Note: The agenda and meeting transcript indicate the meeting took place on January 7, 2025. However, the instructions for this summary specify the date as January 8, 2025. This summary uses the date provided in the instructions, with the discrepancy noted.
The Stamford Planning Board held a public hearing to receive comments on the recommended Capital Budget for 2025-2026 and Capital Plan for 2026-2032. The meeting began with chair Jay Tepper resigning as chair and turning the meeting over to vice chair Jennifer Godzino. City department heads and the public provided testimony on various proposed capital projects. The board also discussed funding considerations, including existing balances, phasing possibilities, and alignment with the city's master plan.
Good evening. This is oh, sorry, Jay, go ahead. I'd like to call call to order the planning board meeting of January 7th. My name is Jay Tepper. I'm the chair. Also in attendance are Jennifer Godzino, regular member, Rafi Subramanian, uh regular member and Chet Sellett, alternate member and Lindsay Cohn are more than capable staff person. Um with that, I would like to tender my resignation as chair of the planning board, not from the planning board entirely, and turn the meeting over to our very able vice chair Jennifer Godzino. Thank you very much, Jay, for all of your service and look forward to continuing to have you on the board as a resource. Thank you. Um Ravi, why don't we go ahead and read the public notice in for the hearing? Yes. So the legal notice of the planning board of the City of Stanford in accordance with Section C 611.3 of the Stanford Charter. The Stanford Planning Board will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, the 7th of January 2025 at 7 p.m. via phone and internet video conference to hear public comments on the recommended budget for 2025 26 and capital plan for 2026 to 2032. Copies of the documents are available on the planning board website at www.stanford ct.gov slash government slash boards. IFON commissions slash planning board. This meeting is accessible to the physically impaired, before hearing impaired persons wishing to participate in this meeting and who requires special assistance may make arrangements by contacting the Department of Social Services Administration Office at 2037 4050, at least two working days prior to the meeting. Over to you, Jason. So before we open uh public comment for the hearing, um, well, one, we will walk through procedure for public comment and then uh I'll offer a few um uh contextual uh bits of information as well as some updates that we received from the various city departments um to add a little bit of of context on um some of the items where we were deliberating on amounts. Um so Lindsay, um believe the procedure is just for folks to raise their hand and then we'll establish an order for people to speak. Uh yes. So since there were um a number of questions to city departments um and a number of city department heads are here to respond um to those questions. I will be front loading the city departments in case any of their responses um might inform some of the public comment that we're here um to hear tonight. Um so going, let's see. And I'll be starting um from the top of the draft budget book and going down. Um so this top of that book starts with uh the board of education. Uh so I'll bring forward Catherine Labalbo. And um if she has anybody else supporting with her with on those comments, I can um bring Oh uh Lindsay, I was gonna go ahead and do a little bit of context first. Okay. Um so if you don't mind, I'll just leave Catherine here. She'll be unmuted and and you can do your thing. Um any other questions that I can answer while I'm still talking. Um so uh for our um city department staff as well as the public. Um first just want to situate where we are in the capital budget process. Um so the planning board is charged with coming up with basically a first draft proposal of the capital budget based on requests that we receive from the various departments um and agencies in town. Um we then submit that budget to the mayor. The mayor makes amendments that then goes to the Board of Finance, which is allowed to remove items from the budget. And then finally it goes to the Board of Representatives, which again in its approval process can decide to eliminate items from the budget. So this is a months-long process. And this is our first point for public input on the budget. So what we're not doing is saying, you know, we should pave three miles of this specific street. So if you are here with a very specific request like that, I would encourage you to instead uh get in touch with the appropriate agency and feel free to ask in the comments if you're unsure how to go about that. Um the other bits of context that I just want to add is that uh the um the charge of the planning board is to uh assess all of the needs that have been put before us um and to uh certainly make sure they're um in alignment with uh the master plan, but also that we are um also looking at you know what funding uh already has been allocated in in recent years uh to the agencies and what balances they still have. Um and so in in many cases there are uh projects or line items where um we may not have allocated much uh in this fiscal year, but not because these are not important priorities, but because um either there's a very high existing balance within the account, and we want to have want the department to have the opportunity to spend that down before we add. Um, and then one thing that is unique this year is that um because the city received a lot of federal funding, um uh ARPA funding, um, a lot of departments received allocations from those funds because we had to spend them down uh within this uh fiscal year. And so many departments have actually received allocations of funding, but they're not reflected in this capital budget because it's a separate stream of funding. Um I I offer that all just to give a little bit of context on process and our uh how we've come to this draft. And of course, the purpose of this hearing is to uh receive further feedback on budget. Um with that um I will go ahead and hand it and uh invite uh Catherine to speak. Good evening, members of the planning board, um, Chair Tepper.