--------- [Music] Good evening. Today is Tuesday, September 9th. We're here at the Council on Aging for a joint meeting with the board of selectment and the finance
committee. Our guest presenters this evening is representatives from Old Colony and the uh consultants who are helping with the school building committee uh facility. Is there a motion of the board selected to open the meeting? Select.
So move second. All those in favor I motion carries. Good evening everyone. Thank you for coming. This is a joint meeting of the board of select and finance committee. It's Tuesday, September 9th, 2025, and we are all here to discuss Neil Colony new construction project. Do I have a
motion to open our meeting? All in favor? As a reminder, this meeting is being audio and videotape. Please rise for the pledge of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you um for for being here this evening and the purpose of this is going to be one of many
meetings uh by this group here uh not only to town officials but to town residents. Keep in mind is one of five communities in the district. So uh I propose that Aaron and the team will be in Lakeville uh when they leave here at
5:00 pm. And so the point of this meeting really was to provide uh the public and the finance committee um you know a download of what's taken place essentially over the last two years. As you may recall, town meeting approved
money to uh for a facility study to determine, you know, what uh what path colony should go go forward with um to address the the building uh status and the needs of the school district. Um
just by way of background, I've served on the building committee um really more in an advisory role just as uh to kind of give a sense of the pulse of the town of what's going on. And in my role, I had two real selfish objectives uh
sitting on that uh building committee. One is to make sure that enough scrutiny was given to additions and renovations to make sure that that option was explored as the first option. uh doesn't mean it would be the right option but at
least based on past practice in town of a cushion again we're one of five communities but based on past practice what we did with the schools it looked there was additions and renovations and so that was explored and number two was to make sure that um what was put
forward to address the needs I don't know how to say this but that they weren't looking at a Taj Mahal right I've seen it in other communities in other school districts where people start getting like almost on like happy gas and saying, "Well, we need this and we need that. We need this and we need
that." And so, the one thing I can attest to is that the representatives of the building committee and AR and the school committee really made sure that what is being presented addresses the needs and the needs only. Um, and so
that's all I'm going to say is just offering that insight. Uh, we have Robbie Gomes who is our school committee representative who also uh serves on that building committee. I've asked him to say a few words to give his perspective. I don't if you know Robbie, but he's got a extensive background,
vocational education, in the trades. Um, and then Shirley, uh, who is from Rochester is our, uh, is the school committee chair, but also the chair of the facilities committee and just a unbelievable person. So, I wanted you all to get to know her if you haven't
met her, and then we'll turn it over to the team. So, uh, Chairman Buché, I don't know if you have any thoughts before we turn it over the presentation. We'll ask you, I think, maybe ask questions at the end, if that's fair. I sent out an email last night to make sure that our committee uh had a chance
to review the the presentation that was sent to us. Um, I took a look at it and um, we'll definitely have some questions prepared um, after they give their presentation. There is a lot of information, but again, this will be the first of as many that needs to take
place for town officials and the residents of Kushna to have a better understanding of what they'll be voting on. November 18th is the day that was selected. There'll be five elections going on in one day. But with that, we'll turn it over to Mr.
Thank you. Hi everybody. I'm happy to be here and I'm honored honored to be your school committee member. Um, I actually want to speak a little bit about the process um, and where I'm coming from. Vocational education has been my life. I
graduates from vocational school. Three sons graduated from vocational school. And after entering the trade, working in this community, I decided I want to pursue a career in vocational education. Did that for decades until my retirement a few years ago. But in that time, I got
involved with a number of SBA funded projects, renovations, new school builds throughout the community and and served on accreditation teams and all that. So, it's a really involved process. Without echoing anything that David had said, um
I found the process to be very thorough. There's a lot of boxes to check. They checked them up to this point. They've checked them. And um I was impressed with um the opportunity for it to be inclusive for everyone involved. All the all the
players right down to the students the students and the and the staff family members were engaged in different activities to determine where we're at, where we need to go, and how to get there. I said that fast, but it's not an easy task, you know.
um they had these different activities, but one in particular I'd like to speak about is our advisory committee. Now, for folks that know, I'm going to be telling you a little story, but for folks that don't, it's it's interesting to know that the school meets twice a
year with an advisory committee for each department and a general advisory committee for the school. And the function of that is like for them to see what the school's doing, how they're doing it, and also to provide some input on uh ways to keep it current with
industry needs. That advisory board and committees are comprised of uh business leaders, parents, a host of Oak Tech grads, many generations of grads, right? And um town officials. Now, they're there. They're
not getting paid. They're giving back. But in a sense, they're paying forward too because a lot of those folks are hiring our kids. You know, they're putting them to work. And um you know, I this has been our experience. I've seen it. These kids get back out into the
workforce and they're making a good wage and they're they're contributing to the local economy by buying or building homes and bringing up their kids here and and paying back, you know. Um, I'm just going to say from from my
standpoint, that's kind of the reason why I want to live in a town like a cushion, you know, and a little bit more than 50 years ago, you know, group like us was faced with a similar objective to to entertain the idea of that school that we're in that's done a good job. It
served us well. I've been in contact with that school through my whole career in the next door town. Um, but the time has come, right? And you know, if those folks looked at this as an opportunity to invest in in the students and and the
you know, the future of our community. So, I'm grateful for that. You know, I I have more to say, but thank you for the opportunity. All right. Sh. Hi, I'm Shirley Burke. I am a school committee member from the town of Rochester and I'm currently serving as
the old colony school building committee chair. I come to you first to say thank you for the this opportunity to meet with you uh both fin and the select board and with your town administrator Mr. Kelly.
One of the things I just wanted you to understand is that this has been a long journey over many months and many long hours. The process has been collaborative throughout. That's
something that I take a lot of pride in. It has um been rich with data collecting, data interpretation, thoughtful deliberation and David had made a comment that he
would he had two selfish interests. Those are not selfish interests. Those are his fiduciary interests to the town of Rochester. And I think every member of the subcommittee came to the committee understanding that we needed
to look out for the greater good for of our students but the good of our communities as well. Um David and and Barton have already told you that they're members. I want to to acknowledge two other members that reside in the Kushnet. Al Amarol is
anushnet resident who is a vocational teacher at Old Colony and Neil Regis is an accuset resident who is in the constructive field. I think everybody from the town of Aushet has been
thoughtful in their deliberations, respectful in their conversation and I think they have served both the town of Aushnet and the old colony district with the pride. With that, I'll turn it over to W. Before we do that, Shirley, one thing
that Shirley's um sort of calling card is when we have a meeting, before we do any discussion or deliberation, she asked that we take a moment of reflection to Shirley, would you would you do that for us? I just think that's such a nice touch and more boards should do it. It's just a great way to start
off the meeting. It is a tradition at Oak Colony that after the pledge of alleg allegiance there is always a moment of silence. And I always ask people to instead of stating what the cause should be, I ask you to whatever
resonates in your heart that you spend that moment thinking about it and may your actions be true. It's as simple as that. But thank you for that opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. All right.
Welcome from um PMA who are project managers. Uh good evening everyone. I'm Walter Hartley with PMA. I'm uh the bonus project manager uh for the Woodland School District. Also a resident of Rochester. Um with me tonight I have
Chad Kitten and Nick Hall also from PMA. Um and Tina from HMFH, uh the designer for the project. Um so just to give everyone an update on the MBA project, uh as um Shirley mentioned, we've been ongoing or this project has been ongoing for many
months. Um almost two years in fact, if you go back to when the statement of interest was submitted almost three, four years ago and accepted. Um so right here you can see we've worked our way through almost two-year process of the feasibility study and the schematic design. We are now at MSP's module 5
funding the project and that's where we're be able to bring you the information um that's going to allow the people to make an informed decision. uh on November 18th. Um we'll talk about detailed design construction completion um at the end of the project um sorry at the end of the presentation. Um but just
uh this is where we are at MSBA module 5 out of B. Um really what I uh the two uh submissions that happened during the feasibility study are the preliminary design program and the schematic report. That's what helps the district narrow
narrow down its options. Um we ran scenarios from base repair, add addition renovations, renovations, new constructions on multiple locations on the site at any viable location um that we could come up with at the school building committee. That led to almost
42 options being studied um in various scenarios and enrollments. Um uh it was further refined in that preferred schematic report down to about six or seven options uh where the building committee made its final decisions um to move on with the preferred schematic. um
in the schematic design uh that was accepted I believe in February by the MSBA uh board of directors um having fulfilled the requirements of those two submissions uh to move forward with schematic design. We have culminated the schematic design and and with that we're
ready to present this information to you. So just a detailed uh look at NP's module 4. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Aaron Glansk. I'm the superintendent director at Old Colony. I've been with the school for a decade for a decade now and
um we're celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. I'm also celebrating my own 50th uh birthday later next month. So I'll turn 50 with the school. This is just a quick overview. I wanted to share that Old Colony is more than just a school. We're
a partner in service, a resource for workforce solutions, and a destination for community centered outreach that benefits all generations. Over the years, Old Colony students have proudly supported our communities to projects such as building COA sheds, construction
at the Akushnet COA in both um outdoor and out indoor uh parts of the facility, as well as Rochester COA. We've installed electric car charging stations for the town of Lushnet. Uh we've constructed the Carver Gazebo and Carver Junior Senior High School concession
stand as recently as this year. Uh we reconstructed Lagoon Pond Lodge and enhancements at Pen Williams camp and Lakeville Town offices. We've renovated the American Legion Holy Ghost grounds and Dun Gardens and Mapois. We've supported the Plum Library in the upcoming Rochester COA edition and
construction of con conference tables and fire stations in a majority of our member towns. In addition, please know our cosmetology students are a fixture at all of our COAs. We also have a destinationbased location at Old Colony called Those are just a few. With the
proposed addition of plumbing and HBAC C programs, Old Colony will function as a fully integrated construction workforce, providing greater benefits for our towns and for our taxpayers. Our vision for the new school facility is to create a modern facility designed to integrate vocational academic learning while
empowering our students with voice independence in the opportunity to explore the overview for today. We want you to understand the current state of Old Colony. We want to provide an in-depth overview of our current state and future plans. We want to provide an overview
and timeline as it pertains to the MSBA grant program. and we'd like to answer questions pertaining to our vision moving forward to protect the investment of our five member towns. Should we run out of time today, please know we will schedule other meetings so that we can answer questions. We are also available
via email. My email for anyone watching is a polly with a y at oldcolony.info. And if you have questions, we will send you answers. We want you to know that this this this has been created to be a transparent process. Uh, Old Colony was founded in 1975. So,
our doors have been open for 50 years. We're in our original building and I wanted to show you some pictures of the original building. These are also available online at our website www.oldcolony. us. If you click on the MSBA button, there's a transparent list of everything
that has happened for the project in chronological order. You'll be able to follow the project extremely closely. Um our our we're currently limited by our existing footprint. Uh we need to expand to provide eligible students with their preference for vocational
education. We currently offer 13 programs. We have about 340 applications for 150 slots which means the opportunities to be accepted to Old Colony are less than one and two. Uh the other issue that we deal with is the state has just moved to a lottery and that changes the dynamic of how we
accept students. Many systems have surpassed their useful live streaming the operating budget as maintenance costs are increasingly um added to our operating budget. The important piece to recognize here is that we put a lot of things on hold with the knowledge that this is in the pipeline. It would be fiscally
irresponsible to put forward capital requests if we know that those capital requests would only be short-term in nature. A building relatively unchanged from the 70s no longer serves the associated needs of current day vocational education. and we'd like to expand our offerings as we've stated in
the areas of plumbing, HBAC, and dental assisting in alignment with labor market needs. This will create additional opportunities for students and will allow us to expand our current footprint while serving our communities in an expanded way. Demand for vocational
education training is at an all-time high. Old Colony aspires to provide vocational training beyond the traditional school day in collaboration with workforce partners where we will also educate our adult workforce. Uh this is a an overview of some of our
maintenance um needs and upgrades. Um installation of security doors has taken place. We've uh improved a 40 camera security system. Um access to the control system. We've retrofitted the interior and exterior lighting. um
replacement of overhead doors. We've added to our welding shop in 1986, which was needed, and we've had upgrades to our septic system in 1991. Uh within the last decade, we had a grant-f funded installation of new security doors and an addition of
cameras um through a security grant offered by the state. We also had our students do an overhaul of our lobby. Um, it used to be a brick covered lobby that carried from the outside into the inside. This work that you see in the main picture was completely uh was done
completely by students and we're extremely proud that all of the departments came together to do this work. Unfortunately, the construction of a new building cannot be done by students. There's more to it. Currently, electronic engineering has no storage. Our workspace is limited. We have small
shared space for two grades. square footage for the two classes in is inadequate. The machine and tool technology uh student work areas are congested. If you look at this machine and tool technology classroom on the right and were to compare it at a more uh upto-date location, you would see
vast differential between the two locations. These are uh this is a snapshot of our old school colony our old colony programs in the square footage in each program is is compared to the state minimum per pupil and square feet and
you can see that we are below the minimum in every category and that is very problematic. We're crammed for space. Uh existing conditions are certainly in need of an upgrade. Uh, an office supply closet was cut in half to house a
student interventionist. Um, sorry, this isn't on an auto for some reason. School psychologist uses a closet housed on the back of the stage. Our athletic trainer provides services to student athletes in what used to be a custodial supply closet. It's located at
the rear of inadequately sized weight room off of our gym. You can see sinks on the wall with leak le leaking uh drains behind the masonry where they had to be disconnected. We have grease traps and fasteners that have brought it to a
point where they no longer seal and a floor drain in our culinary arts department is blocked off. It's one of several inoperable floor drains. We attempted to stink that drain recently and we pulled out dirt which means the infrastructure underneath the floors is
in need of repair. Unfortunately, we would have to jackhammer floors in order to repair those pipes. The water to the building is supplied by a bedrock well several years ago. Bacteria was detected in that well and we had to do some work on the well. Um,
our water tank, this says 46 years old, but this slide was made during feasibility. It's now 50 years old and this water tank is in need of replacement. Um we have not made a choice to replace the water tank. That will be done immediately. Um well that
will come with a new building. If for some reason um a new building were not to come to fruition. This is one of those issues that would another issue that would have to be addressed immediately. Uh we do not have water redundancy. We do not have fire protection. We're in talks with the town
of Middbor to try and pull water from Middleboro at the Annie Maximum House all the way down North A to Old Colony so that we can have redundancy and fire protection. That will need to happen regardless of uh the nature of this project. Restrooms do not meet ADA
requirements. Uh the lab the laboratory ratio for female students to male students is not equitable. There are three men's rooms, two women's rooms. To access the women's room, female students and their non-traditional shops have to walk twice the distance of their male
counterparts through the building. This is our gym floor that continues to lift. Um, this affects gameplay and poses a risk of injury. The floor is in need of complete replacement. Epoxy floors are separating and repaired as budget money is allowed. This is an
ongoing issue. Patches are shown in the photos on the left and right just to give examples of this. carpeting is beyond its useful life is replaced as funding becomes available. Approximately 10% of the building still has rug in dire need of replacement.
Our HVAC controls um we don't have climate controls in certain shops that require climate control including graphic arts machine and tool our head end room. We need sophisticated equipment. Um but we have sophisticated equipment. We need
more sophisticated HVAC to match the needs of that equipment. And our server room is utilized uh utilizes a portable AC unit to temper air and dehumidify space. Closet was repurposed um to house the facility's main servers and other IT
equipment using access control and CCTV systems. We've recently moved our servers to a cloud model to help alleviate this and for increased security. Our driveways and sidewalks are in disrepair. Uh our aluminum double pane windows are
original to the building. The seals are failing on those. Our doors are original to the building. Hard hardware thresholds and frames are problematic and require frequent repair. Our masonry is splitting. We have issues with uh step cracking, grub
deterioration and spalling and potential for water infiltration. and our parking is insufficient. Uh storm water drainage ineffective. Parking lots flood sometimes to a depth of 10 in. Some lots do not meet accessibility requirements. Uh this
shows a steady uh record of our enrollment and again I'll reiterate that we have over three 300 applications for 140 to 150 slots every year. That trend continues. Um we understand that resources are
finite. We know that our district members and our citizen taxpayers will need the relief of the MSBA reimbursement order in order for this to be successful. Um we are advocating at every level to try and ensure that we have support on a financial level for
our five member towns. I will be speaking before the Senate on September 30th um as part of the educational piece um to ask for increased MSBA funding uh for our member towns and for vocational school construction. And the rationale
for that is very simple. If the cost to build a vocational school is more than that of a traditional high school and we can alleviate those costs for our member districts, the reallocation of that savings can go to the local schools.
So the savings that will benefit our member communities and also the vocational school construction can be rolled into investments in our sending district schools, which means there's a mutual benefit for all parties involved.
That conversation has taken place at a multitude of levels. It is actually a legislative priority for the Massachusetts Associ Association of School Superintendent and for the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators. And so now what we're
doing is we're bringing that legislative request in front of our legislators to ask for further support to alleviate the costs of projects like this. Um I want people to know we're not sitting quietly and and hoping. We're working actively to make this happen. That concludes my
part of an introduction and our why. I'm going to turn it over to Tina Stannislosski of HMFH to talk about design. We started a little bit late, so I don't know if we can have five, but we have a little bit over time. Just want to make sure that everybody has a chance to digest the
information. I can go through these quickly, too. you. Yeah, I think at some point we'll want to get to the design, but also let's get into the numbers. Absolutely. So, this slide is just talking about the visioning process that we went through with the school, with
the educators, the students, members of the community to come up with the program for this new school. Um, and out of that visioning session, we came up with the goals for the educational um goals for the school and the facility goals for the school. And
those were very important because all of the 42 options that we developed were weighed against those goals and that helped the committee make a decision on which option would be best. So we also looked at multiple enrollments. The MSBA, which is the
funding authority, gave us a range to look at. 560 is what they have now all the way up to 810. And so 728 would add two programs, the HVAC and plumbing. 776 would add dental to that and then 810
would add biotech. And in this new school, they ended up going with adding three new programs. So they're adding HBAC, plumbing, and dental assisting. Um the school is arranged around clusters. And so each of the programs falls into a cluster
whether it be business, health, services cluster, manufacturing and engineering or construction. We also had sustainability goals. So, we want to make this building sustainable for the future. We want it to be low EUI, which means low energy use. We
wanted to have water redundancy, as Aaron spoke about. We want to bring in natural daylight into the shops. That will cut down on our electrical use. So, all of these things were important in the design. This is a chart that we put together to weigh all of the different options. Like
I said, we looked at the facility goals that we developed during the study and also the educational goals. We looked at the different populations and then we ranked them and you can see the new construction option ended up being the most viable. I know we studied
renovation addition for quite some time. It's difficult in vocational schools to do that because there's no swing space. It's difficult to find an auto shop for the students to use while the auto shop was being renovated. So going through all those, you'd have to, you know, move
people around the school and it was very challenging and it made the construction process much longer than a new build and longer construction means more money. Um, the site is beautiful and it's quite large, but it's got some restrictions on
it. Um, and there are also some things that MSPA doesn't pay for. So they cap your site cost. So we worked hard to maximize the grant that we would get from the MSBA. Um some of the things we looked at, you know, demolition isn't
reimbursed. Um if you wanted to buy a new site, the cost of buying that site would be wouldn't be reimbursed. Um if you had to use the open space that's next door to the school, you would have to go through an article 97 process, which could be a very long extended
process. So, we looked at all the pros and cons of the site and where to put this new building or to add on to the existing building. Again, there's just there's a few other constraints. There's this is North A here. There's a gas line. There's a
historic cemetery. There's vernal pools. And there's an existing well on site where they get their water. We looked at multiple options. Um if you added on to the school, we could add on directly behind it. You can see the cost range for those options. Uh the new
option would be built between the existing school and the vernal pools. And you can see the range on those options. And then if we decided we would build on the the fields, um you can see the range for that. We ended up not going in that direction because again
for economy's sake, if we don't touch the fields, we don't have to rebuild them. Therefore, it's a less expensive project. So this is what the new school is going to look at look like. It's got a lot of green space around it. Um it's got multiple wings for the different
clusters and it's arranged around a central hub space. Here's the site plan of the new um building. The red is where the existing building is currently and we're building right behind it between that and the wetlands. Um we are also adding a new
entrance off of North A. Right now there's only one entrance and so for security reasons you you'd like to have two ways in and out of a a site. Um we are creating a new main entrance here. Um the service cluster which will be
cosmetology, culinary and um auto will all be up front. So you'll be able to easily park and find those programs and not have to wander through the school like you do right now to get to them. Um, we are going to provide places for outdoor dining for the culinary and also
for the students when they're at lunch. Uh, we're providing a large workyard that the manufacturing and engineering cluster and the construction cluster will share. And we're also providing some athletic space outside of the athletic wing and a direct route to the fields and a little
bit more parking closer to the fields. If you've been to that site, it's a long way to walk when you go to the the football games. So this is an image of what that new school will look like. Um the front will be the parent drop off. The main entrance is here. Again, this is
culinary. Cosmetologies here. And then Otto is on the end. You can see the workard shared by those clusters there. And this is from the backside looking if you were in where the vernal pools are looking at the back side of the building which is mostly the classrooms which are
paired up with the shops. So, these are the floor plans, the map for the new building. You can see I was talking about the main entrance. You come in here and you're in a student hub that will have the auditorium, the cafeteria. It will have access to the
media center on the second floor and then a direct line out. The buses will drop the kids off in the back of the school and everybody can meet in the center. Um, as I was saying, business is here in the front with the school store, culinary, cosmetology. There'll be
visitor parking here. This is the manufacturing and engineering wing and automotive that folks can just drive their car in here. The construction clusters in the back and then the gymnasium is over here. You have the ability to lock down the wings so that if you just have an event in the gym
after hours, you can securely do that and folks can't get into the rest of the school. The concept behind the floor plans is to uh have the academic classrooms adjacent to the shops. Currently, they're in separate wings now, but the thinking is really to have
that sort of cross-pollination between the academic classes and also the hands-on learning in the shops. So, the school will have two stories. Um, some of these spaces here are the big shops that have two stories. That's
why the ax is in them. But, we will have classrooms on the upper floor that look down into those shops. So, kids will be able to see what they're doing in in the construction cluster. The upper Top of the auditorium is there more science labs and then we have graphics, computer
science, architecture engineering, electronics as well as the health careers which is adjacent to the gym. So a health and wellness suite and this is just a quick sketch of what that new entrance may look like. We're thinking about durable materials,
economical like brick in this new building. Now for the money. Start it. Yeah. Excuse me. Um so as we mentioned um the MSBA is the funding partner for
the project. Um a lot of uh red tape to jump through with the MSBA. Uh their funding process is uh highly specific. Uh they have cost caps they have ineligibles. um recently uh and we'll get into it in a few slides, but the MTA
reimbures uh 600 uh $586 a square foot uh for eligible construction costs only. So there are ineligibles. Uh as Tina mentioned, if you demo on a site that you're not building on, the demo would be ineligible. We are demoing on the site we are building on, so therefore
that demo would be uh an eligible cost. Uh the MSBA also has site work caps of $59 a square foot. Uh so when you work those two together, you end up with uh eligible costs per square foot uh reimbursement of $645 per square foot. Um and we'll get into
the reimbursement rate as well. Um but uh the MSBA board is constantly looking at this and and we have a couple slides on this as well to show that they they have um tried to adjust. Uh but just note that the MSBA does want to fund as many projects throughout the Commonwealth as possible. They want to have as many buildings uh be updated as
possible. So it's not just trying to fund all projects at 100%. Uh right here, this is data from the MSBA's website. They update it uh on a monthly uh bimonthly basis as they have a uh board of directors meeting. Um so what you see on the far right uh is the
group of schools that is currently going through the MSBA process right now. Um a few of them would be on the uh uh board of directors meeting for October for approval of schematic design um pending successful votes. Um but what you can see uh moving back this is projects all
the way back to 2009 2010 and you can see uh recently the uh very high increase in cost of construction uh and specifically in school construction. Uh what you can also uh take away from this is that the uh project team here is
targeting a very cost-effective school. Um and we have some data to show that as well. But you see Lexington up on the top there, Birkshire Hills up in Western Mass. That is also another tech school. Um something to note here is Lexington is just a uh regular high school where technical high schools do tend to cost
more per square foot uh because of the specialized equipment, because of the larger spaces. Um and you see that old colony is targeting us cost per square foot uh and a project cost below uh the averages and who's in the pipeline right now. Um specifically highlighting that
$829 a square foot post the value management exercise that was worked uh through on the MSBA. Uh jumping back the MSBA as I mentioned uh the green line with the steps uh you can see is their funding uh increases over time. So every year they look at their funding
mechanisms uh which are funded through 1% of the 6 and a half% uh one penny of the 6 and a half% sales tax. Uh that goes to the MSBA to allocate to schools across the Commonwealth. Uh they do from time to time look at it. Um so uh they
did just um up their uh reimbursement rate of eligible costs uh early late last year. Um so old colony would be uh subject to that increase uh and we are accounting for that in the figures that we're presenting. Um so going just grabbing a handful of
similar schools uh specifically uh technical high schools uh since 2023 uh you can see the increase uh and the spread across these uh you can look at Tread County Regional Bet Vote uh back in 2023 when they went through schematic they were at 829 a square foot. We are
also targeting a cost per square foot of 829. Lexington High School um um you know they're they're closer to Boston. They they have some probably tough site um tough site that they may need to work with. They're upwards of $1,000 a square foot. So anything that this committee um
was able to do to drive this cost per square foot down, they're trying to take advantage of uh and we'll get to some more information on that as well. So what that resulted in on the selection of the uh schematic uh
preferred schematic uh and where the uh estimates landed um was 288 million 288.7 million total project cost that is uh the entire project contingencies furniture um soft costs uh escalation
construction um that is the t uh project cost that is being brought to the MSBA for approval. Um, with that, the team has taken a look at the MSBA uh 311 budget sheet uh and tried to take as as educated a guess as we can on where they're going to land
for reimbursement. And right now um we're in negotiations with them. Those will be finalized before we head to the board uh in October. Uh but we're targeting almost just just slightly under $130 million uh reimbursement from the MSBA. uh leaving just slight just
under uh just over $159 million district share between the member towns of the Oakland Regional School District. Um this will be formalized on October 29th by the MSBA board of directors uh pending those negotiations. Uh breaking that down further, this is
just showing uh those uh and uh the entire project costs. So right here on the left is the 311 budget sheet. um the total construction cost uh so not including soft costs and contingencies of 226 uh.1 million. Um as we're working
through uh this project we have uh an pending uh successful outcome in November. There will be three other design phases where we'll have professional estimators uh one on behalf of the architect, one on behalf of the OPM um uh locked in a room for eight
hours going through the design making sure that we are on budget. Um so we'll have a design development phase, a 60% construction dock phase, a 90% construction doc phase, and we will be tied to the construction cost and the total project cost that is approved by
the MSBA in uh October. We cannot submit to them. We have three more sub submissions to them after schematic. We cannot submit a dollar higher to them at any point in time. Nor could we ever pay more than than those funds um without ever going back to the town for more
money, which we never ever want to do. That's why we try to capture every piece of the project up front. Um, so as we mentioned the 226 million construction costs, we within that we try to escalate out and our estimators try to put numbers on what they feel that the bid environment is going to look like when
we get to the time of bid. Uh, we have that number captured here. They both uh came to an agreement uh to capture that number. We also captured design and pricing contingency. We're schematic design level drawings. The architect hasn't finished the full set. We know what the scope of the project is. final
details uh come through DD 60% and 90% drawings. Um over on the right you see the lower portion of the MSBA budget where we capture uh the contingencies, the construction contingency, the owners contingency. Uh we have about uh uh $17
million almost $18 million captured in uh hard cost construction contingency. That's about 6 and a half six to six% of construction. We have about $23 million in owners contingency for um other various items. The soft costs not
related to construction. Um and you see the total project budget of that 288743 uh 683 uh and the max total facility strength that we're targeting. Again, these numbers will be finalized uh at the MSBA board of directors meeting in October.
Uh we wanted everyone to understand uh that the MSBA base reimbursement rate of uh for Old Colony was also increased early this year. Every year the MSBA uh takes a look at that base reimbursement rate again of eligible costs. Um it was
recalculated. So uh we were originally um carrying a 54.16 base reimbursement with a 54.79 um uh increase from the MSBA earlier this year. Uh, another couple of items to notice here are the uh 1.7 um bonus
points, incentive points for maintenance. That's an attestment to the investment that the communities make uh that the school facilities department makes and the school administration makes for the upkeep of that school. Uh we were originally carrying 1.25 average
um that we may see across Old Colony achieved 1.7 out of two. Um really not numbers that we see a lot. We don't see a lot of high numbers, but it is an attestment to what the money um what the school does with the money that's provided them and what they have. Uh you'll notice down even further below
the four point uh four point for uh energy efficiency. Um we'll talk a little bit about that as well. Um but what that results in is a uh base uh reimbursement rate uh with incentives of 60.49% again of eligible costs. So throughout
that budget there are cost per square foot caps. There are other just various ineligible um completely ineligible pieces that we capture in the budget as well. Sure. All right. So this is um at the preferred schematic phase. These are
essentially the finalist options. So the one that you see highlighted in gold there is where the preferred solution landed. On the far left side uh that is what it would cost to repair the existing building. So the MSBA as part of this process makes us go and do a very thorough assessment of that existing building, identify the systems
that need to be upgraded or replaced, what it takes to bring that building up to code. That information goes from the engineers over to the cost estimators and the cost estimators uh perform a very detailed takeoff. It's all available on the project website if you want to poke through it. Um but where they landed uh once you factor in soft
cost contingencies appropriate to repair just like we did on the other scenarios is that 134 million. So the way that this graph is set up here, the bottom darker shaded are the district share and then the top half is what you would expect uh in reimbursement from the MSBA
across each of those scenarios. Uh the challenge with a repair and the MSBA step one in this whole thing was the educational vision, right? So they have developed this vision. They want to make sure that uh people who participate in the MSBA program are designing a building that fits their needs and not
trying to back into a budget. That's one of the SBA to MSBA around 2007 big changes that happened. So they require you to create this vision, figure out where your shortfalls are and address them with whatever project is. They don't want you to come back in 15 20 years and ask for more money, right? Um
so in order to have a repair be eligible for MSBA reimbursement, we would need to be able to demonstrate that the repair substantially meets the educational programming needs of the district. uh in all colonies case their building is half the size of what DESI and MSBA
guidelines have they're not going to meet you we can't get that building shoehorned into MSB and des guidelines so they're not going to participate in repair of that particular building they would however participate in the addition renovation those are the next two bars that you see moving from the left um so we we priced those out we ran
it through the MSBA's formulas uh we said okay what does the district share look like if we're going to do this addition renovation addition renovations have a little more nuances. Um, it changes the delivery method on the project. It adds some phasing, some complexity. Uh, there might be a little
bit of swing space like uh Tina had mentioned earlier when you're doing the auto tech shop. Those students still have to learn. We can't just say, "Hey, this auto tech for two years. Sorry." Um, so you have to build a temporary condition or find someplace for them to go. Uh, auto tech's one example, but thing things like culinary. It's a full
restaurant kitchen. So, you're really trying to temporarily house that for students while construction's on the way. Multiply that by 15 programs, right? You can see the challenge. Uh, so those uh with an additional renovation, vocational schools just don't typically
play out. A regular K through 12, uh, elementary school, middle school, high school, yeah, maybe you can do it. Vocational, not really a great option. So, then that brings us into the new construction options. Um so there were five finalist new construction options that were studied. Uh these were across
a variety of different enrollments looking at different programs and uh the building committee taking all this into consideration said okay we don't want to go to the max because we want to be conscious of the sending communities and they have their own budget constraints um but we definitely have a need for HAC
plumbing and dental assisting and we have a demand in the communities so we want to open up that opportunity. So they ended up at the 776 enrollment which got them those three in demand programs. Uh at that time uh NC3 is the 161 million district share number there.
Uh so this is back when the preferred solution was selected. So it's come down a little bit as you saw 159 million district share a couple slides ago. Um what wasn't available at that point in time was we needed to go through the next step of design was what incentives might be out there. So, Massave uh IRA
2022 as amended by the OBVA uh we said okay let's look at systems where are the opportunities so working with the engineers again and the estimators we identified more than $1 million in grant opportunity based upon the revised version of the bill that was just passed in July and then also with
Massage so those two combined for another $11 million that would come off the district's bottom line so that effectively reduces the district share from that 159 to 147.9 you see here. Uh the other big takeaway here, uh this
line going across the gold line up top and the red line and that's showing what the district cost is to repair that existing building versus the cost to build new. So question inevitably comes up inevitably comes up, what if we do nothing? Maybe
we can get by 5 years, 10 years. Um but it really turns into death by a thousand cuts. That building doesn't have 50 years left in it. Maybe we can squeeze another 10, 15, whatever it is. But sometime over the next 50 years, that scope on the repair is going to hit the wallets of each of the five million
communities. I live in the the district, too. So, myself included. The new construction MSBA requires that we design for a minimum of 50 years. So, many buildings are designed well beyond that. Um, but it's really as I think the building committee took the approach of rip off the band-aid, replace it, be
good for 50 plus years rather than 5,000 cuts over the next 50. Uh, so diving a little bit more into that $11 million in uh rebates and incentives. Uh, so they analyzed a whole bunch of mechanical systems. These were
the five finalists up on the screen here. We mapped them out on a life cycle cost analysis. You can see that in the bottom right. You can see the cumulative numbers. The green dashed uh glowing line there you see is the ground source where they ultimately landed. So ground source heat pumps are one of the things
that did survive uh the IRA 2022 under the OPA amendments. Uh so really played out to the project's benefit and is a huge contribution to um those credits that we are targeting here. Uh some system highlights, we do have solar in
there. There's 1.25 25 megawatts and the goal there is to get the district's operating cost right back to where it was in the pre-build condition so that they can mitigate that impact. There's an option to look at more as we uh evolve in design. The challenge there is really what the grid can handle. Um it
would throw us into a nice study. Uh those generally take years. So all of that needs to weigh into that decision if we're going to take that next step. Um but that will be studied during the next phase of design the project go forward. Uh in the base scope we do have a ground source geothermal system. So
those are 650 foot deep wells. Uh they don't put water into the ground or take water out of the ground. It's a closed loop. It's one pipe goes down the ground, comes back up. Uh those feet are fed into a 750 ton uh ground source heat pump module. And then we do have energy
recovery at the uh rooftop unit. So, we're trying to maintain as much cooler, heated air depending on the season that's already in the building. For backup systems, we would have a an electric backup to all that. Um, so the the next step, so we have our
um cost, we have our budget. Um, we can then go back and look at enrollment data. So, right now, the latest enrollment data we have is FY26. It gets updated in October of each year. Uh, so the new numbers will be yelled shortly, but uh, don't expect them to move too too much. Um, you can see a cushion
here. So the the left pie is the MSBA grant amount, that $130 million number. The right side is that district share number, $159 million. And that's just simple math. That's how many students each sending community sends to the school. Uh, so the inevitable question is, hey, why is MATO only 6%. It's
because they only send 30 something kids to the school. Uh so with all this information um we then cost load our schedule. So Walter had explained earlier the MSBA does cap certain systems. They cap your cost per square foot. There's a whole host of ineligible costs for reimbursement at
the MSBA. So we need to identify where those are and when they're going to hit in time and that's what this does. So the cumulative lines that you see there, there are three of them. The top highest one is the total cost that $288 million. The next one there is uh what the district shares and the bottom one is
when those MSBA reimbursements would hit. The MSBA reimbursees monthly. So the district doesn't need to borrow $28 million and then wait for a check back from the state. They get reimbursed and they have been getting reimbursed as project goes uh on a monthto-month basis. You do see that um the green line
there flat lines towards the end of the project. The MSBA does stop reimbursement once you hit the 95% amount because they want to make sure that you hit your incentives. If you said you were going to build an energy efficient school, they're going to audit that, make sure you built an energy efficient school before they release that final product.
So, all of this information goes over to the district's financial advisors. In this case, uh they were working with Uni Bank and Uni Banks out a borrowing scenario. Uh so, don't want to borrow all that money up front because then you're paying interest on a big uh sum of money. The first year is really just
designed so it's a it's a very light hit, small cost compared to constructing new building. You see where it jumps up there? That's where the construction starts. Um the idea is bands initially and then long-term bond once you actually hit like
full uh head on. Uh so that information that comes, you know, goes to Univand comes back in the form of a tax impact projection. So they say, "Okay, we're going to pull a ban next year. We're going to pull another ban in 2027 and then a long-term bond in
2028. We're going to spread that out level debt. Here's what it looks like for each of your member communities. So, a few things to remember these projections. One, we don't have the incentives in there. So, the uh IRA 2022 OBBA round source incentive is not in
these numbers. The mass save incentive is not in these numbers. So, right out of the gate, we hope to be more than 11 million under what this projection is. The other big caveat in this is we have to assume that we're going to spend every penny. We hope that that is never the case, but if we're asking you to
spend up to 280 million, we're going to run that in the numbers. Uh our experience recently has been that projects come in significantly lower. Um so HF and PMA on the Bristol Pom Tech project when we were in front of BP back in 2022,
um the number that they were presented with was $179 million district share. uh fast forward or rewind back about a year, that number is $40 million lower. So, we hope to be lower and it'll drastically change these tax impact numbers for the better. Um, but going
into this, we need to match what is essentially the worst case scenario and then we're always going to work with the committee to pull it back. Uh, not far away in where we just wrapped up an elementary school. They had a district share projection of $40 million. They landed at $25 million. I mean that's you can imagine what how much that changes
the district share projection when the project's actually completed through um so this information I think it pops up on another slide there is a tax impact calculator that's live on the project website right now so if you go to colony building project.com top buttons has a tax impact calculator
look up your assessed value there's a link right there drop it in on the calculator and it will give you your estimated tax impact but again keep in mind that's no incentive There's no rebates spending every single dollar which we hope to speed double the scenario over.
So there are links to the assessed value locations for each of the towns on the tax impact calculator. Please make sure to use those uh valuations for your towns. All right, on to uh schedule and next steps real quick. So uh it's been almost
2 years of uh feasibility study and schematic design making sure that every box is checked and that uh nothing is left unturned. Uh three submissions to the MSBA. The MSBA does very thorough checks with their auditors to make sure that again nothing is left unturned. They're partners in this. They're
contributing a lot of money. So they also want to make sure that this is the most responsible solution that's being selected and put forth to them. Uh so very recently we met with uh town stakeholders to coordinate the November 18th uh ballot date and um we started
our our big community outreach push. So we know the scope, we know the numbers, we want to make ourselves available. Um last weekend if you made Sap Beach, you saw some of the team over there uh on the West Point Lane. Um but we are we are here to answer any questions. So
there is a method to the madness. The MSBA has definitely got this figured out. Um, so the answers are there. You just have to uh just ask and we're happy to point out the information. There's a lot of them on the website. Goes back two years. There's thousands of pages of documents. So if you can't find anything, please just shoot us a
message. There's a question on the website. I know I mentioned we can go into overtime, take some questions if that's all right. So chairman Bush, if you you and your committee finance committee members have questions, please
be First, we have to do this next week, the week after, week after that. We'll continue to do it to get the questions on the table. One thing I'd like to uh mention to uh Aaron Bansky is uh last week I had the opportunity with uh our selecting Bobley
and our town administrator Jamie Kelly to attend a legislative meeting um regarding our Christian elementary school issue that we're dealing with the structural problems uh because we need to do a fix there. much smaller scale probably about 4.2 2 million. Um, but we
had our two state reps there, Mark Sylvia and Steve Le and also Senator Montikney was there and um, you know, it was asked of Senator Montgney, is there more money out there for for that project for the elementary school project? And he basically was not very
helpful with what he said. He said, you know, keep your expectations low. Um, but we'll do the best we can to try and find some additional money for you. Um, but again, we need to be realistic about it. And I just feel like a lot of it's going to fall on us. Um, you know, for
that project. So, I wish you luck. Uh, you know, you said you're going to be speaking to the Senate to try and get more more money from the MSP. I hope you can. Um, you know, do whatever you can uh to to try and push that up because it's going to help us here. They did just release a release release $und00
million for vocational schools to apply uh for up to a $2 to5 million grant for expansion purposes. So, Old Colony will be submitting a request for an additional $5 million grant for expansion, but again, that's a
competitive grant. We don't know what the outcome of that particular request will be. Um, but our advocacy efforts have landed in a way that there there has been some response. Uh, but I think you never stop to your point, you never stop asking. Right. Right.
Thank you. You're welcome. Anybody else on the fin have any questions? Uh, Sue, you're good for a good question or two generally. Um, so is it is it fair to say that if we don't do the new school, it's going to
cost the the member towns $135 million just to bring the school up to code? Did I hear that correctly? I don't think that building has another 50 years left in it. I mean, that's in today's prices. So, they would be escalated based on when you actually check off the prices, right? So, the way I look at this, so we're
looking at 135 versus the 148 based on these latest numbers essentially. Okay. The other thing that I think would be helpful is bigger school costs more. Do we have a sense on what the ask would be for the member towns just on annual caring costs? how that that's going to
compare to what it used to be. Y um so from the utility costs, a lot of that was mitigated through the ground source and um so that part of it is um pretty well known. The other piece is is staff of course, right? Um so additional programs do mean
additional staff. Um I know that district had run some preliminary numbers at the Sarah. I don't expect an answer today, but I think that would be helpful information also for the residents so we understand what the all-in cost is going to be. Yeah. So, we've mapped out um basically what it would look like in a in a
quarterly or I should say a 4-year um capacity because what you'd be looking at in terms of growth is a 4-year increase. The first class of students would consist of 16 16 and 16 we'll call it
uh plumbing, HBAC and dental and we'd have to then look at the carryover into the academic areas if that makes sense. So, In years one and two, the academic teacher increase um will be in the one
to two teacher per subject um area. And then in years three and four, another one to two teachers per subject. So it's a considerable increase. I think over a 4-year period, we had estimated a potential um I don't
want to misspeak. I'll have to I'll get the document and I'll be able to provide it. We can even post it online for you. That would be awesome. But off the top of my head, I don't have them memorized, but we do have it all graphed. That would be awesome. Thank you. Yes, there will be increase chapter 70
as well. Shirley just stated. So, the reimbursement that we get from the state um comes with the increase in students as well. Unfortunately, we know that normally doesn't cover it. So, no, it doesn't. It does not cover. Anyone else on question? I I got a quick
question. Um we're talking about the um increase in schools. The number is going to be increased to 776. Is that correct? Uh I'm wondering based on the membership towns obviously by the figures Kushner has no students going. So Krishna is
going to be responsible for the lion share project. uh on these new students will a Christian be afforded the benefit of the line share of both the new student enrollment how does that work so with the introduction of lottery
that's a great question we've seen trends historically that allowed us to project and anytime we went beyond let's say a 10 student increase I immediately pick up the phone and I'll call the town administrator and say in October one just so you know you have 10 or 11
additional students I wanted to let you know as early as possible so that you can plan for the next budget cycle. Um, we'll still be able to do that, but they've moved from what used to be a competitive process to a lottery. So that lottery takes away some predictability and we're working through
the intricacies of lottery right now to try and examine how we can make that more predictable because the other downside to that is if you were to pull let's say an inordinate number of students from one community the impact on that community is unfair financially.
But we're waiting for feedback around whether or not we're allowed to use, let's say, a three-year average to set a base lottery number for each town, which we think allows the municipality to better predict what could be coming, if that makes sense. And then to draw the balance of any seats that are unfilled
from a general lottery, if you follow that. Yeah. But it used to be that students, if you had a legacy and you, let's say you had a son or daughter who attended and then you had a younger sibling who wanted to attend, if they got in or didn't get in, it was on their own
accord based on merit. The new system is unpredictable and they're not honoring legacies or anything of that nature. So that that makes it very unpredictable for families. Do you follow what I'm saying? It's almost like drawing ping pong balls out of a bucket and saying, "Well, here's where this particular
student comes from." What we want to propose is that you draw ping pong bucket ping pong balls out of respective towns and be able to use a three-year average to create a predictable number for those towns. We're waiting for answers. So, that's all in that's that's all
being worked out. That's all being there's no resolution to this yet. We don't even have the resolution because the lottery uh was literally announced recently uh through legislation. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome.
Sorry, I have one more question. Kind of piggy backing off of what it says. Is the allocation for the town set this year? So say in 20 years a push it is 10%. Are we still locked into paying 35% of the costs because that is what we what it was when we entered into or
that's going to change? That's a great question. So that's annual. Any capital is going to be annual. Um 90% of it is your enrollment. 10% of it is your K through 12 population. So that's in our district agreement and very clearly identified.
And so that's how we establish the capital. the numbers that you had put on the board, are these this that's not obviously not set in stone yet, but is that a pretty good solid number that we can these numbers
or the Yeah. Um so the the assumption here it's a 30-year bond at 4%. I mean, if anything, it's going like you're talking about the incentives and stuff. So that number actually can go down. We're not if rates improve, which has been the talk, then yeah, the number would come down. or if you don't spend every penny
or 30 days. Question. So if you leave that chart up and you look at what Rochester is 161 per quarter, how is that the case if they're only 15% of the population right
now and Lakeville's 23% like those numbers a lot shorter? How's that how's that working out? It's their tax levy. So it's all based on the DLS data. Um, so what their total residential levy is, the Rochesterers doesn't have as much taxable,
yeah, they have zero commercial, so it's really all residential. Um, but it's a bigger share of their existing tax and that's why the increase is higher proportionally seems kind of skewed how you how that's breaking out, right? I mean, it's Rochester is a very So a cushion is
roughly 30 I think you got 37. I I go up 30 35 I I go up 37 um% so neither here or there 35 37 close enough um and we would be paying 180 and Rochester would basically I think I said 16% is their
population 15%. So how do I how does that I don't understand how that works out with their assessment so high relative to their percentage of kids going to school. I suspect it's less households that are
covering more students per household. Rochester has a minimum commercial tax that Rochester looks at. You have multiple commercial entities tax, right? That's what you're saying
at different rates. Yeah. I I see. So to hit back on I think Sue's question and question is that's the cost of construction and if all the numbers stay the same and we
know that there might be some few million bucks varying here and there but based on the numbers that you've given us um it's 180 bucks comes out to $720 per year for a cushion tax right household but that's not true because that's true
for construction cost but as Mrs. Dado and um MC refer to is the number of teachers. So if you add three shops and I know it's kind of transition because you'll have freshman year when you have the first shop and that's why you said maybe one teacher 16 and then the second year you'll have double the amount and
then until you get to four full years you'll have full scale. Y if you're doing that you're accommodating that many more students then you're also going to have academic classes because you're going to you're not going to be taking 550. Right now we're around 550 total population 62. Yeah. Somewhere around there. So you probably
if you're looking to up that to I don't know what the number is. Just call it 650. At 100 more than the end game would be 776. So if you're going to jump that dramatically, you're looking at probably what four additional academic teachers.
Probably the endgame will be two to three at the end of the four-year period. academic um per not total you got let's say English has five or four at the end of the increase over four years English would have six
that's what I'm saying every category you're going to add another teacher at the end of the four year cycle right so if again or or maybe two just to be fair like you're being generous but it could be two right if that's what we're going to call me is generous when I say one additional classroom so you're right it could be
two depending on how many more student population. I mean, you can't have 40 kids in a classroom. So, if you just if you just up it by, you know, 160, four is 40 kids in a school. That's not going to happen. We know it's another going to be bigger. So, you add just call it five teachers, right? The
average cost of a teacher right now at our colony with benefits, let's just call that 100 grand. That's $500,000. Then you have each shop, right? Um back when I was in school, you had a minimum two shop teachers and one related teacher, right? And so you're talking three teachers per shop
or maybe two in a par. Yeah, absolutely. So, so you're at nine there plus your five, right? You got 14 new teachers. That's $1.4 million roughly depending on where your hiring costs are, but you have benefits that go along associated with it. So average hour, it's going to come out to about 100k per. So that's
1.4 that is going to be assessed as the the five member communities. Again, we being 33. Let's just make math easy. 33% that's an additional $500,000 just budget impact to the town of cushion. Is that fair to say? Well, you can use the chapter 70 offset too.
Yeah. And another we're not there's not 200 additional students in the region. They're going to school somewhere else. Right. So it's not necessarily that you're adding operational costs where 200 students don't exist. They're just going whether it's effort or hidden or or whatever it might be. You might not be tuition.
Yeah. Well, my local schools aren't having 200 more students. It's just my high school is Oak Colony. So if we're taking a percentage of that again, right, I'm going back to that 1/3. I'm looking at total cost 1.5 million where a third of the school is $500,000 for a third of the school which we have been
pretty consistent to be honest. I mean back in the earlier days we were as high as 40 something% of the um so again it's it's a $500,000 hit just operational budget to the town of the cushion. Let's just call it that number. It might be 400,000, but for the
sake of discussion, minus chapter 70 funding, you ain't getting that much money as M. Dog referred to as chapter 7 funding to offset that great of a difference, right? So, I mean, it is it's it's it's ginormous just in an operational standpoint for us, we don't
have from what our experience is, we're cutting all the time where we coming up with, let's just call it $400,000, right? So it's an automatic forced override basically to make budget. And what's really convoluted about that
is what happens when you talked a little bit about it where it's a variable where every year things are going to change. So how do we as or any community the five member communities even think about trying to budget that number in? Like we don't just we can't just say okay worst case scenario all in that cost plus the
school operating budget it's an extra million dollars to the town of commission as an assessment right you can't just override a million dollars because one year it could be 1.2 2, 1.3, it could be 700,000, right? The variable and the worst when we if we drop in
population, the other communities suffer, right? Because now those those costs have gone up for everybody else, right? So if we say and just don't have kids going home anymore, whatever the case may be, the other member towns now escalate. So it's for anybody to try to
plan and budget for this over how many years you projected to borrow for this? 30. 30 years. Yeah. Well, it's very it's a very difficult task. That excluded funds, too. So, um it's not necessarily an operational override. Each year is captured under the debt exclusion vote that has taken at that
one point. But that's still a massive even under a debt exclusion, you're still carrying as part of the levy and it's still a massive variable for us to be playing with tax rate. That's what every community is going to be expected to do based on whatever that number is in any given year. that variable if it shifts 5
10% the tax rate is going to be giating all over the place. There's no common like you if we could do it and I'm not saying we can't but if there was like a more of a common way calculation to do it where you could better plan and give people a number and say you
know what this is the number that we're always going to use but from what I know because I've been part of old colony in 2005 to 10 I was lazison on for the budgets and I know how that variable works and sometimes when population drops off you might not be doing 550 you might be doing 500 that changes that
number we'll just go Not that number, the assessment number that for budgeting for every community. So one year, let's use the low guy, Matapo, that person might be funding $100,000 to old colony's budget. When population drops, if the majority is coming off the
other member towns, Matapo could now be paying $250,000 whole colony's budget. That's that's a massive variable. What's two and a half times? There's a lot of there's a lack of predictability right now with admissions the way it currently stands. We're looking to increase the level of
predictability with the way we move forward with the lottery. But even now, we don't have predictability beyond our October one number. And that's when we basically will call and say, "By the way, your October one number is plus X or minus X. So that's the best way for
us to communicate even historically because historically you never really knew where your admission pool would come from. But you're right, there is a lack of predictability and that was when Eric asked or when Sue asked, that's where we're coming from in our attempt to create predictability on a municipal
level. And when they went to lottery, I echoed your sentiments and I said that to the commissioner for our municipalities, they need predictability with the with the admissions process. We saw patterns and we did. You you've seen the the list, right?
But you make a you make a valid point. It's Bob, I know you have some questions. Um yes, Mr. Chairman. Um most of them were actually already asked. So um I just want to get some confirmation on the ballot vote November 18th. Um just to confirm the way this would work
set up as a simple majority total up all votes from all five member towns. Correct. 51% says yes. It's a it's a go. Correct. Correct. Correct. I only asked because I had a lot of questions asked in regards to that wondering and this is just to
answer the people that ask me if the town of Mushna is responsible for 35% of this. How is it fair to ask our residents to not be worth 35% of the actual ballot vote? So I can explain the process between the
16D and the 16N vote. If you go with a town by town vote and it fails, you then go to a majority vote because otherwise the feasibility funds if you were to ever revisit a project in either model
are not paid for. The MSBA will not pay for feasibility a second time. However, if you have a delay between the first vote and the second vote, what you're looking at is escalation of about $8 million, if that's correct, in that timeline because of the delay and
inflation. What we said was if we knew that if the town by town vote were to fail and then we'd go with a aggregate vote afterward, but at the expense of $8 million, we don't want to play a game and pretend that that first model would
work because it's disillusioning to people. They might think, well, that failed. We're done. and the school would have a fiscal responsibility to revisit it so that they wouldn't reenter into feasibility at a later date to further escalate the project. And what I mean by
that is Minute Man went through this process, I think, for 11 years where they tried to get their building up and running and the cost kept increasing for Minute Man until they finally got the yes. But the cost to build a building 11 years later was so dramatic, so much
more that basically the only winners in the end were the people doing the job because they got paid more money. What we said was don't waste taxpayer money. Don't put on a facade that if this vote were to fail in a town by town that you wouldn't go forward with a second vote
because that's disingenuous. Just cut to the chase and the outcome is the outcome. Was it Berkeley? Wasn't there an issue? That was with the debt exclusion because they voted against the debt exclusion, but they voted for the school. So what happened was they had to revisit the debt exclusion, but the debt exclusion
is not the responsibility of the regional high school. The debt exclusion is up to the town. So, you know, the we believe the right thing to do is probably vote a debt exclusion, but that can be revoted, but for us, a 16N16D model is a really important
consideration, and we didn't want to play games with taxpayer money. It just didn't seem like the right thing to do with that. Does that answer your question? It does. I do have a piggyback question. Sure. for that. And this is once again being directed from lots of community members wondering.
We've talked a lot about information that we don't know yet right now and we're trying to fine-tune some numbers when it comes to operational budgets like Mr. Gasker Mr. Gasper alluded to. This could have a drastic impact on our operational budget which will cause cuts
everywhere else in town or a possible force override on the operational side. So, not only dead exclusively vote for the school, but an override to run an operational budget without having all the details. Why are we voting November 18th and not waiting for spring? We can get you the details. I just don't
have them memorized. Okay. So, we have details. I just don't have them memorized. One piece I think would be helpful was raised tonight was is there a formula based on reimbursement? If you're your reimbursement rate now is based on 500
and change students and if you're at 76 you know what's that number I think would help right we have that information you talking about chapter 7 yeah chapter 7 what the increase based on today's numbers should be right which are not great
you hope they'd be better but this way I think that might be help right what would an operational budget in today's numbers look like if we were let's say 776 in Kushnet were still 35 to 37% of the population. I think that would is that is that we're talking override
override. We can run those very very helpful but we don't have all the correct all the information. Well, then that's why it comes into conversation because we don't have all the information. Are we going to have to expect this in one year, 2 years, 3 years, or even four years? Having those numbers like so like just
said, so we can say in year four, this is what the increase based on today's percentage for our allocation of 35% would represent to the operational budget. Sure. We can run those numbers and we can make them pop up. The other piece too I guess you know from just something that we
need to think about just is that we don't have a high school so we tuition out students right so we have an obligation to provide some some education right so if the numbers the number of students who have an
interest in going to colony increases what does that do to the tuition that we're paying out right it's less that we're paying to benefit less that we're paying to pay and less that we're paying or whoever correct that was the point decides to engage
with. So I think that's a piece of the equation as well. All all that all that really is is a shifting of money from the Kushner public schools budget. They carry that in tuition from New Befford and Haven. So if we're paying $12,000 which is
arbitral we speak again $12,000 for behav colonies at $16,000 because I believe you're right roughly that for cushion right now is around 16 somewhere around 16k. So the difference is the additional $4,000 on each student, right? You still have to look at that big impact
operationally. And there's no way in hell being what we've been through in the last couple years and VidCom knows this is there's no we don't have an additional 400 or $500,000 of operational money. We can just go on top of the increase of three or 400 already
and go here's $800,000. I mean we collect in this year I think in prop two and a half levy increased 564. So with that number being said pretty much everything's gone. You have new growth left to play with and you still have K through8 schools you have to fund
police department fire departments and things that like there's not any money. So it is no matter how you cut and slice this. an automatic force override for operational the budget alone let alone the debt exclusion if that's what we're going to call it for the building to to
build the building right and that's I think those are all points we need to bring up but my point is we need to you know have this full picture from an operational standpoint the mission of this group was to address the need each community is going to have to do a gut
check on the voters say yes or no and it is what it This the result will be what it is but the mission was to provide to try to put forward a project that addresses the need and ultimately the towns will decide if the addresses they
need or not. Exactly. Well, thank you. No, I just real [Music] quick. We'll have to shoot out in about five minutes just to get to So, yeah, this will be quick. So, I'm not sure. Are we under like some kind of
contractual obligation to say we can send this many students where say Mapoet only gets this many like we can turn around and say okay can we put a cap on the amount of students that get sent and then increase the cap for the other to help pay for this. Right now, we cannot because we've had
conversations with the commissioner around quotas, so to speak, and with this lottery system. I'm still waiting for answers around whether or not we're even allowed to establish an average for the drawing of the lottery. But that, to your point, would be as
close as we could get to that. And that's what I'm trying to work on because if I can get a yes again, it allows us predictability because the other thing is the school committee I believe is entertaining other schools to send our high school students to. I believe it was in the
last meeting, right? Four different. There may not be that many more kids going to Old County. They may opt to go to some of these other new schools that the school committee is looking at. So, I mean, if we can turn around and say, "Okay, this thing's going to cost so much money." you know, okay, well, they're going to go to these other
schools. That's what's going to guys from us. You know, it's opportunity for the other town to step up and help pay for this. So, that's just my thought. Help and also help predict. Historically, money follows students, right? Yeah. I don't I don't think with school choice
nowadays that you can deny a kid an education at vocational school, though, right? I think you're right. To your point, you just look at the eighth grade students and say, We already have too many people going to Old Colony. We're not going to allow 25
more to go to Old Colony. It's part of school choice. And I don't think you can deny a kid a certain education. If they have the capacity to take the students from any one of the district member towns, I believe we have to fulfill that obligation. If we have students that want to go, right? And I think that, you know,
politically, I think that's a disaster because you try to tell a parent that wants to put their kid through a vocational school, we can't do it cuz costs are going up too much. We we'll find out that reality number what the the hard hit is going to be. It's it's
not it's not a soft hit. We got to figure out what that is. And that's what I think Morno is describing as what is that number going to be as best as we can predict with them and say this is what we can try to predict what the tax bill is going to go up and whatever the budget's going to go up we already know
like all you folks know you've been doing financing long enough there's no more money so there's a when I keep talking about that force override that's just for operational side of the budget on what they're doing and irregardless of they go from 550 to 650 instead of
750 50. Once you build those shops, it don't matter if you have 10 people in that shop or 20 people in that shop, your teacher base is still going to be a teacher base, right? Still talk about it here. You know, I want to extend this offer is we will come back. Um we want this process to be
much like our budgeting process is that is an open book, line by line, whatever you need, please let us know so that we can provide you with that information. I know that several people sitting at this table and at this table have been a part of our budget process uh which we like to have as an open book and when people
articulate concern we try to do our best to work with one thing I would suggest Aaron I know you've put out a calendar you got five towns so you've got bunch of meetings um you we like to do another couple here in Kusha but if you have one mega meeting
of all the community at the school we have three in the auditori posted online as well. So, we'll And those are not time binding. Got it. Yeah. Absolutely. Dave, I just want to end with this. First of all, thank you, Maron, and your team for coming in to give us this presentation.
Um, number one, it's going to be a big ask for our residents just based on the $471,000 median home value, which is about approximately $720 a year added to their property tax, right? That's that's significant for a
lot of our residents. And then to throw on the operational increases of a potential override year-over-year, that is another concern. Um, so this being said, squeeze as much as you possibly can out of the MSBA if you can. We're doing our best
and we're trying to paint a worst case scenario now so that it can be, you know, everybody has told us underpromise and overd deliver, right? And so these are worst case scenarios and that's our job is to never overpromise because that's disingenuous also. So, we will do
our best and we'll we'll continue to come back to you with information. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Um, if there was no nothing else with the finance committee, um, thank you for your time, Mike, and thank you for assisting on this meeting. Thank
you membership committee for being here. Again, this is a weird one because the mission was to address the need and ultimately it's up to the taxpayer to decide what they can and cannot afford. Um, it's best you can do. Yeah, we look forward to more outreach
to the residents. I think that's going to be crucial so they can make informed decision. We have a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? We are. There's a motion to adjourn this meeting and then we'll start the motions
to adjourn the joint meeting. [Music] Part: 2
[Music] Order September 9th, 2025 a meeting the accusition board of selectment. So move second.
All those in favor? Motion carries. Do the pledge of allegiance once again to the flag of the United States of America to the stands one indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
All right. In your meeting packet is minutes. Um check still a uh typo with uh O R. It's not O. It should be old colony
on the 23rd 24th minutes. Gentlemen, are there any other additions, corrections, deletions? Mr. Tamman, on on the minutes of February 7th, 2023, page two, the very bottom, it just says that Miss Costa asked Mr. Kelly what he
was using for projected new growth in 2024. He said he's using $250. It looks like $250. It's 250,000. Okay. So, we need a motion just a motion to amend that. $250,000. Second.
All those in favor? Anything else? Mr. Chairman, on uh August 26, 2025, page eight. At the top, it talks about Mr. Gasper asked about the double polls of Mr. Kelly to review with solar companies that they are paying for those polls and not the taxpayers. I want to
be add a little bit more clarification what Mr. Gasper was talking about is regarding street lamps being switched over to the new poles and our five relocation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right. Other than that, I'll make a motion to approve all minutes as presented with the changes that were just made. Second.
All those in favor? I motion carries. Very good. Very good. Uh so item number one, Pam, we do not need to approve this warrant. Is that correct? That is correct. All right. So, we're going to withdraw that. It has to do with you'll call in
the election of course luck and do not have to approve that warrant. So scrap that. Next item is the town administrator search committee charge of duties. We have Pam Levante, Mr. St. Giles, Mr. Rosendis, Mr. Dacon, and Mr.
Brown. Uh first of all, thank you all for your service. Everybody's been sworn in. Everyone's been All right. Great. Um, as you know, you have a number of resumes uh that the screening committee has whittleled down to seven to do interviews. Some other we
posted a couple weeks ago. Few other resumes came in. You're welcome to take a look at those if you want to add them into the mix. What I saw, we got a great candidate from California, great one from North Carolina, whatever. It's up to you to decide if you think they should move forward. Um, and so now it's
us for us to kind of share with you our thoughts of what we would like for you to to look at as you're interviewing these candidates. Mr. Gasper, Mr. Hinckley, I have my own thoughts, but I'll leave it up to my colleagues to offer that up. Um, if you'd like, Mr. Chairman, I think um I think you
said it hit the nail on the head. Um, and I have full faith in everybody on this committee to make accurate and informed decisions and present us with the best possible options. So, I've also looked at resumes, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, and and
it's not an easy decision to make, and you guys should at least forward a minimum of three. Um the the ad has been readvertised again because the the pool that we have, some of it some of those applicants are older and, you know, not older in age, but the the time that we
receive them has been a couple of months gap. So, some of them might have already have other jobs. They might not be interested anymore. You might not be able to complete that mission. That's why I asked for the ad to be re rerun to try to see what else we can bring in. Um, most of you all know um how this
community operates. Um, Mr. Dacon and Mr. Brown, former selectman. They definitely get how the town operates. Mr. Rosendi has been on the commission. Mr. St. is active at Miss Leoni as well as 20 years serving as 18 years serving
as town clerk. She gets it. Um to me, you got to have somebody that has some background there in in budgeting um understands um employment workplace issues. DBW is a big part. It's our
third biggest budget um in the town of Kushnet. So, infrastructure, some expertise there. Um, public safety, obviously, police, fire, things like that. Have some kind of a background there as well with with staffing and the
operational aspect of that. Um, I think most importantly, when the board of selectment have been trying to hire um other people in the town, um, we we focus on I know at least I do and I'm responsible on behalf of the board to interview. You try to look at a person's
character and try to figure out are they a good fit for the community, right? We've had past situations where we've had individuals where, you know, they might they might put like their Superman on their resume, but they get here and, you know, they heckle and jive. So, try
to do your best in looking through the individual. That's why I think it's important for personal interviews to figure out who these people are and try to figure out, in my opinion, will they work well with others, right? I think that's that's probably probably the biggest thing is some experience in in
public safety, DPW, finance and things of the like and then you have to look at that individual and say are they a good fit? You think they would mix with our most importantly our department heads, right? Um that's really what it comes down to. So other than that try to do your best and we'll see what
comes to the board and if not we'll continue running ads I guess but we'll figure it out. Do your best. Yeah. And I I echo that, you know, combo platter of what they said. You know, from me perspective, it's finances. We just spent, you know, an hour and a half talking about a big project. It's all it
all at the end of the day, it all comes down to finances. Um, you know, I think the board years ago, got a little flexible with residency, and I'd love to know if the next town administrator would be willing to live in a cushion. Um, I think that would be, you know, something when you get some skin in the
game and you're here all the time, you get a better flavor for things. So, um, I think ultimately finance is what is is really important. Mr. Bryant, I I think my question was answered a minute ago, but we're not expected to
give you three to interview from this paper. We're going to get an opportunity to um, you know, interview these people and talk to them at some point. And how is that setup going to work for us? That's my question. So, Mr. Kelly will work with you guys. What I would suggest amongst the five
somebody select be selected as a chair and then Jamie will help and Sydney will be scheduling of the interviews and then your job is to narrow it down to three finalists and then recommend three finalists for us to do final interviews. Thank you. Good. Cuz I agree that you
know what's on paper isn't necessarily where we're going. And I I I don't want to recommend anybody based on what's in a file. after I've talked to somebody and looked them in the eye and asked them like you say personally, what do you think about our town? Do you want to live here? We got, as you say,
candidates from across the country. Why do why are they interviewing? Are they coming here? What's going on? And uh I think you know, especially you, David, know personally that last time I hired someone important in town was the police chief. I said, "Are you going to come
live in town?" And he moved back into town for us. I think it's very important to to be part of the community if you're going to have a role to spend. So, anybody else have questions? Yeah, Mr. Chairman, how stringent do you want us to be? There are required
elements to the job and there are preferred elements how stringent do you want this team to be? As I as I put in the memo to Bob and Kevin, there's no nobody backs a thousand. No way is every requirement
like every benchmark. Um I think you got to come up with who you feel would be the best candidate. Um like I said if we could go to AI and punch out the best candidate we could probably do that but can't right. So somebody's going to have a deficiency here but it's going to be
really good here. So I think maybe you come up with a scoring grid or something along those lines. And I know last you're you're a numbers guy that way. So maybe you can come up with a score sheet. I think Jamie, you probably could come up with a score sheet saying these are the things, finances,
we'll make a matrix. Yeah. Most importantly, we want we want this committee because you're all townies. That's that's the way we talk about each other, right? We're all townies. We we we care about the community um from our heart, right? And and we want what's in
the best interest moving forward for the community. And you have to have that leader in the town administrator's position that's that can keep the team together um and and keep everybody moving forward at a regular pace instead of the bog downs, the arguments and and the fighting back and forth. We don't
want that. We we just need somebody that's a diverse person um in all aspects when you look at it. I mean, Bob, you you understand that you're self-employed. Mr. Dakens worked for Verizon and probably interviewed hundreds of people over his career. Uh, Mr. Lonnie, she's she's in came from the
private sector. Mr. St. Jill is in the private sector. Mr. Presenti is in the private sector. I mean, you know what it takes, right? And collectively, you five chosen people. I I believe in the bottom of my heart. You should be able to whittle that list down. And and perhaps
you just go, we don't like anybody. What do we do that? Then you have to bring that back to the board, right? That's why I asked for the ad to continue to be run because you don't know what else might be out there. And again, you have whatever you have, seven, we'll call it. Some of these people might already have jobs elsewhere because of the two-month,
three-month time lapse when they submitted resumes, right? The other important part that I I want to stress to you is when you bring each individual in for interviews as a subcommittee, the first thing you have to ask them is this. If well, once you're done interviewing, you if you feel
comfortable enough, but you should ask everyone this. If you're a finalist to present to the board of selectment, are you willing to have your name on an agenda at the board of selectments meeting? Because if they say no, they're out. It's illegal for us to put their name on
an agenda for an interview without their permission. So that's that's an absolute dead drop question to every candidate, regardless if you feel good about them or not. Just make it habit to ask everybody that comes through the door when you're wrapping up that interview is ask them that question. If you are a finalist, are you comfortable being
placed on the board of selected agenda as a finalist for the Teenage position? If they say no, they're out. And that's going to hurt again with the people that might be out with the pretend you're only working with seven versus the people that say, "Nope, I'm not
comfortable." You might not be able to give us three people, four people. Right? That's how it works. Well, thank you. All right. Um, we don't want to put an artificial timeline on it, but we'd ask that you try to move things along as quickly as
possible because the clock is ticking with Mr. Kelly, who's been nice enough to help us out. Um, so, uh, good luck and if you have any questions, please let us know. But to be honest with you, we'd rather not talk to you until the end. I think that's fairness, right? So,
M, Mr. Chairman, if I could just add one more thing for the committee. So for you folks when you have your first meeting to start talking about candidates and things of the like you're really going to give if if Sydney from our office is responsible to make phone calls and line up um the interviews with this committee
you folks need to figure out what the best time of day is to do interviews and communicate that so that when you are doing it if you're going to do these screenings at 5:00 at night 6:00 at night again Mr. Rosendi is a working man I know Mr. St. is a working man. He does
have flexibility. Mr. Brown, you own your own business, but your guns are blazing and at work hard all day long until 4 or 5:00. I don't know what your schedule is. U Mr. Dacon, he's retired. Miss Leavon's in in her office. It's all like she's sitting around, you know,
eating bon bonss, waiting for something to happen. She's got a very busy office. So, I think you all need to talk about when you're done with us, we'll have Pam come over and we'll we'll put it together. Yeah. We should get Thank you. There you go. All right. Thank you guys. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. Have a good night. Uh, next item. Go quickly. Chief on the opioid stuff. We got um gentlemen, uh, we received some correspondence
um over the summer from our law partners at KP Law um in regards to some updates and new uh litigation settlements. available to the town uh related to the opioid crisis.
The town's been active in these for several years dating back to Chief Gallagher uh who started this um and as such made me de facto appointment for this project upon his retirement. Um so there are four motions that um uh we had
Sydney right up and put in front of you uh that um allow the town to participate in these new uh litigation settlements um and the town to recoup some more of the available funding that is out there. So just need those those to be approved
and then I can make the proper notifications um to the various vendors. Um, quick question, Mr. Chairman, just to ask a question I'm pretty sure I asked a couple of years ago. Um, all
these funds go into the regular opioid fund that can be dispersed, but it can only be spent on opioid related. Correct? The the there are certain restrictions that the settlements through the courts have and then our lovely Commonwealth
restricts them even further. Um, we use some of this funding to purchase some cardiac monitors for our ambulances to update their current equipment. Um, there's been a lot of discussion whether or not that's going to be a continued use for them or not. Um,
it varies day-to-day depending on who you speak to at the the opioid commission. Um, but it's it's mostly for prevention, treatment, and after care. Um, so I I do have conversations uh regularly with Officer Cathkart, our
school resource officer, um to be able to try to put together a program for the middle school. We can use funds for that. Um we are uh you guys are familiar with um the agreement we have with Fair Haven through the health um
collaborative. We uh also have the availability to participate in some of their programs um which also gives us access to some of the regional funds as well as our own. Um so there's definitely a use for it. Um and it's all
it has to be declared free cash and then it sound like we did in the spring we have to reallocate it to the opioid fund itself. Okay. We got a bunch of motions in front of us. I'll make a motion to approve the Purdue plan.
Second. All those in favor? I. Make a motion to approve the government entity settlement agreement or GESA release. Second. Those in favor. Motion carries. Motion to approve the additional defendant settlements.
Second. All in favor? I. And a motion to approve the Sando settlement. Second. All in favor? I. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next item is a note sent to us by Brad Fish,
our veterans agent. I didn't see Brad here, but that's okay. Oh, yeah. He's But anyway, the bottom line is I I saw Brad and we were just checking in on I wanted to check on with him, see how things were going, if he's liking the job. He loves it. One thing
he did raise and it's kind of a testament to Brad in his character. He says, "Look, I'm here part time. These are the hours I'm being paid for. I do work more hours, but I just want people to know that, you know, they're
not if I'm not in the office. It's not because I'm not doing my job. That I'm just a part-time employee. And he just wanted us to know that, you know, he's concerned about that perception. I said, "Look, you give us more than you actually are getting paid for, and we're very appreciative of that." But again,
he just wanted us to be aware of that that dynamic. And, you know, he does a lot He is the work he's doing is really incredible. So Brad, keep up the great work. I just wanted, you know, the board require motion to give him a vote of
confidence and to keep him doing what he's doing because he does a great great job for us. We're really blessed to have him. So Chairman Brad Fish is a phenomenal BSO. Um, I know that I was instrumental in this neatly, I believe, helped out the conversation as well to
to etch it in stone, but I've known Brad Fish for several years. He's a very good friend. Um, more more importantly, he's an extremely um great VSO officer. So, I don't think I've never heard anybody talk bad about him. And I can tell you right now, I would defend him, his cap
to 100%. Um, because I would never let that happen to Brad. Brad, you're right. He spends exorbitant amount of hours running around doing different things whether it's flagging cemeteries on Veterans Day, Memorial Day and things of the like Labor Day. Doesn't matter what that means doing. He's always doing
something. He spends I think like 35 hours in the state house dealing with that kind of stuff for veterans. Um and I do know I speak with a lot of veterans. I have a lot of friends that are veterans and they all love Brad. So, um to you Brad, kudos for everything you do for our veterans and God bless you.
when we go through a budget cycle. If there's stuff we need to do to address what he's doing here and get him with the resources, then we should decide to cut you off%. And Mr. Chairman, um, you know, you both spoke exactly how I was feeling about
Brad. Um, Brad is probably one of the best things to happen to Kushnik in a long time. Um, the fact that he was concerned with how we felt about it speaks volumes as to his character. Um, Brad Fish is an excellent human being
and I wouldn't question the single thing he did. Great. All right. Very good. Next item. Scott Daget, uh, Lake Street Improvement Committee. on behalf of them. Uh as you know, gentlemen, there's a lot of work that was done this summer uh with Chief
Coffee here as well. Gary, want to just grab a seat part of that committee. Uh Jimmy Souza helped out. But Scott, why don't you just give us kind of a recap of the work that was done, what you see as the next steps that need to be done, and I can share with you some conversations that I've already had with
the city. But go ahead. All right. So, if I may, I'm going to read to you an email from uh Jeff Cortiso, which was on August 15th. So it was just after the project had first phase had finished. Uh so Jeff says uh in total I would
estimate approximately 600 yards of material was removed from all three ponds. I think there is the most that we have ever removed in one location. The north pond had significant growth near the street and along the western edge. Some of the water levels were too shallow for us to get into. Some of the
areas had virtually no water at all. the northern section around those homes was densely packed in, but they were able to put a big dent in that area and also able to get some of the water flowing. So, he's referring to the far north end of the north pond. Uh he believed at the
time that uh by removing some of the uh the mil foil and the invasive weeds would be able to foster some better flow coming in from the Keen River into the ponds. Uh the south pond also had the same story along the road and the eastern
edge where it was the heaviest. The cove area next to the street had a large amount of dead biomass that we were able to remove. We did get to the southern section by the fish ladder for a few passes. I know we could do more down there if we had closer access point to offload. So he's stating that he would
have been able to have made a more of an impact on the far south end where the fish ladder in Earth & Dam is if he had better access because of the weight that would be in the the hopper slows the boat down. Uh the small pond to the east
was very well suited for the excavator. We were able to remove the floating islands in the sections closest to the road. We were also able to tackle some of the bigger ones a little farther to the north. Uh we were able to get the water flowing on the lefth hand side as you know as you're looking north. We
were able to remove the fragmitees along the edge of the ramp. They definitely opened it up for us to use. Uh with the help of Jim Souza and the DPW, we were able to speed up the process of the removal. The DPW came in with a backhoe and dump truck. As fast as they were
bringing the weeds in, they were removing it. They were a huge help throughout the project. We were all very impressed at how quickly the town workers and neighbors were eager to help. We are not used to that. Normally, everyone looks the other way and has excuses. A Christian
residents and employees are the example of what I would want to see in my own town. It was excellent to see them working towards a long overdue resolution. As far as going forward, if you would have us back next year to do a similar scope, I think you would be pretty far
ahead of it. I think some more time with the excavator could be a huge help. The combination of the harvesters and excavators next year would position the ponds in great shape for a maintenance program in years to come. We are really looking forward to working with the town of Christian. Again, if you have any
other questions, feel free to contact them. So, from what Jeff's experience is, um I think it really, you know, resonates, you know, the type of people that we have in this town. So, a huge thank you to uh Dan with the DPW
and Jimmy Souza who did a lot of coordination with Jeff. Um, initially when we did this project, we thought that the scope of work was only going to be along the roads. Uh, but to our surprise, uh, Jeff expanded that greatly. Uh, he impacted areas along the
roads and since he had plenty of time available, uh, hit other areas throughout the three ponds. Uh, so what that did was it it kind of threw us into a little bit of a tizzy because we had to figure out when he was working at the far north end
of the pond, he wasn't going to haul that stuff all the way back to the boat ramp. So luckily with uh Mr. Jimmy Souza and and Dan Manard, we were able to coordinate, get trucks out there so that we could offload this stuff into a front
end loader, dump it in a truck, and take it right to the uh storage site. So, all in all, with u with the help of everybody involved, um I think it was a huge success. Uh I've always felt that this first phase is kind of a feeling out kind of
thing to see what works and what doesn't work. Um, there are some things I think we can improve on next year. Um, which I will discuss with Jeff when we get to that point. Um, but I think overall from what I've been hearing from many people,
um, many people are very happy with the results. Uh, I'd like to have Gary at least give you an example of how he feels it impacted uh, the pond that he lives on since he's a resident on the pond. Okay. First, I want to thank you
gentlemen publicly. It's the first time I've been in front of you. Um, it's been a pretty busy week. Um, but it's okay. It's learned a lot. Uh, as far as the pond, I've lived on the pond for probably about 25 years now. Um, and
when we first uh, moved in, I literally could walk down to my shoreline and fish right off the shore and there was no problem. Over the years, that's had to stop. I could fish off my dock, but not the shoreline. Then I got a toy I couldn't even leave the dock with my boat. And that's the way it's been the
last three years. I did not expect Jeff and his crew to get that far down on the pond. But the way they explained to me explained it was they need to do a circle and continuous circle rather than stop and backing up and that takes too much time. They want to have more time
on the water. So they were able to get further down the pond. Um and I've noticed a huge difference. uh it's not as pristine as it was 25 years ago, but according to Jeff, the more you treat and hit these ponds, you can get back to
that level. I do think another applicant of them coming, another round of them coming next year and then figuring out maintenance program will probably be the way to go. Um obviously we need to figure out the funding to go that route. So gentlemen, as you know, we talked
about a legislative delegation, but also, you know, begs the question, we don't own the body of water. City of New Bedford does, and we want to continue to open up the piggy bank for that. Um, I would say this, I've talked to Mayor Mitchell personally about it. Um, I know
these gentlemen have talked to various city councilors and I think, you know, we'll have to make a decision as we go forward with see if we can acquire the body of water. you know, from what I understand and talking with city officials in New Bedford that it's of
little to no value of them to them. It's not considered a drinking source. Um, it's just do they have the the bandwidth to actually put together, you know, a process, a legal process to to do that. Um, so, you know, I think we we'll have
to decide, you know, if we can go forward with that and how we can get them to move forward as well. Um, but if we can find other pools of money from the state, you know, and work it with New Bedford and their their team, then we should continue to do that and raise
awareness. Um, you know, but we'll have to gut check as to how much money more money of taxpayer money we put into it without actually owning it. But I think to chase money through other sources would make sense and you maybe get New Bedford to cover the next round. So, um,
anyway, so the good good work and we appreciate, uh, what you guys have done. I see some some folks, uh, from the growing community. I don't know if you're here for that. I saw your your eyebrows raised when we were talking about it. So, I don't know. We see arms folded, so I don't know if you're happy or uh, no, I don't care what you do as long as
you don't put pesticides. We're not doing that. So, we've already crossed that bridge. No pesticides. No pesticides. No pesticides. So, we want to make it better for everybody. Uh, I might mention that if you take over the pond, you're also responsible
for the dam. And that could be quite a responsibility. Over the years, probably 30 years ago. I guess there's a department of dams up at D or something and they said you have to cut all the trees off there because
if one uproots then yeah, it could breach the dam. That kind of thing. So that's something else you want to Yeah. Something, you know, we look at all of it. Now, weren't they going to talk about the dam itself down there with the fish ladder and all that? Are you going to mention something about that? Yeah, eventually.
I'd like to hear what you got to say about that. Yeah. So, eventually we're going to address that. Um, so that that topic came up when we wanted to drop the water levels in the pond so that the well, we we wanted to drop it temporarily because we wanted to
have the process be more effective. So, if the water level were deeper, for example, one of the gentlemen that's on our committee uh owns a piece of property on the other side of the pond, and where he where his boat ramp or where his dock is is a little bit deeper. So, since it's a little bit
deeper, uh the weeds won't come up to the surface as much as they would probably on Gary's side where it may be a little shallower. So, um the results over there were a little bit different because the machine could not get deep enough to pull the weeds. So, I
contacted the city in New Bedford, the water department, tried to get permission to uh have the water levels drop just temporarily so that we could be more effective in in pulling the weeds. We were denied because of u concerns of people downstream
and also concerns because of the stability of the earth and dam. Um, I went out there a couple of weeks ago, uh, had got permission from the people who are now running Keith's farm. I looked at the fish ladder. I looked at
the earth and dam. U, in my opinion, as an engineer, I don't see any issues with that earth and dam. To me, it looks pretty stable. Um, I spoke to Chief Farland, who uh just acquired some uh paperwork and some information regarding
the dam. uh he'll be forwarding that to me uh when he has the opportunity to do so. Uh we're going to make sure that um that if this town does eventually take control of those ponds that we're going to look at the dam and make sure that the dam is stable and not going to be an
issue. Well, I just got to make sure that I have enough water to irrigate enough. It gets low. Yeah. What you is there a new herring run down there? Is that what's down there now? So So there is a new herring run. Well, they let too much water on the damn barn. That's why it goes down. That's why so many
somebody comes up there and pulls the goddamn planks like that. So, so the planks in control. So, the planks are padlocked and the city in New Bedford has control of the padlock. Now, when I went down there and I looked at the spillway, there's only one board and that board is only maybe 8 in. So,
it's like a 2 by8. So, it's not much. Uh, the current water levels that were out there were probably 3 to 4 in below the top of that board. So the water you're talking about in the in the herring run. No dam. So there's no so there are no
boards at the herring run. What there is is there's a there's a stone spillway uh which is just in front of the herring run and that stone spillway is what controls the depth of the water in the pond. So if you pull the boards at the spillway, you're going to allow
more water to go downstream. You find all spring and everything else the waters are nice and high. But when we get droughts like this, the water's horrible for us, you know, as far as being able to pump. So far, so far this year, I've had to move my suction off of an old stump onto
an 8 in block, onto a 6 in block, onto a 4in block, and now it's sitting on the hard pan. I can't get it any lower. I've had to put an excavator in my canal and dig it deep. So, so what so what the people from CNB underwater did do is
they cleared a lot of the invasive weeds to the far north of the north pond where the Keen River flows into the pond hopefully in the attempt of allowing more water flowing. They're going to run right out the other end. Yeah. Now you're talking, you said that if you lowered the water you'd be
able to get more rooms. Now I watched those machines go over there by whites and they got stuck in the mud. Yeah. Trying to get those weeds out. If you didn't have that much water, they couldn't even get anywhere near where they and you didn't get within 200 yards
of us on the other side. Yeah. And that's why he addressed it and that's why Jeff addressed it in the email that there were some areas that they could not hit because raise the water then you could get to some of these areas. Get to a lot of the you drop it, it's all mud.
It's six in one hand, half dozen in the other. All you're doing is beautifying right there by the road. Do you do you raise the water? And yes, you're going to be able to pull some of the weeds in some areas, but then you're not going to be able to pull weeds in the other areas because the water's too deep. Now, how many weeds does it pull and how
many you just break off and prune them so they grow better? I I'm waiting to see what happens next summer. You know, I have pictures four times in the exact same place and there still And when the down there, we just grow like that. Okay, it's a process.
In my opinion, I've been there 50 years. Do you guys want to be on the on the committee? No. No. Okay. I mean, there's there's no perfect solution. If if there were, we would do it. Sure. Look, I don't care if people out there with a perfect solution. You can get involved.
Yes. If you guys tried talking individually, I don't mean that disrespectfully, but I didn't hear what either of you just said. And if there is a solution, I think it's it's beneficial to hear, but you can't talk over. The solution is leave it the hell alone. I just think that's an awful lot of
money for what little bit they did. That's all I'm saying. Pain for it. It was a uh it was a pilot project and that's the purpose of this. So yeah, Jim, what do you got? One thing I can say, I spent a lot of time with Jeff um a lot of time in every
different part of the North River, South River, the small pond. Um when we were up the north end and Jeff was working up there, that is going to end up being marsh. That's what's going to happen. we're gonna lose these ponds. So, we worry about not having enough water or
too much water. That's what's going to end up happening in what 400 years. Maybe you want another point to keep in mind about what's going on up there is there are no more bogs allowing any fertilizer or nitrogen to go into the pond.
What I'm saying it was still unbelievable. They were pulling up root mass this big. There's spots where you can even go over a canoe. There is spots where you can do nothing. It's going to end up a marsh. The smallest pond has areas where you can actually walk on and probably tee off a golf ball if you
want. Right? And that's what's going to happen to the whole pond if we don't do anything. Right? So you say 400 years. I was there with my granddaughter. I hope someday my granddaughter gets to play there with her grandkids. Right? We really want to keep the pawns. We don't want to say let it turn to marsh. And
that's what's going to happen. And that's my own opinion. And that's talking and working right with Jeff. All right. So that's all. Thank you guys. And we got other stuff on the agenda. All right. Thank you. Have a good night. All righty. We got a request for a
senior tax deferral given to the across our desk annually. Is there motion to approve as presented? Second. All those in favor? I motion carries. Next item, gentlemen, is
to get here maintenance truck. I know town meeting Mr. Gatsby been involved with this. We had an article. Um I think just we want to make sure that comes before the board we can get three at least three options to consider. Um but
like to see it happen sooner than later I guess um to make sure that we're ready to before we know it'll be snow plowing season. And um it's easy it's easy to buy a truck. It's hard to find the right truck for for the
applications that we're using. I try to explain that to our maintenance guys and you know a 150 you know half ton probably not the ideal for you can put a blade on it but suspension wise not not the greatest option. So you now you're in the 2500 class. Um I already told
them I'm not looking to buy a quad cab so you could put 9 million people inside of it. It's a maintenance truck you and another person but an extra cab would be nice trying to find that. Um, and that $45,000 up to 45,000 they're out there. Some of them are a halls way away to go
look at. And then, you know, in my opinion, I'd be more than happy to do it. I bought EMA. I didn't buy it. The town's people bought EMA a truck probably 10 15 years ago. I went with Mr. Jerry Burgers who was the EMA director back then. Um, I think it was way forward and we found a great truck
for a reasonable price and the truck is still in commission today. So there's a lot that that goes around it and you know trying to trying to do our best but there's only so many good ones out there and sometimes it is not within a 30 40 mile radius for me to go hunt them down and take a look at it. Well I'm doing my
best every day every other day I'm on the web trying to see what else is new and I got some contacts in different dealerships looking for stuff for me. I want to the only reason why I put it want to make sure it's on the agenda that if we identify a vehicle I want it back on the agenda because I want to you
know not repeat the errors of the past monument purchase like this obviously the board should have final approval on it and that was and I appreciate his work. Uh next item conservation commission a
while ago we had asked Mr. Kelly to dive into the conservation commission. We had some issues there. Um, and we wanted to make sure that we have a plan moving forward. So, we asked Jamie to look at some of the not only structural stuff,
but you know, how we handle the volume, so on and so forth. So, Mr. Kelly, are you uh prepared to to do that? Uh well, what we first did was look at how the conservation commission was established
and that goes back to 1962 town meeting. And then we uh uh Miss Labonte and I verified that the official records of the town did not
reflect what actually happened at town meeting. So, we corrected that and uh so and then we discussed it with town council and the general laws allow you
to have a commission of between three and seven members. I uh and right now you have five members on the commission and uh I think a workable number is five rather than
seven to change it because the article established it at 7. You will have to go to town meeting and amend that article which is article 12 of the annual town
meeting of on March 10, 1962 to become five members. Uh according to town council, the uh membership,
the expiration date of the members that are now sitting will hold true unless the board had reconstitute by removing each member for cause that is not up for uh
reappoint or there is a vacancy. Right. Now there are seven slots, five are filled, right? So we got two essentially two vacancies. You've got two vacancies you can eliminate. Of the five slots,
three are set to expire uh 2025. So let me ask you this Jamie and I don't know the answer to this but when it comes to like conservation commission or any other appointed board we can't get into elected stuff but you know you
attendance is really important and is that something that we would have to we put that in as a uh a requirement of the board that you're allowed three absences during your tenure or something like that or come up with some number uh because we got to make sure
that people show up. That is of the board. It's within the purview of the board if ex according to town council if an extended amount of absences have
occurred. That would be cause for all right that's fine. I just think as we go forward I don't know gentlemen how you feel about reducing the number from 7 to 5 and putting an article at town meeting. Uh Mr. chairman. Um I would actually support that just based on our struggle
to fill those last two slots. We've had multiple appointments and multiple resignations. Um a lot of the times I don't know if uh the people that signed up understood. There was a couple where they straight up moved out of town. Um but we've been
sitting in two open seats for a while now. Um and five members usually show up. So I would I would I would support five members personally. Yeah. I I I believe under the statute the commission right now it's different
from for different commissions um and boards but I believe under some statute for conservation commission if you're minus two you're able to go with the five remaining and then the quorum would be three. That's how the conservation commission is currently operating under.
So, it's kind of the way it is right now and I'm I'm all for five members versus seven members. So, then I guess we need to make a motion for it. I guess we can deal with that when we get to next item. Jame, I think you're talking
about like staffing. I know I talked to Mr. Susan. The board cannot continue with the amount of work and the fact that not only is it doing conservation
work, it's doing storm water regulation uh to not have professional help. Now, whether you have a part-time agent, whether you use some hybrid
situation, you're going to need uh at least to attempt to fill the uh professional conservation agent position. And
uh right now you've got a principal clerk that's staffing the commission. You've got very recently the board has put a minutes clerk
that is dealing with a number of minutes for various committees not just this one and taking care of uh the uh situation with getting all the minutes done and that can be re-examined
in the future when all the past minutes have been prepared. and reviewed, but to have one principal clerk for the conservation commission, which is also uh the storm water bylaw was transferred
to from the planning board to the conservation commission. You need professional help and you need the peer reviews of the engineers, Mr. Madden, Mr. Q
and I see I hit a capital thing instead of leaving the number the same for MS4. But uh the two peer review engineers have to uh
be there to support and I would advise this uh board to uh look at doing a advertisement that uh starting salary is dependent upon qualifications and
experience. would just advertise and see if we get somebody. Mr. Mr. Chairman, I'm fine with for the conservation agent, but I I think of Mr. Kelly um for the record when we were doing budgets, I had the concern about the conservation agent 6 months ago and
he hasn't been gone that long. and I asked for you to change the budget um in the conservation agent salary line item to say conservation agent/contractual services for this point when the commission needs expert help outside
help we could be drawing off the the conservation agent salary because it was now defined um commission agent/conultant services. So, if that budget's been properly recorded, um the conservation commission absolutely could start expending funds and calling up an
engineer and saying, "Hey, I need some help on X, Y, and Z if that's the case." And they always have at their disposal is 533G account, which is paid for by the applicant, which is obviously the preferred way to go. But there are certain situations where the commission is going to need some background
expertise. We have our MS4 um permitting uh engineer that's on hand. You can use him. who's already technically part of payroll with all the articles that we do. So, there's plenty of resources for conservation commission to reach out to and get some help from. So, you know, I
would the chairman's here right now. Um I just said what I said, Mr. Souza, you know what's there for the budget. U Kevin, we take in like any storm water. We do not deal with that. I don't you ever look at the storm water couch, which I know you have, right? For us, it's easier to just say, "Okay, we're
sending that out to peer review." So the storm water is pretty much kind of like runs itself per se, right? Because it's not something I actually have a someone putting a roadway in. I told them that they redo their storm water count to prove it to us. Well, they gave me a 57
page report and I just said, "Okay, now I got to put it to peer review." So I sent it to uh GAF. Excellent. Bill's going over. They'll get back to us. So the storm water we can kind of like self-ride. The biggest problem I have is the site
visits during the weeks and everything else and trying to take and have that engineer with the conservation commission them discussing what's the best way to go, what's going on. I've been like the other day, last two weeks ago, I had 109 emails, right? As a
volunteer, that's a lot for me and for me to try to step over that. So we do need that person that I can talk to too when I have a question before a meeting and also someone that can talk to the engineers and say hey listen that can't even be discussed that or whatever give
his opinion. So it might take some steps away from the board until we get to the meeting and I just really think we need that somebody in the office to help us. um the 53G. It's really hard to tell somebody who's putting an RDA in to say,
"Okay, 53G that or even an NOI that we see the we see the order of conditions that they're almost out of 100% out of the buffer zone, but they are going with an NOI because they have to still within the buffer zone. But to 53 jet, 53G that is even for a
single resident, I don't think that's why I'm talking Jimmy. I don't want to spend all night talking about this, right? because the answers are already there in front of us, right? I just I just outlined the answers to it, right? We have an MS4 engineer at any given time. If you have a concern, you can call them up and say, "I need a little help with this." You we have our
office if you need to scan things in an email, send them over, whatever it is. Can you please review this? But don't do it 12 hours before a meeting. Try to be considerate 48 hours. So, he's got other things to be doing, right? Hopefully, that'll work out to get you out of a bind. And I agree that we should be filling the Hong Kong agent as best we
can, right? within what we think is an appropriate budget to do. So we had 31,000 whatever his budget for. If we have to go up a little bit, I'm fine with doing that. Am I gonna pay somebody $60,000 for a part-time job? No. Never happening. And I understand that. Right. So there's plenty of resources for you to go after. I just don't think
you've been told what I just told you now. So I hope that'll help you and you make that those phone calls and he can take that deduction out of MS4 engineer and things of the like. It's part of all of our storm water, right? The impacts of other people. Hold on real real quick, gentlemen.
Hold on. I'm sorry to do this. These guys have been sitting here for about Heartley Street. What's going on over there? That's your question, right? Yeah. Dan, if you could talk to him. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was trying to get to. Sorry. Sorry, gentlemen. So, I know
Kevin, what's that? One of them is Carico that I can reach out to. Our MS4 engineer is Kico Engineers, right? Kevin McHugh is the lead guy. He's got some guy that's down here that's local. Um, he's been doing some bond inspections. We've made some changes for our town's MS4 engineering
permit that he filed on our behalf with with what we done down at DBW. And he said, "I'll call I forgot the kid's name." He said, "He's local. I'll have him run over and and take a do some inspections. He'll file a report and give it to me." Okay. Well, if that guy is closer than where Kevin Mchugh's out
or wherever the hell he is, then fine. Maybe this kid can help us out with doing certain things. Um, and he submits a bill and we'll pay for it. That's it. We'll figure out way to pay for Like I said, storm water, solar field, some are really easy. Then peer review it. Peer review it. And it's on there. D, like you said, the little Mickey Mouse
ones. You know what it is way up front. Ship it off. Give them a week to look at things. Give them give them time to talk to them and and send a recommendation in writing to the commission because it's not your job to make decisions based for the commission. It's the commission's job to say, "We don't feel comfortable
with it. We want it peer reviewed. Let it go out to peer review." Right? That's not the chairman's job. It's the commission's job. There's certain things that you might look at. You can say, "Hey, I share this with them, the town's MS4 engineer. He's comfortable with us doing XYZ. How do you feel? It's, you know, it's not something that we want to
burden the resident with, uh, you know, the 53G account. We can take 500 bucks and have our engineer do it and have an ice tech. No big deal. Sounds good. Yeah. So, what is the board regarding? I I I I think just like we've been doing
the last couple of open positions, regardless, we should still advertise because we might find the right candidate. Um, but I agree with what Jamie said as well, uh, listing it at a salary based on qualifications. Um, I still I mean, budget wise, it's
still a halftime position, so I wouldn't want to advertise similar what Mr. Gasper said for a full-time position, right? and at least we have the option of getting resumes in and seeing if there's any qualities and at least we have the fallback plan. So I I've talked to Mr. Kelly about that
Mr. Chairman in the past is sometimes when you're having a difficult time filling a part-time position for we'll use this as an example. Sometimes it it hurts us by putting a salary range, right? Leave it out and just do what Mr. Kelly just said and say based on previous experience blah blah blah
blah blah and let people come in and talk to us, right? and and feel them out and see what they want for a part-time position and maybe you just say, "You know what? We can make that work for this person, the expertise that we need." Right. One thing I'd like to ask is any of the old resumes, is there do you still have
them where we can look back? Because there was actually one girl that was really really good. Um I know that uh Mr. Mitten was picked um but she was like the close runner and I think she would have been better. But I don't know. But I'm still saying I think maybe
we should look at it. We'll look around. We'll post and then we'll see who I think we need to post because agree post. But I agree with Mr. Souza because I remember part it was the prior prior agent was hired. There was a
female out of Rhode Island um extremely impressive resume but for some reason she wasn't brought on board either, Mr. Souza. So I mean we can go into a file. Maybe we still have that file. We can dig up some old folks that have not again not age wise but old folks that have been applying over the years that
have been applying over the years and taken maybe you could just make some phone call to saying hey we're reposting the job I don't know if you're still interested could you reapply if you know I just know I'm more than willing to help any way I can to do it. Excellent sounds good. Thank you. So there's a motion there's a motion to post for a conservation agent halftime
cost conservation agent uh salary commisserate with qualifications. So move. Second. All those in favor? I carry. Thank you guys. Next one. Gentlemen's request that came in. I think we're just going to hold off on this. I'd like to I'm talking to the town council on this
and I'd ask that it be passed over. Okay. Next item. Sydney, you want to go get Dan? Yes. Thank you. Mr. Santos, Mr. Cammy from college. I'll go by and see him tomorrow. I know
Mr. Cam from all my childhood. Mr. Santos have been in the office a number of times. They were supposed to have done a deal with you that long. Okay, Dan, how's it going? Why don't we take out before we get into
uh sewer and water rates stuff? Do you want to go into the paving requests and the Heartley Street warning site? Let's just go through the stuff that some paving requests. Is that uh the the Heartley one? That was the guy. So, I just kind of went over that.
Yeah. What's going on over there? I actually if a source was going to go in there and actually wanted to pave it, they just called me last week. Um but that road we got to kind of go in there. I got to reshoot all the grades that's got to be regraded or tied into storm drainage or
do something over there. So again, I got to get out there. I told we probably get there and within the next couple weeks I'll get over there and and I'll talk with them guys and I'll shoot all the elevations. Okay. But I'm assuming that road it's really got to be regraded. So it's going to be dug up and and redone
to be done right. We put we put the asphalt in um and it wasn't shot properly in Mr. Santos has some water issues sitting on his property because the road's a bit too high. Right. So, what Dan saying is he's going to go in there, rip that road
right off. Um, Eversource is going to go in once we regrade shooting it for grades and put some drainage in to help out Mr. Santos's yard from flooding out. He'll tie into either a storm drain on N or go into back to some wetlands. I I prefer going
into a storm drain and letting it go there instead of all vacuum swamping on somebody's backyard. I don't know how much water is if it's going to have any back in. But that's your call, not mine. So, but we need to get it done. Yep. Because Mr. Santos has been on my tail. I am a little bit guilty about not
getting back to him, not getting back to him because I talked once and apparently I I don't feel like I should be saying the same thing 10 times. So, and I know y'all busy. It's not your fault, but we we definitely need to go take care of that issue for them. Um especially in
winter time, the way the water sits and freezes, you know, it's not safe for any resident to be out there at the mailbox slip sliding away. So try to bang that out. I know your schedule, but it is a small piece of road. Morningside.
Mr. Chairman, I actually uh was trying to put Morning Side AB on the agenda for signage. Um but in the meantime, I did speak with the same residents in discussing signage. Um, so, um, they brought to my attention, and this was just to let Dan know, um, cuz I
sat down with pretty much every resident on Morning Side in regards to a separate issue, and they've requested that we at least look at it to see if there's something that can be done about the very end of the street. Um, anytime it rains heavy, it floods out. And also that it hasn't been paved in a long
time. Um, I consider it I drove by Morningside every day of my life and I never even thought to drive down it because it's a dead end street where unless you live on it, you're not going to drive down it. Um, but I did want to um relay the residents down there. Their concerns and they're saying there's
definitely getting to the point where there's some some deep ruts and potholes and some drainage stuff going on. Um, and because I technically didn't mean to put it on paving, you didn't know about it. Um, but if you do in your travels happen to go down
there, um, if you could come up with a good idea, maybe put together a plan and take a look at the drainage aspect towards the end of the road where it meets Peekom. Um, just to see if there is a solution. So, it's on Pekkham or the dead end on Peekom right at the end of the
problem. Correct. Yeah. So, flooding flooding basically at the intersection of Morning Side to Peek. Correct. That's where the flooding occurs. But I think what mistake saying I'll go out tomorrow, Dan, if you want to take a ride out. Supposed to rain tomorrow. We'll go look at that road.
I seen it on here. I want I didn't have time today. I was I was with the assistant town accountant trying to deal with water and sewer rates for quite some time and I feel bad she's still here tonight. Um she was trying to do some training and I was like the little birdie saying, "I need this. I need this. I need this. I need this." And I
kind of disrupted her afternoon. So to Miss Velasquez, I apologize for my interference in your day today, but it was very helpful what you did. We'll get to the water and sewer. So we can go out look at the condition of the road, right? Because yes, right now we don't know what it is. Well, you can measure it while we're out there. Reclamation,
milling, we don't know what that's a chip seal road. So we can look at all that, put a number together and bring it back to the board. Okay. Mr. Mr. Chairman, if I may, um because of the initial reason for this, I would ask that when this does come back in front of the board that we also um put
it back on for signage. Okay. Um and I can review what I was trying to get at with that. Um but seeing this is not on the agenda, we'll deal with signage is one of the DPW talk about it. So essentially, uh concern was travel.
Um they've requested some speed limit signs and they've requested some um go slow children signs um with a new building that's going up over there. Um part of our authority is to reduce street speed limits. Um I was going to
recommend to reduce it to 25. Um but that's once again something that we have to do under See I thought I thought all side streets work on the 25. So, we have to we have the ability as a vote of selection to change the speed limits
to 25 or 20 if it's deemed a safety zone under a chapter 90 provision. But by default under chapter 90 based on the street size population, it defaults to 30. Actually, um I said five miles an hour is not that big of a deal, but
sometimes when people see a two, peace of mind tells them to slow down a little bit. Um, but that would actually have to be done by a board vote for us to reduce the speed limit to 25. I did confirm that it is a 30 mph street based on the state law. Um, but it was just something
I was going to bring up in just so we're basically saying right now there is no postage speed limit on that on that street. Correct. So again, two means three, three means four, five means six, right? And when you give me a six, I'm going 80. Right? It happened.
They changed the speed limit in on state highways in the Commonwealth, I don't even know how many decades ago, from 55 to 65 and now everybody drives 80. When it was 55, we were driving 65 70, right? And then they changed it to 65, now everybody's going 75 or 80. So again, I think it's it's something
that a sign each direction, whatever. One here, one down there. I don't know if that's something we could, you know, talk to the police chief or anything about. Um, I know, um, you know, we got to book at the office and, you know, I stop signs, speed limit
signs, they got to kind of be in certain locations and they got to kind of be, um, I know the lawyers have field days with this stuff if it's not in the right spot. And this is just put right height, all this stuff. So, it's a lot to just, you know,
I'm 100% uh, willing to go through the process with it. Um, I did make a promise that I would follow this through at least to find out if there's any things that would hit us as roadblocks with it. Um, but I have no problem chucking go through all the
Hey, just have contact me. That's fine. Perfect. Putting up the easy part. All right, Dan. Rock Street and Matapo Road signage. What's that all about? Okay. The Rock Street I that just came to my that just came to the office last week, I guess.
Okay. Um, I guess somebody was concerned the way that the way it look this has been like that before I got here. So, and it we've never had an issue with it till now, I guess. So, I don't know cuz Bidu comes off of Sloum and it goes out
to Hope Street and that's a oneway coming down. Rock Street is a oneway coming up. So, you kind of can't it's Rock and Vitu are almost straight across from each other. So, you can't come vitu go down Rock. You either got to take a left to go around or even rock you can't
cut through bit to get to slope them. You either got to take a a left on hope or a right on hope. I mean that's the way it's always been. Again I don't know if that's something the board or you know the you're talking about the U coming off of Hope Street, right? It's a U. So Rock
would be going this way. It goes down off of Hope. Yeah. Yeah. And then the little two side streets, right? And you can't go in from one where the titleless property is. Yes. Storage units at Y cuz that's a one way down this way. Yeah. Is that what this is saying? Put a
oneway do not enter on the bottom where the titleless property is. No, the B the R80 is a oneway do not enter on rock right now. So that's saying put another said is a one way going this way and then you got a do not enter but it's a
different street. I don't know if they thought this was the same street or something. Then it would be you'd have one way going into a one way, you know what I mean? Type of thing. But it's a totally different street. So I think that's what the concern is because one's going one way this way and the other one's coming a one way this way. You
come out the hole, though. You got to cross over the hole. So you know, I mean, you can't just go straight across off the rock. There must have been an issue with it back in the day. Again, this was way before my time. I I It's I don't understand where what's being asked of us
on one end. So there's little two little side streets like this. They're maybe 150 ft long if you're lucky. And then rock goes down like this. It runs parallel to Hope. And somewhere in this conversation, it's the people are going down this way
because it's a two-way on the two side streets, but not once you get to Rock, it's a oneway down. So I'm imagining on the bottom street near the storage places, that's a two-way. And right at that corner, you need to put a oneway do not enter veil. So the people that are coming in this way don't go up the one
way. That's the only thing I can envision. Does it need to be does it stay? Does it still need to be a one way? Like I mean somebody probably asked for it like that's what I'm saying little kids running around. It is I will say this. It's a it's a
narrow road and there's houses on both sides of the rock. So it is a little bit maybe that's why it was done in the past. I don't know the history of why people have one ways and not the other road. Anyways, we take a look. Why don't we just take a look at that situation, too? Okay.
All right. Mana poison road stop ahead. You travel a road stop ahead. I'm assuming that's the end of Manapo. Uh, this is again, this is all news to me. I have nobody. I've never had Okay, hold on. We got our uh
There's um you go to the intersection. I This is terrible. I don't know the names of the roads, but they're it comes really quickly into Mad Road. So, there should be a stop ahead silence if someone was telling me. Um, so Halfway Road after the big bend on
Halfway Road. You You could tell me. I don't know. Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yes. I travel on this road every single day. Yeah. I know when to stop. There are some trees on the corner where halfway turns
into Mendel and Matapo that if you're going extremely fast, you're going to have an issue. Um, but knowing what the speed limit is around that corner, I mean, maybe I'm speaking from experience and literally driving through that stop sign every day. I mean, you don't you look you got to
look at it like you you don't drive it every day. That's the way these things. No, no, but that's the way you should look at them is you don't drive it every day. So, somebody coming up to it don't know it's there. Um the only thing usually we have problems like you know like again it would be a bunch of
accidents or a reasoning for it you know um we put them ones up on Lennard even the flashy ones which I'll tell you what since we put them we ain't had no issues no more accidents so but then we're getting ongoing accidents on both sides on Main Street and Middle Road. So, you
know what I mean? That's another option is putting, you know, the flash ones cuz they can see them from far away if if it's an issue. But again, that's something I'd like to talk to the chief or something about if there was issues with accidents and stuff like that or, you know, really think I mean, you say
no, but I mean, you know, really, you got to kind of look like he just he just admitted that he drives through it every day. He drives through it. Do you mind if I show you? Yes, please. on my computer. All right. Right here. That may be a situation too where like Dan said, I
might have to just take my daily daily drive. I think they were talking about right here, like this intersection right here. It comes quick. Okay, we're on the same page. It only comes quick if you're going above the posted speed that
30 [Music] loop around. All right, I think that's what I'll do. Mr. Chairman, I'll uh you go take a look at it. I'm going to actually drive into that intersection without the I got to go to work mode on
and I'll actually pay attention to it. Um I haven't missed the stop sign yet, just so you guys know. But again, that's that's something you don't have to really it's just a stop ahead sign. Take a look at it if you guys can talk about it. I can do that on my way home, Dan. Okay.
Give me a call. You're going to put one of them up. That's not something that you have to really be that it's the official ones that can uh result in tickets that we have to worry about. All right. Now, here we go. The doozy of all doozies.
Um water and sewer rates, but before we do this, Dan, again, um shout out to Kathy. I know today was yesterday was her last day. Yeah. Um sorry for that. Big loss. Yeah. But, you know, at some point we want to talk to you about like your
department and what you think you need. And, you know, there's a there's a slot there. There's money associated with it. And there's way if there's a way that we can give you some additional help, like, you know, technical help and maybe there's something else we do there from an office man, whatever it is. But anyway,
shout out to Kathy. But water and sewer mates, I know Kevin's been involved in this stuff really at the mercy of the city and the veteran. So, you guys All right. So um
the latest we just got actually was from the benefit. So there was an increase of 46 cents on the water and 22 cents on the um sewer. Um I have some papers that Kathy did
earlier in the and she gave us you know different um I don't know if you got that Kevin. Do you? Yeah I gave the board copies. Everybody's got it. So the only thing with that that I noticed is that was based on the current rate of lube not
with the 46 cents and the 22 cent increase on that. So you even you really can't use that as a as a number to go off because that was based on the rates before the increase
before the 46 and the 22 cents. If you look on the top of it, it's based on current week 26 body usage from Becca, which that's basically and again we when we you know I've worked with Kathy on this too, but she does she's been doing it for years. I've been out for a few
years. Um, but prior I I know we always used to budget off of either three year or a fiveyear um patent on it and a lot to do with weather and stuff like that and uh this year was dry so we're definitely
going to have a little more water usage I can see coming forward. Um so that's based on that Kevin I don't know what what you looked at and so like going that 50 cents. That's basically what it's going to be. No, you're going
to have no surplus if we went up just 50 cents cuz you're only really going 4 cents above the the um rate from the city. And the sewer, the sewer again was based on the cover
rate and that went up 22 cents. So again, I mean she went she went on You know this with a 50 cent increase we only had like a th000 for surplus you know I mean on sewer but that would be even less than
that now if you're cutting it I see what's going I mean I was really I'm thankful I got these spreadsheets me too from Jamie Lynn because we didn't have we don't have Kathy to do this right y
um earlier on is normally right we would sit down we take the last three years average everything out and say okay this is what we need to do we help digest the numbers to make sure we have good numbers. But which she did I believe she did that in this Kevin she did all the analysis with the threeyear you know what I mean? So
this what these papers that we got was she definitely did all that analysis. No I understand that but the problem is is the city option number two on water. Let's let's talk water first then with the green box. Right. So option number two is a 40 cent increase but the
city went up 6 cents. Right. Correct. So on 6 cents in deficit even though it looks like you're going to generate 14,000 bucks in surplus and then I took the liberty to run a 50 cent increase which is the green box
with Jamie Lynn our assistant town because I didn't think any of that was suitable for us to do which it hurts. It's going to hurt but we need to do what we need to do to stay whole. We can't have a shortfall, right? And I understand that the line item in the
water budget, the sewer budget, city of Bethford water bill, city of Bethford sewer bills is a floating number, but I think that's when she does the budget and she looks at the previous three years and does a calculation and plus whatever the increase is, she puts in that percentage increase to float
that number up, right? Because of the increase, help with the budget. So, she's got the budget there. Yeah. Well, I'm just saying I the one I got wouldn't she might have done she you think she's got the uh only because the budget the budget's right. Yeah.
See the budget number says estimated billing income. Yeah. And then it floats down below as well. Yeah. So it's lost. I mean I don't cuz when did these rates come in these? Last March. Oh, so they've been in for a while. Okay. So she already had it.
So I'm thinking that because she done she did budget. Okay. Right. That's what she's trying to cover is budget. Correct. So, she anticipated that rate increase when we set budget in June. The March increase is factored into what she put in paid to the city of New Beth and
water bills slash sewer bills for each budget, right? Y. So, I'm thinking she did capture that. Okay. I've never gotten one of these pieces of papers where she's she's been wrong. No. No. But I've been in the past, like I said, we've been we were waiting and waiting waiting to get
budget here though. We we finalized it. This is the budget number right here. Yeah. Right. And it says you can see fiscal year 2025 budget less the 60,000 reserve. Yeah. On the top part. So she's capturing budget in that
increase in paid to city of New Bethford water bills is there. So she anticipated rate increase I would have to imagine at that point. Yeah. A lot of times she'll just put in like, you know, whatever uh 6 or 8% increase on the def and not cuz we will wait for the rate. That's why I'm really
wondering when these rates came in, but they came in back then. So the rates the city of New Befford always send us this rate sheet. They're usually pretty good by March because we pretty much etched that in stone. I think it was in one of the old intermittent agreements that says by March we need these numbers and that was
done from the previous board of public works. um so that we can anticipate what we need to do for budgeting. Right. So your guess is as good as mine. I'm gonna I'm gonna have I can I can you know I still can contact her and call her and ask her just to
make sure. We don't have to vote on this tonight. Correct. Well, that's I mean the billing the billing's coming out next month, right? So if if Sigman won't um as a chairman has a a meeting at 1:00 for the board of selectments scheduled
um to do some RFQ stuff for the police chief assessment center. So under that if we can get back to us we'll put Mr. Chairman water and back on the agenda for Friday at 1:00. We'll have a meeting at 1:00. He's still on for 1:00. Mhm.
I just want to double check and make sure Kevin, you know what I mean? Because it says based on the current rate. So is that rather not vote on something tonight? You can do it on Friday. Yeah. And then get it right. Just because it hurts it hurts where we're going. I know.
And based on what you're saying, it's going to hurt even more. Correct. And I don't want to hurt anybody anymore. Correct. And this is a necessity because basically we're being pinched by the city, right? So I get it. We need to go up and we need to cover our cost. But I'd rather not go up any more than what is projected here,
right? You know what I mean? So, if you can get that dialed in and get back to us, I will. Right. And just say spreadsheets are good. Yeah. Or they're no good. Sounds good. Thank you. Sorry to waste your time.
Just remember, I'll come I'll give you a call tomorrow. see where you're at cuz we'll go look at side and look at all that to get some calcs for the board. But we also got to do hotly, right? Correct. Thank you, sir. Guys, have a good night. You, too. Dan, I'll get in touch with you end of the week once I touch base with the chief and we'll I'll have him
contact you about the signage, too. Perfect. Thank you. Have a good night, guys. Gentlemen, if there's nothing else other than we're going to do a meeting Friday at 1:00 to do some police items, and we'll now do DPW water rates. Um, anything under announcements? I'm sure
you got something. Uh, yes. Just uh uh thank you to uh Andrew Chopper. My annual heck of a job parade, even though it was a complete wash out. I still had a blast hanging out with you guys, throwing candy at people, and uh seeing how many
people were actually outside with tents in their driveway enjoying it and having a good time and rain gear. Like the rain wasn't even there. Um, I'm glad Andrew decided to still go forward with it. I had an excellent time. And, uh, Andrew, keep up the good work. And, uh, Apple
Peach Festival was also a blast on Saturday. Uh, Sunday was a little wet, so I chose not to, uh, spend more than five minutes there, but, um, it seemed like it went pretty well for the weekend. Uh, so, congratulations to them as well. Yeah, kudos to the Chopper family. I know Mike was out there, too, um, with
his son, Andrew. Um, and I'm glad Mr. Hley is the one that acknowledged that he was throwing candy at people. I was throwing candy to people. So if any of you were pegged off the head, that was Mr. Inkley. It was not Mr. Laner or myself. We were throwing at two people.
But neither here or there. Mr. Mr. Chairman, if I could just touch base because I didn't have an opportunity to do it um for the cruise night. It was an incredible night. It was jam-packed. Record number of cars, roughly 180 cars on cruise night. I'd like to put out a a
big thank you um to police department for all their support and their help for the cruise night. Um most importantly fire EMS for their cooperations. EMA department as as always they've always played a crucial role in cruise night. So to all of you folks, thank you very
much for your support and your help. Um it was it was an incredible night. It was a jam-packed night. A lot of people had a great time. We're trying to figure out if that's still going to be the place to do it. I brought it up with the schools. Some people say it's a good idea, not such a good idea because it's been tradition. We can have that
conversation moving forward. But to Sydney Vera, uh, administrative assistant in my office, in our office that helped me do the printing for Matt Lopes to get the word out to everybody ordering the magnets in and designing that for me. Kudos to you, Sydney, for doing that again. Um, and anybody else
that I missed, I I apologize. anybody else that's out here, thank you all very much for an extremely successful 16th anniversary with Cruise Link. It was a huge success. Thank you all. God bless. Last thing I want to say about Apple Peach, what you guys said 10fold, but
also uh appreciate some of our senior or older police officers working details. I think it was really important to have the Kushner patch out there and fonts and capsule. uh thought was really good good to see that really good leadership. So thank you gentlemen for that and uh with that
is there a motion to adjourn. So move second. All those in favor I [Music]