Board of Selectmen - February 2, 2026 Regular Meeting

001We're all set. Yep. Good evening. Today is Monday, February 2nd, 2026 at 700 p.m. I'd like to call the regular board of sleins meeting to order. >> Kevin Bishop, >> Paul Marino, Paul Harrington, >> Todd Aralashi, >> Glenn Elicius, >> William Hester, >> Cheryl Hernande Glenn, >> William Po, >> and Selectman Lamir is excused as he is ill. Please join us for the pledge of >> allegiance. I pledge allegiance >> to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Item three, agenda review. >> Mr. Mayor, under the >> I'm sorry. >> Uh, is this for him? No, I have one, but go ahead. >> The town manager requests us to add under item 11, executive

002session, line B, uh, executive session, healthc care insurance contract. >> Yeah, health insurance contract. >> And Mr. Mar, select Marino. >> Um, under u approval of minutes, I did find something that was in the January 5th minutes that we approved that is actually pertinent. So, I would like to uh I'll share that with you when we get to that section. >> Anything else added to the agenda? All right. All in favor? >> Second. >> Need a second. >> Second. I'll second. >> Any discussion? Now, all in favor? Unanimous. >> Thank you. >> Item four, approval of minutes of the regular meeting on June 20th. January >> January the 20th. >> Wishful. Thank you. >> It's rough week. >> Move that we approve the minutes from January 20th. >> I'll second. >> Any corrections, additions. >>

003Uh we have a motion. We have a second. All in favor? Unanimous. >> Mr. Premier, under the uh minutes of January 5th, and this would be under um stand by. Under item nine, the charter revision panel membership. Uh number three and item nine says panel members should not be related to any select person or current board or commission member. I actually went back and reviewed the uh the video and then I actually dropped the recording of the video into my favorite little AI tool and it did a transcript for me of the motion just to double check my memory and the actual motion as it related to that item was simply not related to members of the board of selectment. We did not do anything with other boards or commissions. So I move that we

004adjust the minutes to reflect that that correction >> January 5th. Uh we have a motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. Any other discussion on that? All in favor? >> Post. Uh 501. Item five, citizens comments. The board of selectman welcomes public comments. Speakers will be limited to three minutes and may speak once. Does anyone wish to speak? >> One question I have. I when Jim is done with his thing, we then ask questions on his public works. >> Uh you can ask the questions in the citizens comments section after that. Yes. >> Right. >> But it's not a question and answer period. So you could pose the question and we'll get the answer to you. Anyone else? Item six, starting the timer. Tower manager report. I promise I will keep it

005brief. Um, this report's obviously from January 20. What's wrong? Oh, my mic's off. Um, this report's from January 20th through February 2nd. Um, I first want to extend a huge thank you to public works, our sewer department, our water crews, their hercuent effort. uh during last weekend's storm. The hours they put in were nothing short but extraordinary. Working round the clock to clear the roads, restoring the services, and making sure the town bounced back fairly quickly. The community clearly noticed the outpouring of support on social media was overwhelming. the countless comments, the likes, and even the donations and special thanks to Sarah Tumi for rallying the folks uh that they raised enough money to provide lunch um to not only our our crews that you know handled the snow, but they also did gift cards

006for our police department as well. Credit is also due to our police department and emergency management director. The police work tirelessly tirelessly getting cars moved or ticketed to keep the roads clear. little behind the scenes. They went door to door way before the parking ban went into effect with flyers and right before the parking ban took effect and before they towed one car, they knocked on doors to try and get cars moved. The last thing we wanted to do was tow cars. We tried every effort to get those cars moved, but unfortunately we had to tow cars because we wanted to uh obviously get that snow removed as quickly as possible. And last shout out's going to be to our emergency management director right by my side the entire weekend making sure we got the

007timely updates of what the weather was doing whatever source any power losses. So great group effort. I think it goes a lot back to that Friday morning early meeting we had with all of our departments getting everybody rowing in the same direction and I think you saw that this storm was although a big one we we handled it quite well. Moving on. I do have a handout because this is very important. Two this way. One, two, three, four, five. I would have provided that in your packet to review over the weekend, but it just got done uh today because we had to file the grand list, but I wanted to give you a little glimpse of what the grand list is looking at. This is officially been filed with OPM. When you look at the

008real estate grand list 2024 was 872,554 381 in 24. The 25 grand list is what we'll be using for the uh for the budget that begins on July 1st. 877 628 950 an increase of 6%. Motor vehicle grand list 92,420130 up to 963 630 up 3.9% and personal property grand list 88,341435 last year this year 95 million 632 663 up 8.3%. That makes the grand list up a almost $16 million increase, 1.5%. Now comes the bad news. So now we got to look at the exemptions. When you look at the exemptions, and I'm going to recap it as quick as I can, and I can take questions if need be. Last year we had exemptions totaling 30,130 474. This year, our exemptions has jumped to 39,979 946, an increase in exemptions of just under $10

009million. Somebody may ask, and I'll and I'll point it out right now, what drove the increase? First one, we now have full exemptions for 100% disabled veterans. More commercial vehicles were added to the ROS, which led to corresponding exemptions. Some vehicles that were fully exempt in the past have been left off the list. They're back on this year and exempted accordingly. Personal property exemptions also rose. There's been significant increases in manufacturing personal property which brought in more exemptions, which is great. People are making investments in town, but because of manufacturing uh rules, uh those pro those pieces of property do get exempt. And now solar equipment is now 100% exempt as personal property which impacts the total. So when you look at all in all uh our exemptions rose just under $10 million. But there

010is a positive story to all this when you go down to that final uh box. You can see that after exemptions our grand list grew just over $6 million. So happy to report I've been here uh reporting on grand lists for two years. This is my third list I've been reporting on. The first two years I had to report losses. This year I'm reporting that it's an increase. I look at that as very positive that it is going to be a slow climate. It doesn't happen overnight. But the positive that we can pull out of this is I think we're not going to lose it now. We're going to start building it. So it's positive. What is $6.1 million really translate into revenue? Roughly about $180 $190,000 if the mill rate stayed the same. So

011it's good news. It's really good. But the real glaring is that we lo we we we had to exempt almost an additional $10 million of our grand list that we didn't last year. So there's a lot of positive 15 million bucks almost 16. I lost almost 10 million of it um due to exemptions. So that's the grand list. Um budget development we're cranking along. Um in the budget development we're having some lively conversations. Um, I know what this board, you know, uh, put out there two weeks ago. I'm putting that all into consideration. We're far from this being over. It's definitely more of a a marathon than a sprint, but we'll get you guys something uh, definitely by March 15th. Some happy news. Uh, I do want to thank Senator Blumenthal and Murphy. The town

012has been awarded $635,000 for fiscal year 2026 congressional direct spending earmark for the southern sewer network expansion project. This funding will support the extan extension of sewer mains along the town's gateway on Raleigh Street to the Department of Public Works facility. With a formal application is still required. The funds are essentially guaranteed. The email couldn't have said it any better. This isn't subject to uh Washington shutting down. This was part of those incremental uh funding bills that they did. This money has been funded by Washington. Going to put the formal application in and we are been granted $635 to officially add sewer leading right up until the public works facility which will help the sue gross material. So, thank you Senator Blumenthal and thank you uh Senator Murphy. $635 >> sorry 635 $635. >> Yes,

013>> I would thank you for that. 635,000. Yes, we we Yeah, that sounds a little bit better. $635,000 is is is a huge gift to the town. So, we thank you. Uh prek edition, I know we talked about a little bit at the last meeting. I wanted to let you all know that we've engaged Downs Construction to assist with the prek add edition project. I have worked with Downs in the past. Um I know we allocated up to $40,000. Happy to report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. happy to report we're going to get everything that we need plus the pretty pictures. Uh a a good cost estimate. We got it down for $13,000. They will be available for all of town meetings. Uh and any anytime we need and have questions, DS will be here. Like

014I said, I've worked with them in the past. Um if you look into them, they build all the schools in the state of Connecticut. Basically, they know what they're doing. They're the experts in the field. Happy to say that uh both the superintendent and I talked this weekend over this. be uh I think I sent the email either Saturday or Sunday morning. So, they're going to start the process and we'll get that going. They're also going to commit that we move forward with the project. If you remember that gentleman, Roger, that was part of the whole roof project. They will ensure that every dollar that we are qualified for that we get. So, we're going to bring the experts in to make sure we maximize our dollars as much. So, more on that because there's

015a lot of work to do to get that going. um the dog case. I know we had a pretty spirited uh meeting uh last week or two weeks ago. I wanted to let you know that with the accomp and we brought in Happy Dog Rescue, a rescue that has been no part of this case whatsoever to help us vet any potential adopter. They've agreed to even make home visits. They're going to put any adopter soup to nuts through it and make suggestions to the town because it's ultimately the town that decides to adopt these dogs out or not. So, that's been moving along quite nicely. Uh, and last but not least, I want to just mention Winstead Ambulance was in today to go over their budget with me. Um, they heard that Selecman Marino did

016a ride along in the police department and they wanted me to mention that if any of you wanted to ride in a Winstead Ambulance for a couple hours, um, they're open and willing to see what their operations are all about. With that, I'm going to open it up for questions. >> Questions from the board. Paul, on this on this grand list, uh you said some of the veterans. Is there any exemptions with the the fire department too because wasn't that part of some of the exemptions some of those guys? >> We are going to work through that list. That'll be a minimum amount of money with the ordinance that we passed. So, um we got to get those numbers. Not there yet. And this isn't final final because it's not in the budget yet, but

017we're still working on that number. >> And roughly, and I'm not sure if you can even say how many veterans actually >> I will email that number. it has been said and and there's so many numbers swirling in my head right now. Um I'll get that number for you. It's there. We know it. Um I just off the top of my head, I don't even want to guess right now. >> Okay. >> Other board members, >> I just wanted to to say uh thank you to our town manager for first off making this very clear document and also um it's it's wonderful to see just I say it's wonderful to see the grand list going in the right direction. And I know that's been an issue that we've all uh fredded over for a couple

018years now. Um and it's good step in the right direction. >> Thank you. >> Group effort, big team effort. >> Uh I just had a couple questions. I probably should have called you earlier so you could get these numbers. So you probably don't have them. Do we have a number of how many cars we did tow during the parking bay? >> Oh, uh 30 cars were towed during the parking bay. Um roughly over a 100 infractions were issued as well. And this one will probably be more for director Rollins, but how are we on salt? There were stories this week about salt. >> I can jump in if you want, >> Mr. Rollins. You come up to the mic so the the and just turn it on for us. We did uh state an emergency

019uh with Demis and Mr. Rollins will give you the update on that. >> So, yeah, salt has been a pretty difficult commodity to go by for a couple of reasons. One, it's been a, you know, pretty harsh winter. and two, the storms down south diverted some of the barges to go take care of them. So, it's been in short supply. We were down to our last 30 ton and uh Steve Williams, our emergency management director, somehow worked through the EOC and Deeus and you know the next day I had almost 300 ton delivered. So, we're at least not dead in the water. Um, the latest thing I heard is there's they're unloading a barge in New Haven as we speak and there's another barge coming next week. So, that should alleviate the supply problem. The

020next hurdle is you can only get so many trucks in and out of that port. But right now, we're holding our own. Um, there's going to be a couple weeks before we get a big storm. It looks like by then things should equalize out. So, I think not just us, but I think most municipalities will probably be okay. >> Excellent. >> It's actually the little storms that eat up the salt. It's not the big ones. It's the little ones. >> You're not kidding. >> So, this goes back, Mr. Mayor, when I said that the uh emergency management director and I were attached at the hip. I think it was very late on either a Thursday or Friday night where we declared the emergency. We were one of the first ones in to to Deeus to

021get our salt and then Deus kicked back the following day. Hey, don't ask us for salt. But we had secured ours. So >> somehow we snuck in just under the ramp. >> Steve and I were attached at the hip cuz he doesn't have the authority. But he >> it worked out >> beautifully. Let's just put it that way. >> I got to say you guys did a really good job with this storm. I mean I traveled all over the state this past week, you know, since the storm and you know in Hamden, Cheshire, whatever, you know, up in Hartford area. Any town I've gone through hasn't done as good a job as Winston. >> Really? Very impressive. >> I didn't get to leave town because we were busy, but it's good to know because it

022was it was a lot of snow. >> There was a lot of snow >> and those areas had less snow than we had and we still did a better job. >> Yeah. Well, I'll take the I'll pass it on to my guys because that was a tough one. >> It was a tough one. I was out there was working for Selecman Lamir up in Northfor and it was pretty pretty bad at times. You couldn't see the front of the truck. >> Yeah. >> So, it was a tough one. >> Happy to report when I call public works, it's no longer the zombie hotline. Our crew, that's how that's how Mr. Rollins would answer. They uh they were zombie for a few days cuz they were cranking some hours, but I think they're they're charged up

023and and they're back and they were very appreciative of the town. I had a your foreman reaching out to me. We we all worked. It was beautiful. It was we talked. I have to say it went well. And >> if we didn't get those cars off the road, >> it could have been a very different story. You know, that was that was >> that worked. I couldn't be prouder. >> Yeah. I got no complaints in this. >> So So while going how's how's the sidewalk situations? I I know Main Street's been taken care of and I know there's some in my area that nobody's cleaning their sidewalks. >> So we just finished our sidewalks, town responsible sidewalks today. So now we'll start looking at the ones that aren't our responsibility. We, you know, I know

024we have an ordinance that says after a certain amount of time we can, you know, force them to to do their sidewalks or we do it for them. We don't feel right about enforcing that until we get ours done. >> Yeah. >> So that's the next step is to look at that. So >> can you clarify that? >> Yeah. Quick quick. So we don't have an ordinance that says we we're going to look at potentially doing that ordinance. The ordinance right now, what it says is it's $100, not a day. it's a $100 fine for not cleaning the sidewalk. One of the things that the the group's meeting internally about is do we create an ordinance that after a certain period of time we go in and quote unquote clean and lean or shovel and

025lean um is areas we're looking at. We brought in the town attorney. We're looking at different, you know, avenues of cleaning up sidewalks, especially in our school zones where kids are walking to school and stuff like that. We're not ready for prime time yet with it, but we're continuing to meet. Jeff's been meeting with me, the town attorney. We'll get there. It's just right now the only mechanism we have is $100. Um, and does that get the sidewalk shoveled? No, because it's not $100 a day. It's $100. >> Do you happen to know how many miles of sidewalk that we actually have? >> We own or in the town? >> Well, the whole town because this is just just throwing this out. North Kanan, their their fire district was actually their sewer plant. They do

026the sidewalks. They actually go out and they take care of it. That's part of their responsibility. And there's actually more miles of sidewalks than there is road. >> And North Kanan. >> Oh, North Kanan. Yeah, maybe. >> Yeah. >> Um, yeah, there's because we got sidewalks on both sides of a lot of the downtown. >> So, and state roads. So, yeah. I I I don't >> Just curious. >> I've used the number 40 just because it's about as much as we have for water manes. >> Yep. >> And thought it's about right. But, you know, Could be. >> Could be 60. Could be 80 because you're doubling it. >> I I We That's >> Don't know the answer to that. >> I think he's got some >> I just got a homework assignment. >> Yeah.

027So, Paul, I think we need to look into that if we got to do an ordinance change cuz I drove a bunch of the roads after the storm. I drove some today and and there's you can see them. There's little groups of homeowners, multif family, that not only didn't shovel them, they removed the snow from the driveways and put it on the sidewalk. Um, and again, the way the state says it right now, we can find them once $100. And honestly, for what it's going to cost to clean it, it's cheaper to just pay you $100 and let it melt. >> Never clean it. >> All right. >> Yeah, we're we'll get we'll get you guys we'll we'll get you something um legally that hopefully um you guys want to take on. >> Priority being

028the school zones. There's been a lot of comments from people on social media about trying to walk their kids to school and have to do it in the roads and >> and um with the snow banks, you can't, you know, there's lots of blind spots and people backing out of driveways. So, >> um we definitely have to in deal with the school areas first. >> Yeah, I experienced myself just even three or four days after the storm having to walk in the street to get to to Pearson and a lot of kids like before and after school are walking out in the street. And not only are there sidewalks that aren't shovelled at all, there's some that are shoveled one shovel with through, which >> you know, better than nothing, though. >> Better than nothing,

029but not much better than >> I was I forget what road I was driving down, but by the time the plows are done putting all the snow onto the sidewalks, >> Yeah. >> it's an amazing task to try to shovel those. And I they're like tunnels with six feet of snow on both sides by the time you shovel it and try to go through it. So >> we shoveled ours and the plow came by and put it all back. We need to shovel it again. >> So one of the things that and we're working on a like a snow policy document that we want to put on the website. One of the things that can help and people make this mistake all the time. They shovel their sidewalks out into the road. >> Yes. So

030then we come back, we put it back and they shovel it into the if they just shovel it the other way >> onto their property. >> Some of that would come back, but it would save them at least 50% of the work. >> Agreed. >> And simple little things like that that people just don't think of, you know, and a little storm, it doesn't matter because it melts off pretty quick, but you get a big storm and it's a game changer and people are, you know, they're cursing at us when we come by. >> You know, the other problem is the the contractors. They push their snow out into the roads and they leave these giant wind rows. And if we don't clean those up, they freeze into place. And I don't know if you've

031ever hit, you have a snow plow, you hit one of those frozen things, it can send the truck right across the road. So, we have to push those things off. We have to get them out of the road. >> And we're we're like we're the most loved and the most hated at the same time. >> I had a homeowner reach out to me and wanted to know why you guys are going through today, but could not lift your plow when you go by to drive. so that you don't push the stuff back in their driveway after they've just shoveled it. And I said, "Well, when you got a road with 200 houses on it, it's pretty hard for that plow to go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down." >>

032Well, we know that the plow guy sits up the road and waits till we're going in the house and then they come by and put in your name. >> We know that's what happens. Don't let that be public. >> Hey, I'm one of the guys pushing the snow in the driveway. You know, I I know it does seem that way and I can remember being a kid and the same thing happened and now I understand why. You know, it's >> Yeah, it's it's Yeah. >> Listen, you guys moved a massive amount of snow, did a great job. The team effort on Main Street and everywhere that we saw it the days after the storm was a herculean job. So, thank you. >> Yes, I will. >> Pass those compliments on my guys. They'll they'll be

033very happy to hear it. They were and 47 hours of over time. That's a lot. They were just exhausted. But I will >> and it's not a relaxing job to do. I mean, Bill will tell you there's nothing relaxing about being in a plow truck. >> No, >> especially when the roads aren't perfectly smooth, Jim. You know, that makes it even worse. >> Just remember that. Just keep >> that. All right. We'll be back to you in just a couple minutes. Uh any other questions for the town manager? Moving on to item number seven, correspondence. Does anyone have anything? >> I have nothing. >> Item number eight, boards and commissions. Bill. >> All right. So, we have for reappoint to the historic commission, Steuart Pollins. Um, term ending 12, 2028. Um, we have to the

034a reassignment reappointment to the ad hoc water level committee uh David Pines uh with a term ending in January of 2028 and to the retirement uh administrative board another reappointment Jamie Legassi term ending that can't be right >> 20 you had an amended one >> thank you >> you're welcome >> thank you 2030 that's better Um, so those are the reappoints. >> All right, we need a motion for Mr. Pollins. >> I'll make a motion for Stuart. >> Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> All in favor? We need a motion for Mr. >> I'll make the motion for Dave F. >> Second. >> Thank you. Thank you. Discussion. All in favor? >> And I might as well go for it. Uh, Mr. Lassie too for the retirement. >> I'll second.

035>> Discussion. All in favor? >> Got to keep you honest. >> We have one resignation from Lauren Dumbrossski in the historic commission um party Democrat. So just one resignation. >> We thank her for her service and there are no current appointments. >> Um if I may, Mr. mayor because I I I have the uh pleasure of filling the alternate uh uh seat. The Economic Development Commission is looking um for a member amongst other boards, but um there's a lot of openings, but we uh EDC is doing some great things. If you want to get involved, come see me. >> Anything else? >> Moving on to item nine, unfinished business. Item eight, charter revision panel membership and continued discussion. Harrison. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, tonight, and it wasn't um because I didn't want to

036provide it uh this weekend. These applications came in this morning, we have two new applications. So, if you have a a bunch of papers, they kind of look like this. Two new names were added. Uh Sandra Stubar and Louisa Martinez are two additional uh people that put their name in. Um just pointing that out. The applications are due to my office on February 13th at 11:00 a.m. This board is looking to take action on February 16th. It's a Tuesday because President Day is that Monday to form the charter commission. With that, I'll turn it back over to the board if there's any additional comments or requests. >> Just reminder, February 13th is a Friday. Tom Hall closes at 12:00 noon >> and applications are due at 11. So just as we're uh inviting people to

037um put in applications and we are getting some which is nice to see at the end of um and it may be that that same January 3rd meeting I don't remember if it was that meeting or the meeting after but I think it was Mr. Platt who came up at the end of the meeting for citizen comments and made mention that town employees were not eligible to be on any board or commission. So, I took a look at the charter today because he said it was right in the charter. And I looked for every word in there that said employee and um didn't see anything that that uh said it was an issue and then dropped the charter into AI and let it search it for me and it came back and said that there

038were some restrictions but not specifically for boards and commissions. You guys can I'll send you a copy around if you want to see what it came up with. And Paul, you were going to check to see if we had an ordinance um that that uh prevented town employees from being part of it. >> I did I did look through the ordinance. I did not find one that would limit uh employees from joining. So then my next step would be state statue. I didn't get there, but I also reached out to our town attorney for any institutional knowledge that you know 30 years in uh he may have as well and he may know state statues a little bit better uh than I do um and looking through them all. So, as it stands right now,

039um I don't believe the ordinance prohibited and now it's a matter of the state statute prohibit it. I don't know the answer. So, so if we had a resident town employee who wanted to be part of this commission at this point, we could accept the application. What I just gave to all of you, the top part is just a summary of what it found in the charter and then you can see I asked the question about halfway down and it gives you the answer. So, um just take a look at that if you if you'd like, but um there are no restrictions on that. So, just want to make sure we open it up to as many people as possible. >> I know that the charter does restrict us board members from working for the

040town for two years. >> That's mentioned actually in here. >> So, that may be where he got a little confused. >> Uh, anything else? >> I just I just wanted to um I think if a lot of people have reached out to me to talk about like the charter revision committee, the big question is like how much is the commitment? How long? Um I just wanted to take a look at this timeline that that's submitted here like a an an estimate of what it is. So it's a commitment basically between midFebruary and mid June. So it's not an ongoing forever sort of commitment. Um so I think there's a I think that it just needs to be clarified that you know that that is a commitment and it's the committee meets um when everybody's available,

041right? It's no specific time. Um they they decide when to meet. Right. >> Correct. I think there was a you know Candy put together some proposals as part of our materials looking at dates and stuff and >> and talking about you know I think it's a 14week period >> um she's put together as part of a propos you know >> how to do it >> yeah this document is really helpful and then when we invite further people in the next few weeks and call on people to to join the committee I think it's important to lay out you know that it's not a it's not a forever commitment it's a short-term um thing I think that's a question that have a diver Yeah. >> As well. >> Anything else? >> I'll have uh applications sent

042to you by close of business, but that's 12. It may be a little bit after close of business on Friday. So, you have the weekend to review them. And then your action would be on that Tuesday the 16th. >> That is next Friday, not this Friday. >> Next Friday. >> Friday the 13th. >> Friday the day before Valentine's Day. wouldn't want to be interrupting a game this coming Sunday or anything. Some paperwork. Moving on to item 10, new business. Item A, roadway infrastructure strategic planning. Manager Harrington, public works director Ran and Dan, I'm gonna massacre your last name. >> Um, thank you, uh, Mr. Mayor. So, obviously tonight, uh, we do have, uh, director of public works, Mr. Collins and then our Yukon intern uh Dan Codad. Um they're going to run you through a

04320 minute or so presentation. Kevin had the joy of uh when he first came on the board, he wanted to know about roads, so we put him through like the hour presentation, but we've uh >> We streamlined it a little bit. Um I do have a select person that makes me on my 20 minute presentation, so kind of stick to that as hard as I can. They shut off. >> Seamless. >> Love it when a plan work they turn off eventually. >> Afraid to hit buttons. >> Seamless, huh? >> Hit the button. You have to get different brands TV so you have different remotes, >> right? >> Come on. He got that real quick. >> These guys were in here for an hour before the meeting. I had to come down and fix it. >>

044Yeah. >> Go ahead, guys. >> Awesome. Thanks for having us, everyone. It's nice to meet you all if I haven't yet, and it's good to see you all again if I have. So Jim and I are going to show you kind of a pretty concise walkthrough of some of the strategic planning that goes into which roads we should pave and also give you an introduction to the new software that we've been using which has streamlined the process and made it a lot more efficient. So just to cover some of the basic infrastructures related to roadway, we obviously have pavement surfaces and base, but there's also drainage, sidewalks, curbing, guide rails, the signs and markings, bridges, and culverts. And that doesn't even mention things like water, gas, and sewer underneath the road. And one thing to

045note is that the lion share of the cost for a lot of paving roads tends to lie in drainage, bridges, and culverts. And then also if you hit a point where you have to get to the base that also starts to ramp up the cost. And Jim and I put together a loose rubric uh just as far as it goes for the presentation where the goal of this plan is to limit the liability to the town and we want to utilize the taxpayer funds as much as possible and oftentimes that relates in dollar per mile figures. Also, as Jim kind of preluded when we were talking about the paving or uh the uh snow plowing, a reduction of winter maintenance costs is also extremely important when it comes to making a strategic planning rubric. This

046also has to do with the synergies with utility work like I mentioned, water, sewer, gas, drainage, etc. And one of the things that is always in the back of our mind is that the available funding plus the bandwidth to accomplish whatever project we set forth can always be a give and take of a constraint when it comes to paving. And by no means is this an exhaustive list. I'm sure all of you can come up with an idea of a different metric or a different figure that could add another variable to the process. So back in 2016, and this was what uh Paul had given me originally as a document to base this off of, we were using a software called Roadsoft. And while it does do a pretty good job at actually getting a

047pacer rating and addressing the surface conditions, it really is much much more costly than what we use now, it's extremely timeconuming and the frequency that you can use it is much lower than something with the new software which we can discuss with you now which is called Violytics. This is an AI software that also uses a lot of human contribution. And we're going to switch on over to Violytics. So, we can give you guys a brief overview of it. >> We lost you again. >> It's coming back. You lost. >> It's trying. >> That one's still lost. >> No, he lo He lost. >> Oh, boy. >> We had to work this connection earlier. >> I may just have to adjust the display settings. duplicate. >> Well, we tested this earlier at like five o'clock.

048It was seamless >> technology >> dress rehearsal. >> We're all on the edge of our seats. >> I know. It's everybody's favorite topic of discussion is paving the road. So, Oh, it's a pretty good It's a pretty good topic. We actually have >> Did you have the laptop and the car driving over? >> No, no, no. I stayed here. try to make sure it was seamless, but software doesn't like to be that way sometimes. >> There you go. >> Just Yeah, pedal. Keep Jane, you're good. >> There we go. >> You're perfect. >> All right. Thank you for the intermission. So just to give a brief overview, one of the things that Violytics does very well is that in real time you can attach a phone mount to one of the public works vehicles and

049roughly 10 ft I believe uh in increments of 10 ft it will take photos of not just the surface but also the curbing signs any other assets related to the road. And you can see here in the bar graph, Jim and I have found that one of the uh processes that Violytics will continue to refine as we keep using it is that it will get more accurate as we go. But one thing you can notice is that it tries to follow a typical bell curve. So some of the lowest rated roads may get slight improvements on the first goound and some of the highest rated roads may appear as if they're a little bit closer to the middle. So, I'm going to jump in just clarify for those of you that we're going to use

050some terminology that some of you aren't familiar with. Uh Paser rating is there there's two different ways of rating a road and it's pavement condition index and paser ratings. We go with paser because it's a scale of one to 10. Um so you can see that bar graph and there's a one to 10. The ones in red and uh you know the greener you get you the closer you get to 10. So, we want to try to get all our roads, you know, up to sixes or better, uh, if we could. Uh, fives really aren't too bad. But, so paser ratings are your your one to 10 scale of how good your road surface is. It doesn't talk about the drainage underneath. It doesn't talk about the curbing, the sidewalks, the signs, the guide rails.

051It's just the driving surface. Um, so it's a little bit of a it's it's a good tool, but it it it only paints part of the picture. And where Daniel was going with this is RoadSoft, the software that we used before, it didn't do this road rating through the the AI. It did it through, you know, people. We hired engineers to drive around the roads, assess all the types of different cracking in the road and put them in a percentage and you know they gave the roads a rating. The difference between the paser ratings from roadsoft and the paser ratings from violytics is really more violytics averages out if you have a road with 500 you know photos that get assessed. It takes the average of all of those. Whereas Roadoft and the engineers had

052a little different way of rating it and they would they would take what's the area of distress and you'd go to the not the worst distress but the most uh the most problematic distress. And so the paser ratings for roadsoft tend to be a little bit lower than Violytics. So, we've got to do a little double-checking every time we go into this. And I'll show you kind of a really good example of where this worked uh super well. So, if we scroll in to Upland Road. All right, let's stop right there for a second. This is >> so cool. >> And you can see on the left hand side as it curved up off of Main Street, there's a bunch of kind of green dots, blue dots. You know, they look nice and nice and

053neat. You get up around the corner and they all start turning pink red. And that's where there's a transition. So, let me let me just drive and get to the a good point to start. We're going to start right there >> and then we're going to click >> right here. It's going to go full screen. >> So, that's a Paser 4. That's a pretty good example of a four. Well, I think that's being rather generous at a four. >> Um, >> a three maybe. It's certainly not a one or a two. >> Did you say? But didn't you say before a five is not bad? >> A six was not bad. >> Yeah. >> Oh, six is not bad. >> Can we see a six, please? I just >> We'll We'll find one. >> Okay.

054Thanks. So, so this is this is a Paser 4 and we can um take, you know, a leap of 10 feet. So, every one of those dots is a new photograph. And it's probably going to be a little slow. It takes a little bit. >> So I while you're on this, I want to just note you see the color of the truck. So this software rides along. So we're not no longer hiring engineers. This is if you remember back a few months ago when I reported that Phil was racing around before the leaves covered the street. So yet another point that we're not bringing in engineers. This is done by our crew with the software in the vehicle. So you can see there's our vehicle right there. It used to cost us, you know, $20,000

055or so to do a pavement assessment with the engineers. The entire package of software here and and we would only do that once every three years um or longer. Um this software costs $15,000, but we can go out unlimited times anytime we have and we we hold this archive. So we have essentially our own Google street view of our own roads, the own the sides of the roads. This way when people call and complain, hey, you know, you knock down my stone wall, we can go back, you know, look at these photos and say, well, that thing was knocked down, you know, in the fall, so you know, we sure didn't do it with a plow or, oh, yes, we did, so let's, you know, let's get out there and fix it. So it's just

056a really great record, which saves us a lot of time running around it. provides an archive. It tracks everything. It's also got a work order um unit to it and and we'll get to all of that. Um so we can just click, you know, every 10 feet or so. One of these just as is the next one. Now you start seeing the brand new pavement and you look up in the corner and this is a Paser 9. That's the section of road that we redid. We had to redo this road because of a failed retaining wall that was, you know,und and something years old. It failed. So we we took the old wall out. We built an earthn embankment which was far less expensive than um fixing a retaining wall. We had to do a

057driveway apron there because we >> maybe easier if I click here to skip ahead a little. >> Um, >> yeah, it doesn't really matter, but you get the idea. So, we turned a corner. There you go. And now you got the whole new road, the curbing, the drainage, all of that stuff. That was all done. We were able to do this because we did the retaining wall, but we stopped where we stopped because there's a water mane in there from 1890 that we want to fix before we put the road on top. So, as part of the rubric that he was talking about, there's water, sewer, gas, all kinds of utilities under the road. And we have a five-year look ahead with all the utilities. They talk to us five years ahead of their projects.

058We talk to them five years ahead of ours. and we all try to work together to avoid opening a road up more than you have to, which is all great, but it really complicates things because we might not have road money when Eversource has a gas project or the water and sewer department has a gas or a water project. So, it really makes things a lot more complicated, but it does make it a lot more cost-effective in the end. So, those are some of the complexities that we try to navigate while we're um doing our road planning and developing. You know, that's part of our rubric is which roads get done, well, let's try to get ahead of the wa water department, the sewer department, the gas company, um private development, um you know, whatever.

059If we know that there's a a shopping center, you try to, you know, come in and help them out. Or, you know, Baramstead, great example. Well, they had we knew they were going to be putting sewer up Old New Hartford Road. We didn't want to do any work on that road until the sewer got in. Now they're doing the water. Once that's done, now I've put it into my budget. That's you we'll see that spreadsheet later on. So, there's a lot of thought goes into it and it's it's time consuming and things change. You know, we'll have a project that well, Hubard Street was a great example. We planned on doing it. The gas company said no, we're not going to uh do anything for five years. We designed it, engineered it, they called back

060and said, "Oh, no, actually we are going to do it." So, we held off and then they said, "Oh, we're not going to do it." So, then we pulled the trigger and did it. So, there's a lot of back and forth and I don't blame them because we do the same thing. You know, you expect the budget to pass and it doesn't. Something gets chopped. Could be that project. Um, you might not get your funding from the state revolving fund. You might not get, you know, there's a million reasons. And uh so but we all try to work together and it's you know it's a relatively new thing. We've been doing it for how long that's been a mandate for what five years maybe maybe longer seven years >> five to seven >> we're all

061starting to get pretty good at it. Um >> question um is does Eversource actually cooperate with you and give you information because it seemed like you know Main Street gets done and then it get dug up and then it gets done you know. So, this is something that seems to happen like they're not telling us. >> No, they are. We knew that was that project was coming. Um, >> so why did we go to the trouble of paving the Main Street when we knew that they were going to dig it all out? >> Did the state not pave Main Street? >> Yeah, that's a state road. >> Um, >> but they work with the state as well. Okay. >> And um, we actually just had a meeting with the state and uh, Everurus just recently.

062Actually, was the state there? I don't know if the state was there, but we were talking about the state road and the paving. And as soon as spring hits, they want to finish the same project that they're doing now all the way down essentially to Hinsdale Avenue. Um, so they are asking, do you want to do the paving right away on this phase or do it together? I like to wait as long as possible. As long as you don't have to go through another winter, you get a little bit more settling done. It all lasts a little bit longer. Um, I told them it needed some patching and they're like, "Okay, you know, we'll get in there and patch it." I also told them we had some sidewalk work that we're coming up to do

063on Main Street. So, I'd rather they not do that until we're done. And they're like, "Oh, that works for us." So, we do, you know, we do coordinate where we can. Sometimes signals get crossed, but it it works out. It works out pretty well. >> Good. in the event that they have to get ahead of us and we're not ready the we have an I don't know if it's an ordinance or if it's just a policy where any of utility work that gets done any water util any main work going down you know the length of the road any utility company that does work like that is required to mill and pave two inches after they're done. So they know that that's part of the permit process. And then we will take that fee in

064lie of and we'll just put it in the pile and we've got a we've got an account that's fee in le of money allocated for specific roads that were paved. Now Rockwell Union Rockwell Superior Ridge and Spring Streets are all in that list. We've got that fee in lie of money for their two inches. we've got to go fix drainage and blah blah blah and other things that we're doing. So, they they wanted to get ahead of us. Okay, you do that, give us the money, we do our stuff, then we pave it. So, it does work good, >> but it it's logistically it's tough, but but it does work. Um, so this is a sense of what um let's see if we can find a >> Oh, we got to hit done to get

065out of that. So why am I looking? >> You want to find a paser? One of these red ones might be uh that's a two. Let's see what that looks like. So sometimes the that one's that one's a two. That's got a lot of alligator cracks which is indicating that the pavement is completely dried up. All the oils have have evaporated out of it. And a lot of times you'll have that with a base failure too. Doesn't look as bad. Part of it could be the shadows. Um, but like I said, the the AI isn't an engineer in a car. So, it's it tends to find the middle a little more often than it than it should. >> How do you prioritize which roads to do first? >> So, I'm guessing it's more than just

066the paser score. like all the ones don't get done first. >> So, that's a excellent segue into the decision-making process. And I'm going to go back to 2016 when we went adopted our road plan. Our town had always done the worst roads first. You know, my road is zero. It's awful. You can't drive it. You can't plow it. Yeah, you're right. We'll fix it. But it costs so much money to do those roads. We never had money to do just the routine maintenance, the preventive maintenance. So all the other roads deteriorated. So we're fixing one, you know, really bad road. All our money's gone and we're losing miles and miles and miles and miles of other roads. So what became painfully clear when we went through the process of the 2016 road report was that

067you've got to maintain the roads that are decent first. that will slow the deterioration down that you can save enough money or not spend that money then you can start doing the worst roads up. So that was like 2018 we you know finally got some money we put it into you know preventive maintenance the public lost their mind. How can you chip seal a road that's in good shape when my road is falling apart? Valid question. So we went through it and you know I credit the board of selectmen. You were on it. That was a tough call. People were not happy but we they they had the courage to say yes this is the right thing to do and we went several years just doing that. People weren't happy. But now we've got those

068roads fairly wellmaintained. We're staying on top of it with crack seal, chip seal, all that stuff. Now we're moving on to those roads that are, you know, worst first or do you go to the ones that, you know, you have a water mane that you want to do or the gas companies coming in. So there's a those other roads. There's a lot there's more of an art to that than a science and that's partly based on what the selectmen think are the important roads. My personal opinion, I think the the first bond we did was really wellcraftrafted to get some skin in the game for everybody. We hit all parts of town. We hit rural roads, city roads, you know, all areas. It It was pretty good. We got some drainage. We got some lake

069stuff. Um got some bridges. Like, so it it really covered a lot. Um I think I I think it's a better plan that I would have put out if I was left to my own devices. I would have gone probably out in the country and hit some of the long roads that don't cost as much because there's not as much drainage work. Um that way you could get a lot of the roads done. It would increase our average rating. We get more miles done per dollar. Some of the far out roads are for us they're really rough. you know, Blue Street, it's it's 20 minute drive to get out there. You know, snowplow, it's, you know, an hour and 15. So, you get out there and it's beating you up. It takes a lot more

070material, takes a lot more abuse on the trucks. I'd like to get that stuff down to lower our overall winter maintenance prices costs and work our way back, but that might not sell to the people downtown. So, that's the art. You know, you've got what was it 300 and something dollars a square foot for Case Avenue where and >> it can go up to 450 for some of them depending on the severity >> you know so you got to really balance it and >> I mean I wonder sometimes if you have stuff where you know you don't have to do drainage work because the drainage work in the engineering we always hear about slows this to a snail's pace >> and raises the cost >> and cost money. So, if you've got roads that, dare

071I say, are simple mill and paves >> that we can get several miles done. >> I mean, hopefully it's not out in the woods, the furthest part where no one is going to see it other than the three people that live there. I hear you. >> Yeah, those that's part of the problem. >> But I mean, what we need now really is some progress where people are saying, "Wow, we are >> going to cut to that." >> I was I was just That's what I was saying. >> Am I segueing you again? >> You You did it again. It was pretty. So, um, speaking of a list, we happen to have one. >> So, while he's pulling up the list, it was a challenge to put that list together. >> This list or the old

072list? >> This list of roads that don't require a ton of drainage work because most of them require a ton of drainage work, >> of course. So, it came up to it came up to about 1.25 1.27 miles. >> Um, and >> and these are with minimal drainage needed. Yes. >> So, did you say this is 1.27 miles? Everything that's on this list. So, of the 80 some odd miles we have, only 1.2 can be milled and paved without >> with with minimal drainage. >> Wow. >> Yeah. That's now you're beginning to understand the >> remember we're we're in a valley. Everything is hill. It's like there's no ledge around here either, right? >> Yeah. The ledge it's what it is. We're I the best way to explain it is there's always a point in

073time where infrastructure reaches its certain age limit. >> Sure. >> And in the 50s when a lot of work was done, they buried a lot of corrugated metal pipe. >> It's worn out and rusted. That's our biggest nemesis. So the bottoms of those pipes are rotted out >> and so you got to replace them and if you don't you get sink holes and it was just a complete waste of paving. So it's not that it was neglected. It's not that it wasn't put in well. It just reached the end of its useful life and they did so much work in, you know, the 50s and now all of a sudden it's it's it's time is up. It's it's time to do it. So it's just the way it is. You know, it's not It's not

074pretty. Um, >> we on the stuff. So, this is 1.2 miles of what we call the easy projects. >> The It's sad it's only 1.2 miles. I wish it was 50 miles of easy project, right? >> Right. Yeah. So why >> um so okay excluding this do we then look at do you take into account obviously the paser rating but amount of traffic like do we do the hightra areas first? Do they get priority if they're carrying many more cars a day than other roads? Again, that's part of the rubric that is it's taken into consideration. You know, you might weigh that more important than you do. You know, um the list isn't any one person's responsibility. Um there's too many people that have a sway in whether a road gets done or not. You

075know, you guys have to believe in it enough to advocate for the budget. I have to give you that I think is worth, you know, worth doing. The public has to, you know, buy into it. It's got to be affordable. So, there's there's a lot of variables, which is why the last bond was so diverse and so spread out, but that also means it has to be pretty big. Um, >> I wanted to add to Mr. Rollins comment. Um, and we've talked extensively about roads. We also want to be responsible with the taxpayer money and and and one of our fears is if we go after a road where, you know, just bill and pave it and we feel that we may crack the pipe underneath, we've now started a project and don't have the

076funding to fix that pipe underneath or we pave the road, a year later that pipe breaks. What does the resident then say? you just spent $381,000 that you're literally tearing up to fix a pipe. Why don't you fix the pipe before you pave the road? So, what we try and do is be very responsible with every dollar that's given to us because we don't want to waste it. And the biggest waste would us go would be us to go in, pave a road, and then either a crack the pipe during the the milling process or b the pipe breaks a year and a half later and we're ripping up the $400,000 uh expenditure. >> And that's another reason why you really work with the utilities. Um the clay sewer pipes were first put in the

07750s. They get brittle over time. They're they're they're amazing at what they do, but when they get brittle, you know, that's a problem. Water manes, we've got water manes in the ground that are from 1890. These things are really old and they get brittle as well. So, you can pave over them. They're, you know, they're carrying water, but the vibration will often crack a pipe of that age. So, you go and you pave it. Rockwell Street was a classic example. Eversource came in, they fixed an area, they milled and paved it because that was their responsibility. And a couple days later, we dug it up and fixed the leak that was caused by the the vibratory rollers. So, there's a lot going on. And >> yeah, >> to to pick the roads. I mean, I

078could go through and pick the roads that I would like to see for my selfish reasons, like what's going to what's going to help make the winter maintenance more cost-effective for the town. I could certainly do that, but there's only, you know, I can put together, you know, a million scenarios. And this is one I just said, what if I got a million dollars? Where could I put that and make progress without having to put most of it into drainage work because I know people really want smooth road. That's what this is about. So, these were the roads I came up with. Most of you probably don't even know where Cordano or Cornelio are. >> I know where Cordano is. So, so some of this drainage, Jim, I know the galvanized has to come out,

079but some of some of this drainage line, depending on the shape, can actually be relined, like the sewer line and the clay. >> Well, the sewer lines for sure. >> The sewer for sure, but even some of these drain lines, they do reline drain lines. >> It's not really cost effective unless they're deep. And most of these aren't. the ones that that they are Oakdale, Glendale, those for sure, but most of the shallow ones or big ones, once you get over a 12 inch, the lining gets pretty expensive. >> Um, and it's it can be done, but there's a lot of it's we look at that, you know, by the time you grout back around them, you don't always get a good grout. It there's a it's a challenge and it's expensive. It's time consuming,

080but it can be done. I'll say I I've always wanted to see that get done and now both public works directors this town and my last town have told me that Paul you're going to spend more money in the long run because it literally machine goes in and realign a few years ago. >> Yeah, it was the it's the coolest process that I I looked at but >> I helped spend $4 million relining the whole town at Northfor. So >> I've seen it do some pretty amazing stuff. I've actually seen it push the clay pipe back into place. But the thing of it is it'll take the shape of it. So if the pipe is crushed, it's going to take the shape of that pipe. >> So also limiting. >> We've got that under South

081Main Sanitary sewer makes perfect sense. That that's a much it's much more applicable to that than storm drains. Um >> that's why it's all plastic for storm drains now instead of the >> that's part of it. So Jim, the in the couple years I've been on this board, the thing I get yelled at about the most is roads. Obviously. >> Me too. >> Um Yes, I'm sure you do. >> No, actually sidewalks might be more than roads. >> Yeah, for me it's roads. Okay. >> Um and I sit here and I look at our situation and I and I've heard you say that this was ignored for 30 years and and it's obvious that that's what happened, right? Um and to me it feels like it's an impossible thing to fix. like without allocating $80

082million to it, which we don't know where that's coming from, but without allocating a massive amount of money quickly, it doesn't feel like we can get ahead of it. So, my question to you is, do we need to develop like a like a 10-year plan, Jim, that we know what can we accomplish in 10 years and how much money is it and can we get it into the budget? I don't know the answer to those questions, but I feel like every year we sit here and you go through the list and and I know you're doing what you can with a very limited amount of money. I mean, I think what do we have a million dollars in the in the road budget or something or we're talking about a million dollars this year? >>

083400. But that 485 >> 480 and that's doing a lot of other things paving roads, trees, and everything. >> But we've got to figure out a way to give us hope, right? The public needs hope. We need hope um on the board that says, "Okay, in 10 years we can we'll be a third of the way through this problem or whatever." I I'd love to see something like that where we really kind of give the public and all of us a feel like yeah, we can get there because right now I don't feel like we can get there. It just it seems and it's no reflection on you or your department. >> I get let me jump in. >> It's overwhelming. Yeah, really. >> You're not kidding. >> Yeah. Um, let me jump in and

084say, yeah, it is overwhelming. It's a lot less overwhelming than it was 10 years ago. There had been 30 years of mostly neglect in preventive maintenance. The crack seal, chip seal stuff went away uh for various reasons. Um, so that allowed all the roads to deteriorate to the point they're at. the drainage, that's just a function of time. Like it would it would have had to have been done even if our roads were good. Um the ideal thing would have been to pick up on those before they got as bad as they are. >> But with that said, how do you how do you get there? First you need to define what you know where you want to get. Do you want to get so that you don't have anything less than a paser five,

085anything less than a paser eight? You know, like first you have to define that. Um and then we we go after it. you know, you you make a plan. Do we again I I keep thinking and it's selfish because I would like to see the the Winchester roads that don't require really expensive drainage down the length of the road. They just have crossovers that discharge into the nearest brook. You know, you pop in a you know, catch basin or some kind of a erosion, you know, protection and get those roads in better shape. That's But I just don't know that the town would buy into that. I mean, yeah, it's going to save them money. So, there's the big expensive roads are the ones downtown. I mean, >> yeah, >> Case Avenue, Elm Street. Elm

086Street is probably the most complicated road in I don't think there's going to be anything. Pull that. You got it up. >> Behind the town hall, >> Center Street, that's going to be that's virtually the same as what Case Avenue was. Pull Let's pull up that are pulling up. Is there uh >> uh electricity underground in town too in some spots? There is some. >> How about phone too? Is there >> phone? It's not a lot. >> Um so this >> the current project >> when we listed K >> uh Center Street up there. Uh very number one. So Center Street, that's the the street right behind Town Hall. It's virtually the same exact job that we did on uh uh Case Avenue. and that came out to $435 a square yard. So then take

087a road like uh pick a road up um oh let's go back to the other spreadsheet with um >> are those before you leave that >> is that the prices to do the jobs that you have on those roads with drainage >> that green column the green the green column dollars per square yard that's the dollar That's for everything listed, right? >> Let's come back to that because those numbers will mean more if we go to the other spreadsheet first. >> Yeah. But doesn't also Center Street, there's other streets that drain into Center Street, right? Come that direction. Yeah. >> Cuz everything wants to end up over there. >> So, you got everything that has to come that way. So, it could even be undersized pipes. >> I've heard some nightmares about the drainage. So,

088Okay, green will work. So these these roads here, Mountain Road, Chapel Road, this section of East Wakefield, uh Price Road, Holmes Drive, Sucker Brook Road, Dayton Road, uh Wani Road, Holland Beach, and West Wakefield. These are all roads that we just finished. These roads in pink, Marshall Street, Case Avenue, Elm Street, and Hubard Street are roads that we did the prior year. So, we went I just did a quick description of the work that we did and that's in this column here. So, yeah, keep scrolling that that way. So, let's just take Case Avenue for example, since that's the one right outside. We did a full reconstruction with drainage and sidewalks. that cost us $435 a square yard. So, let's just look at um Marshall Street. Marshall Street is a much longer road. It's over

089a mile and we did the drainage. Public works did the drainage. We didn't sub that out. um when we did a reclaim and pave and that was >> $35 a square yard. So you throw sidewalks, drainage, curbing, all that stuff, signs, line painting into a downtown road where you have traffic management, >> water, sewer, gas there. And that one had underground electric and communications in some areas. So you got to be, you know, so we took we took all these all these prices. Um, so let's take this one here, Suckerbrook Road. We did just a a 3-in mill and pave and um, you know, a tax seal. We put joint seal on afterwards. We had flaggers. That was the soup to nuts price of $27 a square yard. So when we go to the other

090roads that we had on that on the other spreadsheet, I said, "Okay, yeah, this project, we looked at Center Street." I said, "It's exactly the same as Case Avenue." So we took the cost per square yard price and that's how we figured out what to budget for that, what to expect to pay. Wani Road, you know, pretty similar. That's 30 just under 35. Marshall Street that was 34. So those two projects are very similar, two years apart. So we're starting to get a pattern of how much it really costs you to do these types of jobs in real time in this modern age in this town. So that's where the numbers came from that we used on that next slide. So let's go back to that other slide, the long one. Yeah. So, Center Street,

091that's the same amount as uh Case Avenue was. So, that you know.15 miles is going to cost you $833,000. >> So, so roughly just really quick, I don't want to drag this out too much, but what he just up had just up there with that work was uh $4.7 million. Just those few streets he had up before. >> And this may be a time actually to directly respond to select Marino as far as hope for the town. you kind of get put in this tough position where as far as the budget is concerned a million dollars clearly when you get to some of the more labor intensive roads you wouldn't even be able to cover one of them just as an example Hinsdale A that road alone even add a pacer rating of five would

092be over $3 million obviously 1 million won't cut it one of the things that Jim and I did do additionally is we sat down and we came up with this list where in total it would be $23.5 million which could be phased phased out over a 5-year one bond pack uh one-year bond package over 5 years. If the inflation rate ends up being higher than the interest rate for the bond that has to be paid back, you really are arbitrageing the rate and saving money for the town and creating an opportunity to start catching up on some of the very low quality roads. And one of the things that Jim and I uh really wanted to show you, which I think might be helpful to kind of illustrate this, the pavement deterioration curve that you

093see here, this is what Jim and I keep mentioning when we say worst roads first. That was the old methodology for repairing the windstead roads. But if you look all the way at the bottom of that graph in the red area, after about 20 to 25 years, you're spending upwards of $50 to $100 per square yard. And that's just for the pavement. That doesn't include drainage, sidewalks, signage, anything like that. The reason we keep saying that maintenance of good roads is a priority, you spend one to$2 dollars per square yard on those roads, which saves you exponential cost in the long run. So the longer that we keep up this pattern of maintaining the good roads, spending1 to$2 over time, you're able to catch up with all of the poor rated roads and keeping those

094eights at an eight or a nine actually tends to be the highest utility for the taxpayer dollar. However, like you said, it does take some time. You may have to go to bond or sacrifice large parts of the budget to get there. Ultimately though, it is possible. It's not a quick fix that happens in one to three years, but it is a viable strategy moving forward to accomplish that goal. >> Can you go back to the spreadsheet for a second? Because a lot of times when we talk about roads, when you say we're going to do this road, I envision we're doing the whole road, but we're only doing 100 feet of it or something like that. What's interesting to me is you have East and West Wakefield on there at 7.3 million round numbers.

095Is that the entire thing with drainage? >> Approximately 2 and a2 million for East and West Wakefield would be drainage. >> That's all 7 and a half miles >> this one here says 5.8 miles. >> Not all of it. >> All right. >> And that's got >> So that's still leaving two miles of it untouched. >> Yep. >> Just the one by your house. Yes, of course. >> And again, do you have to do >> We've made some progress on West Wakefield. There's a couple of places we put some drainage and we've done some paving improvements. Um right by H right by Risha Beach is one example. Um right by um um >> So you're thinking on the road, I got I got to pick on you a little bit. Select my >> like five

096be the perfect time to give your water all the way around the lake. >> Don't start me on the water conversation again. >> So then you might as well double the price. >> That was an amazing uh >> might as well double the price. >> We dug it all up to put the sewers in and didn't put the water in back then. >> So where does this leave us with? Because because we have a bond out now and a list of roads. Uh some of those roads haven't been done. Well, uh, definitely haven't been done, but the estimate you had when we went out for bond, it's been so long. New field, again, not going to pick on Newfield because I live there, but Newfield's horrible. I forget what your original estimate was of Newfield,

097but I'm betting you can't even with with inflation, you can't even come close to fixing that road for >> what it was what it was >> in the bond for. Right. >> Right. So, we had a lot of money in there for New Field. Uh, I don't recall what the number was. I think it's over two million. Um, there's varying ways of of getting what you want. Um there's there's certain do you do every inch of it or do you do you know the problem is you take a good section and you leave it all of a sudden it looks bad. You know the section that used to step on the gas all of a sudden you're going to be like how come they stopped? >> And your problem on Newfield again is you've talked

098drainage you were talking 12 in this and that. I I know for a fact three pipes under Newfield that are 36 to 48 in. They might as well be. >> Well, those are the cross pipes. The cross pipes are a little different story. And there is one covert um up there that it needs some rehabilitation, but that one can be lined. Um the head walls aren't bad, you know. So, I wouldn't get too hung up on that one. The one down below, I'm not I'm not real familiar. Just just down by you. That one bad. >> That's a bad heads in the river. So that that one I honestly don't know a whole lot about. Um but there's a bridge down there too that also is narrow >> right by Sh Road. >> Yep. So

099you know, do you have a nice fast road and then a nice narrow bridge causing an incident or do we widen the bridge? You know, so there's always tradeoffs and >> but again, you're stuck. Okay. I guess the question was you're you're stuck with Newfield right now because it's a it's part of the bond package. >> That money has to be spent on Newfield. Correct. >> Yep. >> Well, you can't do Newfield with that amount. You can, like you said, maybe do the real bad sections. >> My I I wouldn't count Newfield out yet. I think I think we're going to be okay on that one. That's not the kind of road that really It's the drainage, the workup. You don't have a lot of util. You don't have any utilities. We might have we

100might have someone's electric buried across the road. >> Other than that, you got some driveway culverts and you got some crossover pipes. We'll have to put in some strategic under drains here and there. Not a big deal. That stuff's not terrible. You're you're in the you're in the, you know, the area of, you know, 35 bucks a square yard like we had on Wani Road. You know, that's that's that's a doable thing. >> So, let's go back to this list for a minute. You got 22 projects up there. Two of them look like uh are state and federal projects though. Is that 23 million include the 76 million you've got for those two bottom projects? >> No. So that that 7 million for White Street Bridge. It's not included in that 23. >> So 23

101million is our cost to do the other 20 roads, right? >> Correct. And that's also because uh I'm sure you've heard of the state local bridge and the federal local bridge programs. Yeah. Currently the state I believe sits at about 55 to 45% in reimbursement. One of the wonderful things that you can see with White Street is that the federal government is doing 100% reimbursement and you don't have to budget that you don't have to include it as part of the allocated budget. Y >> so I think we have roughly 20 federal bridges give or take a couple. So all of those if the total of them just based off that 7 million is averaging a little over a hundred million that's covered by the federal government. Right. I was just trying to get to

102the 23 million that was accounted in that. So, >> two questions, Jim. One is the cost difference between when our team does it, your team does it does the work versus a contractor. Have you can you tell me the efficiencies? Which is which is actually more expensive for us? Because it you you'd probably say, well, it's always a contractor, but that's not necessarily true. >> You're right. It depends um depends on the complexity of the job. More than that, it depends on the unknowns. If we have a project with a bazillion unknowns, I send my people to do it because we can adapt to whatever we find and make the best decision for us. Whereas the contractor just says, "Well, tell get an engineer in here and tell me what to do." um the stuff

103that we have to subcontract if you need bid documents, there's an enormous time and cost associated with that. Last year we was our first year we used our bid um we did a drainage bid, we did a paving bid. >> It worked out pretty well. >> Um >> we had to make a few we had to adapt and overcome to a few things that were unforeseen. Some of those would have been caught had we bought an engineer and designed the whole thing, but we got enough experience that we can we were pretty close on these. Cost us a little more than we were anticipating, but less than the engineering would have cost. So, it's beginning to work and become more efficient and faster and you know, so so we're we're starting to learn how to,

104you know, we could never do that with Center Street. There's too many unknown. There's it's that one's got to be that one's got to be bid. It's a much more difficult job. >> So, say we decided this list was going to be our our big phase one plan, phase two plan, because we already did the bond. So, this is our next big project, right? these 20 roads. Problem of course is we could go to bond for $23.5 million and by the time everything's ready to go, it's nowhere near enough money because that's what we went through in the last bond. Right. >> So this gets you kind of to your point of the 10-year plan or the 20-year plan, whatever it is, if people know that the road is on the plan somewhere, like that's

105a step in the right direction. >> And you know, Paul's been adamant about that. You know, the way we did that last bond really wasn't great because again, no one anticipated a 50% inflation cost due to the whole COVID nightmare, all the money that got, you know, spent. So, >> but say we took this list rather than bond it now. >> Let's do all the homework. Let's get the bids. Decide how you want to approach these 20 roads. How many are going to go out to bid? How many we're going to do? And then, and you're going to have to ask the contract, hey, give me a bid in two years or whatever that, you know, I'm I'm spitballing here with you, Jim, but rather than bonding it now and then we are 20% short

106of the money we need. >> That's that's to Paul's point. How about we get everything ready, get the bids, get everything done, and then put it to bond so that when you when you're ready to go, maybe you've got 10 contractors hitting it that one year and plus our guys and maybe in two years we're getting this done, not the six years we've been working on the bond or however long it is, right? We got to be strategic in how we plan for this. >> That's a way of doing it. Um that's that's a lot of work. So this is this is essentially the beginnings of that. These are real prices for real jobs that are virtually identical. This so let me but if we go to bond now we're going to have the money

107but we're not ready to do the work and then and then it doesn't work >> right. But you can't be totally ready to go to work yet and then get the bond either. It doesn't it just never works like that either. Um, so just to communicate the complexity of this, this is based on actual prices that we just spent in the last two years. If we put these jobs out to bid, you'll get prices that are 50% higher than the low bid. So even a contractors have this giant delta between what they think is the right price for the job. So how do you know How do we do it? >> Right? >> You know, so that's why I just went to dollars that we just spent for similar projects and >> but if we

108plan these 20 and it takes us five years or whatever doing engineering and everything else that needs to go into it. Well, that 23 million isn't 23 million anymore. We don't know how much to bond, how much to budget for. I I guess it's the way we did the last bond didn't work out so well, right? Because by the time we got to the project and and this unforeseen inflation, great. And my idea of let's put it all at the bin then bond it when it's ready to go. That doesn't necessarily work, but something in the middle >> between what that sweet spot is, I don't know. Um but but there has to be a way of of sneaking up on it. >> So let me jump in uh really quickly now. So what we've

109done because we've we've heard the cry, we we we truly understand. So what we what we've done now is we we we've gotten the information that we've needed. Now we can act. And some of the suggestions that I'll be bringing back to the board is you don't necessarily have to go out and bond right away. You can do things called ban and you can ban money um x amount of dollars over years. And then when you have typically in the past and what we've done even here, we go out and borrow tronses of $8 to 12 million. So you can start projects with banning which is a very minimum payment to get the projects going and then when you've gotten two three years of projects going then you go out and bond that note. So

110you're not but keeping in mind when that that service hits it hits I just rough ran a a quick amortization rate on $23 million if we could pull it all off over 30 years. You'd be looking at a $1.2 million debt service payment overall interest. And I and I I picked a three and a half% interest rate which is typical where municipalities are going to roll in right now. You're still paying $14 million in interest over 30 years. But we got the information. Now it's time to how do we execute all of the information we have. Jim and I even talked to Dan's shaking his head because he's been in finance meetings about banning and bonding and everything like that. So that's an first I had to get Jim get us all the information. Then

111it's the execution of how do we roll how do we get these roads accomplished with you know money in hand but also not going out and borrowing the money too soon and and banning it is is one of the potential options that that we have with it. So, um, >> I mean, if we ever could develop a plan that actually gets these 20 done and it gets it done in the next, I don't know, pick a dime, five, six, seven, however many years you think it would take, that's something that we'd all get excited about. The public will get excited about. Look, there's going to be real there's going to be real um progress made here. >> Even the 1.2 >> I'm sorry, >> even the 1.2 million. >> Well, we're going to take it

112out of someone else, don't we? Just got to put that out there. >> I just got to throw this out there. If you look at Center Street, 769 ft is almost $834,000 for 769 ft. >> Yeah, it's crazy. And that's one thing, if you don't mind, I wanted to jump in on >> as you mentioned with the amortization payments. >> Big word, I know. >> Yeah, my vocab is pretty elementary. But one thing that you run into when that happens, the reason we showed you guys the deterioration curve is that the alternative is you don't treat those roads in the meantime throughout those that payment schedule, the cost of doing them later is exponentially higher than if you just make those payments. I mean, it would seem that the that the and you know, so

113budget season isn't so much fun, but I mean, it would seem that the annual operating budget should be, dare I say, adequate to pay for the maintenance of the roads we're trying to preserve. I mean, that should be in your annual budget, not capitals. Obviously, these are all capitals. Um >> I mean >> is it a chip ceiling considered maintenance that would be in your your maintenance budget? >> We don't put it in the maintenance budget. We put it in the capital I think because it's >> rolls over >> you know and it and it has a it has a lifespan to it like you know there's kind of a fiveyear lifespan and a a dollar amount and a lifespan and it and it leap frog it's it's more than the 5,000 it's more than

114five years so it goes into capital even It maintains your assets. It It really is an asset in of itself, too. So, at least that's how we've >> Yeah, listen, I think you're absolutely right. We need to maintain what's a >> which a six or a sevens that we have now. Although, I'm dying to see what a six after seeing that that four looked like a one to me. But anyway, >> the ones that we need to maintain our sixes and sevens so that we get an extra 10 years out of I know Selectman Lamir has been big about that in his conversations because He realiz he said to us many times >> go to South Road. I'll bet you you have one. You go towards the town line. >> Yes. >> Presentation of how

115helpful Violytics is. So South Road, which segment towards the town line, right? To side. >> Yeah, the higher numbers. Yeah. >> Don't hit the four. >> Is that a six? >> I snapped my last string. >> Yeah, right there. How much damage, Jim, are the plow trucks getting over and over this stuff? >> I'm afraid to ask. >> You are afraid to ask. >> Next storm. Next storm. If I know they're coming, I'll just record the sound of the plows coming up. New field. >> It's gunfire going off around us when the >> So, they take a beating. >> It is a big part of it. But another big part of it that people may not even think about is the amount of salt that it takes. >> If you can't scrape it off, you

116got to burn it off. >> So, we're putting down and and we've we've calibrated all of our trucks to the absolute minimum we can get away with. And it's but you could you could go down a lot lower. The classic example was Wanie Road this winter. come down Newfield Road and ice and holes and blotches of black and white coming down. Take a right onto Wani Road. >> It looked like an airport runway, not not a flake of snow because you could scrape it off. Get up to the other end of it, hit Blue Street, looked just like Newfield. >> You know that retaining wall you built on >> Yep. >> on Wakefield. >> The you know 100 yards we get up >> Yeah. That's right. >> Right. >> That's right. That that part is

117all perfectly clear like a runway and then you got in the truck. >> Yeah, that's the point. I mean one contract because you sub that >> and they did a beautiful job on it. >> They did a great job. >> Mr. you're showing us right now >> but it averages out. So it's about a five or a six for this entire stretch. >> It just depends on where you go >> again. Now let me ask you. >> So you come up with this rating. AI come up with this rating. Yeah. >> If you drove this again uh now and you drove this again in the spring, >> it'll readjust those those ratings, right? >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. >> And and the AI will improve over time. You have to remember. So, there's there's different programs

118out there. There's the Cadillac is this program called Street Scan. This car looks like an alien. It's got it's got metal detector, you know, cameras. It will, as it's driving down the road, it'll give you GPS coordinates of every gate valve, every manhole cover. It can analyze the signs and assess its retroreflectivity. It can tell you if it's compliant with the manual of uniform traffic control devices, right? Ungodly expensive. >> This is done with an iPhone that has that we it downloads these pictures and we send it in and they assess it and they send it back. So, we're not getting a premium product. You're going to find there's some variations in here. >> Yeah. >> And you know, but it gives us an idea and you know, it gives us all kinds of other

119Yeah. There's there's a there's a great one. We can >> there's a few twos there. Those the phaser ratings there where it says two, three, two >> under this specific layer. That's just the number of addresses I believe for that specific. >> Okay. I thought that switch back the rating >> cuz I'm I'm surprised if those are are five cuz that's the airport right there Jimmy right >> the the long fields that's the old airport >> again take so it's funny yeah go to go to plat platill road right there um you know that section's an eight um that's a four and I would say that section of of south road is better than this section here >> absolutely towards the call that afford to. Um, so take you get you got to take these

120numbers with a grain of salt. >> It's an average. You're going to find spots that are um, you know, disturbingly bad that are rated okay. It averages things out. It's not as good as the the engineers doing it, but we've got enough historical data. >> So the more you drive this, the better off you are, right, with this with this program. >> Two thing, the more you drive it, the better you are. And two, the the AI is going to be getting better and they're they're already working on the next generation. And there's also there's already a couple of things on here that we haven't even been trained on how to use yet. So, it's advancing. Um, but we had to start somewhere. We we >> So, because you did this what fall, >> right?

121Yeah. S I saw one it was September 30th. I can't believe that day. >> Yeah. That's why it'd be interesting cuz in the fall that road >> was a little bad. Then the frost hit. Right. Right now, believe it or not, some of those sections are actually a little better >> cuz the the frost is >> But when we get into a thaw because we've had such cold weather >> and that I I would be curious to drive that again with this. Let's let's go back to the the 20 list, >> right? That is a list that you've identified as really the best priority from a standpoint of use of funds. Um, roads that needed the worst, traffic on the roads. I mean, those are the 20 you've identified as these would be the next

122ones you'd want to do. >> The rubric I used for that was >> probably number one, what's the town's liability for potential failures? Center Street. There's a lot of traffic on that. A lot of people walking. Sidewalks are bad. I also use the fact that it's right in between two roads that we just did. We got a beautiful Elm Street. We got a beautiful uh Case Avenue. It's right by Town Hall. That's why that one got on there. South Road. Um you know, that's that's the other end of that road is in the bond. So, it seemed like we had to go to to the next end because we just, you know, Pratt Street. That's just a short section of Pratt Street, but that's because there's a stone covert under there that is failing. And

123that's a problem. And to make it even more complicated, part of that stone cover goes under a house. >> So that these are the challenges. This is what happens in a in a town that was built so long ago. >> So how do you how do you deal with these? Um Elm Street, you know, we did, you know, phase one and two are done, but we want to get phase three up to the school, right? because then the sidewalks are dialed in. Hinsdale Avenue, one of the reasons this got on is because we have our um priority sidewalk um list around the schools and that go Hinsdale Avenue. If you're going to do the sidewalks, you kind of got to do the road. I mean, you don't have to, but it would make sense to

124um High View Drive, you know, that's reached the point in its life, you know, I remember that road being built when I was a little kid and not much has been done to it. use salt drum. >> Yep. Um, Nanny Drive. There's a a drainage pipe that has to be lined. That one actually we can line that. We don't have to dig it and pave it. So, that that's why it's in yellow because there's, you know, things to deal with there. Uh, Huntington Road. I don't want to do the road until I do the culvert because all the drainage has to go down to that culvert. So, I don't want to create a sc a bigger problem than I already have with that. So, I've got an engineer right now look looking to see is

125that covert unders sized as it is because it it has searchcharge and depending on how big it is, it might be eligible for the state uh local bridge program. So, trying to leverage my decisions based on the money that's available. So, there's there's there's so many things that go into this. >> Sure. So um and I and we've gone through a lot of time and I just don't want to be the guy who's belaboring it. So I'll throw this question at Mr. Harrington. >> What is a reasonable period of time for you to come back to us with the plan on how we're going to get these 20 done >> because I don't want to have this fun discussion that we've had for the last 45 minutes. We could be here till 3:00 in the

126morning and then it goes away and then we don't talk about it again. Let's come back with a plan and it doesn't Listen, I'm not asking for it tomorrow. So, >> day after. >> Yeah. Can you have it for the next meeting? No, I'm only kidding. I >> I could um I could I could have it prepared within, you know, an hour. The question's going to become is the budgetary impact that it that it's going to have. >> Well, think of it. I The question is how do we go after this? So, let me I can answer the first part of that. I just wrote this down. We've got to define the goal. What are we trying to get at, >> right, >> with our with our Do we want everything to be a 10?

127Do we want everything to be above a five? Do we want to start somewhere? And, you know, do we want >> I think we need to drive the roads a few more times and let this thing calibrate a little more because I agree with Paul. If that was a four that that we saw, I'd like to >> We want Jim, we want nice roads, right? We want, they don't have to be tens, >> but we want roads that that people >> I I think I think a six is a reasonable try to get everything try to get it so there's nothing below a six. >> And when you say that, you're you're you're making something a 10. By the time you get, you know, 10 years down the road to you're working on something that

128now you're making that a 10 and this has already become a six. I get that. It's a it's a constant, right? But if we had everything a six, and I'm hoping the six is pretty good. >> Um, if we had everything a six, >> you know, roads are two things. Roads are safety, roads are um they they annoy the living daylights out of people. And also, it's a certain amount of pride. When you pull into a town and the roads are nice, it it gives the entire town >> a a much better look for developers and certainly for the people who live here. So, >> no doubt, >> you know, we've got to prioritize it in some way. plan. I know that the budgetary problems that we're going to but but let's develop a plan

129and maybe it's a tier maybe it's a bond or three bonds that happens over 10 years. I don't know the answer to it Paul that's you're the expert in that area. So, real quick, Paul, funding wise, >> ju just a town, are other states different the way they pass out funding or do they qualify for more federal aid? Because I've been in towns of Vermont, way smaller than Winchester, New Hampshire, been in a few towns up there where again, population very low. Grand's got to be small because there's nothing that and the roads are pristine. >> A lot of them are county roads out there. >> Okay. So, so all right, that was just my question because You know, I'm three years in now. I'm thinking, where's the money coming from? And some of these

130towns with a population of 480 people, they have 70 miles of roads, >> but there but they also probably didn't have three decades of no preventive maintenance, >> right? >> You know, >> that that you know, zero budget, zero budget, zero budget over time >> adds up. And >> I just don't want all >> you got to pay for it eventually. >> So, let us I hear you all loud and clear. Let us discuss to be tabled and then we don't talk about it again. That's why let us come back with a plan. You know, honestly, it makes the most sense to, you know, talk about a plan during the budget time because that's when you're you're going to have to act with dollar amounts because works get done. So, when we present the budget

131and we started even talking about the second pond, you know, in terms of what do we do? We we've already started those discussions. So when we come back um we'll present a package um with the budget of what a potential you know look ahead looks like and you know let's put together a plan on how we get those 20 done. you guys. Why not? >> That That's good, too. And then do we have a schedule, Jim, for the bond money we already have? Because that's one thing I hear in the res too. We we poured all this money. We're going to do these roads. Are we hitting or are we attacking any of those this year? >> Or maybe the better question would be when does the bond project, the current bond projects, when do

132we expect completion on all of it? >> I we won't make we won't make them all in five years, which was the goal. I'm thinking it's going to probably be six. And I'm thinking we're probably going to run out of money before we get something done. So that will have to be the first one in this in the next bond. My hunch is it's probably going to be the Lake Street repair. It's expensive. We plan on using lots of money. There's been a delay in the lots of money that is pushing it out. Um we're using our our round of lots of money on the Hallebert job. Torington ended up getting two years in a row of it because of a big project which kind of bumped some and we're having that conversation with the

133cog. But I if I had to guess that's the one job that will fall off the bond and have to be the first one in the neck. That that's my hunch. Uh on the positive side the uh one of the bridges I can't remember it was the Granville Bridge or the White Street bridge is on the bond. >> White Street. White Street >> 7 million. So that one >> because it's 100% funded. The money that we allocate, we thought it was going to be only 80% funded. So the 20% that we had can be reallocated to other projects, which is helping us, you know, keep up with the inflated prices. So we're we're still we're we're working on them. You know, we're we're knocking them off. It's just we're not going to get them all

134done in five years. And I think the only one that I see that is going to be completely off the table for this fiveyear period is going to be uh probably the Lake Street. Um everything else at the moment I think is probably still pretty safe. And you we got a couple of them that were done ahead of time, a couple of them that have fallen behind their schedule. Hallebert Avenue is scheduled like we're we're in with the engineers right now getting that that one's going out to bid. Um I don't think Bridge Street wasn't that wasn't on the bond. >> So that one and that one's going out too, >> you know. So you got to remember we're doing things other than what's on the bond, too. So that that interrupts things. Um >>

135but so we're a little behind schedule, but and a little over budget, but not terrible considering the inflation that hit this. And yeah, you know, there's contractor bandwidth and engineer bandwidth on top of it. You know, some of the bond stuff, you know, the Highland Lake drainage stuff, I've got some engineers that are just waiting for surveys. Can't get surveyors on it. And then they were going to do it this winter. Now they're snowed out. They can't find what they're surveying. So, there's always something. But I know everybody wants it done. You know, for me, we get it done. We just go into another one. So, you know, let's go. But we we've made a lot of progress and there's and we're not terribly far behind or terribly over budget considering. So don't give up

136hope. There's >> always hope, Paul. >> So Paul, are you going to come back? Because again, I I just don't want this thing to fall between the cracks here. >> Is there can we should we put a date on this by the time we'll come back with with a preliminary plan for these 20? I I'll put it in the in the budget in the budget documents because again it's going to have a financial impact and that's the time to say I like this plan or I don't like this plan because whether we we go out and bond or ban there is going to be a financial impact in the 27 budget and I think it only makes sense presenting it with the budget. So you see you see it both ways with it injected into

137the budget without being injected into the budget that that makes the most sense because I can come in here and say, "Hey, we can get these three roads done. We'll ban it. We only have to pay, you know, the the interest on it there and and go from there." But I think you need to see that you ban something and then eventually you get to that $10 million mark, you bond it, what that debt service payment does. So I I think it it's It's bigger but smaller in that, you know, one of my jobs is is the financial responsibility of the town and I never want to get us into a situation where we can't make a debt service payment or, you know, something has to go. So, I think you have to look at

138it as a total. Um, and I think it makes the most sense during the budget process to present how do you get these first 20 roads going and when exactly the financial commitment is going to hit. And another thing that I think is is helpful to seed to plant is when you know people say don't don't bond for 20 years for a road because it's worn out in 20 years. That's only half true. The pavement surface may be worn out, but the expensive part is, as you can see, is all the drainage and all the other stuff. And if you do it right and you get a good you get good drainage and you get your base proper, you get it crowned and you maintain it, it will last more than 20 years. But when

139it's time to resurface it, you can either just overlay it or you can mill and pave it. And those are relatively short, you know, relatively small dollars, >> $35 a square foot. So >> does overlay ever happen anymore? Uh we did a little bit on um on Suckerbrook Road right where it joins Flat Hill Road. We had a stretch in there. It just wasn't it was the right treatment to do. We we milled off three inches. We just put down one leveling layer just enough to absorb the So one of the problems with just overlaying is any crack that you have in the pavement underneath is going to refer through. >> So we milled three inches and we just put a shim in there. add a crown and give that a buffer for those cracks

140to slow the referral down. And we put two inches over that or inch and a half over that. Very cost effective and made a big difference in an area that was just awful. You know, short little section, but it was just we just couldn't we couldn't pole patch it enough to stay ahead of it. Very easy. And that was part of our paving bid. Just, you know, we had a unit price, bang, knocked it out. So yeah, there's, you know, we're a little behind schedule this year because our clerk of the works got poached from us and uh I got interviews on Friday with with, you know, the next, you know, batch of applicants. But we didn't need that, which is the time to get him set up and get all these roads into the

141list. >> So So that is a total of 16 miles. Everything we're talking about there, is that 17 miles? >> Yeah. 20%. >> Yep. >> Okay. Hey, it gives us hope >> in essence, right? It's something. >> So, in in the spirit of not losing hope or maybe killing all hope, but depending on your answer, um the amount of investment that we've made through the bond and just regular maintenance, you know, the regular budget and such, would you say that overall over like say the last five years, are we staying ahead? I mean, I know deterioration is always happening. Are we improving overall? >> Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it. >> So, we are making progress. >> Yes. No doubt about it. >> Yeah. >> So, there's hope. >> There is hope. >> There's hope.

142>> Feels good, doesn't it? >> Yeah. There there's there's no doubt about it. You know, you no one ever really notices the roads that are good because you're just driving. You know, you that's because it's what you expect. You notice the roads that are bad and those still just show up and when they do it annoys everybody. But they're still driving 40, 45, 50 miles an hour on Newfield Road. So, how bad can it be? >> How bad can it be? >> That's a whole another problem, >> Jim. They're trying to get flight so that they don't hit the bus. >> You go fast enough, you >> I see a speed camera. There you go. >> You know, a couple neighbors have actually brought that up to me like if they repave it, I mean,

143the cars drive so fast now if they reatch 90 to 120 on a Friday night. >> All right, we're kind of off the rails here on our presentation. You guys have anything else? >> Exaggeration to say that as soon as we finish the road, the very first phone call, you know, put up speed limit signs. Get the cops out here at every single road you do. >> So, it's But yeah, so that was our 20 minutes. >> Yeah. >> 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, Jim in the office. No. Um, if the board didn't have anything else, special shout out to Dan, who is our intern. Um, fabulous job, Dan, putting this all together. >> You know, Dan, Dan's obviously still in college getting his way. He does want a job in the uh in the public arena

144one day, but hell of a job, Dan. Thank you for coming. else. I'm guessing >> exactly. >> He did get to miss class tonight. Um, typically Dan works Tuesdays, Thursday, he has class Monday night, but uh we meet on or excuse me, Tuesday, Thursday Dan works, but he he wanted to join us tonight. He's been very close with this project. So, great great job, Dan. >> Thank you. You always >> gentlemen, moving on to item B, Pearson roof referral to planning and zoning per Connecticut General Station 8-248-22. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I hope you had time to look over the bond package from Pullman and Comm. Um, there are certain uh boxes that we need to check in order to move this thing. The first one being that we need a referral to

145the planning and zoning commission uh under Connecticut General Statute 8-24 and 8-22. They will look over the project and provide comments. It is required by Connecticut General Statue. I'll answer any questions or there is a motion uh to refer this to the planning and zoning commission. >> I move that we refer the Pearson School roof project to the Winchester Planning and Zoning Commission for review and comment pursuant to Connecticut General Statute Sections 8-24 and 8-22 and to request that the commission report back to the board of selectmen within the statutory review period. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Bill. Any discussion? Seeing no discussion, all in favor? Unanimous. >> I will get a letter over to them first thing tomorrow morning. Um with that, the next one is um we have a

146few things to do. We need to Oh, do you want to read the agenda item? I'm sorry. >> Oh, item C. I muted it all together. Item C, roof bond resolution, set meeting date for a and a referendum date. >> So, we need to do two things tonight. We need to set the town meeting date which we have uh scheduled for March 17th. That will be at 700 p.m. at the Winchester Town Hall. And then the referendum would be set for March 24th. I did have our register ask me a question tonight and I found the answer and I emailed her. Why are we doing the town meeting um so close or not enough time? Um I knew the answer, but I went back into our ordinance. So section 313 special town meeting the board

147of selectment may call a special town meeting for the purpose of the referendum or initiate or any purpose not inconsistent with the provisions of this charter. At any town meeting the mayor shall preside unless a moderator is designated by the majority vote with the board. At any special town meeting where a resolution is introduced to authorize the issuance of any bonds or notes. The meeting shall be adjourned after an opportunity for discussion for such resolution to a referendum to be held on a date within one week thereafter. So what this in essence is saying is that you can't have a meeting way in advance of a referendum the day before a referendum. You have to town have a town meeting. That town meeting actually doesn't get adjourned. It gets recessed to the referendum one week

148later. So, if you're wondering about time frame, um absentee ballots become available the day after the town meeting. So, they would be available on >> March 18th. I lost my uh train of thought for a second. March 18th because that gives one weeks. The only absentee ballots that do get mailed out are the ones that are on the always absentee ballot. um that list. Anyone can request an absentee ballot. They can come in, but mailing because of mail taking time, um they will not be mailed out. They would need to come in to either the register or the clerk's office to get an absentee ballot. But the ones that are on the list that always get absentee ballots, those go out immediately the next day. Um before you are two motion rolled up in the

149one. Um, it would be to set the town meeting on March 17th at 7 PM and the also would be March 24th would be the referendum between 8:00 am to 8:00 PM here that is provided on a note card. If there isn't any other questions on this, >> we have a motion. >> So, the motion um for the Isabella M. Pearson school roof project resolved that the board of selectman this is all of it, right? >> This is you have to read it. Yeah. Resolved that the board of selectment of the town of Winchester hereby approves the setting of a special town meeting to be held on Tuesday, March 17th, 2026, 700 p.m. at the Winchester Town Hall, 338 Main Street, Winstead, Connecticut, for the purpose of considering and discussing a proposed appropriation and authorization

150for the issuance of bonds or notes for the Isabella M. Pearson school roof project as presented to this meeting. Further resolved that the said proposed appropriation shall be in the amount of 2,898,670 and shall be for the purpose of funding the design construction replacement and related costs associated with the Isabella M. Pearson school roof project. It is further resolved that the special town meeting shall be adjourned at its conclusion to submit such appropriation and borrowing authorization to a referendum vote to be held on Tuesday, March 24th, 2026 between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. at the Winchester Town Hall, 338 Main Street, Winstead, Connecticut, in accordance with the town charter and applicable provisions of the Connecticut General Statutes. It's further resolved that the notice of such special town meeting and referendum substantially in

151the form presented to this meeting is hereby approved and that the town clerk is authorized and directed to cause such notice to be posted, published, and distributed in the manner and within the time required by law. And it's further resolved that a copy of said notice shall be attached to and made a part of the minutes of this meeting. >> Second. >> Thank you, Paul. >> Thank you, Bill. Any discussion? >> Just one more. Mr. Mayor, the uh question that will be on the ballot will be a resolution appropriating 2,898,670 for costs related to the replacement of the roof and portions of the building envelope at the Elizabeth M. Pearson Middle School and authorize the issue of bonds and notes in the same amount to finance the portion of the appropriation not defayed from grants

152will be the question. Yes or no will be the only responses given. So I wanted that part of the minutes as well. >> Did you say Elizabeth? >> And it is Isabella. >> Isabella. I am sorry. It said Yeah. I'm sorry. >> I only read it for you three times. >> I typed it. I think I would know. Right. Right. >> We have a motion. We have a second. Any other discussion? All in favor? >> Unanimous. >> Everyone have an opportunity to sign this? >> We did. >> Oh, okay. Well, and Troy wasn't here and it's fine as is. So, I I appreciate all of you. Um, so we have a meeting on the 16th and then also on the 17th, I believe, of March. Um, unfortunately, I tried to schedule it. >> Is that

153going to interfere with Board of Education on the 17th? Don't they usually make it Tuesday? >> It's a different night. Yeah, it's okay. Um, but I try I tried to get it on Monday and unfortunately then we'd have to move the actual referendum date. No, we're back to back. >> All right, moving on to item D. Request for additional state aid. >> I apologize, Mr. May. I just >> lost this paper. >> Lost I got too much stuff in front of me. >> Um, >> no. >> You have special notes on yours or >> I Yeah, the packet. >> I >> He's got a super secret packet. a super secret packet that helps. >> Well, that's it. But I'm missing my letter. Um, if I could have the letter. So, I was working with uh

154>> I don't know where it was. I'm good. I was working with Selectman Bishop. Um, he was really asking a lot about the state aid um and money that the the state provides us. Um, so we took some time and thank you to our assistant town clerk and also to our finance director who went back many many years to provide the data which you see in that Excel sheet and you can see that over this is why I wanted my sheet um that the state aid has not gone up at all. What we did is we drafted a letter um on behalf of the mayor um and we're requesting that you authorize the mayor to sign this letter to give to our governor to increase our state aid. While we were drafting this letter, um

155we were ranked number 11. We have now um in distressed municipality in two in 2004. In 2005, we've increased to number four as a distressed municipality. You go on the TV, you may read online, you may pick up a newspaper, you find that all the big cities are always giving additional appropriation. Well, if we're the number four distressed community, I want our peace. So I move that the board of selectmen authorize and approve a letter requesting additional state aid to be signed by the mayor and transmitted to governor lea on behalf of the town. >> Second. >> Any other discussion? >> I'd like to say a few things about this. So so yeah um the as you can see on this chart here the educational cost sharing it has not gone up since 2009. And

156that is absolutely uh ridiculous. Um I have looked at this and bowled over this in every sort of way looking at things such as enrollment. The enrollment is way up. It's not like it's not been that our you know school enrollment is is falling. Um you know the number of staff members have gone up in every in every way conceivable way. You know there should be raises in the in the state contribution to the educational cost sharing and it is severely impacting our town. And I want to be able to fund you know what our children need and I don't want to have to put that all on the taxpayers of our town. And it's I I just find it ridiculous that that since 2009 the state government has not been able to help us

157out. So I have, you know, I've had a conversation a couple times with Congressman John Larson about this. I've been making a lot of noise trying to, you know, get a meeting with the governor, lieutenant governor, anybody because this is this is a huge problem and it's having a direct impact on our children, our taxpayers, our town and we need to we need to change this. I would ask, you know, I remember that when Gilbert, what they call the agreement about, you know, longevity of the relationship, there was conversations with apparently Representative Paser said that that would result in us getting more funds. Has there been any action on that at all? >> No action that I've seen from my office. >> I believe I think it was a few weeks ago I had shared

158with you the new numbers. should that that >> as I recall um the comment he made is when we when we get a contract with Gilbert the the um secretary of education I believe and I'm just going off memory has said to him you can't come looking for more money until you get a contract with Gilbert >> there's no contract required that's the but >> that's their comment back they they wanted us to have a contract with Gilbert for a long time as you know. So that's I think them pushing back on the fact that we haven't gotten that contract done. >> Did that study it was saying that the issues could potentially resolve by contract. Unfortunately they haven't been able to resolve by contract. Hopefully they can be but um that doesn't control those

159funding and so in the conversations that I've been a part of that's never been one of the issues. So I don't know where that came from. But you know the reason why that agreement for the longevity of the relationship was proposed and pushed through was under the theory that was going to get us more money. Again, if I recall correctly, we named them as the high school for the town is what the latest vote was. >> And that gets us capital um reimbursement is what it gets us, but more funding for our town. Again, I'm only going off what Representative Kase said here at the meeting, which was get a contract with Gilbert is what he's told, and then he can come ask for funding. >> Actually, you don't have to have the agreement in

160order to get the capital. They can bond and they can get the capital reimbursement for that. I did extensive research on this done my time with the board had conversations with decision makers. So, that's does my understanding was it was going to help us get funds in not capital. That's always been that's always been available to them. I think we had to they had to be the named high school though from what I was >> they've always been the designated high school. >> They don't did not have to have you don't have to have an written agreement. They just have under the statute you have to have the relationship for 10 years after the completion of the project in order for them not to do a clawback. >> Right? >> So that's there's no requirement

161there be any agreement to that contract. But that's not I'm not trying to push that issue right now. But so So, has has anyone had any conversations with um Mr. Case? I know I'm going to be reaching out to him this this week about this um directly, but has anyone had any conversation with Mr. Case as to whether he's gone back to the school um to the education department, okay, can we get more funds? What is is he doing anything to help us with this issue? Does anyone know? >> No. Okay. shots in this week to see what what he can offer because it's important to get our representatives involved in this too. Letter for our mayor is great, but doesn't always have the same contact that someone from the legislature does. >> That is

162correct. We have a motion. We have a second. Any other discussion? >> I'll just add one last thing. Um, this was the letter from this board. I do plan on following up with a letter from the town manager's office as well. I do really want to stress the fact that we were number 11 distressed community. Now, we're number four. Um, so I I plan on also engaging with the governor's office and anyone else who will listen. Um, you heard me last year when I stood up and presented the budget. Um, the people down in Harford believe flat funding us is something to be noble about and we're all happy that they they held the towns harmless. You hear them all get up. Um, and they held the town harmless. Um, all the towns, all 169

163towns. um when you had record setting inflation and then coming back and telling 169 towns, "We've left you harmless. Meanwhile, you have billions and dollars in surplus funds >> and towns are suffering." I get a little aggravated. Not as aggravated as two weeks ago, but there are a lot of different talking points and I want to hit the fact that you didn't leave us harmless because you keep continuing to push state mandates on us. You saw just alone what happened to our grand list. >> That alone. And to sit here and then tell us that you've held us harmless. You have not. You continue to pass laws to continue to shrink our grand list. Yes, we do have to grow our grand list ourselves. But I think there are other things that they could be

164doing to helping out not just Winchester, but I play for the name on the front of the jersey, but all 169,000. >> Is um I saw that Governor Lamont made an announcement that the state was going to um cover some of the withheld federal funds. Have we heard anything about whether we're losing any federal funds and whether the state's going to make up for that? >> There was a little conversation in the superintendent and I have met. We believe we are held whole. Um there was about $158,000 that we we were a little scared about, but currently right now we're in a good spot with getting everything we should be getting. >> Correct. >> That is something that keeps me up at night and probably keeps the superintendent up as well. >> All right. All

165in favor? >> Thank you. Thank you. I'll get this out tomorrow morning. >> Item 11, executive session, discussions regarding 48 Bridge Street and the health insurance contract. Uh, taking with us David Satarana, realtor and town manager Harrington. >> I'll note before any motions made that, uh, our realtor, uh, David will only be be with us for section A, not section B. >> So moved. Second. >> All in favor? It is 9:07. >> You shouldn't be hanging out. You should not be That was a deep if I ever heard one. Can't keep track collar with a bell on them. >> 929. >> 9:29. That's what I wrote. We're We are back from executive session at 9:29 p.m. Item 12, new business, discussion, possible action regarding 48 Bridge Street. So, I move that we accept the offer

166for 48 Bridge Street from uh the last name Nash for 27,000. And we will send this property sale to town meeting to be held here at town hall on March 17th, 2026 at 6 7 p.m. >> Second. >> We have a motion and second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Unanimous. Item 13, citizens comments. The board of selectman welcomes public comments. Speaker limited three minutes and may speak once. Does anyone wish to speak? Uh, just hit hit the mic before you got to turn green. >> Nope. Just hit it one more time. >> There you go. You're good. >> Well, thank you for the 48 street. That's my guy. But anyways, I want to know if there's any updates on WS Hill project, housing project with 118 acres. >> Mr. Mayor, >> may I answer?

167>> You may answer. >> Uh at 4:00 today, all of the um the three uh qualified uh developers submitted their uh proposals. Um that was at 4:00. I have not opened them yet. Um so they're three of them are in big boxes are all sitting in my office. Let me ask you one part B to the question. >> Sure. >> Do we have a specific uh criteria that we're looking for for our builder >> as to what we want built up there as a town? >> That's a interesting great question. So when we sent out our RFQ um we wanted to make sure that well an RFQ and an RFP. Um we did first they had to you know show their qualifications and then we allowed them to propose their deal. Um the board of

168selectment came up with several options that they were looking for. Um the word multigenerational uh housing uh seemed to ring a good bell um with the board of selectment. So we've put that in. Uh we've put a a mixture of you know different concepts out there. But until we open the boxes, I don't know what these developers um do. But ultimately where I think we're going to guide this is that we're going to bring each developer in to meet with the board of selectman in executive session. There'll be some back and forth and then ultimately come out of executive session at a later meeting and then have each developer do a very short 20 to 30 minute uh uh presentation on each one of their um proposals >> that will be live in in front

169of people. And then what we want to do, what I want to do for the board is gather public input. And I know it's hard for a lot of people to make meetings. So I want to obviously make it available on YouTube as well and then leave the survey open that they can get online. So this way the board of selecting can gather a lot of information from the community and then ultimately select the one they're going to move forward to the town meeting for ultimate sale of this land is the process I see in my head. But again, we just got the proposals today. So that's where I see it going. Anyone else wish to speak? Item 14, selectman's comments and reports. Anyone? Uh, just we're not out of the cold yet. So, make

170sure you're checking on your friends and neighbors, uh, parents, elderly, as 20 below this week still. >> Shovel your sidewalks. >> And shovel your sidewalks >> And fire hydrants. The groundhog didn't see a shadow. >> We do have a warrant for the groundhog's arrest. >> If not, we'll be swearing one out soon. >> All right. >> Item 14. >> I make a motion we adjourn. >> Second. >> All in favor. >> See you in two weeks. >> Well, not really. Oh, sure.