Board of Finance reviews year-end capital projects; members urge clearer project-tracking metrics

The Board of Finance opened its June meeting with a year-end capital projects review, during which the chair said the town’s list includes about 50 projects, “45 projects that are actually open” and five intended to be closed out. The chair framed the review as a regular check on how the town is spending capital funds and urged the board to follow up on specific project items in the latest quarter reports.

Board members and staff walked through department-by-department updates. Staff said the Board of Education still plans to add two security cameras and that weekly contractor meetings continue for the Great Neck Fields remediation; emergency management reported the final phase of a radio conversion is programming the radios rather than replacing radios, prompting a question from the chair about why $1.2 million appeared as “amount expended” when the town was awaiting a programming quote.

Director-level updates included confirmation that the town received a port authority grant to begin town-dock replacement and that the fire station’s building permit has been issued, allowing construction to start. On the Goshen roof replacement, the director said bids came in significantly higher than earlier estimates and that an additional appropriation increased the project total to roughly $170,000–$180,000.

Several members raised concerns about how projects are tracked across phases. One committee member argued the quarterly spreadsheet does not give an objective sense of project progress: “It’s excellent, but you don't really get a clear understanding of where they are in the project aside from Glenn asking questions,” the member said, urging a simple earned-value or straight-line expenditure curve to visualize whether invoicing and spending match planned phasing. The chair and director agreed the goal is to provide more useful information without producing an unwieldy report.

The board also discussed accounting practices that create separate project numbers for repeated or multi-year work. Staff explained that some capital-planning (CIP) lines are only for design and planning while construction or execution may be funded as a separate CNR (capital nonrecurring) project in later years; members urged linking related phases so the town can see a project’s total cost over time rather than disconnected line items.

Other updates noted in the review: planned ribbon-cutting at Mago Point after punch-list and permitting work; planned Old Norwich Road paving in coordination with the utility commission (approximate start July 26); and several Recreation & Parks items — playground equipment with encumbered funds and high bids on Pleasure Beach access, prompting scope-reduction work and a June status update.

The director highlighted road paving in the Quaker Hills area funded after a reimbursement from Eversource for prior utility-related damage, noting the reimbursement allowed crews to begin repaving a list of streets and that letters will be sent to affected residents. A staff member stressed that the quarterly report under review ran through March 31 and that fuller 4th-quarter updates would arrive in the last week of June; several members recommended scheduling a fuller capital review in July with department heads present to answer detailed questions.

The meeting closed with two procedural votes recorded by voice: approval of the May 27 minutes earlier in the session and a motion to adjourn. The board expects follow-up capital updates after the 4th-quarter data are available and indicated an interest in adopting clearer visual metrics to track project progress and total lifecycle costs.