The Capital Improvements Plan Advisory Committee voted Wednesday to recommend its draft capital improvements plan to the town planning board, with the committee’s requested edits, and set a timeline for the planning board review and two public hearings in September.

The recommendation advances a draft the committee spent the meeting reviewing for factual and grammatical corrections. Camille Pattison, director of community development, told the committee it needed to vote that night to move the draft forward: "So I think what we need to do tonight is for this committee to vote to," she said, and then outlined the next steps for planning-board review and public hearings.

Committee members spent the meeting identifying page-level edits and clarifications. Finance staff Caroline Cavalieri added a revised debt schedule that had been omitted from the first circulated draft and asked the committee to use the updated table as a reference. Members flagged wording and factual items to be corrected, including: clarifying a town-hall roof inspection vendor name; changing phrasing on school renovation timing; removing an outdated sentence about library lighting because fixtures had already been replaced; adjusting language about an empty building’s vandalism/occupancy; and standardizing recommendations from departments (for example, phrasing the recreation department’s recommendation to “create a capital reserve” and adjusting language about allocating funds).

After discussion, a motion was made to move the draft plan forward with the suggested amendments. The committee carried the motion in a roll-call vote: Justin, Noah, Rich Elliott, Catherine Parente (listed as Kathy in the meeting), Mike Thornton and Paul Bartolomeucci voted in favor; there were no recorded no votes or abstentions on that motion. The chair noted the draft was approved to move forward with the agreed edits.

Pattison outlined the publication and review timeline the committee agreed to: the committee’s staff will make the edits that evening; the plan will be presented to the planning board at its work session on the fifth (presented by staff and possibly by Committee Chair Karen Mitchell); it will go before the planning board on August 25; and the planning board will hold two public hearings in September. If those hearings proceed and the planning board approves the plan, the board of selectmen (the town board) would be notified and the information would be available for early October, Pattison said.

The committee also approved minutes from prior meetings (May 31 and June 11) and confirmed that edits to June 25 minutes should remove a note about a July 9 meeting that did not occur. Committee members emphasized they were focused on clarity, correct vendor and program names, and removing outdated statements from the draft before it goes to the planning board.

Next steps assigned by the committee: staff will incorporate the agreed edits and circulate the revised draft to the planning board packet; committee members were invited to attend planning-board meetings and public hearings to answer questions and provide continuity on the plan’s development.

The vote to forward the draft was a formal recommendation to the planning board, not final adoption of the CIP by the town’s governing board; the planning board and subsequent public hearings will provide additional opportunities for public comment and formal approval.