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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022-09-27-AC-min 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. 09/27/2022 AC Minutes 2 When the Fire Department relocated to its temporary headquarters at 173 Bedford Street several years ago, it was able to make do, with minor adjustments, in part because it had already upgraded its communication equipment to work with the Town’s fiber optic network now used by most Town facilities, including at 173 Bedford Street. When the Police Department moved to that temporary location early this summer, however, problems arose because the dispatching operation, used by both the Police and Fire Departments, had been designed to work with an older phone system using copper wiring. In the planning for the move, Verizon representatives had assured that the copper-wire-based dispatching equipment could be transferred to and made serviceable at the temporary headquarters. After the move, however, it turned out that the older “analog” equipment did not function well when connected with the “digital” fiber optic cabling at 173 Bedford Street. The problem surfaced when police and fire employees in the field began to experience skips and drops of radio communications from the dispatch center. With the help of technical advisers and the investment of a considerable amount of time by the Town’s IT and Public Facilities departments, the Police and Fire Departments are working on ways to patch around the problems on a temporary basis and eliminate the skips and drops. However, both Police Chief McLean and Fire Chief Sencabaugh believe that it is essential to upgrade the affected portions of the communications systems as soon as possible to assure public safety. The chiefs, together with Department of Public Facilities Director Cronin, have identified nine antenna locations around the Town where equipment needs to be replaced. The estimated cost for the project is $800,000, including an allowance for contingencies. As there are long lead times for delivery after ordering the necessary equipment – in the range of six to eight months – the chiefs do not believe it would be prudent to delay things further by waiting for an appropriation of the necessary funds at the upcoming special town meeting scheduled for early November. The chiefs presented the issue to the Select Board at its meeting on September 24 and at that time proposed the use of ARPA grant money to fund the project. The Select Board, however, was reluctant to use ARPA funds for this purpose and recommended instead a request to this Committee for a transfer from the Reserve Fund. The request is for the complete balance of $750,000 currently in the Reserve Fund, which is the amount originally appropriated at the 2022 Annual Town Meeting. The additional $50,000 required would be covered by ARPA funds. In order to assure that adequate amounts would be available in the Reserve Fund for the balance of FY2023, it is anticipated that a request will be made at the upcoming special town meeting in November for an appropriation to replenish that fund from additional new growth revenue that has recently been identified. In response to questions by Committee members, including those in an email circulated in advance by Mr. Padaki, the following additional information was provided: • The contemplated upgrade of the dispatch equipment would have been necessary anyway when the Police Department moved back to its new headquarters building; this project will just accelerate the process. • The needed equipment upgrade was not part of the budget for construction of the new police station; the equipment is mostly located at antennas around the town, not at the station. • The anticipated lifespan of the new equipment is approximately 10 years. • The costs for the future retransfer of any of the new equipment purchased to the communications tower planned behind the new police station should be covered by AT&T as part of a tower lease. 09/27/2022 AC Minutes 3 • Pricing for the equipment to be purchased is based on a previously approved public bid list, which is published by the State on a periodic basis. • The Select Board decided not to approve funding this project entirely with ARPA funds because, although the Town has considerable flexibility in expending those funds, it believes they should be directed primarily to pandemic-related needs of the Town and the community. • The technical experts working on the project have a high confidence level that it will not only solve the existing problems but result in a better and more reliable public safety communications system for the Town; the project has also been reviewed and endorsed by radio experts with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA). • If this project had come before Town Meeting in the ordinary course, it would have been a candidate for bonding, but most likely would have been proposed for cash funding. • The temporary patches being worked on should be adequate to avoid most of the problems that have been experienced in the short term. • The expenses which have been incurred to date have been funded within the existing operating budgets of the relevant departments and are not part of this request. Mr. Parker shared on the screen a Town form requesting the transfer of $750,000 from the Reserve Fund to a new Public Safety Communications capital account that would be used to purchase and install the antenna equipment. A motion was made and seconded to approve the transfer. The motion was approved by a roll call vote. VOTE: 7-1. Minutes of Prior Meetings A motion was made and seconded to approve the minutes of the AC meeting held on September 21, 2022. The motion was approved by a roll call vote. VOTE: 8-0. Adjourn The meeting was adjourned by roll call vote at 9:05 p.m. Respectfully submitted, John Bartenstein Approved: October 13, 2022 Exhibits ● Agenda, posted by Mr. Parker ● Email from Carolyn Kosnoff dated 9/27/2022 responding to questions posed by Mr. Padaki in an email dated 9/26/2022 ● Signed approval of Reserve Fund Transfer Request dated 9/27/2022