Good evening.

Tonight is the uh February 25th meeting of the Stamp Foot Planning Board.

Um I am Jennifer Gadzenow, Chair.

Um we have present Jay Tupper, Vice Chair, uh Ravi Subramanian, our secretary, and Chet Salett, one of our alternates.

Um, and everyone will be voting on all items this evening.

Um first on our agenda is the approval of the planning board minutes from our prior meeting, February 11th, 2025.

Um are there any uh questions about or amendments for the minutes for February 11th?

No.

Okay.

Um hearing none, may I have a motion?

Uh motion from Jay to approve.

We have a second, second from chat.

Um, all in favor, please raise your hand and pass this unanimously.

Thank you.

Um the next item on our agenda is uh a number of uh capital budget related items, uh requests from the mayor for consideration to be added.

Um we have a speaker to invite uh or to promote on that.

Yes, uh Erin McKenna was just promoted and she'll be rejoining as a panelist in one second.

Can I ask one question while she's doing that about what um about these three?

Is it uh standard operating procedure that after the mayor weighs in on the on the planning recommendations, it we have to vote on those things again?

Um yes, I I would like to read the um if I may, the uh section of our ordinance uh C8 uh dash 206.

Is that okay?

Yes, sure.

Okay, it says uh the uh just to get this on a record, the planning board shall thereupon prepare its capital project budget and submit it to the mayor on or before the first day of March.

The mayor may revise this budget, but may not include any new projects without first submitting them to the planning board.

If the planning board is opposed to such new project, uh that fact shall be recorded by the mayor when submitting recommendations to the board of finance and board of representative.

Uh the capital projects all consist only of the proposed uh defined in section C 1104.

Um so we it we'd normally do a couple of these every year where they're where where we have some changes to the budget request um based on progress.

Um these are three that were submitting for you guys today.

Um if possible, um can we promote Matt, director of operations, and um and Bridget Fox, Chief of Staff.

Um they may have some more information they they may want to add as we present these three projects.

Um and then just uh to uh I guess clarify on the the part of the ordinance that you just read out, Tony.

So that just means that in order for any of these projects to be considered for funding, they have to be added to the project list, but as the planning board, we don't necessarily have to decide tonight to put in any funding for them, correct?

No, so this I'm sorry, uh hang on one second, excuse me.

I'm not saying that's decided.

I just for uh administrative purposes, just wanted to clarify what counts as adding them to the budget.

So this this wouldn't affect the planning board budget.

This would affect the mayor's budget.

Um so I see doesn't uh touch your numbers at all.

Got it.

So this would just be adding them as items for consideration.

We are not being asked to recommend appropriation of funds in the budget we submit to the mayor.

No, this is this is just to amend the capital budget with these three projects at the mayor's level.

So when we when we print these books on your column, these three projects will show a zero, and then the mayor would have a dollar amount, and that would you know okay.

Okay.

Ravi, um question about that administratively.

Yeah.

So we don't need to consider the safe debt limit etc when we review this three edition.

So we are already above a safe note limit by a few million dollars.

I think 440 was 45 or something like that.

Yeah so under I'm sorry go ahead Tim so my understanding Rabbi again is that we're being asked to add these three items in as items for consideration but at but we're not as the planning board actually going to recommend any dollars to be allocated to these.

So it will not impact our recommendation for the total uh of projects and it will be at the mayor's discretion as we pass it on to the next step to then determine um what if any funding to put toward these three as well as how to adjust uh the planning board's recommended budget in order for um any of these to fit or you know for that matter to make adjustments to any other item that has been put forward for consideration as part of the capital budget.

So we don't need to review items we already decided upon to accommodate these requests.

These will be on top of whatever we have already finalized.

And therefore the for or what let's say we upload 45 45 plus whatever it is.

Well no so I mean I guess we could like we we in theory we could at this point since it is before March 1st like we could accept these as items and also make a recommendation to fund but it sounds like the minimum that we need to do this evening is just accept these three as items uh that can be for consideration but not actually even if even if there are zero dollars put into it from our recommendation they're still eligible for the mayor then I just want to make sure the expectations from this planning board are very clear right I mean the task given to us was you got 40 million safe debt limit.

Correct and you consider these three or four items on top of whatever we the other 55 items we approved last time and try to find a solution that is one ask.

Sure.

Another ask is saying hey you've done your job you came up with the 55 now here there are three more items the mayor wants to add.

If any serious objections week up otherwise the mayor will add it at her level on top of the budget we have proposed and take it to the next stage right that is well so again but if so if this evening if we were in theory again we could say let's add we you know we consent to add item one and item two we do not consent to add item three and so only those and then you know we don't have to put any dollar items in.

So the mayor can't add it that cannot add any dollars if the project does not exist in the capital budget book basically.