Water Tank Funding Plan Changes
$43M Article Split Into 2 Votes, Design and OPM, and Construction Funding
Summary
On Wednesday morning Feb 26 the Select Board Water Tank Working Group decided it wants the tank funding article voted on in two stages on town meeting night. The Working Group has put in a profound amount of work over the last several months to address the issues that were raised at the December Town Meeting and to re-shape the proposal into something significantly better. Rather than putting the remaining design funding together with the newly added Owners Project Manager (OPM) oversight function, as well as construction funding in one vote, they decided to ask for separate votes. The first funding vote will be for the design and the OPM first ($3m). Then there will be a separate vote for borrowing for construction funding later in the meeting (up to $37M in debt).
The impact of this is those residents concerned about oversight of the design process now can rely on a second opinion in the qualified, third-party engineer hired as an OPM who will review the creation of the detailed construction documents and design based on the preliminary conceptual designs. This will allow more opportunity for resident input during that process. The design will be funded through completion of the construction and bidding documents, so the project can continue. This first vote only needs a majority of the votes to pass as the money will not be borrowed but sourced from available funds.
The second vote will be to authorize up to $38.5M in expenditures with up to $37M allowed to be borrowed and will require a 2/3 vote.
As background, the design work funded by the first part of article 3 needs decisions from the town on Articles 1 and 2, the land swap to enable use of the sites selected, and the change in zoning for water tanks on those sites to allow for the increase height necessary to produce the water pressure using gravity to finally give many residents the pressure they want, and the pressure and volume of stored water to meet firefighting needs in very dry periods of high water use. Without knowing those two parameters the engineers can’t know how to design the tanks, so progress will stop very quickly.
The Rest of the Story
Last December the funding article asked for a single vote requesting borrowing authority for $43 million to cover both design work to finish the engineering work, and for construction. The votes nearly approved the article, receiving 62% of the 66.6% needed to approve borrowing by the town.
This time the Select Board is requesting a vote first on just design and to fund a consultant called an Owners Project Manager (OPM) to help the select board manage the project and to assure the engineering consultants work is accurate and well done.
They propose to pay for this phase of the project with money already available in a “Free Cash” account. This will need only a majority vote, not the 2/3 vote needed for borrowing authority. Passing this motion will allow the project to keep moving forward no matter what happens with the construction borrowing vote. The timing of a later construction funding vote is quite complicated as once each year the town can submit an application to compete for state funds for municipal water projects and the construction funding needs to authorized before the application could be approved, The state funds (State Water Revolving Fund) would allow Weston to finance debt for the project at 2.4% as opposed to market rate municipal bonds. At 2.4% the SBWG estimates water users on average will see a 3% increase in water rates. At market rate municipal bond costs the rates are estimated to rise 5%. Even with either rate increases our rates are lower than many communities in the region, though we charge higher rates for the very big water users and I haven’t heard how those compare. The bigger users could of course use less water to lower their costs, or move to well water for irrigation rather than drinking water.
After the first funding vote, the Select Board is asking for approval for borrowing authority to pay for construction, like in December, but for a smaller amount as the design work has been split out.
To complicate the explanation of all this (sorry for the long and winding road here) the town meeting funding article as written does not specify any amounts, but the amounts are to be specified in the verbal motion in town meeting to consider the article. This was also the case in December. This flexibility to define the vote details in the verbal motion will allow the motion to be split in two votes as described above.
A final twist is that Alan Day will be making all the motions, not the Select Board, because these articles were proposed by our petition drive for consideration during this Special Town Meeting (STM). We are using our authority as petitioners who called the STM to present only motions that reflect what the Select Board Water Tank Working Group defined as its strategy, not what we or anyone else thinks might be better. We believe those elected to make these decisions for the town, and to manage the implementation of those decisions, are the ones who are best positioned to guide the town through this project.
A final twist is that Alan Day will be making all the motions, not the Select Board, because these articles were proposed by our petition drive for consideration during this Special Town Meeting (STM). We are using our authority as petitioners who called the STM to present only motions that reflect what the Select Board Water Tank Working Group defined as its strategy, not what we or anyone else thinks might be better. We believe those elected to make these decisions for the town, and to manage the implementation of those decisions, are the ones who are best positioned to guide the town through this project.
I apologize for probably confusing everyone. Did my best. Please email me at alanday@engageweston.com with your questions, I’ll try to answer them as well as I can.