welcome everybody to the joint select board and finance committee meeting of Conway for Monday March 17th i'll call the meeting to order the first me uh item on the agenda is to approve the amendments for March 10th adam's not here but I did look over the amendments they look good to me so I'll make a
motion to approve those minutes second all in favor i I No warrants today great meetings attended by select board members erica oh glad there was one must be come back to me okay
i had union negotiations for oh nearly four hours on Wednesday night it was not settled okay uh and then I had school committee on Thursday night and we put forth our budget although the final vote on it is the end of this month
i remember I had Yes meeting with um Source Pass uh one of the potential vendors for um our IT contract got it i don't I don't remember gza has been every week i'm sure there was some anyway I also attended on Friday night
with Ashefield some Ashefield um town uh uh members as well as Shelurn Falls to look at the lights in Shelurn Falls oh yeah they're nice it looks a lot better than what what we currently have so it will make a dramatic difference cool
yeah no glare on them are they like gas lanterns no no well people keep getting confused actually because there's the downtown the main street in Shelurn and those are separate because they're those big glass dome old school style we're talking about the actual you know
regular street light fixtures um so the hue is a lot uh it's not blue tint um the lumens are low it points down and there's no glare so when you're driving it's not like affecting the layer of the
road so that's it for that we'll um pass public comment for now no unfinished business so we're going to move on to new business first item on that new business is the discussion and vote to hire Tim O'Brien as a part-time police officer
welcome hello thank you for having me timothy O'Brien for everybody to meet what an appropriate day for exactly i mean since we're wearing green it's the hair and the look in general so so uh Timothy actually reached out to me about
uh if we were looking for anybody at the time I was kind of kicking the tires about possibly having another person on um reached out to some contacts that knew him he's highly recommended playing field the chief there highly recommended
that that we hire him so I as asked him again after what about a month i'm like "Hey you still interested?" Yes I am here he is so what's the ENT get up here um well you know for 26 years I've been
doing this as a full-time job so yeah uh I started off with a high interest in law enforcement i got my bers in criminal justice i was a police explorer at 14 uh through 20 when I had to become an adviser for the post i got um sworn
as a police officer at 19 in Stockbridge where I grew up and then um initially but there was no full-time hiring at the time in Birkers it was a lot of you know very low turnover rate so in order to keep my foot in the public service I had
my resume I got my EMT certification in 99 I guess it would be 26 years in and then uh needed to make money so I kept going that direction and you know I'm doing it full-time my bread and butter but I still like the police i
think that's a great excellent skill set yeah skills skill to have as a police officer for sure who are you an EMT for what time um I'm a critical care paramedic with American Medical Response and Bay State Health full-time position but then I work the field also because we have to work fields on the regular ambulance and
that's in Greenfield for AMR i've been with AMR for 25 years that's not specific ones i know their pros and cons so that's his pedigree and I told the ambulance personnel not to get too excited oh yeah
watch out he can only practice it a first responder why'd you bring the muscle because I need to enforce it i got to bring the delicate one at least we need to in case we act up
well I will make a motion that we hire Mr timothy O'Brien as part police officer for economy second all in favor i welcome Tim appreciate it thank you that's awesome as I live in town it makes perfect sense right exactly yeah
i'm I live on 1497 right at the corner of Harrison and East or main Poland so Oh great yeah the house looks like it belongs in Harry Potter you know that's how we describe to our friends it's awesome it's a Weasley house
do you have kids in this grammar school uh yes we have a 11-year-old and a nine-year-old and we have a 2 and 1 half-year-old who'll be starting preschool next year oh nice so my my availability for much of has been limited to the 2 and 1/ halfyear-old she's kind of they they're kind of an anchor i don't know if you're familiar
with that they don't want you doing much they like this food stuff and they like you know not falling off tables and things so had to but she's going to my schedule's going to open up considerably and you know foreseeable future so great grammar school i'm the chair of your school committee also just to keep yeah
one of our the older boys in the wings program we love the wings program tonight i guess it's going away i don't know hopefully not yeah actually strategically by geography that's good because we have one coming from Buckland
one coming from Whley and then one coming from the from the uh main Poland area so that's actually from the Roaring Brook area and the Roaring Brook yeah and we've got Connecticut covered too right yeah that's great that is that's good actually yeah excellent it's a diverse
police department awesome well welcome aboard thank you well thank you yeah we're going to bow out get Chris back to work all right thank you guys thank you so much thank you for your service nice meeting you uhoh watch out
try to try to keep it in line you are in line today all the blush on Verinique okay all right thank you so we're going to move on to the discussion and vote on the um Guilford Trust
application come over here so we have all the information you sent us we're sorry you went through all of that it's awful um what else um how long were these tenants in there a total of four years
and did you try to um evict them no um my husband was dying at that point for the last two years so I was his caretaker and exhausted um I knew the outside was messy um but I didn't
venture inside of course did they continue to pay rent that rent reliably while they were there yeah um Oh my god wow and then they just disappeared did you not know until they moved out the
condition of their life not the inside no every once in a while maybe once a year I would tell them once or twice a year I'd say "You've got to get a dumpster and throw some of this stuff that's outside away." And he'd get a
dumpster and uh eventually it would be hauled off um the dumpster guy says they still owe him okay and I think the uh Bob Baker said that
he still hasn't returned the um the fancy pager emergency pager that he was issued as a volunteer fireman so and so everyone is aware you I've clearly seen you've done your due diligence you first tried to go through
your insurance company right um you also had um assessors come out correct to understand the the breadth of the damage yeah let's the public adjusters
the adjusters insurance adjusters right and it was rejected the insurance was rejected um because it was not considered mischief even though they broke terms of a lease
right it's interesting how that works um and then I had the environmental engineer the public adjusters said "You you should get this guy he works all over the state to come out and just you know he
comes with devices and measures the levels of bacteria in it even more dire because he said essentially the whole house is a biohazard even the little floors have to be ripped out
so the intent is to I think you were saying you were trying to sell but you can't do that obviously in the state that the cabin's in right now right yeah and even if it didn't sell I couldn't reenter it either right until the mold
litigation is is done right so do you know how this works out with the grant like the the um I'm sorry not assessors but the um
adjusters have what they think is a certain sum of would take right you apply for however much and that's all you can get right it can't change after that oh if the scope increases and the cost
increase i'd have to check into that but I don't see why if you're in the middle of something you couldn't You mean if we were to adjust that money if we were to award the grant and the money from the grant right and then the work starts but can't complete because it's not
enough that we offered in the grant how does that work i can I can certainly look into that i mean I put vote tonight but it's only to cover it if you did right so you don't necessarily have to tonight can I see the cost well I mean I would imagine you would just come back and ask for a second grant to cover the
you know the remainder of the cost depends on how the grant works right the um Yeah it depends on the language of the trust yeah there are some I got two quotes one from um James McDton the guy who is great but he doesn't have a
license um and the other one was from uh Quality Restoration Turners and um I brought with me if you want to see the full 15page quote which lists every single
thing that they thought they would have to do right um and that came out to be 50,500 which is insane oh I've seen the pictures it's not I think that sounds I understand i mean
when the dogs chew apart the closet doors yeah were they breeding dogs there yes we didn't We had no idea and he was selling them
um in fact I only found out about it through Helen Baker because he would brag to her that they just sold a dog for a puppy for $1,000 or $1,500 what kind of dogs
they were purebred something or others i treated like this nobody should be treated like this well my granddaughter saw them a couple of times um apparently handing off a a puppy to a buyer and they always did it
i don't know if you know our property but we have a very long driveway and they always did it out of sight at the bottom of the driveway because they knew if anyone came up and saw that saw that they wouldn't take the puppy
they should be reported puppy well they moved out of state um when they first when I had gotten some back rent from them during the pandemic when I had them apply for
the raft program mhm um but then when they suddenly left or uh that summer the summer of 23 I think um when they said they couldn't pay the rent anymore I said
"Why don't you apply again to the raft program?" And they did and everything seemed to be going through but then the raft program sent them a letter saying the last piece that we need is for you
to give us a letter stating how you are going to repay that to the RAP program and they never sent that in and then they just took off but because they moved out of state then they were no
longer eligible for the RAF program so back to what she was saying um I would think given the 15page quote that we got which people told me was too high
but that was their quote um for five for $50,000 I would think that that would cover it right and it's up to so if not all the 50 is used it's Oh absolutely right
right this is only for the cost of right not not in a word but for the cost of service right but I can look at the language of the trust and see if there's anything in there about what happens it says right here former applicants may not apply for additional funding with regard to an application that was
previously funded however applicants will be considered for funding if strong evidence of need is shown concerning a different issue than was originally funded those applying for additional grant money from the Guilford fund are not eligible for a period of 10 years after receiving any loan or grant from
the town of Conway yeah I know there was at least one that had a 10-year caveat so so would I mean Yeah so have we have we done this before and so like in this particular instance
would would the contractor basically submit his bills to the town of Conway as opposed to like like here's a grant $50,000 we just we just given yeah not that I know of the last grant that was given out under this um was for
$850 in 2019 so the only thing I could think that might be comparable was the um church But I don't remember which fund that came from which trust after the tornado i mean right well
yeah there was something some funds I think that had been lent and then there was some issue with insurance and I I really don't know the whole story but um but I don't remember what fund that was mhm
my concern is the language as it says if it's anything outside of what would have been applied for in the original mhm but we all know especially on renovations that Well this is not renovations well this
is strictly I mean this is pretty straightforward that you know the all the flooring has to be ripped out this is the cabin up on the hill yeah in the middle of the the tree works or whatever the the earth works earthworks okay so up on the right
of Yeah yeah it's the cabin that Kenny Wet grew up in yeah and my kids lived in for a few years actually did they with Christina yeah yeah he didn't recognize it i did not recognize it for the most I mean I this seems pretty clear to me that if we
you know awarded 27,000 and then that wasn't enough that we couldn't then supplement that money to make this project full so I just feel more comfortable awarding the full amount i guess a
little just little little concerned that someone watching this might say "Oh there's $50,000." And you know like would not necessarily be totally honest about what that's going to cost you know so I mean I feel like I'd be more comfortable if
it was awarded in such a way that I don't know like the the contractor had to build through the town but I don't know if that it's probably like how that if that's complicated i would feel more comfortable having hiring a contractor and
having him send the bills to the town exactly yeah yeah um and then awarding kind of you know like a maximum amount with the understanding that it's you know the reason that we're doing that is because we don't we don't
want you to get stuck not having not even be being able to come back to ask for more money for another 10 years so right i would also assume that even though there's a lower bid if they're not certified or insured or bonded through the town that that's not allowed
through the grant i mean is this all we have about the Yeah the only other the only other language um well I haven't I haven't been through the whole file on it but um the only other language that I saw was that it's up to the select board to
decide if it's going to be a grant or a loan or a combination or you know so it seems to give the select board a lot of latitude and how it's dispersed but given all these questions I would prefer to get them all answered for you yeah i mean probably if we are going to go if
if the billing is going to go through the town then that certainly should be a licensed contractor to do even if it's Yeah and we don't want to delay any further but we do want to make sure that we're doing this right the first time yeah the only uh restoration place in
Franklin County I believe is uh quality restoration because you said surf pro didn't they never even came back with I think they also were the ones who um who did the some work on that um camp back
on Brooklyn um they do now I could I did reach out to Serpro and they came out and with many
more devices and did all this fancy measuring and took pictures and um and then they never got back to me and I think it's because their quote would have been astronomical because they deal with insurance
companies who just pay what they're asked to pay or fight it but you definitely have to go with a licensed person because you need guarantees it's done right yeah i mean we had a water thing happen at work and I think it was Surf Pro or somebody
did it and anytime there's even a potential issue they come and look at it and check it out so it just gives you that peace of mind right so short of going to Hampshire County I think there are a couple more maybe in the Northampton
area yeah you might get more quotes just so I could reach out and get another quote that's also another question is typically on funding like this you need three quotes yeah yeah and the other thing I was going to ask because I didn't happen to look or notice was how
long the quote is good for um so if they had just done it you might need to you know have them update the date exactly yeah yeah right yeah i mean honestly the attention of
the the Guilford fund seems to be this kind of issue certainly i mean this definitely meets the criteria i I agree i mean I just think we just got to nail down the details but it certainly seems appropriate is this
a like how much money is in the fund does it keep it's I just 850 something 915 okay i 800s two three years ago right right so there's Yeah john did a huge
review of all the trusts a while back yeah and that was you know Baron you can have had discussions along with council but that's the thing is just to make sure that the applicant does their due diligence first right don't come to the town first which she
did yeah totally um and then that it's suitable for the actual fund which it is yes now we just have to have those other questions answered it's true it seems like it's got to move along at a reasonable pace you're already in a bad
spot so it seems like can't take forever so if you can get a couple more quotes and I can get these questions answered then we could Yeah come back and Yeah they're pretty quick with the quotes good business
so I'll contact a couple more in the the Northampton area great actually you know what let me um let me send you the town's procurement form which just lays out how to you know what information you need for the three quotes for just for our files yeah and then that'll just
make sure we have it from the get- go right well and I would think I mean it's a beautiful piece of property having been up there it's beautiful I do think you'd sell it in a minute and don't where where is the property right at the end where of 116 and you're
coming up on the Asheville Town line oh really you'll see on the right there's a sign that says Earth Works it's almost across from the the uh North Pole where we have the new bridge
yeah but the driveway goes uh but the house sits back and it's very open feels beautiful well just just uh six weeks ago when I was talking to Joanie Schwarz yes um you know she was very
confident that it would sell fairly quickly and she was even looking forward to a bidding war i think because it's a unique property also and Joanie knows Conway and who wants to be in Conway for sure himself um but you know with everything that's
happening in Washington Yes without mentioning any names um everything in every industry is just up in the air nobody knows what's going to happen you know are people going to pull back and not buy or are you know
the wealthier people going to swoop in Yeah and get a a bargain nobody knows all right well the quicker you can get the quotes the quicker we can get those answers the quicker we can get through the application hope you get this great well thanks again for coming in
thank you very much appreciate it and for all the information this was very very helpful a lot of work nobody should have to go through that that's just awful okay thank you again thank you so I'll email that to you i can't believe I
didn't recognize that um here they would think Alan would you like to committee sure i'll make a motion to call the finance committee meeting to order okay i make a motion to approve the minutes of the March 10th finance
committee meeting as as presented second all in favor yes i All right go up thank you figure we can move on to our joint meeting and get back to the rest of new business afterwards yep okay so moving on to the joint meeting
there it is um so let's first on that agenda before we get into the line items or the department line items I should say is the discussion and vote on the source of
supplemental funding for the new Conway Mall um swap shop building up at the transfer station ernie right okay so we um the town received $6,000 from Mass D's sustainable
materials recovery program grant for a new swap shop it has to be spent before the end of the fiscal year um and a new shed um Janamine's been helping us with this and we're trying to figure out you know we're trying to figure out what
size would fit in basically the old mall that's up there is just going to get raised everything's going to be boxed up taken out by Salvation Army and we're going to move where the electronics are and have that whole area level it and
put in a new 14 deep by 30 wide building was it 14 by 30 okay and it's um this is a vendor that Jan uses actually I did too when I was back in South Hadley hometown Structures
um they have neat trucks where whole thing comes in and not only do can they bag up this way but they can go this way too which is kind of neat when they Yeah um anyway and Tim measured yours and it looks like it's going to fit in fine in there and one of the reasons 30 ft we
wanted was because um it's been very difficult with the volunteers when it's really hot or really cold they just can't stay in there the whole time with no heater you know um or AC so we wanted to have a little room that was just for sorting
for the volunteers to be in we can keep it climate controlled so they can always be in there but they can be do a little sorting then run out to the building then come back you know um anyway so that's more like $14,000 so we need another eight or so
who's doing the ground work the ground prep um well that should be Ron there is um it's actually kind of good timing in a way because the whole transfer station that the divots in the back um town meeting set aside some money a couple years ago to pay for repairing the cap
of the landfill you know where you know where you go back behind the bulky and it dips down there's those Yeah so we're under order from D to get that fixed we have to raise it up to the Yeah they've got to excavate it basically yeah they got to excavate it got to put in fill and then they've got to pave it back
over when they're doing that they were planning to on the road that you're leaving there's going to be three parking spots put in at an angle there while the wood's just sitting there that will be mall parking so that people won't be in the way of everything there cuz you know we're pretty cramped for
space chris can I make a comment this is unfamiliar with hometown structures i understand it that if they do the site prep you get an extended warranty on their facilities if they do the site prep that's good just just mentioning that okay that's good to know we know how much I have no idea how much it
costs no I mean I saw it on one of their like videos you know so had no idea okay well let you know what let me look into that because I was talking with Jan about that so timing then i mean you've got to do the ground prep you got to take tear down the old structure is that
all going to happen before you know are you going to be able to spend these funds down the $6,000 we better yes yeah yeah i mean there's already a plan to um take all everything out of the
current mall and um uh give it to um Salvation Army salvation Army sorry um and then you know taking razing the whole thing's not going to take long no and Jan's going to rent an extra roll off and they're just literally going to
knock it down and throw it in that rolloff and ship it out yeah the the anchor pillars stay it'll just go on top well right you're going to have No I'm not going to have any pillars in the back cuz the new one's bigger right i mean it's not as deep it's not as deep
but it's uh Yeah but there's anchor pillars that are holding up the whole structure oh the Oh the in the front i'm sorry i thought you meant hillside in the back no that's holding up the back okay sorry here you go y um Yeah so you're talking about the footings the footing yeah yeah so it is a tight time
frame but that's one of the reasons and what I was concerned about was well where are we going to get this extra money because last year when we put it into the warrant and the revolving funds the limit of how much could be spent out of each it was
$10,000 we've already spent 10,000 this year for the new catwalk so we don't have 10,000 in this fiscal year so I talked to our accountant and he said if the select word and finance committee agree you can up that in between town
meetings so that's why I'm coming to say if you guys approve of this we you can release more funds we have about 11,000 now in there I think um after having spent the 10 and how much more do we think we need
about eight I think so you're thinking all the ground work would be done by Ron then yes okay yes yeah because I guess Ron knows this yeah we had already talked to them um Jeez that was probably a couple years
ago about those parking spaces i know that there's been all this talk about what you were just saying about you know having to redo the this land but but Mr rock going to charge the town do you know is he going to do it for free well he we haven't done the stipen for but no
well town meeting passed uh I thought there 37 or 39,000 based on Ron's estimate for what it would take to get the um the land cap of the landfill and parking spots and all that done that was
a couple years ago so you know I don't know if materials have gone up a lot whatever he needs for fill I I don't know right well everybody always assumes that red is always the cheapest but I'm never actually convinced of that just just put my personal opinion out there are you talking about extra yeah that's
like I think that's what she's Yeah that's what you're talking about right i mean is you mean hiring a construction crew to come in and do it no she's saying so part of his job or is it part of his job description he has to do that or is he getting an extra stipen for doing Oh no i I think that was an extra
stipen and I think that was already done now no we didn't do the stipen we did the stipen for pickle ball and for the for right so then if you find out if hometown structures can do site prep it'll be an interesting comparison between that's why I marked it down that
you said that it's worth checking out for you yeah if they can't do it they might recommend somebody well the other thing too is if I mean excavators are really expensive if Hometown Structures does it I mean I've seen that i know exactly what Veronique's talking about if if they have a site where they can
just slide the building onto the site they will and they do they do the site prep and it's a big company they do it in one day i don't know what Ron's availability is that's a good point his availability can be fluid let's I
will say on this matter though I mean obviously the new platform was absolutely needed it was falling apart right so that's why that money was used for that um the the bid and the cost of this new mall was surprisingly cheap in my mind i
couldn't believe how cheap it actually is and to have the 6K as part of the grand I just don't want to lose that so um you know I I do think that we do need to look at an an additional source to
cover the other 8,000 well if well and Hometown Structures may be booked out through the fall at this point i mean that's something else to consider they're a pretty big company okay um so I guess what I would say is if if the finance committee and the select
board are kind of copacetic with the idea I could go back and do this research and come back and you know with whatever paperwork Mike says we need it it may just be a vote to to release the funds probably it is um but I could come back with a little bit more information
and and the request for a vote is the grant reimburseable or is it up front oh that's a good question i believe I used to be in charge of those grants it's reimburseable and work with reimburseed
yeah i I think it is it has to be reimburseable and I know Jan is willing to work with us to maybe float some funds but I don't I don't want to put her in that they can probably extend a deadline beyond can fully extend it the state doesn't know the situation i'm sure they do it here yeah yeah and I
will say that we were one of very few towns it was a very competitive grant and the fact that we even got to 6,000 was kind of a big deal no you were not optimistic i was not at all i was like don't even think about get this but that's great that'll be beautiful there
so we'll come back to that and I'll put that on for for next week too yep so we're going to table that vote till next week all right next on the uh joint meeting agenda is discussion and vote on policy for stipen increases we also have Phyllis here
who's part of our Yeah so let me We have a quorum oh you better call me personel personnel okay call to order i'll call the personnel committee meeting to order okay so Verinique has sent us a a spreadsheet that is a
combination of and Verie correct me if I miss if I don't describe this accurately so COLA increases COLA increases plus requested employee increases and then some additional increases highway
department that's sort of outside of that scope so personnel committee meeting is going to meet this Thursday to make recommendations that will be presented to the three of you next Monday and I have a couple of questions for you and this is really
just to get your sense of how we can have this discussion so I went through this spreadsheet and I could just say that at a high level that some of the requested requests that are outside of COLA are above COLA mhm so the question
becomes one if an employee employ and employees make their own requests for for wage increases because Conway has no performance management system no performance management metrics so just as a sidebar that reality makes it really
difficult for a personnel committee to make recommendations outside of COLA because we have no data and it's just an individual presumably in good faith making a request for their own benefit you can't get access to like salaries of other
towns with similar that's not relevant because this is performance-based because if it's an individual who's making a request for their own wage they feel they're justified we can do we can do cola research cola is easy it's either it's either based on um you know
uh US labor statistics like that average i just looked it up for Massachusetts it's like 3% yeah so making making a recommendation which we will do for all the employees who are requesting cola that's easy but people anything above
that is difficult like so what I'm trying to query you on is how do you feel about requests that are o when we present the information to you next week you'll see who's made a request that's above cola which in Massachusetts is
about 3% um and how to deal with that i mean how do you the act more like market requesting a market adjustment than a cola is what they're doing i wouldn't even call it a market adjustment it's a it's that individual
requesting what they believe they deserve just to be clear I don't think any individual has done that i think a lot of these requests were made on behalf of those people by somebody else either their supervisor or that's that's
fine but there's still on the spreadsheet that I'm looking at Barrenique there's no metric around it why it's justified um okay I'm trying to think back to we had the discussion with the police department when that went up and and Don
justified and gave us the range for the part-time officers the transfer station attendance was actually brought by the select board um I'm trying to think of what other actual races there are i'm not sure outside of cola you're talking about that's outside of cola and I think
those are the only two that were outside of so what Barney just gave you an example one it's done on an ad hoc basis obviously uh Don Bates advocated for his his employees to to select board other
individuals transfer station advocated to select board so I guess my question to you is how do you want this to be managed in the absence of a per because we're just going to have to keep coming to you outside of cola on these individual way should be it should be by request well my understanding is as of
those were I mean I don't know what you don't seem to want to call them that to me but to me those were sounded like market adjustments but what is a market adjustment market adjustment is when the the the market has shifted but the people have stayed behind I don't understand what that means so the going
wage in other towns comparable to ours is significantly more than ours which makes it difficult for us to hire and staff our positions with quality but these are being made on an individual basis not based on a job description that's a good point well yes and no
because the Furcog you know for better or worse is what is usually used as the benchmark um benchmark for what role for uh job descriptions not for the descriptions for the positions yeah this albuming the world the job the the job
title right and so that for instance when we look at transfer station attendance even though it had been bumped up one year we're still at the the bottom because everybody else has been bumping up so that's what's used for comparison right it's been a crazy
market for especially the lower waged jobs to just lay it out for you just so you know what you're going to be voting on next week you will see people that will in this when you see the spreadsheet next week after personnel has discussed it you'll see people who work cola plus
an increase which can be it can only be one or the other so the the what we had decided I believe last year or a couple years ago is if the increase that the requested increase is below cola you go with cola if the
requested increase is above cola you go with the requested increase it's whichever two or the higher value but you can't have both you can't say I'm requesting 4% cola is three tack on three for 7% no cola requested increase
requested increase no cola so even if cola is high even if the requested increase in no cola is higher i'm saying you can't combine them you can't combine them you can't combine an increase and cola it's one or the other and whichever is the highest the requested increase but some of these are
still generally above what you would typically see in organizations that have a performance management system that's fine the select board can vote on it then okay yeah if you're comfortable with that okay and if the select board doesn't agree with the increase and thinks it's too much then we can vote on it okay y All right so doing these on an
ad hoc basis that's how that's your preference by request okay okay all right let me make a note of that and the other question I have here is some of the individuals on this spreadsheet are under employment contracts which the personnel committee
aside from the fact that Baron has disclosed hers we're not a party to those employment contracts i'm baffled as to why individuals with employment contracts are on this spreadsheet because presumably aren't they not that is a contract between select board and that's true maybe they shouldn't be
right that's a good point i I personally speaking just as Phyllis Crane not as a chair I am from a liability standpoint very uncomfortable interfering with a contract I am not party to me but I didn't sign it those should come back to
us um yeah I get I guess what I could put in there is under contract and just state that i mean it's a public it's a public document i mean that's why I post mine all the time because No I know that no I know that but so so yeah I guess
you're right i should have put in there that this has already been decided and it's just under contract it's in their contract okay right all right then that answers my question confusing good catch all right well it's in there I think just as an
aid for internal Yeah knowledge yeah no I Okay that was it those are my questions okay so thank you i'll come back you'll see me next week i work with you have to um adjourn
all right adjourning personnel committee motion to second thank you all right thanks ajourn thank you oh um sorry yeah i just want You're not leaving the second right no okay good sorry i thought that's what you No why
you were journinging personal right but the personnel budget's coming up so that's why I wasn't sure oh why don't we get to that first then so we're not Phyllis well she's got a big weight for me anyway oh okay never mind let's start let's keep her no come on
we should still probably start with 190 cuz 159 is going to be a longer discussion actually 159 isn't even going to be discussed tonight i had it on there as a placeholder in case we didn't get the but we didn't get Yeah so we're not so that'll be tabled till next time so let
me share my [Music] screen is what are we doing first 190 190 Roy Connor threatened to call us well this one's hard
looks great we can't get it did you guys need any Did you guys get all the money you needed for the Furog employee manual review which is why we did $1,500 last year that's why it was last year yeah but you you don't
need it again this year you don't you need additional I don't know i don't know where it's at in the process or I got I got a quote from them that I haven't looked at yet so what I'm going to do is look at it tomorrow and send it to you and everybody else you you've
gotten a quote well I have I have the um response back i sent them the draft oh good and they're going to send us a quote and what it's really going to I think what it's really going to boil down to is how much work we want them to do and Roy if you can hear us can you mute
do you want me to table my stop sharing so I can get up here and mute him sounds like he's underwater so to answer your question um the way EA works is you know they'll
do a a first pass at your employee manual and they will make recommendations for it so when we were discussing this in the committee we were we were just going to say just do just do the first pass give us your basic vote and then they're going to come back with to us and they're probably going to
have all kinds of consultative recommendations that may or may not be something that Conway is willing or able to implement for a whole bunch of different reasons resource reasons people reasons complexity reasons
so in the absence of that I mean we can talk about it when we meet on Thursday but since we've never used these people before I don't know what they're going to recommend okay you know so I'm don't see any point in asking for a budget line and I can just say too
this just occurred to me literally in the second when when the new employee manual is rolled out part of me would just like to use it for a while and see how fit for purpose it is beta test it yeah before we launch into make la watching it into making it more
complicated it's it's it's only 16 pages i mean it seems like 16 pages is appropriate i mean I've seen employee manuals that are like this oh yeah ours is bigger than that which is you know it can't be something that's not helpful to employees you know or their managers so
that's my view great i know before you had mentioned that you wanted to have some money set aside for FY26 in case there was another report or something that the committee wanted to work on right so that's what the that's what I just described okay that because
within the context of the employee manual which is which is like the um which cementss the relationship between the town and the employee and sets the expectations in the absence of knowing how this revised version is going to be fit for
purpose like I just said I'd rather have it out there and use it for a year and see what the feedback is and then you would have an idea you more than anybody else because that's kind of where you live every day what you think how you
think it might need to be improved or what other types of consulting you might want to use and EN4 and they do they do a lot mhm you know they have a lot of expertise in that area okay so basically that's we've got we've got some wiggle room for later
on tweaks if we want yeah yeah that makes sense sounds good can we do council on aging before we get to the school sure oops she goes the wrong way 541 Council on Aging so everybody knows and there is no change requested i don't
know if you had a chance to see i sent out a spreadsheet a little while ago that had kind of like what Erica does with the light warrant light i went through every single one of our general funds yeah so
and it'll tell you whether or not they there was a change or whether they went up much easier has made my job so much easier that I put that together for town um anyway so yes there was no change to this budget so it's pretty easy okay any questions
this looks good they look good let's get to the big one all right um well a second for me to come to there we are so we had our public hearing last
week and Baron was our public all right okay well you probably So the beginning of this is just explaining how we come about our budget which I don't think the finance committee necessarily needs to hear cuz you know well you can skip this that's what we do for development
uh go back to enrollment um there we go um you see that it goes through residents and school choice [Music]
oh might find my face all right there we go our resident enrollment has been growing so um and there are actually some classes currently that have very limited school choice opportunities which is in
some ways great in some ways no can I ask a question about that yeah so do school choice apply in any in any school um school year like a a family from another town doesn't have to opt in at kindergarten they can opt in at third
grade yes okay yep that the school committee votes on school choice openings every year and then the principal fills them are the kids who get accepted then uh they they they get preference for the following years if they're in for if
they're in there yeah yep yeah um so it it winds up I don't know if she says it i mean this year you know it's it's a pretty um unfortunately the hard thing about school choice is I think you're well aware we only get like $5,000 a kid
which is the educate the amount she has in here the amount to educate a kid is way more than $5,000 but other than that it would be just much more of a challenge to um would be talking about having grades
together can I ask another question yeah would it be the same amount amount of money if a child needed an IEP or if they had special needs uh that depends if they're in the wings program that's a tuition in program for other other towns okay uh which has actually
in general been a very uh wellsupported program although there's been some transitions in that too but yeah um keep going down um so our grant we did look at our
grants and our federal grants to see if we're at risk to lose some of them um I forget the name on the bottom it's in the paper oh it's right here sorry poor letters um
anyway if if we lost this federal grant it would not be devastating to us we could pick up the funding from other budgets um but if that federal grant was cut urban areas would be closing schools you know so that's why we don't think
this money is necessarily going to be money that's on the chopping block because what it would do to urban areas would be completely devastating because they like live on this particular grant money so and we we don't uh so um I
think she has a pie chart somewhere with page uh there you go there we go expenses as you know most of it is uh the the employees of the school that's the highest expense um you know oil is a def
and transportation are big expenses um and then it goes down from there um but you know the biggest part and we are in negotiations right now uh Frontier did settle um with the teachers um at I'm actually not allowed to say it
because I don't want to get signed but that's something we we could manage um but our negotiations are not that advanced we're making some progress but yeah so we don't actually have the number but uh well you think
it'll be finalized between now and town meeting i do yes I do so we might have to come back and have another uh beyond April meet up yeah I think we're going to hopefully be okay but yeah yeah
so um you know I was explaining to Chris earlier like there's so little fat to cut out of school budget um you know we've done a good job with maintaining our school um there were you know we we did lack at that sometimes uh with
like suddenly having kids having uh asthma attacks and the carpeting needed to be replaced and stuff but we've we've fixed that problem and we've gone through and upgraded things uh gotten many splits I think in every part of the school now because it is warmer sooner
and warmer earlier you know so it's warm in September it's even warm October it's warm in April um and so warm in June yep uh we are you all know we're looking at the boiler replacement at some point but we also need to get a smart energy
system to manage the boilers and the mini splits and all those things together so we get the most bang for our buck uh we're ask going to ask the sustainability committee to look for grants for that deerfield got a grant to cover that smart energy system but our sustainability committee has been pretty busy right now so it's not something we
can put on their plate right at this moment but so right now we look like we're level services obviously um and we're at about a what a 5% increase just on level services before any union negotiations
with placeholders for those union negotiations so there are estimates for the negotiations in that 5% correct okay and it does say in the recorder article the sessation which just means the end
fancy word on it of 30,000 in federal um relief for ESSER elementary and secondary school emergency relief yeah there was So that's gone that's gone yeah it's like 30,000 30,000 yeah oh yeah so
that's part of the We planned that five and four increase uh our business administrator for the school district Shelley is super on point with things and is very planful and aware and um luckily we kept her because there was a moment we
thought we might lose her to another town um but uh she's really does a great job with the budgets and transparency and what we can do and where we can move you know school choice money or uh grant
money almost all the IAS in the Conway Burmer school are covered by grant some type of grant money um so 153 students that that's one of the highest numbers in the more than 10
years been in the finance it's one of the highest enrollment it is it's gone up y I think in 12 years yeah we've been in the like 126 128 before and that's with school choice yep so the uh kindergarten class this year
was 26 students 21 Conway five school choice that's that that did it work out that way about uh Yep it's about that i mean I know that you put some numbers in i know huge kindergarten class that's one of the biggest kindergarten classes that Conway in town students at Conway people do come to Conway for the school
system and I bet they probably love doing it in kindergarten right well it's a good time yeah well Mr mr b is infamous he's he's great i have a question with the Wings program there are some students that do receive
Medicaid if there are cuts in Medicaid what are the implications is the school committee exploring that at all if there are cuts how that could happen at this moment uh not that I've heard that for discussion because the federal funding year starts October 1st we're voting
June 1st i mean July 1st yep so it's something to pay attention to you know there's a strong commitment at the state level to fund our schools um I think the governor the state hasn't stepped in I mean this governor has talked about stepping in with children's healthc care
and coverage to if there is a gap with the uh Medicaid to cover but there hasn't any formal commitment has to go through a whole process personally I'm confident the state would step in but I certainly can't guarantee it you need the state to step in to adjust
the formulas like we've been saying correct i mean I'm not popular for this is for not a comment this would be lot because a lot of school choice students come in from the for the wounds program it's a very good program has a good reputation
but the transportation is what I keep on saying school choice kids don't provide their own transportation right i'm just saying if if the formula was different they removed the top 1% of the top 1% from the formula the bottom 1% of the
bottom 1% right so 0 01 right just put that in the formula and then it would look completely different for us we might be able to Well and our our transportation contract had a huge jump and it's still under
market oh yeah we're lucky to have a bus company nearby with a guy who's very handy if we had to go to the second bidder I can't even want to look at cost who would mascus i mean the rub is is people come to our town in large part because of our school oh yeah but the
problem is it's the largest item of our budget so when you're looking at a big increase like this it makes a substantial difference and if we didn't have the other schools be under budget this year we'd be in really bad shape oh yeah so
it's to me it's not just about being um uh fiscally responsible it's fiscally strategic so we need to look 3 5 years out you need to look at the
unfortunate impact and what you might need to do to avoid catastrophe whether that's through you know okay so through the years you're going to have insurance increases you're going to have salary increases right services are going to
insurance increases have been insane they've been in right so there's only certain areas you can look at and there are areas nobody wants to discuss I mean we've been having school choice more to make up for the lack of in town enrollment so if in town enrollment goes
up school choice goes away i mean based on what we collect and average and property taxes versus we get for student school choice i mean you know it's kind of a at best it's a wash it might even be a plus who knows yeah but our school is such a good school because of how it is ran and because how it is it's
performing because how it's set up with the teacher and assistant you know yeah and uh school uh class size nobody wants to change that i don't and we've invested in the buildings too it's just up to the We have to find another way to get fun we can't It's not tenable to
have a five and a quarter or 5% increase annually it's just not so especially since we have no new growth and we rely almost completely on real estate tax it's just I I really well like you said we
have to push back on the formulas that fund our schools and I talked when I was in Shelurn on Friday that's what I talked to them about too they were asking "Oh we should really get together and regionalize some stuff." And I said "No we need to be a larger voice." Yeah
right so I mean you guys know Belure Town's in big trouble there's other other I mean it's a bigger town than others but it's they're they're cutting like 13 positions power in numbers so just gather the towns together they had a long steady
growth spurt and now they started down the other side yeah they were the fastest growing town for a number of years so changed the formula yeah it's very basic very simple well if they can if we can get the enroll the for the projected
enrollments for next year between in town and uh school of choice i'd like to look at those numbers i'd like to look at I think we've had them already kristen's already put them out there I think mhm oh I can email will Shelley have that information who should I email
kristen Gordon kristen the principal Gordon okay all right thanks is that good yep yep oh do we have him muted or is he muted on his own i muted himself i'm trying to ask him to unmute himself i can text him right now too i'm here
great all right do you have any questions Roy comments suggestions uh I don't okay thank you all right well good luck calling those negotiations so it's both for the both
unions right for both unions are negotiating the union and IAS the frontier settled with theirs so it's union 38 IAS and teachers i mean and for perspective you know the the IAS
make now I think 17 to $20 you know to do some really hard jobs yeah are we still keeping the adjustment counselor the position we created as a result of the pandemic at uh at the moment i mean good yep it's good we had
it oh yeah it's probably more for the if it's as much for the parents and the teachers and the kids well I think what what you know is super challenging is and I say this all the time at school committee is if your community we're very in general educated community that
in general really wants to fund our school system but you start you start uh you start restricting things um in your school budget and when I when
I um there was a period of time when I was in town we had probably three or four out of district placements in our grammar school for things that we could manage in the grammar school but parents had some sense that we couldn't oh because of
either some you know something happened that they So an out of district placement right now is minimum $100,000 to a school budget wow minimums yep and a higherend placement like u severe medical needs
and educational needs is easily $300,000 sure so a lot of times you have a cost share with like um DCF DMH uh Department of uh developmental disabilities but you don't always have a cost share um and so
I think our district's gotten very good at programs like Wings it's better for the kids to stay in their community anyway so if you can keep them in their your community and give them quality service parents are happy with that but one I mean we used to bus kids down to
um Springfield west Springfield and um West Springfield too is for dyslexia oh yeah we have the best reading specialist ever in our school and they bust kids
out to to schools for dyslexia absolutely you know so we really have to to publicly educate people that if you start doing those kind of things it's not that hard to get an IEP and once you do once you get an IEP you can advocate
to get your kids sent somewhere and it will break our budget yeah yeah any idea of how many Conway Graham Grammar School age students are school choicing out of Conway any idea i don't know that there's any currently oh good couple
years we had a few good yeah so anyway that's always something I cuz people start being like oh like you bring up an adjustment counselor or bring up a reading specialist you know those are the first things people want to like oh well they're extra cut them you know they're
not extra if it cost you one out of district placement one so you really have to pay attention to how we talk about those things in the services in our school so yeah I know like South Hadley was having major issues like $2
million in deficit and they originally were talking about getting rid of the band and uh or their parents had a connection so instead of getting rid of the band they're getting rid of teachers
which is crazy to me but you know that's what I'm saying there's a lot of a lot of communities that are really hurting right now i just don't want to get in that position they really are yeah do we have any students this year going to Yeah one student I think going to Smith Hope right
no oh zero two years in a row that's good of relief all righty thank you any questions further questions comments no all right thank you Roy nothing else i think that's it all right thank you motion to
adjurnn i make a motion to adjurnn the finance committee second all right all right thank you financ you're welcome any public comments oh
that's such an idiot is Hazel on here i thought you were Hazel oh God that's not the first time that's happened roy we are we've adjourned if you want to Thanks Roy you want to stay on you're welcome okay well sorry I missed the
beginning okay see you have a good one we did table it Roy it is next week i'm sorry we tabled the IT budget so that's next week okay okay i'll see you all see you then
please okay take care bye-bye thank you bye all right um discussion in vote on remote meeting option i think we should obviously keep the remote meeting option people are still getting sick there are some people that
still can't make it in you know for whatever reason so does anybody have any descent to that no well just just to be clear these are spelled out this is something that I think probably cuz I hadn't seen it as a policy vote got missed back when the
remote you know even just calling it was starting um but I was told you I'll state it we really need to have it in the books but there are very specific reasons for being allowed to motive got it i guess is what I'm trying
to make and this is different than the open meeting law that we're hoping they'll extend okay yeah got it all right well I'll make a motion that we move to allow remote participation in public meetings in accordance with the requirements of 940 CMR29.10 with the authorization applying
to all meetings of all local public bodies in the town of Conway second all in favor i I All right sorry get this out got it uh discussion and vote to sign the certification
certification of application for the green communities grant which we have discussed so you have anything more to say about this grant i mean we've already talked about it yeah honestly no oh it's just these this is just done the eyes and crossing all the tees to be able to
submit the green communities granted street lights got it um like I said on Friday I went to Shelurn the lights looked awesome i'm sure you've seen the photos uh if you
haven't uh our town clerk Lori sent some images um that were posted online and um there's a stark difference on the town website um did she put it on Facebook i think she put it on one of the emails
let's see if I can find it here lucier here we go there it is oh yeah oh wow see how they shoot down there's no light going up yeah looks like a movie it does it does look like a movie yeah which is Shelurn's Way yeah it is
um okay so if you guys are okay with me signing this I'll make a motion to sign their certification of application for the dream communities grant second all in favor i I want to make sure I'm signing the right here
i would be the CEO correct yes says on the behalf of Is that just Conine or the committee up here yeah i just don't know that second part there if it needs to be Oh
yeah yeah yeah just to tell you go uh no items anticipated um not anticipated 40 hours in advance on to TA updates wow was that it well it was a long one because I got some updates from other departments this time so um there
you go yeah yeah it was great um nothing really in there that we haven't pretty much spoken about just so although you know if you if you want me to read No it's okay thank you um and just so you know with the grand updates
I change that every week it's like I update you and I like move two of them down to the bottom because they're on hold they're federal so whatever anyway okay great i will post online as usual awesome great thank you
comments or concerns i thought I did have one i was going to mention next week told you about You did what is wrong that's going to have to wait till I'm
sorry it's going to have to wait till the third no mail no announcements next meeting is going to be March 24th 4th march 24th uh happy St patrick's Day to our new officer Tim O'Brien
pretty fitting huh and I'll make a motion to adjurnn second all in favor i i thank you