Good evening everyone and welcome to the Cadam Select Board and Finance Chattam Finance Committee meeting of February 3rd, 2026. But the record showed uh we started the commence the meeting at 4:05 and I'll read what I need to read and then we'll get on with the meeting. Pursuant to
Governor Healey's March 28th, 2025 signing of chapter 2 of the acts of 2025 extending certain COVID 19 measures adopted during the state of emergency suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general law chapter 38 section 20 until June 30th 2027. This
joint meeting of the Cadam Select Board and Finance Committee is being conducted in person and via remote participation. Every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings as provided for in that order. A reminder that persons who would like to listen to this meeting while in
progress may do so by calling the phone number 158-945-4410 conference ID 2033 386491 pound or join the meeting online via Microsoft Teams through the link in the posted agenda. While this is a live
broadcast and simoccast on Cadam TV, now Exfinity channel 1072, despite our best efforts, we may not be able to provide real time access. We will post a record of this meeting on the town's website as soon as is possible. First order of
business here is to uh establish a quorum of the board of select selectmen. Uh Mr. Meadows >> present, >> Miss Davis >> present. >> Mr. Smith >> present, >> and the vice chair Dikens is present. I suspect that chair Niccastro is on his way. I think I will convene the finance committee as well at this this m this
moment. And Andy, I'll hand it off to you. >> Great. Thank you very much. I'm filling in uh in person for uh Stephen Daniel, our chair, who is available online. Uh I also see Tommy Don is online. I'll call
the role. Stephen Daniel, >> I am here. >> Okay. I'm here. Tommy Don >> here. >> Eric Whitley >> here. >> Tracy Shields is absent.
>> Kristen Andress >> here. >> John Papalardo >> here. >> Barbara Madison >> here. >> Joanne Sprag >> here. >> Right. We have a quorum of the finance committee available. >> Thank you very much, Yandy. Uh, next
order of business is minutes. This evening we have none. Um, the next order of on the agenda is public announcements and agenda item requests. Do we have any? We have one in here. Mr. Levit, please approach the microphone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, I'm Rick
Lever from West Chadam. I just want to make a an agenda item request. Mr. Smith Stewart Smith has an agenda item request to dis uh uh to discuss the uh affordable housing program here in Chattam. I would like to make the same request.
So noted, Mr. Levit, thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> And thank you for your ongoing interest in affordable housing. Um any other agenda item requests from the crowd here, the folks here? Anybody online? Any member of the board? I do have one.
I'm going to uh at at at some risk I'm going to um ask that we revisit the parade route that we discussed uh at our last meeting. Um I won't go into deep detail this evening, but um I I got home and had some second thoughts and
misgivings about the change uh that was suggested that we in fact uh support it. So I would like to have that and I'm sure Mr. Castro will find a way to get get it on the agenda in the very near term because I think time is somewhat of the essence. So anyway, so uh we'll note
that. Thank you. And then uh seeing nobody else out there and uh either online or in in public, uh we have no public hearing this evening and we have no consent agenda this evening. Um is there are there any comments in advance on our business agenda? I'm certainly
going to entertain comments um as we go through the agenda here this evening. And our agenda this evening is we have a committee appointment uh first off and uh we have one uh we have a candidate for the committee for people with disabilities. We interviewed him last
week. Very talented uh young man and I'll entertain a motion. >> Uh Mr. Chair. Yes. And I not sure how to pronounce his last name again, but I move to appoint Paul Mag >> Mangitus. >> Maggidus uh as a full member of the committee for people with disabilities
until June 30th, 2026 unless sooner revoked or a successor is appointed. >> Okay. And a second. >> Second. >> Okay. Take a vote. Mr. Meadows. >> I. >> Miss Davis. >> I. >> Mr. Smith. >> I. >> And the vice chair says I as well. Um so
welcome to the finance committee. uh folks online both uh present this evening. Our agenda includes uh a consideration of uh um our public safety departments uh extremely important our uh department of public works and then
again a uh or a look I should say uh the operating budget and annual town meeting vote for our water department. So, that being said, uh I think we'll uh have Chief Anderson come come forward first and present his present his public
safety, his police department, and then obviously Justin Tavano and others. So, Chief Anderson, welcome. >> Thank you very much members of both boards for your attention. Mike Anderson, I'm your chief of police. uh fiscal 27.
We'll start with the animal control division. Um Diane Buyers continues to do excellent work for us. Um I have a link to the electronic budget book. Uh but I think my slides are
self-explanatory. I don't think I'm going to go back and forth. Uh it references where you should focus your attention. But uh really this is just a snapshot of the trend of the calls for service that she gets every year. Um
not a big change in calls for service this year as compared to last. And that's just a snapshot of what her categories that we uh we take track of. Uh no no disturbing trends. There was no troubling animal incidents or wildlife
issues. Um, I think the biggest decline would have been in the u the quarantines and the checks uh because just a couple of years ago uh we lost a resident uh who had a farm with a bunch of loose animals and a bunch of complaints. So
that significantly dropped some of her calls for service. Um again her budget uh just reflects uh her increase for salary. Uh other than that, her her
budget is level funded. Uh so we're happy to announce that. No sense clicking to the worksheet. If you look at her budget, it's level funded for this year. And I think the numbers are in the memo you got from Carrie. Y >> any questions about animal control.
Again, I I couldn't be happier with uh Diane. She does a great job. Okay, just a snapshot for our calls for service. Uh, slightly higher, nothing alarming. Um, I'll explain some of the calls for
service and why why it increased uh just slightly from last year. Um, but again, we're we're right we're right about the level of services we had. And and again, like I said, I'll I'll explain some of these increases here with this next
slide. This slide indicates some of the the major calls for service that we have that we track with the annual town reports. Anything underneath that line uh from building and property checks south of that are really officer initiated. And that's those are things
that um the officers do in their idle time. And then you can just see some of the the parking tickets and the permits that we issued and the police records highlighted in yellow uh are some of the calls that led to the increase for calls for service. And if you pay attention to what they are,
motor vehicle, motor vehicle, motor vehicle, uh that is a direct uh response from what we felt we heard loud and clear from the public uh at last year's town meeting when they um they thought about lowering the town speed limit and
we made a compromise of buying those speed calming devices. We we heard from the public loud and clear that uh traffic safety and speeds were a concern and we we really focused our efforts onto that. Um and we had an additional
during that period we had probably one or two extra officers uh on our staff that were working as compared to the year before. So those are mostly um that's indicated in in yellow. Does anybody have any questions about the calls for service that we had last year? >> Mr. here
>> Joanne >> Chief uh number one thank you and and your officers for your service beyond the call of duty because without you uh we wouldn't be safe in our homes and in our town. Number two, there's one uh
means of assurance that you give to your citizens that we don't often talk about and that's your reassurance program. And I want to tell you how much how valuable that is for our older citizens, including me. >> We're glad you're a part of it
>> to to check in every morning. It helps our families know that we are okay that no that someone's checking on us every day. And uh I know it's it's extra trouble. It's it's takes extra time and effort and want to thank you for all of
us who partake of that. >> Thank you. There's there's more to the story and it's not it's not just work that it's a burden on us at all. We we share the responsibility with the emergency management, the fire department and the uh center for active living. Uh and for folks at home, these
last two weekends of storms uh are an example. Um, we had a lot of uh residents that uh needed some assistance, not just with the reassurance program, but what we call the special assistance program, which might be you might not have to call every day our police department and
check in, but let's say you had a medical condition that required your house to have power because of a an oxygen machine or you you know, you you could get around, but you couldn't, you know, you couldn't make it to the mailbox or shovel. um that special assistance program which you can
register for and I encourage folks that aren't registered to uh look at our website and and sign up. Uh it's just an an added safeguard for our community so that folks don't fall between the cracks in and >> that's amazing. That's wonderful. And uh we remember that you put your lives on
the line every day to keep us safe and we thank you for it. >> It's it's it's our pleasure. It's a pleasure serving this community. We're lucky and blessed to work here. >> Oh, and sorry you're going to retire. We're going to miss you. >> Thank you very much. Um, Mr. Meadows,
>> go ahead. >> Just one one quick question. Um, Chief, on the um town bylaw violations, the 124 um basically what violation or what bylaw violations is kind of typical. >> Sure. Dean is not here yet, but I recall
vividly a statement that Dean made several meetings ago about how much traffic and how much people and how much visitors we had over this past season. With that comes, when we say town bylaw violations, they're mostly quality of
life type violations. The the noise, the party calls, the alcohol and public calls, the fireworks calls. uh when when we get that much of a increase in in our town's population, that almost is a an automatic rise.
And I and I will say that um we do track uh major crimes, crimes that we that we report to the FBI. Uh and I am proud to say that most of our major crimes uh did not increase. They stayed at the same
level or lower than they were last year. Uh and the biggest uh location that we found where there was this most significant drop was I think really where people notice in Chattam uh property crimes, any type of larsenies, house breaks, uh vandalisms. Um
again, you've heard me say this for a long time. Cadam's not immune from any type of major crime or or criminal activity. We we're just fortunate to have much smaller doses of it. So, any other questions about the calls for service?
Okay, this is just a snapshot of where we are as far as staffing right now. Uh, you'll see highlighted is 23. Uh, we were grateful that the town increased our staffing last fiscal year. Uh, we certainly appreciate that. Uh, currently we have three student officers in the
police academy right now. Uh, they are expected to graduate the end of March. uh and upon successful completion of their field training officer program, we should expect them to hit the streets on their own on or about July 1st. That
being said, we will not be full staff because we just had a retirement uh about a month ago. Uh and that position is now open to be filled. We're recruiting for that. And if we're successful in filling that, that police
academy starts on or about June 20th. So, we will be short at least one this summer and with with my vacancy probably one more in the middle of the summer. Uh but we are trying to fill that position right now. But even that being said,
hopefully with the three graduates, that should put us maybe one or two extra police officers on the road. that that does not have to be forced in for overtime or have their time off cancelled because of unable to fill the
overtime. So, that again at um is is is great for the for the security and it's great for my morale. Uh we are hiring right now for this season's community service officers. Sad to say that we're only getting so far one returning
because uh a lot of our alumni have been picked up by other police departments. They've they've matured out of the program. It acted like a uh a minor league system. Uh and we're happy to say that a couple of them have have been picked up as police officers or town
employees for other towns. >> Well, it's very generous of you, Chief. >> We at at the time at the time that were available, we did not have any openings that we were we were full staff on paper. But um >> so so the memo did mention a potential
uh hiring. Just it mentioned it. Um, how how strongly do you feel about that? >> Well, I I'll I'll take all the help I can get, but I certainly will defer to the the judgment of the town manager and her needs and that and the town's needs, but um I'll I'll leave it up to her um
and whatever whatever happens happens. >> Okay. Uh Barbara, >> thank you, Mr. Chairs. Um Chief, are you concerned at all that the three officers coming right out of student training are going to be starting on the Fourth of July weekend? Uh there's two ways to look at it. Um
you you could you could you know cross your fingers and close your eyes or you could hit the ground running and and jump right out of the frying pan and into the fire. So uh if it was up to me, I'd rather have them start fresh, motivated, trained when it's busy as opposed to starting now uh where they
might lose some of their edge or lose some of their experience or not get to do things over and over again to improve on them or learn from, you know, any mistakes that they do make. So, if you're asking me honestly, I'd rather have them start right in the middle of summer. Yeah, I'm I'm very confident in the uh
Massachusetts uh Criminal Justice Training Council's Police Academy, and I'm really comfortable with our FTO program. Um they they'll be just fine. Okay. Uh here's our fleet real quick. Um, we just received one of our newest
cruisers. Just to just to note, uh, that cruiser was ordered right after the two new cruisers were ordered just after the, um, last May's town meeting. So, it takes that long to get a cruiser ordered, delivered, and built. Uh, so,
um, that where it says number two scheduled for replacement, it's actually one because our newest, one of our newest cruises arrived just last week. Uh the highlighted uh Chevy Tahoe uh will be replaced and that will replace the Lieutenants 2019 unmarked Ford
Explorer and that'll be replaced with a 26 unmarked uh and our vehicle budget looks fantastic. Um we're in good shape with the vehicle-wise. The reason why we we ask for the vehicles, and we'll get to it later in the presentation, very
simple. Um the the 2-year turnaround that we have on our vehicles keeps the vehicles on the warranty. They don't go off the warranty and it maximizes our trade in value. Any questions?
Okay. This is just a quick snapshot of of what uh the oper operational budget looks like. We're trying to be fiscally responsible. um you know the I think it's 3.9% for contractual salaries. You
take that away, all I'm looking for from the police department is less than 1% of of an increase. Uh and that only increases our budget by 2500 bucks. Um and again, not to slide back and forth to the budget book, but those are the three line items. And that all it is is
based upon the consumer price index on anticipated increases on the maintenance equipments, the labor, uh uniforms. Um it's it's amazing again how much it costs to outfit a police officer and again to keep us operational with our daily operational supplies and that
could range from anything from copy paper to ammunition. Um, oh, we were very proud to announce that uh over the past year we were able to secure uh roughly $54,000 in grants to supplement some of our capital
purchases that we did last fiscal year. Any questions? >> Okay, >> Chief, I I got I got a quickie. Sure. Um, last year we had quite a capital ask and one of the things that you looked for and we approved the town approved the body warn cameras and the for both
the officers and the and the vehicles. How did that play out? And just give us a little color there if you would. Thanks. >> Okay, so one of the reasons why uh we were so pro bodywn cameras is
transparency and officer accountability. Um, prior to the body warn cameras, it would be an average of maybe three or four citizen complaints against police officers regarding their conduct or, you know, how they behaved or what they did
or didn't do. Um, I am very very proud to say that the first year that we've had our body warn cameras, we have had zero zero citizen complaints. Um, we had a couple that came in to entertain a complaint. Uh, but when the body camera
footage was shown to the complainant and you we say, "Hey, you know, tell me tell me what what you see here that I don't." Um, the complainant usually with withdraws. Um, the other thing that works well for us is we also use it for training purposes. we see an officer
doing good on a call, we see an officer responding well, uh, we can download that, we can highlight it, we can use it as a training roll call. Um, no, I'm not looking over their shoulders every night watching all of their body cameras. If I did, I I wouldn't have
time to even exist. Uh, trust is a good thing in a police department and and uh this these body cameras uh really help with that. Um, cruiser cameras as well. Um, you know, it highlights safe operations of the vehicles. It it it documents the crime scenes. Uh, we're
lucky to have them. And we we were very happy that when we purchased them last year, we secured a really really sweet contract. Nice five-year deal, which again, I'll mention uh in a little bit. >> Super. Thank you, Chief. That was that was very informative. Thank you,
>> Chief. Last year was it did we implement the new ticket ticket ticketing system? Was that last year? Oh, was that the year before? This is the second year. Yeah, second year. Um, very happy with it. Uh, it's very easy to use. >> Um,
>> no, but it's it's been great. It's it's it's Yeah, 100% support that. >> Great. >> Okay. Oh, go ahead. Yep. >> Let's do it. >> Uh, Chief, real quick, the uh I think you may have mentioned it. So, when you trade these vehicles in, that's what you
guys do. the town does is they trade them in, they get two new ones that we don't that doesn't go to some other >> the the cruisers once we trade them in. I'm not sure where they go. They're probably a taxi somewhere, but they they you know, maybe years ago, maybe one or two went to another department in town. Yeah. Not not anymore. Not anymore.
>> Great. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Um Okay. U moving along. One of the things we're asking for is is one of two capital items and it's $160,000. And quite frankly, that's our office. That's where we spend uh most of our time and
again we're looking for two like we have in the past uh because the rotation program uh we maximize the return uh the turn-in value and we we keep them on the uh the uh warranty. Uh the reason why
it's a little bit more expensive uh last year and this year, if you go back to the slide earlier, some of our cruisers are 2020 or 2021s that we're turning in and they're getting replaced with a 26 or
maybe even a 27. the interior equipment as you see here, the cage, the computer, the consoles, the body styles change an inch, two inches, three inches, 4 in, and they don't fit. So, this will be the second year in a row that we've had to
uh upfit with some new interior equipment. Uh minimal cost increase, but again, we don't save any money because we can't recycle some of our old equipment. Any any questions with this? Okay. >> I just had a comment. Uh
it's because I'm backing up to a few slides ago where you said that you've ordered these in May. >> Uh the the other ones >> the vehicles that we're receiving last week and next week. We ordered them the day after the town meeting last year. >> It's amazing. It takes that long to get
a vehicle. >> Yep. Yep. >> Wow. And then if you wanted a certain type of engine, if you wanted a certain you wanted a Chevy, you wanted something else, it's it's it's it's Ford is not is not immune. It's not it's the same everywhere. It's those municipal vehicles are are it's a weight.
>> That's crazy. >> Similar to ambulances, same same deal. >> And your fire trucks. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh any questions? >> Okay. Okay. This is the second capital request and again I 203,000 looks like a big
number and I apologize for the sticker shock. Um I just I just want to introduce you to something. Um since 2022, since I did my first budget, uh we we think I feel we've made
some significant improvements in officer safety with some of the equipment we've been allowed to purchase. And they, like we mentioned, we mentioned the body cameras, the cruiser cameras. Um, we we replaced our tasers. Our tasers were probably eight or nine years old. We, you know, the time the the time
that we kicked that can down the road without having to spend uh our time our time ran out, so we had to replace them. Uh, that was done this year, so they're carrying the new tasers. Last year, you guys approved, and I appreciate it. uh the replacement of our sidearms. Uh
we'll all have next generation sidearms uh with the sight packages and the light packages. And again, if I don't have to revisit it, but we we told you of all the benefits and the safety and the accountability for those. Um let me in let me introduce you to the Motorola
APX 6000 portable radio. Now, now I'm I'm not on the front lines anymore. I don't push a cruiser around. Uh I I push a desk around. Uh but the only two really tools that I wear on my belt are my sidearm and my and my radio. This this portable radio is is in my opinion
the most important tool that the officers have on their tool belt. They we don't communicate with each other through cell phones. Uh we we talk on the radio. If you have a scanner, you you hear us. If you you know this this is how we talk on the radio. Um, coincidentally,
not part of my program today, but this morning to support my request, I received an an email from the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police. This email is dated February 3rd, and highlighted in orange, it says,
"There are several models of Motorola radios currently in use on the statewide blah blah blah that are out of support. highlighted is the radio that we carry. Okay. So, I want to introduce you to a term um called end of life.
So, as of October 15, 2025 of last year, all variants of this radio are going to be considered what they call legacy, which means limited accessories and parts, which means they don't repair or
they don't they don't replace these with these radios anymore. They only repair them with leftover parts from other radios. So their typical support is usually 7 to 10 years. Uh and we we started these in
2016. So we are at the end of life. Um so why do we buy them all now? Why do we need these all now? There's a couple of things to to think about. We're we're very lucky to have the situation that we
have in and I think we need to maximize it. I'm going to try to highlight it. So last year we were very very lucky to secure a excellent contract with Motorola for the cruisers and the body cameras. This is a Motorola product. So
because of our successful contract with the cameras, we've been offered a substantial discount uh almost 25% per unit uh if we purchase them now in in in bulk. Um
what that also does next fiscal year as part of the body camera contract. So look at it this way. You wear your body camera here. I don't. But the officers who wear their radios sometimes they
wear a shoulder mic or a portable microphone. Okay. So you've got all this going on. next year there is a a component that we would qualify to get again hopefully at a pretty decent price. It's a piece of equipment that
instead of replacing our current body cameras with a newer similar model will have the ability to get a body camera which uh does the work for both the portable radio microphone and the
camera. And some of the pretty slick things about this new system that we would be eligible to get if we were to purchase the radios is that new body camera style has uh AI technology. Now listen to this. Some of the features
would be, for example, if we go to somebody's house, so we stop somebody's vehicle and there's a language barrier, we can program the the speaker in that camera to translate what we're saying and what they're saying. Um, it's pretty
slick, but again, we can't have that unless we get these N70 radios, which these new components are compatible to. Um, what what would happen now if we broke a radio? We would be at the mercy of a third party or a separate vendor to try
to scavenge uh radio parts from other APX 6000 radios. Um, the cost of the radios is $180,000 on its own. Uh, again, it's it's a sweet deal. I'm sure you've
read the report. Um, it's it's about a 25% savings per unit. Uh, and that would come with the uh radio that you see, the uh attached uh microphone holder and a spare battery and a charger. Now,
end of life. Also, in my police station, we have uh when we talk on the radio, all of our radio communications, the DPW radio communications, the fire department, the harbor master, uh we have the ability to
scan that. We have the ability to record and preserve that because we're required to. We lost the ability to have our call recording system replaced. It was it was brand new in 2011.
Uh it is now obsolete. The company that sold us the uh recording device had been has been sold has been bought has been sold has been bought has been sold. And we were nice, we were lucky enough to get somebody, some old-timer in the a
legacy employee who has made a commitment to us that we haven't had to use yet that if our system breaks, he he could keep it on life support, but we we can't repair it. We can't repair it. So, what we looked at is what's called
uh the vest the the commutel multi-channel radio recording system. Again, we we need it. Um, how do we use it? We we have to preserve it for evidence. Um, if somebody calls on the
radio and we and we don't quite copy what they say, we can record it and play it back and say, "Hey, what did they say?" Um, again, the the department's current recording system is well past its uh its end of life. Um, like I said,
the the company no longer the the original company no longer exists. Um, we've been quoted, I think it was 22,000 for that. Um, for a combined total of 203,000. And I I I would be remiss if I
didn't stop and insert this because I don't want to forget this. There are there are a bunch of other things that that we require for day-to-day operations that are covered by other budgets like the town IT budget. And I can't thank the town IT budget for
taking some of these uh things in for me. Software licenses, software upgrades. Uh the town IT budget just purchased six brand new cruiser laptops. Thankfully, not out of my budget.
Luckily, out of his budget, he has he had plenty of money. Um so, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that and thank them and thank you for supporting the IT. Um, and there was one more thing. I think it was I forget whose budget it falls into, but somebody's asking for
uh the carpet at dispatch to be replaced. Again, 2011 is when we installed it, our dispatch carpet. It's kind of like our living room of our police station. It's it's always 24/7, 365. There's always somebody in there. And that carpet has also received its
end of life. And that thankfully uh has been uh put in somebody else's budget. I I think it's Terry Whan's budget. And when you see it, think of me and u I'd appreciate it. But um again, I I'm not really a tech guy. I'm just saying that
that's it's the most important tool that we carry. And unfortunately, we've we've kicked this can down the road as as long as we can. And I think the the the the right circumstances and the right time is is to purchase this now for the the savings we get now and the availability
for future improvements is probably as soon as next fiscal year >> and I think that's it. >> Chief, what is the uh lifespan of the radios? The new radios is 10 years. >> Seven to 10.
>> Okay. All right. Chief, I might have misunderstood, but uh if you get the radios, do you have to do something with the cameras? The >> No, no, we don't do anything with the cameras. What it does is if if that if that item we were able to purchase next
year with our camera upgrade, we couldn't because it's not compatible with this currently. >> Thank you. >> If we get that, it would be >> Thanks. Yep. Understood. Joanne, you had a question. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh before we leave the the capital program, uh did you say
you had received your new weapons that we ordered? >> They're they're ordered. Some have come in. Uh we haven't started any type of training with them because there's a significant amount of ammunition that you have to put through that weapon because
I don't want to sound too technical here, but you're going from iron sights to uh uh an optic and you really have to learn how to That was my question. I I began to think of that when we were talking about it. And y how how is the
the flashlight and the gun trigger? >> How do you distinguish between those? And how do you learn to use those on the same weapon? >> Training. Training. Repetition. Repetition. >> How does it work? >> How does it work? Real simple. Um, the only thing that is near the trigger
guard is the trigger and the trigger guard where you should never have your finger unless you're intending to pull the trigger. The light is operated off outside of the trigger either with an index finger or an opposite hand finger. Um, >> so there's no making a mistake of when
you want the trigger, you're getting the the light. >> I I don't want to say there's no guarantee, but the training it's uh that's why we we train so much on it. Um if if a guy like me who's not a gun guy can figure it out, it's it's um it's
yeah, it's not that hard. It's it it comes with muscle memory. Um and that's why you train so much. And and it's design it's designed for safety. >> Okay. >> And and again, we we would never use the weapons mounted flashlight is like a
flashlight to check a building. I mean, it's we have flashlights, but this is just a a light mounted on your optics because unfortunately almost half of our our duties are are in low light or no light conditions. Yeah. >> And it's an incredible advantage for the
officer and it's it just increases safety for the public and and more accountability for me. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Do you have a question, Stuart? >> Yeah, I had a just question on the radios. Um, that's kind of fascinating that they'll translate for you now. And
do you program what languages it'll do or is it just do >> they they're going to sell me a product and they're going to demo it and and they're going to hopefully wow all of us. But that's that's that is one of the features and and part of the other features it has like a um like the body cameras now if we if we jump out of the
cruises at Lighthouse Beach even on a calm day the wind's blowing 20 miles an hour and you get that it it eliminates it eliminates that um it it uh it's noiseancelling noise
buffering uh it it it's a it's a pretty it's a pretty slick little piece of equipment. >> Yeah. Sounds it. And Motorola is are they the only folks that offer that? Do you know? >> They they don't. There's a couple of similar makes and models, but I'm not sure about the interoperability with it and and I I much rather stick with a
name and a company that we know and they're on the state bid and it's it should be easy. >> Yeah. Great. Thank you. >> How long uh how long does it take to order and receive and then get it all installed? I mean like >> uh these Yeah. Uh the radios I'm I'm sure uh the last time I talked to our
rep if if we get the green light at town meeting weeks >> any training to them at all because they have different components or >> just a just a little bit of in-house training when the rep gets here. I don't I can't see anything more than you know maybe less than four hours.
>> Cool. Thanks. >> Okay. If there are no more questions from either board, thank you chief. Thank you and your department for all the work you do for the town. >> Any any other questions? Great. Appreciate it. Yes. >> Yes.
>> Briefly, Chief, uh mostly because every now and again you hear this inquiry. Have the community service officers been successful and you know, do they input to your activity report that you showed us? >> I'll ask you.
I'll ask the board. No, >> I I I I couldn't be happier with the program and I know uh some of our neighboring police departments uh I hope I hope they're not watching, but uh I know they they try to copy, you know, like we do. If we see something that's like, "Wow, that works really good." You
know, we'll change it a letter ahead and and make it ours. Um I know that um you know, my staff does a great job of of training them, supervising them. Um, and again, you know, you you'd figure,
uh, you know, hopefully not in a community like ours where you you get civilian complaints. Uh, they're professional, they're courteous, uh, they're helpful. Um, uh, and and again, we we we've been fortunate that that the
ones that we have come back, we we welcome them back. And >> um yeah, >> often chief that it's mostly been somebody has spotted a you know a large vehicle or even a small vehicle parked halfway out into Main Street from the parking space and what are those csos
doing? >> Yep. >> How come there isn't a ticket on that? >> Yeah. And and again we we get that all the time. Where's a cop when you need one? >> Where's a cop when you need one? All the time. >> I think I've heard that before. >> Yeah. Um, last year, I think it was the first year, maybe the second since we
had a complement of five, >> we were able to designate one in a vehicle to to to go to satellite locations to hopefully >> uh take the burden off of some of the road police officers and that was very helpful. We've had some areas in town where we've had some
>> com, you know, concerned citizens and we heard we heard less from them. >> Good. I I've liked the idea right from the get-go and it's glad to hear that it's been successful. >> Awesome. Thank you, >> Corey. Now, as far as the CSOS, I'm a big supporter of them. I I see them
every day downtown the summertime beyond the tickets, walking up and down, engaging with citizens, engaging with shop owners, engaging with with everyone. They they really become a fabric of downtown and and know they expand their services a little bit beyond the downtown area. Um but they
are fully engaged, very successful. And to Joannne's comment about like you know you know officers starting on July 4th a couple years ago there's a little bit of a scuffle that went out over by like say like the carmines area the csos were one of the first ones to respond to it you know running full throttle on foot to
get to the incident um very very successful very very supportive of the program so I think it's been beyond um me beyond our expectations with success so big supporter of it >> thank Thank you again, Chief. This is your
last formal budget presentation, but we're going to see more of you before, >> okay, >> you depart. Thank you again. >> Appreciate your support. >> Thank you. >> And one last question, Mike. Uh, sorry. On the CSOS, I I I too think there it's a great program, especially for a seasonal community like ours. I mean,
how you >> how you fleet up uh uh people for the for the um summer crowds. Are you going to or are they expanding to beaches and most notably town landings because they were always a distraction of of mine.
>> Uh I think I think they on on occasion have visited like Schoolhouse Pond is one of their locations. Bridge Street is one of their locations. They they kind of stay away from the Fish Pier because there's a separate crew down there. But I know they did like the the area around
the Fish Pier Shore Road. I I know they visited Coward uh and maybe some of those. Uh but I the answer is yes. >> Do do they have uh means of driving? I mean, can they drive somewhere to a town landing if they need or
>> we we give them an unmarked vehicle? >> You give them an unmarked for the >> We we teach them how to drive one of the unmarked. It's got the radios. They only turn the lights on when there it's it's an emergency. >> Uh but uh >> and they go to Barnhill and >> Oh, yeah. >> Riders Cove. >> Oh, yeah. And it really really takes a a
lot of burden off of the regular route police officers to allows them to do other things and it's it's been great. >> Great. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Chief Deano. Welcome.
>> Good afternoon. All right. Good afternoon everybody, members of the finance committee and select board um and anybody from public uh viewing at home and in person. Uh Justin Tano, the fire chief. Um, just want to start off with saying a few words about the department and about the
town. Um, before we get into my slides, uh, the women and men of the department worked extremely hard once again this past year in 2025, striving to set the standard for public safety excellence across the county. Their devotion to the town of Chadam and dedication to public service is highlighted by their training
and their teamwork and their compassion for the community that we serve. I'm extremely proud and honored to work alongside true professionals. As always, I remain grateful to all of you uh on the select board, on the finance committee, town manager, finance director, and our taxpayers per for
providing the necessary funding, allowing our first responders to perform their duties safely, efficiently, and effectively. And I'm also appreciative of the profound support and collaboration we share with our colleagues throughout the various town departments. Thank you.
So, we will jump right in. We'll look at some data first. um cut it down to just kind of a five-year look back at some of our incident um metrics. Um so this first slide is just showing us incident data
from calendar year 2021 to 2025. The blue columns show total incidents where the orange columns show ambulance transports. And typically we see those um correlate with each other pretty well.
uh when one goes up, typically the other one goes up somewhat proportionally. Um we had a little bit of a dip in um in total calls this year um along with ambulance transports um primarily due to a drop in calls during the shoulder season months which
we'll get into in a in a few slides. Uh what was interesting to me and I don't have an answer as to why was the the drop in ambulance transports didn't directly correlate proportionally with the drop in total calls for service. Um
we had about a 200 call drop in ambulance transports um between 2024 and 2025 um with with just a little over a hundred uh in call drop in total call volume.
This next one just uh just compares 2024 to 2025. The blue column and this is uh by month. So January is on your far left and December's on the far right. Uh the blue co the blue column the blue bar is showing you 2024 total incidents per
month and the orange is showing 2025 and you can see July uh is about a mirror image of each other. Um that's the two tallest uh bars on the graph there. And if we look at June just to the left of July right in
the middle um you can see that the orange column is uh had a a pretty decent drop below the blue. So we dropped off in 2025 and June and then again in September, October and November. So our change in call volume
between 2024 and 2025 was mostly due to a drop in call volume in June and then in the in the late summer and early fall months. This looks five five-year look back at our ambulance transports uh going back to 2021. Um you can see that it um 2021
was still a little bit lower. We're still kind of recovering from the the co experience. Um 22 23 24 were all pretty leveled out. We saw a pretty pretty good climb. And then 2025 again uh this past year things kind of took took a weird a weird dip.
Um this is looking at ambulance revenue over the past five fiscal years rather rather than calendar years. Um, and you can see that there's been a there was a pretty steady climb from 21 through 24, uh, and then starting to level off in 25. Um, but ambulance revenue, um,
without any change in our rates has been has been a a pretty good, um, source of revenue for the town. This pie chart's just looking at 2025. Uh this breaks our incident types down uh into what we what we report to the federal government to the US fire
administration. Um the the largest uh piece of pie there is in the gray. That's our rescue and EMS uh medical responses. Um and that's that's typically where it about falls is somewhere between 63 66% of our total call volume. Um so no no real outliers
in this. Um the only thing that really dropped somewhat significantly is our what we call service calls. Um and those dropped um by about a hundred this past year. Um with the most notable
drops being in calls for uh uh residents burning without permits um along with um assisting residents with troubleshooting smoking carbon monoxide detectors. Uh we had a few residents in town that we had to crack
down significantly on that uh were our kind of um frequent calls that were burning without permits. Um so the the crackdown on that uh definitely dropped that that number of calls um for service. Um and
our fire prevention office did did quite a bit of work um upgrading um helping residents the year prior with upgrading their smoke and seal alarm. So, it made sense that that that those calls went down as well. This is just looking at our personnel.
Uh nothing's changed from the prior year. Um our two administrative personnel are myself and the deputy chief. Um we have day positions, which is an emergency medical services captain and a fire inspector. Uh they're both crossrained as uh firefighters, fire
inspectors an EMT, and the EMS captain's a paramedic. Uh we have four shifts uh with seven personnel on each shift. Each shift has a captain, a lieutenant, and five firefighters. So in total, we have four captains, one for each shift. Um
out of those four captains, three are paramedics, one's an EMT. Each shift has a lieutenant with one being a paramedic and three being EMTs. And then each shift has five fire five firefighters. So 20 at the firefighter rank with 13 paramedics and seven EMTs. And then
finally, we have a part-time administrative assistant. Quick look at our fleet. Uh nothing has changed significantly in the past year except for uh we took delivery of a new ambulance recently. Um, so we still
have, uh, two pumpers, two fire engines, one mini pumper, um, which has all the all the capabilities of a full-size pumper truck, um, but a little bit smaller, uh, footprint, um, can get into some tighter areas. We have the Quint, which is our ladder
truck, um, which is dual dual purpose of being a has the, uh, capacity of a fire pumper, but also a ladder truck. uh our high water vehicle, that's the army truck we've seen around uh which we utilize to help evacuate people from flood floodprone areas. We have four
administrative or staff vehicles. Uh that's for myself, the deputy chief, the fire inspector, and then one additional for staff. We have a service vehicle, which is our pickup truck. We have a boat, which is trailered out of the fire station. And
then we have our all-terrain uh utility vehicle, our UTV. Chief, how much use does the Quint get? >> Um, you know, it's we don't have a lot of fires. Um, as as we're all well aware, um, thankfully,
um, but it it is, um, especially with with our staffing now that we've, uh, moved dispatch to the county sheriff's, um, we're now able with full staffing on each shift to be able to fully staff an engine and the Quinn. So for any report
of a possible fire, any report of a confirmed fire, um both those trucks are able to move out the door right away. Whereas prior to this past year, we were only able to staff just one. So um the the recalled personnel, people coming in from home would be required to go to the
station, get the ladder truck, and get it to the scene. Um so it's it's moving a lot more on calls, which is great. >> What vehicle do you house in South Chattam? >> Um we move it around a little bit. Um, typically it's the mini pumper. Um, but at certain points of the year we shift that around a little bit. We bring that
up back up to headquarters. Um, we have to get creative um, in the near future here because the high water vehicle is currently stored over at the wastewater facility. Uh, we need to move it out of there um because they're taking delivery of the grinder pumps and and need that
that space there. Um, so we're playing around um with things a little bit between the high water vehicle and the mini pumper as to which which is going to be in South Chattam and which is going to be at headquarters, but they can't both fit at headquarters. >> Thank you. >> Um, we're also working um
with Hardmaster Jason Holm. Um, we had moved our forestry truck um towards the end of Stewart's time over the hardmaster division. Um, we still have our forestry skid off that truck. It's a It's a pump um with hose and a reel um which we're exploring the opportunity to
put it into the back of the high water vehicle to uh increase that truck's capabilities a little bit. >> Chief, if I may, um you probably get tired of hearing me ask this, but how are we doing for, you know, fire burden, particularly in the South Chadam forest?
>> Um okay, right now. Um, you know, they they did they did some work around the goose goose pond area not too long ago. Um, the county just uh received a grant recently and is going to be starting to update the county wildfire protection plan.
>> Um, so we'll be participating in that in that kind of study and looking at the areas that need that need to be addressed and then uh first will come the study address finding those areas and then doing some work to help mitigate some risk. >> Okay. I just I mean it seems like every
time I walk into the woods it's there's a ton of dead pine and lots of easily ignited material lying around and I the pile may have been reduced but I'm never sure whether it was decay or was removed.
>> Yeah. You know it's the it's we we tend to um defer some of that assessment to the the wildfire experts. >> Sure. um with with DCR, Department of Conservation Recreation. >> Um and they kind of they kind of lead the charge on telling us, you know, we
sometimes walk in there, we say, "This all needs this is all a major fire hazard." And they say, "No, that's actually good. Um it's it's in decay. Um it's it's not not a huge fuel source." So sometimes it doesn't all it's not always what meets the eye. >> Yeah. Are DCR grants or personnel
available to to take away some of that stuff or >> Yeah. when that time comes, uh, DCR personnel will help. Um, they tend to rely on some Americanore volunteers and some other volunteer organizations to help out with that as well. >> Thank you.
>> Um, just just to note, it doesn't really have a whole lot to do with us, but um, US Fish and Wildlife um, does have a permit um, for the winter and spring to do some some significant uh, control burning out on >> Monoy. >> So, they're looking at doing about 90
acres out there. supposed to start two weeks ago, but with the cold weather and snow, it's been pushed back. Barbara, >> chair, um, Chief, have you noticed any decent amount of help from homeowners and citizenry in digging out
the fire hydrants from the snow? >> Um, I I tend to try to keep an eye on that as I'm driving around town or driving into work. Um, and have noticed some areas where they've been shoveled out. Um, but obviously with a little bit of an older community, it it's a it it
is tricky. Um, had some conversations with Chuck Wood um from uh the from the uh Viola um about getting those hydrants opened up. So, we started working on a little bit of a plan to to get better access to them. Um but if you drive
around, you will notice that some have paths cleared to the hydrants. Um, but it's it's, you know, with the snowstorm that we got a couple weeks ago, it is it's it's tricky. But we adapt our plans, our response plans. We put more equipment on it. Um, when we know that there's been a significant amount of
snow, we we increase our staffing level um because we know that those are going to be challenges that we face. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Chief. uh in the summertime when we are so full of tourists and many of our places of
entertainment seem to be people falling out the doors. Uh what is your program of of of con controlling the the the entertain places of entertainment to where they only have the certain number
that they're allowed to have and that they aren't there aren't more revelers than should be in case of fire. >> Yeah. So it's it's it's a little bit of a a a three-pronged attack. So the the first and foremost the the
responsibility falls on the establishment. Um excuse me. Every establishment that has capacity of 100 or more is required to have a crowd manager, a certified crowd manager through the state for for every hundred people that they have within
their capacity. Um so and that that part of that person's responsibility is making sure that they're staying within their capacity and counting heads on the way in. So, the ultimate liability and responsibility lies with the establishment themselves. We do often get calls um in the summertime to go to
establishments um where folks think believe that they're overcrowded. >> Yeah. >> Um and you actually wouldn't believe how many people you can fit into a place by by fire code. Um it's uh it's it's seven square feet per person um once you
remove tables and chairs for an establishment which isn't a lot of space um when you think about the footprint that you know uh basically just over a 3ft by two foot area takes up. Um so a lot of times we show up and and people believe that somewhere's overcrowded. Um
sometimes it's somebody from from our duty crew that's on duty. Um the fire inspector or myself or the deputy chief. Um we have had to go out in the past um and do some headc counts um and get general approximations as to how many
people in there um over the we in my time as chief we haven't had any time that we've been called out to check um an establishment where they've actually been over capacity. >> Okay. Thank you. >> We always run into, you know, I talk with my colleagues in other towns on
these issues all the time as well. Um, Haritch has had some significant issues in the past few years um, in the Harport district with a couple establishments there. Um, I know that they had a time last summer where they actually had to empty one of the facilities out, make everybody get back in line and then
count heads to let everybody back in. And we always wrestle with the safety aspect of doing something like that, especially when it's on Main Street. So if we look at an establishment that has a capacity of say 250 people, if we dump that building and we put 250 people outside all at on Main Street at the
same time, was you know the bite worth the chew to get, you know, otherw if we were to stay uh and keep an eye on it and they had a good control of the crowd that's in there. Um we tend to just kind of let them manage it. Um to try to count get everybody emptied out and
count heads on their way back in is is kind of a huge undertaking. Right. Um just a quick look at some of the grants um that we're currently working on. Um this past year we got a small car seat grant um from the state. Um it wasn't actually a a financial grant to
us, but it was in the form of equipment um that we uh allowed us to get 28 car seats um free that we were able to work with Monoy Community Services, the schools uh to identify some people in the community that could benefit from
having a free car seat. Um some leftover funding from the old Medic Center 5 um still funds some small grants each year. Um, this past year we got $2,745 which allowed us to purchase some CPR equipment. Um, much needed replacement
on that. Uh, the Department of Fire Services, the student awareness of fire education and senior safety grants gives us about $7,000 each year to assist with fire safety education for our schools and working with our center for active
living on providing um safety education for our for our older population. And then the assistance to firefighters grant through MIMA um we were actually awarded um about a year and a half ago but we just um started that project this year that awarded us about $55,000
um to send one of our current uh EMT employees to paramedic school. So provides uh funding to backfill that person's position when they have to go to class but they're scheduled to be on duty. um and also to um provide funding to that person when they're attending
training um to be compensated with overtime to attend the training. So that's working out really well. Um currently we have um Cali Burnham who's attending that program. She's about halfway through. Um similar to Chief Anderson, um I
didn't pull up the budget book, the digital budget book, um just because I know it can be a little hard on the eyes in this setting. Um but I know you all have access to that and I just wanted to highlight um really the only um significant changes in the budget for the year. Um so this is looking at FY26
um is the lefth hand column where you'll see values and then FY27 right to the right rate to the right of it and then the dollar variance and the percent change. Um so the two areas of our budget we look at are personnel expenses and our operating expenses. Um personnel
expenses always take up um the most significant part of our operating budget um at around 93%. Um in FY26 that was just over 4.7 million and for FY27
that's going up to 4,941,000. So uh just under $240,000 change um which is about 5.1%. So all those changes are contractual. Um it's for um cost of living adjustments, market adjustments,
um longevity payments, step increases, increase uh holiday pay um and things of that nature. for our operating expenses in FY26 it was just about 370,000 and in FY27
uh we've proposed 3917 391,788 for a change of 22,239 or 6.02%. So in total uh the percent in uh increase of the the overall budget from
FY27 to FY26 is 5.15%. So, this next slide just shows where those changes occur. Um, which line items. Do you want me to stop? >> I just have a question for you, Chief. Go >> ahead. Um, has to do with ambulance billing. >> How often do you test the upper limits of what the insurers will pay for
reimbursement? >> It's so Medicare and Medicaid are are set federally. Um, what rates are >> um it's something that that Gary and I have talked about looking at those rates. It's been quite a while since we've changed our ambulance rates in town. Um we have significantly the
lowest on the Cape. Um but we take in um out of all of our revenue, which you know last fiscal year was around $900,000. >> Um about 90% of that is coming back from Medicare and Medicaid. >> Um so a huge portion of it is it just is
what it is. Um, so it doesn't really behoove us as a town that much to increase rates higher than what Medicare and Medicaid are going to reimburse for that because that's 90% of that revenue. The other 10% is coming from
from private insurance. >> Um, so we we we are looking at um doing some increases with the rates so that for that remaining 10% that are being paid privately um we would get a little bit more of a return. >> Okay. I just there were two things I was thinking of. Of course, Medicare and
Medicaid periodically do change their rate structure. So, you know, they might do that without telling you. >> Uh they keep our so we use a third party billing company called Coastal Medical Billing >> and um and they they keep us well informed of changes. The other question
is, you know, how much am I correct in my understanding that we do not um bill over and above what our reimbursement is from Medicare, Medicaid? >> That's correct. >> Okay. Which I always thought was a
pretty practical and and useful and community-minded practice. Now, do you have a sense of how much revenue we forego as a result of that? >> Um, I I don't offhand. Um, >> okay. >> I can certainly
>> I just think and get that info back to you. >> Balance billing is inevitably a surprise to everybody that happens to, and I'm glad we don't practice that with our ambulance billing service. Um but it it now and again we
ought to be reminded of just how much we're doing for our community by not going after that. >> Um it is quantifiable I'm sure. >> Thank you, Chief. >> Sure. >> Uh so for FY27 uh our increases in the
budget operating budget on the lefth hand side. Um, first and foremost, as I've already addressed, um, some increases for personnel expenses, which is our salary and wages. Um, and then, uh, related to the the salary and wage contractual increases. Um, that also
drives our overtime rates up. Um, so with that, there's a a corresponding increase in the overtime budget, our training budget, our special teams budget, and our holiday pay. So that's that's that's the bulk of the of the increases in the operating budget for FY27.
Um, we've also adjusted the ambulance billing by an increase of $3,000. Um, and that's just to fund um, based on prior year actuals. Um, we've been we've kind of gone over a little bit on those in years past. Um, the good thing about ambulance billing, as I mentioned in the
past, is if we're paying more to the ambulance billing company, it means we're taking in more money. Um, because right now we we pay 4% of of uh, so basically four cents on every dollar that they that they take in goes back to them. Um
the biggest asks that I have this year um and these are based on um what what I believe are are needs of our department um are the continu continuing education line item uh requesting an additional
$10,000 corresponding with that an additional 6,000 for meeting and dues and travel. Um I ask for those to be increased. Um and there are offsets from that which I'll go over in just a moment. Um that those increases are to fund each member
of our department to go out of state for live fire training. We since 2019 uh with the closure of the Barnes Fire Academy um our department has not been able to attend any live fire training um with a group traveling with the shift
that they work with um to go all trained together. Um it's it's peacemeal. Uh the training the live fire opportunities through the state are few and far between. Um they're at their burn buildings um at on their different fire academy campuses in Springfield and Stow
and Bridgewater uh building just got operational recently. Um the burn buildings, the big concrete burn buildings are are are better than nothing. Uh we were fortunate when we used to have one in Barnstable County. Um it allowed
somewhat of realism to our training by having our members be able to go in and feel the actual heat from a fire. Um but with those closures in the few opportunities that we have across the state. Um it's been quite some time since some some of our members have been able to get into real fire training
situations. Um we've had several members over the last five years or so travel out of state to Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut um where they've um gone to live fire training opportunities through private organizations
um where they're actually able to they have different environmental protection regulations in those states and they've actually been able to burn homes down that are going to be demolished. Um it's a much more realistic environment. Um the folks that have gone to those training opportunities have come back
with um just an unbelievable experience. Um and I think for the money um it's it's well worth it um for our people to go train in an environment like that. Um it's critical training. Um, we've done a great job getting creative locally with
working with contractors and the building department um to identify houses in our community that are going to be demolished um where we can go in with smoke machines um fill them with smoke but without really feeling that that heat and having that intensity um
and creating that that sense of urgency and anxiety. um our newer members are just they're they're not getting the same level of training that we got uh 10 plus years ago. Um so the continuing education increase of 10,000 um that
goes towards the the cost for the actual programs um that are being run out of state. So tuition and fees and then the 6,000 for meeting and dues and travel um because these folks are gone for typically uh three to four days. That's
to provide each one of our shifts um a stipen of $1,500 per shift um to account for lodging and meals and mileage to travel to and from. Um not only do I think it's a phenomenal training opportunity for these for these groups
to go and take this train type of training, but to be able to travel away for a weekend, um it's also great team building and being able to work with each other in that type of environment. um that's offset slightly um by a $5,000 decrease on the right hand side in our
purchase of services account. Um we're able to absorb that decrease um based on looking at prior year actual expenditures in our purchase of services and because of replacement of some of our equipment um which have now come with new are now under warranty and
we've been able to drop some service agreements. And then lastly, um requesting a 10% or a $8,240 increase in our vehicles and equipment maintenance account um to account for
increased uh costs for parts, labor, and depreciating equipment. And that's also based on prior year actual expenditures. Can you just get back to talk about what the acronym is? The the Capeen Islands >> on the very bottom
>> annual assessment. >> Um so yeah, and then the uh meeting dues and travel um increase is also offset um by our Cape Islands EMS annual assessment. That's the CIEMSS um in the past. Uh we'll get to the slide in just a few moments, but the the
Cape Islands EMS annual assessment held its own budget before. Um and that going forward um we're working right now through a strategic plan. Um with the Cape Cod Healthair's Get Healthc Care is going to be picking up that that funding. So uh in the past that was a
$6,500 budget um and that's going away. So that that money is also uh being used to offset some of those increases that we've requested. >> That answer my question. So that's it on the fire side. Um I'll touch briefly on the emergency
management operating budget. Um you'll notice um looking at the digital budget book, there's been a small decrease in that. Um several years ago we we um had a a small stipen for a summer intern um which has been we haven't utilized in in quite a number of years now. Um so
that's dropped that um budget a slight amount. Um, and it's also there's also a a small um cola in there for the deputy director position consistent with other town staff. Um, and then there's a $500
increase to the emergency management operational supplies account line item. Um, and that's taking again we had another separate account which only had uh a budget rather for oil pollution control which was only budgeted at $500. Um, and rather than than running that at
as its own separate budget, we've just moved that $500 into emergency management because that's where the funding uh typically gets used anyway. Uh, our capital request for fire department and emergency management. Um, the first three items are our
traditional annual requests. Um, our recurring requests. First is the firefighter protective clothing account uh capital article. That's uh $75,000. Um this funds our turnout gear um which um as I went over last year with the uh
the studies on PIFA um we're now required to have PIA gear um when we issue it um new sets of gear and with that uh with that requirement the cost of the gear has gone up quite a bit. Um we have a pretty comprehensive replacement plan on all our gear. Each
one of our firefighters is uh assigned two full sets of turnout gear. Um and the way that the standards are uh your your first line set of equipment has to be in order to be compliant with the standards has to be less than 5 years old. And once it hits 5 years old, it
can be moved to an an alternate or backup set. So each firefighter has two sets of gear. um we have all the the dates um and replacement plan built out on that. So that that increase or that that request is based on what needs to
be replaced in the upcoming year. Um, we also use that that uh capital article to fund other forms of protective gear such as our suits for our water rescue team, uh, members of our dive team, our cold
water immersion suits, um, some ballistic equipment, and basically all the other types of protective equipment that we that we need to do our job safely. >> Tracy Tracy. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hi. Um, what does
the a full turnout suit cost? >> So, right now, um, head to toe. So, it's it's I'll walk you through it. Head to toe. It's your helmet and then what we call a hood underneath it, your jacket, gloves, our pants with suspenders and
boots, and then the helmet has a shield on it as well. Um, is about that $7,000. And does that that does include breathing apparatus? Does everybody have a >> Nope. That's that's just the turnout gear. >> Yep.
>> And and you'll be refreshing it every year. I mean, as they as they rotate, >> correct? >> They come superanuated. Yeah. Okay. >> Yep. >> Thanks. >> So, the the next item is our self-contained breathing apparatus, uh, which we refer to as our SCBA. Um again this is a an annual recurring request um
to continue replacement of our uh there's two components to the the breathing apparatus. One is the harness itself with the straps and regulator on it and the other is the cylinder which is uh what holds the air. Um so many of our cylinders are expiring. They can
only be um what is called in the industry as being hydro tested. It's how they test the um integrity of the cylinder itself. um they can only be hydro tested a certain number of times. So we have um a majority of our cylinders that all are
due for replacement. Um we started replacing some last year. Uh we're working on replacing some this year um with the funding that we've gotten through the capital requests and we'll need to start replacing additional next year for our radios. Um our traditional
request of $10,000. Um, we're not at the place where the police department's at yet with needing a full replacement. Uh, >> that was I was going to ask because you just heard the chief uh, how are we with our radios? Are are we we're not near hopefully end of life? >> We Well, we're we're in a similar boat
as far as what model we're utilizing. Um, but there are our our radios are they go through um, uh, they get they get maintained regularly uh, annually. Um, we're in pretty good shape with their functionality. They've all got software upgrades uh recently. Um
they're going to work on the new state system which is going to be being implemented over the next couple years. Um and that is an item that we have targeted for a future grant request. So prior that prior to putting that on the
on the capital improvement plan, uh the the radios that we have currently were all funded through a federal grant. Uh we're hopeful that as these start to get to their end of the life uh we'll we'll be successful in uh acquiring a federal grant for those.
>> Chief, um if I might, the protective clothing and the uh CBAs are is that part of the state bid? Do you go to a state bid list? Yeah. >> Yep. >> So that's >> Yep. Um we do have um some minor
customizations on our turnout gear um that we've just kind of developed through the years as to what works well for our department, >> right? >> Um but they it's they result in incremental increases in the overall cost. Um it's really just kind of pocket layout and >> right
>> where the clips are and stuff like that. >> Thank you. >> Stephen has a question. >> Yep. Stephen, go ahead, please. >> Thanks Andy. Uh, Chief, I'm curious if a police radio is roughly $8,000, how far is $10,000 going to go? And
is there a benefit to seeding more of that money now rather than in the future at some point in time? >> Was that for the radios? >> Yes. >> Yes, sir. >> Little difficult to hear you. I'm sorry. Um I'm sorry. >> No. Uh I I think we're okay right now.
Um, we do have a little bit um of funding built up there. Um, we've done some radio replacement recently as is. Um, so I I I think we're in pretty good shape right now with that request. >> Okay, very good. Thank you.
>> Um, the next uh non-recurring item from our our typical annual request is stretchers and stair chairs. Um, currently all three of our stair chairs um are at the end of their life. Um, one of them has had some
deficiencies which is uh no longer supported um by our by our contractors and vendors that that we that we utilize um and and they can't replace parts in. So, we've had to put band-aids on them. So, our stair chairs, just to just to technically not get too into it, but our
stair chair is is basically a It's a wheelchair essentially. Um it's collapsible. Um and we utilize it nearly every every call. Um every call that we can't get the stretcher into the house easily with. Um so whether somebody's on the second floor or on the first floor
and there's a few steps to get down out of the house. Um typically the stair chair is how we're getting them to the front yard where they then get transferred to the stretch the stretcher. Um, so the stair chairs, um, the current replacement cost is about $6,000 each. Um, those all need to be
done this year. And then we have one stretcher, um, which needs replacement this year. And then my initial request included doing all the stretchers and stair chairs this year, but Carrie's divided them into just doing one of the
stretchers and all three stair chairs this year and then doing the remaining two stretchers next next fiscal year. Um, so again, that's just something I mean, the stretchers and stair chairs get used on on every single call we go on. Uh, they get a lot of work. We put a
lot of a lot of lot of strain on them. Um, and they're all at the end of their useful life. >> Chief, the chief, the stretchers, as I recall some years ago, I think you were talking about making sure you had a power loading system. >> Y those. >> So, two two uh two power components to
the stretcher. One is to the stretcher itself. Um they're battery operated so that allows the stretcher while it's on the ground to go up and down. Um so that takes a strain out of our first responders from lifting the actual patient and stretcher up at the same time. And then we also have a power load
system in which is mounted to the ambulance itself which allows us to dock the stretcher at at from while it's wheels are still on the ground. And then the the power load system actually lifts the legs up so we're not actually lifting the patient into the truck at
all. Um, and then it slides the patient in. So, takes a significant amount of strain off off people's backs, um, and hips. Um, hopefully improves quality of life form at the end of their career. >> Um, I think we're all those of us that
had to carry the old stretchers without any power system in them. Um, we all feel the effects of it for sure. >> Thank you. >> And it's of course uh much safer for the patient as well. um reduces the
likelihood of inadvertent tipovers. And then last on the uh capital request is our um our generator request. Um we continue to to to build that account up for emergency management. Um couple
projects ongoing. Um working with Terry and Sawyer on the town hall generator replacement. Um and we have a couple other projects in town. one being um looking back at creating some redundancy
at the fire station. Um unfortunately that project has fallen through the cracks year and year year after year after year. Uh I think Stuart can feel my pain a little bit there as the two of us um back when he was on staff uh worked to try to find an electrician to
do that project. It's been quite difficult. Um but that project is still um on the docket. Um and we'll need to look at replacement of our portable generator um at some point as well. Um separate account um which went took
effect last fiscal year for FY26 is our fire department dispatch services. Um, this was to uh outsource our dispatch services to the county sheriff's department. Uh, for FY27, that annual assessment came in at $95,692. Um, fairly significant increase from
what we paid last year. um but under what their initial um what their initial uh budget amount was going to be once they got their state offsets. Um for the value um as I mentioned earlier um we that's allowed
for one firefighter per shift to become operational. Um $100,000 is an absolute bargain. um the professionalism that they bring, the redundancy, the backup um that they have in their room um and freeing up our staff to go on emergency
calls. Um it's been it's been a game changer for us as a department this past year. Um so the biggest reason for the increases of that annual assessment is uh they are union employees up there. Um they did settle new contracts. They had they had
to add um increase their staffing levels a little bit to account for taking us on and two of the other towns that they took on. Um and they're going through a significant software upgrade process right now with what they call their uh CAD system, their computer AED dispatch
system. >> Yes, >> Chief. Uh in the budget book it was 123,000 124,000. So that's a good that's a great decrease from what their initial estimate was. How many other how many other departments on the cape are utilizing this service?
>> Uh so now they are up to 15. >> Oh, all of them. >> 15 departments. Okay. >> 15 department. >> Yeah. >> And it's been it's been a this was a you know an issue last year. It's been a huge success is what I'm hearing you say. >> It's it's been fantastic. Yep. >> Super. Good. Good decision.
Um, one other note on that, you know, I I think what really reflects um our capabilities as a department with this change um is our mutual aid numbers. So, our mutual aid, the times that we've had to call mutual aid in in the past year
has dropped significantly since before we were dispatching. So, having that extra person available operationally has been has been huge. um not just it hasn't just decreased the number of times we've had to call for help, but it's increased the number of times we've been able to provide it. So, on both
sides there, um it's it's definitely reflective of our uh of an enhancement of our operations. Um as mentioned prior, um this is our Cape Islands emergency medical services annual assessment. Um and as I mentioned before, um typically funded at $6,500.
That's gone down to zero. and that and that budget will uh go away. Um so the cost um the way that that agency has been funded in the past, every a every municipality pays an annual assessment uh to fund operations through for for
that agency. Um and Cape Cod Healthcare is going to be picking up the cost of that uh going forward. And lastly, this uh prior to FY27, this was a $500 um budget for oil pollution control. Uh was kind of a legacy budget that's been
around for a while. Um we've just taken that $500 and rolled it into the emergency management budget. >> Okay. Other questions? >> I have a comment, a quick question. I just uh was pleased to see in your department goals, you're thinking about succession planning, not for yourself obviously. so young. But for your for
your for others in your department, that's very that's it's precient looking forward. That's smart. And then I just wanted a quick question on the insurance services office rating review. Is is that going to save the town andor our residents any money going forward if you pull it off? And and what is that about? Just briefly, thank
>> it. It has the potential um to save some residents on their insurance rates. Um so right now we're a class 3 ISO rating. um our kind of early assessment. Um it's been quite a while since Chief Amrisco was here um since we've looked at that
ISO rating. Um so it's definitely due time to do that. Um and our early assessment looks like we'll at least be able to get it to a class two. Um which would be great. Um it won't be a universal decrease in insurance rates for every resident. Um but there should
it should result in some savings for some residents. >> Super. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Any other questions for the fire chief Stewart? Sure. >> Uh, thanks Justin. That was real informative. The um, you know, the the high water vehicle has a has a place in
my in my head. Um, and um, I know you folks use it quite a bit. Do do you think Well, is it getting the financial support it needs from the town? Um, you know, my concern is that they're somewhat Well, a lot of your vehicles are unique, but this one is particularly
unique. Y >> particularly needed and um it you know is it the fair stepchild or are we actually supporting it as we >> No, we we you know we're getting it regularly maintained. Uh Josh Ford's doing maintenance on it. Um
repairs as needed, but regular maintenance as well. Um we are in definitely in need of a place to store it. >> Yeah. >> Um fire station's full. We're we are completely at capacity. Um, even just this past weekend in the storm, we
wanted to have the uh mini pumper up there. Um, just cuz with the builtup snow banks on different sides of the roads, it's easier to to manipulate through some of those tight roads. Um, and we didn't have a place to put that and and then we had a concern for flooding, too. So, the high water
vehicle was outside. Um, fortunately, it we ended up not getting snow. Um but it that could have been a problem to have to continuously clean that off throughout the storm if we did get any significant snowfall. >> So um we're definitely looking for a place to to put it. Um we've been
fortunate enough that that Rob and Tom have, you know, have found a place for us over the years, but we're uh we're kind of maxed out. is um are there does the uh does the South Chadam well I know the South Chadam station is
insufficient but is is that property a perspective for a building to you know the day you guys opened the building was too small in my opinion uh it's missing a bay um and we're going to forever pay
that price so um can South Chattam that property be used to augment your needs. >> Uh I mean right now that bay is full >> right >> at one at any given time with either the high water or the mini pumper. Um you
referencing like renovating and >> yeah I'm thinking of a >> renovating or you know it's a >> um yeah I don't I don't know if we want to get into the full uh staff station 2 conversation right now. Um but my opinion on it prior to moving um
dispatch to the county was that we didn't have the staffing to support even having a station two, >> right? >> Um we're much closer now than we were then >> um where we could put four people at a headquarter station and three at a station two without having to chase people around all the time or pick
people up >> um to augment staffing at one or the other. Um, but I don't know if that would be the property to >> right >> to look at in the future. I think there's some other property in that part
of town that would be more suitable. Um, >> I mean, staffing aside, um, you know, the arguments that I heard some years ago, this predates you and maybe even Pete, I can't remember now, but, uh, um, those needs didn't evaporate,
>> right? uh you know your EMS uh time response for the South Chattam area is significant um and I didn't know if those discuss you've had any thinking or discussions regarding a uh you know I mean I hate to
bring up spending more money but those needs didn't go away. >> We haven't started any of those conversations yet. >> Yeah. Yeah, but uh knowing that that that the dispatch services has been going well with the county um and our staffing is is better now than it ever
has been. Um I I think it's it's probably a conversation worth having in the going forward. >> So when you're uh speaking of that the uh um not that I got a vote, but I'm somewhat undecided on the whole dispatch issue.
um you know, yes, it's a savings, but in my mind, we we pay a price for those savings. And um one of them is that when your crew is responding, uh with an engine and a and a rescue,
my sense is there's times during the day that the building's not occupied. What What happens then? >> Mostly on the weekends. Um because during the day at any given time either myself or the deputy um fire inspector captainori uh typically one of us is
there >> right >> um at least from you know 7 to 5 7 to 6. Um there there are times where occasionally it is um unstaffed. Um we we have signage um at the front door. So we've changed some some some of the
infrastructure with with how the doors lock and people get rung in. Um, but there's a phone right in the front vestibule, very clear signage that if you're showing up with an emergency, you just pick up that phone and it automatically dials to the dispatch of the county. Uh, they don't have to even
dial 911. They just pick up the handset and it rings directly to them. Um, so that's kind of how we manage it now. Um, if if that engine's still in town, it hasn't happened to date that they've had to respond back to the station for
anybody. Um, I think we've gotten some good messaging out to people that that change was occurring. Um, and really just continue to try to push the message. Don't show up at the fire station with an emergency. Call 911 for help. Um, and I think it's
we've definitely seen a decrease in the number of people showing up at the station requiring medical attention or coming in with some sort of emergency. They still do it. Um, it hasn't happened when the station's been empty, though. Yeah, I mean staffing is always a
challenge in all these departments. Yours, no no exemption there. The uh you know, we staff police and fire and our other departments um for not so much a community of 6,000 people. We staff it
for 30,000 people because that's the height of our season. And um then we augment that with overtime costs and what have you. But uh uh one of my concerns is that um not only in the FD but in other
departments is that we get further and further and further a field from where we are drawing our employees. And and if we're going to be, you know, when you call people back, it's essential that these people that
are getting called back live in a, you know, a recall radius as opposed to somewhere beyond those limits. And I certainly hope we're looking at that because um it's uh you know, it it's a critical component of how you folks do
business. And um if we're drawing people from off Cape, they might as well not exist in my book, unless they're on duty. >> That's we've we've been much more fortunate in the last couple years and we've really ramped up our recruitment efforts with trying to identify young
local people, people with roots in this part of the Cape. >> Um through our program at Cape Cod Tech, >> um with our internship program with Monoy High School, um we've identified some really good um candidates. we have already um a few people lined up to do
summer internships. So with this the summer good >> who are um have good local ties. Um you know so the the thought with our recruitment is to really just try to to get people whether they can if they grew up here maybe they can have an accessory
dwelling at their at their folks house or they can have a room at least for a little bit for a few years to save some money um to then be able to afford to live here. Um but that's really where we're focusing a lot of efforts right now with recruitment. Um we seem to have we're starting to develop I think a little bit of a farm system um with the
hopes that we can all uh also try to reinvigorate a little bit of uh call department that we had of years ago. >> Yeah. Yeah. And the call department kind of on paper only at this point >> right now. Yeah. We have that small line item for for of $10,000 for it. Um but
our hopes is this year to start utilizing some of that funding to to actually start to build a call department back a little bit. >> Yeah. And uh >> and to to be fully transparent, mostly for a recruitment standpoint. >> Sure. >> And a supplemental staff standpoint. >> Sure. And and as we've talked about in
other departments and on the board here is uh is uh paying them appropriately. >> If it's going to be a second job for somebody, it's it's got to pay. >> Yep. >> And uh we haven't done that here. >> It's and it's it's still difficult to expect people to be able to drop >> Yep. their job in the middle of the day
if they're working in a trade to tell their if they're a business owner might be a little bit easier because it's their own job, but to tell their boss, hey, I got to run. I'll be back in three hours. Um, they're not they're going to be out of a job pretty quick. Um, but, you know, that's why I said not necessarily from a from a supplemental
staffing standpoint. We're looking at the call department, but more of a more of a recruit department than a call department. So, to offer them some some baseline training, get them familiar with the folks that we work with with the town. um developed that that
interest that we need. Um so we're bringing people in the door that that want to get their start here and then stay here, >> right? >> So I'm hopeful. Um I think the the situation is looking I think a lot better than it did four or five years ago.
>> And how's the um you know here again just from your graphs which were helpful. It's really no surprise but your calls go up in the summer. >> Yep. you know, for four months, five months, whatever it is, some um um even though we try to staff for those levels
because that's what we have to do because we live in a seasonal community. Um uh your recall ability um how's are we still getting people on recall? I mean, >> we we are it's actually been it's been
better than it has been in probably a decade um with people coming back. Um we do have our our folks that that don't live locally. Yeah. Um and obviously they can't come back for recall. Um but the ones that do are really showing up.
>> Um you know when I but when I mention you know our succession planning um in my goals and objectives um it's not just to replace administration captains and lieutenants. It's to replace those people that live locally too. >> Yeah. Um, so that's really where we're
trying to drive that focus is is to get people that that have ties here that can live locally. Um, we've assisted one of our firefighters who's been with us for a few years now. She had been living in Falmouth. Um, she was able to to relocate to Orleans earlier this year thankfully. Um, and now she's been able
to re relocate actually into Chadam. Um, and since being able to do that, she's been coming back for call back quite a bit. um two of our most recent hires um both living in Haritch are coming back in all the time. So um we're in a pretty
good shape um as far as newer members of the department. We're not relying on kind of the same old faces to >> fulfill those requests. Um we do have some some younger fresh blood that's coming in and they've been able to to secure some housing locally which is
great. Do do you see lastly then I'll keep quiet, but do you um aside from having no room, which is going to be a problem that we're just going to need to address. Um the uh
lost my train of thought, but you don't have enough room. And um the Oh, yeah. The fourth ambulance. I know you don't have a fourth ambulance, but is that something that is down the road thinking that we're going to need? Uh, you know, I just think of both uh Mike and
yourself and these replacing these vehicles, trying to keep them maintained that are just old. It's expensive and um uh and you run them constantly. So, what's what's your thought on that? >> I don't know that our call volume is at a point right now that we would
necessarily need to have a fourth ambulance. You know, that would require >> hiring a couple more people per shift in order to staff it. Well, um the bigger concern is just how long it takes to to get them replaced. So, >> and so all three well all three, let's say the third ambulance is your oldest
ambulance with the most miles. maybe you know we have to bite the bullet and ensure that those vehicles are although older are a newer older version because >> so so what we've done is basically every even fiscal year I've been requesting an
ambulance um as a car capital replacement article um in reality it's taking two and a half years to build an ambulance so whereas like our old replacement policy >> um or program.
We were we were aging an ambulance out at six years. Now it's more like 8 and a half. Um but it's the same it's the same everywhere. Uh we are still fortunate that when we're trading ambulances in, >> they're around 120 130,000 miles. Some
of our neighboring departments, they're getting upwards of 200,000 by the time they're they're getting them traded in. >> And uh what's the what's the out what's the time period for replacing an engine? Uh, right now it's a four-year build from time of order. >> Crazy numbers. >> Yeah.
>> All right. >> I think I've mentioned I know Carrie's aware and Jill's aware. Um, and if you do look at the the five-year capital plan, I do have a placeholder in an advanced year for looking at replacing one of the engines. >> Yep. >> Um,
the two engines we have right now um were built at the same time. They're both 2017s. Um, so if we're looking at at a 40-year build, um, if we fund it four years from now, it'll be 15 years old by the time we get
the new one. So, kind of the the industry standard is your frontline piece of apparatus should be less than 15 years old. At 15 years old, it should be moved into a a backup or alternate role. So, um, I think it was FY31 that I
put the placeholder in there for a new engine. All righty. Thank you. >> And then of course it's impossible to predict what the cost will be. >> Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There is no predicting really. It's it's I've seen those numbers. They're kind of
crazy. >> Thank you. >> All right. If there are no more questions for the chief, thank you for your presentation and for the service that you and your department >> to the town. And I think it's a fair statement that we have first class u public service department between police
and fire. Second to no one in the state. >> Have a good night. >> Thank you. >> Um so the next item on the agenda is the FY2027 operating and capital budgets review for the department of public works. Mr. Faley. Um Carrie, do you have
anything to say in by way of introduction or do we go directly to Rob? >> Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, so the proposed public work budget is presented at 8.3 million for FY2027, an increase of uh almost 600,000 or 7.73%
over the current fiscal year. Um and then we also have um Rob Philly is also going to be going over the water department budget which for 2027 is presented at 5.7 million an increase of
255,000 over FY2026 and um director of public works Rob Bailey will do his presentation go over everything for you. >> Good afternoon select board and finance committee. Rob Faley, director of public works. Uh go over the FY27 DPW budget
first. Um so the Department of Public Works includes 11 divisions, but for the purpose of this presentation, it's only 10 because the water division is handled separately. Uh so here's a list of our current departments. uh includes a transfer station, parks and grounds,
sewer, municipal buildings or facilities, uh the fuel depot, highways, street lights, snow and ice, cemetery, and included under this is projects administration. Typically, you would have Terry Whale in here. Um but it it's
rolled into the DP DPW budget, and he has just a a few small line items, and I would just carry it in my budget for uh this presentation. So, here's uh staffing levels. Um, we were fortunate enough to have those two additional parks and grounds staff added
last year um to help out with cemetery maintenance. Last summer was the first summer we maintained all the cemeteries in house. Um, I've heard uh many positive things and kudos goes out to that department. I've also had a new position which is a uh DPW associate
position. she started yesterday that was uh uh took a half-time position and some overtime uh for seasonal employees and we combined those to create a new position. So um um looks like coming this uh later this month DPW will be
fully staffed to be the first time in my three years that we've been fully staffed. So that's pretty exciting news. Here's just a list of some of our uh equipment that we have. Um again, um I know we've had uh one of the dump trucks will be replaced soon. A new one ton
pickup is on order uh to replace that. We have ordered the trash truck. Uh we ordered that last June. Uh we haven't received delivery of it yet, but we expect that any week now. Uh similar to other departments, you've heard how long it takes to build some of these vehicles. Um
yeah, everything else is uh is pretty status quo. >> Where's the vacuum truck? because I don't mean that list >> uh that is listed on sewer uh the vector truck uh quantity one >> and stop me please stop me anytime uh
during this for questions. Uh so here's the DPW proposed FY27 budget starting um at 12:00 and going clockwise. Municipal buildings is uh 1.793 million which equates to 22% of the
budget. And I'll go over all these in much more detail in a minute. Um, highways is 11 or 12% of our overall budget at 974,000. Snow and ice is uh just 95,000 at 1% of the budget. Street lighting is very
modest. We actually hardly ever exceed or even approach that amount, but it's good to have in there in case we have uh some street light failures that we need to replace. uh the central fuel depot 235,000 which is 3% of the budget that provides fuel for all town fleet
vehicles uh including fire and PD um transfer station is our largest category 26% of the budget at 2.189 million um sewer department is 23% at 1.9 million cemetery uh is relatively small
at 1% 71,000 parks and grounds at 9% % at 742,000 and again Terry Whan's project administration at 327,000 is 4% of DPW's budget. So the 800 8,357,551
budget is an increase of $599,418 or 7.73%. uh 90,197 is due to personnel increases and $59,221 is operational increases and I'll break
those down further here. So um most uh increases are due to collective bargaining agreements. Uh you'll see an asterisk next to municipal buildings and to cemetery. some municipal buildings. As part of the uh CBA, we introduced on
call pay uh to have those facilities employees a little bit more accountable and reactive to um to show up to emergencies, but also have a way to reimburse them and and make it um a little bit more financially feasible for
them to be on call. Um there was no there was no incentive for them to um I don't know what I'm saying. It's just no incentive for them to be uh on call, but we wanted to make sure they were compensated fairly. Um and the cemetery position went from 35 hours a week to 40
hours a week. All the other ones are basically in line with what the collective bar bargaining agreements were. So for operational increases, uh municipal buildings went up 6.6%. primarily due to um you know utilities.
So $5,000 for gas heat, which isn't very much uh considering the number of buildings we have, but the biggest increase was electric utilities, $100,000. That includes all town facilities. So it's, you know, it's it's moderate for every facility. I'm sure you're all familiar with your electric
bills, how they've increased lately. Um this basically matches what we've been spending every year. It's not we're not asking for any kind of a windfall. It's just to make up for the amount we're actually spending in electrical costs. Highways is a 5.1% increase. $5,000 is
modest just for operational supplies. Those are those things that uh don't fall into some of the other categories where we would spend it, you know, for um for fleet uh equipment or or other things. They're just kind of a a kind of a catch-all for just equipment that we
need to operate at highways. Uh sewer is a 9.1% increase. Uh 53,873 is due to the contracted services with Violia. They're starting their third year of a 5-year contract and that's already been built into their contract
for all five years. Um again, electrical utilities is up $61,000. We have brought four new pumping stations online and part of that is just uh to cover some of those electrical costs. And lastly is $41,000 for solid
waste disposal. Um that's more of like a bioolids, um rags, grease, things that are very difficult to get rid of, expensive to transport. There's no place on Cape Cod that will accept this. We are sending the stuff currently to Ohio. We're
putting it on rail cars and sending it to Ohio. Um a lot of it's uh laden with POS chemicals. So there aren't many New England states that will accept this. So we have to ship it uh halfway across the country to get it uh disposed of.
>> Hey Rob, uh just before you move the slide, the municipal buildings, so the title is DPW operational increases, >> correct? >> Electrical utilities is 100,000. What's the budget for electric?
I'm sure it's in my book, but do you know >> um off hand >> over last year? I know they were over budget by 85,000. Um I don't know if Carrie has that available. I probably brought it with me, but >> um let me see if I can find it.
>> In any event, the that is the increase, the $100,000 on whatever the other >> that's the increase, correct? >> That >> it's much more than $100,000. >> 3328 last year. 4328 is budgeted this year. >> Thank you. That That's a
Do Are we leaving the lights on? I'm not Doesn't that seem like a lot? >> Uh, it does. I mean, we've gone through a lot of LED lighting upgrades over the years. Um, >> and we're we're adding to our solar, you know, cadre. So, that should be helping.
You would think >> it does help. Every little bit helps. That's why we're we're promoting these programs, >> right? And but if it's 300 and some odd thousand and we're going up by 100,000, I don't know if that's just better accounting. Sounds like it's that seems like a lot. >> I think we were over we were over budget
85,000 last year. We're just trying to account for that increase. Um we probably needed it last year also. >> Yeah. >> But it wasn't requested at the time. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Can I just say something about that? So it was over budget last year. So this is
accounting for that over budget and like Rob said, this is for all the town buildings, right? So it all goes in there. Our solar revenue isn't offset in the in the bill that we get. The revenue comes to the town and the revenue on the in like local receipts.
>> Yeah. >> And then we pay the invoices as they come in. >> So what's the percentage increase? Did I What did you say? 300. What was the >> 30.05%. >> 30%. It's a It's Yeah, >> it's a lot. >> Yeah, we went way over budget last year
in electric. >> And And when you go way over budget, it the 85,000, let's say, just gets pulled from somewhere else to balance it. >> Correct. Yep. Transfer. Yep. >> Okay.
>> Go ahead, Eric. Thank you. Um, you mentioned this the solar revenue and going somewhere else and not directly offsetting here. Um, How how much is that that that's coming back and going into another category? >> So, um we took in probably roughly
around 500,000 in solar revenue last year and it goes like it goes into the revenue. So, I've seen where I've worked in towns where um it's actually offset on the invoice. So, you'll see the credit on there, but on
our invoices it doesn't come that way. And I I actually didn't hear the number you when you were down there, but So we're we're we're close to fully offsetting our electrical costs. We just are paying for it in different ways. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Correct.
>> Continue. So we come down to uh transfer station. Uh substantial increase 18.1%. Um, seamass tipping and trucking increased by $80,000. Uh, recycling material removal increased
by $150,000. All other categories are level funded. So, SEMASS tipping just went up um 4 and a.5% on January 1st. Uh, July 1st, our trucking contract will go up as well. Um, so this is to cover some of those
expenses. >> You're coming be sorry. So Rob, excuse what's the sore point on recycling? Wh what's what what where are we where are we really not doing well >> since China closed our recycling markets? Um you know we we make a little bit of money on cardboard, newspaper,
metal, um glass we can't get rid of and the biggest one is plastics. >> So So what happens in in the in the system in the recycling world? >> Uh so we take it to a third party and they try to find the highest and best use value of it. There's not a lot of
market out there for for secondhand plastics. >> Plastics and and glass. >> Yeah. Glass we take to Dennis. It's ground and we try to reuse it. Uh we find other markets for it. But it's it's more of a waste product. >> Can you milk glass and reuse it?
>> I I'm making it up. I have no I have no idea. But >> the problem with plastics is you have to add virgin plastic to recycle it. And you can only recycle it once. Um, so you have to find that use that um, you know, like the some of the poly furniture
that's out there, things of that nature. But most plastic is not recyclable. As much as the industry wants you to believe it's recyclable, it's not recyclable. >> I just hearken back to the the movie The Graduates. Plastics, my boy, plastics. It turns out plastics are a nightmare.
>> Barbara, they're in they don't they don't degrade. They're they're in the ocean. They're everywhere. They're inside us. Anyway, we'll be quiet, but Barbara, >> thank you, Mr. chair. Um, so Rob, is there really any point in our separating out all the plastics and glass? I mean,
are we are we saving money recycling them the way that we are as opposed to just throwing them into a regular um all mixed together recyclables? >> It's absolutely cheaper for us to send those separated materials to different
vendors. um uh co-mingled recycling materials costs almost as much as taking it to a landfill. Um so we can we can gain a little bit by having folks continue to separate it. Some of our commercial holders still bring co-mingled recycling material for
us to dispose of. Um and that's one of our bigger expenses. >> Okay. Thanks. >> So Rob, you're coming before us on the third before the select board on the 3rd of March that we're depositing trash at the transfer station. That's correct. >> There'll be a public hearing on that. We
we waited for um the economic development committee to come forward with a recommendation. Um so that's that was the reason for the delay and I know the um finance committee inputed into that. So we'll
hear you we'll hear your recommendation. Then we have to advertise it for two weeks and I Kathy has already placed the the ad for the first week. Okay. Uh, somebody you had a question. >> Yeah. Thanks, Rob. I just for the sake
of everyone hearing it said out loud, would it be fair to say that the bulk of the plastics that get sent to be recycled are actually burned? >> I'm, you know, I'm not really sure what the the venue where we bring our
plastics. I'm not sure what they do with it. I would imagine they do incinerate it for energy. Um, but I I can't say for sure. Okay. >> Um, so continuing with the DPW operational increases, uh, parks and
grounds contracted services for $20,000. That's kind of a new uh, increase, and that's to address uh, pruning and cutting for park trees that has been deferred for a number of years. Um Tom
Bar, my deputy director, just received his uh tree warden certificate. Um so he's planning on going out and uh identifying some of those areas where uh maintenance hasn't been as robust as we would like. So uh so we're going to address that and get rid of some of those hazard trees and hazard branches
that have been plaguing some of the parks. All other categories are level funded. Uh cemeteries level funded. Uh snow, ice, snow and ice, I'm sorry. street lighting, central fuel depot uh are all level funded. So we have county
contracts with salt and street lighting management and for fuel supply as well. So we've been very fortunate enough with our uh all the all the towns in uh Barnstable County uh going through the Barnsible County bid and uh we've been
getting pretty good prices lately. So there's really no need to increase those. Um and projects administration. Uh again, this is uh under Terry Whan. It's a modest increase, $2,000. It looks like it's larger at 41.2%, but it's only I think it was only a
$4,000 line item. So adding $2,000 is uh for meeting dues and travel. >> Stephen, >> thanks Andy. Um Rob, do you or perhaps Carrie have the snow and ice figures for fiscal year
25 total and for FY26 year to date? I'm kind of curious where we've landed relative to our $85,000 line item. >> So in 2025 um we spent $153,000.
We were over by $58,000 in snow and ice. And so far this year, um, we've spent $158,000 and we're over by 63,000 and it's only February. >> So I guess I would wonder why we're only
budgeting $85,000 on a going forward basis if we smashed that figure the last two years. >> Yep. It's 95. Um, not 85, but um, very good question. Um, so last year, so snow and ice you're able to raise on the
recap when you go over or we'll have to do a budget transfer into snow and ice this year. >> Um, >> yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm aware that the state state that do regs allow us to do that. I'm just wondering if we don't wouldn't be more prudent to forecast a more reasonable number
>> based on historic uh historic outcomes. >> Yes. And I don't disagree with you. Um overtime is obviously increasing with salaries overtime increases and um over the years I feel like the
um salt is probably increased as well. >> It's about $73 a ton. I think it was maybe 71 last year, 68 the year before. Um, but I think in 2023 we had such a
mild winter that we didn't even exceed uh that budget that we used maybe half of it. So, and I don't think we I think we purchased salt maybe uh at one time. So, >> yeah, I think in 24 we didn't exceed. >> It's so weather dependent, you know, it's it's hard to put a really solid
number to it. >> Understood. I I I think we can probably confidently put this on a list of things you'll be hearing about from us on the 17th. Thank you. >> One other uh >> I'm sorry. Um
so the parks and wreck were increasing by 25.1 you know to prune the trees. Um we hired two new parks and wreck people I think last year. Did we add two? >> We did. Yes. >> Which I think was needed. Um
>> are these like special trees they can't prune? I'm just wondering why are we contracting out when we have hopefully more people. >> Sure. And and we do a lot of the tree pruning and limming ourselves. Uh some of them are specialty cutting where you know you may need a climber or a
specialty piece of equipment to get up there. Um I don't want to put our folks in they're not trained to handle that kind of like expert level trimming. I think that's why it's been deferred for so long. Um, but we certainly handle a lot of the tree removal and a lot of the
the smaller, easier to manage uh tree trimming ourselves in house. >> And do we have a >> lift alone? >> We do. >> Yeah. >> It's um you can't really put it in a park. It's a it's a it's a genie lift, so it's much bigger. >> Right. >> Um >> and we have a scissor lift, but that you
need it like that's more for buildings. >> Right. Right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. And that's the operating budget. I can jump into the capital requests next unless there are any questions. >> Okay, go ahead.
>> So, this is an annual most of these are annual requests. Um, this is $10,000 for just some of the water main service replacements. Uh, at the end of 2024, we submitted Cadam's service line inventory for to D for evaluation. uh we're
obligated to send out reminder letters to those customers where we were unable to confirm what their water line was made of either on the public side or the private side. Um so we're narrowing down that list um as uh property owners
continue to reach out to us to identify what that material is. Um, at some point in the future, we'll likely beef this annual request up quite a bit because we'll have to do exploratory digging to really, you know, the last several hundred that we can identify. We don't
have any records. We would have to actually excavate a hole and and do a, you know, a physical observation of what that line is made out of. But for now, I think $10,000 is appropriate. Another annual request uh is for OSHA
compliance. This has been historically $50,000 a year, but I think we are getting in better uh position now for our safety issues. Um, so this will handle uh many of the things uh that OSHA uh monitors including uh safety
data sheets, lockout tagout, uh flammable storage uh containers, personal protective equipment, uh machine guarding, things of that nature that uh get us into compliance with OSHA. Again, this is another annual request for $5,000.
Uh it's the annual um bike trail maintenance. Um we work in collaboration with the bikeways committee every year to look at uh signage and prioritize um improvements uh fence repair things of that nature. Um this is has been
historically an adequate amount of funding to uh to handle what comes up in uh every year. >> Tracy, >> uh does it ever come up about plowing the bike path?
>> No. You typically don't. I know a lot of towns don't uh plow their bike paths. >> They would. >> Kristen, >> thank you. Um wondering about I know other towns along the bike path, they
have all sorts of lights and flashing signals and everything. Um it looked like something might have been going up on Sam Ryder. Uh are there plans for that or is there money budgeted or I don't know how those things get paid for. Is there any plans for those? Thank
you. >> Sure. So we have one on uh recently installed on Sam Ryder, one on Meeting House Road and one on Old Queen Anne Road. Those are the more higher volume roads. Uh Sam Ryder Road was just installed this fall. Um that was uh
through a grant through Mass DOT. Uh so they bought the equipment for us. Uh we did the installation ourselves. Um, you know, I would like eventually to maybe see all the intersections signalized. I at least want to see um
ADA compliant, you know, detectable warning surfaces at each road crossing. Um, some of the traffic volumes, even for Sam Ryder Road, we submitted uh the application and I wasn't even sure we'd get it because it was so far the traffic volumes are so far under with the state
requirements where I I just said, "All right, I'll throw the application in." But I didn't really think we were going to get it and and they gave us one. So, um I I don't want to like oversign in a rural condition, you know. So, I think we'd have to take it and see see what comes
of it. >> Rob, if I might, I just I would prioritize stepping stones in that effort as well for signage. >> Okay. >> Forward. >> Thank you. Uh, another annual request, $20,000 for road, sidewalk, and parking area
repairs. Um, you know, we try to do preventative maintenance to anticipate for some of these things, but uh, you know, we have an aging infrastructure and sometimes things come up that we don't uh historically have the budgeting for. So, it's nice to have that extra $20,000 that we can fall back on if
needed. emergency. >> Rob, do you plan on um do you have like a sidewalk uh replacement or expansion uh plan or do are there any upcoming this year? I I had some inquiries about
sidewalks. >> So, I'm just scheduling a um a meeting with Beta Group who had done a uh sidewalk evaluation in 2018 for Chadam. Um, I'm looking to do it with um with
Beta, of course, with AI technology they use now. Uh, there are a couple of really good companies out there that they work with. So, it would look at paving conditions, sidewalk, and signage. And we could build an asset management program and build in a budget to replace as needed, as the conditions
warrant. So, right now, it's a little outdated. It's on paper. Um, we don't have access to the electronic files. Um, but going forward, I think we're going to be in a much better place and we'll be able to address those those issues. >> And right now, it's simply a citizen
coming forward and making a request and somehow getting it into a >> No, it's it's more manual. Um, so we do evaluations manually by observation, but there's always leaves room for things to get missed. Um, so that's why we want to do it um, you know, systematically with
AI. Yeah, there was a request for between Pawn Street and the Rotary, uh, which was kind of an interesting request in that, um, there's no sidewalk there, but it would connect to busy places and places that have sidewalks.
And I'm just curious how that how that would come to fruition. >> So, so we're with this AI technology, we would be looking at existing infrastructure and how do we repair that, right? >> Um, not new locations. So new >> new locations are yeah a citizen request basically
>> they come forward with a neighborhood the neighbors and say this is what we'd like to see and the town would evaluate that and budget if if appropriate. >> Exactly. >> Thanks. >> Well we do have an agenda item forthcoming in the future on a sidewalk
master plan that's been on our agenda our wish list for quite a while. But I just hearken back to two of the more recent developments or Harding Beach not so much, but you can can literally walk from the bike trail all through West Chad. I mean, you can walk all the way to Harding Beach on a sidewalk. It's wonderful. I'm a fan. And then the the
the improvements that we made to Old Queen Anne Road from Route 28 up to the bike trail. Again, tying infrastructure, walking infrastructure in the town is a really good idea. And we attempted once at Stage Harbor, god forbid, stage harbor road, god forbid. Um, but that that's a very highly traversed and very
active area going from downtown all from Oyster Pond and downtown all the way down to the harbor. Very active with trucks and commercial vehicles and and lots of pedestrians. Um, so I'm a real fan of sidewalks and and you know, I hope hope we can get this master plan cooking here and and really get a good
analysis done because I really do think it it improves the quality of life in our town. Thanks. Well, as you know, the the stage harbor issue, I mean, it it all came down to rightway and easements. Um, and that's typically what our biggest challenge is. >> Gotcha, Rob. I just use it as an example of
>> Well, there was significant >> negatives and positives. >> Significant neighborhood opposition to it. That was what killed it. >> So, needed. >> Okay. So, here's a road resurfacing. Again, an annual request for $100,000.
This request is typically $200,000, but Governor Healey uh increased chapter 90 funding by 50% last year. She proposed uh the same this year. So, we want to try to defer some of that and give the taxpayers $100,000 back or at least use
that money for a loader request, which is coming up later in this budget. Uh road maintenance, $25,000. Again, it's an annual request. We did increase it $5,000 this year. Um the cost of asphalt, um things of that nature, hot
mix, cold patch, shown here is Aquaalt. It's a relatively new product. Um it's really good for patching potholes in the winter time and it's activated by water. Um but it's better than cold patch, but it's it's not cheap. It's about $55 a
bucket. So, we try to only use those in areas that are high traffic and it's a risk for our folks to be out there repeatedly patching potholes. We try to do it once and and leave it and we'll address it again in the spring or summer. And here's the sidewalk construction uh
annual request for $100,000. Um projects like the library site plan uh that'll be done this summer. Um we'll pull some of the money from sidewalks. Uh we have Cedar Street when we're doing
our pump station on Cedar Street. Sidewalks are not included in SRF, so we can use sidewalk funds uh for that impro incre improvement. Um so it's nice to have a a budget. >> Rob, when is the library bid going out
or has it gone out? I believe it's March 3rd is the latest date. I think bids are going to be open on March 3rd. >> So, it's already gone out. >> No, it has not gone out yet. >> Okay. >> I'm sorry. Bids will be I think advertised March 3rd. I just got a um I just got a notice from Terry uh today or
yesterday. >> Okay. >> February. >> Can we notify the the the library director and the trustees? Can I have asked about it >> including the it's going through permitting as well with some of the town boards and the directors aware of it.
>> Yeah, >> that's HBDC tomorrow and planning board next week. >> Okay. >> We had some concern that it wasn't going to get done before July 4th. I think that's one of the issues. >> I share those concerns. >> Okay. Thanks.
>> So, property management, building maintenance projects. Um this is a typically was um it was a Terry Whan budget but last year um DPW took over uh all the facility uh budgeting items. So we work very closely between DPW and
projects administration. This is a $200,000 annual request for some of those larger repair replacement items that happen at some of our facilities. I know last year we did a lot of roof work at the community center. uh about $50,000 worth of roof repairs to prevent
leaks in the gymnasium. Um so that came out of this fund. This was a uh $250,000 for ADA improvements. I believe this is a five-year period uh ATM article for a total ofundred I mean 1,250,000.
This is just basically the next uh fiscal year installation of that. Shown here is the uh treasure collector's office where we put in a new counter uh lower counter for uh wheelchair um residents that would be visiting. We
did the same at the town clerk's office. I think it came out really nice. >> Beautiful. So, this is not an annual. This is a special request for a fire alarm at the police department. Uh the police department is um about 11 years old and
all the fire equipment has become obsolete. Um it's still working, but uh we're having challenges with it reporting to the fire alarm company. So this would include um replacing the fire alarm, replacing the uh initiating devices like the smoke detectors and
things of that nature. Um, very similar situation at the annex since they were built at the same time. Uh, it's a little bit less expensive, but it's $80,000 to do a very similar project at the annex at the same time.
>> Rob, does I I feel like I feel like we built this place yesterday, but 11 years. Um uh can we expect that we're going to have to replace fire alarm systems to the tune of 80 and $90,000 every 11 years in these buildings?
>> It's >> it seems like it doesn't seem >> technology changes so fast and a lot of the components >> wear and they're just not reliable. I mean when it comes to fire equipment, you don't want to jeopardize anything
that way. >> No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm I'm simply saying that I'm simply saying that that seems like a uh more frequent than I would have thought. Um you know the one at the uh the fish
pier that's in you know in a totally worse conditions uh is older than that. >> This came under recommendation of our fire equipment monitoring company. >> Do they sell it as well? >> Thanks.
>> They do. But um but we are having uh challenges with them uh receiving the signals at their monitoring plant. So you know I we've vetted this through through uh projects administration and
our facilities group and uh we think it's the best path forward. Uh public restroom improvements $20,000. This again isn't another annual request. Um many of our restrooms, public restrooms are are getting older. Uh they
are very heavily used in the summertime. Um this is the town hall restroom that we recently renovated. Um we are renovating the Veterans Field restroom. So we we have funding for heat and insulation and we're doing many of
the renovation projects inhouse with our facilities group to save money. That was the result of the vandalism that occurred there last fall. And this is a transfer station loader. Um $200,000
to replace the 10-year-old John Deere 624K front end loader. It's got 16,000 hours on the engine. It's used 360 days a year to handle municipal and commercial solid waste, construction debris, mulch and brush. Um full price
is $310,000. I'll use chapter 90 funds for $110,000 of it and the $200,000 is part of this request. Uh we've seen frequent breakdowns with this loader. Um high repair costs. It's been out of service
for about two and a half months over the past two years just in different times. Uh recently we had the uh piston the main piston that raises the bucket was leaking. Um we had it repaired um but the the company that we had repair it
said if we had to buy a new one there's only two left in the country is what they told us. So uh parts are becoming obsolete for equipment of this age. Uh, another request for $26,000 for mowers and a landscape trailer. Um,
32-in standon commercial mower and a 48 inch ride-on commercial mower with the landscape trailer. Uh, we have those two additional parks and grounds employees. Like to get some equipment to uh keep them at operable uh efficiency. Um,
we're finding a need for mowers this size with the cemetery maintenance. >> Grayson, >> um, oops, sorry. Um, the industry, there's a move in the industry to move towards electric. Has there been any
thought to, um, sort of phasing out our gas powered equipment? >> It's a great question. So, we did buy a green machine, I want to say two years ago. Um, it's a 36 inch mower. Um, it's great for some conditions, but it's not
great for every condition. Um, our our parks and ground staff were struggling with that mower at the cemeteries. Um, it's very heavy because of the battery packs. Uh, didn't have the power that they needed. Um, they would prefer to
stay with gas powered at this point. Um, but we do use the green machine for other areas. It's just not uh conducive to cemetery maintenance. >> Yeah, I guess I I uh just having owned one and using it in a field. Um I don't
know. Ours works pretty good. So, but um understand that it's hard to transition, but I I'm glad you at least are have it one piece of equipment that's electric. >> Thanks. And we've gone to some electric uh pole saws and chainsaws and things of that nature as well, just to try to try
to get away from as much of the petroleumbased engines that we can. Uh this is for a $14,000 request for an athletic field line striper. Uh again for our parks and grounds division. Uh the existing walkbehind line striper is
approximately 10 years old and needs constant repair and adjustment. Um, this is a ride-on mower. Um, every time we mow the middle school fields, uh, they have to be linstriped. The athletic fields have to be line striped. We also have to mow the, um, when we mow the
volunteer park fields, they have to be liner striped as well. Uh, currently it's a walkbehind model. So, this would be much more efficient. >> And that's it for the DPW budget. Um, and I can jump into the water department if everybody's okay with that or unless there are any
questions. >> Okay. Any other >> Corey? >> Um, I'm going to tread lightly on the on on venturing into this conversation, but so um with the uh transfer station
basically um you know we it's it's it's it's an operation. It's a commercial operation. It makes noise and everything else. and we've had internal discussions about um how we best could have remedied that. Where in the budget is um our
potential solution paths um factored into all this. >> So for what we talked about uh uh possible noise mitigation, >> right? We we fig we discussed maybe you know would it be a physical structure down the road would make some sense and when and before we went to that degree
to do a study um to understand where the noise is coming from where it's going and and if if we have any uh opportunity to block it with a physical barrier basically so I have our engineer that's designing uh phase one of the transfer
station looking into that um they have some uh noise expert consultants that they've worked with uh I would like to see how we are with the bidding um to see if we have any money left over in that um either in that uh line item in
the budget to either fund a wall or at least have the the engineering done to for the consultant to really evaluate the site. Okay, thank you. >> Okay, guess we can go into the water budget. >> Okay.
So the water department increases are projected at 4.68%. Uh it's much more modest than uh last year. I think we were up around 15%. Um water fund salary um
was voted at 288,000 last year. It's up to 304,000 this year. That's again primarily just due to contract um salaries. Um and I think I'll I think I broke it down here. Here we go. Um
some of that's due to overtime and some is due to longevity, but that's really the personnel costs. Water fund expense increases are 7.9%. Again, electricity uh rearing its head one more time. uh printing and postage
costs. We saw a large amount of uh increases there uh primarily because uh I mentioned before the D lead service inventory and also with a lot of the irrigation meter and fines and things of that nature. So we had to do a lot of
mailings and printings uh this past year. I don't see that going away. Um it may be reduced a little bit but I think this amount kind of helps us bridge that gap from last year. uh 73,000 for meter replacements. Um we did buy a large
number of meters this past year uh primarily for uh the irrigation meters. I think we bought over 600 meters. Um luckily Violia, our contracted services, we were able to piggy back on some of their contracts. Uh so they got us uh
basically a discounted rate. They have international contracts with some vendors. Um, we followed all procurement laws and we were able to take advantage of that bulk buying power that they have. And then contracted services, that's part of the five-year contract. We're
just going to be entering year three, and that's the increase in their service contract. All other categories are level funded. And then I'm going to look to Carrie on this because those highlighted areas are her expertise where we talk about overhead and debt service.
I had one question before while Carrie's thinking about that. If you backed up uh to the water meters. >> Yes. >> You might recall I had asked about uh the reimbursement of uh for water meters that had been re people had done. Uh I
think it was six or eight weeks ago. Um and I was told that there's a there's a process for which people could go through that. Um I just want to confirm that process actually exists because >> Are you talking about water meters or
grinder pumps for sewer? >> Uh grinder pumps I'm sorry but related to is is that is that still does that process exist? >> Uh we are still working on it. So we've we've been before the water and sewer advisory committee a couple of times now to revise the language so we can change
the sewer rules and regulations. We've just vetted that with town council. It's going to be back on the water and sewer advisory committee meeting agenda this coming month and then they'll make a recommendation to the select board after that. >> Okay. Thanks.
>> Have you have you um made a contractual arrangement to acquire the the um the pumps? >> Yes, we have. And um we we're negotiating when they can be delivered. Um we have 45 in the first delivery. Uh
next week we have training set up for the licensed utility installers. We're using the firehouse and we're going to have a mandatory training for all the installers so they can continue the 5-year manufacturers warranty. They'll need to be certified in order for that warranty to be effective.
>> So we are moving forward. When do you see us um actually um installing them and also reimbursing folks that paid for them themsel paid for installation themselves previously?
>> I think once the select board approves that language will be okay for people to start seeing uh getting that reimbursement, you know, working on the paperwork that we'll have to develop. >> Okay. Thank you. I don't have a delivery date yet for the uh for when we get the first grinder pumps in town.
>> This is from FW Mahoney. >> Uh FR Mahoney. Yes. >> Mahoney. >> Yep. >> Um if you want I can speak about the overhead the overhead costs. So the indirect costs for um items such as pension um health insurance for the
employees that work in the water department. Um and then also there's uh percentages for indirect costs for the use of um other town departments that get used by the water department. So HR,
accounting, treasury collectors, town manager office. Um and then there's um medic Medicare that gets paid on payroll that gets a portion paid from the water department as well. So,
they're supposed to be self-funded. So, all these that's what the overhead costs are and direct costs. >> Are these town employees or are they Violia? >> Nope, they're town employees. >> Yep. They get paid um out of the water department. So, um a portion of Rob's
salary gets paid out of the water department. A portion of um his administrative assistant. >> Um I think there's a couple of them get that get paid out of water. And then um I think Tom also gets >> I think he has a portion also. Yes.
>> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Mhm. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> I have a quick question. >> So we raised rates a while back there four, five, six months ago. >> How are we tracking? Okay. Any idea how we're tracking for in terms of our our our budget? >> Oh, it's it's good. I I have to run
another revenue report for the water department, but we are tracking really much better this year than we did last year. At one point we were protecting a $700 and something thousand loss. >> Yeah. Yeah. That been wiped out. We were headed we were heading into deficit and
we raised rates. We took a lot of >> correct >> from doing it but we did it. >> We are tracking much better. Um so we did hit a some of our fund balance last year. I worked with Rob. We closed out a couple of old capital items that helped with the you not hitting the fund
balance too too much. But it did get hit by probably like 600,000 >> last year. >> Right. Right. >> Thanks. >> Good. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> We still have water worth on the hook. So, um they'll be doing a presentation at the next water sewer advisory committee more related to sewer, but he
can answer any questions on water and I think he's got the current update. So, he'll be able to show what the projections are. So, uh, there's only one capital request for, uh, the water department, and that's a big one. It's two 2.3 million
for painting of the water storage tank. Um, American Waterworks Association recommends the protective coating is uh, reapplied every 10 years. We are at 15 years now. Um, it was last painted in 2011.
Um it it's called paint, but it's really a protective coating. You know, it's um if we look through some of the um the issues that were discovered, these pictures, I only had them digitally from 2022, but we have modern, you know, 2025
inspection pictures as well. There's not really a substantial change, but you can see some of the anchor bolts. There's corrosion um manway corrosion starting to show. uh corrosion up at the roof hatch. Uh roof chalking which shows that
the um the paint is thinning and roof coating loss. Um the outside coating has an life expectancy of between 8 and 10 years. Again, we're at 15 now. There's no cathotic protection on the inside of the tank. Uh so when
they do this, they would drain the tank, clean it, and paint the inside as well. Um, a lot of times with cathotic protection, they'll use like in your hot water heater, you have like a magnesium rod that kind of makes all the rust and and corrosion adhere to it. Water tanks
have similar things or they have um, you know, you could send electrical charge to uh through the the tank itself and it creates a protective surface on the inside. Um, we don't have any of that. We rely on the painted surface on the inside and that's all we have between
the water supply and corrosion. So, um, I think it's, uh, pretty important. I know this has been on kind of a draft budget of mine for a couple of years now, but I think the time has come where we really want to push this forward and and try to get it approved. >> I think when you present this to town
meeting, um, you should especially focus on that third bullet because it's not just, you know, getting a couple of brushes and paint exterior of this facility. >> Yeah. They would they would sand blast the entire exterior, you know, strip all the paint,
>> repaint it, and do the the protective surface on the inside as well. >> Yeah, I think that the the in emphasizing the inside is going to be real important because I'm I think people might miss that. >> Do they s do they sand blast the inside as well or
>> I think they they treat it. I don't think they sand blast it though. >> Yeah. And then it's down. we've got enough capacity elsewhere to handle our load. >> So, the timing is critical. Yeah. Springtime would be the likely time. You know, it can't be below freezing and we
can't be ready for summer flows. So, we have a window of maybe, you know, March and April. >> And does that contribute to the expense? So, they bring extra help in. I mean, this is a this is a big job. >> This is everything includes uh engineer inspection uh during construction and
soup to nuts. Are there specialized, you know, folks? >> Yeah, there are companies that just this is all they do. It's not like we're going out for a painting contractor. This is a very specialized >> Oh, no. I I get it. I really do get it. I But I I get it. You know, it's a big job. Put it that way.
>> I think last time they encapsulated the entire uh water tank when the 1.3 million gallon tank was last re recoted >> and then they sand blasted. >> And then they sandlast. >> Yeah. >> How long does it take? Probably at least a month, I would say.
>> What do you think, April? >> I don't know. I'm making it up. I'm still >> But again, it'll be another year, you know, by the time we go to annual town meeting and then get the contracts drawn up and lined up for next spring. So, it'll be over a year from now. >> What's the life expectancy of a
standby water tank? of the tank itself. I think as long as it's you're up to date on your protective coatings, um it could be, you know, 50 100 years. I mean, I I really don't know, >> but it's it's preventative maintenance that keeps the >> Sure. Oh, yeah. >> Absolutely.
>> So, what what's the capacity of this tank? I thought I read it. >> 1.25 million gallons. >> And we have a second tank. >> That's 1.35 million. >> Okay. Is is that coming up for painting at some point? No, it was it was painted >> couple years >> 2017. Okay.
>> Okay. >> It's it's good for a while. I mean, you could tell this was the this is the faded one, you know, the one that looks faded on the outside. >> So, you're asking us you're asking the select board tonight to um place two items on the warrant. One is the water
department operating budget and the second is the water capital for the water storage tank painting and repairs the borrowing for it. >> That's correct. >> So I'm going to unless there are any questions from the finance committee on either of these items I'm going to ask the select board from motion. Corey do I
do want to wrap my head around a little bit something. So the previous slide the paint the coning every 8 to 10 years >> that's what uh waterworks association recommend >> recommends and we're pushing 15 >> correct it'll be 16 by the time it's actually
>> okay 16. So my first part of the question is is are we compromising the actual structure by that kind of a delay? It's not just a one or two years. I mean and if you're saying the other water tow water um tank was done in 2017
by the time we put in a budget we're going to be looking at at least 10 years. So it's it's really right around the corner for that one. >> It is. But we have these tanks inspected annually and cleaned annually. Um, we go by what the inspection report says. If they say the paint is thinning but it's
not failing, um, we know that's an appropriate time to act. Um, if we had, you know, catastrophic failure or the welds were leaking or anything more substantial, we would have pushed this ahead of time. I think we're we're kind of in a sweet spot right now by delaying
it enough um, and still getting it before we have any major kind of issues. >> All right. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? All right. I'm going to ask uh u >> Mr. Chair. >> Yes. >> Um Mr. Dykens had asked what uh how
we're tracking on revenues and I just wanted to look it up for you. So currently right now we've taken in um just about $4.6 million for the water department and we still have a few more months to go. So we're tracking pretty good. And let's see where we were last
year at this time. It was four four million last year. >> 600 there. 600K. Okay. >> That's what we were looking at. 600. That's what we transferred from fund balance last year. >> Okay. >> Thank you, Carrie. Thank you. All right. I'll entertain a motion uh to place the water operating budget in the amount of
$5,73 $73,16 on the warrant. >> Motion. >> Mr. Chairman, I move that the town vote to appropriate $5,349,586 for direct costs and further that an
additional $353,430 be transferred to the general fund to be applied to overhead and indirect costs associated with the water department operating budget of the town for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2026 for the purposes and the amounts designated in the column titled proposed water
budget FY2027 of article we don't know yet of the warrant. And to meet set appropriation, the town raised 5,33,16 through water receipts and raise $400,000 through taxation for a total of 5,73,16.
>> So that's a motion to place this on the warrant. Is there a second? >> Second. >> All right, I'll call the role. Miss Davis, >> I. >> Mr. Dykins, I >> Mr. Matters. >> Hi. >> Mr. Smith, >> I chair votes side. Is there a motion to recommend? >> Move to recommend. Is there a second? >> Moved and seconded. I'll call the role.
Miss Davis. Hi. >> Mr. Dikkins. >> Hi. >> Mr. Meadows. Hi. Mr. Smith. >> Hi. >> And the chair votes. I >> next. Uh, Mr. Dikkins, do you want to make offer a motion on the the water tank painting? >> Yes, Mr. Chairman. I move that the town
appropriate $2.3 million for the painting repairs the 1.25 million of the 1.25 million gallon water storage tank and for all costs incidental and related there too. To meet this appropriation, the treasurer, with the approval of the select board, is authorized to borrow
$2.3 million under general laws chapter 44, section seven and or eight or any other enabling authority. That the treasurer with the approval of the select board is authorized to contract for any federal or state aid available for the project, provided that the amount of the authorized borrowing shall
be reduced by the amount of such aid received prior to the issuance of the bonds or notes under this note under this vote. and that the select board is authorized to take any other action necessary to carry out this project. Any premium received by the town upon the sale of any bonds or notes approved by
this vote less any such premium applied to the payment of the cost of issuance of such bonds or notes may be applied to the payment of costs approved by this vote in accordance with chapter 44 section 20 of the general laws thereby reducing the amount authorized to be borrowed to pay such costs by like
amount. >> So that's a motion to place this on the wall. it he but he didn't say the word place on either one of the motions. >> I move I moved to place. >> Okay. You did. Okay. All right. Second. >> Okay. Moved and seconded. I'll call the role. Mr. Davis. Hi. >> Mr. Dyken. Hi. >> Mr. Meadows. Hi. >> Mr. Smith.
>> Hi. >> Chair votes side. Is there a motion to recommend? >> Move to recommend. Mr. Chairman. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Moved and seconded. >> Miss Davis. >> Hi. >> Mr. Dikkins. Hi. Mr. Meadows. Hi. >> Mr. Smith. >> I. >> Chair votes I. Do we not have to take a
vote to place this on the ballot? Go ahead. >> No, this doesn't go on the ballot. >> Borrowing though. >> How do I say this? It's not inside debt. It's outside debt. So, it's paid by the water department, which is not
contingent on Prop 2 and a half like general fund. Yeah. Still a twothird vote at town meeting. >> Yeah. Still a two-th3 vote. >> Thank you for town meeting. It's 23. >> Yeah. Anything else we need to do? Anything from the finance committee like to do?
>> I think we'd love to adjourn. >> We'd love to adjourn. >> I think that we Thank you. Thank you. This this has been an experiment and uh we'll we'll have to determine if how we go forward from here. Is there you want to take an adjournment motion from you? >> Do any of my members have move to
adjourn? >> So move. >> All right. That's good. And I will call the role. Stephen Daniel. >> Yes, please. >> Right. Joannne Sprag, >> yes. >> Barbara Madison had to leave early. John Papalardo,
>> yes. >> Kristen Andrews, >> yes. >> Tracy Shields, >> yes. >> Tommy Don, >> yes. >> Eric Whitley, >> yes. >> Chair Bai. Great. Thank you very much. We'rejourned. >> Thank you. >> Su, did you have something you wanted to say?
>> Yeah, I had I had a sort of a comment. Uh, I was going to make it before the last two votes, but they seemed rather you know, unexciting, so to speak. >> Is the Has the Finance Committee voted? >> No. >> On those two? >> No.
>> No, you you haven't voted. >> We haven't. No, >> they they'll they usually defer their votes until the very end. >> Correct. >> Thank you. >> So, we're still in session. We're still in session. >> Yeah. Well, yeah. I just was waiting for
them to clear out. >> Yeah. Excuse me. >> Excuse me. We're still in session, guys. >> We're still in session here. >> Go ahead, Stuart. >> Well, I'm trying. I'm looking at the charter
6-3. I I thought maybe these had taken place and I had missed it because I hadn't I'd sort of been away for the last two meetings. But under B, it says the finance committee shall make budget recommendations to report those recommendations to the select
board and sufficient time for the select board to consider those recommendations prior to the select board voting on operating and capital budgets. So, that being the case, should we should we have well, at least in the future, should we
be waiting for the finance? It seems to me we're supposed to be getting recommendations from the finance committee and then making our votes. >> Go ahead, Joe. >> Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. So, uh, the charter has a preliminary recommendation to the select board before the select
board transmits its budget, the FY27 operating and capital budgets back to the finance committee on or before March 1st. So, that's what the board will do. I'm sorry. Vincomcom the chair will
provide a report on the 17th of February and then the select board is scheduled to vote the transmitt of the FY27 operating and capital budgets on the 24th of February. >> So Jill just to be clear though the >> the reports on the 17th are preliminary
from us. >> Yes it's preliminary. So then they'll come. So then the formal report will be to town meeting in the warrant from fincom on the total town financial plan including warrant articles and the budget.
>> Okay. So how do we comply with B if if I don't see that we're complying with this? Am I missing something? >> B we're going to comply when FIN comp comes to make their preliminary recommendations. There's also a bylaw. There's there's two uh separate areas that we were
actually thinking about uh proposing something to reconcile that for this town meeting, but I'm not sure about that. But nonetheless, so Vinc will provide their preliminary recommendations on February 17th >> to to who? >> To the select board. And then the select
board before March 1st, which we scheduled for February 24th, will actually vote to transmit the town manager's budget, which will become the select board at that time to the fincom finto historically, and I think Stephen
may still be on, and I know Andy's here, but they don't they actually don't take votes on their own recommendations until right at the end just of all Well, >> they'll have multiple meetings over the next several weeks.
>> Is that >> Yeah, I mean we us we typically Dean I don't can I don't know if you can hear me turn off we can we can >> Yeah. So we kind of do them as we can uh after we make our preliminary report back to you guys. Sometimes we have to
wait on you guys to place an article on the uh on the warrant. Sometimes uh my tech tactic, technique, whatever has been to start chipping away at things like what we heard tonight, the the various budget categories, the various uh department budgets so we can
get those done before we really have to focus on the warrant articles, the capital articles in the warrant, let me say. >> Okay. Well, I I'm getting that process, but it seems to be it seems to conflict. Well, it doesn't seem to it conflicts
with this provision. The provision says the finance committee shall make budget recommendations and report those recommendations to the select board insufficient time for the select board to consider those recommendations prior to the select board voting on the
operating and capital budgets. Didn't we just do that with the water? >> So, if I may, I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt. No. So um it's so since I've been here it's been that we start the
budget season you guys have see operating and capital requests that you just saw and then also the fincom looks at the operating and capital requests and then the fincom will come and do a
recommendation on what they believe before you vote on the operate the final operating in capital and it's always been just the general fund operating and the regular 5-year capital, not
necessarily the water department. Um, it just says the I mean that's what that's how it's been, >> right? >> And that Stuart that'll be delivered on by on 17 February two weeks from today. >> Yeah. >> I'm sorry I missed you, Stephen.
>> Sorry. that'll be delivered to you guys on 17th February, two weeks from today. >> And then um and then what you're saying is I I guess >> and you guys finalize the budget based on any input you may choose to take from
us and transmit it back to us. >> Yeah. Okay. I I can see how it's been done and you know um at least since you've been here maybe before Carrie, I don't know. I I think we need to explore this because clearly we're not in sync
with this provision because we just voted on the operating budget for the water department and a capital budget. Both of which I supported and I'm just trying to get the process down so when the public goes to try to figure out what our process is that we're all
playing off the same sheet of music and um however expedient what you're saying is is fine. It's definitely not in compliance with this. So, either we change this provision of the charter to which I'm not opposed to if it to to uh
work with how we're working currently, but um this this provision this vote should have waited until we had heard from the finance committee. >> So, so, so isn't the most expeditious resolution for you guys not to take further votes for the next two weeks?
>> Well, yeah, that that's fine. It's going to be easier than changing the changing the charter. >> Okay, that's fine with me, Stephen. What I'm saying is what I'm trying to outline is that today's vote was inconsistent at
best with the charter. So, moving forward, we can fix that and maybe next year we can, you know, just keep that in mind that, you know, that exists. We we should be doing that. I think that's okay. That's, you know, we all
rose to our right hand and said, "Hey, we're going to enforce the charter. We ought to do it." And, uh, um, I think it's important that we have all play off the same sheet of music. And like I said, I I supported the budgets. I just like the process to follow >> some, uh, accepted sheet of music, and I
don't think this one did. >> Well, we should keep an eye to this going forward. >> Motion to adjurnn, Mr. Chairman. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Moved and seconded. Miss Davis. >> Hi, >> Mr. Dyken. Hi, >> Mr. Meadows. Hi, >> Mr. Smith. >> I >> and the chair votes side. We are
adjourned at 6:57 p.m. Thank you. Good night.