good evening uh welcome to the town of Air Finance Committee meeting on Thursday April 17 2025 at 6 PM in the air town hall my name is Kirk Prescowski i'm the chairman of the finance committee um this is a hybrid meeting
this meeting of the finance committee will be held in person at the location provided on this notice members of the public are welcome to attend this in-person meeting please note that while an option for remote attendance and/or participation via Zoom is being provided
as a courtesy to the public the meeting hearing will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with a particular interest in a specific item on this agenda should make plans for
inperson versus virtual attendance accordingly this meeting will be live on Zoom the public may access the proceedings by joining Zoom meeting IT 978-77282 or by calling 9292056099 for additional information
about remote participation please contact Carly Anteneellis assistant town manager atmair.mma us or 978-772822 extension 100 prior to the meeting okay we call the meeting to
order um first items on the agenda is a review and approval of the March 20th and March 27th 2025 meeting minutes so any corrections
notes on the March 20th meeting right at the beginning there other town representatives in attendance it's police chief should be police um not 27 okay do we have I would like to make a
motion to approve the minutes with that one amendment okay sorry I'm slow today okay you'll be here to it all right do we have a second i second okay um all those in favor of approving the minutes
for March 20th and March 27th I I I So approved okay we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is a presentation by Dr denise Pigeon and on the Nissa Valley Technical High School
welcome Dr pigeon thank you i have some guests with me as well so Chris Pale is actually a representative on our school committee um representing the town of Air and Michelle Bouvet is our assistant business manager and Denise Pigeon i'm proud to be serving as the
superintendent at Ashoba Valley Tech thank you um so I'll go through the PowerPoint presentation and then if we want to look at more details that's what the budget is for as well um just beginning with the with the first slide again as you know we are your regional
vocational technical high school we have eight member towns i'm very proud to have air as one of our member towns in terms of you know what this budget represents I'd like to share with you um pretty much the primary purpose we exist and that is to provide high quality technical education to the students of
our member towns um and we offer 18 different technical programs over three different um career clusters the first is construction and transportation and that actually makes up almost half of our student body is enrolled in some sort of a construction program or transportation program 31% of our
students are enrolled in health and human services programs and 22% of our students enrolled in arts and technology programs um in terms of enrollment I always like to include enrollment information when we talk about the assessment because enrollment is one of
the major drivers of the assessment and looking at the history of air in two um 2022 air had its highest enrollment at NSOCH with 69 students you can see in October of 23 it went down just a little bit and in October of 24 it has
decreased slightly again um but over time your enrollment has fluctuated anywhere between you know 50 and 70 students when we look at enrollment there's two pieces to look at is the town's enrollment increasing and or decreasing and then into our overall
percentage of um enrollment as a whole increasing or decreasing so for air um for this particular budget you represent 7.2% of the overall student population and your population from air is actually
decreasing by eight students um again you may be graduating a smaller senior class taking in slightly more in the freshman class there's always sometimes students that move from town to town so um that's not a significant change but um it does make a difference when we get to the calculation page for the
assessment so up a total of seven students overall across the district and you can see this year the two towns that have um had the the most significant increase in enrollment are Pil and Westford um on page three um I'd like to say that I could take this slide and
probably copy and paste it into any school or town budget presentation um what we're experiencing at Nohobate is no different than what the town is experiencing it's no different than what you know other school districts are experiencing um for us we have an aging building um you know we're in our
original building we do take very good care of it but it is an older building um so capital expenses and and upkeep does cost um cost a significant amount of money we're all dealing with uncertainty at the state and federal level in terms of funding we have been working at
Ashobetch on a multi-year adjustment to make sure that we're not relying too much on one-time funds we don't want to see from one year to the next if we're relying too much on one time funds that could that could cause an increase in the overall assessment health insurance costs are
are rising everywhere um other contractual increases step and lane changes for contractual obligations for staff and the increased cost of our technical program instructional materials so unlike a a traditional school where supplies are are are
typically your basic educational teaching and learning supplies we are teaching students career trades so the cost of plumbing materials the cost of carpentry materials electrical materials are are um variable and rising um and then other fixed costs as
as you would experience in any budget um in terms of capital we do work really hard and Chris thank you chris also serves on our equipment and facilities um subcommittee as part of the school committee we maintain a 10-year capital plan so that we can be
forward thinking in terms of the the needs of our of our building and we can be aggressive with grants and applying for grants we have some pretty significant capital needs that and projects we've been working on um we have we have to replace the entire fire
suppression system of our full building and instead of trying to do that in one large project we've broken it into multiple phases so we did complete the first phase during the last um budget cycle and we budgeted for this phase during during this budget cycle so we're
actually going into phase three and that is in the capital plan in addition to that we've also been implementing several competitive grants that we received which have been a wonderful blessing we actually some of you thank
you you came to our our grand u grand opening and our ribbon cutting we received a $3.75 million state grant to add 7,000 square feet of instructional space for our students so that project was completely funded through the state grant allowed us to move our engineering
robotics and programming and web program into that new space so those are some pictures that you see of electrical and programming and web and what that's really allowed us to do it put those programs together and right next to advanced manufacturing which has huge instructional benefit but it's also
opened up the space in other areas of the building so we could expand our fastest growing technical program so for us electrical is one of the fastest growing programs and vet assisting is the second fastest growing program and we're basically moving programs around to continue to be able to meet the need
and the demand question please sure what's driving the fire suppression system replacement s an aging thing or it's a great question um it was replaced during a project during 2003 2005 and we found that there was um an
unusual amount of corrosion and way too early in the fitting some of the fittings and we've done as much research as we possibly can but there's an issue with fittings so all of either the fittings have to all be replaced um or sometimes the whole entire system needs to be replaced so when we broke it down
into the phases some of the phases are full replacement some of the phases were able to just replace the sections that are damaged so it it may have to do with the materials or the um is the the materials that they put on the
system when they put it together um but we are we are in that situation where it has to be all replaced and we we've broken it up as Dr pigeon said to the highest need sections where we found that there were troubles in those sections and we've been breaking those
down section by section um quick I was going to have ask a question also on the fire expression system am I correct in in assuming that because of let's say the auto shop and
other manufacturing type things you have to have a little more high-tech fire suppression systems i I don't I don't necessarily think it's any more high-tech um in certain cases it's high bay right so that it's just a lot higher of a ceiling in certain areas but I
think it's it's a pretty traditional structure in terms of across the building um in 2003 2005 when they did a major renovation this was before I was superintendent we were required to implement fire suppression throughout whenever you do significant portion of
construction it triggers the requirement to have fire suppression so we are required but by code to have fire suppression everywhere um there are certain programs that have increased needs like in carpentry where there's sawdust and things like Okay yeah yeah um but for the most part across the building I think it's just a pretty
traditional setup and culinary has that spe some of those specialty items because of the fryillators and things like that that they have in in culinary and the company that installed the fire suppression system they only had a very short warranty period so the problems
occur after the warrant okay yeah we we checked into all that yes and it's very unfortunate um the well but some good news let's talk about some good news with fire suppression because there is some good news with some of these grants that we've been implementing so we received
two significant grants the $3.75 million grant that new 7,000 square feet as part of that grant fire suppression came with that piece of the building um but we also received a $2.5 million state grant to expand and renovate um event
assisting and electrical technology and through that project we had to move another program which is cosmetology so the grant funds we were able to actually replace some of the fire suppression system through that particular grant so it did not have to go into our capital plan so whenever we can maximize those types of grant programs to help with
capital plan we've been we've been doing both if I remember from last year you you generally are like look at all this grant money we got yes yes your grand writer is amazing yes i have a list here our grant writer is amazing actually it's a team effort we have a lead grant
writer but we also have a group of people that just all participate in in putting together very very good grant applications for highly honestly highly competitive grants do you think it's a benefit of having so many towns in one
school i think I think that we do probably in the grant application process receive bonus points because we do serve a very high need population um you know 40% of our students are special needs students um when you compare that to a traditional high school that's about 12 to 15% so we do have some I
think um advantages when you when you write grants that when they have their um you know their rubrics for grading because we do serve a high need population i think it's also the workforce demand many of these grants are specific to workforce development and that was their primary purpose is to
look at your labor market studies figure out where is the greatest need can you prove that you have the student you know need and capacity to build that program and that is what what drives the the points for um and also to have strong business partners because the grants require letters of support from business
partners and we really lean on our vocational technical advisory committee members our cooperative placement employers so we get you know a whole bunch of letters of support from our um from our partners and that helps too but just because this is such an exciting part of what I do sorry if I
get off track you can stop please stop me um but electrical for example electrical our largest program and our fastest growing program we took in our largest freshman class in electrical ever we just placed 36 freshmen into electrical and in order to do that we had to very quickly take our design and
visual program move it into the space that programming and web used to be in so we renovated all in-house staff support student support moved that program and built um new booths so that 36 freshmen could enter into a new space and we could not turn any students away we didn't want to turn any students away
from that program because demand is there for a really wonderful career opportunity so and I think one of the biggest pluses that we have we have a very motivated and willing staff that that jumps right in and jumps in these projects helps out and then we have the
students and it's giving them realworld trade experience with these things just you know some of them will do electrical just in homes but the code is different the work is different because this is industry industrial type environment so it's it's a different animal for them
it's great experience for them um and with these particular workforce skills capital grants we have never missed an a grant opportunity so they come out you know a couple of times a year every time there's an opportunity we submit an application we've not been successful every time but we never miss an
opportunity and if we don't if we don't receive it the first time we put in we continue to work to increase the the application package so that next time we can we can make it work so we're hoping that there'll be more announcements coming soon we know a hot topic in the in the state level budget right now as
well um I believe that the governor had $75 million in the budget for potential expansion for vocational schools um and it will go through multiple iterations over the next few months so we're in support of continued expansion to meet the need across the state
um on the next page just some some photos and this um and this is this is cosmetology and this was a a long project it took a while to finish this one but um the picture you see on the left was um over a year ago and we
gutted an old um horiculture program students did support in that part of the pro project and then you could see sort of getting closer to finish and then all the way to the right the students actually just moved into the new cosmetology salon about two weeks ago um and are now serving the public in their
new salon the old salon is already ready next week to begin gutting so that we can uh double the size of our vet assisting program and expand for like Dr pigeon said that is open to the general public along with our restaurant that is open for people can come in get haircuts
nails and uh they do a great job there um thinking forward thinking with capital um again it is an aging building so we do have ongoing needs we um the fire suppression phases will need to continue in addition we do have to replace several of our student passenger
vans they actually were in our plan to replace during this current budget year but we chose to hold off an additional year um to keep our costs in in um you know in line with with where we know our towns are are financially so we did put that on hold we do need to replace our
exterior doors se there's a small section of our roof that will need to be replaced our boilers are aging we have some parking lot work that we need to do futuristically and the big ticket item for us is the HVAC so our HVAC is beyond its useful life um but the good news is
again we are aggressive with seeking grants we've been planning for this and we're hopeful we did submit for an MSBA accelerated repair project that window just closed um in March and we made sure that our application was in um we'll
wait and see what happens but if we are able to get an MSBA project that would be a future warrant article that would come before you in the next year or two um and we're hoping to time it with a piece of debt coming off of the budget at the same time a new piece of debt
might be coming onto the budget so the 2003 2005 project is just about to be paid off in another year so again we're hoping that if we need to take on more debt it would be balanced with the debt that's coming off question how much do you anticipate
[Music] i I would prefer to email you an an estimate because it changes on every day and depending on who you ask and depending on what type if we're replacing in kind versus if we're going with heat pumps and um I think if we have to do it on our own we're probably
going to have to go in one direction and if we go forward with the MSBA grant there's a requirement that you're looking at heat pumps but then the percentage of reimbursement is different so it's still a bit in the air um but I can give you some of those estimates if you're curious Yeah just
it's a good question you're plenty busy it's okay no but again it's important to be planning for the future um this is the bird's eye view of the budget um you know budget by function and um as you would expect the largest increase is in instruction the majority
of that increase is again the step and lane changes for staffing it's also the increase in the instructional supplies um and if you look at um the section in yellow which is the 2000s are instruction if you add in the 3000s which is you know the pupil per pupil
services transportation and um the benefits basically 75% of our budget is pretty much based on staffing and instructional staffing as you would want to see and the next slide is the revenue so
on the top we receive our revenues from either directly from the towns through the assessment and we also have non-town assessment revenue so at the top this is money that comes direct to to um chapter 70 school aid is um we are
expecting an increase it's not a significant increase but it's up about 100,000 we are um currently planning on we estimated what was our reimbursement rate for about 80 about 80% for transportation reimbursement we're hopeful there's always talk of it going
to 100% but I've never seen it we'll see but we're budgeting for about 80% um transportation reimbursement um we are using 600,000 of our excess and deficiency which is not the full amount of our excess and deficiency we're holding back about 200,000 which is what
we've done the last few years um and then direct from the towns through the town assessment there's a number that's calculated through the state formula and that's the required minimum contribution that's where the biggest increase is coming in this year so that formula is calculating that that our minimum
contribution is going up $499,274 transportation and capital is um doesn't look like it's going up that much i want to sort of explain that because it might not make sense when when you look at it from that big picture but we were able to save in transportation costs not because of our contract our contract is significantly
increasing but with some attrition um we've been able to save on some of our special transportation and that's the adjustment that you see um that makes it look like it's not that that large of an increase the additional assessment is up um just over 75,000 and you can see debt every year decreases
slightly and there's two pieces of debt in that number that's a a roof project that was voted probably about five years ago and then the pro the big project from 2003 to 2005 which is about just about done so we're actually um compared
to most regional school districts our debt is actually quite low um the next page I know this is a busy slide i always like to kind of jump ahead but uh when when you look at the assessment and when we calculate the assessment page the first thing we look at again is that number of students by
district so that's why understanding decreasing is important the percentage of of the students by town because that factors into most of the calculation um but some people always try to start doing straight math and they look at the next column and it
doesn't make any sense that number in the next column town's minimum contribution is not a number that Nishobate calculates this is a number that the state provides this is the formula um and it and it and it is driven by a formula and that number is set by the state all of the rest of the
numbers in that calculation are calculated on the number of students in your percentage of student by town um so air again $936,772 for your assessment for 2526 we'll get into more details on a future slide so when you go to the next
slide this is looking at our total budget all eight towns year-over-year so this is all eight towns not just air we've gone up by seven students overall you can see the biggest change in our assessment is driven by that state funding formula we are up almost 500,000
in the state funding formula transportation is is not a significant change and again that's due to that adjustment in the special transportation additional assessment is up um and then debt service is slightly down for the total assessment change of
$553,58 the next slide will look specific to AIR and you can see AIR has gone from 63 students to 55 students so a decrease of eight students your total percentage of the overall student population is also slightly decreased and that's likely
what's factoring into the decreased requirement from the state regarding your town's minimum contribution so that's down transportation is also slightly down additional assessment is up just over 2,000 and then you see debt service is down so your total assessment
for Nobitech is actually down from last year it's a decrease of $137,93 i can pause there and see if there's any questions it's not go for it i can't remember what I was going to ask i think one of the the big messages that
I would just want to say it's not often I go to a town and I say "Oh you're decreasing this year." I don't think you hear that often right um but again because our budget really functions so close to the required minimum um what you will see with Nishobate over time is
that sometimes there could be larger increases and sometimes there are these decreases and that is because we do function really not that much above minimum um and this year you might be down $137,93 but it's important to keep in mind that if you go up 16 students next
year you could see that that 137,000 plus in a in an increase and I think that happened to air was it last year or the year before two years with that enrollment swing meeting you remember i'm good go ahead
no I'm good all right yeah I I is the the state calculation or what did I'm going to turn it over to Robert i'm sorry um is [Music]
there is there it is what it is but I just wondering like because you said oh there was a so there's like there's there there's several Well there's the enrollment is one factor enrollment is one factor of that um calculation so you'll see the increases or decreases
based on enrollment but there are other factors involved there's a there's a wealth factor of the town um factor Yeah jump in help me out here just some of the the highlights yeah so the they'll look at whether or not the each town is meeting what their uh expected
contribution is and each year they'll review it to see if they're closer or further away from what their expected uh target share is and so then they will give it an an additional increment to meet that target share and that's all part of the calculation it's a very it's
a very complicated so they also take into account like how many um students from the town require special education that kind of thing yes i assume that is also there are different increments based on the the student population yes
in fact that was one of the pieces when they did the formula change um a few years ago when they went with the student opportunity act there was a a portion of that where they the special education increment there was discussion about how that was going to work and vocational schools special education students at vocational schools do also
get um an increment in that factor as well um the the next slide is just an a little information about the other things that we do at NHobate Tech so in addition to providing education for students who grades 9 through 12 for career focused education we also run a a
pretty robust evening program so CTI or career and technical initiative was started a few years ago by the state and this is a fully funded state program this is not part of the budget that we're discussing it's fully funded by the state um and it is free for participants that qualify so um adults
of any age who are looking to career change um have the opportunity to participate in 200 hour career focused programs we're currently running advanced manufacturing automotive and electrical and uh we place students in in the field right after they complete
that program so it's been very successful it can really be a game changer for people who are looking to to find a new career and a new path we've had people from our community that have attended these programs um I keep tabs on them and um I've actually spoken to
uh one of the persons that have uh graduated that program and got a a great uh job in automotive from that program let me ask do you um uh what the state pays that include some
of the fixed costs you have yes it does that facility facility use yes it pays for facility use it pays for a portion of custodians pays for um the person who coordinates and runs the program 100% pays for the teachers that teach the program and then um it's it's a grant
how it works is a grant and there are other incentives so if we place students in the field there's actually additional funding that we receive if they they get placed in the field and if they persist in the field um so the program is fully funded outside of the budget and doing well we just had an electrical one that wrote
a very nice letter back one of the students wrote it on behalf of their fellow students about uh how great the class was and the instructors and they really got a lot out of it it was nice they sent it to the school committee we we had it presented to us two weeks ago
at our meeting we have teachers in the program most of them are teachers of our day program sometimes they're people from other technical schools that also teach at night um but we also hire student assistant so there's always a junior or a senior from the technical program that's working as a teachers assistant in the adult program and
that's really wonderful to see when you see a a real amazing junior or senior and they're they're teaching the adults for the next career it's really a wonderful and hopefully our future technical teachers too because we have to work on recruiting recruiting those too and those students are very excited
we have one that's our student rep and she does the electrical phenomenal just an awesome young woman and then the um last slide is just a reminder to everybody that's watching and here that we are open to the public
we um we do provide automotive services we provide design and visual or printing needs if you have any um Cosmo Cuts is now reopened and beautiful please come and check it out and uh we provide other services and the restaurant is amazing right now uh what the restaurant is doing is every other week they turn the
restaurant over to a senior and the senior runs the show they pick the whole entire menu and they run the show so there's a lot of interesting um opportunities for meals going on it's a main theme this week got crab cakes corn chowder uh it's
really their culminating project where they they get to make all of the decisions for the restaurant great good question um I I may have missed it or whatever and I don't remember exactly from like
say last year um I know you last year had talked about u capacity and having to essentially like turn away people from outside district and you were also getting like uh Lego yes i can't think of the word
I'm looking for uh but Lego or Tetris was it new new like building you know expansion or whatever um how how would you say the capacity situation is at the school right now
it's a really good question because there's also a lot of discussion going on statewide if you've been seeing the different articles that have been in the news so the good news about Nishob is for the most part we've been right sized over the years for our region um you go back to when you know when I first started there and I've been there let's
not talk about how long I've been there um we the what you're talking about with the outof district students um that was definitely over the last few years I've been letting you know one of the things that happened over time at ashobet is we used to always have space for about 20
students who were school choice students or non-resident students for years we had that so that's an extra revenue stream where you would have maybe 20 students in each grade and you would be school choice revenue um over the last three years we have had such an interest in our member towns and we must serve
those students first which makes sense um that we have not accepted any school choice students so I think we're now down to two and they're in the uh upper class and they'll be graduating out so school choice is over um for now we don't have any school choice which means
we don't also don't receive the school choice revenue um so that was something that we were preparing for slowly over time in terms of capacity um we are we do have a weight list it is not a giant weight list you know we are running between 30 and 50 students per
grade on the weight list so we're working on how we can continue to expand a bit to be able to reduce or eliminate that weight list um we are not in a situation like you would see some of the vocational schools that have thousands on their weight list so again the good
news is we're pretty much right sized for our region but we do have a little bit of work to do to continue to meet the increased demand um we we take in about 200 freshmen per year um we did receive about 330 applications but some of those students get accepted and
decide it's not for them so they don't necessarily end up on the wait list we continue to process if they say they're not interested um and that we're in that process right now for the incoming freshman class thank you and then the other piece with the the movement of the program so it's
great you can take all the students in but if you don't have room to place them in the program of their dreams that's the next issue and u that's why we have been really focusing a lot of our energies on making sure we're expanding those very popular programs with high labor market demand because I would
never want to turn a freshman away from the program of their dreams and this year we were fortunate that we had not had to we were able to place students where they um wanted to be and we knew they were going to be um successful but not every technical school can do that so we're in a good place
attempt the student gets three choices at at the end of their their exploratory they come down to their three first second third choice this year as Dr pigeon said first year in our history everybody got their first pick we had electrical was the biggest the
biggest piece there with 36 students that wanted that program you were able to make it work i mean it sounds like amazing that you you guys are constantly shifting classrooms around and and a lot
going on there just and we're and we're out back here helping we're building the Habitat house out back here so um the kids have been over here busy with that waiting for the next phase to get in hopefully the uh electrical and plumbing kids can get in there but you know we're
under time clock because they do have summer break so and that project has been wonderful the students and staff have spoken so highly about the the partnership so thank you um I had one question i was just um
doing a quick um skim of the budget and I noticed that the debt service has gone down yep so so the good news with the debt service going down every year the debt goes down um as we continue to pay it off um like I said there's two pieces of debt in that number there's the roof
project that is from about five years ago and then there's the 2003 2005 project which is the larger piece of debt and we have um just one more year of that and it will come off the books but what we are anticipating is that they won't actually change the assessment i would not expect a
significant decrease in assessment because of that debt coming off we are planning to add a new piece of debt to address the HBAC and time it so that it doesn't create a big variation in your assessment that is um what we're planning for okay good that sort of ties
together with as you said under the capital items yes yep yep thank you you're welcome and then the budget book is just um all things Neshobate and um we will have copies of this available at town meeting in addition it's also posted on our
website it goes into a little bit more detail and the only other thing we didn't talk about today that might be worth mentioning is OPED and um as a regional school district we're responsible to be you know making making progress towards our OPED and our budget
does put in a contribution to OPED is it 100,000 um and we're continuing to make progress on our OPED liability on the other postmployment benefit thank you part part of my brain was going
benefits the other part was what's the exact acronyms in education we love acronyms we have a lot military than education any other questions for him
okay Jen Bob Eric um I'd like to u open uh if there's any uh questions from the public for Dr pigeon and representatives from the high school seeing none okay um well thank
you very Thank you very much folks appreciate your time really appreciate it see you at town meeting yes okay all right moving on to the next item on the agenda is going to be uh we've got the
uh annual town meeting uh coming up uh on Monday April 28th it's our next meeting um well let me see that's why I was just going to pull up a calendar here who's going i'll be there i'll be there okay do you
want to go Jude sure okay i mean I've seen the audience i I don't want to sit on the stage but I can that's the fun part i can i'll be a spectator last chance to be on stage no thanks
you you had your your your time in the spotlight many years ago i guess where the big bucks are you know sometimes in the hot seat too all right so Robert we're going to have um the three musketeers
who are myself Andrew and Eric on stage all right three officers if you will yep um Okay perfect current And um is there anything in particular we need to be aware of
i don't think so pardon i think next year we should do a presentation on something be friendly suggestion yeah at town meeting and yeah feel like uh no one shows up to our meetings anyway so it'd be good to see
give a little precursor of uh what we do and contribute it's a good idea so but not this meeting next year but you're clearly volunteering to do that right okay did you have something like
in mind that you were thinking of well we uh so I I mean I will throw this out is that and Robert I'm going to lean on you here to make sure got my facts straight is we are going to still be having the
special town meeting in the fall correct yes yep the main focus of that will be the senior center it's looking that way yes yep at this point okay all right so we'll have um we'll have
u work to do this uh I did a lot of work speaking of senior center and and everything else I had a thought so you're essentially like a representative on um capital planning committee right correct is
it um how does capital planning committee work like do you guys actually like approve or recommend things to come out and be on the warrant or should we is that something like we should be
like giving a final like recommendation to for everything you have excuse me I have no idea what goes on outside of our committee so um the Robert will correct me but um all the departments present their capital
needs for the year so u new fire engine would be the big thing uh new trucks uh the water department knew this or that and uh then
the some of the items can be paid out of there's a certain level use um and then um and then the rest of it is technically becomes part uh goes to we it's approved and then is going to go on
to the warrant correct as part of one of the warrant articles is the capital items and those will be subject to borrowing right so um as the chair mentioned so the town has had it's in the financial policy a capital planning committee believe it's nine members
there's resident reps on there um FINCOM rep and they're charged with to review all of the capital recommendations for the for the upcoming year and they make the recommendations on um what should move forward and the method in which it
should be financed and some of that's set by the financial policies too so for example any what quantifies a capital request is any onetime item that's $10,000 or more and
then the policy says that any item that's $50,000 or less we try to pay from capital stabilization rather than borrow and we have over we're approaching five million on capital stabilization on the small stuff and
then the borrowing so that capital planning committee uh will meet from October usually through January make those recommendations to select board you guys did review the I think it's article 13 and article 14 which are the
capital which made a recommendation um on it so that's sort of the process okay but I mean like just for two examples this year is Peron Park we wanted to put in there
was a request to put in a u cameras to keep to watch because of people had broken into the shed there so we said that that was really maybe not a good idea so that sort of came off uh I
think the other thing was the uh several departments were looking for new vehicles and I think we came up looked at they the departments went back to the drawing board and I think we lo one down one vehicle
y and the capital planning committee as the chair will recall also was instrumental in um with respect to the senior center project that that committee's original goal was for for this spring and and through the capital
process it became clear that it was not ready for town meeting so there's another example so the it's more of advisory in nature the the capital planning But and if I'm not mistaken isn't having
haven't we reserved for the capital planning committee to meet in August or September yes yep if needed was correct okay for the senior center yep and on that and I would recommend through the
chair to also that they come back to the finance committee once they have finished some of the further due diligence and that'd be my opinion yes excuse myself okay
well we were still going to meet at least the once a month cadence like we did last year I would assume oh yeah so I mean right that because that's going to that was going to be leading into you know continuing on
um so for our So I'm sort of moving to our scheduling our next meeting but anything else about town meeting i had a separate side question but we can schedule our thing next pardon i had a side question but I'll wait till we
schedule our next meeting oh okay does that tie into the town meetings or No okay um so we are the regular schedule we've been looking is first and third of
the Thursday so that would put us at May 1st and May 15 may 1st falling three days after the town meeting so do we want to maybe hold off and do our next
meeting on the 15th of May i propose that so we will what are we going to talk about i was going to say after town meeting what are we meeting for we'll call something We used to say that oh we will try to
educate ourselves in the offse but in we do not really meet as much but well whatever is fine I probably won't be around could we um what if we made an effort to meet with um members of the um community
preservation commission yeah oh yeah we had talked about that that that was one thing we talked about yeah the CPC oh that why I forgot why but I I actually would I'm interested in learning more about that so I would uh
propose we do that i don't know i'm not going to be here for the month of May so where you going i'm recording live so I'll tell you afterwards okay sorry i forget about it sometimes um so what I'm hearing is maybe for our
May 15th meeting is we can start doing some planning for the next few months leading up to the special town meeting so and and actually into next year um I think the point is if you're getting sir charged something it'd be good to
explain that to us and the town of what the CPC does and kind of get a better sense of what's going on so do you do you think do you want to actually get have somewhat get a presentation on CPC on the May 15th meeting well if I would say like if we could do that in June
okay so what I'm thinking is maybe we on our meeting on May 15th we can say "Okay here's things that we'd like to do uh during the next few months and even looking forward is a CPC meeting uh or CPC explanation
uh or review how's that um what other Mr chair yes so maybe just a a couple of suggestions i I think the CPC for June would be a good one that for this
committee but also for the public to really do a deep dive on CPC i think that's good couple other potential topics is perhaps uh more detail on the town's debt schedule and borrowing um
that would be Barbara um why I say that is because major projects like the senior center major projects in the future like the elementary school but sort of do a she could do an overview of the municipal borrowing but also review
the debt schedule like what Denise was talking about earlier what's coming off coming on i mean that could be one topic um that was that was Yeah I have notes at home and I did not bring them tonight that is that's true because that's a really good point because something I was thinking after the last meeting when
we went over the articles and whatnot and uh Barbara had said that all the debt none of that is included in the departmental budgets once it gets approved it's just it's just part of the and I think that that would be like something interesting to know like okay
some departments obviously do carry more debt than others it's the nature of what they do and require But as far as like okay how much is say one department have on there and are we then maybe choking out another department or whatnot like
and how much are we Also here is another good example and again correct me if I have the facts wrong here Robert is that we approved the fire truck it's been two years however we've yet to take delivery on it so we have it pardon
we just haven't paid for it yet we haven't paid for it yet so actually so when we take delivery of fire truck the barber will then be selling the bond for I don't use so that's when the debt will
actually be incurred so we have this sort of basically you're you're uh you're saying why I'm why I'm asking this oh yeah this is this is in fact well I had asked Barber to work on this
yeah there definitely does seem to be a an emphasis on um certain departments well it's yeah there's that angle but also the angle that I was coming from and this sort of occurred to me as we
were going through the capital plan process again with the firet truck is that we have approved I think there's one or two other items that we have approved i know but and now we continue to approve more and those haven't even hit is what I'm trying to say those haven't exactly right and that's where
we want to get a good handle on that um so maybe I I could check with Barbara it's up to the committee for May we could at least do part one which would be an overview on the borrowing and the debt schedule that would be Barbara and I to Jyn's point which I think is a good
one or the committee's point I think meeting with CPC in June to do an overview of CPC and all of that I think will be not only helpful for all of us including the committee but also um the public as well to fully understand that
um another potential topic too we could do for consideration at some point too is more of a more of a deep dive on capital In other words u looking to the So one of the things the capital plan committee does look at a five-year plan and so
maybe that could be another topic is looking to the future fiveyear plan but you norally take a 20-year note right you take a 20 or a 30 um depending on the you need a 20 or 30 view right
yeah um especially like when you consider I mean There's regardless of what how many more years it is the right the new elementary school is not far down the road right not necessarily next year but it it's
not 20 years down the road I had an and something I find interesting maybe is a separate question right looking at the planning board meetings and they're putting looking to put in more developments and they started on Stratton Hill this week um they're
putting in 30 40 new houses Stratton Hill alone and how does that affect the tax base of curiosity like how much more tax income is there wow that probably people complain right everyone's always
like the water and the whatever and it's like well those people pay taxes too right but is it a net positive or Well the all due respect Yeah Mr pumpre the
Towns rarely have a problem finding use for revenue so they're also very happy to encourage more development oh we're going to have additional revenue fantastic we'll just we'll find a way to spend it what if to your point just
quick but on the flip side of that are we going to need to repave um what's that wonderful road that you live i already asked them to repave that twice right road yeah so I mean there's so I mean what I'm making a note here is projects impacts on revenue because the
project have been approved no no they've been they've been approved but I think a lot of people a lot of people show up to those meetings because they don't want the development yeah it's always for various reasons and I think I'm maybe I'm I'm when I first moved into this
town the Calvin Street section was also was wetland yeah and the O chemistry and Oak drive were separated and then so so but within the few years after moving here that they did that and it was all it was already approved years ago like
Australia it was approved years ago so you can't stop it and I think I understand developer has already scaled back and I suspect in general probably the revenue the tax revenue you the town uh receives from you know the sale of
the real estate probably would be more than what the town will have to spend in providing service to those areas so I think it will be a net positive to the town i don't think people realize that yeah the thing is it's always this way to the home owners the brothers they
hate it because they don't want to get this place i'm on team build i'm I'm maybe anti-air i I live right down the road from there it's going to be years of construction and blasting and whatever and I'm on team let's build man like let's do it i'm not anti-build as
since Sam is you know her job she seen build well no her job you know reaches all these different departments and whatever you know part of my concern is always this is all well and good we have literally one road in and out of town
that backs up to the Rotary every day already also are the town is the size of this computer is highly developed and people always talk about the you know we have a housing crisis
housing crisis housing shortage but like unless we plan on building 15tory skyscrapers this we're not solving a problem the thing is all this should have already I I believe and I don't want to live already debated live here
for 15 stories at at the planning for stage Yeah when when the when the planning board approved that they should have already considered all this they probably already you know part of it again as far as my education goes part of it is also like the town can't just
be like "No we don't want you to build and just say no for no reason whatsoever." They just get sued or taken to whatever and the builder says "There was no reason i was told no." As long as they like meet certain requirements and
guidelines you see this town probably had built more i don't really know i'm I'm wondering if this town had built more than the surrounding towns but the thing is this town's real estate value this is property value is also still increasing despite all the you know
building you would think that if you build too much you dilute that you know maybe I don't that's not my Did you see we were runner up town under 750,000 that's right best place to live massachusetts Boston Globe 2025 West under 750 what do you mean this is still
sort of like the Who was number one um I think we should go take them out probably somewhere near yeah yeah i don't know i have another point to you i think I was looking I have friends looking for a house and they're looking to buy in Mayard right which is I think it's like four and a half square miles
yeah it's even smaller 50% more than our population i just find that interesting dichotomy yeah yeah so Robert but we also have a lot I don't think Maynard has a lot of wetlands we have a lot more we don't we don't really know I I mean I
feel like I don't know the exact geography of any town in in New England every town has a little s some kind of water hole you know Mayor used to the the the you know the clock tower that's the mill if there's a mill there there must be some river something there so I
wouldn't be surprised if there is some wetland around there so I don't know i don't know but but it also comes to the point of you know not that you want to stop building everywhere or wherever but um you
know our there was a previous employee at the town who often times made uh comments as if they were trying to turn the town into another place and I don't think that's what a lot of people in town want i think they want to live in
this town because of what this town is they don't want it to be you know a population of 15,000 that's not what they're looking for it's it's hard everybody has pro and con debate and and it's hard because sort of like a the
entire eastern Massachusetts has this housing crisis you know so it has to be built somewhere and the air is 350 other towns exactly we're not the only one that that that can build well not probably not true i I assume the other
towns around us are also building but each town had their own you know appetite for new building and all the rest and also we are on the rail uh route of you know public transportation that on the commuter route so according
to the state law that the town of Milton and the town of Eden needen had fought against that the the state mandated you have to build like a certain amount of multi you have to zone for yeah like a higher density housing so whatever it's
a it's hard to but they're also getting soup though i don't know if that's disturbed and put to bed but yeah it's hard to say the thing is I think that every town you know the characters of each town will change over time and air
air is evolving but I think so far has not evolved in a bad way so so so so the thing is that yes if you are as rich as a Harvard or Graten you may just insist on that's my question that that that you
know that you are not going to exceed certain kind of density and and then you just turn people away which is fine the people in the town are willing not really because then it puts pressure on all the other towns around them there has to be some better balance well this
is this is I'm I'm going to in the interest of time and we Oh no no this is But I I I'm going to jump off of what you you just were saying about the rich towns and poor towns and stuff is that what we can
do as finance committee and what we I'm looking at our mission here is we we need to look at the financial impact of all these things um so I was sort of like you know I was making notes so projects what does that impact revenue and cost um so yes and and I'm I'm going
to come to you i know I stepped on just Yeah and u um so um this is great stuff because what we can do is say okay here's again the pro you know the planning committee coming
up with these projects okay well what's what are the cost on this you know and is is this being transparent is everyone are are are the cost and revenues being fairly presented and accurately presented and that's where we can really do I would like to just know where
they're going to put the road for all these people coming through town but I think and honestly there's there what what other road is there in in and out of town harvard grand Harvard oh yeah and who's who's on that route nobody no
I I know but I mean like that's not that's not going anywhere the highways are that way right and if they open the hospital again we'll get busy so but I think we're going to put But I think one thing and I will maybe since you have
few more years of your Sears experiences that one thing we as a committee we need to focus on the financial side of it absolutely and uh I think um to you know to present um to be aware of and I think this is
this is great that we are aware of and on top of it and to ask the important questions of the various committees and select boards who are making these questions and stuff i was going to ask my 20 second question oh yeah I want to ask earlier i haven't forgotten about
Robert what surrounding towns are doing two and a half overrides you know off the bat right now um Pil Townsen Groten
Harvard I'm thinking in our in our neighborhood Shirley isn't we aren't Littleton isn't so Groten Pilh Grten Pero Townsen Dunstable
a lot of them and Mr chair what I was just saying for the plan for the summer as they say so it sounds like and I'd be happy to work with the chair to coordinate all this however the committee wants to i think having an
overview on the borrowing and the debt schedule would be a good topic as we said and it would be timely with this senior center type of thing on the horizon we could put together as was brought up maybe the the
municipal economic so the municipal in finance municipal finance impact of development what I'm getting at is we could have certain departments come would put this together and talk about when development happens get down into
the weeds a little bit as to okay you know you build new houses but then as you're saying the services um that could be a topic the other one I was thinking too would be um town meeting and taxation and what I
mean by that is so everything on April 28th that town meeting authorizes for appropriation ation we have to raise that money largely through the tax levy but that isn't set until November so it's sort of it's sort of a counterintuitive process like everything
that happens on April 28th is actually going to impact the tax classification which is usually in November or December so we could sort of break that apart and look at you know the raise in appropriate articles the c what is how
that impacts um the budget moving forward um you know because we often hear you know we want to lower taxes and and so forth and one of the ways is less that is spent at town meeting has a less impact potentially on the tax rate so maybe town meeting and taxation because
I I think I mean the big thing on the horizon the two things I think are whatever comes forward to the fall town meeting that as financial in nature you'll want to review there's potentially this senior center project for the fall so there's those two but in addition to that from
now until then I think it's a great opportunity we could put together some of these topics and and talk about them and I think that that would be beneficial i think not only for all of us but for the public that's all I wanted to say so
what I'm thinking is so for our the next meeting May 15th uh the agenda first item on the agenda will be a presentation part one on debt service and borrowing and I think the second part second item on our agenda is um and
I've made some quick I notes here of um of items I think we could do what I'm thinking is we could say okay here's and we could maybe as a group just sort of uh uh here's various things that we want
to discuss the next few months so in other words your idea on municipal so I think on the second part of the meeting on May 15th would be getting that list formalized and getting a game plan for the rest of the summer and into the fall
of each of these items that we want to um talk about the uh developments impact uh new school senior center capital planning process and I forgot CPC so next for next meeting will be okay here's all the things we want to talk
about and maybe start scheduling them and things how does that sound to everyone perfect okay wow going to be busy so may have to continue with the first and third
are going to be around well no just like in the summer people you know it's we may not have a quorum all the time yeah right right but no I think it's uh I think it's go goes back to and Andrew what you were saying is I think doing a presentation at next town meeting is
just becoming a uh we can become a vehicle to help the town understand and learn about stuff you were you just volunteered for that Jim no I don't want you going in we're putting you in charge of the powerpoints
we managed a quorum just three of us on the committee for a whole year okay um I think we are all set i don't think we have any public comments to be made no okay like to make a motion to adjurnn
second all those in favor to adjurnn got it hi we are journed as of 7:08