* VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: The Acton Finance Committee Ballot Series – Question #1 (DPW) (2025-04-14)

For some reason, the following video is no longer public. Below is a transcript, generated by Notta.ai, of this video:

* The Acton Finance Committee Ballot Series – Question #1 (DPW) (2025-04-14)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JdhrksxYTk

You can also read FinCom’s letter to the editor of The Acton Exchange here:

* Letter: Finance Committee Advises Voting No on Question #1 (2025-04-11)
https://www.actonexchange.org/letters/letter-finance-committee-advises-voting-no-on-question-1/

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Hi, I’m Greg Jarboe. I’m a member of the Acton Finance Committee. I’m also a member of the Public Works Facility Building Committee. And I want to speak to you today about question one which will be on your April 29th town ballot.

Question one is – there’s a lot of shorthand for it – but basically is it’s a debt exclusion. And the Finance Committee voted this past week, unanimously, to urge you to vote no on question one.

Question one is debt exclusion for a specific project. It’s the DPW building and you may be hearing about that later because it’s also in article seven. But for the debt exclusion to work, first of all it has to pass by a fifty percent plus one vot during the April 29th town election. And then it is brought to town meeting a second time where it then has to pass a two-thirds plus one vote at town meeting.

But let let’s take the first iteration of it which you will see on the ballot as question one. And we on the Finance Committee – and I’m speaking as their designated representative on the issue – have significant concerns about this debt exclusion request. You won’t see a number on the ballot as to how much is being requested, and that’s legal. But it’s for the project that will be presented in article seven and that latest estimate is 35.2 million dollars for a new DPW building. And what this would give question one gives is the Select Board the authority to proceed with completing this project in the future.

Well, we have real concerns about first of all the overall scope of the project. So the Finance Committee is concerned that this project is going to add about 275 dollars to the tax rate over the next 30 years, and that’s if you have an average single family home in in town or about 160 dollars if you have a condo. And that assumes that we’re going to be able to bond all of this at about a 4.25% rate, which is what the town is currently getting. So that’s a a reasonable assumption to start with. but as you know, we’re living in some very uncertain times, and it’s it’s unclear whether that’s going to be a bond rate we’re going to continue seeing going forward. So we think this warrants extreme caution at this point in time.

Now, we’re also seeing in this current proposal one of the ways that they’ve gotten the price down is to basically assume that we can take about 1.55 million dollars from the capital stabilization fund and apply it to this particular project. And the Finance Committee has concerns about that, because that’s essentially the entire fund and what that basically is saying to the town is: “this is our biggest and only priority that we can foresee in the future.” We’re concerned about that. We’re not sure that that’s the right assumption to make. It certainly will put us into a difficult position if we have some other capital project in the future that we have to consider because it would then require us to go out for another debt exclusion. So using all of the current capital stabilization funds for this project doesn’t seem particularly prudent.

There’s also some contingencies in the current plan in case costs go up, and so there’s about a a 5.2% of the total project cost has been set aside either for construction contingencies or other soft costs going up or down. In a normal year,that would be a prudent number. we are not living in a normal year as you know. And one of the things that we’re concerned about is the tariffs and, yes, I know there was new news about that just yesterday, but guess what? Even after yesterday’s announcement – that the reciprocal tariffs were being suspended for 90 days – the tariffs on steel and aluminum of twenty-five percent, which were authorized March 12th, continue. And what we’re concerned about, particularly for the construction of a new DPW facility, is that these kinds of construction costs if we suddenly find that our construction cost go up twenty-five percent and we’ve got a five percent contingency, we’re going to fall short, and that would put the town in the awkward position of either having to put the entire project on pause or come back and say: “excuse us we’re going to need a little extra before we can complete this again.” We think that is just not a prudent thing to do at this point in time.

Now, there have been some arguments made in favor of moving forward with this project, because we’ve already spent 1.2 million dollars on the design for this facility and that’s true. But deciding how to spend another 35-36 million dollars on construction of the facility because we’ve already spent 1.2 million on design is what we call the “sunk cost fallacy.” And the Finance Committee urges you to take that seriously. This is this is a big expenditure and the fact that, yes, we have authorized and, yes, we have spent some money so far doesn’t basically rationalize or justify moving forward.

Last, but not least, you get to decide. Yes, the Finance Committee is opposed. Yes, the Select Board is in favor, and you can certainly listen to both sides of the argument. I encourage you to do your homework on this one. But at the end of the day, you get to vote, and you get to vote twice. The first time will be April 29th in the town election. You’ll see question number one on the ballot which gives the authorization for this debt exclusion. And then please attend town meeting, which will start May 5th and probably continue to May 6th, that that seems to be our pattern over the last several years. And it’s unclear which day this article, article seven, would come up – possibly on the fifth but as late as the sixth. But it then would require more than two-thirds to vote and the Finance Committee would urge you to vote no on April 29th. You’ll hear from another member of the Finance Committee about why you should also vote no at town meeting. But with that, I thank you for your time and attention and no matter what you do, please vote.

END