Bangor Finance Committee approves signal upgrades and sewer bond orders

[0:22] Speaker A (unidentified): We [0:26] Carollynn Lear: are here for the finance committee meeting. It is 5:37 and our chair is absent, so I will take a motion to nominate an interim chair. I will make a motion that [0:44] Speaker A (unidentified): Councillor [1:06] Daniel Carson: Carson, Council Leonard, would you join the finance committee this evening? I would love. All right, welcome to the regularly scheduled finance committee meeting. It is August 17th, 2026, and it is 5:37 p.m. I'm Daniel Carson, the temporary chair for this committee this evening. I am joined by fellow committee members Michael Beck, Councillor Faloon, Councillor Mallar, and Councillor Leonard this evening, and also at the table we are joined by City Manager Carollynn Lear, Council Chair Hawes, Councilor Fish. We have three items on our, excuse me, two items on our agendas this evening. The first is bids and purchases. Yes, turn it over to you. [1:52] Carollynn Lear: All right. So the first item is a fleet mule dispenser. This was bid and three bids were received. And they are seeking gain to go with the low bid, which is Gaff Tech at 32,650, was approved in the fiscal 27 budget. [2:15] Speaker A (unidentified): Any questions? [2:21] Michael Beck: Counselor Back, it's just a question, were all the bids responsive normally? [2:26] Carollynn Lear: Oh yeah, we can update the templates so people don't use the new ones. My, for all the bids responses, yes. Okay, my apologies for not catching that. [2:44] Daniel Carson: I would just move that recommendation. Thank you. Any doubt move? [2:52] Carollynn Lear: On. All right, so next on the agenda is a de-icer loan leader. The airport budgeted for this for three of them so that they can sort of better monitor the ice material as it's getting applied, because it's a particular flow meter for a particular icer that we already have. We've had to do a sole source for this, and so we're looking for committee approval for the sole source and the award of the bid, the Global Ground Support. [3:32] Daniel Carson: Four, any questions? What's [3:39] Joseph Leonard: going on? I'm just doing a staff recommendation. Second. [3:42] Daniel Carson: And item [3:47] Carollynn Lear: c on your list is actually something that you approved last week so we can eliminate that from the agenda you already approved that one it's missed that and so then the last item them on the agenda is some signal improvements from the engineering department as i'm flipping to it jeff anything in particular that you want to share about this one fortunately the local share is only 10 so although the award is substantial our portion is quite small off i've [4:34] Unidentified staff member: Been in here so the projects you have in front of you is for still for signal improvements at Broadway and Stillwater North Park. It's an existing intersection, it's just a project to upgrade the mast arms, the concrete bases, and all the signal equipment. We're putting the new fabric cabinet update and the signal detection with miles vision, and again, the I did not use, I apologize too, I did not use the new form, I used the old one, but all bids were responsive. The original budget amount was 714 000 699 cents. This is a grand project with the state, that's an it's an 80 10 project, which means 80 as federal, 10 state, 10 local share. This came in way in the budget, I think that when this budget was originally created, you know, a few years, many years ago, I think we thought, you know, signal prices were going to be jacked up quite a quite a bit things of state level, so recommended is 287 782 dollars, and our ten percent share will be twenty eight thousand seven hundred seventy eight dollars, so we are recommending award to Daigle Construction plan for [6:02] Joseph Leonard: life and we moved that [6:03] Daniel Carson: recommendation, thank you, and then a second move [6:12] Speaker A (unidentified): on we'll go like that, thank you, what's [6:28] Daniel Carson: the end of bid and purchases next we have our sewer infrastructure bond issues councillor mallard [6:34] Wayne Mallar: Before we go on to the next section, I vaguely remember the budget looking for two vehicles for pox and rank, is this one of the two, or did we vote on the both of them last time [6:50] Carollynn Lear: Was the I'm sorry Mike, I'm sorry director [6:57] Wayne Mallar: What was it, but I thought in the budget they had an item in there for two vehicles, two ranger vehicles, no just one, okay, I just wanted to be sure, yes our [7:17] Daniel Carson: next item is our sewer infrastructure bond issues, yes so you had [7:24] Carollynn Lear: items on for first reading last week to issue two bonds for sewer stormwater infrastructure projects. These are projects that were budgeted for in fiscal 27, and the budget authorized them to be bonded. Now, step two of the process is to actually issue the bonds, which requires another round of council approval. I thought before we actually discussed the two bond items, I would just give a high-level overview for the benefit of our new counselors on the sort of the process at a high level, and there was a really brief presentation in your packet [8:13] Speaker A (unidentified): that I'm going to work from so [8:18] Carollynn Lear: Why do we borrow? We typically only borrow for very expensive projects, which allows us to pay over time and spread the costs of those major projects over many years. The other reason why we bond is because the project is going to benefit residents over a very long period of time. It makes sense to spend the cost of those projects of a very long period of time so that all residents are paying for those projects. We typically are borrowing for major infrastructure projects, buildings, equipment, major utility systems, like the wastewater treatment infrastructure that you're considering. And it also allows us to deliver certain infrastructure improvements sooner. So you don't have to save up the money over a long period to invest. You can do that infrastructure improvement now and get that more quickly. There's really two types of bonds that we typically use here in the city. There's SRF bonds, which are state sewer infrastructure bonds, and then there's general obligation bonds, and general obligation bonds are typically supported by taxpayer dollars. In this instance, actually, with the general obligation bonds that are on your agenda for tonight, those aren't supported by taxpayer dollars. Those are supported by the sewer fees that everyone one pays for using the system, and then state revolving fund sewer and stormwater loans are almost always paid for from service fees. They don't typically fall to taxpayers, but preference is to always do SRF loans because the interest rate is lower, and oftentimes portions of them can be forgiven, but there's a state level approval process, and your projects don't always get approval for an SRF. So that is another reason why you have both general obligation bonds and SRF bonds for tonight, because the state approved some but not all of our projects for those industry-benefited bonds that can be forgiven. So each year when we go to do the budget process, as you're familiar with, there's a line item in the budget that lists our debt service, and that is the amount of money that we project that we need to raise to pay the payments for our bonds. For these bonds that you're taking out today, are theoretically approving today, we will start making payment on those bonds in this fiscal year. So next year we will budget an additional amount in our debt service to cover those bonds. So I think we already went Over the high level process, but it starts with the capital budget. The budget selects the projects that we want, you know, during the upcoming year. We all talk about how we want to finance them. Last year we financed the vast majority through unassigned fund balance. In prior years there was probably a higher proportion of projects that were bonded. And then those items come back to you to approve the actual bond issuance question. [12:05] Wayne Mallar: How many uninsured bonds do we have right now, meaning approved but not issued, many? [12:13] Carollynn Lear: I would, I would have to give you a list. I would say at least a dozen in various amounts. [12:20] Speaker A (unidentified): And [12:22] Wayne Mallar: why have we had a delay in issuing them? So typically it's been the city's practice [12:29] Carollynn Lear: to pay for projects out of cash because we are a cash owned city, and then reimburse ourselves with the bonds later as a mechanism to reduce the amount of interest that we're paying on [12:45] Unidentified staff member: those bonds. I'd [12:50] Wayne Mallar: be interested in seeing how many we have outstanding. Yeah, I can absolutely [12:54] Carollynn Lear: bring that, bring that back to you. And you know, I think big picture, you need to go out for some of those outstanding bonds, so those are going to start coming. So when we issue bond orders, so the bond orders, for example, that you have before you, they're highly technical documents. Unlike most of your council orders, they're not typically two or three pages long with very technical language. Those are drafted not by city staff, they're drafted by dedicated bond council that the city hires to help us through this process. And then we also work with a financing agent who advises us on what types of bonds to go out for, when to issue them, in what amounts, to get the best deal for the city. One of the nice things about being a big city is that we can be competitive on the open market for bonds. We issue enough and we're big enough that folks wanna buy our bonds. A lot of, if you were a smaller town, you'd generally be working directly with the municipal bond bank. They only do two bond issuances a year, so you're sort of time limited on when you can do it. But for us, we can be a bit more flexible and nimble when going out for bonds. So once we have the bonds, we fund all of our capital accounts, we maintain a specific capital account for each project, and the money goes into that account, and then we pay down, or we pay for the work from those bonds. [14:40] Michael Beck: Just to clear the question, did you say that both of the bonds currently are going to be paid by fees, or was it just the SRF one? [14:51] Carollynn Lear: Both of them will be paid by wastewater fees because they're both budgeted through Amanda's budget. She's an enterprise fund. She's entirely funded by sewer fees. So although they're not both the super good deals that you get from SRF, neither of the bond packages will impact taxpayers. And Amanda will budget appropriately in her next budget for the debt service on those. And although we didn't get approval for all of these projects for SRF loans, I think we feel like the state was pretty generous on what they did. We don't feel slighted or short-changed. It's still great for us to get those projects that were funded with SRF bonds. So with that, I'm ready to move on to the two actual projects. Councilor Grisham and Councilor Luck, do we have an idea, maybe too early, but do we have an idea of just what that means in dollars, how it's going to impact those that are paying their sewer bills? So the actual bond we came in on, these two packages combined will be about 650 000 a year. I suspect that it will have no impact because I think we've adequately budgeted for it in this year. So yeah, then my other comment is it's exciting to see these because I know for years certain development projects have been discouraged because we just haven't had the infrastructure to be able to support that. So and I think especially the past year or two we've had some pretty significant projects come to the table. So I think that you know even though it looks like a lot, I think the long-term return on this is it's going to be good. They reported on one today in the newspaper about a big project that's been on hold. Amanda, do you want to come up and talk about the actual projects briefly? Amanda [17:05] Unidentified staff member: Smith, director for the department of water quality. The general obligation bond is mainly going to be covering two projects. One is the rest of the phases needed to complete the Bangor Mall area capacity, which happened to be in the paper this morning. As you know, you recently awarded the capacity improvements going under the interstate right there. And this bond will allow us to carry on the rest of the gravity work that we need to get up all the way to that Chase Road area to free up capacity. Our consultant worked with our community economic development to look at the full potential build-out capacity. So when this is complete, we should never have to revisit capacity in that subsection again. At the other project, the other main project for that bond is a potential BBI project for downtown, where the beautification project that hopefully will be going in next year will give us an opportunity to get into an area to separate the storm water out from the sewer and address some of our most ancient lines right downtown. The SRF bonds, which we were very fortunate to have approved through DEP, to give you an idea, they received $400 million worth of requests this year, and they had 75 million to work with. So the fact that Bangor was awarded two projects of this size is a big deal. And those are both focused on another area. It's our other pump station that is open capacity, it's another restricted area that impacts more business development, industrial development, and has a significant impact on our combined sewer overflows. One of those projects in particular is one that we have offered up to the EPA in our submittal last June for our final phase of our long-term control plan under our consent decree, so that is a project that is likely going to be a regulatory requirement for us to complete. And so, yeah, the two SRF projects are a big separation project to get a lot more stormwater separated out of the sewer in the Perry Road area and the Perry Road post station. Any [19:31] Carollynn Lear: other questions for us? We will be looking for them delivered. [19:38] Joseph Leonard: I'm more sorry to just add a comment overall. We thank you for using the word ancient, probably not like thousands of years old, but certainly hundreds at this point in some sections of the city. And this outdated infrastructure, even though it's still useful to us to this day, it's so important for the development of the city to grow and bolster, to whether it's supporting more residential units or commercial units, we have to support those buildings by giving them the underground infrastructure [20:11] Speaker A (unidentified): for them to function. [20:13] Joseph Leonard: And there's been a lot of talk over the years regarding the idea of the council wanting to pursue a housing bond order for the citizens to vote on. And I think before going into something like that, or maybe in conjunction with that, we actually have to address the infrastructure needs of our wastewater system, our sewage system, especially separating the storm water from the actual wastewater system. I know, I know on Silver Street in the western bank where it constantly has those issues all the time, they still don't have separation out there, or separation. Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't shock me if not. I recall many citizens having issues with flooding their basements there. But like, so that's already an issue for existing units of buildings in the city. And that's why we have to address this, even if we don't plan to build any new building units. But there are a lot of development lots that really we do need an infrastructure in order to facilitate more housing or more commercial housing. So I would actually like to, I don't know if it's probably appropriate to have this either in finance or in the infrastructure committee, but I definitely want to have our infrastructure committee have more vision operating goals to try to see like what are the needs of the city from an infrastructure standpoint? What are our shortfalls? What are the things that we're doing well, but what are the ways that we can complement the existing system in order to facilitate more economic growth and more residential growth? So, I mean, I'm going to be in favor of all of these. So I just want to make sure that this is a discussion that we are going to have to have as a city for the foreseeable future, but certainly within the next decade, this is going to be a big issue for us, especially considering not to get into a larger discussion about climate change, but it's very clear we're going to have more rainfall, we're going to have more flooding that's going to put an extra stress on our underground infrastructure as well. So we are going to need to have this conversation. I'd rather have preventative conversations than reactive ones. So, Amanda, you've been great on this topic for so long. I really appreciate your leadership in this and I apologize for potentially giving you more headaches in the future. [23:03] Carollynn Lear: I'm not on the committee, but I'm pretty sure that the infrastructure committee has already started looking into some of those issues and doing some pre planning. We've had several conversations with the city engineer and talking about future plans. So I think it's underway. They have more to do, but I know they've started the process. [23:31] Joseph Leonard: Questions? Are you ready for a motion? Comments? Motions? I mean, I would make a motion on the bond order for the Kmart pump station and other sewers, sewer separation, CSO infrastructure. [23:46] Speaker A (unidentified): Structure you'll [23:51] Michael Beck: Go back just to clarify so the motion we made is a not to pass because it would [23:57] Carollynn Lear: Be the committee recommendation. Okay, yeah, it will, it will go back to the whole council regardless that second, but we'll be accompanied by a recommendation any [24:09] Daniel Carson: Further discussion? Any doubt? Back to council, and I think we're required a public hearing on the 24th. There's another one I [24:24] Joseph Leonard: would also make a motion in favor of the federal pump station and others [24:29] Daniel Carson: who were super separation CSO infrastructure. Second stop time. Any doubt? Council also in the public hearing on the funny boy. Any other business? I was just going to say [24:48] Carollynn Lear: aloud for folks listening because they're wondering, so we're going to delay a third item because we got some late information that didn't get into it. So we'll consider it if it ceases. [25:01] Daniel Carson: Any other business from the committee? With that, we're adjourned at 6.01 p.m. Stay tuned for the Business and Economic Development Committee.