001[Music] all right I'd like to call to order the special meeting tonight Thursday March 7th of the Board of Finance I'd like to start the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance all right do we have any public comment none perfect all right we're gonna move on to new business and discuss the budget discussion land use is gonna be up first all right my name is Alice do I'm the director of land use I have a very nice quick PowerPoint hopefully I'll just read this too so Shawn understands what we're talking about it asks accomplishments since last year land use Department includes Fire Marshal building health Oh hold on good pause oh there it goes is the container yeah the land-use Department is Fire Marshal building health inland wetlands conservation planning zoning Zoning Board of Appeals
002economic and Community Development and and that's about it the budgets that I'm presenting tonight are for building health planning which includes Inland Wetlands EBA planning and zoning and then economic development and conservation the fire marshal is going to be presenting with the police and the fire stations on March 14th I'm doing the presentation primarily for the sake of expediency so I will try to answer your questions I'll just read through this the land-use department endeavors to provide a smooth transparent process for development applications whether for the individual residential homeowner or for the commercial developer or property owner pre-application meetings prior to submission of larger complex commissioned applications can be informally reviewed prior submission by our development team services made up of building health fire wetland zoning planning and police and economic development actually this is
003and the First Selectman intends them as well this has been extremely helpful to businesses interested in coming to Brook fields as we are one of the few towns to have such a group in place meeting consistently to assist in permitting there was a great deal of work this year needed or this past year after the macro burst inmate 2018 as far as determining safety of homes and other structures getting permits going as quickly as possible in helping residents recover from the storm view permit which is our online permitting system was really crucial in processing than the large amount of permits that have come into the office since this storm there are hundreds of permits for demolition repairs residing reroofing propane tanks generators etcetera that we processed it did take several months for many residents to
004reach payment or notification from their insurance company and as a result there's been a demand for extra help in the office to process these and we're still getting requests for permits as work from the storm is still being completed and actually just this week there's been another demolition taking place for a house that was has been destroyed and some people just don't have the money yet to do it so it has been a quite a long process this is just an example of some of the damages that we experienced what you all of course know about we began the process of transitioning to viewpoint cloud from view permit this past year this should allow us more flexibility and application management and ease for our residents we've also made online permitting much more simple with the
005ability to pay online as well and it sounds that we're planning on having credit card payment and PayPal or excuse me stripe available on Town Hall we're hoping to get approval for office remodeling as well in order to bring our office up to OSHA standards and to make all staff more efficient as well as having a more user-friendly customer area with computer kiosks and scanners in order to allow customers to submit their permits and other applications online as far as the operating budget all the land use departments have overlapping work and approvals a building permit needs to be approved in almost all cases by wetland zoning health WPC a fire and building and we're all in one office which makes it very convenient for us to communicate with each other as well as the public
006so what we did was decided that the cost of permitting and satellite imagery work would come out of the land use budgets rather than have some come out of building some from out of land use etc there's going to be an increase in the land use budget and a decrease in the building budget as all the aforementioned costs are no longer shared by the various departments but will be in the land use budget this includes the online permitting copiers and phones another budget change is the cost of legal notices in the Pennysaver and occasionally in the new news times when we have weeks where the Pennysaver isn't published this cost is approximately twenty one thousand nine hundred dollars and is being reclassified for the town clerk's budget to the various individual departments land use posts
007a minimum of twelve public notices a month in the painting saver for Commission results public hearings and other state mandated postings there's also a reclassification of the administrative assistant for fire and health her salary had previously been through the Health Department but will now be split between fire and health and then also again due to the May 2018 macro burst there was been a large increase in permitting most of this is reflected in the building department and we did add a part-time administrative aide for the increase but I think that's been taken out of the budget by the selectmen conservation and Kirksey budgets have been combined they used to be two separate budgets and there's an overall decrease in those two budgets of 5% which only comes to 1148 dollars but so the one capital
008expenditure that we've put in for is land office remodel this would be a redesign of all spaces in Town Hall so it would be an overall town hall looking at the entire building with particular attention to the land use office in our office we have between 15 and 20 employees in a fairly very poorly organized space there was money used to redesign the land use faults maybe five years ago however the rest of the office is made up of leftover things that other offices get rid of like dividers we also went to Siemens when they went out of business and we're able to replace some of our worst equipment with things that they were throwing out it's also extremely difficult to concentrate in the current environment with employees helping residents the counter people are on
009the phone copiers scanners printers employees talking to each other we also have developers lawyers and attorneys come to our office and sit at a back table that we have and it is really noisy sometimes and it's not appropriate really for us to wear any noise counseling cancelling headphones because we also have to help customers and there is some pictures of our office questions No okay you did you say that the bad news budget to be up in the building buildings down there is an error every seeing them in in building department if you look at the original budget for 2018-19 and you look at 53 910 which is which had been technical consulting and is now departments specific outside services its 20,000 and it it transcribed incorrectly as minus two hundred dollars so it's actually
010a decrease of 30% for the operating cost minus salaries and wages so that was just fail and that was there the rows are hidden and that was me I was reclassifying the trying because we had him all combined in one department and you know I fixed that today so it's 200 it's zero now so it's 23,000 150 for the operating costs for 2018 that was permanent and they now have sixteen thousand six hundred twenty four thirty percent decrease this is a general question and this might be outside the control of the department but the the increases in Union wage is kind of jump out and I'm just wondering is that mandated discretionary so that's on that worksheet that you have but they have all their clerks got that extra bump this year the for the
011Union so they're higher than 2% I think they got an extra about six thousand dollars the when we negotiated with a union job it have become clear over the years that the job of the assistant town clerk let's say and the assistant town had almost completely melted and merged they were all doing the same thing so our lawyer they asked for an increase to equalize the the assistant level and our town lawyer who works on this Pat Mikhail said if we go to arbitration on this they'll win these people and there were seven people in that position okay that went out okay that's it we didn't wanna go to arbitration and on the off-site they certainly deserved it extremely hard sits deep cut one area that was for the part-time for time in the building
012the seasonal part-time and seasonally yeah yeah that's a big rocking increases went from we went from zero basically because you know I see them yeah the the storm created a huge influx of permits and we couldn't keep up and whether that will be over okay it's questionable plus we decide I decided to take this out because we just have to limit what we're doing and if we still see increased development increased permits we may need to come back right understand it should start to roll off when you hopefully yeah and with you point cloud hopefully to be able to get by with no is that all the way establish viewpoint clowder you said you got the credit cards it that's still coming yeah that's still coming actually we're right now transitioning to a few point
013clouds from a few permit probably next month it's a big learning curve for everybody some more so than others sorry you mentioned the money to the capital request for reconfiguring the office but I don't know that was that taken out well I took it out to get help everybody's gonna make that face I'm gonna make I just wanted to make the board's aware of analysis department we have 15 to 18 people in about the same space that three people are in in the town clerk's office they are just jammed and we're gonna have to do something and sometimes if you go to like a coal or Herman Miller they'll design office spaces for you have the hope that you'll buy their equipment I don't think we can afford either of those or you could hire
014a designer to come in see what people do see what their specific tasks and activities are and then design a space because we're really jammed analysis it's it's crazy and we got to keep these Department these departments together because the fire marshals always talking to the building yeah right and you got to keep them closed and all the files are there in the wall oh we also have the streetscape great no mouse keys in our offices yeah so so so you want to have free services maybe we put 20,000 in yep if we had to hire a designer to sign it okay that's why I couldn't figure out how and we took it out so maybe we can do it first you could have saved two minutes on that Steve yeah very dude miss very
015much which one all right first of all thank you for the [Music] response and the cruisers also just the snow it's the general condition of the road yeah borders are very very clear when you go to Bethel does your talent well that's our road paving program and you can really see it now visible you know close to the Newtown border ya know go to house it go down up to South this site driving through a minefield the minute you hit new town so I said something to an Rosenthal the First Selectman in Newtown I said can you fix that he says I already have I tell people it's in Brookville I thought it might be a new time policy that they keep their rights like that to sort of damp into traffic and they'll like
016to lavon's yeah yeah that's ridiculous okay all right I guess so get started but as you all know I'm Ralph Tedesco and this is the Department of Public Works 2019 2020 budget presentation I just like to start off usually for the people don't know itself that well just telling us what our mission is and what we do who we are so basically the fishermen of the Department of Public Works is to provide the citizens of the town of with the best possible services and the most efficient and economical way possible I bet I have a list of all kinds of things that we do under there but I have a couple more slides that I could get into a little bit more detail about the things that we actually do but who we are the
017Department Public Works is actually made up of two departments where the highway department that's the obvious one and we're also the fifth specific facilities department and the head of the facilities area is Sheldon Conn he's not here tonight but he's kind of James's equivalent on the facility side the highway department consists of a diversified group of 13 individuals with a combined over 250 years of experience so they know what they're doing but it's a good mix we have a good mix down there it's a good mix of older guys and younger guys we're starting to see a little bit of that transition and some of our newer guys are starting to become some of the older guys and some of the older guys are starting to retire and we're bringing new new people into the
018things so it's a dynamic thing it's something that's continually happening and that experience is being passed on to the new people our basic responsibilities two hours to install drainage for all of our road paving projects we normally pave several miles of road per year so all of that training is brand new drainage when we pave a road all the catch basins all the pipe that we put in it's a brand new system so basically when we reclaim and pave a road the people are getting a brand new road including including the Audrina the obvious thing we do in the winter we've talked about a little bit already is snow plowing and salting the general maintenance of the town right away which is included it's all of the trees that you see any drainage swells that
019run along the edge of the road there within the right away all the signs anything that you might see in the town right away is something that we're responsible I also like to point out sometimes it's forgotten we're first responders to a wide variety of emergencies snow is the obvious one but a good example for this year is the macro burst our guys were the first guys out there I mean we were working alongside our source during that entire storm we cleared the roads and if we didn't get out there first there would be no EMS they'd be no fire there would be no police to be no response so sometimes people forget that but we're a first responder the first first responder and we're also responsible for the town's fleet the facilities Department like
020I said is managed by Sheldon Conn and we're responsible for the Town Hall the Senior Center the police department the library town garage Old Town Hall and other minor structures on a daily basis and both do whatever were called upon sometimes we've come to the schools and give some aid there and we're cooperative with the Parks and Recreation Department and whoever may be cause but these are our major responsibilities what did we accomplish this year sometimes people forget but the winter actually ended in April this year and then we were soon hit by a may 15 that microburst the deep that I'll never forget it certainly took a lot out of me as well as a lot of other people in the town but like I said we immediately open the roads we were first
021first responders we worked alongside eversource to fire the police the EMS we got people where they needed to be when they needed to be there for were sixty-two thousand cubic yards of material collected that includes our roadside picker as well as things residents brought to a yard as well as trees that we cut and things we brought to the yard ourselves so that's that's a lot of material and we on the facility side we had damage to our Town Hall roof we replaced an air conditioning at the replot at the library and a recycling truck was struck by a tree so that was repaired as well bunch of the compliments I put this is actually in your packages I'm not gonna read everything we did but the point of these slides is just to show
022you that in addition to the bad winter and the response to the macro burst we continued our regular duties as well some of the highlights are we we paved 1.6 miles a roadway we reclaimed and paved we have more to come in the spring of 2019 because a lot of that money was delayed and being spent because of the macro burst where we still almost got to mile done and we cracked seal 2.5 miles of roadway does an MS 4 program the MS 4 is actually a fancy word for stormwater management so that's our drainage system we created a digital mapping platform for the MS 4 program so basically we have a platform you could go on to the website see just about every catch basin in town we're starting to add the pipe work
023into that system as well and that's a requirement of the DEP of the state of Connecticut so we're trying to meet all of those mandates and get everything done in an appropriate way we maintain a fleet of over 100 plated plated vehicles so we main tagged hundreds and hundreds of dangerous trees removed we're just going through a list of the FEMA trees today I have to do a finger report for the trees that were removed and get GPS locations on basically every stump that's out there and just in the favorite trees alone we have about a hundred trees that removed that's in addition to the normal trees we would remove an hourly basis like I said their residential brush arthas man successfully it was extremely busy this year for a period of time it was
024open 7 days a week for a period of almost a month so we man that with additional manpower and hours we responded to hundreds of rain as residents generated work orders way more than usual because of the macro burst in addition to the normal 300 or so we get on a regular basis and we replace all of our antiquated vehicles as you know because you give us the money for that I talked about the ms4 and the work order so move on on the facility set we replaced hot-water heaters a number of buildings we're in the process of designing Windows for the library I believe it's been removed from the capital budget but we do have we will have a window design by the end of this year so whenever we do decide to replace
025the windows rivetti we'll be ready for the big four bid with documents and specifications we completed the specifications for the gas pump canopy which you granted us the money for last year and we successfully bended that project and we expect construction of the canopy in the spring that will protect our gas pumps our new tanks as well as the people who are pumping gas in inclement weather as usual where you play several of the HVAC units in the town hall this 53 units traditionally two of them golf per year so they're probably on about a twenty to twenty-five year cycle and we have that in the capital budget again this year that's a necessity because it's inevitably going to happen on 52 he pumps 53 themed pumps whatever it may be we actually run a
026hazardous waste date with the town in New Milford it's regional but Google for coordinates that we hold in a New Milford and 600 residents persistent participated while the parking lot lights were replaced at the Town Hall we've got a grant from bright ideas and we were able to replace our inefficient lighting with LED lights which are more Chinese you have more energy efficient so it's a win in two ways we did it for free and we're going to save money on electric and as part of our duties we do daily maintenance at the Town Hall Police Department Senior Center library town garage and park strip and Recreation building their goals for 2019-20 rather than read this it's to do a lot of the same we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do everything we making with
027different projects and different vehicles so with that I'm done if you have any questions so starting on the on the expenses and no complaints obviously because the overall zero bug up to that to items that go down substantially to not only down to master cook down to three 2015 levels but wondering how that done the same insult in the vehicle field how how how that was well the scent the sand and salt I do expect a bit of a surplus for this year I open to end the year with a full salt barn and based on if you remember about three years ago there was a salt shortage so the prices the price is escalated and they went from like $70 a ton to almost $90 of time so basically for this year I budgeted
028less than ninety but higher much higher than 70 and priced prices of salt over the years have been coming down so basically that reflects a full salt barn as well as reduced prices so from the soil shortens in the end three or three or four years ago fuel is based on your contract that's about that contract price we contract our fuel Mitchell II got part of it I figured who live and everything Mitchell is doing it this year but we contracted a price and based on average usage that's what that's what the number comes out to something and then on the capital side I don't wanna go through all share a glass session but I have a question specifically without the tape okay and you're in you're out we put in 1.5 million dollar roads
029are great but half but how do we know 1.5 is the right number should it be 1.7 should be problem with four I mean how do we know that we're basically into a calculation this various methods to pave roads is reclaiming pave which is the most expensive method is milling fills which are less expensive but less efficient cost wise and then this micro pays and things like that so we have a hundred miles of road in town so if you think of it this way since you have a hundred miles of road and they aged one year that means you lose 100 Rulin mile ears now for every method that you use for example reclaiming and paving and 17 so few 17 years so if you reclaim and pave one mile of road you're in
030seventeen years to your system so basically with all the methods available on the money that you've given me I figure out how much money we could put into various methods of paving and then if the total is 100 that means we are status quo if it totals over 100 that means we're improving our system and so the most people tell me just so what what would the effect be of that 1.5 budget went down to 1.4 out of here put it this way to reclaim in favor alleys approximately $300,000 so if you take 300 thousand dollars out of the budget you're essentially removing 17 to 20 Road mile years so basically you're moving backwards you're adding 80 wrote model years to your system so you're losing 20 miles off of your system you might not
031see it in a year or two or three but over the course of time as you don't maintain the status quo we have an overall Road rating system it's called the pavement condition index PCI and currently we're at about a seventy so if you don't put the money into your roads and you put a an eighty mile road mile you're it might be at a 68 next year and then the next year you might be at a 65 64 but it's going to be a gradual decline based on the money not specifically what they really do look at is that you're putting enough money into your budget to maintain your buildings and your roads they don't have specific questions like that what they don't want to see is you digging into your general fund or
032operating expenses they really just like and there is a way gap generally accepted accounting principles has a way that an alternative where you could put the road conditions right in the financial statements but there is no state no town in the state of Connecticut that does that because it takes a lot of engineering costs every year to and a lot of auditing cost to do that you said the money we give you you make work however are we giving enough to meet the goals we should be meeting yeah we've added 100 or 100 plus remaining years every year since I've been getting the 1.5 million dollars comfortable yes I mean that's bad yeah I mean since it's so formulaic you might not have been if it was one point for how many wrote my husband
033hated well like I said if you base it upon them reclaiming pave which is predominantly the most expensive and you're adding seventy and you give us one hundred thousand dollars less that's probably one third of seventeen so six little loose explode my own ears got me right down that formula and sender come to my office tomorrow well and I think you know with the cost of asphalt we may at some point need to up that number regicide see what the price it's been pretty steady right yes in steady but the good thing about the condition of our roads is that we could do more microwaves so basically if you want to get two more formulation um hey REE claimant pave will cost you approximately a dollar thirty per square yard to do a paving project
034to gain seventeen-year-old mile years am at a might a micro pave will cost approximately $1 to nineteen ninety cents to a dollar to gain about seven role in well years so if you do the efficiency math on that you'll see that it's more efficient to buy years by doing micro pays rather than doing reclaims and paves like I said milling fills are like the most blessed fish so basically since our rows are in good conditions we could do more micro pave so we could buy more Road mile years at a reduced cost so I think the roads are awesome selfie and intel says old guy I thought I already had it I like the way they emphasize the question of the developers windows I know the last year we brought that I'm just looking at
035the capital item and there was a remaster $425,000 they've got reduced to $5 yep what does 5,000 get you in library windows every place windows in my house yeah so sue Slater was at the library and she looked at it and we looked at the pictures this is to repair the cupola right on the pass which is leaking rotted wood it's dangerous so I talked to Ralph and Ralph said yeah but we think we can do that for about $5,000 so of those windows we're gonna partly piecemeal it and then when we make a decision because that needs to be done right away so can you believe label this Capitol item from library windows the library Cooper yeah they're always knows in the cupola yeah there are windows oh you're right so we'll put a
036library Cooper audience it's better if goodness angry all right anything else yes so that so there's two vehicles remaining that were not sure actually if you want to see this nice presentation without James doctoral high-waist away if I suppose it's got some pictures of our viewing with the condition if they're in but this is the truck go on replace justice woods and disturb this place but we do recycle it down system and became the chip truck that you drive around new chips no cyclone alert rough in that position and put a new truck first align vehicle questioning us $230,000 three plates that would 19 2009 teen 2020 which will block budding flow and this this is one of the trucks that's still in the butter themselves yeah this is another truck that's still in yeah
037it's an all another all season smaller zone clickable one-ton dumpling all season body on back dumps into Tulsa stands public release their private reasons has been rebuilt placed in the back in the cab retina Rodney your question when at $40,000 clicks that was to build 19 2012 Ford and that's like 50 or couple well we I think was we add I'm sure this cos asked every year but any sound Italia what gets rid of her when it wasn't a plan for the those two sweeping quickly one Belfield zircon with the working engine and take a little local website people pick them up second so maybe one of the thousand dollars maybe get somebody wants the engine wheel I mean a cop car it might go to phone you you know that's where to go next
038this is no longer in the but this was in the budget but the fourth level cut it out so it's a ten-mile truck leave some cosmetic work on the floorboards Fred Flintstone we have a helps welder fabricator bags often try to get another years and a mini excavator we were meant to share these were just up get partner action for different jobs and that again selecting Club though and for the second year school just let them so I go back to that last one and that oh wait that's trees if you wanted to talk about trees we're ready for that too with the excavator I'm just looking at that and thinking about the macro burst and like what that probably would have gonna help the trails are so free we have a larger Aires on
039our roof joke but when you entities traveling down on about coupes and stuff you're not gonna be looking a little beauty in it who knows what this is more efficient to do that you know swells our office or that store and small drainage projects daily practice they can use for ball full restoration plantation it will be a joint feature quickly how long businesses at least twenty years since the Lexia SF last how often do you rent the machine for $500 a day well between departments we praise you more if we get in the house but the appraiser 10 times a year we know it takes a day to go you know I gotta get it dig forward or go get pick it up right back good a job and I think they forgot was plenty
040aw you see that doesn't include parking right you stay probably using another truck to drive escapes you still about 10 days a year case we're excited to announce our dollars a year not the one locked cuz parks and refuges in six 120 thousand dollars the spirits to rent good rented every time you kill them look not every can we get the advertiser it's over 20 years if the Bartlet will forget the number I mean instead of saying about 10 days do we have that number something well they don't have one now so that all the rest it when you say the rent think do we know how big times we rented here to get a history of we rented it three or four but we don't we're using more if we had it I don't
041think I had this if we read it ten times a year it's pays for itself in a few years they're doing it from I think I think what Jesus is trying to say is that it would be a useful piece of equipment and we're operating somewhat inefficiently now even though we're only rented it for or so times this year it doesn't reflect the need for because they try to make do with the equipment they have so although we only rent it at for time that we might use it twenty times if we actually have it and our job to be more efficiently get done quicker and better part directly with more thrills small them being up trees down they were used one to tell him all thing I didn't want to go to bed until
042mom and I know we read them passage to reduce of all fields I just don't I just don't like James go renting equipment I was joke - no it was more my volume or to rent them than the Honan now I was just Cuban that's all it means that something I guess - with the musical project placement and losing the soccer cousin would be more potential options do you agree it's an additional transit know there would be a definitely a nice piece of equipment to have this for sure this is the town on how their excavators you know we learned you 135 genders great two and a half times sex with it okay he says you do more instruction that's a very weird thing it's kind of productive this guy yeah Charlotte you there you
043had any questions very rounded treats you would like to talk about that actually actually in our not operating budget is it is a tree budget but you'll see that we increase the the money that we're putting towards trees this year one for obvious reason is the macro burst we're still cleaning up Deadwood and trees that we're leaning over that are not dying and in addition to that there is the what did he call that the mo magic is actually starting around time you see that species are straight but woodpeckers busy they want to give to other layer and those boards in between the work in the wood yeah this notice actually came out from the state of Connecticut alerting us about this creature and we are starting to see their effects that's an example of
044what what teams were just talking about and if you ride around town and look for that you'll see a lot of that we also the Maples Bank and relish two years we did dry seasons killing off affecting the language this is just some damage from the macro burst some of the things we responded to that was stumped on the side of the road and the bottom ones look like these still River Trail and that's it thank you thanks for having us Parks and Rec like good morning apologize in advance anybody who's a parent here knows that your kids always get sick at the least opportune times and my son was home from school on Tuesday afternoons at home and now the thing is going through our whole house so I tried to time my cold
045medicine in order to be as coherent and that easy to understand as possible but please bear with me because I am fighting off something right now I have security you know can be contaminating everything before I leave that for those of you and I haven't had the pleasure of meeting my name is Mary Knox I work for the parking BEC Department for quite some time mostly recently was promoted to director back in March of 2018 just in time for the Mac reverse so when people think about the parks department what people know we do is mowing and lawn care and all the parks schools and basically owned properties maintenance and lining of the ball fields the grass and turf including the fields in all the schools garbage removal at the park school properties and other
046municipal owned properties and leaf removal and fall and snow removal in the winter at school properties and other municipal owned properties what we also do is operation and maintenance of the irrigation systems and seasonal water systems buildings including restrooms at Town Hall Cadogan Park in the town beach maintenance at all the playgrounds at the schools as well as the kids Kingdom in the town beach trail maintenance including small tree removal beautification projects and yes we even hang the wreath at the front entrance of Town Hall every year that is gifted to the town by the garden club we respond to damage to property caused by weather events including wind rain and snow most recently on May 16 2008 een the parks department began our response to the map reversed which as we all know deeply
047affected numerous facilities including Brookfield High School the Town Hall Cadogan Park the town each and there's the river Greenway so we were dealing with things from fence repairs bleacher repairs turf repairs feeding on the turf and even the Town Hall Christmas tree so we had a lot of different things that took a lot of our attention over the summer and well into the fall these tasks and many more are accomplished with our four full-time employees including working supervisor contractor services and seasonal employees are used to supplement our labor force during peak times throughout the year the other part of our department is a recreation department and what people know that we do we have popular after-school programs especially for kindergartners and first-graders at thunder school and grades two through four and huckleberry we have our
048Friday night ski and snowboard trips with 150 students in grades 5 through 12 and a dedicated group of volunteer chaperones youth basketball leagues for boys and girls in grades 1 through 12 and special events for the community including our annual egg hunts the Halloween 5k talha Trick or Treat magic shows and many more what we also do is our 11 week concert from the Park series each summer fully funded by sponsorship revenue we're responsible for the seasonal operation of the town park Beach and hiring and training staff to provide a robust aquatics program including swimming lessons and the growth of muskrat swim team we plan and supervise at least eight weeks of camp each summer often with five or more camps running concurrently each week we offer a variety of adult education enrichment classes in
049addition to adult fitness classes and open gyms we work with the town's social services department to offer program discounts and scholarships to those in need and these tasks and many more are accomplished with three full-time employees myself as director our recreation supervisor Dan Gagne and our administrative assistant was grabbed so I figured if I'm you I don't know what's different from last year so this is what's different we have an increase fourteen thousand four hundred eighty seven dollars in total of that five hundred excuse me five thousand five hundred and seventy is a union contract increase for the parks department and we're also looking to align our actual ot closer to what we actually spend every year so our four thousand seven hundred twenty eight dollars that we're requesting in addition to what we were
050funded last year is a very conservative estimate and below any actual for the last three fiscal years and they'll spend a little bit more time talking about that on the next slide under projects equipment facility maintenance we have a total increase of sixteen thousand five hundred and eighteen dollars requested of that the equipment maintenance and repair we're requesting a 20-foot equipment trailer at a cost of four thousand three hundred five dollars and a lower deck at a cost of four thousand four hundred twenty dollars which are included in our operating budget visitor for guidelines that account for more than fifty percent of our total increase we have a five thousand dollar new item request and technical supplies for engineered claim product for ball fields and we expect this product to help us reduce a number
051of renounce on baseball and softball field so basically when you buy a load of clay you're kind of getting look at the draw the engineer clay is going to give us a higher clay content and less silt and it's going to help us firm up the fields and decrease the rate outs we have an additional three thousand dollars in technical supplies to fund replenishing the playground mulch twice per year it's a wonderful slide thank you very much very solid if that could be yeah if I could understand that yes every act every increase explaining loved it thank you I appreciate that feedback so for the parks operating budget ot we can see here in fiscal year 2016 we had a total of twenty two thousand six hundred ninety-four dollars funded our actual miss twenty eight
052thousand two hundred eighty four dollars and eighty two cents and our cost per crew our for four men would be one hundred and fifty dollars and thirty nine cents moving to fiscal year 2017 we have ot funded at twenty two thousand six hundred ninety four dollars the actual spent was thirty two thousand three hundred twenty three dollars and the cost per crew our for for is one hundred and fifty three dollars and forty cents 2018 ot funded again twenty two 694 more sensing a pattern here ot actual is thirty seven to thirty to ninety six and the cost per crew our for for again is 150 for twenty eight and then for fiscal year 2019 we did receive a small increase I think somebody was trying to kind of make up the difference from any
053potential salary increases last year we went up to 22,000 147 and as of the end of February were already at twenty two thousand and fifty million dollars so we have less than hundred dollars left and our cost per hour is why is it difficult to predict that number I'm glad that you asked that question so it's difficult to predict the number because storm response is a moving target so as much as we want the storms to come between 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and non holidays unfortunately you know we can't control that and so as much as we try our best to estimate what we need you know holiday storm a weekend storm you know the significant storm that we have this past weekend which requires a larger response the Fiocchi throws
054really quickly and so to be truthful in my opinion we've we've been underfunded for quite some time and our goal here is not to make a tonal correction per se but just to kind of move in the right direction and then look for other efficiencies as well so we're hoping to kind of get closer to where we except I would agree with you and with that request and I did a little I did a little math and you know even to get back to the level that we were funded in in 2016 in terms of how many hours were given we need to be up to thirty thousand eight hundred and twenty eight dollars so again I recognize that we're always looking for cost efficiencies I know that if I were on the board Finance
055I'd be looking for a conservative numbers as opposed to inflated so I feel like we're asking for just under the actual in 2016 with the goal of you know doing what we can to find efficiencies but recognizing that we may not you know it might be a two step process we might be kind of making headway this year and then we might be coming back to you next year and saying okay we make some headway and now this is where we really feel like we need today we do have some control you know the storms again totally beyond your control anytime Public Works is out we're out as well with a school parking lots but we also have increases that our facilities on the weekends and so we have a lot of garbage Cleanup is
056one of our more fun jobs that we get to do and since the silver greenways open and we have so many good community events we find ourselves needing to go out on the weekends it's actually better in our opinion to have our own people doing that as opposed to even contracting it out because when they're out picking up the garbage they can go check other facilities where contractor labor would not necessarily give us that same level of a service 2018 is funded at 22,000 that the actual was 37 that 715 and that was found somewhere in the budget so that was from the macro first so yeah so 2080 17 is still $10,000 almost where do we find the money you know our year yeah the type of thing before there were the things that
057didn't happen that were the programs that weren't able to happen and you know I I can't honestly speak to that because it was it yeah I'm in this position at the time but I I I think your conjecture you know it would be reasonable that I've see their content through operating or funds transfer affirmative are now we're gonna remember a fair bit of this will be reimbursed by FEMA at some point in the future but yeah you're still gonna have these expenses yeah I'll be really as I like the whole approach to the whole thing I like the fact of how its laid out and I like the fact how you're saying you put a little bit more in but you're gonna try to work with it you're not gonna put the maximum in and
058you're gonna figure it out I think that's the approach we're looking for almost is I'm not wrong and I love the else love it yeah I mean wages the Union sent by Union yes three out of the four of our crew are the now you can ask to with the you know thinking that this is snow removal and that type of stuff do you have the equipment that you need to efficiently use these the crew of you is it for an excavator thank you see fermenting yes we've been very fortunate so we are going to be looking to find some new efficiencies going forward on a bobcat tool cab that we currently use for some snow removal on sidewalks we're going to be looking to perhaps get a Brian strata to help solve the Sanwa
059sidewalks in that manner going forward but that's not for this budget year yep okay so for our recreation operating budget drivers we have total of fourteen thousand three hundred and seven dollars increase in salaries and wages most of that is found by union contract salary increase much like the land use Department was speaking about earlier there's a more significant increase unusual we did introduce over time for our administrative assistant right now twenty is a conservative estimate she does work at a lot of special events that we have during the course of the year and it's just reasonable to have that in our budget and then our Park and Rec Commission secretary for 10 full meetings and then there's a small salary increase with that as well and all of the other parking wrap excuse me
060recreation lines total two thousand and thirty-two dollars those can be broken down to an increase from the cost of our software report for our each Rock software an alignment of communication line to what we're currently paying for the same services and then a small increase in cost for the installation removal and the storage of the docks at the Town Beach as well as smallest every repair or so as the docks age we have to replace more teams and weeks and things along those lines so I was hoping to spend a lot of my time with you this evening concentrating on a few of the capital projects so the Board of Selectmen very understandably decided to fund $50,000 into a capital reserve account for the replacement of the birth of high school tennis courts and at
061that level of funding it would take us about six years in order to have enough in the account in order to replace them so the tennis courts are one of two of the high priority capital projects that the partner mint commission would like to talk about so I actually took these pictures on one of those beautiful days back in February that we had there was no snow and I figured this is the perfect time to go and capture kind of what we what we come to every spring when the courts reopened so the high school tennis teams actually take to the courts on March 16th for their first day and right now they're locked we're trying to allow things to settle back and what's going to happen is that the lines that we see here
062are either going to settle down or they're going to turn into Crocs and we never quite know which one we're going to be dealing with every March so we do have some constraints of what kinds of repair work we can do and we often need to do emergency repairs which we would just be using concrete and then we have to wait a few weeks and then we have to repaint the courts and those in those particular patches so it's certainly not an ideal situation for the high school tennis team because at the start of their season the courts are not in the prediction that we would walk for them also of note here the cracks that you see I'm not sure how clear the picture is up on the screen but you see some different
063colors and you can also see maybe some kind of tape underneath and that just shows you that a lot of these cracks that we're seeing again are on the same areas that were repaired before so we're not fixing the problem when we do the crack sealing we get maybe six months maybe a year sometimes up to two years but we're just kind of patching the problem so I hesitate to say that it's it's fixing the issue so the tennis courts are 40-plus years old I played on these when I was in in high school here actually not on the tennis team I wasn't that good but I did do PE classes so our current practice is we do crack sailing we touch-up paint every year and so as I mentioned each winter and spring with
064a freeze and thaw cycle we have new cracks develop and old cracks reopen and we repair many of the same spots over and over again so there's no long-term guarantee and the average extends over the past few years it's usually around $10,000 in fiscal year 2019 the former director brought forward a proposal for a $550,000 for the demolition of the existing courts and to build five new post-tensioned concrete courts and to light them so recognizing that we might need to be a little bit more conservative in our approach for fiscal year 2020 we're looking for three hundred and thirty thousand dollars just to replace the four courts that we have and after meeting with a contractor he feels at the creative the current courts is sufficient enough for us to build right on top of
065them and save any potential cost of demolition we would not suggest lighting in the first stage but we could do the very limited underground work necessary in anticipation of a possible light project in the future so you would leave the courts that are there now and just put the post attention right a pop right on top of them interesting yes so this falls under Parks and Rec so it's not in the school's ten-year plan you know it's not enough schools everything outside the school building I thought they seem to have we've been building a reserve at all or is this the first year most post-tensioning it's the style of building them so basically the concrete floats so anything that's going on below the subsurface is not going to affect the surface of the courts and
066they put rods yes there's a rise on feet and tighten them up and it just keeps it all we have that over cadogan it seems to be working very well yeah it's very much stuff so the question really is you know at what point do we continue to invest in the repairs every year and at what point do we read them and that's a question for the Board of Finance for sure another question they have with the tennis courts is what the condition of the existing condition of the courts is that preventing us from hosting tennis matches that are at the high school up until this point uh you know we've had to do some rescheduling of Hill matches before but we have to be able to fix them and to reschedule and to have
067post the matches again we're going to the emergency repair so in the springtime in the early spring we're doing emergence and repair work which is is not guaranteed at all and so we're basically this kind of patching the problem later in the season in the fall and the late summer or to the late summer early fall we can go in and do a little bit more crack filling and repair and actually last year we were funded twenty five thousand dollars in order to do some significant crack sealing and then to repaint the entire court all four courts and when I got an estimate for that work the estimate came in at thirty seven thousand nine hundred dollars so so we decided at the time that we would kind of take away tints the approach and
068that we no matter what we did in the fall was going to likely reopen this spring so we were going to go ahead and address the spring knowing that we already have that $25,000 we probably don't need more than five or six or seven to correct the courts in the short term and then perhaps that money is better spent actually putting it towards rebuilding the new courts how long did a new courts last they're guaranteed structurally for 20 years ah we would need to repaint them after about eight or nine years on to the high school back here so again another one of our capital project priorities is the replacement of the bacteria dat the high school and again understandably the Board of Selectmen recommended $50,000 to go into a reserve fund we had requested
069five hundred thousand dollars for their replacement so a little bit of background about what happens when you put in a turf field so initially you can see that the the top picture the fibers are upright the infill is high and the field looks like that for about a year so basically the field was installed say the fall of 2007 into the 12 2008 that's what it looked like going down to the settling period years two through five again approximately fall 2008 through fall 2012 the fibers start to settle down they're laying over there holding in the crumb rubber which is what what provides the cushion for the impact and and that's that's the sweet spot of the field for years two through five when you have mature filled for your six through eight which brings
070us about through the fall of 2015 the fibers are laid over and the info height remains at its ideal level and it can go for about six or eight years from the initial installation so through Chuck 2015 or feel to be considered a mature field and now current conditions in February two thousand nineteen and I apologize because the slides really do depict very very good pictures in terms of what you would see if you actually walked the field but you can see there's actually a lot of worn areas and I didn't bring the measurement tool with me when I went to take the pictures but I did have on my employee lanyard so I kind of use that as a little guy so basically you know when I pulled on on the fiber it's you
071know about a centimeter less than half an inch so we're having a lot of wear and again this is not scientific that was me picking up one place just out of random but you know we do have some concern that the field is is wearing quite a bit and and we're not sure if it can if it can last long enough in order to continue to just put that fifty thousand dollars away for the next eight years that we would need when was the field the best information that I could get was the fall of 2007 when it opened and so it would have been the spring of 2007 there was it's a little bit hard to to follow the process at the high-school fields as those of us that were in town back then
072know the stadium field was the first one laid and then they did the back field second but there was a pop of the stadium field so the back field open first and so to the best of my knowledge and ability deduce fall of 2007 is when I believe it was opened and what is the expected I think of what is the thank you so the average is anywhere between eight and twelve years so we're very much at the end of the life expectancy for the field and still it's still supposed to be cheaper to have a turf field than maintaining the grass it's hard to see the one lump sum yeah so you can make a lot of different arguments in terms of the man-hours and the seeding and the cutting that certainly is going
073to offset some of the cost of having the turf field what's not really quantifiable in terms of monetary savings would be the extra use that the team's really enjoy being able to use the turbo you know with all the grass fields are closed and so you know it from where I'm sitting that's that's an equally important consideration for the turf I think if you look at it a per hour of use a turf field is less expensive but just for to maintain a grass field unless you are using golf course level you know us open level maintenance it's cheaper for grass but you don't get anywhere in years you yeah understood yeah the weather's been a shame we weren't reserving since yeah he's longer since we knew who was a limited life expectancy but gotta
074start somewhere that agreed and and so when the field was first approved and installed the town actually was aware that it had a shelf life and and it was about ten years and now were on year eleven to twelve and back in fiscal year 2016-17 that might be off by just a year we requested two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the turf replacement and in fiscal year 2017 actually fifty thousand dollars was funded so we already have fifty thousand dollars in a reserve fund which is good news for all of us in fiscal in the next fiscal year again we recognized it as a priority we asked for it and it was postponed it's a big knot we get it you know and then the next year again asked for it was postponed so
075this year we're asking for the five hundred thousand dollars to fully fund the back to our field again since we are fairly confident that we already have 50 in reserve that could be brought down to four hundred and fifty to fifty what with that of covered is opposed to the five hundred so the five hundred is for replacement of the backfield the 250 would have been wall thank you so we have two trails at the high school and so we recognize that they're both going to have to be replaced within a couple of years and so the 250 times four is going to give us both so why now it really has been a plan replacement from this from when it was installed it's not really a surprise to any of us although we wish
076it was the project completion if we plan it can be twelve weeks after we award the bed and if we replace the field you know ahead of needing to close it for any reason we have the luxury of being able to plan the construction at a time what is going to be leased interruption to the Scholastic's or schedules and we do have weather as a consideration we do have to be above 40 degrees so as much as we would like to replace it over the course of the winter that's not going to be an option for for us so the choice is you know should we increase the level of funding for repairs I was quoted recently a repair for a single five by ten patches about five thousand dollars so basically what happens is
077they can take a less worn area of the field likely one of the side and they can cut it out and they can sew it into a more Ward area of the field and we've done that before and when the lacrosse goal creases already so the question is you know how many of those areas do we have on the field how many how much money do we want to sink into repairs and is it better to sink money into repairs is it going to last long enough that we get our money's worth or we just better off going to the replacement that we have when they do that do they take the one piece and put it on edge where they sew some additional you know problems with doing that is you're creating more scenes
078and anytime you have a scene you're gonna have a scene that's gonna start coming apart as well as the sub-base and last but not least we have one piece of equipment that was put back in through the Board of Selectmen for your consideration and that's our Bobcat toolkit and so basically we consider our Bobcat toolkit our fifth crewmember it's really not valuable to us and last year we spent somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to ten thousand dollars on repairs so again we're kind of in a situation that is it better to keep putting money into it or like when you have a car that is six or eight or ten years old you kind of reach a point and you say okay I'm gonna put on the new tires but if it needs an
079alternator I'm done I'm moving on so we kind of have to think about it like that oh I believe in and I'm so sorry because our Park supervisor is not here to help me out but I believe it's seven or eight years old so it does help us with many different tasks lifting heavy equipment we're putting on one of the spreaders onto the plow truck there we use it to maintain the silver Greenway to clear off the debris from the path and then for plowing the snowing of snow either from the school sidewalks or from the from the turf a lot of times you sports or and the Scholastic sports are very anxious to get on to the turf fields even before the snows melted and so we do our best to try to clear
080it off off so they can start their season in mid-march I do wanna thank you for allowing me the opportunity to come and speak may I answer any questions pick one I don't see any requisition here for the tennis court in Williams Park how does that been abandoned no sir that's actually part of our operating so we spend about five thousand dollars a year to recondition it with the Youth Sports that use all of the fields and we activate okay I know as a parent with kids and youth sports that we pay fees and I know that that goes toward cleaner forms of coaching and umpires and stuff like that but is there any revenue that comes from or from the the soccer teams I think that that good to help pay for the maintenance
081of the fields that they use that are outside of the schools and thank you so as of right now the current model is that the sports groups actually pay for a lot of their own expenses associated with using the field so as an example dumpsters porta-potties Fila finding things along those lines are very common expenses of the sport groups are already cover it's not part of the town's budget in terms of us getting you know a per person charge or anything like that and you know we do get like larger projects basically funded through the sports organizations recently the soccer club put up some additional fencing a lower of attack the LaCrosse club gifted the snowplow removal attachment for the Bobcat a couple of years ago so we do have a great working relationship with
082them but it's not so much monetary as project given right now what is the model the other talents to use or is that is that the normal for every sports league as they fee for every participant it's $15 per sport per season and they have about I think two million dollars in a fund that they use to replace all their fields it's a self fulfilling fun just keeps going and going going going that's something we've talked about we've considered there would be a lot of pushback on that but it would be a good way a new town doesn't they've had it for a long time and they have no problem with it at all people would say okay fine 875 bucks for my kid it's $15 more and the fields are maintained and they do
083a very good job there take care of other fields and I know that they're ducking when you travel to other towns and you see like the condition of some of their baseball fields duffle particularly the one overthinking why I mean that's hands down better than anything that we have to I mean I know they've been improvements on our fields in different fields but aren't a lot better than there were 30 years yeah but that's type of model bring us up to a different standard of facilities I don't know you know that's a great long-term question for us to think about we we pride ourselves on having really nice fields here in town as well and I know that throughout the baseball community Bethel is kind of known as the gold standard I have a baseball
084player of my family as well so so you know we're hoping we do our best we are looking for that engineer clay product we're always looking for for new ways to improve the fields and Chris reviews who's our Park supervisor visit there's a great job in trying to stay current you can do the engineer claims a lot less maintenance for your people yes less maintenance for sure it doesn't fly up and and it also is going to forgive me I just lost my train of thought let's be dry let's be dry but does it stick to the uniforms a lot more that I don't know about 1/2 an estimate or OxiClean special clay guaranteed to never come out probably because they wear white pants any other questions I just have one quick question which which
085teams play at Cadogan field so I know those fields are beautiful we have high school teams that ever get to play on that baseball field that's a beautiful baseball for sex song yes so cement yeah in softball is used very often by the by the softball league that we run here at Park and Rec and be BSA also does have use of that field for the girls softball program and always wanted to very impressive thank you losing less so I thank you very much I have a lake up off the asking I don't know if it's possible or not this year if we have a surplus in our budget right from the end of the year who are closing out the year we know we're having extra money for FEMA then we're going to be
086able to put to the general fund about a million if we have extra money this year in the budget can we put it to some of these appropriations like into the fields and put it into the fire department can be taken fifty thousand dollars and put it towards the field instead of dropping into the general fund there we legally allowed to move it to for the fire department some of the truck apparatuses and move it to the park and recs for fields because if we don't have to drop into the channel from bring it out of the general fund can we put the money in and I think I hid under rating and because we have the FEMA money that's coming in can we put that was rated now it is the anticipation of these
087costs that are coming our way and we have a surplus of two hundred thousand dollars at the end of the year why can't we fill it in the future needs and position it yeah you know we're at the level with our general fund we're about a little over ten percent now yes the FEMA money comes in we're gonna be about thirteen this is what I'm saying so we have a little extra money of this year is it time to put it into these pockets for the projects we know are coming are we still gonna be at thirteen F to the Augustus the pitocin yes that those numbers it's ten I think point 35 last time I looked order that yeah there shouldn't be any any adjustments to the general fund that the I think we're
088just talking about placement round ones question so we get back to the end of the erected window we're gonna have like the two hundred thousand but I don't know what it is so please they know I don't break down whatever the number is we need theoretical if we could put fifty thousand towards the fields or whatever it's a fire apparatus or things that we need yeah why not would have been reserves how that would work is a number of different ways that you could do it that's committed fund balance by going to actual town meeting and in doing that that would have to be done by June 30th that you could do it as assigned to fund balance by this board and so that that Board of Finance can't change a board of selectmen can't
089change it if it's going to change somehow it's you guys that change it and what that would do is just take it out of available fund balance and just move it into a separate line you could also within the budget rules go and into a transfer and move it to capital non-recurring but that would take it because it's an additional appropriation that would you'd have to follow the budget rules so we could we could rather than right now just everything kind of over but the fact of goes into unassigned general right we could make the decision to do an assigned to have to do without assigned yeah but we're not right not that we're not funny now you need to have the money in an operating budget going for but we have a little X
090now if you have a decision right so long then we can have a Royal Rumble button who gets the designer I don't know we're trying to reduce the bonding I just know that we're except rad this stuff coming up yeah I not in the shed with the FEMA money we're already getting in a little extra boost so if we're gonna do something like that together so all that would do is just reclassify it kind of like if you have a savings account those of us that are old enough you had a passbook savings account but it wouldn't authorize anyone to spend it to spend it it would have five zeros okay well every year we go we put forth these reserves and I'm not saying that you have to bring them down and keep the
091tax without every year you have to reduce it the fire department reduce these reserves if we have a chance to fill some of these reserves right now so now another one of your hot line is how do you make sure that gets tracked and recorded properly we have a reserve now and six years from now it we make sure it's in the financial statements every year so at least once a year get screwed up you know it's just like this year we put the white Alec scholarship it will be in our financial statement because primarily we do not want some future administration making a mistake and using that money for something else right that's what's there and ring-fenced that's the way to do it right this way we're not burning the taxpayers down the road
092this and the general fund I know it's rainy day funds in decent shape but it's a great idea yeah that's a great idea you know how I mean is there a kind of systemic plan for finding all these reserves in other words when the time comes to make these assignments what kind of criteria are we going to be operating on well you know how are we gonna disperse those and only do we have a kind of long term for the big behind invisible to everybody fire departments come to us with an entire plan it's every one of their pieces of equipment here's the years they want to replace it here's what the estimate the cost will be at that time divided by the 20 years whatever it is and they ask us for now the
093amount of money that will be needed when that piece of equipment retires and they replace it to replace it fully we haven't been able to fully fund their requested reserves but when we get to that point we should have 60 it's all about a little bit because we haven't hurt I'm not going to be 60% it is for two million dollar piece of equipment that's a big difference now the one thing for the ambulance is we always fund that 100% because we replace them every three years and that's worked out very well just boom we've got the money we buy a new one I think we're below your 50% is that because of you because because of what we've been forcing you do I'm not flaming numbers 11 in the not blamin any but I
094think we're underfunded a little bit are you doing so if we can catch up a little bit with less pain here you know and so there's somewhere in the in the town accounting system where you can go and see this entire display of reserve accounts and what the zorga they are so pretty new see we have a plates here but there's a route there is a reserve fund set up you just saw the fields right they had a line of four years two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year right I was pretty well detailed yeah I'd like to see you that's our one place where water for the Sun if you reserve if you go if you go to the financial statements I think Schedule B one shows everything that's bonded that the money that's
095set aside for that I think it is like d4 that shows a capital non-recurring it doesn't show the other you know methodology or any of that stuff it just shows the numbers as of June 30 or 2018 so we've been keeping track of this on munis central when we went to the Candlewood company we told them and we made sure what reserves we had for the new fire truck what we have what we could use although such things and both fire companies agree with us on the number and you can always go back and look at last year's their previous year's budgets but we'd like to keep track of it separately and John would still have approval of the equipment so they can't buy the equipment they have a thought it of course selected in
096them yes are not talking about you know before of just to transparency control thing all right for any other questions for me okay decent motion to adjourn second you run a hell with me all a favor I like that's really nice [Music]