HomeMy WebLinkAbout1999-11-16-CEC-min
Hi: Proposed minutes of the November 16th meeting follow. Please send me
any corrections, complaints, etc. -Tom G-
Capital Expenditures Committee
Minutes November 16, 1999 Meeting
1) Meeting was called to order in Room G15 by the Vice-Chairman at
7:30pm. Members present: Shirley Stolz, Narain Bhatia, Tom Griffiths,
and George Burnell. The Appropriation Committee was represented by
its liaison member Sheldon Spector.
2) The first 45 minutes of the meeting were spent in Room G15 with
members of the Recreation Committee and Karen Simmons from the
Recreation Department, who presented our Committee with its five-year
capital spending plan. Written copies of the plan were made available
for all members of our Committee.
3) The Recreation Department requests fall into two categories,
Enterprise and Tax Levy. The criterion for which requests go into
which category is whether the request is related to a revenue-making
activity. Thus, the $125,000 requested this year for swimming-related
improvements is requested from Enterprise and the $30,000 requested
for playground improvements is requested from cash-capital (tax-levy).
4) The tax-levy request for playground improvements is not within
scenario 1. If the Recreation Department has excess revenues this
they will be applied to reducing the amount of bonding for other
projects, not for the playground request.
5) The soccer field for Harrington has run into some siting problems,
but the Recreation Department expects to have a plan in place next
week. It may take two years to complete the work. One goal of the
project is to produce three soccer fields that don't experience
competition from baseball for use.
6) The Capital Expenditures Committee reconvened in Room 105 at 8:15pm
to meet with Connie Rawson, Steve Ellis, and John Ryan. Connie and
Steve presented plans for installing connections to a fiber-based
network RCN will run between Town buildings. John talked about the
plan to replace the Town's financial software and acquire an
integrated financial system that would support both the school-
and town-side administrative applications.
7) Connie and Steve handed out a description of the fiber-connection
proposal and an earlier study of the Town's Wide Area Network (WAN)
needs by Shooshanian Engineering Associates.
8) The principal argument advanced on behalf of installing the
connection equipment (switches and routers) now is that the current
WAN is extremely unreliable. Amplifiers in the current WAN are at
approximately 1/3rd-mile intervals. Network problems are frequent and
hard to localize. The resultant lost time, wasted effort, and
frustration are hard to live with. Particularly unreliable is
current WAN service for the COA, DPW, and fire-stations.
9) The fiber net would increase WAN bandwidth from 30mbs to 1gbs, a
thirty-fold increase.
10) As part of its agreement, RCN will also provide free internet access
and free use of one of its ISPs. This will result in a saving to the
Town of between $24,000 and $36,000 per year. This is the only hard
saving associated with implementing the fiber WAN.
11) Eventually, the fiber WAN should result in the Town's using fewer
servers and being able to implement centralized backup facilities.
12) The estimated cost of the connection equipment is $250,000. Of this,
$100,000 would come from the Selectmen's gift account and $150,000
from cash capital. None of this amount is in scenario 1.
13) The Finance Department is asking for $275,000 in FY 2002 to replace
its financial packages that dated back to 1991. The request would
be used to replace antiquated software the school system uses. The
$275,000 estimate is based on what other communities have spent for
comparable integrated packages.
14) The principal concern is support for software support. The software
is so old, many of vendor's staff are no longer familiar with it.
15) In addition, the software doesn't interface with modern tools, such
as spreadsheets.
16) Note that scenario 1 shows only $200,000 of the $275,000 request.
17) The meeting ended at approximately 9:15pm.
Minutes by Tom Griffiths