Brunswick Council Begins 2028-2032 Capital Improvement Program Workshop

[0:06] Steve Weems: Good evening, everybody. Welcome. My name is Steve Weems. I'll be hosting tonight's workshop. It is Thursday, October 15th, 2026. And this is a town council meeting to begin our work on the capital improvements program. It is a workshop hosted by the Finance Committee, which is why I'm here. And welcome everybody who might be listening in or watching in. We have seven counselors. We have five counselors in the room, I think. Yes, we do. Five in the room. One on Zoom. One heading home to get on Zoom. And absent would be, and those on Zoom are Ramona Thieme and Kathy Wilson, the chair of the council, Nathan McDonald is absent this evening. And so is Kim Anderson, another counselor. I think with that out of the way, my next duty is to ask the town manager if this meeting was properly noticed. It was. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Our agenda tonight will be, by the way, to receive the draft number one of our capital improvements program. Program. Hear from the Department of Economic and Community Development on their activities and begin our process of considering the so called CIP. Are there any adjustments? Seeing none, I'll open up the meeting for public comment. Anyone in the room want to make a comment? Seeing none. And I see none on Zoom. I will close the public comment period. And blessedly turn the meeting over to the town manager to take it from here. [2:14] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): Thank you, Councillor Weems. So I have a brief presentation, and I'm going to be quick. What you have in paper in front of you is draft one. So my presentation, my first presentation will be to just give you a quick tour of the document, and you can follow along on paper. I've also given you a copy of the presentation. So I'm going to get that called up. So this is kicking off the capital improvement program, which is going to go all the way. We're going to be working on this until next May. So welcome. I will tell you that staff started this in August. Not April. We weren't done with the last one in April. So we started this in August and compiled a lot of projects,, and this is sort of them all coming together. So as a reminder, the capital improvement program is required by town charter. It's a multiyear financial plan, five years, that identifies capital projects and acquisitions, and the point of it is to look at the capital part of our operations. We look at our annual operating costs every year in the budget, but this is a longer-term plan that will set priorities, promotes coordination of efforts, guides debt financing decisions. And this is important because a lot of what we do in the capital improvement plan affects future budgets because if we issue debt, that is then paid back in future years. And the most important thing, I think, really is to have the capital operations of the town or activities of the town linked to the financing of the operations. So, very quick. This particular policy was adopted in 2013, amended in 2018. The general concept is projects have to be over 100,000 to get in here as a capital project. Less than that, we try to fund in different ways. We also have, and this is more recent even than 2018, capital reserves. And that's ways to fund regular replacement of existing things, whereas capital projects tend to be bigger, one-time things. So, as you know, we collect a whole bunch of projects and then we sort them into various categories. Recommended things that we know we want to do but are still a little squishy, under development. And then there are some projects that you'll show up in here year after year as not recommended, but we don't want to forget that somebody wanted them. Next slide, please. How we fund them is also a big part of this plan because we not only have to identify what we want to do, but how it would be funded and how that whole picture looks altogether. And so this slide just sort of lays out what the policy says about how we should fund things. Generally debt service for big things, general revenues. news, this is how we fund our capital reserves. And fund balance, we'll talk about that as well. And then obviously we also have non-town sources. So we use grants whenever we can, and we also partner with other entities to make our capital projects more efficient. So the document itself. Next slide, please. It starts out – I'm going to actually go through this so we can skip this, but there's three sections. The summary of the projects, the funding analysis, then the reserve schedules, and then the individual project summaries. So the first page, one, after the table of contents, is the summary of sources and uses. And this lays out the recommended projects. So this is not all the projects in development, but this is just the things that really look like they're going to go forward, and it lays out the types of projects and the associated funding sources. And this is something the rating agencies look at, because they're they're looking at our totals of what we think we're going to be taking on for debt in the coming years, what our total capital expenditure is. It's important that a town and any municipality actually spends money on capital. It is seen as a good thing, because if you're not spending on capital, you're letting things deteriorate. It's recognized. So the next slide, please. This is when you get into the list of the projects, and these are the projects recommended for funding. I've just put page two in the sheet, but we have a page-and-a-half full list of projects. And I'll remind everyone that number on that page to the left is a page number for the project later in the book, so you can get into the detail. Next slide, please. In this section, recommended, is also where we list the amount that we expect to put into the capital reserves every year. As a reminder, these are also in the budget. So when it says municipal revenues way over on the right there, that means that is annual revenues, meaning in the budget, raised from taxes or other sources. So this is our regular annual spending, and it's considered sort of repair. It's not repairs and repair and maintenance. It is replacement of existing capital, vehicles, equipment. equipment. We have an IT cable TV equipment, because there are some big projects that come up there. We can talk about the reserves later. So the next slide, this is the projects in development. These, when you're looking at them and you're thinking, oh, how did they come up with that? These may not be very well detailed yet. I will also point out this is draft one. If you see mistakes in it, let us know. We're working on it. We hope by the final draft we've got it down, but things will change. And some of the numbers, and particularly this section, I think will be looked at again. And then the next slide. So then the next page, five, is proposed but not recommended and the non-town projects. The non-town projects are primarily from Maine DOT's annual work plan and what they're planning to do in Brunswick. And the reason we put them in here is so, well, everyone knows that they're happening. But also if there's some advantages to coordinating any of the work, we would want to know that. If something is happening over on Main, Cabot, and Bow Streets, for example, that is aligned with some of the other projects, for example, the Riverwalk. So then next slide, please. Then we get into the debt analysis. We're now getting into the debt side. So pages 6 and 7 are kind of the assumptions of if we are to borrow for these things, when we would borrow, how much, what the estimated interest rates would be, what the projected first-year debt service would be, and what the estimated total debt service would be. And so this is how the analysis then gets built. And I'm going to keep racing right along. We can talk about details when I get through all this tour here. So the next slide is some of the graphs that come out of those debt service models. So this first one is the existing debt that we have. So this is debt that has already been issued, that we know exactly what the payment schedules are. And in this one as well, I identify what the dark blue is coming from the general fund budget. The purple is school subsidy. That's for the Harriet Beecher's Toe School. And the orange is TIF revenues. So we don't have any TIF revenues paying debt service right now, but we have in the past. And you will see we are planning to have some in the future. So the next slide. So this is existing and authorized debt service. You see the TIF revenues are popping back in there. The Council has authorized issuing debt for Jordan Avenue and Jordan Avenue's debt service can be paid from TIF revenues. [11:23] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, go ahead. Is that newly discovered or did we always know that? [11:29] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): We have always modeled it that way. way. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That is, it's a good feature. And so whenever possible, we will do it that way. We will use TIF revenues whenever we can, because that means it doesn't come out of the general fund budget. So then the next slide is if we are to add the projects in the recommended section. Again, there's quite a few more that can be funded with TIF. A big one is Steven Drive. That one could be funded with the Cook's Corner TIF, and we're modeling it that way. And then the last graph, this is if we were to do everything in the projects in development as well, which everyone looks always shocked at this graph, but we know that probably this isn't going to happen. But it doesn't mean that the project shouldn't be in there and we shouldn't be looking at them and we shouldn't be moving them around and trying to prioritize and sequence things as best we can. So then the next slide, there's also a section on the tax impact summary because people always want to know like what would it mean to the tax rate if we were to do all these things. So there's a whole section on what that tax impact would be. And then next slide, this is the tax rate impact of the debt service. So this would be with the recommended. In your book, you have one that is basically our existing and authorized debt, and then in the slide I put in just the one that includes the proposed debt in the recommended section. So in this case, the dark blue is existing debt. The light blue is authorized debt, and then the green one is what's recommended with debt in the recommended projects. And then the last next slide, we're almost there, this would be the tax, what would hit the tax impact if we did everything in the book. So then moving on, going on in the book, that the next couple pages are of the terms used, explaining the assumptions that were made. Looks like I missed the whole assumption. Oh, there's the assumptions and then the terms used. And then we get into the vehicle and equipment reserve schedules. And there's the fire department. And we can go into more detail about these as needed. I'm going to just keep moving. Moving, this year we have a climate action plan reserve on page 27. This is just, as you know, was funded for the first time this year that we're in, and you can see it's just getting started, but we have a basis here that we're getting working on. Then beginning on page 29 are the actual projects. Projects, and each project has two pages, and they are labeled by color. If they're green, they're in the recommended section. If they're yellow, they're in development. Red is not recommended. And I think that's probably the end of my, almost the end, yes, individual project summaries. And then my last slide, I usually put in, this is the first of a whole lot of CIP workshops we are, these are the ones that we're scheduling. Obviously, the ones in the new year will be approved by the new council, but this is what at least we're looking at through the end of this calendar year and hopefully starting in the new year as well. So I will stop there. I know we have, what I'd suggest is that we let our economic development director and our project engineer talk about their projects, and then we can get back into other projects in detail in this. Unless you have particular questions. I'm looking at a question. Hello. [16:09] Speaker D (unidentified): So one question is, you said that the CIP policy was adopted in 2013 and 2018, and it was identifying projects or acquisitions, capital projects and acquisitions, based on a minimum cost of $100,000 and a minimum five-year life plan. So, considering where we are today, as opposed to even 2018, I'm curious, $100,000 seems like a very low bar. Should we be looking at adjusting that up? Because it seems like the CIP will end up capturing a lot more things because of $100,000 low bar. [17:12] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): So the reason, I mean, $100,000, a project of $100,000 in any one of our department budgets would blow it away. That's part of the problem. So I've still found $100,000 to be a pretty good number. Even a $50,000 add to a budget to buy a vehicle or to build a new park can be big. We try to put the more routine things into the budget, and then we find other ways to fund the others. Now, general fund balance is what we try to use for these things that are less than a million, even actually less than $750,000. Once we get up there, we don't have enough general fund balance. But, yeah, I get what you're saying, that $100,000 doesn't go very far anymore. And you'll see that there's very few projects that are $100,000. They're all $300,000. Yeah. [18:11] Speaker D (unidentified): And then I know it said a minimum of five-year life. I'm just curious and apologize because I was trying to keep up and I didn't necessarily see everything. But so like in regards to like regular vehicles, not like stuff like public works use or the school department or something, but like more like the police cruisers or maybe like what public works uses for just regular stuff. Of are those considered capital because a five-year life of a regular vehicle is not with the amount of especially the cruisers absolutely more so than the public works. I mean like parks and rec is what I was thinking, so I'm just curious do those fall under this or it seems like they shouldn't because it seems like a five-year that we're we're being very hopeful if they last five years. [19:11] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): Yes, they're not scheduled to. So this is exactly the sort of intermediate area. They're less than $100,000, but they will blow a budget if you try to replace, and we're trying to replace four cruisers every year because they do last about five years. So that's what the reserves are about. So if you look on page 21 of the book, this is how we try to, it's kind of between the standalone projects and the budget. So it's where we fund these equipment and vehicle reserves, so it levels out the funding, but it means that those funds can be managed over time. So these are the pages that show you that type of thing. It's kind of in between. It's exactly what you're pointing out. This [20:10] Speaker E (unidentified): is more so to the general process. So we have projects that have approved budgets. Those are in the gray columns that we have. We have ones that are in not gray columns that are planned. But as I've often heard, the funding is not approved for those. Exactly. Where do you transition from projects that are recommended for funding to actually assessing what council temperament is to doing? Said project like if I randomly pick a project here playgrounds and parks this will make me everybody's favorite there's 150,000 in there for that but let's say the council didn't want to fund that like what's the process for checking in on that next step of progression we are starting it right now so it's project by project we will go by yep each of these yep you will hear from [20:54] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): The parks and rec about those you will have a chance this is this ends up being adopted by the council, and then we will have a funding resolution for some of the projects at the budget time, just the first year. But during this process, we will be amending this document till it meets what, I mean, we're also gonna be, I prepared a whole presentation on funding methods that we'll go over as well in one of these workshops so that we understand how we try to balance things out. We know how much general fund balance we have to spend we you know we have to say oh we're not gonna be able to afford everything the first year so does [21:39] Speaker E (unidentified): Approval of this plan, though, like, if I'm looking at this and let's just focus on twenty seven, twenty eight, which is the next year, if I approve this plan right now, I'm not necessarily approving the individual funding for the line items, right? Like, we're not gonna take a vote on every single project to say, yeah, we're doing that. 's still within the budget, we would vote on those, we would expect those to come into the budget for the next year because that's probably more certain than if I were looking at 2030 through 31. Those are, you know, who knows when those will happen. But I'm just, again, curious when the alignment of council approval and actual process goes. [22:14] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): So, yes, it comes all together in May. In May. Right? So I don't know if you remember when you approved the budget last year. You also approved last year's CIP, which didn't fund anything on its own, but there was also a funding resolution for some of the projects in the CIP. Not all of them, but some of the projects, and primarily most of the ones in the first year. It wasn't even all of the ones in the first year. [22:43] Speaker E (unidentified): So I'm trying to ask you the question because I'm trying to gauge, like, if I have advocacy for one of or any of these projects or opposition to them, like, when do I speak? And it sounds like the budget season is really where that... You can start now. [22:56] Speaker D (unidentified): Okay. Right? Like, all these workshops, really. [23:00] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): I mean, that's when, you know, we are all listening. And, I mean, Jay is, Jay really put a lot of this together. And he is, yeah, he's paying attention. And so he's going to be like, well, that one's not going to fly. I'm going to move it out a couple of years. [23:16] Speaker E (unidentified): And so it's still, until we get to the budget season, it's still more of a straw-poly type. He gets a read for the room. Like, if I were to say a project like Houston Park, I think is in a couple years, some of the bigger investments on that. Like, there's nothing binding on that until we get closer to that time point. But you're getting a sense for how people are receiving it as a project to understand whether or not you should even be pitching it in the budget. [23:39] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): Yes, and staff will advocate for different projects, right? I mean, because we, who are looking at the whole thing all the time, have opinions about what sequence should be, what priorities should be. Yep, okay. I think Ramona has a question. [23:57] Steve Weems: Ramona, are you there with a question? Yes, I am. [24:02] Speaker F (unidentified): Honestly, Chancellor Ellis' question answered a lot of it, but I think I just wanted to dig into it a little more with, like, the inclusion of things in the recommended section of this. Would that also be interpreted as like guidance to staff to be kind of prioritizing working on those things, and so staff time would be like going into those projects? So if there were things that the council was not really particularly interested in doing in the near term, it makes sense to you know kind of get that out here early. There aren't specific things that I'm, I'm talking about here. I'm just, that from a process standpoint, we're going to be at some point enacting the CIP. And when we do that, we're kind of saying, you know, work towards having this ready for us to then authorize funding for later. You know, we shouldn't just be kind of leaving everything in here with this idea that, oh, well, we can always just say no later, because there would be a whole bunch of wasted effort that went into getting it ready for us to then say no to later. Yes, I would, I would say that's very true. [25:22] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): Obviously we would, you know, you're gonna be hearing about all these projects over time, and the cycle of the CIP is one cycle, but projects are going not necessarily at this same time. I mean, you're gonna hear about a project tonight that's been going for a while that is still in the CIP. It was in last year's CIP and the year before. And now things are changing and happening. So it's on staff to bring these projects to you at these junctures where decisions have to be made of, are we still going or are we not? And projects come from all different places. So some of these projects come from committees. Some come from departments. You'll see projects in here for the library because the town owns the library. So the projects come from all over. They try to get in here. They get mashed around. The good news is that just because they're in here doesn't mean they're going to happen. I say that over and over again. But it is a really good opportunity to take a big look at all the different options and think wow, like what can we actually manage to do? So just one more question in regards [26:39] Speaker D (unidentified): to like our current debt service, where would I go to look and see like what makes up our current debt service, and like when our individual projects like Carrie Beecher Stowe or the police department or something, when are they coming off this? [27:00] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): Isn't a presentation I would give if we had time tonight, but it's that I can tell we'll need to do that, we'll need to do a real, this whole presentation is really all about all the different funding methods you can have that. Okay, I'll hand it out. [27:25] Steve Weems: later this is a moment with me to add one nuance here and that from the managers comments it's pretty clear that this is an organic process and I like to go on this little quest I can't win it but this is not a capital improvement plan this is a capital improvement program that eventually through the budgeting process becomes more like a plan so it's a nomenclature difference without a distinction probably but it is kind of reflective of the organic nature of the process in the document [28:14] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): So I know we have staff here to tell you about a project, you're going to have these project presentations, hopefully you'll get an idea of all the projects, but I hope you'll take, I know, no, this is a lot of paper, but we have found the council finds it advantageous to be able to write in it and that sort of thing. So I'd suggest, yep. You're on a roll. Keep going. Okay. Ask our economic and community development director and our project engineer. I don't know if you've met our, this is our project engineer, Laura Smith. She is stepping up now in a big way. [28:59] Sally Costello: Okay. Thank you, Chair Weems. Sally Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development. This is not my full presentation for economic development. That's actually, I'm coming back on the 26th. I am here on a special project related to an interdepartmental effort for Allagash, the Allagash Drive Realignment and Access Road Connection Project that we've been working with multiple departments on. Primarily the town manager's office and engineering, and that is why Laura Smith is here accompanying me, because she can fill in the gaps for the engineering piece. As Manager Henze mentioned, this has been in the CIP for a few years, and we have, as staff, have made some strides in fundraising that have brought this to this place where we think we can advance this with our partners and obviously this would come back to the town council if they agree. Next slide please. So this is the area, this is in Cook's Corner, just this was the location map that we put together for a grant application to MDOT for some funding for this project, and this just shows sort of that little nexus there of where Allagash Drive is, and you can see that little curve now. Everybody knows that sort of is the S-curve, although I was thinking today it's really backwards. But that is currently where Allagash comes through to Admiral Fitch. The access road is where Rusty is, and people take that as a cut-through and then come on that little curve there and get on to Admiral Fitch. So that's the location. Next slide, please. So this is kind of a little silly, but this is what we used last year to talk about the project in economic development, just to really show you what we're trying to accomplish here, and that is a straightening or realignment of Allagash Drive, a removal of the existing Allagash Drive to open up the two parcels that are under purchase and sale and sold to Jim Howard. It's called Pinnacle Group LLC, is the owner of that, to be able to develop those as mixed-use development. So that is proposed to be commercial and housing. The cut-through, which is the access drive, is something we've been wanting to improve as a public way. And so the idea is that all of it would be improved as a public way with bike-ped facilities, and I'll talk in more detail about that, as well as built as a complete street. So I will talk a little bit more about that. The path that is the multi-use path is separate. There are kind of two separate projects, and I'm going to explain that in a minute. One is the multi-use path. The multi-use path is a 10-foot path that we feel is really important to build when we build these new streets because we are trying to achieve connectivity not only in Cook's Corner but all around town. So whenever we have the opportunity to improve a street and put investment into our public ways, we would like to have that at least as an option for the town council to consider. It also runs along an MDOT project that they were working with MIRA to create a multi-use path all the way down to Allagash, connecting to where the perimeter trail is on the other side, all the way to the gate where Martin's point is, because we've got the perimeter trail. And what we found out during the process that they were working with MDOT, they were funded design money for that, is that when we worked, our engineer recommended some borings of Allagash, and we found out that Allagash needs to be fully rebuilt. And, of course, at some point, the town will take over the roads, and so we want them to be to our road standards. standards. We did, however, want to work with MDOT on doing some portion of the bike-ped facilities, and so we're working to reduce the scope of the WN, and that's what the WN is, what MDOT uses to allocate their projects, so that we can do this all at one time. It's much more efficient than coming back and doing it later. So you can see on the access road the other things we're doing in this list talk about safety features when you pull into the rusties it's a you can pull in and pull out and it's very dangerous it's so close that first curb cut there into the gas station is very tight and we'd like that just to be a right in and you circle around and come out we also want to have again we want to have the bike ped facilities running along that's what that green line is and ultimately getting us across to mary Meeting plaza and there is a very big mobile home park there and so we would like to line that up with m dot signalization project that is for the entirety of bath road within the cook's corner area there the whole price project cost that we have estimated right now, and we have 60% drawings, is about $1.27 million, and the town share, we estimate that to be about $761,000. Next slide, please. So this is kind of an interesting document that is a construction drawing that has all this colorization, and there's a reason for that, because there's multiple things we were trying to achieve, and there's multiple sources of funding in this. So we talk about these partnerships and it's really important that we try to leverage other funding when we do these infrastructure projects because it's out there. There are many people benefiting from this including the business owners. In this particular case we went to MDOT for a business partnership initiative grant. Basically the way that is set up is that it's a third, a third, a third. MDOT will pick up a third of the cost. The town, the municipality picks up a third, and then hopefully the business picks up a third. It's not always that the business picks up a third, but that is the goal. We did have an MOU with four partners in this case. This is kind of a unique case because obviously this land is on the auspices of MIRA, and so we want MIRA to be a participating entity in this, and they have gone to their board and gotten approval for funding $375,000 of this. What makes up the BPI project, and I'm going to show you this in a minute, is 1.355. We did get notified that they approved this project and their funding, and we're kind of working through a grant agreement subject to the town council thinking this is a good project and wanting to move forward with that. The reason we're here tonight is because we're actually coming to the town council on the 19th because we're going to be bringing a resolution to accept that grant. That doesn't mean that you're saying let's move forward with this project. What it means is that we've got funds reserved for 2027 for this project with MDOT, and we want to get those obligated. We can get out at any time for any reason. There's no penalty. So we wanted to get here prior to that meeting. So the purple is showing you know what's going on in the access road as it relates to the improvements that we're going to be doing with the sidewalk and the bike ped 10 foot multi-path. Also the right in right out is the red. You can kind of see how that median's been adjusted to and there'll be signage to accommodate that. The blue is also is Allagash, that's you know part of the BPI, and then that pink strip is what is the multimodal path that would be funded through MDOT this other wind project. That is through MIRA, and so MIRA is picking up the design and for both the design drawings and the construction drawings, so they are funding that as part of what they're doing. And the little, there's just a little bit where you can see the orange, and that's just kind of where the beginning of that S-curve is, but that is where the paving is just showing that would be demoed as part of this project. So, what are the four entities I explained? MDOT, Town of Brunswick, MIRA, and the Pinnacle Group. The proposed sources would be the BPI grant, TIF revenues. TIF revenues on both sides would be from the town, and also MIRA's would be proposing using TIF revenues out of their portion of TIF revenues. A land donation by the property owner and also a business equity investment that would be in addition to the donation. So basically Mira and the landowner are bringing that second 451 and we have a memorandum of understanding that was submitted to MDOT as part of that application. Laura helped with that application on the engineering side so we submitted that as a team. Next slide please. So this is the engineering drawing that I'm going to let Laura talk to you about because she can get more into the specifics about what actually is going to be happening with the construction. Thank [39:00] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): you Sally. Yeah I think Sally covered kind of the highlights of what this project would actually be but I'll just give a few more details. So basically the town would be constructing and accepting about 850 feet of public roadway that is currently a private access road and then the private Allagash Drive. So it would be a public road connection from Bath Road to Admiral Fitch. And accepting it as a public road allows us to improve the circulation in that area kind of increase the safety close some of the existing curb cuts that are just kind of confusing traffic circulation and then put in the pedestrian and bike facilities to connect Bath Road Mary meeting Plaza to the perimeter trail to the landing ending Katahdin Drive, kind of all points south of here. So, yeah, the primary features are, if you kind of think about this area, this segment of Bath Road, probably all know that 's quite a congested area. Part of the traffic study in the Cook's Corner revitalization plan did a whole traffic study in this area, And we know that section of Bath Road kind of has a level of service graded as C or D currently, and we just know that it's getting more busy out there. So having a public road will hopefully encourage people to use local traffic to use that more to get off of Bath Road to get into the landing. will be, as Sally mentioned, closing the entrance into Irving is very close to the Bath Road access road intersection. So we'll be changing that to an entrance only. It just really reduces the turning movements in that area to increase safety. And then you can, traffic can also currently cut through not only cut through this like access road and Allagash Drive but cut through a whole network of parking lots kind of in the center of this drawing. And we'll be closing some of those access points so that you can't cut through that way anymore. You would take the public road, the bike path I think we've gone over. So those are kind of the primary improvements are creating a more direct public road access there and then the bike ped connections next. [Sally Costello: Slide please, sure.] This is just if you're looking at the budget and notice we have a item kind of toward the bottom of that for pedestrian scale lighting. We just wanted to point out that we are, this is still, The whole design of this project is still in draft, but it's kind of one of the maybe larger single items in the budget that you might notice. And that is for pedestrian scale lighting to just bring this up to complete streets policy with lighting on that 10-foot multimodal path. And this plan mirrors other pedestrian-scale lighting that we have in similar projects in Cook's Corner. We also just wanted everyone to be aware that this is an area that we know there is environmental contamination. This was the old Navy base, and we know that in past years they used this area as fire suppression training. So it's known that some of the soils here are contaminated. I think the Navy did some soil testing just this month, and so we'll get the results from those soil samples by early December. So we're just trying to get ahead of that and know that will be part of it. We are not digging especially deep on this project, but there will be excavation. We have to remove surface along the sides of the roads. There's some drainage going in. So that is part of the project that we are considering that. Working with the Navy, the contamination is kind of their responsibility but that will be part of this project so. [44:03] Sally Costello: You have a very big budget with that kind of correlates to the colors that we saw there and I just want to kind of walk you through it a little bit because as I mentioned there's a couple of projects running alongside each other. So we've got the BPI project you can see that it's one point six four six right. So the amount that we have that is with MDOT for that was actually awarded the funding is one point three five and that is a share of the 451 for the three parties and actually as i Explained Mira and priority or I said a pinnacle group LLC will be picking up that third. There's a little bit more that we put in there because of we want this to be a complete street. This is staff recommending the council may feel differently, but we did want to add the lighting which is why I had Laura show that it was modeled off of what we are kind of the spacing and what we are looking to do with the Stevens Drive connection. However, I think it's probably over-designed and shown on this. It's probably going to be a lot less, and that's what we have to further refine because we added this in at the last minute because I just want that to be fully understood that we'd like it to be a complete street. But there is a lot of lighting at this commercial, at the gas station and everything. So that $230,000 is probably going to come down. But again, this is a project budget we need to still study. We also did have a meeting with the Navy, the EPA, and the DEP yesterday to talk about the sampling. And that's how we found out we're going to be getting those samples early December. And then we are going to be waiting until February because they're going to be working on the EPA side and the federal government side to give us a quote background which is what is the baseline that they are evaluating so they'll get the soil samples they'll get a read but they don't know what they're evaluating against what levels are acceptable and what would be required so we would not bring this project back until we obviously have a handle on that but we did put money in the budget we did Have some analysis on which parts we and working with MDOT we thought were likely to have contamination and kind of putting in some budget numbers to that a health and safety plan and the disposal and treatment of special excavation now if that's if that analysis comes back and it's more or we have to move them off site obviously that would be a whole nother decision and a whole nother thing that we would talk to the town council about whether you wanted to move forward given what we find but Every site, I cannot stress enough, that we the town look to invest in, we will always do environmental analysis. I keep saying this over and over. We know this is a superfund site, and so we will move in a measured way and that, but that is not part of the BPI funding. It is something that is separate. But so that pink column is the MIRA project, the MIRA project with M dot, that has a value of 162,000. So that would be, if we are successful in reducing that scope of the bike-ped facility, that would come in and pay for that $162,000. So that's what gets us to the $1.827,000. So I just wanted to be clear, and if there's any questions about any of this right now, happy to try to answer it, but know that this is not a final budget. But any questions on that before I move to the next slide? Next slide, please. So what are the next steps on this? So, as I mentioned, we're doing the environmental testing and the impact analysis to the project. We'll be coming on Monday. Staff will be coming to the town council on October the 19th with a resolution to accept the BPI grant and get approval on whether or not the town manager has the authority to execute the grant agreement. Agreement. And as I said, we can get out of that at any time for any reason, whether it's over budget, council decides not to do it. What we're trying to do is just reserve the funds because they were awarded for 2027. And then when we get that information back, we'll have budget refinement. As I said, we're going to be taking a look at the lighting. We're going to be taking a look at what comes back on the environmental side and finding out and assessing where we are. And then if we get to a point where we feel that it's ready, we'll bring it forward to the town council for a discussion about whether or not they would want to have authorized this project. And then we would do final design and permitting. And then eventually we'd finalize all funding and the land agreements along with these last couple steps. So that's kind of the sequencing of what the next steps are. This is really just the beginning introduction to the town council of this project because I know even though it's been in the CIP, there are always new councillors who may not have seen this before. So with that, we'll take any questions. [49:29] Speaker D (unidentified): So our portion, our quarter, is it going to be a quarter or a third? [49:36] Sally Costello: So the BPI funding, it will be a quarter of the BPI funding, which is the 1.355. The additional lighting, if we decide to make that complete street, that's what we've added on to what we say our portion is. It's interesting because we didn't have near, we have 60% drawings. And last year when I brought this, the budget was 1.7 million, the estimated budget. And I think our estimated share was like 750,000. So it's really, we're very close to that without even having, so I think our engineer did a pretty good job about like thinking through the pieces even without all the engineering in place. But at that time, we thought that our share was going to be $750,000 because we didn't know that we were even going to be awarded the BPI. I will say that we made a very concerted effort. We did work very hard on that because the BPI is really supposed to be made for connections to a state road, and so we were saying, hey, this is all going to be a public way. It is connecting, but we were very pleased with it because they have a very limited budget. So that's the other reason why they're saying we've got to get this allocated. [50:47] Speaker D (unidentified): So our portion that we would have to fund for the project, is that something that would fall under the Cook's Corner TIF, or would we be able to use any of that? [50:59] Sally Costello: Yeah, we're recommending TIF revenues, and then Mira would use TIF revenues that are from their TIF districts. All right, thank you. [51:07] Steve Weems: So one thing you can, just to kind of have a tutorial on how to navigate this on page two, I guess it's page two of the TIF program, there's up on the top recommended projects for funding. You'll see a third of the way down, 339 numbers. It says Allagash Drive realignment three times. That's this project. And over on the right are where the money would come from, 761 to something from TIF revenues from both Cook's Corner and the Brunswick Landing, the DOT, whatever that grant was. [51:52] Sally Costello: 1 million. Well, their portion is 451. [51:56] Steve Weems: And then there's on page 39 more detail about it back in the book. [52:03] Speaker C (unidentified): John. I'm wondering if we can go back to one of the sketches. I just wanted a little more clarification about... [52:14] Sally Costello: You want to go to the engineering one? [52:15] Speaker C (unidentified): One that's the clearest. They're kind of hard to... [52:18] Sally Costello: Why don't you go one with the coloring on it? I think it's easier to read. No, keep going to the very beginning. Sorry, there. Yeah, okay, is that more helpful? Yeah, so [52:29] Speaker C (unidentified): the purple is that 's the part that goes that connects to bath road yes okay and so on the left is the rusty's lantern and what does purple indicate well purple is just the [52:45] Sally Costello: axis road. I mean, they were just different colors for different pieces, so it doesn't have anything thing to do with funding. It does, it's actually included in the BPI. Okay, but it would be blue if we're talking about, isn't that, yeah, if it were, yes, yeah. And the red is also BPI funding, so everything on the access road, the blue and the green, well, everything, even the medians, everything [53:07] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): Yeah, I think basically everything besides the pink is part of this BPI project. The pink, the pink part is the DOT MIRA project that we want to construct together, but it's separate. What is the pink? The pink is the 10-foot multimodal path along that section of Allagash. And in the purple, there's also a 10-foot wide path, but that would be part of the town BPI project. [53:35] Speaker C (unidentified): So that connects to the access road. And then, but how will it connect to the actual Allagash Trail? Will that continue? Do we endeavor to connect that at some point that's down the road? [53:49] Sally Costello: We endeavor to connect that to some point down the road. And I will say that I've already been talking about that just with the town manager's office because, you know, I sit on staff review for planning and development. And there are projects coming through that we're going to really need to prioritize the rest of Allagash, getting that rebuilt and then coming hopefully back to MDOT with help on the multi-use path. [54:15] Speaker C (unidentified): And one more question. So from the access road on, who owns that road, that part of Allagash? That's Mira. It's Mira. Okay. Yeah. Whereas the road we're building, it was priority folks that owned that property, right? Yes. Okay. So that's one of those roads that we would someday want to own as a town? Is that something that we have thought about? [54:47] Sally Costello: Yeah, we will need to accept it as a public way, and we'll take over the maintenance for it. [54:53] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): Go ahead. Part of the project is the land agreement. When this project is constructed, the town would own that L shape kind of as a public way. So part of the BPI is working with Pinnacle Realty for the town to own that public right-of-way. [55:16] Sally Costello: I also just want to say that little green section that's being closed. You know, if you've gone to Dunkin' Donuts and the medical center, it's really confusing. You're driving through people's parking lot. Closing that off is going to make all the difference in people coming in from a safety standpoint. I mean, Cook's Corner has a lot of this going on, and this is one really good measure to kind of correct the safety and make the traffic flow much better. [55:47] Speaker E (unidentified): So I'm looking at a geographic map of this. So that is the entrance that you get into the drive-thru at Dunkin' Donuts today. I've heard from friends that's how you get into there. So that would be getting closed off, but then how would you get into that parking lot? Is it that little blue spur that comes on the thing? So it's being lowered to presumably the southwestern corner of that property? [56:10] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): Do we have a pointer here? [56:11] Sally Costello: Oh, I think there's a pointer. [56:14] Speaker E (unidentified): That brings you into Bar Harbor Bank, though. [56:17] Sally Costello: Maybe this doesn't work. [56:19] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): Sorry, I was trying to use a pointer. Purple comes down through. Yes, so you would come, you would access those businesses from this new section of Allagash Drive. Well, you could, right, so you would come down Admiral Fitch, you would get onto the new section of Allagash Drive, and then you would enter all of those parking lots. [56:39] Speaker E (unidentified): So you would turn right into the back end there? That's right. You got a pointer there? Who has the pointer? So that's where, right there is where you would enter. Right. And what's being shut off is the western entrance? [56:50] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): So we're closing an entrance right here to those parking lots. And then right now you can drive like all the way, kind of zigzag around these parking lots and get through here and then come this way. So we're closing off this and we're closing off this and providing this entrance. [57:08] Speaker E (unidentified): And can you outline, you had mentioned the L. I think I know what the L is. [57:11] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): Yeah, right. So this would be a public road. [57:13] Speaker E (unidentified): So we would be taking on, and I'm actually surprised to see this, that actually that road that many of us cut through is actually part of Priority's property. But that's also the main entrance into Bar Harbor Bank, for example. And again, very interesting that all of those have been using somebody else's private road. When I'm looking at this, there's behind that building, and I don't know who was in this building, but on the corner of Admiral Fitch and Bath Road, I think it's a health care building of some nature. There's one big parking lot behind it, and then the road that cuts through, and then another small parking lot. Today, are any of those you mentioned, the roadway I think is being closed out, but is the small parking lot that's south of that being modified in any way? No, the only modification we're doing is like this entrance here, so that, so the road itself comes below that existing [58:08] Unidentified staff member (likely Public Works Director): existing today parking lot? Correct, right. Yeah, so I think this maybe is that small parking lot that you're referencing. Yeah, okay. That's remaining. It's hard to tell. I gotta tell you. And there's, I know, yeah, we wish that this had aerial, but we're actually, there's going to be parking increase because I think he's going to, the private owner of this property will be able to put in more parking here where there was an entrance previously. So and now I'd like to [58:39] Speaker E (unidentified): ask a question just from a economic development perspective obviously the project costs are going to be you know somewhere in the one point whatever to 1.8 million dollar range in a nutshell describe what 's the economic benefit to the town of brunswick for doing this so the economic development [58:53] Sally Costello: benefit is opening up those two sites for redevelopment because that Allagash kind of bisects and goes through there, you cannot get the development done in a way that he would like to do, which I think he's calling a priority village, maybe. But it's going to be commercial and residential. And so that's the economic development. [59:14] Speaker E (unidentified): And those will be taxable properties at some point in time. Absolutely. [59:20] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): I'll just chime in to say, when I look at this project, I see sort of the pilot program for how we are going to be moving forward with someday probably owning all the roads in Brunswick Landing. This is a heavy lift. It's going to be a heavy lift. And this sort of model of a public-private partnership where we are really all pulling together and getting the state involved to pay, not just tax revenues, TIF revenues. And I think this is an example of how we could, you know, I'm seeing it as, you know, I don't know, I think it's very exciting just to this model, like we're working it and we're hoping that we can do more of this type of thing. And once we start doing it, I just think about what Sally said about them about the mark, like once you start getting momentum with this, then we might be able to get federal funding because we are going to need some big money to bring these roads up to standard so the town can Accept them, so anyway, that's my, and I mean, I find this exciting because I feel like, yeah, this could be our example. [1:00:28] Sally Costello: And I will say that this is also a model for bringing the business investment, right? We need, we're leveraging business investment. But, you know, donating the land has a value, just to say that priority, I worked with Taylor on this. Their land value is $202,000, so they're donating that. And then they're also putting in additional cash, too. So, you know, it's a way for us to not have to go and eminent domain something and pay for the land and then, you know, pay for the improvements. So everybody benefits. That's the way that kind of things, that's the best way to have things get done is everybody benefits. [1:01:07] Speaker E (unidentified): Again, just for clarity, this project does not do anything to the westward side of Rusty's currently. It ends at that access road is basically. [1:01:15] Sally Costello: And I will tell you that MDOT, so we didn't talk much about the signalization project, but, you know, when I worked on the Cook's Corner revitalization effort, that was a multi-year effort, and we had four. We had this really big, it wasn't even called a task force. It was just the committee was like literally 25 people from all different, you know, expertise and stakeholder groups. But MDOT had four people on this, and they were, you know, Steve Landry, who's a project engineer, said he doesn't have many concerns about traffic in Maine, but Cook's Corner is of the highest priority for him. And they have been a tremendous partner. We intend to keep applying for these BPIs, and we've got him as a real advocate. So I think striking why the iron's hot, why he's still there, is good. [1:02:11] Steve Weems: We now have three councillors on Zoom. Councillor Ecker had to leave the premises, and he's on Zoom. Is that any comments coming in from that direction? I don't see any hands up, all. [1:02:30] Speaker C (unidentified): Right, could I, could I jump, ask him? I was waiting for everybody to take their turn, so I have just one more clarification as far as the crossing pedestrian or the upgrades to the crossing on Bath Road. So what are some of the elements that make, will make that a safer crossing with? [1:02:48] Sally Costello: Of this project, so a couple of things we, right now it's, you know, it's really a just a crosswalk, but with the signalization they will, they will do the other side of the road because there's sidewalk on the west side but not on the east side. The other thing that staff is trying to put forward and I didn't show it in this, but we showed it last year, we would like to have, because, you know, Bath Road is a barrier for pedestrians and bicyclists. And there's literally two crossings on the entire, you know, several-mile stretch. So we, as Economic Development, have tried to work with MDOT and Goral Palmer. Goral Palmer gave their services because they were also on our stakeholder group. And we applied for this big federal grant, Reconnecting Community, two years in a row. And it's very difficult to get, and we didn't get it. it's very hard to make the case but so we've been chipping away trying to get these different pieces done but m dots hung with us you know on this and one so what we'd like to do is have a dedicated bike lane you know literally with because they're doing the signalization project we may fall flat but we'd like to have a dedicated signal just for bike pad because you know that is racing traffic and so that 's that's one thing that we'll try to as i said in one of the slides it has future funding So we're still trying to work, you know, that narrative and work with them to try to get them to think about that, and just to follow up, is there multimodal [1:04:24] Speaker C (unidentified): path on the access road? Yes. Okay, so that crossing would connect to an actual like sidewalk or on the other side on that access road, so you're crossing, you're coming from the, let's say the mobile home park across Bath Road, and it takes you on to an actual... Yes. Maybe there's already one there. I can't... [1:04:46] Sally Costello: Well, we're making it a 10-foot-wide multi-use path, so that's part of the upgrades to the access road. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. Yes. [1:04:57] Steve Weems: Mayor Genesee, anything further on that? [1:05:01] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): So, I don't think so. This is going to come to the council on Monday, and just about the BPI grant agreement, as Director Costello has said, it's not a commitment, but we do have to, I'm asking for authority to assign it so that main DoT holds the money for us, so yep, well there's a fine briefing, thank [1:05:26] Steve Weems: you very much, you will stay tuned for the next stages here in the next steps [1:05:31] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): and it may be another CIP workshop when you hear more about this particular project that I think you presented it last year as well and probably I'm back [1:05:41] Sally Costello: On the 26 for all my projects, so well, you might come back in the spring to [1:05:46] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): Based on this one, yeah, so it'll depend on, so what I was trying to say earlier was projects don't always line up with the CIP. I mean, it may be that some of the projects in the CIP don't wait for the CIP to be approved before we come, Staff comes to the council and says, okay, this project is at the point where we need to know, do you get approval to approve for the project? So in this case, it would be an ordinance. Because it's a project over a million dollars, it would be a fairly complex ordinance. It would be something that would approve the project, authorize acceptance of the land, and all those contributions, authorize entering into agreements to cost share, and probably this is the piece I haven't yet figured out, is accept the road, because that's a formal action as well, to accept the road as a public way. [1:06:51] Speaker D (unidentified): Would we accept it then or when it's complete? [1:06:55] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): That's the part I haven't figured out. However, we're not going to want to build it unless we're going to accept it. So that will be part of the consideration. Right. [1:07:04] Speaker D (unidentified): I mean, to me, that would be more like the ordinance would require that the road be built to town standards and inspected rather than. [1:07:15] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): So we would be building it ourselves? Right. [1:07:18] Speaker D (unidentified): But it still needs to be said, I would think. Absolutely. Yeah,. Absolutely. [1:07:22] Unidentified staff member (likely Finance Director): Yes. No. I mean, we're not going to build a road that wouldn't be to town standards. In fact, it's going to be to, you know, complete street policy standards. That's the goal. But the piece I haven't figured out is that sequence. Like, you know, does this council commit to accepting that road and then a future council say, no, we don't want to? So we have that sort of thing. So I will work with the attorney. We've got months before that comes up. So we'll figure it out. All right. Anything else? No. Thank you, folks. Mayor Janzi. So, I, you know, I can, we can go on, but it is also, it's been quite a while, so maybe this is enough for one night? [1:08:19] Steve Weems: I think that's an invitation for a motion to adjourn. [1:08:22] Speaker E (unidentified): I'd like to make a motion to adjourn. [1:08:25] Steve Weems: That would be seconded by Councilor Peralta, I think. I'll second. All those in favor? Raise your hands, we are adjourned. Thank you, everybody.