Swampscott unveils $2.5M wish list

SWAMPSCOTT – Town departments requested a total of $2,532,466 for capital projects next year, not including the largest project – a $1.65-million artificial turf field – that proponents will present as a separate Town Meeting article.”We’re putting it in as a standalone; it puzzled me at first, too,” Friends of Swampscott Athletic Fields member Chris Urbano said Tuesday.The Capital Improvement Committee is annually tasked with reviewing town departments’ capital requests, ranking the requests, and recommending to the Finance Committee which requests should be put to a vote at Town Meeting.The committee operates with a recommendation that they can suggest about $1 million for capital projects each year from within the town budget. Many requests, however, are funded from other sources, including bonds, water and sewer funds, or are annual requests for maintenance that the town always plans to spend – for example, the town annually proposes approximately $450,000 to supplement Chapter 90 money for roads.This year, six town departments – the department of public works, fire, police, planning, library and school departments? submitted requests for capital projects totaling $2,532,466. Certain departments also submitted requests for the next five years that total $17,074,406.Town Administrator Thomas Younger ranked the requests and assigned funding sources to some items before presenting them to the Capital Improvement Committee. The committee is now meeting and speaking with members of the various departments to understand their needs.The committee will then rank and recommend projects to the Finance Committee, which puts together the Town Meeting warrant.Many of the projects are familiar, having been multi-year or perennial projects. For instance, completing the seawall repairs along Puritan Road will cost an estimated $20,000, Capital Improvement Committee Chairman Ray Patalano said.Other requests are familiar, but new circumstances have upped their priority. A surf rake, which cleans debris from and “fluffs” beach sand, is ranked No. 4 on Younger’s recommendations. Previous requests were rejected because the public works department couldn’t find anybody to come and take the trash. Now it’s going to be put in trash containers and hauled away, according to Patalano.Younger said the top projects he recommended this year were both submitted by the school department: a new roof and boiler at Hadley School and a replacement elevator at Clarke School, estimated to cost $450,000 and an undetermined amount, respectively.Patalano said he was surprised that the turf field did not appear as a capital improvement request, but said that no town department requested it.Urbano said he had met with other town officials, and the field proponents decided to submit the proposal as a standalone warrant item.Urbano said the group also intended to apply for a state grant to help pay for some of the project. The grant organization said the project had to be approved as a single warrant article (rather than as part of either a town budget or a capital improvements budget) to be eligible for the grant.Urbano said Younger supported the project and would sponsor it if necessary; but the group was also prepared to submit the proposal as a citizen’s petition.”We’ll do our due diligence” Urbano said.