2022-09-27-AC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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09/27/2022 AC Minutes 1 Minutes Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee (AC) September 27, 2022 Place and Time: Remote Participation: in accordance with “An Act Relative to Extending Certain State of Emergency Accommodations”, signed into law by Gov. Baker on July 16, 2022, communication took place via a Zoom teleconferencing session that was open to the public; 7:30 p.m. Members Present: Glenn Parker, Chair; Sanjay Padaki, Vice-Chair; Anil Ahuja; John Bartenstein; Alan Levine, Secretary; Eric Michelson; Sean Osborne; Lily Manhua Yan; Carolyn Kosnoff, Assistant Town Manager, Finance (non-voting, ex officio) Member(s) Absent: None Other Attendees: David Kanter, Capital Expenditures Committee; Doug Lucente, Select Board Member; Derek Sencabaugh, Fire Chief; Michael McLean, Police Chief; Mike Cronin, Director, Department of Public Facilities; Tim Goncalves, Director of Innovation and Technology; Sophie Culpepper, Reporter, Lexington Observer. At 7:35 p.m. Mr. Parker confirmed attendance by roll call and stated that the meeting was being recorded for the purpose of creating minutes. Mr. Bartenstein agreed to take minutes in the absence of a recording secretary. Announcements and Liaison Reports Mr. Levine reported that a meeting of the School Building Committee would be held the following day and that a meeting of the School Master Planning Committee, for which he is the liaison, would be held on Thursday. There was a discussion of the continuing role to be played by the Master Planning Committee in the planning for the rebuilding or renovation of Lexington High School now that the School Building Committee has been given principal responsibility for the project. Reserve Fund Transfer for Public Safety Communications Project The balance of the meeting was devoted to a requested transfer of $750,000 from the Reserve Fund to address an unanticipated need to refurbish and bring up to date certain components of the Town’s police and fire radio communications system. Following the recent move of the Police Department to its temporary headquarters located at 173 Bedford Street, that communications system was discovered to have deficiencies which could potentially have an impact on public safety. The amount requested is the entire current balance of the Reserve Fund. Fire Chief Sencabaugh began by providing background information necessary to understand the problem. He focused on technical developments of nationwide public safety radio systems since the late 1990’s, in particular an FCC plan to reallocate and auction off the bandwidth used by local police and fire departments around the country for use by cell phone carriers. Because the reallocation under discussion and the assignment of new and higher bandwidths for police and fire operations would have required the Town to replace or upgrade a substantial amount of its communications equipment to an as yet unknown standard, Lexington, like many other towns around the country, deferred system upgrades it otherwise would have made pending the FCC’s decision. After years of discussion, the FCC ultimately abandoned the reallocation plan in 2021. By this time, some components of the Town’s public safety communications equipment were nearing end of life.