2026-10-13 - Planning Board

Good evening. This is the Tuesday, October 13th meeting of the Stamford Planning Board. Our first order of business this evening is the Planning Board minutes from our prior meeting, October 6th,

which was a capital budget presentation meeting. Do any of the members have questions about our amendments to the minutes? Okay. Seeing none, motioned from those who were present for the minutes.

First from Ravi. Second, second from Chet. All in favor. And it passes. So before we get into our capital budget presentations this evening, we do have a request for authorization. This licensed

operating agreement buy-in between the City of Stamford and Snack Isle LLC at 77 Buckham Drive. This is a proposed license and operating agreement with Snack Isle LLC for the management and operation

of concessions at Terry Connor's rink. I'll just stop reading it into the record there and invite who Barbara is presenting to go ahead and introduce yourself for the record. I would typically see one

of our one of the lawyers here, but I don't see them. Tony, do you know who might be representing this project? Let me see. Let me take a look. Snack Isle. Was Evan Murray maybe? I can give him a

call. I'm not sure if it's him. Chris De La Selva or? I'd have to make some phone calls. Okay. Then amend the agenda to move this later in the meeting. I'm just trying to figure out procedurally since

I think we'll just sort of between presentations whenever they're available. Or just put it at the end and they come in at the end. But are the members comfortable voting on this? I mean, I

personally, I already I'm quite okay to vote on it. Sorry, there was a little extra background noise here. Could you say that again, Ravi? I was saying I have read the proposal and I'm quite okay to

vote on this. I think it is pretty straightforward. So if other members are willing to vote, we can probably take a note instead of delaying. Are other members, they had a chance to review the

materials and are similarly comfortable or should we defer this in the agenda? I've had a chance to review the materials. Yeah, me as well. I'm fine moving forward. Okay, so then, I don't know if I

should read any additional context into the agenda first or if that's necessary. I think I'll just add this is a three-year agreement that automatically renews for one additional year. Each year after

the third year, SNCCI will pay the license, the city of license and use fee of $9,000 a year in year two, $10,000. Sorry, year one, $9,000. Year two, $9,000. Year three, $10,000 with 3% increases each

year thereafter. Up to a motion on this item. First from Ravi, do I have a second? Second. Second from Drew, all in favor? And it passes. All right, thank you Ravi for the suggestions, these

agreements, especially for relatively small amounts are pretty straightforward. All right, so next on the agenda, we have our capital budget presentations. First, office of administration, short-term

financing technology. Do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself for the record? Absolutely. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Yes. Okay. Members of the planning board, thank you for accommodating me.

My name is Prashant Pangarala. I'm the chief information officer for the city of Stanford and I will be presenting the short-term capital budget for the upcoming fiscal year this evening. I will share

my screen if it makes it easier. In one second. Unless Jennifer, you have a copy of one screen. I can share it. Hang on. Great. Thanks, Tony. Thank you. All right. So we are making a total capital

request of $1.432 million for the upcoming fiscal year that is comprised of nine items in order of importance or an order of priority. Network switch replacements for a total amount of $50,000. The

breakdown of this is each network switch. So there are 10 network switches and each one costs $5,000. We could potentially get a refurbished network switch which would maybe put us at $3,000 a pop,

but we are going with the conservative estimate here. And this amount will cover only the ninth and the 10th floors for this coming fiscal year. We do do this on a rolling basis. And this is the

amount of the estimate for upcoming fiscal year. Okay. I'm just going to keep going. If anyone has any questions, feel free to stop me. The next one is the UPS battery replacements in the data center.

So we have two data centers, one in the government center and one in the AITE. And we're asking for a total amount of $23,750. That's $20,000 for the batteries of the government center. And then

$25,000 at the AITE, which each one costs $150 a pop. That is done to ensure that the UPS batteries which lose life consistently, constantly are kept up to speed and up to scratch for maintaining our

critical services. The next one on the list is the government center Wi-Fi access point upgrades. And this is an amount of $54,000. The latest Wi-Fi access points have tri-band capabilities, which

means that we will get faster internet connectivity. And the breakdown of this is that we are expecting to install 45 access points, which each one costing $1,200 a pop, roughly, that gives us

$54,000. The next one again is a rolling item year over year computer replacements for a total amount of $205,000. And the breakdown is 100 test tops at $1,600 each and 30 laptops at roughly the same

amount, $1,500. And this might be slightly higher than past years because computer costs escalated over 30 percent of the last year owing to a combination of tariffs and other logistical challenges

and also parts shortages. So the next one is a citywide data warehouse project. And this one is something that we initiated last year or earlier this year, I should say. And this was as a result of

the mayor's request for having us provide up-to-date key performance indicators and also breaking down the data silos that exist in the city departments to consolidate all the data and to be able to

govern the data effectively or being able to provide better KPIs, like I said, and also to have better future looking decisions from a more budget-conscious standpoint, meaning that if we understand

where our spend is going in the bank for the buck, so to speak, which can be had by having those KPIs, the real-time KPIs, we should be able to make better and more efficient decisions from a forward

looking standpoint. The breakdown for this is that since it's the year one or year zero, the way you look at it, staffing costs are the biggest chunk of this piece, totaling up to $150,000 to

$175,000. And the fact of the matter is we are using Microsoft Azure or we are a Microsoft shop, which means that a lot of the infrastructure that we are using to build this data warehouse is

Microsoft. And we are using a combination of available licenses, which come with our G5 license, as well as our brand funds that Microsoft gives its clients with very few strings attached so that they

can see their technology by way of Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft One Lake technology being installed in a municipal setting. Okay. The next one is fiber replacement. So we are going from leased

fiber to city-owned fiber, and it's roughly $200,000, which the breakdown being $50,000 across four sites. And the reason we are doing this is moving to city-owned fiber gives us greater assurance of

reliability to timely support. And the migration will also say approximately 20% year over year on maintenance costs, on annual costs by not having to lease fiber and having their own fiber. So this

is a cosplay. Security cameras at the government center, and the amount for this is $100,000. The reason for this, the rationale is that going to the latest camera technology will provide greater

coverage and higher quality images. And also, this particular version of cameras come with advanced analytics, which will enable us to draw again KPIs, as I talked about before, in terms of attendance

and the questions that come from the residents, which will be able to be categorized over heat map, which is all good for KPIs. The eighth item on the agenda is SQL Enterprise. It's a multi-year

virtual databases on five hosts. This is an end of life play, meaning that the current systems have reached end of life from a support standpoint, which means that the vendor doesn't provide security

patches as frequently as they used to for other non-end of life systems. And also, in some cases, the vulnerabilities on these aging infrastructure, which could potentially put us at higher risk of

cyber threats and so on. The last item on the list is a facilities request. It's called IT department modernization, but really it's an upgrade of the ninth floor facilities. So the IT department in

the government center is broken down into two areas, one on each on either side of the elevator bank. The south side is the one that this request is for that has original carpeting that goes back to

the 1980s. And it is causing some health concerns for some of our employees who have, you know, asthma problems and so on and have trouble breathing. So this is a request based on health reasons. And

that is the last item on the list. I can take questions. Thank you very much. I'm actually wondering, to kind of complicate things too much, but Tony, for that last item, the IT department

modernization, should that actually be, does it make sense for that to be under short term capital? Tony, you're on mute. Can you hear me? Okay. We should probably move that to government center

renovations. Okay. That was great. Thanks, Tony. Okay. Any other questions? Ravi, I see your hand. Hey, Prasanth. Nice to see you again. So I'm just curious, your scope or the scope of this request,

is all the functions in the town or it is just only the building that we're talking about? Like, for example, the Land Use Bureau or the tax department, because you're talking about data warehouse

across the town. So your scope is going to be cutting across all the- Yeah, good question. So the answer is both, right? So you'll see some items are limited, Ravi, to the government center and our

secondary backup data center. So the question you're asking is, if I may kind of paraphrase it, you're asking what data are we looking at in terms of handling, what are the risks we're trying to

alleviate? Is it the government center employees risk only, or is it across the city of Stanford, correct? Yeah. So it's a combination. For the most part, it is limited to the government center and

any associated buildings that the government center has either like a backup relationship with, like for example, in the AITE, which you see in item number two, the UPS batteries switch replacements.

In some cases, it spans across the city, meaning connecting various sites that are owned by the city of Stanford by way of the fiber replacement, right? So fiber replacement goes across various

buildings like the PD, the fire department, our AITE backup data center. And another thing that is happening, which I didn't talk about, which might actually put some more light on the question you

asked, Ravi, is that we also have an ongoing initiative to expand Wi-Fi connectivity, free Wi-Fi connectivity across the city. In fact, I'm happy to report that in the last three months alone, we have

brought three city owned sites onto this free Wi-Fi connectivity as part of the MIRS digital equity divide vision initiative. So the availability of fiber to these sites helps because as you may or

may not know, if you want to have free Wi-Fi in a certain site, the backhaul has to be there to the head end, to the main data center. And the fiber enables us to do that. Oftentimes what happens is

we're at the mercy of our service providers, which is not a bad thing to have because we're not investing in digging up the roads or maintaining those fiber. But in some cases, it's good to have that

as a cost savings. So really the combination, it's a combination of both the government owned sites as well as some services that benefits residents and are not kind of limited to our sites. Yeah, so

the citywide data warehouse project that will touch every department in the town? Correct, that's the expectation. So we are taking a phased approach. In this current year, we are targeting five

departments, two of which have already gone through proof of concept, meaning that we have built the end-to-end infrastructure using our existing dollars from last year. We were able to bootstrap some

grant money. We were able to use some of our consultant dollars. And what that means is this year, we have five departments. So that's IT, HR, law, PD, and the health department. And those are

expected to happen without this money that we are requesting for this coming fiscal year. And the KPIs are already out there, meaning that any resident can view the KPIs at this point. If, for

example, a potential resident of Stanford who's looking to move to Stanford is looking for his house hunter. And they want to see what are the safest areas in Stanford where their children can walk

safely without the risk of accidents. So they can look at the traffic fatalities, the speeding tickets in areas, and they can map that visually and be able to make a decision based on the more

informed and real-time data. So this has a very real impact on how our residents interact with us and how they use our services to make better life decisions. So maybe if you could just share a link

or something later on. Absolutely. No, I just want one caution. I mean, these... Looks like Ravi froze. No, no, I'm okay. I can hear it. I can see it. Okay, so I think these projects, Prashant, you

know, require some ongoing financial support because otherwise you create this in the next year or the year, your tour is, it just dies. So you have enough funding to keep this live and ongoing and

not just created and then you struggle with how to maintain it. No, we'll find out. We do have the will to continue on this as we have our operating dollars in some cases, which we are using full

disclosure. We use some of our consulting dollars this past year, Ravi, to kind of hire the services or engage the services of a data architect who really found creative ways for us to build this. And

I keep using the word bootstrap because that's really what it is. I come from the private sector and the way that it happens usually in that realm is the companies invest in expensive data warehouses

such as Snowflake, which come at a hefty price tag. Obviously, I don't have that luxury here, but I do have that mandate from the mayor to build real-time views that the residents and businesses and

employees alike can use. So we are finding creative ways. It will certainly help if the planning board supports us in this initiative. I'm happy to share the link. Actually, if you can, if you allow

me a couple of minutes here, I'll even share the link right now. But really, it's up to us to kind of see how we can leverage, like I said, grant funds from Microsoft. So vendor financing is a big

part of this. We do plan to use some of our existing license freebies, so to speak. For example, Power BI, which is the software that is used to build those dashboards, which I'm about to show you is,

you know, that comes free with Microsoft up to a certain point. So you're going to take a cautious approach there. But if you want to scale up, obviously you need the support from the board. Thank

you. Thank you. Yeah. If I might just while others have any questions, if you, you know, feel free to ask them. And if I can just steal control from you, Tony, for a second, I want to show the board

what we have here by way of dashboards. All right. I promise I won't take too much time here. I know kind of drifting from the script here. And I see a lot of people be after me. So I just want to

show a couple dashboards here. So this is crash trends by neighborhood. This is what I was talking about earlier. Click on this. You'll see that this is part and parcel of our Stanford Vision Zero

initiative, where the mayor has promised zero traffic fatalities by the year 2022. And we are at one this year. So as actually last year, so so yeah, so we, you know, these I have drilled on

capabilities, they'll tell you what, you know, what caused the crash, when did the crashes happen, you know, is a commute morning, commute time and so on and so forth. What are the type of crashes

that, you know, side swipe and so on. And of course, also a visual representation of where these crashes happen. And so my goal, my vision is to have dashboards across all the departments. For

example, if you have permitting and licensing, right, you want to see it as a resident, hey, if I'm renovating my basement, how long can I expect a permit to take on an average, right? And if they go

here, they have the latest stats here, they can make a more informed decision as to when they want to do the basement renovation. So it's really has a real time impact on the quality applied to our

residents. I'll stop sharing. But if anyone has any other questions, I'm happy to take this as well. The only questions I have one. So currently there is a balance on the account, I presume that you

expect for that to be spent down by the end of the fiscal year. Correct. We do expect to have year on track. I track that that's spent pretty closely. I have a real time dashboard. As you can see, you

can see a pattern here. I like to keep a pretty close eye and be expected to have a wash by the end of the fiscal year. Great. And I'm glad that last year, your allocation was funded in full. And then

some, I do wonder if for some reason, or what would be the impact if this were only partially funded? We will prioritize as we always do. And the health of my employees is my first and foremost

initiative for me, even though that listed last. And I'm hoping that that is fully funded. The whole budget, whole request is fully funded. But if it comes to that, we will have to make some decisions

as to can we take a calculated risk for say some of this infrastructure that I talked about before, the network switch. It is definitely before the scheduled end of life for these infrastructure, but

we take a low risk approach here. And if it comes to that, we might take a more slightly higher elevated risk, but still below our enterprise risk appetite. But that's kind of how I plan to manage the

reduced allocation of funds if it comes to that. Thank you. That makes sense. I remember, recall last year in your presentation, you had a whole kind of level of risk and urgency for the various

projects. I know that you're very mindful of prioritization. Again, as we noted, that last item, the renovations for the floor will actually be moved over to a different capital budget account for

government center renovations. So I think by virtue of that, they won't be competing against each other directly. And I'll leave you to work with Tony to determine description for that in particular,

the safety implications of delay of that. If there are no other questions from the board, thank you for your time. And we'll go ahead and go on to our next presentation. Thank you, everyone. Next, we

have Office of Public Safety, Health and Welfare. And I believe this was for just one item that was missing in our packet. Yes. We pushed that back. They're going to join us at the plan and meeting.

Okay. Just looking at the paper agenda. So sorry if I missed an amendment that came electronically. Next on our agenda is the Bartlett Arboretum. I'm going to go ahead and introduce yourself for the

record. I think I'm communicating with everyone correct. I'm Tracy K, CEO of the Bartlett Arboretum Association. And thank you for listening to me again this year. For those that are unfamiliar with

the Arboretum, I'd just like to note that while we are a non-city agency, Bartlett Arboretum Association manages and maintains 91 acres of city-owned property, and that the improvements made to the

property become assets of the city of Stanford, and not the Arboretum Association. I mention this because it impacts our ability to privately finance our capital improvements, particularly any pledges

we have outstanding on the money we are raising privately. The Arboretum is open free of charge from dawn to dusk, 365 days a year, and plays host to 110,000 visitors annually. In addition to its

regular public programs, school vacation programs, community festivals, concerts, and events, the Arboretum provides a number of program experiences for its community partners, including but not

limited to the Stanford Boys and Girls Club, Inspirica, Children's Learning Centers, Building One Community, various senior centers, and, up most, the Stanford Public Schools. Related to the schools,

we conduct plant lifecycle field trips for every second grade class in the Stanford Public Schools. We provide on-site programming and internship opportunities for students in West Hill AgriScience

program, and the Academy of Information Technology and Engineering. We deliver latchkey prevention programming for the Tiger Academy at Toquan Magnet Elementary School, and we even maintain Arboretum

trails for the Stanford Public School cross-country team meets. Our capital requests provide facilities essential to support and enhance these programs. Tony, if you want to switch to the next slide.

We have three requests this year, the Arboretum's Capital Request for the Greenhouse Conservatory and the Arboretum's New Pavilion, while they are separate projects, have been dealt with because there

are certain infrastructure components such as stormwater management and septic that relate to each other. And the third project is the Maintenance Building Upgrades. Next slide, Tony. Don't want to

take the time tonight where maybe you've already had the time, but if you want to take a virtual tour of what this horticultural complex is going to look like, I encourage you to take a look at the

YouTube video link that I've put on here. But in the interest of time, let's switch to the next slide. We have made progress. While that proposed date of demolition is 11/18/25, I'm happy to report

that - and this was a nice thing from the community standpoint - VD Construction, knowing that we were moving forward with this project, wanted to help us and in kind provided the demolition services.

We kicked off with the mayor and city folks in late August and they completed the full demolition last Friday. We still have some things to tie up before we have review of the final permit for the

demolition of that facility. It accomplishes two things. It provides the site readiness for the new horticultural complex and plus it eliminates the liability and exposure the city and Arboretum had

because of this failing infrastructure. It had definitely had met its end of life as a greenhouse. Next slide, Tony. This is the first component of the horticultural complex. It's the Arboretum

greenhouse. The project has been valued and engineered a number of times and, however, it's not fully funded. It's estimated to be at about 3.5 million for the greenhouse itself and related site work

is 1.5 million. Strategically, it addresses a number of the City of Stanford comprehensive plan items. One thing I want to add in addition to our programming that we provide for the schools, we are

working with downtown special services district and others in the city to help propagate plant material for the city's greening efforts and that's one of the things that this horticultural complex

will provide and hopefully reduce annual costs for that greening activity. To date, we have collected a well, I'll just give you a history of it. They're tied into these two programs. The Arboretum

horticultural complex greenhouse and the pavilion are two state grants and the Arboretum greenhouse and the conservatory has a $500,000 Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development

grant come from their good to great program that is three and a half years into its grant period. It's the money that we put together there is for construction only so we have to start the project to

start retrieving some of those funds from construction. Last year we proposed 2.25 million. The planning recommended 1.5. The mayor recommended a million. The board of finance reduced us to $750,000

so we're obviously shy of the money needed to put this project out to bid. We are this year requesting 2.35 million as a department request to add it to that $500,000 good to great grant that we have.

That should give us the money to go out to bid comfortably. Tony, if you want to switch to the next slide, I can sort of combine this with, we can come back if there's questions on this, but the

pavilion itself, the same thing, it's a 2400 square foot pavilion to support the Arboretum's public program and I want to make a point that there was some discussion last year that this pavilion

wasn't going to receive funding because we didn't need a catering event facility and this is not a catering event facility. In fact, our septic system is designed, can't be designed large enough to

support a catering facility at that site. This is really to support the community events we provide and to back up for our Sunday concert series and other things that we want to carry out regardless

of whether it makes our programming weather cancel free, I guess, is the way I would put that. Last year, we requested $750,000. Planning provided us with a recommendation of $300,000. The mayor did

owe that, but unfortunately it was totally eliminated by the board of finance. So we made little headway on funds necessary to complete this project. Tony, if you want to take the next slide, I can

sort of encapsulate available funds to date. The city of Stanford has provided $2.15 million. The state has provided $675,000. We have made donations we have available to us of $814,000, but I will

note that we have raised much more than that because we have taken on the expense of the design fees, which to date have total over $400,000. We are looking at a trophy point estimate for the entire

project of $6.295,000. That was for October in 2025. If you increase for inflation, we are above that at this point. It would be about $6.5 million or more, and that's just for inflation. We've been

trying to track what the costs of construction materials are going relative to tariffs while we're sourcing a lot of the timber for this project in the states. The tariffs on the Canadian timber has

actually now trickled down to have an effect on timber prices here in the states. I guess I'd pause at this point, take any questions on the horticultural complex if there are. If not, I'll move on to

our third project, Tony. I'm sorry. If I may, I do have a question, Tracy. I'm looking at the capital budget request sheet for the pavilion. You make reference to it in the greenhouse, the state

component grant, the $175,000, but yet like the greenhouse's state grant, I do not see a line item on the capital budget request pertaining to the pavilion for its state grants. I'm wondering, should

that be added by way of clarification as to sources of funds or is there some other reason? It's a good point, Chet. Because this project has taken on a longer term than we anticipated. To just give

you some of the background, on that state grant, it was a grant that we applied for and received. However, when the Department of our DEEP saw that the city was the owner of the property, they

transferred that grant to the city. So those funds are available to the city and we've yet to figure, it's a good point as to where it will show up on this budget sheet itself and maybe Tony has a

recommendation, but this is the one that's rather time sensitive. The DEEP grant has been extended to June of 2029. At that point, the city has been managing this grant. We have a $125,000 cash match

for that that's sitting available as soon as we start construction costs. But the thing that made it even more difficult, Chet, is that when we initiated this project, the septic and storm, the

primary septic was related to the pavilion project, but in doing our value engineering, the bathrooms were moved over to the greenhouse complex. So there's a combination of some money in one program

and another and that's why we combined the two, but it's on two separate budget sheets. So my apologies for it being a little more confusing than it probably needs to be, but I've been taking guidance

from Tony on how to actually present this. And so if he has a suggestion, I'd be open to that. Sure, the $175,000 grant was approved a couple years ago. So it's already in the balance in this project,

Chet. So that's why it's been approved in fiscal year '22. I see. And so the funding source is time-specific. So because it was approved in that year, it's not appropriate for it to appear in the

overall project numbers. Yeah, so it wouldn't be part of Tracy's request this year 'cause it's already been requested and approved in a prior year. Okay. All right. I understand relative to this

year's request, but I think I'm inferring from what you just said, Tony, that in the overall accounting for the sources of funds for the overall project, it will continue to appear. Yes. Okay. All

right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I do think that it could be helpful to just add that to the notes that the $175,000 is already accounted for in the balance 'cause it had been

previously accepted and you said fiscal year '22, '23. And one other thing I might add, and I don't know if this is possible, but I've heard it's been done in other cases, is that because there's some

uncertainty about the pricing on where we are with estimates at this point, we're putting in a request being somewhat conservative, hoping to cover what we anticipate costs, but should there be a

point where bids would come back less than what we have asked for, we would only spend the city's money last in this process. But we're frustrated by the fact that each year we go out and get

estimates, we don't have enough money to put the project out to bid, and each year it skids to higher inflation, higher costs, and we don't want to lose the money that's been awarded us in grants. So

if there's a stipulation on expenditure of funds, we'd be more than happy to have the money there to cover it, because as I said, we don't have everything we do and funds we raise for this property

become assets of the city of Stanford. And our only assets are a 20-year-old pickup truck and a 10-year-old van. And I don't know how old our tractor is in the computer I'm speaking to you through,

but definitely no one's going to finance our loan request on that. So that's why we're asking for this money. And each year we try to make a legitimate ask, but obviously it keeps getting reduced or

eliminated totally. And so we'd like to move this project forward if at all possible. I just want to note, procedurally especially for our new board members, so this is an example of a project where

it has to be fully funded to go out to bid. And so the balance that's there, we can't spend it until this project is fully funded, as I understand it, which leaves it in an unfortunate limbo. So I

will say it could be helpful actually, and I know there are a lot of things you could add to the notes just to give the context of kind of the price escalation over time, kind of where it started and

where we are now. I think that could just be a tangible way of accounting for the literal cost of delay on this. And just so you know, the original was 4.1 million four years ago. So I think just

documenting that I think would be tremendously helpful. John, we tried, I mean we were trying to keep this on one page. I guess I could eliminate some of the things on the strategies because people

are probably familiar with that and we might be able to put that in. Yeah, I think that would be helpful. Ravi, I see your hand. Yeah, so I was thinking, you know, this is my third capital budget

meeting, third year, and this request has come every year. And as a resident of Stanford, I fear we may never see the completion of this because, as you said, every year we approve partial amounts and

then the project never gets off the ground and then inflation comes in and then this is like, we're not going to have a fully funded project. So would it make sense for you to consider either

combining or, you know, facing this out, like you do the greenhouse first with all the monies you have or do the pavilion first with all the monies you have? I mean, you're chasing two of this and

neither of them is getting done, which I think is very sad. So could you consider the third option here? It is a valid point, Ravi, and we've been considering that. And actually, we did some value

engineering to see if that could be done. One of the things that really needs to be done first is the storm water management and septic because that's a site improvement that needs to go through. And

then we were hoping to bid this out in a way that we could see, you know, cost out what the pavilion would be relative and what the greenhouse and conservatory would be so that we could then have the

contractor start in a phased approach. The only back, the only issue with that is because these two projects are so close together, we don't want to run into the situation where they are at West Hill

where while they have a fully equipped plant science building, they can't use it during construction because the contractors don't want the liability of people using the facility that's so close to

other construction because these two facilities are right on top of each other. That's the only challenge. But if I had to put a priority to it to support our plant science programs, it would be the

greenhouse and the conservatory would be our prime, but we have to get the bathrooms and storm water management systems in to do that. So long-winded answer to your question, yes, we've considered

phasing, but we want to try to get this out to bid to see what the entire package would cost and then make the phasing adjustments then. I think I'm sure you're doing the right thing, but when this

request goes through the chain for various approvals to the mayor's office and then to the board of finance, all this gets lost in the broader discussion. So in the previous chat for the greenhouse,

if you could say, for example, storm water drainage is the must do for 2028 and that costs some number, right? And at least there is some added intelligence to the other bodies when they make a

decision on how much to approve or not. Otherwise, it's a random number. I could pick 750, I could pick 300, I could pick whatever I want, but then it doesn't help for you to execute the project. So

maybe in the previous chat, at least where it's a bigger number, you may want to break it out and say, look, at least let us get the foundation done or let us at least get the storm water done. That

will cost 1.8 million. So whatever you do, at least give us 1.8. Don't, don't take it down to 900. That doesn't help us get out of stuff. Help the decision makers when they evaluate the request. And

the other thing we're concerned about is that while it's not the highest priority, the pavilion, that has the closest timeline because that state grant expires in June of 2029. And we've been given an

estimate of construction time of 18 to 24 months. Once we start construction of the horticultural complex, it includes a pavilion. So it's, we're racing against time. We're still collecting and doing

fundraising on our end, and I'll try to, as this goes through, provide updates as to where that is. As I said, feeding construction provided in-kind services for demolition, which reduced our costs

anywhere from 50 to $75,000 in the overall project. So we're continuing to try to find funds and whatever the city can help support us with that will get us closer to making this thing a reality.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. And we're including this, we added it last year, it was a priority three, but I just want to continue to show that we are trying to make some effort to evaluate

this building. We may have to take on that evaluation ourselves if funding falls short, but we're requesting, you'll see this building was, I think built when UConn was on the property. Only one of

the four garage bay doors is operational. You'll see in that second photo in the top middle, on the bird program we had last, two weeks ago on Saturday, a bird flew in that hole and came out the other

end of the building. That was a Donnie Woodpecker. The workshop itself, because it doesn't have an HVAC system, is only a three seasonal workshop. The roof itself is in a state of disrepair. We are

tarping it to prevent any further damage. So, Tony, if you want to go to the last page, we're looking at a request of $300,000 to do a $75,000 of which would be for a professional services engineering

study, and then a construction related cost of $225,000 to address any immediate things we can do to prevent further deterioration of the building should it be deemed that we can rebuild on that. And

we just wanted to try to make some advances on this. As I say, if money is not available, we might have to take it out as a private fundraiser ourselves. Actually, I'm just wondering on this one, if

you looked into a prefab garage style building and whether that might be cheaper. We are actually, we're looking at that. That's where I just wanted to get a determination on the structural soundness.

It looks pretty good from the interior. But there will be a, unless PD construction is available to do another demolition for free, there will be a demolition cost. So we're trying to, that's one of

the things we wanted to do is do an engineering study and get that advice as to whether or not the building can be salvaged or we should be looking for start from scratch. I should also say that we've

built into the horticultural complex since it is near this maintenance building, the infrastructure to support the stormwater management and the septic. While it won't have a bathroom, it will have a

slop sink and water resources, which it doesn't quite have now. Thank you. And for those doing math, when I said 91 acres, the city owns 91 acres. We have a request of two acres so that technically we

have, while it's not a cash asset because it's in conservation easements, we have two acres that are but the conifer garden here at the Arboretum. So I just want to be correct in my math of 91 plus

two. All right, there are no further questions. Thank you for your time. I also kind of note, for the record, I think this is a good example of the kind of project that would benefit from if we had

like a two-year capital cycle instead of having to do this annually. So the state has a two-year budget cycle. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next on our agenda, we have the Ferguson Library. Want

to introduce yourself for the record, do you see? Yep, she's rejoining in one second. Here she is. Alice, you can turn on your camera and unmute yourself as well. How about now? There we go. I can

hear you. I can see you. Okay, great. Good evening. I'm Alice Knapp. I'm the CEO of the Ferguson Library. You can go to the next slide, Tony. But yeah, I wanted to show off our staff. We have over

500,000 visitors every single year to all of our facilities. That doesn't count the online visitors. But what's important about the visitors who come is that they use the library and they use it

extensively. And there's a lot of wear and tear. And although the projects I'm talking about tonight doesn't reflect that wear and tear, I wanted to point out that we are doing a lot of stuff. In

particular, the Ferguson Library Foundation currently has underwritten the redoing of our children's room so that we're trying to fundraise so that we're only asking you for the necessary things. Next

slide. So my ask is big, and I know that. But we have been working very closely with the city's team, and I cannot thank them enough. Nancy Orangeby, Josh Nagel, Michael Sapeta, Annie Rabinowitz, they

have been helping us with the main library's HVAC project for, I feel like the last three years, but we're now in phase three of it and about to go into the next phase. And I'll get back to that when

I talk about the out years for a second. But why we've been basically doing the work at the main library, because that was the most critical problem. The Harry Bennett branch is HVAC system is in deep

trouble. We knew when we had the repair people come out to look at it this spring, that we would not be able to get air into the auditorium or the children's room. So we brought in supplemental air

before the hot weather. And then the very first hot day, the air conditioning system broke down. And it's not really replaceable. Or if it is replaceable, we throw in good money after bad because we

need to move away from the Freon system that is there. So my number one priority is to ask for HVAC equipment for the Harry Bennett branch. We have some money right now for the Harry Bennett

modernization that we're using to start the work and hopefully get air conditioning set up for next spring and summer. But we know this is going to be an expensive replacement. We're switching from a

Freon based system to a heat pump system. Then my second priority is continuing the design work for the Eastside branch. The closer the design is done, the closer we get to build it, but it also makes

it easier for me to fundraise supplemental funds for the branch. The third priority is the Harry Bennett branch modernization. We're really looking at the parking lot. And in this case, what I really

want to stress is ADA improvements and beyond ADA improvements, mobility improvements. We have strollers going through there, as well as people with walkers, with in wheelchairs. And right now, it's a

very rough parking lot that has been well loved. It's 26 years young at this point. And then my last request is the restoration for the main library building, the money that's currently in our capital

budget. This year, we'll be looking to upgrade and modernize the elevators. When we've gone out to do our estimates, it's going to take about everything that we had in the main library's request to do

that. So I hope had been that we'd be able to go on immediately to start to work on the historic preservation of the windows in the original 1911 building. And at this point, it doesn't look like we

can do that just by the estimate that we've seen. So we know that there's more work to be continued. Before I go to the next slide, I just wanted to point out in the out years for the number one

priority, HVAC equipment, we have included money. And that is because working on the main library's HVAC system, we had to value engineer out the water tower. And the whole point of that was to use

the water that we used to cool the building in the summer store and then use it to heat the building in the winter. That got value engineered out. So when we get done with all this work, we have to

deal with our heating system, our heating component of it. And by the time we're done with the Harry Bennett branch and we're done with the main library branch, the weed branch, which was last looked

at in 2005 and seems to be very healthy right now, thank goodness, will now be that many years older and probably getting closer to 23, 24 years. And so we know we need to look at that. Next slide.

This is just a quick one. We did do decarbonization reports for the main library and the Harry Bennett branch. And that is the basis for how we're going to do the design build for the Harry Bennett

branch. Although I don't think we're going to be able to do everything we wanted to do right away just because of the emergency of the situation. So initially we were thinking geothermal that might

become a future project or something that I fundraise for one or the other. Next slide. So before I go on to talk about short term capital, I just want to pause and say, do you have any questions? No

questions. All right. So we are asking for 75,000 for replacements of computers and IT technology. And if you're looking at the sheet, you're going to say, well, your current funding looks great. But

I want to go to the next slide and show you what we are doing this year. So last year we were in between IT managers and we brought in this wonderful new person who is really bringing us into the 21st

century. But the first thing and our first priority is to purchase and install self checkout equipment. Some of the self checkout machines are close to 15, 16 years old. And so we need to replace them

because that's how we are working on our staffing. We assume that 30 to 50 percent of the people coming into the library will check out their own materials. And since we put the self checks in the

children's room, that is true. It is closer to 40 percent at this point. And some days at the main library, the self checks are more than the physical person interaction checking out. So that is that

materials on order and will be installed within the next few weeks. We are also working on currently on our firewall conversion for the last several years. We have outsourced this to the Connecticut

Education Network. We several times have run into problems where they've had problems and they haven't been able to do timely repairs. And we feel strongly that it's time to bring this in-house so

that conversion will take place this fall. And from January to March we'll be working on really our security, replacing security cameras at all locations. And then we need to upgrade our door access

for all locations. So that is our work for this year. And by the time we're done, the balance that we have that looks so flush right now will no longer look flush. And I think that's the last slide.

Yes. So any questions? Questions. All right. I know it's a big ask, especially for the HVAC systems, but we are cooling and warming centers for the city. And so anything you can do, we truly

appreciate. And as always, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. I am wondering actually for the HVAC, if we can't fund the whole thing, is there a minimum amount that's required to be able to

move something forward? I would have to get back to you on that. What I worry about with the Harry Bennett branch is that it was bubble gum and paper clips that were keeping it together last winter.

And so I don't want to make the same mistake that I made last March saying, oh, yeah, we can do this. I really am very concerned about it. We even had somebody come from the city to take a look at it.

It's one of my biggest worries. And of course, the Harry Bennett branch, because the parking is good and because of its location, it is like as busy as a suburban library. This would be as if there

were no branch systems. It's not where I want to see it be closed for two or three months as we go in because of a delay in getting the money in place. Great. Thank you very much. Go ahead and move on

to our next presentation. Next, we have for Charter Oak Communities Post House. Do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself for the record, please? Sure. My name is Natalie Cord, Executive Director

of Charter Oak Communities. Thank you, Tony. You can go to the next slide. So first I want to say good evening and thank you for the opportunity to present tonight on the capital funding request.

Today I'm requesting some support for Critical Investment at Post House, one of Stanford's important affordable housing community. But before we go into the request, I just want to give a little bit

of background on Post House. So Post House is owned and managed by Charter Oak Communities. It's located right on the corner of Clinton and Truster Boulevard. You guys can usually see it right outside

the government center there. The property was constructed back in 2008, and it contains 61 bedroom apartments. We serve seniors, individuals with disabilities, and non-elderly adults who need

affordable housing options in Stanford. When we initially built the community, it was financed through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, which kind of reflects the partnership between the

public and private investment for affordable housing. Fifty of the units at Post House, they do receive a project-based voucher, and ten of those units are designated for public housing. Essentially,

that means they're still paying 30 percent of their income across the board. We're just getting a little higher subsidy for those that do receive the project-based voucher versus those in public

housing. Post House is a place where we also provide supportive services for individuals to maintain independence and equality of life. We employ family centers to run our Resident Service Coordinator

Program over there at Post House. Tony, you can go to the next slide. We're requesting $50,000 to replace five aging heat pumps systems that serve the common areas throughout the property. These

systems have reached the end of its useful life, and we're experiencing more maintenance needs and concerns for these systems. We have replaced two of them ourselves, but in addition to that, we also

need to replace the ones in the units. We're trying to allocate our resources accordingly so we can do the units as well, just because those are where the residents live. They would need that vital

resource in their units as well as the common areas. We continue to make these repairs, which we do find it's less cost-effective going forward. The common spaces that are served are usually areas

that a lot of the residents gather for programs, how they access their services, and actually they have a network with their neighbors as well, and that's where all the common spaces are used for.

Tony, you can go to the next slide. So why is this investment and why does this matter? This project helps preserve an important affordable housing asset serving Stanford residents, which are faced

with the greatest housing needs in Stanford. We want to make sure that, one, the common areas are comfortable and functional for residents, and even though they do have the ability, as long as the

ones in their apartments work, usually when we talked about cooling centers and things of that nature, they do come down to common spaces on those really hot days in the summer. So replacing these

services, this system is kind of more of a proactive investment, which hopefully will prevent any emergency repairs or disruptions in the future. The energy efficiency of the equipment will help also

reduce operating costs and allowing us to provide some of those services directly to our residents with property maintenance. So the idea is to really extend, once we get the replacement, extend the

useful life of these systems throughout the building. So in closing, I just want to say thank you for listening today, and hopefully you guys can see the importance of investing in this. As though it

sounds minor, it's 50,000. It's a big, big ask, I know, for the city of Stanford, just because they have other large projects going on as well. I don't know if you guys have any questions. No

questions. It seems like a very straightforward project. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Next on our agenda, Stanford Center for the Arts. You could introduce yourself

for the record, please. Hi, my name is Walter Lameca, and I'm representing Stanford Center for the Arts. We go as Palace Theater. I am director of theater operations here. This is my first time

actually getting involved in capital project requests. I want to thank you, City of Stanford, for giving us an opportunity to submit these couple of requests. As you all know, Palace Theater has been

the longest-running art presenter in Fairfield County, and we have a lot of different programs. We are a non-for-profit. We are dedicated to serve a regional premier arts center, providing existing

entertainment, which enhances and ridges the cultural, educational, economic, and social life through our community. So we did submit a couple of capital project requests. I'm not sure if you -- can

you switch that to -- yes. So the first one is a document from history repointing and waterproofing of south and west walls, including repairs, fire escape, and interior walls, and exit doors. So this

project is -- the second project -- I'm going to keep it very short and sweet. The second project is to investigate and evaluate the condition of the plumbing-based system, which is -- some of the

pipings go back to the 1900s. So infrastructure, sustainability, and we're seeking to modernize the venue aging piping infrastructure, protecting structural integrity from this 100-year-old building,

while ensuring safe, seamless experience of our about 75,000 annual guests. This critical update will protect the building integrity and help us to bring more people downtown Stanford performing arts.

That's all I have. I just kept it short and sweet. If you have any questions, please, we can show some of the pictures of the aging piping. Some of the pipings are still asbestos. About three years

ago, we had a couple of incidents where pipes burst and damaged our stock hole, a 100-year-old stock hole, actually, that was designed back then. So we -- like, just this past summer, we spent about

$50,000 on our own money to replace some of the stock hole and some of the paintings. So trying to keep up with our building, you know, it's very challenging, but just asking for your help. Any

questions from the board? Thank you. I am very straightforward needs at the Palace, so thank you very much. Thank you so much. Have a good day. You too. Next, we have Stanford Historical Society.

Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm Michael McCarry. I'm a relatively new executive director to the Stanford Historical Society, Stanford History Center. I wanted to thank you for giving me the

opportunity to present to you today. I also wanted to thank Nancy Ornsby and many from the Engineering and Operations Department who have been helping us through some of the issues that we've had

here. As you may know, the Stanford History Center for over 125 years has been the municipal historian for the city of Stanford. Primarily, we house 35,000 historical artifacts going back 400 years,

including vital records, photos, artifacts. We preserve them digitally and on premises. We have a library which is accessible to outside people at any time. In my tenure, we have begun to try to

become more visible and increase attendance and raise our revenues through our programs, including the 1699 Barnum House that we have. We have a very substantial program that we do with the Stanford

Public Schools, where we're teaching history to about 3,000 students. We'd like to raise that number. We also have about 1,000 that come by our facility and our building every day. We're also trying

to engage the community more using means that are available to us to make history more relevant and a unifying force within Stanford. We're operating out of this 100-plus-year-old building, the former

Martha Hoyt School at 1508 High Ridge Road, which itself is about 100 years old. During the time that I've been there, we have been working with Nancy in engineering and with the operations people on

the issues that we're having operating the building. The building is obviously very old and it's aging. And one of the things that we want to do -- you can switch that next slide for me. Thank you. So

what we're trying to do is keep 1508 High Ridge Road operating. We maintain all three floors of it. We have exhibits on the first floor and our library and our meeting facilities. We have storage of

all these units, very organized, very indexed. They're easy to find. We have them on all the rooms of the third floor and on the basement floor. It is 400 years of history that we keep moving through

in exhibits and things. And what is most important in our request to you is to create a safe, comfortable environment for not only for the visitors that come, but for the staff and volunteers. A lot

of our volunteers are seniors and they come two, three days a week. We're open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. And we're working with operations on a control system for our boiler controls as

we're getting into the colder season. And we're experiencing very, very high costs of heating oil because of this old system. I won't speak to that today because I understand that that's in a separate

bucket and that's operations. But the most important thing that I come to you for today is in our basement, both from an outside standpoint and inside, you've got these hundred year old cobblestone

walls. And anytime we get any rain of substance, the water is coming through the mortar and the foundation cracks. And at any given time, we can find pools of water. We can find a uniform inch or two

of water in some rooms more than others. But the most important thing is not only that it could potentially affect the operations of our systems there, but it has already begun to affect historical

artifacts. A lot of what we have are clothing and fabrics and materials. We are finding mold. We have lost some materials. We have photo archives and other things that are subject to decay. In a

recent assessment and a discussion that we had, we were estimating that it was about two hundred and forty thousand dollars to get to the bottom of it, both externally out in the parking lot and in

the front of our building where the water pools and comes down, and that it's going to take an assessment and some substantial work to figure out exactly how we do this. It was paid to two hundred and

forty thousand. We also are expecting our parking lot to be paved. My understanding is that that is part of what we of what we have as available funds or a balance on our account that was approved

last year. So we're looking to get the parking lot paved. We have some entry doors that are not stable hardware and two dangerous locations. We had a volunteer fall and cracker ankle last week, the

staircase and the fire doors there. And because of where we are, we have this extra exterior lighting that we'd like to do to increase the safety of the parking lot. I think in the in the in the

document regarding our capital request, it was about four hundred and seventy thousand dollars. We we believe this is critical to our operations. We're trying to be open more than the three days a

week. We've had a couple of exhibits recently that the public really, really responded to. We have had instances last week when we couldn't open because it was too cold in the building. The building

is one hundred and twenty years old, like we said, it serves us well. It's completely maxed out in terms of our capabilities and our the artifacts that we have here and the size of the exhibits that

we have. But we're asking for help from the city to help us deal with these issues, the waterproofing and the repointing downstairs of the cobblestone walls above and beyond anything. I don't know if

Nancy is on this call, but Nancy has a lot more technical background than I do about it. And I'd be willing to relinquish some time to her if she's on and wishes to talk to us about it. I'll answer

any questions. I'm on. Hi, Nancy. But I think the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. The these are some photos that my team supplied to me about some of the degradation that you can see in the

in the next two slides. I happen to just I wanted to show you some of the artifacts are hard. You're not going to get a gravestone from the 1600s. It's not going to necessarily get harmed. But we do

have a lot of paper documents. And if you went to the next slide, you'll see the next one after that, I think. Is there is there one more? Yeah, a lot of them are, you know, these are fabrics and we

we have all this kinds of stuff and it's subject to mold and it's subject to water when the water comes in. I think that one on the right was one that was kind of partially destroyed because of it.

But this is this is kind of what we're dealing with. It's it's fairly simple, but but we know it's costly for for a business like us. And, you know, we are trying to be more not only fiscally

attractive, but we are trying to increase our program so that we can increase our revenues and contribute to the operating costs, at least for sure. Nancy, is there any explanation that we can give

them beyond what I've said about the technical aspects? The water infiltration, we are not sure where it is coming in from. It most likely is coming in from the mortar joints, but it could be because

there is either deteriorated or no waterproofing below grade. So similar to the Palace Theater, which is 100 years old, the waterproofing, the old tar paper basically had deteriorated. We have not

done an excavation at the cobblestone walls to know whether that's the case at 1508 High Ridge Road, but that very likely could be that there is no waterproofing on the outside. So that's that's part

of the, you know, investigation that would have to happen before tackling any interior changes or refinishing to find out where the water is coming in from the outside. Chad, you have a question? Yes,

thank you. I'm just trying to reconcile all the numbers. Michael, on one of your presentation slides where you showed the critical items, there's one on your project, your capital project request

form, which may be a part of one of these that you note. The hazmat abatement in the basement rooms, is that actually part of your, which of these would it be part of? I did not list that at the time.

I didn't list it. When we did get our final version done here, we decided that we wanted to move that. We wanted to move that for consideration. My understanding is it's about $85,000 is what's

expected. Yeah, there's a tin ceilings that have lead paint, and there's also asbestos insulation on the piping, and there's also VAT floor tiles. So there's three types of hazmat. Okay, I understand

that. On the capital project request, there are four items noted. And you've identified the cost of three of them on this slide. And so should I assume the difference between 540 and the sum of these

is the hazardous abatement? Well, you could also assume that doing all three at once is a lot less expensive than taking them out separately. Sure. The lead paint on the ceiling, tin ceiling, and the

VAT, and the asbestos insulation, if we do all three of them, it'd be a whole different number. We can do it all together. All right, so there's about $95,000 that is not noted on your slide

presentation, but is on this. So I'm going to assume the $95,000 is for item. It's actually listed as you have two item threes, so I'm going to call the first one item two, the hazmat abatement. Would

that be a safe assumption? On the form that I'm looking at, I see you as a typo of three instead of two. Yeah, I see that. I have item three, hazmat abatement. Okay, all right. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chester. Any other questions? Yeah, Jennifer, I do have one question. So just to elaborate on what Chet was saying and the feedback we got with doing all the abatements at once and saying

that would be a whole different number. Are we saying that would be a whole different number in terms of reducing the cost? Is these are broken out to do separately? So it would be a lesser ask. I

guess I'm just looking for clarification on that. It would be lesser, but it would be a much larger project for the Historical Society to actually undertake because they'd have to move things

completely out of the whole basement. Versus doing the VAT in one room and doing the tin ceiling in the hallway and doing the piping insulation just along the pipes. So it would cost less, but it

would be a larger project. Do we have an idea of what that cost savings would be? Regardless of whether... No, because there have been considered having as one project because there's no place to put

everything. We had the windows and the HVAC before we had Connex containers in the parking lot to put things in because there isn't enough swing. There isn't any swing space in the building to move

artifacts. We move things out into storage. I think we had four storage containers out in the parking lot. So it sounds like there is a place to move it to, but you're saying that it's a hardship for

the Historical Society. I guess I'm trying to understand, because we're talking about money here and if there's an ability to provide savings that would possibly get more money to the Historical

Society, I'm trying to understand what that would look like. Well, for one thing, that's not their priority. The priority is the waterproofing inside. Secondly is the abatement. Those areas are not

open to the public. The VAT is not harming anybody. The floor tiles are floating off the floor. The asbestos is pretty well intact on the pipe insulation and the lead paint is on the tin ceilings. No

one is scratching at the ceilings, removing the lead paint. If that area was going to be open to the public in the future, then the whole basement should be abated, yes. So it sounds like those items

could that be scratched from this request if they're not open to the public? Well, I still want to keep it out there. There's staff that goes down there and it's still part of the building's

infrastructure that needs to be addressed, but that's not their priority now. We're doing the paving with the balance that we have and we're going to be doing investigating for the water intrusion and

we'll see what that yields as to how much money will have to be spent for the walls of the basement. Just to qualify, one of the things that we're discussing here, that's the basement area of this

three floor building. It does occasionally, occasionally there is an event that the History Center runs, which is called, it's a tag sale essentially, where excess materials or things that have been

donated that are no longer necessary for the collections. People come in two or three times a year and most of that material, they do use the center floor where our exhibit space is and our

auditorium, but because there is so much material, they set up these tables in those hallways and some of those rooms downstairs. But it's a total of three, four, five days a year. And other than

that, other than giving a tour to somebody or showing the building to somebody or that type of thing, it is primarily for staff only downstairs. Okay. And those doors are locked also. Right. Okay, I

think that clarifies. Thank you. Just to make sure I understand, actually. So what you're saying is that if the abatement were deferred, it would reduce the capital ask for this year, but it's not

like, it still costs the same to do it no matter when you have to do it, whether it's this fiscal year or next fiscal year. It's like everything you would escalate. Right. So I think it sounded like

there was some cost savings to be had, but there's not actually cost savings. It's just deferring the project, which is not actually a cost savings. And yeah, there would be, there'd be a manpower

cost to move the artifacts out of the basement. And a rental cost for trailers to put the stuff in. Correct. And that being able to do that in parallel to the exterior waterproofing would reduce the

need to have that kind of added labor cost. Yeah, we can do the waterproofing without moving everything out of the basement. Things would have to be moved, but not like completely out. They only have

to move three feet away from the wall. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. Um, thank you for your presentation. Next on our docket is the Stanford Museum and Nature Center. Great. Hello,

everyone. My name is Bill Brucker and I am the very proud and relatively new executive director at the Stanford Museum and Nature Center. Thank you, Tony for pulling up the deck. For those of you who

aren't familiar with us at the Stanford Museum and Nature Center, we are an education center serving Stanford, but also the lower Fairfield County region and actually the state. Combining four main

disciplines, which would be fine art. We are Stanford's Fine Art Museum with 20,000 paintings, sculptures and artifacts in our extensive collection. We are a robust environmental education center. We

have a working New England farm, which is a leader in agriculture education and brand new to this year is our brand new astronomy center and planetarium which we opened last November. And the city has

been very helpful in helping us procure the funds to get that center open. Every year we serve about 39,000 local skilled school children from about 131 schools in our area, providing onsite

educational services. In addition, we have about 125,000 visitors to our campus every year to visit the sites and the animals and the museum and just take in all the grounds around our 118 acre

facility as well as our acres and acres of hardwood forests and trails, which lead up to our neighbors at the Bartlett Arboretum. So we are a proud education center that has been serving the Stanford

community for well over 90 years. This year, we have one capital request, and that is to pave the lower part of our campus. If you scroll to the next slide, this is the capital request, which I'm sure

that you are familiar with. Again, we are looking to repay the lower part of the campus. Tony, if you scroll through to the next two slides. Right. So we are asking for $250,000 in capital city

funding. The lower part of the campus has not been repaid in well over two decades and with 125,000 people visiting our site every year, it poses real challenges for pedestrians and vehicle traffic.

We have several potholes throughout the property and damaged blacktop, which we've tried to repair over the years with temporary patching, which has really deteriorated over the years. We have a

preschool on our campus, which serves about 100 preschoolers. And one of the areas that we're looking to pave is outside of our preschool, where our children come in and enter and exit the property.

It's particularly beat up and we've had some incidents where people are tripping and kids are scraping knees. So we're really trying to create a better walking pattern for the children. In addition,

we are really focused on making our campus accessible for all, regardless of their physical abilities. We have lots of strollers just like the library coming through our property as well as people in

wheelchairs and in walkers walking our paths and through our campus. So we want to really make sure that we have a safe and smooth walking pattern for our visitors as well. This covers about 75,000

square feet of area along the lower campus and this project is pretty much shovel ready and we're ready to begin the bidding process pending any funding approval. If you go to the next slide, again,

going just through the main scope, we're looking to repair the failed areas and we're not looking to replace the entire blacktop what we're looking to do is really dig up the most affected areas and

put new new gravel down and then repay that and then put a fresh coat of blacktop over top to make a smooth surface. We have one manhole outside these preschool pedestrian patch which is particularly

deteriorated around the area and is unsafe and has caused some tripping hazards as well. In addition, we are looking to replace there are several areas of missing curbing around the property and the

driveways, which is a detriment to water runoff and actually causes pretty significant pooling with heavy rains. We have five speed bumps that we're looking to also replace to control the flow of

traffic and speed given that we do have a lot of pedestrians, and then the project will also entail restriping the property as well. Next slide. If you if you take a look here this is the area that

we're really looking to, to repave so it starts right at the gatehouse right off of Scofield town road continues across the pond up around the hill to the bendel mansion, and then back around and

creates a loop and then the second. The second image right there is the parking lot that's adjacent to our preschool where many of our preschool parents park and then walk up to the preschool so again

all told we're looking at 70 75,000 square feet of paving. Next slide. Here are some pictures of the condition of the blacktop the first picture is the entry area that I mentioned right past the

gatehouse you can see some of the several areas of temporary patching that we've tried to repair over the years and is in pretty rough shape. The second is right outside the bendel mansion the back of

the bendel mansion. And again, that has been repaired over the years with temporary patching and that has deteriorated as well. Next slide. As you can see we have several potholes that our staff has

has filled over the years our operations team is a fantastic group of guys who really take good care of the property and do what they can with the limited resources we have to fill those patches and

the potholes but again, over time, and the significant rains that we've had over the past several years have just deteriorated the area as well. Next slide. The first picture here is the, the manhole

that I mentioned earlier that has been repatch several times. The second is an example of some of the asphalt curbing that is broken away. This particular one is the is the hill leading up to the back

of the mansion that leads and that hill goes right into the preschool so again on heavy rains. We get some significant pooling there so hopefully with some curbing we can control the water runoff and

then the last one is one of the, the speed bumps that is a severe need of replacement as well. So in summary, we're looking at this project as a again shovel ready project that is ready to go pending

funding approval to really, it's a, it's a matter of public safety we're looking at so again we're repairing the documented hazards that we've been doing for many, many decades, helps us restore the

infrastructure, serving a very heavily visited campus and then obviously combines the paving with the pedestrian path and foot traffic control repairs, all told really making the Stanford Museum and

Nature Center a much more enjoyable and safe environment for our visitors and residents of Stanford. Next slide. I think that's it. That's it. Any questions. Yes. Are you going to incorporate any

stormwater management, like retrofits as part of this paving project because if it's if a lot of this pavement broken up when you have heavy rain events and it's freshly paved it'll sheet flow off it

a lot faster. Yeah, that that's part of the plan as well we'll certainly be working with our various contractors when we go out to the bidding process and bring that up during the initial discussions.

But our operations team is working closely with any vendors that we use to address any any water runoff with the new paving. Okay, did you factor that into your budgeting the need for. Yeah, we've

gotten some some initial quotes and it was right around that 250,000 and there was some some water prevention built into that so we're anticipating that an investment of 250,000 should cover the

entire project. Thank you, Chester. Yes, thank you. You did mention that among your overall objectives is to improve the accessibility of the entire site. Absolutely. That that that word specifically,

and I'm thinking of, of people in wheelchairs and and who suffer from other disabilities will this. Do the has there been a long term plan established for what the overall campus might need to address

some of the specifically pedestrian exit exhibit accessibility requirements, or is this just a, an overall objective that you want to take care of the, the vehicular first and then we'll focus on the

other. Well, everything we do at the Stanford Museum has accessibility in mind and we obviously have a lot of work to do to make our site fully accessible. But we've made a lot of great strides in

recent years to make the entire campus accessible. I think this this project in particular, because so many people do utilize our parking areas and walk along the parking area to get into the main

campus solidifying and creating a safe walking area will certainly be a great first step. As a matter of fact, there's been a lot of work that's been done, even in our trails. We visited us recently

but we have a area in our trails called wheels in the woods, where we have a plank boardwalk area so people in wheelchairs or wish strollers can actually enjoy the trails, regardless of their, their,

their physical abilities. And I believe that this is a first step for us to really make our primary walking areas, especially in the lower campus safe for people in wheelchairs wish strollers with

walkers and really make the property much more safe and accessible. But specifically what I'm getting at Bill is sidewalks versus roadways. You haven't mentioned any sidewalks and that's why I'm

asking. Yes, to the extent you have a, you know, a better paved area, you're, you're still sharing it, you know, sharing that improved space between vehicles and pedestrians, which would not is not a

desirable thing to do so I was asking specifically about few potentially additional sidewalks, whether that's a future, a future objective. Yeah, well you know, in the particular lower campus of the,

of the area here that we're speaking of there isn't a whole lot of sidewalk areas most people, when they do come to our campus they would drive to access the mansion to the back of the area which

there are no sidewalks. We do have a small walking path along the side leading up the hill to the backside of the mansion. That's actually in pretty decent shape and doesn't need to be repaired so

there is a safe sidewalk area. But we're going to constantly reassess and reevaluate but in terms of critical needs this is something that we think needs to be done sooner than rather than later.

Understood. Thanks very much. Sure. I see Robbie's hand up. He will is the planetarium going to come with a separate request or this is including the planetarium. No, this is a separate request. The

planetarium is up and running we are not seeking any additional funding for the planetarium at this time. The city again has been very generous in their support of the planetarium. So, being mindful

of that past support. We wanted to just put in one request this year to address the, the paving needs around the lower part of the campus. Okay, thanks. I'm wondering is, you know, given that we're

not able to fund all projects at full level is is partial funding meaningful on this or is it really something you need to do all in one go. It would certainly be easier for us to do it all in one go

I think realistically because we do have a substantial amount of needs capital needs around the property and being respectful to the city's limitations of budgets. We most likely would if we were to

receive partial funding would probably only, we'd have to retrofit the project and only take care of part of the project and not the entire lower campus, for example, we may have to depending on the

amount we may just, you know, do the driveway and forego the parking area or the area outside the playground or we might do the playground or the, the preschool, and the, the preschool parking lot so

depending on the level of funding, we would have to make some decisions to retrofit the project but I think it would be more cost effective for us to do it all in one shot to be honest with you. Make

sense. There are no further questions. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you all. Hope to see you around soon. Next, on our agenda is liberation programs, introduce yourself in a great place. Good

evening everyone. I'm john Hamilton, it says I'm rich liver on Oh but his wife. It was her birthday today so I'm stepping in. I'm john Hamilton I'm the president and CEO of liberation programs and

welcome. I have a straightforward request for a new elevator in an old building right around the block from the government center. So I just have a couple of slides so if we can pull those slides up

to anyone, that would be great. So just a quick overview. We've been around since 1971 liberation program received its name to liberate the community from the scourge of drug addiction it was started

by the city of Stanford and and corporations five, five corporations of seed money, and it actually started right around the block and so we have a pretty old building, and we do a lot we for a

continuum of care we're considered a nonprofit behavioral health agency, but we've kind of expanded. So we help people not just navigate substance use and mental health, but we've done more efforts

now and outreach efforts, working with trauma and housing instability. We actually even have a small office now in the in the train station to help those that are on house to be able to engage those

individuals in the community, and we have this peace love and liberation van as you can see on the slide that you might see in town it looks like we're selling acid from it but it's just to be

engaging and not very threatening to the individuals in the community and we help people give them supplies that they may need and try to access them to treatment. So, as I said, we are in 115 119

Main Street, right on the corner there relay place in Main Street around the block from Washington Ave, and we've been there for many many years and sustained our, we were the first methadone program

in Stanford and we're the only men's residential program in that building for that length of stay it's up to 90 days in all of Fairfield County and the only men's residential substance use disorder

program in in Stanford. We have presently a census of 64 of men, although we're going to expand and we're part of this renovation projects is to expand to 76 beds and add 12 more beds for women, and

we serve 350 men per year. Next slide please. So, 322 people served in 2026. We deal with basically people living under the poverty line 97% live under the poverty line 39% were on the house or

homeless and 63% did not live in a private residence. We have a 23% black 29% Hispanic and 31% identify as white as our population. Next slide. Our request pretty simple straightforward. We need a new

elevator, we put the last elevator in over 21 years ago, and our elevator is our only mode of transport in a five story building, where most of the services are actually on the second third and fourth

floor on this five story building so the elevators the primary use for all the residents in the building. And it's the only way that we can get clients transported, particularly with clients with

mobility challenges. Next slide. So, our humble ask is to ask for $253,731 and 54 cents, which is the exact price of a new elevator which actually includes a $50,000 contingency, which would be the

estimate of what we understand could be surprises found in a very, very old elevator in a very, very old building timetable as you can see for the design would be in the beginning of the new fiscal

year on 71 to be completed 730 implementation on 10 one, about a year from now and it would end in within three months from that period. Next slide. So what would be the benefits. Obviously, we would

be repair the elevator for better utilization for clients and staff because it constantly breaks down now which is real hardship on those that we serve that we're trying to show a recovery environment

and support and treat people with dignity and respect. We'd be in compliance with ADA and usable for everyone regardless of their ability. We would actually do this construction as part of a larger

braided funding strategy. This is an old building as I've mentioned I think it was once a dance hall in Stanford, and in this building, we're actually we've received $3 million from Senator Murphy's

office for congressional discretionary fund, $250,000 for state bonding money for planning grant for those 12 beds, and we even received support from the Cohen Foundation to furnish the building for

$270,000 for all the furniture. And so it's a braided funded model that we're going to really try to upgrade the entire building and the elevator is a key piece to that. The construction, as they say,

will never have disruption of services all 64 beds and men will be in operation during all this construction. We will not disrupt care because there's such a need in the Stanford area. And by doing

this we treat clients with dignity, respect, and we promote what's called a recovery environment so all feel welcome. Next slide. That's it. Any questions. It's pretty straightforward. Thank you for

your time and your consideration. I just want to smart to get on the record I presume because the project is an elevator that there's no way to face this you it's either you get all the funding or, or

you can't correct. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Thank you. You too. All right. And next and last but not least on our agenda is Stanford Pal.

You can introduce yourself for the record please. Good evening everyone. My name is Latisha Williams I'm the executive director for Stanford Pal, and I want to appreciate everyone saving the best for

last. So, let's just get, get into it. If you don't mind I did send a couple pictures of the gym floor. Can we post those pictures. Okay, thank you. As I said before, my name is Latisha Williams I'm

the executive director for Stanford Pal. I am requesting $150,000 in capital funding for the replacement of the gymnasium floor, as you can see. The request is more about, it's not just replacing the

floor because we are, you know, we service so many of our families in the Stanford community not just the Southwood Square families, but a number of families from all the Stanford public schools, and

then our transition kids who will be using a building twice a week. I mean sorry twice a month, every on Fridays, and the condition of the floors is our priority to address, as you can see, what we

did was we placed combs on the bubbling area so you have this idea of the floor is, you know, basically coming apart and I'm trying to read from a script so I lost my script so forgive me. There are

areas where the floor and has begun to bubble and lift, creating an uneven surface, not safe. There's been a potential safety hazard of course, especially for our children running jumping playing

basketball. You know we use this opera desk this gym to bring together, not only our law enforcement but our community, and they use the gym to do correct recreational activities like basketball and

in occasion soccer and other things that we do the impact community impact. Again, I do apologize. I want to emphasize that this project will benefit more than just the children currently we serve. We

work with Stanford public schools and numerous community organizations to provide program and opportunities for children and families. For many of the young people we serve the power centers a place

where they feel connected, supported, and safe. It is where they build friendships, develop confidence and learn teamwork interact with positive adult role models. It's an investment in this gymnasium

is an investment our Stanford use our youth excuse me so the total capital funding request again it's $150,000 at this time, Stanford power has. We continue to explore other funds to help address the

issue with our gymnasium private donation corporate sponsorship and other things but we have not been successful. Hence why we are here, asking for some assistance from the city, and hopefully this

project will get some much needed attention. Our request is not a lot. I just want to close with thanking everyone for giving me the opportunity just to present this. I truly understand that you have

other projects to look at everyone, asking for money. It's very dire we're just up there as well. And I hope that you would just consider the need that we're doing right now the Stanford power is

utilized by a number of agencies and organization. It's free for our community. People do not have to pay outside of the custodial fees, but this is just something that we are hoping that you know

this project get funded. And I just want to thank everyone on this board for taking the time to listen to me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any questions. Yeah, I see your hand. Yeah, yeah, just one

question for me so is this center open to the general public or you need to be part of the police department or this is for everybody in the community. This is open to the general general public for

activities we used to rent the gym out a while ago but we stopped doing that because of the condition of the floor is it's just not safe and we just, you know, we don't want to be liable for any

injuries or anything like that. So in addition to the basketball court, what other facilities are there. We have outside of the basketball outside of the gym facilities we also have the community

hall. We have the art room we have our game room so we have other rooms or, you know, places in the center that families and outside agencies could use. Thank you. Yeah, let's you should do you have

any idea how old the existing flooring surfaces, by any chance, if the building was so we used to be called Chester Addison founded 1942 so this, this floor is really only. Okay, the reason why ask.

Has it been assessed yet. You know, vinyl asbestos tile is actually nine inches by nine inches. And based on this photograph of the cone with a with, you know, juxtaposed against the part or partial

shoe. It makes me wonder if this flooring is actually that has it been assessed. It has, and it is not vat to, I will be honest with you, it has been assessed and I do know that the idea is to build

on top of the current floor to avoid any type of service of asbestos or anything like that. Okay, yeah, that that's a viable form of encapsulation but I was just wondering that adds it, if it is, and,

and there are breaks in the floor of course, if it is vat. It just makes it more hazardous to the kids so it adds an urgency to this project. Yes, it does. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Any other

questions. Okay, more just a note. I appreciate what you said about that previously you have been wrenching out the facility to groups but have discontinued due to the condition and so I think you can

add that it has positive revenue impact, because I presume once this facility is renovated then you would have the ability to resume, wrenching it out to different community needs and causes. Yes, I

just want to record we again, you know we are facility is free for our Stanford public school students, we do have outside organizations who rent for private parties, which we have stopped only

because of the condition of the floor. That makes sense. I know there's, it is hard to come by a good space to host things. Yeah, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. If there are no other questions, I

think that concludes the presentation and thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So, our next regularly scheduled planning board meeting is October 27, at which we will again discuss capital

budget. Okay, I will not Lindsay I don't I haven't been following the special meeting scheduling request. Has that been settled. We yes so we weren't able to pull anything together for a special

meeting so those two items will be heard on November 4. Okay. So, to our next to the two following meetings in November will be November 4, which is again a Wednesday in order to avoid being on

Tuesday election day. And the following meeting will be on the 10th, and all will focus on capital budget with some other supplemental items as well. Thank you very much, everyone. And want to offer

additional acknowledgement for chat who's been attending the pre public vetting with the various departments to evaluate these projects and so we'll be continuing to do that throughout this process.

Good evening everyone. Have a good night. The time is 830.