. I know Glastenberry does something like that. Um, so that would be a good program. I think we're missing. Um, we work well with our human services department and refer people to them, but I feel sometimes that we could do more if I had either the proper trained person to be able to handle that. >> Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. >> Anybody else? Any other questions? >> How

014many hours a week are you looking for the part-time person to work? >> 30. you have a lot of volunteers that help out. Have you researched maybe having a volunteer help with this alleviate some of yours? >> Um, well, we use volunteers for a multitude of things. Being in the office working on the town computers, um, I don't think that that's really appropriate for a volunteer and 30 hours a week. I don't think there is a volunteer who would even want to do that kind of job. Um, >> no, I wouldn't suggest one person. Maybe you'd have two or three people helping out. >> Then it gets fractured. >> Right now, if there's an issue or a problem, the staff come to me. I could, oh, that's supposed to be there. This is supposed to

015be there. If I can divide some of the things, this person's in charge of exercise programs. It's a clean mark. You know, it's a there's a lot of different moving parts um to to offer a class from the writing the description, contacting the instructor, setting up the room, putting it in the newsletter, following up, paying the instructor, there's there's a lot to it. So, when you look at the volume of programs we have, it makes it difficult for one person to do all that. Believe me, we use a we have 130 volunteers and they are awesome. We would never be able to do what we do without our volunteers. >> Great. Thank you. >> Well, I I did want to say that I've had the pleasure of being on the senior subcommittee here and getting

016to hear about our programs and hear about the good work you're doing. And I've been so impressed with the variety of programs that we offer, with the outreach that we are able to do within the budget that we've got here, and frankly your ability to wrangle in everything that's happening all at once. Um, you have wonderful volunteers who who come in more frequently than most volunteers for other types of uh opportunities for that and that's a testament to the type of environment and culture you you bring to this. Um, I know that we all feel the pinch of the com, you know, the common reality economically right now. So, I I don't see anything egregious about what you're asking for here. I also know that we are in a couple of places, maybe the library

017as well, um, relying on the endurance, the character, and the dedication of folks like you in order to hold these things up that are these wonderful services that we offer our residents and frankly for you. the region. You offer the region these these opportunities. So I I know looking to the future, not necessarily in this budget, but you talk about programming and the need for help with that. This is a part-time ask, but realistically with the amount of programming we're offering and what we might be in the future, even if we expand into those areas you just talked about, you'll probably need something full-time in the future, right? >> Yes. That would be the ultimate goal before I die. >> Yeah. It's it's just it's good for us to like consider where we might be

018in a couple of years or what we might be looking to eventually achieve here. I know transportation's tough, too. Finding people to do the transportation on a part-time basis is a particularly hard ask. I mean, a full-time basis, oh, you get benefits, you get all these things. PDM often seems a little bit more attractive uh than part-time, but um we we do need to think about what we can do about transportation uh in the coming years because this right now like much like everything else feels like it's running through the dedication and endurance of the individual people in the roles right now and uh we don't know what will happen when there's turnover. Um also I just wanted to say hi to Evette. It's very nice to see you. It's it was wonderful to meet

019you a couple of days ago and I'm really excited for what you bring to the table too. >> Thank you. >> Um is the number of volunteers does that stay steady or does it eb and flow? >> Um we've just reached 130. We we've been hovering around 100 to 120 for the last few years. I don't see it getting too much bigger than that just because of you only can take so many volunteers for so many programs. But that's right now we're at our highest point. >> And some of the volunteers do activities that are things that your current part-time people would have to be doing. >> Correct. >> Yes. Yeah. And are they your part- timerrs put in more time than they're getting paid for? Would that be fair? >> Uh can't I shouldn't

020be saying that, but we do have very dedicated staff. As a matter of fact, two of them are here today. Miss Charlene, who does our transportation, and Cindy, who's an office person, as well as our volunteer manager. So, they both are supposed to leave at a certain time and later in the day they are still there. Whether they're talking to a customer, helping a volunteer, um they just really are dedicated. I've been so fortunate to have people that are so dedicated to the cause. They love what they do. So, it makes it easy. >> So, um >> say I did move it to the uh the mini bus, which you didn't touch upon. So, I don't know. Okay, mini bus. As you can well, as you see, the only change in this is a $10,000

021professional services added. Um, we've been part of a tri town grant through the state with Weathersfield and um, Newington. And this when I came it was COVID. So we Rocky Hill was using a certain percentage of this grant which was more than we were allotted but because the other senior centers weren't using the the money we grabbed it. So we have we have continuously been using more than our share and our share is decided by the population of the town. That's how it was divided up. So, this is the first year that they're knocking on my door saying, "Okay, we're using our share. You need to kind of come up to what we're what we need. We're probably going to need an extra 10 to 12,000 to cover the cost." Part of the reason the

022medical transportation is so high is we have a frailer population. They're aging in place, which is good. They're still in the community. We have quite a few people with mental health issues. So, they're going to a few appointments per week to deal with anxiety or depression. So, it's kind of boosted up the numbers a little bit because of this. One of the goals that I have, and it's I think it's it'll show up, is I wanted to do a fundraiser for our transportation program. Um, and possibly reaching out to one of the um serviceoriented groups in town to do that. Uh, specifically related to the the mini bus, uh, I have a couple questions for the senior center as well, but um, have we looked at getting like sponsors on the mini bus or anything

023like that? I mean, >> putting them on the bus, you know, >> the state frowns upon that. Um, we just got audited just, you know, out of the blue. It's random, but we got audit audited and one of the question was, "Do you have anything on the outside of your bus promoting somebody else?" Um, I don't know. I've never gone there with it, but it made it sound like it wasn't something that they encouraged. Um, that's an idea. >> I know. Um, certainly if if we're re receiving state funding to offset some of the costs there, they might have questions about it. But if memory serves me correctly, the Northwestern Cog has a like a bus system that they use up up there, you know, Torington area or whatever. And I think they sell sponsorships

024on their buses. Um, it's not a lot of money, but also that's something that might help offset if we have rising costs for some of the regional um things that we do. Um, it might just be something worth looking into. You know, the type of places that typically do that might be the same services that the people that ride on the bus might use. And so having something there. Um, obviously this isn't a city bus that is like constantly rolling around and you've got, you know, some law firm plastered on the side of it or whatever. It's a little different. But um but also to that end, just to circle back, one of your goals was uh to, you know, try to get some more sponsorship dollars from other companies as well. Um, if you

025had that extra part-time position, would that per would that person handle some of that outreach or does that give it you the ability to go and and get more of that? >> That'll give me more time to be out and about and securing fundraising and securing sponsors. >> Um, which I'm pretty good at, but >> could always use some improvement if I have the time. But also, I think we probably see this from other parks and recck departments, too, when you know that if you call one place, then they'll always give you a little bit you and you don't have all day to make a ton of phone calls. Then you call the one place and you get that money and then you're like, "Okay, at least we got enough for this program, >> right?"

026>> And it doesn't if you don't have the time because you're already stretched thin. It's 8:00 at night. You're supposed to have already left. then you know you're not making that second phone call and like getting the new um the new vendor to to also sponsor or you're not reaching out to the new person that maybe you don't have a relationship with yet. Um so that's good that that would assist with that and maybe offset some of the costs of the programs and stuff that we provide as well. Um, and I've I know about the the monthly trips that you guys go on and those are typically you take uh load up the bus and go to an area restaurant, right? >> The adventures and dining are Yes. Once a month. >> So, um, that's

027also a boon for our local businesses as well. when a 20some people that are definitely gonna come and eat at your restaurant all come in on probably an off day. It's not Friday night Tuesday, >> right? It's not Friday night at 6 when they're already full. It's an off night. >> Um and so having an extra person to help coordinate that more frequently is also helpful to our local businesses. We've got 60 to 70 restaurants in town and if you're only going one per month, that leaves 48 to 58 people out of the loop. Um, and then lastly, you talked about um hoping to offer more like caregiver services. So, if somebody doesn't get those that help as a caregiver for an elderly loved one, where would they get that help? >> There might be

028state help for them. Um, a lot depends on their income, but that might be something. We are actually starting a new program with NCAA, the area Agency on Aging in June where they're going to have two and a half hours of office hours here once a month to help seniors fill out their forms, find out what services are they qualify for. Um, so I I think that will help bringing somebody like that into the building where they don't have to try to get on the phone with someone. The face toface is always better with the elderly um than on phone or online. And this the thought of that is just to give them a little bit of respit, you know, just to give the caregiver they can talk to other people their own age. They

029can have coffee and and and kind of release some of the tension um of being a caregiver because it's very difficult to do. Um, if any of you have ever done it, it's it's hard. >> Anything else from anybody? >> Mona, I quick question. Um, I see the 10,000 that we added. Uh, and then I also see vehicle parts went up, >> you know, from 3,000 up to 12. >> We didn't we don't have the percentage jump on that 10,000. Is that because it's a 100% jump? It is >> okay I thinkow like calculating on zeros. I think Gina and I had talked about that. >> So that's why it's that way. Okay. And then the and the 11.9 would be inclusive of that increase then. >> Correct. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Doing a

030great job. Gina, >> what happened with the vehicle parts? Mona, why have they >> Yeah, they just had one major repair this year. was uh on one of the older buses actually was an engine uh replacement prior to the new bus coming online. So, we're hoping that won't occur again, although you do have some. >> Yeah, we do have one in the shop right now. So, >> hoping not for a $15,000 cost, but we'll see. >> Let's hope. Keep your fingers crossed. >> Then we'll be doing a different fundraiser. >> Consider this a town council order not to have any of your vehicles break down from here on out. >> Um question. So when something like that happens, we have our town garage. Do they typically fix it unless it's like a transmission or an

031entire motor rebuild or something? >> Yes. Yeah. They they are actually asking I for the uh rotary lift they have one. So if one is up like they've got a highway truck up then the the bus will go out but they usually do everything or try to do most in-house. So, like that expense that came in this year that ran so far over over budget, that was a job that probably wasn't in-house. >> Definitely not in-house. It was sent out to a company I won't name, but yes, it was sent out. >> Okay. >> And presumably though that repair would extend the life of the minibus >> hopefully. Yes. >> Purchasing a new one would be a >> Yeah. Well, we just got we just got one through a grant, so we're we're good. We

032now have four vehicles >> right now. Well, we're back down to three vehicles. We had one in the shop. We had one in the shop for a while that had an a heater issue. That's how long it's been in the shop since like February >> since it was cold. >> And it's a 2019, but for some reason, they're having a difficult time finding that heater. They don't make it anymore. So, they've reached out to several different companies to replace it. They've tried a few different heaters and they're not being replaced. So, today the drivers picked up the van without the heater because we don't need it. Not for now. Anyways, we need the van. We're short of van. We used one of the um pool cars uh just just today and yesterday because we were

033without a without a the third van. and and many days we need all three drivers. So, >> I've seen them all lined up before right around lunchtime. Yep. >> Great. >> All right. Thank Thank you, Gina. >> Is that it? >> Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Have a good night. >> All right. Next, we have parks and facilities. Okay. Well, parks and facilities. First of all, parks. Good evening everyone. Craig Bowman, parks and recreation director. Um, gonna have to try and stay on task here. I just My son just threw his first complete game in a high school game and they won. >> So, I'm pretty fired up right now. Yeah. I'm like, "All right, I got to lock in. I got to lock in right now." Little hard. Little hard right

034now. Um so you know I guess for an introduction um you know I think it's important for us to understand the value of parks and recreation in a community. I believe that um people move to towns, they come to towns to enjoy two things I think are most important, schools and parks. Um, and I think it's our job as a department to put as many smiles on people's faces, whether it's through um programming to all ages or um the facilities, the playgrounds, the fields, um to try and affect as many age groups um all walks of life um in a positive way. So, I you know, I think that's kind of the plug for our department. We're trying to put as many smiles on people's faces in town on a daily basis throughout the year.

035Um, talk about a couple goals. Um, we on the park side of things, should I just tackle these all together and then we can go separately? Is that what you guys want to do? >> Okay. >> Um, you know, again, we want to continue to uh plant trees throughout town. Uh last year I believe we planted I think it was close to 15 to 20. Um with how many trees get taken down throughout the year uh in weather emergencies or through old, you know, age trees, um it's important to to build that back up. Uh we do want to build some outdoor volleyball areas at at least one of our parks to start off. It's definitely a growing trend. Um, we've actually gotten a lot of feedback about doing some drop in volleyball programming um,

036at the community center at night. So, now it's about finding the time and the space to do it. Um, but at the very least, if we could put something outdoors, that will alleviate some issues for a couple months throughout the year. Uh, we would like to add security cameras to Ferry and Elmidge Park. We're actually in the process of doing that at Ferry Park as we speak and they're about to be turned over to our department. Um, but having security cameras at Elmbridge Park would be huge. Um, obviously it's the most popular park we have in our town. We have people that come there from all over, not just Rocky Hill, but we have people that come to enjoy the dog park on a daily basis throughout the year. Um, and I think it's important

037that we put some eyes on that park at all times. Um, moving over to aquatics, we're looking to, um, create and distribute some promotional video for our aquatic programs. Uh, we do have a new staff member in place. She's very talented um, with social media, Nancy Glenn. Um she's fantastic and um I would like to utilize some of her strengths as far as promoting what we have to offer as well as growing some of our aquatics programming. Um and again that talks about expanding our water aerobics programming. Um we want to do some more offerings. We're looking to put together um an adult uh cricket tennis ball league to play throughout the summer um at Maxwell Park. Um we are also working with Gina, I think she already mentioned it to grow our our um

038Market on the Hill, which was our first year hosting this indoor winter market. It was a big success. Uh we always work well with Gino when it comes to these things. um and we collaborate well together because we have a lot of um similar contacts that and vendors that we use throughout the year on events. Uh we do want to reintroduce some more pre-K dropin programs and we also want to uh collaborate with BOE on creating more teen programs. That is easily not just in Rocky Hill but nationwide one of the hardest groups of people to um to program for. Um there's a lot of distractions at that age. So, we're looking to um team up with them to do some We're talking about maybe um maybe working on an eighth grade formal um at

039here at the community center, doing some different things for them. Um and then last but not least, you know, increasing, we always want to try and increase our our pool attendance numbers, so both indoor and outdoor. And uh we're I you know I want to be able to do that using one of the goals above which was uh the um promotional video for our aquatic facilities. Um you know if we want to move into parks um I'm still getting used to this software program. I'm used to looking at the old Excel sheets. >> Oh dear. Would you like to see your budget now sir? >> Yeah. Um, so I think if we go through here, our parks we kept pretty pretty flat. Um, we did have some cutbacks last year. We didn't ask for more

040in those line items. I believe that was the um was either it was one of the No, go down. Yeah, it was field maintenance supplies. We went down this year. Um, we are going to be pretty close to expending this entire budget. Um, and I think as many of you know, but some of you are new on the council, usually when it gets to this time of year, a lot of our purchasing takes place to get ready for the summertime. So, um, the only increases I think were really in full-time salaries, which was due to union, um, wage increases per the contract. and then some additional funds for part-time salaries just to try and help combat the minimum wage increase. Other than that, there is pretty much all zeros across the board for this particular

041budget. Um I don't know if anyone has any questions for this or um >> or if we want to do it at the end. It doesn't matter. Maybe we'll do it this way. Parks first. This looks pretty good to me. >> Okay. >> 2.4%. I mean, cost of living increase less than that at this point. >> Way less. >> Yeah. >> So, congratulations. >> Trying. >> Yeah. You always are. So, we are good. >> I just want to give you credit, too. Um, you've been trying to budget for this mini excavator for the last couple years. You've been in and out. And I just want to thank you for using some of your special revenue funds to not create I don't want to say a burden on the taxpayers but you found a way to

042get your mini excavator without putting it in your budget this year. So thank you for your creative thinking and usefulness of of some of that money. So I want to give you a lot of credit for that. Uh one thing I noticed I don't know what this New England turf management is. It was 32,000 then went down to 7,200. >> No. So, just so you guys know, this is a new the way we put this in this year. >> Um, >> it was just a whole line item number last year, but this year we itemized all of the expenses for each line item. So, >> okay, >> that was a collective total of the service contracts for like three or four different companies there. >> Um, so New England Turf is not 32,000. Oh dear,

043we'd be in a we'd be in trouble. >> Yeah, >> it's mostly cemeter. >> This was unusual there. >> yeah. So, those are the true expenses. New England turf management, which is, you know, our annual turf maintenance we do on our turf fields at McVicker at the high school as well as the Miracle Field at Elmerge Park. Um, we do two groomings and cleanings a year on those particular fields. Plus, we do um we have to do GMAX testing, which is impact testing to make sure that the turf is safe from head impact and to make sure it's, you know, safely playable. >> What was your budgeted for the tree care? >> So, tree care we held at 50. Um, currently we've spent about twothirds of that. We are not over on that right now.

044Fingers crossed. We got like two months left. So, I know there is a bill in the hopper for a recent tree that got in tangled up into some data and power lines on Dividend Road last weekend for an emergency tree call, which was between three and 4,000, but we're still um above water in that line item so far. Do you work with highway to do some of those jobs or is there a possibility to do >> Yes, we do. Um, >> we have asked them to help us out with a couple of of um areas if it's low hanging fruit areas, easier trees to remove, >> you know, like for example, the one last weekend, it was it was in power lines. That's a no no. We got to get to the specialist for that

045one. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> At at one point, Craig, was was there a talk about an automatic liner? >> Oh, that's C. >> I think that's in the capital improvements portion. >> You can talk about it now if you want, >> but we can Yeah, we can ask about it now if we like. Question. >> Yes. Good news. for your sorry oh boy for your action item is a progress 40% increase that's volleyball basketball cricket league >> mhm >> and then performance it says only enrollment soccer and basketball so who is running the cricket who is running the volleyball what it is about just >> um most of those would be things that are done inhouse >> by us set up by us in house Um, we do have a position

046that we are looking to fill here pretty soon. Full-time position that would be handling some of that stuff. So, >> so right now you're handling it or somebody else. >> Oh, me? Yeah. >> All you? >> Yeah. You see the bags under my eyes? >> Yeah. >> So, I think 2023 we thought about, you know, doing something whole cricket field. >> Yeah. >> Like a full cricket field. Right now it's not full cricket field. >> Yeah. What happened for three years? >> There's nowhere to put a full cricket field. >> Whole town >> on Rocky Hill town own land. There is nowhere to put a full-size cricket field without compromising other fields. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So like if you wanted to put one at Sunnyest, sure we could put one at Sunnyest. We

047don't have a baseball field and a soccer field now. So we added a field but we lost two. It's a net minus one. Oh, okay. Gotcha. >> Yeah. I mean the >> Is there any way we can do that or No, >> for you. No. >> Craig, what what how much land do you need for a full size? >> Um, ideally it's a fullsize cricket field. Ideally, you would want 460 ft. You know, >> like a like a oval or a cir. It's like 460 feet across >> this way. That's a big chunk of land. That's like a >> It's like a major league baseball field >> basically. Um but bigger. Well, if you include foul territory, it's about the size of a major league baseball field. Now that's if you were going to host

048like an Olympic cricket match or something like that, you can get away with, you know, a smaller size, maybe 400 feet if you wanted to because the pitch is actually in the middle of the field. So you're looking at, you know, 200 feet this way, 200 feet that way, 200 feet to the right, 200 feet to the left. It's a lot of space. Um, definitely something I'm willing to >> But Greg, that's only for the summer. >> I mean, how many times have I gone to Ray's office and we've, you know, we're perusing the Google maps to see if there's any patch of land that we can find. How many times have we done that? >> Everyone we find is like this. So all for it. All for it. Love it. What's that? >> The

049whole cricket field. >> Yeah. But again, I've already like gone on public record saying that like that's a that's now you lose a baseball field and a soccer field. So what's the point of that? What's the point of adding a field when you lose two? That's kind of that's my we could we could do that but there's going to be a lot of people affected. There's going to be a lot of people affected. >> Cricket is not playing by only Indians. They are playing so many countries now playing. >> Oh that's town is like that. >> I understand that. >> My question is still there. You know the cricket is only for the summer. We cannot play in winter. Same thing with baseball. Why can't we just make it out that you know one week

050they play, next week they play? >> You you you're going to hire somebody full-time. You said >> yeah. >> Look at it. This one they cannot figure this one out. >> Did the full-timer is a replacement? >> Yeah, the full-time is a replacement. >> That's a replacement for a vacant position. >> Yeah. >> Position. But still, you know, when you do the cricket league, you know, you can get so many people, so many leagues right now, you know, go to Hartford, you know, look at the Kenny Park. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm very familiar with Kenny Park. I'm familiar with uh there's a park up in East Hartford on the river. There's I've visited some sites in Cheshire. I visited sites in New Haven. You know, there's definitely um you know, there's there's definitely areas that

051they can play. South Windsor has a nice cricket ground. >> Can the can a field set up for cricket is it different materials? Like can it can the that area still be used? I mean, like I know I I grew up in a town that had a soccer field that part of it was the baseball diamond. You know, you're running on dirt half the time. So ideally ideally cricket is played um the pitch is clay. >> Yeah. >> It's it's a clay pitch and it it's about 110 ft about because you need a runup on either side. Um and it's about 10 feet wide. So >> and that's in the middle of the >> field. That's like if we put that at Sunny Crest, it would be right in center field >> of a baseball

052game or it would be going right through the middle of a >> soccer >> of a soccer 11 v11 soccer. >> So you couldn't obviously carry on the same games at the same time, but if nobody was if you weren't playing on the baseball field, you couldn't have a cricket pitch in the middle of it. I mean, you know, they they can't overlap. You can't have a diamond. The problem would be you would have a center fielder, okay, who is tracking down a fly ball and then they're going up on a cricket pitch to go feel the ball. >> Yeah. >> It's okay. >> You know, it's you'd have to have >> safe. >> In other words, it it just doesn't work like that. >> It doesn't work. >> It's it doesn't work like that.

053And if and and you know, I'll be 100% truthful. I'd rather have a dedicated cricket pitch that is played on from March or April 1st to November 1st. Um we just don't have an area of land right now that we're able to to do that. We we don't we don't have that. We're landlocked in that regard unless we, you know, we go in some open space somewhere and start chopping trees down and ripping stumps. >> We don't want to do that. >> All right, John and Fran, you guys get on that with the open space. >> Maxwell, you know >> the Maxwell also. It's not a cricket. That pitch is not a cricket. We created it or somebody else created it. >> It's it's a youth it. It's a youth cricket. >> It's a youth

054cricket. They use it as the cricket. >> Youth cricket and adults can use it for tennis ball cricket. >> That's the tennis ball cricket. >> For tennis ball, adults can use. Yes. >> So right now you play soccer on that field too. >> Yes, they play soccer on that. >> They play soccer on the same >> but around but it's around the pitch. It the pitch does not interfere with the field. >> So the pitch is in the middle of that field. We've been able to modify a small soccer field that >> doesn't overlap. >> That doesn't overlap, but it's pretty darn close. >> But that's for like little kids, not adults. >> Yeah, it's it's more what the soccer or the >> the soccer that would be for like Yeah. Like seven and eight

055year olds. >> So both are for kids. Not none of them are full size adult. >> No. >> Yeah. Fields. So, you are running the cricket league or somebody else is running the cricket league. >> Uh, we have not actually set the league up yet because I don't have a full-time person to do that yet, which will be happening soon, but it would be run through our department and we would hope to have some a league coordinator that would help with scheduling. And then the field would be available for usage for for this league a couple nights a week. and then the youth a couple days a week and split it up that way and let them play under the lights at Maxwell. >> There is no tournament we can develop there. There is no

056tournament we can develop there. Just like tournament, you know, >> tournament. >> Yeah. >> Cricket tournament is always there. You know >> who? I'm I'm having >> tournament. Can you have tournaments up there? You could have a tournament there >> with a tennis ball >> if if there's an adult tennis ball league. You I don't see why you couldn't have a tournament. >> Okay. >> Um I have a question. This gentleman here asked for uh uh cages for cricket. Um >> is that an uh does that instill something different from another type of batting cage? Could it be a shared batting cage? >> Sure. >> I don't know the answer to that. Well, can it be? You need a hard Do you need a hard surface inside of it? And by the way, the batting

057cages we have in town were done by the organizations. >> Yes. >> Paid for by >> by Little >> donations from Little League. >> Um, you know, I think it's a good request and I think it's definitely a viable request. I think, you know, if you're having kids um that are playing there or practicing there, you can get more people um getting or doing activities if there's another place where they can hit while people are practicing fielding or doing I've coached for 25 years. Like the more people you can get doing something and being active, the better. So, it's definitely a good idea. As far as the um the location of it, we'd have to find a good location for that. >> Craig and I will be looking at Google Maps tomorrow morning. >> Sounds

058like it. >> Yes, I love that part. >> I I just didn't know like if there was a chance to get >> cricket batting cages if they can be potentially used for other sports. Yeah, >> I understand. We do have I mean right now we have a lot of the high school the two high school fields were paid for by the town but the other ones at Elmbridgeidge and >> we're fundraising >> all done by the organizations at their expense. >> Um and we also have one happening down at Elmbridgeidge with potentially that >> indoor >> right again fully funded by >> the organizations andor grants. >> Correct. >> Right. So when they they came to us and do it and and again if if the field is at Maxwell Park where to Craig's point

059you can practice on the field and have people hitting in the cage that would be great. I just don't know if Maxwell Park with the >> I'd have to find we'd have to look and see if there's an area to do that. It's there's not a lot of >> You'd have to make sure you would do it in an area that is not in a field of play and it doesn't interfere >> into the field of play. That's that's really ultimately the >> town town's been very supportive with the ground and the excavation where you borrow the ser or your you lend the services of of the excavation and then you put stone dust and all that's worked you know from you guys but then the actual netting the replacement of the netting >> the

060the fencing has all been >> and I think for something like that you'd probably want to pour a pad. I think you have to. >> And you'd want to have, >> you know, post anchored sleeved into the ground, netting hooked up to it that you can pull down in the winter time >> to preserve. >> You'd want to have enough of a runway so that a pitcher can actually practice inside. And then you'd want to have um you'd want to have some kind of a >> Is it longer? It must be because >> it's long. >> Yeah, because baseball you just need 75 years. >> It's long. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Yeah, >> it's it's a 110, right? >> Y >> with a runup. Yeah, >> you need a runup for that. >> You might

061not need 110 for something like that because >> I mean, you only need one side. >> How many uh how many cages you're talking about? Like one or two maximum, right? Really, one will do probably. Um, I've had a couple email communications with Aish. Um, but we haven't gone too deep into the weeds on how big. I I would I would think you'd want maybe two two lanes at least so you can go either way. Um, because at that point all you're talking about is just extra some extra width and concrete. But it's like where do you put it? >> Yeah. >> And how is it not in a field of play? >> Yeah. >> You know, >> how close is it to a walkway or whatever? >> Yeah. How close is it to a

062walkway? Can it be accessed? There's a lot of >> Yeah. >> little variables that we'd have to iron out, >> but it looks like Craig, it's feasible. >> It's a It's feasible. >> Yeah. I mean, we can take a look at it basically. >> Yeah, we could look. Okay. >> For sure. >> All right. So, in a nutshell, um something that's feasible, we need we would need to see if there's a location that would work for it, >> and the precedent has been that the leagues have kind of funded that, you know, themselves. >> Correct. >> All right. Um if we don't have any other questions around, let's move to um organized activities. All right. Um, again, there was a small we asked for a small increase in um full-time salaries, but I don't it's

063not going to actually meet that number. It'll be lower than that once we have a new hire that starts. They won't start at the step that the previous person was. So, that'll be lower, just so everyone knows. Um, we asked for a little bit more money in um program fees for I believe it's um we added $1,000 to help out with Market on the Hill to make it a bigger event to cover staffing cost um and possible entertainment during the event. And then we did add a little bit of money on for the uh Camp Sunrise bus rental fee um because that is actually that fee has gone up for the daily um transportation to Camp Sunrise. But other than that, the only other thing that that you guys will notice is the printing line

064item. Um, so that is I asked for 12 we asked for 12,000 there because that is the true cost of what it costs for us to design and print a couple hundred copies of our brochure for three seasons. So, just so everyone knows, when when I first started seven years ago, we had $25,000 in that line item, and we've cut that all the way back in half because we stopped sending uh brochures to every household in the town. We stopped doing that because we wanted to make it more digital. So, now we've gone from four to three. We've combined our winter spring brochure and we have um you know we do print a couple hundred copies for each brochure to to hand out to have it to hand out at our office. Actually, I dropped

065some of those off to you guys. Um we could do the math. You might owe me a couple bucks each. >> Um yeah. No. So, we put those all in prominent locations um throughout town or if someone calls and they're like, "Hey, I I can't drive. I can't get there." We'll send it to them in the mail. Um we we give them to the schools so that they're in prominent locations. So, but it it truly costs $12,000. So, that is not a madeup number. The the line item was cut back to 10 last year. I don't know why. That's how much it costs. And you can see how much it costs. It was $11995 last year. So, um, other than that, that is it's going to be smaller than a probably less than a 3%

066increase for this for this budget. >> Craig, just uh, one quick question. Sure. Um, >> the concert subsidy, >> is that just because ticket sales aren't >> subsidizing? >> We don't sell tickets to concerts, >> so this is just paying for the bands. So that that line item for concerts that probably pays for maybe half of what they actually cost. We do go out and secure sponsors to cover the other half. So So like that does not cover all of our costs for concerts. >> Why don't you sell tickets? >> Because it would be impossible. You pay more for to try and lock down the the place and pay staff. And it's never been a it's it's a free event. Those are the concerts at the park. >> Yeah. Change the whole vibe. >> I

067think that was three. >> I don't think people would come if they had to pay. >> If you had like Harford Symphony Orchestra, >> well, if you had a big, if we were talking about a big name act, of course we would, you know, but there's a lot of lockdowns. >> You have to gate it up. >> You'd have to gate it. You need temp fencing everywhere. You >> can walk through quadruple your staff. The police cost would be more. It's just >> some spots on your lawn if you live across the street from the park. >> Correct. Right. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> So, I I have a question. I know last year there wasn't enough coaches for I think it was soccer and you hired the Footsol coaches. How did you >> That

068was paid for through all the user fees. >> Okay. >> Not through the general fund. >> Okay. >> Yep. I see under under the uh special revenue that's associated with programs. I think that's I think it comes up as like 400 and something. Yeah. >> 406 >> something like that. >> Yeah. >> So if you had to if so if this whole portion of the budget organized activities has a budget of 325. Mhm. >> And the revenue coming in is 406. Um, this doesn't include aquatic. Um, I'm sure there's something else that I'm not thinking of that's not included in there. >> That 406 number you're talking about is is not >> indicative of like that's a couple of different special revenue line items. >> Okay. that we have. >> Yeah, you can chime in.

069>> What I'm Yeah, what I'm just getting at is >> the uh the senior activities are kind of grouped together as fees. I think that's the only thing you wouldn't be able to do is fund a full-time salary under a special revenue because you can't do fees for full-time. Well, what basically just what I'm trying to get at is does the money that parks and recck bring in for the most part pay for most of the activities that we're putting out anyway, the concert, the >> um hop around the hill and we sell sponsorships and and all of that stuff. I mean, what is the delta between the amount that we bring in and the amount that we put out? I mean obviously there's value for the community in having free concerts and for various

070services but what is that gap I guess >> that's a loaded question >> or can we quantify >> that's a completely loaded question um you know one thing I will say just so you guys understand is that our summer skate program we don't ask for a dime a dime from the taxpayers. >> That that's all covered through user fees. You know, we're trying to hold the line so we're not charging customers more because the state keeps increasing the minimum wage. Um and we are constantly fighting that. And I'm trying to hold prices at least every two years um and account for those minimum wages. But so those are things that don't get accounted for that we cover completely through our special revenue budget. Um all of our swim lessons >> all Yeah. That's all offset.

071>> Yeah. Like >> camp counselors and all that. >> That's all covered out of that account. So like even though you see like a number >> that says 400,47 whatever 425. >> Yeah. A lot of that is through um user fees that have been paid now, but they're going to come out in July through August when we're actually running the program and and paying, you know, paying for our instructors, paying for our entertainment and stuff. So, >> it's that's a very loaded question and not something I would be willing to answer >> right now. >> Yeah. Um but >> um one of the other one of the other services that we've talked about a little bit at least uh also like with the board of ed is doing some of the afterchool programs like bringing

072that inhouse. Yep. >> Can you talk about like how that might work or is that something that we're still looking at doing? >> It's something we're looking at doing. um it's not something that we could incorporate next school year. Um we don't have enough time to do that without someone that can fully put that together. Um the good news is is um we have uh written that into the job description for our open position and um I have been conducting interviews over the last two weeks with candidates that have significant experience with before and after school programming. Um but just to give you guys an idea of how that would work is is um people who would be interested in it, we would start it at the two schools, West Hill and Stevens. Um and

073those programs would we would want to run them similarly to the existing um company that provides that service, but we would put our own spin on it. Um, and the way that works is you would do it's usually monthly monthly payment installments for that service. Um, and it would be an everyday afterare program or before care program. Um, >> and you would time it with the school year. >> Correct. Correct. It would be exactly on the school schedule. >> My hope would be that we could attract staff that would be able to work year round, not only in the schools, but in our summer programs as well. Um, and we could have almost like a feeder program for summer camp or for before and afterare program. Um, there's a bit of research that needs to

074be put into it. Um, I wouldn't want to run it exactly like the existing program. I think we could run it better and >> and potentially do it at a lower cost for the parents. >> Correct. you know that right now there's, you know, monies in there that have to cover things that don't have anything to do with with us. >> Yeah. Like building rental costs and stuff, things like that. And and so Okay. >> Yep. >> But obviously, you know, it's going to be the next school year before we know it. >> So trying to ramp that up before like August is >> impossible >> right now. >> Yeah. No. Yeah. No. >> Is it really impossible? I mean is something we can focus on. >> Um >> I mean is is it because

075of this position? >> Yes. >> So if you hired somebody like >> this is not a >> by the end of the month. >> I will go on record and say I do not feel comfortable doing it starting next school year without >> this was a big uh this was a big >> think it would be done. >> Yes. Absolutely. And I've I've had that discussion with Dr. Zto >> and he's fully in support. Just so I'm a little bit more in on this. The board of ed doesn't run it. We outsource it. >> Yes. >> And but we don't pay a fee. We don't incur a fee for outsourcing. >> Correct. >> YMCA or YW.CA pays a fee to the board of ed to rent the building out. >> Right. >> The YW.CA CA

076charges >> that >> the parents >> of the children in the schools that want the service. >> The idea would be for us to potentially do that in lie of >> more costefficient. >> Yes. Community partner >> pay for itself. >> We we are joint users of buildings. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Yeah. We're going to revisit this. >> Yeah. We'll have to >> Yeah. So you said you already spoke to Dr. Zto. >> I spoke to Dr. Zoto about this. >> When was this >> within the last couple weeks? >> All right. >> We the the timeline's not it's not it's not feasible. >> It was and it's affected by this vacancy. >> Correct. >> It would have been different if uh we didn't have a vacancy and that the role of the person

077that would do that. Um, >> yeah. >> Last thing, we've got the uh at least for me, the uh the bus rental part that you mentioned for Camp Sunrise. >> So, >> we don't have we don't use any of our own >> no >> bus stuff. No, it's contracted out. and the the buses. Um, Camp Sunrise is a is a program, an adaptive program that we have um for students who might not um or kids who might not um function as great in our everyday summer camp. And they um they go to Glastonbury to Camp Sunrise for this program. And yeah, >> and we have a contract with the bus company to help >> and it just the cost per day went up a little bit. So >> yeah, >> how that do the uh

078students have to pay for that or the campers whatever? >> Yes. >> So they pay for >> We do subsidize. >> Yeah, we do help. Yep. >> Okay. >> You keep referring to a position that needs to get filled. Did we lose somebody or they left us or? >> Yep. >> Okay. How long ago was that? >> Couple months ago. >> So, um, looking to >> is it >> move forward? >> Are you just refilling that position or you're creating a new one? >> No, that position. >> Want to talk a little bit about aquatics? >> Sure. Uh let's see here. It looks like a, you know, a large increase. The only ones that really went up though are maintenance costs for the pool. Um, we needed some diving board maintenance. Uh, the startup cost

079for the outdoor pool had just a little bit more expensive this year. I think there was only I think we asked for $2,000 more there. And then training stayed the same. Oh, uh, it's part-time salaries driven. Um, so essentially this is just to help offset the cost of the minimum wage increases. So another one where we're kind of battling it. Um, we were able to hold it pretty close last year. I mean, as you guys could see, we we spent almost all 165,000 last year and then there was another minimum wage increase that went into effect. So, this is based off our calculations for the minimum wage increase to help offset those that coverage. Do we have a solution figured out for the pool yet at Elmbridge? Like, is is >> that's the most loaded

080question of the night. I guess I came loaded um with questions today, but um >> but we've got um you know because we have some rising maintenance costs and and things like that. I think I mean my suggestion would be to have that as a separate item where >> Craig did a um what do you call a couple years ago uh did a survey survey >> and the residents put down the criteria for remediation for the pool from brand new to >> fill in you know cracks or whatever. Um, I think that could be a separate discussion that we need to start planning for because this has been this has been on the books for at least 10 years. >> We have 750,000 allotted over three years in our capital improvement right now. So, >>

081and that should have that actually should have begun well it did begin like 10 years ago >> and then it stopped. >> I know that's not going to be enough to do whatever we need to do either disappeared. >> Yeah. But I mean I think that's a separate totally separate >> Yeah. >> council item. >> All right. My question was just in in terms of you know what we're seeing for maintenance in in this year and you know is it are we going to fall off a cliff next year based on you know where we're currently at. That's all. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean my question would be and and that's that's really good from your perspective with the omeridge pool continuing to do what we've been doing the past couple years with just you

082know putting in gaps how long do you think this could continue >> without something major >> loaded I mean >> I can't answer that I just >> in the can for so long >> I just caution everyone it's a 60-y old facility >> so you know a 60-y old facility can You know, it's it's it's an aging facility. I don't know what to tell you guys. Like, >> have you seen other towns like Glassenbury, for example? I think they did theirs five years ago. Do towns apply for grants for this type of project? >> I think sometimes they might be able to get steep grants for for things like this. I know that Wallingford uh actually just did one um pool splash pad um a renovated or updated building um and it came in around

08310 and a half >> steep grants are very limited. >> They are >> and you have to expand them within the like threeyear period. >> But I do know that I don't know what Wallingford's funding source was for that project. I think it might have been locally bonded. Um, but it was around 10 and a half. I spoke to the director a month ago about it. And Simsberry's looked into a similar a similar renovation as well. Any other aquatic questions? >> You did have your capital painter item. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yes. Sorry, in the wrong place. >> Where is that? >> Yes. So, capital improvement for parks. I know we've got the list of everything. I'm going to zero in just on the new item. This one is a um that's a repeat. And

084we have the new item, the robotic field painter 46950 and uh CIP. So, if you want to talk about that one, Craig. >> Sure. Um, so this is a bit of a a newer technology uh that has been um adopted by a couple towns around us, Newington, Burland, Cromwell. Um it's it's a field painting machine that um it's it's basically an automatic machine. So I could go up to So you know we don't mark our fields. We don't paint our fields all year. Um we paint them usually in the spring and then like soccer fields in the summer when soccer dies down a little bit before the fall season. Um we don't mark them and then we remark them in the fall. Um, this machine is run off of GPS coordinates and you can literally

085go to a field, put it in the corner where you want it. Punch in what you want to do. I want to do a 9v9 field. Blah blah blah. Hit it. It will paint a field in 22 minutes and mark your field for the year. Now, normally if I'm gonna mark out a field for the year, that's going to cost us or it's going to have probably three or four guys and it's going to take a couple of hours just to just to mark it and that's not even paint it because you have to do all the line measurements and everything else. Um, this will do it in 22 minutes. Um, we've had Berlin >> has one, >> huh? >> You you had mentioned Berlin had one. >> Berlin has one. Yeah, they've come they've

086actually come and demoed they demoed it for us last year when we went at Maxwell last year and we took the 11 by11 field which runs north south and we put two east west 7 by seven fields it did that in about 40 minutes and it that we had never put those lines down before ever. Um, another thing with this machine is it it's not a high pressure sprayer. Um, so what happens is over the years when you have a high pressure sprayer, the paint comes down and it eventually beats it beats the field and to your point where your lines almost make an indentation in the field. So last year we actually had um a company Championship Turf come out and core airate all of our soccer lines or soccer lines on like three

087of our fields to to break it up and regrow the grass and level everything out. Put in top soil, level everything out because over the years it had just gotten beaten down by the high pressure paint. This is more of a low pressure spray. Um so it's like two parts to one. So, it's low pressure. Um, and I don't want to put a number on it because I don't want to say the wrong thing, but it should save in paint costs. Um, one of the salesmen told me it's it saved one town up to 50% of their paint costs. >> Um, >> do you have an idea what the paint cost? about 95 bucks a gallon >> or for a five gallon. Five gallon. >> But that but on a yearly basis. >> Uh yeah,

088I have it in my budget. Um I think we >> Yeah, I know. We just um >> I mean is it like 10 grand? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So five grand. Okay. >> Yeah. >> But even if it was seven or >> No, no. The man hours. It is also man hours too. >> Take away the part-time worker. 5,800 bucks. That's how much our paint costs are. >> Still have to pay the person. >> $5,800. >> Well, yeah, but at least it's one person that marks it out. >> Oh, yeah. >> Essentially, >> these things are unbelievable. So >> one I mean one thing I'm sorry uh mayor um Craig had done a presentation in front of finance a couple months ago and one of the questions I had was well if Berlin has it

089and we're talking about efficiency >> why can't we just borrow Berlin periodically? That's what I was going to ask. >> And Craig had the direct answer that when they're using it, we need to use it. So, at that particular time, it's not like something that's they're using it and it sits in the shed for a month or two so somebody else can use it. It's really the peak time that they have it will need it too. >> So, that's why if if I stated that correctly, >> you know, they've done us a favor like they went and demoed it for us and showed us how to do it. It's it's a it's a pretty pretty cool unit and there's two or three different companies really that are in the in the market for it. Um

090>> how many fields do we have that require painting? >> I mean we have >> 10. >> We take care of about 19 or 20 fields. Um I think in the fall season I believe there's like 11 soccer fields plus we have the um McVicker. We paint McVicker football lines. We paint football lines. And it's not just one field. Like even right now at auxiliary 2 at the high school, there's soccer lines on it and there's lacrosse lines on it. So there's two different sets of lines on it. So you could say it's a field, but it's really like two or three fields because you got boys lacrosse, girls lacrosse, and soccer on it. And they're all different colors. So, and I and I appreciate that that when it's the beginning of football season for

091us, it's the beginning of football season for them, too. It's beginning of the same the seasons are all the same. >> But if it does the job in 22 minutes >> and there's 19 fields or 20 fields or whatever, >> that's seven hours and or something something like that. I mean, we're still saving even if we rent it from them. Even if we rent it from another T, let's give them 10 grand and use theirs for, >> you know, two days. I realize it's not that easy, but that does seem like a piece of equipment that is >> well the lines the lines grow out. >> Yeah, I was I was just going to ask how long this line presumably you'd have to go and redo all the fields. >> Well, even the >> Yeah,

092but we have to do that anyways. But but I'm saying but I'm saying this this week at the fast >> I guess the question how often do you line the fields? Like how often do you line a soccer field? Weekly or bi-weekly? Okay. So that's it's not >> it's not like the beginning of the season it's done. Yeah. Yeah. >> And you can't use it on baseball and softball. It's not a >> you could do a foul line on baseball softball. >> They actually have actually >> they have machines there is a machine that will do um >> the batters >> the batter like the pitching mountain circle. No, it's it's not. It's not. >> No, but but the the >> Have you seen those things? Have you seen them do? >> I have I

093have not. I know. I know. W That's what they do for all the major league stadiums now, too. It's all It's all robotic. >> Yeah. >> Takes them like eight minutes to do a batter box. >> And if actually it might even be less than that. >> But I think the other question is how long this a typical machine lasts. >> So that's a good question. Um, the rep I spoke to from S Swazi, um, he he thinks anywhere from 10 to 12 years if you're doing the proper maintenance on it. Um, if you know how our garage operates, we've got ZTRs from 2006 that are still in our fleet. Like, we take care of our equipment. We clean our equipment every day. Um, the other thing with this piece of m machinery, it's it's

094it's battery powered. It's not there's no belts, there's no gas, there's it's it's electric. Um, so you would ultimately like in a nutshell investing in this saves us money in manh hours and potentially even paint over overtime. >> Correct. >> Especially if you divide out 46 >> if you did it over 10 years, you know, 10 12 years, you're looking at less than $5,000 a year for something like this. Would you be able to quantify like last year how how how many hours did it cost to paint and how much was the pain? >> No, you're on the spot. >> Not on the spot. >> No, I mean could you and then like email Ray with an estimation? >> Sure. >> Dave, >> the paint. Yeah, the paint. What? 5,800 >> 5,800 bucks a year

095sounds like. So, >> but it's the hours. I'm trying to get to a point where if it's five grand a year for for this robot on average over 10 years. >> Yeah. >> Are we saving six in manh hours and 50% pain? >> We're probably saving 3,000 pain. >> Yeah. If we split that, you know. So, >> and do the manh hours get utilized somewhere else, too? I I mean I >> I think you'll do more stuff, right? You know, maybe you have less overtime. I don't know. Would that impact? Well, part Yeah. Part-timers work over. No, >> it wouldn't be overtime. >> No, >> but you can't have a part-timer run this. You would have guys fulltime in charge of this, >> right? >> I forgot to mention. >> See, like you're asking where

096do we save the money? And I The paint's easy. >> Yeah, that's easy math. It's it's paint and manh hours. >> But if it's two or three people >> over three hours, >> if you want to try a rough estimate and you said you you're going to save about 20 hours, right, for four guys and they're doing about $20 an hour and you're doing it for >> No, that's full >> for 10 weeks. So that's like 16,000. >> But we're not going to >> They're full-time person. >> Yeah. What are they going to do instead? >> Correct. >> What are the parts going to do instead? That's >> right. We'd have a lot of part-time grounds. So maybe 16. >> So we lose a part-time. So just saying, you know what I mean? Yeah. We're

097not going to lose anybody or save any money. >> Yeah. >> I I also forgot to mention um the fields look perfect. The lines are >> dead straight. The circles are perfect. It's It looks good. >> And if Newington has one and Berlin has one, we're better than both of them. >> We got to be better. >> Yeah, that's all I'm saying. >> No, it looks >> I don't want to >> I I agree with >> de labor it, but they're it's worth the investment in my opinion. >> The thing about efficiency gains is like you have to always >> there you're not going to cut headcount. It's going to be a soft saving essentially and you can live with a soft saving then you know then it's you do it. That's it. I >>

098I think we need to advance to to your point too. >> That's it. I mean you know there's not going to be any like hard savings on this like except for the paint. >> That's it. >> So >> correct. >> Well the good news on rainy days when you don't have to pay the part- timerrs. Right. >> Well they're not part- timerrs fulltime. Well, yeah, but to the parttime we had a lot of rain. Parttime have to work more to get these things done. Even though a part-time is not doing it, >> that thing won't get stuck in the rain either. It's crazy. >> Will it work in the rain? >> Yeah, >> it's cool. >> I don't think there's anything else. >> I say when you lose a lot of a couple days because

099of rain, the part-timers come in and work more >> to make up for the work that wasn't done during those days. So now wouldn't have to >> have the increased hours. truck. >> Oh, yeah. Truck 88. >> Yeah, we do have a We wanted to put in a lease for truck for truck 88. Um that is our truck that has a dump body on it. I don't have my sheet that has um all of our mileage and years in front of me. I have it's at my desk. Um, but truck 88's on the um I think I think it's on the verge of being redlined. So, >> it does need replaced. Um, >> is that a lease car? >> Yes, it is. >> That would be a lease. Yep. >> Truck body is a lease,

100>> is it? >> The the truck itself, it's going to be a It's a whole truck. >> Yeah, it's a truck. Yeah, >> but that's the truck that we use for the dump body. >> What type of truck? you know, >> or did it >> what style >> did he do a 350? >> We tried a 350. >> Or the dump. >> Yeah. >> Was there was there also like a lawn mower on on there or something, too? >> No, those are continued leases. >> It's a lease from previous and Okay. >> Yes. >> So, the new items for him is the truck and the uh robotic painter. And just to be clear, the the um that mower once the lease is done, we still retain it. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> But what we

101would like to do, and I it's not in there. I noticed it not being in there, but is continue and get another mower. >> But that would be in next year. That that would be next year. Y probably an old one that we have to >> the one that we have from that we've had for 10 years. >> So essentially what what we have is we have a a good system in place where we have a five-year lease on a mower. When that mower's done um we own it, we continue to use it. We buy another one. So we have two now. And the one that was 10 years old before this one, we take the auction, we sell, and then, you know, we I think we got probably n 18 or 19 grand for

102the last one that was >> Yeah, we did. >> 10 years old. >> And then we take that money and we put it back into the garage. So, it it's just a it's it's always um an ongoing thing. And then I know that one of the big hot button things has always been well regionalization. What can we do with other towns? Like it helps when you have a backup mower because we have lent ours to Berlin. And there's been times where we've been down to for whatever reason, repairs or you know a line or whatever. Berlin's let us use theirs. So we do have a >> reciprocation. >> Correct. So that's why we do that with the lease. And I there's a lot of new members on the council. So I just wanted you guys

103to understand that. >> No, Malt does a great job with the equipment. >> He does a fantastic job. >> Unbelievable. Yeah. >> The reality of it, everyone, is that the way things are made these days, they're not made as sturdy as they were 25, 30 years ago. Pretty sure my snowblowers from the 70s, but the ones you get now don't last. >> Yeah, my Briggs and Stratton's runs great. >> All right, any other last stuff for Craig? >> Just a a really big thank you for what you're doing with the program. We we offer wonderful stuff here in town and you're doing a lot of great work for us. And even to councelor Whan and councelor Signnney's point, you're doing a great job on keeping the budget right where you need it to be. Really

104appreciate what you're doing. >> Appreciate it. >> Um, sorry. When the tennis court upgrade, is that under Craig or is that under >> board of ed? >> Oh, that's a board of ed tennis court. >> That was a good trade. >> Yeah, >> that's good. >> You take the pool, they take the tennis court. I don't know if that's that's that's loaded. That's a loaded trade. >> All right. Thanks, Craig. >> Thanks. >> Have a great night. >> We're not done yet. >> Not done yet. >> Back here. Sorry. >> Facility. >> How you doing? Phil Seir, uh, director of facilities, um, IT and, um, custodial division. >> Thanks, Phil. >> Um, I'll be doing the, uh, facilities and custodial and then John Anocowski, uh, the IT manager, will come up and do the IT.

105Um, I'm not going to take as long as uh as my my fellow employee, but uh I'll go right into the um the goals. Uh goal one uh staff capturing hours of uh hours and cost on work orders. It's basically just to uh complete data um so we can uh pull it up in you know in in the future to see a cost of material or or what or labor at at that time. Um we reached uh the estimate was 90 we reached 92% um and we're going to close it for for this next upcoming uh budget. Um goal two, capturing data of work orders completed in a week's time uh after tablet purchases and all these um are following the priorities and issues um list uh number eight town and facilities uh continue efforts

106to maintain and sustain efficiencies and make building improvements in a timely cost effective manner. Um, so this, um, the estimate was, uh, 76% and we reached 76%. It's something I'm going to keep open. Um, and I'm estimating for 80% next year. Um, so that what that does, so we're we're a service group and, uh, we provide service to the town employees, not necessarily directly to, you know, the town residents. Um so um my uh my philosophy is if we are efficient in our completing our work orders on time it's it's it's efficient for our customer which is the town employees. Um and that's the you know that's the thinking. Um goal three goal three is closed. It was uh the early Eversource lighting and mechanical equipment replacement for the new uh people on the council.

107Um we uh undertook a um project that uh we replaced all of the old um they're called HID high uh multi- vapor type lamps incandescent for the fields um Maxwell and uh Elm Ridge. And we also included the uh um the high school field as well. Um we also uh had the opportunity to change out um old um rooftop equipment. Um it was a uh sponsored well it actually found information through CCM a webinar um and uh basically it was um for uh uh yeah just to kind of explain the um the construction industry um is going to recognize LED lighting going forward not incandescent lighting or even fluorescent which we don't have by the way. So, um, as a result, the existing field lighting with the, uh, the 1500 watt incandescent lamps and ballouses

108will no longer be manufactured. So, then if these things start going out where, we won't be able to replace them and we'll have our fields in the dark. So, in the addition in addition, LED lighting rebates and incentives um will be eliminated. And this is actually uh in 2024. Um we'll be using uh we will we are using Eversourc's uh uh 0% financing. Okay. Um for what six years? >> Yep. >> Um on bill payments. Okay. So um there was no out of pocket. Um, and in in addition, it was a question that we asked about using uh solar credits from the town farm, the town solar farm if needed to pay the payments on a yearly basis. Um, I'm not sure if I'll get you in trouble by mentioning that, but >> that's okay.

109Are they allowing that now? >> Um, they're allowing that now. >> Uh, yes. It's it's worked well because these particular charges go on the individual's bill. So for example, you change the unit on this building. So the electric bill for this building will have the RLE charge directly to this bill. So this has been allowing us to absorb some of those credits that we couldn't get reimbursement by check for. So it's actually worked out Yeah. quite well. >> Great. >> Yeah. Because that was a concern, right? Right. It's still a concern. You know, it'll end after a couple of years and it hasn't absorbed all of it, but it's it's definitely made a larger dent than what we had. >> So, we're able to, you know, take advantage of rebates and incentives before they went

110away because the incentive was to for people to buy the LEDs and then put them in. But uh now that it's you know um now that incandescent lighting is no longer manufactured it it's you know it was a time to to jump on this and take advantage. Um again the lighting package locations was Elmidge Park fields, softball field, baseball field, the basketball court, lower parking lot, Maxwell Park uh both soccer uh field and I'll call it a multi-use field with the cricket field and uh in baseball um or soccer um tennis court and basketball court there as well and the high school field. Um equipment uh we were able to change out four hanging forest air gas furnaces which were at the time 25 to 30 years old. um now brand new uh high efficiency

111hot water heaters um heat pumps at the library, town garage and parks garage. It's type of water heater that uh they take they it's there's a fan in there and they take ambient air to um to warm up before electricity has to kick in to get it to you know the 110 120 degree. Um so you know that's your savings usage savings. uh boiler pipe insulation at uh firehouses one, two, and three. Three uh major rooftop unit roof roof rooftop units here um at the b at uh at in our penthouse. So above us, our units sit uh one, two, and then three right outside this this window here. Um our biler room is also up there. So if anybody wants to build the building. Never put a boiler room on a roof. Um but

112it is what it is. But um it was three conventional um gas boilers. Now they're condensing boilers, more efficient. Um and a chiller um at the police department. It's outside near our brand new generator that we just put in with a grant. Um with that um task four um tracks uh changes made um or goal for I'm sorry goal for uh track changes made in the automation system suggested again by a company uh that Eversource um um had to see if it's um to see if it's if it's if it's feasible. So when the grid gets taxed during summer, they would come in and get into your automation systems, the buildings that have automation, and then uh tweak um you know, temperatures and sensors to see if we could bring load down to see if

113they can take you know, as much load off of their grid system. So it was a pilot. So for us to uh sign on and as as an incentive um they uh they g they they gave us uh an engineered audit energy audit for the automation buildings um as well as um I'm trying to think what else the other one but um oh incentives as far as whatever usage was saved in payments. So, we made about $2,000. It wasn't a whole lot, but it was to see if it was feasible for other companies or other towns um you know to buy in to see if uh it was a good means to to reduce load for them. So, with that um there was about 80 uh suggested changes. Okay. Um the estimate was uh to

114review and try to tackle 75% of that. We made it up to about 72% of the task that they suggested. Most of it lowhanging fruit. Um the ones that were um that would cost it just wasn't we wouldn't get a a payback, a bang for our buck. Um so it wasn't really worth doing. So um and then 12 of those um 80 um changes implemented we prioritize and we got about 11 done. So um goal five is um to track PM work orders. So goal two was to track um regular work orders that come in from customer base, you know, um customer base uh type of uh uh work orders. This is this is part of the PM program. So what this does is um what will it what it will do is um it

115not force but have my staff complete PMS in in a month's time. Okay. Um the example of of how many we have um we have over 1,900 um PMS for all our different mechanical equipment pieces, motors, belts, and um sensors again. Um um lighting um there's just u extinguisher uh you know inspections um elevator inspections and I mean uh fire inspections, fire systems inspections. So we are also going to include the uh custodians as well. So when I do the factorial portion um you'll see that it just referred to you know the facilities uh goals but uh we're incorporating them in their routines um on a on a weekly monthly basis. Um and right now there's no data but uh based on data as far as right now um the rate is at 80%. So

116that's 80% work orders being completed in a month's time and uh the estimate is 85. So that's my goals. Any any questions? Oh, >> scrolled you right into the budget. >> All right. So, um I would yeah I just wanted to point out for clarification on this particular page which is facilities that shows part-time going from 0 to 60 that is a data entry error. Um you'll see it appears in the custodial which is a true home for that. So, in our plans for how to go with the budget, this is a a $60,000 give it back on the table. Sorry, Phil. >> No, it's okay. So, so clarification get excited. I said, "No, you don't have it. It was our mistake." >> So, is that just It's uh It was a a person that's

117under the wrong section. >> Correct. Okay. >> In there twice, you mean? >> Yeah. >> Basic basically it was duplicated in the facilities, but it should only stated in >> Okay. So 426 is the real proposed. >> That's right. >> Okay. So >> you were in trouble otherwise. >> Yeah. Under the gun. >> Yeah. >> Um >> we saved you. >> So uh service contracts um that's up um one because of of uh the labor increases of the vendors who provide those services for us. And uh what was new was uh the HA has OSHA compliant management. Um that's a component that uh four five departments are going to pay for. >> Yes. >> Um we had an OSHA audit a year ago. Um and um everything equipment wise and procedures were safe. it was

118the data that wasn't collected basically just wasn't there was collection of data but wasn't good enough to OSHA so our training um was done by Kerma our insurance company um because there's no cost they'll come in for free and and and do the same things that OSHA requires but they don't recognize the insurance company's um training So, we incurred uh fines, most of them because of that. Um it was almost like 25 $26,000 and it was like what you know. Um and then most of it was, you know, just not having our paperwork ducks in a row. Um, so the other items that they picked while they were here, we we trailed them, you know, like we had a basically uh, you know, make believe leash follow them around. So anything that they did find,

119we correct it right then and there. They did they they mentioned the sighting, okay, and an amount, but they didn't charge us, okay? and and that's what reduced that 26 to actually to I want to say about seven 8,000 that we have roughly. So um because of that in the future we don't have uh that same with the same issues and we have a compliance company that will help us with the training paperwork. Um yeah it's Dana was here there's more to it but uh >> you're good. Okay. >> Um, everything else is pretty much flat except for uh building improvements. So, seven years ago when when I took, you know, the um the facilities director's job, I inherit I inherited about $90,000. And with that, I would itemize, prioritize different projects. The projects are

120based on uh 19 uh I'm sorry, 2016 uh um condition assessment that was done by an engineering group that came in and assessed all our buildings. They uh listed all of our equipment. Um they listed ceilings and floors and and you know windows, doors um and they put a um a longevity replacement uh value to it. So I take that in September in in you know preparation for my budget and I tour the buildings and I try to find and I see I look at what needs to be done. I look at what they suggested because of longevity. um um replacement factor. Um not everything needs to be replaced on the dates or years that it says, but it's it's a 30-year CIP plan. I know we only do a five, but I use this

121yearly to check to see, you know, what needs what the needs are. So, and that's how that helps build my, you know, five year cip going forward. Phil, is that the the dude program? >> Yes. >> Yep. That's our program. >> It started what, seven years ago? >> Oh, at least >> about when when you has it been work I mean has it been working projecting things accurately >> or are you finding things that it should have recognized and >> Well, um it it lists it lists everything. It's very detailed. But there are things that um that is coming up this year, but we should have started replacing them 10 years ago based on how old it was. And that's garage doors, garage door motors, not the doors themselves. That's another, you know, but it's

122uh you know, so this year um in my one of my line items is to replace uh the you the motorheads on all three firehouses, >> right? >> So that was in, you know, the the assessments, but 10 years ago, but based on inspections every year, we were able to push it off. Push it off. Now, um the the brains on the head itself obsolete. So when those go, we can't get parts. So now um you know, you're scrambling uh to try to repair it. So um so again, it's it's in this year's um uh building improvement. Um did I answer your question, John? >> Yeah, it does. Thanks. >> How long is the life of those motors, you think? >> Uh industry standards is 20 years. >> Okay. Um they were um they were

123put in before I was here and I've been here for 24 years. So um you know there it's it's it's time. Um and each each firehouse has doors work in a different way. Um some are timers when they leave and the door closes behind them. Some they have the button, you know. So we're going to try to get them all, you know, the same way. Um, let me see what else. >> It's probably something that you don't want to have malfunction. Uh, >> no, >> because you're using it because you need to use it, right? Then >> yeah, we know we have to repair it as soon as uh, you know, they they they are good only because sometimes you can't get a contractor out, let's say, to repair. they will revamp their parking so

124they can get out, >> you know, for until we could do, you know, repair the door and but uh, you know, within within a day we usually get the door repaired. >> Do you want to do questions on this page before custodial? >> Yeah. >> Does that keep you? Okay. >> Anybody have anything else on building maintenance? What's the fountain repair? What's uh going on with that fountain? >> I'm sorry. Oh, out here. >> Town hall fountain. >> So, um well, if you notice, probably quite a few years back, the lights went out. So, again, like I said, never put a boiler up on a roof, never put light, never put lights in water. Um, but it's uh, you know, it it it just it it broke. The seal is just deteriorated in what? So,

125so we we isolated that out of the way. So, um, now what's happening is we have a a valve gate valve that keeps the water inside. Okay. Well, we can't seat the gate valve all the way. Water escapes. So, um, and there's a cost to it because we got to dig, uh, we got to replace the gate, uh, we got, and while the ground's open, we might as well replace from point A to point B, um, to a, um, storm water drain that's on in the driveway. Um, doing that, we'll also replace the pump, the aation decoration pump, if you will, and we could do, you know, the lights as well. Um, I'm hesitant on putting lights. I' I'd rather not because then we never would have that problem going forward. But because they just

126won't they won't last. Um >> and the the firehouse prepping and painting hose tower, that's the inside, right? >> Yes, that's the inside. >> Like the liner on the inside. >> Yeah. So >> that the inside of that host tower hasn't been touched since the building is 1965 build. It probably hasn't been touched since then. What's happening? It's flaking. Um the the metal sill up top is also flaking. They do use the tower. They lift hoses. There's a hoist um at the top of the tower. Um they lift hoses to dry, repair, uh do maintenance on. Um and they there's none of our buildings have adequate storage. They use the the area as storage as well, but um You know, if you look up and this stuff happens to fall down, it's it's a hazard,

127you know. So, it's time and that's what uh >> it probably preserves the because is it just painting onto brick or what's on the inside? >> Yeah, center block. >> Center block inside. >> Yeah. So, we're going to have to we're going to have to strip. We're going to have to seal primer and then paint. >> Anything else? Anybody? All right, custodial. >> You want me to do CIP now or after custodial? >> We'll do after you do custodial. Yeah. >> Okay. So, custodial. >> I change your gear so I can jump ahead. >> What's that? >> I said you're okay. Okay. >> Yeah. I'm too tall. Shorter. Mhm. >> So the goals are are I already explained that in the facilities portion and the uh custodial budget is basically flat. It hasn't uh hasn't

128been raised at all except for salaries. If anybody has any questions, Phil, what would the damage be if you didn't get the uh part-time position? for custodial. Would there be overtime impact? >> Um, we're not putting in for a part-time. They're already there. >> There's just increased hours from the 60 to the 80. >> Oh, yes. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. Okay. All right. That That's right. >> Y >> Okay. Well, I mean, this one >> not a lot to talk about when it all stays the same, I guess. That's good, right? >> I just think it's amazing the job that they do. I know I'm at the community center all the time, but I know all the buildings, they're wellmaintained. >> They're they're good. >> You see a lot of the same people. >> They've

129been here for a while. >> They're personable. >> Very nice. >> Yep. >> Interact with the public. So, >> I got uh you know, I do have the best group. >> They're great. They They are really good. Yes. >> And uh dedicated and they get it. They know they work hard and that's facilities as well by trade staff. >> Yeah. >> All right. >> So I believe Phil for you for CIP you have the uh truck the four-wheel drive utility body vehicle. >> The other items are recurring. >> We don't have it anymore. >> It's in Ford Heaven. >> It's it it was a 2001 Um, we were third hand-me-down. Um, it was we put in for it last year. Okay. And it was denied last year. I'm not sure if I handed out pictures,

130but I do have pictures of >> the the rust and the bins and the tools falling out on the road, you know, that sort of thing. But, uh, um, right now we're like we're borrowing. So, um, we, uh, Walt was was gracious enough to let us borrow, um, a flatbed pickup, uh, that he had. Um, but when it came to plowing, we had to give it back and, you know, so he can plow. Um, we currently have it now, but he's going to need it back once, um, the seasonal part- timerrs, you know, come back in. He needs wheels for for them to get around. So, um, we can't use a pool car. This is for, uh, for my carpenter, by the way. So, yeah, he needs, you know, he needs bends for for tools

131and materials. And so, you can't use a pool car. Um, what you're going to end up doing is using my uh vehicle that I use because I'm all over the place in all our buildings. Um, until hopefully we get, you know, a vehicle. And it's uh it's utility body reading utility body uh but it's a 250. Um we could certainly put a plow package on the front of it so they can use it for plowing in the winter if they need to if they have you know um a pickup either at the highway or parks that you know that breaks down you know it could be used for for backup as well. >> So it's a 20,000. >> Yeah. That's a lease. >> That's a fiveyear lease, right? >> I was going to say where

132are you finding it? 84. >> Is it four or is it showing three? >> Three. >> What did you have? >> It would It would be four. >> It's four. It's this one here. It's a four-wheel drive utility body truck. >> Facility building maintenance utility van replace Redline 2001. >> Mhm. >> I'm showing three years. >> Are you on my page here or somewhere? I'm on I'm on page 245 of the uh >> I don't have >> says the same on ours 257 page with the original book. >> So the >> still >> the price is 80,000ish. >> So $20,000 a year for the next four years. >> Four years. >> Okay. >> Y >> and that's >> with that outfitted >> Yes. Yes. With the utility. >> With the body. >> Yeah, with the

133utility. >> Yeah. >> Um, does it does it have to be a four-wheel drive truck >> or is it would like a transit van type thing for >> handing? Yeah, but a larger one. My other two >> because you need ladder and stuff. >> I'm sorry. >> Because you would need like ladder. >> Yeah. Well, you could put a ladder rack on on a transit, but it's got to be the larger ones. Um uh he would he and I left it up to to the you know my um employee to and ask him what would be more efficient for him and he said a utility type and it's got a pickup back as well. Yeah. >> So he can you know you can bring sheets of you know 4x8 sheets of plywood and sheetrock or

134studs or whatever. So you know with the back open All right. Anything else around capital improvement for facilities? >> It >> All right. It >> Thanks, Phil. Appreciate it. >> Man, I was hoping to find out where I could get a $20,000 pickup truck. >> That's for one wheel. >> I know. That's true. It's only for a quarter. It's only for a quarter of the truck. >> Yeah. >> 20,000. You might be able to fetch 20 for yours. >> Do they make utility unicycles? >> All right. >> Hold on. I lost my page. >> We used to have you and I've got you down there. >> Hi. Uh John Oowski, IT manager. Um starting with the goals, uh we did have to pivot away from certain goals this year due to uh price increases across

135um a large portion of uh hardware. Um specifically, uh there's a memory shortage that has been in full effect. Prices have in some cases at least tripled, if not quadrupled, uh as far as RAM shortages. A lot of that is attributable to the uh AI um you know uh bubble at this point. Uh unfortunately uh there's been companies that have actually gotten out of the commercial um RAM market because they found it more profitable to sell to these companies. So uh we did not do uh any switches or access points. Uh instead we opted to get in um more storage capacity. uh that unfortunately ran our technology equipment budget over, but it was pay $20,000 now or$25 to $30,000 in July. So, um I had to had to make a tough decision on that one,

136but it seemed like that was a better opportunity for the entire town. Um let me see. Um, we did push off training for Microsoft 365 uh in conversations I've had with the operational director um in regards to putting in more important things like uh our IT service desk um that is a uh brand new um as of it went live October um and that's a living breathing entity uh it incorporates a lot of our inventory um service calls end users can check the status of all their tickets and things like that. Uh we're we're really happy with the way it's performing and it's a constantly evolving uh piece of um piece of uh you know um information that is available to the entire staff. Uh in addition to that we also implemented a uh security

137information and event management system that is a key component um not only in uh cyber insurance as that is a checkbox item for cyber insurance. Uh but it is also key in the fact that we have a lot of data silos. Um we have firewalls um we have servers uh we have um endpoint management all those generate logs all those generate information uh the sim as it's called uh helps to correlate all that and it's something that we've also been working uh heavily with and it helps to improve what we focus on as far as security goes. Uh that way instead of saying, "Well, we've got this firewall log and and this log over here and I showed something here. I showed something here and we looked at it and we go like,"Oh, okay, maybe

138that's nothing. Maybe that's nothing, but I've looked at it twice." Now, uh with that managed service, it comes back and says, "Hey, you know what? Um yeah, that's just white noise, right? We don't need to look at that." But this over here that you you probably wouldn't have noticed because it was coming in so slowly, that's actually something we need to look at. So it it's been a godsend as far as uh helping us to maintain our security posture. Um some of the other things we have uh ongoing computer refreshes. Um and with that also we implement uh new signin procedures. So Windows Hello for business uh takes the concept of a password that you use for everything and moves it down to a pin that's unique to the device. Um it helps with security.

139It helps to implement um tighter controls within our uh identity provider which is Microsoft 365. So with that we create conditional access rules that say you know what um Phil just logged in over here and uh 10 minutes later he logged in at China. Yeah. No, we're we're not allowing the login from China. All right. I mean, you know, time portals are a thing, I guess. You know, it depends on which movies you like, but yeah. Um, so that's really where we've been kind of pushing our efforts. um upcoming goals. Uh we have servers that need to be replaced and unfortunately because of what's happening with the pricing, uh you'll see increases um in the technology, the equipment line. Um and I'm not even sure if that's enough to be honest with you. When we

140did this, you know, several months ago, prices just have not they've slightly stabilized, but Um, some other things you might notice, there was an increase in the uh software uh line item. Some of our one of our maintenance contracts actually has a software component that goes along with it. So, we just kind of married the whole thing into one um one bucket since they technically only send us one invoice. Um, another thing is uh our Microsoft costs are increasing. Uh, unfortunately every vendor has jumped on the hey let's charge more bandwagon >> very popular bandwag. >> Yes, it is. Any questions? >> Oh, I wanted to point out though, sorry on the telephone. Sorry about that one. U there is an entry error here. We had it corrected like it's almost like simultaneously with the

141printing of this upload and then uh our staff reviewing. So that was a $21,000 uh should be a contract service. It was not John's uh communication. Just the vendor name looked similar. So >> So >> he he didn't blow the budget 21,000. >> The 80,000 is that the 80,000 >> correct? >> But that's correct. Or it should be 100. It this year to date should be 80, not 100. >> Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. >> Sorry about that. So that's why he's still requesting 80 >> because that is a realistic number. >> Question for the photocopier. I can see that you know uh it's about 32,000. That's for the maintenance or that for the actual machinery. uh for the photocopier that is um part of that is for the lease >> uh part

142of that is for um cost per print. >> That's the main difference, right? >> Yes. >> John, one of the things that you know we discuss is about efficiencies and and whether they're between departments in town hall or other towns or whatever. Do you do you hear anything from board of ed about anything that from your perspective can can be shared? >> So the board of ed um they are they have a completely different direction that they go in. Uh we use Microsoft 365, they use Google um workspace. Um they have we don't. Um there's a lot of um back and forth as to as to what we could possibly do. We've talked about u sharing vendors and things like that, but even the vendors will say, "Well, that's that's education." So, we have different

143contracts for them that your municipality, we have different contracts for you. Um I've talked about uh possibility of you know maybe sharing the firewall or something like that but a lot of times because of the way that the external vendors structure things uh it doesn't get feasible from a budgeting standpoint. >> Okay. Thanks. Um to to that end we do share uh some server uh hardware with them right like they house some stuff on server that we we share and that's one of the ones >> they do have access for our you know uh to our server room so uh anything that they need uh within this building um they can store it and run it in here on their own networks um but we don't share the actual compute resources >> okay because Um,

144is that you talked about, you know, that's something the the hardware for a server is something that we've got to replace in the pretty near future. Correct. Is it the same hardware that they're using as well? >> Uh, no, it's not. >> Okay. >> Because I think they had they have similar concerns around their own >> I'm sure they do. We use different virtualization systems and things like that. Um, is that is that potentially an area that we could if we both have to go out for similar hardware at the same time? >> Uh, we'd have to be careful with that. Uh, the, um, police department has a lot of, um, criminal justice information on those servers and, uh, any time that we get near that information, uh, we run serious risk of the police

145actually losing access to certain state databases. So we want to be very careful when we try and share compute and storage resources like that. >> But so is the the ones that the police department uses that's on our side not board of ed correct. Okay. >> Um and in the in and just like a for like a broader question um we don't have specifically a director of IT anymore. Um and there's some savings there because now everything falls under facilities as well. Is that system working out generally? >> Yes. >> All right. Well, I I wanted to talk a little bit about the hardware needs on the server side and the purchasing that you've done this year in response to frankly national and international realities. um thank you for making the purchasing you did because

146looking at what's happening commercial lines are moving over to just data center RAM production >> and uh on top of that other international pressures on the system >> uh lend me to think that yeah if we have server issues right now we should be all over that we should get that done now while we can because those prices are just going up and at such an exponential rate that like quite literally the time that we're going over this budget process these prices may go up significantly. And so, um, if we have server needs, my recommendation is that we fulfill them and and get it done quickly. >> Uh, and quite honestly, in response to that, uh, my vendors have told me that any pricing we've gotten, they can hold it for sometimes a week, man.

147>> Yeah. Yeah. Like a week. Yeah. That's what >> it's it's a it's as close to I mean, I will go ahead and call it it's a crisis in that space and it's bleeding over into municipal governments across the state. And so, uh, it's one of those places where we talk about efficiencies a lot in general, but right now this is what do we need and we need to get it. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Any other could just go over to technical equipment line items there? >> Sure. Uh, technical equipment. The, uh, biggest thing within that is actually servers. Did we not budget for them earlier or is this the new software we're using? So zeros >> uh no that that's because uh previously they had been a a different line ite um um

148previously that had been wireless and uh uh access point uh upgrades. So because this is a new budget and a new budget sheet servers were not a part of that. What were they under then before? You had to have them under something. Correct. >> Uh no, that that line item changes frequently. Uh this year we might need um I I try and rotate it as much as I can so that way we're not we're not constantly being caught with a um big, you know, uh rise and fall within the budget. So I I try and work it so that you know every five years we need to replace this, we need to do this, we need to do that. What about the computer line item that's gone down? >> Yes. So, uh, a lot of

149the computer line item, uh, there was a big push towards Windows 11 because Windows 10 went end of life. Uh, a lot of our equipment just couldn't support Windows 11. So, we pushed hard the last few years to to actually increase the amount of uh PCs we were purchasing. Um, and now we're back down into a maintenance. Uh, we didn't replace everything. Uh there are still some older computers that technically ran Windows 11 >> but need to be replaced still. So we wanted to make sure we targeted those machines that would not actually run Windows 11 first. >> What about the detail line item there? What's that? >> Uh oh, other equipment. That's just um miscellaneous stuff. That's I don't know why it came out under details to be honest with you. I think that

150was waiting for you to give it a name. >> There we go. >> So, miscellaneous, I suppose, would have done fine. >> But we're not budgeting for for that. >> I'm sorry. >> We're not budgeting for it. >> Uh, no. Miscellaneous equipment. That is all one >> account. We're budgeting 1,200 for it. >> It runs up. >> I think it was just it uh under other equipment. And it was called details last year. This year it's called miscellaneous. And under computers, it was called details. And last year, and this year, it's called annual computer replacement for outdated computers. >> Yes, it has a lot to do with the >> That's why it's zero versus >> That's why I don't like this, Mona. >> You're going to love it next year. I promise. I'm going to

151>> tell me I'm going to like it saying that >> in time. It's >> I understand that, Fran. >> Thank you. >> Maybe next year. transparency and more data. It's a good day. >> Well, we like that the numbers at the bottom are smaller as you go further on at least. >> Thank you, sir. >> Hey, you got to look at the indents, whether it's indented or not. >> I'm not following that yet. >> Okay. >> All right. Any other questions around it? >> I think you did a good job actually. >> Thank you. Thank you for keeping our computers and everything else running and uh making this meeting happen. >> Yeah, I I guess the one of the sorry, one question I did have was um you know some other municipalities have had issues

152around like ransomware stuff, cyber attacks, stuff like this and where they've had a lot of issues. Um do we feel pretty confident that we're doing everything we can to not have that crisis? Uh so uh everyone will have that crisis at some point in their existence. Uh >> probably at least 15 years ago we lost the you know it became when not if um to the credit of the other towns uh and to as well as to what we do uh we do have a robust security stack. Uh we um part of that is also you know those initiatives that we've done this year with the uh security information and event management and uh things like that. Um we do other things uh via policy um making sure that um you know Mona doesn't have

153the same access that I do that Phil does so that we only see and can interact with those things that are actually part of actually required to do our job. It's it's the uh priv it's the principle of least privilege. So we've made that you know that is a core of what we do. uh we when we do new systems and things like that, one of the things we try and make sure is that um how is it going to be exploited in normal use and we try and mitigate around that. No one's foolproof. Um best we can do uh is to try and contain as much as possible and increase our reaction time. >> Yeah. Right. Thank you. That's that's all I had. Anybody else got anything? >> All right. Yes. Thank you. Thanks,

154John. Thank you. >> And thanks, Phil. >> All right. I think that just about wraps it up for this evening. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All right.