Rockport Finance Committee, Oct. 19, 2026

Okay. Welcome to the finance committee meeting of Monday, October 19th, 2026. And we have a quorum so we will begin. We'll start with public comment. Anyone from the public wish to comment. No. Okay. I believe our next order of business is approval of the minutes. So we have a number of minutes that we need to review. Please keep in mind that if you attended the meeting feel free to weigh in and make any edits that you wish to make.

maybe with union reps and the retiree, et cetera. How many? We have four units. Four. Okay. Okay. Simple. Thanks. Okay. So, go ahead, Mitch. Sorry. Okay. That's right. So just moving on to some project updates, town hall renovations. So we're truly grateful for the approval at fall town meeting for the supplemental funding for this project. For those of you who have spent any time in this building, it's in pretty rough shape. And I think a speaker, you know, really called it out at the end and crystallized how a lot of us feel that we've gotten used to the condition in here. And it's really not that great. So we have to address that. And we are now the 100% design plans are

nearly done. We were at 95% going into town meeting. We expect actually this week we'll be at 100% on design plans for it. That'll let us then finish things up and get the RFP out for a general contractor. And that'll really be when the project kicks off. We have already started our planning and shuffling of surplus furniture and materials in some locations to get ready for the move, which we expect would be in quarter one of calendar 27. So very likely January, February is really where we're aiming. A lot will depend on timing and RFP and things of that nature,

but that's our plan right now. So I believe that the last committee meeting I shared the update that we have all of our public facing departments will be moving to the annex and all of our non public facing departments will be moving to what we are calling town hall auxiliary, which is formerly the old police station across the street. DPW has done an exceptional job in giving that quick facelift inside, cleaning up the walls, fresh coat of paint, fixing some of the electrical and fixing some of the plumbing. The plumbing had totally failed. The drains had totally failed. They were original to the building in 1939. So we're in the process of replacing those now

internally with our plumbers. That's putting it. It was unpleasant to see the photos, to be very frank on what came out of that building. So we're getting ready to move some stuff over there. So where we have extra desks, those are starting to get placed now so that things will move well. Probably sometime next month or early December, physical changes will start to happen at the annex. The large conference table will come out and go into storage and temporary wall will be put up. We're going to be taking the wall and windows from the assessor's office and moving that over to there so that we can have a service counter so that when you come into the annex, which will be the temporary town hall, all of

your town hall based services will be at the two windows there. So there'll be two windows to cover treasury, clerk, assessing and DPW. They'll be busy spaces, but that's kind of the best flow we have in that location. So we're starting that process and getting ready on that front. So I do think January or early February will be really the move date for the majority of public facing folks here. Some of the non-public departments will probably start to move those out earlier one at a time so they can get settled and it won't impact customer service. I do expect also that there'll be sporadic closures as we start to transition out of the building in afternoon

here or there or morning here or there to accommodate getting offices out and getting them reset in their new locations. So good progress. I think we're all looking forward to having a better product here and a better more hygienic work environment, but it'll be a challenging nine months to a year. Nine months is a really, really optimistic window. But for those who are familiar with building construction and projects, probably not going to be that amount of time. It's probably going to be closer to a year. So it will certainly be very tight quarters at the annex, but we're looking at the end goal here, which will be a better quality town hall. So we're really excited about how that's playing

out. The town has also applied for a number of additional grants, as we indicated we would at fall town meeting to try to offset one, including a very large grant we've applied for with green communities focused on the electrification of this building. So we're very hopeful on that as well to help offset costs associated with that portion of the project. So that's the town hall renovation process. You'll start to see some adjustments coming with that on the project end of things. DPW has been very busy making their way through their list of projects. So for those who've come in and out of town on Upper Main Street, you'll notice that there are temporary water lines in place. DPW is now starting the phase one portion of the

construction related to the Great Hill pressure district pressure zone that needs to be installed for several decades. Since the town built the dissolved air flotation, the DAF water treatment plant in the early 90s, there has been a significant pressure problem on Great Hill and Upper Main Street. There was a water standpipe there that provided the pressure needed for that neighborhood. When that came down, it caused this bigger issue. So kudos to DPW for picking it up, starting with our last director and really moving forward with our current director on getting that project going. So phase one is getting a new water main put in on Main Street. And the intent is that that'll be finished by the middle of next month to comply with permits from the state over the

winter. Work will be done on the DPW campus up there in the water treatment plant to install the actual booster pump, booster station. And then in the spring, the second part will take place, which will be off of Hodgkin's and that general area on actually installing main over there. And then once that is in, the booster plant will be brought online and folks should see a pretty healthy increase in pressure. So it's a unique location and sitting through a neighborhood meeting on this last week, you learn something every time. They have to balance out some of this pressure increase so that it's up enough to give people who are really struggling

something but not over pressurize the folks who are down at the bottom of Main Street as you're entering Nugent stretch, it'll over pressurize. So a lot of engineering has gone into the process. A lot of engineering has gone into that process. So we're looking forward to that happening. Again, DPW has been great in facilitating it. The neighborhood meeting went very well last week and folks I think are generally appreciative and recognize that for the short term headache, there'll be a tangible outcome for them, a quality of life increase for them. So that's going on and then hopefully also happening in the spring, kind of the phase two cycle will be drainage improvements on Marmian Way and after that it would lead into the water

main replacement on a portion of Marmian Way and if the funding stretches this far, very, very big if Phillips Avenue, but that may have to wait until a new trench of funding or appropriation is made. But at this point we know we can move forward with the water main associated with Great Hill and with Marmian Way and then obviously once those are done that would allow in a future year paving the roadways and both of those areas, particularly Marmian Way we've heard for a number of years, is in very poor condition in certain spots because of the drainage issues largely and settled trenches. So we're looking forward to being able to address that and DPW

again has done a really good job of managing that process and they've just brought on, the person will be starting in a couple of weeks, a new assistant director so it'll help to spread the workload out for project management on the team, fill an important role in the departmental hierarchy for DPW. So busy season and that's in addition to all of the regular things that are going on at this point in their process, vehicle purchases, vehicle replacements for departments, other smaller projects that are taking place, building-based projects that are taking place, very busy fall as usual on that end for DPW. That's all I have for the report,

happy to take any other questions. Thank you very much Mitch. Any other, any comments or questions from the committee? No, that was great Mitch, thank you, very informative. Sure, thank you. Okay, we will turn now to public comment if there is any and if not I will take a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Thank you, Lorraine. Second? Second. Great, roll call vote. Lorraine? Aye. Roy? Aye. Christina? You're muted but I heard you and Sal. Aye, thank you. Great, thanks very much everyone.