##VIDEO ID:Iiv1eYjXzTk## we're recording please go ahead thank you good evening it's December 2nd 2024 this is a regular meeting of the Town Council and will include the state of the Town addresses the open meeting law allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the council physically present at a meeting location while providing the public with adequate access to the meeting this meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom by phone and as a live broadcast on ammer media channel 9 and live streamed there are however six counselors in the room tonight and given that we have a quorum of the Council of those in the room and on Zoom I am calling the December 2nd regular Town council meeting to order at 6:31 I'll call upon each counselor by name and please at that point unmute your mic and say present and then remember to mute it again um I understand that Pat deangelus will be absent Anna Devin gothier present councelor ET present Lyn grimer is present councelor hanaki present Bob Hegman present councelor Lord will be joining us later Pam Rooney here councelor Ryan I'm here Kathy Shane is unable to be here tonight Andy Steinberg present Jennifer to is also unable to be here tonight although she may join later and councelor Walker is unable to be here tonight there is no chat room for this meeting if you have technical issues please let Athena and me know to make a comment or ask a question please click the raised hand button if technical difficulties arise as a result of using remote participation Athena and I will decide how to address that situation uh Athena will be monitoring counselor's connections um during the meeting there will be one general public comment period we're going to move quickly to the announcements the order of the agenda is as it appears in public um there are various Council there it our next council meeting is on December 16th at 6:30 after that our next council meeting will not be until January and that'll be January 6th at 6:30 um there are various committee meetings coming up and those are posted on the calendar in addition to that I just like to quickly remind you that we will be celebrating the new Mary maple on our newly renovated North Common this Friday night from 6 at the 6 from 4: to 7: and the lighting of the tree will actually be at 5:00 the Sip and stroll uh also sponsored by the bid is on Thursday December 19th from 4 to 7 uh Bob you have your hand up yeah I just wanted to let people know that the finance committee also has a meeting scheduled for December 10th at 300 p.m. uh that's if we need it you know we don't get through all the business on the six okay thank you very much are there any other changes for committee meetings yes Pam I just wanted to note that the CRC meeting tomorrow night is a public hearing for the University Drive overlay it begins at 6: p.m unlike our usual 6:30 start thank you Andy uh Services Outreach committee from the printed um agenda the meetings are not as indicated uh there is no going to be no meeting this week on the 5th the meeting on the 12th is not at the usual time it is at 5: p.m. to 6:30 it is actually a a combined meeting with the Trans Transportation advisory committee and disability access advisory committee to get responses from staff and Town's Consulting engineer regarding the proposed uh uh layout for Southeast Street near the elementary school that's being built and uh we're adding a meeting instead of the meeting on the 5th on the following Thursday at usual 10:00 time that's the 19th so December 19th at 10:00 p.m. amm is an added meeting thank you thank you for all those changes I know that people are inlux at this point uh we have no hearing tonight uh but I want to make sure that people know there are in the town room there are three people in the audience on the um Zoom there are five people in attendance and at this point we are going to move to G ener public comment um anyone wishing to speak who is in the town room if you have not signed up please do so with um Athena o'keef our Clerk of the Town Council um and if you are in the audience and you would like to speak please raise your hand now Athena how many people have signed up two two uh at this point there are nobody on Zoom so we're going to go ahead with two and the limit is three minutes let me say that public comments on matters with are on matters within the jurisdiction of the Town Council residents are welcomed to express their views for up to three minutes the council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment public comments are not reflective of the opinions of the Town Council please go ahead first Deb Leonard please come up you want Vince to go first Vince o Conor please state your name and generally where you live of Vincent o coner 175 Summer Street Department 12 so I have a um a prepared statement which I'm from which I'm going to delete some items because of the of um some of the deletions in the council's uh agenda for this evening please make sure you speak directly into the mic say again please speak directly into the mic okay um so at a prior council meeting I expressed no no problem with spending on roads and sidewalks but did object to the lack of spending for schools and the proposed allocation by Council majority of the spendable Surplus to reserve accounts that require Appropriations by a 2third council majority a fair and Equitable plan for the distribution of the Surplus would be for the council to restore the road and sidewalk spending and to compensate each school district for the false and misleading information that shaped their past Year's budgets um and to compensate them add $200,000 to this year's FY 25 elementary school bud to compensate for the manager's cut to the FY 24 elementary school budget and add a $400,000 gift to this year's fy2 Regional School budget the compensat for the 8% to 6% reduction in amoris fy2 Regional assessment and include both Appropriations in each School District's base for FY 26 and direct the manager to include the full amount of both School budgets as voted by their respective School committees in next year's FY 26 budget to the objections one that we don't have the money the monster Beals by the town's own presentation at the November 4th council meeting two that the superintendent has not asked for these monies the superintendent was not here for these events she was not lied to by the manager it was the council Amorous school children their parents and Guardians Amorous taxpayers and both District School Employees who were misled and deceived by the managers calculatedly false statements about amoris finances and it is we who have the right and responsibility to demand that the council exact compensation thank you for your comment hi um Deb Leonard District 5 uh not speaking on behalf of anybody but myself and I'm going to keep my comments really short and I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank the council the town manager's office um Mr zic uh the members of the CPA committee and all who have brought forward the uh process of the track authorization um and the the the order that you're going to vote on later in this evening seeing the uh process through its twists and turns to the end for a healthy uh smart well oriented uh track for generations of regional students and families to enjoy thank you thank you for joining us with that we're going to move on to the consent agenda um um point of information or inquiry on the consent agenda I'm sorry point of inquiry yes the consent agenda lists on the motion sheet that it needs nine eyes is that correct for today and if so then I'm going to request that everything be moved off of it no that's incorrect what is the voting Quantum for today then it's seven for today I'm sorry for the error thank you it's good catch Mandy Jo thank you councelor hanii um okay uh the following items were selected uh because they're considered to be routine in many cases they came with unanimous recommendations from committees uh I ask that after I read the first motion if you want to remove an item you let me know and we will do so that does not require a second uh to move the following items in the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit 6A adoption of the 2024 Human Rights Day Proclamation 9 A1 approval of town manager appointment of Lindsay stram as fire chief and 11 approval of minutes November 4 2024 special meeting Financial indicators presentation November 4 2024 regular meeting is there a second I'm sorry Mandy Joe you councelor hanck you have your hand up yeah an another question um our agenda says that there was supposed to be a waiver of rule procedure 8.6 for agenda item 9 A1 did that agenda item go through TSO it did not so we need to add that to the consent agenda the waiver is on the consent agenda the problem is that we don't have enough votes for the waiver we can't vote 9 A1 until we've waved right so we need to pull 9 A1 off the consent um if we don't have enough counselors in the room tonight that item won't be able to be voted we may have enough counselors by the time we get to that so when we do then we can save it for when we do one counselor is expected to join us around 8 o'clock one two three four five six seven eight and that will that will be nine counselors okay okay um okay so the only two items then that we are putting on here are the adoption of the 2024 Human Rights Day Proclamation and approval of minutes um it is there a second second Ryan thank you um that's no for de dat debate debate excuse me we'll move ahead uh Anna Devin gothier i councelor r hi Lyn grimer is an i councelor hanii hi Bob hegner hi councelor Lord is present not present at the moment uh Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Kathy Sheen is present Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer Tom and councelor Walker is is also not present so it is unanimous with all counselors voting that are present and that means there are eight in favor and five absent okay um with regard to the resolutions and proclamations uh Andy I'm going to ask I'm actually on the Human Rights Day Proclamation um we had a change in plan so let me just find it real quick and we will take care of it [Music] um okay as one of the sponsors I'm just going to go ahead and read now therefore we the emmer toown council do hereby Proclaim December 10th 2024 as human rights day be it be it further proclaimed we the ammer toown council encourage enourage our community to embrace every opportunity to reflect and embody the values of the universal Declaration of Human Rights in their work for the community and urges amest residents to celebrate this day with a community reading of the Declaration of Human Rights on the ammer toown common on December 10th 2024 at 6:30 p.m. please join us U we're going to move on to uh the resolution opposing expansion of the pioneer Valley Chinese immersion charter school that was not on the consent agenda um so I'm going to place the motion on the table to adopt the resolution opposing the expansion of the Pioneer Valley Chinese emersion charter school as presented is there a second second dein goth here thank you are there any questions or comments seeing I'm sorry councelor hanii need I apologize it takes me a while to find the button when so many things are open on my screen I'm going to oppose this resolution for a number of reasons um part of it I believe is inaccurate despite having gone through go that part includes the decline the fourth to last where whereas that says that state aid has declined in state support of ammer schools and ammer Regional Schools due to Charter State funding that's inaccurate because at least at the emmer schools state aid has increased between 2020 and 2025 um by the Numbers I've seen so I'm not sure where that comes from maybe at the Regional Schools I haven't seen them but at the ammer school state aid has increased it has not been a decline in state support at least as presented in this resolution um the second to last whereas has that FY legislation that is referred to has nothing to do with charter school funding at all so I'm not sure what its purpose in this resolution is because it muddies Waters um the argument that this pvci has surpluses uh to me is specious because you know the town of amest has accumulated over 15 million in surpluses plus another 10 million in capital stabilization surpluses um and 5 million this year alone but we're not saying that's a problem and the Regional School District in the recent past had to actually return money to the town because of its surpluses so again I'm not sure what the purpose of that whereas Clause is um while people argue that Charter Schools may have directly may have resulted in some budget deficits to say that they are directly fueling our budget deficits when we know at the Regional Schools there is a structural deficit that even if we put money back into that this year would be structural every year whether or not charter school funding is fixed just as misleading in this to say that charter schools are basically fueling these budget deficits because they'd be there anyway um the argument that because enrollment has declined for the past 20 years that we don't need expanded capacity makes no sense to me um there's clearly demand but and then there's some other things in here about confusing opposition to charter schools with opposition to an expansion there's also another charter school that is seeking an amendment to its Charter that will potentially cause more ammer residents to attend that charter school and that is pvpa yet no one's opposing pvp's expansion I find it specious to make arguments about this related to a school that has served residents of ammer a public school that has served residents of ammer well to say we can't have that and we don't need expanded schooling when clearly there are families in amorist that are choosing to go to this public school pvci because the amorist public schools are not serving them the resolution I believe is misguided although I understand the need for a change in the funding formula but that change and need for it is independent of whether a school that approximately one 5% of Our Town School AED children are attending should exist and there is nothing in this resolution other than a problem and a complaint with the state funding formula that indicat that pvci is not educating its students well you can disagree with the point of charter schools You can disagree with the funding formula but that does not necessarily mean we should be putting as I've said before the families of those people those children who attend the school at the heart of the budget deficits that ammer schools and ammer Regional public schools are seeing and I read this resolution as putting those families at the heart of this issue and to me that is just wrong the families that are going there are receiving a good education they are clearly not finding what they want at our public schools and our Public Schools should do better to find that and I cannot support this resolution as worded thank you are there any other comments Anna this came out of go do you have any comments as chair of go no I covered the gist of the conversation in the go report um we spent a decent amount of time on this at go uh primarily looking uh looking at sources um clarifying sources of data and clarifying numbers that were in the report um as well as some clarity around the differentiation between the ammer and ammer palum Regional School Districts and making sure both of those were uh identified throughout the report but uh ultimately the committee unanimously with one absent voted to find it clear consistent and actionable thank you then we'll move to the vote um and that is um beginning with Anna Devin gothier I councelor ET I Lynn grimer is an i councelor hanii no Bob hegner I councelor Lord absent Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane is I'm sorry absent Andy Steinberg hi the motion passes with seven in favor and one opposed we're going to move on to um our next agenda item which is the presentation of of the state of the Town addresses this is something we do every year uh Athena were you able to load mine thank you we'll start with mine and then we'll move to the town manager so actually six years ago today uh the first Town Council was sworn in it was a very C cute celebratory event at the uh high school and um several of us remain on the council today next Slide the two PE this is a requirement of the Town Charter uh the town manager will also give its stateof the town address and I'm going to be very brief in mind and highlight a few of the slides the full deck is going to will now be posted the next slide please so I want to thank the Town Council uh I made note this time of the various counselors and the number of terms they have served and I just want to point out that Mandy councelor hanii Andy Steinberg Pat deangeles Kathy Shane myself and uh have all served now for for we're in our third term others have served for their second term and their first term I want to thank all of you for the work you do for on behalf of the town of amest next slide our meetings are hard to count sometimes because we have joint meetings but I counted 28 I actually think it's a few more we have four committees we hold our district meetings on a regular basis and this year in and we are liaison in this year in to nine actual Committees of the town uh we appoint people on the planning board the zba and I want to remind people those positions are always open and coming up every year as well as the nonvoting residents of the finance committee and this year we had the special task of AC of appointing the charter Review Committee next slide please one of the respon responsibilities of the Town Council that we take quite seriously and in fact this year alone we have P passed 21 proclamations and resolutions this is one where we are actually at the North fire station and it was in regard to child children and child abuse next slide out of the ordinary however this year we had twice two different times where we had to appoint me members to other elected bodies the housing authority and the Jones Library trustee next slide but we had some special events one was the celebration of 20 years of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and one of our very own on our Council councelor Pat diangelus was part of that panel and in addition to that we had the 30th anniversary and visit from our sister city from kanasaki Japan next slide please the town manager I'm sure will be addressing the goals we've been talking about them a lot so I'm going to just move on we did adopt bylaws and Rental registration and nuisance property I want to give a special shout out to CRC the community resource committee for the tireless work in moving these two bylaws along they have made major ma major changes and they're in the process of being implemented and or re uh enforced if you will the only thing other thing we did with regard to bylaws at least by my records were the fee adjustments on Water and Sewer bylaws next slide we did adopt some policies mostly of them relating to speed and safety zones but in addition to that we did deal with Surplus Real Property Disposition policy next slide please but we're actively working mostly through Tso on waste holler through CRC on solar um on the solar bylaw and on University Drive overlay also with crcc you heard about the upcoming hearing on that that is also going on with the planning board next slide our major capital projects have been made progress although there's been a few stumbling blocks along the way and the one slide I didn't include but would have loved to uh and would should have is that of when we were able to cut the ribbon on the North amorist Library Edition uh we still have and have been starting now to discuss issues related to BPW and fire and EMS next slide as I mentioned earlier we spent a lot of time on our public ways pomoy North Common Town Hall University Drive and Main Street roundabout out and in addition to that signs for each of our for two of our highered institutions speed limits safety zones acceptance of roads and a one of the things outstanding is to whether or not we will adopt a proposed transportation and parking commission and what their roles and responsibilities will be next slide I'm going to skip this although it's very important to us we are a du community and I do want to applaud the continuing progress we are making on both our affordable housing front and the homeless shelter permanent Hess Shelter on the former VFW site that's thanks to Dave Zac and several people in the planning department next slide please um what we are going to find this year is the budgeting is going to be tough and we already know that later tonight we'll be taking our first look as a c as a council at the uh Financial guidelines for the coming year and there's some tough choices and some significant warnings in those guidelines next slide we continue to deal with uh one of our major goals on racial equity and social justice and the resident oversight board is now under discussion by a committee the charge for that will come forward to the council there's still money set aside for a Youth Empowerment Center and other and the we still are dealing with recommendations for from the African Heritage reparations assembly and its followon committee next slide please but we recently had to vote again to refile rank Choice voting fee or transfer of property and extending voting rights to lawful permanent residents for Municipal elections those will now be filed again in the legislature uh by our state representative and Senator next slide please there are other things in the legislature we're going to be looking at looking for and keeping an eye on one is an act creating a municipal and public safety building authority this would help us both with DPW and fire and am and we know that this is something our state representative Mindy Dom and Senator cumerford both support there's also been a lot of discussion about school funding formulas pilot legislation and fee on transfer of property next slide please but our challenges are many and one of the interesting things that we have this going on this year which we hope that all of you will participate in and that is the discussions about the review of the charter again it's been six years we've all learned a lot there's some things probably some of us would like to see changed as well and this is the time to have that discussion so with that I'd like to go to the last slide and just make sure that we thank Our Town manager and our staff we are not always the easiest bunch to deal with and the staff and our town manager have done so remarkably over these last years in the process of that we've had a couple retirements of key staff and they've been replaced in fact tonight we have the opportunity to vote on one of those replacement a new fire chief um so we want to thank all of you for the hard work that each of you do at every level of our staff I want to give a special shout out to Athena oef our Clerk of the Town Council she's patient she works diligently to keep us on task and is reliable in so many ways that people probably don't completely appreciate but thank you again Athena for everything you do for the council we have many members of the public who serve on our committees they do that they do this with a great deal of expertise that they bring from their own professional lives and their own commitment to the community and amoris media has recently gone through a change and has continued to support us in our meetings and finally we want to thank our residents thank you for speaking up thank you for letting us know what's on your mind thank you for coming and talking to us we hope you will continue to do that and we look forward to seeing you in the future Town manager vaman it's your turn thank you Lynn so we've just celebrated Thanksgiving so I want to start with a short story of thanks so late Thursday night my family and I were driving home after big Thanksgiving dinner at Kathy's sister's house in New York we came into town on Route 9 turn left past the town common and stopped at the light at the center of town it was quiet it was late it was a lovely quiet town I was thinking about the lighting of the Mary Maple later this week and a celebration that we'll be enjoyed on our new North Town common we had just seen an ambulance on its way to KY Dickinson on Route 9 and I was listening to the dispatch recording to see what was up as always the dispatcher handled the call with calm professionalism as we turned on the Main Street and passed the police station I said to my kids look up there see the lights that's where the dispatchers are I mentioned how police officers and firefighters are always in our MTS are always standing by ready to respond to any call for help at any time some of the calls that day included an elderly person with high blood pressure another with low blood sugar a carbon monoxide alarm at a house a senior who had fallen in hit their head and a fire alarm activation at a university building I felt very grateful for our First Responders they are the ones who have Thanksgiving dinner while in uniform I felt grateful for the DPW workers too who were out in the we hours that holiday weekend diing our roads so we could get to our shopping or other destinations and so I've been thinking a lot about gratitude lately gratitude for all we have as a family a town and a country and and yeah even when the news is dark we're we're fortunate to live in a place as beautiful as this with the relationships we have preparing the state of the Town leads me to reflect on the years accomplishments and that's important he reminds us that our actions have meaning celebrating our progress bolsters our resilience we need that resilience it's no secret that's hard to get things done in local government it's the unit of government that's closest to the people our elected leaders are our neighbors we all have opinions and we all care and have agent to advocate for what we think is best it's all too easy for people to take pot shots at you and town staff especially in this political climate we're fortunate to have elected and appointed officials who take on these roles you don't take it on for the accolades but to make the town a better place I'm grateful for your leadership you are doing your job and you're doing it well so I want to look at a few things that we can next slide please that was gratitude next slide I want to look at a few things that um which we can be proud of so we broke Lyn sort mentioned our capital projects we broke ground on our new elementary school after securing substantial funding from the state now we're ready to be begin construction and we received bids from three reputable contractors all below our budget and with a healthy contingency while we're going through the bid protest I'm confident you'll see construction start soon and after adjusting the design on the Jones Library you can go to SL um and a renovation we Reed received a bid that was within the town's budget and also with a healthy contingency this project to has received substantial commitment of funds from the state along with millions and other grants and private donations we have more steps to take before I can sign a contract but we are working through this process the town's $15.8 million investment will produce a building project valued at $46 million and at the last council meeting we presented proposals to the Town Council for choosing locations for the fire EMS and DPW facilities along with solid financing options that will advance these projects forward things are moving next slide few years ago uh I presented destination amest a vision to make the downtown more attractive and provide a foundation for an economically vibrant downtown and we have delivered the new North Common has transformed downtown amorist we created a welcoming green space with park-like amenities that serves as a magnet for Gathering we now have families visitors and young people in jooy the center of town and waves we had not seen previously we have a new playground at Kendrick Park and have completed the associated road bike and pedestrian improvements if you walk by there so many kids play there every day more than we ever imagined and soon we'll have a new modern restroom for those inevitable emergencies that kids have and right now the planning department is engaging the community and discussing the vision for the street Skates of downtown Amor Amor and if you haven't taken their survey you you really should it's very it's really a fun survey to take it's very easy easy you get to compare pictures and choose which one you like better and I want to recognize that our local businesses business people have really stepped up making significant private investments in the downtown area by building new housing outfitting revive retail spaces and opening new restaurants and want to recognize the investment Amis college and the university are making by establishing visible presences downtown reinforcing the Vitality of our downtown but this work is not confined to downtown as Lynn mentioned we dedicated a beautiful addition to the north Amber Library thanks to a generous private donor our purchase of the former Hickory Ridge Golf Course and construction of the grant funded Pomroy Village roundabout are bringing New Life to South amorist Hickory Ridge alone preserved 150 acres of sensitive River Frontage provided a handicapped accessible hiking trails that I walked on this weekend and will soon generate 6.5 megawatts of solar power to the east on Bel toown Road we powered up the solar project on the town's close landfill generating another 4 megawatt of clean energy all of it going to meet the demands of our municipal buildings with the side benefit of our first dog park coming up residents will see a new roundabout at Amity Street University Drive partnership with University supported by nearly $2 million State Grant and the Town Council will be making the final decision on moving forward with CPA funds for the new track and field for the Regional School District and traffic improvements on Southeast Street in front of our new elementary school and I want to mention a lesser publicized project but one of high importance it's the complete replacement of the town's Centennial Water Treatment Facility in fum it's it's people don't notice it very often it's and this project is funded in large part by low interest loan and Grant from the state we will have a brand new state-of-the-art facility bringing in established source of clean water to supplement our current reservoirs and Wells Centennial will provide high quality water to the town for decades to come next Slide the town is taking the critical need for affordable housing to straight on Lynn has mentioned a couple of these so the single room occupancy development at 132 North Northampton Road has proven to be super successful and town staff are actively planning for a new shelter with support of services at the former BFW site in the pipeline on the creation of 30 home ownership opportunities for moderate income households in north ammer and the development of 78 units of affordable housing within walking distance of our new school in the East Amber Village Center the message here is we are making our town better for generations to come while stretching the town's precious tax dollars at every opportunity by winning state and federal grants partnering with businesses and other doners and practicing sound financial planning next slide so managing a complex hundred million organization is challenging all the in initiatives I mentioned the new parks buildings capital projects are predicated on a durable Financial Foundation how do we get that by strict budget management including position control a strategic building of reserves smart debt management and credible Financial policies these are the tools of success our finances are solid because we've made the hard choices to manage the taxpayers funds wisely but don't take my word for it the bond rating agencies confirm our strong fiscal systems for every item that's rated that we control we have excelled but I don't want to just focus on finances because that's not the only thing we talk about next Slide the town is fortunate to have many employees who are among the best in the state and I can't sing the Praises enough our staff art is a testament to our ability to grow our own leaders and to recruit Talent from the outside next slide we have three new leaders in our Public Safety department Gabe Ting is police chief camil terak is our Crest director and if the Town Council agrees Lindsey stren is fire chief each brings experience vision and integrity to these important departments in addition we have our new Finance director Melissa Melissa zawatski who in the audience tonight who has just jumped right into the work with fervor and I've have already enjoyed working with our bold new superintendent of schools Dr Z who has imp who has provided inspired leadership in difficult times like many we are bracing for headwinds as a new federal Administration takes over with values that are likely out of step with the town of Amber stated values as Pete budded says here in moments like this our Salvation will come from the local and state levels I have worked for local government my entire career keep keeping the long-term plan an explicit part of the daily conversation makes a short-term setbacks easier to bear the best way to increase resiliency is to reduce frustration it's inevitable you know this as well as I do that one project or another will be unpopular without at least one group a colleague likes to say go hard on the issues and easy on the people I think it's the attacks much more than the actual content of any disagreement and the slow pace that can make Town employees and those engaged in the Civic process feel undercut and discouraged we must all do our part to commit to undertaking this work with an attitude of love and gratitude for one another even those with whom we disagree next slide so relentless optimism is a survival skill that we can all give each other to those in our community who feel we could go further or move faster I encourage you to reflect on the progress we've made together show me another Community that's tackling racial equity and climate action with greater determination our Municipal staff as deeply committed to their mission as ours we know we're not perfect we're making strives every day to build a stronger more inclusive and better future I appreciate the opportunity to serve you and the people of amorist I'm privileged to work alongside our incredible staff and still after eight years here when I drive home late at night with my family I see this lovely little town and I'm grateful to be here thank you thank you very much Paul very and I do want to acknowledge that we had a real library of photos to draw from because of Sam Griffin our new communications director and also Angela Mills who often tends our events as well uh again thanks Paul I appreciate the comments and your review of the Town um we are going to move on to action items the first first action item which was about signing a letter regarding Chapter 70 funding has been removed it will be back on the agenda for December 16th um the second one is regarding the community preservation act uh referral of community preservation act appropriation and transfer order FY 25-8 a and Order appropriating and authorizing debt for construction of the reoriented track and field facility known as option 3C at the Amis pelum Regional High School with that I'm going to call on both um our town manager Paul Bachman and assistant Town manager Dave Zac um and want to recognize the CPA committee and chair Sam McLoud for taking this item up out of order and bringing it to the council not consistent with other my mic thank you um so I'm going to make a motion seek a second and uh then move on um to refer Community preservation act appropriation and transfer order FY 25 08a and Order appropriating and authorizing debt for construction of the reoriented track and field facility known as option 3C at the Amis pelum Regional High School to the finance committee for consideration for a recommendation to the Town Council by January 27th 2025 is there a second second earning okay with that we're going to go to the presentation Paul yeah I'm gonna give it over to Dave who in the um absence of leadership at the school because of the change of of people Dave really took this on and has been guiding it through four towns not just ammer so okay Dave sure thank you very much Lynn can you hear me okay we can thank you great thank you for having me I'm joined tonight by Bob parent our special capital projects manager um perhaps Athena could let him into the room if questions do arise uh later on um Bob and I have been working together on this project with our Consulting team at SLR as the council knows uh SLR has been doing a wonderful job and we've made tremendous progress in the last few months uh all along the way we've kept the new superintendent of schools updated and consulted with her team in including the athletic director coaches and staff uh We've also consulted with the planning department uh the inspections department and our Department of Public Works uh with with particular emphasis on our engineering staff there um I want to note that the newest cost estimate uh for the plan 3C which is the plan that we have been moving forward with is in your packet uh also the CPA recommendation for the 800,000 uh in additional CPA funds is in your packet as well and then there is a draft uh uh appropriation and debt authorization order uh in the packet as I mentioned there's been significant progress since we last discussed the project with the council and we're excited to share this with you tonight and in future meetings as needed uh some of the recent benchmarks that uh We've passed uh We've uh we've moved forward on the design uh and plans and cost estimates are moving forward with the goal of bidding the project in January of next year again with a Target date for construction of Summer 2025 um we've moved forward on permitting we've presented the project and gotten feedback from the drb the daac we've presented to the Conservation Commission and the planning board and we hope for a positive outcomes from the commission tomorrow uh excuse me Wednesday night and the planning board on 124 as as well um in terms of funding um I did go to the pelum uh town meeting and pelum uh fortunately voted for um for the project with 136 excuse me with 999,000 additional dollars uh toward the project I'll be at the shutesbury town meeting tomorrow night where we have a request in for 136,000 for the project and then uh later next week I'll be before the Leverett CPAC with an application for $176,000 uh dollars to support the project which we hope they will take up uh if it's voted uh to forward to annual town meeting in the spring so we've we've really appreciated all the Partnerships of moving this project forward uh we're excited to bring the project to the community we're hopeful about the Project funding and sources and uh we we think we have reasonable accurate cost estimates uh moving forward we understand that tonight's vote is really whether to refer to the finance committee and we're happy to take questions at this point um either Bob or myself could take those questions questions councelor hanii um thank you for the financial update that was the bulk of my questions of where did all the other CPAs stand so I I thank you for that I saw that right before the meeting um so now my question is you've got a an estimated project total of 4.47 million um and funding requests of over that um that have been at least approved by CPA committees even I believe um with Leverett waiting to approve still in their CPA but but funding requests at 3.5 million fully approved and another 900 plus th000 sitting in the legislative bodies basically right now us and town meeting for shutesbury um CPA funds have a non-s supplant requirement so I guess one of my questions is if we vote this before leverick gets to Spring town meeting and so does shutesbury can Leverett even allocate CPA money um if the bids come in at 4.47 million uh or should we be thinking about allocating some number that gets us up to 4.47 million if shsb and Leverett allocate their full CPA amount so that there is no non-s supplanting um and that all four towns can contribute CPA money and then the other one sort of is if the project comes in under budget or under what funding has been secured who gets to keep the overage is and is there an agreement as to what monies of these what could end up being six or seven funding sources get spent first or last um things like that and I know you might not have answers tonight and this is going to fi finance committee um so I'm happy to wait on those answers but that's sort of where I'm thinking and then I do want to say I appreciate Dave that you are heading this um and your time and Bob parents time but this is fundamentally a regional school project and so I guess one of my questions is as the superintendent is looking at executing memorandums of agreements for uses of things and doing all of that and being more careful with that um I I mean kind of blunt but how is your time being compensated or is it being donated to the region and how is that going into this calculation um your and Bob parents time thanks um why don't we take Pam Ro's questions if you have them and then we'll go on and ask for responses Dave okay um there was a lot in that though I just wonder whether we're going to lose that train would you mind if we no please go ahead so um first off we'll know tomorrow night shury town meeting is taking this up tomorrow night so we'll know on the $136,000 request to shutesbury we'll we'll know that before the even the finance committee later this week my understanding is if the council uh moves in this direction you will um hopefully refer this to the finance committee and they will take it up I believe next week on the 10th if I'm not mistaken um but I defer to to the chair of the finance committee on that so we we've got a little time to to process the 136 um uh we will not know and I think those are great we will not have answers on some of your other questions councelor hanii uh with regard to the Leverett piece uh I think we're going to have to think about that a little bit in terms of supplanting um Bob I don't know if you wanted to comment on any those questions or or comment on anything that councelor hanii talked about with regard to you know the 4.7 um sure certainly I can adding to that I'd wanted to note that the $ 4.47 million estimate is based on a 5% contingency amount which is is reasonable for this type of work but it's a little bit less than would typically be carried forward in a project most times we would carry a 10% contingency into bidding at this point and I did just want to note that if that in contingency was increased to 10% the total uh project value at that point would be 4.67 million just under the total of all the requested funding sources from the various communities so just trying to make the point that there doesn't there isn't necessarily as big of a gap as there might appear to be between the project estimate and what is being requested from the four communities uh because we're going with a relatively lean contingency amount before we go on to other questions I would just add that we will certainly take your questions about um you know kind of the sequence and and supplanting and where does if if all the money is not needed if if the town of ammer and and the other three towns all chip in with their shares and we don't need all the money we will we need to address your question about so who who gets who gets money's returned or who doesn't spend all that has been allocated we hear you on that and then I don't really have a comment on my time um perhaps the town manager wants to comment on that but we are here trying to move this project forward for our community and you know we are at least 80% of this project in terms of funding so we're trying to make it happen after all these many years for the athletes and the coaches and and the broader community so that's where we are I think on that Paul did you have a comment you wanted to make no I mean the timing of this project was such that given the sort of change over of Staffing at the school there was nobody really there who was um ready to take on this this Challenge and I thought it was important for us to move this forward and so I appreciate Dave and Bob stepping up to make that happen I get I understand what the councelor Hani is saying and that's something we will weigh as we move forward thank you Pam broney thank you um the existing I'm I'm going to talk about first of all I support this project uh second I want to talk about uh tan Brooke which is in a pipe that runs currently uh along through the fields the playing fields and barely touches the existing um track in the new orientation the new track will sit substantially over the top of tan Brook piping so my question is how are the contractors going to be directed to protect the piping uh in order to not exacerbate the wet sellers that uh everyone that I know that lives on the W the east side of Cottage Street has so um the question is what protection are you are you going to seek for Tan Brook piping thank you I would defer to Bob on that if it's okay Lynn certainly it's a very valid question one of the first things we did when we got involved in this project was to look at the condition of that pipe uh working with the DPW we televis the entire length of the pipe through the field so we have documentation of what the existing condition of that pipe is you know we uh have made certain that we have adequate cover over the top of the pipe during construction and we'll have the means to do if necessary a post construction video and hold the account the contractor accountable for any problems that might occur but we really don't anticipate it it's a the pipe is in very good condition it's a reinforced concrete pipe um it looks pretty much as good as it was the day it was installed um but it is a concern we can't we need to make certain that that pipe isn't damaged so it continues to serve for you know many years after after today okay um so my question first of all let me just say I'm delighted to see this project moving forward I think it's a um terrific project that serves all four of the towns and not just the students and the athletes that are and coaches but those people who just go out and use the track so um but my question really builds a little bit on what uh councelor haniki was and that is as we move forward what is the plan for maintenance of this facility and what how that how will that be codified in an Mo MOA or whatever the case may be thank you D if I could yeah if I could Lynn um we I I did neglect to mention that we are currently um working with our finance director and the team over at the region on um every every CPA funded project in town has to have a an agreement essentially anou a legal document and we will have a a CPA agreement contract between the town and the region um on the use of of U of the CPA funds um it will address uh a number of the issues that have come up tonight the councelor II uh brought up and we will I I was not 100% sure it would it would delve into the maintenance but we can consider that with the superintendent as well but there will be a formal contract agreement as uh as is is uh our our practice and our policy relative to CPA funding of of any sort with a nonprofit or um within the town great thank you very much are there any other questions or comments seeing none we're going to move I'm sorry councelor hanii sorry I was trying to reopen the document I just closed um did I'm just trying to look it up we already gave CPA funds for it um and so I guess do we already have an agreement and if so for the CPA funds we already authorized for it the $967,000 and if so are we looking at a different one or was that agreement never executed again you don't have to answer it now just bring it to finance um David go ahead um I think Bob can partially address that but because construction hasn't started we really haven't other than design money we really haven't spent uh but a small fraction of the funds you see in the memo um but let me look into that for for finance for next week um I'm not aware that we have a an agreement again that was in the hands of the former Finance director for the schools and it may be something that didn't carry forward during that period but again uh Bob I think our contract for design is approximately 200 and some odd thousand dollar it's a fairly small fraction of the overall project and some of those funds actually uh were drawn from other accounts that are non CPA so we'll have more detail on that um next week at Finance just adding to that the majority of the funds that have been spent to date have come from funds that as I understand it that the district has on hand including the hurricane boosters account as well as the initial pelum CPA grant that had been received we're just starting to dip into the um first round of Amherst CPA funding right now uh to pay for design fees but we're we're really beginning that process right now so now is the time to really get that agreement in place before we go much further Bob hegner yes um one of the things we discussed uh when we were debating this a while back was whether we could defer some of the construction in order to keep the cost down below uh what was uh you know then considered to be uh a a threshold is is is there a is will we be doing that will we be postponing some things I mean we talked about maybe postponing the lighting um you know we could put the base of the lighting in but postpone the the towers and the lights um will we be doing any of that or is this funding sufficient to do the entire Project B why don't you jump in on alt alt ads and such yeah correct the number that has been presented the $4.4 7 million which includes the 5% contingency includes all of the additive alternates in other words that's everything we would like to complete it's still a Rel atively lean lean project to be you know to be honest it doesn't have a press box it doesn't have bleachers it doesn't have lots of things that you might want to see somewhere down the road at this location um but as a public project we need to be able to ensure that once the bids come in we can award the contract within the funding that has been appropriated for the project and um a strategy that's often used is the use of alternates which we do have we currently have identified up to seven alternates that could reduce that 4.47 million or what the bid number is by about $800,000 so if either we're not successful in receiving all the funding that we've requested or we receive bids that are higher than estimated we have a strategy in place to bring the project cost down so that it would match the available funding thank you are there any other questions or comments um then we're going to move to a vote the motion's been made and seconded I'll begin the vote with councelor this is a vote for referral I Lyn grimer and I councelor hanii hi Bob hegner I councelor Lord is not here Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi cat Andy Steinberg I and Anna delin goth I it's unanimous of all of those present so it is one eight in favor and none opposed um let me just also mention that I assume that any mo MOA orou for maintenance will cover all the money that has been put into this not just CPA since it a lot of town money has also gone into this and booster money so thank you again for this project thank you both for working on it at the level that you have and and we look forward to it thanks thank you very much thank you okay we're going to move on to supplemental budget appropriation requests um item C1 has was removed because it was not forwarded as a recommendation at this time from the finance committee and that's the one that regards a sidewalk equipment for DPW so we're going to move on to C2 which is referral of council order FY 25- 04b in order appropriating the supplemental increase to the town of ammer sewer Enterprise fund operating budget for the fiscal year 2025 I'm going to place the motion in order and then we do have presentations I will mention that there are three of these kinds of um orders and so at when we do the presentation one of them will be about the sewer fund operating budget the next will be about the um sewer Enterprise fund operating budget um for a supplemental increase and the third one is the solid waste Enterprise fund uh superintendent Guilford moing of superintendent of DPW Guilford moring has joined us along with our finance director for this purpose so the first order is the motion is to refer Council order FY 25- 04b in order appropriating a supplemental increase to the town of amerur Enterprise fund operating budget for fiscal year fy2 um to the finance committee for a recommendation to the Town Council by January 27 2025 is there a second second thank you councelor um please go ahead Gilford so this appropriation yeah this we can hear you I got a have a cold so sometimes my voice stops um so this appropriation is for $250,000 to cover the cost of sludge removal from the waste War treatment plant we opened bids and the new bid was $25,000 more than we budgeted for and we had actually put additional money into the budget during the budgeting process because we thought it would go up we just were off and how much it went went up so this is the money that pays to have the sludge residue taken from the Wastewater Plant it goes to a facility in Connecticut where it is disposed of and that's what this money is for are questions from the council councelor hanii um thank you for indicating that this was unanticipated and that you tried to put this money into the budget um that was one of my questions so thank you for covering that one you said 25,000 but the request is 250,000 so I was just wanting to clarify that yes so it the bid was 250,000 more 250,000 can that seems like a lot can you can you tell us how much sludge removal costs in general and how much you had anticipated the new bid would be so that we get an idea of how much it was more than we thought it would be so we are now is now going to cost roughly a million dollars a year to remove our Sledge we thought we'd be in the 700 to $750,000 range okay any further question councelor hanii um the only one I have is more related to next year's budget um we going to make make sure this is seems like the second year in a row that the sewer Enterprise fund has not done well in anticipating its costs in terms of when you've when we've adopted the sewer fees um so in finance can you then address you don't have to do it now what the department will be doing to anticipate the fees and the expenses better so that we can plan the fees and propose and set fees better we can we can do that okay um would you please repeat your response Guilford uh yes we can do that okay thank you um Bob hegner yes I was gonna say the same thing my concern is how how are these fees going to uh increase over time if you could estimate that uh that would be very helpful okay are there any other questions on this particular Financial order that the vote is a referral to finance seeing none I'm going to move to the vote start with counselor I'm starting with Lyn grimer myself I councelor hanii I Bob hegner I Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Andy Steinberg hi honor Devin gothier I councelor Han councelor ET I it's unanimous with eight people voting no none opposed uh the next one I'm going to read the motion seek a second to refer Council order FY 25-4 C an order appropriating a supplemental increase to the town of armmer solid waste Enterprise fund operating budget for fiscal year 2025 to the finance committee with a recommendation to the Town Council by January 27 2025 uh is there a second second Rooney second Pam Rooney um uh would you please speak to this one uh Guilford so at at the Sol in the solid waste fund and the at the landfill we do a lot of sampling uh we sample groundwater we sample surface water we sample sediment we do a lot of different sampling to to make sure that things are not getting out of the landfill and it's required by D um the latest chemicals of concern by D are called posos chemicals forever chemicals um they told us about January February last year that they might be requiring us to do this sampling uh we are actually having to do this sampling in our Wastewater sludge as well now so we didn't know for sure what they were going to require they finally gave us the requirements but the budget had already been finalized and was moving forward and then we got prices so this is the price to do this testing it's about $20,000 we'll be doing sampling from the monitoring wells around the landfill to look for um forever chemicals in the uh in the water and that's what this is for um we've kind of already started the sampling and hopefully you approve this and we can finish the sampling okay are there questions from the council okay seeing none we're going to move to a vote this again is vote to refer uh councelor hanii I Bob hegner I Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Andy Steinberg hi um Anna Devin gothi I councelor ete I Lyn grimer is an i it's eight in favor none opposed uh the next counts next order is to refer Council order FY 25-5 B and Order appropriating funds for the town of ammer sewer fund Capital program sewer collection system and wastewater treatment pH and chlorine studies and additional costs associated with gravity belt thickener project to the finance committee with a report to the Town Council by January 27 2025 is there a second Ryan second thank you go for so there's there's three things that this is made up of one is the pH study when we got our new permit we had some options in our new permit of how to maintain the ph and our effluent discharge to the river and we've chosen to do a study of our pH and come up with a way to to maximize the operation of the plant to not have to do any well to see if we have to do any pH adjustment or if we can stay within the range ranges we're operating in now um our new requirement is uh 6.5 for our pH and we are just a little around there so there might need to be some adjustments we have to make in our water that's being turned over to the river so this study is a requirement of the permit and then it will also there will be a follow on if we have to make some adjustments there'll be some design work to install the adjustments that need to be made but this is kind of a a permanent required um request uh it's taken us a little while to work it out with what we wanted to do with our staff and with d and this is why it's coming at this time period the second one is a chlorine study uh we've been having issues for years with our chlorine system and the staff is really not comfortable with the chlorine system at times so we decided we should just have a study see if we want to stay with gasius chlorine or we want to go to one of two other options which would either be hyper chlorate or it would be UV disinfection those are both options um they both cost money one's a little less expensive than the other one but we really think we need to look at what we're doing make sure our system's working properly and see if there's a better alternative uh for the safety of the staff and for the safety of the water we're discharging we've had recently we've had more chlorine violations in our affluent discharge than we've wanted it's uh we try not to have any violations but we probably doubled our violations in the last few years so we probably had about five or six um which is really not good we zero is The Goal Zero is what you want to have um so the study is to look at that uh we actually having the pH study and the chlorine study go on at the same time we'll have the engineering staff on board doing it at the same time which actually is a little bit more efficient and we won't be paying double the price for the staff to do the do the study so we kind of Lo lumped them together to try to do it during the same time period and that's what we're we're trying to set up here um we do have staff at the Wastewater Plant from the our Consulting engineer working on the gbt project and we're just trying to capitalize on having all those people there and try to get these two studies done as well um the third thing is the money for the gravity belt thickener uh we've had cost overruns we've had some guard rail that needs to be replaced small things that have to be done that just weren't anticipated in the construction um and then we've had some larger things uh some valves that we want to replace which we found out we really need to replace these Valves and make this entire process works a little better so it's roughly $385,000 for this extra work um the project is still under 10% overall in change orders so we're still got a good project here we haven't um we haven't completely uh blown the project as as the Consultants would say because we're within that 10% we're under 10% for change orders but we're ask we're asking for this money to make those adjustments some have already been made and some are to be made made um um so the motion's been made in second and we're going to move to councelor questions uh councelor Ryan so Gilford you mentioned that occasionally there are chlorine violations I'm just wondering what the consequences of violations are uh the consequences is that we have to explore why we caused the violation and how to resolve it and get back into compliance um one of the if we do too many of them we do we will receive a notice of non-conformance and we have to bring the plant into conformance um we have not had to do had a non-compliance issue yet at the Wastewater Plant okay councelor hanii uh my question is more of a logistical procedural question and it relates to all of these all three of these Council orders do they need a public forum and if so when is that planned for since they're appr since they appear to be Appropriations outside of the budget they do they do require a public forum that public forum will probably not take place until the beginning of January um so I was actually wanted to know whether there was a financial consequence when we're out of compliance [Music] um um eventually there will be the more you're out of compliance the more they look at you and they either will issue a fine or they will make you um do some type of uh the words of evading me right now but we'll have to have a consent order and get into compliance and usually a consent order they come up with uh or they tell you to get um the changes made so you don't get go out of compliance again um they can get expensive like uh Springfield and Holio and chapi have consent orders for their confined sewer overflows those are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work that they're legitimately signed a contract with the EPA and the D to to U resolve uh we're still on the low end of the problem scale right now we're not that bad um we just need to make sure we're showing progress and getting and containing our issues I I would just say I hope we continue to do that in a manner that makes sure we never are out of compliance and have some kind of order uh that comes us without anticipation and therefore very costly um counselor um Pam Ro can uh can someone explain why we would need a public forum on these uh items when the funding is coming out of the Enterprise fund itself please go ahead Athena because they the spending those funds weren't in the budget and so any appropriation even if it's from an Enterprise fund outside what's planned in the budget needs a public forum and and we will be able to lump them all together into one public forum okay so we don't have to hold three public forums are there any other questions or comments again this is a vote for referral uh I'll begin with Council um Bob hegner hi uh Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Andy Steinberg hi uh Anna Delan gothier hi Council r hi Lynn grimer and I Mandy Johan hanii hi it's unanimous thank you very much very much for joining us and we hope you're get over your cold soon I do too yeah thanks thanks [Music] um I'm going to suggest we take our break now and reconvene at s at 8 o'clock okay so we will re when we reconvene we will move on to the town managers evaluation memo the Draft Town manager goals the draft budget guidelines and the meeting schedule thank you please unmute and also turn your video on and turn it back on when you return e e e e e good for e you're love than e e e e e spe not e we're going to reconvene please as you come back please turn your video on so I know that you're here George you have your hand up oh okay councelor at day is working very hard not to turn his sound on all right we're all back um thank you uh the next item on our agenda is um the town manager evaluation and memo um I received a variety of comments and edits and tried to incorporate all of them if I missed somebody's I am sorry somehow or another it was a deluge of emails on various different things um but the um motion before us is to accept uh to adopt the 2024 Town manager performance evaluation as presented in the evaluation memo dated November 26 it should say not 18 uh 2024 and so uh is there a second Ryan second thank you now are there questions comments or required changes yes councelor hanii I was just wondering what was up with the like page three and four practically blank and whether that'll at least get deleted before we send it formally onto the manager great idea thank you any other questions or comments I didn't realize there was that big blank in there it's because I took that confusing table out yes yes pamon thank you I I appreciate the opportunity to consider all that has been accomplished in the year and and the TR mendous amount of work that goes in toward that goes into and toward accomplishing our goals um all that said it's really pretty awful process and the outcome in terms of uh ranking or voting or whatever is is it's an ineffective way because we could have we can have everything from unsatisfactory to commendable based on the the perspective of that particular counselor and so everything essentially gets averaged and it's not a it's it's a it's a very difficult way to gauge uh uh actual achievement so um I'm not going to equiv with any of the wording I just I just think um it's not a great system I think we all agree with that one are there any other questions or comments okay seeing none we're going to move to a vote um and this is an adoption uh on it uh let's see I think we're up to Pam Rooney I councelor Ryan hi Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer to nops I'm sorry um Pat Anna Delan goth here hi councelor r hi Lyn grimer an i councelor hanii hi Bob hegner hi councelor Lord oops not here yet all right it's unanimous Paul thank you I don't think we uh said one word of thanks um when we were doing this before Thanksgiving but uh we want to thank you for everything you've done and for your performance over this past year and for the last eight years um we're going to now I'm just going to ask uh vice president uh gothier Anna Devin gothier uh to talk about the town manager goals hi everybody I'm back to talk about town manager goals again um so go will be continuing our discussion on Town manager goals on Thursday the 5th and what we are going to be getting into in this meeting is our action items uh we'll be talking about outcomes but the goal here is this is our last um opportunity to get those action items in so what I need from folks is to tell me which action items from the last year's goals you would like carried over uh into this year's goals I'm prepping a document for go that will put the the action items in there and I'd like to be able to include comments from uh the full Council on which ones should be there and if there are any you think should be struck from uh this coming Year's goals as well um a reminder action items should be something that uh to kind of look back at what Pam was just saying that's not they're not up for interpretation as to whether or not they were achieved these are things action items mean you can um without any gray area say this was done this was not done so that's that's where we're trying to get to with the action items the outcomes are a bit more broad um and I am continuing to seek feedback on those as well based on last year's goals or if you have something completely new to add in for this year please send that to me as soon as possible thank you looks like there are some questions then councelor um hanii yeah um you kind of answered it but I was wondering where if we could get a copy of the updated chart document whatever you want to refer to that that you were talking about having edited in go because it sounds like you've already put some in um and it's hard to cross reference or look when I don't have anything more recent than something without any action items already put in um so it would be helpful since you said in your memo that you wanted tracked changes in a word version to have the most recent word version that was edited at go and what came out of that go meeting not what went into that go meeting absolutely um I will send that out to the council it will be in the go packet for this week as well but I will make sure the council has a copy thank you okay um Andy Steinberg yes when we were in one of our sessions were revie the goals for um this year that's about to end I made a comment to in general terms about several aspects of the goals and um one of them was that I found it very difficult to do what we were trying to do at that point which was to sort of rank goals or ones that we thought were particularly important that ex that were actually carryovers for prior years and I made the suggestion that we really not should not even um necessarily list them other than to say that uh something like continue the good work that you've done on these previous goals and uh then um narrow the discussion because they don't need the repetition from the prior year we know that um they're being worked on that they're complex that uh it's not going to be anything that's uh that we can add to it um and by listing it as a goal again you kind of I mean we wouldn't not list it if there's substantial work that's under way on it so I would just suggest that U we look very carefully at the need to actually list all the goals um again that were previously listed the other thing that I uh pointed out at the time I'll just say to complete the thought that I had expressed at that time that we need to be very thoughtful as we add new goals that are entirely new processes recognizing that frequently we are in then diving into a multi-year process and have to assess the capacity to do that and we also as we introduce U bylaws uh or policies that ultimately they kind of turn into goals on themselves and um we need to give some thought to that question too is to how that kind of process can be thoughtfully uh dealt with in the same way that we're dealing with this process so thanks Andy and to address that point um in terms of ongoing annual goals what go has talked about is everything should be able to get to that actionable place and so if something is a continuation from a prior year there should be specific things that we expect to be done in the coming year otherwise it wouldn't be on the goals and so you know I think that your second point about uh things that take up time and and having the goals being an indicator of how we expect the town manager to use his time is one that go is discussing when we think about categories like the um like the administration and Leadership area right so thinking through those are the items that are the job duties of the Town manager more of the that kind of executive functioning of the town uh how do we articulate those so that we can mark them off as complete or for that year um but I think what's really important is that we not include vague references to past work because that's where there's a lot of space for interpretation uh if counselors didn't like that that work existed then they're going to have commentary on it continuing in the example you gave right continue your good work on XYZ if if there are people that didn't like that work in the place that's then leading to this situation where we're kind of averaging out all of our scores again and so we need to be able to have goals that are almost dispassionate at the end that or that we have voted on as a council uh and action items that it's not when we look at them we're not evaluating the Merit of the action item we are evaluating whether or not it was completed so I think that's that's the lens that go is looking at and if we're going to have something on there every year we need to be indicating what it is that is accomplished on that goal in the span of the year um I'd like to pause for a moment and ask councelor Lord can you hear us I can hear you can you hear me yes we can thank you for joining us uh P Rooney in response to the the comments that were just made about the action items if an action item disappears uh or is just referenced um I think that doesn't give true indication of the fact that it's still underway take for instance uh rental registration which took two years plus to finish so action was it was ongoing I would have not wanted to drop that as an action uh similarly with solar bylaw that's been underway for now three years uh one one and a half two and a half excuse me only two and a half years so um to eliminate that and not and not reference it as yet another as an action item I think would be a mistake it also gives us by by continuing those ongoing uh activities it allows us to better see what what workload is already there and and what new can be filed on otherwise it's Lo so that was just response to that the question to um councilor delin gothier is is this our one and only chance to actually um you know talk about what's going to carry it over give you new items or is this just to help formulate the table the lad so this is to help us formulate this will all come to the council for a vote um but I think as we all know it's hard to have those conversations from the kind of the Gen genis at a 13ers meeting and so we're trying to get as much input and filter it kind of um and and format it and all of that through go so that what we bring to council has everyone's input in it and hopefully is a little less messy that said there's always the possibility that go will not vote to include something and someone can bring it back at the council level and say I wanted this in there go didn't put it in there put it in there so this is Thursday is the last scheduled go meeting before the next the The Last council meeting of the year if that makes sense so the idea would be if you can get any feedback to me before Thursday uh that would be great the fifth this week yeah um jel was attempting to meet on the 12th but there's a lot of there are a lot of other meetings going on um we're going to see uh what happens with that the issues we would have it our our staff person is Staffing another committee meeting at that time so um we're currently kind of struggling with that time frame but uh unfortunately we only have the last meeting on the 5th it will come before the Council on our meeting on the 19th 16th 16th sorry 16th the Council on the 16th so yeah you'll have something from go after the 5th to look at and provide comments on for the council C answer Ryan when this finally comes to the council and we vote on it um how does that go I spent a while obviously since I've been around for this but um we do it item by item line by line and we certainly don't just vote the entire document so we do we do I'm sorry so yeah if you're opposed to say if there's an action item that you don't like in this entire document your only choice is to vote against the goals as a to as you would present that action item as either an amendment to remove or amend and then it would go up or down and then you basically when we're finally done I see okay but there's a series of amendments back and forth thank you yeah thanks for asking George are there other questions or comments regarding the goals okay then we're going to move on to the draft budget guidelines um the finance committee has been working very hard on this they have met on several occasions um I know that councelor hanii has been one of the major authors and um I've enjoyed listening to the discussion um but I will call on the chair of Finance Bob hegner do you want to introduce this and we'll move on to questions and comments we are not taking a vote tonight yes so as Lynn mentioned um we've spent a lot of time uh on the guidelines um we spent a lot of time discussing things that are not in the guidelines so um you know it it what you see is the final is a final product or a product uh that does reflect uh a lot of discussion um I sent uh I provided a report as well as the draft guidelines where I tried to lay out some of the areas where I thought there might be questions or we might have um moved along I mean we we tried to stay within um the basic guidelines that have been followed by the town uh such as you know keeping the free cash at 5% uh the general stabilization at 10% uh we kept the um the uh investment in the um the uh capital capital stabilization fund at 10.5% um so uh there are a lot of things that we did that are very familiar or very similar but we there are some things that we we thought we might want to change a little bit so let me focus on some of those um that um you may want to uh get some further discussion of first of all uh the one of the things that you have to understand and what the committee understands is that the the finances or the the budget that the town has is constantly changing new information becomes available all the time and that gives the manager and the finance director uh much more information uh to figure out uh ways of doing things that are a little different so we Tred to set these guidelines as policy goals and what the manager and the finance director respond to the changes that occur um we we tried to put the highlevel uh uh guidelines in the executive summary some members did not like the executive summary because it doesn't really include all of the discussion around each of the points and if if people only read the executive summary they might get the wrong impression so that's one issue is whether the executive summary is really helpful or not um one of the things that we um decided on um was is to recommend that the town permanently basically increase the Baseline funding for the regional schools by the amount that we had put in last year using arpa funds and we recognize that this is Poss possibly problematic because we don't want to um signal that we you know that the the the regional school budget is unconstrained uh but we did put in a uh a admonition to all budget areas that they needed to really show us uh Over a four-year period or up up through through FY 29 how they could manage within the three to 4% increase that we normally see in the town and this will give us some indication of what the stresses are um on on the budgets um as the principles uh within each of the four uh committee or four general areas uh see it um we recommend freezing the contributions to the town's OPB uh liability uh at the current 600,000 to give us a little bit more leeway for other Town needs um one of the issues that we we don't really have an answer for right now but it's coming up is the elementary school may come in below what we had originally estimated as the cost and what do we do with that excess money I mean some people in town have said you need to return it to the the the taxpayers because you didn't ask for anything other than construction of a school other people have said well maybe this is money we could use for some other purpose so we need that's something that the council's going to have to make a have a discussion on and uh you know we'll probably get some indication of that over this next fiscal year um um the financial the town provided a financial models of uh Finance director provided some uh Financial models for um how to fund the four major capital projects uh the the town the the the uh committee re you know discussed these but did not really reach a recommendation as to which model made sense and basically the the the issue there's a couple of issues uh that we saw one is that um the um the models don't include all of the potential debt that we might incur for some of these projects um the uh Finance director pointed out that you know she can only put in the models debt that's already been approved but we know that there's other potential debt out there so you know we need we don't know what the solution is to that yet but I think that's something where um we need to think about what what debt is is you know reasonably anticipated that we should put into the models um and um we did say that the DPW facility is probably the higher priority that of the two DPW versus Fire EMS facility um we also uh members of the committee had some concerns about how the town can meet other Capital needs within a $3 million cap um we're not sure that that's enough and we want to we really want to focus in on uh the a five-year uh estimate of capital needs that we will get through the um jcpc process and then the the final thing is we we recommended a connection fees for the town's water and sewer systems uh the rationale behind that was that you know the town has invested a lot of money in our systems and if somebody comes in and says hey can I hook up to your system we should be charging them some connection fee to kind of you know reflect the fact that we've invested in these for for for many many decades so uh anyway that's that's kind of like the the the the highlevel thing but we obviously if people have specific questions on any part of the the guidelines uh please uh this is the time to to ask them so thank you uh P mnie thanks um just a couple of items and one is um I would encourage the the finance committee to consider adding uh something to the effect whether it's in section six uh or in this section under sort of the budget budget guidelines uh and that would be to ask the town manager to give a free cash estimate or a surplus estimate by April 1 so prior to the requirement of submitting his budget um by May one so that we have a much better sense of that'll be that'll be the beginning of the fourth quarter we'll have a much better sense of actual surpluses and actual expenses um we have for several years seen really healthy endof year um um call it free cash and I think um many people are uncomfortable that um it it's not a it's not a well-guided process so so we end up with some pretty um arbitrary with with conditions obviously but but not necessarily programmed um expend expenditures um the second is I would I would strongly encourage maybe draft modeling um by the finance director to include all potential debt not just the approved debt I think um what comes to my mind is the potential for um some additional for the library if if funds are not raised um by by the by Jones Library itself and that What will what will the town be held accountable for since we are the ones signing the the check essentially those are my two items thank you um councilor so I'm looking at page one of the budget guideline L which on the bottom of the page at the expense projections it reads to prioritize increasing the ammer regional assessment fy2 based to its full fy2 assessment amount that is assessment plus additional support prior to calculating the 3% year overy year increase my question is if we are now having what is called the full fy2 assessment amount does that mean that previous years we were we didn't budget to the full amount and so in that sense what changed between last year and this year where by last year we weren't we didn't expect to use the onetime gift as an addition to calculate the base if that makes sense I'm tripping over myself but the point is it says here that it's the full fy2 which means previous years it was not full what changed in the discussion this year to make this determination Bob did you want to address that yeah I think I think um I don't I don't want to speak for the committee but I think the sentiment was that um the schools need some short-term money to get through a crisis they have a new uh superintendent who's working very hard to get the budgets in line with the annual growth of our Revenue base um but the the the consensus was or the the sentiment was we can't get get there this year um so it was to try to give the school the Regional Schools a little bit more money uh to get them through the crisis uh but we did emphasize that they have to come back and tell us what their you know their projections are over a five year four or five year period in order to see what whether they're going to be able to get down to a 3 or 4% increase or not um I think that would then you know we're leaving open what we do next year as a consequence of seeing these projections um I mean it's if we want to take a hard line we can take a hard line and say we're going to we're only going to increase it 3% over what our Baseline was prior to the the ARP of money that we put in in um that's the choice that we have um or somewhere in between does that answer your question or councilor it does but if that becomes the new base then that is permanent or is there a possibility that that is going to be yes adjusted if so then maybe the language needs to be clarified so that we could have that expectation well again you're you're looking at the the okay we we'll try to clarify that um the if you look down as to where the projections are actually in the document besides the executive summary we try to put more context around that um this is this is one of the problems with the executive summary that I mentioned earlier that you know some people objected to the the fact that there was an executive summary because it can be you know you read one one sentence in the executive summary and it it may not convey all of the Nuance that you want to convey around that particular topic so but we'll see what we can do to clarify okay um councelor Ryan so first thank you Bob as chair and also to the committee for doing this work it is really really important I feel like every morning I'm going to be reading this document um before I set off to uh do my work for the council or whenever I do that work um but I do have a sp kind of following up on on council at his comment I think um I I dug deep into the document and on page two of the document I'm looking at and uh it says basically our schools must address already identified structural budgeting issues resulting from the decline in student enrollment and the recent use of one-time funds to supplement operating budgets which I agree with then but in the uh budget guidelines the executive summary as Council pointed out um we see that uh a one-time use of monies was is being basically put into the base and so I guess the only way I can make that make sense and explain it to my constituents who have questions about this is that this money even though it doesn't it seems to go in contradiction to what you say in the bulk in this the heart of the document is um actually making up for some other structural problems that that uh U that's why you're doing it I I just I guess I'm trying to just try to make sense of the the larger principle in the document itself with the fact that we are adding 355,000 uh to the uh FY 25 budget and that money was clearly onetime money um so could you help me how would I explain it to my constituents that would seem in contradiction between what we're asking the schools to do and what we're actually recommending Bob do you want to take that or counselor hanii also has her hand up I don't know if it's because she wanted to try to answer that question she's shaking her head yes you want her to Bob do you want her to take it on go ahead counselor um the reference on page two to the recent use of one times funds um was not necessarily a reference to the arpa funds it was a reference to the schools both using Esser funds for multiple years for operating budgets um we knew we were violating our policy with the use of arpa funds when we did it last year as you you will know um I think we actually mentioned it in here too um but I guess one way to look at it in non-contradictory manner is when we voted the arpa funds we knew there was not an operating budget for them at that time and that this could be problematic structurally from a council point of view from a holistic budget point of view because and that's why we wrote the letter last spring um but to try and I guess correct our use of one-time funds not the school committee's use our use we are now trying to prioritize any additional funds that could potentially increase overall operating budgets or or with the decrease in oped by $50,000 or with other potential Revenue sources and state aid increases that might come in as this budget is better finalized um that that our our attempt to correct that is to prioritize putting that additional potential revenue or decrease in expenses from other locations into the Region's budget to make up for the use of one-time funds so you could almost look at it as we recognize we also created a structural issue within our overall Town budget and this guideline is to try to fix the structural issue we created as a Town Council in funding part of the Region's budget with arpa money onetime funds from the town um it is not an attempt to create to correct the Regional School committees or the ammer school committee's structural issues that they have by using onetime Esser funds that they've been doing can I try a clarifying question that is in the same area George so last year in addition to the percentage that we gave everybody we also gave the regional schools an additional amount of money I believe it was 400,000 or something like that 355,000 thank you 355,000 of arpa money and what this memo is suggesting is that even though at the time we did that we said we did not want it to go to the base for the coming year in fact this memo is saying we will now put it to the base and I correct um what we should be saying if if we didn't clarify it is that that's a priority if the if we can afford it basically um you know we we we recognize that the the budget is going to change over time we don't have to finalize the budget we won't finalize the budget until May or June and at the time at this point in time it's a priority if the money is available in order to do that we don't want to use one-time money you know if if we can't afford it that's the that's the point the point is if we can afford it within our operating budgets let's let's see if we can do it you know I could I clarify a little bit more ahead please it's the priority after everyone gets 3% right right so it's it's saying you can't make this a priority if that would result in all the operating budgets not increasing by at least 3% but once you've given those 3% the first priority is add that 355 in before you do anything else so if I was a member of the school committee which I am not how do I know when I can count on that 355 being part of the base is it January is it when when the budget is finished so in other words I'm supposed to go through my budget planning process on the school committee with the hope that it's there but I could find out in June that it wasn't Town manager baman has his hand up thank you the next time you will see a sub a significant adjustment in the projections is in January after we see the governor's budget come out and after we get our health insurance those are two big numbers that will give us a lot of guidance so I think that would be the time frame uh when everybody would get updated numbers and see what it looks like at that point in time so do you expect that we would then hear from you as to what whether or not we can go to that 355 additional to the base we will be sharing out the in the updated projection sheet with to everyone uh that will include more certainty on our health insurance and more clarity or the first number from the from the um the governor's budget um that could be good news or bad news we don't know what it is um so it it will just give us more information okay so the health insurance could be higher we sort of chose a midpoint it could be higher than we anticipated so we just don't know so just to summarize what I'm hearing is that this is a wish that we will be better able to confirm whether it might be a reality in Janu toward the end of January if I understand councelor hanii said our first goal is 3% across the board our next goal is to hold you know to replace that that um onetime money from last year and then work sort of trickled down from there what happens next what happens next that's my understanding okay thank you that that I have other questions but George I'm going to go back to you what I'm hearing is that that we created this problem and we're trying to fix it which is not my view what happened I would like to help the schools and I certainly hear the thought that it's we're making their job difficult job as it is even more difficult if they don't really know what the base is going to be so at some point hopefully maybe in January we can give them that kind of certainty um I'm not sure I agree with the idea that we created this problem but if it would help the schools get through what I'm hearing also is that this would help them get through this coming year and that hopefully they will then do what they need to do to address these larger structural issues with our help and support so that's where I'm at um I have one other very brief if you may if I may please go ahead um under if I can find it quickly [Music] um you under budget surpluses you point out in your doc that it's prudent fiscal management to aim for a 5% budget surplus each year if the town meets this target the year- end Surplus would be approximately $5 million um the council accepts that these are onetime funds that should not be used for ongoing operating expenses um this is just my terrible memory but that is about what we have is that correct this year about five million so what this seems to say is that the town manager following a Pruden strategy and 5 million is about right for what we would expect and I heard in the last meeting that some people felt that somehow this was not appropriate so I guess I'm trying to is it is it the finance committee's view that in fact what the C what the manager is doing um is not only prudent um but they encourage it they support it and that the five million we have this year is uh welcome and a sign of prudent fiscal management but they would like him to continue to pursue because I heard something different last week from some of my colleagues last whatever it was two weeks Bob did you want to address that well that is that is what we consider to be good prudent fiscal management yes um and it's been part of the um I mean a 5% budget surplus um is not you know it's not outrageous um given all the uncertainties that we have and we you know we we want to encourage the manager to continue to budget um conservatively in order to not wind up in a situation where we run a deficit so um you know we we we can always argue whether we you know we can argue whether we can get that down to 4% or 3% um in other words spend spend the money rather than you know save it and move it forward but um when you think about the where we get the the savings from the 5% from some of its Investments some of it's you know positions that are not filled I mean we there's a lot of uncertainty around that so we we can we can't ever guarantee that we're going to get 5% but it it is a reason Target I see two other counselors that are on the finance committee with their hands up did you want to comment on either of these items Andy or councelor hanii just going to comment on the school uh Regional School question um in particular um I think that there's an additional element that we're not discussing and other way I should disclose that I was not at the last finance committee meeting because of a family emergency and uh I regret that I wasn't part of the discussion but I did keep up with it and talk to uh the chair U both before and after the meeting um the regional school budget is not just an ammer Enterprise it is a fourtown Enterprise and uh so that you know as we develop policy we need to think about um ammer we need to think about the region and we need to think about where the our partner communities are on their issues both internally and in support of the region and um last year uh the um clear state of three towns the three other towns was that um they wanted to have the increase that was voted and U they were prepared to support it um we made um we were really in a very different financial position at the time and the only choice we had was to find to use onetime money to make up the difference that had not been in the prior budget to allow the um budget to go through with the support of all four communities and we made that decision uh I you know we don't know what the expectations are of the other towns but um we have to at least um be prepared for um the view of those communities that it is a part of the base so I think that um we you know The Prudent thing to do is at least um until the next four towns meeting to be thinking in terms of that is what we should do and need to do because um otherwise we're going to have a problem um as the for Town process proceeds which you know we um don't control in its en iry it's it's a fourtown Enterprise so I think that's the other thing that needs to be considered as you um address this issue councelor haniki did you want to speak to this too um I wanted to speak to the 5% it's it's one of the new additions to this document this year as in fact the entire budget surplus section is a new addition um to to budget guidelines um given the conversations we've had and this one uh a as the document says Finance hasn't voted the document or recommendation on this document yet at all we're still working through it but it was time for the council to see it um this is what the manager said is sort of a reasonable Surplus at the end of a year maybe it could be worded to up to a 5% budget surplus um but it it's an attempt to even if someone at smaller or lower as as the chair said the we should discuss whether that's the number we we think is the up to number maybe but it's it's an attempt to recognize that when surpluses come in um that it's not bad if it's up to a certain number that that's that's actually prudent um and as our budget increases I think in the last six years we used to have like an $85 million budget or an 80 million ion doll budget it goes up you know when when we started 6 years ago it might have been a total of about 80 million and now we're around 100 million um that additional 20 million adds in a percentage a million or so to what a 5% is um and so I think it adds about that um but it could add less but as the budget gets higher the 5% gets to a larger number that in raw numbers seems really large right right um but so this is an attempt to recognize that as our budget increases a typical Surplus that would be seen as prudent could look like a large amount of money that we're leaving on the table for operating expenses so it's I see it as a way to acknowledge that these larger numbers in the fall that we're seeing is actually as since the town budget is getting larger actually more re more reasonable than it might seem on a raw number basis but we as a council should make sure that that 5% number is something we agree with it's what the manager said a couple weeks ago it's what our finance people have said so it's the number that's in there without having had a large number of conversation but it's more of an attempt to stop us including me every year I will acknowledge that it's me a lot of the times from say is this too much it to to ground that in some sort of policy somewhere okay um Pam did you want to go ahead thank you so I just want to clarify that that the 5% budget surplus that is being discussed is different than the next paragraph which is uh supporting um closeout transfers that prioritize maintaining free cash at 5% and general stabilization at 10% um I read I read the 5% that were discussing is different than those two and I and I need to be corrected if I'm wrong Bob it's a different 5% yeah um so in other words the commitment is to the two other goals plus 5% well yeah I mean yes um and you know off well for for example we did not put anything into the general stabilization with any of the free cash into General stabilization this year because we had 10% more than 10% in there so that's a that's a that's where we need to make sure we maintain over time is 5% free cash 10% General stabilization in addition to that as a goal we thought a surplus so to speak of 5% is a reasonable Target year on year year in and year out I mean that's a reasonable we could we could we could amend that to say up to 5% that that's fine um but the idea is to try to put some expectation that that we use consern conservative budgeting in order to generate surpluses every year and that's not a bad thing thank you Pam did you have a further question on that yeah so that kind that counters what I was advocating for earlier which is to be more careful more targeted with what we think our projection numbers are so that we come in closer to the end line with I was thinking zero would be good good but um I'm I'm saying here that that we have 5% free cash we have 10% stabilization and we're aiming for a an x% budget surplus so I'm just saying I think it's it's counter to what I was envisioning thank you councelor hanaki did you have a comment on this yeah um so this section is meant to say and I think it does that first sentence needs reward Ed I think it it could be rewarded to as as Bob was saying um it's prudent fiscal management to ex to or it's reasonable to have an endof year budget surplus of up to 5% something like that that doesn't say we're aiming for it we're not trying to say you know we expect every year to have 5 million because we're so conservative that we're trying not to spend the money but that if we have up to 5% that's a reasonable thing to see um because we don't want to be in the negative but the you asked about the next paragraph the next paragraphs those budget surplus is that if you have a surplus at the end of the year the next paragraphs say this is where you start so the next paragraph say you start by making sure we have 5% in free cash of an operating budget then you go to do we have in general stabilization 10% and and then after that you talk about the reparation stabilization fund is there money left over after you've met those two to do that then the opioid and then after that um that's that's it's the after that that we got sort of discussed this year that that we're trying to figure out what what are our guides to the manager if after those four things are done because there was a budget surplus and there's not always going to be 5 million some years it's less than a million and it you might be done after General stabilization right but if there's more what is our guidance for the rest of it if there is more because that's what we have been missing in these fall transfers is any guidance from the council yeah I I I want to point out too that sometimes and and Paul you can confir uh confirm this sometimes we have to dip into free cash during the year um and so we want to replenish it at the end of the at the end of the fiscal year and so we're not running it down from the 5% to to 2% or 1% so so yes I mean what Mandy what councelor hanii said was is correct you know we're we're trying to put some you know if we you know we want to make sure that we replenish if we have money to replenish that we replenish free cash and general stabilization first and then do the other things and then then the question is what do we do when we if we have money afterwards thank you uh councelor you have your hand up so I just had a question from page four that speaks about um we also recommend budgeting OPB at the fy2 allocation of 600 ,000 um we recognize that this will slow opep funding and it goes on to speak about the justification with that but I'm wondering what is the effect of slowing down opep funding what exactly is OPB okay OPB is is a it's money being spent on retirees and uh basically OPB is essentially health insurance there's there's a little bit ex other stuff in there but it's mostly health insurance and correct me if I'm if I'm wrong here but there's a we have a liability that's currently unfunded and so we're trying to put money back into this liability you know to to to reduce our liability so that we're fully funded in oped so the the town manager uh originally proposed we increased over we we we did 600,000 last year he proposed we increase that to 650,000 um so that we could get basically get it get to the Finish Line faster with that um we the the the language here that it will slow is comparing the 600,000 to the 650 um it it really isn't any you know it's the same amount that we we put in last year um and this is important for our bond rating as well that we continue to uh we don't we didn't we don't want to like drop it down to 300,000 um so we wanted to maintain it um at a level where the the the bond um you know the the bond uh Raiders say that's good you you know you guys have a healthy healthy approach now now Paul we may have to increase that at some point but um in order to maintain our bond rating but our understanding is that it wasn't 600,000 would be okay for the bond rating is that correct Paul yeah so I think the the plan it's a I wouldn't say token amount it's a basic amount that we contribute to opep opep stands for other post post-employment benefits so people who retire the town says we will pay for a portion of your health insurance that's a liability that we have that gets accounted for in our in our books and we do an assessment of that um every couple years or so um the plan is that once we pay we fully fund our pension the money that's going to fully fund our pension will then be switched over to to do to really carve into the debt or the liability we have for for health Insurance OPB So the plan is but that's not going to be for till 2032 I think it is um George did you have other comments yeah I'm sorry just if I may just to go back to section six budget surpluses um I appreciate very much this being in being put in the document I think that um this could be very helpful and it certainly focuses us in our discussion um I'm wondering if if Paul were to follow if followed this at guidance this year um I'm looking at that last paragraph where it says after meeting the above transfers we recommend prioritizing allocating the bulk of the Sur Surplus revenues to this fund that that refers to the capital stabilization fund right so if if Paul were following this guidance this year the million dollar that he had suggested we set put to roads and sidewalks he would have put it into the Capital stabilization fund is that what this guidance would tell him to do am I interpreting that correctly Paul no that million dollars was kind of come out of out of the the free free cash that we had set up yeah we' be spending some of the five million free cash yeah it's a completely different cattle of fish so this guidance wouldn't you wouldn't be following this in in this case it's not what they're saying here would not guide you in making that decision you would so so free cash will be once once we hold our free cash at the 5% we just we hold that unless we in the case we need something for something during the course of the year and so one of the things we came to the council with is how about a million dollars in free cash for roads Council said no we're happy with where we are on roads and so um so it didn't really it would this is not money that would have otherwise gone into the capital fund George maybe this is something I'm just going to have to discuss that some of we got it's late enough but I'm just struggling I I'm just seeing this advice um because then it goes to say you may choose to propose expenditures outside of these recommendations and if so we recommend you allocate it yet somewhere else but what Paul's telling me if I understand him is this advice refers to another pot of money it's not what we're dealing with right now we're not it's not the free cash issue that we dealt with last time this is something else and this advice this guidance would not be applicable uh just we when we receive free cash we periodically have had Financial orders of how to use some of it before it's then the balance of which then goes into reserves so or we put it into uh the capital fund or whatever but it's spent before it goes to those funds and so the road Financial order that was before us was from free cash once those once when we don't spend that money it then goes into reserves unless we direct it differently councelor hanii you have your hand up again yeah so the intention which which maybe the town manager doesn't see but the intention of this entire section is to say when free cash is over 5% at the end of the year after it's being certified the first thing you do is make sure free cash stays at 5% the next thing you do is make sure stabilization General stabilization stays at 10% the next thing you do is reparations should get if there's still money above 5% in free cash then reparations gets its cannabis um equivalents and then the opioid settlement funds get its opioid funds the revolving fund gets the opoid funds if there is still money in free cash that is above that 5% limit the bulk of that should go to Capital stabilization but if you don't want all of it to go to Capital stabilization what it should do is not come to the council in new Financial orders immediately it should go to supplement the capital budget in the next year's capital budget and budget in the so for this year it would be we would not have seen a a roads a waste hauler or a um sidewalk equipment Financial orders instead if Paul had wanted to not put all of it into C in an an additional 1.2 plus million into Capital stabilization he should allocate that in the next year's FY 26 budget both in income from free cash and in expenses in the capital budget money from reserves line to supplement the capital budget so that all of the additional those additional funds get to go through the jcpc process with jcpc accountability a advice to the manager on how to allocate them recognizing that the manager does not want to go through a new jcpc process every November but that just proposing things does privilege some departments over others and that everyone should be able to consider that those funds um in a timely manner with advocacy around all of it so that people aren't pres privileged so that might not be how it reads and if it doesn't read that way we need to redo the wording but that was the intention of what this section is saying George did you have any further coms that's what I thought it said um and I think that's something we need to think about Paul needs to think about but that's how I interpret it okay so thank you Mandy and thank you Paul Andy do you have questions or comments yeah I just wanted to point something out because it never really gets much attention uh the town has a separate policy that has existed from before we were Council which is financial uh management uh objectives and policies and those were adopted back in around 20072 2008 I might have roughly and um the 5% recash after certification um of free cash in the prior year and 10% is minimum for uh the uh General stabilization fund was originally esta lished then and there was then essentially a modification to that policy um which was to create the capital stabilization fund and um anything that was um additional above the 10% was um to be directed in that um and we didn't I don't know if uh the um Financial policies have been formally modified IED um but if they haven't that is certainly um since the recommendation was made with the former Finance director Shan benano what we have been doing um one of the things that um I have been told by many Town managers and finance directors um over time is that the existence of those policies and our adhering to those policies is part of the reason not the whole reason but part of the reason that we are respected and get a double A positive rating so I just wanted to share that additional information thank you um I have a couple comments uh about this uh document first of all I think it's done you've done an excellent job uh I'm glad to see the ongoing commitments to the percentages that have been laid out in that Financial policy that Andy just spoke to uh and also to the ongoing Capital fund with regard to the schools I am I'm not opposed to the possibility that we add in the um New the money from last year from arpa into the base I just want to make sure that we're sending a message to the schools that they can deal with that as they go into their budget process they know what we're saying and they also know that maybe in January it could get a little tighter that that was really the nature of my questioning there it was not to suggest for any moment that I don't support the schools uh while we're on the subject of the schools I I personally would like to make sure that if we have exess from the elementary school that we determine what is legally allowed based on the vote that we went to the people with is it legally allowed for us to use that to help with the entrances and exits in other words the Southeast Street whatever it is decided there it seems to me like that would be something that's legally allowed if it is let's make sure it is and if that is something that needs to be done to make the school more accessible then maybe that's a good use of the money otherwise I don't think legally there's much more you can do with it unless you just want to put more solar on the school or something um I want to speak to the financial model and that is that money it costs money to borrow money and sometimes we are the banker because we have the money and therefore we don't incur interest to borrow money other times we borrow money because we don't have that money or it would mean we would put our other reserves in Jeopardy so when we speak about certain projects having Bond you know money that we have to use to borrow money it's maybe because that money or that project has a different cash flow than another project has and for instance the school pays upon certain Milestones the library on the other hand pays six equal um amounts of money on a regular basis and the mou for the library covers the fact that at a certain point in time the library trustees have to come up with the balance not leaving the town so understanding that we are sometimes the banker means that that doesn't mean we're not having cost to borrow money because we're not going to be investing that money elsewhere it just means we're using our money differently so that then going back to the financial model I would like really like to see the council commit at least initially to a financial model with a clear understanding that it could change and I mentioned this when we did the financial model discussion for example if we went with option two or three at some point in time should someone or some institution provide us with a significant gift or the state would come in with a significant grant program it might mean we can convert rapidly to model option four but meantime we need to signal to our um Financial people into our town manager what path we're taking at least initially with the understanding that we may have to change down the road um and I just really want to applaud another piece in this document and that is the cost of joining our our water and sewer system those are major Capital Investments we can't just let people come in for the price of the monthly fee for usage it's got to have some kind of membership uh to join let me just check my notes and see if I've covered everything I wanted to I have a few other things that are just more editorial that I'll send to the committee councelor H if people have specific comments uh we're we're open to receiving those y okay councelor haniki yeah um I just wanted to comment on the model the the the reason it's worded like this in here is because the finance committee hasn't really discussed the modeling much at all um Bob mentioned it a little bit but we've been focused on so many other things and and already meeting yeah for longer than two hours a week that we haven't been able to and it was a recognition that that in the model that was presented to us we kind of need more information um because that model kept borrowing costs that only what have been the borrowing part of it was only what had been authorized um and so for example the borrowing section of that model did not include projected needed borrowing for the region for what the region like that's even within our 5year Capital plan that shows that increase up to 800,000 a year from the 400 it is now it's not in the model at all which means that increas is within the three the 3 million part of the model um and I think we wanted more information about what those borrowing projections are that were already in the capital Improvement plan is projected and how that would affect what's actually available for cash outside of that so how much would that decrease the 3 million to something else because we've already projected um you know 800,000 or more for this or extra borrowing for Crocker Farms roof in 2029 or this or that what those projected numbers are can we get better numbers for that and then what's left over for everything else because we were unclear what that was and so we just needed more time to talk um before we could figure it out and that's my understanding I'm just encouraging that we at some point make a commitment to a model so that we don't leave it out there just as I want to also bring up the fact that I know that docu this document is not going to make a commitment to whether we're going ahead with the proposed location for fire and DPW but in fact we need to make that commitment are we going forward with DPW as a replacement you know it well dispersed throughout other locations but using the existing DPW site and are we going ahead with fire using the uh hick gr Ridge site because you cannot do schematic design without a site and um that's very important anyway Pam roone yeah I'd like to comment on on that very last point and that is we have seen none of the analysis on the use of of any of these sites we have we have only heard talking about them we've not seen a master plan for Hickory Ridge that shows us maybe um in rough ACD what activities could be accomplished there we've not um seen any kind of analysis that um that might show the the breakdown of um DPW um configurations and or functionalities so we've talked about it being split into several sites we we we've just never seen any data so I would feel really awkward saying yes I'm going to support option or Plan B for the DPW um when I have not seen any information um or options that have been thought about okay are there any other comments on the guidelines is there anything else that the finance committee would like to hear up us talk about okay seeing none we're going to move over on yes Pam um I I brought up earlier I would like very much to ask the finance committee to look very carefully at the Jones Library funding the status of um contributions that have been made and the the the plan forward um if it's going to be a success let's let's make sure that the finance committee has considered it in in a way that um covers our covers our tail when and if we need to put additional funds into that project um so that's something that I think finance committee could very much ask for and better understand okay thank you um we're going to move on to to next year's calendar I'm going to ask the um Clerk of the Town Council to put it up on the screen um this is um the calendar has a lot of moving parts to it let's just put it that way um if we see feel that there needs to be more work done on it we do not have to vote tonight however there is a point point where we do have to vote which is the latest next meeting um so um I'm going to call on Pam Rooney you have your hand up L if I if I may just quickly to introduce it um may I please so um in you in your packet you'll see the PDF of this calendar and then on the next Pages there's notes explaining why um I had proposed each of these dates the council rules indicate that um the meeting should be held on the 1 and third Mondays but there were various holidays and other things that happen on Mondays so things were shifted around um sometimes there was a month where a meeting could be held on a first or third Monday but that would mean holding two meetings in a row backtack weeks and um on our end for staff it's difficult to to do that so um I had proposed different changes in there and you'll see that in the notes um and there were also some considerations for Town and religious holidays um it's just unfortunate that those happen on Mondays usually so we have to shift those dates around and um I would request respectfully that the council consider um breaking up those meetings instead of holding them back toback when possible it's just easier for all of us it uh it's a lot of work doing them on backtack weeks thank you and thank you for spending the time on this um aena um Pam you have your hand up yes thank you the only discrepancy and thank you for the comments so this is comment A10 and um you do know that September 8 and 25 avoid back-to-back meetings yet on the left column it says September 8 and September 15 so you might just want to update the 15 to a 29 per your for your note and and the second comment was I've never heard hold on just September it's September right now it's the September 8 and 15 and the note to the side says that um September 8 and 29 avoid back-to-back meetings oh you're correct that that's not the issue the issue there is that rashash Shana comes in the middle of it that's the 22nd right but so on the on the left it goes August 18 September 8 and it I think should say September 29 according to the text on the right hand side Y and I've never heard of avoiding three kings holiday as a as something to avoid something schools have given off three kings is a is an ammer schools holiday there are there are staff members who enough staff members who observe that holiday that they um decided to leave that as a holiday it's a in the in my understanding is that in the L Latino Community it's a it's a big holiday and um so we that was taken into consideration when I prepared this okay councelor hanii um so there's going to be a backtack meeting whether it's September 15th or September 29th because September 29th is the week before October 6th so I think it's a question of which does which is better for the council or which is better for staff um and I I'm not sure it matters which one but no matter what there's a back toback because rashash Shana starts on the one we would normally do um I object to taking out the August 4th meeting I object every year it's a dispute Lynn and I have we're supposed to have two I don't object to taking out the one in July because we generally do three in June so I think of that last June 1 as the 2nd July one um in a sense um because of budget issues but in six years we've only managed to eliminate that August meeting once this past year um next year it's the end of a term things will be coming up if we don't want to have long long meetings it might be worth having an August 4th meeting that doesn't mean we can't cancel it later if for some reason our agenda is clear but I would rather have it on the schedule and cancel it then have it not on the schedule and need to put it on and not be able to get Quorum because no one thought it was going to happen I've always think of it better to be on the schedule and and get a treat by canceling it than to try and find a way to put it in when no one's planned for it so i' I'd rather put it in um to start with okay are there any other comments with regard to that particular issue the the charter requires that we meet once a month the the practice of the our rules say twice a month though our practices that we meet twice a month based on our rules uh Pam you have your hand all right so right now the motion I have not put a motion on the floor but I can put a motion on the floor and then we can add in the um August fourth as an amendment um so let's if there are no objections to the meeting adding the meeting on August 4th then you could just make that as part of your proposed motions okay so we're going to add a meeting for August 4th 2024 in the past we have listed behind that if needed 2025 I'm sorry are there any other questions or comments on that okay to adopt the 2025 Town council meeting schedule as presented at the meeting on December 2nd 2024 is there a second Ryan second any other question or comments councelor hanii is the presented including the August 4th or not it does okay and and um September 15 that's what I had on the other page so it was a mistake that it was left as the 29th so September 29th is not on this yes it should be September 8 and 15 unless there are objections okay all right and we'll change the note not to worry um all right given that we're going to have a quick roll call uh the Lost Andy Steinberg will start with you yes um Anna Devin gothier I councilor r i Lyn Griers I councelor hanii hi Bob hegner hi councelor Lord hi Pam Rooney councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane is Not absent and everyone else is absent so it's nine votes in favor none opposed we are going to move on to um our next agenda item which is the appointment and I'm going to put a motion on the table seek a second and then ask for questions uh councelor haniki you have your hand up the first motion should be to wave even though it's not on the motion sheet as written thank you um the motion is to wave I'm going to ask the Town Council it's to wave Town Council rules of procedure rule 8.6 for the town manager appointment of the fire chief that's the motion I make the motion is there a second second Rooney okay are there any questions about the waiver the waiver does require that nine people be present okay nine nine eyes okay we will begin the waiver disc the waiver vote with Anna delin gothier I councelor I Lyn gmer and I councelor hanii I Bob hegner hi councelor Lord hi Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane is not here Andy Steinberg hi and please note Jennifer to has joined us Jennifer can you hear us yes and your vote yes thank you so now we move to the actual motion the actual motion is to approve the town manager appointment of Lindsay stram as fire chief effective immediately is there a second second Dublin gothier thank you and I'm going to begin the vote in this case with councelor ET I Lyn grimer is an i councelor hanii i Bob hegner I councelor Lord I Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer to yes Anna Devon gothier I it is unanimous we'd like to congratulate Chief strle so uh we now we have approved the minutes let me just get my notes Here we've approved the minutes that's not where we are we are a committee and Lees on reports CRC uh Pam Ro any go ahead I closed my report uh yes CRC has been working on solar bylaw it is Switching gears tomorrow night to discuss University Drive overlay the meeting notice notice begins at 6:00 p.m. not the usual time and um I think that's the gist of it thank you Elementary School building committee um neither Kathy Shane nor Alysa Walker are here uh Paul is there any update on the um status from the school no that we're still awaiting word from the Attorney General's office good boy thank you finance committee Bob uh nothing more to report we've okay enough go Anna i g pretty much gave my report thank you we're meeting Thursday great thank you see you on Thursday um Jones Library committee P Rooney I have no report Paul is there anything else okay TSO Andy yes as noted we are not meeting uh this week we are meeting next week on the 12th but at a different time is a joint meeting with the uh two other committees the transportation advisory committee and disability access advisory committee to receive the um answers from um all from Gilford and from the um firm the engineering firm that assisted in develop process about uh the proposal that they made other thing other proposals that are possibilities that were considered why they made the proposal that they made and to respond to the questions that were provided that you've seen previously um that meeting is kept at an hour and a half we are probably going to try and um convene 15 minutes or so earlier even a little um so that we can uh um consider any U Town manager committee appointments that need to be U dealt with at the next council meeting um we are then going to actually have a regular meeting at our regular time on uh the following th the 19th and U that will give the committee an opportunity to talk about what it heard at the um December 12th meeting and uh to talk about the next steps including um the Outreach that we think will need to be done to the community to get community comments on what is a a pretty major re uh restructuring of a road Ro that a lot of people rely on so those are the things we're working on most immediately We are continuing to work on the consideration of the transportation and parking commission and uh I'm not sure I think that it's probably going to be in January before the next Council that it um TSO recommendation can be made about the uh uh creation of the commission and uh issues that we see um as being significant which may include um the scope of the um activities that would be referred to the commission and U membership okay um counc hanii you have your hand up yeah um I was just surprised to hear that CRC was at 6 p.m. tomorrow um were we supposed to already get a zoom link because I haven't received any and that's a change in our regular meeting time I can make it but are we changing our regular meeting time to start at 6 for the rest of the year so I can move my calendar or is it just this meeting this is um mistake number two in terms of the hour um because because last week or last time we also met at 6:00 to accommodate somebody's schedule um we inadvertently continued the hearing to tomorrow at that same time so it was completely a mistake I hope to never repeat that mistake again just trying to make sure trying to figure out if I needed to change more of the numbers it's good to hear it tonight because I wouldn't have logged on till 6:30 and I have not gotten the zoom link yet so I don't know whether I'm the only one that hasn't seen that Zoom link or not okay um are there any liaison reports Jennifer yes well since I'm here um the Council on Aging has been working with uh well the ammer senior center but I'm giving this as the leaz on to the Council on Aging um they have been working with ammer college students to do a beautiful mural on the wall in one of the rooms in the senior center and that will be unveiled a week from tomorrow on Tuesday December 10th and the program is between 99 and 11 so you're invited and encouraged to come between those hours thank you great are there any other questions um of committee or any of the reports uh the minutes were approved we'll move on to the town manager's report Paul you have a written report which is pretty extensive you also just note the winter Farmers Market begins on this Saturday from 10:00 to 2 at the banks community Center and then you already mentioned the Mary Maple which is a big event this on Friday are there questions of the Town manager councelor Lord um thank you I believe this is where I would um insert this statement counselor Walker um gave me a statement that she wishes me to read during this meeting is that for I think that's for counselor comments okay my bad she said either here or Council comments I can wait I can wait is that a question regarding the town manager's report it is um it is regarding it's not a question okay I will wait sorry about that thank you okay uh councilor I'm so this is a question regarding the vote last meeting where we were supposed to allocate funds for roads and sideworks I'm wondering since that day pass is they does the town manager have any desire to recommend maybe lower funds for roads and sidewalks um I did present a request for funds and the council did not approve it so that's where it stands did you have a follow-up question the council could I could the council request perhaps the amounts um didn't pass but maybe the council um supposes that something lower could pass could could the council reach out to you for a recommendation or that amount that's could you get some direction from the council here's the here's the question can the Council on a future agenda have an item where it would request the town manager to submit a financial order for a different amount of money for roads and sidewalks the answer is yes we can do that uh point of order yes a counselor would need to propose that and ask you to place it on the agenda that is correct for a meeting okay okay um are there any other questions of the Town manager regarding the town manager's report okay um you'll there'll be a written report uh from me next meeting uh future agenda items um include the discussion of the role of the president and the vice president uh the items left from this week which are the financial guidelines and the town manager goals and in addition to that is the letter that I took off the agenda and whether or not we have anything back from um finance committee regarding the financial order for sidewalks uh for sidewalk equipment um the I I don't know the TSO will be ready with any kind of recommendation regarding the Southeast Street quadruple roundabout um but the other uh roundabout on you drive in Main Street I'm assuming will be coming forward um and that is it are there any other requests yes the roundabout at udrive and Main Street that's the one down by University Drive I'm assuming that will be coming back to the council at the meeting on the 16th that's not the overlay you said Main Street but it's AMD street thank you so much I I messed that up it's Amity street right and I believe that's a TSO isn't it TSL already made a recommendation on that and it has been written up in a prior report okay so we will bring that to a we missed that on this no no we had decided to hold it for December 16 right okay that will be on the December 16th agenda okay sorry for the confusion about the street names okay are there any other requests for future agenda items George I would like to request as an agenda item for next time a discussion on the use of free cash for roads and sidewalks and other possible eligible projects okay that was a formal request for the agenda and I accept that formal request are there counselor comments I believe that this might be the place councelor Lord please go ahead yes thank you I'm reading the statement on behalf of councelor Walker as she could not be here today um these are her words as I reflect on the ongoing impacts of the covid-19 pandemic I want to remind us all of the disproportionate harm it has caused black and brown individuals and businesses worldwide amrest has been no exception marginalized residents and businesses in our community were already grappling with systemic inequalities and the pandemic only exacerbated these challenges the ARA funds were specific Ty Al provided to municipalities like ours to help mitigate and thust these hardships it is our responsibility as a town to ensure These funds are distributed equitably targeting those who were and continue to be most impacted with the year drawing to a close and the deadline for dispersing arpa funds quickly approaching I strongly urge the town manager and my colleagues to reconsider any plans that would allow these funds to revert to free cash while I understand the town has numerous priorities and obligations arpa funds were created for this very purpose to address unmet needs arising from the pandemic if we fail to utilize them as intended how else will we meet these urgent and unaddressed needs in particular I ask the town manager to commit a substantial portion of the REM remaining arpa funds to the black Business Association of amorist area BB triaa ensuring that the black and bipac owned businesses receive the relief and support they have long been denied this is the right time to make the right decision the arpa funds present a rare and crucial opportunity for amers to make a tangible progress towards equity and Justice let us notm it thank you um respectfully submitted counselor Walker thank you thank you are there any other counsel comments okay um we uh do not have a we are going to move into executive session so I need a motion to move into executive session let's let's get the Motions right to it may I yes to convene in an executive session for the following purposes in accordance with Massachusetts General Law chapter 30A section 21 A2 to conduct strategy sessions and preparations for negotiations with non-union Personnel Town manager Paul bachan in accordance with mgl chapter section 21 A2 to conduct contract negotiations with nonunion Personnel Town manager Paul ban the council will or will not reconvene in open S we will not reconvene not reconvene um the so the motion that I do make that motion is there a second Ryan second thank you uh on your email you will now receive a different link that is the link that will move us into executive session and exclude any audience and as we mentioned earlier we will not return to open session this evening thank you we have to vote I'm sorry we do have to vote thank you um all right so on the vote this is the vote to uh move into executive session I'll begin with C coun ET hi Lyn grimer is an i councelor hanii hi P egner hi councelor Lord hi pamy yes councelor Ryan hi Andy Steinberg hi coun uh Jennifer to yes and Anna Devon gothier I it's unanimous uh so you zoom off of this and go back into the next one thank you one second