2000-03-23-CEC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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MEETING MARCH 23,2000 1) The Chairman called the meeting to order at 8:36pm. All members were present: Narain Bhatia, George Burnell, Tom Griffiths, Charles Hornig, Shirley Stolz. 2) The meeting was primarily a joint meeting with the Appropriation Committee to hear information on the Senior Center and ambulance proposals. The Town Administration was represented by Rick White. The Selectmen were represented by Jeanne Krieger, and the COA was represented by Jackie Davison, Nancy Freed, and others. 3) Before beginning action on these items, both finance committees voted in favor of seeing an elementary school building study that brought forth two new schools and two renovations. The estimated cost for this study is $1.2M, an amount larger than the $1M budgetary place holder for the study. 4) Rick, Jeanne, and the COA representatives spoke in support of granting the COA $50,000 in study money to put together a coherent proposal for nest Town Meeting: o The COA favors the use of the Laconia Street site currently owned by the School Committee. o Rick Bechtel is doing a quick estimate of needed space that will be based on a program needs list developed by the Senior Center Staff and volunteers. Rick will have this for Wednesday night's Town Meeting. o The money requested would be used for two site studies at $8,000 each and schematics at $36,000, actually a total of $52,000. 5) Members of the financial committees commented on several things, among them: o That they supported the overall goals of the COA. o That they were unclear that COA's thinking had gelled sufficiently to warrant funding of schematic design. o That they were uncomfortable that the number 36,000 sq ft (or 30,000 sq ft net) keeps coming up without a clear cut definition of precise needs. 6) Rick and Jeanne spoke in favor of the replacement of the backup ambulance this year. Rick pointed out that fire department personnel were uncomfortable with extending the use of the backup ambulance beyond 6 years. If the backup ambulance were temporarily out-of-service, Armstrong would be asked to cover. 7) Various members of the financial committees commented that they wanted to get replacement of the primary ambulance on a fixed three-year cycle, rather than an alternating two-year, four-year cycle. The reliability of the primary ambulance was of greater concern than the reliability of the secondary ambulance, though the committees agreed that both were important. 8) George Burnell offered to talk to the Fire Chief tomorrow, and Rick accepted the offer. 9) After the joint meeting, the Capital Expenditures Committee moved to an adjacent room to consider positions on the COA and ambulance. No formal votes were taken. 10) Senior Center: One member expressed a preference for shifting the