The ad hoc budget committee, charged with reviewing the town and school budgets and reaching a consensus before April Town Meeting, discussed how to plan for big purchases during its second meeting, held Friday morning.

"The bottom line is infrastructure is crumbling around us," Capital Planning Committee co-chair Alan Slavin told the ad hoc committee during a discussion of that committee's work. "It keeps adding up and it's stuff you just can't ignore anymore."

Much of the discussion centered around the purchase of vehicles, such as police cruisers and school buses. The School Committee voted this week to continue operating its own fleet after results of a bidding process indicated that private companies would charge at least $1 million more than the School Department currently pays for transportation, which sparked the conversation.

"Ultimately, this is all about the cost of money," said ad hoc and School Committee member Geoff Swett.

With interest rates relatively low, committee members compared the costs of leasing or bonding new vehicles to just buying them outright.

"Maybe this is the best time to go in and bite the bullet" on replacing a large number of buses in the School Department's aging fleet, Slavin said. He added that replacing only a few buses in the district's 45-bus fleet per year was not realistic, as the town would never be able to significantly lower the average age of the fleet.

The meeting concluded after about an hour and much discussion about procedures for planning for the future.

At its next meeting, the ad hoc committee will discuss "free cash," or unrestricted funds left over from previous years' budgets. The meeting will be held on Friday, February 11 at 10 a.m. in the Wareham Middle School auditorium. The committee also lined up two evening meetings for residents who cannot attend morning meetings. It will meet on Tuesday, February 15 and Tuesday, March 1 at 5:30 p.m. in the Selectmen's Meeting Room, located in the Multi-Service Center on Marion Road.