##VIDEO ID:qvTkyk6dtuQ## there are budgets printed for you if you didn't grab one and it's also available online at ac.gov manager uh the capital plan is also up there as well if you if you're looking for that we did not print that for you all but it is it that's that's how you find that uh there's questions in front of you which I'll go over in a moment um and we we welcome additional questions and some of them we actually said we're not ready to answer uh which which will be ready to answer for you on uh Tuesday or by Tuesday when we when we reconvene and um we also have provided an FTE chart which um what do you think if I just go over that now or do you want that way before so it'll be kind of like a a Prelude to the to the programming um so there was a requ question last night the finance commit has been meeting every night this week uh and so in their meeting last night there was a discussion about FTE and what they look like and what they looked like in the past so there's a question that references that in the big sheet uh but more detailed information is on a smaller sheet with some red on the top and it basically if you look at um the top portion it shows in current fiscal year the FTE we have by department and then what's proposed in the FY 26 budget that's uh that we're going over tonight and then there was a lot of discussion the last last night about other sources and how to account for that and I think we could probably account for it more comprehensively but what we have below this is a list by Department of positions that are funded out of sources other than the general fund so for example the ambulance Enterprise funds 11 positions um building revolving funds funds positions CPA sewer Food Service Hazmat sealers transort station fund portions of positions road maintenance a portion storm water a portion uh grants fund a portion as well um does this have the police one um so it is it's the right here the um clinical responder it doesn't have it the okay um this is the older version you get money from the Department of Public Health okay um do the select board have any questions about that just as a way to uh use some time here are any fincom members attending a select board meeting okay um we uh just other other updates we started to work on a town meeting calendar uh there are a lot of timelines that fall into place as we get up to our May 5th annual town meeting the draft was published with the select board thank you marann the the draft was published in the select board packet earlier this week we'll have an updated one that we'll be Distributing uh before this next budget Workshop but basically uh the finance committee has several meetings planned in January the select board has this one another one next week uh there will be more of a normal schedule in February and then there's some deadlines that need to be met as it relates to the town meeting um the budget needs to be transmitted from the select board to the finance committee by March 6 the zoning public hearing with is required for any zoning article that goes to town meeting will take place March 18th the last day to file um that's related to the election there's a timelines related to the upcoming election at the end of March the last select board meeting to vote printed article recommendations this is always a question that comes up April 7th so um even though we have a draft warrant that'll be prepared uh and start looking at it probably at our first February meeting and we'll get that to the finance committee as soon as we can we'll we'll plan to have um discussions about the Articles leading up to that date any questions about the town meeting timeline thank you we're now in order okay okay uh welcome uh thank you for being here um as I mentioned I know this is a busy time a year and uh you've all been out a few times already this week uh we appreciate you being here to listen to us this is a night that I'm really excited about uh every throughout the year you hear a lot from me you hear from Aran maybe and Tom but this is a night where you get to meet all the people that do all the hard work in the organization and uh it's it's really fun to to be able to listen to our very talented and professional Department staff present to you the work that they do on behalf of of you all and field questions from you and um provide details about some of the cool things that they do every day that it's hard you know even in this budget book the budget book we try to tell the story uh but it's hard to tell the story of all the work that goes on in this organization uh for this community so uh these budget workshops are a nice opportunity for us to to expand on that for you to meet uh staff for the staff to meet you uh some some of there's some new faces the finance committee it's nice to to see you all and um staff will be introducing them themselves as as they come up for each presentation so we're going to start with the schedule scheduled program I just wanted to provide a little bit of an opening remark about uh to lay the context for this uh the town manager budget is going to be the the source that we use it's not going to be a PowerPoint uh we're going to be just looking at this and then talking to you directly about what we do uh so each department will try to reference where their their programs are in the budget so if you're following along it's easier for you to follow along uh specifically uh but that's going to be the the program um and I think the budget that was presented on Monday night is something that uh we worked hard to develop and uh with policy direction from the select board and this is the point where we get specific feedback from select board and from the finance committee and work towards uh the timelines that I was just referring to earlier and just to also provide context about the ALG process which is sort of an overarching component to the the development of the the town's operating budget uh because of some changes in the ALG plan I just wanted to clarify that the budget that was presented Monday night in the ALG plan represents a balanced budget uh with a net surplus of $54 um which is pretty good uh I know there's work that we still need to do on the budget and that the school hasn't published theirs yet uh so there's certainly a lot of work stuff to do uh but I just wanted to mention that because uh it's changed since the last ALG meeting which was about a month ago um so with that um I hope you had a chance to review the capital plan and some of the uh details that we provid in the budget book but I'm very excited to introduce or not introduced you probably know her but to welcome Maryann Flector who is our director of administration Finance she'll be k off the budget presentations with the Department that she oversees okay thank you John uh good evening select board and finance committee members uh my name is Maryann flegner and I've been with the town for 17 years before joining the town 21 years with the Commonwealth so a total of 38 years in administration and Finance in government I want to thank the staff to thank the administration and finance staff I am humbled I am honored to work with such committed passionate and caring colleagues Leo Mardo and Alicia Burak in the town clerk's office CJ Carol Marty Abbott Tiffany Peters in assessing Teresa Oar Brandy Rando Anne miles Emma Baza in our collector treasur Ellie Anderson in finance and Kristen cowette Jennifer aseno Kathy WN in our accounting and Mary bet Zack cat striker in Human Resources also I want to acknowledge Debbie Delmar who was a temp for us for a short while where we were bringing up some new hires and all of these folks have taken on additional new duties and that's something that I'm so proud of for them and again just so proud to be part of this organization and I think you'll see it tonight and under John's Direction what we keep as right on top of importance is customer service and we're proud of that so at this time I'd like to point out some of our accomplishments and some of our um key performance indicators and I'll then be sharing the microphone with my division head colleagues so you can hear more about these accomplishments and goals um but in summary is that we have been able to maintain our AAA rating in March of 2024 and we are one of the few in the Commonwealth and we were able bble to recently borrow at 2.74% because of this key rating um and our goal is to maintain this AAA rating also we have received the gfoa which stands for the government Finance offices Association certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting and we are also submitted and awaiting the paer which is the popular annual financial reporting which we have received certification and Excellence for and that indicator for us would be that would be that we would continue with that gfo certification also under John's Direction we'll be submitting the fiscal year 26 budget book for the first time ever for certification and we will continue to enhance this book and provide transparency a combination of payroll and finance and HR standpoint on January 1st of 2024 we enrolled approximately 300 retirees into the nner health insurance plan and on July 1st we enrolled all active into Blue Cross Blue Shield and that with a performance indicator is that next January we'll be looking to enroll the retirees into Blue Cross Blue Shield you've asked us to have a turn back of 1% or less for fiscal year 24 which would have been about $400,000 turn back we are very proud to say and I know you know this number already um that it was $7,000 n% so our goal again a key performance indicator that we continue with that uh you'll be hearing from Kristen cowette later on um a little bit of uh news that if you see Kristen coming at the end of the fiscal year we say either you should be ready to turn back or run so uh we we are proud of that uh we will continue reporting our quarter reports to the select board in fincom to include the Enterprise and revolving personal actions and time entry is a new process that we have seen with munus with efficiencies uh also there are programs like Transportation where ANF uh plays a a key role with the other division departments to ensure that these programs are running smoothly not just from a finance standpoint but from a total uh uh policymaking processing standpoint uh now if I can ask you to turn to page 42 of your budget book which is the Finance director's budget and I'm just going to do a few highlights and then hand it over to my colleagues so on page 42 of your budget book you'll see that there have been decreases in small budgets but still decreases such as equipment maintenance professional development office supplies and other supplies workers compensation it has gone down by 88.7% and the reason for that is that we work very closely with the signed clinical teams to ensure that employees come back to work as soon as possible our unemployment insurance something similar that also decreased by 53.4% the reason for that is that when we get an unemployment insurance claim we do not just accept it we fight it and we will go all the way to the end to ensure that it is a true unemployment insurance claim also you'll see that increase in Medicare by $20,000 and there are employees who began employment before you had to contribute to Medicare some of those employees have retired so therefore the Medicare increases for us because we have more people who now have to contribute into Medicare they're not exempt and plus if you are on a workers comp you do not contribute after 6 months so that's that 20,000 that we estimated and I will end with health insurance um I probably should have started with health insurance because that's the usual topic of the day sometimes uh many of you know we've had many conversations about health insurance uh through Maya they they have suggested an 8 to 10% increase so you'll see that we budgeted for that 8% increase but also from the third line down from the bottom you'll see APS retiree Health which increased 24.05 per that is to ensure that what we have for numbers for APS retirees we realistically budgeted so at this time I'm going to hand it over to Ellie Anderson our budget manager good evening uh members of the select board and the finance committee I am my name is Ellie Anderson I currently serve as the budget manager and I've worked for the town for uh two and a half years now my transition into the role of budget manager earlier this past well in the beginning of 2024 effectively created the budget division uh within the larger Administration and finance department the goal of this division is to provide a go-to One-Stop resource for budgeting revenue and expense tracking Financial forecasting rate setting all the way from B budget development um through to fiscal year closeout this role is a collaborative one in that it's focused on working with Department ments every step of the budget process through all of those phases um including the various general fund budgets as well as the revolving and Enterprise funds the budget division also leads the charge on the annual tax recap process um which is truly a team effort throughout the finance department and requires involvement from every finance division the division also works collaboratively with the town manager and the rest of the budget team on the development of the fiscal year operating budget and capital plan um in the budget book we are particularly proud of this year's operating budget and capital plan as it includes a wealth of data narratives metrics and financial details some of which have never been reported in this document at this level of detail um we hope that it will be a resource for anyone in the community who interested in Acton's finances and organizational operations some highlights from this past year include as Maryann mentioned the FY 2024 year and closeout process which resulted in the lowest general fund term back in recent memory this was an extensive process which required ongoing work with department heads and particularly the accounting division uh um another highlight is the optimization of the finance committee quarterly reports which now includes a greater level of financial detail regarding all budgeted funds as well as plans and ongoing efforts related to those funds we also implemented quarterly budget meetings with all departments to review on a regular basis expenses revenues purchase orders as well as any ongoing projects and initiatives we also have an ongoing effort to promote fiscal sustainability among our Enterprise and revolving funds through the development of longer range Financial plans and rate setting models we've presented on such plans for the sewer Enterprise and the transfer station Enterprise funds and look forward to continuing this effort with the ambulance Enterprise and wreck revolving funds in the second half of this fiscal year so I thank you for your time and your attention next speaking will be Kristen cowette our interim Town accountant good evening my name is Kristen kette I'm the interim Town accountant I've been with the town for 17 years my accounting team consists of Jen AR archinal and Kathy win the accounting division maintains comprehensive and detailed general ledger for all Town Financial activities we prepare submit all required reports to the Department of Revenue such as the schedule a and a balance sheet for preparation for free cash certification we also reconcile cash and accounts receivables to the books of the treasurer collector we process a bi-weekly warrant that consists of payroll and payments for all Town invoices additionally we provide continuous training and support for all employees on payroll accounts payable and general financial reporting the accounting division is currently in a period of transition with recent retirement of our town accountant Joanne Norton and Kathy when was promoted to full-time staff accountant we are looking for ways to improve our processes starting with how we process our payroll we will be introducing and implementing time entry for all Town departments this will reduce the amount of time manual staff hours that the accounting team dedicates to the payroll process our accounting budget begins on pay page 46 and on 47 you can see that the accounting had an increase in clerical salaries due to the promotion of Kathy win we've also had a reduction in professional development and office supplies thank you thank you Kristen next speaking will be CJ Carol our Assessor hello everybody members of the select board and finance committee it's good to see all of you U my name is CJ Carroll I'm the principal assessor in Acton I've held this position for a year and a half to two years now um other members of the the assessor's office are Marty Abbott our assessing analyst who's been with the town for over 25 years and Tiffany Peters our newest edition who joined the team in October uh the the goal of the assessor's office is to assess all real and personal property at full and fair cash value uh to result in Fair and Equitable taxation across all taxpayers in town this includes maintaining a database of all Parcels in town reporting to the Department of Revenue and following their guidelines and requirements analyzing and inspecting all sales in town and using this information to inform values we also process abatements and exemptions of all types and of course assist residents and taxpayers uh when whenever a question may come up uh it is important that the most vulnerable members of the community are given opportunities for tax relief so we do hold multiple presentations at the COA each year uh next one is coming up in March uh we're actually making arrangements as well to expand that to other venues such as the robins Brook senior community uh Marty in our office goes above and beyond to make sure those resources are provided to those who need it and because of this AC can actually provides some of the most tax relief in the state providing $675,000 in 2024 um I'd like to thank everybody who attended town meeting because the hero act universally passed allowing uh veterans exemptions to increase to receive a cost of living increase each year a crucial function of the assessor's office is to collect all new and previously unassessed property to be added to the tax levy is New Growth for the year Tiffany our newest addition to the office has already been an incredible asset to this function and she's been improving and optimizing processes to make sure that our data is as accurate as possible and that all new growth is collected efficiently on page 48 you can find the Assessor's budget um the expenses outside of personnel include databases for real and personal property uh the multiple listing service to find sales comps and broker contacts when needed um we also contract help for interim and certification year Val value adjustments and to uh check up on our personal property accounts once every 5 years so uh new for this year there is actually a line item um for or or an increase in the Professional Services line item um for data collection for $16,000 um this is a new line item new operating line item but it's not a new expense so the strategy in the past was to do this state mandated data collection as one large project but if you remember last year's cap Capital request um yeah so last year that was that was what the capital request was um this project so far is going well uh today January 15th was our um 50% checkin I suppose they are ahead of schedule they're around 60% which was very good news um but we do think that the best way to do it moving forward would be to transition this project to be done 10% annually um that one guarantees will be on time for each 10year deadline as well as reducing some administrative burden because we're able to do it on an ongoing basis rather than managing a large project every so often um but the biggest thing that I think that it would change um is that growth that is not collected via standard per building permit or sales inspection um would be added through this process to the levy as much as 9 years sooner than it would otherwise so I I do think that would be a really great change in the process um that's everything for me I thank you for your time and I look forward to answering any questions that you have if we could just get through the the presentations I think then Maran and the team would answer any questions that come up thank you next I think is an example of where we have a phenomenal team effort is that Teresa oar who's our Treasurer collector she had broken her wrist and so we have Brandy Rando who is the assistant treasur collector and worked with her today to say you're on and so um next is Brandy Rando our assistant Treasurer collector good evening my name is Brandy Rando and I am as Maran said the assistant uh treasur collector I've been with the town for three years um the treasure collector Department consists of tereso liry the Town treasur collector myself and two new additions Emma balena in the role of principal treasure collector Clerk and Anne Mills our staff assistant in the absence of tereso I'll be summarizing the treasur collector Department's operations the treasure collector 's office is responsible for the accurate and timely processing and collection of real estate personal property excise and Sewer bills while also providing phenomenal customer service our office processes almost 880,000 bills per year the treasury collector's Department collected over 7 million in local receipt Revenue which primarily includes Motor Vehicles excise building uh sorry motor vehicle excise tax building permits and investment income we have a very robust customer service function through receiving a high volume of phone calls emails and in-person requests such as paid real estate statements balances due and confirmation of payment histories a few of our accomplishments include the treasurer collector manages the town's Investments going from $3 35,990 in 2022 to $716,000 in2 in 2024 by strategically moving the town's money for the best return of investment we implemented lockbox services to reduce manual payment processing and increase efficiencies we we also assisted in implementing open gov for permit processing ing so that we are able to import um so we can import the financial data and uh which simplifies the permitting process to only one online system we implemented the online ordering and payments of Municipal lean certificates and Teresa Oar received her certificate as a Massachusetts Municipal collector and certified treasurer we have one of the highest real estate tax collection rates in the Commonwealth at 99.6% you'll see our budget on page 53 we have a very minimal increase in office supplies from 00 to $200 our challenges and goals for FY 26 include implementation oh sorry implement the option to pay by credit card at town hall and explore the feasibility of transitioning sewer billing from monthly to quarterly billing while also working on our goals we are working on staying on top of cyber threats which could affect our operations thank you for your time have a good evening okay so um last is Mary Beth Zach our human resources manager for human resources hello um as Maran mentioned my name is Mary BC I've been with the town for five and a half years and I'm curent and I am currently the town's HR manager under the direction of marann fuckner the HR staff consists of myself and our talent acquisition um HR officer Kathleen Striker um and you will find our budget starting on page 54 Talent acquisition has been especially busy the past few years and it was one of our biggest accomplishments in FY 24 in FY 24 we reviewed 2500 applications and conducted 1500 interviews this led to 60 positions being filled six of which were internal promotions in addition we brought on 71 seasonal employees although this was a huge accomplishment hiring and retention continues to be a major challenge in HR One goal we have for FY 26 is to complete a compensation study to ensure that we are offering competitive wages when compared to our comparable communities we also plan to continue with our well Wellness initiative Network and our employee recognition committee which are always highlights and EXT interviews that we conduct two more accomplishments in FY 24 were for two successful health insurance transitions on January 1st 2024 we moved all of our approximately 300 Medicare eligible retirees from Medics and tuffs onto an Etna Advantage plan after the dissolvement of the Acton health insurance trust the town joined the Maya Consortium which required us to transfer approximately 200 active employees from our self-funded plans with Blue Cross Blue Shield and Har Pilgrim to Maya's Blue Cross Blue Shield programs this was completed in in under two months it was one of the shortest implementation periods on record with Maya not only does Maya provide our health insurance it also has a very robust wellness program and we are excited that in FY 26 we we will continue to partner with them and have them come in for different programs with our wooden committee due to this health insurance trust transition a goal for FY 26 is to hire a part-time benefits coordinator while we were self-funded the hit contracted with outside services to direct Bill Ser retirees and complete monthly audits of our approximately 500 active and retirees on benefits we have begun to bring these functions in house and will be able to more efficiently manag not only health insurance but also our other benefit offerings thank you so we can entertain question questions now David or I don't know if R if you I I just have a very quick uh question for for C uh CJ and um uh uh for on page 49 it shows the number of taxable Parcels in town went down in fy2 um why was that sure that's a good question so um if you remember the select board actually voted in what's called a personal property taxable minimum um and that that amounts $2,500 so if there's a valuation on a personal property account for under $2,500 that is been deemed um essentially not worth taxing um that's the majority of it um there were also the first line you're always going to see when you look at the total report is of the single families that did Reduce by about seven that's standard clean clean up of data things that should have been represented um in chapterland they're now represented in chapter land but that has no real impact on the actual bottom line total Parcels or taxable value the big impact was that personal property exemption or minimum thank you I'm glad we're starting off with the finance folks because we're the numers people and I think we can all data geek out this this is this is a uh a good place to start um as I indicated Monday night and last night one of the steps forward is understanding your goals um one of the questions that I'm going to ask everybody so this isn't a surprise is uh what are the metrics or key performance indicators that you use or you think we should use to evaluate your progress against those goals and for example this year you guys did phenomenal work just adjusting to the you know health insurance change in town that may not have been on your radar screen a year ago but you know how do you know you're on target how do you know when something needs attention sure um so that's a great question and so um what we are driven by our deadlines like I'll just give a few examples is that um turn back June 30th 20 June 30th of every year is that we have to ensure that we know that our books are being closed if for example like I had mentioned that um the finance committee you folks said 1% and a key performance indicator could be that if we turned back say 800,000 which is 2% um or higher that we know that we are not reaching that goal and so our goal is to stay under that 1% or less um another indicator is for example is that if we have um the gfoa I mentioned the gfoa is that we want to ensure that we are meeting those certificates of Excellence level because they're the ones that give those metrics to us um Ellie did a great job where we look to see when we submit this budget book there are 80 plus metrics that we have to meet in order to even be considered so we internally know that whether it's our schedule a our balance sheet that we know that we have to meet these goals and these metrics in order to keep our AAA rating for example with human resources uh Mary Beth mentioned that I think on a national level there is the challenge of Recruitment and Retention but how do we know that we're being successful by offering the benefits that most people are looking for this in this day and age and also to do exit interviews so that we gather data and under John's direction that when we go to the table with unions we heard you're looking for this and this is how we can deliver great right and and by the way your quarterly reports actually let me know you guys are counting all the way along so we I I think we have a good sense of of how ANF or Administration and finance what do you call it Administration and finance okay I I won't I won't use jargon in administration fin okay second question and this again is going to be for everybody but you get to go up first um how do I say this there's a lot of oh Bluster in the private sector about doing more with less and I've always interacted with my private clients decide doing more with less is a um Fool's errand you can generally do more with more you can do less with less that's the easy stuff what is hard to do is imagine how do we do more with the same or how do we um do the same with less those are more realistic uh parameters so you've adjusted to a number of changes in the last year to what extent um are you anticipating you know doing more with the same or doing the same with less um going forward sure so I think how we approach it in ANF and then under John Direction he is um works extremely well with all of us when we have vacancies for example is that if we have a vacancy for a um uh principal Clerk of treasur collector how could we change that title change that job description look at different ways where we could integ great maybe um different parts of the organization where treasury in collection could be done differently so every time there is a vacancy it's not just okay post the position backfill it as is as we did the past 10 20 years what is the best title what is the best function how can we change that and it can be cross- departmental it doesn't have to be that just because it was always in land use or was always wherever Health and Family Services and so I agree with you is that doing more with less and all that is that I think what it comes down to is how can we become more efficient in our work so that if we do have the same FTE and more work or whatever that is that we can still be successful yeah I have one question for CJ and and one that's a toss up anybody can take um uh CJ I know I know commercial uh assessment is different from residential uh that rents and income uh streams affected I guess do you have any sense of how is our commercial sector doing um year-over Year from an assessed value perspective the assess value is derived from their rents and their income so I'm just trying to get a sense sure so so this past year I believe the increase was somewhere in the range of four to 5% um previous year was more than that if I remember correctly um tough tough to speak to you know off off the cuff about how commercial how businesses are doing off of that but you know if if you see values you know income and expense value derived values as um how businesses are doing then then it seems fairly well good uh the tossup is does anybody know what percent funded the middle sex pension plan is it's in here somewhere it's in here somewhere um do you mean by the whole uh system or just for acting no just not the whole thing is we're just one of oh many no I don't know does somebody else know the 6 million we're we're on target to pay it off in the mid 2030s I know that oh okay is that I apologize so you're wondering when we are expected to be 100% full paid so the goal is 2037 um but also is that we have started last year the $300,000 use that's different that is no that's op that's the op okay so middle sex pension um I'd say has been chronically mismanaged at least I can only speak for the last 20 years um and the assessment seem to go up every year seven six s% I'm wondering what I've heard rumors that it was going to be fully funded one day and we'd stop seeing that but Ellie knows something P it's on page 15 page 15 I knew it was in here somewhere thank you page 15 it talks all about that question Steve I have it open I can't okay Ellie take it away okay so on page 15 in the executive budget summary we have a section on middlex County Retirement and the assessment is set to increase through fiscal year 2028 after which point it's set to stabilize and then we are predicted to be fully funded by fiscal year 2036 okay thank you I'm sorry I have a question about that since you're still there sorry does doesn't the point at which these Pension funds are fully funded um depend on market returns right so when we have really good years in the stock market shouldn't those assessments be lower the increases I know so the pension system is run by a board uh and they make decisions on how to allocate the resource the uh Investments and I think they use a conservative discount rate to make sure that they can absorb they can not overestimate and not underestimate so I think certainly if the market does well it improves uh the whole position but um there has we do an actual aerial analysis every two years I believe and at that point we kind of recalibrate the the schedule and occasionally it'll it'll shorten usually it doesn't um sometime sometimes it goes the other way but we've had a couple good years so maybe the next one will will show a different um um welome so do you ever do you ever push back like if you're doing do you just rely on their actual Actuarial analysis or do you have anything is anybody pushing back on them to make sure it makes sense I think so the act in organization in the '90s or early 2000s pushed back pretty significantly um I don't remember what happened at the end of that story but in any event uh we're we're it's an assessment that's issued to us uh we push back to the extent that it's um a good use of our time uh yeah okay I'm just curious thank you my recollection is a few years ago they were in the 40s low 40s in terms of percent funded so it's an improvement and also if we pay on July 1st then we receive a discount um and um on that same page my apologies for misunderstanding your question Steve but if you are interested in opep is the following paragraph I fooled you I know I always ask about opip I decided to change it up this year I have a few questions um I'm just going to ask all of them and let you decide who best to answer them um I noticed that the medical opt out increased by 36.25 per. so I just want a confirmation of that my assumption is either accurate or inaccurate does that represent a tax saving a savings for the town not a tax savings um because I'm assuming that costs less than providing the insurance and I also noticed an APS um that's act in public schools retiree Health increase of 24% so that's the health question um about the assessment plan moving forward to do you know um a little bit 10% every year for for the decade um that sounds nice to have the the levy it go onto the levy as soon as nine years earlier but I'd like to know what the impact is to the taxpayer because it seems like um that's going to make a lot of um unevenness in assessment for you know building to building home to home um in a way that it doesn't happen now where they're all done at once um and then the tax collection rate is going down very I understand we have the you know one of the highest in the state um and it's only gone down by 2% but that represents maybe $800,000 so I'm wondering if anybody knows why and if there's any reason if there's any plan to address it um and then my fourth question um is about well actually yeah so it it seems a positive thing that the general fund interest income has gone up I think it was more than double that's pretty dramatic and I'm wondering if if you know is that because we're doing anything differently or just the interest rates have changed in that okay so I took notes I can handle the first two and then I'll ask CJ to come up regarding the question about the assessment the 10% tax levy and the tax collection rate going down so the opt out for those who may not be familiar with it is that if you do not care if you're benefited and you do not carry health insurance with the town we will pay you either $2500 for an individual plan or $5,000 for a family plan um that is much less than the approximately $226,000 for the full Premium plan so it's not necessarily like a tax savings but it is a savings to the town because we're not offering the health insurance so that's that opt out and the reason why it has increased which is actually good because the health insurance than premiums decrease is because more people have signed up for it and also we increased from to $2500 in $5,000 for again individual family plan um APS retirees the reason for that increase is that we did actual numbers with APS and those APS retirees who came over to the town a few years back and before it was an estimate and we needed to know the true exact numbers which did increase it uh dis proportionately but doing those numbers I feel very comfortable that we are well positioned for fiscal year 26 of what the real bills are will be for the aps retirees um I'll C it now over to uh CJ and I wrote those questions down unless you memorize them all right um I I'll speak to the um your question about the data collection project so and and let me know if I miss or anything in aspect of it but um I believe your question was essentially if this is done 10% annually rather than all at once what kind of impact will that have on people's assessments and it will remain Equitable so I want to clarify that these projects do not impact our annual adjustments in values that's based on our sales analysis that's based on all the income and expense information we receive everything like that so what this does is it confirms all the data that we have have on every parcel so when we go to out to a parcel we make sure that we have the right amount of bathrooms we have the right depreciation we have is the basement finished all the all all the basics because if we you know if you don't have those basics of the data correct then any adjustments we make are going to be that much less accurate so what this allows us to do um and kind of where it ties into the growth growth piece is it allows us to on a rolling basis make sure everything is correct so it's not that everyone who's being seen that year is going to see an assessment increase because just as often you may see a decrease we may have you in good condition but you're in average condition given given you know the year built and the style home that you have um so it in my opinion and I think factually it will increase Equity across the assessments because it's going to make sure that we remain um timely with our inspections across the board oh that I it was tax collection was the the next The Collection rate right okay yeah small small it's just the way that we made the graph if you if if it started at zero it you wouldn't even notice I I that it's only 2% but still that's you know $800,000 so i' like to know if there's a plan to figure out how we can get back up I don't have any insight on that unfortunately I would potentially defer to Teresa um back no we can get back to on that I did not fully write down your interest income question I was just wondering about um it looks like it's it's gone up the interest income the interest yeah um the general fund interest income which is a good thing I'm just curious does that have to do with what we're doing or is it just a change in the interest rates oh sure um it's both um so conversations with Teresa Oar on that is that an example is Bank of America was not giving any interest income or other uh institutions with less um she on a daily basis will look and see where the best investment is and will move the money in addition to obviously um the situation that we are in all of us um for interest bearing so it's a combination of both uh got a couple of questions I think uh they're two of them are very easy yes no answers um less than two years ago may have only been last year we switched to um having a service be able we switched to sending our real estate taxes into a PO Box in Boston uh there was at least one quarter with a pretty serious hiccup on that um and reason why I call it serious because it hit me May it may not have hit that many part of the town but it definitely hit me um did that change end up saving us money did it free up resources elsewhere and how sure are we that that hiccup's not going to happen again I'm gonna have Brandy answer that and she's the next she's the next question too so that works so it's the PO box is a hiup and will we experience that again and be comfortable with how it's happening now yeah we're we continue to learn with the PO box with the lock box on uh what's working and what's not and changing things that aren't working so that because it is such a cost savings to use them that it's in our best interest to make it to make it work um I can speak to before the lock box we would take home there was um collector Treasures had quite a bit of overtime hours because we would spend about 3 weeks processing payments weekends included now we are usually caught up um I think our last big bills uh we were caught up in three days so it's definitely T saved a lot of money and a lot of time okay um um I see as a goal for next year to be able to do pay by credit card that will require a search charge for the people paying by credit card correct correct good and then um I told you the one of the questions was simple Yes No and then the last question is for CJ um we as a finance committee set our recommendation every year for um the ability for um when we try to figure out how much to recommend in increases in taxation every year we we continue to land at 3% because we're used prop two and a half and we've been using a wild card of 0.5% of New Growth as uh as our our base guideline um does that feel appropriate to you do you think that's something that should be changed do you think that we're we're in around the right place are we chronically low or chronically High what's your take on a 0.5% increase with new growth and every year that doesn't include something like insulin sure right and I think that's a big piece is you know we'll have Powder Mill and then you know there are going to be years where we can foresee things occurring where that growth is going to jump but if if we want to use one stable and appropriately conservative number I I think that we're in a good place thank you very much hi um couple of questions um one is about um human resources and um I'm wondering if you've been tracking um uh comparing uh our turnover rate with you know other municipalities Massachusetts Trends um and how we're doing I mean I know everyone's been hit all the municipalities been hit hard by by increasing turnover but I just wanted to understand how we were doing I can uh begin that answer and also I think that if Mary Beth you want to join in this conversation and so we are in the the running in the ballpark of turnover which is about if you take about like 60 positions that we filled with a 200 FTE count is that that is a fairly high percentage um talking with and seeing postings with other commun communities Municipal communities that they're experiencing the same sometimes what we see is that we're able to backfill positions um sooner than other communities but there are certain titles that have licenses that no matter what are hard to do um I think uh mayy Beth if you want to add to that yes we are not formally tracking that right now that's is something we could do in the future um we do talk to our colleagues and surrounding communities constantly whether it be through email we have an email list it's the mmhr email list at conferences it's definitely a Statewide problem um it would be interesting to see the formal tracking um and my last question um how much longer do we get to keep you Maryanne it was I I got to understand from this report that you know you're not staying here forever which is unfortunate um just wanted to thank you for all you've done and find out you know how soon we have to plan for a party and that sort of thing oh oh a party oh all right um so in the budget book it actually talks about um I think the uh transition and so I had mentioned um I've been in this field for 38 years and um it's more so that my husband is saying when are we going to be able to enjoy life I love life right now I am not lying to to any of you I say to people that if you love to golf and someone said to you you know you really should stop golfing um that's kind of how I feel about my job I've been so fortunate but um the plan is is for me to retire around the August September time period um but what we've been doing under John's direction is ensuring that you will not skip a be I think that you saw um some of these examples tonight and the ANF staff is absolutely phenomenal and you're going to be in awesome hands and so um I actually this is where I go like squirrel um that I have this little joke that I was going to share with all of you tonight so maybe this is time appropriate so it just just takes one second okay your big announcement all right because I thought what could I do right at my last budget meeting I would end so [Music] um so how do you know your son or daughter or your child is going to be a CPA anyone know that no okay so when you read your child the story of Cinderella and you get to the part where the pumpkin turns into a golden Carriage then your child will ask you is that ordinary income or a capital gain so no no Allison no okay com I I have one question um I asked Steve Barrett this a couple years back the state pension fund gets better returns in Middle sex they seem to be managed better does a town have to be with middle sex or can we put our Pension funds with the state program or something or something that base where your town is you have to go with that County's retirement because small percentage we do every year over a long period of town time adds up to a big percentage right um so there were approximately 56 pension plans throughout the Commonwealth which you probably know and the Commonwealth the one is run by the um the state treasur perak the Public Employee Retirement Administration commission we belong to the middle sex County Retirement System and I believe that we are required to participate in Middle counter retirement system but I just am looking to John because you also mentioned something I just think that I think the the par invests a lot of the money that is a middle sex anyways I think we are part of that in some way um but I think there are communities that have their own pension system which I I would I would not advocate for um because there's a lot overhead that comes along with that but uh you know we're I think we we're in a tough spot I mean we tried to fight the the system 15 years ago we have there's an end in sight to the unfunded liability I think we keep plugging away and um do our best to uh keep costs down and and spend wisely because the salary growth leads to the pension growth so we have to be beware of that and make sure that we're keeping P salaries appropriate uh so that it doesn't impact pensions um accordingly thank you yeah I was part of the group that was trying to get out 15 years ago so um it's possible but it was decided it wasn't really cost effective too much overhead um so I just looked at the funding ratio C it's 55.2 1% so it's a long way before reaching 100% which means that the cost will keep going up so if we cannot get out then anticipate the cost going up this is not something that you can the forecast this is something that calculate by actual rat so you know that it's going to go up uh the uh which is the interest cost of the unfunded liabilities will keep going up for the next 14 years um so either keep exploring the way of getting out um or you have to anticipate and and that's going to be part of the um uh the payroll um as a as a percent the Fring is a percent of the payroll so um with that um then any FTE that you add to it that will also incur this pension cost so that's a really good point that you make and um just wanted to point out that that's when we have to do the budget every year with John is that we obviously have to take that into consideration because of those increases that you said are built in and that we automatically say thank you if you think of other questions you certainly could email me or or email Maryann and we appreciate all the thoughtful questions and if were there any in the in the handout that you wanted to mention I think we hit them all okay good um uh we we'll get Leo we'll get Leo can we nice job ANF [Applause] and thank you for that that might have been the first joke that we've had at a budget Workshop that I it's at least in my time here so thank you for that uh it's a good way to go out uh thank you marann uh we're going to hear from our town clerk which is a little bit outside of the agenda but hopefully you'll indulge our town clerk is Leo Marcado hello everyone thank you for for coming out tonight letting us present to you first I'd like to say thank you to all these guys these guys do a great job every day I I got to be honest with you they work so any Kudos I can throw their way they deserve it so let me just go over my budget real quick with you so my name is Leo Mado I'm the town clerk Alicia baric she's my Deputy town clerk so our core Duty our core duties in our in our office managing public records birth certificates death certificates marriage certificates those things that everyone comes out for when when they need them we're there for that administrating elections and voter registration we get that accomplished through a lot of work from volunteers and poll workers which we could never get it done without their help I'd like to say thank you to them as well and then we also coordinate Town meetings and and we post Public Notices throughout the town it's a little bit of an archaic system but that's the way Massachusetts is we still go out we post it in eight different locations throughout the town for every every meeting so issuing licenses and permits business certificates marriage certificates dog licenses and things like that we're in the middle of dog license season right now so if you have a dog please remember to register of that dog so record keeping for Town orces and resolutions we keep all those records we have them back from we have them in book one I look at that thing regularly it's pretty interesting to look at 1735 so my area of the budget book begins on page 88 so if you'd like to take a quick peek at that it's brief so some of the accomplishments from my department have been the past year was dominated with elections we all saw that so including one of the large elections in the United States history there was a huge turnout for that and then as a new newly appointed leadership group in my department we stood up to those challenges and ran the presidential election in a very smooth manner we also had to turn around and help organize and run a special town meeting 3 weeks later I feel like that went pretty smoothly without any major hiccups the transition of responsibilities from my predecessor evatic to myself I feel like that has gone without me any problems some of our goals for for 2026 we'd like to streamline that that town clerk page that's something that that that's been really bothering me since the day I got here and now that that I'm and in the leadership position in my department I'm going to make sure that gets done as soon as possible so we want to make it much more user friendly and easier to navigate I see some different municipalities they have town clerk pages that I admire and I'm going to use those as examples so state of massachusett will Al also be rolling out new vital record system for their their system so we're going to require a lot of training for that there's all different things that they're going to be asking us to do things that we're going to be responsible for that we're not responsible for now but you know we're going to be trained on that so there won't be any issues with that then we'd also like to complete the complete moving everything into all of our equipment into one location we're looking at 18 wsav as a as our new storage facility so that's going to be where we're going to be able to keep everything located one spot without any any um concerns about security and things like that so so those goals will not only so we'd also like to look at streamlining some of our processes we we've we've put um we've put um the dbas online those are 100% online now so when you're requesting a business certificate you can go right to the website that's done electronically there's no more paperwork to fill out and then it it accelerates the process you get that that turned around in I'd say about four days instead of the two weeks that it has been taking so we'd also like to look at different a different processes that we have in our office and get those online as well so so we're looking at everything some of the metrics in our office the total residence according to the 2024 Municipal census 2,236 total registered vote is as of today 16357 marriage license is processed in in 2024 103 public records requests quite a few of those 273 dog licenses we process 1,831 of them we like to get that number a little higher because I'm sure there are a lot more dogs in 1800 of them in in the town of Acton so with that I'd like to thank you for your time have a great night oh wait we have questions you have questions we have questions sure what's your question Greg well 21,000 population that's according to the census is that down it's a little down but that's within 87% return rate of our of our street listing SL census so what I'm going to do with that I'm going to send out follow-up notifications when I don't receive the the number that I want so I'm going to be sending individual followup notifications to everybody that has not returned a census to me so that should kick that number up quite a bit okay I was I was wondering if they had all like moved to boxboro or what okay um not yet then the quick repetition of the questions I asked earlier what metrics or key performance indicators do you use to know that you're I'm a bottom line guy if I get it done it's done so so all right then how about some Secret Sauce how do you estimate how many people are going to turn out for town meeting how how do we estimate that we go by previous history so we look at at the numbers that have have shown up in the at the previous meetings and we also look at the topics so you can tell if it's it's a hot but button issue how much staff I'm going to need to have on hand so it's 500 people you double it if there's dog leash involved you quadruple it if it's have have you considered opening a sports betting kind of uh operation any other questions oh very good all right guys have a great night nice job Leo so uh we are we are moving on to the next scheduled program uh budget which I believe is the luse department and they're going to come up together is that is that right yes there's still some pizza left up there I believe Olivia uh I think we're ready to get started are we ready to get started I think we're ready to roll all right let's rock and roll thanks okay so um good evening I'm Kristen Gard I'm the planning director in zoning enforcement officer um it's nice to see you all here tonight and some new faces that I haven't had the opportunity to meet personally yet but hopefully we will get to do that soon um so um I serve as the the planning director and Zoning Enforcement office officer overseeing the planning Division and conservation division um which includes senior planner Kayla saour um Nate Ryan who is our new assistant planner and Barbara ryes who is our part-time cultural resource planner and in the conservation division Ian Bergman the community conservation specialist and Olivia barale who's here with us tonight our conservation agent that join our team this year and um I wanted to just mention Alicia Barack who Leo mentioned um was our previous administrator itive assistant um who we are very proud of who got the deputy clerk position and um we are now reposting and actively searching for her replacement so the conservation and planning divisions manage permitting and provide direct staff support to 10 different boards and committees the number of permits and permit types um that we manage really fluctuates year toe some years we have more complicated permits um development projects for example um that may span several months and other times um and other years we may have less complex but more administrative permits like sign permits that are very fast turnover um our permitting is now fully online and this past year we worked um to complete the transition from the historical data migration from munice into opengov um with a big thank you to our GIS team for helping us with all that background um work and Beyond permitting both divisions work closely with the community to realize is the vision for the natural uilt environment and if you've had the pleasure of working with the staff um of the planning and conservation division like I have um you I'm sure know that they are very passionate about the work that they do um and the planning division provides project management for initiatives identified in action items through various Community plans um almost all the projects that we manage are funded through state and federal Grant awards that we actively seek um and in order to implement those action items um we typically need additional consultant support so we make sure to get that in that way rather than trying to just go for additional funds to town meeting um we use these Community plans um really to direct the work that we do and one of our key performance measures um is our ability to raise the voices of act and residents and help the community to come to consensus on implementing the action items set forth in those Community plans this past year the planning division staff helped the community come to consensus on three major zoning efforts which all passed town meeting with a super majority vote the MBTA community's overlay District updated South Acton Village district and the Powder Mill overlay District these efforts helped to achieve several action items in the housing production plan act in 2020 comprehensive community plan as well as the climate action plan um after the positive vote at town meeting we applied for and received additional grant funding um in about $30,000 for an economic feasibility analysis to pursue a deeper and higher affordability requirement in the MBTA overlay District um as a direct response from the community feedback that we received so we will be kicking that off in a few months um and then over this summer The planning department also kicked off the housing production Plan update and the habitat for all um initiative which is a natural resource protection zoning um and inclusion area zoning project combined and this last effort is a collaboration between planning conservation um and our sustainability departments we continue to provide project management for the Kelly's Corner infrastructure project and oversee act and shared services for the Regional Housing service office um we are excited to announce that the recent approval of the open space and Recreation plan was received um and this was led by Kayla SAU over the past year adoption of this plan will open a significant amount of grant funding opportunities for both conservation land preservation and Recreation funding and speaking of Grant funds I wanted to give a shout out to Ian Bergman who stayed up late on a beautiful Friday Summer Afternoon um to submit that land grant which helped to offset the weather be land purchase by $500,000 um and our conservation agent Olivia Barksdale um is now working to finalize that land purchase and I don't know if Olivia you want to give a quick update on where we're at absolutely my name is Olivia barkel and I've been with the town of Acton for about six months I'm currently final finalizing the due diligence for the purchase of 19 and 35 weatherbe and working on drafting the conservation restriction with the Sudbury valleys of Trustees the house has been demolished and we're on track for closing hopefully in early spring so lots of exciting things happening and um in addition to helping preserve land the conservation division provides daily support managing Wetlands protect the wetlands protection act um monitoring and managing over 2,000 acres of conservation land more than 50 miles of Trails um which we also want to give a big thanks to the land stewards for all of their work um the division also runs environmental programming and education so stay tuned for March because there will be a whole initiative about uh migration and vernal pools so it should be a lot of fun um and clearly educational um turning to the budget book so if you have that in front of you it's page 62 um you'll notice that a majority of the planning Division and conservation budgets are comprised of salaries um with the exception of anticipated salary steps you'll note on page 64 the planning division budget is proposed with a 2.58% increase um one change you'll notice in the budget is a new line item for Community engagement materials in the past we have pulled from our supplies line item to pay for public Workshop materials um and one of our goals is to increase public engagement particularly with community members who have not traditionally participated in the planning process and um we want to make sure that we're always ensuring to ask three critical questions while we do our work who does it help who does it hurt and who is missing um so we have increasingly been taking on more public engagement efforts in house and we need to make sure that we are um adequately supporting these efforts the conservation Budget on page 67 shows a 2.9% decrease in the overall budget proposal um and this year we are very grateful to have been able to work with the finance department as Ellie mentioned um to really work um with them on reorganizing our line items to better align with the spending purposes so for example we've removed um meals and other supplies and created a new line item for Community engagement in addition we have Consolidated the contractual Services solely for Contracting Services at the Arboretum and moving funding for tree removal and beaver mitigation into Professional Services that way were better able to track um the work that's being done at the Arboretum rather than um some of the other work that we're doing for um resource protection um so I just want to thank you all for your time and I'm really happy to answer any questions tonight and any followup if needed first of all you get kudos for using the word or the phrase key performance indicators in your introduction those are the only questions I have you're stealing my thunder but um Let me let me ask them the second question um you you you were already making lots of adjustments uh one of the adjustments that you've made um is your sort of backfilling and covering for the economic development director so how do you plan prepare adjust going forward how do you anticipate the unanticipated that's a great question um I think in our line of work working in mun ipal government there's always unknowns and always things that are coming our way new laws coming down from the federal government or the state government um and changes you know within our organization and I think it comes down to the great staff that I have to work with they're extremely knowledgeable and we're able to be nimble and share our work um and able to bounce ideas off one another and work collaboratively so um it's worked well for us um since I've been here and more so even in the past five years so um it's a collaboration is Key Well than one follow-up question since in the past we've been able to look to the federal government for Grants with the change of administrations next week um have you anticipated what you're going to need to do next that is a difficult question to answer um I'll leave it at that for now we we were just going to finish with the land use presentation from our Building Commissioner if and uh Kristen and Ed will will take questions further questions I'm sure there are others if if that's okay good evening everyone I'm Ed Mullen I'm the Building Commissioner thank you all for being here to listen to us tonight um The Building Division in the land use office um our office UPF front consists of four cons four customer service Representatives two full-time and two part-time with one of the FTE being dedicated to the building division we have five inspectors including myself there are two additional inspectors one full-time and one part-time there's a part-time plumbing and gas inspector and our inspector of wires is shared with the town of Littleton through an IMA agreement the state has finally approved and promulgated the 10th edition of the State Building Code and is running concurrently with the ninth Edition until June 9 June 30th of this year the online permitting software open goov has streamlined the process for revie reviewing and issuing permits for the building division as well as other divisions and departments additionally we are able to extract data efficiently from for example the building division issued 96 rooftop solar permits in FY 26 and I can search that and find that information in about five minutes over the last two years the building division has tried to best leverage our resources to provide excellent consistent service this includes the building inspector's revolving Fund in fy2 we began contributing annually towards the fleet program and the cost of our own vehicles the building division took on the annual cost of open GFF software as well in FY 26 we proposed funding a new fire prevention officer position out of this fund the fire prevention officer works with the building inspectors as part of the inspections team this will improve inspectional Services overall and will better service the res residents of Acton thank you um if you want to go to the budget book we're on page 59 and you can see that there's some metrics in there that just show permit numbers um the fluctuation from year to year there it is and permits by type so the estimated cost value in a th you can see that as well um we're towing a pretty good line through fy4 so you have lots of metrics which ones do you use to know whether you're on track or or behind or sure what what are your key key ones so permit numbers overall we is what we look at and then we break it down by category whether it's building Plumbing electrical mechanical and gas um but I was really excited to get past August 8th of this year because that gave me one full year of data in this software so I can tell you that date is like infamy for me is August 8th is the day we implemented it and started so I'm able to at least go back to that time for so it's exciting for me to be able to go in there and the analytics in this are are fun direct followup to that question is um what is the average turnaround time for getting a building permit now and has that decreased over the last couple of years significantly um last year when I did my presentation which I rewatched just before tonight um I had come up and said that I originally got here we chased paper around the office because it was all done by hand um this we've taken permits that were taking 30 60 90 days and we're doing them in two weeks to 30 days but on average like a small like a roof you know if you want a re roof or rooftop solar four four to five days for review as long as there's no no missing information from the applicant if every if they provide everything we can get it out in four or five days thank you you also just said that uh you I'm I'm a little confused maybe I'm just meeting this reading this wrong is the fire prevention officer going to hit your budget or is it going to hit the fire budget because it's listed in the fire budget so I'm proposing to fund it out of our revolving fund the building inspector revolving fund okay so Mr mangera is that uh am I misreading that under the fire line you got a one fire prevention officer should that be being funded out of uh out of land use which uh which line are you referring to which piece of paper do so we we put it in the fire department because that's the department it's in uh where it's funded from initially we're proposing to fund it from the building revolving fund with the hope that over time the fire prevention revolving fund we be able to to we' be able to transfer to that uh but this the need is immediate and the fire prevention Revenue isn't uh hasn't we don't have as much cuz we don't have an officer actively doing the work uh so while it's in the building revolving fund it will be a fire department position that reports to the fire chief just works very closely with the Building Commissioner and the other inspectors to do the work of inspections uh throughout the day or the year so you're hoping that within two or three years the that ft FD will come out of the budget revolving building revolving and go back go over to fire prevention revolving yeah the the fire mention revolving fund was just established by T meeting I think last year for the first time and and uh we looked at fees that we charge for uh Fire Prevention Services and they hadn't been adjusted for a while we adjusted them and uh and the chief is going to talk about this when when she's up next but um the goal would be to have a dedicated resource to help look at fire prevention across the community and we believe that that would lead to an increase in Revenue in that account and a lot for it to be closer to self-supporting and I think it makes a lot of sense for the building revolving fund now and even for an extended period of time because of the the collaboration and the work that they do together um on a daily basis I just want to make sure that we can track it and make make sure to we'll update the sheet next year yeah that there in lies some of the rub right things get shuffled around so I want to keep track of once we add a new FTE that there's a reason that we don't just say well now we're funding it out of fire prevention so we have another we have a free spot over in land use that's what I'm trying to avoid I have two other questions um uh what is the revised date for the completion of Kelly's corner it was supposed to have been Last Summer the very first time it was presented I paid close attention because it was time when when Parker was going to be able to walk out of the high school um so it has always been fall of 2025 that hasn't changed and that's still the schedule that's the projected schedule still today okay okay and then um there have been no 40b projects for the past two years we're not in Safe Harbor correct we are not in Safe Harbor any longer but um we with our latest building permit for the Powder Mill project we have submitted that to eohc for inclusion on the subsidized housing inventory which should bring us to 10% and is it is it possible that the reason we've had there is no appetite for 40 BS is because we've made permissive enough zoning changes the developers are just not interested in keeping the 25% housing restriction imposed by 40b or do you anticipate that because we're this close to being in Safe Harbor that we are going to be free from 40b for the foreseeable future I really can't predict that I apologize but that's not something that I can predict thank you you going no you go I wait just to follow up on the weather be land I heard you say that the house had been demolished uh what about the antenna ey cars and the cars yes the the buried cars they are still working on that they do have active building permits for removing law material including the cars in the towers the wires um but one of the good news was the commission was concerned about a car potentially being in the Verno pool and during a site visit with the landowner he was able to pick it up so it actually wasn't a full-fledged car and so long story short we're still working on removing everything I was wondering about that cuz I was on the walk when the guy kicked the roof and it moved so so one car down thank you um I'm involved with act Troop One Boy Scouts and for your conservation land trail maintenance Scouts need conservation time so definitely coordinate with the different uh the four Scout Troops in town to set up time they mostly do it on weekends because the kids are in school during the week so it's something that we've done with acting conservation trust twice in the past year one was the weatherbe property do initially go through it Carver Trail so if you can utilize them it's a good thing to do yes we definitely do appreciate the Boy Scouts all their Eagle Scout projects with probably most of our boardwalks um I can think of one recently believe at pratz Brook where he had an ambitious project that he did achieve helping with the stream Crossing so we definitely do and still utilize Boy Scouts it's just working with Ian it's a quick email and he has depending on where they're located in town trying to match them to um what logistically makes sense and trying to help them through the process okay I'll have them the troop coordinator reach out to you for that one thank you yes hi um add some couple of questions about the the fossil fuel-free building bylaw and the new special opt and specialized code um you know the specialized code's been in operation since the beginning of the year and the fossil fuel-free bylaw cut in in the spring um so I guess my first question is whether you've um noticed any change uh in in the workload of the building department uh to implement those things more more work less work or what um slightly more work you know the review process when a set of plans comes in now we're we're measuring square footage closely to see if if the project actually requires them to meet the fossil fuel free bylaw whether it's a level three renovation or a new construction project so a little more time on a plan review but we've cut the time off in the other places so it's it's still efficient um what we have noticed is a lot of applications come in just under the requirement so they they're doing level two Renovations or they're doing a conditions under 1,000 sare ft that don't trigger it so that's what we're seeing a lot of people is is meeting going just under the threshold the people that have built new houses even before the fossil Fu free byaw came in because there were some incentives for Mass Save they went electric anyway and that one contractor came back to me and said that he would never build a house without it again and he did it on his own because the rebates were there but now he doesn't even care if the rebates are there he said the the the heating and the cooling of that house is so much more efficient and comfortable that and we've just had a new come in this this past week that's going to be all electric as well so that's great to hear um you know we always anticipated that the um fossil fuel-free Bilo would be particularly easy in the residential situation for exactly the reasons you describe that it's just you know makes economic sense and it provides a better experience for the for the people that are living there but um we did anticipate on the commercial side that there would be situations where um in it wasn't it wasn't practical either Tech technically or financially for some aspect of a building uh to be all all electric and I was learning if if you had any Reflections on um how that that side of the process has gone I mean I've noticed that on the select board we haven't seen any waver requests yet uh but i' I'd love to know a little bit more about what you know behind the scenes sure great good question um well just this past week I had a meeting with a gentleman by the name of John Crandle who is a representative from a govern Automotive Group he's a project manager I sat down with him and he had some of those exact questions that you're asking now you know where can I ask for a waiver where should I be saying that I don't need a waiver um so we went through their floor plan fairly quickly but mentioned that you know he should keep the electrification in the back offices um or any place where there was smaller areas that they can control the um climate and then he was saying you know asking you about the mechanic space whether the doors are always opening and closing they'd still like to continue to use the uh uh waste burner oil uh equipment um where it's they don't want to have to transport that off site that's an added cost and additionally in the showroom where they're going to have bed ceilings and cars are going to go in and out he was asking if he could go to maybe a mixed fuel type where it's generally heated by Electric but if they do do vehicle shifting where they could maybe turn on the HVAC equipment that might be gas fired to bring the place back up to temperature shut it down and go back to Electric so they were looking for where so I think you will see that one another interesting questioning I got this past week was uh Marcus Lewis tennis camp is moving or tennis program and they're looking to do their own location and they were talking about doing either uh inflated building or a stretch tension fabric building and again he was saying he didn't think that you know heating those with electric would be uh affordable or efficient for him in those scenarios so he was asking if that would be something that he could request a waiver on and I said that I would certainly bring it to the board so well we look forward to having those conversations so learn how to be a you know a waiver request board thank you yep nice work land use [Applause] team do you want to take a quick break or want to keep going it's that's up to the chairs I heard multiple people say break would be good so I'll uh I'll I'll say we think break would be good all right so we'll start up again in five or six minutes sounds great okay e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e I'm ready okay finance committee have a seat okay thank you for that break and uh for those thoughtful questions in the first half of tonight's session we're going to kick off the second half with the fire department led by Chief Anita arnam thank you good evening everyone finance committee select board appreciate your uh work here with us with the budgets um my name is Anita arnam I currently serve as the fire chief and Emergency Management director for the town of Acton I've been a member of the Acton fire department since October of 198 89 and I'm currently entering my 36th year of service to the town I appreciate the opportunity to present various budgets currently managed by the fire department and I'm very honored to serve with the women and men of the act and fire department who provide an exemplary service to the community with me tonight I'd like to introduce uh deputy chief Christopher samit Deputy samit is a 26-year veteran of the fire department who's worked his way up through the ranks and was promoted to deputy chief in January of last year Deputy Sam has been a great addition to the administration as we as we meet the many tasks and challenges of running the department and we continually strive to bring the department forward and provide Dependable quality service to the community in your budget book our budget starts on page 69 and provides the mission statements of the fire department and Emergency Management you'll also find a list there of the budgets managed by the fire department the act and fire department is currently comprised of 46 FTE as seen in the organization chart on page 70 uh just as a quick additional note the acting fire and police departments jointly are responsible for the e911 system dispatch system run out of the public safety facility which falls under the police department budget currently 35 FTE are accounted for in the general fund which includes the chief deputy chief office manager four captains four lieutenants and 24 firefighter positions which which include both EMTs and paramedics the remaining 11 fdes are accounted for out of the ambulance uh Enterprise fund which includes the ALS coordinator 8 firefighter paramedics and two impact shift firefighter paramedics this brings our current complement to 46 FTE when fully staffed we run four shifts consisting of a captain shift Commander a lieutenant eight firefighter EMTs and at least two of which are paramedic level Monday through Friday an ALS coordinators on the clock along with the chief the deputy chief and all supported by our office manager currently recruiting and retaining staff has been a challenging has been challenging particularly firefighter paramedics we currently have seven vacancies and two impact shifts that have remained unfilled to date primarily due to some contract restraints which we are in the process of currently working through we're aggressively recruiting to fill these vacancies and to relieve the burden of overtime that our members have been filling the fire service is charged with three Broad objectives Life Safety incident stabilization and property conservation over the years the fire service has transformed into an all hazards response Organization no longer responding only to extinguished fires members must be trained and skilled in a number of areas in order to provide for the safety of the community services provided include fire suppression prevention education training programs pre-planning hazardous materials response Emergency Medical Response if you saw TV recently ice and water rescue Auto extrication active shooter response emergency treatment of police canines under Nero's law search and rescue fire investigation service and the list goes on basically if someone needs a service and they don't know who to call they dial 911 fire service Personnel are problem solvers we'll if we'll get the problem solved One Way Or Another We're fortunate to have a member trained as a certified fire investigator who provides a tremendous service to the Department dep and in fact to several area communities as a member of the district 14 fire investigation team we also work cooperatively with the police officer who is currently seeking training in the art of fire investigation Police Department involvement and cooperation provides a certain legal authorities required in investigation we obtain Grant funds to participate in student awar student and Senior awareness of fire education programs known as safe and Senior safe the safe program provides Fire and Life safety education to school children in our schools and Senior safe aims to reduce older adult and fire injuries and deaths through Education and Training relative to the unique needs of seniors as technology advances so do the challenges for the fire department new materials act differently Under Fire conditions and produce different toxins when burning one area that has become of particular concern and challenge for the fire department is the installation of solar systems energy storage systems and lithium ion batteries that have become very popular we have to take a whole different approach when these batteries are involved in fire currently fire Administration with the support of line staff is challenged to keep up with the demand for Fire Prevention Services and is currently responding primarily to activities only as requested however we should be doing more to take a proactive approach to fire prevention the addition of a full-time fire prevention officer will allow for a more consistent application of fire prevention regulations provide a single consistent contact for the public public and allow for a more proactive approach to fire prevention establishment of a fire prevention officer would subsequently allow Administration and line staff to focus on other critical areas of operational activities it is anticipated that a full-time fire prevention officer will lead to increased revenues from permit fees and if necessary fines for compliance with with certain uh fire code requirements though our goal is to assist with compliance and eventually become a self-funded position this position is presently is presented currently to be funded in conjunction with the building division as many fire prevention activities are conducted in conjunction with the building division functions of the position will include but are not limited to code enforcement ensuring compliance with fire codes building plan review fire safety occupancy inspections pre-planning activities maintaining tier 2 Hazardous Materials Handling and storage replace uh storage requirements and documentation school safety inspections uh including fire drills Fire and Life safety risk assessment review of Fire Protection Systems energy storage system compliance issuance of code violations recordkeeping and testifying before the board of fire prevention regulations when necessary the fire prevention officer will be the primary contact for issuing a variety of those permits includes things such as uh the simple 26f which is fire um fire alarms and um fire Det detectors and and C uh is it carbon monoxide detections welding cutting and other hot work open burning permits blasting energy storage systems fire protection installation and repairs flammable and combustible storage hazardous material storage temporary heating equipment special event projects such as fireworks uh black powder and various other special permits the list goes on if you turn to uh page 72 you'll see a list of changes and ongoing challenges the department is facing and a list of our accomplishments and goals uh primary goals uh this year are to increase our overall effic efficiency of operations and safety for our fire Personnel moving on to Emergency Management that's on page 73 of your document Emergency Management is charged with ensuring the town is prepared to respond to a variety of emergencies including weather events pandemics significant fires active shooter events disruptions in infrastructure Etc a cach of equipment is being Acquired and stored for ready deployment as needed and additional permit additional permit storage locations are being evaluated Emergency Management preparedness Grant of $5,100 annually have been utilized to assist in building our cash of equipment in FY 26 we hope to exercise Acton's comprehensive emergency management plan through a tabletop event and complete a full inventory of Emergency Management resources and continuing to maintain those resources to be ready as needed page 74 of your document talks about the uh or shows the Enterprise and revolving funds these funds include the fire alarm Network revolving fund that's our um maintenance and and repair of our current 100 Mil fire alarm Network the red boxes red call boxes you'll see either on the poles or on buildings and that budget itself is located on page 173 other Enterprise and evolving funds include the fire prevention revolving fund which that you heard the town manager state is New so it does not have uh much revenue in that yet but it'll eventually support a fire prevention officer's position with the collection of permit and inspection fees that budget is located on page 183 ambulance Enterprise funds budget which supports the operation of the town's ambulance service is located on pay page 170 going back to fire on page 75 it offers a graphic of Statistics over the past 10 years if you look at the center graph it depicts the Fire Department emergency and Medical Services responsive which have been trending upwards over the past several years and particularly this last year and continues to do so over the past year we've had an increase in the number of simultaneous requests for service often necessitating the need to call in mutual aid from our surrounding communities we also provide Mutual Aid on a regular basis to our surrounding communities on page 76 is the fire department general fund budget and on page 77 are some interesting points to note primarily uh one of our biggest cost increases this year is the emergency equip uh is the equipment repair and servicing which includes our apparatus repairs which has shown a sharp increase in cost for required annual service maintenance and certification of equipment and apparatus uh I know you all uh submitted or many of you submitted questions I think you got the short list of answers if you need additional information on those questions I'm happy to take that now or any other questions you might have metrics yeah um you have so many metrics in here I won't even ask you which ones are your key performance indicators unless you want to single a few out well one of our biggest key performance indicators I would direct you to NFPA 19 uh 1710 which about response times to both fire and medical services key cool now let me get to the mutual Aid issue okay all the towns around are going through budget squeezes would you assess that we're providing other communities with mutual Aid at about the same rate that they're providing us or is somebody out there slacking and counting on us to sort of backfill it's kind of hard to say if anyone's slacking because we never know where the emergency is going to be however I do have numbers for you uh total incoming Mutual Aid response which includes medical fire and other is 161 over the course of the last year as far as outgoing Mutual Aid 236 got it s I had a question about the FTE it says so your department is asking for two more firefighter EMTs but in then in the FY 26 goal it says fill vacancies you said you had seven vacancies right now we currently have seven vacancies we struggle along with every other fire department ideally we'd like to hire firefighter paramedics um we get a number of requests from firefighter EMTs but we need to maintain our ALS service so we're currently undergoing uh a pilot program to determine the best way to organize and be most efficient with that resource okay so that says fill vacancies and add eight additional that mean 15 not eight additional right now uh the town manager has reduced that to two currently all right so all right but I'll just explain too that those two will assist with the two impact so that we can add one more person per shift all right thank you uh Chief do we um in regards to response times for years North Acton was the problem until we bu station out there is there a problem now does any part of town have a a much longer response time than uh any other the average so I think we're doing much better North Acton definitely needed a station located up there that's our busiest District in town most responses um I would say that our response times to all areas of town now with that resource have uh have improved and I don't believe there's any one particular area that's underserved and as far as the um FTE uh how does your current Staffing compar to what's recommended by the National Fire Protection Association in terms of how many should we have based on a whatever 20,000 that's a difficult answer to find um it all depends a little bit on your population density and what your your population is made of you know uh residential versus commercial and things like that and I've looked many times for a standard uh number and I've not found that standard number however I can tell you that for a single family residents it's recommended that you assemble 17 firefighters on the scene within X number of minutes uh in order to attack that fire there's 22 critical tasks that have to be taken initially at the scene of a fire and let me say you don't have 17 firefighters on duty at all times we do not okay thank you hence that's why I initially asked for eight it's a finance committee we can do the math absolutely will these two additional firefighters I understand that you uh say that this adds put this swing shift and we'll add one per one per system per shift you said but will this uh represent a decrease in overtime costs will there be will there be any tangible savings or is this just two new FTE to the to the Top Line I believe that by having additional Personnel it will assist in reducing overtime right now we're we're running fairly high on overtime but it's offset a little bit by the vacancies so I mean obviously people are going to have personal uh vacation and things like that that are going to have to be taken into account with additional Personnel to Greg's point about key performance indicators if you come back next year and say we haded two new firefighters but we saved x amount of money in overtime that will go a long way to to helping your cause in the future um similarly if it doesn't it won't so please know that that's that's going to be a question you're going to get in the next year um in the past I remember looking at the uh number of cases and it was I must be missing something maybe maybe it's how it's being reported but I remember it being way more lopsided that the number of medical uh in medical cases was almost you know 6,000 and the you know the fire fire instances were significantly lower and as I recall it was one year we had one fully fully engaged house fire is this Fire Department emergency responses number does that also include some set of uh medical responses because yes because when you respond to a fire you also respond excuse me when you respond to a medical we also have fire appar apparatus responding we have new software now so there's a a you know garbage in garbage out right so we're working on making sure that things are accurately recorded and um so that we can look at the data a little bit better it's to that same purpose it's that same uh indicat that I'd like to talk about you I understand that you want to hire firefighters that have the advanced life life saving paramedic level um why why do we not just hire paramedics why do we not just hire have ambulances if we've got a 10 to1 Ratio or whatever the number is of medical uh instances versus fire instances why are we rolling gigantic fire trucks when we need to be rolling an ambulance it's going to end up being significantly more efficient if we can do if we can have a the right number of paramedics for the for the instances that we see so and I know John wants to jump in here a little bit too but um right now we're able to take advantage of firefighter paramedics to provide both Services we have indeed discussed hiring paramedic only uh some of that is going to involve contractual impact issues as well so it's not just turn the switch and higher paramedics um we have some ideas moving forward we're going to start with our pilot program that I introduced on Monday night as far as looking at efficiencies and operations and we have some ideas on how we can better utilize our paramedics right now uh we have instances where our paramedics two on an ambulance uh I'll give you an example they're responding to a broken ankle um they're tied up they go to the hospital that there's longer wait times at the hospital now to to uh have them um transfer care to the hospital meanwhile we get a second call with a BLS ambulance cardiac arrest so now my paramedics are tied up on a BLS call when I need him for an ALS call that the BLS crew is handling so if we can and that's where you saw uh information on the Fly car fly car allows you to triage appropriately and get that paramedic service to those that need it most and make sure that you're not tied up providing care to someone who doesn't or providing Medics on a call that doesn't require medics I I just feel that there's definitely room for efficiency there on on the paramedic versus rolling a fire am fire truck for for a medical and I and we agree with you um and I think it's something that in the last two years that Chief has been the head of the department she's brought some serious vision and and Leadership and and Deputy sammon as well and in the past things like that would have been a non-starter but now it's something that we're working closely with the Department to implement and so we can't do it today but I think that we'll be able to do that soon and it will address that need where um yeah sometimes it would be helpful to have a few medic Medics and not fire fire Medics uh we certainly need a full compliment of firefighters but uh there is an opportunity potentially to use a medic only situation to supplement or to improve the way we respond so thank you for that suggestion and we're we're we're with you on that yeah we're aggressively looking into that excellent yes so I I had notes about this so maybe I'll do a little followup is the um uh is the uh fly car model um does that mean you would staff the ambulances with BLS and um the uh the fly car would just go to one place treat the patient the the the ALS might go into the hospital if the patient needed to be needed Care on the way in but otherwise they would stay with the car and return back to um Station House correct and if we're able to staff it with two paramedics they could actually split and provide care to two patients at the same time if necessary uh if you have a MCI or mass casualty incident they would be the ones to help triage start treatment and send them in BLS under those circumstances um it's a much more efficient model and it's actually the model that used to take place here with Emerson Hospital Emerson Hospital ran a fly car with two paramedics servicing 14 towns um and they were able to do it they did recognize uh towards the end of their service that they needed a second fly car to service that many towns but a much more efficient model of providing the appropriate Care at the appropriate patient and for the ambulance uh uh Enterprise fund do we are we able to bill for both the medical care provided in ALS plus the transport is that two separate billing so it right now we have a separate ALS Bill uh a BLS well it's two levels of ALS billing there's uh the als1 which is just uh minimal ALS care and then there's als2 where you uh are doing some more advanced treatment and three or more interventions so that's a different level of billing right now for example if we provide ALS Mutual Aid which several towns around us do not have ALS and sometimes they'll call us for that service what happens right now is there ends up being two ambulances dispatched one from their town and one from our Town um the person or the ambulance that does the transport is going to pick up the bill if we send our Medics from our ambulance in their ambulance and both go to the hospital we're able to assess them a $250 fee pro EMS currently operating their fly car out of South Acton um which is servicing numerous towns so they're not always available to us they're charging a $450 fee so we've already talked with Finance about matching fees thank thank you I have two other uh uh quick questions um will the fire pres prevention officer deal with any um red flag conditions or will they just deal with structure fires and their contents in your list you you talked about structure fires hazardous materials all sorts of things but I didn't hear you mentioning anything about you know we don't get wildfires here very often but we did a little bit not in Acton but we did in the in Massachusetts this year so does will the fire prevention officer with that as well the fire prevention will officer will be looking at all risks in the community uh that includes red flag warnings and as you mentioned uh the state was in a state of drought this year it was a the largest state mobilization activation of a task force which Acton responded twice we responded once to Salem and once to Wilmington with a brush truck Strike Force um so yeah it's an all hazards allrisk fire prevention officer um thank you and I have one final question um do you know the last time that we added firefighter paramedics to the department with the expanded a shift with the exception of the ALS coordinator which was added I believe it was uh 1988 we added eight personnel and actually back at that point we we were in a better position because we had our staff Emerson provided the ALS service and that provided more Personnel on a critical call right now we'll get four Personnel on a critical call if we have a fly car now we can increase that to six which is the old model thank you sorry I do have a followup if I may um I'm just trying just trying to make sure I understand the the Staffing you've got 46 currently and 46 yeah 46 current 46 in the fy2 budget you say there are seven vacancies are those vacancies do you have currently 46 employees or do you currently have 39 employees 39 right now okay so there's a lot of overtime it's a big burden on our Personnel have those seven vacancies been an entire year been the entirety of the previous F year no some one of them just occurred as of the 11th of this month okay so so we have five six seven full-time employees who've been budgeted for who've been monies have been have been uh appropriated for but those Services were not rendered because there weren't bodies to fill this fill vacancies cor those vacancies were filled with overtime we have to provide the staff in order to fill our stations and to man our apparatus so it may not be coming out of a full-time FTE but somebody has to fill it and that's being filled with overtime what's the likelihood of getting everything everything staffed this year it depends on uh what direction we go um we're looking at various models if we end up going to a fly car model we can open up some of those positions to firefighter EMTs and you know during during the whole transition with ALS there was some concern that when we were hiring paramedics they didn't come with fire experience we had to send them to the academy which we do with all new hires that don't have that but many when many times when you hire a firefighter EMT they're coming from another department and they have that fire experience so we got a little paramedic heavy for a while with less fire experience which concerned the uh staff and then now we're we're getting lighter on the paramedic side and um need to fill some of those vacancies I I believe if we look aggressively at how we want to change our operational model I believe we'll be able to fill those vacancies so we're holding over half a million dollars in overtime just on the fire department side correct thank you I have a few questions um Jason already asked my question about um overtime um is I'm assuming it's more financially prudent to um have the additional staff rather than rely on overtime as well as all of the other things that you mentioned about being able to train inhouse firefighter safety morale and and um over taxing the staff is that is that accurate I I believe that's accurate okay even even with the benefits that come with an additional FTE I think so I mean because because overtime is time and a half overtime is time and a half overtime is paid for filling shifts is paid for training outside of the department um when we send someone to the academy we backfill them so there's overtime there so there's a lot of different categories of overtime but right now most of it's being filled or most of it's being charged due to the fact that we have the vacancies okay um in the FY 26 goals you have listed um a goal to promote um additional lieutenants um so is that dependent on the approval of additional firefighters because if you're promoting firefighters so are you are you at are you in the future going to add Lieutenant positions or fewer firefighters because officers because they've been promoted to leadership position our goal is to get additional staff per apparatus because right now we run two people on a piece of apparatus that's that's not a safe way to run the operation um I mentioned the other night you know we have ocean mandated two in two out that means you're not supposed to enter a fire structure until you have two firefighters available to go in and two firefighters available to be out to rest rescue them in case there's an issue uh and as I mentioned you know you need 17 firefighters on just a single family house fire so assembling all those people takes time and time with fire fire um is logarithmic it doubles in size every minute so it's um it's critical to get started on a fire as quickly as you can um over the years with two people on a piece of apparatus first piece of apparatus pulls up you got one person to pull the line the other guy has to uh Engage The Pump they engage the pump he joins the guy on the line and they go in but there's nobody there running the pump you're relying on somebody coming in behind you to establish a water supply to ventilate to to do a number of other op operations in order to attack that fire so having so accomplishing three staff on each um vehicle is going to be possible because of the the pilot not so much the promotion to so promoting more lieutenants correct well it's promoting people within so right right now I have one lieutenant and each Fire Company in the ideal World which is going to take us a while to get there I understand that and we realize that uh in the ideal world you have a company with an officer so every time every piece of apparatus has an officer in charge of that apparatus and in charge of the staff on that apparatus so if we end up with a model where um we're able to like for example the pilot we're consolidating so there's going to be more people people in in the station same number you know um on duty but uh within the stations so it it if we're going to be doing that the ideal thing would be to have a lieutenant in each of those stations so we can promote that from within okay um and then I have two more questions so we have about 10 10 years yeah 10 years of performance metrics with the fires extinguished and I think up until fy22 would have said oh yes we need fire prevention because the number of fires extinguished is going up but then there's been a pretty big drop half from fy22 to FY 24 do you have any ideas about um what's causing that drop because it's surprising given you know drought situations um and whe and how How likely it is that it's going to go back up like this is not a drop that what we're doing it's it's difficult to predict the emergencies that are going to occur um as far as the fire prevention officer there's all kinds of things that are going to happen regardless of whether or not you have fires that's independent of whether or not you have fires there's tank in installations there's um occupancy in installations there's safety uh things that need to be be done there's all kinds of solar needs to be inspected by fire if they have an energy storage system that's going to continue and that's what's bogging us down the deputy and the captains are doing most of that work right now the captains um are tied up with that good portion of the day the other thing that happens is if we do send the captain or a company out to do an inspection and I believe Ed Mullen can attest to this often times they get there tone goes off they got to leave now you got to reschedule that's inconvenient for the um property owner or contractor okay the inspector and the inspector sorry Ed all right so yeah I'm I'm clear on the the what the fire prevention officer's duties will be I just I'm getting hung up on the fire prevention and thinking you know back to my elementary days like oh that's going to be fewer fires because we all know how to prevent fire um better um my last question is about the fly car um if that gets added to the department will that serve other towns uh I believe when you put up a service you have to do what's called a service agreement and you need to make sure that Services you provide if they're if they're available they may be available to another town if it's a double medic fly car again we could split if we have to you know what I mean uh and there's and we're thinking about all different types of op operational models where we can I I'm not going to let all our paramedics go out of town that I'm not going to do um we're going to keep paramedics in town because this town has uh requested the ALS service it's a vital service and in fact I would say more than half of our Medicals are ALS based okay so I said that was my last question but you meent the reason I asked it was because you mentioned Emerson was running a fly car for 14 communities so I was wondering um you know how many communities act in fly car might serve and if there's any opportunity for for Revenue generation from that I I believe there's definitely opportunity for Revenue generation but again we have to come up with the model that's not going to strip our town of that service hi Chief thank you uh Alex lens this is my second meeting new associate so thank you um you mentioned other towns were having vacancy issues as well uh what are the trends with that and the challenges that you're facing as a department to attract uh you know new employees to fill those vacancies and what's your confidence level of being able to fill them if you're competing with a lot of other towns thank you there there well um I know that uh every a lot of times we're in negotiations in order to try and figure out what they can offer um we're doing the same and we're trying to be competitive out there and provide a a good benefit uh one of the things I will say with with our current challenge of two people per station is firefighters don't join a department to work with one other person that's not why they get there's a Sisterhood and a Brotherhood there's a team and camaraderie and they depend on each other to know their jobs do their jobs and in fact for their very lives they depend on each other so to that's part of our problem of not being able to attract Personnel is because and in fact if the new person comes in they're assigned to station one there's no Lieutenant uh during the day oversight there the Lieutenant's up North but the ambulance is here so new people generally come into the service with us on the ambulance they may be assigned with a fairly new person and they're they don't get the mentorship they don't get the training uh as much as they really should we need to Foster that in order to give them a good career path and um and to learn and know their job so I think there's opportunities out there but I think we're going to have to change some of our operational models to get that hi thanks for the time tonight um so just a recap is like you have 46 spots today there's six or seven openings of those 46 but you you had been looking for eight additional Personnel but that was reduced to two is that correct that's correct um and so like eight on 46 is is a pretty sizable increase and I I appreciate what you said um but you know back to Greg's point on just the metrics is you know if I am looking at page 75 the fires you know emergency medical responses Etc they generally look over 10 years to be flattish I think our population is pretty flattish to maybe even slightly down do you have additional metrics um you you cited response time and National standards is one I think that just just was like one data point you know just generally um it would be really helpful just to have more context around like a larger hiring increase like that if the request was eight and I understand it is is is actually now two um but it does jump off the page like 17 18% increase in headcount versus flat everything else that's listed here for the most part so that that initial request was based also on running four stations um and getting that would only give us two more what is it one more person per station two more people per station so that would give us a complement of three to four per apparatus which is what we're looking for overall okay I would rather have an engine show up with four Personnel than two engine show up with two Personnel yeah I guess just from our perspective it's just much better to to sell the idea just to understand the qu the numbers around it like what what is what is going into this because as we discussed earlier like obviously every additional Personnel salary pension benefits and so on and so forth and does become something we we all need to deal with over the longer term I I understand that but the safety of our Personnel is also Paramount sure thank you uh thank you Chief so I just want to have a clarification question to make sure I'm reading the right numbers so on page uh 76 the FY 26 uh proposed budget that includes uh the two FTE that you intend to add right uh I don't believe well I don't believe that includes does it yes okay yes so that explains the increase in the regular salary and but what from what I heard is that you expect the overtime will go down right because if adding FTE then you will will be able to U protect the current um employee the staff so the overturn will go down but you still see the overtime goes up the proposed budget overtime goes up by around 5% and I believe that was uh instituted to cover some additional training that we would like to be able to provide our members you it also it's also reflective of actuals uh the overtime budget was significantly overspent the last two years and and while we believe that filling vacancies would curb that uh we do think that it's necessary to increase overtime budget just because of the the U every employee has a right to vacation and and so on and if you if you look at that across the workforce across the entire year it's going to incur overtime just as a Baseline and then there's the other things that happen that also incur over time so while we hope that then we won't go over budget as much as we have in the past we do think it's necessary to increase it still uh to to have a more appropriate amount of money in the overtime budget right so talking about FY 26 and then FY 25 so you would expect the actual FY 25 over time will be over 525 s yep poti not but yeah probably all right thank you but it would probably be higher if you don't fill the vacancies right so it's gonna offset I'm sorry say that again the overtime budget it's going to exceed budget if you don't fill your vacancies there'll be an offset right if we don't fill the VAC we're going to have to fill over time yes okay so yeah other questions sure H um so I understand we're not ready yet to buy electric vehicles either for the ambulances or any of the fire apparatus I was wondering what the what the key key technical or financial factors would have to change for that to be realistic I would think that the dependability and part of the problem is uh even on a quick charge like uh I believe uh I was sent a electric ambulance um ad or or information and a quick charge on that ambulance is 4 hours M you know I can't say hey we'll be there in four hours I don't have a charge uh the other things that we have to consider is the lights the radios uh the equipment in the ambulance in the winter time the Heat and in the summertime the air conditioning those are all going to draw down M sometimes we send an ambulance to do a standby at a fire it needs to be running and it may be there for a couple of hours so the technology has to get a little bit better uh in order to do that I did hear recently that there's a cab service that the way they manage some of that is when they pull into their cab garage they just drop the battery out and put a new battery in so technology just has to improve there and I think all the stations would have to be upgraded for their electrical service yes sir um kind of related to that um for the the the new amb the new uh fire engine that's on the capital list um what brand of uh equipment do we uh expect to buy and are there and why did you choose that brand and are there other choices um okay so um we do currently have an apparatus coordinator and an apparatus committee that gets together to look at what's available out there and the committee researches the department needs and what is available uh a Seagrave is the manufacturer that we're looking at and the chassis is a Marauder so it's a Seagrave Marauder too we've had good luck with those engines we have some of those engines so it assists in you know constant maintenance and parts and things like that um it's the as I said it's the same manufacturer of our some of our line engines it comes with a stainless steel body in chassis which probably helps with some of the salt and issues around New England it has been dependable and reliable lower maintenance cost shorter out of service times we get better service from Seagrave than some of the other manufacturers that we've used in the past um my apparatus coordinator said that um he's found it to be a superior product and he prioritizes maintenance service uh service after the sale in particular um when it comes to those vehicles and also looking at the lifespan of 15 to 20 years we we want something that's going to be dependable and reliable thank you and I have one question for the town manager the we had a home rule petition in to be able to hire Public Safety uh individuals in a wider circle around town than is allowed by state law that home rule petition did not pass is that correct yes unfortunately it was filed two years ago um and was hung up in whatever happens uh when things get hung up for a long time uh although the good news is is that representative Cena's office notified us earlier last week that they have refiled it and hopefully they'll get a fresh look at it and um you know I know the fire chief and I think even the fire Union and um other folks have reached out to advocate for for that and maybe the select board I think the select board did in the past maybe we could have ask to do it again and that speaks to the vacancies as well thank you for bringing that up um under Mass General law we're limited to a 15 mile radius for where we can hire people from which really limits our pool uh from just from a m num standpoint but also an equity standpoint and other reasons so uh we're looking to reduce all the barriers we can to hiring and that one we're just H we need some help from the state legislature because uh so hopefully hopefully we'll get Swift action this year and um anything that you can do as politicians would would be appreciated yeah I I just I just thought of that now because it was not on uh uh representative Cataldo's refile list so maybe we can get him to sign on to reena's bill so um I'll see if I can do that thank and I'll reiterate that has indeed been a barrier to hiring thank you other question questions Burning Season just started so get your permits be safe thank you can I just make one last exit comment absolutely I I covered the story about the ice and one of the things that I was impressed with is that you leveraged the opportunity to talk about fire safety in addition to oh by the way we saved the following number of people and you they're good that it was a u kudos for that brilliant move leveraging people's attention on a news topic to remind them about Public Safety so nice move nice move thank you and uh just as a added note tomorrow we're going to be talking with Acton TV about how to save yourself if you fall under the ice or fall through the ice thank you I appreciate your time okay well we're right on schedule and we our closing act tonight will be the police department which is led by Chief James kogan yes sorry inexperience the body camera is not rolling but it's ready to so um good evening to to members of the select board and finance committee and thank you for the challenging work you do I am not only the police chief but I'm also a resident of act and and have been for over 30 years joining me tonight is Douglas stolo our Deputy police chief who joined the Department 24 years ago he was hired as the deputy chief about a year and a half ago or promoted we currently have 46 FTE on the police department the police department is comprised of 42 sworn officers two full-time clinical responders and I will say that we just were able to um get the second one on board um in the last couple of weeks so we're very happy about that uh we have a business manager a records Clerk and a service dog that is not reflected in the count um we are committed to enhancing the life quality of life for all those who live in in or visit Acton I would like to start by publicly thanking all of the First Responders who serve the town of Acton and provide excellent services to anyone who needs assistance of any kind I'll begin with my list of accomplishments first of all and I'm kind of going through the year in May we received our reaccreditation and why is this important accreditation demonstrates the Department's commitment to adhering to high stand standards of professionalism ethics and operational effectiveness we also implemented a body warn camera program body warn cameras and vehicle cameras provide and record interactions um between police and and citizens or residents or visitors promoting accountability among officers and building trust with the community we also added a lightning pickup truck to as an additional supervisor vehicle which is now in service it is driven seven it is driven s days a week um and it's in addition to another supervisor vehicle we currently have and this has worked out very well one of the reasons for this was our supervisor vehicle car 8 um we always have a supervisor working and that car would be run from just 24 hours a day seven days a week and we had problems with it and um because of that that use at this time we used car 18 which is the lightning during the day so that car has a chance to recover a little bit it needs less service and we're very happy with the results we've had so far from the lightning pickup truck so um we also created a peer support team which includes police fire and dispatch public safety personnel are significantly more likely to be exposed to critical incidents than the general public due to the nature of the work and um I can tell you that we've had a couple of very critical incidents in the last year um that many of our staff have been affected by so um it's it's great um in the aftermath of a critical incident peer support teams provide immediate assistance and help individuals process their experience and recover more effectively our staffing remains good but it seems to be continuous currently we have two openings um and three open positions were filled over the past 12 months one with a lateral transfer which is actually very easy an officer from mayard came and joined our departmento already Academy trained it took about 12 weeks for the field training program and then she was off so um it takes a lot longer almost a year for the other people that we hire to complete the C the the completed Academy and then do a 12we um training program so as as I said our staffing is good we're down currently two positions um but the Outlook and the results we've had recently have been very good our police budget begins on page 79 and the majority of the budget covers costs um associated with personnel there are also some key performance indicators listed on the pages that follow um I am requesting one additional FTE this year an administrative Lieutenant's position the administrative Lieutenant's Position will help balance the increased workload of our current lieutenants this new position will maintain direct oversight over several new programs the department has added in recent years accreditation and the body War camera program both of these important programs require a large amount of time to properly maintain and I will say this is written in my um um my notes here that we're we're struggling to do that to um to to keep up with that the body One camera program is excellent it's it's outstanding to record all this but we we are recording every single day massives amount of data and we have to manage that oversee it and monitor it provide it to people that need it there's a lot that goes along with the body camera program so I this this request is critical in my eyes to um help with this um to manage these positions or these programs uh this position would also serve as a computer systems and Grant coordinator and assist with recruiting and hiring of new police and dispatch Personnel it has been more than 25 years since the department added a lieutenant to the Command Staff our department has grown in the past 10 years with the addition of n eight new police officers two clinical respond ERS and a dispatch supervisors A dispatch supervisor um addition of this administrative Lieutenant position is is the necessary solution to have the support guidance without overburdening our current Command Staff addition to this position would stabilize the chain of command support its effective operation and clarify delegation and responsibility and also improve communication in calendar year 2024 we which we just ended the department handled 28,9 incidents an increase of 10% over 2023 motor vehicle traffic enforcement including vehicle stops increased 30% 6,28 stops were made by acting police officers in the past calendar year the number of citations also increased significantly we continue to deploy our electronic speed radar signs that we were able to purchase through a grant from the state um so all of those signs that you see around town are are items that we purchased with grant money um we we continue to put these locations throughout town to help remind Motors of the posted speed limits and we will continue with our ongoing efforts to reduce speed and handle traffic complaints referrals to our JDP or jail diversion program our clinical responders you could call them in 2024 continue to increase section 12 numbers which are indicated in the budget book um have reduced this year to 83 which is a great number that's what we want and I don't know what to attribute it to um education maybe coming out of covid and people living a a more normal life um but that's something that is significant and I'm proud of the efforts that we have been involved with to reduce that number I continue to believe that our clinical responders and Advanced Training of our officers has improved our response and outcomes to calls involving mental health having a mental health component responses to overdose in 2024 remain low similar to last year and I attribute that to just a better access and um and knowledge of Naran I think that's very helpful we continue to be committed to working along onside Our Community Partners including communities for restorative justice the domestic violence service network our many act and town Services local religious organizations and schools we continue to build community Relationships by conducting a Citizens Police Academy we participate in a National Night Out in August we attend and host several coffee with a cop events throughout town we have a Youth Academy at narrow Park we've had for um about five or six years now which is um a great success and it's great to see our officers get to involve um themselves in Mentor our youth a little bit and maybe get them interested in becoming a police officer um we also had our SE second com with the cop event where we had we got an ice cream um truck and went around and shared ice cream it was it was awesome it went very well and our plans are to do it again the second part of our um this our another budget that falls under my direction is the dispatch budget the police department also oversees this budget for the Dispatch Center which has nine full-time and three part-time dispatchers there are two dispatchers on duty at all times 24 hours a day dispatchers take calls and coordinate an appropriate response by police fire and EMS dispatch has serve both the police and fire department and I work directly with um Chief arnam to for on hiring and and many of the policies that we have in place within the Dispatch Center so um we will be adding one additional FTE in the Dispatch Center on July 1st as a result of the recent contract that we that was just signed and it's due to a scheduling change uh we currently work for five- two schedule dispatches and as of July 1st they'll be going to 4- two which requires an extra FTE in order to make that coverage complete um dispatchers answered approximately 5,000 calls for service or 911 calls in 2024 they provide many vital tasks including EMD and I I've mentioned this last year but the importance of EMD to me as a resident is just it's it's it's wonderful to know that when you call 911 from your cell phone which most of us do now it's unless there's some issue if you're in acting it's going to be answered at 371 Main Street and you're going to get someone on the end of the line that knows exactly what to tell you and how to walk you through whatever it is that you're dealing with um and and that's that's not something that every Community has and I think it's it it helps save people um and it's a great service that we provide to the town so um I just want to give a shout out I gu to our dispatchers for for that great ability to be able to reason with people that are hysterical when they're calling 911 they have to multitask and do um a lot as well as you know dispatch fire and police and and and again provide instructions it's it's um it's terrorizing sometimes and listening to the calls it's it's um it's difficult so they do a wonderful job the last part of um my my um presentation here just deals with animal control it's the third section of our budget it has not changed our ACO has been in place for almost as long as me um or maybe longer it's it's been a long time that the perers have been helping us with ACO um responsibilities and um there's no change to that budget in 2024 we actively sought grant funding and have received almost $300,000 in funding 161,000 for our Dispatch Center which goes to training support incentive and EMD we also have a dmh grant that we renew for The Last 5 Years for our one of our clinical responders cover that cost and the traffic grant that I mentioned earlier for approximately $40,000 and that covers overtime so that we can add extra Patrol officers to uh go out and for for that specific reason to enforce traffic our other officers throughout their shifts will be enforcing officer on I mean enforcing traffic on a regular basis but oftentimes they're called out of service because they have to attend to a call so it's it's um it's good to have this grant in place we also have a designated one designated traffic officer whose sole responsibility is to handle traffic complaints as well as provide enforcement um I think that's all I have I'd be happy to answer any question C Kudos is for using the magic words key performance indicators and um there is an accomplishment that you may not be aware of that you might want to add to the list return turns out the what we used to call the police blot is the best R section of Maran Maxwell's newsletter that the senior community gets and as a member of the senior community who gets it it's it is incredibly informative so kudos for that too but since you have so many numbers here's the question I got are there times of the day days of the week months of the year where we're safer or less safe do you do you see ups and downs I'm not superstitious but um I I you just don't know you really we we sometimes think we know um and we can look at calls for service and 911 calls um Tuesday might have been the busiest day at one during one year for what reason I can't tell you um but there are many people that are superstitious in Friday nights with a full moon um could be busy good to know that's it I don't know I didn't hear you mention this but in the in the graphs there is something called uh section 12s for response what is that yes I um I sent a response I and maybe hasn't made it to you yet so a section 12 response is a response to a mental health call and under chapter 12 123 section 12 of the Massachusetts general laws police officers are allowed to seek hospitalization for someone involuntarily to that is a harm to thems or potentially others and what it does is allows police to bring someone to an emergency room in basically um order that they be evaluated doesn't mean they're going to be admitted to the hospital but typically it's someone that we're at the last we're at the last resort and and again with the numbers coming down we're getting better at spending more time with people making sure that this is the right thing to do um but it allows us to bring someone that needs hospitalization because they're harm to themsel or others and it's due to mental ill illness thanks Chief um I have a couple of questions I want to qualify this by acknowledging that you weren't chief the time that the eight additional officers were added I think you said it like 10 years ago um and that sounds like a similar number to what Chief arnam is asking for so I'm assuming it has to do with the shift um but if you do know can you share with us is that um an increase in community needs is it an increase in population is a little bit of of both are you asking if the back when we did this in 134 we added four and four I think it was two years in a row to the staff um I think that was a just a uh a need um that you know we had gone a long time before adding one or two when the population increased the number of calls increased and the town decided they wanted a better better response times and better um um coverage by their police okay thank you related to that is this additional um Lieutenant I understand completely the need for um additional you know leadership to oversee staff I think that's a really you know critical um piece to to take care of uh and the numbers are are even numbers so if you you know promoted say an officer to the lieutenant position to to fill that need to manage these new programs that you have like the the body warn camera then that's going to maybe mess up the the shifts and I think the it was ideal to have that we had an odd number of school resource officers you could take one away and and create that clinical position but is there any possibility to um do an an internal promotion to cover that position and if and if that's not ideal why would that be yeah I think that would be the way we would go about it it would be an internal promotion I mean without changing the like basically eliminating one other position as happened with the SRO yeah um so if that's not good why I I just think we need the we need the numbers I mean we could like the fire department we could survive with with four or five extra police officers and that may you know lower our overtime costs because as it stands now we do try to staff shifts um heavy meaning some some days we'll have five people on a 3 to 11 shift but we'll go down to four so the first person out doesn't cost us anything um and if we could increase the Staffing on all shifts that would I I believe lower the cost um for overtime because you you would not need to cover the first person out all right got it thank you um and just one last question I'm curious the special police officers that are hired as needed what kinds of Duties are they covering T typically traffic enforce or you know poll duties all of our special police officers are post certified um and that's a great advantage to us I mean if we were ever to I think about this like if we were ever to have another pandemic or something like that and we had a we lost a large portion of our department to sickness or something we could actually have those people come back and work as full-time employees um I don't know what that would take but they're they're they're just just as well trained as every other police officer and they have to maintain that on their own to become a special so they'll cost me nothing once they retire they maintain their certification they maintain their training um so it's it's a it's a great advantage to having those those people on our department as part of our department same with traffic um attendants who um who are limited a little bit more traffic only does traffic you may see a special police officer at pole Duty um where we wouldn't have a traffic attendant at pole Duty because they're inside they're they're the responsibility for enforcing the laws and whatever the regulations are in polling places so are they going to be at a special event like n Park Fourth of July so you don't have to rely on the the the regular staff okay and we did that last year we for Fourth of July we had all of our specials that's a requirement if um sure um we tell them this is an agreement you need to maintain your training and you need to be here for the 4th of July okay thank you thank you Chief I have a couple of questions if I may um first one uh did the grants for the speed monitoring cameras come with any uh requirement to share the data with the state no okay not that I'm aware of uh do we use that data to to to determine if the the speed limit on a road is not accurate we could I think Corey York has other equipment that may be more sensitive and better for collection um but we could certainly compare it and use it for um we we can often share it with a resident who wants to see what the results are um and I've seen other departments post things on their social media that's something that we could consider so that people understand that um you know it may look like people are going fast big trucks coming down the road um a lot of the complaints we get are legitimate I don't want to minimalize anybody's complaints because we have some busy streets and um we spend a lot of time trying to be there but we can't always be there and these finds are a good reminder they flash up in front of you um and they tell you what your speed is or or close to what it is and you may hit your G your brake pedal or get off the gas a little bit um but also it's in a lot of places um if a street is set for a speed limit of 25 and people are consistently doing 45 it's determined that the street has a better caring capacity than 25 and the speed limit is artificially low uh do we do any of that analysis as well I think that's more done by the highway department I mean like the 85th percentile of what the speed is it should be right okay I'm just curious if we're using that data or not but it sounds like it's we're willing to share it we collect it and keep it so we will um we'd be happy to share it thank you uh the other police officers and traffic attendants where do they get accounted for in the budget are they under the professional salaries they're not full-time employees they do not get a paycheck unless they work um for an outside contractor or if they work for the town they work at a lower rate but we we budget for them correct Mr manager I mean I understand that they're understand that they're not Fringe Fringe salary fringe benefits eligible but no but if they work for ever if they do eversource detail eversource pays for it um if they work the 4th of July it would come out of the recreation over uh budget to pay for the 4th of July so the whatever whatever project they're assigned to if uh is how they get paid so if short of a a definitive source to pay from it would come from the police overtime budget okay um I'm also curious that the Prof under the Professional Services uh line item the FY 23 was 372,000 24 budget was 540 FY 24 actual was 390 that's a good $140,000 right there uh but in FY 25 we're right back up to a 552 and FY 26 we're up to a 686 when the last two actual numbers have both been sub $400,000 are we uh being potentially over L cautious and overly uh overly uh careful on on on these on this line item what page are you on I'm on page the professional salaries are based on the the the contracted cost or or the the known cost for the employees that we have listed in the budget so uh in some cases there were years where people retired and they were being paid more uh than the people that filled in behind them um and so that may be part of what you're seeing uh but in terms of the the number that we have for the FY 26 budget that's based on the positions that we've proposed and how much they would cost next year okay um you said you have two vacant uh positions at this time but we're running at 177% above the regular per regular perm cost is the overtime cost is 17% greater than the regular what would it take to get CU overtime is time and a half we're we're paying 1.5x the price for the value that we're receiving what would it take to get that overtime down to less than 5% of of the overall cost of the of policing and I should have asked the same question when the fire chief was up because they're at 20% they're even worse than the fire side I I can't provide a good answer with I mean it can be figured out we haven't done that specific calculation uh it would be adding Staffing certainly and it would be uh loading the shifts so as the chief mentioned he said they they they plan for five and if four show up they don't fill the fifth on overtime I think that's the Cal that's the calculation that you would have for every shift so uh whether the number is in you carrying that example further if we had six for every shift but we only filled the four would that eliminate our overtime uh or get it to 5% as you suggest we can look at that uh but we haven't yet and not to be not to be callous but if you take the $560,000 on the police side and the uh sorry and the $550,000 on the fire side were at Round it up to 1.1 million if 50% of that is is inefficient because we're paying time and a half so a third of it is inefficient that's $350,000 that we we need to manage do you see where do you see the numbers that I'm getting at and why I I understand the concept I'm not sure if I'm following the specific calculations but I get the concept and and I agree with you I think there's always a balance in how many fdes do you want to add to the organization which will come with a $25,000 health insurance plan versus are you sure sure that maybe we can as the fire chief mentioned improve the way operations are going so that we have less people calling out or less vacancies that there's a lot of things that go into it just piling in people on the door I don't think is the answer uh but there's a balance that we could work better to achieve if you'd like us to uh to to try to get that sweet spot of getting the overtime down by adding a little Staffing and other measures would have to be in place too to control the use of overtime but I would love to see where the break where it where it becomes more efficient to pay overtime than it is to have full-time salar employees I would love for us to as as a key performance indicator that Greg's looking for I would love for us to drive closer to that I've seen that key performance indicator in the private sector um and it's the federal government says if you're going to get a federal government contract you take a person's salary multipli by 2.5 and that gives uh the cost for the the benefits and an additional profit margin to the vendor who's providing the services to the federal government but but that only works if you're hiring somebody for 40 hours a week and 48 weeks a year and so you you do the math on that and I'm not always is that the the number we use in this to do we do 250% of the of the of the yearly salary to cover fringes it sounds sounds High to me we we don't uh we could look at that but I think well they don't have a profit Marchin which is what they're giving the private vendor understand what I'm getting but but the there are there are formulas that are out there so so overtime the efficient use of overtime is caused by you know managing the shifts um having a work environment that people want to stay in because overtime increases when the vacancies occur um there's a lot of things that we can do to improve overtime but in the end as I mentioned every every employee has vacation time that they owed and other things that that they should use and when they use it depending on when it will incur over time I think some of the things that the chief mentioned earlier about the specials that's actually made a a significant step in reducing being more efficient because uh while I mentioned that a lot of the things are eversource or special events there are I think Highway Department stuff where they would they he would have to or somebody would have to order in someone on a Saturday because the highway the apartment is Paving and that person would get overtime uh but when we when we use a special we pay them a little bit less yes right so that's one example of doing what you're saying on a smaller scale but we could look at it sort of for everything and see if there's a something we can come back with next year that that uh finds a sweet spot thank you thanks Chief I appreciate the uh presentation as well the fire and the other departments tonight we were in contract I guess at one point to have a regional Dispatch Center is that still on a table with looking at other communities around here that we could combine with to save money like Fox par or whoever um I was I don't think that's likely at this point um although it's not not something we couldn't do yeah I'm just thinking you know if you're going to save money have so kind of sheer cost right um the specials I did see the former sheif out there several times directing on uh Patriots Day and things like that so it's good to see that you have that those offices are still want to come back and still work a little bit here and there and help out the town yes uh listening to this I think a easy way to do an analysis for both the fire and the police that would take the noise of compensation out but still get to this the right answer is to just you you can do it without putting names next to it and you can do it without U petitions of titles but basically just do a uh an hour hour per week week per employee per year so you have there's 50 police officers um one through 50 uh they worked officer one worked 40 hours 60 hours 40 hours 55 just take the hours during the week and then you can see clearly where the overtime is uh because the the problem with overtime is that depending on the level of the employee um it's going to be a different amount of money so it so it doesn't help you by staring at compensation and vacancy because it just creates noise but the real answer is is how many hours are people working and where the overtime is and this is where the specials can be included in because the specials are covering hours right that the police staff would be covering but so you have you know you can list the numbers you don't have to put names across put hours per week and and where it kick to overtime and then you have specials and the hours that they covered that weren't covered by staff that would have created more overtime and then you can do the same thing for the fire and then you can have a very clean look of just hours in the break between hours worked in overtime and that can also help Drive um it can help you understand the impact of a new hire because in if you have the hours laid out like where they they were in the week and everything then you drop in a new hire and assuming the hours you can say this new hire would replace these and you just take the compensation out of it because it just creates noise and then when you have your answer then you can quantify the uh the value of an additional staff person versus of the uh the offset of you know overtime and that way you get to the answer faster because I I just think there's too much noise in compensation to get to a clean answer quickly and you have payroll so you know everybody's hours so you just take last year's actuals lay it out and just take the names off take the comp out and just do the hours that'd be my suggestion thank you did you write that you connect on that that I would be interested to talk to you more about that when you have if you have time sometime um just a couple things um first of all um I just wanted to acknowledge the direct connection between um the select boards focus in our goals on pedestrian safety and your increased traffic enforcement and it's just it it just it's it's a really important piece of our overall pedestrian safety strategy so I thank you for doing that um the next one was next question was about the clinical responders um so now that we've gone from one to two and I know this is very recent does that mean that we're going to be able to have uh clinical responders support for uh more hours will it extend the the number of hours yes that's the plan to extend more hours per day great okay because it seems like a lot of the more challenging mental health calls I imagine come in after hours so after after a working day you know they're they're nighttime things so I'm glad you'll be able to have more coverage for that um and um finally I I since I'm sitting here so close I couldn't help but notice the morning band that you're wearing and if you wanted to have a chance to say something about that I I would like to hear sure that's um for George Robinson our former Chief um I was hired in 1984 um Chief Robinson had just become Chief and I was telling someone tonight that he was I was either the first or second person that he hired back then so um he was the chief for a number of years he was a he was appointed Chief at a I want to say in his mid-30s um served um quite a while um he was my first experience um in acting with a chief and really when I think about it for the first few years you know the chief and the the lowest patrol officer don't get a lot of time together so I can't say I know him really well but um I did work with him for a good amount of years years and he was a nice man thank you and you were also appointed in your mid-30s right Chief yes correct two years ago anything else well thank you very much nice [Applause] work well thank you for all these questions I think um I look forward to any feedback you have you know either now or before next Tuesday but I think we'll try to do the same thing and get you any questions that we get as in writing at least so you have in front of you we'll try to expand on them live and uh we'll try to end by 930 um so thank you for for doing this and thanks thanks for listening I moved to a journ hold hold hold try to work out our joint meeting scheduling if that's okay well we're all in the same room yes uh so as you all remember from Monday oh so long ago um we have been asked to have a moderated meeting between the two boards regarding our disconnect on the D DPW building last night at the finance committee we suggested a trio of dates which managed to hit while you guys are all off at the MMA uh conference so that didn't work um Fran and I have been uh in communication she came back with asking about after the finc com session on the 28th we're going to be in the COA and we're already going to be after hours so that's not going to work uh so what we're proposing now and I'm looking to everyone at the table on both sides uh does Friday January 31st at 6:30 7 o'clock work for everybody so everyone pull out their phones so Jason I was going to suggest um we had wanted to have this discussion um following the tour and the tour is scheduled for the 25th but there's a snow date for February 1st so would you be amenable to going ahead and scheduling for the 7th instead of the 31st just in case there's a snow delay for the DPW site tour I am loow Anything Could Happen nothing could happen just a second I just need to double check one thing because what I don't want to have happen I first of all I don't want this to go I know any later than we absolutely have to because I think there something we need to get solved um is there a reason why they're Fridays I wasn't the one who suggested the 31st so I'm just suggesting another Friday doesn't have to be a Friday Friday was the day that you wrote to me that's why I the 31st is a Friday but if we did Fe we could do the first week in February not on a Friday yeah we could do Tuesday the 4th so we select what the third I think ALG is the following week someone the following week okay so that's not in the way does the finance committee meet that week uh the finance committee does not meet on the 4th so if we're comfortable pushing it that late 24 at 7 o'clock I'm not available I turn into a pumpkin in February understood well I can afford to lose one Steve sorry uh two4 do we have what's that do we have do will we get Quorum on 24 7 7 o'clock February 4th no it's fin meeting was 211 is the next and look at us here right now is CPC that night or is there something no CPC is uh is February 11th you you mentioned previously Dean you had mentioned previously that you may have a DPW uh project presentation to a group on February 4th oh that the was that February 4th or March 4th the senior center is the 30th yeah I'd have to I'd have to check that okay should we just stick with the 31st which is a Friday January 31st and hopefully the tour will have happened I'm fine either day I only suggested the seventh because it might snow and the thing might get is delayed are we stuck on the fourth or no are we moving the we stuck maybe Wednesday the fth Steve's not available for the fourth well he's not available for the U 7th either so um okay I think we should try for the 31st I mean it doesn't matter if the tour is happened or not right or does it matter I think everyone's seen it well you have quite a few new members so did yall go on the tour last year no the it's the the meeting is on Dat is the the 1 so if it snows and they have to cancel on the 25th then the tour will be on the first okie dokie oh she said that out loud there's no traffic on the highway uh let's why don't we plan on the 31st and if and we can we can be nimble if the if the tour if the tour gets canceled very good so does a Friday s o'cl Friday so what will we'll need we'll need a room and we'll need to go down the list of moderators that you and I discussed yeah I can imagine we'd have a difficult time finding a room on a Friday night that's I agree with you I just didn't want the staff to be here if you you're not going to be here that's why I was kind of veering off Friday what you think about that if you're about St in town hall I'm happy to do it in the library where would they let us lock up when we leave no I was just more worried about asking the DPW director to come out on Friday night uh but I don't think we're planning on I thought we were just going to have the boards and a moderator oh that's a good point I didn't even think that your Corey might so yeah if we don't have to be there that then I don't need to be involved in the scheduling I'm good you can leave it's up to you sure I mean the more people we try and add the harder this going to be schedule the the 31st then we'll do that is that good to 7 oock work for everybody 7 okay great we'll get a we'll get a venue and we'll uh go down the list of for moderators and whoever says yes first wins or loses depending on how you want to look at it thank you all I feel like this is a major accomplishment just getting the date we'll take STS now I move to adjourn second all in favor I I motion to adjourn second all in favor say I I any objections thank you very much good night everybody