[Music] go ahead and get started so it is minutes after 6 uh on the 3rd of February we will call to order this
finance committee meeting um I don't think we need to do a roll call if you not just want to announce it's being recorded is being recorded by area 58 for future Distribution on our YouTube channel for
public okay so um first order of business uh I know that Katie sent out the meeting minutes uh on Sunday if everybody had an opportunity to take a look at them anybody have any questions ads changes delions I get to approve so second than
you all in favor say I pass all right this brings us to the meet of our agenda so Cody ask some time this week to do a midyear budget review uh for the town so with that said we move on to that point turn that every
sure so everyone should have received the budget status through December um if you if you had a chance to take a quick look through everything's pretty good actually um we're we're TR tring there really aren't many accounts where we're
concerned at this point we're trending kind of in the right direction uh for most of our our accounts there were a few things in the review that popped up we took care of them within accounting and actually they were more accounting issues they weren't actually budget overages they were just applied to the wrong account which is good that means
we're still training the right direction so we've been able to take care of those um you know there's a few you look at like the school's account and they always show that they're using a lot less at this point in the year because not really halfway through their year yet right because they're not starting
until September um and then they incover all their wages which which was the majority of their accounts so you you look at that you say oh geez they're they're under budget they're not going to be under budget uh they'll probably Comm in right at right where we expect them to um the other thing is we have a
few electricity accounts that maybe of concerned but we actually are in the process of um negotiating a deal with the city of Bron to purchase power credits from them at a 20% reduction so give 80 cents on the dollar for us which
is huge um so we we anticipate that going into effect very soon we're going to do that for the rest of fiscal 25 and then we anticipate doing it again for fiscal 26 so that'll result in some savings um I I would anticipate that we level fund all our electricity accounts
for 26 even though it may be a reduction because you just don't know we can't guarantee it and what we can do is we can actually purchase the credit and if for some reason we buy too many for a fiscal year the credits don't go anywhere so then they can go to the next year so it's really just continuous
saving so it's a good thing um one thing to be mindful of is the there has been well they have the clerical and administrative employees for the town have unionized we have not um bored a contract for them at this point we're we
sitting down next week to begin those contract negotiations but I would anticipate some Financial applications as a result of that um you may recall this is primarily the non-union employees that are part of that wage and Personnel bylaw that um did not get a
cost of living adjustment at for this year so that kind of I think pushed them to unionized because they see the other unions are getting you know cross living adjustments and they weren't so um they have unionized like I said we haven't even sat down yet so I can't begin to
say what the impact will be um but I would really P probably similar to what our other unions are for fiscal 26 um and then from there on I'll you know we'll see for a bit again you know what the financial picture of the town
is that's all public information so um it'll be interesting how many employees are we talking H probably over 20 so we'll have about less than less than 20 non-union employees remaining
and include P time he put as well yep yeah it pretty pretty much includes everybody except for department heads um our van drivers over at the C on aging and that's pretty much it some like the
stien depos veteran services and obviously elected Union but other than that it's pretty much everyone else oh confidential employees can't be Union either so staff bi so time just get insurance no no over
19 and a half so 20 or more hours a week you you're you get benefits but we keep part-time typically under 19 and a half and under so they don't get benefits so that's one thing definitely keep you you know be mindful of once we
start bargaining again I can't let you know what's happening bargaining because that would give up our bargaining position but as soon as we have some sort of um tenative agreement I'll certainly invite you guys out just want to be updated one of the other changes that we've had thus far is in our
building maintenance department so building maintenance department consists of our department head who is the director and we have three staff under him um the makeup up to this point was two custodial workers and a crafts person so crafts person was a little bit
more skilled um the senior custodial worker retired uh in the past month or so or couple months and speaking with the director what we were able to do is we posted it for a crafts person position and we're able to bring on a licensed plumber actually so the costs
and wages we're going to see a little bit of an increase because we're going from a custodial worker to a crafts person but longterm costs are going to decrease because we spent a lot of money on plumbers for some of these small things the LI Al you look at last year we spend you know close to5 $10,000 on a
plumber so um this will be good to have on staff now have a plumber on staff we have electrici so do they have equipment to work with like SE snake blah blah blah blah blah um we're slowly getting some equipment as as smaller things come up it may be something um you know Scot I
spoken trying to make fitable add a little bit more into his expense account this year so when things come up we're able to buy the equipment so we own it um but it's working through um those things and there there's still will be job that we need to bring
outside he not coming with a back all good so we should be I I really don't think any issues this year with that as far as having to do with transfer um we there were a few months where we didn't have or maybe two months where we didn't have anyone in the position so that savings should kind of
account for the additional cost this year but you'll see a little bit of a when we go through the budget for next year you'll may see it's higher a typical 3 or 4% for that reason so I'll remind you when it comes to that um accounting we may end up with a shortfall and need a transfer that
primarily obviously we have been posting the accountant position for over a year um and we wereing able to recently bring Lindsay on but we've had to keep the consultant on a lot longer than we initially anticipated so that that we're starting to phase the consultant out and then we'll be posting for an assistant
Town accountant soon but um again that's C Business unfortunately um one of the other things that's come up this this year thus far is our landfill so we own the landfill over here on Hemlock Lane that's the town owned landfill um we have a landfill monitoring contract of an engineering
firm we made recall calls under our Board of Health budget somewhere in the range of $20,000 a year D contacted us uh in late November you may heard of it Po and said you have to do now test for PE and it has to be done by the end of
this year and then it also has be done every every six months with your other testing obviously that didn't give us any time to go Clos at bids so we we had to use our G engineering firm which we think will probably be the cheapest anyways because they're already out there right so it's really the cost of
sampling so that that somewhere in the range of $46,000 for this fiscal year for that one samping that we didn't anticipate and again you'll see that in the budget for 26 some probably an8 to $10,000 increase and that's again DP was requiring it um twice a Year all eight
of our wells so um and then the last big thing that's come up this fiscal year is our veteran services um agent Steve Littlefield so that's a sied position but it's based on really like a 12h hour a week um commitment to the town the
states come up with new accreditation requirements so in order for for him to submit and assist with a claims for veterans um he has to be an accredited veterans agent he's gone through all the training caveat you have to work you have to be employed 20 hours a week as a
veterans agent in order to receive this accreditation or he cannot help people with claims which is that's huge right big factor of what he does so we're in a great period right now um that is likely
to end Sometime Late winter early summer or I'm sorry early spring and at that point we will need to bump his compensation up to a level of 20 hours a week and you know he'll work more um and then again that's something you're going to see on the budget for for fisal 26
we've explored the idea of um creating a district veteran services District you have to be it has to be with a budding community so that there there our options there and I've reached out to everybody in community and there is not interest at this time so we but again we want to continue
to briide that par of town so those are kind of big the only big things that have come up this year which is good obviously some some things have come up but it could be a lot worse relatively speaking it operationally happen the year do the other towns have their own
veteran services program with somebody hours full time yeah or or even H for instance so hon is was going to be without someone reached out to up and said can you fill in for us the in no we
we'll do let's make this permanent um in meeting with their team it's not something interest in doing they they will want their own person their own control over it um you really you have to have two strong towns two you know
solid administrations that get along and can just make it work and not care about kind of the control aspect and and not care of and so we do a conservation with bridgew and the way that kind of it works is 20 hours a week in both but you also recognize there may be a really
busy week in Bridgewater where she's there 30 hours and that's okay as long as when we need her in Halifax she's here for a lot of communities don't operate like that and then it becomes notable Clon has someone only a couple
hours a week uh but they weren't looking to expand it all um just go away well that person worked in another community so they technically have the should be able to fall into the
accreditation because they work into in another community fulltime and basically do St plon as a a side and the hours that spend on that we can fill up to 20
hours keep them busy oh definely yeah think what what Steve does now not bare minimum but Steve gets all the claims out right all the payments get out does the veterans spr um and does everything can but he he's not really having events and other than the veteran gred and
things like that um does he have is the workload there for the hours pretty much dou yeah yeah yeah I think so definitely he still have those couple assistance you had a little while or you buy himself again assistance but you know take that for
what it is volunteers it's basically it's a committee it's uh and so they can assist with some of the like event planning stuff but when it comes down to the the kind of n gritt of payments and processing applications that that's all you um so that's again hasn't hit yet
but I anticipate it will be hitting this year and you'll certainly see on a bunch of requests for her fiscal 26 and I'm assuming because we're talking about it here he's on board with the hours jump that's not an issue for him yeah he's a good agent and again I
think the way you have to do a position like that where he's not full-time is you know he has office hours here but then there are times where he's out on a Saturday meeting with a veteran or he's you know a Monday morning he's at someone's post um not every Community
wants to operate like that a lot of communities want it you're in the X Town Hall two days a week from 8: a.m. to 4 P.M yeah just that type of position just does yeah unfortunately but we will continue to explore if
there's an opportunity for it we'll we'll start Cody on the Energy Credit you and I talk about this for a little bit um we have an idea of how many dollarars we're talk about energy credits spending or B
B uh I mean tens of thousands probably around 100,000 range well as long as yeah yeah 100,000 in yeah so space somewhere in the 50,000 range this year half half of the Year
basically and then I'm hopeful that Brockton which they they've said that they would um be available to sell them we're going to pull the trigger right on July 1 as soon as that money is available for us and and buy basically the year's worth of electricity so there were a few things that we had to do behind the scenes to make it work where
right now we contract our electricity which was already a savings we needed to combine the bills because um previously we were built separately National gr would send us the bill for delivery and then Direct Energy is the supplier we contracted with with send as a separate bill for the supply
portion you can only apply the N the credits to The National Grid bill so what we wanted to do was put all into the national gri bill so that took some kind of work behind the scenes but that that's done now um and yeah you're talking School schol using electricity so that that in itself is going to save
a lot of and I've extended the offer to as well other questions kind mid year things will um some Ros and issues up there you taking that into account yet or what are we doing yeah so there's kind of two options for that um they and
the board is considering that the board's actually doing the board black doing a site visit on Tuesday afternoon out there with our engineer so um if you if you go out there there is some erosion the liner is starting to get exposed
D hasn't formally issued a notice that we need to repair but coming it's coming and people take care of it which uh right down yeah yeah so um so what we had engineer do was look at it and say okay basically give us two options
option one is cheapest way to pick it for right now and how much time does it buy us option two is let's let's fix the problem so this doesn't keep happening um option one Band-Aid you know theide maybe at last three to five years somewhere in the range of 30 to
$50,000 option two um about a million dollars but there is some opportunity to bring in uh reclaimed soils um to basically build up the edges of the
landfill and with that we would be charging a fee to bring that those soils in and it would probably offset the cost of of the repair so um two kind of two options there no decisions when you say reclaim soil talk about industrial type soil yes
look um just like low contaminated so uh not even contaminated um so we wouldn't bring any of that in you know we would have the basic permit level where it would basically just be like a top now the engineer we got at
TRC uh yes yeah and they big outfit and the million dollar part of that that's just preliminary budget numbers they put together it is yeah they would just manage a subcontract for that or they going out to get
bids for because TRC won't actually do the work no no we would have to go out to bid because it's such a large project actually have to go out to bid um yeah but they just giv you engineer engineering cost numbers right now yeah they'll just do the oversight management
of whoever the town chooses for a subcontractor correct yeah a very high level Overview at this point they didn't want to dig too much in because we're not yeah you can get in deep real quick yeah top no no so so it would be a million
dollars to kind of fix the whole problem but the idea would be we could probably bring in about a million in Revenue okay so it would be cost effective the again the select board is looking to determine which option they think is best to move forward with um if we do move forward
with a larger scale project it's going to take a while and there's also a lot of um procurement hurdles that we need to try to work through and then also just budgetary Financial hurdles right because state law is you can't Revenue right it comes in and goes
to the general fund you can't just say we're going to take this money and use it for this so now you have to create probably some sort of revolving account at town meeting um get the approval of town meeting and that the revolving limit right we set limits every year but
now you're talking about setting a limit of maybe you million dollars most of those limits are 20 30,000 so and that's once we get pass the procurement so long road if we did that I would anticipate a couple years before that was was complete and then
we're also working um last year I think it was last 2023 202 three the town we brought the town meeting an article to allow us to lease that land for solar purposes um town meeting approved that up to a 30-year lease we went out to bid we got
a proposal back we only had one bidder it's relatively small piece of land for solar um but we did get one bidder back we're currently in negotiations with them but you're talking probably an additional revenue of somewhere $50,000 a year with an escalator of 3% every
year but again that gets put on hold if this project if the big project moves forward move forward the small project we can we can have them put the solar on and we'll have to bandid it right over the next few years and until I think we it was a 25 year lease so you have to
continue to bandid it but once you do that ther you can't go back and do the big project because you have all that what's that the revenue for the so keep going to the band doing that [Music] ultimately questions on the budget so
far everything going on there a number of departments that have unexpended uh funds from articles that they given is that something that it's part of our review this year um is we're going through looking at all of those a
lot of the smaller um dollar amounts here they're just things that have been left over that we we're going to close out um at the end of this fiscal year so uh and then there's some that are larger that if they fall under a specific Department we'll make sure we speak to that department and say you know what's
going on that there could be various factors playing into it but one of the things I think I've explained this before I think I've explained this before but one of the things that was done very differently here was typically when you approve something out of free
cash it's a capital thing that's that's very normal that's what we should be doing and that's what we are doing going forward what you seen here in the past was things are have always been tight and are tight so things that maybe weren't a capital
item but needed to get done would get approved through C and have an article in here so there's one in here for um department head training that's good we use it we do department head training the not really a capital item it shouldn't have been an article that's we should probably have a line item in our
operating budget proba training isn't a one time thing right we should always be doing training we have a training budget of 10 we it used to be 5,000 when I got here we increased it to 10 but $10,000 for training for 100 plus right full-time equipent that that doesn't cut
so what they did was okay there was a need determine we need to do some additional training part department heads let's go get an article as a one time EXP expense and there's a lot of things like that in here that we're trying to clean up and and but but the problem is is you need to somehow weave
that at your operating budget and the operating budget's very tight particularly right now um so we are cleaning those up and when in fiscal 26 budget you will see all these small ones gone because if the Project's done we
need to close those out they're not meant to stay open to to take up ancillary costs that they them up the future and that's what has happened is you bought a vehicle um you asked for 70,000 you were able to get the vehicle for
55 okay good now let's close that out that money goes back to pre cash what has happened is that's been kept aside and maybe in a couple years if um the vehicle needs some new lights or something then they use that same thing well it really wasn't under the the vehicle but really
isn't what we you know what the purpose is not the intend uh well public buildings and properties is 47 75385 what um page is that that's on page
19 does that have to do with the adaa that that 200,000 that at the Ada stuff which we've we' they spent 200 was 422 total and we have about 150,000 outstanding right now for the sidewalks over at the Council on Aging in the
library and stuff so that that'll be depleted down one of the other big ones is the fire station molder mediation we're actively seeking proposals on that right now problem is you can't find molder molder mediators that want to do a public job prevailing wage um and also
at a fire everything watch so that that's another big hitter there um the Bri and walls B21 there's an article from the from oh that's been fully expended that's gone so
unexpended so that was the took care of that um this a couple of the other ones 39,000 for the Portico repair we just got um proposals for that we had to get that engineered so another we had hard time getting Engineers we finally got Engineers which you see that expenditure
there and same thing with the library window repair so about from 2012 insulation and Vapor repair the town Barn uh 19258 33-8 yeah so those are the types of ones we're going to go through make and check
the property right ability of the department to spend the money that they get right and make these repair they came to the town and they asked for the money they got the money and then it just sits there so now this is 11 12 years old years old what
what you have with that is likely you you had somebody here a different department head asked for it left uh new Department came in he knows about it but I'm guessing didn't know about it right away and then I don't know if it's
something we even need anymore but those larger amounts where things haven't been expended those are the ones we're going through what's the plan with this and and we want to plan not just it needs to be done what is we plan to get it done what's the timeline and if not okay we're going to close it back out because
the reality is that 13,000 isn't do it any start yeah yeah so a lot of those be well and then like you see a lot of these smaller ones that or the odd number $ 5,748 right that's something that we we
probably project probably been finished and they're probably sitting on it so we're going to close those out at the end of the fiscal year all those kind of odd ones that have been done will no longer be here at the end of this fiscal year if you look at a budget status from last fiscal year at this time to this
there left it might not look like it but there are left go through to clean it up we're going to continue that in this but there were some last year for $55 $74 just things that were never cleaned
up did we get a free cashday year no we did get free cash limitted but it has not been 3i so hopefully by next meeting pre cash will be certified we're going to spend another 150 tiles on the 8 we've got outstanding
what's that going to put the balance of the 8 from the 500 at the remaining funds mean yes remaining um yeah somewh 50,000 range 50 to 70,000 done yet it hasn't been completed yet
it's been done if you used to look over there but it hasn't been a lot no that was the big one there mhm revenues are trending we can actually share that with you at the next meeting but revenues are trending right right where right where we would anticipate them to be trending um not
not higher not lower so we're trending above fiscal 24 which is good um but you know certainly not at a round base kind of right online where where we would expect them to be it's hard when you look at our revenues because um our
billing right goes out in Cycles so it may look like oh geez we only we have 20% in right now but yeah motor vehicle excise forance hasn't gone out yet and that's a huge portion of our receipt so we always when we compare we compare it um so I would I compare February 3rd 24
to February 3rd 25 and do a year to comparison so but we can share that with next yeah all that well not all construction over the old narella spot I'm assuming that construction is associated with the
Starbucks and aut not associated with the storage units in the back 40 is that correct yeah and then there's the rebuild of the old Chinese restaurant going on for the
walk-in clinic so those are all perish that are happening correct they are the the good we want growth growth is good um the negative is timing right so what we do is for fiscal 26 our new growth is
whatever is there as of January 1st so if it wasn't there January 1 they not getting taxed on it for fiscal 26 so that's why you know we obviously want to do our due diligence F we want to work with our Regulatory and permitting boards to move people through the
process right because and you look at Thorn is a good example the 55 plus condominium not saying that they could have maybe gone through the process sooner but let's say they had been able to get things in and maybe they started that project a couple months sooner they probably would have been a lot further
along as of January 1st right now we're getting them for foundation for January 1st not a ton of value now if they had been had additional three months well they might have had a fully framed building that could have increased it again you're not talking hundreds of thousands but you could be talking tens of thousands you know on a project of
that size um and effectively now we it will do kind of in place what January 1st next year and then they'll get taxed on or on that for 27 but we kind of not lose well we do we lose I don't know the exact you know
they're I mean expens people are you know Chou you know I I didn't think that was a bad price a lot of people but just you know do anything Town bring more traffic you don't want
to go too low because that is exactly we want that and it's 55 these people they're 55 all F to okay anything that you can think of that
is something that we didn't account for last year that's com in through different I guess no I think we we've done a pretty good job you know health insurance is kind of r on track um retirement still going to be what it's going to be the retirement fund
that we need to contribute to on yeah so that's an actual number we have that actuary gave us that so we have that for for fiscal 26 um that f most 10% increase in accouny retirement can't can't do anything about that um they did last
year extend out um when we will be fully funded the negative to that is we're not going to see relief now until 2031 I believe it is so before it was 2030 now it's 2031 so we got to try to get through these next kind of six years
once you through we're just funding the annual annual contribution we're not so that'll be that get there but until then we're continue to see those increase um property liability workers comp insurance kind of right on track
where we anticipated to be um they're anticipating 10% increase for thisal 26 so again what you'll see when we start going through the budget is it's on the share drive now fixed cost of can L the things that we can't do anything
about uh retirement insurance health insurance and you know property liability workers comp just totally de change those things debt Deb service any issues there no um not really it's not the
municipal bond market is actually pretty stable right now a lot of people it's pretty good thing to to buy because municipalities are usually pretty uh pretty good Investments you so we're not seeing too many issues there we only have one project that we so to
meeting authorized us to long-term borrow the Water Project we met with our financial advisers last last year and determined um we weren going to go to long-term borrowing at that time because we were only looking at about a million six initially we thought we going have to borrow somewhere in the three3
million range with um the other monies that have been allocated out of retained earnings Water Department we were only at a million six and you can't do anything under a 10-year Bor the long term so we said do make sense to do a 10 year we're locked
in for 10 years paying that interest so let's do a ban so we did a ban for this year we're meeting with them again and I think we're going to likely roll that over again um because I I think retain earnings are going to be healthy again this year and we will be able to pay
down probably my goal is 500,000 again this year so then wor r r over two more years and we're out of it in four years verus 10 and and once you get the a million and a half and Below you're you're paying significant with your interest rates because it's such a small
small project for someone who's buying municipal bonds it's just are there any big capital projects in re real good um I I think probably within the next five years we're going need to start doing a feasibility study for
Public Safety you're you're far out from actually constructing it but we are going need to start doing a feasibility study to determine kind of the future of those two facilities those are probably the biggest things obviously Council on Aging is ongoing um we're still working
on again procurement with the um designer so we have an OPM on board we're looking to get a designer uh but we have some procurement uh challenges that we're working through right now we you know hopefully that still comes in we had built in a contingency so I I
think will be stable there um the the other thing we'll have to look at is what do we want to do with we have a lot of historical buildings that the town owns it's great there's a cost to the owning these though um and you know we have somewhat active historical group in town
but they don't get utilized a whole ton of these building so there's we're going to have to make a decision in the next five years or so what are we going to do with all these historical buildings now you're going to have the pope Tavern over there too when we move into the COA so and again our facilities team they
spend a lot of time you over there making sure these buildings are kept up with um and then the old Museum where the old Museum down uh no the
uh police station store old library the old Museum um you know that will I think we need to come up with a plan of potentially moving them over to
PO Saturn which which actually has some historical value just an old building there's historical value there um so makes sense to put kind of all the their artifacts in there and then you know as we look at operations you know we may we
may look to do some sort of remodel of that space and use it as some additional Office Space or meeting space see we don't really have meeting great meeting space um and the way the offices are set up particularly here like in our regulatory Department very separated which makes it somewhat challenging so
again that's long term but I think those are really the only things Public Safety in the next 10 15 years probably the biggest you got to go get CR yeah so we got to start with that uh school I get I'm not sure I haven't seen
their count Bill plan but I do know it's come off path L years about air conditioning over there um at the elementary school um you know we have the newer boilers but we do have that old backup so Kathy stand there energy
manager consultant actually just secured a grant to do a um decarbonization study over there basically looking at adding some heat pump in and doing a but not air source heat pumps we want to do a potentially a water heat pump
a no no a water source heat pump so we could effectively still use the water system in place the hot water system in place um and it would draw the heat from the hot water so we could still it would almost be like a hybrid system you're starting to see that in some of the
build bit bigger buildings so they're going to study that and then with that you would be able to add the electricity and and the goal would I mean not electricity air conditioning the goal would be there's hopefully significant plant funding up there for you the way that the the way that the town was
approaching this previously was just looking at adding air conditioning you're not getting you're not get any Grand back for that the grand money right now is with the decarbonization so the heat pumps so this stud is going to look at that and also look at um what
the electricity needed do does National GD even have the enough electricity to bring that in because they' have to upgrade the service you so um other than that those are kind of the big big things that we're looking at ambulance in the next couple years we're going to need which you say amulance isn't too
bad but that's 500,000 now and a two to three year weight list so our amulance is great right now but we have to think is our is going to be okay in two to three years well probably you know start so looking at that fire trucks are in pretty good shape um maybe in five or so
years we get ordering one one new fire LS a good shake up go do the um two um electric Chargers out here in parking lot how do those work we get Revenue off of those here at Town Hall yeah uh no those are we do not
charge a fee for those those are primarily used for our town Vehicles here on at the library the ones at the library once they're interconnected they they'll be waiting for that generator waiting for Transformer yeah the Transformer
National Grid is were on the list apparently for sometime in the next week or two so these ones out here are not for the public I mean the public can park with them they're they're level two slow Chargers so even if somebody parked there for several
hours not electricity being utilized is minimal the reason that we don't charge is um again this is the the Chargers that were put in there were very kind of B B chargers at
the time probably not the best software to put in for commercial use for commercial use um about six months ago we were informed by the company that they were going leaving North America is
what they said to us asek is what they said too you have seven days Amer and um your your charges are no longer going to work so we had two options they were either buy new Chargers and put them in
or we could kind of sign on with this new vendor who was doing this work around to make them work but there was a per kilowatt hour fee that we were going to have to pay to them which doesn't work well when we're charging our own Vehicles we're not going to pay the
charge our own Vehicles so I said so they kept crawling kept crawling and I said well let's let's let them leave North America and see if they still work they still we can't charge Fe is the thing but again they're really not being utilized by the public all the time are we have
two electric vehicles here and primarily used to char say slow Char help the public no if someone plugs in while they're in here Town Hall paying tax bill for 20 minutes so they don't put that for why
did they put the ball in first I'm not sure I hope the ball in nightm okay anyone else National gete off of
the no we we pay to put them in through uh Federal incentives that we weren't eligible for so not National Grid did not pay to put them in we we contracted with a company called Livingston energy Livingston
energy basically said you know as a municipality you're not eligible for these federal tax credit but we are so let's what we'll put it in for you some a system like that cost somewhere2 to $300,000 put those in um and if if
there's any overages we'll eat it we're not going to charge it anything so they they got the incentives from federal incentives and some incentives from National Grid but we we uh contracted with living C energy comp yeah so there'll be a fee for those that
absolutely yeah yeah ultimately it's it the fee will just cover the cost of the electricity and then um any sort of annual um software cost right because we can't profit on electricity as a Municipality of Massachusetts but we're
really just providing a service um what's going on with Stop Shop you heard anything from anybody over there no planning to reach out to the Chamber of Commerce see if they can try to do some advertising on our behalf um
it's it's it's tough if you were in a good geographical location right it spot like that never mind even our geographical location and there's one one of them that closes in RH right on 44 spot they still don't have anything
over there you know looking going there so um it's it's very challenging given the geogra and have we have zoning liit right so they want to come in and do colal they can come in and do that anything beyond that they really can't
do um you know potentially if someone want to do some housing in there while I'm going right now you you could put think less than 10 units in there you're not spending millions of dollars on that building probably
business Mar that's another thing we did lose that 3% impact feed St so in the state when these marijuana defens first came out it was you could negotiate host Community agreements you had to with everyone and
there were a few the primary benefits were you could adopt a 3% local tax which the town of palex did then you could also impose a 3% Community impact fee the idea was 3% of their growth revenues because there's an impact on the community Beyond a typical
business well as these businesses get up and rolling everyone realized there there may not be uh an impact Beyond a typical business and the regulation came out that you can't charge the 3% plat so we we actually had just the canas
Control Commission actually rejected our agreements we just had to redo those agreements so we still get the 3% tax but we don't get the 3% yeah 3% tax is the max we charge but it's significant I mean we're even just in those two shopa we're
bringing over $150,000 b% elevated rots and illegal operation it's all right okay thank you all right any further question okay once twice times we will
close out that agenda uh moving on um so for the liaison reporting for f 26 everybody either done or completed your department head meetings you still have your
okay so we will close out that specific line item moving on to any committee the ason updates the 30 we still need another date for the zoning bylaw committee for us to get together on that I think that's the only thing that's outstanding Capital planit meeting at
the end of the month right have a full group for that we do yeah I think it's the first time like 10 years actually you yes all right uh so that's it for the
community I'm sorry committee leison updates um correspondence as me arriv I haven't received any emails I don't think you've got anything anyone else for the finance okay so we will move on from
that line item public participation anyone on the phone wish to chat bring something up for the finance committee okay hearing none we move on okay which sets us to the last line
item which is the next meeting so the next meeting normally would have been the 17th that's president day so we want to do the 18th and like we did the last time just bump it out a day is everybody okay with that and that'll be a virtual meeting any
I'll be here make sure you don't get in the KE okay be and just 11 we have joint meeting with [Music] theol that's the elementary school right
yeah yeah yeah I got that mark on my calendar so we did invite a group from the elementary element school committee to attend this meeting on the 11th so meeting on the 11th really twofold one is we have theu Personnel public hearing
um which you'll you'll get I'll actually send out those out later this week the proposals um I don't know if there were any other than a few things that I recommending um and then the other is is we need to start looking at you know big picture of Finance for for fisal 206
with the board and no wants to talk about it or but we need to look at you know is there an appe type or no right now that's not not saying definitely yet not saying a dollar figure but is it something that the town wants to explore because it's already February we
basically have two months to kind of get everything finalized here um and that either means based on the information we're getting from the schools significant cup or an override or com and we just need direction ultimately the Selectmen are the only ones that can
decide to put an overy on on the ballot so um the idea is to have a discussion with them is there you know are they interested they interested in exploring it um to what level and what would they like to do can you forward the meeting
for 10 I don't know if posted you but I won't okay that's so what are we going to discuss the override with the s's that going discussion take place next meeting 11
while the person okay yeah so we'll do we'll do the W Personnel first I don't that taking very long and then we'll we'll go right into the uh The Joint meeting to start talking budget and I think you'll if you haven't seen it yet
the budget with all the requests are in the finance committee folder everything is filled in um and also I've started putting in recommendations on so you'll see in there biggest thing again is the school but but if you look you'll see
things are tight on the you know on the government side of things there isn't zero this year do happen you don't get a 0% increase um but we we getting B the zero this year and that's not because that's what you know the public
safety necessarily wanted but you know we had some decreases the police department due to retirement and then we had to pair down the fire department request just because it's not there we have to we have to be realistic so um but I recommend you take a look at that
prior to this joint meeting so you can get an idea of where where things are coming from when do you want to do a walk through the budget L um I mean you so when we start talking um departments coming in I would say you probably want to have in the big big
departments kind of just an overview what they're looking at but then I I don't like we did last year I don't think you need him the smaller so no I I I agree I agree we don't need smaller so I think if we did you know police fire
Highway um uh Library buildings buildings you want buildings then you I'm just they have three line items it's up to you guys it's wages uh preventive maintenance and their expens account yeah and and all that other than wages is level pretty
much level 100 you can't I just don't know you how much he going to give you yeah yeah but I definitely recommend you do you police fire Highway Library is a pretty big operation schools obviously want to have
time oh I think that cursor you're G try to do all the same night maybe maybe you break up and do Public Safety one night yeah and then the next meeting you do library and then I can go through and kind of explain all the
other increases we'll probably talk in March March time frame where we're going to move to like a once week meeting to get through this stuff if that we're ready to go I mean we we have a we have a budget if you take the school get through next week we have so I think get
through next week but I I I wouldn't wait till March necessarily maybe the last week of February start meeting because again either way you're looking at a lot work yes in person we have them
no the in person stuff we can certainly do that that's 25th wait February 26 if we do inperson meetings with finance committee we can do a highight like this where you someone can't make it in birp you can join the only reason
we can't do on the 11th is because we're having it in the other room and that room hrid they're probably choose to do remotely next next week is the joint meeting on the 11th uh the week after that which is
the 18th I think so that's the Tuesday meeting for um for our regular meeting uh and then the following I guess following Monday we'll start bringing in that work well we're gonna have a we'll have
the virtual meeting on all the all the agendas okay so again just a repeat next week the 11th it's the joint meeting with the Selectmen in the schools uh the following meeting on the 18th is our regular meeting which will be virtual uh
and then the following week we're going to start bringing in departments to go to the the4 start bringing in Department anybody have any questions about anything we've discussed so far and that is the last agenda item
that we had motion to not opposed okay thanks everybody for coming [Music]