The Town Council and Finance Committee held a joint workshop on December 8, 2025, to review the draft Capital Improvements Program (CIP). The meeting focused on proposed infrastructure projects from Public Works and Engineering, including stream crossings, road maintenance, major road reconstructions, and new transportation initiatives. Town Manager Julia Hens provided a financial overview, highlighting the substantial cost of the full project list and the need for prioritization. No votes were taken; the session was informational.
All right, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the December 8th meeting of the town council and the finance committee to consider uh the capital improvements program for the town of Brunswick. My name is Steve Weems. I'm a pro tem host for the meeting tonight, standing in for the chair of the finance committee, Nat Shedd, who is with us on Zoom. And as far as I can tell in the room, we have counselors Jamie Ecker, Jen Hicks, Sandy Uptograph, Kathy Wilson is on Zoom. Did I miss anybody else? Nat Shed in also in his his home. With us also are, excuse me, Council Ecker. I believe Nathan Michelle is probably joining us. All right. Nathan, counselor vice chair, Nathan McDonald will be joining joining us by Zoom. I guess my first duty is to ask the town manager, Julia Hens, if this meeting was properly noticed. It was. Thank you very much. So our purpose tonight is to delve into certain departmental aspects of the capital improvements program. And I think to introduce that, I will turn it over to the town manager. Thank you, Councilor Weems. Um we have a I think it's a joint presentation with Public Works and Engineering. Our town engineer, Trey Cruz, and our department of public works director, Ryan Leightner here. Take it away. Oh, weren't you gonna do a presentation first? I was gonna do it second after they see all your good presentation, all your good projects. All right. Well buckle in because I have a long presentation. The goal of my presentation was to go over every CIP item that I'm associated with or public works that hasn't already been in a meeting. So uh Larry, if you get that presentation up. All right, hello, and uh thank you for having me, Town Council and Finance Committee. Um I kind of broke this presentation into four major topics, and I'd kind of like to go through each of these broad categories, and then I can kind of stop for questions, comments, and concerns at each one. So first I would just like to begin with uh stream crossings. Uh is this dead. Uh next slide. Uh next slide. Oh uh were we supposed to have public comment before the presentations? Okay. All right. Um so to begin this, I just had a uh chart here. I don't expect anyone to necessarily read this right away. This is just kind of a discussing stream crossings. The town has a very strong uh uh has a strong desire to do stream smart style crossings. These are the ones that promote possible wildlife crossings. Uh they're more environmentally sound and friendly. They try to mimic natural resources more. So this is a variety of types of crossings, uh bridges, different kinds of bridges, uh three-sided box culverts, open bottom arches, embedded culverts are completely on all four sides, uh embedded pipes, embedded uh different types of round pipes. So they all have different benefits and values of different lifespan, some are more suited for certain types of drainage projects, some are dependent on the foundational possible loading and the bedrock under a crossing. So this just kind of a good idea of the different types of crossings. Just a little bit of a preface before I start going through some of these. Uh next slide. So first I'm gonna begin with uh Richard's culvert replacement. This is part of the Mayor Brook. Um this design was paid for by a 319 grain, and we are doing a construction funding request of 450,000 for next year. Um this was part of the Mayor Brook Restoration Project.