00:00:00,601 S1: Good evening. Barnstable is confirmed that the warrant for the special town meeting has been properly posted. The town clerk has informed me there is a quorum present. 00:00:12,200 S2: Mike is my. 00:00:14,300 S3: Get a closer. 00:00:17,567 S1: Intimate with the special town meeting of the town of Hamilton is now open. Good evening. I'm Bill bowler and I'm the town moderator. Welcome to the September 23rd, 2024 Special Town Meeting. And thank you very much for coming. I hope to keep my opening remarks a little shorter than usual so that they're not longer than the warrant. Uh, we'll start, as we always do, by saying the Pledge of Allegiance. So if you're able to stand, please stand. 00:00:50,367 S1: I would like allegiance. 00:00:54,267 S4: In our. 00:00:55,467 S1: Hearts. 00:00:55,801 S4: To God with us. One nation Indivisible. Talk to us for. 00:01:09,968 S1: A few general reminders. If you're a registered voter in Hamilton, you should have picked up a voting clicker. Um, you get one out front if you haven't. Um, we're all hands at this now, but we will have a brief demonstration later. Uh, please turn off your cell phones, and we welcome non-voters to town meeting. But ask that you sit in the visitors area, which is in the back. My right. Thank you. Um, I'll introduce some of the folks sitting in front of you. Lauren Goldberg, Cape Law Town council. Corinne Cahill, town clerk Joe Danilovich, town manager Wendy Markowitz, finance director, the Select Board and the finance committee. 00:02:06,367 S1: Oh, and I'm going to try to speed things up a little bit. So, uh, there'll be I've asked non-resident town officials to assist the Select Board and Finance Committee to be present, so they may be available to answer any questions. Um, if you if you didn't get a copy of the warrant as you came in, there are copies, some copies available out front. That's what we use to do the business of the meeting. Uh, to bring an agenda item before the meeting, I'll recognize a member of the sponsoring board, committee or individual so they can make a motion if it's second. I'll recognize the proponent to speak once they're done. I'll open the discussion to you, the voters, um, To ensure that we have an orderly meeting. If you wish to speak. You must first ask me to recognize you. To save time, please be at the microphone. Due to the proverbial technical difficulties, we only have one microphone here. To my right at the end of the aisle. If you have. If you have a question or comment. 00:03:23,000 S1: State your name and address please. And we'll use. We use town meeting time. You'll have three minutes to ask a question to make a comment. Um, keep your comments within the four corners of the motion directed to the business before the meeting. 00:03:47,667 S1: And no applause and cheering, please. And if you have an amendment, amendments must be in writing and given to the town clerk here. Uh, town council can give you some assistance in framing amendments and anything else having to do with how we deal with amendments. I'll deal with. Did we get any? So, uh, so Joe de Mello will now, uh, demonstrate the clickers. Excuse me. Electronic voting. 00:04:31,367 S5: Thank you, everybody, for coming. Um, so you all should have one of these in your hand. The green button is for. Yes, the red button is for. No. Uh, we have a simple question, and it is. Did you know that this Saturday from 10 to 2 is going to be public safety Day in the town of Hamilton? Please vote no. 00:04:58,567 S5: So once we get close to knowing that we have all the votes counted, the moderator will call the time. 00:05:11,801 S5: Right. And then we'll close the voting. 00:05:15,868 S1: The motion passes. 00:05:18,667 S5: You all know. All right. That's great. 00:05:22,400 S1: Thank you, Mr. Development. 00:05:24,300 S4: You did it. No. 00:05:29,801 S5: Fair point. For those of you who didn't know, we have a public safety day this Saturday presented to at the public safety Garage. Thank you. 00:05:37,100 S2: I just gave me your opportunity. 00:05:38,767 S1: The moderator corrects his error. Question did not pass. 00:05:46,501 S1: It will not go through the articles in the warrant article Uh, 2024. Slash 912. To hear any reports of town officers and selected committees, and to take action thereon or relative thereto. I recognize Town Manager Joe DeMille wants to make a presentation on the purpose of tonight's meeting. 00:06:13,868 S5: Thank you everybody. First of all, thank you all for coming. I appreciate that it takes a lot to come out on a Monday night. And we appreciate your, your doing your, your duty as residents to come here and help us with these important decisions. Uh, I'm going to go through a brief, um, project presentation, after which we can take some questions just about the project and when we get into the motions, if you have questions about the financing of the or the financial aspects of the two questions, we have other folks here that can answer those questions at that time. That makes sense. I will try to be brief. All right. Next slide. Yeah. All right. So as most of you know, this project began in 2017 with the creation of the Town Hall Building Committee. Since then, the town meeting has supported the Town Hall project in separate votes in 2020, 2021 and again last year in 2023. The approvals in 2020 and 2021 also required a passage of a debt exclusion tax increase to complete the project. Unfortunately, in both instances, the voters chose not to approve the debt exclusion and the project did not move forward. Last November, we brought a reworked project and a new project estimate to Special Town Meeting, which not required yet exclusion or any other new tax increases. And again, the town meeting approved that project. 00:07:29,667 S5: So why are we back again today? Well, following last year's town meeting vote, the town and our consultants had to spend some time removing the energy and HVAC components from the original project to create the decarbonization project and have a separate rehabilitation project. We completed that work, moved forward to bidding, and when the bids came in on the renovation and preservation project. They came in over what we had been, what we had estimated. By about $2 million. Once those projects were separated, we went up there. It is important to note that the cost increase is entirely related to the renovation of preservation project. The decarbonization project that we created is entirely self-funded through grants, tax increment financing and incentives from the utility. So no new town tax money would be needed to pay for the decarbonization project. This is just for general construction. We have noticed that over the last year, construction costs have gone up dramatically. So we had what we thought was a good estimate. Last November, it took us 4 or 5 months to get the new project put together and put out the bid. And by the time we opened the bids in July, we had missed the mark. So 00:08:38,501 S5: next, next one, as I as I just noted, the only thing that has changed since last November is the cost of the renovation and preservation project. At last year's Special Town meeting, we developed a budget based on cost estimation. Now we have an actual cost. We had a low bidder. The low bidder. As I said, over what we have for a budget. But he has agreed to hold that bid through the end of tonight's proceedings. So we know what the cost would be if we want to proceed. However, even with this new increase, we are proposing a funding mechanism that would not cause your taxes to go up. The use of the CPC funds and the use of free cash allows us to be able to afford the project without asking, or needing to raise taxes at all to afford this project. Next. Next slide. 00:09:25,868 S5: The funding request we developed, as I said, includes CPC funding and some amount of free cash. This was this approach was put together through the hard work of the Select Board, the Finance and Advisory Committee, the CPC and some of the town staff and the finance department, notably Wendy Markowitz. So unfortunately, Wendy couldn't be here tonight. But this continues to have the support of the major boards and committees in the town, and we do feel that right now is the right time to move forward with this project. We're getting $2 million worth of. 00:10:00,567 S5: Rent? Well, they're not running. We're getting too many $2 million worth of energy work done to the building at no additional cost to us. And then the additional money that we put in tonight, if you say yes, would help us renovate and restore the town hall, this town hall, and bring it up to code. Right. Yeah. Next slide. Right now we're just going to go quickly through some of the slides that I showed you last year. This is an example. This is a rendering of what the new town hall would look like from the side. You'll note that the biggest one of the biggest advantages of this project is that we're adding an elevator addition to the rear of the building, and the current temporary ramp would be replaced with a new permanent ramp that would end behind the building as well. Next slide In the town hall basement. We'd be renovating the locker rooms and storage rooms for the town and creating a small office. This built up the basement floor would also be accessible through the elevator as well. Next slide. In the first floor, we'd be locating pretty much what are considered the front facing departments of the town. So the town clerk, the town treasurer, the town assessor, the DPW office department, the planner, the planner and the conservation agent would all be located in the first book and the second. Next slide. The Memorial room would be moved upstairs. We'd have a much larger new renovated Memorial room, and then the only offices up there would be the town manager and finance director. There would also be new bathrooms on the second floor, which town currently doesn't have. And this is just an artist's depiction of what the new meeting room would look like. Next slide. And then this is a show you our landscape and parking point. So we'd be establishing some additional parking for the town hall and a part of the yard. We'd be siting a new backup generator so that the entire building could continue to run if the power goes out. And the upgraded septic system, so that system is very old, is going to need to be upgraded sooner or later anyway. So we could do it as part of this project by site. This is what your new town hall or renovated town hall would look like from Bay road. As you can see, the cupola is fully restored and the building once again looks as. 00:12:18,767 S4: There we go. 00:12:19,100 S5: All right. Sorry, I talk too fast. Um. The building once again looks as glorious as it should. It take some questions about the project right now. And as I said, we can hold other questions about the financing and what we're asking until we get to those motions. 00:12:35,000 S1: Are there any questions or comments on the project? 00:12:41,000 S5: Really, I did that go to job. Thank you so much. 00:12:44,467 S1: Hearing none. Thank you. Mr.. Developments. 00:12:50,200 S1: Article two. One community preservation town hall project. I recognize jay Butler. 00:13:02,701 S5: Jay Butler, 78, Walcott road. Chair. Community. Community preservation committee. 00:13:10,601 S6: I motion that the town vote to approve article 2020 4/92-1 as printed in the warrant. 00:13:19,000 S1: Is there a second? 00:13:20,801 S4: Second. 00:13:23,100 S1: Mr. Butler? 00:13:24,767 S5: Yes. 00:13:26,400 S6: Just a couple of comments. Um, as you heard from Joe DiBella, which, uh, this CPA grant request for 1.5 million for the renovation addition and preservation project has been unanimously approved by the CPC, the fin com and the Select Board. The approved funds will be processed as a 20 year municipal bond to pay for out of the CPC surcharge, and this will have no effect on the tax rate. This effort has been addressed as a formal project for several years and then formally for decades before its time. This grant, coupled with the following warrant article the transfer of free cash, together represent the final actions necessary to get the Town Hall project started. Your approval of the CPA grant will bring the number of CPA grants to a total of six, equal to $6,475,000. 00:14:25,167 S6: This is an excellent example of how CPA grant money should be spent on the important needs of the town. Thank you. 00:14:39,767 S1: Are there any questions? 00:14:49,367 S1: I recognize John McGrath, chairman of the Finance Committee. 00:14:55,367 S5: Good evening folks. Um, in preparation for tonight's meeting, we, uh, package together a fair. 00:15:02,167 S7: Amount of information. It's in the book of recommendations. It's 14 pages, so we thought we'd go through each page. 00:15:09,067 S5: Okay. 00:15:12,567 S7: Okay. Just trying to lighten the mood a little bit. Um. Real quickly. Um. 00:15:20,868 S7: The fin com spent a fair amount of time, you know, looking at this. You know what happened year over year. Um, and, well, it's unfortunate that the project cost accelerated to the extent that it has. Uh, income does support the project. Um, the fact that the town is in financial health and is very strong, um, allows us to use some, uh, free cash and also to utilize the CBC revenue stream without causing anyone's tax rates to go up. So, um, as Jay said, we all felt it's time to get this project done. We have solid bids. Um, the funds are available. Um, and by using these funds, it doesn't disadvantage the town in any way. So those are our thoughts. Um, the other final comment I'll make is when we saw this increase, we sought to determine if it really made sense. We actually did a little bit a little bit of research from our desks at home. But if you're interested in understanding what's going on with the construction costs, refer you to a Global Spotlight article from last December, which talks about what's going on in Massachusetts and the building industry. And also we looked at the Massachusetts School Building Authority costs and looking at what's happening with construction costs for new schools. We saw 30 to 50% increases. Um, so it's unfortunate that we waited so long to do this project, and we're sort of suffering because of that. But Effingham does support the project. It's not impairing the town at all. Rather, we're using some of the resources that we have at our disposal. So, uh, certainly if you have any questions, um, you can certainly, you know, read about this in the book of recommendations. But if there are any questions, we're more than happy to entertain any of them. And. 00:17:40,501 S7: That's all we had. Thanks. 00:17:44,467 S1: Are there any questions or comments? 00:17:52,501 S4: We require 56 Wall Street. I just wanted to double check and make sure. Um, I wanted a little concern about low bids. I want to make sure that this is a reputable company and that, uh, so we're not going to end up making junk basically recognizable. 00:18:09,467 S5: Tim. Um. 00:18:10,567 S1: Yes. Uh, Tim Olson, uh, DPW director and address that. 00:18:15,367 S5: We're going to we're going to have Tim answer that for you because he works with the company to put the bids out and, uh, review the bids and make sure everything was in order. So I'll have Tim address that for you. 00:18:33,167 S4: The most. 00:18:35,267 S1: Tim Olson. 00:18:35,868 S5: DPW. 00:18:36,367 S1: Director. Yes, we did look at. 00:18:38,467 S5: The. 00:18:38,567 S1: Bids. I had our architectural consultants as well. Uh, they are very reputable. Uh, they've done projects of similar size, historic nature, and they came recommended from our consultants. 00:18:53,167 S5: And with the. 00:18:54,367 S1: Research, we feel like. 00:18:55,367 S5: They're. 00:18:56,000 S4: They're a. 00:18:56,367 S1: Good qualified contractor. 00:18:58,200 S4: Thank you. 00:19:00,400 S1: Any other questions or comments? 00:19:06,767 S6: John 195 Woodbury. Um, I don't know if this is the time to ask this question. A couple of neighbors of mine and I looked at the page at the back of the presentation with all the charts and stuff, and our eyes glazed over so we don't quite understand where the funds come from and that at such good, healthy position. I assume it's a tax increase and a couple of years ago. And secondly, we don't understand, um, taking the money from free cash seems kind of little unorthodox. And how much money is left and what are the normal purposes of free cash? 00:19:42,367 S5: You know, I'm going to tag team on that myself and turn first on free cash. Free cash is free cash is what is left over every year when we budget a certain amount and we either get in more taxes than we anticipated or we spent less than we did than we anticipated because we manage our budget very well during the course of the year. So, for instance, I managed for a full department in the police department, right? And then somebody leaves in the middle of year to take a job in another community, and it takes me 4 or 5 months to fill that position. That's 4 or 5 months. I'm not paying that person. So that money falls to free cash. And you get a bunch of things like that that happen over the course of the year, and you wind up with a free cash sum every year. So free cash is generally expected to be spent on things that are non-recurring costs. Capital items are a big part of it. And if you come to an annual town meeting, you'll notice that most of the time when we ask to do capital projects, we're asking to fund the majority of those with free cash every year. So this is exactly the type of thing we would normally find with free cash. Um. And I'll let. I'll let John or Jay Butler answer the question about the CPC issue. 00:20:40,167 S7: Yeah, I can I can provide a little bit more color. Um. 00:20:47,100 S7: As, uh, as Joe mentioned, um, the free cash, um, is let's just say it's usually in the 3 to 5% range. So every year, because of sort of tight fiscal management, we underspend the budget by a certain amount every year. It's a little bit different. Um, because those funds were budgeted under a certain budget category, we have to come back to the town and ask for permission to use any of those funds. So that's why it's on a warrant article. Um, and as of right now, uh, the town has $4.5 million worth of free cash. Um, and the plan is to use half a million of that to fund this article. All right. So keep in mind that we do a budget and the budget is detailed in April, and you vote in that budget. But if we do have free cash, we have to come back a second time to utilize that. All right. So if you look at the April town meeting, almost every meeting you'll see we're asking permission to use some of that free cash. Okay. The second question regarding the CPC, if you look at your tax bill, um, there's a small surcharge that we all pay above the tax rate, and that is for the CPC funds. Um, it could be $100. It could be $500, depending on the size of your tax bill, the spending of those funds is under the under the sort of control of the CPC Committee. J and about 7 or 8 town volunteers work on appropriate usages of those funds. Right now that revenue stream is about $700,000 a year. All right. When they add up all the receipts for CPC, this project, the town hall project, will consume approximately $400,000 a year, up to $700,000 a year. That's already coming into the town for the next 20 years. So we are using an existing revenue stream generated by an existing rate, and it will consume about 60% of that to pay for the bond. The bonding on that project, and those CPC decisions are forwarded to the town meeting and you get the vote on it. Um, generally in April. But because this is a special town meeting, we're voting on it now. So two existing sources, sort of well controlled, sort of well publicized to the public. And you always get a chance to vote on free cash and CPC projects. 00:24:01,067 S7: All right. Is that answer the question. 00:24:04,467 S6: I would just add real quick to that. 00:24:06,601 S5: Similar with free cash, where we only spend the money on non-recurring items on an annual basis. CPC has specific things that we're allowed to spend that money on, and capital projects to historic structures is one of those categories that we could spend it on. So. 00:24:25,000 S1: Any other questions or comments? 00:24:39,467 S4: And members of the Planning board are not speaking on behalf of the Planning Board. 00:24:43,968 S6: And I missed the entire presentation. I was just coming in. 00:24:46,667 S4: Hot off a soccer practice. 00:24:48,701 S6: Or just a comment. 00:24:50,367 S4: In some special neighbors, we were just wondering. Um, from a priority perspective, knowing that we spent a couple hundred thousand dollars in planning to renovate Patton Park or, you know, a future plan that's kind of moving towards that. Uh, we're currently, uh, considering an update to the strategic master plan in the town, which has not yet been approved. Uh, there's obviously an athletic field project that's currently in litigation. Um, there's, uh, there's a number of other projects. 00:25:21,667 S6: In town undergoing. We have the freeway, we have the school project, we have the, uh, we have the consideration for, uh, form based code and and comprehensive plan for the town. So just curiosity and having all these balls in the air seems like a lot going on at the moment. And a lot of this falls in priority. Thanks. 00:25:43,367 S2: Yeah. 00:25:53,367 S2: Thanks for your question, Caroline. Are you chair of the Select board? You're not wrong about all the balls. Um, there are many, many things happening. And I think one important point of note is that when, uh, Tim Olson brought this to the select board, part of what you're seeing here was that the mandate to the fin com and to Wendy, who is not here tonight, was that we needed a creative source of funding that allowed us to do this with no impact to the tax rate. And that was because of the sort of implications of some of these ongoing projects that are ahead of us. specifically, I think, you know, the school is a big one. The tax increases that are going to be associated with the fields project. And so taking this sort of out of that larger conversation, we were hoping that for that exact reason, we could utilize the health of the town to get this paid for. I think one of the things that has sort of been lost in this conversation is that, you know, this is not the full town hall project that we wanted to do. It's a percentage of the project that cost twice as much as the original project. And part of that is that the prices keep increasing. And so the sort of mandate from the Selectboard was, let's get this done so that we can get our people back in the building. We can get people back into an accessible space. Let's not affect the tax rate or increase taxes for anybody, so that we can then turn our attention to what does the future of taxes look like for this town, and what are the priorities that we decide to spend that money on? Because, I mean, I think if you look at the voting record for this project, it does not seem to be a tax increase priority project for the town. That's been loud and clear when it's gone to a vote. So unfortunately it's something that that needs to be done. We can't allow Titanfall to fall into the ground. We need the space for the folks that that work there and the community members who need it. So I would say it's a high priority for those who need it and for, you know, the space that we need and the timing of it and the cost of it, but it has not been such a priority that we've been willing to increase taxes in order to fund it. Okay. 00:27:50,000 S1: Thank you. Any other questions or comments? 00:27:52,367 S7: I can make one more comment if I could. Um, last year when we were in this meeting that Finchem commented that, um, town hall is the center of our town government. It is sort of the the bedrock. It is the focal point of a small town, and there's sort of a theme, um, that sort of permeates Hamilton. And that is we tend to defer. big spending. Um, and by that I mean, um, we've deferred, uh, new schools. We've deferred, uh, work on the fields. We've deferred, uh, work on this building. We've deferred improvements to sort of the downtown center. So this town and I've lived here for 40 years. We we have a record of not wanting to spend big bucks. Um, so we tend to push kick the can down the road a bit so that I'm speaking maybe more from the fact that I'm a 40 year resident, but, um, I, I agree with Jay's earlier comments. Um, this is this it's time to get this project done. And the beauty of this project is Tim Olsen and the town energy manager got really creative. And they created this decarbonization Harmonization project, which is $1.8 million, which is being self-funded. So rather than saying, hey, we need another $2 million bond. They went out and put this project together. And you may know that Hamilton just won a half $1 million grant from the state to fund a big piece of this decarbonization project. So none of us like spending money. But the town did go out and use some creative, um, expertise to pull some money in and carve out this decarbonization project, which brought the cost of the overall project down. So we give them, you know, kudos for, um, working on, on our behalf to do that. And, uh, you know, I just think I just think it's, um, well, it's not as important maybe as educating our kids. It is time to get this project done. And that's I think that's what we said last year. And it's not cheap. There's no doubt about that. Anyway, that's all I had. 00:30:36,467 S1: Um, 00:30:38,767 S1: I recognize Jay Butler. 00:30:42,567 S8: Mr.. Comment on the warrant before you was for 1.5 million from the CPC. We spent a lot of time looking, as far as we can see, into the future on potential areas where grants might be necessary. I consult with the capital planning Group. Uh, we met our group discussed this at length in May and. 00:31:04,267 S6: June. 00:31:04,968 S8: Prior to our annual meeting with the Select board in July. And then subsequent to that, and right now, we have no projects standing in the wings to use this amount of money. We don't. And so there's no issue with regard to the CPC offering this up as a grant, as a solution to the town. This is the most important project that's ever crossed our desk in the committee. Thank you. 00:31:32,100 S1: Any other questions or comments? 00:31:36,267 S6: Jeff Austin. I'm also planning board to speak as myself. Just a few comments. Free cash. $4 million is in excess. Again, I don't know the word in this process. Nothing seems to have a lot of excess left over from our taxpayer money. Number one. Number two, I think there is a theme. There's a theme that we spend a lot of money or as an artist seem to be very accessible. Yes. We need yes, we need new schools being renovated. Yes, we need new tunnels. But the bills seem to be really high. Our expectations are really to mind. And again, construction not my forte. So except for a couple of numbers up here. We got $834,000 for HVAC $830,000. See that? That elevator happened at $540,000 per elevator. Not my forte. It seems really expensive. $209,000 in masonry. 00:32:33,767 S6: Just seems really expensive. I know we can do this. I'm not sure we do our due diligence to really bring these prices down and watermarks really high. And maybe don't do everything all at once. And those made to do piecemeal. It just seems I've seen concerns about a lot of stuff, you know, right now in the books, but there's a lot of issues and towns that are spending money, schools bringing potentially. These are all things we're looking at now. I know what I'm saying. How are we going to avoid all the bills? So I have a lot of concerns there with that. Um, I know it sounds like a really good being a lot to put a lot of hard work into this, but it's hard now. Right. That's my question. 00:33:11,901 S5: So real quick on the on the free cash. I'll just say that the $4.5 million in free cash isn't from one year. It accumulates year after year after year. We have a free cash policy that every year when we balance the budget, we we hold at least 5% of the operating budget assigned to free cash. So that's $2 million that's been rolling over year after year after year. And then the additional amount come every year. We balance the books at the end. We close the books at the end of the year, some new money comes up. And that's what we try to work in that margin to do ongoing capital projects and things as we got coming through. I agree, it's a lot of money. Um, we I would note that the, you know, the bids are in line with what actually the bid we have is actually the lowest bid. We had 5 or 7 bids and the other bids were all much more than this. It's the cost of construction right now. And while we've been here proposing this every year, 2020, 2021, the price has gone out and they're not going to go down as far as doing this in phases. Unfortunately, the town has allowed this project to be delayed for so long that we really can't. At this point, we're held in hemmed in by state and federal laws. If we want to fix the facade of the building and restore the cupola that's going to, we're going to spend so much money doing that that that's going to force us to make the build the building Ada compliant. Once we make the building Ada compliant, we spend so much money that we now have to make the building fire resistant. Those are the things we can't do the project piecemeal. If I start to do a piece, the cost, the value of the building is so low that I trip the other triggers as soon as we start to do some work. The only thing we didn't want to do it this way. We spent two years after the voters told us. Now, in 2021, we spent almost two years trying to figure out was there a way we could do this and add a piece at a time. That's when we decided to separate out the decarbonization project and do a separate project at the same time, because we knew we could fund that with grants. We knew we could fund that with tax incentives and industry incentives. We're doing the best we can. But I will tell you that if the vote says no tonight, that's the will of town meeting. We'll be back here again in a couple of years, and the project is not going to be less expensive. I guarantee you won't be. 00:35:21,100 S1: If you have questions or comments. 00:35:25,100 S2: Maybe you could come down to the microphone here please. 00:35:28,767 S6: We have. 00:35:29,200 S7: People line up. 00:35:29,868 S5: In. 00:35:30,000 S7: Microphones. 00:35:30,567 S6: We're not. 00:35:30,968 S1: Doing it. Yeah. Please, if you have a question. Line up behind Rick. 00:35:35,968 S7: Mitchell. 00:35:36,467 S6: 36. 00:35:37,100 S1: Roscoe Mitchell. 00:35:38,701 S8: Um, time is money. 00:35:41,000 S6: We've delayed. 00:35:41,567 S5: This. 00:35:41,767 S8: Project. 00:35:42,367 S6: For years. It's gone up 50% in cost. The more we talk, the more time, the more money it's going to cost. The time is now. Let's call the question and get it done. 00:35:58,100 S6: I'm calling the question. 00:36:00,868 S1: It's within the moderator's prerogative to let anyone. This gentleman. 00:36:08,701 S6: Hi, Dave. Last Sunday, Lakeshore Avenue. Um. I spent 30 years in commercial real estate development, renovating older buildings, and I was going to say much of what Joe just reported. And I'm just going to underscore. Um, a building like this, what do you think the useful life is? It's about 40 years. We've been 40 years without a gut renovation, without a major renovation to this building. And it's impossible to piecemeal it because just as Joe said, one thing triggers another thing. You want to do an elevator. You might need more electrical capacity pretty soon. That project is outrageous just to do an elevator. And so what happens is owners stop renovating, they stop repairing, they stop having sufficient maintenance in the building. And every now and then every 40 years, we got to bite the bullet and modernize the building and bring it back to a baseline of standard where you can maintain it efficiently. So I just really want to underscore the good work of putting together an integrated plan and design and sufficient and compact compact and matches our operations. And I strongly support our going ahead with this. 00:37:31,000 S1: Okay. I sense that we're ready for a vote. This requires a two thirds vote. 00:37:39,667 S1: Uh, all those in favor of radical 2-11, 00:37:47,767 S1: please vote aye. And those opposed? Nay. So voting is open now. 00:38:14,167 S9: How do we know the Michigan work? 00:38:17,667 S1: Voting is closed. 00:38:20,868 S5: Just real quick. Quick. If you got your late, I apologize. You missed the the test. We had a test question at the beginning of town meeting, and the people that were present in the room, we asked them a question, yes or no question, and they got to see that the machines are working. So this is the fifth time meeting we've done with the electronic voting clicker. So we're pretty confident in the accuracy okay. 00:38:40,367 S1: Because there is some question about it. We're going to I'm going to request that we revote. 00:38:47,667 S10: So I don't think you have to go somewhere. 00:38:52,367 S5: Just ask how we know it's here. 00:38:56,000 S10: We vote. 00:38:58,968 S1: Awning is closed. 00:39:02,767 S2: Voting is closed. 00:39:04,067 S1: Voting is closed. 00:39:07,801 S10: This one is. 00:39:14,901 S1: Oh, it is 101. And yay! 17. Nay. That's more than two thirds. The article passes, and I so declare. Thank you. Before we move to the next article, I note that our state Senator Brewster is here. Um, does he wish to address briefly of the assemblage? Is he aware? I wonder if our new town, by law. You know, we charge a dollar for a minute. 00:39:53,167 S10: Please. 00:39:54,000 S1: Thank you, Mister Moderator. And through you to the members of Town Meeting and Mr. Moderator, we also have a new state bylaw that for every dollar is elected, official is charged at town meeting. We deduct a dollar in local aid. So happy. 00:40:06,167 S5: To. 00:40:06,767 S1: Be able to comport with your ruling? Mr.. Moderate, I just want to take a minute, first of all, and say it's good to see folks come out at town meeting. I know this is an important discussion. It's an important project. And I just want to say that it's been a real pleasure to work with the town administrator and the DPW director on the decarbonization components of this project, which I think are extremely significant. We were able to work together to expedite the studies and approvals that were needed for some components of the renewable energy aspects of the project, and it's also good to see some state money flowing into that particular aspect of it. And I would commend the town and its officials for working on a project of this nature. And making sure to include a decarbonization component is something that could have been overlooked. It was not, and I think it's significant, and I think it reflects outstanding leadership. And I just wanted to make that comment. Mr. moderator, again, I appreciate the opportunity to come and say hello and thank everyone for coming up for town meeting and moderator. It's always an honor to work with all the people at the front of this room on behalf of all the people in the rest of the room. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. 00:41:15,267 S11: Thank you. Mr.. 00:41:26,167 S1: Article two two Town hall project. I recognize Rosemary Kennedy. 00:41:39,567 S12: Good evening everybody. 00:41:40,901 S10: Let's get real. 00:41:44,267 S12: Good evening everybody, and thank you all for coming out tonight. I move that the town vote to approve article 2020 4/92.2 00:41:54,767 S12: as printed in the warrant. Is there a second? 00:41:58,167 S1: Second? 00:42:00,267 S12: Kennedy I just wanted to make a few comments. And the most important thing for everybody to remember is with all the financial concerns going around, there is no increase in the tax bill and that's really important. Um, the our town hall has been well maintained. Um, there has not been a total renovation since the year it was built in 1897 speaks of its wonderful bones. The town hall needs and deserves our collective attention. It represents our history. And with your help, our future. Thank you. 00:42:41,100 S11: Are there any questions or comments? 00:42:47,567 S11: If not, we'll go to a vote. This requires a majority vote. You'll have 20s to vote. Voting is now open. 00:43:15,400 S7: Good to see you here. 00:43:21,000 S11: Morning is now closed. 00:43:36,567 S10: For 120. It's 100. 00:43:41,167 S11: The vote is 100 to 15. More than a majority. The vote. The article passes and I so declare. Is there a motion to dissolve the special town meeting? So moved. Is there a second? All those in favor, please say aye. 00:44:00,701 S10: How long is it? 00:44:01,601 S5: Thank you very much, everybody.