[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 8:49)
and the Finance Committee and the Select Board and discuss school finances and town finances. We're at the beginning of really our capital planning process. We have a lot of important shared projects, not only a $100 million elementary school, but a lot of ambitious plans for capital projects.

We thought it would be helpful for us to really roll up our sleeves and really get into some of the numbers. So we've looked at a number of opportunities for us to schedule some meetings, have our town and school finance committee, finance team come together and really look at changes. We're seeing some additional enrollment this year in our school district, so we're eager to kind of figure out how that's affecting our overall projections, but certainly helpful to sit around the table and talk about these issues.

Tonight, we have both Chief Archer and Chief Cassata here to discuss our regional contract with the city of Lynn and the town of Nahant. We're in a regional district. This opens up Swampskate, Lynn, and Nahant to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of state grants.

And there's some additional information that we shared tonight about some of the benefits that are in that contract, but also some of the opportunities for us to continue that partnership. Last week, I had a wonderful opportunity, last Saturday, to attend a rededication of the basement of the Swampskate Library. It has been rebranded to the Fathoms.

This was a name that Swampskate teenagers came up with. It's an absolutely awesome space and place. If I were a teenager, I'd love to go and just hang out there.

I did bring a teenager, and they said it was a cross between something that Harry Potter and perhaps a nautical-themed space collaborated on. This space was also dedicated in honor of a Swampskate employee, Sandy Maltz. I had an opportunity to work with Sandy for a number of years when I first started.

She was on the bargaining team for the library, but she was so much more than that. Sandy's love for music, art, and culture really permeated through the library. This space has been dedicated in her honor for all the work and effort that she put into creating programs.

The library director has told me that since we hired two team pages to staff this space, there's been a huge uptick in individuals using the space. Tonight, we're gonna be talking about the historic Pitman House. I have had several meetings over the last week with Historical Commission Chair and Select Board Member Thompson to discuss the relocation of the house.

We have had several meetings with Habitat for Humanity. It's exciting to work with Habitat again and really connect with some folks. Lot of complexities with this, but certainly something that is worthy of our time and attention.

We have our Hadley request for proposals out. We're looking to build a hotel in the former Hadley School. It's fascinating to see how many individual companies and boutique companies actually have pulled that RFP all throughout New England, but across the country.

Slumskip was once the hotel capital of New England, and it looks as though there may be some interest in bringing back a little bit of that magic. Tonight, we'll get into an asset management update. Over the last 24 months, we've actually taken a look at over $200 million worth of stuff that's underground that nobody has ever seen or heard about unless it doesn't work.

Slumskip has significant assets for water, wastewater, and drainage. Each of these systems require a capital plan. This is a plan, and we'll be going over tonight some of the information that we've been able to gather in terms of its age and the system's needs.

I've been working closely with Mayor Nicholson from Lynn. We heard back from the Undersecretary of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. Secretary Cooper responded to a letter that we sent back in August asking to expedite the scheduling for permitting a pension for Kings Beach.

This would help ensure that the beach is protected from overflows and bacteria that come out of Stacy's Brook. The Undersecretary has been meeting with her regulatory team. They believe that they can expedite the permit by six months to a year, but again, permitting for an outfall pipe could take as much as five to eight years, and we wanna get a real clear idea of how long it's gonna take, and we wanna back into a 36-month schedule.

So we do have an urgency to really schedule another follow-up meeting with the Army Corps, CZM, and DEP, and really get a schedule, scope, and fee for how we're gonna move forward with that project. Our RFP for Veterans Housing Project for Pine Street has closed. We did receive one respondent, and we're reviewing it in detail.

We have a bona fide proposal that really is extraordinary to think that we could take a property like this and create Veterans Affordable Housing. Our Facilities Director, Matt Casper, is working to coordinate the new school construction and has recently completed the filling in of the carriage house at Town Hall. Last year, we had a loader crash through the floor at Town Hall, so that will never happen again.

It has been completely filled with concrete. So we do have a number of updates for police and fire vacancies. Chief Posada has been working aggressively with members of the Swansboro Police Union to really tighten up a hiring timeline.

We've reduced it to 49 days. We currently have 13 candidates that have passed the physical and 12 candidates will be actually interviewed tomorrow, and so really looking forward to recommendations from the chief. We have a number of staff that are joining the chief for those interviews.

Amy Saro has been working with our finance team to go over the recently received capital improvement projects. She has provided an update on American Recovery Act funding, and happy to discuss that. She's attending the meeting online.

Our Senior Center is always busy. Heidi Weir has been working with GBH to promote Seed Glass Village and other recreation programs that include Getting Dot Older as part of the aging program. We're still looking for van drivers, so anybody that's looking to drive some of our seniors around, we have an opportunity for ya.

Recreation department is as busy as it's ever been. We have our farmer's market. We have Indigenous People's Day on October 15th.

We have annual Halloween parade. It was great leaving Town Hall tonight, seeing a number of costumes being picked up. There's a costume sale tonight at Town Hall, but certainly recreation has collected over 200 costumes, and they'll be on sale Wednesday night in October from five to 7 p.m., and prices are between five and eight dollars, so they come in all sorts of sizes, so everybody can go down there and take a look and have some fun.

[Speaker 7] (8:49 - 8:52)
That's my report. Thanks, Sean. Questions from the board?

[Speaker 6] (8:54 - 9:02)
My, I have actually two questions. Who is going to evaluate the RFP from Pine Street? Who does that?

[Speaker 2] (9:04 - 9:24)
Typically, initially, town staff. I have reached out to the chair of the board, and I think having two select board members evaluate that with us to come back to the full board for a conversation would be the appropriate way to vet the RFP.

[Speaker 6] (9:24 - 9:32)
Okay, my second question is, are we gonna be discussing tonight the ARPA money, the DEP money, the 2.5 for Kings Beach?

[Speaker 2] (9:33 - 9:56)
We are gonna be discussing that in two different agenda items, so there's a memo that was presented by our director of finance administration. I think that's a time where the board could ask our finance director any type of questions that you might have, or ask me questions, and it is going to come up when we talk about the asset management in Kings Beach update.

[Speaker 20] (9:56 - 9:57)
Okay, great.

[Speaker 2] (9:57 - 10:00)
I think there's an opportunity to discuss it in both of those agenda items.

[Speaker 6] (10:02 - 10:20)
Thanks. Oh, and I just wanna add, the recreation department, on another day at the farmer's market, Marion Hartman will be bringing the ponies and the other little animals back to the farmer's market. I just don't know the exact date.

[Speaker 2] (10:20 - 10:20)
October, October.

[Speaker 7] (10:20 - 10:22)
Buttercup, or is?

[Speaker 6] (10:22 - 10:22)
It's a big one.

[Speaker 7] (10:24 - 10:24)
Yeah, that'll be a good one.

[Speaker 6] (10:25 - 10:25)
Minnie's with a mission.

[Speaker 7] (10:26 - 10:27)
Minnie?

[Speaker 6] (10:27 - 10:33)
Minnie's with a mission. Oh, that's what they're called? Minnie's with a mission?

Oh, okay, yep. I call them the ponies. All right, yeah.

[Speaker 7] (10:34 - 10:56)
All right, we'll move on now to public comment. Public comment is where members of the public can comment on items that are not on the agenda. I ask members of the public who wish to speak to stand up, go to the microphone, state your name, your address, and your precinct, if known, and you're gonna be limited to three minutes to speak.

[Speaker 13] (10:56 - 14:11)
Thank you very much. I would like to thank the select board for allowing me this time to present my proposal. My name is Peter Bores.

I'm a resident of Charlotte Road. I believe that's in precinct four. Not 100% sure.

My proposal here today is to allow for 20 votes for winter storage in the parking lot at Phillips Park. And also, I ask that we set up a three-person committee to oversee and organize that storage. The reason why I'm here today is that a decision has been made to eliminate the boat storage at Phillips Park.

A little history. As we all know, back in 1896, the land at the fish house was taken by public domain for the sole purpose of boating, bathing, and fishing. It was stated that certain structure for boating, bathing, and fishing purposes be established so that the fishermen could have access to the beach, and so that the public could not drive stakes or build walls to prevent the landing of boats in the high seas.

To that purpose, until a few years ago, the boating public was allowed to store boats at the fishing house parking lot. Both boaters and fishermen utilized that property without conflict. Over the years, with the cooperation of the town and the boating community, we have given up access to the fishing house parking lot because the Phillips Beach Park lot was offered as an alternative.

While the fishermen are not directly affected by the decision because they do have the direct right to the fish house parking lot, and the recreational boating community may have an inherent right to that parking lot due to the agreement made in 1896 and subsequent agreements, even if we agreed to move to Phillips Park. Last year, the town allowed 12 boats to be stored at Phillips Park lot, generating approximately $4,000 in revenue. Also, there are 160 moorings granted by the town, generating over $20,000 in revenue, and the town received almost $5,000 in excise tax from the boat owners.

The Swampska Yacht Club has over 200 members now, and we pay a sizable amount of rent to the town, which helps preserve the historic fish house. Furthermore, the town receives revenue for the summer storage of boat trailers at Phillips Beach Parking Lot. Due to these facts alone, it is in the town's interest to continue cooperating with the boating community.

Basically, the rest of my comments were to address the issues of last year. I feel that given the decision that has already been made, there is no point in bringing up that now. Thank you, Mr. Boyce. I'm basically disappointed in the way this ended up, and a little disappointed that I was not officially put on the agenda tonight.

[Speaker 7] (14:12 - 14:15)
Thank you, Mr. Boyce. Thank you. Time's up.

[Speaker 13] (14:16 - 14:18)
I can only hope that they may.

[Speaker 7] (14:18 - 14:18)
Thank you.

[Speaker 13] (14:19 - 14:30)
Seriously? I guess so? Anyone else?

I can answer any question, yeah.

[Speaker 16] (14:33 - 14:36)
Can I take three minutes to attend the briefing one more time?

[Speaker 20] (14:37 - 14:40)
Sure, go ahead. Okay.

[Speaker 16] (14:43 - 14:45)
Oh, it's yeah. Yes.

[Speaker 8] (14:47 - 14:48)
You can get up and speak.

[Speaker 9] (14:55 - 14:57)
It's just a little more.

[Speaker 7] (14:57 - 14:59)
It's just your name and address for the record, please.

[Speaker 12] (14:59 - 15:18)
Susan Boris, 22 Charlotte Road, Precinct 5. I can only hope that there may be a change of heart in this decision. We could all compromise once again and at least allow storage this year before any construction in that parking lot begins.

Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (15:18 - 15:27)
Thank you. Any additional members of the public wish to speak during public comment?

[Speaker 14] (15:33 - 15:37)
I'm Suzanne Wright, 11 Hardy Road, Precinct, what am I now, 3?

[Speaker 20] (15:38 - 15:38)
3.

[Speaker 14] (15:39 - 18:41)
I've moved so many times. I rise to speak in the same topic as Mr. Boris. I am one of the people that have taken advantage of the storage in the lot and the trailer storage.

I haven't always won the lottery but it was a surprise and the decision was made sort of at the last minute when a lot of people were sort of counting on either having a space here or had just started to make other plans and it was really difficult for me to find another slip to go to instead of this lot and I'll have to say I just paid Salem $500 for my slip and I think it's a real shame that we're not keeping that money in town. Part of the argument for moving the slips was that it was a municipal finance discrepancy or law or something which is hard to believe because both Lynn and Salem are offering spaces and Marblehead have public spaces so obviously public spaces are something we should be offering our marine town members.

I also have a hard time listening to the hypocrisy of listening to how this town's number one resource is its beach and its harbor and that we have this really rich marine history in this town but at the same token we're not respecting the current mariners in this town and I know there's been issues in the past and I think that there's definitely been abuse of the privilege without a doubt but I think that the proposal to try to make this right again makes a lot of sense and I've heard some issues about pickleball which is another whole I guess it's going to be a discussion but if that is a discussion and pickleball is something that might happen at this place I would argue that we have eight baseball fields in this town, two of which are at the Clark School, the Abbott Playground and pickleball takes up about 800 square feet for a court and Little League field is a little bit more than 3,000 square feet so by using one of those baseball fields on Abbott Park we could get probably three maybe even four pickleball courts there which seem to be sort of a better use of a conservation land and in order to keep more parking available at Phillips Park so that's what I have to say and I did write to you Town Administrator and volunteer to help with this program or run some sort of program and those of you that know me know that I could do it. Thank you Ms. Wright. Anyway, thank you Mr. Sleck.

[Speaker 16] (19:01 - 19:09)
Precinct 3. Question, are you going to take any comment after the asset management?

[Speaker 7] (19:10 - 19:15)
Yes, yes. We're going to allocate 20 minutes and yeah, same thing. So, thank you.

[Speaker 2] (19:21 - 19:25)
I know that if I could, hold on.

[Speaker 8] (19:28 - 20:03)
Steve Skoranzas, Stetson Ave. Thank you very much for your comments. I hope that this town does not forget the industry that it was founded on. It's fishing and it's progressed, you know, even though there are a lot of boats in the harbor and they may not be to your eye commercial fishing boats.

A lot of people here have commercial fishing licenses and fish out of small boats and it seems like you guys have forgotten the history of this town and you've systematically pushed fishermen away.

[Speaker 5] (20:05 - 20:50)
You stated the reason that most of us So, I was just simply going to say, Peter, thank you.

[Speaker 2] (20:50 - 21:39)
I met with you yesterday and we don't respond to public comment at these meetings. We just wouldn't have enough time to get through our agenda. We have a lot of busy agenda but I am willing to meet with everybody here today.

I'm willing to get out of the fish house. I'm willing to get out. I was down at the park today.

We can talk a little bit about how we work together. I do want people to believe that we do care about our mariners and our boating community. We have worked through a lot of issues.

We have a harbor and waterfront plan that has a lot of absolutely important investments that we all believe we need to protect that harbor and protect this community. So, let's schedule some time and work through this. Alright, thank you.

[Speaker 7] (21:41 - 23:02)
Thanks everybody. Alright, moving on, we will address proclamations. We're going to look at the Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation and we're going to start and go around the room.

Town of Swampscott, Massachusetts. Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation by the Select Board. Whereas, instead of commemorating conquest today here in the town of Swampscott, we recognize our history and since time immemorial, people indigenous to the lands we now call Swampscott built communities, fostered cultures, and stewarded the land sustainably and

[Speaker 6] (23:02 - 23:28)
Whereas, for the first time in our town's history, we recognize Indigenous people here and anywhere in the United States as we pay respect to the cultures and populations that existed long before European contact with the land.

So, too, we celebrate the contributions of all Indigenous people to the culture of diversity, innovation, and resilience that has had an indelible impact on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and

[Speaker 5] (23:28 - 23:48)
Whereas, the town of Swampscott recognizes that the Indigenous peoples of the lands later known as the Americas have lived on these lands since time immemorial and we honor the fact that Swampscott has been built upon the traditional and ancestral homelands of Native Americans referred to as Nomkeags and called Swampscott the land of the Red Rock and

[Speaker 9] (23:49 - 24:02)
Whereas, the Indigenous Peoples Day was first proposed in 1977 by a delegation of Native Nations to the United Nations-sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas and

[Speaker 7] (24:03 - 24:21)
Whereas, the town of Swampscott is committed to protecting and advocating for justice, human rights, and the dignity of all people who live, work, and visit our community and is committed to supporting the principles contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Declaration endorsed by the United States on December 16, 2010 and

[Speaker 6] (24:22 - 24:52)
Whereas, the Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right of Indigenous people to the dignity and diversity of their cultures, traditions, histories, and aspirations which shall be appropriately reflected in education and public information and places an obligation to take effective measures in consultation and cooperation with the Indigenous Peoples concerned to combat prejudice and eliminate discrimination and to promote tolerance, understanding, and good relations among Indigenous people and all other segments of society and

[Speaker 5] (24:53 - 25:33)
Now, therefore, on behalf of the entire Select Board, we do hereby proclaim October 9, 2023 as Indigenous Peoples Day in the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts and encourage all faith-based and non-profit organizations, residents, businesses, and public institutions to acknowledge, honor, value, and celebrate Indigenous Peoples' historic and current contributions locally and beyond while also recognizing the ongoing and interconnected struggles of all Indigenous communities locally and beyond In witness whereof, we have hereon to set our hands and cause to be affixed the great seal of the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts this fourth day of October, 2023 Swampscott Select Board

[Speaker 7] (25:33 - 26:11)
This month is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we have a proclamation. I'm sure there's many in the audience and in our town and in our state who have had down the numbers of wives, daughters, mothers, grandmothers impacted by breast cancer. So I think it's important that we're bringing this forward and making the proclamation.

Whereas, while considerable progress has been made in the fight against breast cancer, it remains the most frequently diagnosed type of non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in our country. And

[Speaker 6] (26:12 - 26:17)
Whereas, unfortunately, many of us know someone or family members who have or have had breast

[Speaker 5] (26:17 - 26:22)
cancer and Whereas, thanks to earlier detection and better treatments, mortality rates for

[Speaker 9] (26:22 - 26:32)
breast cancer have steadily decreased in the last decade and Whereas, knowing what may contribute to breast cancer symptoms, diagnosis and treatment are important parts of its prevention and

[Speaker 7] (26:32 - 26:37)
Whereas, having affordable access to screenings and early detection for all women is an essential component

[Speaker 6] (26:37 - 26:56)
in the fight against breast cancer and Whereas, during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we stand with our families, friends and neighbors and recognize all who have joined their loved ones in fighting their battle as well and as the advocates, researchers and health care providers whose care and hard work gives hope to those living with breast cancer and

[Speaker 5] (26:56 - 27:29)
Whereas, by educating ourselves and supporting innovative research, we will improve the quality of care for all those affected by breast cancer and one day defeat this terrible disease. Now, therefore, on behalf of the entire Select Board, we do hereby proclaim the month of October 2023 as Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts and encourage all citizens to join this worthy observance.

In witness whereof, we have here unto set our hands and cause to be affixed the great seal of the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts this fourth day of October 2023 Swampscott Select Board.

[Speaker 9] (27:33 - 27:45)
Just note that men can also get breast cancer and I think it's something like one out of a hundred or two hundred diagnosis of breast cancer fall into men.

[Speaker 7] (27:49 - 28:11)
Alright, it's a few minutes after 7 o'clock. We are going to reopen to vote to reopen our joint meeting public hearing which is extended from June 26 to 2023 regarding the annual earth removal permit. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing or continue the public hearing?

[Speaker 9] (28:12 - 28:12)
So moved.

[Speaker 7] (28:13 - 28:57)
Second. All in favor? Aye.

We are now, public hearing is open. I think the only item that we were looking to do was continue this, continue to open to a date certain. So looking at the calendar Diane, the first first Wednesday in March I believe is March the 6th of 2024.

That is correct. We can continue this public hearing from today to March 6th of 2024. Do I have anything to motion to do so?

So moved.

[Speaker 6] (28:57 - 28:57)
Second.

[Speaker 7] (28:58 - 29:06)
All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

We will continue that until March the 6th.

[Speaker 9] (29:07 - 29:08)
Do we have to close the public hearing?

[Speaker 11] (29:09 - 29:10)
Oh, we can close it.

[Speaker 9] (29:12 - 29:13)
Got it.

[Speaker 7] (29:22 - 29:24)
Do we have Clive Felder?

[Speaker 2] (29:24 - 29:38)
Dave Peterson, unfortunately is online. We have Courtney here.

[Speaker 7] (29:38 - 29:48)
Courtney is from Clive Felder. Welcome, Courtney.

[Speaker 2] (29:54 - 29:55)
Courtney, you can actually sit right there.

[Speaker 7] (29:56 - 29:58)
We have an extra microphone right there.

[Speaker 1] (30:09 - 31:00)
I'm fine. If this is good with you, I'm good. Yeah, I know.

I'm hopeful. Let's see. I'm kind of between glasses.

Let's see how we do. So I'm going to start out just talking about the asset management capital improvement planning project that we've been working on with the team, with Gino and Sean, for the past couple of years. And then Dave will chime in with an EPA, a Kings Beach EPA update, kind of an overview of that, sort of sandwiched in between the asset management items.

Do you want to move to the next slide? Maybe.

[Speaker 7] (31:14 - 31:16)
Are we still live on Teams?

[Speaker 9] (33:45 - 33:48)
There's no presentation being shared.

[Speaker 1] (33:52 - 37:59)
Okay. All right. Thank you.

Appreciate that. All right. So tonight the objectives of the presentation is really to discuss the asset management and capital plan improvement and particularly want to make sure that we highlight this is for sewer drain and drinking water management.

We're going to talk about existing conditions and risks. These are some of the things that went into the asset management project. The approach to asset management process and how we think about it.

And then, as I mentioned, kind of sandwiched in between, Dave will come on to Teams, hopefully, and share an update of Kings Beach and the EPA update that was shared in September. And then we'll talk more about the proposed capital improvement plan and financial impact assessment and then some key takeaways from that. This project all began in 2021 through a grant that the town received from DEP specifically for asset management planning.

And really the impetus for this was to take a step back and look at the town's infrastructure at a higher level, a more holistic look at it. And so that's what we've tried to do. And we'll share some of that tonight.

So just some quick facts as a good overview of what the system entails. So the water system, water comes through the MWRA system through a series of pipes to the town. And then within the town, there's over 57 miles of pipe.

70% of that is over 50 years old. So aged infrastructure, this is probably not a new thing that you've heard. 475 hydrants, a little over 1,400 gate valves, kind of serving approximately 5,700 accounts.

You may all know that. If not, just a little reminder, I guess. Moving on to sewer, which is the next slide.

So it's a separated system. That means it's sanitary only, not combined with stormwater or not intended to be combined with stormwater. There are about 46 miles of sewer pipe.

Again, about 50% of those are actually over 100 years old. Clay pipe, 1,500 plus manholes, eight sewer lift stations or pump stations. The main station, and we'll talk a little bit more about this, is the Humphrey Street lift station, which collects all the wastewater or sewer from Swanscott and pumps it over to Lynn, to the wastewater treatment plant there for treatment.

There's a three and a half mile force main that connects the pump station to the treatment plant in Lynn and serves about 4,600 accounts. And then last but not least, the drain system. It's about 28 miles of pipes and culverts within the town, resulting in 61 discharge points or outfalls.

Twenty of those are coastal. The picture you see here is the Lynn and Swanscott outfalls in the Kings Beach area. All right, so that's an overview.

We'll move on from there, but any questions before we move on?

[Speaker 6] (37:59 - 38:09)
I have a couple questions. Sure. So this started, I do remember when, this was the grant that Ron Mendez wrote, and this was 2021?

[Speaker 2] (38:10 - 38:11)
It was, yeah.

[Speaker 6] (38:11 - 38:12)
I'm just wondering.

[Speaker 2] (38:13 - 38:26)
I'm not so sure he wrote it, but we worked on it. Yep. Heinfelder actually brought it to our attention, and when we were discussing in 2021, all of the other areas of town that we needed to focus our attention to.

[Speaker 6] (38:27 - 38:36)
Got it. I just want to know, is this the actual, is there a report other than just this slide show?

[Speaker 1] (38:36 - 38:41)
Yeah, there will be a report. Yeah, in fact, we have that, but this is sort of a summary of the report.

[Speaker 6] (38:41 - 38:49)
Because I'm a little surprised that it's 2023, and we haven't seen the, I'm just wondering, why did it take two years?

[Speaker 1] (38:50 - 39:32)
So it just, it takes time to collect all of the data, so a lot of our initial steps were to collect inventory data on all three systems. Some of it's readily in the GIS system, some of it's not. So a lot of our time up front was spent putting together the data, understanding the system, and then kind of working with Gino and Sean and staff to then understand the outputs of the risk analysis that we did, and then come up with the capital plan.

So I guess it just takes a while to walk through it.

[Speaker 6] (39:32 - 39:47)
So in the report, will the report say what, how vulnerable we are for like the force main and for, like, will it say the force main looks like it's in great shape, medium shape, or whatever?

[Speaker 1] (39:48 - 40:57)
We're anticipating that you might have an issue here, or does it actually look at structures that are in there and give us a good idea No, unfortunately, we don't have the specific pipe conditions, but we have a lot of the known information represented in there. The Humphrey Street force main, for instance, is one recommendation out of this that we need to understand that it's a critical piece of infrastructure. What we were able to do is applying some metrics that we worked together with Gino and Sean and staff to basically understand what are the really important factors for all these systems.

What is driving the condition? What is driving the consequence if those assets fail? And putting those together to understand the risk.

We'll talk more about that, but no, I can't say that we have the specific information on the condition of the Humphrey Street force main yet, but I know Gino has that in process, so that'll be coming.

[Speaker 5] (40:58 - 41:09)
Right, because that's in the extra slides, right? I mean, you actually talk about what it takes to do that investigation, $27,000 basically to figure out what's really going on, right?

[Speaker 1] (41:09 - 41:27)
Yeah, yeah. And then once you know that, then you have a much better idea of what it's going to cost to fix it. But that's the first step.

And that's the first step in a lot of what we'll talk about here when we talk about approach and proactive thinking towards asset management.

[Speaker 6] (41:27 - 41:40)
So in this report that you're giving, if Gino decided not to come to work tomorrow, can somebody else look at that report and say, okay, I know where this is, I know where that is. Does that report really show the whole blueprint of where everything is?

[Speaker 1] (41:41 - 42:25)
I think it shows a really good blueprint for how to move forward and what are your critical assets? Not just the force main, although that's a key one, but what are the list of critical assets? What are the key factors you need to understand about those critical assets if you don't know it already?

And then how do you move forward with that? And then as importantly, what do we think the cost to do that will be at a planning level? Does that help to answer some questions?

Okay. Great. All right.

Anything else? Any other questions before we move on?

[Speaker 3] (42:26 - 42:37)
I just have one. Do you have a copy of the prior asset management report that was ever done for our subgrade infrastructure in the town? I wasn't aware there was one.

[Speaker 1] (42:37 - 42:38)
Is it? Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (42:38 - 42:56)
No. So in the 100 plus years we've had sewer lines in 70 plus years of where most of our things are more than 70 years old, the town has never undertaken a infrastructure report to understand what it would take to actually repair and maintain everything, the hundreds of miles of infrastructure that are below the ground. Nope.

[Speaker 1] (42:56 - 43:02)
I was, yeah, I was under the impression, I guess, in talking with folks that this was the first that we've done.

[Speaker 15] (43:02 - 43:08)
So we probably don't have a comprehensive plan, but I do have a map of all the water mains in the town and the age that they're all installed.

[Speaker 3] (43:08 - 43:51)
Right. But we've never gone out and we've, let me just say this, before you all in this administration, no one ever thought to go out and actually assess and come up with a plan of how we were going to repair or upgrade things. So it's not like, this is not like this is replacing any existing plan.

This is replacing nothing. Seriously, nothing. Nothing.

This is the first time in the year 2023. This is the first time we're looking at a comprehensive survey of hundreds of miles of infrastructure. That we've known for 100 years has been underground.

And again, I'm not talking to this generation, I guess. I'm just curious as to, I find it unbelievable. It's a yes or no question.

You don't need to really rationalize it. I'm just, I find it unbelievable that we're not actually updating any plan. We are updating no plan.

[Speaker 1] (43:53 - 44:37)
I definitely get your surprise at that. I do think in our industry, this idea of asset management, believe it or not, is a newer concept. Probably within, certainly within my career.

I'd say within the last 20 years. I know that's hard to believe, but I think that in the past, we've interacted with our infrastructure differently. And we're starting to understand the importance of proactive management.

Like many other industries do, but it's just taken us a little bit longer. Yeah.

[Speaker 15] (44:38 - 44:50)
About 10 years ago, we did a comprehensive stormwater plan after we had a major flood. We had six inches of rain in a couple of hours. So we do have a drain plan.

We did do that.

[Speaker 1] (44:50 - 45:01)
And we looked at all of that as we put this one together. So anything that had been done previously, we tried to draw upon that. I appreciate that.

It's not completely.

[Speaker 3] (45:02 - 46:14)
I appreciate it. Kleinfelder has been a welcome addition. The education and the technical advice.

At this point after nine years, I think I would stop being surprised by the fact that there was no school plan to replace schools. There was no infrastructure plan to replace infrastructure. There was no roadway plan.

And so it's almost like our town began thinking about all these things when we started having professional town staff in the last two decades. Whereas for the hundred and whatever years before that, there's like no record. I mean, there's just nothing.

And we're absorbing in two decades, century plus worth of infrastructure costs. And that is not sustainable. And so I look forward to hearing the recommendations.

But it's like it still makes me lose my breath because that's not sustainable. And it's not you guys are doing great work. That's awesome that you're telling us about it.

But I just can't help but point out that we're not even talking about updating the plan. We're talking about the first ever plan to deal with this, which is again, I don't care if we're the same as other communities. It's still awful.

And that's on top of no school plan, no public safety plan, no roadway plan, on and on and on. And people are surprised when we're trying to balance this versus every single community. So I look forward to your report.

[Speaker 1] (46:15 - 46:54)
But I guess I give a huge shout out to Sean and Gino for taking that on now when I think there are still communities that aren't doing that just yet. Because it's hard. We want to spend the money on the infrastructure in the ground to make the most use of it.

But at the same time, I think this type of asset management planning can be very worth its weight in the small dollars that it takes. I hope you see that too at the end of the presentation. I'd be happy to take questions as we go along.

[Speaker 2] (46:55 - 49:06)
There's a lot for us to get through. But I just want to share a context. We know that we have pipes that need to work.

And we know that we have drainage systems that need to work. And we know that we have wastewater systems that have to work. And when they break, we fix them.

That's generally been just keep it working. That has been our game plan. And that's not really a great plan because the things that do keep me up at night are what's going to happen next.

Where's the biggest problem? Is it going to happen on Thanksgiving? Is it going to happen on holidays?

Where are we going to have to fix a water pipe? When are we going to have to fix it? And we don't know the age of a force main.

We don't know the life cycle of every piece of pipe, every neighborhood. We're not as proactive at maintaining that status of good repair. Every citizen in this town deserves to know that we are going to be dependable and reliable.

And these systems are going to work. And we're going to protect the environment. We're going to protect all of our responsibilities.

And for years we were laser focused on administrative orders, things that we had to do either by court order or by emergency. And we were missing the big picture. And I think as we sat around the table, we knew we had known unknowns in this town that frankly we just didn't have a good handle on.

And so this report gives us a chance to really think about, alright, here are the areas that we actually worked on over the last 20 or 30 years that we know. Here are the areas that we have to spend a little bit more time exploring and spending more time and effort on and chasing more state and federal grants for. And it gives us the chance to really very methodically map through this over the course of a few decades.

Frankly this stuff doesn't happen overnight, but it can help us synergize with other road surface management plans and other strategic things that actually will help us do more with the constrained resources that we have. That's it. Big picture context.

We'll get back into the details. Alright.

[Speaker 1] (49:06 - 50:25)
Perfect. Let's move on. Next slide.

And there's a bar missing there, but that's okay. I think we're having trouble with that. That's okay.

I'll just annotate what's there. So if you had to replace all of this infrastructure today, what would be the cost that you would incur as a town to do that? And this is an estimate, of course, but these three bars really represent the different values of the system, if you will.

So the water system we estimate at about $70 million. The sewer at about $100 million. And the storm at about $30 million.

So totaling about $200 million. If you had to replace all that. So just to put it in context for you, what's the value of this infrastructure?

It's hard to tell because a lot of it's under the ground. You don't see it. You don't think about it.

That's the point. That's its function. But I think it's important to put it into the numbers and context.

[Speaker 2] (50:25 - 51:04)
So big numbers are hard to think about. So kind of giving an apple an apple. We're spending $100 million on building a state-of-the-art elementary school.

So just in your mind, think about this $100 million awesome investment that you would just love to see. That exists literally underground. And when you think about $80 million order of magnitude, these are huge capital.

In fact, combined it's your largest capital asset. So it's just important to kind of think about it in that level of importance. Because when it breaks, everybody knows how important it is.

[Speaker 15] (51:05 - 51:07)
But we're pretty confident it's not all going to break at once.

[Speaker 1] (51:07 - 56:38)
It's not going to break at once. And you don't have to replace it. That's the good news.

You don't have to replace it all at once. But what asset management allows you to do, working through this process that we'll talk about here in a minute, it really allows you to spread out that cost impact to keep things in a state of good repair. We'll talk about some successes you've already had using the process and then we'll talk about some other needs.

So when we started this process, we talked a lot about some of the system risks and consequences, just to get our arms around what are the drivers for this plan. And I won't spend too much time here. I think that a lot of these are pretty obvious.

But we want a system that is protecting public health, is meeting regulatory obligations as it relates to public health, whether that's for drinking water standards or water quality coming out the end of pipe sort of thing. Also, we just talked about aging infrastructure being a huge driver for this. How do we keep the system in good working order?

We repair the pipes that are in most need of repair because of their age or condition. And what about climate? How are we thinking about and mitigating for potential climate impacts?

So these were some of the big drivers that we talked about from a risk perspective. And then really tried to account for those in the risk framework, the criteria that we use to assess the health of the infrastructure for each system. We can move to the next slide.

And just to get into this asset management strategy that we talked about a little bit, taking a proactive approach. And Sean kind of mentioned it in the past. A more reactive approach was necessary in a lot of cases.

So taking that and flipping it around. And how do we think in advance? How do we think proactively?

First, assessing the system. That's a lot of what we did through this study was to understand where are we at? What do we know about the systems?

What do we not know about the systems? And how do we find that out? Then from that, identifying the needs and using the risk criteria that we talked about a little bit as a tool to prioritize.

You can't fix all the pipes and all this infrastructure at once. You can't. You said it.

It's not sustainable. You can't do it from a resources perspective. So how do we target our resources and funds towards the highest risk assets and then work our way down from there?

So the big box off to the right, I'll say, that really is the result of this work is to come up with a capital improvement plan for whatever time frame you decide to think about it. We often think about it in a short term time frame, whether that's 5, 10 years, and then a long term time frame, a 20, a 30 year. And you lay out a plan for basically design and construction, implementation, or rehab of those high priority assets down to the lower priority.

And then, wouldn't you know, after year 30 or year 20, those low priority assets suddenly become the high priority assets because they've waited that long. But it's a very methodical approach. Once you've done a year or two of rehab, then it's always good to go back and measure your success, measure your outcomes.

We're going to talk a little bit about that as it relates to the King's Beach and EPA update. So a really great example of this is the town's water system and the work that Gino and staff have done to bring that into a place of really good repair. Money has been spent and kind of methodically gone through town rehabbing and lining as needed and working to rehabilitate the pipes and the drinking water system.

We would suggest the same sort of approach for the sewer and the stormwater system. And that's really starting with the phase one work that's already been done. So great segue into hopefully we can hear Dave who's online.

He's going to give a little bit of an update on the phase one work now. Maybe go back one slide, Diane, if you can. We cannot hear Dave.

[Speaker 2] (56:39 - 56:41)
I think I hear him in the way that...

[Speaker 7] (56:50 - 57:19)
Okay. Hey Dave, hold on one second. Try speaking now, Dave.

Sure.

[Speaker 2] (57:19 - 57:24)
How does that sound? Okay. You're overcompensating.

We can hear you.

[Speaker 4] (57:25 - 1:11:26)
Overcompensating. Sorry about that. So yeah, so Courtney, we wanted to pause on this slide really because discussing the water system is a really good example of how the town has taken a very proactive approach, made use of water revenues that the town has taken in, but also mixed in with available funds from MURA to be able to have a very high functioning water system.

On the wastewater sewer side, as I've presented to this group before, we've been very focused in the last while on the King's Beach issue, which is really fundamentally a sewer system problem. And so we're at a situation where the tail's wagging the dog on sewer, and what we want to be able to do is adjust on the fly and get ourselves into a proactive approach similar to the water system. So one of the reasons why this asset management project came out at the perfect time is because it allowed us to really take a step back and not let the King's Beach be the only issue that we're trying to deal with on the sewer system, but look a little bit with a broader lens and try to understand what are the priorities that the town should be looking at in addition to the immediacy of the King's Beach problem. And so this strategy is employed in the asset management approach for sewer and for drain and for drinking water, so it's a comprehensive strategy that's employed everywhere.

On the next slide, I'm just going to give a little bit of an update on the sewer system specifically, and then I know Courtney wants to take it back over and talk more on the CIP and sort of the risk-based approach. I know there'll probably be questions on phase one specifically, and I think I heard that there's going to be some time set aside for that exactly, so that's great. So on the sewer system side, one of the things that we've identified as a bellwether or a way to know how your system is, is infiltration and inflow.

And in the past couple of years, the town of Swampscott has instituted an infiltration and inflow bank, which essentially is an additional source of revenue that the town can take in to start being able to tackle some of the sewer projects that are in this asset management strategy. It's not a huge revenue stream, but every little bit helps to offset some of the initial investment into studying the system and understanding it better. On the sewer rehabilitation side, as I mentioned on the previous slide, one of our major objectives through this project is to be able to get enough data so that we can put a plan together to move ourselves from a reactive position into more of a proactive position.

So can we stabilize our investment in the system so that over the long term we're improving it and bring it to a better status of good repair and having something that won't keep us up at night as often as it does now. So even though we're pretty new into looking at the sewer system comprehensively, the IIS bank is a positive step in the right direction. But we've already seen some improvements in the percentage of SwampScot's flow at the Linn Water and Sewer Commission.

So Gino keeps tabs on the assessment costs from Linn Water and Sewer. Those reports come in to him that say what percentage of flow at the Linn plant is due to SwampScot versus other communities. And we've seen that flow percentage going down, which is a wonderful thing to see.

And we think it's a direct byproduct of some of the recent investment in the sewer system. And certainly water quality improvements, we'll talk a little bit about. We're doing a quick check in here on our sewer projects for Kings Beach.

And we can talk a little bit about some of the improvements we've seen to date. Before we go to the next slide, I just wanted to talk to the figures here. So when we talk about the sewer rehab program that we've been using since 2017, we're really tackling every element of the sewer system within a targeted area.

We're doing CIPP lining, which is basically a fabric sock that you pull into the pipe and you invert it and you harden it. And it becomes basically a brand new pipe within a pipe. So we're doing that for a vast majority of the area in the Kings Beach area of the town.

We're doing a similar technology on house services. So we're trying to get from the mainline to the sewer as close to the house as is technologically feasible and renewing those services. And then we're using a cementitious lighting product inside the sewer manhole.

So effectively, every interior space of the sewer system is getting a fresh liner, which is allowing the sewer to stay in the sewer and not leave the sewer, which is sort of what the main goal is. So if we can go to the next slide. So the bluish blob that is on the screen is effectively what we've called the phase one target area of the sewer rehabilitation program.

This was born out of the 2015 consent decree between EPA and Swampscot, where there was an agreement put forth that the town would put together a scope of work to identify and eliminate non-stormwater discharges from its sewer system that's entering the drain system. And the primary target areas in the consent decree encapsulate Kings Beach and also Fisherman's Beach. And so those have been focus areas of our work since 2015 when the consent decree was started.

But this has been a long-range vision from day one because we understand that we have $100 million of sewer infrastructure in Swampscot. You can't just renew it overnight. So this is a phase program that is prioritized based on our understanding of the worst water quality areas first and then tackling the second areas next.

And so it just so happened that when we looked at water quality information in the town's drainage system, this blue area became the phase one target area. And due to the cost of the program and the cost in which we could afford to spread out the work, we split the phase one into three separate construction projects. Originally it was intended to be four construction projects, but we ended up getting really good competitive construction prices and we were able to fortunately finish phase one a couple years ahead of schedule by consolidating the fourth phase into the third phase.

So in kind of an overall summary of the phase one construction, we have lined about seven miles of sewer within this blue area, or about 15% of the town. We've replaced about 470 individual house services, which is about 10% of the homes in town. And we've rehabbed about 250 manholes, again about 16% of all the town's manholes.

So it's a pretty good bite out of the apple in phase one. But even so, it's still less than 20% of the whole town. The total cost, including engineering services, police details, other soft costs, came in at about 6.5 million for phase one. Next slide. So this slide basically boils down the bacteria results, which is what we sort of use as our indicator of progress, onto a singular chart, which is always a dangerous thing to do because it really oversimplifies the story. The town has to submit an EPA report every six months on this, and our latest report that was just submitted in September has this graphic, but it also has attachments with a more complete data set of the bacteria results that we've been tracking since 2015.

But the point of this slide really shows on the x-axis is time, starting from 2014, or late 2014, when we started rebaselining water quality in the drainage system, all the way through today, which is when we finished phase 1C and were able to take some samples after the end of construction. The general trend that we see is that the pathogen levels are going down, which is a great thing. However, it's not consistent.

Obviously, there's spikes in the data. There's several data points that are elevated well above what we'd like them to be. They may be a little lower than they were originally.

It really speaks to some of the imperfect science of trying to go into all the infrastructure that we have in front of us and trying to renew it. There will be sources that we miss. We are trying to be as precise with which specific manholes, which specific sewers, which specific homes are we focusing our dollars on.

Trying to be so specific, we are leaving a few laterals or stretches of sewer unimproved. It's possible that there may be sources there that we weren't aware of that we may have to go back to later. There's certainly a sense that an IDDE in sewer rehab isn't necessarily going to get it done perfectly in the first shot.

You can see that in the data here. One of the specific areas, which is on the slide that we're aware of, is on Banks Road. There's been a legacy issue there that we've worked through.

We've been to pretty much every house on that street and been door to door trying to find it. We've made as much progress that we can. One of our next real steps with Geno is to take a step back and resurvey all of Banks Road again because there's still a persistent issue there, which in my opinion is driving those two points in the red circles.

That's something that we know we need to do. One of the things that I failed to mention on the data on this particular slide is this is dry weather results, which basically means there's no influence from road runoff or stormwater in the drain. This is strictly base flow that might be in the system that could be influenced if they were still illicit.

In our study, we always look at the dry weather flow as way more meaningful because it tells us what's going on in the system from an illicit connection perspective. Dry weather for us is the key data we're looking at, which is what's presented here. Overall impressions from Phase 1, we are making some improvements.

I think it's pretty clear, but obviously it's not adequate enough to bring Kings Beach back online basically in the short term. We think that the town could be at IDDE and sewer rehab for well over a decade before that could potentially come about. There's an obligation the town has to do this through its consent decree, but also through its stormwater permit.

It's not going to go away. There's still a strong commitment to doing it, and it will continue to yield results. I think as most people are aware, the town in 2021 decided to initiate a study to augment their efforts on IDDE and sewer rehab to look at are there other types of approaches that can be used to augment or in parallel try to resolve the water quality issue at Kings Beach that get it done faster than just IDDE alone.

We can talk about that in the open Q&A session and stuff like that, but I can give as much update on that as well. I wanted to keep this focused on the asset management, and really I think that was the highlights from the IDDE. I think if we go to the next slide, and I'm willing to take a pause too if there's any immediate questions, but I think there's a few more slides that Courtney had to kind of wrap up the asset management approach in general and some of the capital numbers.

[Speaker 9] (1:11:27 - 1:11:39)
I just have a question about the sleeving of the inside of the pipes. Essentially we are making the sewer pipes smaller then, correct?

[Speaker 4] (1:11:41 - 1:11:44)
It's slightly smaller.

[Speaker 9] (1:11:46 - 1:11:58)
Slightly smaller across many miles of pipes. Is making it slightly smaller a significant issue for what we can handle in town from a sewer perspective?

[Speaker 1] (1:12:01 - 1:12:08)
No, I would say generally not. It's such a small difference that you don't notice it.

[Speaker 6] (1:12:10 - 1:12:13)
What's the life expectancy of that lining?

[Speaker 1] (1:12:14 - 1:12:20)
Good question. Dave, do you know? Life expectancy of the CIPP liners?

[Speaker 4] (1:12:22 - 1:12:30)
It's well over 50. It's probably 70 to 80. It's effectively a brand new pipe, kind of comparable to a PBC pipe.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:30 - 1:12:36)
Is there a 160 year solution? Because that's what we need. Because we apparently only do this once every 100 years.

[Speaker 6] (1:12:36 - 1:12:37)
Maybe, maybe not.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:38 - 1:12:40)
But if we can find one, that would be great.

[Speaker 6] (1:12:40 - 1:13:04)
I have another question on one of the earlier slides, the infiltration in Infobank. The select board implemented a policy in 2021 and during that policy the forecast was about $500,000 every two years. I was just wondering where we're at, because we're at two years now.

Are we at that $500,000?

[Speaker 2] (1:13:05 - 1:13:07)
We're not at the $500,000.

[Speaker 15] (1:13:09 - 1:13:10)
I think it was $38,000.

[Speaker 2] (1:13:10 - 1:13:11)
Give me a minute.

[Speaker 6] (1:13:14 - 1:13:42)
The other question is, do you know if we're lining the pipes, the flow that we're saving over to Lynn Water and Sewer? What is that actual number? Do we have a number?

Or is it just a guess? What is the savings? Because it sounds like there's a significant amount of savings once you're lining the sewer pipes of having anything in flow in there and then having to send it over to Lynn to have it filtered.

[Speaker 15] (1:13:44 - 1:13:53)
I can take a shot at that. I don't think it's really significant. At the most, maybe $50,000.

Not that $50,000 is significant, but in the grand scheme of things.

[Speaker 9] (1:13:54 - 1:13:56)
Are you saying 5-0 or 1-5?

[Speaker 7] (1:13:56 - 1:13:59)
5-0. But as a percentage, do you know?

[Speaker 15] (1:14:00 - 1:14:26)
We're based in Iran. Dave and I had this conversation a couple of years ago when Lynn told us that Guerrilla Farms was going to close. They anticipated with the reduction of the Lynn flow, odds would go up to 10%.

We're prepared for that. Right now our percentage, FY23 last year, was 7.8%. Some of that has to be attributed, although I can't quantify it exactly. We're anticipating 10.

[Speaker 6] (1:14:28 - 1:15:01)
The other three communities all went up to make up the 2.2%. When you look at that chart there of the dry, I was just wondering on some of these peaks, we really don't know what causes these peaks on here. For example, with Paradise and Ellis, it looks like they were pretty low and then they just spiked. Do you come back and retest it a couple weeks later and say where is it?

Is it just that one test?

[Speaker 4] (1:15:02 - 1:16:02)
The testing is there's two dry and two wet weather samples after the construction phase. That's what is prescribed in the consent decree. We don't go out there more frequently than that.

Intermittent, there could be some sort of a sewer connection in that neighborhood. It could be something like a washing machine that's off and running. You just happen to be at the right time to get it.

But then you could go back a day later and miss it. There's a little bit of uncertainty in the data because the system is a very dynamic system. At any moment you're in a manhole, the flows could be coming from different houses and different sources and things like that.

That explains some of the variability in the numbers. But just the fact that it's there means there's some sort of a higher connection that we're going to find.

[Speaker 6] (1:16:03 - 1:16:19)
It says here 3-15-23, but didn't you do a test on 9-1 or August? August there's a testing, August 23. Those aren't included.

Do those look like it comes down any lower? It's not in this report. I'm just wondering.

[Speaker 4] (1:16:22 - 1:16:27)
I'd have to go back and look at the attachment to the EPA report for that. I don't have it in front of me.

[Speaker 6] (1:16:28 - 1:16:51)
My last question is on the Phase 1, on that blue area that you have here. Is this blue area, does all the drainage run into Kings Beach? Is that that area that's all Kings Beach right there?

And out of that, what percentage of that area has been lined? The main lines and the, what do you call the line from the house?

[Speaker 20] (1:16:51 - 1:16:51)
Laterals.

[Speaker 15] (1:16:52 - 1:16:57)
44% of the main line. Dave, do you have the lateral number off the top of your head?

[Speaker 4] (1:16:58 - 1:17:25)
I don't have the lateral number off the top of my head, but we're probably in the similar ballpark. But that blue area, all the data points on that graph are Kings Beach data points. So the Phase 1, the blue box are sort of the initial baseline setting numbers from the IDDE in 2015-2016 time frame.

So that's before there was any investment in sewer rehabilitation.

[Speaker 3] (1:17:25 - 1:17:33)
He's not referring to the blue block. He's referring to a graph. Oh, sorry Peter.

[Speaker 6] (1:17:34 - 1:18:16)
So if you go back and you look at the map that you have. Do you have that? The map of Phase 1, Dave.

So what I'm trying to find out is this area right here, the Phase 1 target area, this all runs out onto Kings Beach, correct? And what you're saying is 44% of the main lines in there have been rehabilitated. And we don't know exactly laterals, but there's probably something pretty close to laterals, which means we have just a little over 60-something percent left to finish that up.

And that would be everything?

[Speaker 4] (1:18:17 - 1:18:49)
So Gina, when you were saying 40%, I think what you meant, Gina, was of all the sewer infrastructure in the Kings Beach area, this Phase 1, that whole blue blob represents about 44% of the sewer main lines. So in other words, what's left to do would be about 64%, 66%. Is that what you meant?

56%. So that blue blob is roughly half of what goes to Kings Beach.

[Speaker 6] (1:18:49 - 1:18:53)
And we spent about $6.5 million on that blob?

[Speaker 5] (1:18:56 - 1:19:01)
That number was 4.8 the last time we talked about this, but whatever.

[Speaker 15] (1:19:02 - 1:19:03)
I think that was just the construction costs.

[Speaker 1] (1:19:03 - 1:19:09)
Yeah, right. Project costs include engineering and permitting and all that.

[Speaker 7] (1:19:10 - 1:19:36)
And Dave, I had a question just about those spikes between 1031-21 and 315-23, specifically Paradise Road, Ellis Road, as well as the Banks Road at Banks Court. How many illicit discharges could cause such a spike to a number that is nearly 20,000 or nearly 15,000? One?

One.

[Speaker 4] (1:19:36 - 1:19:41)
Yeah, I mean, it really doesn't take much to see it in a system like that.

[Speaker 3] (1:19:45 - 1:19:54)
David, one thing that we didn't talk about is seasonal.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:54 - 1:20:10)
Is there any influence on seasonal? When we think about groundwater, we think of other tables, other influences. Is it important for us to kind of just get a baseline as we start really getting to IDB?

[Speaker 4] (1:20:13 - 1:20:58)
There's a dilution that can happen inside the drainage system. So as your groundwater table is higher, which would be sort of in the springtime predominantly, or pretty much the spring, when you have a higher groundwater table, you get more groundwater in your drainage system. So you have more water.

So if you still have some illicit connections or some inadvertent connections, the relative amount of illicit will be lower. So your concentrations might be a little bit lower. But honestly, I think that's within the noise of just sampling numbers.

So I don't know that that seasonal variability would be a high correlation if you really try to study it that way.

[Speaker 3] (1:21:01 - 1:23:02)
David, do you mind if I just go back and ask? So I'd like to follow up on the question about I&I fees. In particular, just to ask Sean, you were going to pull up the number.

How much in I&I fees have been billed and collected to date? 30,800 as of September 27th. So in December of 22, you gave me a list of I&I fees, which totals a billing of 37,400, which is more than the number you just gave me.

And we have collections significantly less. And I'm not quite sure how we have billings but not collections since it's a condition of getting a sewer permit. So I'm not quite sure how someone got a sewer permit if they actually didn't pay their bill.

But put that aside. That tells me since December of last year, not a single person has pulled a sewer permit that would qualify for an I&I fee. Not a single household since December of last year.

I'm going to say it again to make sure I'm saying it correctly. Not a single household in Swampscott has pulled a permit for a sewer connection fee, a connection that would trigger a payment. So in the last nine months, 10 months, not a single project has pulled, a household property owner has pulled a sewer connection permit.

Besides the fact that your number, nine months past the number I have here, don't match each other, which is problematic to me, it's also not believable to me that not a single sewer connection permit has been sought in 10 months that would have triggered a fee. It's inconceivable to me actually. It's not even short.

It's inconceivable to me. So I guess my question is, I guess let me say this. I think we would appreciate a list of everyone since the enactment of the I&I that has pulled a sewer connection permit, the calculation that went with it, the fee that was charged and the fee that was collected.

Because something feels really off here. And I'm less concerned about the money as I am about the fact that we are focusing on I&I. The whole point wasn't revenue.

The whole point was I&I. And the revenue was then to start addressing some of the things to do it. But something seems pretty off here.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:03 - 1:23:43)
Peter, I will look into this and I will give the Board a complete list of every permit that we've taken and we'll reconcile this. I did get that number from the Town Treasurer just a few days ago. I have had a few discussions with our Building Commissioner about these projects.

It certainly has been a constant conversation about how we're moving forward with these projects. We went through great extent to put that I&I fee in place with the full thought that we could use these funds to help mitigate the I&I impact to the Town. So I appreciate that.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:43 - 1:24:13)
I care about these issues. I'm sure you do. But just to help you, I just sent to you and to the Chairman the email you sent me on December 8th of last year that had the list of I&I fees collected.

I'd also appreciate understanding if there's ones that are billed but not collected to explain that to me because I don't know how anybody would get a sewer connection permit if they didn't pay the fees. I just want to understand that people aren't able to pull permits without paying fees because we're not really good at chasing money and putting liens on people's properties really isn't a very effective or friendly tool either.

[Speaker 6] (1:24:13 - 1:24:29)
My understanding of the I&I permit is if I want to put an extra bedroom into my home, the cost is $2,500?

[Speaker 15] (1:24:31 - 1:24:31)
$2,200.

[Speaker 6] (1:24:32 - 1:24:35)
And then they connect it to the sewer?

[Speaker 15] (1:24:35 - 1:24:43)
No. Predominantly those are already connected to the sewer. If you're just putting an addition on your home, you're going into the same connection.

So it's not a new connection.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:44 - 1:25:18)
The only time we'd have a new connection is if you have a new home. So it's when you add volume to your existing system that there's a calculation based on bedroom count and then there's a certain base amount you have to pay just for the pleasure of doing it. But if you were to do something above a certain number of gallons per day, which is based on bedrooms, then you would trigger an increased payment.

Once you get beyond the base, then it goes up so big. For example, a 114 unit multifamily project, for example, would be paying very significantly compared to someone that just put a bedroom on there.

[Speaker 6] (1:25:19 - 1:25:20)
Or maybe not.

[Speaker 3] (1:25:24 - 1:25:34)
No one should be able to do a sewer connection or actually pull a permit which increases sewer flow without paying this fee. But according to these numbers...

[Speaker 6] (1:25:34 - 1:25:46)
All right, so it sounds like if you pull a permit just to even just put another bedroom... Do you have to pull a permit if you're just going to make a bedroom in your house? I haven't done it.

[Speaker 5] (1:25:47 - 1:25:55)
I haven't put the apartment on the bedroom. All these fees are generated through the building department.

[Speaker 15] (1:25:55 - 1:26:02)
So when somebody goes to pull a permit for a brand new home or an addition, they are charged that fee at that time.

[Speaker 6] (1:26:06 - 1:26:10)
I just don't understand where the number 500,000, like where that forecast would have come from.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:11 - 1:26:33)
There actually was, and I'm trying to find that because I remember a big number. I don't remember that specific number. I do remember that we asked the team based on their recommendation of the fee structure to project what that would get based on historicals.

But I'm agreeing with you, I just can't. I'm trying to find it in the email here as we've been sitting here. So essentially you'd be dividing 500,000 by $2,200.

[Speaker 15] (1:26:36 - 1:26:38)
And that's how many new bedrooms we'd be putting in a year.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:39 - 1:26:39)
Seems high.

[Speaker 6] (1:26:40 - 1:26:41)
Seems high, okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:41 - 1:27:15)
Unless you have a large development. And the other thing, and then we'll move on, sorry. Sean, back in December I asked you about where on the website someone would find information about the fee.

Can you just, after this, point us to that? I'm not seeing that either, but I just want to make sure that that's, and maybe just in connection, just tell us what happens when someone goes to the building department. How does that get captured?

Because that is where the fee gets paid, I assume, because that's where all fees do. It gets calculated and then gets paid in the clerk's office, but it gets calculated there. It is.

[Speaker 2] (1:27:15 - 1:27:29)
I will, I know I've conveyed to the building inspector last year at that same time that we wanted to get that up online. I believe it has been put up online, but I'll have to double check that. Great, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:34 - 1:35:49)
All right. Any other questions? Okay, if I move on?

Go ahead. All right. We'll just finish this out then.

I don't know if it'll be that easy, but we'll give it a shot. All right. We'll move into the results of this asset management work.

We're calling this the health of SWAMSA infrastructure. There's a lot going on here. I'll just quickly orient you.

The graph is just a representation. When we think risk of assets, we think about the probability that that asset might fail and the consequence if it does. Let's think about what might cause a failure of an asset.

Age, certainly. Age can lead to poor condition. It can lead to not just collapse of that asset, but we talked about infiltration, inflow.

There's several mechanisms that could constitute failure there. Sorry for the text being smaller. We also think about the service capacity of that asset.

Is it serving a large volume of either water or sewer or drain, or is it a relatively small service in a small area? That's not to say that small services are less important than bigger ones. It's just the capacity, the carrying capacity is what we're looking at there.

Is the asset in an area of environmental sensitivity, let's say. These are things we think about when we think about the consequence of failure. The probability of failure is usually based on age, condition of the service, but then the consequence of that failure is related to what happens if an asset that has a high capacity fails.

Lots of folks are impacted. Businesses, residents, commercial, what have you. Or environmentally sensitive areas might be impacted.

These are just some examples of ways that the consequence of failure could be either on the higher side or on the lower side. If we put these two together, we talk about the failure and the consequence. If the failure probability is high and the consequence of that failure is very important, then we consider that to be a high risk asset.

If, on the other hand, the failure probability is lower or the asset is in good condition and the consequence of failure is fairly low, then the risk of that asset is considered to be lower. Then in terms of just defining what you do with that information, this is how we assess the different assets across the three systems. That's fine, but what do you do with that information?

On the bar on the right, there is a list of actions. They're not specific at this time, because it really depends on the asset and what you're talking about. If it's determined to be a low risk asset, routine maintenance is generally the action to take there.

As you move up in the risk matrix and you go towards a high risk asset, then you put that on the take action. Let's just take the example of sewer pipe that Dave was just talking about earlier. That might mean lining it.

That might mean replacing it altogether. It really depends on the particular asset and what's going on with it. It's important then to dig deeper and understand what's the root cause there.

That determines the action that you would take. I think it's important to notice the different colors, because we're going to talk about those later. Green really represents low risk.

Yellow, a moderate risk. Red or orange, a higher risk. We want to move past that.

Something else that we looked at as we were assessing the different assets across the system was to look at the water and sewer rate baseline, starting with the fiscal year 2022 rates. This is a chart that we put in. I think you may have seen this before, but this is a comparison of not just swamp scat rates, but comparison with other communities.

The thing to note here is that the current water rate, for instance, is a bit higher in some of the neighboring communities. You may already be aware of that. I think as we started to think about it in relation to the health of the system, it kind of made sense to us, because you've been spending money on rehab within the water system.

Therefore, the water system is in a state of good repair. It's kind of a direct correlation there. That's not to suggest that the sewer system is in a state of poor repair, but the lower rate may be an indication of some opportunity to increase spending there.

We'll talk about that a little bit more. We'll go to the next slide. We'll just go quickly through the three different systems.

As we've already mentioned a couple of times, the drinking water system as a whole, and it's hard to see here because we've got a box right over our heat map, we'll call it our risk map there. As a whole, the water system, particularly these are showing the horizontal assets of the drinking water system, are in the medium to low risk assessment. When we take that probability of failure and we combine it with the consequence of failure, this is the outcome.

That kind of holds true to what we've already discussed. There's been significant investment over the last number of years in water main replacement, rehabilitation. Some of the other things that Gino and Sean have focused on are looking at the rate structure to increase focus on conservation and building equity.

Good meter replacement program has been in place as well that's important for good system management. All these things come together when we start to take a step back and look at it holistically. We can move to the next slide.

What do we do with that information? We've taken a step back and we've looked at the overall health of the water system. With that, we build the capital improvement program around that.

What are the things that need to be included in this? Just to orient you, because we'll show a couple of graphs that look like the one that's there on the screen. The gray bars, we're building the financial impact here.

The gray and the blue bars represent the expenditure, if you will, of the system. The red line represents the revenue. It can be then equated to a rate ultimately.

The gray represents an operational expenditure. The two blue bars at the top are the projected capital improvement plan.

[Speaker 5] (1:35:50 - 1:36:16)
You're looking confused. It shows the red lines above all the bars, but in the packet we have it shows it differently. I think it's a somewhat relevant fact whether or not your revenue is sufficient to cover an expected cost.

Slide 15. What does your printed version show?

[Speaker 1] (1:36:17 - 1:36:23)
Mine shows what's on the screen, which is not helpful to you. Okay.

[Speaker 5] (1:36:28 - 1:36:29)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:31 - 1:36:32)
Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:36 - 1:36:55)
Hold on a second. If that's the case, then how is it that our fiscal year 24 numbers out of balance? I'm just curious.

We've approved our fiscal year 24 rates, and this is showing something that's showing us underwater. Again, I just... Revenue is up.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:55 - 1:37:50)
I'm sorry. I had it reversed. I guess I can address the difference between what's in your packet, it sounds like, and what's on the screen.

The last few days, right before we finalized the presentation, we were talking with Gino about our assumptions for particularly lead service line work. We had estimated something based on other communities' experience with lead service lines, but in talking with Gino a bit more, it really seemed like we were overestimating that. We adjusted that number, not just for the point of the presentation and making the red line higher, but we adjusted it based on real information that we're starting to collect.

That's the difference there.

[Speaker 6] (1:37:51 - 1:37:55)
Could you describe what lead service line means? Inventory means?

[Speaker 1] (1:37:55 - 1:38:50)
A lot of drinking water laterals, so connection from Maine in the street to the home, historically have been lead-based. Flint, Michigan, is an example of where that went really awry. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

It's a program that Massachusetts is starting to implement town by town, municipality by municipality to get a handle on what is the issue. Understanding that it's inconsistent across Massachusetts in terms of the prevalence of lead service lines. From the work that you've done, you feel like it's pretty low in Swampscot in general.

[Speaker 15] (1:38:50 - 1:38:52)
Almost zero.

[Speaker 1] (1:38:52 - 1:39:09)
It may be less of an issue in even the state of Massachusetts or Commonwealth than it is in other areas, but regulators are covering their bases for sure.

[Speaker 2] (1:39:10 - 1:40:15)
We've applied for a grant. We're going to go through. We're going to do an inventory.

We're going to make sure that we look at everything. Remember, this is a capital improvement plan. We have assumptions in here.

It's not budgeting based on our actual budgeting, but there are some assumptions that help us start to think about where are the right projects that can help us really smooth out rates and help us continue on a careful plan that really does prioritize where we're going to do work and how we're going to really synergize with other municipal functions, whether it's working in proximity and mobilizing contractors and really making sure we only touch a street once instead of just going through and ripping it up two or three times for two different projects. We want to really be much more comprehensive about how we approach construction management.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:18 - 1:43:57)
As Sean mentioned, this is a projection. It's a plan. It's an exercise to really see if you were to follow some of these things to keep each system in a state of good repair, how would it add up in relation to your financial status?

I think this actually is a really good story for the water system in that we feel that the continued rehabilitation that Gino has started and continues to work towards can work within the financial boundaries that you have set for this enterprise fund. I'm happy to take more questions about any of the assumptions that we made or that are encapsulated in there. We can move on then.

Fair enough. Again, just using that same health of the system graphic, we placed at a high level, we placed the sewer in an orange level. Not quite at the red mark, but certainly in a spot where there are more assets that we've identified as higher risk using the criteria that we talked about.

As Dave mentioned, already a significant investment has been made into Phase 1, into the sewer rehab program. A lot of that was dictated by the EPA consent decree, but the process used to assess and understand the target areas within there, it's the same process that we're talking about. It's the same proactive approach to reduce that inflow and infiltration.

Another key to highlight with the sewer system is the Humphrey Street force main, particularly the force main, but also worth mentioning the pump station as one of the more critical higher risk assets. Hence, including funds and the proposal of funds in there to do the assessment and understand the condition. We would say that outside of the area of Phase 1, the condition of assets is largely unknown within the sewer system.

A lot of the risk is based on the age of the system. As we mentioned, the pipes are, many of them are over 100 years old. Part of the recommendation is to do that assessment on areas beyond Phase 1 or areas beyond Stacey's Brook.

When I first started working with Gino, I had to ask him about five times what that stood for. Really starting to understand that. Do the assessment work and understand where to go next.

Any questions on that before you?

[Speaker 6] (1:43:57 - 1:44:30)
I have one question on the force main, only because I was on the finance committee before and that the risk of the force main was constantly brought up. That's something that's always on my mind. What is our risk there?

How long would it take for us to really go in and find out where we are as far as assessing the situation with the force main? What would that entail?

[Speaker 1] (1:44:33 - 1:44:34)
We're in the works, right?

[Speaker 15] (1:44:35 - 1:45:40)
I have a proposal in hand to test the air relief valves to give us an indication of the thickness of the pipe walls in those areas. The one bit of good news we got is when AHRQ was doing their force main rehabilitation work at the plant, they also tested our pipe for us and the wall thickness was in very good condition. I asked because our force main is ten years newer than the Hans.

In theory, right? We'd start developing the same amount of problems that the Hans did ten years later, but I was told otherwise because a lot of the Hans issues are based on low flow. As the sulfur gases are sitting in the pipe and rotting out the pipe a little quicker, we have a pretty consistent flow.

That's what the experts are telling me. That was relatively good news. I've been asked on numerous occasions what keeps me up at night.

We can replace saw, we can fix, we have the ability to repair water main. If something happens to the force main, we're in huge trouble. There's no immediate fix.

[Speaker 6] (1:45:42 - 1:45:51)
It's in process, about six months-ish to do that work. Do you have the funding for that? Is that in the budget?

[Speaker 15] (1:45:51 - 1:46:00)
It's not. I'm requesting that funding through one of the applicants. It's in the process of requesting it.

[Speaker 9] (1:46:02 - 1:46:45)
Okay. Now that we've done the phase one area and we have some nice patches of green amongst all the red and yellow, is the philosophy behind maintaining the green area different now than say before we did anything? It feels like we were being reactive instead of proactive.

Are there avenues that we can go down to keep that area greener longer now that we're focusing on? Even though we still have red and orange, and I understand that, and we need to fix that too. I don't want to come back in ten years and find out that we weren't proactive in keeping that area green.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:46 - 1:48:19)
That's a good point. I think a lot of the way we think about asset management as a whole applies to that as well. You don't want to just walk away from it now.

Developing a regular assessment program as you work your way through the system on a regular basis. It's not a one and done. Particularly for other communities, and this would apply exactly in Swanscot, you just develop a regular rhythm with doing your assessment and taking a look at the pipes.

In that case, you just lined it. Dave said lining is over 70 year age. It's not in immediate danger, but if you go back out and you look at it at a regular interval, and particularly look at those high consequence of failure pipes, the ones that are bigger or that are in higher density areas or whatever it might be causing that to be a higher consequence, and start with those.

Then just that routine monitoring. I really just think it comes back to the routine assessment and making that part of your rhythm. Then if you start to see issues, you consider different types of repair for those issues.

Ideally, we wouldn't expect to see anything for a number of years, but as you said, you don't want to get to that point.

[Speaker 15] (1:48:19 - 1:48:28)
That's a good point. Be more applicable to have a water system where we could exercise gates on a regular basis, flush hydrants, more than the sewer.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:32 - 1:51:17)
Any other questions before we get to the cost? We'll show a graph similar to, but different at the same time. We took this same approach with the sewer system related to your enterprise funds and your current rates.

Something just to mention that I didn't mention on the last graph. We were assuming a routine increase of about 3% per year and also aiming for retained earnings of about 20%. Putting an eye on all those things that we talked about.

For example, and you can look actually in the back of the presentation, there's a list of the specific projects that are included. For instance, in the five-year sewer SAP, including a comprehensive II study beyond just the phase one area, looking at it holistically across town. Of course, advancing the consent decree work.

Investigating, we just talked about that, the Humphrey Street Forceman and Pump Station that Gino mentioned. Then establishing that proactive assessment and rehab program. Assessing a portion of the town and then deciding what does it need, where is the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, and then implementing rehab in that area.

That's really what's included in those orange bars. The gray bars, again, represent the operating budget, but the orange bars are that. Just to differentiate, because Humphrey Street Forceman and Pump Station is a bigger ticket item, you see the hatched orange that occurs in 2026.

It's an estimate at this point. It's a planning level cost that we want to at least put forth, but it needs refinement. We put it as a hatch to just suggest that this is still being understood.

The level of this is still being understood. The good news is that the portion that is not hatched is really within reach of that red line. I think that is a good part of the story with some proactive.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:17 - 1:51:32)
Some of the other things that we talked about for I&I are much more intensive. Sometimes we have to camera some of the lines. There can be some really difficult efforts.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:34 - 1:52:35)
It's sort of a process. Typically you start with a flow metering program, so you'd have a meter, different areas. We call them sub-areas of town, to understand where do you have higher instances.

I should let Dave give this, because he is the expert on I&I. He's been teaching me. Understand where your higher instances of inflow and infiltration are.

Then, as Sean mentioned, you can start to do other diagnostics, whether it's putting a camera in the pipe. This is stuff you can't do on the water side. You do this only on a gravity system, like your storm or your sewer.

You really start to take it from a large area and bring it down to specific targeted areas within any given sub-area. Again, it's exactly the process, or some of the processes you did for Phase 1.

[Speaker 5] (1:52:40 - 1:52:56)
You say advanced consent decree here. Is it referring to the Kings Beach consent decree? You don't call it out here.

You call it out on the drainage section, but there's kind of Kings Beach stuff happening in both, right? No, you're right.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:56 - 1:53:18)
I believe that in the 5-year plan, it was the areas beyond Stacey's Brook that had already been identified and, if not fully, at least partially designed, if I'm not mistaken, that we had included in the 5-year as the next rehab project.

[Speaker 5] (1:53:18 - 1:54:00)
Does this cost projection include enough funding to deal with regular, accelerated addressing of the sewer issues to get us to complete that 56% that we talked about earlier? Dave made a comment earlier, which I didn't address to you at the moment, but I certainly am going to object to now that this inherently has to take us many, many, many years. I'm just wondering, what is the assumption that you have?

Is that the assumption you have in here, that we're spreading out, finishing that 56% for many, many years?

[Speaker 1] (1:54:02 - 1:54:17)
Dave and John, I don't know if you can chime in, but I know that part of it is in the 5-year, but then I think, can you speak to how much longer, I think?

[Speaker 4] (1:54:18 - 1:54:19)
Can you hear me okay?

[Speaker 1] (1:54:19 - 1:54:20)
Yes, we can.

[Speaker 4] (1:54:22 - 1:56:04)
In the CIP, there is a specific allocation for what we would call the Phase 2 IDDE and design period of time, so really moving swiftly to Phase 2 is one of the priorities. Then there's also in that early 5-year period, a specific allocation for sewer rehab within what would be Phase 2A and also the areas beyond Stacey's Brook, which is essentially one of the priority areas on Fisherman's Beach, just so you all know. That's a focus on Fisherman's Beach.

Those are some specific projects that we have knowledge of that's within the first 5-year, but the overall CIP has an additional, I think it's $2.5 million every 3 years, something like that. It's sort of an ongoing pace of investment to bring the system to good repair, and that's throughout the entirety of the CIP. Courtney was talking about an II study.

There's $165,000 I think in there for performing an II study, and the outcome of the II study will help us to plan the immediate phases following the Phase 2A and Phase 2. The II study will help provide data to prioritize all the subsequent sewer rehab following what's immediately in front of us.

[Speaker 5] (1:56:05 - 1:56:28)
I want to just make sure we're all super clear about... If I try to decipher what you just said there, Dave, for myself, in this 5-year period, we may only have assumed maybe 2 allocations of $2.5 million since you said every 3 years?

[Speaker 4] (1:56:30 - 1:56:35)
That sounds about right. I don't have the exact years in front of me, but that sounds like that might be about the pace.

[Speaker 5] (1:56:36 - 1:57:05)
So that puts us on a pace probably to not finish making a first pass, at least, with the entire Kings Beach tributary area for 7 to 8 years. If we start next year with some planning, start then actually doing work in 2025, then you're not going to do it until 2028, 2031. That's the pace that's assumed here, just to be clear?

[Speaker 2] (1:57:06 - 1:59:26)
It's the rate that's assumed if we don't get a broader state or federal grant. When we looked at the planning, if we could jack up that rate as high as we possibly could conceive, sure, we'd fix it all tomorrow. We'd rip up the whole town and we'd go through literally an incredibly significant imposition to sleeve all these pipes and then still wonder what's going to happen to Kings Beach.

We're not the only ones that are going to be part of solving that problem because this is a regional issue. We're not on the same sequential path as the City of Lynn. Frankly, we're still worried about whether or not there's still additional IDVE responsibilities for the existing area that we've done.

We're trying to figure out how to fix the Kings Beach problem simultaneously as we really develop this asset management strategic plan that can help us balance all of the other fiduciary responsibilities of the town. It's a lot more complicated than I think a lot of people really want to wrap their minds around. We just don't have the ability right now to go out there and fund this all.

What we can do is get on a really regimented plan that every couple of years we're making these important investments not just in the Kings Beach area but around the whole town and really get better at that discipline to be strategic. We've never been closer to getting some broader state or federal funding opportunities. We just got $2.5 million. Was it enough? Well, no, but frankly it was more than we've ever received before and it's a start. I think the hope is that all of these efforts are going to really start to synergize and they're going to come together and we're going to really start just getting good at this status of good repair and we're going to resist this sense that somehow we have to just focus on one area of the town at the expense of every other area.

We have to broaden this lens.

[Speaker 5] (1:59:26 - 2:00:15)
With all due respect, Sean, all I was doing right now was clarifying what the assumptions were right here. You're kind of going into a much broader conversation which I hope we get to here and we can have that debate and discussion, but I just want to be clear what I'm looking at. I was asking these guys to make sure that I understood what they put in the plan.

We talk about trying to clean up Kings Beach and there might be multiple parts of it, but this is one part of it and I'm just being clear that as I'm understanding it, we're kind of talking about a pace that doesn't even take care of the pipe, sewer, repair for about eight years. That's the assumption. That's right.

That's all I'm getting clear about.

[Speaker 6] (2:00:18 - 2:00:51)
In 2016, we did $2 million from the consent decree. The consent decree said you have to invest in repair, source elimination. In 2016, we did $2 million.

Then in 2018, we did $2 million. Then in 2020, we did $2.5 million. We haven't put any more money into this adventure.

[Speaker 15] (2:00:52 - 2:01:11)
I think the last $2.5 million extended a little bit longer. The idea was to spend $2 million every other year, which averages $1 million a year. The $2.5 million one ended up taking at least a year and a half. The idea is to ask for more.

[Speaker 6] (2:01:11 - 2:01:13)
You've used up all your money?

[Speaker 15] (2:01:13 - 2:01:14)
Correct.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:18 - 2:01:57)
To be fair, we looked at a more aggressive rehab schedule. Could we do it every year? Could we do 2.5 every year?

Could we do it every other year? Every three years seemed to be the right spot, just from a sustainability of rate perspective. As Sean said, it's a balance.

It's a complete balance of resources versus...

[Speaker 6] (2:01:57 - 2:02:04)
My worry is we've lost momentum here by not having it in last year's capital budget. That's my big concern.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:05 - 2:02:11)
We have other opportunities, if we so choose, to take them to fund us besides through rates.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:11 - 2:02:12)
Yes, absolutely.

[Speaker 7] (2:02:13 - 2:02:28)
We've also gained the knowledge of spending the six years and working on three phases, 1A, 1B, and 1C. If something wasn't working on those first three phases, maybe we can change areas.

[Speaker 3] (2:02:29 - 2:02:37)
We can do something different. There's different perspectives and ways to look at it. We're still not done with this yet.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:42 - 2:07:56)
I did want to mention we did include the list of projects, if it's helpful, in the back of the presentation. Any more questions on sewer or should we move on to drain? Again, this is a similar map, similar conversation here.

We look at the drain asset risk level. I think the map shows a number of horizontal assets that are in the high risk category. In this case, I think there probably is some precondition concern here, but there's also some lack of information.

We have some data gaps that we need to close on this system, but it is still an aged system. A lot of the high risk comes from a combination of age and proximity to environmentally sensitive areas and or service. There's some positives here.

Seawall repair has been ongoing. Funds have been funneled in that direction. That's good.

As Gino mentioned, the flood study that was done back in 2017, I don't know if I got that right, but recently, really focused in on some areas of potential mitigation. One thing that we would recommend is looking at that from an updated climate impact perspective, understanding what potential future climate impacts might be. I think flood will be a continued concern.

I'm working from the bottom up here, but we recognize, we've already talked a lot about Kings Beach tonight, that it is a top priority for the town. To make the point that it is not the only priority, and we took this as an opportunity to broaden the look across town at areas that are outside of that. We feel this asset management plan helps you to do.

We'll go to the next slide, and hopefully you don't kick me out of the room at this point. We developed a stormwater five-year CIP, five-year and 20-year CIP. Unfortunately, most of the bars there are underneath that box.

I just wanted to highlight the two different colored bars. These look different because it's a different funding mechanism, if you will, in town. The green bars represent getting the system to a status of good repair generally across the system.

What's it going to take to address the Kings Beach issue? Right now, that's a big number. No, we don't think it's actually going to hit in 2026 at this level, and that's what it's going to be.

The opportunity to do this will be driven by what can the town secure in state and federal grants, funding, that sort of thing. I think we could look at it like that. Again, we include in this stormwater CIP the similar proactive assessment and rehab approach that we've talked about with water and sewer.

It's not different. It's the same approach, and it works. Let's see.

A couple other things. Just to highlight, there are options to think about as it relates to stormwater funding. We talked about some of the state and federal grant and low or zero interest loans that are more and more available.

Another thought is starting an enterprise fund or stormwater utility for generating some revenue. It often won't cover large magnitude projects, but it can offset. It's similar to the I&I Bank, but maybe even in a little more lucrative fashion.

I think with that...

[Speaker 5] (2:07:58 - 2:08:09)
When you say Kings Beach here, is this more about CSOs? Is that what you think about as a stormwater? Is that how you distinguish putting that here versus on the sewer page?

[Speaker 1] (2:08:10 - 2:08:52)
I think it's thinking about pulling the stormwater out and away from the beach, the stormwater component. I get that they are interconnected. It would be more the stormwater piece of that.

I hesitate to call it a CSO, I guess, because it's not a combined system. I know what you're saying. Yes, it would be more on the stormwater piece of the puzzle.

Happy to answer any questions here.

[Speaker 3] (2:08:56 - 2:10:30)
I think Doug is asking a really good clarification point. Which is about drains sitting in its own categories. The interconnection financially with sewer doesn't exist, and obviously it does.

This is not necessarily for Kleinfelder, but it's the challenge. If you just look at last year's capital expenditure that Town Meeting did, I think only about $1.2 million was new capital items for water and sewer that would build back to water and sewer. The debt service comes out of their budgets, not out of the general fund, etc.

About $4.5 million came was non-water and sewer capital. That was what was needed to stay within water and sewer's budget to make sure we didn't have reckless increases in water and sewer, and to make sure we weren't doing this. I'm asking the most obvious question in the world.

How do you take $100 million of expenditures for invisible infrastructure that's critical, that has to be fixed? I'm using $100 million. Use $50 million.

Add Humphrey Street, Force Main, whatever. Pick your number. The number actually doesn't matter.

It's so ridiculous. In all seriousness, how do we do that while balancing the fact that we have the exact same exercise for every other thing that was forgotten for not decades, centuries. Literally forgotten in this town.

You actually, earlier, Sean, started by talking about how you used the word lead, and you saying when you first got here and doing things like that.

[Speaker 17] (2:10:30 - 2:10:31)
I hear you.

[Speaker 3] (2:10:32 - 2:11:07)
Again, we are correcting the last seven years, but I'm more concerned about how you do that. These are paralyzing numbers that we're talking about here. These are paralyzing numbers.

We have two public safety chiefs sitting in our audience tonight. Kings Beach is obviously a paramount concern. Schools and roads.

I'm sharing what I think all of us feel, including yourself. This is paralyzing. Again, not surprising, but paralyzing nonetheless.

Every town may be having it, but it doesn't make me feel better.

[Speaker 2] (2:11:08 - 2:14:10)
I want to try to put you at ease in the sense that it's sort of like folks that perhaps avoid going to the doctor because they just don't want to hear the news. Most communities don't look at this because they'll fix it when it breaks, and they're too busy worrying about everything else. I think Swampskate is starting to get serious about the importance of all these issues.

Sometimes we just have to have these conversations. Without really trying to sound cavalier, how do we solve all these problems? We do it as carefully as we can.

We're mindful of everything. We have a capital plan. It's not a budget.

It's a capital plan that actually puts these priorities in place and says, hey, don't forget about these things. Don't forget about painting the water tower in 10 years. Don't forget about making sure that you have to take care of seawalls and make sure you have to take care of parks and ADA issues for beaches.

All these things have to exist and have to be prioritized by select boards and finance committees and ultimately town meeting. They have to really begin with professional staff that actually helps to identify all of these opportunities. I will tell you it's absolutely essential if we're going to get broader state and federal grants that these projects exist within our capital improvement plan.

It's absolutely important that these agencies know that we have identified these needs and we've started to prioritize them. I don't want you to think that we're going to have to immediately rush into spending all of these dollars in this plan. We may have to push a few of these projects out a few years.

We may have to pull them in. We may get an opportunity to pull them in because we do get a grant or we do get support for a broader level of effort. There are all sorts of opportunities as well.

Our last phase of the consent decree, we actually picked up an enormous amount of efficiencies. We picked up time. We picked up additional scope of work.

It's not all bad news. I do think it's sort of like opening up a closet that you haven't really looked at for long. We've got to organize it.

We've got to prioritize it. We've got to be careful about how we integrate it into the overall financial plan of the town. I'm not as anxious about this.

I think I have more anxiety not having a report like this and not knowing that we're looking at everything.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:12 - 2:14:13)
I would agree.

[Speaker 2] (2:14:13 - 2:14:14)
I think this is fantastic.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:17 - 2:16:16)
I guess, Peter, I look at this and say water, we're in pretty good shape. Basically, we've got a projection. Revenue looks like it's consistent.

The rates don't have to really go up. Basically, kind of in good shape. Sewer, we're not quite there.

We don't really have the revenue. Does that mean the rates are going to have to go up a little bit? Probably, maybe.

What I would like to talk about tonight, whether or not we vote on it or not, but if you have the 2.5 million in ARPA money, we have delayed in terms of putting money into fixing the pipes. It's not going to be probably the whole solution, but there is money there that we could talk about using that would not affect increasing the rates, but we would make some progress and get back on track with dealing with the IDE and source elimination. The other pieces of this, the creation of an enterprise fund for the stormwater.

I do feel like this does lay out a plan. To me, the only things that are kind of shaking around in the public, maybe amongst us, are we going to put some money towards fixing the pipes pronto, and what is the big solution? Assuming that fixing the pipes is not going to do it 100%, what is the belt and suspenders big solution for dealing with the pipes as well as CSOs?

Those are things that are kind of hanging out there that I don't feel like this conclusively addresses, but I'd say we're like 90% there, that last 10%. We need to just kind of resolve amongst ourselves and with feedback, how fast are we going to do the pipes, and does that help us? I would say that helps us a lot with our state and federal partners if we're taking care of our own business and we're going to need some big help for other bigger pieces of the pie.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:20 - 2:17:53)
Doug, I appreciate all those comments. I really do think stormwater plan, enterprise, the stormwater enterprise follows the INI and I think it helps everybody understand that we have a system that we have to just continue to support. I do think this gives us a chance to really step off and have a few more of those broader conversations.

I don't think the conversation tonight was intended to really get to all of those bigger pictures, but I think it was intended to prime that conversation and really give us a chance to think critically about what is the best use of some of those offer dollars they were awarded to the town to really help address the Kings Beach issues, and I do think it's important for the board to think and discuss and to debate what are the most important alternatives to simply hoping for the best with the IDVE without a clear understanding of when that certitude will appear that we can all enjoy that resource area safely. I'm not convinced that anything we're doing or anything that we have been doing will give us any certitude over the next 10 years. I think it will continue to frustrate us as if we're shoveling against the tide that we just cannot somehow get in sync with.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:53 - 2:19:43)
I really, truly hope we can have those conversations. Can we talk, but I think Doug's on the right path, right? I mean, can we, with client failure tonight, it seems like in as much as I know people are going to get tired, but I really do want to understand the correlation between IDVE and let's just call the Kings Beach Basin, I'm going to call it for lack of a better phrase, which we've now done a significant amount of the sewer work here.

We have done to understand the correlated benefit to the Kings Beach outfall and the issues relating there. I'm not prioritizing one or the other. I'm not valuing all of it.

What I'm trying to do is just for my own purposes, I think I need to understand the correlation as opposed to just assume a correlation or a non-correlation to be able to do it. What I've heard to date is, and again, I can't speak in numbers, but has led me to believe that the millions that we've spent in that basin creating all this green has not resulted in what I'm going to call material improvements in the outfall. I'm being generous with my words, and I'm saying that just so you guys, the scientists, the engineers, will respond to me and say, no, no, it has been, it's this, and that's okay, I want you to do it, but I think the general feeling that I've had at prior board meetings and presentations is you're not seeing that equivalent benefit through the outfall, which means that we aren't necessarily getting to the problem with what we did in Phase 1A, 1A, et cetera, et cetera.

If the chairman's okay with it, if we can spend five minutes just having you guys respond to that or just help that, maybe that will, when you're not here praying the conversations, that when we are having this conversation, we at least aren't debating facts that you have. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:46 - 2:19:52)
Dave, I don't know if you could hear that, if you heard all of that from Peter or not.

[Speaker 4] (2:19:53 - 2:21:05)
I mean, strictly speaking to the work that's been done with Phase 1, probably the cleanest place where you can look to see what the results have been is there's, again, it's in that EPA report. So we have a sample spot on Paradise Road, and it's right, I don't remember where the cross street is, I think it's Burrill Street. That's sort of effectively the geographical lowest point in the drainage system that is expected to be improved by Phase 1.

Those dry weather results have been pretty good. I mean, in the hundreds, less than 1,000. In my mind, that's a pretty good result to show some of the benefit of Phase 1.

At the same time, the other areas that we haven't improved yet, so the quote unquote future Phase 2 areas, those are still, based on the data that I was looking at before improvement, in the thousands, pretty consistently.

[Speaker 3] (2:21:05 - 2:22:21)
But Dave, can I just redirect you a little bit here? I appreciate you talking about that low point in Burrill and Paradise, but when you compare the level of improvement pre- IDDE and post-IDDE for this, again, what I'm going to call the King's Beach Basin, for lack of a better phrase, if you just look at that level of improvement, and then you compare it to the level of improvement at the outfall, past that point at Burrill and Paradise where everything comes together, are you seeing a corresponding improvement, and one would say, well, of course you would, because we're doing it. But I think what we've heard is no, we're not seeing it.

And I just want to get to the correlation between, I appreciate that interim point, but the outfall, right? And are we seeing, I guess what I'm getting to is how much of the outfall problem, we've got to do this, understand we've got to do it regardless, how much of the outfall problem are we solving through IDDE versus how much are we just dealing with our sewer system issues with post-IDDE and not so much King's Beach outfall pipe. Again, not prioritizing or value judging any of them.

I just want to understand the scientific correlation.

[Speaker 6] (2:22:22 - 2:22:26)
Do we have outfall numbers here? We don't have outfall numbers.

[Speaker 3] (2:22:28 - 2:22:31)
Dave, that was to you, so you can just take it any time you want. Take your time.

[Speaker 4] (2:22:33 - 2:23:12)
Yeah, I mean, I guess I have to go back and just sort of repaint the picture that this is always intended to be a long view, this whole approach. So the ultimate goal is to make improvements at the outfall, but I would not try to say that the intent is that at the end of phase one we would see improvements at the outfall. There's still more than half of the infrastructure remaining that's tied to that.

So we haven't even attempted to make a correlation between the phase one work and those outfall numbers just because we're really not there yet.

[Speaker 5] (2:23:17 - 2:24:29)
Dave, tell me if this is right. To me, what it feels like is that when your numbers are like 20-30,000 and you tinker with something over here, maybe it comes down to 15,000. It's kind of hard to know whether or not, until you get to that 80-90%, you may not actually really even see what the impact is.

Having said that, I don't believe that, I'm sure Sean is wondering, thinking I'm saying something that I'm not, I'm not saying that I know if we do 100% of all these pipes that we're going to have a pristine beach and it's going to be all good and perfect, because I know there's going to be stuff that's going to pop up. But then we're in the whack-a-mole phase, which would be a great place to be. So that's kind of what I'm advocating.

We've got to do it for a lot of different reasons. Let's get on with it and do the right thing for the pipes and we'll see what the net result is at the outflow. And at the same time, plan for we're probably going to need something else as well.

But I somewhat repeated what I said before.

[Speaker 3] (2:24:30 - 2:24:31)
I appreciate that.

[Speaker 7] (2:24:34 - 2:24:38)
We can open this up for public comment. Hold on a second.

[Speaker 6] (2:24:38 - 2:25:02)
I do have a question on the 9-1 report. On the 9-1 report, the numbers at Fisherman's Beach outfall, those numbers seem to be through the roof. Do you think those numbers are through the roof?

It looks like they do have the 130,000, 88,000.

[Speaker 2] (2:25:04 - 2:25:07)
Yeah, we've got some issues there.

[Speaker 6] (2:25:09 - 2:25:52)
And so when do we have the plan for dealing with that? So the reason I'm bringing that up is because we have recreation events there, right in that pocket. And it looks like these numbers were taken in 22.

And then we don't even have a number. This report is from August of 23, but we don't even have a number for August of 23. So my concern here is we have recreational programs that are happening right there.

We have kids on paddle boards, people in kayaks, people swimming. And I'm concerned that we're not actually addressing this situation immediately. So that's my big concern after reading this report.

[Speaker 3] (2:25:53 - 2:26:11)
Dave, do you have something to say? Do you have the report? I don't believe anybody here has the report besides Mary Ellen at the moment, but can you just speak to what fishermen's...

It's okay, Liz. I just wanted to see if Dave can look at the report and speak to what those reports showed. And can you explain that?

[Speaker 4] (2:26:12 - 2:27:29)
Right. So the consent decree includes fishermen's... They brought to the town the data that was supporting the consent decree in the first place.

They brought data for Kings Beach, and they brought data for fishermen as well. And I honestly can't remember exactly which outfall of fishermen's they were testing at the time. But the test data that Mary Ellen talked about, I believe, is from the outfall that would...

Basically, if you were on Marshall Street facing the ocean and you just walked through all the houses there, it's that outfall right there. So I believe that's where those data points are. So the consent decree required the town to perform sampling within that catchment area, which was done.

And I think... I don't know if Gina or Courtney mentioned earlier, but there is a design for sewer improvements already for that particular outfall. So the study's been done.

The design's been done. It just needs funding to go into the next construction phase. It is represented in the CIP in combination with Phase 2A.

Right.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:29 - 2:27:37)
Okay. I just wanted to make sure that was right. So I'm glad you've confirmed that.

For like 2025, I believe.

[Speaker 6] (2:27:37 - 2:27:42)
Right. So we're in 2023. And what I'm hearing you say is that we're going to address this in 2025.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:43 - 2:27:45)
No, it's fiscal year. So we're in fiscal year 24.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:46 - 2:27:46)
Okay.

[Speaker 7] (2:27:55 - 2:28:03)
And where is that captured? It's in your... Oh, you're talking about MAPA?

Right.

[Speaker 2] (2:28:34 - 2:28:45)
So it's on... If you look at the 20-year efficiency of each improvement project, there's one... I'm sorry.

That's way off.

[Speaker 5] (2:28:47 - 2:28:49)
Can you restate your question, Dave?

[Speaker 7] (2:28:50 - 2:28:54)
My question was just where is this?

[Speaker 9] (2:28:57 - 2:29:02)
The Fisherman's Beach outfall issue that Gina was talking about.

[Speaker 3] (2:29:05 - 2:29:10)
So I see you summoned 37 for climate flood. I don't see anything else.

[Speaker 6] (2:29:19 - 2:29:29)
When you don't have... When you don't get an answer, when you don't get a test result, do you go back and get a test result? I mean, there's no...

What's the protocol here?

[Speaker 1] (2:29:30 - 2:29:35)
Sorry about that. I missed the question. You said when you get a test result that's high like that, do you go back?

[Speaker 6] (2:29:35 - 2:29:52)
Right. On many of these areas, there are blanks as far as test results. And like on this one here at Fisherman's Beach, it says that there was a lab error.

So if they come back and say there's a lab error, you don't go back and test it again?

[Speaker 15] (2:29:58 - 2:29:59)
Oh, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:01 - 2:30:02)
Dave, do you know?

[Speaker 15] (2:30:03 - 2:30:04)
Short answer is no.

[Speaker 4] (2:30:05 - 2:30:13)
Yeah, I mean, I don't think we'll...

[Speaker 9] (2:30:13 - 2:30:28)
I think to answer David's question, it's the Stacybrook Phase 2A in areas beyond Stacybrook construction start date 2025, the 1.7 million is what would be taking care of some of that Fisherman's Beach?

[Speaker 1] (2:30:29 - 2:30:33)
Yeah, at least some of Fisherman's Beach, if not all. In Phase 2A.

[Speaker 15] (2:30:34 - 2:30:42)
The good news is there's a lot less strain pipes in the Fisherman's Beach outfall than there is in Stacybrook outfall. It's a lot smaller area.

[Speaker 7] (2:30:49 - 2:31:04)
Thank you. I do want to allow for time for questions and comments from the public. So if there are members of the public here that want to ask questions of Feinfelder, please step up, state your name, address, and limit you to three minutes, please.

[Speaker 10] (2:31:10 - 2:35:03)
Hi, guys. I'm Andrea Moore, Precinct 3. Appreciate all the time that everyone has devoted into all this.

It's incredibly thoughtful. It means a lot. So I just wanted to make some really fast comments.

Biggest comment is this timing is not fast enough. We are woefully behind in our infrastructure and fixing things with $2.5 million every three years is not going to work. I would suggest, and it's a very unpopular opinion, but I would suggest based on the averages that we saw that our sewer rates are too low, and the responsible thing to do would be to raise them to invest in our infrastructure that is woefully aged.

So I would maybe suggest making a projection. If we raised rates by $2 per HCF, how much would that raise and how would it translate to faster replacement of our sewer system? Something like that.

Let's look at what the best results of something like that would be. I would also question why are we stretching funding periods out longer when we just discovered that we're in a really terrible position in terms of our infrastructure? We should be doing the opposite.

I also would, and you brought this up tonight, urge a questioning of our street refinishing. It looks like almost every street needs some kind of work, whether it's sewer, water, or drainage. We, in my opinion, should probably be halting the further investment into our surfaces when what's underneath is probably bunk.

Because that would also free up some more money for investing in underground. I would also like to end by saying, and this is in the politest way possible, to Kleinfelder, to the town of Swampscott, but based on conversations we have been having at Save Kings Beach with other towns and other stakeholders, I do not see a reality in which the outfall pipe happens. Nahant Select Board is meeting this evening and we just got an email going through from very strong advocates at Nahant saying, thank you for letting us know that you do not approve of the outfall pipe.

And as some of you may know, Nahant was successful in rerouting the outfall pipe that was at Deer Island 40 years ago. They were successful then. I feel like they will be again.

They are very, very vocal. And I do think that is, as you guys saw that big jump in the graphic, it would be, in my opinion, at this stage of things, before we have even fixed the other 56% that is going into Kings Beach, it would be a waste of money. I do think it is something, you know, our group has talked a lot about focusing on fixing the pipe.

We just really need to double down on those efforts. I am doing everything we can. I can, you know, we'll continue to do more to try to urge the state to give us more funding, but I do think that that is where our focus should remain because we are just going to waste our time.

We're going to spin our wheels. Nahant is going to put a stop to it. And I do think that we should be looking at other solutions.

Perhaps it might be worthwhile to go back and look at what some of the other solutions are that were not like furthered. And we should also be looking at other towns. Revere solved this problem.

I talked to a city councilwoman. We need to be having these conversations across towns with folks who were successful, and I feel like that's just not happening now. And I believe that perhaps starting a town committee would help solve some of this.

Putting our towns energy, there are so many people in this room who are way more knowledgeable than even I am who can help add color to this. We can make phone calls to other towns. We can explore other situations that can get us to answers that are favorable because what's on the table right now has a lot of pushback.

And I feel like we can get to a solution that most people can agree is the right one. Thank you for your time.

[Speaker 17] (2:35:06 - 2:36:48)
So I'm Brian Drummond, Reddington Street, former finance committee member. And if you go to page four of your presentation, that forced pipe or forced main back in 1990, there was a huge amount of engineering work that went into that and studies of the town structure and the construction of it. And there's also in those reports a prediction of the life of that pipe.

So you should be able to get all of that information from 1990. And that all resulted from the 1972-73 Clean Water Air Act passed by Congress that forced Swampskat to stop discharging into the coastal waters. And this really goes back to that time period, which resulted in the decision of Swampskat to go with Lynn and Nahat and not do our own treatment plan, which was what we had talked about for a lot of times.

But the Kleinfeld report, February 2023, alternative two in the appendix, talks about putting a pumping station and just pump everything to Lynn. It's only two to three years, small dollars, $17 million. You can put in $5 million a year in the capital approval the next three years.

And it says prediction that the beach will be open 90% of the time in the summer. So to me, you just start and go that way, and then you continue to line the pipes and do other things. But you just take on this recommended alternative two duration, two to three year duration, and you're done.

Thank you.

[Speaker 16] (2:36:55 - 2:38:53)
Liz Smith, Precinct 3. You know I care about Kings Beach, right? We've talked about Kings Beach a lot over the last year.

When I read the 9-1 report, which I was so grateful that you put it on the website, Sean, and that we all had access to it. And then, lo and behold, the next day, all the pilot reports were up there, too. So when I saw those numbers at Fisherman's Beach, I said, holy cow, we have a really big problem here.

And it's not just at Kings. It's everywhere. We don't know where it is.

I went back and tried to correlate some of the previous test results. Can't do it because there's no locations on the prior reports. I feel like there needs to be even more discussion, transparency.

What is the real extent of the problem? I really appreciate all the work that's been done on the asset management. I think there's probably a lot of underlying facts and data, and maybe even some correlations can be teased out to help us to understand better what's the big picture, what's really happening.

Now we've got a big problem we have to solve, but we need to put money towards it. I don't think we're putting enough towards Kings or Fisherman's. We're not doing it soon enough.

I'd like to see that happen sooner and faster and more. But I just really want an opportunity for us to have the time to understand the facts and talk through them, not just when it comes to the town and what we're doing, but also the steering committee and the pipe extension, which has now found its way onto the asset management and really gooses those numbers up. And some people aren't going to tease out that we're talking about state and federal funds for that $50 million.

They're just going to look and say, oh my God. So there's a lot of nuance to this. Please let us help to understand and communicate what the facts are.

Thank you.

[Speaker 11] (2:39:04 - 2:44:02)
Hi. Wayne Spritz, Precinct 3. I have a lot of questions in my three minutes.

So hopefully someone can, for the record, and happy to take the answers offline. The key questions are for Kleinfelder. So your slide presentation doesn't say anything about the underdrain.

And I feel as though it is really the elephant in the room that has been neglected to be talked about. And the reason I say that is that the underdrain is connected to the line that pumps directly over to Lynn. And when it rains, we can have extraordinarily high outflows.

And we know that because I've seen the daily numbers. It can go from a million, two million on a dry day to nine million on a wet day. And so if we have a really wet summer, my question is, and this goes to the point of the numbers last year that we're given, I forget, is it 40% or 60% what the ratio was, but the amount of freshwater, MWRA water that we use relative to what we send to Lynn is not even close to proportional.

So when we look at financial projection, one of the questions I would ask is, if we're diverting that underdrain water to Lynn, there's probably a reason why. And it may or may not have to do with valves that can be changed. But why did we do it a while ago?

It's probably because it's contaminated. If it's contaminated, Kleinfelder, are you measuring it? Are you looking specifically at the underdrain?

So if we can split the underdrain off eventually, if we can fix the pipes, we could save even more than we're sending, because we're not sending it to Lynn. As a result, I think that should be part of your financial projections. One of the next questions is, on the existing, as Peter refers to, the Swampscot Basin, my understanding is that not all the pipes were done.

It was the ones on the high side, so you might get one side of the street on elevation. So the reality is that, no, not 100% of those pipes were done. Can I get a better understanding of what those numbers are in the report?

And because we know that there were a limited amount of improvements, do you see doing the rest of the pipes in that system to improve it? I don't know the answer to that, but I sure would like to have consideration and to understand. The laterals, correct?

The laterals, correct. One other question I have is, the existing pipe that goes out from the old pump station, I believe it's concreted off, why is that not being looked at to redirect to that existing line? That was certified, but allowed by the EPA.

Why is that not being considered? Was it considered? Because I've never heard any talk about it in any of the presentations.

Can it be considered? Would it be much less expensive, because you have existing infrastructure there, and pre-priorized permitting of some sort? Okay.

Lastly, having been around and talked about infrastructure, Peter's here to address, geez, this is hard to swallow, but if you guys remember 10 years ago, we didn't have a facilities director. We neglected our buildings because we weren't thinking about preventative maintenance of our assets. So let's go back to, at one point I know we had a DPW committee that was kind of, we divested from that.

I don't know if you want to consider an infrastructure committee or a DPW committee again to look at these types of projects, to help analyze them, that can give you some expertise from across the community to be able to report back to, an advisory committee of some sort. Just throwing it out there for your future consideration, so it doesn't land all on one particular person or persons. And so, yeah, those are the key.

Oh, sorry, one more question. The spikes on Banks Road, it's an honest question. You have a dog that decides to do his business at a drain the day or an hour before you go and test your, you know, the line.

What effect does that have? And the other thing is if people are putting manure on their lawns as fertilizer, how does that affect those numbers? If you get a spike that is that high, right, insanely high, wouldn't you just go back another two weeks and retest just to make sure?

These are anomalies, but there is something obviously that happened, but does that affect the entire caucus? Does that affect the numbers if you have a, not an arbitrary, but a very specific contamination mode that does not have necessarily mean an illicit connection? Thank you for your time.

[Speaker 7] (2:44:02 - 2:44:03)
Next one.

[Speaker 10] (2:44:09 - 2:44:35)
One is a clarifying question. So we've talked about the fact that a lot of sewer laterals are broken and in fact that led to the increased amount of money that we spent based on the estimate from the 9-1 report. Whose responsibility is it financially to fix the sewer laterals?

Because in Boston, it's the homeowner. Okay, so why, what did you just say?

[Speaker 15] (2:44:35 - 2:44:37)
I said same as Swampscott.

[Speaker 3] (2:44:37 - 2:44:40)
So how many Swampscott residents have paid for their laterals so far?

[Speaker 15] (2:44:41 - 2:44:42)
As part of this project? Zero.

[Speaker 10] (2:44:47 - 2:44:50)
Right, so like when we talk about not having enough money.

[Speaker 2] (2:44:54 - 2:46:33)
Yeah, so look, I just want to be candid. That began prior to my attending. I was very surprised when I heard that town was actually going to pick up the cost for the laterals because it is a homeowner responsibility.

But he's saying, I know, but the town was so focused, my understanding when it began this project of fixing this problem because the consent order and the administrative order that came before the consent order was focused on Kings Beach and the quality of water at Kings Beach. And so the town, in good faith, was really trying to fix that problem and it moved expeditiously to try to address that. And we didn't do every lateral, we just did the laterals that literally overlaid the drainage.

And so I think the town was trying to be very strategic and focused. But are we going to be able to do the entire town? Are we going to be able to absorb all those costs?

Is that something that, frankly, I think we really have to have a big conversation about some of these costs and what the obligations are. Whether or not, frankly, we need to think about passing a few different ordinances. In some communities, if you sell your house, one of the requirements is you actually have to have that inspected and certified.

And maybe there's a program where we start to look at strategically addressing that ownership responsibility. Do I want to shift any more costs onto small-ship taxpayers? No.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:34 - 2:46:36)
It is already there.

[Speaker 2] (2:46:36 - 2:46:37)
It is, I know.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:37 - 2:47:25)
The only reason it's not felt is because we make special rules. I'm not talking about what we're doing now. I'm talking about your statement saying that.

Just your statement alone. There is a rule right now. The homeowner owns the lateral.

Period. Hard stop. I get for this project we might be making some things because we want to keep the project going.

I get that for the limited laterals we're doing. We spend so much time apologizing for just asking people to do what is expected of them. We have to be conscious of that economic burden as we layer other economic burdens on it because there is a lot of cost of being here.

But we can't start from a position of apologizing just asking people to understand this is their responsibility. We're going to try and find a financially good way to deal with it, but it's their responsibility. If there is ordinances out there like you just said, then you should be bringing that to us.

[Speaker 2] (2:47:25 - 2:47:57)
Fair enough. Fair enough. I just want to say before we actually get on that path, I'd love for the town to actually think about how we would try to help residents absorb some of those costs and maybe there is a way for the town to find a strategic way that we are not going to immediately thrust some of those costs on some of these families, but come up with a way that could either lean the property or find a way to ensure that we do it as carefully as possible.

[Speaker 10] (2:48:03 - 2:49:26)
I would add that there is a lot of education that can happen around that. There are homeowners policies that cover that, one of which I just bought. That way if I CCTV it and it's broken, it's paid for.

There's a lot of education that we can provide where no one is financially responsible except an insurance company. There's also grants in the City of Boston, so we could probably find similar grants here. There's just so much that we can do here.

The last thing I would say is in terms of going back to funding too and also talking across communities, Liz and I were at Linn Water and Sewer Commission on Monday and they are talking about approving almost $700,000 to CCTV their entire sewer system to actually get a sense of what is going on, where things are broken, whatever. I think that your map of green, yellow, red is a good guess, but it's not a reality. There's probably a lot that we can learn.

I think layering onto that requiring homeowners to do the equivalent of a Title 5 in other communities that have septic systems, perhaps we layer that into our home training because it's about $300 or $400. It's an expense, but it's one that when you're selling a home, you can just wrap it into the closing costs. Call it a day.

That's all. Thank you. I promise I'm done.

[Speaker 3] (2:49:32 - 2:49:51)
Can I just ask that we, I mean, we have so much to talk about. Can we, if the next agenda allows it or an upcoming agenda, have a board conversation where we can talk about how we will move forward? Just generally speaking, town staff too, I'm just saying amongst ourselves, we can really sit with this information for a couple of weeks, think about it.

[Speaker 7] (2:49:54 - 2:49:56)
Again, we'll add that to an upcoming agenda.

[Speaker 3] (2:49:57 - 2:50:04)
I'd appreciate that. I appreciate everyone who shares their knowledge with us. Thank you.

Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, Gino.

[Speaker 2] (2:50:04 - 2:50:10)
Thank you, David. Thank you, John. I'm sorry, John Reed.

[Speaker 7] (2:50:10 - 2:50:22)
John Reed. John Reed, yes. I'm sorry, another Kleinfelder colleague.

We'll be moving on discussion of possible vote relating to the settlement of Massachusetts Electric Company, DBA.

[Speaker 20] (2:50:25 - 2:50:27)
Did you check?

[Speaker 7] (2:50:29 - 2:50:42)
The national grid versus the town of Essex County Superior Court. So we have counsel on the line, Sharon Everett is here joining us.

[Speaker 3] (2:50:43 - 2:56:23)
I'd like to welcome her into the conversation and thank you for your patience, Sharon. Hi, Sharon. You want me to go ahead and kick off?

So tonight before the board is, well, let me say this. As the board recalls in January 2019, the select board system with approval from town meeting voted to acquire easements necessary for creation of the rail trail. In January 2019, the select board voted to acquire the required easements over those portions of the trail that were owned in fee by National Grid.

National Grid filed suit at that time against the town, seeking to have further conversations with the town about the trail, the location of the trail, the impact of the trails, et cetera. With the able help of counsel over these past four years, there's been ongoing conversations with National Grid. Let me just frame the substantive issue at the end of the day is not really what the litigation on its face talks about.

The substantive issue which National Grid has sought from day one is they have strongly preferred a ground lease option for the rail trail, not a easement taken by eminent domain for the rail trail. That is consistent with what they have done with other communities. You may recall, I believe it was in 2021, there was a subsequent warrant article presented to town meeting where permission was sought of town meeting in anticipation of this settlement, giving this select board the ability to convey back, release the easement that was acquired in January 2019 in return for the ability to enter into an agreement with National Grid that contemplates a ground lease, a 99-year ground lease for the rail trail, consistent with National Grid's practice in other communities.

Since even before the 2021 town meeting vote and since, town council staff and National Grid have entered into conversations together with MassDOT about the form of easement and the path, no pun intended, going forward here. What has changed in recent years, as many of you know, I think all of you know, is that the town very excitedly was added to the TIP list, which is federal funding administered by the Mass Department of Transportation and have been allocated just under $10 million with escalation to pay the costs associated with the trail. Part of that process is a renewed design and community process.

So for some it's going to feel a little bit like Groundhog Day, but it's not. We're working with the town's design teams, working with MassDOT and their design team and their trails group to look at the design of the trail, to work on possible modifications and make sure the trail meets MassDOT trail design standards. As part of that, there's a long history between MassDOT and National Grid relative to their interactions, because obviously there are other communities that have trails or want trails on which National Grid, aka MassElectric, is the fee owner of those.

In those communities, Groveland, Haverhill, to name two, are communities where National Grid, if you will, the triumvirate of MassDOT, National Grid, and those communities. I think similarly, those were also funded with MassDOT dollars, is that correct? Correct.

Through that process, they were able to work through a form of ground lease that would be acceptable to the state, that would be acceptable to National Grid, and would be acceptable for the community that would meet the funding requirements and meet the requirements of National Grid to make sure National Grid has the controls that they need to make sure that the provisions of service, both now and in the future, are protected and they have the ability to make sure that there's no interruption to their primary service, which is the provision of utility services, now and in the future, as those services may expand or change. Before, the board has met in an executive session recently. The board reviewed in executive session, as part of the negotiation, an escrow agreement, which has attached to it a form of ground lease, which basically is the agreement with National Grid that once we go through the design process and once we have final approval from MassDOT, in essence, releases the ground lease from escrow and allows the town then to have the full benefit of the 99-year ground lease consistent with the final design of the trail.

The board also reviewed an assent agreement, which is essentially, think about it this way, not really a ground lease, but it's an agreement which confirms our right to use the portion of the trail that has already been constructed from the Marblehead Line to Bradley Avenue. That's consistent in form to the ground lease attached to the escrow agreement. The last document is a release of easement, which is the legal document which, with a vote tonight, our signatures will, and then ultimately the recording of this document, once National Grid similarly signs the settlement agreement and the escrow agreement, will be recorded and that will actually release that easement in return for the escrow agreement and the ultimate ground lease that the town of Swampscott will have. So, a lot said as quickly as I can say it. Did I miss anything that you want to add to the conversation?

[Speaker 16] (2:56:27 - 2:56:29)
No, I believe you've covered everything.

[Speaker 7] (2:56:33 - 2:56:40)
Questions from the board? Ms. Pappalardo.

[Speaker 19] (2:56:51 - 2:57:00)
Three, what is the address that you're talking about here? You didn't put in the notices where exactly you're talking about for the public to know.

[Speaker 3] (2:57:00 - 2:57:23)
So, every portion of the, that's owned in fee by National Grid, there's actually, in the order of taking originally, there's ten sheets which show that portion of it, so I can't tell you addresses because the trail doesn't have addresses. I can, but I can't give it to you with precision because it's unplanned.

[Speaker 19] (2:57:23 - 2:57:28)
You know the trail well enough to know which section you're talking about though, right?

[Speaker 3] (2:57:29 - 2:57:40)
I can, but unfortunately the portions that are owned by National Grid do not necessarily include the entire width of that portion, so I'm going to do the best I can to explain it to you tonight because I don't have a plan in front of me.

[Speaker 19] (2:57:40 - 2:57:47)
Clarification though, you said owner in fee, so they own the easement. They don't necessarily own the land, correct?

[Speaker 3] (2:57:49 - 2:58:01)
No, I'm talking about the areas which National Grid has a deeded right and owns the land for which we took, the town of Slomskot took an easement.

[Speaker 19] (2:58:03 - 2:58:05)
Pardon? The National Grid has an easement?

[Speaker 3] (2:58:06 - 2:58:19)
No, and portions where National Grid owns the property in fee, which means they own the land, 2019 taking by the town of Slomskot only took an easement over that land which National Grid owns in fee.

[Speaker 19] (2:58:19 - 2:58:21)
So which section are you speaking of?

[Speaker 3] (2:58:21 - 2:58:44)
So it's various sections that extend all the way from the Stetson Avenue through to Humphrey Street in essence, the various portions of it. Knowing where you live, it does include portions between Walker Road and the middle school, but I can't without having a plan in front of me tell you exactly what portion.

[Speaker 19] (2:58:44 - 2:58:57)
And regarding the comment about MassDOT and having to go back through the design process, have certain things changed regarding width, anything like that?

[Speaker 3] (2:58:57 - 2:59:30)
So nothing has changed in the design. That would be a forthcoming process now that we have to meet MassDOT design standards. The town's design team is working with MassDOT to fully understand what needs to happen.

That will go through a public process, a community process, consistent with what we did back in 2017-18 to make sure that the changes are aired and viewed. It's actually a requirement of the MassDOT funding that we go through that process. It's a good idea regardless, but just to give people confidence, that's actually a requirement of MassDOT for us to go through a community process that MassDOT will be involved in.

[Speaker 19] (2:59:30 - 2:59:35)
To clarify, I wasn't asking if the design had changed, just if the standards for the design had changed.

[Speaker 3] (2:59:35 - 2:59:47)
Yeah, I can't speak to MassDOT design standards, so I can't speak to that, but that process will be intended to flush out anything that MassDOT requires differently than what the town would do but for the requirement of MassDOT.

[Speaker 19] (2:59:49 - 2:59:58)
If the design standards aren't what we agreed on years ago at town meeting, how do we address that?

[Speaker 3] (2:59:59 - 3:00:09)
It's a hypothetical that I don't know the answer to. I don't know what those would be, so we'll have to wait and see what that process is. I just don't know how to answer a hypothetical.

[Speaker 19] (3:00:09 - 3:00:20)
Regarding keeping the trail neighbors in the loop, did anyone think to notify us of these discussions, maybe invite us, maybe make it known that you guys were discussing this?

[Speaker 3] (3:00:20 - 3:00:52)
This is a settlement litigation. This is litigation of settlement. No conversations have been going on about the design of the trail or changes to the trail.

This is all about settling a litigation with the town, and respectfully, you're right, we didn't talk to the neighbors. We didn't talk to anybody about settling litigation against financial exposure against the town, but the good news is this settlement actually creates a process and requires a process which is actually going to invite everyone to the table to talk about any changes to the plans coming up and anything that has to happen before the MassDOT will finalize the funding for the trail.

[Speaker 19] (3:00:52 - 3:00:55)
Is there a reason why the address wasn't put on the agendas?

[Speaker 3] (3:00:56 - 3:01:10)
I can't answer that question because I didn't create the agenda. Fair enough. It was settlement of litigation, so it's not a fair question.

I don't know how to answer that question.

[Speaker 19] (3:01:11 - 3:01:24)
In the future, could you please try to make it more clear about what you're talking about so that people have advance notice and can avail themselves of the information they need ahead of time? Thanks.

[Speaker 3] (3:01:25 - 3:01:26)
Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (3:01:28 - 3:01:33)
Anything additional from the board? Hearing none, I'd entertain a motion.

[Speaker 3] (3:01:33 - 3:01:52)
So I'd move to approve and authorize the select board to sign the form of escrow agreement with the corresponding exhibits, the assent agreement, and the release of easement in the forms provided to the board. Let me just stop there and ask council if I need to add anything to that motion.

[Speaker 13] (3:01:55 - 3:01:57)
No, those are the essentials.

[Speaker 3] (3:01:57 - 3:02:14)
Great. And again, all on the condition of settlement of the litigation. National Grid obviously has to finalize these documents themselves as well, and so our finalizing is conditional upon them finalizing and the lawyers exchanging a discharge of the litigation.

[Speaker 7] (3:02:15 - 3:02:15)
Do I have a second?

[Speaker 20] (3:02:16 - 3:02:16)
Second.

[Speaker 7] (3:02:17 - 3:02:25)
All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

All right. We'll move on. I actually skipped.

[Speaker 2] (3:02:25 - 3:02:25)
Thanks, Sharon.

[Speaker 7] (3:02:25 - 3:02:43)
Appreciate it. Thank you, Sharon. We actually skipped the update regarding ARPA funds.

I know this is just meant to prime the pump, but we do have our finance director, Amy Saro, on the line, and we can get a brief update from her regarding ARPA.

[Speaker 12] (3:02:45 - 3:05:11)
Amy? Hi, can you hear me? Yep.

It's not letting me turn my camera on. So as you guys know, when the American Rescue Plan Act was enacted in March 21, Swamp Kit was awarded $4,572,677, of which almost $2.4 million was authorized by the board, the largest of which was the 1.76 for the acquisition of Pine Street, which is still ongoing. The other amounts were the one-time supplemental compensation for employees who worked through COVID, a small sewer repair project at Stacy's Brook, and costs for the Health Department for COVID tracing and vaccine clinics and at-home tasks.

So at this time, there is still $2.18 million to be allocated of this award. There has been updates to the timeline of it. Originally, it had to be obligated and spent by December 30, 2024.

Now, it only has to be obligated by December 31, 2024, and we have until December 31, 2026 to expend the funds. If you remember, we did a community survey in September of last year to request input on where the community funds would be best invested. That was presented at the September 28-22 Select Board Meeting.

We also solicited ideas internally from our town departments. So we have those from our Health Department, Public Works, Library, Senior Center, and Building. I have reached out to the department heads to see if they update their proposals to make sure that it still fits within the timeline and is still things that we feel is a good use of the funds for the town.

I'm going to get those together to send something out to the board so that you guys can review it and see if it's something you want to put on a future meeting.

[Speaker 6] (3:05:13 - 3:05:14)
Thank you, Amy.

[Speaker 3] (3:05:14 - 3:05:21)
Can I just ask the chairman if we can just resend that survey from September 22 as a result?

[Speaker 7] (3:05:22 - 3:05:34)
Yeah, I think that would make sense and would be helpful as we shape this conversation and add this to a future agenda. Keep this front and center so we can have all the data points and information available.

[Speaker 6] (3:05:36 - 3:07:02)
So I have a comment about this. We have $2,181,555 left over. At what point are we going to sit down and just say, okay, this is how we want to spend it?

Because after what I heard tonight, it's my opinion that the $2.5 million that we have for the Kings Beach system, I think all of that money should go towards lining these pipes, getting these laterals fixed, and just getting it fixed. I also feel that this amount of money that's left over should be used for the other section, for Fisherman's Beach, that they already have a contract or a design all ready to go. That's my opinion.

When I was on the finance committee, the finance committee recommended that all this money should go into infrastructure. I understand that people have different ideas, but we have spent $1.7 million on acquisition and almost half a million, a little bit over half a million on bonuses, one-time supplemental. That's a lot of money.

Because we're in a crisis with the sewers, my opinion is we should put the bulk of the money in there, if not all of it. I was just going to ask that.

[Speaker 9] (3:07:02 - 3:08:03)
It sounds like there's a presentation forthcoming next meeting regarding ARPA. If you go by the Klein-Felder report, which we just went over, they look to have suggested that $2.34 million go to sewer lining or other projects related to water and sewer, which is obviously more than we have left in ARPA funds. If we could get some feedback from the town administrator when the presentation comes to light sort of against competing interests.

I understand Mary Ellen's position. I'd like to find out first if there are any other similar not hang a hat on a dream sort of projects, but pressing matters that the town is worried about from an infrastructure perspective, not just water sewer, but anything else hanging out there that we're going to expend funds anyways that we could be using ARPA for.

[Speaker 2] (3:08:06 - 3:10:05)
Katie, thank you. I think there are a number of department heads that would appreciate an opportunity to talk to the board and go over some of the hopes for some of these dollars. I've said this previously, and it's been shared prior to this, but the problems with our water and sewer, our ministerial problems, the things that we just have to do all the time, every day, those are things that, frankly, I think we can find the bandwidth to deal with through our finances.

These ARPA dollars are for some very unique and extraordinary opportunities, and I would hope the board gives itself a chance to really think creatively about doing things that would be otherwise almost impossible to do without them, because this is the opportunity for these. These are one-time, gone issues, and all of the sewer problems, by the way, are going to be here forever. Every board, every town administrator, we're going to have to deal with this stuff.

There are many opportunities for us to get state and federal grants for water and sewer projects. We've proven that. Though we get zero interest loans, we'll continue to highlight how important it is for us that we double some of those efforts.

I think we'll be even more successful. As we show up with a lot of the information that we see here tonight, we're not going to get more than another tranche of ARPA dollars. This is it.

We should really spend as much time as we can, as carefully as we can, trying to prioritize these dollars. We did a community survey. I think it would be helpful to look at that and zero back on what the survey really indicated the needs are.

[Speaker 7] (3:10:06 - 3:10:21)
Just to be clear, we'll have the requests of the department heads at our next meeting, so we can help shape this conversation and have a more substantive discussion about allocation and expenditure of these one-time funds.

[Speaker 6] (3:10:21 - 3:10:25)
Do we actually have this money in the bank? Are we getting interest on this?

[Speaker 2] (3:10:26 - 3:10:27)
Yes, we do.

[Speaker 12] (3:10:27 - 3:10:59)
We are in possession of all of these funds, and they are in an account earning interest right now. What about the $2.5 million that's related to Kings Beach that came from the state? We are not in possession of that money yet.

Kleinfelder had put that scope of work together for us, and that is before the regional director of MassDEP for that ARPA right now, being evaluated along with Lynn's proposal. How are they putting together a scope?

[Speaker 6] (3:10:59 - 3:11:12)
We haven't even had a conversation about it. We haven't had a conversation about how we want that money to be spent, so I don't know how they can be putting together a scope of work.

[Speaker 2] (3:11:15 - 3:11:42)
I've asked Amy to actually look into the authorization for the expenditure of these funds, and so she has reached out and received some information from DOR, but certainly we need a scope of work and we need authorization from the state, so we've provided them with a scope of work.

[Speaker 6] (3:11:45 - 3:11:58)
You're providing a scope of work, but the select board hasn't even said what type of scope of work we want done, so that's where I'm really confused here. Is Kleinfelder coming up with a scope of work?

[Speaker 3] (3:11:58 - 3:12:16)
Do you need select board approval to expend those $2.5 million? We do not. That at least frames the conversation, and I think what you're hearing Mary Ellen now saying is that she would like to have a conversation about that regardless.

[Speaker 6] (3:12:20 - 3:12:26)
I've been told that the select board needs to approve that $2.5 million.

[Speaker 12] (3:12:27 - 3:12:42)
The select board needs to approve the authorizations for the $4.5 million that we received. Because of how we are receiving the $2.5 million from the state, it is a different award.

[Speaker 6] (3:12:42 - 3:12:46)
Can you just send me the backup information on that?

[Speaker 3] (3:12:47 - 3:12:50)
The 4.5 was the ARPA you were just talking about.

[Speaker 6] (3:12:51 - 3:13:05)
There's two ARPAs. The one is 4.5. I don't want to see money being spent without the select board participating.

[Speaker 3] (3:13:05 - 3:13:08)
It would be good for us to know what it is that you guys are contemplating.

[Speaker 2] (3:13:11 - 3:13:25)
The only thing we're contemplating right now is paying Kleinfelder for the work that they've previously done to look at the alternatives. The scope of work was less than $150,000.

[Speaker 6] (3:13:26 - 3:13:41)
Right, and is Swarmscott paying all that? Because Lynn Warner and Sewer had a meeting and Lynn Warner and Sewer is saying that they're spending $2.5 on camera work, and at their meeting they said Swarmscott is spending their money on the steering committee.

[Speaker 2] (3:13:41 - 3:14:04)
I'm not here to represent Lynn Warner and Sewer. I will tell you that we haven't really outlined a scope of work for that $2.5 million other than we've had some discussions about whether or not we could use some of those dollars to expedite any permitting associated with any of the options that were identified, but we haven't outlined a scope of work for that.

[Speaker 6] (3:14:04 - 3:14:09)
So the work that Kleinfelder is doing to come up with these different alternatives on what to do, are we splitting that with Lynn?

[Speaker 2] (3:14:13 - 3:14:38)
We have been working in collaboration with Lynn, and we've talked about sharing some of the costs associated with some of the work going forward. The Town of Swarmscott started the effort to look at these additional options, and we indicated that we were going to cover the cost for those, for that original alternative analysis.

[Speaker 3] (3:14:40 - 3:15:16)
Again, I think Mary Ellen's questions are all in line, which is we should not be grasping to get knowledge. So when we talk about ARPA next time, if we can please bring forward that $2.5, whatever, and what you are proposing it's being spent for and not, and even if it's your authority, we just need to understand what it is, because we're talking about other things, and I just feel as though I share her unspoken word about the fact, because I do, because I think her unspoken word is why is it that we're sitting here grasping for knowledge on something that's so vitally important? We shouldn't be, period.

[Speaker 9] (3:15:17 - 3:15:26)
Amy, the timing of the other ARPA, not the 4.5, the 2.5 is the same, correct?

[Speaker 16] (3:15:27 - 3:15:28)
Yes, it is.

[Speaker 7] (3:15:30 - 3:15:31)
Anything additional on ARPA?

[Speaker 5] (3:15:32 - 3:16:08)
No, but I think where you're going, I'm just trying to make sure I'm following the bouncing ball here, it feels a little bit like we have a good opportunity for kind of, we had a conversation last time about goals for capital planning, circling back on this King's Beach stuff with the ARPA money, we actually had maybe all three of those pieces, you probably already got it lined up, maybe you do. Okay, great. If I'm interpreting that smile correctly, that would make a very sensical conversation to all of what we're talking about.

[Speaker 7] (3:16:08 - 3:16:29)
Yeah, there is going to be a discussion about capital in general at our next meeting, and there is going to be a discussion now that we're going to compile this information and we're going to bring this ARPA discussion and request from department heads forward, I think this dovetails nicely into what we can do at our October 18th meeting. Awesome.

[Speaker 9] (3:16:30 - 3:16:45)
What's the game plan of that discussion then? Is it that the next time we meet we're having a conversation about these things, we mull them over, and then in a subsequent meeting we're making decisions about how we spend the money or are we deciding right there?

[Speaker 7] (3:16:47 - 3:16:48)
We're having a discussion.

[Speaker 9] (3:16:48 - 3:17:02)
We're having discussions about having more discussions? John's going to bring his $2.5 million checkbook, No, but I mean, what's the timeline for them saying, okay, this is our decision and this is how we're spending the money.

[Speaker 7] (3:17:02 - 3:17:08)
Well, I think we have to have the funds encumbered by December 31-24 and expended by December 31-26.

[Speaker 9] (3:17:08 - 3:17:10)
I'm talking about our timeline internally.

[Speaker 7] (3:17:11 - 3:17:26)
I think it depends, I think we need to hear what is coming out of the department head, so I think we need more information so that way we can have the first of several conversations.

[Speaker 9] (3:17:26 - 3:17:30)
Right. I'm just worried we're getting close to this 2024 timeline.

[Speaker 3] (3:17:30 - 3:17:36)
I hear you. But the 2024 is just for us to identify. Yeah.

[Speaker 12] (3:17:36 - 3:17:39)
Understood. And when does it have to be spent? 26?

26.

[Speaker 3] (3:17:41 - 3:17:42)
Anything additional?

[Speaker 12] (3:17:42 - 3:18:01)
Katie and the rest of the board, I just want to let you know that we do have assurance that even if every contract is signed on December 31st, 2024, you are still completely within the guidelines of this. Not that you want to be making the decision on the very last day.

[Speaker 9] (3:18:02 - 3:18:07)
Get your pens ready. Thank you, Amy.

[Speaker 12] (3:18:07 - 3:18:08)
Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (3:18:10 - 3:18:32)
We're going to move on to a discussion and vote to sign a public safety answering point and secondary PSAP agreement between the City of Lynn and the Town of Swampskate. Are we kicking this off with Chief Archer and Chief Quesada here at this late hour? Thank you for joining us and thank you for your patience.

[Speaker 2] (3:18:42 - 3:18:48)
Yes, please.

[Speaker 8] (3:18:49 - 3:24:50)
Okay. Well, we're here to discuss the successor agreement. In a simpler term, the dispatch contract between the City of Lynn and the Town of Swampskate.

In about 1994, as part of a pretty significant reorganization of the Swampskate Fire Department, several years later, the Police Department, what used to be our in-house dispatching was handled by on-duty firefighting staff. Essentially, one additional staff person per shift would handle the dispatch function of our firefighting. We transitioned to having Lynn handle that.

Initially, it was just the two communities having Lynn do our dispatching. Eventually, NAHAS came on board, which made it a true regional dispatch center. At that point, we threw a tuition, reduced the staffing by one firefighter per shift.

That would have been the dispatch for a total of four firefighters. That was a significant savings for the town. In today's dollars, that would total about $414,000 a year.

With all costs, town costs for the firefighters, not inclusive of pension costs. Lynn took over the dispatch for us, and it was a great improvement. Dispatching is actually a career all in and of itself.

We struggled along for many years with firefighters doing the dispatching. It was a workable system. Dispatching today is more demanding than it ever has been before.

Our dispatchers are highly trained. They're trained in emergency medical dispatching. They give pre-arrival instructions for people having medical crises while they wait for the emergency responders to get there.

Having experienced both systems, having done dispatch when I was a new firefighter, it was always a short straw kind of a thing. You'd have eight firefighters riding on a truck, and the short straw truck stayed in the station and handled radio communications and called for a mutual aid backup and called for utility companies to show up at Red Cross and things like that. I can't speak highly enough about how our civilian dispatchers, professional dispatchers, and Lynn handle that function for us now.

To me, this should be a pretty easy conversation for us to have. There is really no comparison in cost or in what we get by having the professional civilian dispatchers do our dispatch for us. I mentioned some of the benefits that come from them.

Sorry, Dan, I know I'm just kind of rolling through this out of sequence. You can just change them as you see fit. That one wasn't updated there.

I don't think you have the updated slide on that one. Some of the things that the dispatch does for us when we're on scene. They're a vital part of the team.

You see the trucks. You'll see police officers doing traffic control on a fire scene. I'll let Chief Posada speak about the police.

There are benefits that flow to the police function as well. I'm just speaking about the fire benefit portion of this dispatch compact that we have with Lynn. I'll just say that they're an unseen but really important part of the response that you see at a fire.

We're coming up on 10 years this coming March of a double fatal fire in the city of Boston on Beacon Street. Lieutenant Ed Kelly and Michael, I'm losing his name, two Boston firefighters lost their lives. We replay those audios a lot of times of significant fires, especially where tragedies like that happen.

If you replay that, you'll hear professional dispatchers who kept a lid on that scene and prevented a lot more tragedy from happening. It's really striking. There was just a woman who was on the radio who, when May Day started happening, she redirected traffic.

She got people who were beginning to understandably really stress out. You could hear the stress in their voices. You could hear the pitch in people's voices going up.

You could hear the panic. She redirected people and got people on the right frequency they needed to be on, relayed transmissions that were almost unintelligible between companies, between the officer on command and between other responding companies. I haven't experienced that with our dispatchers, but I've experienced, to a lesser extent, a similar thing.

When the people on the scene are up to their elbows and things are going badly and you're juggling a lot of different things, a real professional dispatcher who's highly trained and knows just what they're doing is invaluable. It's a lot different than having a firefighter who, having done it, you don't want to be at that desk. You want to get up and get in your car and go down to that scene.

I just want to say that. A shout out to what our dispatchers provide for us.

[Speaker 18] (3:24:51 - 3:26:39)
If it's okay, also, the cost benefit, the benefit that we see from the police department is saving the personnel and resources. With this dispatch agreement, if we are booking a prisoner, we take them to Lynn. That is a huge savings for us because while we will initially input their information into our computer system, then we then transfer that individual to the Lynn jail who will be seen.

Anybody who has to be booked, you can never tell how long it's going to take. You can take an officer off the street for five minutes up to six hours. That is an additional officer that is off the street for, let's say, an average of at least two hours trying to book an individual.

Before we had this dispatch agreement, we were booking individuals into Middleton, which is Essex County Jail. Again, that's a cost savings for us because we get the officer back out on the street. It's more than just the cost savings.

It is essential in terms of our partnership with Lynn Police. I know Graham and the fire department sees the same thing, but for us it is absolutely essential to have these partnerships. We are able to use their range two times a year.

That's a cost savings of about $3,500 for a mandatory range training, especially for someone like me who is not used to the snow. It is absolutely incredible rain, snow, or shine that we are able to conduct our mandatory firearms training. I'll let you go on.

I think I covered most of the high points that I wanted to hit.

[Speaker 8] (3:26:43 - 3:27:12)
Just following up on what Chief Cassata said, also the relationship with Lynn, who is our primary mutual aid partner. Having a shared dispatch with them also really enhances the partnership we have with them. It really makes our interdepartmental cooperation really seamless and smooth.

I'll leave it to Administrator Fitzgerald to talk about some of the specifics of the cost of the agreement.

[Speaker 6] (3:27:15 - 3:27:50)
Can I ask you a quick question before? Sure. You have it here in the contract on number three.

It says, Lynn Fire Engine to the town of Swampscott on all telephone alarms of fire and other such aid agreed by the Chief. It doesn't say anything here about Swampscott giving mutual aid. It just says, Lynn Fire Department shall provide automatic aid to the Swampscott Fire Department.

Automatic aid shall consist of Lynn Fire Dispatching sending along with the Swampscott apparatus. Does that mean that the Lynn Fire Engine comes out every time the Swampscott?

[Speaker 8] (3:27:51 - 3:28:56)
It almost does. There's a slight subtle difference between automatic aid and mutual aid. Mutual aid is just what it sounds like.

It's mutual. Automatic aid isn't necessarily mutual. If we have what's called a telephone alarm, it's something other than your monitored automatic alarm system, ADT comes to mind, things like that.

If we get that, we handle that in-house. We'll send both Swampscott pieces of apparatus. If a person senses fire or smoke and calls, that's a telephone alarm.

We feed a sentient person calling a higher level of a call than an automatic alarm system. That is where we'll get, that'll trigger automatic aid. A telephone alarm will trigger both of our pieces of apparatus and an automatic engine from the City of Lynn also.

That doesn't go both ways. If Lynn has a telephone alarm, we don't automatically send a Swampscott engine to Lynn. Mutual aid goes in both directions, but the automatic component is just what Lynn, under this contract, Lynn provides to us.

[Speaker 6] (3:28:57 - 3:29:00)
That seems like a pretty significant benefit.

[Speaker 8] (3:29:00 - 3:29:32)
It is a very significant benefit. Again, this all is part of the reorganization. When we closed the Phillips Beach Station and we took one, when we had two Swampscott engines and one ladder truck and I think a shift strength of maybe 10 at the time, down to 7 or 8 right now per shift.

We basically replaced our second engine with an automatic second engine from the City of Lynn. It's a giant benefit.

[Speaker 5] (3:29:33 - 3:29:44)
Maybe to move us along, is there any reason why we shouldn't be moving forward with this straightforwardly? This is pretty much a continuation of what we do, right?

[Speaker 2] (3:29:44 - 3:29:45)
It is.

[Speaker 5] (3:29:45 - 3:29:48)
I think this is probably a major cost increase.

[Speaker 2] (3:29:48 - 3:30:06)
Yeah, there's a significant jump in costs. There's a resetting of the cost, but I think you've got to keep the cost in mind with how much it might cost for us if we actually had to have our own dispatch center. How much it would cost if we weren't in this regional center.

[Speaker 3] (3:30:07 - 3:30:09)
Can you just remind us what we're paying currently?

[Speaker 2] (3:30:11 - 3:30:26)
Currently, we're paying, we budgeted $140,000 this year and we're paying $50,000 last year.

[Speaker 8] (3:30:27 - 3:30:51)
Last year it was $71,000 for the dispatch portion and $29,000 in equipment upgrades that was under a slightly different structure of the contract than the previous one. We were required to invest in our own infrastructure and our own capital.

[Speaker 5] (3:30:51 - 3:30:53)
We keep this simple and apples to apples?

[Speaker 8] (3:30:53 - 3:30:57)
We pay them. $100,000 in the previous contract.

[Speaker 3] (3:30:58 - 3:31:05)
What's the $140,000? I'm looking at the line item in the fire budget of $140,000 for Linn Dispatch this fiscal year. That's right.

[Speaker 2] (3:31:06 - 3:31:16)
There's $140,000 in this fiscal year and there's a $50,000 capital article that was approved at the town meeting for capital equipment. Things like radios, radio towers.

[Speaker 3] (3:31:17 - 3:31:20)
Those are for capital for our town though, for our town department.

[Speaker 2] (3:31:20 - 3:31:23)
No, it's capital for both Swampscott and Linn.

[Speaker 8] (3:31:27 - 3:31:52)
It needs to be mutually agreed upon how it will be spent by both fire chiefs. There's Swampscott specific equipment, there's Linn specific equipment and there's a lot of shared equipment between our department of communication. Our watch desk and their dispatch center are connected with a lot of equipment.

A lot of it is shared equipment as well.

[Speaker 5] (3:31:53 - 3:32:02)
$140,000 in the budget are shown. I'm looking at $185,000 minus $37,000. We're close to what's in the budget, right?

[Speaker 2] (3:32:03 - 3:32:09)
That's correct. That's the apple to apple, right? The balance due is $190,000.

It's literally $140,000.

[Speaker 5] (3:32:09 - 3:32:12)
That includes $50,000 of capital, which is separate, right? That's right.

[Speaker 3] (3:32:13 - 3:32:29)
The apples to apples is $100,000 to the $185,000. We're still getting the grant. That just doesn't show in the budget.

I assume we're still getting the grant, right? We got the grant currently.

[Speaker 8] (3:32:29 - 3:32:30)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (3:32:31 - 3:32:55)
The grant from the state 9-1-1 system? Yes. Right now we appropriate this fiscal year $140,000 minus the $37,000 grant.

It's actually $100,000, right? It's $100,000 compared to these lineups. It's $100,000 plus the $50,000 is $150,000 compared to these future years.

We're going up by $40,000 next year, by $90,000 the year after.

[Speaker 6] (3:32:55 - 3:32:57)
We're coming in budget this year?

[Speaker 2] (3:32:57 - 3:33:53)
We are coming in budget this year. I went back, frankly, and we negotiated a three-year contract that meets the appropriation that we have. Next year it's going to go up and the following year it will go up.

We will have a chance to meet those appropriations, frankly. Look, am I crazy that it's going up significantly like this? No, but frankly, we have been receiving such a great deal.

We've looked at some of the costs associated. If we had to go it alone, it would be millions. Frankly, this is a terrific deal for the town of Swampskate at these numbers.

I know it's going up, but frankly, it's the best position that I think we could be in.

[Speaker 5] (3:33:54 - 3:34:05)
When it says here the $299,000 in the grant, how do I map that to what's on here? Is that over 10 years or something and it's $37,000 a year?

[Speaker 8] (3:34:07 - 3:34:20)
The grant is the compact of the three communities is eligible for the grant because it's three communities. Our share is that.

[Speaker 6] (3:34:22 - 3:34:23)
Nahant isn't in this?

[Speaker 2] (3:34:28 - 3:34:34)
If we did not have a regional dispatch, we would not receive those. Do you need a motion from us? I do.

[Speaker 9] (3:34:35 - 3:34:47)
I just have a question on top of what Mary Ellen is saying. It's because Lynn has a similar mutual aid with Nahant, correct? It's not a tri-party agreement.

It's just Lynn? Yes.

[Speaker 8] (3:34:48 - 3:34:53)
That's correct. There's no relationship between Swampskate and Nahant.

[Speaker 9] (3:34:56 - 3:34:58)
Lynn is the primary.

[Speaker 5] (3:35:01 - 3:35:19)
There's $50,000 extra per year. Now I understand when I ask my question if there's a reason why we shouldn't go for it. I understand there's a benefit.

There's no service level increase. We're not getting anything more for the increasing cost.

[Speaker 8] (3:35:19 - 3:35:56)
No. It's essentially a continuation of the contract. As Sean said, we were getting a really good deal for a really long time under the previous contract.

I think the city of Lynn came and asked for an adjustment in the cost sharing and the structure of it. They initially were looking for more, I think. It's still a clear cost benefit to us.

[Speaker 3] (3:35:57 - 3:36:07)
All the things that are outlined here, the police department, for example, the ability to transfer to Lynn PD and do all that, that's just a continuation of what has been in practice.

[Speaker 2] (3:36:07 - 3:37:07)
Correct. Dispatching software. I'm sorry.

He asked a good question. I actually discussed with Lynn Nicholson the opportunity for the town to work with Lynn to really look at the software that Lynn Dispatch uses so that we can actually get more information about the type of calls and the nature of the calls and how we analyze the calls because that data can help us really just manage some of the responsibilities we have. I do think there are opportunities.

Chief Posada has brought these issues up. He has worked with other types of dispatching software systems that can help us really get into greater data analytics. I'm hopeful that we can continue to collaborate with Lynn and get some of that technology.

[Speaker 3] (3:37:09 - 3:37:11)
I would make a motion to approve.

[Speaker 16] (3:37:12 - 3:37:12)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (3:37:13 - 3:37:16)
All in favor. Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 7] (3:37:20 - 3:37:50)
Aye. Thank you, Chiefs. Chief Archer, Chief Posada, thank you.

Thank you. And we'll move on to a discussion and possible vote regarding the Piven House. Just before we get in there, I know it's late.

I do want to thank Doug for reaching out and getting this on the agenda. I do want to thank you and certainly Nancy Schultz and Martin Epstein for their advocacy.

[Speaker 5] (3:37:52 - 3:42:59)
I promise David this wouldn't be any more than ten minutes. That was probably when he was hoping the meeting ended at nine. So here we go.

A couple of months ago, we all sat here and thought, hey, it would be a great idea if we tried to save the Piven House. So at least I think all of us did. I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth.

So we went off and tried to make that happen and went through a zillion different zigs and zags. And we're getting there, but not there is probably the fairest way to put it. What we have on the table, I've actually sent it to you all, is the latest pro forma from just a few minutes ago.

So I'll just summarize it. So the Habitat is very interested in working with the town of Swampscott. Not in a generic way, maybe as it was before, but very, very concrete.

Sean has met with the executive director as well, and they have a detailed pro forma of putting together four units on 7 Hillside and a comprehensive permit, including the Piven House in that. So they're very much interested in moving forward. Frankly, they don't really care whether or not it's the Piven House or not.

They're very excited to do affordable housing with the town of Swampscott, and we've got something kind of lined up here. We've gone through a million things to try to make sure the house is ready, and we did a bid process, and we have a house mover lined up. We opened the bid today, and they're ready to go two days from now.

All sorts of contractors to do the kind of little pre-work that needs to happen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the problem is that it's always been with Piven House is time, and so here we are kind of trying to get to a solution that works for everybody and weren't able to kind of reengage with Habitat productively until the last week or so, and just kind of got the revised pro forma today from them, and no fault of theirs at all. So here we are.

Then we had an Affordable Housing Trust Fund meeting right before this meeting. They very understandably were certainly interested in this idea, but were in no position to definitively decide on moving forward with this, given the fact that they were just being given the information today. The only stop we have left is, I believe, the following, which is this board would have to take the bold step to allocate $150,000 to move the house and to a temporary storage location here in town and to give the town administrator the authority to kind of help make that happen.

That would tee us up for a very possible with Habitat and partnership with the Affordable Housing Trust to execute on a affordable housing comprehensive permit, including Piven House. So that's the, I believe, the best summary I can give of the status of things, which is not super satisfactory to even me, but just want to kind of, it is literally midnight on this issue. I think everybody is well aware that if we don't move the house in the next week, it won't be there.

I won't kind of do a big dramatic song and dance about the importance of the Piven House. I think we've all kind of heard that. And so I'm just kind of laying it out there plainly that there is a path.

It takes some risk taking and leaning in, as this board has done in other circumstances, but it clearly is not a slam dunk.

[Speaker 7] (3:43:03 - 3:43:04)
Questions, comments?

[Speaker 6] (3:43:06 - 3:43:55)
I think if we finance this move, we save a historic house, one of the very few houses left in Swansky, according to historic permission. And we set it up for affordable housing, four units, according to Habitat for Humanity. So when I looked at the pro forma and I listened to Nancy Schultz, the chair of the historic commission, it seems to me that this is all doable.

And I do hate to see losing a historic house where we can make this happen. So I do think that there's risk. I don't think that there's a ton of risk, though.

I think we can do this.

[Speaker 5] (3:43:57 - 3:44:12)
To that point, I'll just note that we have lined up insurance and those types of cautionary things in terms of the storage. I could go on with myriad number of details if people have questions, but I'll save it.

[Speaker 3] (3:44:14 - 3:44:21)
I appreciate what Mary Ellen just said, but you also said, Mary Ellen, 10 minutes ago that you wanted 100% of the ARPA funds to go to Kings Beach and sewer projects.

[Speaker 6] (3:44:21 - 3:44:24)
I said almost 100%, because I still wanted some money.

[Speaker 3] (3:44:24 - 3:46:55)
So I think we're about to go through a process where we're going to explore everything, as opposed to do anything in a vacuum and know what they all are. And so that still sits here, which is, I don't know what I'm choosing against. What else is being proposed and what we're going to do here?

I think the four units, if I heard Doug correctly, could go forward. The Pittman House is really just an add-on to a habitat project. So the affordable housing can happen, and whether it should happen in that neighborhood or not.

That's not our responsibility. But I love the vigor that you've been pursuing this, honestly. I really do, and it's reminiscent of vigor that I tend to bring to things as well.

No, I really do. I appreciate it. I do think it's important to note, though, that this is not, I don't want this to be seen as, hey, we're making a binary choice.

This is a property that has been sitting there forever, and only recently, if this actually was known at the point in time where we were going through the 40B process, if it was identified as a historical structure during the 40B process, or at any time in the 25 billion years before that, that actually would have been addressed in the 40B process. I'm highly confident of that fact. The zoning board would have gone out of their way, as they've done, to do these things.

It's just unfortunate, and we are where we are. And I do appreciate the chairwoman of the Historical Commission's passion as well, and just the amount of time she spends on this stuff. But this is not as if the town knew about this and now is purposely turning a blind eye.

This is, like you're saying, a scurry to make something happen and do it. I appreciate the effort. I can't support using ARPA funds for it, but I do appreciate the effort for it.

I hope the lesson that we're all hearing is making sure that we are going out and identifying every single property that was worth saving, because for years, I think we all believed that we were doing that, the town was doing that, but the Glover sat dormant for 25 years, falling in, and only recently, the chairwoman has been working really hard to do that. But after a zoning process, after rezoning, after everything that we did, it was brought up as being this thing worth saving, and the same with Pittman. They kind of are suffering the same ill effects at the moment here, and so I'm not insensitive to it, and I don't think anybody here tonight is going to be insensitive to that fact.

Again, we're going to have a comprehensive conversation about ARPA, and I know the timing may not work, but I do want to know that I really do appreciate your inhibitiveness, because I do recognize it.

[Speaker 9] (3:46:56 - 3:49:54)
Yeah, I think the takeaway here is timing is everything in so many ways in this situation. One way being that we just had a very real conversation about spending a very large amount of money on sewer pipes, and so in the scheme of things relating that to saving the Pittman house, I don't know that I can answer today where I land on that conversation. Additionally, to Peter's point, without looking at this process that we asked the community and department heads to go through related to ARPA, it doesn't feel quite fair to then allocate funds in advance of that conversation.

So, when I think about how the Historic Commission, the opportunities they might have related to ARPA funds, I think about what we were just talking about with seeing out the historic properties in town and ranking them and trying to obtain rovers and purchase options to future homes and being proactive about what we can do with what's left rather than being reactive, which it feels like. I've already said this. It feels like that's what's happening with this and with Glover, and I can understand the timing of it all and the change of chairs and the opportunity, but it's only through coming so far along in the process that we're reacting to the idea that it might be lost.

I think it's clear from the outcome or from what might be the fated outcome here that that's probably not a great way to be trying to save historic houses in our town and that we need to be really creating a plan and process in place that's giving these sites some sort of value, not monetary value, but historic value, so that then we as a board can understand, when we're looking at them, the significance they play in history and how do we come to that conclusion and what process we went about in order to evaluate them related to the history in town and then how that equates to a monetary contribution thereafter. Sure. I just don't know that I'm willing to spend that much in funds.

I'm willing to lean in. I think that if we all come to the table together, we could get something done, but if we're the only folks coming to the table in the 12th hour, then I don't know that that feels like a commitment from all the parties involved. What does that mean?

[Speaker 5] (3:49:54 - 3:51:13)
Actually, Kevin, I know you haven't spoken yet. Do you mind if I address something here? Go ahead.

Two things. One is, thank you for reminding me about that, because I know the Historic Commission has kind of lined up some serious fundraising. I can't sit here tonight and tell you I know that's going to raise X or Y amount of dollars.

I mean, I think there's an opportunity to, with grants or actual fundraisers or whatever, raise $50,000, pick a number, $30,000, $50,000, I don't know what it is. So I think that could defray whatever the select board would put forward for this. The other thing I just want to mention is that this thing seems to be suffering from another ailment of timing, because we've made many other allocations out of ARPA.

Actually, I've never made an allocation out of ARPA, but you all have. 2.4. Without the comprehensive view. Right now we happen to be talking about it tonight.

They're, oh, we're on the verge of doing a comprehensive view. And so we have done that before to the tune of a couple hundred thousand or a couple million or whatever. So I want to kind of just, for the sake of the Pittman House, just put it out there like that.

It wouldn't be unprecedented for us.

[Speaker 7] (3:51:18 - 3:55:52)
Doug, I want to just echo Peter's comments. I think you've worked your tail off. I saw you, what, two weeks ago at the soft opening of Dockside Pub, and I said, hey, what's going on?

You said Pittman House. And you were completely serious. That's really been all-encompassing.

And really been something that we've been truly focused on. I think our role as select board members is a little different because we can't be, at least I can't be, all-encompassing and focused on just one thing. I served on the Affordable Housing Trust for two years.

I'm certainly an advocate for affordable housing. The fact that there was a meeting tonight and they were noncommittal on this as to what next steps are here with funding, et cetera, it gives me substantial cause for pause to say, all right, if we're going to put our money in here, is there any certainty or guarantee that their money follows? I don't know.

That's why it's uncertain. I think really what we have here is we've just run out of runway. We've run out of time with the Pittman House and with the Glover House.

And really I think this just drives home the fact that we need to create policy and to do something with Community Preservation Act so we have these funds at our disposal that we can utilize so when the chair of the Historic Commission and that committee gets together and puts together the list of properties that have historical significance within the town of Swampskate, that there is a recurring revenue source to be able to preserve those properties. There's a recurring revenue source to be able to delve into affordable housing so we can create these.

Right now we just don't have these mechanisms and this policy in place to allow us to do this. And to come to us literally as the clock is striking midnight, it's a difficult position because I do want to help. I'm just looking out and there's just no certainty in the fact that once we put these funds in that anything additional happens.

So my concern there is we put our funds in and then we're having to put additional funds in with no certainty. And again, I would like to see the pro forma, but at this point we've had conversations with Habitat for Humanity for well over a year. They knew this project was coming, they knew that this day was coming and they sort of dragged their feet a little bit.

So I'm not sure that the Pittman House was ever in their long term plans. I think their plan was to do an affordable project and to play along until. It's a difficult decision for me, but I don't think I can support the $150,000 request for funds at this time.

Just given the great uncertainty with how the project moves forward and takes that next step after that relocation. But that said, you've literally left no stone unturned, Doug. I think that if you take the energy and the vigor that you worked on the Pittman House with and apply that to the CPA, there could be the opportunity to save three future houses or to create many more than just four units of affordable housing.

So I think that I would love to work with you and to sit with you and to see if that's something that you'd be interested in. Because I think it's something that is going to profoundly change the trajectory of historic preservation and creation of affordable housing for decades to come if we're able to pass this.

[Speaker 5] (3:55:53 - 3:56:47)
Well, I do appreciate all the concern, but I don't really, you know, no one needs to worry about that. It's more, you know, I always kept coming back to like, you know, I don't personally need a Pittman House. But it seems like, you know, there's only one town founder.

And so this does seem like a very particularly unique, you know, situation. And so that's why I kept kind of, you know, trying to find a way. And so, you know, I should just I'm going to take my conservative approach to trying to represent what the chair of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund said tonight.

A little bit to your point, David, just so there's clarity about that. Like, you know, I think it's very understandable that they couldn't, you know, make a vote tonight, frankly, given where we were and the information they had and the timing.

[Speaker 3] (3:56:48 - 3:56:57)
Because they literally got the pro forma as the meeting happened. Can you just explain why then would it be reasonable for us to make that same vote since three of the five of us don't even have a pro forma?

[Speaker 6] (3:56:57 - 3:57:02)
Well, we voted for $1.7 million for Pine Street, and we don't have any payment from them for that.

[Speaker 3] (3:57:03 - 3:57:05)
No, no, no. That is totally apples and oranges.

[Speaker 6] (3:57:05 - 3:57:05)
Is it?

[Speaker 3] (3:57:05 - 3:58:00)
It is apples and oranges because we sat in, frankly, an executive session at great length and explored the finances. We explored strategy, et cetera, without going into too much executive session conversations here. I'm just asking Doug who said it wouldn't be reasonable to have expected an affordable housing trust to make a commitment.

They made a previous commitment, by the way, for this project. But tonight they weren't able to because they had just gotten the pro forma. All I'm saying is three out of the five of us.

You referenced the pro forma. You've seen Mary Ellen. Three out of the five of us haven't seen the pro forma and don't have anything in our inbox as we sit here today, like right now.

So I'm just saying I don't think we're – I just would ask you to – I don't believe we're any more unreasonable or reasonable, if you will, than the affordable housing trust. That's all. And I hear you about it, but I'm just saying I don't even know what it is that I would actually be voting on.

I have no idea what it is I would actually be doing tonight.

[Speaker 7] (3:58:00 - 3:58:07)
Or you'd be allocating $150,000 to relocate a house to a – No, to relocate a part of a house. Part of a house.

[Speaker 3] (3:58:07 - 3:58:33)
To someplace I don't even know where for how long. I don't know. Like I'm just saying.

Details of which are – They're all questions that with time could all be answered. My only point was just I feel as though we're actually – you gave the affordable housing trust the benefit of the doubt there. Frankly, we have no more information than they do.

As a matter of fact, I think they probably have more because they've been talking about it longer than we've actually been talking about it. Do you want us to vote?

[Speaker 5] (3:58:33 - 3:59:55)
What the chair of the affordable housing trust said was – Basically, when I presented exactly this kind of chicken and egg situation, basically, that they didn't vote to at least support tonight for buying the land, basically, which is what Habitat will need them to do to make this happen, which is probably something they would do. I said it's really important for you to do that so that the select board knows that there's some place for this house that is going. So that basically you're kind of moving the process forward.

They weren't prepared to do that. But when I pointed that out, that this creates a circular situation, the chair did point out that this type of project is probably – and Mary Ellen was on the call, so that's how she saw the pro forma – that the chair said something to the effect of, this is the type of project, of course, that we would be interested in doing, but we just need more time to kind of examine it. So I don't think it's really a major stretch to think that this is the type of project that they would do.

I can't obviously speak for them, but I just wanted to kind of clarify that context.

[Speaker 3] (3:59:55 - 4:00:02)
That's fair enough. And so my last comment would be this is the type of project that I would be interested in doing, but I need more time to get there.

[Speaker 9] (4:00:02 - 4:00:40)
Well, I think that's what I was saying about leaning in, right? This is something that absolutely has legs, but without knowing who's at the table, then we're left holding the bag, and for how long, and for how much, and to where, and to what end. All those what-ifs, all those risks are the questions that remain.

And so that's why I said, sure, I absolutely feel like there's a possibility of leaning in here, but without having some of those answers or knowing that other parties are taking the risk with us, that's where I'm at.

[Speaker 3] (4:00:41 - 4:01:06)
I would like to advocate to the non-administrator to think about how we can help the Historical Commission, because if Samuel Pittman – to use your phrase, I don't know enough about the history – is actually a founder of Swampscot, and for all these years, we didn't know – no one even knew Samuel Pittman's name, nor know his house, know anything. Again, I don't know anything about it. I'm just saying we've got to throw some resources towards helping this inventory of properties.

We have Blythworth. We have so many other things coming up.

[Speaker 2] (4:01:06 - 4:01:11)
Actually, we have a book of hundreds of historic properties.

[Speaker 3] (4:01:12 - 4:01:23)
So if we can just maybe, big picture, with time, look to see how we may supplement that and work on that, because that is, to me – I'm astonished by that. I totally believe it, but it's so sad that no one knew.

[Speaker 2] (4:01:24 - 4:01:47)
So it sounds like we should probably prioritize a few of the remaining historic properties in town and really think about whether or not we want to use some of these opera dollars to secure a right of option to ensure that they survive and perhaps even become inclusionary. Not all the money, Mary Ellen, just some of the money.

[Speaker 3] (4:01:47 - 4:01:50)
No, but maybe we can – I'm serious.

[Speaker 2] (4:01:50 - 4:01:55)
If we want to get off the dime here, we have to start buying these options.

[Speaker 9] (4:01:55 - 4:02:16)
I mean, I think first we need a process and procedure in place by which we rank them and understand their significance and understand how we're coming about to determine their historical and what concept and how we value that. All of those things are really important to then understand how much money you're going to be willing to put into it. So that's what we need to do.

[Speaker 7] (4:02:16 - 4:02:41)
But to that point, I think if we're talking about spending $150,000 in this instance, maybe that's part of our next conversation, Sean, Katie. Maybe we're talking about expending $150,000 to buy options or first right of refusals on historic properties. Maybe that could be part of our next discussion that we're going to have in two weeks about opera funds.

[Speaker 11] (4:02:43 - 4:02:43)
That's interesting.

[Speaker 6] (4:02:44 - 4:02:48)
So beautiful to talk about that stuff. Great.

[Speaker 7] (4:02:49 - 4:02:52)
All right. Annie, do we need to take a vote?

[Speaker 6] (4:02:53 - 4:02:58)
I think we're all pretty clear where we stand. Unless you want to vote?

[Speaker 5] (4:02:58 - 4:03:08)
I think it's very clear where Peter stands. It's very clear where Katie stands. I think I'm clear where you and I stand.

Are you not 100% sure where Katie stands?

[Speaker 9] (4:03:09 - 4:03:14)
I stand in not spending $150,000 but willing to spend something if there were a clearer path forward.

[Speaker 6] (4:03:17 - 4:03:22)
The only path is 150, I think. Unless, Sean, do you know any other paths?

[Speaker 2] (4:03:23 - 4:03:24)
I'm sorry. Do I know?

[Speaker 6] (4:03:24 - 4:03:28)
It seems that the only path is 150, unless you know any other paths.

[Speaker 2] (4:03:29 - 4:03:48)
At this point, I don't. I think this board needs to take a disposition on it. I think it's very complicated, but frankly, this is a big policy decision.

[Speaker 7] (4:03:58 - 4:04:15)
All right. We'll move on to the approval of the consent agenda. Consent agenda is designed to expedite the handling of routine and miscellaneous business to the board.

Select board may adopt an entire consent agenda with one motion at the request of any board member. Any item may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for discussion.

[Speaker 6] (4:04:16 - 4:04:18)
Take out the liquor license. I'll move.

[Speaker 7] (4:04:18 - 4:04:31)
Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended? Second.

So moved. Yes. So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

[Speaker 20] (4:04:31 - 4:04:31)
Aye.

[Speaker 7] (4:04:31 - 4:04:40)
It's late, I know. All right. Liquor license.

What would you like to address about the liquor license?

[Speaker 6] (4:04:40 - 4:04:43)
Oh, no. I'm a no for a 9 a.m. liquor license.

[Speaker 7] (4:04:45 - 4:04:52)
Take the vote. Okay. All in favor of a one-day liquor license?

Can we just say out loud what it is?

[Speaker 3] (4:04:52 - 4:05:04)
Because, again, I appreciate the objection to a 9 a.m. liquor license, but can we describe what the event is so people that aren't looking at what we're looking at least know that we're not – I would. That there might be a reason someone's requesting that. Yes.

[Speaker 7] (4:05:04 - 4:05:25)
This is the Michael J. Fox run for Parkinson's Research. 100% of all the funds that will be raised at this event, and this is the Greater Boston event, is coming to Swanscot.

On October 29th, currently, there's already $57,000 that's raised of a target goal of $150,000.

[Speaker 2] (4:05:25 - 4:05:26)
It's an annual event we do.

[Speaker 3] (4:05:26 - 4:05:30)
And they've had a liquor license previously, and do we have any reports of any issues?

[Speaker 2] (4:05:31 - 4:05:32)
Zero.

[Speaker 3] (4:05:32 - 4:05:36)
Zero. I'd make a motion to approve the one-day liquor license. All in favor?

Aye.

[Speaker 6] (4:05:37 - 4:05:38)
Do we need a second? Second.

[Speaker 7] (4:05:39 - 4:05:39)
Opposed?

[Speaker 6] (4:05:40 - 4:05:41)
Second. Opposed.

[Speaker 7] (4:05:41 - 4:05:43)
Okay. Next.

[Speaker 2] (4:05:44 - 4:05:45)
Select board time.

[Speaker 6] (4:05:50 - 4:06:54)
I have a minute. I want to thank Joe Dulette, if he's still here, Daniel Boretsky, Nathan Kent, and Aaron Laporte for being here all night and doing a great job. I just want to report that the retirement board at their last meeting, they're going to be – they are discussing putting an article in for increases in COLA.

They also are in the top 14 out of, I think, 150, or it could be 130. I don't have that number off the top of my head, communities where they're in the top 14 as far as returns. Even though returns were lost in the commonwealth, they are still – have the best turnout.

The board of health is, according to the chairman, she wanted me to report that they're just doing their housekeeping. And the solid waste committee is preparing to have their public meeting to address the plastics bylaw that's going to be coming up.

[Speaker 7] (4:06:54 - 4:06:56)
They're coming here next month?

[Speaker 6] (4:06:57 - 4:07:03)
They'll be coming here in October, but I think they're having their public meeting prior to. They're working with Diane setting that up.

[Speaker 7] (4:07:03 - 4:07:03)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (4:07:04 - 4:07:08)
And that's all I have for it. Thank you.

[Speaker 9] (4:07:08 - 4:07:59)
I would just like to highlight that the Swamp Style Police Department is participating in the DEA National Prescription Drug Take Back. So from now until October 27th, the police department, while they always have a box to take back pill form drugs, they will be taking medication in liquid form and creams so long as they're in their original packaging and placed in a Ziploc bag. So no needles, it says, or sharp objects, please.

And pet medications are also being accepted. So if you have some pet meds that you need to get rid of, this is a safe and effective way to get rid of prescription meds. It should not go into your toilet and be flushed or into the garbage and not left around your home where folks can get ahold of them if not necessary.

[Speaker 7] (4:08:00 - 4:08:30)
And just really, really briefly, there's a first ever Cahill 5K and One Mile Walk that's happening to benefit the memory of Danny Cahill, as well as Anchor Food Pantry that's happening on Sunday, October 22nd. So if you're interested in becoming a race sponsor, please contact Anchor Food Pantry at theanchorfoodpantry at gmail.com. And with that, I'd entertain a motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 16] (4:08:31 - 4:08:31)
So moved.

[Speaker 7] (4:08:33 - 4:08:38)
Do I have a second? Second. All in favor?

Aye. Thanks, everybody. Have a great night.