Brunswick Public Works Task Force Adopts Project Scope, Reviews Needs Assessment

[0:00] Task Force Chair: Welcome, everyone. It's Thursday, excuse me, Monday, September 23rd, and this is the third meeting of the Public Works Facility Task Force. All five task force members are present, as well as support staff, Jay Obstel and Ryan Rafe. And before we get into the agenda, two things. One is we need to truncate this meeting because a town council workshop got scheduled at 5:15, so three of the members need to go to that workshop. So we're mapping the second item, which is adjustments to the agenda. So I'd like to offer a few right up and get concurrence from the committee that they're okay. Number one is you'll truncate the item number three, the review of the draft, which states the needs assessment, to 40 minutes from 60. So that would have us getting out of here at 510. Second, a couple of administrative items. I'd like to bring up a couple of announcements and items to clarify. First, the committee web page has been set up. So there's now a committee web page dedicated to this task force. I don't know if there's anything further to say about that, Jay, [1:33] Task Force Member: but that's all said [1:37] Task Force Chair: there is a we will be scheduling a tour for the committee existing public works facility, so I'm hoping perhaps staff can get a doodle poll out in the next week or so to get that scheduled. I want to talk a little bit about public comment, so it's clear how we're going to handle public comment. We'll continue to have 10 minutes at the end of every meeting allocated for public comments. Obviously, they're going to have to be relatively brief, so we can end the meetings on time. We're also getting public comments written by email, which is fine and a good way to submit it. And I would ask the public and members of the task force, if you get public comment, to forward it to Jay, who can copy me, and Jay will make sure it goes to the whole committee and becomes part of the record. By part of the record, Jay, that gets attached to the minutes. Yeah, okay. And one other, everyone okay with that approach to public comment? One other administrative item, handouts such as the ones we have today, which was from the homework, I'm assuming those will get attached to the minutes as well and become part of the public record. So anything that's the business of this committee that gets conducted here, gets handed out, becomes part of the public record. So any questions on that? [Jay Obstel (staff): That'll work, Jay.] So next up on the agenda is reveal and approve the minutes of September 8th. I'm going to do this a little non-standard. Does anyone have any comments on them or adjustments? I have a couple, just so it's clear, and I can, I can pass these to staff. But one is under the reviewed task force procedures, guiding principles and expectations. Just a clarification, second sentence, designated support staff, Jay Astle as staff project manager, that would be the insertion, and Ryan Layton as secretary, in addition to their staff support duties. [Jay Obstel (staff): duties. And] then on other discussion items, I think we clarified that with the public comment discussion we just had a moment ago about how written comments can be submitted. So no changes there. Any questions on that? Any other adjustments? Hearing none, I'll take a motion to accept the minutes. The motions, motion by Councillor Taney, seconded by member Kervin, all those in favor, okay, all right, the next item up, number two, is on the project scope and next steps document. Recall we got this document at the last meeting that was presented to us, that was drafted by Councilman McDonald, to be chair of McDonald, in reviewing it and reviewing his circulation of it. He did intend it to be guiding, and that if there was any adjustments to be made that we should feel free to do that if we voted on it. So in front of you is a red line I inserted on the first page there, other guiding principles for the task force to recognize, which I basically went through at the last meeting. It's worded slightly differently, but it's the same [6:23] Jay Obstel (staff): same gist on those, and on page two there [6:35] Task Force Chair: was a question that got raised because there was a differential between our charge, which I think is item number three in the charge, very clearly the council charge that was adopted, wanted the addition of fleet maintenance services to be analyzed separately, that's an addition, and as was presented to the council, but not totally, I think, absorbed, there's already a transition to some fleet maintenance services right now today. So the comments we made and the red line kind of reflects that, maybe we treat the base as what's going on today over the next, that's in progress, I guess, right now. And maybe there's some further explanation, I guess, from staff on what is going on right now and how we, how we segregate the base from the additional fleet services. Yeah, I guess my [7:46] Task Force Member: question was when the original charge was drafted it was prior to july 6th there's like at the end of june like the first iteration went around and effective july one we had made a split of fleet management spun out of public works so we had already that was the inception point of going down that path so with the new fiscal year yeah exactly yeah coinciding with the fiscal year change so not including that as part of the baseline seems i guess inaccurate for kind of like what the new current baseline is and the charge makes it sound like there's a baseline and then there's a fleet management thing and I guess what I'm saying is I think that fleet management thing is really now part of the baseline there's some ramping up in fleet management that will happen over the next for certain over this year but over the next couple of years as we it's there's an evolution of it doesn't just happen like that We made a slight staffing change. We'll continue to make the behind-the-scenes financial changes, just kind of teasing out aspects of the public works budget and reorganizing it into fleet management. But I think it's important to capture that because that is our reality, our current reality as of today, which, again, just different than what the charge contemplated because we hadn't actually made that move yet Questions, so in the section of phase two where it says, how come the redlining, it says a baseline project requirements and scope summary that includes public works operations and expanded in-house fleet maintenance beyond what exists today, which I read as saying that expanded fleet maintenance beyond what exists today is part of the baseline project. But then in the next paragraph under base three, it says current fleet maintenance activity that exists today is part of the baseline project and any other potential services, including expansion of fleet maintenance services, should be considered separately. So it seems like one of those is saying that the baseline project goes beyond what exists today and the other one is saying that it does not go beyond what exists today [10:25] Task Force Chair: Yeah, I can clarify a little bit of that because I did the red line knowing that this was an issue. It was raised to me after the last meeting and then provided a copy you to Jay to comment on it. So the red line is not necessarily what we would adopt. We can adjust it a little bit, but my attempt on that was to say before Jay was given the staff was given this was that what exists in this fiscal year be considered the baseline for what's been added. Maybe it's not working correctly I think. I know something yeah but Jay are you [11:15] Task Force Member: Yeah does that make sense this year just in terms of I'm looking at you for fleet management it would be because yeah I'm just trying to think is it better to take to try to capture the next two or three years as that baseline knowing what we're what the short-term goal of that is right so we have the fleet management department head now there's a director the three mechanics will be in the garage and the garage foreman will be under that heading. In terms of work on vehicles, it'll be all the same. That isn't practically changing right now. We're not necessarily exponentially ramping up in any fundamental [12:20] Public Works/Fleet Staff: way. They started doing PD stuff. [12:23] Task Force Member: I mean, I guess they're operating still in the same space. So that is the learning factor. It isn't that suddenly they have six maintenance days and we're suddenly doing twice as much work because of the increased capacity in terms of space. Obviously, we're still working. [12:42] Public Works/Fleet Staff: I mean, certain baseline is what it is, because, I mean, we've been in touch with that. If we had vacant, mechanic positions currently that we could fill with a qualified person to be able to bring on, which would then, you know, that would in turn expand our options to do more right now. So, I mean, there's a lot of moving parts. [13:03] Task Force Chair: Space is the biggest problem. [13:06] Task Force Member: I guess things are always changing anyway, no matter what. So, I think it makes sense to just capture sure this fiscal year what we're doing what are you planning on doing this whether a position is [13:17] Task Force Chair: filled or not you have a position it's budgeted again well we're trying to fit things in as we go yeah so that to the extent those services can be considered whatever we're doing through the fiscal year is considering the baseline for staff for the baseline scenario and then the addition services additional services would be the analysis that the council wanted to see [13:41] Public Works/Fleet Staff: That makes sense, and just to clarify, the open mechanic position is not relevant to the fleet service change. It was already an open position, you know what it works, we've been trying to fill [13:55] Task Force Chair: it for years. Thank you. Okay, any other discussion on that? As a counselor team, are you okay with the wording though? It's homeless, or is there any wording changes you'd like to see? [14:15] Task Force Member: I still think that like if we're just looking at the red line that exists in the document, they agree to me as in conflict with each other, just because of the beyond what exists today in the in the outcome section. I think that if we're based on my what I just heard of what we you're talking about, I think that outcome section should probably say a baseline project requirements and scope summary that includes for public works operations and expanded in-house fleet maintenance that exists today or something. I think that beyond what exists today is what puts it in conflict with the next paragraph. You see what I'm saying? Under outcome, it says that the requirements and scope summary includes maintenance beyond what exists today. And then the next section, it says fleet maintenance activity that exists today is part of it. And any expansion of fleet services, i.e. what exists beyond today, should be considered separately. [15:27] Task Force Chair: Yeah, so the second one. [15:29] Task Force Member: The second one is more restrictive and the first one is more expansive. [15:35] Task Force Chair: To okay, well it's a it's a it's a it's a wording issue. Yeah, it'll get the intent, it's what's ever exists beyond in our fiscal year or 2027 in June is what is outside of the baseline, right [15:50] Task Force Member: Yeah, right, so I think we should just change beyond what exists today to okay that is today [15:55] Task Force Chair: or something like that. So it would have to a baseline project requirements and skill summary, you'd have to strike in that first sentence and or say a baseline project requirements and scope summary that includes core public works operations including fleet management services that exist today. Is that right? [16:34] Task Force Member: Yeah, that would handle it. Okay. [16:39] Task Force Chair: And I'm going to continue to put FY26-27 because they have plans they may not have implemented yet. Okay. All right. Does that work for people? Okay. Any further comments on this? Is this going to be their guiding document there? Anything? Okay. Okay. I'll take a motion to adopt the updated project scope and next steps. Motion. Motion from Councilor Anderson. Councilor Feeney. All those in favor? That one's in the record books. All right. We are on to the year of the March going 26th draft. Leads to needs assessment. Here's the report. I'll just say just as an introduction, very much homework, we probably won't get fully through the review of that today given the completed meeting, but I appreciate that we had 100 response rate from all the participants and a lot of great comments, and we can't possibly absorb all those comments at this meeting since many of you, or it's first time you're seeing that, it's an attempt at a summary, and that's what I'd like to try to drive towards is agreeing on that summary. We may or may not get to that. We probably won't get to that today because first up in this topic was for staff to provide an overview of the report and allow us a chance to address any questions. So okay, Ryan, how do you want to [18:35] Jay Obstel (staff): approach it all? [18:45] Task Force Member: Right, that's a great question. Maybe [18:50] Task Force Chair: look at genesis in the, in the, yeah, I mean in the versions and how from staff's point of view was assembled, right? So we engaged, right, [19:01] Task Force Member: years, three years ago, I think, to do a space and needs study. I think they encapsulated what the goal of that study was at the beginning of their report. And I think it's important to know that it's limited, right? It wasn't meant to be all things related to this project. It was specific. It's, you know, what are the existing services that public works provides in the space that they use, what does that look like at some point down the road, and what's an appropriate sizing of all the various needs as it relates to that. It wasn't how did, It wasn't expansive in a lot of different areas, and not saying that those aren't necessary pieces of information to acquire, just for you to realize that this document wasn't meant to do all of those things. so they did a first iteration of it and that was Redgear's consultants talking with public work staff I was included in some of it not all of it was an iterative process they provided a draft there was feedback from staff specifically in terms of breakdown of spaces and sizes of those spaces whether it be administrative spaces or whether it's garage space, vehicle equipment storage. There was back and forth. There was a meeting in the middle of some areas. It was a recognition that input from Public Works, let's go with a higher number based on whatever factors were involved in that particular space, to arrive at eventually a final version of it in terms of what those spaces look like. It ended up growing through that process because we were having concurrent conversations with Council as it related to overall project scope, then breaking down in phases. Is there was a side conversation about acquisition of Two Industry Road and what that looked like. Again, kind of went through more iterations than including other site alternatives for different than Industry Road. All of that kind of got packaged into the basic needs study, the original one. Ended up with a different problem earlier this year in March. So that I'd love to say it was a linear process. Parts of it were, and then it ended up migrating in different areas and trying to capture those, side conversations and incorporating it to the best of their ability into this, into this final document. So [22:30] Public Works/Fleet Staff: Yeah, I think that's, in a nutshell, kind of, I mean, the initial purpose of the study was to determine if, you know, state or government, basically, was the simple part of it was, it's not an Industry Road where Public Works are going to live, or there are other locations that would be better suited for the operation, and ones that get permitted, so on and so forth. So that was the initial impetus of it. It was always intended just to be squares on a paper, how they would fit, how you could make pieces of the puzzle work. And then there was a lot of time that was spent trying to figure out how to phase everything in. Because, I mean, it was initially like, this is roughly what it should be for a new Public Works facility. But then how do you work within your existing buildings in a fiscally responsible manner to get to the point where ultimately the building project was determined to go? And that's how we ended up with the phased approach that we took on the Industry Road. A lot of it was feedback from council and others. Again, the two Industry Road lines was a real big wrinkle that came up before anything was even finalized, and then we pivoted based on that possibility and the flexibility that would have provided, which is why kind of the building blocks all kind of went around on site. The biggest, the biggest point of that study though was like, are you staying or are you going? That was, that was the primary thing, and it was high level, not down into the weeds at all. Yeah, I would compare [24:11] Task Force Member: occurred with that, it was intentionally high-level. Back when the current version of the idea that we needed public works upgrades came about in 2020. At that time, I would say the prevailing theory was that Industry Road wasn't, the existing site was not big enough to contemplate a new public work facility it 's fairly tight there isn't a lot of room to expand there's a wetland on the back side that prevents you from using about five acres of this site so knowing that we are limited as well as group one on the backside of the property, neighbors on both sides. They just knew that there wasn't a ton of room there. And so we kind of engaged Wright Pierce to help us think through. And as Ryan said, it was just like box on a piece of paper to see just in terms of order of magnitude, where footage wise, where are we gonna be able to orient things on that site sites to the degree that we needed, and we ended up looking at other sites just to compare and contrast with what we had and to see whether those same kind of blocks could fit elsewhere and to figure out what our minimum requirements might be acreage-wise, and I think there was the fact that 2MinuteZero came up in the middle of this process, we got into the process not contemplating requiring other properties there that either were or were not available. Just this one ended up coming up at a time when we had some number of years of substantial conversation about the project, and that helps kind of inform us of, okay, well, if we save the Industry Road, maybe there is an opportunity to expand into that site if we could acquire it, then that would make, even though it's only 1.1 acres, it's an important acre in that in that vicinity. But yeah, as Ryan said, that the overarching thing was we went in broad scope, let's just see kind of where things might play out [26:52] Task Force Chair: Maybe I'll just offer, staff can correct me if I'm wrong, but just so all the members of the task force have the same information, so there was, there were two versions of this report. There was one from February 24, and there was this version. There are parts of each report that are identical, like the existing conditions, maybe they got a little more detailed with the existing conditions. And there was also in the first report, there was a high level economic analysis that's associated with staying, I think, at Industry Road. And that report was presented to the council in 2025, I think. And the councilor Anderson helped me out there if I'm missing something. And at that time, the feeling was Industry Road, as it exists, is too small. There was a belief and strong belief it might be too small and other sites were entered into the equation to look at and that happened over a number of months, yeah, I believe that [28:18] Public Works/Fleet Staff: part had happened like before I came on, I when I came on and got brought up to speed, it was we had reviewed all of these possible sites and others that aren't mentioned in many of our powerpoints and for many different reasons they weren't the, they weren't the appropriate sites and further review and possible design layouts showed that we would make doing [28:53] Task Force Chair: Yeah, and that happened in 2025, it was in the middle of 2025 when we presented the council with Jay, it was like we think we can figure it out and that prompted a request and the guys to tune up the needs assessment, there are some other things that some took issue with that were looked for so that result in the second one that you all reviewed for, today. And one of the big differences between the one before and this one, this one goes into much more detail on phasing, how it's been phased and Industry Road. And another standout to me is there's no, not good or bad, there's no economic analysis associated with it at all, right in the phasing. So that's the difference between these two reports and really quickly the timeline that came marching through, anything to add to that counselor Anderson, your partner or director Layton [30:09] Public Works/Fleet Staff: The timeline I had was that we just focused on nine Industry Road as of January 25, that was when the determination was right, Fierce West, because they provided us a task order at that [30:19] Task Force Chair: point for us to just focus off of that initiative, yeah, and it was around that time or maybe it was right before that the three or sites that were looked at were presented to the council [30:34] Task Force Member: I would say that the phasing was an important and long conversation. It we started out early on of contemplating this as a one big project with approximately $39-$40 million price tag. It was never $47 million, it was never $61 million, it was $39-$40 million. [31:03] Public Works/Fleet Staff: It was pretty less than this with a lot of contingencies. Yeah, right. I mean, this is bidding contingency. I mean, everything that the engineers would do based on [Task Force Member: the long] time frame between the estimate and when it would be [31:15] Task Force Member: constructed that's just it was just like an opinion of cost at a very high level and it was became pretty clear through conversations internally in the council that 40 million dollar project isn't going to fly not in the climate to contemplate something that large and as we were having these conversations they morphed into well how do we break up a project of that size and trying to make it into more palatable bite-sized chunks that could be actually feeded over some time horizon. And we ended up, I think we initially chopped it in half and then we chopped it in quarters and we started trying to figure out once Industry Road was the chosen location to remain at, it was, you know, how do we continue doing 100% of our public works operations on-site while also constructing these phases? So when we talk about the large project, it's important to remember that it's a large project, and that was how it was originally conceived, but where we were today or a month ago was it was whittled down to a very small phasing of what we were going to do, and anything that might have happened after, and I think, I don't remember whether it was in the comments that Jackie had collected from neighbors or somebody had said this and it's true it's that the likelihood of subsequent phases happening who knows right it's a different council whether it happens three years from now six years from now 15 years from now we were trying to protect against that what are the most critical things to do right now as part of phase one and achieve them and then continue to work on those subsequent phases and parts of the project down the line and that you know typical of a municipal project where leadership changes every single year third of council changes i hope they're not all the time so i just wanted to point that out that what started out as a 40 million dollar complete rebuild of and conceptualization of a public works facility, that was like four years ago, three years ago. That's not where we are right now. Even though you're still seeing the residual documents from all of those discussions, and so you see stuff on paper, that was to help kind of move us along in our process of figuring out what we could achieve with some type of financial scrutiny and strategy. [34:27] Public Works/Fleet Staff: The near term, well, I think talking about the budget, I think it's important to mention that the total phase one as we conceived it had been 12 million 377 thousand dollars of change our pride from where we started way back when. And again, today's point was that initial step that would get us over the hump for, you know, the next 15 or 20 years before we'd have to do anything substantial after that. But the numbers again, having heard some misquoted numbers, I just want to that what was presented to council back in December, and it was the phase, it was changed a little bit, but the total estimated project at that time was 12 million 377. Yeah, I only [35:12] Task Force Chair: wanted to make sure that for all of phase one, which was, okay, I just want to make sure that the committee members all were aware there were two reports. Is the second one on the website as well? I mean the first one. [35:30] Task Force Member: I don't believe the first one is there. Okay. [35:34] Task Force Chair: It's maybe neither here nor there. There's substantial things that are the same, and there's some notable differences. And the first one, I believe there's, there's, there was one site, other site that was kind of looked at a little bit in the first report, the corporate site, at least there's a drawing of it in there. [35:59] Public Works/Fleet Staff: Oh, that first one of our, one of our first presentations, the council or the finance [36:04] Task Force Member: committee included that alternative site as an option. Yeah, the other purpose site or not? No, it [36:09] Task Force Chair: it was, yeah, okay, I believe it was only a council movement that presentation was made showing the three other sites, the two corporate sites and 40 boards. Okay, so I guess anyone have any questions at this stage for or staff on these things, trying to not get too deep in the weeds but make sure everyone's grounded on what the goals that the most recent draft March 26 report were and what it's telling us. [36:50] Task Force Member: So everything that we just discussed we're going to redo, right? Not necessarily. [36:57] Task Force Chair: No, I mean, that would not be my intention, and I think others may feel differently, but I think there's aspects of that report that are, that might engage you all. I mean, we can get into the homework there, but I think just for example, the documentation on what the existing conditions are and what real space they have today, day. I think it was general agreement that was extremely thorough, for example. I think where I was intending to try to drive it is towards what information needs are lacking for us to move ahead, as opposed to redoing a whole report, especially as it may have bearing on alternative siting. [38:02] Task Force Member: Jay, I don't know what type of protections you can, and this is probably jumping way far ahead, but what you can do to prevent the second phase from not happening, but for example, I'm at a treatment plant that was designed in 91 as part as phase one, still waiting for phase two, so I would hate to see that happen. Yeah, I think I would say on staff's part that is a legitimate concern. It's why we went in trying to conceive of a single project for public works, because there are no guarantees. Next year, financial situation changes, council changes, staff changes. They're competing needs every year. It would not surprise me to see a new junior high school to be put on the radar. Matching up a municipal need like this, of this size, and let's just say it's competing against a school of a similar price tag, maybe more, I'm going to tell you who's going to win. You're going to lose. Yeah, exactly. We're going to protect against that. At the same time, it was pretty clear that a $40 million project right out of the gate just, there wasn't enough support for it. And so, that's exactly right. It's like, well, if we can build something, if there are things that we can do, what are the most important things that we can do? And can we get authorization to do that soon, short term? And then take our chances with the next most important thing, then the next most important. And so that's how we broke it up, not only in terms of what are the priorities for Public Works and the other related departments, but also from a financial perspective, what's the size of this chunk? What's the size of that chunk in terms of financial costs? And are those palatable numbers every five years or something like that? I don't even know what the statute was, but your point is taken, and we shared it. [40:28] Public Works/Fleet Staff: Well, I mean, now that you said it, Phase 1A, if nothing did happen, you know, based on the same timeframe you're dealing with, then we'd still have the existing buildings that we've been functioning out of that would continue to build these auxiliary buildings to basically carry on until the act was there. Before they fell down. Yeah. Right. [40:51] Task Force Chair: If I could offer a perspective, because I think those perspectives are good and solid, but for me personally, I fully am on board with the phasing of a project. I think my intent would be to understand what's the master plan looking out, and do we have the site to fit it, and then go about the phasing. So I understand what you're saying, Chris. I've seen that happen before where plans get laid out and then they never get built, but part of the intent of this was to make sure that we could service whatever that design need is, 50 year need, 35 year need on that property, which we had fairly strong signals that the property was tight to work on. So knowing what, trying to begin with the end in mind and then trying to break it up into phases to build. That's at least my personal thinking about it. [41:59] Task Force Member: I think I would add that one of the reasons why I'm very comfortable with this first parcel phase with the fuel island and the salt shed and putting them where we were putting them, there's a lot of reasons why we wanted them where we had them supposed to go, but one of the benefits was it didn't impact appreciably the rest of the site, which gave us the opportunity for that we did come back and we're successful in getting another phase, we hadn't painted ourselves into a corner because it took a short-term win of sticking this new thing here and there and then we filed out the site for future development, but we're very cognizant of that, of just trying to be, to keep as much flexibility as possible with the existing sites while still doing incremental but substantial improvements, i.e. the fuel island and the solution [42:58] Public Works/Fleet Staff: rather than the acquisition of the industry road, you know, all the proposed phase when they work, it was on big Atlanta that was on right [43:06] Task Force Chair: I don't know, okay, so with that you have a question. Well, for a question [43:15] Task Force Member: Futurely, we're asking questions about the assessment you said at a high level, and you clarify exactly how high of a level we need to be thinking here, because there are, there's plenty of like little detailed questions which I obviously is not in scope right now. But I think one thing that came up for a lot of people, including members of the public, was the idea of the expectation that staff will grow to 50, which is obviously a lot more than where we're at right now, and there wasn't any exclamation of what that time frame was for that estimate, which, you know, given that we're talking about a project or a, you know, a site and buildings that would be in operation for 35, 50, who knows how long, are we saying in the next 35 years the staff might grow to 50? Are we saying in the next 50 years the staff will grow to 50? Like, where is that number kind of coming from, and when would we be expecting that? Yeah. [44:26] Task Force Chair: Yeah, so my intent, and I'd be interested in task force feedback on this, my intent was to try to drive this segment to look at what are the information gaps that have a bearing on the kind of site that might be selected. One of those gaps, because if there are information needs that we need to develop what I am assuming would be the next phase, which is the site selection matrix, they may involve work. They may require some funding. So I'd like to try to, in this chapter that we're working through right now, work towards committee agreement, staff input on what the priority information needs are, so staff can go about getting that information. So your point around that exact issue, well, how many staff are we going to have, well, what's the design year we're designing for, I think if we go through people's individual comments, these things come out, and those are the things that in my experience you bracket and you bucket into a basis of design. We're designing for year X. We're assuming in year X we're going to have X many people employed. We're assuming we're going to have this many pieces of over-the-road equipment. We're assuming we're going to be doing whatever alternative fueling, you know, some things that give some design criteria, and out of that may flow then, what are the additional information needs they need? So that was kind of my thinking about how to go about that relatively systematically. Because I share the same concern when I look through it, is that there wasn't a direct path right to what the basis of design was on a couple aspects. Aspects, but this, yeah, does that answer your question? Or is that, yeah, I have one other thing. [46:51] Task Force Member: With that in mind that I wanted to highlight, which was the time distribution of service calls, because it was mentioned in relation to other sites, which I think, of course, makes perfect sense, that if you have to drive further, it takes longer to do that and get things done. But when you're talking about something like that, it's very helpful to know the magnitude of what you're actually talking about, and when during the day you are trying to get from one area to another in Brunswick makes a huge difference in terms of how long that additional distance actually takes you to travel. So knowing at least roughly kind of like what the sort of heat map would be over the course of a day, and I'm sure it's different in different seasons, so it's a little hard to get the data together. It's not going to be, you know, hit safe on a spreadsheet, but I think that information would be very helpful if we are looking at other sighting options. Yeah, and that [48:00] Task Force Chair: so maybe just summarize quickly here. Wouldn't I, went through everybody's homework, and I'd like, I'd like everyone to have a chance to get the floor and, you know, say what, highlight to the committee in public, you know, what stuck out to you in terms of these things, in terms of strengths and gaps in the information needs. But that one-page summary is an attempt to take everyone's feedback and get it on one page and see if there's a line or what's missing or what isn't articulated correctly. Correctly, it's at some point I want to, we want to work towards adopting what the priority information needs are that we want to get on, because that's probably going to be one of the critical path items to pass forth doing its work, because that's going to take time for staff or consultants to do that, and we have to hire consultants. Part of it is we have to get funding allocated, that's indicated in charge to do that. So maybe I'll pause there. Chris, did you have a question? I saw you [49:20] Jay Obstel (staff): starting to formulate something. No, just again, probably think, yeah. Jackie? No, yeah, okay, we [49:35] Task Force Member: I mean, we have two staff members here that they should know, and they do know what their needs are. [49:41] Public Works/Fleet Staff: I don't understand why we would have to hire a consultant. [49:47] Task Force Chair: Well, when we get to the point where they can see whether or not that some of you have done in-house or not, I don't know. Some of these things, I'm sure, some of you can do in-house. But if some do involve hiring a consultant, it's written right into our charge that we have to go back to the council to get money allocated to do that. Unless there's funding I don't know about, which is possible, so I think we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Chris. I don't know, maybe all this stuff can be done in-house. We haven't finalized the list yet, so sorry, that's been home. We need to see some details. [50:37] Jay Obstel (staff): That's where we got to get to. [50:39] Task Force Chair: I thought it'd be productive to have to ask each task force member to go around, just highlight things from your section of the homework. We've all published where everyone's comments are embedded there on what you think, some of the, whatever you want to highlight from those three categories. Again, you know, the thread to draw towards is, you know, stuff we got, the gaps, how those gaps get filled with information we don't currently have, what we feel we need. So I'm going to take them in the order they came in, and we won't have much time for this, but we'll start. So, family, thank you. [51:32] Public Works/Fleet Staff: I think, I mean, based on what I submitted, is really more, and I've done this every time, and talking to Jay is getting into the weeds instead of staying at the high level, [51:46] Task Force Chair: which is fine, we need both. So yeah, a [51:56] Public Works/Fleet Staff: lot of my takeover was like explaining the size of, there needs to be more explanation. I would like more explanation how we choose sizes. Like I understand bay sizes are based on our piece of equipment, you know, we upsized from, I think, 60 feet to 80 feet or something like that because of specific pieces of equipment, how many pieces of equipment we can actually process and or are we currently processing, and what's the expected growth. Similarly with employees, which Ramona already touched on, like how many do we actually have, how many are in the vicinity of the building at any given time, how many, what's the projected gross rate of growth for employees, Jackie. [53:04] Task Force Member: You want to sure. I have a hard time like just saying it's the same here, but one reflection I feel like after hearing all your explanation of the process is just that I think once it changed from like a let's do this all at once in a different site type of project that seems like a lot simpler design project, and then with it changing to a phase and like in this constrained space and all this, that made I think that I just, it's important to state that I'm reflecting like that ramped up the like design challenge hugely right there. I think that's like a big thing that we're grappling with in this moment, but anyway I guess just like from that big picture standpoint I guess I'm wondering if like we're aiming for one thing I'm reflecting on is like it's a needs assessment, but like do we need actually like a strategic plan instead of just a need assessment of which the needs are like part of. I was doing a little like research on how other places do this work and the like association of public works or American Public Works Association seems to use that language. I wonder if we could like get some guidance from like these organizations that support public works departments in doing this type of like really hard planning, because I think what we have at hand is like a big a lot of constraints to meet all the in like the challenging space that we have and in a phased approach that's just really possible, okay. And then like I guess I just think that, like, a strategic plan could then also include, like, more thinking about how this works for our town at large and for our neighborhood. So, like, that community involvement piece, I hear that wasn't supposed to be in there, and that makes sense, but it should be because it's important how the whole, like, ecosystem of the area works. And then I think the big thing for me is just kind of what you guys have been talking about with identifying like specific pieces of evidence and information really will like substantiate the things that we're designing for. Yeah, I think that's all I have. Very good. Is, yeah, I mean, it can be short and sweet for me, but I mean, they generally support the report. I mean, it was still just a draft. It can be cleaned up a little bit, but generally support the report, support the location that the staff had decided on, Industry Road. The report is lacking a little bit of justification on offices, but I mean, I support employees having offices if they need them. They just need to maybe justify office space and conference room and just a little bit more justification. But overall, I mean, they support staff decision to stay at NGP Road and the report. So, and includes a little bit more financial numbers. Yeah. So I'm just focusing on initially the additional information that I think would be helpful. I already mentioned the distribution of service calls and the timeframe of back throws. I think as part of the time distribution and service calls, we're also going to have to have that big time distribution, but that's much easier information to get because it already in many cases available mainly the bath road but like the route one traffic information i believe is available through this that's some amount of detail i think at this point probably if you're in a chair to start trying to get traffic information because we don't necessarily know what traffic areas we would be looking at, but the time distribution of service calls would be pretty constant regardless of location, I would think, or you know, it'd be the same. I'm just doing one. I think that the report did a great job describing the site and the current buildings from everything I've seen being there, and it seemed like it collected a lot of information from public works employees, although it didn't really get into the details, like how many people were actually at the top, they just said that they had received money, but they have shops in place to find out what the needs would be in terms of like additional space they had to add in. I also noted that like the number of other places in Maine, Houston, South Portland, also Portland, although a while back, and I'm sure there are many other examples often grappling with the same issue and moving their public works facilities to less dense areas. I think Lewiston is planning on doing that in 2028, and it is going to be quite a bit further from their kind of downtown area. I would imagine that they're dealing with kind of the same things that the public works department is having to do from an operational standpoint, kind of working on stormwater systems and all of that. So they have a lot of the same drivers, the downsides of moving further out. But they also just, you know, once you get to a certain level of built environment, it's kind of hard to find a big site where you can put a large reverse facility. One solution that works for one municipality isn't necessarily going to be true for all, but a number of them do seem to keep ending up going that direction. For weaknesses of the report, I think that visible informing information piece here, there's like a lot of kind of, it's unclear to me how much additional kind of background data was there that didn't make it into the report, because the report was focusing on like the kind of outcome of the thought process that went in. So it makes it hard to kind of, you know, really know what information was on the table when those takeaways are being drawn out. The idea of how much future growth to expect is like kind of talked about a little bit, and that they kind of say, well, there will be some, but without knowing how much future growth they think that there will be, it's a little hard to know how prepared we would be to meet different levels of future growth that might happen. In many ways it kind of feels like it is responding to a set of like stated needs more than assessing what needs are, which I think is where some of the differing opinions on what we need out of this needs assessment like part, because you know the title needs assessment to me sounds like it is assessing what the needs are, less than kind of like just showing how they handle something based on the needs that have been. Data just doesn't seem to kind of basket up with the data that I would personally love to see to build up understanding that it is [Jay Obstel (staff): not like methods] area as much as up to the task of what might be needed, like is this taking into account the amount of growth that we would be seeing if funds would continue to grow the way it has for the past five years? I don't know, because it doesn't really say. Yeah, I'm [1:01:28] Task Force Chair: Going to really quickly summarize one, and I'm going to go to the gaps and additional information needs. For me, the biggest thing is in embarking on this kind of project, typically it's an apple and an orange, but I'll just say like a wastewater project. You first engage the experts to do what's the basis of the design you're trying to achieve. What limits what design year, what, are you trying to achieve, so that you lock that down, because that then determines your scope. And I posed it in the gaps as a, as a number of questions, just example questions, like what is the future design year, how did we arrive at 50 employees, how do we arrive at the bay sizes we did, all these things I'm sure can be answered, you know, but how did we get to this place, because in that report, it basically goes right from, right from in Section 2.1 to a table that says here's what we need. And it didn't give us kind of the basis for why we need those things. An example I would give, which I know Jay has heard before, it's in the weeds quickly, but I'll jump out of the weeds. But I'm just trying to understand the basis for how we run from two, what I assume are functional, maybe not very functional maintenance days today, at 4,000 square feet to meeting six at 15,000 square feet. So it's almost like vehicle to space. Space, so just help me draw the path to how we got there, and it's, there may be some really good explanations that come out in the basis of design, but how did we get to that point. And for me, what, where I go is it may be a 40 million dollar facility down the road, who knows, but it's not, I try to begin, like to think about projects like this to begin with the end in mind. You've got your basis of design, you lock that down, you can develop your scope, and from that, you can start doing plummeting, and sure, what we may need for design year 2050 may not be eight maintenance bays or ten, but we may need only four of them, or five or six, maybe six, and we'll design the site so we can add those up, so incrementally over time. What's the master plan to suffice it to serve our needs? So that's kind of what I've been grappling with through this process, and it very well may be that 85 of the information is from staff's hands, but I haven't seen that in a typical engineering report. That's what you'd see is that what are the design criteria designing to? We're going to have to we're We're going to have to end there. That doesn't give much chance for EMA with each other or with staff. But we'll pick this up at the next meeting. I would say the homework for the next meeting on this topic is everyone now has this. It's been emailed to all of you. And go through it. And what's [Jay Obstel (staff): you know] what are we trying to hone in on is the information needs to establish that basis and also there's some gaps that haven't been discussed at all in several participants here on the other one, not to make it the top one at all, but one gap was around over a design year of 30 years out or 50 years out of alternative fuels are we planning for that things like that and there are other gaps like that jump up high all of it to try to get us to one of that we know what we're looking for we'll get the information back and how it threads into this exciting period [1:05:55] Jay Obstel (staff): that makes sense okay [1:06:05] Task Force Chair: all right we're going to have to quickly jump into public comment it and so we have anyone online we do we have two online but we have three in the room so we're going to try to we're going to have to limit people to two minutes each here so this would come state your name and where you're from my name is Paul we've come up from Boneswood. [1:06:35] Public Works/Fleet Staff: The project itself, I'd like to speak about the project and I'd like to speak about the composition of the task force as well. The project is a solution looking for a problem. No facts or evidence has been supplied for the basis for this project. No evidence at all. Right here, themselves, was looking for a scaled-down project at the beginning of this study, the March 2026 study. They wanted a scaled down study, but they perpetuated somehow at some point to somebody who convinced them to keep the expanded version and to take the senior gardens area as well. One of the premises, one of the most important premises of the location of the salt shed the fuel island is that there is a situation of traffic conflict down not an industry road no data no information none that situation exists now No. We can't be naive. We can't be complacent. And we have to have a healthy skepticism. Now, the composition of the task force, so I think that you're one foot forward, two steps backward. With Mr. Layton and Mr. Astle here, I think you're miring yourself back into the mindset that created the situation that propelled us here to begin with. We are here to change this proposed plan and site. We're not here to congratulate or to confirm the validity of this because it is invalid. It is irresponsible and unaffordable and unhealthy. So it's true. I'm going to have to ask you to wrap [1:09:08] Task Force Chair: up and just to note that the staff people are going to hear their stakeholders as part of the process as well and their designated support staff in this effort. So anyone else want to speak? Well I do have a question. Yes, can you give us your name? I'm Linda Nesbitt. I live at [1:09:28] Public Commenter (57 Water Street resident): 57 Water Street in Brunswick, Maine. The cemetery that's at the end of the road, because there's talk in that NEED study that they want to close off the public works area, and that's why the fuel station is proposed to be moved to where it is, so close to the houses. What's going to happen? Are you closing off access to that little cemetery that's up there? The memorial, I thought it was a cemetery. I thought it was a mass grave. [1:10:00] Public Works/Fleet Staff: I just, you know. [1:10:03] Task Force Chair: I don't think anything's supposed to change with that at all. [1:10:07] Public Commenter (57 Water Street resident): So people can still go up there and visit or, yeah. Even after they close off the, is that going to be closed? Is that proposed to be closed by a gate? So people can't drive up in there? [1:10:22] Task Force Member: It would be acceptable during the daytime. Okay. [1:10:24] Task Force Chair: All right, okay, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? No, you go to zoo. Sean Hogan has his hand. Mr. Hogan, identify yourself and where you're from. Good [1:10:42] Sean Hogan (Brunswick resident, public commenter): afternoon, Sean Hogan, Brunswick resident. Just a quick question, and this may be beyond your purview to answer it, but I didn't see anywhere where it was reported the result of the manager's negotiations with the company that was supposed to bury the gas tanks, and I'm just curious if maybe if it has been released somewhere or if you can give me the feedback or maybe the town manager can provide the public with the feedback tonight of what were the result of her negotiations and how much money, if in fact this town lost, did this town lose by not going through with that deal? I'm just curious to get an answer [1:11:22] Task Force Chair: on that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Do you have a quick answer? Yeah, Sean, I can answer that. [1:11:32] Task Force Member: We're still in negotiations with Samaritan Sons about that very thing, so nothing's been finalized yet. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. I don't know if you guys can hear me, but [1:11:45] Task Force Chair: But thank you for the answer. I appreciate that. I see Jody from Water Street. Can you state your first and last name? And I assume you're from Brunswick's Water Street. [1:12:02] Public Works/Fleet Staff: Yes, she is. Yeah, she's from Water Street. There you are. Can you hear me? [1:12:08] Public Commenter: Yes, we can. Oh, hooray. Wonderful. Thanks so much. It's been great to hear all the progress today. And I had some query about the bays for the police boats or some sort of boats that were intended to be housed indoors and whether or not that was a need or if that could be a place where the boats could be outdoors and wrapped like many others so that there was less expenditure for that particular request. [1:12:45] Task Force Chair: Thank you. All right, all right, no other comments. Take a motion to adjourn. Motion made by Dr. Anderson, seconded by Mr. Foreign. Thank you very much.