Meeting transcript
Capital Improvement Planning Committee - Regular Meeting
November 18, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Me. Ah. There we go. Who's recording?
So is this is this quorum, or do we need Ed? We have a quorum, I think. Eric's remember Eric's not on our committee.
Did you get ahold of Ed? I did not get ahold of Ed. His phone rings through, so I don't get him. Okay.
Try the house or the cell. All we're missing is Ed and Kurt.
Yeah. Kurt won't be here. With four out of six have a quorum, Robert. Oh, do we? I didn't. Listen. Don't ask Robert. No. I thought you said five. I thought you were putting up five. I said five because I miscounted. I shouldn't have counted error. I thought he said. We're good. I thought he said Even four is good. I thought he said fine. Let's go.
Okay. Okay. Well, let's call it to order. What time? 07:09.
So, our our thought process prior to you guys hopping on was maybe go till let's cover as much as we can till 08:30 because there's a lot of rich in there. Little too much to digest, I think in one meeting. Some of it's repeat. Guys are okay with that.
Some of it's some of it's repeated in in the different ones, so it might go a little faster. One thing I wanted. I got my thing from Carol. Are we okay for just keeping our third Thursday for next year? Do we need to make a motion on that or can we just agree unofficially or Yeah. We can agree. I did look at the calendar though. What's our Just giving you a heads up. Starting now. I
did look and see what our December 1 was or if we still have it on schedule.
It would be the thirteenth sixteenth. Which I could do
sixteenth. Okay. I'm talking about for next year. You know, we get these things from Carol every year about. Yeah, we have to submit our calendar. I think we need to do that by
motion. Do we? Okay. Oh, we have to approve. I'll make a motion to continue our CIP meetings in the year of 2022 on the third Thursday of each month starting at 7PM. Sounds good. Seconded. Okay. Any discussion? Favor. I.
Okay. Anyone against? Okay. So who seconded it? Adrian? I did. Okay. Eric's got his sweater off. He's ready to go.
Eric, are you gonna share your screen with us or do I need to pull up all these documents? I didn't print all of them out. Certainly can't share my screen with all of them.
I certainly can share my screen if you want to. That would be great. Okay. Thank you. For those of you who didn't read, everyone.
I read them. I decided not to kill a lot of trees by printing them doubly in our house. Thank you. Think I'm gonna second I'm gonna second the motion for separate rooms. Definitely a good idea.
If you kill a lot of trees, then you have better solar access, and it's better for the planet. You know, you're Exactly. Good thing. You're being funny, but that is true. There's some truth in that. I had to cut a lot of trees to get mine peeked out. Unfortunately, our paper doesn't come from Andover trees.
No, no, doesn't. Okay, anyway, so public comment. Additions or changes to the agenda.
May we approve the minutes of our September meeting? Yeah, was going to take care of that while we're going through all this stuff. I moved to approve the minutes from our regular September meeting.
Second. Did you have any correction Shannon I didn't see anything.
I didn't see any. Usually catch those were you there Adrian. I don't think you were there. No, but I looked over him actually to kind of see what was up. So didn't know. Didn't know if it was proper for you to second. That's why I was asking.
I think I can second to move the motion. Just can't vote on the motion. You should abstain. I'll abstain. You should abstain. Right. Got it. Okay.
So any discussion on those on our minutes? Alright. All in favor. So Aye. Aye. Robert. One abstention.
Okay. Now new business. So Eric got this wealth of papers you sent us. Yeah. I put them in an order that I thought was good, but I guess move through in whatever order you think is
best. Well, tell me what you want to want to start with. Start with that one.
Well, I like the potential capital. I put them in the order that I thought was good. Potential capital projects. Okay.
Okay, I would have probably put that at the end in case we decide to move on some of the public work stuff. Okay, so do you want go with something different?
I'd like to peel off the public work stuff in case he needs to come back with more info. Okay, so that we. The 02/2223
capital equipment plans for public works. Yeah, in case we need to come back with more info. That way we can address everything at our next meeting if we haven't here. Alright. Okay. Okay.
Okay, you should see that on your screen. I do. So what I wanted to do is give you just a little look back on what we bought recently between 2018 and today. And then, you know, kind of what I did in 2018 was I took every piece of equipment we had, and said, what is a normal lifespan for this in a public works department? You know, and there's plenty of towns and bigger municipalities and states that all publish these schedules. You can find this kind of information commonly in a lot of towns. And I said, Okay,
where does our stuff fall in? And the reality is pretty bad. You know,
Eric I'm sorry to interrupt you. I see is that Ed who just joined us on his phone. Yeah, I'm here are you can you hear me. Yeah, Ed, I was just Eric is sharing all of the documents on the screen which you're not going to be able to see unless you're in the meeting. Are you able to get into the meeting so you can see the documents or do you have them on your phone so you can review them as we're going through them? Sorry
to interrupt you, Eric. I just wanted to make sure Ed knew we were looking at documents. Ed, can you hear us?
I think when it's gray, it means he's faded away.
I'm sorry. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Yes. Alright. So I'm just gonna have to listen in. Sorry about that. I don't have a computer.
Ed, do want Ed, do you wanna just run over my house? We're at oh, who's this? Adrian? Yeah. Adrian? Yeah. Just just run over.
I could do that if if it's if it's necessary. Sure. Yeah. But received
copies of all the documents from Fred by email so he could just He doesn't have a he doesn't have a computer. No on his phone. Okay. Okay.
Let's just go. I'll be if you want it's five minutes you're welcome, Ed.
Yeah, I'll be over in five minutes, Adrian. Thank you. Yeah. Bye. I'll catch him up when he gets here. Okay. Okay. Okay, Eric. Alright. So, initially,
what I did was just provide you a purchasing summary of what we played bought, about what it cost, you know, over the last, from 2018 on, because that was really the first time I had been involved with CIP and really looked at it. So, you know, and then one of the things that I keyed on very early on is kind of remaining service life for equipment. So, in a perfect world, you want your total average remaining surface life to be point five in terms of the average age of your equipment divided by the the life expectancy of the equipment. So that, you know, you'll have a range of gear from stuff that's ready to be replaced to stuff that's brand new, but on average, it should be about 0.5, you know, when it gets to the point 7.8, 0.9, one and higher, that means you're in an area where you're likely to have more equipment that you need to replace in a shorter timeframe. And if you're below 0.5, you know, you're in great shape as a department. So the second thing is that, you know, we also looked at what functions does the Public Works Department do the most? And what is the equipment kind of type? And how does a small public works department, you know, function maximally with kind of gear? And, you know, given the tasks we do, what do we consider buying? So starting with fall twenty eighteen, I'm not gonna go over everything. The only thing I wanna point is the overall equipment,
you know, we're at an average age divided by lifespan of 1.4, which is another way of saying a lot of our stuff at that point should have been jumped a long time ago. So we were at 1.4 in 2018? Correct. Correct.
And even a little worse on heavy equipment. So fast forward to 2019, we got that number down, know, quite a bit fairly fast. We did it by making a bunch of capital equipment using unexpended fund balance. Remember we went to public meeting, we got a new truck, we got a new loader, and we got a F-two 50 all in a fairly short period of time, which kind of jump started. And the second thing we did is we got rid of the old bulldozer and the old roller that weren't really functioning or were barely functioning. And it's just frankly not worth having a piece of equipment that is barely working. So what was what was our average in 2019?
Our average in 2019 for overall equipment was one, but for heavy equipment was 1.3. So heavy equipment is basically everything other than the trucks. Okay. Okay.
So we went from 1.5 for heavy equipment to 1.3. By fall of twenty twenty, we had brought that down to 1.2. And by this fall, fall of twenty twenty one, we've got that down to one point zero. So we made a significant improvement, you know, in a four year time period, which is, is excellent.
You know, and what's the, what's the goal? What's your goal number?
Ideally? I mean, the ideal number is 0.5. Does that mean your average piece of equipment is halfway through its expected lifespan.
Okay. So one means that everything is at our average piece of that means that everything is at its expected lifespan, right? What means somewhere above and somewhere below, but yeah. That means a lot of stuff at its.
Well, it means that some things are passed. Right. If you if you look at the chart, I mean, we've basically got a bunch of brand new stuff and a bunch of stuff that's way past its expiration date. Well, we don't have much in between. I like, I mean, I I like the presentation, Eric, but I have to be honest in saying that, you know, a lot of things don't get used but once a year. So the fact that it says it's a seven or ten year life cycle to me is irrelevant. Idea that you have, you know, a 20 year old, a 20 year old, let's say chipper is not a big We're deal to doing so much outsourcing on the chipping.
Right. I don't take it as just because we're past its expected lifespan, we're automatically going to replace it. From my perspective, what happens is once you're past its kind of traditional lifespan, you need to be taking a hard look at equipment and deciding what, you know, that's when you need to be looking at your maintenance schedules and saying, is this piece of equipment getting to the point where the maintenance costs are eating us up?
Yeah, I agree. I mean, like an equipment trailer, we can replace the boards on it and buy another five years. Easy, you know, so. Right. And like I said, that's not something that's,
know, if you look at the actual capital plan, you know, even though, you know, the, the our issue with the equipment trailers, not its age, because it's been well maintained. It's a fact that it is a little short for moving some of the stuff we would like to move. No I understand.
Gonna break off for a second let Ed in. Okay.
Yeah I guess the way I see it we you know look at what the equipment is if it's our plow truck we don't want that to go too far over if it's something that doesn't get that much use and you can still maintain it, that's fine. We don't want our main plow truck to be well beyond that because then we're to get burned next winter.
Right. And, you know, we have significant and it's going to take, you know, a while longer before we're, it's really going to take us somewhere around another seven years to get to the point where all the plow trucks are in that sweet spot. And the reason is, you know, we're forecasting buying on essentially every five years. And that way you always have three primary trucks, you know, are 15 years old or less. And then your emergency sparing keep until it gets to be about 20 years old. Right. Whereas right now, our emergency spare, you know, is already, I think it's a 97. So it's definitely, you know, well past that fifteen year part. Right. But we're not gonna get rid of it for another two years
until we buy another cloud truck, buy that one. We're still sitting with an international that was built in 2004. So I mean, that thing's already, you know, seventeen, eighteen years old now. Right.
So that's not going to be corrected, you know, immediately, but by putting it this way, at some point in the future, we'll get to the point where we're on a regular rotation.
Yeah, yeah we're moving in the right direction I think that's that's part of your legacy here Eric is getting making that happen.
Yeah that's that's been good. Yeah. So last year, this was last year's capital plan. And part of the reason why I've tried to forecast it out over fifteen years is because that way you can kind of average out the yearly average capital costs and just forecast the same amount of money each year. If you look at what we actually purchased, the one thing that we weren't anticipating, I mean, anticipating we that we would likely have to buy a new sweeper. Although last year we were looking at it and saying, we ever found a used sweeper in the right condition, we would jump on cause that's one of those pieces of equipment that we use. We don't use anywhere near as much as a bigger municipality that uses it for regular road sweeping. And because we've kind of gone deliberately to a vendor, a chip seal vendor that does their own sweeping, we don't have, you know, an enormous number of hours each year of sweeping. So this was last year's. The thing we really didn't get, you know, which we in the end kind of Jay decided against that. And we can talk a little bit about why was purchasing an asphalt pop box. The other thing we had planned on doing this year was buying the F-five 50 pickup
with dump body and plow. And we ended up buying that out of last year simply because the last one blew up and we had to get rid of it. So we did buy that one a little ahead of when we had forecast, but you know the cost to repair was greater than it would have been worth.
And so are we borrowing a hot box at this point? Is that what we're doing?
No, what we've done is, you know, we've switched over to a different cold mix that seems to be holding up a lot better. And just, we're going to try to get along without one. You know, part of it is Jay thinks if we really can get through the whole town and do one round of shimming and chip sealing with everything, we'll take care of the majority of the pothole problem. And as long as we stay on a regular schedule, we can't really justify owning a hot box. Well, what
no one's get, I haven't heard a cost per ton difference between our new pill cold patch and you know, and buying it, you know, buying buying tonnage. I don't know what the It's really nice to say it, but I haven't heard a number. Know,
don't know off the top of my head what the cost per ton for cold patches. Well, gonna say that generally in my own experience, probably may be better for you guys as a municipality, but now I'm seeing anywhere from five to six times the cost. So it depends how many tons of cold patch we're going through. There's the question, right? So I kind of like to know that before we let that one go the way it's going. What's the, how many tons are we using in a typical season? You know, and what's the cost per ton difference? You know, because if we buy early in the season on contracts, you know we're probably. On the low end we're going to be 75 a ton and on the high end we're going to be you know. Maybe 125 a ton for hot patch so. You know. I'd like to know what those numbers are because it may that may be the justification for the box, you know. So let's look at that number.
Good. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there. No, that's that's fine. I I have no problem with that.
So the point is we've moved to a cold patch system and it's more expensive than buying the hot stuff. Oh, it's definitely more expensive,
but. We always used cold patch or we always used cold patch also, you know, because most of the time during the season you can't get, you know, in the peak of the winter when you're getting potholes appear, the only thing you really have available is cold patch without, you know, without one of those reclaimers, which some of the hot box can function as reclaimers too. In other words, you can just take old broken asphalt and throw it in there and eat it all up, get it molten again, add a little liquid asphalt, you know, and put it back in the road. Yeah. And there are some towns that do that.
I mean, I guess it again, it goes back to how much are we using? I mean, certainly you're going to always have some cold patch on hand for the dead of winter repair. But you know, otherwise from April 1 to probably November 15 depending upon like this year, I think they're going be open till November 30. You can still get hot patch. Right.
But remember for bigger areas, because we would have only bought, you know, a three ton hot box anyway, probably we weren't going to buy a real big one. You know, if you're rolling out a bigger area, we're just going to put it in the back of a truck anyway. It's only for actual, when you're chasing lots of little potholes with hot patch that you really, you know, we really use the hot box.
Okay. So they're not using, so the hot boxes that we were looking at I thought we were looking at something that could hold you know right around three or four yards. Yeah and that's. Is that about what do we put it in our trucks. Not really put more than four or five are we. No, we it's
I'd have to look. Honestly, I haven't revisited hot boxes,
you know, since about this time last year or in the spring. Okay. So I would have to look I'm trying to understand the methodology behind that in the sense that if we had a hot, the point of the hot box is not, it's because we don't have heated beds. We're not, we're not buying a spec bed that's heated with the truck. Correct.
This is a way to work around that and get a better quality of patch when we put it down and give us more working time and make one trip during the day and try to be done with it, you know? But anyways, so I don't, if we can get past that onto the next thing. Yeah, that's something seems like we could get Jay or Eric can ask Jay Jay to look will give us some numbers and we'll go from there. So what's next? What's next on this? So
Jay and I sat down and worked through this, and really one of the differences is we moved up in priority a little bit, the wheeled skid steer. We've always had it on our lists. We've had it on the last three or four years. We just did forecasted it a little farther back. The thing we pushed, one of the things we pushed back a little bit was the second roadside mower, a narrower scale second roadside mower. You know, and part of it is, and then we added to the list this year, an industrial snowblower, you know, a heavy duty snowblower, because it looks like, you know, at least the sidewalks in front of the library, you know, we're going to have enough sidewalks that we really can't be shoveling that by hand. So we're going to need some kind of mechanism. And since they're only five feet wide, it's pretty tough to deal with that, you know, with the only other real option we have would be use our Steiner and buy, you know, one of the auger snow blowers for the front of the Steiner. And we are going to look into that too.
Basically a heavy duty model of a walk behind snowblower or the Steiner attachment?
Yeah now if we ever end up you know, getting enough federal and state dollars to put in a multi use pathway along 316, we would make sure that that gets built wide enough that it can be done with one of our conventional trucks or we do it with the wheeled skid steer. But the sidewalks, because of their geometry are really too narrow, I think to do that effectively with a skid steer.
So, what are you guys looking at for an industrial snowblower? I mean, are you talking like my, I have a commercial unit that has no shear pins, hydro box, you know, and that was give or take $2,400 for the one that I have and I do it's basically that it's basically meant for sidewalks that's its primary job you know. Yeah. You talking something that goes on another piece of equipment.
No, I think for that, I think we're talking about a standalone walk behind unit. Okay.
Have you guys looked at them? Do you know what you're looking at? Yep. I
have not personally, you know, and you'll remember at this point we're, you know, nine months away from potentially, you know, even buying and practically we're probably more like twelve months away from buying that piece of equipment. So I'm not getting too wrapped up around what exact models. I just asked for very rough pricing information, you know, for what a skid steer would be with the potential options that we could, we would conceivably use to do two things. One, if we ended up with multi use trails and we ended up plowing something bigger scale than a walk behind could use. And then what do we have to do when we have to start replacing all these freaking railings that we have in the ball field and elsewhere that are gonna be rotting out at some point. So,
you know, for the snowblower thing, you're talking one of those walk behind, if it's say a couple thousand dollars, you don't need to run that through just put that into the department works, the public works department budget and have them get what they want.
Eric, do they have any walk behind blower right now? You think they'd have one for the shop? No, they don't. They're gonna shovel one.
And given that they now have all the library walkways, I think it's pertinent
just from a- Yeah, library walkways are narrow, but I think we need to plan for the future. My input would be to put one on the power takeoff on the front of the skid steer lower or one of our small tractors or front, you know, you got, for productivity, you gotta give them a a heated a heated cab with a five foot wide blower and. Not not I I know what you're saying but we don't have an application in town for that at all. Yeah. We just don't. We don't have any place we need that. The and the units Library sidewalks, so walk behind seems the right thing. Yeah. I mean, I do over a thousand feet of sidewalk with mine, know, and it it's amazing how quick it is. I mean, I'm doing a thousand feet of sidewalk in under two hours by myself. Yeah, I'm just going back to what Eric said about the multi use pathway. I mean, Eric, I don't see that being much more than four or five feet. We don't need one that's wide enough for an eight foot pickup truck plow. So the multi use pathway,
we'll cross that bridge when we get to You're not gonna get funding for it. If you propose it as a four foot wide path, it's not fundable because it does not meet federal or state standards for multiuse pathway.
All right, so what's the width? So what's the width? Let's back up. I mean, we don't have one yet. We just want to plan for what is the minimum width, Eric?
Eight to 10 feet. 10 feet is the approved width. Sometimes you can waiver and get an eight foot wide. That's probably because they want you to be able to service it with a standard truck. All right.
So, but let's go back to the skid steer. When I looked at it, it did not look, it did not look like you guys had a bump up on the, on the hydro. It looked like you had a standard 20 to 21 gallon per minute unit.
I mean, you know, again, this is something, this is a single quote. And what I asked Jay to do is just get me a ballpark number for what a skid steer would cost, with all the things we would potentially put on. Okay. I'm not saying this is the final, I mean, obviously this is a single quote, you know, I mean, we haven't looked at any source well or anything else. I'm not trying to say this is the machine we're going to get in any way, shape or form. I'm just saying that ballpark, given what we've seen, we know, you know, forecasting $90,000
should be under that. Okay. Yep. I I I the next question I have is we're under 90, but have we talked about doing a tracked unit instead of a wheeled unit?
So yes, we've debated that back and forth. Jay and Tom both felt that given most of the tasks that we do, that a wheel loader was more practical and a wheel loader was easier to move around without putting it on the trailer every time depending on where you're going.
So they're proposing that they would drive it through town?
Depends where they're going. That's a horrible idea. I mean, if you're going right up to the rail trail, yeah, I would certainly drive it through, drive it down Long Hill Road and pop it right up on the rail trail. If I was going to Jermotti Road, it probably gets trailed.
Sure. I just, you know, my own experience with skid steers, the tracked units are a heck of a lot more stable. They're going to have a higher GPM standard and they're certainly going to be handed. The other issue we get into with these the smaller units and I I didn't look at that. I have to look up that unit specifically but when we start talking about that stuff, I just want to make sure that we're not undershooting the number, one, and two, that whatever specs you guys, whatever you guys go get, let's make sure it comes back to this committee because I've I've seen it in another town where they went out and did this. They had no one on staff had used a sit sear. They bought one and realized that they couldn't load their dump trucks because it didn't have enough reach. They can load their 550s but they couldn't rent load a standard dump truck. Something that simple.
So. Right. But remember that this is, you know, one of the things I want to be clear on is that, you know, we're starting for the first time to have kind of redundant options with things. Right. Are we really going to be using that? I mean, so when you have a backhoe and you have a wheel loader already, a skid steer to me makes sense to go with the smaller unit, you know, and start thinking about all those other little ancillary things you do with it, not necessarily trying to get a bigger unit and attract unit. I mean, you don't need all the capabilities in that piece of machinery because in some cases they duplicate
other,
you know, I guess that's what I'm asking is I would really like an understanding as to specifically what we're going to use this for. Because if we're only using this to replace fence poles and, and stuff like that, we can rent one a heck of a lot cheaper than $70. I have no problem with buying an excavator because I know the multi use of it. But when we start talking about, again, because we already do have a wheel blower, we already do have, you know, a backhoe. So the conversation becomes, why do I need this? Because the front of that backhoe, if I'm correct, you guys have a multiuse plate. You could hook up with auxiliary ports. You should be able to hook up a hydraulic with that, you know, to auger it. So why do we need this?
Well, for one, I think that it's just a lot bigger. I mean, the thing about a skid steer is you can potentially, you know, deal with narrower paths. And part of the reason that Jay spec what he did was he spec ed essentially the narrowest unit he could get that was still fully function.
But for what? You still haven't told me what you actually need it for. Because if you're going with a a really small one like this, it's not really functional except for path work and maybe replacing, you know, path work and and doing some replacement of of fence poles if you wanted to do that but again, I, it's a fairly expensive unit. So, I mean, if if you're going to spend the money to me, I'd rather see redundancy overlap with another piece of equipment than see a a very narrow usage. You know what I mean? Okay.
I'd like to have a, let's see if we can get Jay on next time
so I can understand what the purpose of this is. Yeah, what pathways is he gonna run it on? What pathways exactly?
You know. Where is it going to use it? Where is it going to use it? In a pathway, what pathway? Because we've also talked about, you know, and you have in here, you know, the idea of getting, you know, a new roadside mowerflail unit. And. If we're doing that we're buying a tractor which we can also which is also narrow access which we could put a loader on the front of. So now we've got something that again becomes a redundant we're buying a $90,000 piece of equipment $70,000 piece of equipment that in most situations could overlap. So. It's kinda I I you know I again I mean if you're telling me that you're gonna you're gonna go out and get a a flail unit that goes on the front or a batwing mower that goes on the front of this. But then I'm going to come back and say why are we getting such a narrow one why aren't we looking at a tractor and then it replaces your roadside mower that you're talking about using for some of the other areas, you know. So I'm just again I'm just trying to understand so. Okay okay.
Well I'll get Jay here and he can go. You know, give me chapter and verse about why he wants one versus another. Okay. Alright.
The plow truck with sander. Are we are we comfortable with that given that we're a six or eight month lead time? Are we comfortable about pushing that out to twenty three?
Yeah. I mean, because Adrian, my goal is to get us on a five year plow truck replacement schedule. Yeah. You know, so flat out that gives us at any one time, case scenario, you know, when we're on that, have a five year old machine, a ten year old machine and a fifteen year old machine as our primary and our emergency backup is at 20 years old, you know, and then it goes back to, you know, one year, six year, you know, eleven year, the next year, basically to keep us in that range. In a perfect world, yeah, would we have done
something, you know, if we had gotten on this plan earlier, we wouldn't be in this problem, you know, so we are, we did commit to, at least doing the rear brakes on our old truck number five, which is a 97. Okay. Just because it was getting Jay felt it was getting a little too sketchy to Yeah. It's a 97 so.
Yeah. And, and the 2011 this year or the 2004, we put around $12,000 into it about 8 to re weld the bed, and rebuild the bed and then paint.
And I was only, I was only asking in terms of from a budgeting standpoint, if you don't get approval till July, you know through a budget, you know you don't get money till July. You know, are you are we if we if the budget passes in May and you order and it's eight months is that that's just pretty close? It is and it's it's not ideal.
And given the given the age of those trucks, that's my concern. That's all. I mean, I know we've been doing work on them, but I can tell you, I mean, I had an eight that I just let go of this year out of the blue. Took a drive shaft out and then I had some other issues with it after that and sort of, you know, the light came on that I needed to move on.
Yeah. Yeah, no question. And I mean, look, that part of the reason why we transitioned to the Peterbilts for the last two trucks and we would probably do for the next trucks is if you look at the real repair history and what we've spent on the international, we spent an awful lot of money on that machine.
No, I totally understand. So you're comfortable with putting the plow truck off to next year? Yep. Not this coming budget, but the following budget. Yep. If we decide that the the the we don't think the skid steer is next up. I mean, I'm surprised that you pushed out the trail mower and, you know, the sidebar flail, you know. I thought that having a smaller or, you know, basically a new roadside mower was kind of an issue, you know. So
you know the. You can just back up a second because this was on the list. We were talking rail side mower two years ago. Now all of a sudden, and now all of a sudden we've pushed it out to you know,
quite a ways, four years. So, yeah, part of it has been the fact that we committed to spend a bunch of money to fix the flail head unit. One of our so we have we have two basically flail heads for existing mower. Yeah. One Coventry was getting rid of because it was too old. We took it and rebuilt it. And that's kind of our primary one. And then our older one still has this setup with the hammerhead,
know, cutters on it. Yeah, but it has it has heavier cutters. For everybody else that doesn't know the heavier cutters can cut through a hammerhead cutter can cut through a three inch tree, whereas the other cutters are lighter. They'll cut grass and they'll cut stocky stuff. But if you know the advantage of using the lighter cutters is that when they hit rocks, they don't break and they don't dull. When you take hammerheads and you hit rocks that are on the roadside, it'll just be it'll just completely beat up the hammerheads. They break really quickly.
So you spent money fixing the other head. So we spent a little money on it. You know, we started looking at it and going the, because the tractor portion of that, even though it's fairly old, it doesn't have a huge number of hours given how long those things last. And it's been maintained in really good shape. Yep. At worst case scenario for our boom flail mower, which is the one we can use to reach over guard rails and also do vertical things. You know, is not going anywhere anytime soon. That thing's in really good shape. We're not having problems with it. We're not forecasting replacing that.
Why were you guys so adamant on replacing it before that? I mean, you got shut down and.
So we were never planning on replacing it. We were planning on supplementing it. The problem with those from my perspective is that the standard mowing speed on those is really slow. And the advantage of just the straight sidebar flail is you can mow a lot faster. And it's a much smaller scale machine. Like if you look, you know, for some of the areas, not so much of the roadside mowing, but certainly the trail side mowing, it's a much better deal than trying to mow, you know, with a much wider unit. Well, that's
actually that's okay. So the ones we have are slow because they're probably PTO based, right? They're not straight hydraulic. What do I know? Well, because if you, I didn't hear that. If you if you change the setup and you go to a straight hydraulic, you can mow a little faster because then it's not as dependent on PTO speed, right, so we probably have five forty pto's and so changing the pto speed will allow you to go a little faster with those. You're not dependent on a specific pto speed at that point you're dependent on hydraulic hydraulic output so. That's fine I don't care if we go to one or the other, but I just wanted to understand why that was so far out all of a sudden. I don't want to get into you know, we've already talked about 23, 24. We'll deal with that when we get there. The the the mower was really the only thing I saw out there that I wanted to talk about. Okay.
Yeah. And then the the other thing I think that's is I do think at some point electrification, we're going to have to deal with electrification.
Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that when we get there because you have an electric F-one 150 pickup truck on this and they're not gonna allow you to put a plow on it. I
don't know that that's a practical vehicle for us. Well, would be our third truck if we got it. So I don't think we need three small cloud trucks.
So why do we need a third? Why do we need a third small truck? There's the question then.
Well, it does seem like, you know, we're not as bad as we were before, but it, you know, it seems like we're spending a lot of time doing road guard stuff and ending up using big trucks to do it. You know, and that's fine if we got Mark Williams is our road guard, but that's not fine when we've got Steve Moydle,
you know, who does not have a CDL license is not going to be driving a big truck. So get him a Class B CDL. What's so hard about that?
Are you really going to put your transfer station attendant and get him a Class B CDL? Because, you know, fifteen days a year, you use them as a road guard? If it's better, it's certainly better than me going out and spending $50,000
on electric pickup truck that is usable for nothing else except transportation from A to B. It it you can't use it for anything else. You can't put a plow on it. You know, you're gonna have limitations on the total on total, you know, weight you put in it. It'll tow really well. It'll tow well. How do you know you can't put a plow on?
You're not actually so so as of this year, F-150s are restricted for plows anyways. They just did this with Dodges and they did this with Fords. Anything under a a 2500 series, they're not letting you put plows on. You can only put like the homeowner style plows. They're they're restricting. They're restricting it. So. It's just a thing. I just ran into this myself looking at plow trucks. And there's certainly on the electric. I I'm I'm pretty sure you're going to find when the electric comes out, they're not even gonna let you put a homeowner plow on it. So, but, you know, we'll see, you know. At any rate.
Honestly, I think in five years, all our small, I think you're going to struggle to buy
gas trucks and gas delivery trucks in five years. Yeah, but we don't need a gas delivery truck. We need a plow truck. If it if it can't take a liftgate and it can't take a plow, it shouldn't be in the public works department personally, you know. That that's my take on it. It needs to be multi use. The idea that we're going to have trucks down there just so I, know, so Steve can drive out to a particular location. I'd rather pay him mileage on his personal vehicle than go out and spend this kind of money on electric charging truck or even just a regular pickup truck. I just don't see the point of it.
So when we get to that year, if can put it on electric vehicle, if they change it, we'll get an electric vehicle. If you can't put a plow on it, I agree with Adrian. All our trucks need to be plowable for backup redundancy of big storms. We need to have plows for all of our trucks. Let's at what that truck can do when the time comes. When the time comes, if they allow electric, I'm in favor of it, but we need to put a plow on it for sure.
So. Yeah. Is there a reason, Adrian, that they're not letting they're not putting plows on electric F-one 150? Weight of the bat, the weight of the batteries
is is is pretty hefty. And they're underneath, right? Yeah, they're underneath. So, the weight of the batteries is an issue but in general, it's they're they had to they had to change the frame setup to get them in there. So, I mean, it actually in convention in they've changed the front ends on F-150s. They've gone to independent. Their full independent front ends, and now they're looking at independent rear ends. And so it's it's just a it's a structure change. It's a weight shift. Also the new trucks now, a lot of them come standard with front, adaptable radar crews and and that a plow you have to disengage all of that stuff. They consider the. It's gonna read like you're gonna hit somebody if the plows dies. Actually it will it will buy. It will go kind of crazy. It'll tell you know, I'm just dealing with that right now and actually one of my small trucks. So you have to go to a specialist and have it basically
taken off, you know? But, but Eric's right. In so many years they may re engineer it to, to have plows. Yeah. You think people are gonna run into this. So,
know, to see how well we get The answer that, you know, my friends have gotten, they've had issues with 2500s. You know, Dodges are doing the same thing. Dodge is saying if it's a 20, even a 2,500 Dodge, they do not want you to put a plow on. They want to be a 3,500 series or up. And I, my understanding is that Ford is going in the same direction so that if you even have a, a, a, a, an F two fifty, they're going to tell you they don't want you putting a plow on it. You're going have to go to a three fifty. So just one of those things, you know, and interestingly enough, in every other area, plows are getting, you know, equipment's getting lighter but in plows they're getting heavier because they're just doing more things there's more hydraulics there's more stuff on them, you know my V plow is 1,200 pounds that's a lot of weight to be hanging six feet off the truck So, but anyways, not needed for this conversation. I asked, that was my fault. I asked you, you answered. Thanks. So, what what else do we have, Eric, that you want us to address that? So, Jay's going to come back in and tell us about, you know, what his real vision is for this skid steer. What else do we need to address for this budget from public? Nothing.
Those the only two things we were contemplating getting would be the wheeled skid steer and Okay. You know, in some form of of snowblower. Okay. That's it. Okay.
Well, the snowblower seems definitely doable if you're talking one of those walk behind things. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And those commercial, if you buy a commercial one, like mine, mine came with a five year commercial warranty. It's pretty amazing. No sheer pins, no nothing. It's great. Chew through dogs and stuff?
No, but we get a lot of like trash and debris and Willamantic on the side of the road, especially in the winter. And when the trucks come by, they, they plow that salt brine onto the sidewalk. So we have to go back even after the storm. If you've done it once, we have to do it again to try to get that, that frozen mix off and it will chew right through that. It's pretty, pretty good stuff. Do you want to try to pick off another section, Eric? We've got about a half hour.
Sure. What do you what do you want to go over next?
What do you got on there that you think's a half hour? Senior transportation. That looks good. You're good with that, Eric? Yep. That's fine. Okay.
Is that showing up in your screen or do I I think I gotta stop the share and reshare. Hang on. Alright, so this one should be fairly simple. Right now, it's not great. So right now, technically the town owns two vehicles. We own the two thousand and two twenty passenger wheelchair accessible small bus, and we own a 2014 Dodge Caravan that's got a lift gate, so it can take a handicapped, passenger too. We do have a twenty seventeen twelve passenger that we got via a DOT essentially grant program. We won't officially own that till next year. The deal is when you when you take that grant, you you still have to report to them annually and what you do with it. And they they keep ownership of it for like, I don't know, it's like five years, but you get full use of it. It's effectively, you own it. So we looked at how many hours a week are we actually providing transportation services? You know, it turns out to be a fair bit. These numbers didn't come from me. I think they're actually a little high. I think it's less than that. I think that's about a two week number.
So, and I've got to revisit that. So 60 trips per month, is that accurate? Yes. 60 to 70 a month. Yes. That's quite a bit.
It is, it is. And one of the things, the majority of those are medical trips and far less common is us bringing groups of seniors in one of the bosses. So we do four to five larger trips a year where we're taking multiple buses. And then the shopping, the weekly shopping trips have enough people going normally that we take a bus to that. And then like the senior luncheon programs and the young at heart and those types of programs that we run out of the town hall. So the rest of the trips are basically taking individual people to medical appointments, which don't have their own independent transportation needs. The majority of those do not require a wheelchair. A few of them require walkers and a few of them require canes. So to me, one of the things we would like to do is we would like to get a passenger vehicle that does not have a lift gate that's really optimized for taking one or two people at a time to medical appointments. Appointments. So, it's got to be tall enough that it's easy for them to get in and out, but not so high like an SUV that they got to step down. So, kind of a, some form of either smaller scale SUV or something like that. And that's what I would suggest the town consider buying. We do also have a grant in right now for a 12 passenger bus with the Braun ramp that would replace our 20 passenger bigger bus, because most of the time there's only a few trips a year where, you know, where there's only four to six trips a year where we really max out the capacity. We're really trying to haul like 30 people to something.
So, you know, we'll be a little short with just two twelve passenger buses, but we'll be able to manage. And it doesn't make sense to maintain the bigger bus and the bigger buses, you know, this year alone has broken down twice on senior trips. Stranded them once at hot river homes and they were stranded one other time with it. So it's getting to be a problem reliability wise. So, and it kind of needs to go if we can, if we can get that one. The good news is because of the, the, the national plan, one of the national COVID relief plans up to this year, it's always been a 20% match on the town's part if we go to get one of these things, but it looks like they're going to fund the entire thing. So if we get it, it'll be 100% grant for $76,000 which will cover the exact cost of purchasing the 12 passenger bus under the state bid program. So that one's coming to you because it's a CIP one. Board of Selectmen already signed off on the grant application last year because last year when we submitted the grant, it required a 20% match, but that will no longer require a match. So, know, my suggestion going forward is that we consider a smaller vehicle that will hold three non disabled passengers.
What do you think, say like a minivan, Eric? What do you, what kind of thing, wouldn't that be good? Because something with a side door, it'd be easier for them to get in and out.
I think you could do a minivan. I mean, like a regular Dodge Caravan, you know, other than they're kind of pieces of shit. I know because I own one.
Any You still own one? What? You still own it, don't you? I still own it. Well, tell you what it makes minivan. There are plenty of manufacturers out there, but it seems to me to be kind of a nice thing, easy access.
Well, Eric, you were kind of hinting towards an electric vehicle, is that where you're going with this? Yeah,
I would do an electric vehicle. I would wait to pull the trigger on it until I was sure we were going to get the charger grant and not have to pay for the cost of installing the chargers and down. But if we got that, yeah, I would preferentially. And the reason I look at that is because, you know, we don't turn over vehicles very quickly, you know, hence the reason why we're still running around in a 2,002 bus. So, over the lifespan of a vehicle, I mean, to me an electric car now is probably the lowest cost to own if you buy it carefully. You know, and so, you know, the prices today, I looked right now, a lot of them are not available on Sourcewell. The only one we can really get through Sourcewell is the Bolt,
and that one's around 31,000 to buy through Sourcewell.
Does it let Nissan or Toyota or somebody make a minivan that's electrified?
I don't know that anybody, I've not seen any full minivans that are electric yet. I gotta believe they're coming. I know Dodge is coming out with a electric version of a little Cargo Master, but they're not here yet. So, and I'm not saying that this is the vehicle we buy, you know, in a year when this goes into effect, because I think the landscape will change between now and then. You know, I looked at, so what I did is I looked at vehicles, you know, first of all, I brought a bolt here and just tried it out and decided it was probably easy enough to get in and out that it would work.
But you're able you're able-bodied and you're not 70.
That's true. That's true. But what I'm saying is that it's not a vehicle. I don't have to scoot down to get in it. And I don't have to jump down to get out, you know, so from my perspective, the ride height, the, the in and out height is about correct. Before we bought, we pulled the trigger on any of these, I would say we would have to test it out with senior transportation. You know, for one reason, Ricky, one of our drivers is a pretty big guy. We got to make sure he can actually get in the thing and drive it reasonably comfortably. And we'd have to make sure it actually works. But what I'm saying is there's, there's currently three or four options that are available that look like they're about the right scale. The Kia Niro, the Hyundai Kona and the Chevy Bolt all look like they would work for that. I mean, a Tesla model Y would too, but that's too expensive. We're not, you know, we wouldn't consider that I don't think.
Eric, how soon will we know the grant for the chargers? When will you know that that's approved?
I don't even know. The grant was supposed to have been submitted by December 1, but then I just got a note saying they weren't actually going to even issue the grant, issue the details on the grant until sometime in the spring. So, we don't even have it to apply for. We know they've got the state has a whole ship load of money from the Volkswagen diesel gate settlement. So, they're funding millions of dollars worth of chargers,
but I don't know the details on it yet. But I agree with you 100. If we can get that, that'd be 100% go for the electric van if we can get those charges paid for in the grant.
Well, and maybe what we can do is we know we're doing some upgrades to the electrical. There's no reason we couldn't put in a junction box that we could then just drill through and tie into for that and compensate for that in our panel box. You know what I mean? So the chargers themselves
are only about $500 for level two. If we do that, then this thing has to live outside by town hall. Would it be better to put it? Garage or at least this vehicle would be indoors?
Well, they I don't know that they have the room over there really. Oh, okay. Does it seem like
indoor storage is what we want for this nice new vehicle? Well, that would be ideal, but right now I don't think we don't have indoor storage for the other vehicles currently, do we Eric? Yeah, everything's stored in the old.
Still stored in the old fire station, but it's a little. I thought thought they were moving that stuff over to the other. To public works. I didn't realize they were still using that space because there was a concern. Know, mice coming into Mars and stuff like that. No, there was a there was a mold concern someone had brought up and I thought that had been shifted. That was my understanding.
So that's not the case. I mean, you flat out can't. You're not practically going to get the vehicles inside public works.
No, that's why I'm saying I thought they were outside of public works. I don't want to go by their after hours, so I don't know. No. And, and honestly,
now, given how many public works and transportation companies have been whacked and are missing catalytic converters, I'm not in any rush to move those vehicles outdoors at all right now. Although I hate, I hate keeping them in that building. That a Connecticut thing too? Oh, God. Yeah. Look at it. Some of our neighboring towns have lost a bunch of their public works vehicles, catalytic converters. How the heck are they? An ongoing thing. But given given Connecticut's
very tight situation with you can't you can't turn anything into a scrap yard without an ID. I'm just surprised.
Hey, you know what? There's an Andover resident, you know, that's being prosecuted, got caught a week ago, ten days ago. Him and his one of his buddies got caught in, I think, Columbia stealing catalytic converters. No kidding. And arrested. Yeah. No kidding.
Williams girlfriend's father had his catalytic converter. He runs an electric business and had the catalytic converter out of a very old truck stolen, which really upset him because he was about to try to sell it or trade it in or whatnot. So that happened down in Norwich. No kidding. Yep. Montville, actually.
It's everywhere. Alright. Let's let's address the van thing when we get there. Let's talk about that when we get there. I I think we should maybe be proactive about planning for a charger when we're doing the upgrades at the town hall either way.
Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah. That's Yeah. My goal is to grant fund that.
Yeah. I understand that, but if we can, if we're already doing some logical work that we just make sure that the panel gets sized accordingly with an extra space for that. So we're not, you know, making it more expensive later?
Well, because we have a main distribution, a 400 amp service in the town hall and a main distribution panel. Sure. We will put a standalone breaker in the main distribution panel to, you know, the power one or multiple level two chargers.
Yeah, just because of the size of the, you need a, you know, you need a two forty breaker and probably a pretty large one. That's all. Right. Yeah.
And maybe we should also, while we're talking about this as we're going forward with the electrical on the community center, we should talk about doing that as well, you know, so.
So, but for the, for the senior citizen van thing, it seems that we ought to, before we even start worrying about the electric car, to get rid of that 2002 thing if it's breaking down all the time. So
we're not going to probably spend $80,000 of our own money to replace it because we don't use the thing enough. But we will, in my mind, I think we're likely to get the grant because it's the second time we applied for it, which helps. Second year in a row we applied. We're at the five year limit. So it's been five years since we've gotten another grant funded one from them. You know, and the federal government has put a lot more money into that grant program this year. So I think in all likelihood, will get the grant to replace the 20 passenger with the new 12 passenger.
Okay, so that'll give us a brand new 12 passenger in place of the old 20. Okay. Right.
And I mean, what I would do is I would, you know, my suggestion for board of finance is that they start an actual senior transportation vehicle fund essentially, and then I'll have to put a ton of money into it every year. But if you put, if, if you bought an electric vehicle with the ARPA funds, and then you put about $10 in the fund per year, that should pretty much, you know, in the future that will fund the replacement of the smaller vehicle and the replacement of the town's share of, you know, if we grant fund five or six years from now for one of the bigger ones. So that would be, you know, my suggestion going forward is to establish an actual fund and just, you know, set it at 10,000 and just accumulate money until we're ready to buy another view.
Yeah. Basically what we do for the fire trucks, same deal. Exactly. Smaller stuff. Smaller
stuff. Yeah. 10,000 a year is I think that's reasonable.
Yep. Alright. I'll bring it up to the board. Yeah. Alright.
What's I mean, we're getting close to our $8.30. So do we wanna Anything
else? You wanna just call it quits? And so what do we need for next time? So we'll have next time we'll have fire department stuff. Kurt sent me some stuff for
compressor, I think. Yeah. It's it's the stuff we the stuff we already approved, but they weren't able to purchase because of the situation.
We we do have ten minutes. Is there anything else Eric that you actually either need CIP approval for or input on or that we would need more information about to do any voting during our next meeting? No. Don't. So,
I'm Yeah, looking at but he doesn't have it. We want information on the skids tier. Right. That's next meeting.
But I mean, I look at it and I say what, you know, what I'm presenting to CIP is, is the concept that we need to continue to spend, you know, circa $110,000 a year total on public works equipment,
you know, and that's what I'm pushing for the title that I need. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought primarily the Board of Finance and CIP in general has been supportive of that. Just a question of what you're spending it on at this point.
Right, exactly. So that's what I'm saying is that I'm presenting this to you and saying at some point in the future, we are likely to come back to you with a request for these things. This is what we're looking at for a long term, you know,
roughly where we're going in terms of long term expenditures and where we've been. Right. And, and that I would like to be able to give you an answer at the next meeting. So if you can get Jay to hop on our December meeting, you can actually put in the budget with CIP approval if it's appropriate to skid steer. Yep. Yeah. Not a problem. All right.
Is there anything else on the list? Think is what Shannon is asking. Is there anything else on the list that we need to know about or we're gonna maybe we need more information on if you don't have it in here specifically for the budget process so that we can get it out of the way.
No, I mean, I'm for capital requests. You know, my capital requests haven't really changed in the last three years. The amount of money that the board of finance has actually given us has changed from year to year, but what I've asked for really hasn't.
Is there anything that you've asked for that we have not already said yes to
that is going to be in the budget for next year that you need us to address? The only thing that's I'm suggesting the Board of Finance that's that hasn't explicitly gone to them before is putting 10,000 a year into a senior transportation.
Well, and the skids tier, because that has not come through yet.
Yes. But remember that we have switched from, you know, announcing specific pieces of equipment and budgeting for specific pieces of equipment and budgeting based on a capital plan. Yeah. So essentially all we're doing is I'm going to board of finance and saying, you know, here we are again, we're still forecasting, you know, on average over a fifteen year period expenditures of public works will be between 110,000 and 115,000 per year, regardless of what we buy this year. Right. You know, even if we buy nothing, we would still bank that.
Understand that, but before you buy something, given the to do that was made over the, over the, excavator, apparently we need to vote on things. So let's do that. What, when appropriate.
Right. But Adrian, what I'm saying is that the earliest you would see a proposal for a skid steer would be May or June.
You know, we're not. So you're saying you're still going to go out, you're not coming, you're not budge, you're asking for the money,
but you're not asking for the very specific piece of equipment at this point. Right. I'm not saying this bobcat's what we're going to get. I'm just saying I presented one piece, you know, so you know my ballpark numbers are roughly correct. That's all I'm trying to say. Okay. I'm not saying we're going to buy this one or that one or this attachment to that attachment.
Well, I'd still like to see what that looks like at the December meeting. Because if that is not appropriate, then maybe we can direct you to other pieces of equipment on your list, I. E. The trailer or whatever. Understood. That sounds good. Okay. I would make a motion to adjourn.
No, we have to just make a ten second break for possibility of public comment, which I doesn't
didn't see anyone on the call. Come on, Adrian public comment. You got to follow the agenda. I apologize.
All right. So I didn't hear anyone say anything for public comments. So Adrian made a motion to adjourn.
I'll second it. Beat your Robert. I don't know. That was about the closest I've seen. That was a tie.
Shannon had some earlier motions so. Robert can have that one so it looks like he was in the meeting. That's So it looks like it's the only thing I did in the meeting. Yeah. Age Age before beauty. So you get it Robert.
Any discussion about that? All in favor? Aye. Okay, that sounds wonderful. So we shall see you all next month. So we'll have the fire department stuff and the skid steer.
Alright and all kidding aside and I'm not casting aspersions about anybody but there has been a rash of people either hospitalized or had to be given whatever you call that stuff to revive people. There's a lot of marijuana with fentanyl waste in it that have been causing some serious health problems. If you're gonna smoke pot, know your supplier. That's it.
Or more importantly, go and get your public. Or borrow your own. And buy from a state dispensary. Buy from a state sponsored. There you go.
Keep some Narcan nearby just in case. Oh my That's what he was looking for, the Narcan. Yeah. Right.
Alright. I keep some with me all the time. Okay. Are you really? Fred, really?
Giving it to the cat randomly? Yeah. This is this is recorded too. I should really not say things like that.
You know, the the Oh, stop the recording yet, Eric? That would have been a good thing. Oops. Yeah. You're right. I did not. And there you go.