2017 Town Meeting - Night Four

Welcome to night four!  There were several special events and votes tonight, most involving our schools.  Since we were going to talk schools, the AHS Madrigal Singers performed the Star Spangled Banner and several other songs.  They were fabulous, as always.  Were they there to promote this weekend's Pops concert or to soften us up for the school appropriations to come.  Either way, this annual tradition is one of the highlights.

On the arts theme, there were several notices and announcements about ACA events.  Porchfest is coming up.  The ACA is fundraising, and they have a matching gift challenge.  They are a great organization worthy of our support.  We also had a presentation from the town's Building Maintenance committee, formed only a year or so ago, about the efforts they have made to document the town's built assets and establish a maintenance program.  As they pointed out, the town is great at long term projects like new construction and major renovations.  The town is also good at the short term immediate repairs.  The gap has always been the mid-term preventive maintenance and monitoring.  We have a very capable manager of this new department, and I think we can look forward to firm stewardship of our buildings going forward.

We also had a presentation by the town's Permanent Building Committee.  They oversee our major projects, the long-term projects mentioned before.  They are overseeing renovations to the Hardy, Stratton, Thompson, and Gibbs Schools.  They were able to save the town $1.5M on a recent project, and apply that money towards a larger scope of work for the Gibbs.  They do such a great job for the town, year-in and year-out.

We then turned the night over to Capital Plans.  These are the funds to purchase things for the town that will last for several years.  We had postponed two articles from the Special Town Meeting warrant to discuss tonight:  the Hardy School and the Gibbs School.  Funds for both of these projects was approved through debt exclusion lasy year.  The town is exploring new ways to expedite projects and manage costs.  The vote to appropriate the funds for the Hardy included both design and construction funding.  This would usually occur in two different budget cycles, but they were combined to expedite the development.  This was overwhelmingly approved.

The Gibbs School is going to use a new contracting method.  A contractor was hired at the start of design.  They are responsible for helping to budget and schedule the project as it develops, so it can be delivered on time and on budget.  If it doesn't, it is the Contractor who takes it on the chin.  They are "at risk", the name for the arrangement.  They budget was increased by the town from the approved $18M to $20M in order to increase the scope of the renovation.  Originally, the plan was to only replace those windows that needed immediate attention.  The remaining windows would be replaced later.  The better plan of just doing all of them now is more expensive, but far less disruptive.  By using some of the recaptured funds on other projects, the Town was able to come up with the needed funds to do everything now.  The appropriation for this project was also overwhelmingly approved.  This closed the Special Town Meeting, and the results will be delivered to the state for approval this calendar year.


We left off Monday about to start article 27.  In order to keep going with Capital Budgets, we tabled several articles to get to number 34.  The presentation was very clear and concise.  I must agree with Gordon Jameson who lamented the near elimination of park funding in the Capital Budget.  The Capital Committee is now relying on the CPA for park funding.  The original idea was that the CPA would supplement the Capital Budget so more could get done.  Now, that funding is going elsewhere.  That said, I appreciate the work of that committee, and we passed their budget.

Next, we passed application of bond premiums.  This brought us back to number 33, Town Budgets.  This is the other side of funding, things we need to pay for every year.  This is also a time to ask questions of the various town departments.  There were questions on a lot of topics.  The most bizarre was the rant that if you get into an accident on an icy, unsalted street, it is your fault for not having studded ice tires.  We were still discussing budgets when it was time to go.  We'll pick up with that on Monday.

Enjoy the weekend, and go the the AHS Pops!