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[0:00] Chair Lyons: Anyone else need an agenda at the council table? There's one item. Okay, I'm calling this special meeting of the Ellsworth City Council to order on October 6, 2026. The only item under agenda of substance is agenda item number two, council order number 100600, public hearing in action on request of the city manager to award the contract for the Merrill Lane Extension, parentheses, Hancock County Judicial Center,
[0:30] Charlie (City Manager): project. Thank you so much, Chair Lyons. Before I start off, I just like to kind of give a little bit of an agenda tonight. I know it's a, it's in some ways tonight's about a specific project authorization, but it's also a bit of a look back on what's been accomplished, what's still yet to be accomplished, and where we go from here. And I'll speak for a little while on kind of the project background and public policy considerations. Mike Harris, our Public Works Director, we'll talk about the road work to date in the courthouse coordination sarah's going to talk about cost to date chris namath is going to our chief financial officer is going to talk about financing the project on the 2026 bond and tiff payback scenarios twyla is going to come in for an and Economic Development and Central Corridor TIF review. And then Sarah's gonna anchor at home with the actual work of tonight, the Maryland Extension RFP. So I brought nerd props. I know we oftentimes have props that are interesting. To me, I thought tonight was a good time. time I would be putting together this huge binder on what's been done on this project to make sure there's an account. And oftentimes, you know, in government we live in binders, and I'm surrounded by them on in my, in my office. And you know, I know when I joined the city at a very turbulent time about two and a half years ago, the council, a few of which are here tonight, asked me, you know, what do I think of leadership? And I noted that to me, the essence of leadership is getting results, clear, quantifiable, measurable results. And leadership isn't a person, it's a behavior. And sometimes I lead and sometimes others lead. And those results are oftentimes dependent on building incredible teams, mission-driven people that are cross-collaborative, that fail, but that keep the ball moving forward and are honest and transparent and get results. And today the people around this table or get results people, and tonight we're gonna talk about, you know, at the end of the day with results, it's what you've done and what you left undone, and we're gonna talk a bit about that. You know, tonight potentially marks the end of kind of a major project, probably the most significant projects the city of Ellsworth has undertaken in 10-15 years, but also I'm taking a quick second, you know, to think about where we go ahead, you know, and think about all the projects that we've done and what's left undone. You know, this is one component. I brought my project management team chalkboard, which we organized into tier one, tier two, and tier three priorities. Unfortunately when i arrived we just passed a comp plan, a business attraction plan, a housing needs assessment, so we had some pretty good direction on the things that have been left undone and the things that needed to get done. You know, things that have been done, the more community center re release, the tiff redesign ordinance reform stage one, cannabis ordinance passage, facade grants for the downtown, street light replacement, the street scan of every single road with lidar so we have the actual conditions of where we're at, one five and ten year capital improvement plan, an irky reimagine parks and rec needs assessment, the building of a parks and rec department, website updates and branding, some things that are about halfway there but are pretty well on track, the bayside road municipal partnership initiative, the water treatment plant replacement, schools track and soccer field, library renovations, digital modernizations, wayfinding signage, fire engine replace, and then a lot that remains undone. You know, the to me most pressing is the finance reconciliation and optimization. i have some binders here on the woeful state of the fy25 failed budget, no information, no table of contents, just random pieces of paper being thrown at folks at the meeting itself, and you know very quickly we went to an online budget draft versions, public versions, it wasn't perfect, you've optimized every single year, but to me especially with Chris coming on board, like we have a lot more work to be done in this category, and there's a lot more projects, thriving communities initiative, the village Partnership initiative, some huge things that I think we really, especially now that we know this team and our resource constraints and our time constraints and our financial constraints, that it's it's a kind of a pause for reflection. I know I'm looking forward to the new council in aligning these city work plans and the project management team with an authorized council work plan and exactly what we want to do for 2027 and how do we resource things and how do we do better at budgeting. Everybody's time and how many hours can move forward so we can better judge, hey, this project just came up to, you know, do food sovereignty, how many hours will that take, which staff members, what projects are going to have to pull off of that for that. Barbie campground is another good example, like, you know, that's taking a lot of time. We're kind of putting pause on short-term rentals, but if we have a good work plan, you know, I think we can have a much better chance as a council and as a city to move. Forward in these areas and I'll have some more notes there in a bit and a lot of these other pieces like, you know, I want to avoid a lot of work on binders that never happened. I mean, it's okay sometimes. I've found four different waterfront planning initiatives over two decades for the Riverwalk. I know I want to do it, Morrison Chevrolet, I mean, she's so much work here, but we really need authorization for that work. There's another one we got right now, a village partnership initiative that could. Fund that nine-to-one, but there's an insane amount of work that would go, I need to go through with that, other things like a downtown parking study and parking expansion. I didn't get done. I talked to Chair Beal, she, that was just too expensive, wasn't worth putting it in there. You know, some things that did get done, Olden Park and the Branch Lake public boat launch, and I think as we think of the courthouse project, this is like the great privilege of being a public servant in municipal government. And thank you, Counselor Shea, for the history of Ellsworth, you know, really reading this and all the founding work over, you know, decades and centuries that has gone into just stuff like this so we can enjoy the more community center, so that we can enjoy the marina, so that we can enjoy the Branch Lake trail system and vote launch. This is such noble work to be a part of and it's really been an honor to do, but the courthouse, I think this was actually even before I arrived as city manager, it was on. My project list on that, there's some interesting stuff in the courthouse. What's going on? What's that decision point? You know, it's kind of presented a problem, a public policy problem, and an opportunity. The state judiciary purchased some land in the neighborhood zone, and residents and city officials were very concerned about that being the right place for a potential another 100-year courthouse, and there was an opportunity to really act on a lot of the things in the comp plan to unlock development potential in the urban core, increase commercial and housing opportunities, expand the tax base, and increase quality of life and recreational opportunities. Unfortunately, Senator Grohowski, our Ellsworth's own, recently passed a big bill for the courthouse to be funded, so you know this is kind of a we have to figure this out and do we accept the Surry Road proposal and just do nothing and let it go there and do we put a moratorium on the project or do we think about partnering. I did look back originally, but I think we'd revisit again. I think some folks are what is the city getting involved in a courthouse, and in some ways like the history of Ellsworth can be traced through its courthouses, and there's been a lot of city partnership. In fact, the original courthouse and the original city hall were private donations just across the street when there was more development over on the other side of Bridge Hill, and then now Courthouse Art Gallery was the city hall and the county seat when it moved from Casteen because Ellsworth was becoming more of a commercial residential and regional center in ways that it still is today, and Casteen is not, and there's been a lot of change, sudden abrupt changes like the fire that happened. I mean, it was a new courthouse, this one here got built in the 1880s and it burned down in 1930. That was even before the big 1933 fire. It got replaced by the one we see now about 100 years ago on the same site, and you know definitely built for a different era, and now we're at this new judicial center, but each generation with the courthouse and this community kind of builds for its needs and plans for the Future a little look back on what brought us here. I think the fall of 2023 city staff at the time met with the judiciary and who was looking at a site and it was in a neighborhood zone but there's a public institution exemption and there really wasn't from what I could tell any community or council discussion beyond some internal planning conversations with city staff at the time. Fast forward to March that's when the new starts happening the signs start popping up. I think I'd already accepted this job by then but wasn't on boarded yet they purchased the road parcel gets announced and then just after I arrived I was kind of originally of the opinion that this was an NIMBYism and nobody's gonna like 55,000 or 60,000 square foot building next to them but going to that meeting with Chief Justice Stanfill to the judiciary's great credit to kind hear community concerns hearing from counselors including chair Beal and so we zone this neighborhood for zone for a purpose like this is not the right place for a generational investment and council directed some outreach to the judiciary which me and staff did and to the judiciary's credit they agreed to reconsider. I think the big learning from that for me is that a permissible use and a desirable long-term location are kind of treated as the same question and they were not. We had a very robust public process multiple workshops in July September October November we put out an RFP to see really activate the community could they did they have sites with a lot of great landowners here that might be in a better location ultimately nine submitted potentials that met the judiciary's potential need. I think it was like 17 acres south facing views access to infrastructure etc and really from the community and the council really clearly aligned on the Wardwell parcel and I think this map does a pretty good job self-explanatory on why this is you know one landowner really the this is the rail trail you can just see it's sort of the last unbuilt quadrant of Ellsworth I believe it was local business owner Leslie hard Harlow who called it Eastside Ellsworth you know that's the future Eastside Ellsworth right on the rail trail you know 90 miles we don't currently have public parking there matches a lot of the comp core principle 5 expand water and sewer infrastructure support growth in the urban core in the full binder I have a whole rundown of dozens of business attraction plan comp plan on just we need to encourage investment in The urban core if we're going to tackle housing and a bunch of other things. The issue was there wasn't a road there. I'm not off a traffic light and that was needed in order to permit it. And so we worked with local surveyors and engineers and staff to really consider what would be needed for that and brought to council on January 7th really three options that we could pursue. A moratorium and kind of carry some legal risk for that outcome and then just let the Surry Road proceed with the existing rules or option C go into a land exchange with the city taking responsibility for building a new road and that ultimately passed six to one. And I'm gonna leave it to Mike to talk a little bit more about the project and his work and the team's work to do a million different things solve a million different problems that only people like Mike and Brian and Amanda and Nate who's out here in our public works team and Sarah of course can do. But to me there's also like a and I have a bit of a recommendation for the next phase is that I did receive authorization as part of the original to pursue a rights of first refusal with the Ward Wells on a larger housing initiative really trying it could be 55 plus senior housing it could be workforce or affordable housing we could do nothing and just really partner on rfp and let the market decide. You know my guidance is that like we need to we need to double down on housing that is the biggest problem we are seeing the market is going more towards short-term rentals yes we're getting about 50 a year and our local builders are doing an incredible job we owe them so much for that but it's not affordable to people who want to work and live here and this project really I think we need to focus on that keep seeking state contributions look at developer contributions connection charges the impact fees utilizing the new tiff committee but more importantly in order to kind of focus as well is we need to really consider some pauses or some scale backs on some other massive initiatives too I think most importantly the thriving communities initiative which is like the high street corridor redesign. We have some input there. Twyla will talk a bit more. The village partnership on the marina, bridge hill investments, sidewalks for the downtown. These are once in a generation, potential huge build grants, nine to one match in some cases, but they're also insanely long like community processes, and I worry that we're at max bandwidth with a lot of blocking and tackling we still need to get to. You know, the sit plan still needs 90% of it to be done, and we're having trouble maintaining our own things right now, so let's get our own. We can pause, you know, we've got some great initial planning, and kind of come back to the party. These are generational investments, and if we go that route, eventually I also think it needs a referendum. It's really a community-wide choice, and council, I love you all to death, but if you're gonna, you know, engaging in that kind of generational investment, I do feel like it's important to have a referendum, not just for the council's purpose, but for staff's purpose as well. I think we've all felt like we took these initiatives forward, we weren't a part of getting them together, and we took an insane amount of arrows on some things that we, you know, don't even necessarily agree to move forward. So I really want to work better on the authorization in that piece if we do decide to do this, and with that I'm sent to Mike Harris. We're going to hold questions at the end so the group can get through all these things. Evening
[16:15] Mike Harris, Public Works Director: everybody, Mike Harris, public works director. So as Charlie has so eloquently pointed out and given you the history of where we started and the council's final decision to authorize the move to move the courthouse to where it is, and then eventually to engage in negotiations with the state judiciary to come up with a developer agreement, because they wouldn't have had to build a road in Surrey, but they have to build a road here, and so part of the negotiations of moving the courthouse was coming up with the developer agreement that has the city building this road for the judiciary as part of that agreement. So initially we looked at the what was possible and the road, you know, we're looking at 1225 feet, 66 foot public right away, you know, we were fortunate I think in that we had one landowner that was very willing to work with the district judiciary to move the courthouse up to their property in a land swamp, because the judiciary didn't have funding to buy another piece of land. Charlie and Sarah did an amazing job working with the landowners originally the thought process is that we might try to use a long lane which is by a route one oil and lube and try to come into the courthouse like that way but that doesn't have traffic light and so it would have required a major intersection shift, which kind of set that possibility aside of that option. And, you know, even after that, we thought possibly that we could at least build the construction road up through there. But that, too, ran into some site issues and some landowner issues that kind of bogged that down. And so finally the decision was made that we would move to Merrill Lane, and that we would also build the construction road there, and then the eventual permanent road would be put there. When we first undertook this location and started studying it and talked about possibilities, there was a thought process that maybe this, that the city and its highway department would be able to engage in, building the road. And there was numbers put out at that time. One of them was, which I put out was, $750,000 to build a road, but that number didn't include labor, and it didn't include electrical. It didn't include blasting, and it didn't include paving, and it didn't include labor, because for me at the time I thought, well, either we're gonna pay the guys eight hours a day whether they're working on the courthouse, they're working on something else, we're still gonna pay. The trade-off would be that if they're engaged in building the courthouse road, they're not engaged in doing other city services of the city needs, whether it's ditching, whether it's road sweeping, whether it's taking care of culverts, you know, those things would suffer, and there's no way to put a real dollar value on that, but those tasks would suffer in the engagement of us building the courthouse road. We're fully capable of building it. I have no issue with that. We have the expertise that we need, but it wasn't a, I don't think it was a good trade-off, and we didn't have the whole financial picture put together in terms of, you know, what the actual man-hours would cost and what the equipment and time would cost compared To what a private developer would end up, we would end up paying for. And then, you know, this was a couple years ago. And then, you know, we also had changes within the city, one of which was only hired a parks and rec director, but he needed the parks and rec department to work. And so we had to take some of our highway department guys and shift them to the parks and rec department to accomplish the workflow that the parks and rec thought was necessary and Charlie thought was necessary to give the city the proper maintenance and treatment of its recreational assets, which we the highway was doing it, but it was doing it as part of its normal workflow, and it really wasn't getting the attention it needed. We were hiring contractors to try and do some landscaping and do some ground maintenance, and that became problematic. So in the end, we formed the Parks and Rec Department, which cost the highway department a couple of people, and so we're still to the short-staffed couple people. Oh, thank you. And so as we move through, and you can see the path that everything took. So Charlie and Sarah did the site and the right-of-way negotiations. Main DEP, we had permitting. Andrew McCullough was helping us with the permitting. There was a short stint of time when there were some suspected vernal pools out there,, which caused a lot of heartache and discontent, because you can't build within a hundred feet of a frontal pool, that penalty or something, you know, whatever that setback is. But it turned out they weren't rental pools. And so then we moved forward, at that time, we needed to do the construction road, because that was still part of the developer agreement, even though we weren't building the permanent road, we were going to build the construction. And so we did the clearing and grubbing. We made the construction road. We did the construction road in like three weeks, I think. It took us to do the construction road. And then we also, the city, whole public works department took part in providing the stubbing for the utilities into Maryland that weren't there. So over the course of the first two nights, we ran 100 feet of sewer. We ran a 12-inch water main. We put an insertion valve in the water main, started running the storm, but we couldn't get it done. So we stopped working at that point in time and came back and spent another two nights bringing the stormwater and putting in stormwater catch basin for the stormwater that's going to be coming off the project and getting that installed. And that particular project was pretty amazing. If we'd have had to pay a commercial contract to do that, it would have been a serious amount of money. As it stands, as I said, it took us four nights. The total cost to the city that we've calculated about fifty two thousand dollars, four hundred and thirty four hours of staff time and thirty five thousand three hundred eighty nine dollars roughly materials and equipment, you know, with pipes, catch pieces and storm water pipes and that type of thing plus some rental equipment that we had to have. So for me as a public works director, I can't say enough about all my teams that night to accomplish what we accomplished in the time we accomplished. The highway guys are great, the sewer guys were there, we did the sewer line, water guys were there, we did the water line. It was a total team effort and I'm very happy and proud of the way it came out and the amount of time that we're able to do it in. Had we had to pay a commercial contractor do that work that I would guess a four times increase in cost probably is what you've been looking at with that. So we built the construction road, we did all the courthouse dubbing and then you know we had to do some additional prep work because it was time to do the groundbreaking and we had a lot of dignitaries show up for the groundbreaking. We had multiple people from the legislature show up groundbreaking, the judiciary was there for the groundbreaking and so at that point you know we were well on the way where we needed to be with this project and we've done as the public works team we had done as much as we could do to get this thing to pretty much where it is now, which is going to be the next phase. Part of part of the next phase is that the judiciary is responsible for their traffic movement permit. They had to apply to the D.O.T., the D.O.T. issued them a traffic movement permit and so one of the coordinations that needed to happen was since we're building the road it kind of made practical sense for the contractor that's going to build the road, whether it would be us or another contractor, to also look at handling the traffic movement permit and the intersection improvements that need to be done. And so the judiciary, thankfully, was able to offer $415,000 in reimbursement to us or to the contractor to get that work done. So as this project progresses, and as this road is being built, and as the intersection is improved to accommodate the traffic movement permit, we will be able to submit and get reimbursed from the judiciary up to $415,000 for doing that work. And so now where we stand is any extra property that's going to need to be acquired for this project will need to be done by January 1st of 2027. Whether we do it or somebody else does it, we're going to have to have utilities in. We're looking to possibly have water to the site by December. We're looking to possibly have sewer to the site by January. And then the electrical will be subcontracted out. The blasting will be subcontracted out. No matter if we do it or somebody else does, it will be part of their subcontract work. With the eventual goal to provide the judiciary and the contractor that's working for the embalming construction everything that they need to complete this project for their opening timeline of February of 28, I believe is what their opening timeline is.
[27:33] Charlie (City Manager): October 1st, 27 is when we think we have the road done. So, you know, obviously we want to encourage development as soon as possible. I would note, though, that in this scenario, if there's an opportunity to go late, we might want to just have the shimming and let's cure and do the final after the winter goes through. So, we'll see. October 1st, 10 to 10. Yep.
[27:55] Mike Harris, Public Works Director: So what remains? So this is basically what you're looking at when you talk about building a road. So we've already done a large amount of earthwork, but there's a lot of ledge up there, especially at the entrance going in past Marrow before you get to where the old woods would be, the fence line. So definitely have to do some blasting there and some ledge excavation. As part of the storm water permitting, we need to have certain nine soil filters installed as part of the under drain system, and then a full fully built out storm water storm water drainage system that connects to High Street. We're running a 12 inch water main with three hydrants up there. We're also running eight inch sewer main up there with multiple manholes that would be in place up there, and then something that you know will be very critical is you know having a contractor that come in that can do the electrical for us that'll be a big piece there's a lot that needs to go into that from the structures and the conduits to picking what kind of lights we're going to want and what that lighting is going to consist of so that you know something that needs to that's going to need to happen and you know eventually when the road is built and all the utilities are in and ready to go and all the storm water is in ready to go, then we're going to pave the road. So we'll have a contractor come in or you know it may be part of the contractor that's doing it now, but there'll be two basic to two courses of asphalt put down, so there'll be a base and then there'll be a surface, and then along with that we have sidewalks that are going to need to be built. We have curving that helps direct the storm water along there. We'll have a retaining wall that needs to be looked at going across the small stream that runs through there, so all those will be part of building this road and getting to the final iteration of the road. So all of that is stuff that still needs to be done and stuff that will be you know acutely aware of as we look to award the referent the RFP tonight and work with that contractor, coordinate with the contractors that are there. That'll be a big piece of this going forward is to make sure that all those contractors are on the same page and this thing proceeds smoothly. Andrew McCullough will probably be involved in helping us for that as well, and then you know we've we hope that you know this will be a legacy project that we as the Public Works Department can look back on 50 years from now and say hey we were part of that and we helped build that. So we are very not only proud of the work that we've accomplished but looking forward to when this thing is done and built, and you know the city will have not only a tremendously impressive courthouse but they'll also have the possibility of opening up the last section of undeveloped area and Ellsworth and even possibly having a bypass come to fruition at some point to go from High Street over to Washington Junction Road to help alleviate that traffic that we have especially so with that I will pass it on to Sarah Devlin who can handle all the money thank
[31:52] Staff (Finance/Project): you I'll try to make up some time because these two guys like to chat so I'll try to I'll try to make up some time here I am gonna be getting in the weeds a bit because I'm gonna take a few minutes to walk us through the project cost to date one of the things we were really hoping to accomplish tonight was to provide the council and the public with a clear counting of what has actually been spent on the project what those expenditures were for and what cost we have to look forward to we reviewed the consultant invoices staff charges materials and other project records and organized these by phases so there's a clear record of how we arrived at the cost that you're gonna see tonight okay so as of the dates in the reporting So I just want to ground us a little bit in that. The consultant costs are payments from October 17th, 2024 through August 17th, 2026. So any invoices we've received, which are not very many, it's a few invoices for final design and a few general kind of help formatting this through Kleinfelder. So just a few invoices that we've received are not reflected in here. so those will be as those invoices get paid this database will be updated to include those and for charges that the city has spent so charges for fuel for any generator maintenance as part of the developer agreement those charges all of those are through September 29th so anything that the city has paid for already is through September 29th so we're going to continue to update this through this format so you'll see periodic updates on additional charges so I just wanted to ground us in that so with that being said total charges to date for this project and I hate reading numbers but 606,462 and 20 cents so that's the total charges to date within that date time frame that I just laid out this is not the total anticipated cost for the project the and the largest component is the consultant and professional cost that total approximately is 465,941 but it's important to understand what's included in that so more than 251,000 of that cost is associated with the purchase of the easements in the property. So it was 204 for the actual land purchase, and there was some legal fees and real estate tax and things like that was included in that 251. So that's what is in that cost that you see on the second line down. That's what makes up that cost. Approximately 159 was associated with 159,000, excuse me, was associated with the original road design and engineering. That would be environmental permitting, survey, some borings, things like that, and of course engineering is associated with that. There are costs associated with the drafting and review of the developer agreement and the supplemental developer agreement. That is majority legal fees in reviewing those agreements. There are costs associated with implementation of the requirements of the developer agreement, Securing the letter of credit, installing temp power, things like that. The road is not part of that. We broke out the road separately for what the public works crew did. So this really captures what the city has contributed to date. I also want to just point out that we have done a total of nine, and when I say city hours, this is all public works crew hours and utility hours. it's not like Charlie and I staff time which I did a quick search on my calendar for how many meetings I had on this project and it was I think 75 meetings that were just logged probably an additional I don't know how many of phone calls and just things that were not logged so that those hours are not included in here this is this is mainly just it is only just Public Works water sewer hours associated with the development of the construction road and the stubbing of utilities so those are the cost to date for that which you know equates to the hours equates to just over $30,000 and materials associated with that work was almost a hundred and ten thousand dollars so we have a good idea of what the city is spent in-house today again to echo what Mike said it is a real value i did a little research and looking into that what it would have cost if we had a private contractor and easily 75 to 100 000 an additional cost if we had a private contractor do that work so this slide is really Hard to see, but it is on our website, both under the council agenda packet and on the courthouse road website page. This is all the supporting material. So it didn't want to just provide a number, we wanted to really show the volume of invoices that have been tracked and captured through this whole process. So 63 invoices have been paid to consultants totaling again four hundred sixty five thousand nine forty one and twenty one cents. Every payment is tracked by date and phase, the cities and the city staff hours, and it's all reconciled based to our source documents of our accounting software. Going forward, we intend to use this same process for updating and same methodology. Obviously, we'll be adding an additional phase of construction and construction engineering services, so those will be additional phases we'll be adding. So this slide just again provides another way to view the data by percentage of project. The land purchases via Acadia Law Group was the largest payment. It was paid to Acadia Law Group because that was simply the holder of the payment, and they distributed it to the land owner. Then Andrew McCullough Engineering in the development of the preliminary engineering of the road all the way to final engineering. That one will go up a bit because I do have an invoice from Andrew that has to get inputted to the system. Hendrick and salisbury for serving both on the initial real estate easements, but also on the final road design, and then a series of legal, mostly legal for the development agreement, for the letter of credit. We have Kleinfelder who assisted us with some engineering services, both in developing the final contract documents and just kind of helping us organize the tracking, the financial tracking for the project. So what is what's still to come is obviously tonight, hopefully we will issue an award the construction contract for not to exceed amount. October 19th at the regular scheduled council meeting will be coming forth with an engineering oversight contract for Andrew McCullough. He designed the road, so it's really important that he provides construction inspection services to ensure that the road is built to the design specs. Also included in that will be some inspection and testing of the road. The intersection work that Mike referred to for the traffic movement and permits, we're in the development phase of that. We're about at a 10 percent design. We're going to be meeting with survey and the consultants that the state hired to develop the traffic movement permit. It is a traffic engineer, so it's really outside of Andrew's wheelhouse. So we have a specific traffic engineer that's working on that, and again, that's reimbursed up to the four hundred and fifty thousand dollar mark. I fully expect that will be within that threshold. I have seen no issues with that. One of the also benefits of the city doing that is that we have relationships with the landowners. So there are going to be some easements required to implement that work. So we've already been talking with those landowners. We've shared initial designs. We just want to make sure that they're really comfortable with what's getting the upgrades that are going to be happening at that intersection at no cost to us. And then obviously as the owner of this project we have contingency costs. Things come up when you're out there. It's a really short window for this project, but you know there's utility connections, quality changes, and change orders that might come up as the project goes along. So those might be some additional things that you might see coming forward. So every invoice is going to continue to be tracked under this methodology. At project completion, we fully anticipate coming back with a final accounting and update for the binder of what the full planning to implementation to ribbon cutting, the first car driving down that road or vehicle driving down that road, what the cost will be. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chris, and I was quicker than you.
[41:20] Councilor: You guys actually had five minutes budgeted, huh? We know. My goodness. Yeah. I got out-negotiated in terms of time.
[41:38] Staff (Finance/Project): Ready? Start. Yeah. We need you to be the timekeeper. All right.
[41:43] Councilor: here we go first of all you know I 'm joining that this train has you know obviously down the track and I'm joining kind of late in the process but I've been involved in lots of projects and I just want to just say I'm I'm proud to be on this team it's been very interesting for me I have what I'm gonna say here I'm not I mentioned this I think in the last Finance Committee meeting I'm looking at it from a totally different perspective like purely from a financial lens so from that standpoint You know, pictures of the courthouse, you know, they're stirring and lovely, but I kind of don't care so much about if it's a courthouse or what did I say in the Finance Committee meeting, it's a, it could be a squirrel museum or whatever it is. I'm looking at it purely in financial terms. The other thing, if you've followed any of the Finance committee meetings, you know that every day what I'm looking at is from a taxpayer perspective, how do we respond a good steward of taxpayer money, and what can we do collectively to help manage the property tax burden? And so if you remember that silly little equation that sort of informs everything, and it's, it's the lens with which I look at projects like this, so that equation is as taxes equals expense expenditures, right, what do we need, what are we spending in the town as a whole, minus other revenue, non tax revenues, so T equals e minus R. I am deep now in the weeds in terms of figuring out the e, what are we spending, and squeezing that lemon, and working with the department heads to see what we can do, even cutting things where, you know, it's going to be uncomfortable, but working on seeing what we can do. I think I've been upfront to date that, you know, my initial intuition was that, you know, if we're a service center town, it's not cheap, and so as much as I squeeze, I'm a little concerned that it may not be enough, even conservative inflation estimates and growth estimates, because that wedge, the service center piece of that wedge, is so sizable, that's tough. So given that, I've been looking hard at the our piece, what can we do in terms of other revenues? There's a lot of pieces of that, but one thing that I found that made me a little concerned is we didn't have many that were sizable. I had lots of little ones, but in terms of ones that could actually move the needle and be game-changers, and so when I first got pulled into this discussion, and I'm, you know, playing catch-up like everything else, I started getting very interested that if some of these assumptions are even half right, this thing could actually be very interesting from a financial perspective. So let me talk about that from that perspective. My, when I, whatever I show you, my kind of philosophy on it is to be very conservative, so in terms of the growth assumptions, in terms of the debt service assumptions, the costs, whatever, I'm looking for very conservative assumptions, and then you'll see that I'm looking at it from a taxpayer perspective in terms of how do we minimize the Impact to taxpayers, how do we potentially accelerate the point at which this project is self funding, and then to what extent it could actually pay off going forward after we cross that threshold of self-funding? What could that mean for the town? So let me just show you the way that I look at it. So you know all this, but the bond amount, so it's part of a this bigger bond issue with the main bond bank, the fall issue. The overall amount is about three point eight million dollars, but for this project it's 1.75. Most of the, I should say much of that 3.8 million, those are shorter period bonds, those are mostly 10-year notes. This, the 1.75 is on a 20-year amortization schedule. It got, ended up the final pricing, it got priced at four point six eight, which is, I think we mentioned this maybe a couple finance committee meetings ago, that gosh, you know, the bond market's, you know, pretty volatile, and it did go up a little bit. However, they were able to bring the monthly payments back down, so they sort of split the difference, because even though the market is volatile, the demand for this bond was pretty strong, which is good news. So at the end of the day, the overall interest, I think, for the Maryland portion of it, the 1.75, probably from the initial estimate to the final pricing, I think the interest went up about $80,000 in total over 20 years. Just so you know, I mentioned this before, but I had opted to price it as a level principal note, which just means that we'll pay a little bit more at the outset, and then that, though the annual debt service decreases over time. The benefit of that is that we actually save a boatload of money over the life of the note. So that's the basic, the basic idea. This is a schedule of, it's an ugly schedule, but it's a schedule of the debt service kind of by year. It's a little weird to look at, in part because the way that this thing was produced was we have the macro 3.8 million dollar bond, of which big pieces that note are ten years, so you can see that after ten years those notes go away, and so what remains is the trailing ten years on the one 1.75. And 1.75 is 45.33% of the 3.8. So this schedule is really taking the amortization of the full note, and I'm taking 45% of it. So it's a little awkward to look at. But what it's saying is that early on at the high watermark in terms of annual debt service, for the Merrill Lane share of the bond will be paying just north of $200,000 in the early years, and then it trails off and the final payment is roughly $41,000 would be the final payment. The average annual payment over the life of it is just north of $113,000. Does that make sense? Perfect. Perfect. What I did then is I worked with Twyla and with our assessor to say, OK, if that's what we can lock in, let's say, in terms of the, and by the way, this is the base case. I think there are ways that, you know, maybe I can improve this, which I'll talk about in a second. But let's say that we're going to lock in this. This is the curve in terms of the cost side debt service. I said okay on the revenue side give us a conservative assumption in terms of what it would mean in terms of if we developed it what that would mean in terms of the property tax revenue and the model that came back was 40 developed lots built out evenly over 14 years and using a tax rate of 17.45 so that's the blue line in this case the revenue okay the red line is I just plotted out the debt service so where the blue line crosses the red line no magic there but that's where it becomes self-funding that's the idea so we're looking at by year three on this and that is by the way if i'm just depending on the revenue from the development to pay for its own debt service on the development i'm not picking up other types of revenue so i'll talk about that in a second i think i might be able to improve that what's before that intersection so to the left of that this is where i'm if i'm putting on my taxpayer hat where i'm you know what can i do to minimize that 's almost what you think of as like the cost exposure the front end costs for this to pay down this to pay this debt basically so I'm worried about that timing but you know in this case even the most basic case of this It's not that long, and it's not that great because, again, at the high watermark, first year debt service is only $211,000 to leverage this kind of an opportunity. With that said, I think we might be able to do better than that. We break even year three, and then you can see what happens in terms of that gap between the blue line and the red line kind of going forward. Word purely from finance, from a financial perspective, you know, I look at that and I haven't been here that long, but I have not seen many opportunities that we have even with higher risk profiles than this that actually have the potential to generate that kind of an opportunity at the end of the day. So in this model, you know, when this thing begins to kind of really, the gears really catch on it, we're looking to generate something like $800,000 plus of net value capture at the end of the day. So that catches my attention from a financial perspective. Perspective. There are a couple things to think about where I think there may actually be opportunities to improve this. If I can lower the red line in any way, that makes it better and certainly shifts the payback timing to the left faster. If I can raise the blue line in any way, that does the same. It shifts the payback to the left and then it maximize and if I can do some combination of both of those then we're really talking so the red line there are some pending bills that you guys probably know better than I do in terms of what the status of some of those things are some of them you know maybe are more long shots than others but I know that there's been this at the state level a reimbursement bill for up to three quarters of a million dollars the last word that I heard is they were Looking to take this up again in the next session however you know it's a big dollar amount but maybe the likelihood isn't so high so you know we'll see on that I've heard talk of another piece of legislation where the surplus bond proceeds from the macro bond for three courthouses to the extent there's a surplus we may be able to recoup a piece of that Charlie and others recently met with the county at the county commissioners meeting with a request appeal to potentially share the cost it's Tabled you know we'll see again I'm not sure that likelihoods very high but you know we'll see and then something more in our control you know there's an option potentially to turn to various types of developer contributions or impact fees to recoup this as well any of those things would lower the curve the red line down which shifts the pay back to left and minimizes that exposure and the risk of the taxpayer on the blue line side what I would say is water and sewer fees as users are connected To the grid that's not incorporated, because the only thing that's in the blue line right now is just growing property taxes from 40 parcels, which is very conservative. I mentioned impact fees before. Twilight can speak more to this in her segment, but this district, as you know, it has been, it's, it's in a TIF district. So as that thing grows, we have, I think, real potential to flow the benefits of that toward the project and in the debt service, etc. But even outside of this particular corridor, Twyla and I were talking about the Beckwith Hill TIF, and that there is a portion of that TIF going forward that right now is unallocated. And so I think the back of the envelope analysis that we were doing suggested that we could probably free up as much as maybe $150,000 from that TIF in the early years, where I could use it to, again, minimize the taxpayer exposure until this thing begins to kind of kick in and ramp up, and all of a sudden then it's, it funds itself and then starts creating value. So we're gonna look at that pretty hard as well as the thing grows and we have that kind of, then this value creating kind of period after it breaks even and a self funding. I just made a note here on the right, but in the back of my mind, like I mentioned a few times, we have a whole host of infrastructure needs to the tune of upwards of 20 million dollars right now unfunded. The debt service, if I use just a really simple, you know, back of the envelope sketch of what would that be for a 20 million dollar note, and I just used four and a half percent over 20 years, debt service of that is something like 1.5 million a year. If this thing can generate with minimal upfront financial exposure, if I can generate 800,000, then plus going forward at a conservative, on a conservative model, this thing absolutely has my attention, because again, you know, if people have better ideas and better opportunities than this, I just haven't seen them today. So that's how I'm evaluating it. So, makes sense. I will pass this to Twilight. Good
[58:18] Twilight Fisher, Community Development Director: evening, Twilight Fisher, Community Development Director. I'll just, again, try to be brief. We've all tried to be brief because a lot, it's been covered already, but just to make a plug again for how this opens up long-term housing and commercial investment in the city, and I do believe that it will come. It's one of those, if you build it, will come, it will come. I think this roadway and the infrastructure being run back that far draws immediate attention to the area in a new way, and everyone's eyes have Been on it already, and the potential for development there and the endless opportunities to do not only residential but mixed use, trails, all sorts of development in that area is, you know, nothing's guaranteed in life, but I do think this feels to me to be a very, it's just a no-brainer for developers and people looking to come to Ellsworth or ones that are already here. So we do know that infrastructure does and can reduce barriers to building because water, sewer, and road access is already there. But I also just want to say we know that it cannot necessarily guarantee that homes will be built or are affordable, and we have to be practical. We're hoping for that. I do believe that will happen naturally, but it doesn't guarantee the investment. But we do know that it reduces barriers, it makes it a lot more attractive because it's already been run back there, and from and expansion can happen more easily. Some other tools that we can look at to connect infrastructure outside of the road that's going in or to expand it into the potential housing area are because as my goodness as chris mentioned the it is in a tiff district so we have credit enhancement agreements that can be opened up as soon as we get and hopefully it'll happen this month at the council meeting it will come before you in the packet to have our tiff task force or our tiff committee enacted with a policy in place and the initial members appointed and from that point we can begin to take credit enhancement agreements There are several developers who have reached out already, not all of them around this, the, you know, the courthouse per se, but just looking for opportunities and asking about credit enhancement agreement, so we know there's interest already, and some are looking at workforce housing, some are looking at affordable housing. There is recently passed, I think in July, bipartisan federal housing bill that offers increased greater flexibility for grant programs including CDBG and HOME, and that it has a lot of a good potential there so we wouldn't just be relying on TIF and credit enhancements agreement agreements but it also would be utilizing this federal housing bill and then we also have you know the just landowners and developers that would come to us like i said through the ceas and want to partner in this initiative to build out the area around it and the beauty of having a tiff committee is that the everything being presented to the tiff committee the tiff committee comes back to the Council, and if it doesn't make sense to do a CEA, then we don't do a CEA. It may not. There may be enough interest that we don't have to do that, but we have the potential. It is a tool that we can use as we look at connecting infrastructure even beyond the Maryland extension. And then this just very briefly is a review, again, of the two new TIF districts that were adopted in March, and they were accepted by the state, and July 1 was the date they were enacted at the state level, and we can capture this coming fiscal year up to a hundred percent of the new assessed value, and that would need to happen for the figures that Chris was talking about to be captured, and it's small the first year. We could have, couldn't have really done it this first year because they were formally approved July 1 when our new budget cycle kicked in, but they could be turned on 100% for this next fiscal year, and then I think I'm preaching to the choir at this point about how tax increment financing works, but we do know that the way that this capture would move forward in those two new TIF districts is it would, from the point on that it, that the council says we're going to use a hundred percent of that assessed value, or whatever percentage you decide to capture, the baseline is frozen of when the tiff started and there was a look back to there was a it went back to 2004 so those it was even smaller at that point where it was frozen and then we capture the new value from that point on for up to 30 years and then we reinvest it in the allowable uses in the development plan and meryl lane was included in the central corridor development plan as one of the projected investments for the that area and then we did set up both tiff districts that any uncaptured any of the value that's that's sheltered if it's not used it automatically goes back to the general fund i don't again you saw the projections it would it would be used but it could go back to the general fund if it was unused in any given year and we do know again that why this matters is it the state school subsidy goes down the state revenue sharing goes down an Ellsworth share of County tax goes up if we do not enact the tip so without the TIF that's what happens and approximately 64 cents of every New tax dollar is lost to these shifts if we don't utilize the TIF. So again, just to kind of recap some of the tools that we are looking at to recover cover the city's road investment would be again the central corridor tip the Maryland extensions already written into the development plan. So we can move on that as if the council approves up to 100% capture. We can move on that right away in the next fiscal year. And then again based on Larry's 40 parcel build out and the potential or 15 years of The assessed value capture it was about eight hundred thousand dollars which is really staggering. And that's just for 40 and you could put more way more than 40 parcels but that's being very conservative over 40 years 15 years. And then i mentioned already the build out increment and that would be 800 000 a year from that. And if we looked at an impact fee program people do it all the time for things like this right. It's just pushing it back on the developer a little bit more to you know to Pay to pay into that access to wastewater water roads and traffic control and other qualifying infrastructure. So the downside of that is it might discourage growth if that's enacted. So we want to encourage it this might you know give some developers pause but it's certainly a tool that we could consider. And then just very briefly the bigger picture is that we know that infrastructure like this allows us to consider even larger connections bigger picture down the road but how do we continue to Connect high street and the commercial corridor to the rest of the city. So we've looked through the village partnership initiative at connections to bridge hill the historic downtown in the marina and through the thriving communities program we looked at other improvements on high street. So just to wrap up there are three approaches to the next phase they could be combined or phased but i think each one will require different levels of staff involvement and time commitment but the first one Would just be to focus on the existing systems we finish the road we maintain the assets we improve operations and private development proceeds under the city ordinances we kind of just let it happen organically or as it happens. We could look at some targeted housing partnerships and work very specifically with owners and developers using the tools that we mentioned. And then also looking at a broader set of connections and the bigger picture like i mentioned looking at high street historic Downtown Bridge Hill and in a, in a larger vision way, making sure that we're building out around this Maryland extension, but being very thoughtful about how we're also impacting the rest of the build out in the town, that I'll just pass it back to Sarah to wrap up.
[1:07:00] Councilor: Okay, so I'm going to
[1:07:03] Staff (Finance/Project): wrap up tonight by walking through the procurement process for the Maryland extension and the options that staff evaluated and ultimately our recommendation for moving forward. There's been a lot of discussion about the cost of this project and the approach to construction, so I want to spend a few minutes explaining how we got here and why we took additional time amending the procurement and why staff believes that the recommendation before you tonight is most cost effective and the most manageable one for the city. Okay, so at the end of all this, the decision that's before council tonight is pretty straightforward. It's whether to award the construction contract to complete the Maryland extension. So the work of our public works team has already completed the construction road and the access to the courthouse, which has provided a great value to the city. This next phase of the contract takes that work to the next level and builds the permanent public road. The scope of this contract includes the connection to the High Street corridor, pedestrian accommodations, drainage and lighting, water and sewer infrastructure, electrical and communications, and then the traffic control measures that are required to build this road while maintaining access to the courthouse construction site. And I just wanna make an important distinction. There's been a lot of talk tonight about the traffic movement permit and how that is going to be incorporated into this project, and we are not asking for any approval of that portion of the contract tonight. That is completely separate, that is still in design, that will come back to the council with either a contract change order to this existing contract or to request approval to issue a new contract to a different contractor. We'll have to wait and see how that all plays out in the design phase. So I just wanted to reiterate that, and also reiterate that any of that work is going to be reimbursed through the state, so that's, that's not additional cost to the taxpayers of the city of Ellsworth. Another distinction is that we are going to be coming forward on October 19th, as I mentioned, to issue the, or to request approval of a contract modification for Andrew McCullough's work to provide some engineering oversight and inspection services for the road development as it's constructed, so I want to spend a little time here on the timeline because the procurement process is really important. So after this body approved the bond, we issued an RFP through our Open Gov procurement software that we issue all of our RFPs through. We had a pre proposal site meeting on August 17th, and we received four proposals on September 3rd. Staff evaluated those proposals and looked closely at the scope and pricing, including whether there was opportunities for the City to improve or, excuse me, to provide materials or perform portions of the work ourselves to reduce the overall contract price. We also wanted to preserve the competition and give proposers the opportunity to sharpen in their proposals and their pricing. Through that review, we identified several areas worth revisiting, including city furnishing materials, selected work by city crews, mobilization, scheduling, and contractor markups. And based on that, staff recommended to the council at the September 21st meeting to table the award of the contract to allow us time to provide the contractors opportunity to provide lowest in best or best value, best price. So on September 23rd, we met with three of the lowest proposers, and I just want to take a minute to explain that the fourth proposal was determined to be noncompetitive because of price and experience presented in the original proposal. So we moved forward with the three lowest best qualified proposers at that time to move into the next phase of the amended RFP process so on September 23rd we met with those three proposers we met all at the same time answered questions discussed how the process was going to move forward on September 24th we issued an amended RFP with a consistent revised scope in all three remaining firms received the same information and were given the same opportunity to admit to submit their best and final Pricing the goal of that additional step was straightforward. It was to maintain a fair and competitive process while identifying very reasonable opportunities for the city to save some funding. I also want to be very clear about the integrity of this process. All three of the contractors received the same information, the same revised scope, the same opportunity to submit amended proposals or to submit questions on the process. The proposals were not publicly opened. The individual pricing remained confidential during the entirety of this process. We also worked with the city attorney in close consultation as this process moved along to make sure that the integrity was preserved. So this wasn't simply a In negotiation with one contractor, we remained competitive amongst the lowest proposers and gave each of them an equal opportunity to provide their best and final price. We also, during this time, evaluated could we build this road ourselves? Mike kind of talked a little bit about this in his presentation, but I'm going to get a little bit more granular here, and the answer is that absolutely our crews could build this road. No question about that. They've already done a significant portion of the work, so we had no doubt that they were capable of building the road. Our public works team did a tremendous amount of work establishing the construction road, but there's significant there's a significant difference in that construction road and bringing that road to the final road, the permanent roadway, and the in the preliminary public works estimate identified about 558 000 in overtime rep representing 12 000 hours of approximately six highway employees plus approximately 1.55 million in materials. And i would also note that overtime number does not include any impacts to benefits, so that's just straight overtime funding. That puts the preliminary direct in-house costs above the $2.1 million mark before we add in the contracted work that would be required with electrical, blasting, and the final paving codes. So it isn't a question really whether the work can be done by our talented crew. It's just, is this the best use of the city resources? resources. 12,000 hours is a substantial commitment for our highway department, and these are the same employees that respond to emergency water main breaks, who maintain our roads, address drainage issues, do repair work, keep our roads plowed in the winter and support other paving operations. So this is a pretty substantial ask of them. There's also some practical considerations that we have not considered. Well, staffing has changed. The Parks and Rec Department was developed since the time of the initial discussions whether this could be done in-house. As Mike noted, that took two staff people away from the Highway Department. They're doing great work, but it does provide a deficit in the Highway Department. We also have not discussed any of this with the union. These are union employees, while the work is certainly under their allowable union con work to be done within the union contract but that's a substantial amount of overtime that we would have to be asking our employees to do so when we looked at cost staffing schedule operational risk staff believes that a contractor assuming responsibility for the overall construction is a better approach so that brings us to the recommendation the amended proposals were evaluated using the same scope which gave us a clean comparison among the contractors the basis for award was straightforward the lowest priced amended proposal that meets the required requirements of the RFP and is submitted by a contractor qualified and capable of completing the work RF Jordan submitted the lowest amended proposal at one point six three five forty five this just for context to this is under the one point 7.75 million bond allocation that Chris kind of went into detail about we believe this approach gives the city the best Balance we maintain competition among the three qualified contractors We gave the three contractors the same opportunity to sharpen their pricing We incorporated opportunities for the city to furnish materials in the city to work where those things save money and ultimately we received a competitive Price that is lower than both our bond allocation and our preliminary in-house estimates instruments. And just as importantly, the contractor assumes all responsibility for managing the schedule, delivering the project, rather than placing that responsibility and associated risk on the City. So if the Council approves that award tonight, there are still several steps before construction begins. We will be issuing a notice to proceed to RF Jordan. From there, the City will develop a coordinated schedule with RF Jordan, the judicial branch, and Bowman contractors, and the utilities. Again, October 19th, staff will bring forward the construction administration contract for Andrew McCullough. And one of the challenges is that, as I've mentioned, this remains a construction site. The courthouse is still under construction, and we have to also develop this road. So there's going to require a lot of coordination between the contractor that's developing that construction site and this work. So there will be a lot of coordination that needs to happen. And also, there is going to be some utility work that needs to happen on High Street, and that will all be night work to minimize any disruptions to the abutters or the traveling public. So, ultimately, the road will go through this development. We will come back on the traffic movement permit inspections, and our target is to have the road complete by October 1, 2027, with the caveat that we will wait final pavement because we obviously don't want to pave the road and then have construction vehicles driving over it. So whether permitting, depending on where we're at in the construction timeline, that will be the next steps after award. And then I think Charlie's gonna, you
[1:18:16] Charlie (City Manager): know, yeah, I think you have in the packets on the suggested motion, should we move forward. I've got a couple closing things, but I think I'll wait to the end. I have a little discussion with staff. Any questions, concerns, comments? But I would, I'd like to know, just a huge thing to Sarah on this RFP. I've worked with a lot of public servants on procurement in state government and now municipal government, and she is treasurer to the city of Ellsworth, and her expertise in negotiating skills and focus on best price and best value for the city over the long term. As much as I want to, this is the price where it's at. The council's having their open gov packets, a little more information. We're not releasing any of that price now to preserve. You never know. We could start contract negotiations. There could be issues, and we might need to talk to another bidder. So we're not talking about the other bids. Those bids will all be made public once we get to a final price, so you can see the true cost of the original bids versus what Sarah and team were able to negotiate. I would say that, you know, seven hundred fifty thousand dollars she brought in for municipal partnership initiative on the Bayside Road, her absolutely central role in working with myself in judiciary to get a four to eighteen thousand dollar contribution on that project, plus the savings here, you know, you're looking at well over a million dollars in one staff members insane amount of work, not just on that but all the other things we have tonight. I'd also just know I got some Brian and Amanda, you know, we have the talkers on this side, the doers on this side, you know, on every piece of this over the last almost two years in this project, their fingerprints and blood, sweat, maybe even some tears to make this happen for the city. Once we decided to move forward is included in this whole team, is really an honor to serve city government with you. So with that, the council, that's
[1:20:21] Chair Lyons: it, just a little project. Thank you, counselors. Questions for staff regarding this, the Maryland extension project?
[1:20:33] Councilor: So I'm wondering with the road that was put up on Beckwith Hill, we of course have a property owner that hasn't sold or hasn't been able or willing to lease out those that parcel of land there. Have we actually made, like, we had conversations with those two land owners, the Adams and Ward well, about there, that they are actually looking to sell off parcels of their land? Is that an interest of theirs? Yes, so the I'll
[1:21:13] Charlie (City Manager): I'll take the two-piece in general. As I mentioned before, too, I think that's kind of the next step. I actually have a meeting with the ward walls coming up to start outlining, as I mentioned before, too, I kind of, there is a laissez-faire approach we can take moving forward. I think it should also be under consideration, but, and I'm looking for, I kind of feel like we've outrun the authorization of two years plus on that rights of first refusal. I'm gonna start having some initial conversations that would obviously be brought back to council and how that could go, and outlining the details there. That's my inclination is we need to go a whole hog on housing and make good on these investments, and the quicker we do the faster we can accelerate this timeline and get people housing they can afford in there. It could be 55 plus communities, it could be workforce housing, affordable housing, could be a lot of second homes for people too. So and it could be a lot of Airbnbs, so it's really a policy decision I think for the next council as we align work plans to consider. I'd also note Beckwith Hill or Myrick Street, that kind of area. WS Development, Twyla and I have had a fair amount of conversations with them. You know, there are some promising things. I think it's a really interesting piece. The way they're structured for a sort of full mall build out that didn't happen over the Great Recession, I think in some ways it's a shame. And, you know, we've got some ideas there too. And, you know, I can't really be too public about that. I think the way they kind of structure, you know, they're looking for these bigger box stores and you know, that's coming back around and there might be some good movement there. But even with the development that's happened out there, like not including the pads that are story to plug in, that road is paid for itself like far over. You know, we're looking at four hundred thousand dollars in that Walmart a year. You're looking at three something on the Home Depot. I think in that same corridor the Hilton home two suites, that's like what twenty five million dollar project that just went forward, so you know, gosh, city of Ellsworth and there's a lot of doom and gloom but you know I think it's like two hundred forty million dollar increase in retail sales over the last period time. Not unfortunately that five point seven five percent goes to the state, but there's been a lot of valuation growth to eight hundred million dollars, going from one point one to one point eight, one point nine billion, that's after almost like anemic flat growth for a long period of time. But I've been really been thinking about this, you know, not all growth is good. That Hilton Home and Suites is paying 9% to the state on a lodging tax. A lot of the thousand potential Airbnbs going from 300 to a thousand, that's also 9% going to the state. The retail tax, the retail growth. We really need to encourage housing growth for base expansion. We're getting about $500,000 a year in base expansion right now. That's great. 50 homes. This Hilton Home and Suites, it does include the base, but it also changes the mix of property values. Use. And we're, you know, we were up over 600,000 on public safety alone last year. So that doesn't include the schools, which is a factor of that. So to Chris's point, like, you know, I'd love to see some of that revenue sharing come back to the cities and localities where the actual revenue is being generated. And that's one of the reasons the state is seeing the rain day coffers full, I don't think they're cutting programs or firing staff. I think places like Ellsworth have grown, you know, enormously in economic development, and it's not being monetized locally, it's being monetized by the state so there's that I also think the roads is kind of one of the it's the only thing really that cities do that can pay off its initial investment I think you had one on Commerce Park up here Twyla that the city did so this is a TIF district Commerce Park the city water sewer like the you know the investments and the buildings and the Businesses are there now has paid well over for that road so that's this is one of the only things unlike a lot of everything else we do that's just appreciation and the SIPP plan you know this is an investment in the future that can really help broaden the base if done right any
[1:25:11] Chair Lyons: Further questions for staff before we open the [Public commenter: Public hearing seeing] None this matter is a public hearing so I'm going to open the public hearing if anyone from the public would like to approach the DS us provide comments on this matter please do so now and please provide your name and city of residence and we ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less seeing none I will close the public hearing closed and counsel how would you like to proceed with the narrow land extension project we have a proposed motion from staff regarding moving to enter to a Con I'm not making the motion just the motion is are we going to contract with RF Jordan for the 1.634 and change million for the construction of Maryland extension but I have a question for you the requested motion
[1:26:20] Councilor: Up on the screen is slightly different than the one printed. Just the content is the same, the language as recommended by staff authorized that one seems to be meet more thorough than what we've got here. The number is the same though. No, it's okay. Yes, I'm
[1:26:43] Chair Lyons: happy to make the motion. Before we move, do we want to have any further discussion and time for discussion after the motion? Council, if you'd like to make a motion, Councilor Howland?
[1:26:59] Public commenter: I'd like to talk about this a little bit. The state of Maine come to Ellsworth, bought a piece of property, wanted to build a $55 million project in our city. And that was where it ended. The city would not have had to do anything for that project. There would have been no cost. There would have been no lineup of people here tonight. There would have been no work. None of this would have happened if the city didn't get involved. Here we are with three plus million dollars of debt that Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth has to pay because we stuck our nose into something we shouldn't have. And here we Here we are, one more time, rising the debt on Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth. It's a sad day for Ellsworth. That project could have gone where they bought the property. The property was for sale where they bought it. But here we are, reworking the plan that the state had. This property owner came to the city long before this happened and wanted to sell this property for $5 million. I stated at that time, that's for private development. Government shouldn't be in the real estate business. Now the state comes to do this project, and now all of a sudden Ellsworth is in the real estate business. And tonight, we're hearing the next step of this real estate business, buying more property, developing more property, the next steps. This whole thing is a sad day for the City of Ellsworth.
[1:29:36] Councilor: Councilor Wood. I just want to say that the people of Ellsworth asked us to do this and we listened for once here, which I am so excited to be a part of a council and city staff that are willing to step up and do hard things, make hard decisions, put in the extra time. The people of Ellsworth didn't want it on the Surry Road. It wasn't good on the Surry Road, and we stepped up, and I'm proud of that. I'm proud of you guys. I'm proud of us who voted for it. So any Further make the motion and then go to discussion, but I feel like we should have the motion here. I move to award the contract for the Merrill Lane extension to RF Jordan for a not-to-exceed amount of $1,633,545 as recommended by staff and authorize the city manager to execute the contract and related documents. Second.
[1:30:37] Chair Lyons: Second. Further discussion on the motion of Councillor Smith?
[1:30:44] Councilor: Change is happening in Ellsworth, and change is hard because first what we see is what we lose before we're able to see what we can gain. This is a spectacular example of change can either happen to you or with you, and with this two-year process and into the next two years, Ellsworth is choosing to be actively engaged in how the change is happening. It will happen with us, not to us. We could have had a mediocre location for the courthouse which would have upset a lot of people. It would have not led to additional growth and all the opportunities that we've heard. We would have just reacted and took what we could get, and we chose the other route. We chose to be proactive. We chose to do strategic planning. We chose to look at this as not just this single project, but as a beginning for something that may come. Future decisions still need to be made. But this is opening up opportunities in these parcels that have long been identified as having incredible potential to do everything that the comprehensive plan wishes for us, and this is an exciting moment. And Charlie, you've done a wonderful job of giving credit to your staff here, and I appreciate that. It is important. Leadership is teamwork at the beginning, but I do remember this was within a month or two of you coming in, and I remember the early conversations we had about trying to understand why this was an issue. And then I know for me, I shifted when there was that meeting at the courthouse and attending and listening to this really thoughtful, well-planned, multi-person presentation to the judiciary by the people of Ellsworth on why this was a bad fit. And they sold me. They convinced me. And since then, Charlie, you and the people on your team have done extraordinary work. And I want to thank you for that, all of you, and I want to recognize you for it. And I'll echo what Tavi said. This is really a proud moment for what's to come with the courthouse, where it makes sense and where organically commercial development is going to happen because of it. And also the potential that we can consider in future meetings and open up to broader conversations about what we can do with this piece of land that's in the urban core that is well-suited for development so that we can address housing, economic development, and transportation at once. This is an extraordinary moment. So thank you all for your work, whether you've been here since the beginning or for the last hour and a half. You know, the new guy got the least amount of time to talk, but you added a lot of value to the conversation, so all of you, the talkers and the doers, please know that we appreciate it. There's a parade for you. You can hear the sirens.
[1:33:54] Chair Lyons: Yeah, any further councillor comes to say? No councillor. And what I think, a lot of what I'd like to say has been said, but I'd look at the team here and just, when I started three years ago, you know, it was, you know, this was not the team, and it's incredible to see how far the city staff has come and its abilities, and just this project is really kind of a capstone on that. You know, this is a generational investment in our community. You know, the last courthouse was built almost 100 years ago. This is a 100-year investment. And considering that, and it's also, as someone that works in the court system, our community, our county, but especially in the city, we need a new courthouse so desperately to be able to provide such a fundamental, you know, part of our community in our society, it was the judicial system, so being able to support this investment is incredible. And but, and we've taken that and we've multiplied it, but now we're using it as an opportunity to open up an area for development that the city so needs, as Charlie said, when you came in, it was our comp plan, our housing plan, everything saying we need housing and everyone, and it's obvious and it's everywhere, and we're opening up this land for that development. Whether it's a laissez-faire approach or it's something where the city is involved, it's going to happen. As our finance director, conservative investments, this is going to pay for itself many times over in the long run. This is what cities do. This is what municipalities do. This is what growing municipalities do is they invest in the create opportunity and I thought it was really helpful that Charlie included the first city appropriation in 1869 that for roads it was five thousand three hundred dollars for roads and sidewalks of a total of twenty two thousand nine hundred fifty dollar budget that's 23% of the entire budget. What we're doing here is fails is in comparison to that obviously they're different communities in different times but this is what people in Ellsworth have been doing for 150 years. This is not a sad day for Ellsworth. This is an exciting day for Ellsworth. This is an exciting day for our community and I'm just really proud and thankful of the staff for everything you guys have done to get us here and I very much look forward to voting to not only that but we're having a local contractor do this work and that's really exciting too so this is a win and just thank you everyone for all the hard work you've done so with that I'd entertain a vote. All those in favor opposed abstain motion carries motion carries that's fine motion carries four to one and last matter on the agenda before
[1:37:13] Charlie (City Manager): unless anything else I just wanted a quick closing just to thank you obviously the people at this table the landowners and the partners you know in some ways when I first started reaching out about this I was like gosh I kind of hope they just say nope not interested you know but Allison, Pat Wardwell, Bob Merrill, and the whole Merrill family, Troy Adams, LLB, and KeyBank, they really have been great partners, the whole city team. But more than just this group, Ebony, the council, like how many public hearings and workshops and scheduling, like so much goes into all of this. The environmental engineering and legal firms, all local, incredible. I mean, they don't, especially Andrew McCullough Steve Salisbury you know they really did an incredible job on this project but they're like the builders of Ellsworth I mean I think when you look in the planning department code and you said those are the names here like they are you know they have engineered and built this city with private development and public development for a long time they're absolute treasures obviously Tim Pease and Allison King and Ron Fortier who really came in with Some electrical help, and I think he's a former city councillor, and like one of the longest serving volunteer firefighters. Just such great local people that came together, and of course the same judiciary and Senator Grahowski, Russ White, I know a little bit bearish I think from one of our reps on the passage and a little bullish on the other on the 750. We're going to keep after that. There's that other piece on it, maybe reimbursement. You know, I'm gonna keep at it, and just Chief Justice Stanfell. You know, really listened. I mean, just the idea that a judiciary would be like, yeah, we'll consider that, we've heard this community feedback, notice this council, and we want to make this the right place because it's a hundred year investment. You know, you don't get to be many places where governments and communities can work like that. In the whole judiciary team over there, they've just been, they are incredible public servants as well. You stole my thunder on the finalization, Chair Lyons. No worries, it. Is interesting to look back at that, and honestly the whole thing, Councillor Shea, I just love Ellsworth so much. I know this whole team loves Ellsworth so much. I know actually this whole community, people who supported this project, people who didn't, like that's the history of this book, feuds between, you know, police departments on either side of Ellsworth, and you know, bad decisions. Gosh, this one says 200 bucks for the fire department. That was not a probably good decision. We'd lost courthouse in. 1930, and then the entire downtown in 1930. Okay.
[1:39:57] Public commenter: Ellsworth had two fire departments at one time. Okay. And at Ellsworth Fire Department, Senator Hale. Senator Hale ticked off at the city because one of his buildings burned.
[1:40:10] Mike Harris, Public Works Director: Interesting. Then they would fight at who could get there first to try to put a fire up.
[1:40:17] Charlie (City Manager): Yeah, and I just- So the story's been told. It's such an honor, you know, tonight we're finishing this road, but the next decision is to determine what that road makes possible in Ellsworth. I think that's one of the joys of working in municipal government is to do this type of work which will last generations. And there's much more to be done and to scope it out on what binders to not move forward with, what binders to pick up. But we have such a great team.
[1:40:43] Councilor: So this one's a keeper. I appreciate the context and the documentation, whether it's the PDF or rented. This is a historic document, I think. Thank you so much. Love us a good binder. Yes, we do. Move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? So adjourned.