[Music] [Music] uh it's the 15th of April it is uh 8 or 601 uh we will open the meeting of the finance committee for the FY 2026 budget forum uh present here on the uh stage is
Michael Bennett Frank Johnston Ed Bryant Bill Smith Mike Reignetta and myself cheryl Burke is not present at this time we also have from the town uh Lindseay Martinelli as part of for the town accountant um so at this time we will
open the meeting for any questions or publications on the budget as it currently stands that is our sole agenda item uh for this meeting any comments from the committee i have none
wherever you want to be so you guys aren't able to see this that doesn't make sense we are not okay yeah I don't think we need to let's see did you already open your meeting Jim i did sir very good
okay so um you know based on the feedback from town meeting last year and to make sure that we are um preparing our residents for the budget season and speaking with Jim and uh the board of selectman we decided it was a good idea to do these budget forums the idea
really is to give an overall um preview of the budget answer some questions um highlight areas where there's increases bring people through the process um provide some information on our revenue finance committee will certainly already
be aware of a lot of these things but um we'll open it up to the public if there's questions and then we'll also um this is being recorded there's some Zoom um access and we'll post these on our website we're going to do this again on May 5th as well um and hopefully dig in
at that point all right so I just want to start off um and give an overview on our fiscal 26 budget process so we kicked off the process in October where we had the joint meeting with the board of selectman and the finance committee during that meeting uh priorities for
the upcoming fiscal year were identified we ultimately reviewed and decided that departments would be requested to create two uh budgets one was a level service budget so whatever your cost was to keep your service levels the same and then also a 10% reduction um from your fiscal
25 approved budget uh that budget memo like I said was approved jointly it went out to all of our departments budgets were due in December as budgets came in um finance community leaison myself and our town accountant met with each of the departments to review their requests and
also highlight their 10% uh budget cuts i'll note that this year was the second year that we did the 10% cuts so the department heads really had a better grasp on the 10% cut exercise and in the quality of the cuts I think were much better um than in the past because they
had a more a better understanding of it so kudos to the department heads for that uh large departments such as police fire highway uh water were presented to the full finance committee uh in a o open meeting uh finance committee then had the joint meeting with the board of
selectman in March to discuss the budget shortfall and um the finance committee has since voted a budget based on the parameters that the board of selectman approved in utilizing some free cash so just just bringing you through um kind of start to finish well it's it's always
going but that budget process behind the scenes what is occurring is you know myself and Lindsay uh the rest of our financial team we're consistently reviewing our revenues so uh what we've taken in year to date we're projecting what we anticipate coming in for fiscal 26 we're looking at um the global
economy as crazy as it sounds why do we need to pay attention to the global economy here in Halifax well there's several reasons right we see inflation uh we see fuel prices the tariffs right that we're seeing now at the federal level is that going to result in increased costs for for us um you know
there's recent uh ratings by some of uh financial firms goldman Sachs I think came out with a 35% chance of a recession in the next year right so what happens if a recession hits what does that mean for our local revenues well people may not be going out to eat as much right people may not be buying as
much marijuana as crazy as that sounds those are the things that we have to take into account in our revenues and our revenue growth we also work with our assessor uh and our team and our assessing department to determine what's our new growth going to be so we know our what our tax levy is going to be you take prior years tax levy you add 2 and
a half% um but what's our new growth going to be so we look at how are permits what are new construction so is there anything in the planning stage that will be done by then uh we meet with our building department so it really is a a thorough process behind the scenes to understand where are we
going to be in fiscal 26 um and then we project out the next 5 years as well uh what we saw for fiscal 26 was we have little to no growth in Halifax uh anticipated for for the year the assessor you know we we've
historically even on a conservative um year use $100,000 in new growth we we're confident we're not going to get $100,000 in new growth for fiscal 26 we used $75,000 which I think was a good move in speaking with our assessor just last week we're we're still a little bit under 75 there's still some things
coming in but we 75 is a good number to use um to give you some background that was over 300,000 less than 5 years ago and now we're at about 75,000 so um it it certainly is a challenge that Halifax is facing but also other communities are
facing as well so I started getting into revenues you know tax levy we can we know 2.5% plus new growth um so our tax levy uh for the upcoming year is 20,41,342 um that's 65% of our total revenues uh for the fiscal 26 total
revenues our local receipts so motor vehicle excise tax um marijuana income um the meals tax those items building permit fees we're uh estimating 2.731 million which is an increase of $17,000
that accounts for about 8.7% of our revenues state aid again this is where we're really um you know seeing you know some issues particularly around education um we're not being re reimbursed or given the aid at levels that we should be um but state aid is
only $120,000 increase that total uh amount of 4.861 million accounts for about 15.5% of our revenues we have our enterprise funds which is uh our water our sewer I'm sorry our water and our sol and our cable TV that just serves as
a a um basically a a push through uh our excluded debt so this is debt that we have on the books that comes directly off the tax levy so whatever the debt payments are is what gets assessed to the taxes um as that decreases the tax amount decreases so um as our excluded
debt decreases it doesn't open up those funds for availability in the rest of our budget it just falls off the tax bills of the residents um other uh this consists of a few different things we're using some wetlands money to pay for our conservation age and uh some
reimbursements for loans but that's $59,000.2% of our budget uh and then this year we're using free cash uh $745,000 in free cash to subsidize the operating budget so um now we get to the recommended budget by the finance
committee what you'll see is uh a total budget of $31,380,584 um you will note you know I broke out what percent of the budget they are right our town departments which includes public safety general government um highway those make up
26.4% of the total operating budget um insurance and benefits so those kind of fixed costs uh make up 12.6% of our budget our enterprise funds make up 5.5 the elementary school makes up 24.27 uh and Silver Lake makes up
another 27.36 and we have some other that consists of our overlay uh that consists of our reserve fund and some tax title funds that we have to put aside um and then our debt this includes excluded debt and non-excluded debt uh for $910,000
key budget factors obviously I mentioned um our chapter 70 which is our state aid regarding education is only a 1.14% increase using the governor's budget from fiscal 25 or $40,725 um total there as I mentioned
before um you can see the new growth um in town over the past few years and then if you go back even into fiscal 20 and fiscal 21 that's that over $300,000 is what we were at cost of education um over an 8%
increase 11.63% for Halifax Elementary School and 5.6% for Silverlakes assessment uh almost an 8% increase in our Plymouth County retirement and another 8% increase in our health insurance costs uh as I mentioned the board of
selectment and finance committee did vote to recommend um and to utilize free cash to support the operating budget this year um that was not recommended um by myself and our financial team the town relies on the free cash to fund capital items um and without that we
would not be funding all of our capital items um it also creates a fiscal cliff in fiscal 27 um but there was 745,000 used to subsidize the operating budget we did remove the new ambulance a police cruiser and repairs to the blacksmith's shop from the uh capital
plan um in addition to the use of free cash and our other measures uh there will be reductions in staffing in the administration in Slecman's office building maintenance in the library um and then Halifax Elementary School also had to make several reductions from
their initial requested budget so now this is where I think we get into um the budget itself and I'm not going to read every single budget item line by line but I I really wanted to the point of this is to prepare people for a town meeting allow questions point out places
where there's increases and try to explain why those things are increasing beyond a normal amount um we have a lot of contractual wage increases so I'm not going to get into wage line items but everything else I I'll certainly dig into um as far as increases and um even
decreases so you know the first significant decrease would be in our selecting clerical that's as a result of eliminating a position due to the budget constraints um our legal account is a request increase of $30,000 the reason for that is uh twofold the first is we
are um anticipating some potential litigation regarding the MVTA zoning which the town is not in compliance with and the second is we're going into a a contract year with five of our seven unions so we're planning to have to negotiate five uh collective bargaining agreements in fiscal 26 with that labor
council has to get involved we do a lot of it in-house but there are certainly times when labor council has to be involved so between those things a $30,000 increase was at the minimum warranted next large increase comes into it expense which is the $30,000 increase
you know this is again twofold a lot of it is most of our contra um software contracts are 5% increase annually that's even with using the state contract or uh looking at various vendors and then we also have added the full cost of our online licensing and permitting software in fiscal 26 so in
fiscal 25 part of the uh cost of the software was included in fiscal 26 the full cost of the software is included um going down really the only other large increase um in the general government is in our recruitment and employment costs that's a $10,000
increase um that is mostly related to contractual obligations to pay for professional development on boarding um things of that nature next category is public safety um I'll note that our public safety departments this year uh are
representing pretty much a 0% increase from fiscal 25 to fiscal 26 um there's some line item you know decreases and increases but overall we're looking at a uh pretty much a 0% for all of our public safety um primarily being driven by our police wages we're able to
decrease for um the fiscal 26 and that's because a lot of our senior officers have retired we've hired new officers at a lower rate and so we're able to realize those savings there uh we did have to add some additional funds into the cruiser maintenance account and that is because we are only replacing one
cruiser this year and so we anticipate there being some additional maintenance costs uh in the budget there um under the fire department again primarily being driven by wages um a lot of this is overtime wages um we have a full-time fire department of 10 firefighters and
then we uh offset that with a call fire department um but if you have someone who's out on uh FMLA or if you have someone who takes sick vacation time it's it's overtime that we have to pay um we we are not really per the contract
we cannot fill a full-time union firefighter shift with a part-time non-union shift um so it has to end up going out to overtime uh under other public safety this consil consists of our emergency management and building department
sealer of wasted measures and there's no significant increases there uh education this is where um you know the primary increases are in the town's operating budget you see Halifax Elementary School is an increase of 11.63%
$793,675 silverlakes's assessment is $455,530 increase for a 5 to 6% um we do have some excluded debt at Silver Lake that's falling off which is great it'll that ultimately gets passed on to the taxpayer but that $40,000 decrease does
not free up $40,000 for our operating budget to then put somewhere else wages the number looks larger because we moved uh several thousand out of the cemetery wages into the um and that is primarily because they
shouldn't have been there initially um so we have moved them over to highway uh there's a decrease of $44,000 and $400 in the storm water management that is now in the capital plan because those were capital projects um that were really should have been
classified as capital anyways so you actually have a decrease in our total highway budget um and then in cemetery you have that decrease there as well and that's because of the the uh wages being moved to highway uh next are our two main
enterprise funds so one thing to know with enterprise funds is they are not funded um with your with the tax levy they're not funded with our general operating revenues uh enterprise funds you can kind of think of it like a a business fees they take in the revenue
they have to self costs um so the water department for instance the fees that they collect through the water is what they utilize to u fund their operating budget um the only really uh noticeable increase here is interest on temporary debt so we had
not previously um budgeted for interest on temporary debt but we have some temporary debt with the water department um and we need to budget for that so it's about $60,000 um we actually just sold the ban today so I I think it's actually going to be less than 60 but we'll keep the 60 in there just to be
safe um the the reasoning for the interest on temporary debt is really um it's a better financial decision for the town so when a town borrows you have you you basically take out short-term debt during the project while it's going on until you know how much it's going to be
total and then you go out for long-term borrowing long-term borrowing at minimum is a 10-year cycle and you can't just pay it off early and then you're off the hook um it's it's 10 years you make your payments throughout the 10 years what what we've realized is with some ARPA money um with our retained earnings in
our water department you know the project is now down to we just rolled over $1.3 million we don't want to go out to long-term borrowing on $1.3 million because that's an interest rate of four or 5% that we're now locked into paying over 10 years the reality is is we're looking at rolling this over maybe
once or twice more and just paying it off and so rather than paying 10 years of interest we're looking at only having to pay three or four um so it was a a good financial move by the town uh under public works our solid waste this is uh trash and recycling um our trash
collection contract has a little bit of an increase there um and also our per our tonnage fee is also goes up by $5 per ton uh there's some wage increases there u but that primarily makes up the increases there health and human
services um the first increase that's notable is under the landfill engineering and monitoring so the town owns the landfill open town hall uh that is directly abudding the highway barn um that is a
town-owned landfill we were notified that by DP uh in late 2024 that we were going to have to start conducting this POS testing i'm sure many of you have heard of the POS um we had not previously been required to do that
been required to do our uh other you know standard testing with that comes about almost $10,000 increase for this POS um we are seeking proposals from multiple engineering firms but this is the rough estimate of what we've gotten back so far is almost $10,000 as a
result of that POS testing um veterans agent salary this is an increase of $1,500 the reason for this is um the state recently came out and said in order to be an accredited vet veterans agent which allows you to do submit claims on
behalf of veterans in town which is what a lot of our veteran veterans agent does um you have to be employed 20 hours a week minimum in a community our position was a stipended position um that was paying actually less than 17,000 we
budgeted 17 but the the bylaw did not get updated to um for the 17 um and it only allowed for you know around 12 hours a week of the veterans agent so this 285 um increases the position to 20 hours per week allows the veterans agent
in Halifax to remain accredited so they can continue to process those claims for our veterans um in that it also goes along with the wage and personnel bylaw amendment that'll also be in the warrant uh under culture and recreation this consists of our library uh parks
youth and wreck uh the fireworks there's really no uh significant increases you actually have decreases i mentioned we're going to making some reductions at the library uh and staffing as well as in their expense account so that is uh recorded here uh debt service th this is um again
our debt that we are on a uh schedule with we so our debt for the roof repairs uh at the elementary school goes down a little bit and then our debt for the fire suppression system actually increases we also budget uh just a little bit for interest on temporary debt if we have to take out some temporary debt unexpectedly uh during
the year uh fixed cost which is a major drop our FY26 operating budget you know you can see here and I mentioned earlier Plymouth County retirement is almost an 8% increase that's $150,000 um group insurance which is health insurance the town's contribution
that's an 8% increase to the tune of almost $100,000 i'll note too that under insurance uh group insurance and just insurance that covers the town all general government facilities as well as the elementary school so um employees that take the health insurance over at
the elementary school comes out of this line item as well so there there's additional costs um that are realized there um sicken vacation buyouts we are decreasing just minimally insurance I mentioned this is our property liability
uh workers compensation insurance uh that's a $10,000 increase which we got away with uh quite well this year and then as a result of um some electrification and some grant funding to electrify some heat pumps and things like that we've been able to reduce our
heating uh oil and our gas and oil for our vehicles so you know with that I'll open it up to questions i think one important thing to make note of and Sarah and I actually had this conversation recently is you know we recognize that um costs
are increasing for everybody right you're all seeing it at home and the town is certainly seeing it one thing that is really important to note is um unlike at home where if you want your heating bill to be a little bit lower because you need to you know penny pinch a little bit this month you can turn down your thermostat and throw on a
sweatshirt or um you know you can do other measures we don't have that flexibility within a municipality so we're legally obligated to keep our buildings within a certain temperature right the school has to be a certain temperature between the certain times of year um we're really guided by Mass
General law um and so we don't have that ability to just make those small changes that may make go a long way but we aren't able to um so with that I'll open it up if there's any questions anyone on the finance committee have any questions
i have one question regarding the PIOS is that is this a one-time increase or is it going to be every year it's annual for now okay at least for the next few years after they review a few years of sampling they may not require it annually but at least for now it's it is going to be annually and it's 10,000
approximately per test we have to do it twice a year uh we have eight wells I believe and so it ends up being right around $500 per sample per well uh per testing so it's about give or take about $4,000 per uh every six months so about
eight 8 to10,000 a year um like I said we're still working on securing the contract for that but those were the numbers that a couple of firms have given us sure thank you is there anyone in the audience that has any questions we're also fortunate to have
Sarah Hickey here who's the director of finance and operations for Silver Lake so if there's any particular questions regarding the school um Sarah would be able to answer them okay is there anyone on Zoom that has any questions so if anyone has on Zoom has any
questions if you want to just raise your hand and then we can ask to unmute and speak okay Deb Winnowitz you have a question i do thank you um thank you for doing this um tonight i wish it was a better
turnout actually but Cody there seems to be a lot of confusion every year on our budget checks and balances could you explain a little bit um what the oversight is on our budget and the spending
sure um I mean so I mean at the very least the finance committee is involved every step of the way um reviewing you know requests from departments understanding what's being requested um we look at revenues to see you know what what money the town has available um and
so that's always ongoing at the finance committee level in my day-to-day operations you know we we have a lot of safeguards in place um the town adopted I think about 2 years ago a purchasing and procurement policy which requires purchase orders for everything over
$2,500 so there isn't a purchase scheme in town over 20 under over $2,500 that doesn't come across my desk um and that's being reviewed for make sure we're following proper procurement but it's also make sure that we have the money and that we're really making purchases that are necessary and align
with what was approved in the budget and then I think ultimately town meeting you know town meeting is the one that appropriates the tax dollars right so um if the appropriation doesn't occur at town meeting it ends there so town meeting really has the ultimate say in
the appropriation of funds and then once they're appropriated the day-to-day um you know operation is really something that I'm overseeing with our financial team but then also the finance committee meets regularly uh to to oversee you know expenses as well and they review
monthly u budget statuses to see where it's been spent potential issues u and we we try to get ahead of them as as soon as possible thank you you're welcome any other questions on Zoom jonathan Celig
hi Jonathan Celig uh 86 Stonyware Road uh Cody I was just wondering if maybe could you go over the process um during town meeting with the budget you know like the whole process and I think it'd be good for folks to hear basically if they had any questions on any specific
line items how to how to raise those sure so uh the moderator has historically gone uh line by line so you saw in the presentation tonight those are the lines that you'll get in your warrant with um the the prior year figures and then the recommended amount
by the finance committee for fiscal 26 uh the moderator will go line by line within each section of the budget and if there's a hold um someone will yell hold and then we'll come back when we get to the bottom of each each section and allow whoever had the hold to answer to
ask those questions and we'll try to get um answers to those questions and then we'll vote we'll vote those groups together once the holes have been cleared thank you you're welcome any other questions on Zoom chris oh yeah Chris
[Music] chris what's 129 Circuit Street uh just with the previous subject she was talking about maybe you can clarify that in history we've always taken blocks to explain to people of the line items of the budget and then take a hold if
anyone had a question but we wrote whole blocks in it instead of reading every single line item and potentially being there for hours maybe you can explain why we've done it that way why we got uh not reading every single line item and
doing it in blocks of sections because I think some people were pushing that last meeting why we weren't reading line by line so um town meeting procedures such as that are really the discretion of the moderator so I I anticipate the moderator will continue with you know
what's historically been done but he may not i intend he will um but the reason for the blocks like Mr winnow said was you know really you know we have over 200 lines in the budget um we have total of 30 articles this is just one of them
so if there aren't any questions or concerns it allows us to approve chunks of the budget at a time rather than again going through two over 200 individually um now if there's questions we'll go back and clear the holds on those questions regarding the specific
line but the they're voted as chunks that way there we can make progress um through through the budget any other questions frank uh Cody you might want to touch base on the number of citizens um articles that
are in the um warrant this year and how those will be addressed and and potentially how they how they how they would be funded if they go through um yeah so
there there are a number of uh citizens petitions on the warrant this year um let me I just want to confirm it believe it's eight uh eight citizens petitions on the warrant this year um you know with a citizen's petition you
know if it's met the criteria which is 10 signatures for an annual town meeting and all those signatures have been verified by the town clerk um we are legally bound to put it on the warrant regardless of if it's an incomplete article regardless of its legality um
regardless of a funding source so there are um a few articles on the upcoming annual town meeting warrant that um you know are asking the town to do things but do not identify a funding source um so those are just important things to and we'll certainly mention it at town
meeting um also we did at the last board of selectman meeting we went through each of the articles and we discussed them um one of the um petitioners uh of several of the articles was actually at that selectman meeting and she provided her insight on why um why she's
proposing some of these so that would be beneficial for residents to watch if they're trying to understand um but with the the articles uh citizens petitions our role is ultimately um just advising on legality of them and you know making
sure that if the residents understand that if they have vote this is what it means right if they voted without a funding source but we can't take any action um so we'll make sure that that information is is shared at town meeting just again just so residents have the facts any other
questions so I anticipate again we're going to do this again on May 5th if anyone has feedback of you know how we can make this more beneficial love to hear it um naturally I think that May 5th be attended at a little bit of a higher level because everyone will have their warrants by then it's a week
before town meeting so people might be a little bit more engaged um but you know we appreciate everyone jumping on tonight that did um and we appreciate anyone that is looking to learn more about the process and everything that's gone on um you know my office is always
available so if anyone has questions between now and then please reach out uh we want to try to make sure that you are as educated and understand the process and the budget as much as possible prior to town meeting and hopefully it allows for town meeting to go off uh seamlessly and we're able to get it done in one
night that's the goal okay well with that that that ends my presentation i don't know if you have anything else Jim i I don't this was the only item we had on the agenda for this evening so I think uh if there are no further questions from anyone on Zoom or
any comments from the Uh I think we can uh probably move to close this out absolutely thank you okay motion to adjurnn in a second do uh all in favor say I i i any opposed
hearing none we are closed thank you everybody for attending thanks [Music] [Music]