Bangor Finance Committee approves vehicle bids, ambulance purchase, and airport grants

[0:02] Susan Deane: Through life, good evening and welcome to the regularly scheduled finance committee meeting. It is Monday, April 6, 2026. It is 6:39. I am the chair, so Dean, on the finance committee, and president tonight are Counselor Beck, Counselor Carson, Council Balloon, and Councilman. They also will have Counselor Fifth, Chair, cause City Manager Carollynn Lear, and Counselor Walker present, and Counselor Letter. We will start off with bids and purchases. I believe, yeah, so I'm going to inch hit tonight. Stephanie had a family emergency, and I demanded that she leave and take care of that, so apologies if I bumble through this a little bit. The first item on the agenda is authorization to purchase a sewer maintenance truck for the water quality management department. You'll see in your materials that we received two bids that were relatively close, but they're asking to go with the low bidder, Darlings, for that vehicle. Any questions on this item? No questions, so we are looking for a motion to go with staff recommendation to go with Darlings for the purchase of this [1:41] Daniel Carson: vehicle. Staff recommendation on the Sulamitas [1:48] Susan Deane: motion. We have a second. This is under the 250,000 thresholds, and this should pass with recommendation. Wonderful, and next up, another vehicle. So this is another bid. This one well above the 250,000 threshold. Staff has put out to bid the purchase of a vehicle wash system. Two bids were received, one for $561,000, one for around $430,000, and staff is asking to go with the low bid. And $450,000 was budgeted and approved for the replacement of this vehicle wash system. [2:38] Michael Beck: Yes. I think the question, you know, so with this particular vendor, we don't have experience with them. When that happens, does staff like reach out for references or anything, or is there [2:48] Susan Deane: any kind of policy with that? I would invite our manager of fleet maintenance up. Thank [3:00] Mike Morgan: you. Mike Morgan, fleet director. We do, and I actually knew some municipalities that have wash systems with this particular benefit. Any [3:16] Susan Hawes: other questions? Could [3:21] Susan Deane: we entertain a motion that be a recommendation [3:27] Daniel Carson: basement for a vehicle wash system [3:30] Susan Deane: We have a motion, we have a second, any concerns? So move on. Yeah, so the next item on the agenda is a bid to purchase a jet a refueler. Again, two bids were received, obviously one was much lower than the other, and we've determined that bid was incomplete because it didn't include all the required components for the vehicle, and so we're recommending in this instance to go with the higher bid because it was all that we were looking for. We do have experience with this vendor. Yes, counselor, just a question. [4:29] Michael Beck: A question about the bid tab itself. I don't know, the memos talks about how why it's disqualified. Is there any way for a future bid tag when there's a disqualified bid to notate that on the bed itself? Just because when they get uploaded to the website there's that separate bid sheet that people can get, just so that someone gets that document separately, they'll know oh, they didn't go a little better because it's not qualified. That'll [4:53] Susan Deane: be helpful. Thank you. The [5:05] Wayne Mallar: the 8508-9100-1100 is what account? That's the equipment account. We have, we have some [5:14] Mike Morgan: left over in the equipment account. The other one is a vehicle that [5:24] Wayne Mallar: was from the 26 budget. Yes, and you purchased everything out of the equipment account that you're needing to for [5:33] Mike Morgan: that one? I have for that department, correct. Any other questions? [5:48] Daniel Carson: Recommendation for the purchase of a p26-39 jet a refueler, so I get a full council motion. We have a second, any concerns? [6:00] Susan Deane: This should move forward to full council next Monday. All right, the next item on the edge that for us, so this is a request to leave the bid process and it's in the ambulance, and I am actually just going to proactively invite our fire department experts to come up and talk about this because I think there's a level of expertise from that department that I just cannot replicate. Good [6:41] Jeff Lowe: evening, I'm Jeff Lowe, I'm the fire chief here in Bangor. I have deputy chief Pellet here down at the end of the table with me. He has more of the background on the finances and how we came about the money we have and the cost associated with previous purchases that have basically compounded to be able to do the purchase that we have now. I will tell you that we are looking at replacing an ambulance a little bit sooner than we planned on. Normally this would be part of the upcoming budget process. We Have an opportunity to jump in and get an ambulance right now versus waiting two or three years, which is what the build time is for an ambulance. There's one that's on the line that was meant to be a demo model for the vendor to go out and show. It's a model that meets our needs, and it would, it would be available to us in about eight months versus the two or three year window. So we thought with the money that we have available mobile that Eric can speak a little bit more about as to how we got there and this opportunity in front of us, we thought maybe a good idea to bring it forward and seek Council's permission to expend those funds that we already have in place. Eric, if you don't mind, I know there was a question about how we came to the amount that we have right now. If you can give a little history as to the replacement process and the funding. Yep, so this is a kind of a process we've [8:06] Unidentified speaker (Airport Director): done in the past. We've done remounting ambulances. The last new truck that we bought was back in 2020, and what we've been doing is buying a new chassis and remounting the box onto the new chassis, and that's been very good for cost savings. I'll tell you the last one that we did last year, it's well under 200,000, so we're saving about half the cost in this. That's where some of those savings have come from. We had a budget for about 211,000 them to do the remount for one truck, but we had a different truck that had some mechanical issues, so we did that one in line and it was a cost saving video. It requires much to do for the remount purpose, and when we say the remount we go through the floor, some of the seats, some of the cabinets, sometimes different things need to be replaced. Each truck a little bit different, so sometime that cost goes up, it comes down a little bit. Also the manufacturer builds in some contingency money on top of that as well because of the lead time. Sometimes it takes it used to take about three months for a remount. This last one took close to a year to get done, so a lot of things can change in that your time frame. Also last year we were approved in the capital 300,000 to do another remount. We're comfortable, we feel that we could use that money to purchase a new truck now in lieu of doing that rebound, so that's where a lot of that money has come from, except it's already been approved to be spent. We're just looking to instead of doing the remount purchasing new truck and to increase the fleet from five ambulance to six. I know it [9:48] Jeff Lowe: Talks about waiting the bid process. That's not entirely accurate. While we're asking to waive the city bid process, this particular vendor goes through a national bid group, if you will. So it has been bid, it does meet a specification, it did come in as a as a preferred product for that particular process, and we've used that in the fire department for other purchases as well. So we're not totally not doing a bid. What we're doing is going in on a group bid. There is a cost associated with that. It's It's a thousand dollars to be part of that group, to join in on them. When I weigh out the cost of what it would take for us to assign staff to build the bid and to go through the RFP process and then sit with vendors and build up the truck and proposal and everything else, we're well over a thousand dollars in staff time, and we look at look at wages and stuff like that. So it's see, we can spend $1,000 and have the work already done for us, where I can assign somebody this as an extra duty in addition to their other duties, and use their time to do the whole bit and specification process. [11:01] Wayne Mallar: I just have one question. The total amount was 471. And we had three that 300 in the budget for this year. To do a remount, so what where did the rest of the money come from? I know it was past years, but for [11:19] Unidentified speaker (Airport Director): what progress I'm curious. This all that money comes out of the able and deployment reserve [11:23] Wayne Mallar: account. So what you do is whatever is reserved for the year and not spent goes back into that account to use another year, and specifically addition of all reserve accounts in the city [11:39] Susan Deane: so in each budget document when council votes on it, in the whereas clauses there'll be a number of items that will indicate carryovers and transfers, and so there would have been past items in the budget that carried over certain amounts and appropriated them to reserve funds. Otherwise it goes to the unassigned fund balance, right, which makes more sense, because if you're [12:10] Wayne Mallar: reserved, I'm not saying you don't need the ambulance, I'm just questioning how it's done. If you had it reserved to buy X and you turn around and in two years you buy Y, doesn't that defeat the purpose of approving a budget? So that's why we come back to you and ask [12:31] Susan Deane: for an appropriation so that you have the opportunity. We don't know where the [12:35] Wayne Mallar: appropriations coming from, in which year, how many years back does it go, you [12:39] Susan Deane: actually brought that good. Yeah, you [12:43] Wayne Mallar: know I was gonna ask actually one of your [12:46] Susan Deane: Peers and so we pulled this very sorry just handed you blood so we pull this very quickly so it doesn't have probably all of the detail that you would have preferred but it does show the ins and outs. Unfortunately because Stephanie isn't here I'm not equipped to answer detailed questions on this from the system but it does generally show what years are being are contributing to that amount in the reserve fund and if you have more questions on this we can certainly pause on the discussion of this for when Stephanie [13:37] Michael Beck: There's a couple questions I guess the first question is just checking into is there any other remodels or refits or anything that are being off put to make this possible or is everything else in the fleet taken care of everything else and then the other question would be you know they mentioned the fiscal year 2027 purchase this is just basically pumping being a bad was no longer going to be an ask okay I [14:04] Susan Deane: have a question you said in eight months you would have this vehicle so at that point you would go from five to six full-time on the road five to six ambulances so that so there's a couple [14:20] Jeff Lowe: different things that are getting melded together here that I don't necessarily think should be melded the ambulance would be a purchase no matter what one of the motivators is because we are staffing up that extra ambulance during the daytime, it requires us to have another truck in the fleet, realistically, so we can have two reserves. Our volume is such in the wear and tear on the ambulances is such that we need two reserve trucks. And those are usually older trucks that we've been able to rotate out. The staffing piece is a separate conversation, not to sound not to sound trying to push back but I don't know that this and I'd certainly defer to the city manager I don't know that this is the form for that I can tell you that the daytime staffing will be coming shortly that is going to get rolled in there's no addition to that staff it's just simply a modification to the existing crew that we have on duty but this would play a part in making sure that the trucks are available and that we have enough to be able to do what we need to do we [15:35] Susan Deane: have the questions we've had time to all this over in [15:46] Daniel Carson: a motion wave the city's been processing for the fire [15:53] Susan Deane: For the purchase of an ambulance, second promotion, we have a second. Any further questions or concerns? And much like I did previously, I will invite Lori Lynn Scott up to take the lead as our expert in all things bus related. Thanks. We go [16:46] Speaker I (unidentified): ahead. Okay. Right. So what we're doing here is just a few weeks ago, you're approved in the appropriation of that grant that we got from DoT for the a the EV AB EV ADA van. We got 90,000 as our budget from DOT. This is just purchasing one of those EB vans for that funding, and also purchasing another EB van the exact the identical same one for federal funding, which we got in the FY 26 budget. So one is 100% funded and one is 80 20. [17:34] Susan Deane: Does that amount reflect a twelve thousand dollar credit or is it on top [17:39] Speaker I (unidentified): of that? No, the 77 659 is with the discount. Yes, and that also I included that efficiency main rebate of 12 000 off each man in the packet. What [17:55] Michael Beck: if they don't get the credit for finding [17:56] Susan Hawes: that? Well done, 24 000 bucks. So that's great. I think Laurie gets the credit. [18:07] Wayne Mallar: Local out of the reserve is 15 532. Yeah, what's the total reserve now? [18:14] Speaker I (unidentified): Total reserve, I don't have that number with me. Out of curiosity, what [18:22] Wayne Mallar: had you originally put an amount in the reserve? I did. What was the amount you put in? Well, to [18:29] Speaker I (unidentified): this van here we had a grant of about 134 000 and the local share was about 30 612 I think, so that's about half of that. So we have we have one more band to get in the 26 budget. So [18:49] Wayne Mallar: we really don't. What do you think the next fan is going to cost us? The same amount of the 77. [18:55] Speaker I (unidentified): Yeah, I would I would hope so. I would have came for three, but they didn't have a next another van. [19:06] Susan Deane: Any other questions? Entertain [19:10] Michael Beck: a motion on that recommendation to purchase of these vans. [19:16] Susan Deane: We have a motion, we have a second. Staff recommendation fans. Thank you. That is the last of the boots and purchasing. Next up we'll have airport grant opportunities and we'll just invite Jose Bright up. We'll keep with city manager deferring. Good [19:47] Unidentified speaker (Airport Director): evening. Who says Bay Drive Airport Director? I bring to you two different grant opportunities that the airport seeks approval to pursue. The first is a little bit less complicated than the second one. So it the department of transportation on a regular basis issues the what it's called the small community air service development program. And it's more or less an incentive to help more communities attract additional air service. So this is a grant opportunity that the airport has pursued in the past. And we've been awarded it twice, once in 2003, and then again in 2010. And so the words in both of those years were for 300,000, and the second time for half a million dollars. And so the airport is obviously working with some of our airline partners to try to secure additional connectivity out west. And so the funds of this grant, if awarded, would be used as an incentive to expand service on a westbound route. It's a competitive program, so it's obviously depending on the number of applications that they get that would determine whether or not we're awarded the amount we're requesting. Can I ask why we waited 16 [21:19] Susan Deane: years to ask for this again? Something you only ask for if you feel you have a [21:26] Unidentified speaker (Airport Director): chance to get it? Yeah, no, so this is actually a program that is not issued on a yearly basis. Depending on when the fa gets reauthorized, there's some years in which the reauthorization law allows for a set aside for this program, and then some instances that it does not. It was available out i believe two years ago, and we did apply two years ago, and we did not get the award. So and [21:54] Susan Deane: jose just to clarify you we're talking about these because you're not [21:58] Susan Hawes: going to be able to get a council order through right in time for no. So on the first, the first [22:06] Unidentified speaker (Airport Director): grant, the small community air service development, so just to submit the application, as you all know, in order to apply for any grants, first we can't submit an application without a council approval. So if, this is something that you would like to support, then we would put together a council order so that it goes to council next week, and then we can meet the may 4th deadline to submit that application. That's done deal. So the second grant opportunity is a little bit more complicated, and so I'll spend some time building the context on it because it doesn't have a number yet. The reason why it doesn't have a number is because we were in the process of going through the RFP process to solicit for the funding of the TaxAway Alpha, TaxAway Mike project. It is a project that is will be funded by a hybrid of entitlement funds and hopefully discretionary funding from the faa for this project because of the nature of it would be an eligibility of 95 federal funding so for all intents and purposes we needed to go up to bid and get the number of how much the project is expected to cost and then factor in the 95 so by the time i submitted this memo to you. We had not opened bids for the project. We did get two competitive bids. One of them, which is the one that our engineering firm is recommending to get to award the project, came in at 13.5 million. And so at some point later down, once we've secured the funding from the FAA, then we will come back for the recommendation to award the project. But at this time, now that we have open bids and we know the price of the project for construction itself is 13.4 million, construction administration is 1 million. So the max amount that we would be seeking from the FAA would be 14.5 million. And again, 95% of this would be eligible for federal funds. So, as part of the pre-approved capital improvement program for the airport that has been reviewed and discussed with the FAA at length, so they're aware that this project is coming up the pipeline and working with us very closely on trying to secure the remaining funds that are necessary for this project. [25:18] Michael Beck: Yes. Just a comment. Thanks for looking out for taxiway Mike. Anyone [25:27] Susan Deane: else? Naming rights to another taxiway so [25:36] Unidentified speaker (Airport Director): at this time yet so we will be submitting applications again finalizing the numbers with the FAA and what that looks like but yes it's a committee approval to [25:48] Michael Beck: move forward with applying for this grants. I would move that we authorize the request to apply for FFA, FAA airport group program grants for taxiways I'll feel Alpha and Mike. Second [26:03] Susan Deane: we have a second and we will move forward. Next we have an order accepting 14,500 donations from the Barbara Capacity Foundation and I think we're actually going to ask that we sit on this one. On the reason being that this organization gives us money every year for heating assistance and we actually have a large amount already sitting there that hasn't been used and so we'd like to go back to the organization and see if they're interested in expanding what they're willing to allow us to use the money for given that we have unused heating assistance funds from them from prior [26:55] Michael Beck: Just a question in general, you know, being that for people who out there who may be struggling a little bit, what how do they go about applying for these funds? [27:04] Susan Deane: I would love to invite our Director of Public Health Jen Gunderman up to talk about that. Hi, [27:15] Jen Gunderman: Public Health Director Jen Gunderman. So for someone who is experiencing some challenges with covering their heating costs, there's a few different options for them. They go in sort of an order. So someone can call Bangor General Assistance, make an appointment, and someone, one of our case managers, will go through the general assistance process. And if they qualify for general assistance, they can get heating support that way. If someone goes through that process, and they don't qualify because maybe they're a little over income, or there might be some other disqualification, the next sort of resource that we go to is a voucher program that is supported by a number of lawyers in the area. This voucher program supports people who go to very specific places for their propane and oil. And it's a voucher program that is for Bangor and sort of the towns that touch Bangor. But that's only for people who don't meet the GA requirement, may have gone over GA maximum, and have one of the sort of service delivery organizations of businesses. If no one, if you don't meet the criteria for that, then you meet the criteria for this funding that is for Bangor residents, for the voucher program that also hits the towns around Bangor. They first have to apply to GA in that other town and get denied from that, and then they're able to get the voucher. So we have about three different programs and resources that we can leverage, but no one should be, no one, we, I don't, we've never turned anyone away because they couldn't afford their heat. [28:53] Susan Deane: You're welcome. We have this amount in reserve. Does that mean that we just don't have enough people [28:59] Jen Gunderman: asking for help? Yes. So basically the other programs, the other two layers, have really met most of the need, and it's not until, you know, you've gone through those other two programs that you then fall into the qualification for this third program. So we just haven't had the same number of people who apply. We've, in conversations with this foundation, they want us to promote the program more, which we're absolutely happy to do. But again, those two other layers, and then that doesn't include LIHEAP as well. LIHEAP is another program that's run by a different organization. [29:36] Wayne Mallar: What about HEAP for the homeless shelter? That's it, I mean from where we did the day exemptions, do they qualify? Yeah, this is just for individual residents. If those people don't have a reason, so technically the warming shelter is their residence. Could we ever approach the Cassie on that? We could definitely ask them. It seems like a logical ask because they were all the centers are asking for more money for you. We've got money sitting away out of you first the fuel oil high this year. [30:12] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): And just knowing myself a couple of instances where elderly people too proud to ask or too shy or didn't know how to ask or literally out of fuel. So how do you reach especially the older generation of people that aren't computer savvy and maybe just not networked in with social media. Do you work with elderly services and get the message out? [30:41] Jen Gunderman: So I think that's one of the things that we're looking at as a whole department with all of our resources and how we reach populations better. We had put this information out on our social media for the city. We work with other organizations throughout the city, but it seems as though there's still not enough information out there about the resource. [31:00] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): It seems funny we have we don't spend it when in fact if you know people you know there's people that haven't had money for fuel so we're not communicating as well as we should. Thank you. [31:12] Jen Gunderman: So if they get LIHEAP they can still get help through yeah programs yes the LIHEAP that benefit it just goes into the formula to understand sometimes LIHEAP doesn't cover for the whole winter so somebody can call and we can fill that gap right so LIHEAP does not exclude them from these programs it may exclude them from say GA which is why we've got these like second and [31:41] Susan Hawes: third layers of support. Thank you. Any [31:46] Susan Deane: other questions? Do we need a motion to postpone this or are we just discussing it now? I don't think we require because it's not an officially agenda item circle back. Yeah, we'll add it to a future agenda once we get our response back. It might not be the next finance. Thank you. Finance update, are we waiting for Stephanie? Are you going to present that? I am not going to attempt to discern what she would have given you for an update, but I do have printouts of what is we hope to be although it's been changing quite a bit the final schedule for budget reviews. This will get printed in the budget packet that you get but I thought you might all appreciate having a schedule ahead of time so that you might plan accordingly. [32:35] Susan Hawes: thank you 're welcome [32:42] Michael Beck: i have one question and if it's better to wait for stephanie that's fine but I saw the big tabs have been posted for the author yes you know when they'll [32:53] Susan Deane: come before this committee I don't they're sitting in my inbox to look at so I am I am in control of the answer to that question I hope to look at that soon and hopefully this week the prices were very close so I really think it will be a substantive evaluation of the actual underlying services which is a good thing I think on [33:19] Wayne Mallar: the audit we're behind in providing information how are we going to bring [33:26] Susan Deane: it up yeah I expected that Stephanie was prepared to give you a more robust outline of what's been happening what we did chat about this because obviously when I saw the email come through I thought huh no progress that doesn't that doesn't bode well for when we come and chat with you so one thing i would say is a lot of work is happening with staff as stephanie described to me she essentially has herself and one staff person sort of full-time managing the budget process and then another staff person and her deputy focusing in on the audit and they are producing a lot of materials and getting things ready but those haven't gone to the auditors yet and so theoretically if that's true you should see very shortly a big uptick in progress once those materials do go to the auditors. But if it [34:27] Wayne Mallar: hasn't materialized do we have the ability to provide extra service for her to get the information to them? Yeah. Because I'm sure the auditor's calendar is getting full I mean I don't want to be on the back side of it yeah I think this is [34:44] Susan Deane: really I will preview for you a conversation that we will have as part of the budget process which is that our audit department we have very high expectations for their output and I think we need to have an honest conversation about whether they're going to be able to achieve those expectations with the resources that they have currently. But that being said, I think if we were to try to, for example, hire temp employees to assist, I think one of the challenges is that a temp employee coming in cold to our systems, trying to pull data and information for an audit might be more work to get those individuals up to speed need than if we were just to have employees continue to do overtime because we have employees definitely doing overtime weekends and nights just keeping finance afloat would it be safe to [35:42] Wayne Mallar: Say this is a problem we've had in past years. I think that's never addressed. I think it's fair [35:48] Susan Deane: that it's a long-standing problem, and I think it's a problem that has been exacerbated by a large number of vacancies in the finance department. And so even though they are fully staffed now, they're digging out from a pretty substantial hole through no fault of their own. [36:05] Michael Beck: That's about it. Something I keep bringing up that I'll bring up again, I think one of the things that would take pressure off of them is that if we were to get in the habit of putting a popular annual report out, because the annual or the what they call it the caffer or whatever, the annual report there, the financial report gets held up by the audit, and then you know fiscal year end, and then we don't get a report until a year and a half later, whereas if we could put in the habit of like we did in years past, put up the popular annual report, we get that, it's got the numbers, we can see it, and then later on we'll get the audited version. I [36:38] Susan Hawes: think that might take a little pressure off, and this is something we've been discussing for a [36:44] Susan Deane: while, so perhaps we could really look into it. Yeah, I think, and I see as the benefit of that also that I actually suspect that style of animal report might actually contain more information that the general public might find interesting as compared to the yes, if I'm being honest, but I do think that it is, it is also a lift to put that together, so it's finding the right resources to dedicate to that task to put it together, but I think, I think I've said to you before when I was applying for this position, I searched for a very long time on the website trying to find the annual report, and I realized there just wasn't one, and it would have been very helpful to learn about the city's operations. Other questions with that, we will adjourn at 7 16, and next up is