yeah trying to Good evening good evening everyone we're going to go ahead and get get started i'd like to welcome you all to budget review day three and in order to get us started I'm going to ask the uh inter town manager to kick us off
absolutely thank you Mr chairman we will start today with the more convoluted of the options to vote on but I think it makes sense where we have fire police and DPW all here to start with capital outlay um there's a lot going on in that table so I'll walk through specifically
what we're discussing at the moment um if you scroll down the page schools um that's funded by a warrant article that will come up later on this month that's the this year it'll be a bus we'll talk about that on the 28th or 30th sewer and water again we'll talk about those during their operating budgets later on
in the evening um so what we're really talking about is the general fund capital outlay this is part of the operating budget but it's funded through free cash each year and this year we have 328,000 in public works tax supported again vehicles and heavy
equipment uh police has four cruisers at that 286 fire has two firerevention vehicles which will be electric vehicles partially offset by Dammer Electric and then recreation has
a Rob no recreation the mini track loader mini track loader is the recreation piece so those ones specifically are what we're talking about under this part of the budget
happy to answer questions in any order you'd like okay Mike we'll start on that end um no I'm I'm good i'm I'm good i'm good oh is this where
we would talk about replacing the fire engine too nope so that'll be a separate warrant article later on this month all right so this is more the routine churn vehicles anything larger like for example the flushing vacuum truck would be a separate warrant article a fire truck would be a separate warrant
article all right and I'll leave it at that except for I I noticed the sweeper pops up two or three times that that's got to be somewhere else too no that is here so we can talk about it here that's in three different budgets so it's water sewer and general fund but it probably makes the most sense to talk about it
here if that works for you does it whatever these want to do okay i'm fine you want to come back to sweeper yeah we can come back to sweeper all right all right um I saw the sweeper in three times also that's the only question I had we're going to go down to the end
and come back to sweeper how's that fine sweep back yeah all I got is sweeper head on back all right let's talk about sweeper sure stephen King our town engineer who will be presenting the public works um and water and sewer budgets this evening is happy to talk about the sweeper thank you um thank you
members of the finance committee uh Steve King town engineer uh DPW so uh the sweeper as you see it's split up in three different ways um we have it split up once in the tax supported for 100,000
in the water division for 100,000 and then also the sewer division for 100,000 and the reason for that is the uses that we have for the sweepers um one source is storm water sewer we're required under MS4 permit or
nifty's permit to perform street sweeping every year that brings it about uh excuse me over like 500 tons of sediment that we pick up every year on the tax supported side obviously you've probably
seen the sweeper out downtown um before doing any open houses or family festivals additional sweeping that's necessary before we do events pre and post for cleanup on the on the water side for when you
have water main breaks we're averaging over 16 to 20 water breaks i call it the fiscal winter year um after those breaks we usually have the street sweeper come in because they expose a lot of sediments to the surface those that's just a one time
pickup that's very heavy he heavy sediments that we have to pick up so the street sweepers usually go in there two to three times over the course of a day to make sure we clean up the street after the road is repaired we're also using the street sweep super for any of our water distribution
projects that we have closer to the paving side so once the water distribution projects are complete before we get into the paving phase we would do a general street sweeping cleanup and then before we do the actual paving on the street we also utilize our own sweeper um to pick up the uh loose
debris before we put down new mix on those streets albeit example Locust Street one of our main roads Hobart Street um we've done in the past uh we're going to be going down Windham Street at some point so we have very large streets a lot of different phases
um a lot of uses for the streets between the different divisions so ultimately during our decisions um over the winter time we thought it'd be best to separate out that use or the funding between the different divisions and that's why you see it in three
different spots so ultimately it's a $300 piece of $300,000 piece of equipment split up between the three different divisions how about this right wally any follow-up questions here on sweeper what are you going to do with the old one the old one
um this value so the value right now we've uh talked to a few people potentially trade it in we get 15 25K or potentially go to auction for another it we could get another $10,000 bonus in range of that so looking at probably 20
to 30k what's it cost to rehab that to rehab the existing the annual cost for what's it cost to rehab the existing street sweeper and keep it on for three to five more years well um it varian cost per year it depends on the what has to be replaced between the brushes but
the brushes get 89 to 90 hours out of them then those got to be replaced the bigger sweeper we're using gets 120 hours out of that the hydraulic hoses had to get replaced probably every couple years maybe less than that depending on the usage because street sweepers in general they only get about
48 years of average useful life we usually have ours programmed for a capital replacement in 10 years and we're coming up on 10 years we're replacing a 2017 or we bought in 2017 but it's a 2016 so it's coming up on that 10-year replacement
so you don't have a cost to to rehab it it's general maintenance right now it's like kind of that prime point cost analysis where do we want to take it for the next year it's it's probably we're at that point where we're at the 10 years it could go down ultimately in a
failure if we continue to use it or it could just be another year of just replacing hydraulic hoses but if I sent it out replaced all the hydraulic hoses you know spent $75,000 on it got it back and got five more years out of it would it be worth it
i mean that's I mean that that's your call i'm asking you i think at at this point based on our our useful life expectancy of the street sweeper to invest that much I think to get another 10 plus years out of it I only going to get five years out of it just doing that
general maintenance so that's why we're recommending it for a full replacement i don't think I asked for general maintenance i asked for overhaul which means all the hydraulic lines any of the pumps um you know I I understand it's a gamble um yeah and
money's tight but we we all in agreement here i mean I spent you know $75,000 as opposed to $300,000 i think we we obviously in the DPW budget yeah i think we understand that we we all energetic that we use a sweeper and we need a sweeper i I would agree with you 100%
but I'm I'm going let you guys go with this okay coming down so the total ticket cost across all the one so we we split it across basically it's cost account it's what's the total ticket 300,000 300
and this one's been in service for eight years yep i don't have any other questions can No questions can I Can I ask just because I'm I'm still a little confused in terms of the way this warrant is set up
that number 1.891 includes the it that includes the vacuum truck correct yeah the only thing the right now we're voting on the $843,000 okay but since the sweeper crosses the water and sewer budgets as well it's we're talking about it all at once for
Okay but the actual vote on this is the 840 yeah i'm trying to match it up with pages 99 and 100 i I think I have Yeah the delta is that the back truck is probably backed out in the capital plan right thank you Mr chair y I'm not seeing the sweeper up there but
I'm seeing it in my book right so uh but it's there's no enterprise funds in this at all this is just tax supported the vote is tax supported however one of the tax supported pieces is a sweeper which is 300 grand and is
being split 100 grand from tax 100 from the water operating budget 100 from the sewer operating budget all based all on uh earnings based on tax no a third of it you now you got me really it's a 300 So it's a 300,000 it's a 300
this cost What is this thing going to cost in total $300,000 yes okay 100,000 we're going to pay out of free cash for the tax side 100,000 will appear later on this evening in the water operating budget and 100,000 will appear right after that in the sewer operating budget okay all right good okay now you said
you you've used it 8 years uh yes we've had it since 2017 but it was a year old when you got it yeah so it's in its ninth year okay all right um we never did and this is just a clarifi cler
for some reason I must have gotten the wrong impression years ago that we used to rent out a sweeper back way back was that am I wrong or am I right out no we still because of the amount that we are required to street sweep we do sometimes call in an additional sweeper okay to
help out as well and you'll see that in the tax budget sweeping yes y Well that's good i'm glad I'm not losing an old That cost Yeah that cost has dramatically gone down um with the use of our own sweeper as well yeah okay but when that's when our existing sweeper is
out for mechanic repairs um and we need to use it we can call in that um additional rental to help us out well that leads me to another question that I didn't have so So when you when you have a situation where the the new one let's say breaks down
for some reason or another two years from now you you have to now you have to bring in a rental correct so let's say for $50 or $75,000 we renovated the one we're giving up now and just constantly use it as a backup and didn't have to rent when we need to rent i I think it's
tough to say that i I understand um one of the finance committee members regarding the the potential cost of a overhaul um but again that's the mechanical components also the structural body of it is that has to be evaluated as well and that could be another cost yeah when we
can figure out what the cost of the different pieces are mechanical components the actual steel body of it is going to still be under a lot of corrosion corrosion um with its use on the streets well I'm not opposed to voting for this i I'll be honest with you okay um but if it's if it's a
reasonable amount of money to restore to the present one to keep it going as a backup rather than having to go out and pay a rental fee every time you know we need an extra sweeper whether it's because one broke down or the work there's too much work i'd look I' I'd be
looking forward to maybe thinking that uh as a possibility um I don't know where you get the money but uh it may be more than 75,000 but uh it's it's not how much do we spend annually on renting is that the full line right
the renting versus the rehab as opposed to I'll pull it up for one second sweeping proposed this year is 15,000 so I guess my only count to that would be for the 15,000 for those extra sweepings you need to invest however much you need to keep it up and running lose the 20 to
30 grand on the trade in value i'm not sure that at that point it's worth it good point yeah okay all right thank you that's it arthur we missed you um just kind of a little bit of a followup on that so the the current
sweeper um has it has we have we had periods where it's been out of service over the past few years that's correct yeah has that out of service period grown during the eight or nine years that we've used it uh as it's become a little bit more difficult um to when we
do replacements um not for an extended amount of time i would say not in the month to two-month time frame but when it's out a couple weeks and we're getting into the heavy season depending of that because it's primarily used I would say spring summer and fall um it depends on when that hits we can time
something so we don't we're not going to use it specifically like in the winter time we could then you know schedule that repair and we don't really see a difference but if we're in the middle of the spring and summer or fall and our heavy cleaning periods and we need that street sweeper it's tough to say you
know how much long how do we want to do that replacement and how we want to time that out so just again just so I can get a feel for it um when we when we if assuming we buy the new one which I'm sure we will um and we we get that when will when will that actually go into
service when will we have that um so I'm talking with our mechanics that right now they're calling about 90 days okay from order so that would be late fall then when we have the new one in place do we anticipate that for a for a good period of time it won't i mean you never
know you never know but we won't be losing service time from it yeah i mean it's going to have it general and M like you know uh obviously replacing fluids sometimes hoses but again the we don't expect a new sweeper to have that yeah i'm just trying to get like over a 10
year when you when you're in year 1 versus year 10 um how much how much more time do we lose in year 10 versus year one that's kind of what I'm I'm trying to figure out i know you can't put a precise number on it but um is it is that part of the what you're factoring in as to why we it's time for a new one yeah I
was addressly less in years 1 to five than it is in years 5 to 10 okay all right thanks i'm still baffled by these two these two things so we have one line up there for
$843,000 for general fund funded by free cash and operating budget which I assume is also the $843,000 that's found on page 99 that is correct but then we go to the 328 the 286 the
195 the 334 all of which are in that 843 correct so why are we counting it twice on that sheet where are we counting it twice it says total capital 843 plus I'm doing it on
the fly so if I'm wrong don't judge me 843 I know it is but just I I understand that it just it doesn't Yeah again it's a confusing slide and we can look to clean it up but it's just showing you what the 843 is made up of the four the four numbers after general fund make up the general I know they I know they do
so we don't add those back in it's just the 843 yeah i you would normally have a a column that has all that stuff that adds up to the bottom for the total done okay how much you going to beat me up over this i did no it's obviously it's me no we can make it we can make it
clear i as long as I know i just want to make sure I know that the record outlay is 1.891 million it is what basically appears in this book and that that's justformational purposes that we have on the screen 328 286 and 93 code should be
inside yes exactly i agree that's right let the record show it should be inset it is not a calculation anyone else so I have two let me uh How are they so it's a 90-day turnaround so is it uh build from
scratch are they doing like a custom build like they do school buses they just take your order and then build it to suit uh no they have they have stock there is stock available they do have stock and then um I'll do a follow-up failure rate after re receipt i don't know if we haven't had one in a long
time and then warranty um two great questions i specifically warranty um I do not have off my head but I can follow that up but I think it's typically a threeyear two-year two to three year um but expect failure 15 grand you ask about failure rate as well
yes i just say that you know knowing when we purchase buses you know they're brand new off the lot and then 30 days in I got to send them back because something fell out cuz someone fell asleep on the line when they were building it evidently i've not So So I just I'm just curious i I think once we
get the piece of equipment our fleet our fleet crew definitely will go through it and make sure it's operating um make sure our our operator who would be using it as a street department is well familiar with it and checking it all out if there's anything wrong we obviously right away would send it back before we put it in use and we have a dedicated op
can I just We have a dedicated operator for this now we do yes and last one paul well you you asked a question about warranty so uh it's already out to bid and settled right no we just asked for for the quotes that's how we got the price we can't do
anything after till July 1st okay does it make for your patience all right so questions from the audience is it manufactured in the US oh uh it is an Elgen brand which I believe is manufactured in the US question we are yeah we are looking at
the climate as well as far as a lot of our vehicles let's not pick that scab anymore let me go let me go to the audience please any saying no hands all right a motion would be in order do
we make a motion on this now or on this particular The motion would be on the general fund capital outlay of 843,000 i'll move that we move uh to approve 843,000 for the capital outlay i second it moved and
seconded all those in favor i oppose i my eye as well all right we survived what's next next we'll spin all the way back to the beginning and this year we'll be starting with the police budget police
won the coin flip with fire this year so they'll lead us off uh 9.2% increase driven by salary and wages so we'll talk a little bit about this and again the chief can get into detail on the new additional officer but essentially what we've done the past few years and we've talked
about it in some of these hearings over the past few years is knowing that we weren't going to get to fully staffed we would authorize the chief to get to fully staffed if he could find the bodies knowing that he wouldn't we would cheat down the number by usually two patrol officers again just to maintain service and to balance the budget
knowing that if push came to shove and those materialized we would come to find the money through some fashion well the chief has done a yman's work on getting to fully staffed and we're pretty much close to fully staffed at this point so that means we have to fill in that vacancy factor we've been booking for
the past two years so that in addition to the new officer leads to the 9.2% increase and then operating while it's flat one thing to note is it also includes a staffing study which has been discussed um at several board meetings over the year um the staffing study will
be staffing and structure and that's a projected cost of I believe $9,500 and chief's happy to answer any questions okay I'm going to come back down to Wally um J can you walk me through a little bit so I know it sounds like I see like
what Rodney said we had the theoretical full headcount in the last couple years was 58 and a half and but we weren't we haven't really been operating on that until very recently uh so right now we currently have um one vacancy and we have one officer in the academy right
now so we're actually at the best point we've been in probably 3 to 5 years um the academy graduate will be graduating um in September and then we'll hopefully get a new list come June July this year we'll start working that that vacancy if the extra positions funded we'll do two
vacancies as of July 1st um what was the thought process with adding another uh officer on top of what we considered fully staffed so for fully staffed is 46 offices fully funded by the town of
Damas um there is a 47th that was hired that's funded by the Essex Tech 100% so that's 47 um back in 98 when I was hired was the first time they expanded I think was from up to 46 officers um then back in 2008 we went up to 48 officers um
within a year we laid off two offices bring us back down to that 46 mark uh so this goal is to get that 48th position back um the way I envision it would be a community impact officer uh someone who can deal with community issues that the patrol officers cannot pay enough
attention to because they're responding to call for services other responsibilities so they could domestic violence follow-ups mental health follow-ups um if there's parking issues in the square we can dedicate an officer that's not on patrol to addressing community issues in within the community
so that's the theory um most departments have a community impact unit of two to three four officers um I'd love to see us get there at some point but um I think one at least for now would help us um kind of with some of the responsibilities that we have in the community that we want to be able to
deal with and like are like are we talking about like kind of the new like the did this did the momentum for this extra position build after what happened in November so
for the past 3 to 5 years um well three years since I was been chief um I've talked to Tom about expanding our department we're we need to grow uh we've been the same since 1999 essentially um the problem was we had such a hard time funding filling our
positions the conversation was hey let's get to our fully staffed then we'll consider adding officers um you know the incident this past fall um led a limit to this push um you know I think we definitely need to grow i think the staffing study is a responsible way of
looking at our needs um and then once that staffing studying is done look at the recommendations and then create a plan of how to implement it um if you said to me today hire 10 people we would struggle to hire 10 people at once uh the candidates aren't out there it's it's very difficult to hire police officers right now so I think we need to
have a plan on you know we need to expand the department by this many people let's have a plan on how we're going to implement that and I think you know also have the new town manager on board with the conversation would be helpful as well okay i don't have any other questions
no questions well fully staffed doesn't mean that that's where you really want to be correct okay so um I appreciate that and and I can see that with today the way it is there seems to
be a use for well I I always hear people talk about having some patrolman patrol streets and walk down square but I don't we're not at that stage yet we can do it at at times but often times the times we want to do it at are busy times um sure yesterday afternoon we were we had we
had backlog of calls that we have officers to respond to so we were trying to catch up on calls so that takes away from the ability to actually spend more town time downtown or at the park so again I think a community impact officer would be free from the responding to calls and be able to concentrate on
community issues that we're facing well I'll end with this i have nothing but praise for the police and I and I starts from the top down and um you you mentioned some things here that you have to protect constitutional rights you have to collaborate and
partner with citizens and protect vulnerable populations and from what I see this department is doing every single one of those things and trying to do better and I I I really do appreciate what you do Chief thank you
first of all I agree with that um secondly just just because you mentioned that you'd said yesterday you had a backlog you were backed up you couldn't address everything as you would like to how often does that happen does that happen a lot or is that pretty
infrequent more and more uh depends time of the year now again it's it's getting nicer out our cost for service go up usually in the spring and summer obviously winter months are usually a little bit slower um you know we're seeing a very large increase in shopliftings at the mall um you know
mental health issues um so we're seeing a lot more calls that take more time sometimes a lot of accidents so you know certain times of the day just get busy you know um that that three that 2 to 6:00 is a busy time of the day for us uh so it's it's just imagine managing the
calls and um again I think additional staffing would help long long term so over the past few years have have the amount of calls have they noticeably gone up i think the time we spend on calls has gone up a lot more um you know we're
dealing with mental health calls a lot better than we used to 25 years ago uh which is more time we spend a lot more time with families uh working with clinicians bringing clinicians out to people's residents that all takes time um so it's not you know officers are spending more time on times on calls and
types of investigations getting longer there's they're more they're more um they're requiring additional search warrants or technical skills so it just takes longer to do certain things right now as well in addition to call volume have you had to do um additional training for for the
officers in the mental health area have what have you been doing in there because obviously that's becoming more of a problem sure so um every officer in DMS uh will attend a 40-hour uh crisis intervention training class so it's a 40-hour class that's specifically on
signs and symptoms of domestic of mental illness uh deescalation recognizing types of medications and illnesses so every officer attends that 40-hour class uh our three newest offices I think are scheduled to go in midMay to a class in Beverly so that's one of the things we have um we also have a Jill diversion
clinician who's in office 3 days a week uh so she's a clinician through Ley Health who is available to come out on calls with us respond with us to calls to help us facilitate um either um some followup with a person or uh placement
in a facility or institution or some type of area like that um on that note there uh the current state budget um they're dropping the staffing from $18 million to propose $3.6 $6 million roughly for that geo diversion program
which is grant funded so we are nervous about July 1st if that funding doesn't change at the state level whether or not we'll be able to maintain having a clinician 3 days a week in in the community probably it would be be better to have the clinician 5 days a week absolutely oh yeah so um just just a
just a kind of a general I know that it's not anything that we can do now but but how many office how many um how many what would your workforce look like if you had exactly what you needed to do what needs to be done how many more uh people would
you have that's a tough question that's why I think we want to bring up outside consultant and like we want to look at all different factors you know ask questions like if we went to body cameras what would that mean um they're great tools for law enforcement but there's a lot of time and
efing footage doing compliance so this study will hopefully look at all those issues and give us a better picture um you know we'd love to have a traffic division having officers who are dedicated to traffic enforcement right now our officers are assigned to do traffic enforcement during the shift but often times they set up and they get
called to another call with having a dedicated traffic unit um there's other administrative functions within the department that we could probably do better with if we had better staffing so it's hard to give an exact number sure um but more more yes more definitely more um no thanks i I and and again I
agree with how Paul ended i I think you know you're doing a a great job and and and with the resources that you have so hopefully you'll be able to continue to do that we appreciate that thanks Jamie do you know when was the last time do
you think we actually had a dedicated square officer that I mean 70s right Jimmy George was the last Yeah I mean my father was down there I was a little kid I can remember being brought down there I I mean I just it's it's always interesting when
people talk about that there was also 450 kids down there right at that time um that needed to be dealt with it was a very different world by far much worse frankly than we even want to begin to imagine what it's like down there now
under any circumstances but um Arthur Arthur covered a lot of the same thing that I would have wanted to cover which is the idea of if you did sort of have a have just the blank slate and the ability to do what you want to do from a from an operational standpoint how many
what would you need and I think that the bringing in the outside entity to be able to give you give us some direction in that would be worth will be worthwhile i mean obviously there were just substantial budgetary constraints as we've known for again that I was on the select board when we bumped it up by
two that was 25 27 years ago so it's been and the town has increased sizewise um in that period of time things have changed dramatically in terms of what you guys are expected to do it's a very different world from from what it was 25
years ago for sure you know again my father would be wouldn't recognize police work today by any stretch of the imagination so um you guys do a good job you've done a fantastic job I think as well and we're very fortunate to have you and and the people that we've got
below you and it's a good staff I think at this point so keep up the good work thank you so I have a a couple chief if you could just uh explain what pushes uh officers into overtime and how you are preparing for that because
that's um a larger number in this budget so clearly you're you're anticipating or preparing for um I believe it went up percentage-wise um we have certain um overtime requirements versus inservice training and that we try to budget in uh
the rest is pretty much historical data um you know and unfortunately we can't predict injuries um and other ideas other other items um at the last meeting I think we had six officers of long-term sickness we're down to one we have one left officer left on long-term illness
he'll be back hopefully May 1st um we still have one injured officer who will probably be out through the summertime uh we have one officer who's on military deployment i'm happy to report she is back in the US but she's still wrapping up some of her military obligation so hoping to bring her back in hopefully
by first second week of June so it's a lot of unpredictable um you know things like case load you know if you have a um a major incident a lot of overtime goes into you know investigations you know safety issues with that so it's kind of
hard to predict exactly but usually we use the circle data to look at what we've spent over the past few years and try to use that as our our guide and then the last one's clearly you've done a great job with recruitment and then uh you're still investing in that area you just talk a little bit about the plans
that you have um moving forward in the fiscal year yeah we've been very lucky uh we've got some really great candies over the past 3 four years now um it's a constant battle um you know the list when I came on there would be 60 70 80 names on that list now we get 15 16
names uh for the first time in my 28 years um one recruitment ago we actually had to go outside the damis list and we caught the civil service we have 10 more names to help us get candidates he says we'll give you 75 and I'm like we can't process 75 he goes trust us if we give
75 you might get three names out of it that's the problems with Doma so we're constantly trying to recruit um there are some new options of civil service we're exploring with the town and in uh HR where we can do like a hybrid appro approach where we can hire half of the number of employees we're looking for
through the traditional civil service structure and then other half we choose to hire them that might be an option for us looking in the future if we try to opt into that to kind of open up the ability to do some more recruitment okay and then my last
question is retention you know how we're doing and plans to you know keep doing well we are doing well um we kind of had a kind of a group leave about 5 years ago and you know some people want bigger departments some people wanted small departments um some people just wanted
to change uh we're pretty solid right now we have a consistent staff um we do try to track you know retirement age you know we have you know I'm actually in the group now who is probably in the next 3 to five six years of retirement after that we have a very young department uh we have um you know I'd
probably say you know almost half is you know under 15 years of service so we're going to have a very young department um so I think we're in good sh we're in good shape good questions from the audience motion to approve yes move the
budget is there one question i'm sorry was I do I'm sorry I didn't see you it's okay you have to Yes please get it to go up tell tell people who you are [Music] while she's going up is there anyone from the audience because I don't want to miss folks i didn't see the hand all
right thank you linda Flareity Precinct 6 um my question is with regard to the clinician that's three days a week is that a a state employee or a a departmental employee um so we have a contract with uh Lakey
Behavioral Health so they provide the clinician and the grant money pays for that person's salary um that grant money is also paid to send our officers to that 40hour CIT class so we use that i think last year it was $13,000 grant from DMH to help pay for clinician
services and training services you're concern you expressed a concern about that being able to be continued how is there an option if that money should dry up and in I wonder if you have a number for for that particular
role um for us to hire somebody to to replace that person um and how much would that cost so that we wouldn't lose that uh my estimate would be probably
between60 and $80,000 a year to fund that position i think right now we go through Lakey Behavioral Health which I think is helpful because um the supervision is through Ley the liability insurance is through Ley so I think contracting is is probably better
process versus trying to independently hire a clinician um but again you know state budget is still evolving mass chiefs is really pushing to fund that budget item fully we'll work talking to everyone we can talk to to try to get
that done because a lot of communities rely on that money for these services all right move the budget second moved in a second all those in favor say I i it's unanimous thank you Chief thank you
Chief next up we have the fire budget we have acting chief Jamie Shaner i am sure Chief Brian Barry is watching at home as he conileles we look forward to him rejoining us in the coming weeks
um but tonight we're talking about the fire budget salar wages is up 4.28% uh we talked about this over the past couple years specifically last year on the FY25 budget the three safer funded firefighters we had a three-year grant for a million dollars that grant
ended this February so we talked about a little bit during the FY25 budget where you'd have to absorb some of that cost and now in FY26 we fully absorb that cost uh to maintain those firefighters on staff um the increase is partially offset by a reduction in overtime um and
then operating expenses that's primarily driven by contractual obligations and an uptick in vehicle maintenance costs and we're happy to answer questions mike no good thank you Arthur uh just kind of same question I asked uh
uh chief uh about your staffing is your staffing where you need it to be at this point uh so like Rodney point out we this uh federal grant the safer grant we're able to get our our three positions uh filled that were vacant for quite a while and we're back to our traditional fully staff which we're happy to be at u moving ahead to the
future much like the police chief said a staffing study is probably on the radar um to evaluate the needs of the town with our department okay great thank you so the same question I asked the police you're you're at full staff but but same
yes we are we are fully staffed and again thanks to the the there's work to be done I guess is the business well I mean as we can all see that the town is growing and changing and and we should uh we should take a serious look at that in the future and staffing study is probably the way to go thank you can I
just ask and I should ask police also um do you have grant writing within your department where are the grants so I can speak to that we do um we do a lot of grant work so this past year we've I said the big one was we had a three-year federal grant that paid fully for three positions and benefits uh to the town at
no cost um but we also use we um annually we've gotten equipment grants from the state for uh a $19,000 grant we were just awarded another $9,000 grant from that same department where we buy a lot of equipment out of there's another emergency management grant where we get
six to10,000 where we're constantly uh upgrading our equipment through that and those are annual things we put in for we're also constantly looking out for um federal and state opportunities when we get to the warrant you'll see we applied for federal grant to hopefully try to cover the cost of the fire truck um so
we do do a lot of grant uh research and writing and attempts and we are successful quite a bit good thank you thanks are you are you guys coming back to talk about the fire truck we are that's uh for the warrant i shouldn't bother you with questions about that
tonight i look forward to your questions it's not really you it's the private equity dudes that own the companies that jacking up your question i think we're on the same page there ask questions i have no other questions i'm good i have no questions any from the
audience good evening bill Bates town meeting member precinct 4 and thank you to the fincom for your service to the town um my question is all other departments the unled gasoline is going down but the
fire department is up 16% i just don't know i'd like to understand that better sure thing uh so our fuel estimates are all done by the DPW based on um their uses and equations uh speak
operationally I can say that our three most of our vehicles are diesel our three vehicles that I can think of their gasoline are you know 3 years ago with the start of this grant we're able to add a second fire prevention officer they're the guys you see out doing all the code enforcements inspections uh
their workload has has they've caught up they've been able to catch up and increase as well as our incident commander that SUV you see that says um car 4 on it there that's gasoline and it every year they're out more calls are increasing it's probably just increased usage however with the passage of the
capital um the fire prevention will be transitioning into electric vehicles which will significantly reduce that cost the next year yes of course linda Flity precinct 6 i haven't changed in the past 5 minutes um you brought up
the um subject of EV um vehicles in the budget um my assumption would be there is significant training um for firefighters and I understand um EVs pose a unique challenge for firefighters um can you
speak to the training that our force has for EV fires thank you yeah I mean an emerging trend in society and with the fire service is uh electric vehicle fires and lithium ion issues not just vehicles but everything from small
bicycles and toys we have seen incidents here in Danvers um and so that the training there's plenty of training from the state fire academy there's um the state hazmat team has provided a bunch of training there's also private companies that they've done training we purchased more equipment to um specific equipment to deal with these issues in
particular uh we've had had some what I would call close call incidents in town and some minor issues that have been the training already showed that it's paid off and we've kept those incidents to really small incidents thank you yes uh Nova 7 member precinct one um this
isn't directed at the fire department exactly but with transition to electric vehicles do the departments pay the electric division or is that just sort of a wash does it just get provided by the electric division in terms of the
charging of the vehicles yeah they they are charged for the vehicles yes for the charging yeah okay so they so the fire department will have to pay the electric division exactly yeah okay okay no more questions from the audience motion please move the budget
second all those in favor i it's unanimous thank you so I'm going to uh direct to the town manager and see do we need a recess or is it computer ready to go it was uh if you don't mind a fiveminute recess this new presentation laptop that we debuted this week is
doing updates so address some grants that we do or say that again you want me to address some grants that we No it's okay i just I didn't know who wrote them which department or not yeah so that's good thank you all right we're going to take five minutes for technical uh updates
and then we'll be back here with uh public works enjoying the spinning thank you i did thank you all for that and we are back thank you i appreciate the patience next we'll go into public works we'll start with the public works tax supported budget town engineer Stephen King will
rejoin us uh salary and wages based on contractual obligations is up 4.23% uh slight increase in operating expenses uh you'll notice in the actual line item detail contract cleaning service is up significantly offset with
cuts elsewhere to again try to get to a a balanced budget the operating budget also includes like we talked about on Monday um moving pest control from the health department budget to the buildings in the public works budget where it's managed and then we also
include funding for uh potential flashing beacons that's under the DTAC line which uh we can talk about as well happy to answer any questions what's that great overc You want me to start on the other end
no I don't want him to start on this side arthur um okay uh stuff like patuminous concrete some of the other are you concerned moving into next year that we may end up because I think you're probably the one department that could
be impacted by um purchases yeah um we are obviously we are concerned about that but we have we're currently in existing contract um so we have a solid to three-year contract with a paving contractor so we can also
utilize that funding that we have on top of any additional um previous bids that we've done for mix so we go up per year i don't see a huge escalation in the cost in the next year or so that we wouldn't be able to absorb this in the budget okay and I guess
the somewhat the question of the hour i I my understanding is is that when we deal with with snow removal ice snow removal the winter that winter line item in the past we have basically gone back
5 years done the average of the 5 years previous and that's what we've gone forward with which my understanding is occasionally bites us in the butt and and may have bit us in the butt this year as well but um
I'm assuming we we're we're doing the same thing in this particular budget do we think that it might make some sense to not do that and to have that based on maybe a 10-year average or ju just a taking that amount and
looking at realistically what this last year was which I think would be much it wasn't terrible by any stretch i mean certainly wasn't the two years before but it was certainly wasn't but it was more significant than we've had in the past five years so that's why we see it a change but that's why we saw the uh
uptick over yeah uh this year i mean obviously we discussed that we would discuss that internally but we typically have looked at it in a 5year time frame and we've checked the outliers so if we've had a one year that may be really high maybe take that out but trying to keep it somewhat level um we don't
absorb want to go too high in the budget knowing that we could probably offset it with some other um factors within our our own budget so it's something we definitely look at we look I mean when we get the sheet and we look at everything we do go I always go back you know quite a significant amount of time
and kind of see the trend and then if we can see a trend line of like maybe catching or estimating what it may be in the next one to two years we could we definitely would have that discussion and see if maybe it makes sense to be more conservative than just going with the average or maybe go with the median
are we are we going to need to have a special town meeting before the annual town meeting to be able to transfer our money to deal with with stuff so that is already is in the warrant uh in the warrant articles under transfers and appropriation to balance the snow and ice budget this year but again to Steph's point we can look at you know at
some point we probably do need to get to a baseline number of a minimum um but again just as we don't want to overreact to a bad winter this year we didn't the year before dramatically cut the budget when we had a couple of mild winters to your point at some point we need to get to a baseline um and again we also
at some point probably want to think about at least minimum level funding because snow and ice at Davis historically I don't other than maybe if you did in 2015 I don't know but snow and ice is the only one you actually can deficit spend and raise on the recap the following year the only way you can do that is if you level fund those line
items year-over-year so again moving forward at a minimum probably uh you know in the coming years we want to at least get to a baseline and then at minimum level fund that that way if there was a catastrophic winter and we couldn't find the funding available we could theoretically raise it on next year's recap yeah okay good
um I don't want to sound like um Barry Burbank or somebody like that but uh remember him Barry B um but you know I mean it was it was the winter was not as was worse than the last few years but it wasn't wasn't like
a terrible we weren't deluge with snow so I mean that's going to happen at some point it's not as though it's never going to happen again and and we're not always going to get three years of of uh Palm Springs winters here either so um so I don't even know if you can really
what you can really do can't okay the last 5 years let's do that cuz next year could be totally different correct um so this has to be some I don't know it's a gamble um uh so the staffing is is is the same correct there's no no change in
staffing correct u numbers and the salary and wages really mostly um just just contract correct um what about um how's among that 66.7 staffing uh turnover in there is a lot of turnover is is it is it minimal turnover what
what what did it look like over the past year um we've actually been filling positions uh recently um so again we do have one or two that may be here for a year or two may get the licenses and move on to um another town or municipality but I think uh Rob and
everyone have done a great job of trying to attract new talent and bring more people in and help retain them and keep them on our team so I haven't seen I haven't personally seen a lot of turnover i've seen them and it's been great to have see the same faces every uh every day
all right great thank you um yeah I really I think this is is is a very positive budget i just I have a couple of questions going back to I think maybe it was Mr bates i'm looking at the utilities and they're you're projecting lower oil heating propane gas
heating and I'm sure somewhere in the budget gasoline um are we is this pie in the sky are we you know because one thing you can't to me as a as a public citizen you can never count on a gasoline price
you go up the center of town and two days later you come and it's either 20% up 20 point 20 cents up or 20 cents down um and even electricity where we're were supposedly paying less i just wonder you know where do you get the numbers from i
guess it's more more like I want to ask is it fiveyear studies or simply it's our utility bills averaging our 5year our 5year utility bills and then looking at the predicted therms based on what we're paying today and what's predicted for the future versions excuse me on the US energy information administration so
looking at both those numbers seeing where the inflation may come um and then going back and recalculating based on our 5year average what we may see okay that's that goes for gas heating propane oil heating and electricity yes all those
okay thank you i'm all set all right um I guess my question towards the janitorial services the increase towards that is there still a benefit in outsourcing that and not bringing the staff in seeing that increase in the contractual services the contract clean or contractual the
janitorial services at the schools says 2.4 increase driven in part by increases in contractual obligations and school building janitorial services what's driving the increase in the school janitorial services is it additional events is it
the exact number this is the contracting group we're talking about SJ services sj services so that is yes that is contractual um we do look at that both on a bid basis of what we go what we may go out and search for additional contractors or we use a state bid um
based on what we're seeing for numbers we are seeing a large increase um in services in general about 15% increase um as much as we would like to try and increase our own staff on the janitorial side for in internal we just don't have that capability to make uh to keep up with all the buildings and all the
cleaning so the staff does their best with they with what they have to work with um they do a phenomenal job but also it's very helpful to have that additional service consult consultants come in and help do the cleaning yeah they're great the and the staff is great and the additional services are great
too um and then we had we did see a shift in numbers at the elementary school level um when the school budget was here earlier in the week and we did see maybe Smith might go up and Thorp numbers might go down or a slight shift do you factor that in with the services with the janitorial staff to make sure
that as the numbers shift throughout the school that the staff shifts as well to support the Yeah so we would work directly with the principles um at each of the schools to make sure that we're maintaining those schools as as they want okay good thank you um and then my only other question is I see that
there's 20 streets paved how do residents know if their street is on a list to get paved and or how do they know to to request that their street needs to get paved if they live on a dead-end road that never gets driven but it's a mess how do they get a request in
for that uh they would simply just call DPW office and and let our our staff know that they want someone to come out and take a look at their street we typically go on a three-year we have a three-year paving program okay um we know those streets can be shifted or moved depending on the severity of them
um we're going to do a new drive-thru of all of our streets in the next year yep so that would create a new rating of all of our streets which gives us another indication of what we need to put as priority and what can be shifted down and what type of treatment that that street may need and if the street is half Middleton half Damvers how does
that get divided between the town uh we would do danders yeah okay okay we'd work with town Middleton um we have a great relationship with them if there was something that was necessary to partner with Okay they have another contract that they could use we
could probably coordinate a joint effort on that okay good to know okay thank you before you go to Ted can I just ask so every three years what does that mean every three years every street's going to get paved no no no no so we we try and look ahead three years so we try and
create a list of streets within the next three years that we want to pave um and then that's kind of our our moving list to set in for our contractual um bids that we put out um to help us get a main a range of our numbers based on what we might get for chapter 90 and what we want to put in our pavement management
article so it could it the streets will shift um per se like if we have say 25 to 30 streets that are on our list that need a priority mill and overlay they'll be on a three-year program it may be in 25 maybe 26 and maybe in 27 and all a
sudden another street may pop in that we had in 28 may get moved up all of a sudden because of a bad winter into year 25 so it's just a big range of streets that we use within a three-year uh period to make sure we're tracking those and if people have a question we can say yes that street's on our list or that street's not on our list okay all right
yeah mine I think is on a 45 year paving schedule but that's okay must be a 99 it's a very small It's a very small street can I Can I just So we no longer I think we used to always have a We had a a pretty regular pavement plan in which basically at year three we
would do the the crack ceiling at year five we would do the top whatever they called it and then every like seven years each street was expected to do the full repavement we no longer are on that type of a schedule for each street in
town i think based on the the methods that we've done and the work that we've done it's probably pushed out to like a 5year um time frame before we go back and crack those streets um then you're looking at that 5 to 15 year time frame maybe just doing a surface overlay or um a seal type
treatment and then we get into 15 plus years that's when we get into the potential of just a milling overlay that's taking an inch and a half to two inches off the road putting a new surface down anything beyond that if it if it's a heavily traveled roadway we then may get into reclamation and re repaving and regrading a street thank
you Aaron no he answered it thank you all right thank you anybody else before I go this way sorry Ted okay we got one um how How are we doing overall in the budget this year relative to the what the the
the I guess actual fiscal year 25 versus what's in here as the the budget for this year um obviously you know about the snow but other than that we're tracking to be right on budget and how much how much is the snow overage that's two
it's $440,000 over 280 some of that so you'll see in the town meeting warrant uh request to transfer funds some of that overage they'll just eat through some salary and wages surplus so the salary wages overtime for
snow and ice we can eat but the additional cost in the operating budget they'll be transfer recommended and what percent of the snow and ice budget is that the overage like how much do we overshoot that
reappropriated uh 630,25 [Music] that seems like an awful lot to overshoot i know the last two years were we turned back money the last two years on some No I know but but and but the the baseline budget was an average of
the last five like I think if you called a plow a plow guy a private plow guy and asked him how this winter was he wouldn't tell you it was great he would tell you it was like ah I better I was better yeah he would tell you it was it was better than the last two but those I would if I had another winter like that
I'd retire from the plow business do you want to just either Stephen or Rob just will walk through the number of incidents and etc compared to the last two or three years yeah so uh in this year alone we had uh we call them 13 events but a lot of them were back to
like kind of backtoback days so those carried over a lot from the overtime hours and the amount of plows and service people we need out to clear the streets so if you may say we like the way we listed out there's 13 events but we had a 13 call a b and c that means we got we went from a a Thursday night to a
w to a Friday day into a Friday night where people are working multiple overtime shift to keep up with the snow and I think the bas the way they fell with snow and ice again we're all sanding and salting as well too you got to count those events um that starts to add up very quickly in our what we're
using for rental equipment what we're using for um sanding salting um materials and then our staff what what um what's going on in the the regular overtime assumption for next year it
looks like it's going up by 17% regular over time is going up 17% that's one part of the contractual obligations so as as their salaries do increase you will see increase in over times uh we also have schedules for specific town events um any network and
unscheduled callins so each department's required to put in a list of their their typical yearly call-ins predicted amount of unscheduled call-ins and then um excuse me and then any of our potential network that we know we're going to do
in advance so if we want to just get a little more granular Stephen not to put you on the spot but if you want to talk about so for example the street division we're showing a 31% increase it looks like that's just mostly chasing the actual we've been under budgeting that in prior
years um y uh same thing with school buildings um similar situation with Yeah well while he's going where are we with our contract with the public works where are we with collective bargaining agreements they're all settled yeah for how long this is the first year of
three-year contracts okay fy20 what did they What did they get just to um So most of the polar I would say is unit A would be and that's they got a 3% 3% 3% plus obviously if they're you know as we said a lot of new staff are bringing on so they'll be entitled to step increases
as well do they get do they get stubborn grade as well on so you Mr chair to answer the question regarding the overtime um the way it's calculate calculated out for FY26 on the schedule part we have um obviously
street sweeping uh sanitary pickup overnight hours traffic painting which is happens to be overnight sometimes based on we can do it um we do have miscellaneous calls that we've tracked um that's an exorbitant amount that's a a good amount of hours um for our crew
and staff um snow and ice overtime is a obviously has it own items so we know obviously when they have to go over snow and ice town events we have zero waste day household household hazards day um family festival open houses and truck days so we kind of list out the events
we know we're going to do put hours to those we leave an item open for miscellaneous which has actually gone down over the past two years what we've estimated on um and then we have those no operating procedures that we just do at night because it's easy it's more beneficial for the crews to be working
at night than during the day um is is this where I'm supposed to ask about the warrant articles the questions I had we'd probably talk them about them during the grounds articles but they are prepared to answer your questions now if you'd like uh the grounds articles are
when that's uh either the 28th or the 30th the 30th yeah but I'm actually going to be at a coaching a game on the 30th so um basically my question is some of the money that was appropriated for Warner articles last year those projects
weren't completed and why is that specifically the the two softball projects so drainage for a raw softball field yep and I think there was a sprinkler redoing the sprinkler fields
yep tiggies field um we have that scheduled for uh the irrigation permit we have that scheduled for this summer uh the drainage rollins which we actually had to do a little bit of a design on so I have my staff working on that over the winter time um we have that final design we're just getting some costs together and we're
proposing to probably do that during the middle of the week before games well like before the games start so it'll be uh once we get the materials in once we start the project we could do it this spring or this summer whichever works for the uh the program um we could do
our day day work excavate clean up the site make sure it's safe for games and then come back the next day and finish some of the work we're expecting probably one to two weeks worth of work for that so it'll be it'll be one to two weeks working on the field every day
yeah but we uh the proposed plan especially for the drainage is on the outside so we're going to it's we're supposed to we're going to capture all the water that's coming into the dugout area take that and drain it out towards um and infiltrate into the ground along the outside perimeter of the fence um on
Rollins so we're not going to be actually in the field we're going to be outside the field right um yeah because like we're we're at the brink of the season and there's a lot of volunteer hours that go into removing that water and I also I
don't know that like Yeah you guys my wife runs DGS so like I'm aware of the effort that goes into this there's a lot of private fundraising that goes into that i think they've probably raised more private
capital to put into projects for the town than any other league in the in the past several years the batting cage there you can look through the warrant articles there is no warrant article for the softball cage that was privately funded every dollar of it they put that money down there they've raised money to
do improvements to the fields after this drainage is done it's waiting to be deployed i think the town needs to be more respectful of people that are looking to essentially donate money to public to p for public use and respond
in a timely manner when money gets appropriated yeah I 100% agree i am myself in the softball world and I take care of my fields in my own town so I I definitely know what it Okay what it takes so that is uh that is on our list and that's one of our programs
absolutely i have I have no other questions bring us up so you know I'm I'm having a hard time finding a building maintenance account do you have a building maintenance account in here or is it just scattered through HVAC
and you know roof or I mean I just So I mean building maintenance can be part of a plumbing maintenance which is looking at the book 524070 he maintenance electrical maintenance i I saw that we don't have a building maintenance account
everything's just kind of it's spread out between the different I guess call it mechanical or plumbing components within each building not like a that's not like a general fund of saying like this we have one building maintenance fund that we pull all of our work out of for fixing
elevators or red power obviously the elevators and the individual stuff but you know I have I have a building maintenance and department and as much as they do you would think that you know there'd be something here for uh supplies or
woodwork or doors or So we do Yeah we have divisions so we we present the budget always as a rollup but that rollup's broken out into a town buildings division a school buildings division with their own budgets right so they will have uh we call them
glass lamps paint photocopy supplies lumber hardware that's all items that they would use for any building needs right okay and I have uh it's no equipment it's no removal
equipment what are we getting for that for $220,000 this year as opposed to anything that would come through as a capital expense i believe that's the contractors right snow equipment is rental contractors that we use for our snowplow operations
equipment i mean should that be under contractors and not equipment it's it's both it's both their personnel and their equipment that's good charge under that line yeah and then uh you know I guess I going to bring want to bring up our
uh you know trash curbside pickup um cost um and planning ahead more than anything i mean I understand what's in the budget and what year contract are we
in um I'm trying to look forward more than the budget right now okay um you want to talk about our contract just a second tell them where we are how many years are left in it where we're going to be need to plan to uh to go financially
with this um we're we're the contract goes out to 2028 I believe um so um we're into it for our second year well it's our fiscal year but it's our second year with the contract um so at some point we're going to have to yes start renegotiation with
um with our hauler that we're currently using in the next year or two and then we're going to have to make sure that we're planning well in advance for any changes in that contract cpi right now presently the rate is C
goes up by CPI every year yeah 4% that's what we we estimate on a 4% basis so okay so we're a little concerned but is it is it CPI yes so if CPI is two and a half it's going to be two and a half if it's six it's six okay
and where are we with our uh with Reworld and our facility contract uh I believe that that was negotiated 2020 to 2028 as well so was it go some different now it's reol was there any
change in contract with change in the name no no I'm good just just quickly to go back to anything from anyone else okay thank you the uh ju just to go back
to the to the contract cleaning exactly is that only for the schools or is that for all of our buildings that's for all of our buildings okay i mean I just at this point right now I look at I look at the fact that the entirety of your salaries and wages
for tax supported at this point is about um about full-time about $4 million when our contract cleaning being almost 25% of that number just to go back to I think the thought process do we get to a
point where we need to bring that in house and it's just that's a 17% increase on a on a I mean this been a 35% increase over the last four years i mean I know we've done in prior years costbenefit analysis sure it warrants another costbenefit analysis but again I
think a the cost to pay the staff b can we actually hire the staff and c what's the long-term liability of pension and post-employment benefits so again not to say that that doesn't shake out and say it makes sense but there's a lot of factors that will go into that costbenefit analysis yeah i is it also a
situation unfortunately like we're finding with with some of the other contracts that we have to go out to bus services being the most probably substantial that there is just no competition for that and so we are basically at the will of of the one or
two providers probably both who end up working for the same company is that just where we're at at this point and there's no real competition to be able to get a better contract i mean again like we do use the state state bid list um so there are a few vendors on there um but again they also have employees
that they have contracts with so it's it really depends on how they negotiate those contracts and then how that price gets reflected onto different towns and entities that use those services um I don't know if that answered your question or not but No no it does i mean I I I just this this goes in back to a
what we dealt with last night which is when we start seeing 12 17% increases annually we can't afford it just it just it's and at some point we're going to have to change our mindset we're going to have to think outside the box and it's going to require us everybody has
these every community has these services you know this is an area where Beverly Salem Peabody you know do you want to team with a with bigger communities do you want to team with smaller communities but at some point we we need to see if that that we can't negotiate
better deals by by regionalization of these types of services the consortium type talking about Jan take the state contract i would just mention one of the things we've done is you know try to do RFPs we always fall back on the state contract but doing an
RFP just to see if we can get a better rate based on our specific needs yeah they they're telling me that we did that and it end up being that the state contract was enterprise good thank you committee's good anyone from the audience paul yeah i um
I think Mike brings up an interesting point but I I didn't see the number Mike to be honest with you when you're talking about salary and wages i think you did a top top the actual top the 4.5 million that we pay how was
that right here oh I see it okay well I just wanted to clarify that i got that one but we're still we're with the public for three more years right yes correct and and they have an automatic 2 and a
half% potential increase or is that flexible or is that just going to is is that it um well we are in contract with them so that's based on CPI index we're that's how we average what it's going to be so
explain the C I understand I think I understand what you're saying but there's no flexibility there is consumer price index so we're locked so if the if the consumer price index as measured by the Fed goes up three and a half% that's what the rate goes up by and if it goes
up by 1% that's what the rate goes up okay thank you no I'm not done yet thanks Ted oh um but but Republic Okay i look here and they're handling refuge
collection correct we're down at uh uh 52910 yep refuge yep refuge they handle refuge collection refuge disposal is that separate those are two separate items same
company same uh no jrm does recycling refuge collections jrm refuge disposals is reroll hazardous waste removal that's that's also a separate company yeah and how about yard waste removal another separate company yep yard waste
is by Republic that's by Republic though not by the same trash and contract different different contract no okay no same in the same contract trash collection and yard waste is the same contract of Republic okay republic does recycling as
well and recycling okay thank you that's it no excuse me um I just want to say this is an amazing budget 2.4% increase with with what they're doing is just outstanding and and I see what they're
doing with they're trimming trees on Lebo Drive so that it's not interfering with the wires um they're doing it all over um the water breaks they've had and they've been out you know 2 3 in the morning freezing cold snow plowing is always the best around so I mean it's
it's this our public works in the morning really freezing cold snow is always the best around real drastic changes like heating repairs 41% hv that's 41% up but HVA maintenance
is down 79% um the contract cleaning it as Mike said it's actually 44% over the last four years that's gone up $400,000 so um and then the last one is
irate irerration is down 57% so can somebody help me with those big swings please yeah so we touched on the contract cleaning already but Stephen do you want to explain sort of how we've tried to true up better that number with the HVAC and heating yeah HVAC and
heating um this is my first go around so I had a couple questions myself and I think we were able to figure it out um so the heating part of it let me get to that heating maintenance is is used for repairs above and beyond our standard cleaning of filter filter changes and
maintenance um we also have an annual contract which is HVAC maintenance that's contractual obligations to our contractor to come in and just do our everyday check-ins with all of our school buildings town buildings treatment plant um ancillary DPW
building any building in this in the town so we have one set of the item HVAC maintenance which is used for just our contractual obligations for the contractor to come in and do their their maintenance on a daily basis and then we have heating maintenance which is
actually the item used for the repairs of those anything they find during their day-to-day operations so and Bill just to answer your question the big swing is because historically we've been using them interchangeably and this is our effort to properly account for this is the contract line item this is the
extraordinary repair line item so when you see the swings and percentages if you add them together the track year-over-year combined is relatively similar what we're doing is making sure that moving forward we're better costing we're best better cost accounting on
those items okay and the irriation aation yes you saw that that's down um that's aation of grounds for allic fields we actually are proposing at the 30 on 30th at the Warren articles um to supplement that with a a bigger type
capital program for aeration for all of our fields so we're covering just what we need to be able to do to get our fields going in the upcoming fiscal year and then we'll have a capital program as well for aeration next year as well thank you
nova yeah nova Sam how many you remember precinct one um the I noticed that uh the fertilization went up 24% which is like $10,000 is that just for the price of fertilization or are we using more
that is the price um for a liquid and granular cost per acre so that's gone up over the past year yep i just wanted to make sure we weren't using more fertilization and um with your new line item with pest
control this is just sort of a question as to what kind of pest control do you use i'm hoping that um we can get away from using uh rodenticides in town on municipal buildings i know it's becoming a bigger thing throughout the state um
they're really terrible for our wildlife so there are other options and I'm hoping that we look into those y bill town precinct one i know the town is going to review all of the streets
and put them in priority for which is going to be first which is going to be last to be looked at and refurbished and you'll be notifying the residents on a street that we're going to be working on your street
so you need to make provisions for what happens if the residents on the street get notified who do they call and say "Why are you doing my street you should be doing that one i don't care how you
decide which is which for my street doesn't need to be retouched that one does." How do How do people in town make someone do they can call the town manager's offices the minute they like that they don't want to pave their street that'd be great well you
understand the difference in in some of them i none of us want to pay more in taxes we'd like to see our money used but we as individuals are used properly or conscientiously
when someone says to me "We're going to do this because it's in our schedule to do now." And someone says "Now you should have done it 3 months ago why don't you wait till next year to do it?" So we call you and bother you
stephen you want to give a sort of what goes beyond just the neighbors on the street what goes into deciding to pick a street to be paved if if Bill doesn't want his street send him to my street what about the other uh the first question I think yeah I would defer to town manager if you don't want your
street paved um but other than that we would typically based on a if we doing a utility repair or um rehabilitation project that would be on the list for the streets um obviously if we had a bad winter and we see a lot of potholes and trenches that's also another trigger for
us going to a street and potentially providing some repairs um but I think we've tried at this point we're we've kind of labeled out where we're going to be in the next 5 to 10 years with utility work and then we've also going to based on our drive driving of the all the streets with our consultant and
giving that roads road index um condition score helps us evaluate what streets we're going to be going to so if we're going to your street to pave it it's time we It's time for repave build one more that's two
oh come on did he tell you that too one yes first one was I got my instructions come on i'm I'm not arguing with him but seems to me a few years ago my street was repaved and I was told at the time
the only reason it was repaid was they're going to be coming through to cut some of the trees and branches down and I looked at my street even with the fuel company trucks going up and down here it wasn't that bad around the
corner there's potholes or whatever i'm thinking to myself why is that particular street being done now when there are others who need other streets who need more attention and we'll call you that was my concern duly noted in the
next two weeks we'd like to see our money spent efficiently mhm yes we would all right Linda um I gather that the list of 20 or so streets is a fairly
stable list over time and that the the number of changes where you would might prioritize another street is minimal um the town does a great job on its website um just so people like Mr brad Street
can get some advanced notice is it possible that the DPW could put on the website the list of the streets so that instead of you had mentioned just call if you wonder if your street um is on the list is it possible to just put it out there and say that these are the
next streets to come up in the three-year plan so that people can take a look at it um and as far as my street is concerned if if it's ever been paved in the 32 years I've been there I don't I I I don't remember it so and it
doesn't need it it's okay here we go yes um so one thing that we've we've worked on and we'll probably push public facing side will be uh interactive with GIS map of the history so that if you were wondering what your street when
were your when was your street paved you'd be able to click on that we'd also have a another part of that where it tells you if your street was public or private like so if you see my street is not paved you click on the next arrow says is this public or private street and that could probably give you another indication um tying in the road score
potentially um is also something we want to make sure it's public facing so people can see it the next step would be able to get a map of showing where we're going to go based on certain criteria so people understand that as well um but we obviously want to look at um the whole picture accessibility routes um within
the town timing with with large infrastructure projects is kind of the two big keys that we use to um pick our streets okay yes [Music] thank you uh Amy Butler town meeting member precinct one i'm actually going
to switch topics i I I'm a little confused about this contract cleaning um it is a huge increase but you mentioned something about the state um list so do we have to use certain companies that
are approved by the state or can we use anybody we want we can do an obviously they have to be a company that's capable of doing the work but we have done RFPs that anyone who's the state bid is basically the state goes out to bid for you and locks in pricing with different vendors generally speaking they're the
most advantageous price so that gives us the ability to hire right off that state list it saves time and effort on our part and we know we're getting a fair price if we're not sure that's the best price we're also free to do an RFP or request for a proposal in which any companies feel free to bid and if they can do the work and it's at the correct
price we can award it to them so okay all right and then you mentioned something about bringing in house and you said about you know salaries and then maybe pensions and retirement and all that stuff um is there anything that precludes the
town from using 1099 contractors that's what we do currently for contract so like individuals instead of hiring them as an employee or hiring a company but maybe hiring individuals as a 1099 contractor for cleaning that that might
actually be um cheaper it's just a just a thought i believe that would run a foul of collective bargaining yeah just absolutely thank you any more questions move the question second all
those in favor i all right that's a wrap what's next we have the sewer enterprise budget um slight increase to salary wages and operating expenses uh slight decrease to transfers
so that was we've talked about in prior years the electric division funded some water uh meters a joint project between water sewer and electric over the past few years sewer and water have been paying back electric that that includes
an FY26 so it's a lower amount there uh debt you see some declining debt service sewer and water both when we borrow for them again because we're not limited by Prop 2 and a half if we can properly stagger the debt we're able to do declining debt which obviously saves us on interest in the long term and also
leads to results like this where we have some debt falling off capital outlay is the sweeper that we talked about earlier and then the bulk of the operating budget is really our assessment from uh South Sewage District it's an increase
of 2.77% on the budget level in reality the increase is higher we had a conservative number last year so the delta is 2.77 but Stephen can give you some information on what the actual assessment increase is year-over-year do you have that number
so uh going into this previous year we're going to see um almost a 7% increase and that's due to two major projects that just occurred at the facility um RUM was a primary clarifier restoration project um that's roughly a
$20 million project that's just starting its debt payment now so we're responsible for about 17.5 to 18% of that project um we also started paying debt back on our siphon rehab project that we did a few years ago um that was
lining the siphons that go underneath the Porter River from um from River Street and McDool A over to the Dodia pumping station um that SCSD owns so those are two large main factors that are um causing our Danvers assessment to
go up in this next next year ready for the question on the super side no questions just looks like chemicals are up significantly 650% are we introducing new chemicals or No so that's on the water treatment side
okay those are our typical chemicals that we purchase no Stephen i think she's on the sewer budget so that single line item it's going from 1,000 to 7500 it's up 650% yeah yes those those chemicals are not
chemicals that we that those are chemicals that we have used um we use them typically on sanitary sewer overflow events which is when we have sewage coming up out of the uh the manholes it helps destabilize any of the the waste that goes onto the street or
potentially into the catch basins um so we use that mechanical to help lessen that concentration before it gets into our storm water system okay um I think that was it that was it
okay Paul i'm all set thanks i'm all set also so this is the part of the meeting where I I fade back into the 80s and tell you an old story and the uh the main one is is that when I was in town meeting I always had to sit next to Vern Russell
and if the people from the water department made the mistake to not refer to the water treatment plant as the Vernon C Russell water treatment plant the only time Vern his it was the son young Vern he was like 90 but he would
get up is to correct everybody to make sure that they called it the Vernon C russell water treatment plant so I feel as though if I don't say that to you right now I will be visited by him in my sleep i do not want to be visited by Vern Russell in my sleep so please call
it the Vernon C russell water treatment plant that's two minutes we can't get back we're good there my name question from the audience one question no no and so yes Amy
looks like it amy Butler tom you me precinct one um I just noticed that um traffic control uh went down by 44% what what exactly is that traffic control is for our police details that we call
in for Yep we're good and so this is for sewer enterprise and there's another slide for water enterprise coming up next so a motion for sewer enterprise would be in order move the budget for a second second all those in favor i I All
right water let's go to water and next we have the water budget uh salary wages increased related to contractual obligations as well as an uptick in overtime um operating expenses sludge removal and chemicals which we're
happy to take questions on then the debt increase um again we authorized uh $9 million if you remember last year but specifically going out uh for borrowing purposes $3.7 million in debt that had been authorized was issued in the past year so that'll begin to hit our debt
budget uh in FY26 capital outlay again is the 100,000 for the sweeper and the 15,000 piece is blade plot blade yes yes yep we're happy to
answer questions on the water enterprise budget no thank you all right then i'm all set all set all right um no I'm all set thank you we're good we're good okay could you just Let me
just look at this line explain the water distribution system 924 that 153,000 if you could what is 52
it's 592089 592089 page 55 for us so that that would be the new debt that we talked about so that was yeah some water distribution repairs thank you questions from the audience nova
nova Sam at 810 we remember precinct one um I know that over the past few years water has been a contentious issue with where are we going to get more and what have you um is there any thought to starting to put aside money for whatever it is that we're going to have to do
whether it's dealing with PAS or new storage or anything like that uh sure be happy to answer that question so um recently we've been uh we've been participating in the Northshore Task Force which is a resiliency group um
based on the surrounding communities and Senator Bruce's office kind of leading the charge on looking at alternatives for additional water supplies within the region um it's ongoing conversations there are a few studies going on right now along with what some internal work that we're looking at um reaching out to
our partners and neighbors in PBDA in Salem Beverly um but it's an ongoing discussion there's no we don't have the actual numbers yet but we are starting to talk about the plans of what it may look like to have some type of regional supply or better resilient our own supplies here in DRS
how are we uh positioned today i know in some some communities last week they went into uh drought conditions which I thought was quite interesting this early in the season how are we positioned no we we've been in a severe drought um this whole winter um we didn't have the
same amount of rain that we typically have uh going into the fall and into the winter now the recent snow melt that we had from the snowstorms in March that melt and the recent weed storms that we just occurred over every other day now it seems like um we're gaining level in our reservoir and that's been very
helpful and impactful so we're gaining about a I say a foot foot and a half every month and we're slowly climbing up to where we're going to be in a a moderate stage but okay um it's still obviously weather dependent and we're still drawing plenty of water over from our um auxiliary sources in Middleton to
our palm okay Paul I think it was about three or four years ago I mentioned the word desalinization has there been any chatter with that with your group uh Beverly PB there there has been discussion a little bit there hasn't been a deep dive into
it yet um obviously this very expensive I understand that but there it's going on around the world right now whether we know it or not or we care it is yeah there are there are plants operating and available um I think plants out in California if I'm not mistaken yeah I
know some on the islands as well yeah yeah it's there tides are going up they're not going down okay bill just a quick one on banking services
it's up one year down up down this year it's up 12 grand how come going to go down here [Music] um Mr chair banking charges are up 12 grand uh that's a combination of a few different things um we charge for funds
that's bank charges deposits for funds taken in the office uh credit card machine payments uh invoice cloud online transaction payments were actually been up 29% this year so that's a an additional making fee and then also uh company payment tech which we use which
is our credit card transition processing that fee went up 6% and Jelica from our business division can easily answer any of those other questions you good Bill hi Angelica um the business manager i
just wanted to clarify that we have seen an increase in customers paying online the fee didn't go up 29% for InvoiceCloud we're just seeing more and more of the rate payers choosing to pay online and the utilities absorb the fee
for that we don't charge it to the um customer yes sir we want to deduct this from uh next week i'm just following instructions you you you you know very well keep a tally everyone operates on a deficit
billy precinct one i forgot what my question was oh still counts you changed it oh god now you know now you know how I feel Bill oh no no there we go now we're too over
when it comes to uh water usage uh is there ever a thought or is it out of the question for Damas to get another reservoir i know we can't add water capacity in Middleton because we can't is there another
thought or any thought about another Did you were in town when we tried that you know the whole story we went there literally believing we were going that the Army Corps of Engineers was giving us our final approval and when we showed up for what we thought was going to be
the dedication of it they said "You can't basically flood a swamp." And so it's not happening that I do remember about that middle there's is there another spot that we
can collect somebody's land and put a a big hole and save some water so we don't have that I know it's very simplistic but is there a possibility of another reservoir of whatever size wherever
I'm going to we're working on sale gets water out of the out of the reservoir in Damas can't we have that kind of a possibility We'll take a piece of land and I don't know win them or whatever build another
reservoir so we could have what we think we need for a reasonable supply um sorry no I mean I I think these are these are all good questions and they're definitely thoughtprovoking with you know water supply it's a topic everyone
talks about um obviously the Putinhamville reservoir is owned by the Salem Beverly Water Supply i know that's one of their key assets and I don't believe that they would give that up um they also have own Winnham Lake as well so they transfer from Putinhamville over to Winnham Lake um mostly over during
the winter time so they use that source they also have another piece of land that was already preserved or purchased through them um decades ago which they're potentially looking at building a reservoir but for us I mean obviously that cost somewhere in town to purchase
the amount of land for the amount of water we think we need um would be a huge expense um we've we've looked at alternatives to potentially raising Middleton Pond Reservoir we've seen what we potentially get out of that but again we also have wells as well let's not say it twice but we also have wells um which
are another primary source that we should be using and um looking to more invest in those sources as well so I think right now based on what we predicted as far as our population growth and our water usage um I think we're stable enough right now as far as what we can handle for our growth i'm
not sure if we really need to I think we need to think about it but I'm not sure if in the next 10 years we need to start making investments in purchasing land um for that aspect my leg okay over since we're on the topic I just wanted
to add um MWR is that something that we would is that something we choose to join or do we get pulled in no I think think absolutely that would be a town town vote to connect to any source of MW
okay that's a topic one more we're not going to get into MW bill Clark always said we don't have a water problem we have a storage problem when you talk about the um wells is can
we build things to store water yeah he was uh he was absolutely right we there's plenty of water that falls in into the basin it's a point of trying to capture that water um so we are limited on on our structures to try and capture as much as we can um like I said we're
constantly pumping over for Emerson Brook that's a huge spot that has a a huge amount of water like 700 million gallons that we can transfer over um but sometimes our pumps can't keep up fast enough um so that's something that we're trying to look into potential uh capital project that we don't lose water over
the dam that we're capturing every drop and putting it into our reservoir when we need it um storage of that capacity I mean we have over 9 million gallons of storage right now but what we're talking about to your estimate I think would be somewhere in the 100 million gallons of storage somewhere for for resiliency and
that's a large piece of land all right in structure move the budget got a great education move the budget in a second second all those in favor i approved thank you
last we'll talk about electric just to clarify you won't vote on the electric budget there will be an electric warrant article that we'll talk about on the 28th but here to talk about the budget in detail is Clint Allen our electric utility director percentage of change yeah on this one
thank you Rodney good evening [Music] all right so to run over the basic calendar year 2025 electric budget um just to clarify that is calendar year 25 we operate a
little bit differently than the town calendar year basis uh just to give the high level we are projecting to come in about $4 million less than we had budgeted for calendar year 2024 uh primarily um if not exclusively
that's due to our purchase power expenses um really our operations and maintenance are pretty much level funded from where we were at in 24 uh we're maintaining progress in some of our large capital projects the Northland substation over by the Liberty Tree Mall
um a lot of reconducting work you've probably noticed to rebuild and harden the lines that are going to be coming out of that substation uh but to dig into the power supply aspect of that a little bit and we've already kind of this has been a great thank you Mr king been a great ground uh laid some good
groundwork for the last two winters talking about snow and ice uh they were very mild so when we go into our power supply budgeting we take a look at a three-year rolling historic average um we always budget very conservatively so
we take a look at what's our maximum transmission bill going to look like what's our maximum capacity bill going to look like what's our maximum wholesale market exposure going to look like we set our budget to accommodate all of those expected costs
over 23 and 24 especially in January and February we had budgeted for a more typical I guess you could say New England winter where you actually have ponds that freeze and you actually get
you know plowable snow um you know but for those two winters we didn't see the market exposure we didn't see the volatility in the gas markets that we had experienced in you know 2020 2021 and um you know going back even farther
so that budget came in high we essentially overcolcted around $2 million in 2023 uh for power for expected power supply expenditures uh we did the same thing again in 2024 so at the end of 2024 looking at it
we were carrying in about $4.4 million in our power supply surplus and as a municipal light plant we are required from the Department of Public Utilities to return that money to the rateayers so as I think I use this
joke at the select board but as much as Jason would love to fund the entire Northland substation with that money and I know Mr landers would also probably be in favor of that uh we need to return that money to the rateayers so the way we are doing that is in the calendar
year 25 we have set our revenue expectations and our rates to essentially return that 4 million over the course um through the year to land at the end of 2025 uh where we want to be in our surplus
fund for power supply which is 2% of total budget it's about $600,000 figure so really that is the biggest um you know I would say the difference from last year's budget uh we are maintaining our depreciation expense at
5% that funds our capital projects um as I've mentioned and I think with that we could we go to the power supply sure well so the other big the other uh
big development for 2025 is as you can notice from our energy resources budget this represents all of our um firm power contracts that we have with third parties and then also represents uh the portion of our portfolio that is
unhedged or that's um exposed to the wholesale energy market the big news for this year is we are uh as you can see we are down to uh one small gas contract and one extremely small uh oil peaker
contract so we are actually 80% uh non-carbon um we have sourced 80% of our portfolio as non-carbon um sources of energy which puts us ahead currently um of the 2040 mandate um that the state
has imposed on municipal plants a few years ago so I think that's a great um you know it's it's it's where we would like to be it's where we strive to be and the good news is that we've been able to negotiate these contracts in a way that it keeps the price blended in
with our historic um lack of a better word happy place so it's where it keeps our rates stable it's where our customers have um and the rate payers have seen the rates for you know historically the last 12 to 15 years um and we're able to do that without having to rely on you know the volatile gas
markets essentially so uh with that yeah be happy take any questions all of you i'm I'm actually good you're good i think every April Fool's Day you should send a bill using rates of the most adjacent
for-profit operators to people i don't think that enough people give uh the town and the department credit for how good we have it here both from a rate standpoint and from a reliability
standpoint like you seriously should send a bill on April Fool's Day prices yeah um the nuclear have you not has there been any competition for supply from um from data
centers and things like that the only competition we've seen so for Seabbrook specifically which is the big our biggest chunk that's our long-term contract out to 2050 uh National Grid actually um became extremely interested
in purchasing nuclear um percentages and upping their portfolio cuz for a while nuclear was kind of on right right right on the way out um so that was a couple years ago at that time we worked with with our consortium of other utilities and our um advisers and we actually were
able to pull together and secure this other contract here to be competitive so National Grid couldn't just scoop it all up so we actually grabbed that other slice of next era over there too is there uh is is that supply is the like you mentioned obviously nuclear was it
out of favor for a long time is that is the horizon for the nuclear projects extending and nuclear supply extending more than you know yeah um so the nuclear regulatory commission the NRC they've recently they bumped the
Seabrook plant that was uh set to decommission in 2040 they've extended that to 2050 the Milstone um similar they pushed that one out to 2045 it was 2035 um and I have just on a you know industry chatter level heard more talk
about refurbishing old plants and then there's also the concept of micronuclear which is kind of you know smaller more localized plants but it seems like there's there's definitely for the first time in I don't know decades that there's been a push for there's been a renewed interest in nuclear development
Okay that's all for me thank you very much um so I agree with Ted i don't think people appreciate uh I so I think people really appreciate the municipality your services and everything but I do think if they knew that they had a rate drop they would appreciate it even more and maybe complain about less of their overall
spend with the town if they see other rates increase so I think in general marketing yourselves a little bit better would help right um I did see that computer software is up around 300K is that just you know new requirements that you need or That's Yeah we're actually
going through a whole um the business division our financial software we're going through a complete overhaul for the first time in dare I say 30 years is that right Angelica yeah okay just wasn't sure if it was security or other things yep okay yeah good thank you
thanks um if you combined your What is the percentage up there if you combine all your nuclear uh it's about almost 60% really y Okay great um no new project no
new plants so you may refurbish but right now no new plants out there that you know of right i have in New England in the Midwest there are a couple but in New England there's I have not heard of any new um any new proposals okay all right
um I think that's it for me all set um I uh reiterate what Ted said because I live it every day i go to my office in Tofield that's serviced by National Grid um right Linda and they pay and we pay much higher rates right Mike it's true
pay much higher rates and if the power goes up could be days here rates are much better much better and the power's back on right away so Ted's right i live it so I have nothing but good things to say about campus election well we appreciate that
very much so I I have the the pleasure of serving on the municipal light board in You only reappointed two oh don't remind me good resignation Mike going to refuse yourself
so you know every month maybe every other month when I actually go to the meeting the uh we will um you know we we get a little little sheet and it shows us where we rate in comparison to not just the big commercial providers which
are you know astronomically higher so you're paying sometimes three times the amount that we pay as an average rate payer and obviously the service is substantially less we also on a on a monthly basis get to see our reliability
uh numbers as well and but but the same is true in regards to the other municipals i mean we all we we find ourselves battling on a on a monthly basis basically with Middleton and Peabody um to be who's the who has the
lowest bill and so and and Erin's right in that we really think that we need to do a better job of letting the people know that you are getting the best rate and the best service combined together
that you rarely get any place um I will say this for the first time in the 40 years that I've been involved in town government we have seen the state
regulators propose things that are at least a tiny bit antagonistic towards municipal providers these these are not things that should be individually any concern to us they aren't going to those if these things were adopted they would not
have a substantial impact on our operation or the type of service but we cannot let the same thing happen to us with our electric light division that happened to us with our hospital the electric light division is
a wholly owned subsidiary of the town of Danvers it's how it operates we need that wholly owned subsidiary to be able to operate our town government not just the $1.5 million that gets put aside every year now in
lie of taxes not just the the the huge number of projects and involvements that the electric light does in order to be able to make Danvers a better place to live but more importantly this the the residents of
Danvers and the rateayers of Danvers will get absolutely screwed if we have to become customers of either one of those two primary commercial providers so I will ask everybody again the tens of people who are watching this at home
right now make sure that you if you know if you want to do something protect your municipal electric light division that it is at this point the most critical thing we can do in this
town to make sure that we continue to have the the quality of life that we have is to have that stay we're really fortunate we have wonderful people who operate this for us we have great employees up and down that line but we can't afford to lose that that wholly
owned subsidiary so well said so also as a former member of municipal life board I certainly will echo the sentiment that everyone has said we do appreciate the great work that you all do um every day and um since we have several members of
precinct 1 uh in the room not because I live in precinct one across from this project but uh they would like to know u the timeline on the Liberty Tree Mall project which you know you guys have been working on for a while yep yeah so we are just we're heading into the
construction phase now where you have secured the equipment that's going in the station uh that will be delivered with throughout the rest of this year we're looking to have that system online Jason on mid 26 mid 26 online um and then the good news
is once that station is energized we will be able to scrape the old station and all of that all the trees and brush and shrubs then everybody has to lean way out and almost get t-boned you couldn't get to the trees any sooner they're not our trees but we could take them out we take care of the old
substation just you can't get the whole thing is going Yeah the whole sub you have a nice clear line of sight around Verizon you couldn't do it in 2025 we're working on it just just just those corner trees just you know just cut it back a little bit just a just run a tree
into it accidentally run a truck into it i'm just saying i'm just saying so that's helpful thank you audience no does town meeting have the um authority to override the return of the $4 million
like if since we've already paid it in can we just use it for some kind of capital project instead of we can't override that town need if you want to clarify again that that that's by DPU needs to be returned back to the rateayers it's not considered like
retained earnings like I want it to we could just do it for any project yeah right but like the town town meeting can't vote to override that and and I try question plenty of people have tried Linda please as a former uh puberty resident I
am always very interested um at the end of a year to see how the rankings are there is a listing that shows who comes in the lowest and and that way it's almost like a horse race where we come
down to the finish line and it's a photo finish but Peodyy always seems to beat us out by 000 cent and comes in first have we come in first yet no cuz Middleton actually is now the lowest
really linda's moving to pee there we go right anyone else we're good i have a question we appreciate it i have a question all right back to the committee just I I don't know if this is the proper place to ask it but the pilot this year is 1.5
million and and a followup on that is uh I should know this but I don't really water and sewer do they contribute at all through a pilot program or no they pay a pilot in L taxes um a small amount just for the land they own but uh this
is more of a voluntary contribution from which is allowed by the DPU and by state law back to the town well is um in your estimation you know any is would water and sewer be able to contribute more or is it is it just that tight it would it
would translate directly to a rate increase so I don't think that would be okay forget it i don't want to have people okay and so we do not vote on this this is in a warrant right and so if there are no further questions we will thank
uh everyone for their time thank you all right now you just got a ticket you got a ticket you got a ticket that was first okay