CIP COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES – 10/18/17
Attendees: Jim Bibbo, Jason Allen, Mike James, Claire James, Karen Hambleton
Meeting brought to order at 6:20pm
Current project proposals were reviewed again and some new questions arose:
Town Hall
- What are the current bond term(s) for the Town Hall? What is the proposal for Town Hall in 2018? Will there be a bond put forth via warrant? If so, what is the proposed amount?
Police Dept.
- Police Cruisers – Do these get replaced every 2 years? Confirm replacement rate.
- Was the loader and/or sweeper already bought by the Highway Department?
- Does Highway Department still need a generator? This item was on last year’s CIP but did not show up on this year’s requests.
- If a generator is needed, where is the 50K estimate coming from? It seems high.
- How much should be set aside for road paving each year?
Highway Dept.
We discussed road repair and quality of road repairs versus paving.
- It was suggested that rather than setting aside 50K for road patching, that this money should be added to our CIP plan under the road paving category. In other words, if 100K is set aside normally for road paving and 50K is normally set aside for road patching, that the new course of action should be to combine these numbers and put it all under road paving – resulting in 150K for road paving with no budget for patching. The reasoning behind this is that patching is a very temporary fix and an expensive one at that. Moreover the patching gets taken out and ground up when the actual paving gets done. When the town buys pavement for these small patching jobs, the town pays double the price of what Pike Inc., charges to put down pavement. Specific example put forth by Jason, who has direct knowledge of the matter: It is currently $60 a ton to put pavement down if Pike does it – but it’s $100 plus a ton if our highway department does it. In addition, our highway dept does not use bonding agents with the road repairs per Jason, which should be done and would be done by Pike if they were doing the patching. Another point of discussion: There is already money set aside in the highway department’s operating budget for repairs (which include cold/pothole patching, as opposed to full patching of an entire road stretch), so taking this line item out of the CIP would not impact the ability to do road repairs. It would however limit these road repairs to cold patching and other maintenance. By setting aside 150K each year for road repair, we will much more quickly be able to repave the roads in needs of it, thereby eliminating the need for patch jobs here and there. Also, we discussed that the town is looking into working with neighboring towns road repair schedules so that we can coordinate jobs in such a way that Pike could give us better rates for repair, as town jobs would be coordinate back to back.
- Karen suggested a road committee should be reinstated. We used to have one.
- Mike suggested that we find out what the town paid for the last 3 years for roads and combine it to come up with one figure for road repairs/shims and paving. Mike will discuss this at the budget committee meeting on 10/19/17. (The figure we should spend per year on roads and the breakdown).
- Was the loader and/or sweeper already bought by the Highway Department?
- Does Highway Department still need a generator? This item was on last year’s CIP but did not show up on this year’s requests. If a generator is needed, where is the 50K estimate coming from? It seems high.
Fire Department
The fire alarm system and pumper were discussed again.
- Do we absolutely need new alarm system – especially in lieu of the 475K request for 2019? By taking it out or pushing it back to another year for now, we can use this money to help defray the cost of the 2019 pumper request. Claire stated that the alarm system was key for protecting medical equipment and drugs for the rescue dept. Jason asked if the drugs could be stored in a safe for now, with only one or two people getting the access codes to the safe.
- Another question, posed by Jason Allen, was whether or not there is a life limit on a fire truck. How old is the current truck? Do we absolutely need to replace it by 2019? Follow up questions to ask state Fire Marshall: 1) If a truck is past a certain age does this violate a mutual aid agreement in place with other towns? 2) Generally, how long do trucks last? Karen will ask these questions and then defer any additional questions about the matter to Jason or Mike.
Other follow up items:
- Cap reserve and trust balances – Mike will confirm and update these figures
- Net property valuation – Karen will obtain this figure and inform
Meeting adjourned at 7:55pm.
NEXT MEETING – OCTOBER 25, at 6:00pm (BACC)