[Music] good afternoon everyone today is Tuesday March 18th 2025 it is 4 p.m this is a meeting of the board of selectmen is there a motion to call the meeting to
order so moved second all those in favor i this meeting will be audio and video recorded please rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of Americ school representative letter of resignation Maurice St amen
says "To all the concerned I have come to the conclusion it's time to retire from the Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School District Committee as a member it has been a rewarding experience and I will remember all of my colleagues and friends I made over the past 16 years i thank you all for giving me the opportunity to serve please
accept my resignation from the district school committee as of April 30th 2025 is there a motion to accept Maurice's letter of resignation with regret so move second all those in favor i
Mr thank you for your service you're welcome thank you for letting me do it that's all I was going to say mr chair I'll make a motion to post a vacancy for 30 days for letters of interest second all those in favor hi
all right all right got more close in ballot language mr chairman um all town departments and relative uh committees have submitted their warrants so um it's time to close them they submitted their articles so it's time to
close the warrant um I move to close the warrant for the annual town meeting scheduled for June 2nd 2025 as to articles submitted from town departments by town offices boards or committees or by petition second all those in favor i
I second part of this ballot language um as you know we have ballot question for this upcoming election in regards to the debt debt exclusion for the school have to approve the language and
Jamie this letter this packet you sent us this has all been run through council this has been run through bond counsel our council and school counsel okay and uh it's been forwarded to us by the
schools so uh as long as it's all right with the town clerk it's good to go good oh if for some reason she doesn't like it can we we can modify this before we submit it
well she's going I think to the printer tomorrow in that case Mr mr chairman I just want to offer a clarification we're going to move forward with submitting it but I think this still has a long way to go uh for
it to be ready for prime time and you know for the um for town meeting i think there's still a great deal of due diligence that needs to take place um on the finances of it um the you know the the drastic need for it um so I'm
willing to go forward with you know at least putting it as a placeholder but I still think we reserve at least I reserve the right to uh form a a more um evolved opinion of it you know up until
the the actual uh April 22nd ballot yeah I'm okay with that i I agree i just This is a two-step process for this one it's not only does it have to go on the ballot it has to go on the warrant and
it has to be approved on the ballot for the debt exclusion and then for the appropriation on the warrant and the long story as well is ultimately this board has final say on
borrowing money in general or spending money and the warrant so we still have our options and I believe the school has two public hearings coming for this along with some other meetings so
we do have some some time and ultimately the work doesn't start until we finally approve it anyways I think I think the Mike Warren another conversation joint meeting with Fincom to discuss more details right i
mean we talked about it a little bit last time but the reality of it is we're this proposal is a 20-year bond in the amount of roughly up to $4.5 million i believe it is 4.2
4.2 million just call it $4 million so I think this this board and the fin have some some conversations to be had right ultimately there is a concern that you're going to borrow for 20 years but what's the equipment longevity of right
correct um I talked about the extended warranty i still haven't got anything back on extended warranties from anyone at least I haven't seen it or the roof or the roof um and do would the town's people want to borrow for 20 years for something that might not last 20 years
that's that's some of the questions I think that have gone unanswered and I think we still need to get those answers so correct you know we can we can do whatever we're doing tonight but this is for a ballot question on the April 22nd 2025 ballot
which would be an override known as a debt exclusion for a period of 20 years so town clerk's here the town clerk is here she came in do you want to have her review this language before we
That would be Miss Lebanon the town clerk thank you good evening hi fam hello hi Manti how's everyone doing good how are you good good um hello i don't see anybody here
from the school correct okay all right so the language that you sent over to me um appears fine to me um is this what the school has decided
this town council bond council and school council sent us okay so my question is I thought that I'd read in Brian Riley's um email about the dollar
amount about not putting the dollar amount in there the for the debt exclusion for the debt exclusion the wording uh the wording doesn't have Oh I'm sorry
you're absolutely right so it would be the ballot the ballot question doesn't have the amount in it so that is correct so I mean that looks fine to me um it seems as though we've gone through all of the channels um we've spoken with
town council with bond council um it it seems to be fine with me mr chairman Mr g I do have a question why would we leave the dollar amount on a ballot question out with people don't know what
what they're voting on if they haven't been informed then they just see it why would you do that what Brian recommended was that we do a um a commu a like an ex explanation is that explanation of it
right right right a community outreach um because we cannot put um when you see a ballot question for the state elections um you'll notice that it'll say yes means this no means that um if
depending on how you vote um you're not allowed to do that with a debt exclusion um because they expect that the town is going to do um right by communicating the information out there effectively to
the town's people so are we sending out a memo to all registered voters in the town of Aushna saying it's 4.2 there are going to be from my understanding two public um evenings or days that are set aside
um to have hold an event for public outreach i don't know if the school is planning anything else i have not had any communication with uh Patrick or the school about And if you look at the
uh language for the article that is subject to change as far as the dollar amount right i know i just figured it would say up to right that's usually how you do it that exclusion up
to 4.2 million or whatever the number may be that's in the uh article i'm just concerned about more people showing up for elections on the ballot and not being informed of what the dollar amount would be right cuz how many people are watching public outreaches are attending public outreaches right what do we have
somewhere around 8,000 registered voters that went through the three councils originally when we put it in the dollar amount was in and the up to like we do borrowing they took it out so you're
telling me Pam that we can't like the town clerk's office a nonpartisan Yeah office couldn't print up a fact sheet or like this i I agree with Mr gasper there's got to be some level of transparency oh absolutely i I agree
wholeheartedly um yes a fact sheet could be sent um the one thing we have to be very careful about um and we did run into a situation where a memo was sent out from the
school committee uh or from the superintendent's office um that was it was an ethics violation uh because they had notified um some individuals that um of the debt
exclusion so we have to be very careful it's a it's a fine line that we walk i don't want to tell people which way to vote i just want them to be informed of what that article means at the ballot right i think that's the importance of and and a
fact sheet is you know that is the way to go definitely um to get that information out there okay guess we need to start working on that because there's not much time right
and just just for a little bit of peace of mind the 4.2 is already reduced to 3.7 with the grant that they did get from the state the green is that the green communities it's a decarbonization
grant half million dollars okay all right so Mr kelly if you could talk to Patrick just to have them put together as much information as possible this way we can get it around to the community and we'll also have to get a clear
timeline of all their public information sessions as well any joint meetings and we'll just have to make sure that everybody's aware posted everywhere we possibly can yeah Kim I would ask I would ask
that you try to figure out the best way that we can post it on our social media page right facebook page whatever it is our town web page whatever it may be and have it bang right there right um I can work with Sydney sydney from your office does handle the social media portion of
it um but we can certainly also put it on the website as a as news and announcements i just Mr kelly you got to make sure before our administrative assistant post anything on social media it's proper that's what I'm saying about you Miss
Leavon is to make sure that the language is is proper before we post something i just don't want our administrative assistant posting things trying to do the right thing and then uhoh we're in trouble right what my recommendation would be is whatever
um is decided is going to go out to the public um you know if it's a sheet of paper that we actually include that in the post so everyone's getting the same information
um versus um you know trying to summarize something and missing some real important points okay very good okay so um my question to you is uh because I have to go to print tomorrow
for the the ballot so will you be voting this this evening this question because I can't change that verbiage after I submit it you can't change it after we voted well
exactly right yes yes absolutely it It Mr kelly it does it says including I know it says but not limited to air environmental environment quality and decarbonization improvements but it it's I think there's like a million dollars
of that going to the envelope of the building so does that need to be included in the article for them to spend whatever amount it was allocated to the envelope of the building now that I just read it
the debt exclusion ballot question language all of that information was given to the three sets of councils and this is the language they came out with as long as all three of those people were informed a million roughly a
million dollars was going towards the building envelope because it does not talk about that is but are energy efficient efficiency improvements is that like a generic term that would encompass it could that I know what you're saying though they had it's the
first time I'm seeing this article the more specifics they had well as you can see came from council this morning the energy services services contract from the man the company that
they put this together with does list that in their scope of services so if this is approved this way and we enter in a energy service contract with the company that would pretty much seal that up I
would think we hope there's multiple steps that have to be taken after this one that's fine worst case it comes to find out but this says but not limited to as well right
there are a lot of questions that yet have been answered i have my lawyer how today so I can't answer those questions i left that one at home [Music] this is what uh Mr riley does he's from
KP yeah he went to law school with me sorry to hear that for Mr riley so I'm glad he's all pining rather than me all right so is there a motion to
include the following question as reviewed and approved by council on the April 22nd 2025 town election ballot debt exclusion ballot question shall the town of Mushnet be allowed to exempt from the provisions of proposition two and one half so-called the amounts required to pay for the bonds issued in
order to pay cost of energy efficiency improvements including but not limited to air quality air environment quality and decarbonization improvements to be made pursuant to an energy services contract including the payment of costs incidental or related related there
too so move second all those in favor I Thank you now that I have um the confirmation on that I will um be sending over the warrant for your next meeting for you to approve and that'll
have all of the candidates um the positions for the election okay are there any contested are they all uncontested races they're all Yes they're all uncontested i I actually con contemplated coming to you and
petitioning you to reduce the hours of the election where there are no contend uh contentious races at all um but with the ballot I feel for the school it is
just that we do the the hours of the 8 to 6 which would be unusual makes sense okay so and anyone that's not going to be around because that is going to be um
school vacation uh I do want to reach out to everyone and say get a vote by mail ballot um or an absentee ballot um if they want to vote for for this either way um it's going to be important that
they get to my office um before the deadline um how early can you get an absentee ballot um you can request an absentee ballot now um once they come in once the ballots are printed and we
receive them um and we record them then people can come in and vote in the office absentee um other than that it would be the vote by mail so if people are going to be home and they just choose not to go to the polls on
election day that's not an absentee ballot an absentee ballot is only um if someone has been admitted to a healthc care facility um if it is considered a religious holiday on the day of the election or you're going to
be out of the Commonwealth um other than that um you would have to vote by mail which is um the new the new one that was instituted you ask for flight tickets or transportation no we don't that everyone
is signing under penalties of perjury okay and that's on a Tuesday that is on a Tuesday yes april 22nd it's a And it's also holiday it's the day after yes yes
but at least we're on a Tuesday now yes yes we're consistent with all of the other elections thankfully correct perfect yes all right all right our next meeting will probably be on the 1st just to give you a heads up april 1st okay
i'll be pulling I actually have the warrant already um I was just waiting for this verbiage so you'll probably have that in your office tomorrow okay do you need that electronically just um this here no um no that's okay
because you you sent it to me in the email i'll take care of them yeah but thank you perfect anything else nope okay thank you thank you Miss Leone um I also see that Aaron is here in the school um for Old Colony did you need me
to stay for that no okay all right thank you thank you Bab good morning [Music] who's to kill in terms of the article I'm going to ask off on the article because I have a couple more questions um and I just want to speak to council myself as well um or we can address it
at next meeting that's all right uh you can uh as long as it's printed right yeah put it before the warrants permit cuz that's warrant language not uh ballot
language all right buzzers Bay wershed ride authorization um Buzzers Bay is doing their annual watershed ride this is something that they do every year generally you see a map in here um along
with sections of where they'll be riding just a reminder that they do not close the road see how much they actually see i'm tired just looking at the map yeah it's a pretty long ride um but it does pass through a
little section of our town um so we have to authorize it um Mr jim and I'll make a motion to approve the 19th annual watershed ride um as long as the police chief signs off he signed off on it this
morning we should be good okay second all those in favor i senior veteran job fair uh Mr kelly Mr mr chairman uh the staff has been looking uh at various
uh ways to mitigate the potential tax increases that are coming down uh from these various debt exclusions especially for two groups
veterans and seniors and uh the board has uh suggested this to various staff members they've gotten together uh we are looking for the board to
investigate a veterans tax workoff program similar to the senior tax workoff program as well as the hero's act and uh to also look at some of the
exemptions that are now offered and once the board determines which ways they want to go the staff would do in effect a job fair down at the
COA with the veterans agent COA director the assessor and other members of the staff and invite the public in to tell them exactly what's available to them uh
especially if these tax increases go into the thousands for some homes so this isformational right now but we uh would
like some direction from the board yeah yes i I don't have any problems with veteran workoff program like the senior and the youth workoff program we've implemented it's been great success um I think we I need a little more time to digest with the uh Mr fish
our veterans agent on the Heroes Act but I do know veterans get some uh some abatements already so I'd like to just see what the effect of all of those are but you know our veterans are our veterans right i'm always there to
support veterans 100% we are averaging since this board put in the senior work program and we're uh funding it through free cash we're averaging year to year
just about half of a little uh more than half is being used and it goes back into free cash so uh there is money there also to fold
the appropriation in for the veterans excellent absolutely so Jim Stronger sort of on this subject um it asks that Mr kelly um spin up a couple job descriptions for
you know in the selectman's office specifically you know what would be available but also I've been in touch with um John Quinn who's the former state rep from Dartmouth who now runs the UMass Dartmouth Law School in their public policy uh department and they've
got an internship program that they're trying to you know that they uh present to municipalities ities so I think as we're looking at how we're going to be carrying out our day-to-day functions and you know with budgetary constraints and this could be one other creative way
to to look at it that if we can have you know create an internship opportunity um whether it's in our finance department or the selectman's office or any of our municipal boards um you know to do research or whatever that might be I
think it could be a good opportunity also as we say like to grow a bench right like that's one thing that we need to do is constantly have um people in the rotation we've done that with old colony with our throughout the co-op program and that's been incredibly
successful and um you know I think that we can build that out at the higher ed level as well absolutely there would be a time issue in this to make sure because the focus of this
would be on helping the seniors and the veterans and this big tax increase that's potentially coming and so there would be a time frame for the board to will be coming fairly quickly
uh as it works its way through ballots and town meeting to uh because we'll have to put some articles on town meeting yep to especially the acceptance of the
veterans workoff program which you haven't accepted yet right uh acceptance of that and then the funding of it i think the veterans work off program is is as far as I'm concerned get the
article done right now i don't think there's any hold up on that agreed yeah put it together all right get it approved um and Mr fish did put together some information on the Heroes
Act for me awesome but it did come in after the agenda was set so I wasn't able to bring it up today but I told him I'd share it with you guys and and get it over but he did uh put together some options for us all
right west Island Beach passes let's see so I believe they increased it to 150 total so the only there's some mixed signals inside this packet it says something about a lottery i don't
remember what we did last year versus what we're doing this year but I've heard from a number of our constituents saying you know how can I be included without the same 100 people getting beach passes from last year so I don't know what this board wants to do but I
think in in to hold up some level of fairness to the uh community residents is maybe if you got one last year you would be put on hold and then see if the 150 people if we have that list of the 100 from the previous year and if
they're not filled then we lottery those other hundred into the something like that so chairman can I I'd like to bring Sydney Riveros into this conversation um she's done a lot of work on this um so maybe Sydney I don't know if you want to go up to the podium but I don't want to put you on the spot but I also want to
give you some some shot um on this and talked about a lottery um you know and a couple other concepts that we're trying to get through the uh over the finish line yes so I've been reaching out to the BPW in Fair Haven i've been speaking with Becky over there and so she told me
that the town um the town of Fair Haven and the BPW will be giving out 150 passes this year instead of 100 from last year and it's pretty much up to our discretion how we distribute them they won't be distributing them they've invoiced us for 150 passes already upon
your approval so if that doesn't go through then we won't be paying it but um that's what we have offered to us so so can you tell us about the lottery that you're trying to create and work work with so I put together a form an online form so if people want to be
submitted into lottery they can do that there or if they don't have access to a computer or access to be able to submit the form they can come in person and we'd be able to do a simulator to pretty much have a spinner and spin the wheel and see who is able to win that way
that's just an idea as well um and also they'll be discussing at the end of this month um possibly giving us some passes that we can use as transferable passes that the town would have to purchase that we could use the library potentially yeah a lot of people reached
out to me about about that if there could be some kind of community pass and I know our library already does stuff like that for museums and and various other free passes for other things and I I I think that'd be nice for even the people that don't win the lottery so to
speak actually can still have an opportunity to get it and I was reading through this and having a level of control where you know where the pass is and you can make sure you get it back is is pretty paramount on that because you don't want somebody to borrow the pass for the entire summer exactly
so we'll have to work out the kinks and see what works best but um I gave an example of how I think it would work really well just to have like a three-way ticket stub type of system to show that this is the a copy for the library and then the remaining would go to the resident who's borrowing it but
at the end of the day it is up to what you decide um so I'm happy to speak with the BPW and communicate anything as well too yeah LA last year it was it was big because it was we didn't have much time to do it and it was pretty much first come first serve and there was a lot of
people that were upset with it because they couldn't get out of work or get to the BPW in time so I can see exactly where you're coming from you know a lot of people left work and tried to get there in time and it was sold out so there was a lot of back and forth with
this um and of course just like with everything else no matter what you're never going to make everybody happy but I think if we have When are they releasing the passes it's up to us to accept it the offer is there for us right we just have to vote to Nobody's going nobody's going to the beach in the next couple months and then what we
would do is you know you you'd have like a registration period you know like from next date to whatever and then that close that's closed and then what we would do we could do actually kind of have some fun with it you know we could do run the simulator before selectman's
meeting so it's transparent it's on TV and this way you know if Bob Hley ends up with seven of them we know it's all above board and um you know you know it's a lie it's all above board you'll know it's a lie because I don't go to the show so anyway that that's one thing you know she's in a perfectly well enough to say you want to be eligible
you got to go to town meeting or you got to go well that might be a little too heavy-handed you know so it's not a bad idea though i was testing out the simulator today and you did win Bob you're the first winner so good job was I the only name in it yeah you were i just think it I think it's nice on the on behalf of the town of Haven to
recognize how much money um we let out golf passes right and then they're up in the ante now and because the offset was dramatic right so they're trying to be kind and saying you know what that was the cost to Kushner we'll up the Annie a little bit and make it a little bit fairer and we'll just keep going at some
point they're going to say we can't take any more and we'll have to just have golf say this is the cut off whatever to offset the cost right because we're kind of the extra 50 it's pretty much a wash yeah so yeah that's that's what I'm saying i think it was kind of nice that they even did that recognize that um additional cost that we exor from our
side from golf so we can have that conversation and I come in and see you i'm here all the time sydney we can talk about how this will work okay so maybe what we do is we just put this on the April the next meetings agenda because then we'll know about the transferable
pass business um you know and we'll have a full package so thank you Sydney for your great work one more question if you don't mind um does this just for clarification for me you said they already invoiced us or told us these are yours does that mean that the residents
that do win would pick them up here instead of Fair Haven yes they would so we can figure out how we can have people pick them up okay um but I think that's so is this more like if we have 300 people we give a time a timeline right 30 days as Mr i think Mr long alluded to
and if we have 300 people it's almost like just we're going to rip off tabs with everybody's name chuck it in the hat basically and then reach in the hat and pull it out and until we get to 150 and say try again next year for 150 that didn't get it yeah I I would say so similar to that
yes okay and then the the little past thing that you're talking about how how would like you said you wanted to hold five of them right so how does that five get held like what do you he's talking about something about the library and I read something in here about I'm I'm a little confused with that like if one weekend I want to go I just show up at
the library and see if there's a beach pass available and I can just go one day on that weekend and then I have to bring it back to the library and say "Here you go it's I went my one day and leave it now somebody else can go and use that same one again." Yes and so the like when you get a transferable pass you'll
get a physical pass from Fair Haven BPW but not that I don't trust people but I would hate to see the one person that ruins it for everyone and keeps the pass and pass and steals it so I don't believe that they should ever tangibly have the pass as someone who's using it
instead you'll get a one-day temporary pass from the library that expires at the end of the day does that make sense so you'll just get a piece of paper that end throw it away yeah beautiful yep that's just so you know sounds good um the town of Fair Haven offers that
transferable pass to their residents who have um rentals so like if you have a property on West Island or Fair Haven that you rent out like an Airbnb and you want your renter to be able to go to the beach that trans they have that transferable pass it is more money it's
$200 it's more money than the regular pass but I think we can make up for that just by upcharging you know what we're gonna uh sell the you know the pass to so we won't be losing any money and it creates some additional flexibility for our so I
think it it should be so those so those five passes that's good for the whole season right yes so only one pass because you showed as like six different things but that was just given example of like that one day thing so those five passes
available every I guess every day out of the seven days a week some people want to go to the beach on Monday through Friday right on just Saturday and Sunday right i would say that they should for fairness for everyone they should be able to go to the library each day that they want to use the pass right just so
it's a fair chance that people don't hog the pass either at that point well that's that's something we need to get through is it's only good for one day so if I go down and get my pass and I say I want to go to my family on Monday I just that's it it's good for Monday yep tuesday they could reissue that pass to
another resident yes right and that those five would stay active throughout the whole system yes right okay cool sounds good so I think that because I did write this memo a little while ago and I did speak with the PB BPW this morning about it as well if we would be
giving or selling the 150 passes in total not the 145 and then we'd be purchasing an additional two to five passes that are the $200 mark that are transferable so it would be fine that's fine so just for clarification that's good one more question yes um did Fair
Haven keep track of the names of all the people that ended up with passes last year i believe so they do i can double check just for some fairness too if you can see if they have a list of those names and this way when we decide which way we want to move forward we have all
the options possible so if like Mr gasper said if you got one last year it's time to let somebody else have a a chance at it and this way at least we can know if they're registering this person got it we can be forthcoming and say "Listen we'll put you in a second chance if we don't get all the way
through this then we can enter you." So this way people that didn't get a chance last year can have a fair shot at it too okay makes sense and just to clarify the discounted ones because I know we did have residents that paid the full price correct discounted ones yeah just the discount the first 100 discount ones right perfect cool all right thank you
thank you Sydney all right ambulance Bill of Baker keep piling well we do this fairly often um not that often i don't want to make it seem worse than it is but
um I'm assuming this is typical like we do every year um yeah this is a typical request um this actually comes from our billing company Comstar um we have several agreements with Medicare Medicaid and the the government um with respect to our ambulance billing as a
condition of our contract with Medicare um any unpaid portion from Medicare of these ambulance bills cannot be sent to any other type of collection it has to be written off um so that's just what these two uh bills are mr chairman I'll move to approve an abatement for the
ambulance run number 23-78319 in the amount of $1,910.32 and I'll make a motion to approve the abatement for the ambulance run number 24-153748 in the amount of $1,72320 second all those in favor i I
Thank you gentlemen thank you Chief thank you Chief all right all right Mr pansky you are up thank you sorry did you knock it out did it knock out oh sorry i don't know if I'm I hit it by accident or something i don't
think so can you tap the screen see if it will work I think try unplugging and replugging it back in something there we go so good afternoon and thank you uh for having us first I want to echo the
sentiments and thank um Maurice for his 16 years of service he headed our budget subcommittee for many years probably up until last year probably close to 10 years I think and has been a wonderful part of our
community so thank you i want to thank the select board for their recent recognition of our basketball team as well um we appreciate that we typically start with our mission and our mission is to prepare and support students for the global demands of society and the workforce through rigorous vocational technical and
academic courses this foundation is established within a safe environment that values students interests needs and diversity fostering responsible productive citizens in our community sarah Griffith is our business manager she's typically with me she sends her regrets she's under the
weather with whatever's going around um I'll jump right in these are just some application trends we like to share every year it shows you the total of 2025 um applications at 79 and it shows you the trends starting
dating all the way back to 2018 you can see um in this current year the total number of students that were accepted as of March 3rd which was just recently was a total of 60 students from an application pool of 79 there's a lot
happening in vocational education for those who might not be informed right now at the state level there's uh there are some regulations that have been put out that are proposing a lottery instead of a merit-based admission system and so docket 4510 uh was released yesterday
and it's a motion to um ask them to pause that thought and to reconsider the approach i think that it could be detrimental to a lot of um different facets of what we do and we'll see where that goes uh but this could it could tell a very different story at a later
point um about vocational education uh the fiscal implications uh of our current budget uh our long-term debt of over $500,000 was retired in the uh FY26 budget which is good news and a vocational instructor was cut uh a
request for a co-op coordinator in the amount of $110,000 was also cut from the FY26 request following a February 24th meeting with our member towns uh during that meeting we heard from a number of our towns about the difficulties they've had um on a financial level and so as a
result of that these changes were made um our FY26 budget consists of a 4.12% increase of which 2.93% is attributed to insurance increases we'll be looking at um our insurance uh to see if there's a
better plan um that has a better fiscal impact on the district but that takes some time it's not something we could do overnight um our insurance increases were approximately 19% for our active and 22% for retirees this year uh those
are high we had inflation associated with supply lines and energy and a 3% cola in accordance with negotiated contracts uh the budget preparation begins with the release of the governor's budget for those who aren't familiar I know this is televised so I
just like to share it with our communities as well i do know that our uh select board is familiar the bud the governor's recommendations were released earlier this year and Old Colony did not see major increases in chapter 70 funding we have shared our recommendations as part of a draft
budget and like I said prior met with representatives from our member towns on February 24th uh to seek insight relative to the preliminary draft budget as a result of that meeting the significant adjustments in front of you were made uh we're mindful of the challenges faced by our member towns and
appreciate the opportunity to work collaboratively with you we do do a significant amount of research when we uh create our budget we try to gain a a strong understanding of what our member towns are doing and we try to make sure
that we uh react accordingly um that's a quick overview uh we have a line by line breakdown of the budget for you uh and that um has been handed out to everybody if there are questions I'd be more than happy to answer questions to the best of
my ability mr jim if I could just start with one quick question what are you over net minimum net school spending uh let me pull my Looks like we're at 1,440688
[Music] is that for the that's for this current that's the additional contribution for the current for the proposed budget put a proposed budget in totality because I was looking at some information it looked like fiscal year
24 was 1,048$ 859 over required net school spending then it looks like what we budgeted in 25 was 12,869421 and the state's requirement was 11,93436 so that would be
1,775,995 over net school spending that's why I asked that question yeah I I apologize i'm reading from the paper I have right in front of me um that's fine roughly 1.5 right yeah so you give us the
breakdown sheet your draft membership talent assessments and fiscal year 2025 assessments kushnet's looking at 2,89640
correct and the state is saying I believe the next line down fiscal year 2025 minimum contribution the state saying Kushner needs to spend 2,1234.99 that's correct so on the next sheet you had presented
as it says fiscal year 26 budget rollup report yes and then you have like all the big line items which I couldn't make sense of looking at your budget and trying to figure out what gets bundled into each like district leadership and admin and all that stuff
so the I did the math on each line item and your budget's up 1,123,373 that's really what your budget's up okay and the only reason why it's showing an increase of $593,740 which I would commend you if
that's really what your increase was but the increase is really 1,123,373 because the debt service was reduced by $529,633 however that debt service was agreed upon by municipalities for a certain period of time correct right
and then what essentially what we've done now is we've just kept that for in perpetuity well that's that that was not kept in perpetuity this year it was retired to your point and that was a lifesaver had
it not been retired we would have been up at about 9% so the budget is still up 1,123 373 and again that difference in in your
debt service which is 529,633 which was reduced that's now being kept in perpetuity because now it's used for regular budgetary purposes not debt service anymore which should have retired this year the debt the debt service was taken out
of the budget to your point that's right it it was taken out as debt service it's put back in as budgetary items so it's permanently built into your budget well if you look at where our increases fall be it insurance what it may be yeah I've done
all that Matt too i'm just I'm just making a point that the budget is not up 593,740 which it appears to be based on this worksheet the budget is truly up 1,123373 so you're right if we didn't
have that debt service retiring it would it would wipe us out right it's it's over half a million dollars but you did take that service theoretically you took that service and you built it into the budget no we took debt we did not reallocate for the purpose of
backfilling debt services if that's what you're saying no okay let me put it Let me put it a little bit different perspective o Colony's budget is up 1,123,373 that is correct right yeah we have we were at uh last year we were
at 14406298 this year we're at 15038 sorry say those two numbers again the two 2025 revised budget is 1446298 this year's first draft is at
15,38 that's that's fine but if you back out the numbers from 25 to 26 the budget's up 1,123 373 that's your actual increase in your budget it's only because you got rid of the debt service it looks smaller from a
budget perspective i hear what you're saying i hear So what my point my point is going to be is you got to really look at that a little bit better right and you said you're a million five or whatever it is i come up with a little bit higher number over required net school spending
you're spending at a 4 grade school 8th through 12 and I understand it's a vocational school but you're not buying equipment every year that's for sure and the town spending as a whole including a K through 8 and including I think it's
additional 200 high school students in the school department's budget right so we're capturing another 200 high school students in our local public schools budget that we're paying for and the town's budget goes up roughly 1.3 so your budget just from 8th grade to 12th
grade is going up equivalently the same amount as a whole town's budget's going up that's insane to me that's that's that's ludicrous and I think if you talk to the majority of people out there in in the private sector or the public sector wherever they are they would say
that sounds a little bit crazy running a budget a million to over year-over-year when a town's basically doing the same thing and that's including public safety health all our fixed costs and our K through 8 school with an additional 200
roughly 200 students going to Faven and New Buffett High Captured in that school dependence budget that's I don't understand how you're spending let's just call it over a million dollars easily over a million dollars year-over-year when we're
spending roughly that as a whole town year over year i hear what you're saying i think that what we're looking at is the major costs associated with our increases are based in insurance when you when you look at when you look
at the the big bubble of this budget it has to do with cola and insurance and in terms of where we've negotiated and what we've done to try and keep numbers at a reasonable level and we continue to do so and I share your concerns trust me when I tell you
but we negotiated a 333 with our teachers administration did as well yeah which we could argue is is high for administration especially with some of the salaries and and where they're at right i noticed inside Well you want to just jump to that that conversation real
quick is you jump inside your budget and I noticed that um you know business administrators superintendents and things of the like they all got 3% but they're very high salaries right so and I'm not going to name names but let's just say arbitrarily speaking and I
won't use anybody identified inside of this budget line item um somebody at $165,000 getting a 3% raise that's a $5,000 raise right and then I look down this little list over here and I see you got salary school secretary is zero that
salary is $40,000 right and I think there's a few other ones in here that are zeroed out we're in negotiations for those right now so those have not been determined yet so my point is 3% for somebody
making $40,000 versus 3% of somebody making $165,000 is huge you could give four people that $40,000 a 3% raise and it's only going to equal one raise for one person make it 165 or 3% so we can't
continue this path of the high earners the highest earners getting the same 3% just because we gave it to a school teacher that's maybe 70 or $80,000 they got a 3% so we say let's just give everybody a 3% too because that disparity we talked about this years ago
as a community and there was something going on with the state where you know equitable and all that stuff and saying we got to we got to change that you can't have those big differences in pay ranges but we're still on that same track where we just keep letting it inflate and that disparity is growing greater and greater by that percentage
right so what makes somebody think that they should get a $5,000 raise and then the person at the lower end of the spectrum should only get a $1,200 raise would you think it'd be fair to say that you might want to look at that for dollar terms instead of just looking at as percentage terms because yeah it
sounds great when you use a percentage term i only got 3% like the other person did but we don't talk about the dollar consequence right we actually do with with all due respect when we negotiate we look at norms and we look at surrounding districts and we pull comps
and we actually look at where we fall in terms of those comps we highlight on a spreadsheet means medians and modes and we identify whether we're falling in the middle somewhere near the bottom up toward the top and I can tell you with
absolute confidence that we do not fall near the top in any of those categories and that adjustment made so I only offer that because I agree with you and I do think we should be looking I can understand your perspective and the school committee's perspective when you
look at that you want you want to be um competitive right to a degree right correct we agree with you you you you have to be competitive to a degree right but it doesn't mean that somebody at 165 should just go "Yeah I'm taking that 3% raise to get my 5,000 when you
just talked about one layoff or two layoffs or whatever it may be." So if people would stop forgoing raises and say "You know what i'm already making enough money maybe I don't need to take that raise." And you instead of doing that layoff right for an example I I mean that's that's where we're at i mean
and there are nuition of insanity is just because other people from other towns and I've said this a number of times in this community just because some somebody in another town wants to pay somebody $200,000 go right ahead that doesn't mean we're going to do that right right
and if everybody keeps playing that game where are we at right sure that's not leadership right no I think we do a very good job of identifying where norms are i think we do a very good job i've never done a comparison with your school versus what you pay versus you know I
think it's was it uh Plymouth Bristol Plymouth Bristol i would encourage you to take a deeper look at those and vote and things i'm not I'm not saying there's not a disparity right i just think that there's got to be that conscience when we're in these budget constraints i will tell you uh Selectman
Gasper with all due respect if folks were to take a deeper look at those those numbers I think they would be more than celebratory in their response it's it but it doesn't again I'll go back to what I'll say is just because somebody's being dumb somewhere else doesn't mean I'm going to be dumb here right and just
because everybody keeps doing the definition of insanity doesn't mean it's going to work for us this is we should be really talking about sustainability we echo your conversation is we're not sustainable anymore I think we can all acknowledge that as adults right where we've gone
where government has gone just say me because I'm I'm I'm usually be very financially prudent when I'm making financial decisions right but where the government is gone is beyond me public sector private sector I mean it's just ludicrous right and I spoke about this
where the president of the United States right he gets paid 400k what about 50k in stipens for li stuff right the president of the United States of America gets paid $450,000 a year let's call it that okay to run a country and we have town
administrative superintendent making in little dinky towns like this 200 grand does anybody think that makes any sense that's my question so I will tell you with the chair of our budget subcommittee sitting next to me and the former chair of our budget subcommittee
sitting next to her and the chair of our negotiating subcommittee sitting with me that these are the exact not anymore the exact conversations that we have we echo your sentiments and we are conservative in the work that we do
okay so Mr chairman if you don't mind I just I won't go through and I did do all the math from your budgets Mr palansky and I've seen all your changes i do have a question about one of your moves you you move from information I guess it
says MGT technology line item I think is 1450 and it was zeroed out so I circled it but then I noticed you moved that to page eight so that line item was a negative
64039 and then you move that salary what I noticed once I got further through you move that salary to page 8 and you also added a position so you talk terms of talking point up here of you know whatever position you eliminated in a
tough fiscal year like we're in right now it's not the time to be adding positions you made a cut now you're adding a position so you just that that technology coordinator ended up over here it was a move from page two and then you added a $45,000 salary and that budget line item actually increased
$126,545 which is huge so when you say when you look at these budgets you can't do anymore I I I don't I don't think that's true i don't know what the what the need is of that added assistant position right now when you say you made cuts and I do notice that
your insurance line items went up 311,980 and then your retiree health insurance went up 110,000 so I see that that's a a big chunk um of the money and I think for the most part for the rest of your budgets you've
done a really good job and I and I know and I know health insurance you know which you know I guess maybe you should have been looking at that a little bit further back but um to understand s you know insurance increase Mr kelly does it on behalf of the town and he usually has
a pretty good inkling ahead of time way ahead of time of what they're talking about from the insurance group right saying you know hey you know he'll usually come into us like everybody does and and he'll give us the spiel 15% and then when it comes in at 10 or 12% we
look like heroes cuz it only went up 10 or 12% but when I say only went up 10 or 12% that's still a couple hundred,000 right it's a big nut right and it hurts fixed costs are killing us quite honestly so that's why I keep when I
talk about sustainability same deal with health insurance right pensions retirement system killing us when do we say we can't continue funding that instead of just saying
whatever it takes i I don't know that answer sure beyond my pay grade I guess for now so the tech director uh was moved simply because of the function and where it falls in the budget the position cut but it was not the position cut just so you know it was moved to a
different line i see and then the tech assistant was a new position created to assist our technology director who single-handedly um deals with the entire district so that is a new position at $45,000 created to assist the tech director 100%
probably long overdue to be quite honest given the work that that person does so I'm just saying because I noticed that budget went down 64 and then this one went up 126 right so it's a double the cut was a vocational teaching staff member what's that the cut made from the
budget was 98,000 and change and it was a member of the vocational teaching staff i'm sorry for that person we are We are I mean our schools made cuts we made cuts it hurts um yep can you just
talk about the transportation cuz you got a bunch of different transportation lines in here as well right you got one transportation athletic $90,000 and then you have one in here for transportation field trips and events $30,000 up from
20 yeah so what's the deal with all these multitudes of transportation sure so there's transportation that comes in many forms there's transportation for athletics that's kept as a separate line we have transportation for field trips when students are offsite uh for
respective uh transportation needs whatever they may be regarding a field trip if they're going to council on aging if they're going to um a certain exhibit somewhere um if they're doing work in a certain town um those costs
are written into our transportation um and then we have a regular transportation chapter 71 anticipated transportation so your salary co-op and emissions coordinator seems to be a new position
as well zero line items 20 grand um that was taken we had originally identified the position of a co-op coordinator our vocational coordinator currently does the work of two administrators if you look at other districts of similar size many have a vocational coordinator and a
co-op coordinator we thought it would make sense to create a co-op coordinator when we had our February 24th budget we took that off the table and we created a stipen for someone who will be able to assist in some capacity but it will not be a full-time co-op coordinator it just did not seem like the timing was right
so if we can get back to the why you said I do have a question though while we're on that subject just just briefly that co-op program how many jobs are placed like how do you know off hand I've seen some of the over 50% of our juniors and
seniors go out on co-op um and they have the opportunity to earn while they learn they bring in close to a half a million dollars that was the number I was looking for what was the comment you just made able to earn while they earn so what was the comment that you just made about
bringing in the half a million dollars they bring they earn for themselves oh oh yeah well that program's made going I mean I'm a graduate of OK right from You're familiar i mean I was the first junior in my class to go up yeah i'll brag a little bit right but it's nothing different than what's going on 30 34
years ago so it's it's like it's not something I was explaining i asked the question it's a good day it's not something new it's we've been doing this colony's done this for since it's open yes and it's grown dramatically i I'm I'm very proud of where we brought it um it's grown dramatically
it's great that the students get to go out of learn different aspects of that shop out in the real world right before they actually land in the real world right it gives them a little bit of an eye open it also gives them a flavor of maybe as my middle brother did maybe
this isn't for me right he was he also went through the same shop machine shop as all three of us boys went through right my brother's still in it as you know he's he receives a lot of co-op students from old colony for his shop right acu dynamics is the name of that company and then my middle brother was
like yeah you know what the same for me he went off to college right so you know some people I think that's why co-op's a great thing for students right is to figure out what do they want you know they might be in high school saying yeah this is what I want to do and then they
get out it's a little bit too late but at least if you put them in the real working world they can refocus in their senior year and say "Maybe this you know I'm going to start not worrying about doing that anymore." They'll still do the co-op because they want to earn a paycheck right instead of going to school for two weeks but it won't end up in full-time jobs it gives them a better
plan to go to college right so one thing on this sheet that you always give us every year about our percentage you know the total fiscal budget 15 million bucks and then you give us a cherry sheet what the states lacking and giving us
right the one thing I noticed about this sheet from prior years is transportation fund offset there is zero dollars there and last year there was $350,000 why uh what page are you on i'm on the sheet
that you always give us Aaron it looks It looks like that assessment Aaron it looks like I'm looking at it so there's nothing in there and we always have money there and we know we always get reimbursed for transportation and we know that you like
to budget you know only a certain percentage of your reimbursement so why cuz that number that if that number was 350 I forget what it was the year before that call it 200 or whatever that number was why isn't there a number in that this year
where did that money go that money's always there always has been there and this year there's zero dollars i'm not I'll have to ask Sarah that question i'm looking at this because you're referring that would dramatically reduce the assessments right if you used a decent enough number
i'll give you an example if you So we're 35% right call us 33% if you use 300,000 350 last year should it be too much below that number that would reduce our assessment by $100,000 i'm seeing this where you're referring to right now on the bottom and I'll have to ask her what
that's about i'll find out for you so there's always money there i got history of these reports right right sure and we are we all know what's your transportation a million and change um yeah that's accurate your your
transportation total cost is 1.142 right total cost of transportation and your reimbursement rate is very good according to the state um I've done that analysis analysis for many years some years you get 82% some years you get
96% so and we talked about this last time right so where's that money go when you don't I think that's transportation's a revolving Chapter 71 transportation would be revolved in that so that's fine but that part of goal is
somewhere right and that can only be used for transportation to your point yes but your transportation costs are saying what it is so where's that money going right there's there's leftover every year Aaron you're getting reimbursed and that re you're charging the town a million let's just use simple
math you're charging the towns a million you're getting reimbured 750 about a 75% reimbursement rate you're getting 750,000 the following year back but you're still charging the same amount next year where's that quart of a million dollars going it can't just keep getting stuffed into a revolving account
no it's carried over as an offset i think that's I think I think you usually plug a a number into this i'll have to ask her again that blank line item I think that's where you carry that percentage over year over year from reimbursement i will find out from her
if that's what wrong with that line because you can't just carry and keep it in a revolving account sure right so how many revolving accounts do you have at OKN you must have multitude of revolving accounts well we have a transportation revolving account and we have revolving
accounts for student activities right um how about shops do you have do you have revolving accounts set up for each one of your shops productivity in the shops so when you go out you know carpentry we see you out building sheds i think you did one other schools public schools a
little while back you you you do all kinds of work like that right you can charge for it and that money will go into that should be used to decrease the budget no you don't take from your revolving to decrease your operating because it's you don't know what's going to come in and out of your revolving that should never be used to offset your
operating it's like using ESR funds for your operating it's taboo well you added you added $25,000 to your stabilization account right 75,000 75,000 You added 75 so what is what is
that versus your ED ED account $75,000 in stabilization is going to be used to fund the the boat um as part of our building project we are required you're going to use what to what we are required as a town as a
school to fund the votes in our member towns and instead of that coming from an operating that that does not law that's by law so you're charging us for it you built it into the budget that comes from a stabilization
fund that we have created the offset for yeah you charged an extra $75,000 to do it so you're not paying for it or we're paying for it all you're doing is back door now we're paying for it you're just saying "Okay I'm only going to bill you directly but I'm going to up my
stabilization account build it into my budget i'm going to put $75,000 which I out of time believe a five committee is going to be $75,000 and we're a third of that operation so we're paying 25 for other towns to go out and you pay for their ballot questions that sounds a little whacked out to me
the $75,000 that we've allocated for stabilization was originally going to be a larger I I call it $75,000 and it's the equivalent of the offset that we're talking about but the $75,000 actually came as a recommendation from somebody
who said you have a large number of debt being retired you should always fund your stabilization that's what that's the that's the advice we received thank you Mr chairman i know I said a lot but there was a lot to be said
it's true you actually asked a bunch of the questions I was going to so I'm going to just touch back on this funding of the ballot vote just just for clarification so in this budget our portion is $75,000
to fund the ballot question no your portion is not $75,000 so you'll see this is our this is our budget correct no that's that's the total that's the total total 75 divided by the five community towns based on our percentage correct you're a third of
that $75,000 if you want to look at it that way that's our cost so when they fund $75,000 into stabilization if we're a third we're just a few percentage points above we're 25 grand of that number correct okay the cost to
fund the vote was forecasted at approximately $15,000 per town that's what we were told we should budget we had originally put that into the budget we pulled that out of the
budget we had also put in an offset for stabilization we kept an offset for stabilization and we pulled what was originally in a line called school committee supplies out if that makes sense to answer your
question no I mean I've gone through this up and down and I understand I understand the financial constraints that the town has right so that's the lens that I look at it through um and I know also having had the opportunity to
work with you guys over the last couple years understand the rigorous process that you go through you know um but you know I think there's we're in a position where we've got to take a critical critical look at
everything you know and so if that means going through this a couple times then that's sort of the process you know so obviously I would tell you straight out of the gate and I've been involved with O'allin for a long time as you know and Shirley knows as well um just so
everybody knows Shirley Bour is has been on the committee far longer than what I've ever dreamed of doing i was there from 2005 to 10 when I was a FINC car member and Shirley is one of the most intelligent individuals you could ever meet when it comes to schools right
she's phenomenal um she's always been phenomenal and I thank you for that work that you've done over the years for Colony on and on behalf of the five member town surely you you are an incredible individual it's just it's it's extremely difficult as Mr wa just said with we're looking at an increase
you know I think it's $347,000 i honestly I wouldn't say I accept this budget i I know that your fixed costs have gone up but I'm dying to know about that missing number that's at the bottom because that's a big number sure and I think that it changes
the dynamics a lot for all of us right and and especially our member towns right um and and I get it you know the budget's up 1 point roughly 1.2 million just just under 1.2 million we got to do a better job of keeping that number below that right cuz if it wasn't for that debt
exclusion where the hell would we be at right now you'd be laying off five people six people whatever it may be right right um and that's where we're at we've we've been sitting at the desk talking about these things our local school
departments done it we're looking at positions right now where we have vacancies and we're sitting saying to ourselves how do we do this a different way right we're trying to recreate ourselves in other words and that's really what it's all about not create new positions not just pay higher salaries it's it's let's look at the job
function and see what we can do and can we merge that in and get away with paying somebody a few extra thousand bucks to take on those additional responsibilities and save 30 $40,000 doing it right right that's what we've attempted to do with
some of these solutions here because like you said you can only do so much you can't you know there's a finite pool of money we understand that so if if you could get that answer for that I think it's transportation right
why that why that's left out and again you did use I I wrote my note right here i said Y0 last year was 350K and I know the year before that was pretty substantial it wasn't 350 i want to say it was probably like 200 i have
that paperwork as well sure so there's always a substantial hundreds of thousands in that line item and again that would reduce the town's assessment to a more feasible number mhm and if I remember correctly the
rural rural town designation impacts transportation right if I remember correctly in that conversation with Mr sylvia don't quote me but and I'll look on it but that's why you know we're Kushnet we're trying to figure out a way
to shoe shoehorn ourselves into that rural town designation right so they get a strong reimbursement though i mean it's not consistent i mean I got the chart it's You've done really well i mean you can complain about 85 and 90% reimbursement that's phenomenal in my
eyes you're never going to get what they promised years ago that's that's a reality but I I I think the the reality is that um you know I see what you see so I have the same question you should
it's like a giant goose egg sitting in front of us i'm looking at it and I and as soon as I looked at this spreadsheet I said that's a problem and then I just started breaking down numbers off of it after that right could be a huge I learned from the best i learned from Shirley right that could be a that could be a a
big lifesaver let's see again I'll just keep talking about our percentage even if that number is 200 right that's 60 G's off 60G is a lot of money for us right now sure we're scraping we're going to talk about some new little Mickey Mouse budgets right and what are we going to
cut 500 bucks off this budget 1,500 bucks off that budget if that's what we're into right now that's what we're into right now right i mean every 500,000 equals something in the end yeah we know what matters we'll listen and I mean
that's we we have four contracts that have to be negotiated and I don't know if we'll get that done by the end of the year but can you imagine that impact too right to the budget
we can sustainability is what we all need to focus on right and figure out how how do we sustain this going forward right and reinventing ourselves might be one of them but I really think that the you know the salaries and the health insurance and the pension cost that we got to really look at that differently
right we had a conversation with our state reps and I said the reason why you're not going to do anything is because you're part of the problem right they're in they're entrenching that pension system but in realistic terms nobody deserves to make that kind of money in retirement right there's plenty of people busting their butt year round
for 40 50 years they're going to get social security making 3540 grand a year and you're getting somebody in the municipal sector banging you know even let's just talk about 100 grand a year they're going to get $80,000 in retirement versus somebody else making
35 maybe 40 if they're lucky come on that's that's where things have gone out of control right they should they should should have thought about capping things a long time ago right make whatever you want but this is the cap that you can earn in a pension i think we've done a
you know again I'll just stand by the fact that when it comes to those types of things I think we've done a good job leading that charge pensions are killing us the taxpayers true right health care cost is killing us too right i mean I got a family plan in a town what is it 25 28 grand
nowadays for a family plan think about that right what and then you go to a doctor and they're like "Yeah that's not coming how?" Right you're breaking me and you know it's I'll spin it around a different way because I think there's a lot of intelligent people in the room
right is you think about it this way is we want the best for our kids obviously right the problem becomes is when education and let's just use your school cuz I'm talking about colony the cost per student gets so high taxes have to
go up to reflect to cover that budget cost right there's a there's a time when that family can't afford to live in a cushion no more now they're not able to go to Okconia and fulfill their last three years of high school because they can't afford the taxes in the town that they live in whether It's a Christian
Cabo Lakeville wherever it is right so you got to really think about all of that right when we think about oh it's for the kids yeah I understand that we all want you know the best for our kids but there are a lot of families out there that are that close to not making
it right and if they have kids think about what we're doing to those families that's that's just a thought I'll leave you with because I've had that conversation with a number of families here in this community and elsewhere as well and it hurts when I have that
conversation cuz I understand it right sure we know we we know they're big ass for sure all right all right yeah if you can find that information for Mr gasper and us um we
appreciate it and thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Shirley you're welcome and thank you for your kind words you're always welcome maurice thank you very much enjoy retirement
what you got nice you're five years behind i know thanks Mo thank you all right we have some small
unchanged miscellaneous reserve fund so I'm not looking so my problem my problem right now is I'm not looking for a vote right cuz that's my problem right again we're going to go back to what we just talked about is is we're going to be scraping nickels and dimes right and if you're looking at what you want for my
honest opinion depending on where we are in deficit then they're all of it's on the table and every nickel counts yep so I know famous last year I know things have been presented to FINCOM right i don't I'm not necessarily agreeing with it i think
it's good for them to get a first glance at budgets to say this is where department heads are coming in but ultimately the budgets the board of selectments and I think we're going to have some action to do well you know I always preface my remarks by
whichever committee I'm talking to by saying it's a board of selectments and for the last two years I've been saying that there'll be many iterations of the board of selectment's budget because the board of selectmen
are mandated to present a balanced budget to the town meeting and last year we rolled quarters this year we're rolling counties
in and last year we had a couple of budgets i'll just name them right out public safety couple of one particular line item each one of our fire and EMS and police was underfunded so we got to make that back
up that hurts but we got to do it eventually so I don't know Mr chairman what we're doing i mean I just I've already identified Yeah the money but if we're just going to look at it and say you know what it is what it is i I I present these to the board as budgets
that are unchanged and are not large you can go through every budget and cut a 500 here or,000 there correct you're not going to get to what we need to look
at and until the school comes in with its its budget uh you're looking at an increase of 300 and approximately $50,000 with Old Colony and I've got a revenue increase
of a $500,000 and that does not even take into account fixed costs and you look at what Old Colony just told you their fixed costs were as far as health insurance as
far as their retirees insurance uh I think those uh increases are abysmal uh as you know I offered to help Old Colony with their insuranceances but
they figured that that might be something for another year uh I am going to ask uh Mr palansky uh just I know that
desi terminology is different the municipal terminology is but I would like to know the total balance in the stabilization account that should be available online no well
just I've been looking at that in the DNA i'd like to know yeah no I get it but uh you get that information relatively easy right yep i would think so they don't have a choice but to give
it to us right and if if you need the finance committee to do it it's in our charter they make a request you have to give them the information to the FINCOM so I'm sure Aaron Aaron and I talked so it'll be fine
uh look the budget I went through the whole budget it wasn't like it was horrific right i mean outside some of the salary increases for the higher earners like I talked about but their insurance costs those just the retirees and the regular insurance was up
$426,000 right it was almost 50% of their income it's huge and and operating properly your insurance accounts with the proper stop loss and everything else
it should be half that it's a big I think the Medicaid Medicare one went up well the unemployment I'm sorry went up dramatically too yeah that I don't understand because uh if they're expecting that many layoffs but usually you did two or one
usually it's it's static year to year and it might vary a couple thousand not that much that bars is huge but anyways we look it's his first
go around with us right so it was good we Heard everything and and he I'm sure they're going to go back i mean look they left out a big number right i mean that wasn't I don't know what Sarah was thinking when she looked at that spreadsheet and printed it but I mean you have to notice you're the business
manager making big bucks you should know that you have an error in your spreadsheet but apparently that didn't happen so we'll see what that number gets plugged in and what difference it makes or hopefully it was cut off and it didn't print it's uh it's going to be interesting
right again year over year over here over here until the Commonwealth recognizes that the tax levy goes up
approximately 3% and is 2/3 of your funding sources your local receipts and your others go up approximately 5% so both of those are somewhat keeping tr
uh track with inflation and then your state aid goes up half a percent to 1 and a half% when it spikes that's what is the problem in this
equation and that's about a quarter of your revenue broken system they they they told the state according to the spreadsheets we have they told the school you only have to spend
$50,000 more than you did last year that's that's on the street and I'm thinking to myself are you kidding me right now like what what's that school lunch what energy cost they don't they don't have a clue right with energy costs actually their energy didn't do
too bad i looked at that too they weren't They weren't significant at all they were increases but you guys have these to look at now we also have budget books to update but I think
school's meeting tomorrow and presenting their first draft budget to the committee I believe right so I think ultimately once that is done and we have a copy of that then we can really start jumping in and we'll know what we can
actually reduce the paperclip count on some of the budgets what committee are they school school committee oh is cuz tomorrow's Wednesday i know meets on Wednesday so no they're not meeting they're not proposing fcom yet they are actually their budget subcommittee is
presenting to the rest of the school committee tomorrow so we'll get the actual budget after tomorrow so I'll pay 850 if you're lucky
i would let's move on to some good news oh man all right dbw Slogan Street believe we have members of Woodward and Curran in the audience here yep just talk about some some progress yes i
should have told you to show up at 5:30 i apologize that's okay actually probably better because I was coming from the uh Boston area so if I tried to be down there at 5:30 I probably wouldn't be down here till 7:30 um also in the audience is uh Jay Zip is
uh light light and um Steven Bisco from the from Bisco contracting our who's our contractor how are you sir good how are you good so again uh my name's Arthur project manager with Wooden Current um
and as Mr gasper can uh attest to we it's been a long road to get here but we're finally at construction um they're starting to uh they're planning to start construction in the beginning of April u start mobilizing and uh within the first
week or so some excavation will start um for um just as a reminder for the work that's going to be uh done about 2200 ft of storm drain that's going to um go in storm drain improvements about 2 2400 ft
of water man project also includes um new sidewalk new granite curb and then reclaim and paving of um Slokum Street as a final product um just some of the things to expect because the way the construction
starts is there or what construction involves there's going to be inconvenience to the public there's going to be noise dust debris um there's going to be large equipment around there will be some planned interruptions in service and those notices go out 48
hours in advance to to um the customers that are affected and the reason for them are we need to get control of the existing um water system some of the valves don't work uh as they really should so we're going to put new ones in to make sure that we're not dealing with
that water during construction and then there's also um some unplanned ones if we hit something that we just didn't know about it may cause some termination water service um some other things to expect are the above ground temporary water
manes the photo on the right just shows how uh water is provided water service and fire protection is provided during construction um when we're doing the sidewalk work some of the some driveways will need to cut back into just to make transition
grades um those adjustments are made during construction um so we I can't tell you specifically which one and how far but that's an example uh on the left of how it it's prepped and then in the center how it's finished um we'll have parking
restrictions during the work hours um the contractor is uh planning to work Monday through Thursday so four days a week um there'll be a break Friday through um and resume Monday that hasn't changed
since our pre-con meeting right no that's that should stay the same um obviously unless you have a rain day during the week and you can make it up on the Friday you're not losing that production is there a reason you do 4 day window and not the five day window typically you just get more done by the
time you get there you set up this the hours by the time you're spending either setting up breaking down if you put more into it that day you're just you're getting more done so you just want to you're going to work a little longer day makes sense right four 10our days what's
that four 10-hour days yeah it makes sense makes sense as you said once you get set up and then you gain you have the flexibility if you do have that rain day you can still make it up you're not falling behind on any kind of milestone you're trying to hit right right okay
and um there there will also likely be road closures on Sloping Street with detours around it and um part of the reason of that is um well most of the reason for that is safety and having the public not really get uh have to come through the area and some of it is it
does help with production so it reduces the um the inconvenience to the to the residents in the long run um local the the people that live in the area or like live in the work zone access will be uh permitted you know we'll make ways to
get them in and emergency vehicles will also have access but uh general traffic will be direct will we shut down from up here South Main Street right at the top or
will we look at where they're going to be working from the bridge because we have Hope Street that loops around so we can do you know they're going to have to shut that down and not allow anybody through Hope Street while they're at the bottom end but once they pass that bottom end and get past Hope you can
open that loop back up so they can go down Hope instead of shutting it right down yeah right we will look at at where they're working and and I just cuz people at home want No go back to the map yeah i was trying so
what I'm saying is if they're down here wherever they're going to you starting at the top at South Main Street and working your way down you start at the bottom i was told always at the bottom work your way up right so they're going to start down here and you get past Hope Street right here then you can open this lane up and let them come this way once
they get this part of construction done they can go back to utilizing that and this will stay blocked off and then you you get another side street you can continue doing that for the loop for these people to get back into their homes and all the way up until you get up to to Nai right and then you'll have that and then you just shut down Bank
Bank and shut that down and everybody else can still use the road so it won't be a complete 100% shut off from Sloum Street is that correct for for the most part yeah i mean we we'll have portions like you said uh
Kevin we'll have portions of it um that there won't be access to but we'll have detours around those sections right i mean just the detour to traffic instead of blocking off the whole road and right from day one if you're only at the bottom of the hill you can still allow the top end to be used and the work at
the intersection of South Main Street and Sloum Street that's under Mass uh DOT jurisdiction so we do have to comply with whatever um traffic management plans they've approved in that area that's that's up at when we get to Slow I mean yeah yeah yeah cuz we're going to
we're going to So we are going to cut into South Main we're going to cut into South Main Street yeah uh there's some uh water main connections that we need to make there um and there are some storm drain improvements in that intersection that need to be made
um so we'll go through that so the anticipated schedule is uh you know they plan to mobilize to the site so start bringing equipment April 7th um the above ground water mans I talked about um will be installed between April 7th and the 25th um and the storm drain
improvements will start down um near river at the uh near the river end um April 14th run through July and water beam improvements kind of they go in tandem a little bit here um May May 26
is their anticipated start date for that and run through July 18th um and then the sidewalk work and the curbing work and then the uh paving and base course I mean the pavement reclaim and base
course paving will occur between July and October um final paving right now is scheduled for um the end of October um and um it the the the town may want to consider letting the project go or final
paving go through the winter um just to make sure any settlement in the trenches is uh fully out because during a freeze thaw cycle there will be some movement in these trenches no matter how well they compact and do the final paving in the spring but that's a decision that
you guys can make yeah I think that make that makes sense you've seen that so we'll see how where we make where we make out with that and the um so Mr james one of the individuals that's in
the audience he's been uh hammering me and he likes to talk about trees yep and I know uh that we've I I brought up so Mr the James on the stands i did bring up trees in the initial phases but
there was some things said about water services the width of sidewalks and the things of the like so if we could talk a little bit Mr james and about trees sure um do you want to ask the specific question or you want me to just go in
well uh can we put trees it So it's not an easy straightforward yes or no uh the reason that it's is it feasible everything is feasible there's a cost that's that's uh
gets associated with it um one of the big problems is that the sidewalks in the street there are narrow mhm um you have to have a certain uh clearance from any obstruction to maintain um ADA compliance so um accessible access for
people with disabilities um and the standard tree well depth that you need with the size size of sidewalk that's there wherever you put trees you're going to have to talk to the property owners at those locations to
see if a portion of their property can be taken to allow for a tree well and that is a challenge in my experience to maintain and something that is difficult to achieve um the cost of the trees
themselves are also something that wasn't budgeted um in the in the bid so that would be an extra cost on top of what's already known well even if we put 10 trees on the north side $200 a tree say $200 sixfooters
uh 8 footers $200 a tree with the grates the grates are like $200 $300 right would were tree going to trees going to be put what I've seen for costing on any trees that have gone to enter that goes
in through a contract um is generally between $2 to $3,000 a tree okay who's going to plant the trees you guys the contractor has now I've seen other communities where we just leave them the tree well we fill it with dirt and they come back and do it later um then we we
can make adjustments depending on what's funding is available to the issue I see is that you need a lot of easements to make that work and I don't think that that's doable at this point removed from the property owners that you're going to have to because you have to have you
have to bump out the sidewalks at these locations you could probably we could probably go down and ask the individuals I spoken to if they want trees because once you put those sidewalks in there'll never be trees Yeah that's it'll be it it'll be a
runway up and down the street you know what trees do you're an engineer you know what they do they're calming they're great for the environment all all all the above so once that's gone that's that possibility is limited that
that's going to be it for for our lifetimes you know it'd be like Main Street right here no trees they just put the sidewalks no forethought that's it uh the cheapest way out so uh it's just
it just so we need them i mean uh our kids our kids this is generational trees are generational they're going to be there for hundred 200 years uh and that that's what it's all about it's all about the environment and and what it
does for people i mean just imagine you have a photo of that people walking down that street with trees holding their kids you know uh it's it's just a phenomenal thing and it it' be it'll be just it'll be a shame that we we can't
do it even a couple trees 10 trees five trees and make and make the make the the great there so we can the town people volunteer would actually go there i'd buy the trees myself and plant them myself if we have the great there and
the space okay i mean it would cost the town anything i mean I they pay for the great I'll pay for the trees i'll do the work myself i I don't think we should get hung up on buying trees like that's you know I wouldn't get hung up on that right but if you're saying there's some
type of engineering issue so let me ask was googling online i mean are there ways to bring trees in without you know putting them into the into the sidewalk either with planters i
mean you travel down south and other you know you're going to have so urban landscaping well it's not you know a permanent thing but it's but at least it's something to and I agree because that has major thoroughare for truck traffic and dirt and dust and and create
a calming effect so you know if that's something that we can look at there's it is I'm not telling you it's not feasible it is it's a matter of what how much more do you guys want to spend on it and a matter there may be like some great changes that we have to make to make
these tree wells work from a grading perspective and you said bump out the sidewalk did you mean bump it out more towards the resident yes because we can bump it out towards the street but the street's kind of narrow right now i wouldn't recommend it so well I was just going to say that's not going to happen
because you can't have this down the street mr chairman yes so when we discussed this a while back obviously funding constraints and everything else I'm not worried like David said about the price of a few trees right the problem is when we were doing this we
all know the road is a narrow road already we don't have any room on the south side we're already moving hydrants around the corner to get them off Sloum Street but the hydrants thankfully are located at each one of
the little side streets so what we've done is we've taken those hydrants and we've looped it around the corner because of the no parking thing which the parking's always been on the south side so what we've done is we're really taken because of the sidewalk on the
north side is so narrow we've I think uh correct me if I'm wrong we've I told them we need more room on the south side for parking right so you need room to put a car and that's why we're we're limited on space but you have to have lanes a certain width of the road
correct right and then so you're squeezing already over and you're trying to do as much as you can by short in the southside because you need parking on one side of that road right so that's the limitations of Sloum Street has presented itself to us and especially to
engineering saying there's limitations of what we can do i don't know i'm not going to go ask people for easements we already know how much work we're doing just for that one property owner that's kind enough to allow us an easement on the title of this property for a storm drain um hopefully we're there with
that it's it's incredibly difficult and we'd have to have a look at what the width of the north sidewalk is ADA compliance right because you can't just start throwing trees in and not have that width pass by width from with the tree well if that's what we're going to
call it to the property owner's line you need to be ADA compliant you can't just be ADA compliant for 90% of the sidewalk right so I think that's also sorry but that would also be the case if you brought in like a planter thing like you any kind of including a hydrant i got to
do a block of like what people's front yards or their front yards on Slowroom Street there's nothing there's not much to them homeowner if we provided the tree and if a homeowner wanted to to plant a tree that you know that is that
is an option that might be a good compromise here to to consider and you can't you can really only put trees on the north side because the telephone lines are on the south side right and you don't want to start monkeying around with that putting trees and you can't because that's where the pocket is
anyway so I mean we could take a look at it i mean I'll go over to Slokum Street and like I do all the time and look at different things and see if we can if I can identify certain lots where I mean we might be able to do that and see if we can accommodate and I don't know if
it's going to be 10 that's one every 200 feet right there's 200 there's 2200 linear feet so one every 200 feet i don't know if we can accommodate that um or maybe there is something we could do a few up the north side and maybe
throw one or two in on the south side right and see where property bounds lie let's try to be as creative as we can yeah it certainly can be looked at there's opportunity to do it if Kern wanted to be a a sponsor and donate the
trees we'd love that too there you go i can talk to the people that can make that decision cuz I can't but I certainly will offer I I will tell them that that's what they like same with Bisco yeah ultimately the biggest part is is like you said ADA compliance is big they're already starting to really
delve into communities and their ADA compliance so I don't want to affect that whatsoever and I mean other things to consider like and this is just from the times I've done this and I've run into it is the tree looks great here but
underground there's a gas service or there's a water service or there's a sewer service that then costs money to move right we're not getting there that ain't happening Jack no trees okay i want to go plant trees somewhere else in the town before we The cost of this project
is already high we're not going to start just saying "Oh it's only you know a couple thousand dollars for trees people don't get it." No it's not right and you you hit the nail on the head cuz I was going to tell you why don't you bring up the other thing that you brought up to me where is you got to remember this is you have a house the layout of a house
lot then you have a driveway like he's shown where's the water service main going from the main into the house versus location of the driveway and the water main service and that might just be right where you want that tree but ain't going to do that i identified gas
service identified 10 spots today the there's no no uh water lines or gas lines around it so I mean some of those people at the top they have double lots so there's no p there's no pipes there
okay so they can go they can go there uh they can go I identify at least 10 10 spots down there on the north side today that have no pipes around them cuz that you have to worry about i'm happy to look into whatever why do I do this why
don't I get together with Mr james right i'll get a map i'll do an oversight of Sloum Street with all the houses on the north side i'll get together with Mr james and we'll walk up the side of the road and he can I'll put little X's right and then you can tell me whether
there's a gas man cuz you would know all about that or water mane or whatnot and say "So we you have identified 10 only six are feasible." Done mhm right and we'll see what we can do based on that yeah any anything one is better than none that's right i mean two or three i
uh a friend of mine Chance uh his name is Chance and he he works for he's a for New Bethic and he came over and he was talking to me about it and he said even if two two or three trees on that
street that'd be two or three trees that aren't there now i mean we have the contractors here so the amount of money I'm going to save on concrete I'm going to buy you trees why you Well I mean I've got I've got this thing right here he's shaking his head in the background
laughing at me going Yeah keep dreaming contract no we work on this man let's work on this they laughed like Yeah that's not it i figured I got up in the extra formwork is what he's going to do yeah I know i
was just going to say yeah minus the extra form work yeah um let me let me just do that and I'll forward you that map right we can scan it in and forward it over to you and you can take a look at what you've done on your engineering side of it and you can say "Yeah okay we can probably get away with something like that." And just
uh word of advice is when if you guys go this route make sure that you select the right tree cuz I've had communities who want these big tall trees they look great initially but 10 15 years from now their root balls are just lifting the sidewalk yep well that's when they're
arguing with people about having to cut down trees the avarist from New Bedford will will join us it's will join us we know what kind of trees to to put up there you're not going to put elms touch elms or anything you know you're going to put trees that the rooting system
only goes down not this way yeah well that's right there plenty of them like the red maples the oaks that's that's the street trees you want you want street trees that aren't going to cause any damage you're gonna have a great over it it won't lift up the sidewalks
i mean this is we open up we So I would prefer to have palm trees but I don't think they'll survive winter no that's But you want to talk about calming calming you want effect you know and and also when I get you guys here
what happened to our street meters our speed meters we had a speed meter up the top that got knocked over then we have the one at the bottom that was on a telephone pole it was disappeared so can't get too in depth because he's not on the agenda because we're not talking
about that but remember the conversation I had with you and then I said that they're probably not going to put them back up until I already I already figured that one out i just I apologize if I never got back to you i thought I did and I apologize thank you thank you sir Mr kelly
uh you're starting at the bottom at uh the river you want to just go over briefly the uh alternative that we've been working on for months yep so um the
project was bid with an alternate um to relocate the outfall to the river it currently runs underneath the bridge abutment um the the award of the project was for the base bit and the alternate um but the the town has not given notice
to proceed on the alternate portion because uh we're still working through getting an easement um through um the parking lot that's on the um north side yeah north side um that is slow to progress um we need a
sign off on um an permit application from the that property owner which has still I still haven't received from council yet from from their council yet their council um but there's some permitting effort that's going to follow
that as well um we still that was budgeted back in the design so we're still covered with that um it's not like an extra expense um but why why is that we worked with the attorney and I don't want to mention attorney's names on TV but we went to the office together and
and then we sent in and I think sent back over diagrams of what the easement would look like in the layout our attorney or their attorney it the actual property owner needs to sign off on this because um you guys have already signed
it but uh the reg uh DP and the other regulators for us to submit that permit they need documentation that all parties have you sent that to them or has our attorney sent that to them i know we've
sent it i can certainly resend it might be worthwhile to follow up with we need we need to follow up because I I was reviewing that months ago and it should have been taken care of months ago i mean you and I went downtown to the lawyer's office and and met with
that individual and he's been super good to us yeah all the communications and I know I sent the drawing so it should just be all said and done and he's saying I don't think you can go for I think one of the initial hang-ups was for permitting
estate peritting he needs the owner to sign off on it and that's what we were waiting for but it was all about the attorney wasn't comfortable with his client signing off until the easement was recorded the distance in a drawing and I seen that drawing i have an email of it i seen it i got it has that has
the easement been done i know we I know we've done a survey for it um whether the actual and I mean the legal end of it that's been done I don't know I I don't know the answer I think I mean it may be a good idea just to have
a meeting on this with all parties involved it'll be resolved before the end of the week I promise you no I'm happy to attend it if you need it will be resolved by the end of the week I promise you sounds good why you looking at me with fooy and chew face it will be resolved by the end of the week no I'm not looking at you I'm
trying to figure out trying to figure out why you and I appro uh approved that easement and then it is it get to that tomorrow that's what we're going to find out by the end of the week i promised him already so all right
okay thank you thank you very much we appreciate you we'll see you in a couple weeks you you folks you have conversations around where you're going to store things if you need us for storage that that gentleman that's offering the
easement i think he would offer for the use of storage of some of your equipment we're scheduling a precon for next I believe it's next week um to kind of go over all this with us all right can you try to get a hold of the guy who owns that car lot the garage over there if
you can track them down we'd appreciate it that'd be a great place to put put Oh the one that's right at the top of the Yeah yeah all of those those uh things will get kind of discussed during that period we have I'll have that answer for you
too about using that for storage of this these gentlemen's equipment at the bottom of the hole anyway I got to work on Mr was about those these are hot plastic so they're less expensive and the iron ones are still We need this last piece
no we haven't gotman's announcements construction's going to start on Sloum Street April 7th so everybody that lives on Sloum Street and the surrounding area please be patient all you folks have been waiting
20 30 years for that road to be redone it's finally going to happen so I just ask for everybody's patience um that live around that area luna that's it it's good news good time i just want to say happy belated birthday to my mother oh happy birthday
happy birthday is there a motion to adjurnn so moved second all those in favor i
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