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Home My WebLink About1999-11-02-CEC-min MEETING DATE 11/2/1999 Hi: Attached are the prospective minutes of the November 2nd meeting of the Capital Expenditures Committee. Items 9 and 14, below, suffer from poor note taking. If anybody has better notes, particularly for proposed spending on library capital equipment, I would appreciate getting an upgrade. Item 14, general Town spending on big-ticket items is less important, because we will have a gazillion spreadsheets with all of that itemized before long. I have not included the usual schedule of upcoming meetings. HOWEVER, I do want to remind you that the Monday, August 8th, Selectmen's Meeting will hear departmental capital spending requests. -Tom G- Capital Expenditures Committee Minutes November 2, 1999 Meeting 1) Meeting was called to order by the Chairman at 7:30pm. All members present: Shirley Stolz, Narain Bhatia, Tom Griffiths, and new member George Burnell. The Appropriation Committee was represented by its liaison member Deborah Brown. The Library was represented at the Meeting by Carol Mahoney. The Town Manager, Rick White, also appeared at the meeting. 2) The Clerk passed out minutes of the October 26th meeting and a list of future meetings to those who hadn't received them by e-mail. 3) Condition of the East Lexington Branch Library: Carol Mahoney began with a discussion of the East Lexington Branch Library. It had a leak on the side of the roof that is 25 years old, but the leak was small and caused no damage to the library's books. The branch has structural problems, a bowed beam in the roof, among them. The branch can continue to operate, however, until 2002, at the earliest. At some point, serious consideration will be in order for the East Lexington branch. 4) Function of the East Lexington Branch Library: The branch will operate with extended hours during the main library renovation. It cannot, however, accommodate much overflow from the main library. The branch serves, in part, as a reading room, a quieter, less intense place than the main library. Its collection contains items like popular fiction and books from the NY Times bestseller list; the collection is not a research collection. Circulation at the branch is about 35,000 items a year, compared with about 600,000 at the main library. 5) Renovation of the Main Library, Schedule: Historic District Commission Approval (and Settlement Jan/Feb 2000 of the Douglas suit) Documentation taking about 5 months Move to Cary Hall Jun/Jul 2000 Out for Bids Aug/Sep 2000 Review taking about 2 months Award Oct/Nov 2000 Construction Begins Dec 2000 Construction completes about 16 months later Apr 2002 6) Various Numbers (in $Millions) Concerning Main Library Renovation: May 98 cost estimate (will be used with 3% inflation estimate) 9.3 Cost to Move to Cary Hall 1.5 State has given approximately 3 Fund-Raising to date 1 From Trustees 2 7) Handicapped access has been designed, but not yet approved. 8) Carol Mahoney raised the issue of maintenance. The Town has no maintenance budget for Town buildings. Thus, she worries about maintenance of the renovated library. For example, she expects the Historic District Commission to require a wood windows, a higher maintenance alternative. 9) The library capital equipment request will contain amounts for microfilm and microfiche readers at $10,000 apiece. A self checkout machine at $25,000 was deemed too costly. Even in these days of electronic information storage, many valuable resources are available only on microfilm, including the Lexington Minuteman, and older copies of the NY Times and Boston Globe. 10) The Library is trying to bring in efficient, low-maintenance equipment. Carol cited the example of a gigantic carpet-cleaning machine. The general maintenance budget is carried in the DPW. 11) Rick White spoke to the Committee about capital matters in general. 12) Rick says the Town is serious about the 5% cash capital plan. Steady-state investment for small-ticket items is a serious Town goal. In this context, Rick said that he'd favor a larger percentage set-aside for small-ticket capital expenditures, but that political/economic realities dictated the 5% number as a defendable position. 13) Over time, equipment investment has been favored over streets. The goal has been to achieve efficiencies in labor at the expense of capital maintenance. 14) The study of our roads classifies them into three states: (1) roads that need extensive, expensive reconstruction (estimated at $25-to-30 million), (2) roads in need of repair, but not reconstruction, and (3) roads requiring only simple maintenance. We should ask DPW next week about what estimated maintenance is in each category, and what we can accomplish in steady-state with Chapter 90 funds. In any event, major maintenance goals are to keep roads from creeping down in the condition categories. Note: the roads in need of reconstruction don't require more maintenance money as they deteriorate further: any additional cost of delay is simply that of inflation. Rick felt the study was valuable in establishing goals, but warned that it was, by no means, the final word: further manual inspection of the roads will be required for a completely accurate assessment of where we stand. 15) Rick listed several large ticket capital items the Town is facing, but the Clerk's fingers were not nimble enough to keep up. Among the items listed were the elementary schools at $60 million, the DPW building at $6 million, and the Senior Center at 30,000 square feet. An option for the DPW building is to rebuild on the Hartwell Ave. site of the current landfill, once that is closed. That would free up the current DPW site for sale or other use by the Town. 16) Landfill Closure: Rick is exploring whether Lexington can be granted an option for a "private sector" closing. This would involve having an appropriately certified engineer design an individual plan for Lexington's closing.rather trying to comply with all the requirements of state law, regulation by regulation. Rick thinks would save a substantial amount on the closing. 17) Rick has promised us an update on 14-Dec-99 concerning large contemplated capital expenditures. 18) Members of the Committee speculated that the Town needs maybe $100 million worth capital expenditures during the next ten-to-fifteen years. Rick and the Committee discussed the problems of preparing 5-year, or longer, big-ticket capital plans. 19) After some discussion, the Committee decided to have George Burnell be its liaison to the Committee studying town-side building utilization. 20) The meeting ended at 10:17pm. Minutes by Tom Griffiths