meetings and all other public meetings of the town of Hatfield all regular and special meetings of the boards and committees of the town of Hatfield shall be open to the public and shall conform to the open meeting law executive sessions are closed to the public and will be held only as prescribed by the statutes of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts it is important to recognize that the open meeting law affords the opportunity to listen to the proceedings but not necessarily participate during meetings of the select board an attempt will be made to find a balance between hearing from members of the community and conducting
the required business of the Hatfield Select Board um and just for the public's information this meeting um tonight is being recorded um so first item is announcements did you you didn't have anything no Greg did you have anything i
just want to I have two quick announcements um one is I did hear from a resident today concerned about the town employees who are parking on the side of the building for a longer period of time during the day and I just would ask our town employees to leave those
spots open um as much as possible for residents who are coming into for shortterm trips into the town hall or trying to get into the Council on Aging um that way and then the other thing is I just wanted to let towns people know that I will be traveling to Boston on
Thursday are you going um not sure i think DBW Yeah Garrett's going so at least um Garrett Barry and I from the DPW are traveling in to testify um at a chapter 90 at the hearing for a chapter 90 reform bill um and we wanted to just
do that on behalf of you know Hatfield weigh-in officially in person testimony um on the importance of increasing chapter 90 funding because you know we all know that there isn't enough so um I thank Garrett garrett and I have been talking about the testimony and we're
going to go in and do that together so just wanted to let towns people know that um one more announcement yes sorry it comes in the form of Chief Flity and our newest hire in the in the Oh Peter could we maybe ask you to take a seat in the back for just a second absolutely
peter was all ready to go anybody with chief in their title in front of me chief welcome good evening mhm uh so before you this evening so you get to meet and also the residents that watch this later get to meet our new full-time
firefighter EMT Jeremy Rice he started back with us uh in February he got through his training in about 3 weeks time and was able to get signed off on apparatus and so forth and we felt comfortable that he was able to handle calls uh if he were to be left alone for some reason he comes to us with about
three years of experience from Lever fire he already has his firefighter one and two certification his hazmat certification fire prevention officer and a couple of other things uh under his belt so he's coming with us with a little bit of experience which has definitely been beneficial and uh he's also very good with some of the computer
and IT stuff so it's been helpful as we're getting our new program up and running and so forth and trying to make everything electronic so it's been very beneficial that's great jeremy welcome thank you for coming on board here in Hatfield i'm nice that residents get to
see you and on the unfortunate chance that they need to run into you professionally um but we're glad you're here it sounds like you bring a a lot to the table we're grateful for that in small towns people need to have a lot of different hats um so that's that's really appreciated and I did hear about
a little bit about the computer program eventually like even burning permits yes I actually uh started issuing I did two burn permits electronically last week a smoke and seal already a food truck and something else there was another one
that I've already moved over to the electronic format and today actually Jeremy put the uh link right on our top of our website to take you to pay here which will take you to the UNIPE site that's for the fire department so you can pay all of your permits
invoices essentially anything for the fire department is is now online if you want to that's terrific so while we're talking about burn permits so we we pulled we had we have one of the oldfashioned ones we got one of the paper ones a few weeks ago haven't had a chance to use it yet because hasn't been
great weather but um they mentioned that burning season might be cut short this year did you want to mention that so as it looks right now due to the change in the weather over the last uh about 14 or 16 days I believe we've had enough rain prior to that the state uh the western
part of the state was still considered in a significant drought um so there was question early on if whether or not we were going to be able to allow burning all the way through May 1st which is the normal cutoff or cut it short but I have not heard anything new to this point and I think the rain is definitely going to
help subside that a little bit so I'm confident that right now we're going to keep it through May 1st great well if the wind could stop that would be helpful too a lot of days we have not allowed it due to the the high winds and they're excessively high it's not just a
few miles an hour right right so okay great well I just that that's good to know but thank you for joining thank you for having me welcome aboard yeah welcome welcome we're glad to have you thank you anything else that's it easy Jeremy thanks thank you guys you're on
okay is anyone here for public form no so we're going to dive right into the agenda um we have some agenda items to get through and then at 6:30 we're expecting the finance committee to come in to get to work on some budget and town meeting um matters so our first
order of posted business is our cons consent agenda which is the approval of the March 25th 2025 minutes i'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of March 25th 2025 second motion made in second any further discussion no all those in favor i um
topic one of posted business is um a liquor license a one-day liquor license application for the Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity um which is a fundraiser event that runs at RK Miles on May 21st 2025 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m and we have with us Peter Langoy um to
talk about it a little bit um so obviously Karen this application and all the paperwork looks like it's completely in order we do do this every year right um so if you want to just tell us a little bit about it and Yeah it's uh one of their biggest fundraisers of the year
uh and is just a food and beverage event which I came on board a few years back sort of as a culinary coordinator to try to use my uh friends and connections to uh you know keep it a fun food event so we have
you know 10 or 12 uh great restaurants wineries and breweries on board and it's a sampling event and uh not sure how much the tickets are but they can be found at the Habitat for Humanity website uh and uh yeah it's just a fun a fun night and lots of uh lots of
networking going on and and people just having a good time there's an auction some live music and um and it's a good cause what it's absolutely for a good cause yeah and it's some of the best restaurants in the valley uh providing samplings from their menu so I just took
a picture of the details so I can put it in my calendar so thanks for that um I I again everything looks in order all the insurance liability all of that so I don't have any questions ed do you have any questions no it just says the functions from 6 to 8 right okay
questions great no questions looks great we get all we can out of them in two hours and then we then we go home we're all too old to be up past 8 no it's a pretty fastmoving event and uh didn't end yeah people are people generally people are coming from work and and they
got a couple hours left in them to to to smoo around and and uh and then hopefully it's nice weather it's not an all night thing yeah so we do it right in the Yeah we're right inside the big part of the lumber yard so Yeah yep yeah okay perfect i don't have any more
questions so I'll entertain a motion i make a motion to uh grant the application for a one-day liquor license to the Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity Incorporated which the function will be
at RK Miles on West Street in Hatfield from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m on Wednesday the 21st of May 2025 second a motion made and second any further discussion
all those in favor hi great Peter thank you good luck thank you okay okay thanks next order of business is the approval of the DPW director job description and the process for the POS
um search to fill that position so in um we have this this red markup um and this has um there was a few changes so I had
asked for the chapter 30B language where is that okay um so we did add chapter 30 specific language around the understanding of chapter 30B procurement and I had asked for some grant language
that's in here that should be in there as well i didn't put that in the red line because that was accepted by this board so anything in here has changed since your last meeting from the white okay we did do that at the last meeting and so um I'm sorry did you want to talk about the red line just so they know
where this this came from just a very brief overview um so at your last meeting last Wednesday there was a request made to have this reviewed by DPW staff um and the three superintendent and to also circulate it with um some of our other department
heads so that was done was sent to department heads and to uh uh DPW staff and they came back with with these recommendations a couple of them are more for copy edits but still I'm glad they got them uh which shows wisdom of the crowd there um and then there was a
good point made by one of the superintendents just around making sure that there's input from the superintendent uh and you really trying to avoid some micromanaging of day-to-day you know operations uh of the of some of the superintendent uh and
understanding that especially at the the plants you know they'll know the plants better than the the director might in some cases um so that while they're they're the boss they're they're overseeing them uh we want to make sure there's input from the superintendent on a lot of the the things that they're
directing them on and I think that that that point is is made nicely uh in this job description and um adding the language about tree warden and ADA coordinators that was caught by our town clerk who who said you know we we do have this person
listed as the ADA coordinator and the tree warden right now is it still the intention to continue that way and I I think it is i think we wanted to list this uh job description mostly the way it was before and uh that includes those two functions which I think makes sense
good good changes i'm glad we circulated they had some good input very helpful good nice that was a good recommendation Greg any further thoughts Ed no I I think it's it was well thought out and Yep and
includes everything that that was discussed okay do we need to approve it it says we need to make a motion to approve it recommend that sure i'll make a motion to approve the DPW director job of description as presented as
presented i I'll second that a motion made in second any further discussion all those in favor i I and then a motion to create a DPW director search committee or how I guess it's really a discussion on how we want to move
forward on that you asked the question last time and we got sidetracked i'm sorry about that that's okay i mean you have some thoughts no I I I was going to kick around the idea of putting a search
committee together if we wanted to and I mean you you'd have supervisor participation at least one of them on that and possibly the town administrator I assume
and I'm not sure if if a member of the board would be on there since we're going to see the final candidates afterwards but those were just some some ideas so more of an employee committee not
necessarily a town oh I think I think a person from the town might be Yeah I think be good to help represent the town yes i mean I I know some people that Oh I bet there'd be few that'd be great yeah that would be really great i guess it determines on how many you would how
big of a committee we want for this we know are you suggesting all the superintendent take place take part not necessarily i mean I'd hate to What would your thoughts be i I have and and I'm not sure if this is
a a professional consideration or just something I've always felt somewhat uncomfortable with is is the idea of hiring your own boss um I've always been somewhat skeptical of of that um but at the same time it happens in most professional settings that a lot of times there is at least one direct
report of a a vacant position that's involved with a search and this certainly wouldn't be the hiring you're not suggesting this would be a hiring body but we it would it would Well we would hire yeah right it would ultimately I mean this would go through to submit the candidates to the board
and then we would do interviews on TV with hopefully two or three and then we would make the final decision right so you really just need a screening right yeah sort of like we did with the administrator position
um and if that's the case I do kind of like the idea of the superintendent because I think that they all are you know they they're so um you know mindful of their own department and the and what their own department really needs from this position so I I I could go either
way to be honest not having them or having them but I think having only one isn't a great idea one way to potentially this is just a suggestion you could have um Eric Meals involved in it as a former superintendent who's now still on staff
and someone who's you know competent in the position and understands you know the work of the department well but not necessarily as directed by them on a day-to-day basis that might be a nice way to square that circle for that one for that one department yep yeah or you
could count that as employee super uh employee participation if you wanted to but you could certainly include more yeah Eric would be um I think versed enough in even the highway side and the water side to probably but that's a
thought yeah Greg did you have any No I I agree with that that's I hadn't thought of that before that's a great idea i think I don't know about the supervisors or not like all three supervisors how that would be a lot of people involved in it is all I get your
point too i mean I'm I'm open to either way to be honest it also depends how many people you end up getting applying if you end up with three candidates you could probably interview them all or you could have me and whoever else you want do a quick
screen just for to make sure that they seem like um plausible candidates what I don't want to do is really hold this up that much more so I would like to get this advertise get this get it rolling i mean tomorrow yeah I think we should do that
and then um you know maybe what are you thinking three or five people well I was just thinking I don't know if Andrew wanted to be part of that process uh I thought that would be good uh and then Miles would be
Neil person he would be great that'd be too and then I'm not sure if uh committee if we want a department head from I mean he's going to have to work with all the department heads too
so whether one of the department heads possibly and like the DPW department heads or no our our department heads could be whoever police chief could be police chief fire chief whatever and
then a couple um people maybe one or two people from town i'm just I know Mr k likes he's very good at uh not being on the search committee the first person we put on dave Bob you had your hand up being able to
give suggestions on who he might think should be on the committee since he's wellversed in committees and has been on many chief so in the past some of the other search committees for other department heads have included the the same level rank from a neighboring
department so another DPW director somebody from finance a town resident somebody from the department and then Oh yeah there's We could really make this I think but you could get to probably just to five and still keep it relatively close if you wanted one person that
represents all three departments another DPW director or supervisory whether retired or not finance committee town person and then whatever you thought for the five cuz that's how a lot of the other previous police chief fire chief and a couple of the others you know over
the last 15 or 20 years have consisted of for that original screening committee great Luke you had your hand up i was just going to say that I think it's important that um you choose someone whether it's the town's person or you have an additional person that has a
background in either you know public works sector like a a neighboring town but for like the resident someone who's in the in the fields and understands the workings of both snow and ice and construction and things of that nature
the the costs associated with it so they could give a little bit better input that brings up Frank's name but I don't know if he's in for he would well and Eric would would also be to your point um Bob Eric would sort of serve in that role plus he has a familiarity with this
department in particular and would serve but there's so many people in town who work in this field and have experience that there's I could think of a number of people who'd be great to help so I guess I'm I I I do think to your point
somebody from a maybe the finance committee um I know at least the last there was a finance committee member on both of the screening committees and I believe there was a
police chief and a fire chief on both for their respective disciplines at that time there was a fire chief because I was on that one spec was on the committee right but I mean I I I mean I would suggest
that Eric Meals could fill that that same role who so that but also has pretty sound knowledge of specifically Hatfield um you know DPW issues um so
that's a thought we could ask um all right so let's decide three or five members and who do you have as a suggestion from either a town st stand standpoint or like a general Now when when Luke brought up somebody with a background my first thought was
Frank Motika because he actually ran the DPW at one time but I don't know if he's available i don't know if he's still in Florida they usually come back for the summer so I that was my first thought that I was It would be great
but I know that's I know there's a lot of people in town that have the background somewhat so I suppose okay unless we ask and but we want to get this moving within a week's time right so well we want I mean we we
we can get it advertised with a deadline we just have to have a committee seated before it's time to review applications so the problem is if we really put it out there like for people who might want to join on that's just another delay in you know doing it but I guess we really
have to do that we should open it up and have people be able to you know put their name in as wanting to be considered because we could have some excellent candidates out there that we're not even thinking about but now you don't have a meeting again until the end of April which that should work out
for timing you can pick somebody by then I would think um if that that gives us it gives candidates a few weeks to apply and then you'd have a committee together by the time you start screening applications which is probably fine yeah that'll work i mean we can give
this some more thought but I I do think someone from the finance committee especially just from a consistency standpoint where we've searched for these larger department head positions so maybe we could ask our our good friends on the finance
committee david won't make eye contact with me right now so we'll do so we could ask the uh the finance committee and [Music] um maybe just put it out there that we're looking for residents to um you
know to be on this particularly who have experience in DPW related um professions so by or two residents you're thinking I would say you y a finance y
males Eric Eric Eric if he'll do it if he'll do it and then that would be open to two residents and I would I I mean I would Frank is an excellent suggestion if he's available you might want to reach reach out to
like Rich Parceli lives up on Lindsey Road he's a superintendent Northampton you know larger town and everything has Some good insight there i don't know if he would do it or not but he would be someone who would probably be good on a search committee well Mr antosh or Mr
anttosh too yeah you know him there's a lot there's really a lot of people in town who've had really great careers in um this arena so there's a lot of great candidates out there so hopefully between all of those we'll So
you'll let us know if Eric is agreeable to it so we're going to the process will be we we'll post it and then we'll have a committee selected by our next meeting and then they can review the applicants
and well we'll select the committee at our next meeting right yep and then we'll meet shortly after and screen applicants and uh set up interviews and have folks in here
hopefully by the end of May okay right on let's see what happens you need to vote to establish a search committee i'll make a motion to establish a five member search committee that includes a member of the finance committee our town administrator
um Eric do we identify Eric by name i would say a DPW representative a a Yeah a local DPW yeah local DPW representative and then two Hatfield
residents so that's my motion second motion made in second any further discussion all those in favor i I Great um because the the interview process will take a bit and then I would
assuming whoever I would assume whoever we hire is really going to need to give a decent notice you know to wherever they're working now this is not a two-eek notice kind of job okay everybody good with the DPW director position at this point ed you
good i'm good good plan see what happens fingers crossed okay topic three is appointments and resignations and we have a request here to appoint Carrie Flity to the recreation committee which I think is an excellent idea motion to
appoint Carrie Flity to recreation committee a second motion made and seconded any further discussion no all those in favor i I okay topic four location agreement for a
short film so this is really um this is kind of exciting so Hatfield's um going to be the site of a looks like a very small part of a film that's being um what is it called i saw it um Irving
Berlin's view of the East River that's what it's called so this is uh Yeah sorry go ahead okay um I can send you the script too if you want i guess it's a public document now since it was sent to actors i believe
it's been cast unfortunately um okay um but um so we had talked about this a couple months ago and at the time uh it was looking like they they had two scenes they wanted to film here in town one is just uh B-roll and some uh filming of the welcome to Hatfield sign
and some other things as as you cross into town uh some shots down Main Street um and the other shot that they were looking to get was um this kind of cool walk and talk scene along the Dyke Walk unfortunately the director of photography said that the lighting
wouldn't be quite right and they're going to be shooting that scene in Hadley instead so I know it's not good i I bring you bad news tonight i I really I you know so I'm going to question why is the lighting is no different on this side of the river than that side of the river i would agree with that what is
the possible we're we're going to have to talk to this director of photography and find out i will say apart from that the the producers has been wonderful to work with um and after finding out that they were really only doing this one scene driving along the road which will not in
any way be a disruption to residents most won't even re realize there's something going on uh town council had said we we probably don't even need a formal agreement uh however for the producer um for for their paperwork everything else it is easier to have
gone through this process and they were actually kind of more generous than we were expecting to be they wanted to make sure we had the insurance lined up and a few other things so I I think uh on their end it's helpful for us it doesn't hurt they'll make a very small donation to the town just just to be very nice so
this is a new revenue stream where we're getting 50 bucks uh-huh yeah so it's something uh they really don't need to give us anything because they have every right to drive a car down the the street and film things um at the same time uh it's a nice thing for them to do and
plus it's going to look like the the film takes place in Hatfield so that's so nice it'll be fun so we'll have to arrange why do you know anything about the writer of the film uh there's the one of them two co-writers one of them uh lives in Ammerst and I guess is knows
the area well and just kind of thought it would be pretty unscreen so should be fun very exciting so all we need to do is just uh authorize signing this um town council obviously has seen it and comfortable with it uh that thinks it's more protection than we need and uh we
should be in good shape and it'll just be signed by the chair yes i'm behind on my signatures no problem hang on one second i'm sherking my responsibilities over here so I think
if you want to make a motion to accept it uh to to authorize the chair sign it I think it's probably a good thing to do yeah but I think we do okay i think it's a good idea i'll make a motion that we have the chair sign the location agreement for
this short film as presented second yeah I'll second it okay motion made in second any further discussion no all those in favor i karen on this liquor license do I just sign next to where it says approved
okay sorry I am backtracking here i was not signing documents as we were making votes ed okay well that's very exciting about the movie they'll be filming in two weeks so hopefully
they'll have good weather and maybe something will happen will be just a little too bright in Hadley and they need to move things over here but we'll we'll see i know I'm a little salty about that part of it but that's I'll have to get over it okay there you go all right very good um next is topic five which is the open
space and recreation plan so this is a lot of work that went into this plan through our open space committee and and and others uh the plan is a requirement from the state from um uh from the state's u direct uh division
of conservation services i think the plan looks very good um the last step that's needed is a letter from three different bodies saying that they have reviewed it and approve of it uh planning board uh Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the select board
so we have a draft letter for you uh to approve of saying that you've reviewed the plan and are comfortable with submission and we should be good to go will this be posted anywhere where people can read it yeah I mean I think uh it should be posted everywhere pretty comprehensive yeah it's a it's a good
plan it came out well but just so towns people know sort of the the um themes and specific needs that arose out of this were um you know preserving um agricultural lands and working farms
obviously um protection of aquifers wetlands and flood planes um um continue to improve and add more sidewalks amen to that the open space committee should prioritize education
and outreach such as providing maps and descriptions of active and passive recreation opportunities in the town um a need and desire for more access to water resources in town for swimming non-motorized boating and fishing um then a significant increase in
increasing safe bicycling and walking options so that's it in a nutshell but it is it's it's pretty big and uh hopefully we can get it up to where people can um read that so we just need to um sign this letter does that need to
be a vote uh I I I would recommend a vote just to say that you authorize signing of the letter i'll make a motion to approve signing of the review letter for open space and recreation plan do you want to second that motion i'll second that okay sorry a motion made in
second any further discussion no all those in favor i this is for all three of us to sign thank you Andrew and we said this will be on the town website as far as Okay and it's it's great too we have a uh an
action plan at the end of this document as well similar to how we do in the comprehensive plan so a lot of actions so we need to take that just is for you Greg right here and then um there's just a letter for me for all three of us to sign in here that's
going to Congressman McGovern this was not in our packet that's correct this I found out about today uh a couple hours before this meeting so this um as I I briefed the board on this a little bit ago uh that there was a deadline uh with Congressman McGovern's office to apply
for community project funding and this is essentially the earmarked process these are projects that can get funded through the the the budget making process um it remains to be seen if Congress will actually go through this process or anything else this year um
however the program that I think meets our needs well is a um congressionally directed program um and what I applied for was funding to get us started with the planning process uh design and everything else for a new public safety
building if we do go in that direction thought it was worth applying to see what we get so we have a request in and the fact that McGovern's office asked us to include this uh letter of support which we uh I guess had not very optimistic it's optimistic so it means
that it's one that they're considering if if it was an incomplete application and they weren't even considering it from the start then they probably wouldn't have asked for this so we'll see so do we need to vote to actually sign this letter or just I I would recommend that i'll make a motion to sign the letter and accept it as
presented to us second motion made in second any further discussion no all those in favor i Great thanks so that is all we have um
well I believe we can review the warrant before we could review the warrant the finance committee arrives if we're comfortable with that a little windy okay so that is all set yeah we can start reviewing the warrant
great okay so we do have the draft um we get we're what's this oh what about the um construction and post construction storm water management that's part of the That's part of it okay and we'll get to that
okay okay um we can kind of wait on anything that's more Yeah on the financial stuff but a lot of it we can just get through so obviously um the first so um when what is the deadline for getting this warrant approved great so the deadline is your next meeting uh
April 29th because that would be the last meeting that we have right with with enough time 15 days before the town so that is the deadline for for signing the warrant um we I'm trying to think what I was trying to say the other deadline that exists is the ballot
question deadline so the ballot needs to be completed by next Tuesday the um a week from today and uh the 15th April 15th so I have included you know what might be ballot questions as well with wording that's been approved by town
council if we're comfortable moving in that direction we'll get there that's a finance committee conversation as well i I think right of course but I've prepared that because that's the other deadline to be aware of and if we're not comfortable moving forward with those questions tonight uh then we'd have to look at having another meeting before
the 15th which is fine we can certainly do that um but we do need to do it okay always do a quick meeting to agree on wording okay so uh again the deadline is the the 29th and then question deadline is the 15th okay and this version of the
warrant here has been reviewed uh by department heads today they'll they'll be giving any uh feedback that they have and the uh town council reviewed it today as well so um obviously this will keep changing it's an evolving document but uh we'll keep getting that approved
by town council until Okay perfect perfect okay so how about if we just go through one by one so article one is the article that's on every year um to um set elections for the previous or the coming week um and then I see that the
two um potential um debt exclusion and override questions are there just in case any questions on question one Ed no I mean that's that'll be a longer discussion yeah I mean it okay that's
good um article two um again these are some of the general articles that are on this authorizes us to apply for accept and expend grants um stop me if you have any questions okay article three um is to authorize
the treasurer to enter into into compensating balance agreements um for fiscal 2026 article four is to authorize the select board to enter into a memorandum of agreement with the Mass Department of Public Works concerning use of funds
made available that's the chapter 90 article so that's allowing us to accept chapter 90 funds which we want to accept all we can get um article five is to see if the town will vote to um raise an appropriate or transfer um a sum of
money to supplement FY2025 snow and ice budget there was a lot of discussion around this one last year this is something that's on every year all communities in the Commonwealth are able to overspend their snow and ice it's actually purposely under budgeted
and then we take care of it at town meeting um uh article six um is um appropriating funds relative to the opioid settlement fund so that's a free cash transfer just
because we had money that closed to free cash which should have been put aside in the opioid fund so to rectify that that uh issue we'll be making this transfer so the money went in the money is coming out there's no impact to actual free cash no impact on anything yep um
article 7 um is a transfer from free cash of $1,900 in change for wetlands protection fund same thing this is money that closed to free cash that was that came in through uh NOI fees that should have gone to this wetlands protection
fund which is uh controlled by the conservation commission so this will rectify that that issue as well article 8 is to authorize the payment of previous um bills from previous fiscal years um there is a you know a general law that allows us to do that that
happens sometimes and we just need to clean it up it's a little bit of housekeeping this was an eversource issue we we had uh some some accounts that changed around we were build for them way too late um and these are bills from FY24 that we need to pay off uh and to authorize doing it with this year's
funds this will allow that there's something every year yeah [Music] um so article nine is to authorize funds for the engineering services to meet the town's obligation under the permitting
requirements for small municipal separate storm sewer systems um this number is not official yet um I'm waiting yeah exactly um I'm waiting for an actual estimate from um uh DPC uh
engineering um this would be a very big number i put it in there for now just to to play with numbers to make sure we'd be okay under 30,000 range it should be much closer to that but but this this is um has become a more comprehensive uh
project from them uh to help us with a couple years of reporting and and moving forward so I don't have an estimate from them yet but should get it soon they just said it was had become a more comprehensive project and I probably took that a little too literally and made too big a number here but we'll have that shortly but this this goes
back to we we received three grants and for some reason this one wasn't funded that is actually a separate project that is our storm water asset management plan that's $27,000 uh and that will definitely that that that's on here later that's in the capital planning process this is a
separate project uh to actually come up with a storm water management system um apart from just the asset management of what's there this is this includes policy um and uh reporting and and management that just hasn't been done yet uh despite this this I this is like
the where did this one originate from where did this one come from so this basically originates from me getting contact from EPA uh a couple weeks ago and then uh follow-up contact yesterday in a letter that I shared with this
board um that stated that because we are not in compliance with MS4 regulations from the state and federal governments uh we are in a position now where we need to show that we can quickly catch up and that includes reporting for past
years reporting for this current year and then uh putting together a uh regulatory framework specifically on construction and post construction bylaws um it's yes that's here as well we can talk about this is a whole new we got the email we had an email
yesterday about it this is this is something an email yesterday that was the email that was sent in relation to that okay and and this was uh EPA have these discussions with us and said that we need to be uh updating our our compliance here they've given us time to
do so but also don't want to give us forever to do so um they were comfortable with giving us basically a year from the first time they reached out so uh and we'll get to this later but that means we could either try to pass the storm water regulations which we have a template we've been working from it's been reviewed by town council
they're comfortable with it uh but also it's something that you know you don't necessarily want to rush you want to make sure people are comfortable with this new um new bylaw so we could consider a special town meeting to pass that uh perhaps in September or October so we have some options there in the
meantime we also MS4 MS4 is what's what's the reference when they say MS4 small municipal uh separate storm sewer systems separate storm sewer systems is the S4 okay um that's what it's referring to yeah
the four S's of that title separate storm sewer systems i think that's what they mean yeah they they designated on size of town determining or they designated on the size of your storm um sewer system it's it's about the
infrastructure yes the the size of the infrastructure itself all right okay so um 150,000 or we haven't even had a discussion whether that could be under uh free cash or something right we haven't had a discussion and we haven't
had a discussion with the finance committee on either on that 150,000 no and I would say don't be attached to that number i it should be considerably lower um it should be well within what we could use free cash to do um but I'm recommending that it be done as a
warrant article to set aside this funding so that our engineers can lead this project to help us with the regulatory compliance and uh do some of this reporting that needed to be done that's that's my recommendation but again we will have to decide once we
see what the number is and everything else well I don't know how similar this project is in relation to the project for asset management of our systems i think the asset management can help
inform uh what what the overall uh work will look like but it's separate because it also includes this reporting uh and permitting and um regulator policy piece we need to put together and the compliance i just hate to pay for
redundancy if there's any they should overlap with that project and this project it's the same people who will probably be doing it so they they should be aware of whatever redundancy there is this would have been a DPW
director job this is something that all towns have known about for some time and have done the the math on whether it made sense to be early on this and and do it fast and do it soon or to wait until you were forced to and a lot of the communities
with fewer resources took that second path gotcha we're not we are not alone in being in this position there's a lot of community and we were told this by EPA when we had that first talk they said this is the position a lot of communities are in right now um and
that's why they're so easy to to work with in a lot of ways but at the same time they want communities to show they're serious in doing this okay but yes a director would have helped with this i think it would be good to have the engineers at town meeting to discuss
this if people have questions i mean we go to town meeting discuss it we got to have all the information because the town deserves getting all the information this would be Dave right on why all of a sudden this pops up and it's like I
mean if we don't have all the information then it's not all of a sudden we wait a year it's just that we waited i mean I I I never heard of it before until I got the email from Yeah i I found out about it a couple months ago and been probably not that many months ago few
weeks ago okay is is everybody Sorry go ahead and the number again shouldn't be 150 but I just wanted to put in something um we're just going through some sort of some of the basic articles that aren't necessarily
money related there's always a little money but anyway um article 10 is to um appropriate money um a sum of 7500 for upgrading the town's website so I originally had this in the operating
budget i realized it's really more of a one-time expense so it might make less sense to put it in an operating budget and artificially raise the amount that's in there for future years could make more sense as a warn article uh this isn't something we need to be doing but um we do have an opportunity to act on this because uh there's a migration that
will be happening with our website uh we're moving from one platform to another um because there the Civic Plus is phasing out the platform that they use so um that will be happening anyway and and they will of course try to say would you like to be redesigning things at the same time i think it could be a
helpful thing for the the community uh to refresh a website but it's also it's not mandatory okay um article 11 um is um our is OPED um vote to appoint the town treasurer as trustee of the other postemployment
benefits liability trust fund otherwise known as OPED so article 11 and 12 both come from our town financial policies which were passed in 2017 those policies flagged three things that we needed to do uh to um act on some things that that
would put us in in best practices uh with a lot of communities one was to set up the OPED trust officially and that was done but two things needed to follow that and one would be uh designating the trustee i'm recommending that be the town treasurer um and then the second
thing we need to do is uh accept uh MGL chapter 44 section 54B um the the prudent investor rule which allows us to actually use that that fund and invest it um in a way that will help us with returns in the future so those they're
both tied to our financial policies um and would be a good thing for us to do any questions not on those no okay i just I just get frustrated when the state pushes something a regulation and
then it says to the town you got to pay $150,000 to to get it you know that's all are you still on the other Yeah I'm still on I'm still on M and again the number hopefully isn't the number but I've seen towns across the state have to you know drastically increase their
staffing in in engineering and everything else because of these storm water regulations and in a lot of ways it makes sense just because it's an issue that hasn't been dealt with properly and and there are damages and things that occur because of that but also it's it was an unfunded you know mandate that came from from the state so
that's what we're most of them are most of them are okay so article 13 that is the budget article yes article 14 um has to do with the um fire fire ambulance department's
operating budget for the coming fiscal year so that would be um discussion of that would be the 247 question this would be the override and it would be the override um proposition 2 and a half
override um article 15 um this is again having to do with those um asset management plans hi Daryl um and this is rescending the bond authorizations because we ended up not needing we did not need bond we did not
need that okay so that's so we can get those off the books that's a little housekeeping as well um article 16 is um to do with revolving funds um and this would be adding the new one only the one in red is new
correct that's correct and that's the watershed management timber sales um and that is um to allow us to harvest and use that money for additional planning around the harvest that's correct yeah
that was created by the select board but we haven't done the town meeting article on it yet okay um artic we do want to wait till 6:30 to get to you because it that's how it's posted is that okay with you all of you okay um article 17 um is um to set
spending limits for revolving funds these are the existing um funds and then including the new one that's it yep uh it would recommend an increase in the if if we can do this just through here
an increase in the tax title spending limit that's because we are um increasing our efforts there with the new firm that we've brought on and they what's great about this firm is that they will not bill us until any of their projects are completed so we won't be getting just random bills here and there
um their fees are a little higher but they also are trying to get us some real results so just kind of contingency basis i think that makes sense so they get paid when we get paid that's right which is perfect for revolving funds it's money in money out right okay i
just have a quick question about that timber sale article is that going to become an enterprise fund so it' be self it would stay for so like money from the timber sales would be used for you know conservation or recreation stuff or is that money from the timber sales and stuff like that go back into the general
fund no it's setting up a revolving fund so those funds are they're set aside for future forestry plans okay yep so it's it's really just to cover the forestry plans and then the timber harvest based on the forestry plans fund the next
forestry plans so it's there to set up basically a self-sustaining program yeah so that we're so that all of our forestry work and planning is um paid it pays for itself right right but no nothing timber sales doesn't go back into the general operating budget it
stays within that same it does stay pardon i don't know again I the article but there's usually a limit right there would be a limit in here $50,000 which would be enough to to run the program if it were to ever if we had like a massive
Yeah yeah if we had a massive profit from a timber sale then it's to you would maintain only a certain amount in the re revolving fund enough to just sort of keep the plans going so that we're not there's not gaps in how in our
forestry planning right right right you good okay perfect um Okay um article 18 is the additional funding needed for the storm water asset
management plan we've talked about this several times there were the three plans um this one was not funded um the way it should have been last year yep now we're just didn't authorize us to use free cash and now now we can then
we start getting into some of the capital planning so maybe we should wait and I think it's a great invite our friends from the finance committee on up we'll have we'll we'll get started so I don't see on the agenda that we're reviewing the Oh the budget is at 6:30
okay this isn't right n can hit the buttons all set we're back on okay so we are back um and we're now going to um continue to topic seven which is um a
meeting with our colleagues from the finance committee um the first first we're going to Are we going to do the budget first and then backtrack over warrant articles is that right John darl um yes whatever sure we can do that doesn't matter okay
y um I'll turn it over to you all right well 24th okay just we changed the date so I'm trying to You want lights up no I can
see it i can see it okay good so where do we want to start we'll start with the general government as usual this is is this this is what people want are familiar with so this is what I thought we should start with mhm um and we can
go through it and just see people have thoughts comments or questions [Music] um so not there's some changes which we may or may not decide to keep depending on
the summary how it turns out like the finance reserve thing example yep we reduced the finance reserve from 40 to 30,000 because we were working to balance uh we may not need to do that so um if we don't we put it back the way it
was has been for the last couple years could I ask where we are right now with just the bottom line like Sure okay maybe that that would be a good starting point so where we are with the bottom line and then we backtrack through to see plus 20,000 no we're more than that
now oh huh we are um right now according to this spreadsheet that we use to track uh revenues and expenditures which I've found complicated but I think eventually manageable we have what looks to be a
general fund surplus of $150,000 that's what it looks like at the moment but we've made some changes to get here so we're gonna some of that's going to be undone presumably because um so this uh this particular
sheet um we've been uh working with quite a bit it's new uh as of last year and neither of us really have a lot of experience with it so we're trying to figure out exactly what
it does and so we've been through several uh iterations now but this so something that jumps out at me is that $10 million and the FY2023 general fund surplus general fund surplus FY23
uh is probably because we don't have a budget in there yeah that that this I don't think we can use that properly i what I've put work into doing is making sure that the everything in FY26 is as accurate as as humanly possible we don't have any lines
that feed into a budget for 23 so okay so it's all surplus because we didn't have any money we used Did we use this last year too we did use it last year yes that was the first year it was used though right um so and it's not it's not
this summary sheet is not actually where we do the budgeting the budgeting is done in the other sheet so but right now that appears to be where we're at and I I will say um we've been working with this for you know close to six seven
weeks now and it all feeds in from two other spreadsheets but what this allows us to do is take all of the inputs so all the expenditures everything else with all of our um predictions of what uh revenue will be and see does it balance which is
exactly what you need it to do now I have two other spreadsheets that are being used one of them is a line for line uh spreadsheet of of absolutely every um uh uh ledger number that we use and looking at the request from every department and seeing can we meet that
or we have to go slightly below it that feeds into the department spreadsheet that we started looking at uh which then allows us to see by department uh what are we doing for uh taxation and then other funds that we have put all of that together all of those numbers should be
exactly the same as what's in here which then lets you see does it balance now when we were working with this most recently and at the most recent uh finance committee meeting we were getting this close to getting it to balance we were say a couple uh thousands off and that was when some
decisions were made to try to see can we can we squeeze things a little bit further and just balance this budget since we've met then I've spent some time in working on the enterprise funds and that's where I found this offset for enterprise indirect costs which basically builds into the expenditure
side um the piece where you say how much will the uh enterprise fund be reimbursing the the general fund which makes sense but I already had those expenses built into the general fund too so it was double counting some of these expenses that we expect to be reimbursed
from from the uh enterprise funds if that makes sense to folks i think it almost does so that saves us around this $160,000 so I went back and and refunded some of the accounts we've taken some some money that we probably didn't need to and we can talk about that means for
for schools and other places and I also did the same with 100,000 that we talked about uh to supplement the health insurance increases so we're continuing to work through this and make sure that it's as accurate as human health insurance increases in it yes oh yeah
well yeah so let's we can go through it and see where we're Okay well that wasn't the number I was expecting i'm pleasantly surprised well we're still doing some work here so we'll Yeah but if we're another$100,000 we're still okay which would be great okay thanks
and and if this is if this is $100,000 $200,000 off we still have some mechanisms to use that I think we feel comfortable with yeah we've already done we've already done it once so we know we know where to go back to already yeah okay right okay so I don't know what the best way
to Yeah i mean the one thing that um the one thing that is going on here that I think is is interesting and I haven't quite figured out yet although the math works is that last
year somehow we were under the levy by a considerable amount of money uh if you look at 24 levy and 25 levy you will see
that we didn't we we came under the levy quite a bit somehow and I don't know what happened there this tax levy uh piece should be helpful yeah but I went back through it and added read I calculated it by hand
it's it's not wrong in terms of the 26 so some of the extra some of the 6.6% is debt exclusion right the fact that the total maximum allowable levy goes up so much here much
of that is due to this $360,000 difference is debt debt exclusion which doesn't that's money in money out we already have a funding source for it but so the other piece
is around 350,000 which is more than what you would have anticipated just strictly based on two and a half when you say the other piece you mean not debt exclusion okay right
outside the debt inside the levy what's normally what would normally be in the levy without a debt exclusion that's a good no new growth number too yeah well that's part of it i mean part of it is part of it is new growth but
but new growth was about the same last year too well we have a 407 yeah so I mean that explains 40% explains some of it but we're and that's a conservative estimate for what new growth will look like next year but if
the number of things that our building inspector and assessor are expecting will come online do come online then it should be even higher than that number what What about the overlay is that potentially what happened with the levy i'm not touching it at the moment that's part of it that's part of the levy but
there's still about $60,000 that um we came under somehow uh that we're getting that we can access now better than over oh yeah we can't be over so right uh yeah so you know that it's just
so part of that difference in the levy could be the new growth yeah well without new growth yes it is definitely part of it but without new growth you would have expected about $250,000 right so you got 40,000 from new growth but
you also have other money in there that is coming from un being under the levy in a prior year and I I just can't um I don't know how that happened awesome it's not for this year
at least it's to the good oh yeah okay i mean now it is now it is yeah we do have to figure it out because we do have to figure it out because we don't want to be Yeah no I mean there it Yeah i don't know i I just started trying to
look at it and you know if you do the two and a half calculation it does work um right so it's not the math is correct the question is how do we end up with the excess levy capacity last year right well the question is what happened last
year so you got to dig back for that and I don't remember what happened honestly you we'd have to figure it out and maybe we won't the first it was the first year with the spreadsheet and we didn't maybe have the best handle on the spreadsheet that's entirely could have even been a
carryover from the previous previous right um theoretically I guess it could be i I tend to think it isn't but that's you know I mean you can see in the previous year we were 42,000 under which that I would I would expect
that you know what I mean i I would expect to be 30 to 40,000 under 186 is is a different story right so we have this number this 150,000 can
we in the interest of time because we want to get to the articles too can we now go through the budget lines to see yep because I'd like to see what you've got in there and maybe things that came out that's what we should do yep okay now do we want to do it in a more
granular sense of looking through each department i would do you want to do every single line in the or just the department budget i would do the department budgets yeah i don't think we want to go through every single No you're you're probably right that's sounds like how I will be here a long
time good idea um so like I said um finance committee we reduced that but I I think actually now we should put that back uh to the 40,000 that it has been uh until at least until we discover a need to not do so
okay um and I think there's not really an argument to increase it any further we've had years where we've increased it a little bit right because we I mean we were we had that discussion yeah we had the discussion leave it around the 40 leave it yeah okay
so can we go through where there's um changes which is of course every single line but Well you mean some of them are Yeah yeah select board emergency fund isn't hasn't been spent in years it's
$25 so I'm really struggling to imagine the kind of emergency that $25 fixes i think we just leave it there as a placeholder just to keep the line there but um this one um there's the town administrator and
administrative staff that some of that is moved right well this this increased by 14% yep um right i think that's contractual to be frank my salary is probably a large part of that that's contractual that's fine we call contractual we hired yeah
contractual and and raises too right is that in there also that was my other question are the colas built in here yes colas are built all departments have colas okay right have we heard from schools yet where yes all departments have equal colas uh should they be eligible for them so the only ones that
don't have colas are those with with contractual employees or union employees well Greg can tell us if did the school settle i wasn't there for the last one so you don't know i don't know i thought they were pretty close i'd be surprised if they were close i'd be surprised if they didn't we felt we
feel like I know an adequate number in there to meet that they had a meeting okay right let me see if I can be great yeah yeah if you see you know small decreases like this one for accountant's a good
example i went through line items to to find things like um office supplies and and mailings and things that just weren't being used by certain departments and the accountant's a great example of that we don't have an accountant here on staff we outsource all of it any mailing or anything else is built into their contract already so
we save $6,000 that way which I think is fair um some of these are little increases assessors is mostly because of software and also a staff increase that was proposed that right now we can meet y uh
that's the finance commission treasurer uh contractual contractual yep yep that's the biggest increase there and then a little bit of software as well collector stays the
Um software is really tough i mean there's really not much to do you're in a It's a very low competition environment there are so few people it's not like we're getting Microsoft or the budget products thing too right i mean
it's like you know there's only so many people who make software for towns to do specific town functions we do not use the expensive one now in those two lines that show um decent decreases do you remember what those what the decreases were comprised
of so town hall operations and legal legal we've been budgeting far ahead of what we've actually spent in the last few years um so I felt comfortable reducing it uh to to this number actually some of the smaller ones Andrew's just we looked at actuals and
like what's happened right okay yeah and the same with uh town hall operations there were some lines that just weren't being used in there um consolidated some this is an increase in technology um we did a lot out of that that was a we
we were spending more in our licensing than than we right than we were budgeted for so we needed to update that tax title this is just a mirage because of the uh um the revolving account that's money in money out but for some reason it wasn't
counting even though there is money in the general fund for that it wasn't counting so that's just a a fake number um town clerk and staff that would be an increase uh for u wages for both of the um staff there above two
2.5% above 2.7% above the colas okay that was asked for yeah and the finance committee is currently planning on granting that okay so this is uh we don't have an election yes so we save significant amount of money by not having uh uh multiple elections okay
this is a low our lowest year that's a that's a line that'll have to come back it will yeah yeah so we get a little reprieve this year but yeah this is the fewest elections you can have in a year I think is this year and then next year we'll have okay last year was the most you can have right because next year you don't have to worry about a presidential
primary um conservation goes up because of increased hours for the conservation assistant planning board it's the exact same thing increased hours for the conservation assistant she's trying to make two part-time jobs
into a job and really needs to have a few more hours yeah this would add six more hours a week and yeah they both asked for it so great so that's general government great what is the 13% increase in the assessor
line yeah that's um staff and software software and staff software so that's not part of the technology specific software public safety oops let me see if I can can folks see that okay
let me zoom in a little my old eyes that's better i can zoom in a little more is that too much it's too much okay
that's good that'll be great okay um I need just a little bit more what happened there no it's my own fault actually let me just hide these for now because we don't need them okay that's better yeah all right so um
we had a little bit of inconsistency in the past in how fire and fire and ambulance was was done on here but it's it's it's I combined the percent change so you can see the overall change um so police increases that's contractual and
um and staff increases i think that's it fire and ambulance it's overall 6.5% increase but I think part of that is this 20,000 revolving fund so that wasn't being captured before and now it is overall it's there's not really any significant
increases here in fire and ambulance beyond uh personnel I believe yeah we the is actually Yeah they're pretty level
um inspectional services that was contractual yeah it's contractual i think that's all it is there might be a little software or computer program in there that Kyle talked to us about yeah or permodize you know what i think you're absolutely
right permitized did increase their their their fees for this next year yep that's absolutely right and Kyle did talk to us about that emergency management animal control these are both things that there's little little savings in here but it looks giant because u there was some office supplies or something that they haven't used in
years that I cut and that that ends up being an 8.3% decrease in the department so there you go mostly pretty straightforward here and Bob you like the way that split that fire ambulance split
yeah i mean I know we've talked about that over the years but I think it's gone back and forth and some of the keeping it separate was based on previous information from the accounting that was all okay
and that's Oh can I'm sorry can we go back to public safety because So that's keeping fire and EMS the same as it is obviously in the police line um was that I know I'm expecting there's going to be
money turned back in because there was a lot of shifts not covered in this current fiscal year weren't there for police for police that's something I'm I'm aware of we didn't we didn't look at it at that depth
okay because I know you mentioned um you know increasing shifts as part of that 4.4% andrew it's just salary okay sorry I thought I heard
you say there was no shifts okay so that's assuming that that all the shifts get filled so you have money if they do all get filled right if you don't then it comes back it comes back okay which I believe some of that happened this year yeah okay yeah i mean probably taking into account both fire
and ambulance would happen in both depends on so what is the the reduction ultimately on the fire and ambulance combined of 96,000 and the salary is actually lower for FY26 than it's showing for FY25
at least 387 to 299 yep and the reduction in an expense line as well yeah that's just because in two years ago or I for FY25 they did fire and ambulance all on one line and this year
it's shown as two lines so it just shows a decrease of 96,000 because um this drop down was that because it's because then there's an increase below right of the 127
yeah that difference isn't 127 though cuz if you look at it that way it's showing it that you reduced that's the actual ambulance line and then a reduction of the fire line by 96 cuz there was no actual
change to 20 20 FY25 to 26 ambulance wasn't a reduction okay we have FY25 total for ambulance is shown at zero and it's increasing
127,385 and then the total for fire and ambulance in FY25 is shown as 474578 and then the plan for this year is to be 377 so it's $96,000 less but you add the 127 to it yeah so
overall you really have an increase of um six% $30,000 so 6.5% increase and I I fixed the 6.5% increase but I didn't fix this stuff here because I just couldn't mess with the formulas which I should
but Bob the 6.5 if he clicks on it is to show is covers both of those lines right it's just the the back and forth between the two we switched now three years in a row we've switched them so it makes it harder to see what the actual number
one stick with one and I it's actually why I asked the question it's yeah whenever I look at them I put them together because at one point they were together and it and they different things have happened in different ones at different times so it's like it's
just easier to look at them together when you if you want to compare year-over-year yeah right your total is still going to be like $55,000 between the two but there's and the 20 should be in the last year of the lease
right correct yeah the ambulance payment so actually this 20 is is not from the ambulance payment um this 20 is from a revolving account that that fire has that got picked up in the expense line here by accident um so it just zeros
that out which is fine yeah that's a clerical thing that's the the hazmat 20k okay that's specifically why I asked that because just wanted to make sure we had it i know in the past Bob has said after
the fact that it wasn't what you thought it was yep yeah i mean that that $19,000 discrepancy that I that Marlene and I dealt with at the end of last year is still like outstanding from FY23 to
proposed 26 we are still different of 19,000 between them and I think So you're saying this budget should be $19,000 higher from what we originally did and that was literally just a clerical error from 20 FY23 to FY24 when the override
went through mhm there was a $19,000 that never got carried into the override amount but in subsequent years there's still been turnback at the end of the year so it's not as if you were underfunded by the 19 right well it is because if every shift is filled correctly i mean I know there's always
going to be money i think everybody turns you know some money back but we have to budget based off every shift is filled and there's overtime and then that would lead to that we're 19,000 short so I'm not I'm not super concerned if we don't fill the shifts but if we do
I would have to come back and I guess I'd have to ask for finance reserve so in this gets there so in this budget is there enough money to cover every shift that you're planning no yes
okay yeah that sounds that sounds right to me right we did sit down and go go through the overtime built into it for our fulltime employees because they're the ones that are eligible for it right okay great i just wanted to double check that
thank you did we put the school back we have not yet all right would you like to we should yes we should put the school back okay let me just do that for my other spreadsheet because that will be better for So tell me put the school back what
do you think we we we we took $20,000 from them last week okay because we felt like we were trying to balance balance yeah so and the entire blocking the entire
increase time to ask halfway through uh the entire increase there is really um an increase in special ed costs is going to eat up the entire town portion
um at least that's what we're planning for they're planning for whether it turns out that way or not is always in question depending on things we don't control but right that's the plan could get better could get worse they just asked for two and a half% over last
year's budget y still most of it is and if they because they were in contract negotiations they didn't know right what their numbers would be but they pledged that if it if necessary they would use school choice funds to cover whatever uh increases
that they that they negotiated yep over and above what they asked for on the on the right i think the school choice numbers were they were going to be coming clear into focus when we talked to them last
okay i don't know what the numbers are at okay that should restore their 20,000 i mean so that would bring that number we were looking at originally down to 130 yep in fact 130,000 let's do that
right now expenditures actually we're down to 120 oh right because of the finance finance reserve i haven't done that yet but I but I will we will there's a nice heater back here that
blows on our backs are you getting that i might doze off do we want to it's getting quite Do we need to bring it down to two i'm I'm good but it's it's uh it's really nice i actually like it all right so this is great you can watch what happens uh live here okay all right
so this is education and we added the the that back so if you see percent change 2.5% that was the request from the school department and that's that makes a lot of sense okay that makes sense and so far our vocational school and transportation is down that's right
and that's that is after triple checking it to see the second shocking thing you've said to me tonight Sean it you know I mean the reality is until right a week before tell me and you're dealing with you're dealing with a small number
of people really you know in the grand scheme of life this we're not talking about thousands of people you're talking about a small number of people so if a couple of people decide not to go that makes a big difference for us you know like if a couple more people decide to go that makes a big So and I don't know
what the increase was from Smith Lope but I don't think it could have been too too crazy as far as per pupil they did it last year i don't know if they'll even do another one this year who knows okay
public works let's see let me hide this we had taken some money out of that too didn't we we We had but we ended up in a pretty good place for DPW i we I didn't
ultimately take away too much good just seeing if I can make this a little bigger actually we're probably good we are um all right this first one here public works administration this is kind of a mirage but I just thought that there was some spending that needed to be um shown in this line rather than
others this is for um our FURCOG membership and for um some uh well monitoring that takes place uh there's a public works administration other professional services line that I thought was the best place to include that um it was in somewhere else random before that probably has gone down by
some thousands of dollars so that's why it shows a 354.57% increase well well monitoring wouldn't come under specifically that you can't do that through water enterprise actually it wasn't a water specific it was uh
connected with our I think our transfer station so maybe it should go somewhere else but but I think overall administration is fine um but no it shouldn't be underwater monitor the C oh they must be the captain okay yeah so maybe I should be putting under transfer station looking into the ground
i think that's what it is yeah so other professional services so highway overall right we were able to reduce by 2.4% um because of a a number of line items
that just weren't being used properly or weren't being really used much at all so um the overall decrease is is pretty good there we did need an increase in the mechanic motor pool um for our our uh year-over-year we were spending more
than we thought we were on um vehicle maintenance so that kind of makes up it's kind of a equal increase here and when you reviewed those lines that weren't being utilized is you made sure they weren't being utilized just because we didn't have a DPW director for Right
all went all went through it was not that it was all went through the highway superintendent okay and the uh and and Jen Polari okay so we went through every line okay and uh they were comfortable with any change that took place okay great
but overall you see a a decrease here which I think is is good there was also um some funkiness going on with some of the the salary lines that were was not accurate so we were able to to uh fix
that up a little bit as well so we have a decrease in this department somehow that's really great we could probably add to this if if we end up with the surplus we're talking about now includes all the colas and contractual it does and you know there there who knows what may happen with a DPW salary
line probably no are there any colas in here that's contractual yes i think who's not contractual or not needed oh um honestly affected by the UDM bargaining agreement whether they're in need or not it would
actually just be the the highway superintendent and the DPW director mhm and what about like superintendent doesn't have a seasonal folks we didn't put a cola on seasonals i did yeah oh okay so seasonal they wouldn't be in the bargaining
right well I mean you can't argue with a decrease that's great yeah i mean the the argument is is the one you made which is good which is does this actually provide everything we need and I I would say right now it does and and we can look to see is there anything that we pinch too many pennies on and want to increase if we're in a different
position now but I think we're mostly good i mean just as a general reminder like when we do go through um lines from prior years that are historically under spent we're definitely impacting future
free cash right just so we're aware of that like next year that presumably that impacts free cash going forward because it if it hasn't been spent in three years it's likely not going to be spent this year you know just I don't know what the
impact is but probably some there's there's a good number of reasons why that's the pros outweigh the cons of and there's other things that um you know impact it more than this for Sure like
we can get to later okay i'm good with public works are you good with public works Ed are you Are you good with the public works lines yes i just looking at what I have and what's up there that's all
comparing it and those numbers are the latest numbers these right sort of are a little bit off before they sort of scrubbed some lines yeah they moved them around a lot there's a couple discrepancies couple thousand here at these are up to date so if there's
anything you're concerned about I'm happy to meet on them outside of All right here and we can go through line by line and some things got moved around into just into different places because they were I'm fine with that in weird places you I'm good
okay but we could also I mean like snow and ice is is smaller this year we could probably at least keep it level funded there's some I was probably overly aggressive when I thought the the gap was very small and I think it was comfortable but I think we can but I
mean on one hand we did have some savings from Phil's salary right this year this year we're we're Yeah but I will say for next year um I have budgeted higher than was in the budget
uh for Phil's salary but have not included as a given the 12,000 in school choice that we had been receiving um so I I have it set at $125,000 for next year which I think is a fair salary but we can talk about if
we think it should be higher we don't know yet you have some breathing room because everything comes from the same salary line so okay okay let's say hi to Health and Human Services
can folks see this all right thanks the largest increase in here is veterans um which it's a large increase because of the amount of uh benefits that we were told to plan for for this year uh that was higher than in in past years we
also are no longer employing a a part-time you know uh stipended position we're part of a a regional collaborative for providing these services and they control how much the costs increase each year and it increased uh somewhat significantly to I think um 875 or or
something and we also were told to plan for more in veterans benefits so 22.4% 4% increase back right I mean get money you get money back from this actually
the reimbursement catches up well I have the reimbursement here under other funds um right right but you're a year behind oh I am I mean you're not a year behind a year no you're right you're right so that's a so presumably
conservative benefits go up we would get more money in the next year after that's a great great point yeah okay so that takes care of some of the increase just not all of it yeah we don't get back what it costs to do it obviously but yeah otherwise I
think any increases you see on here um why' this happen oh um I don't know why there wouldn't still be a $5,000 for recreation all right I'll fix that separately does it come from Can What about the celebration line that's the a
revolving account okay yeah because recreation has a revolving fund they have a revolving fund they've also historically had $5,000 in the general fund yeah it's probably probably good to keep it there I would say I'm
not sure why that's didn't show up i think we should just put it in there and then just check the as long as these spread so these spreadsheets aren't communicating so when you change it here it doesn't change that bottom line you have to go back and do that so there's three spreadsheets this one is powered
by the all line items one so those two talk purposely I don't have them talking to the workbook because I just really want to make sure that anything that happens there I really know what's happening there so I I I don't have any automatic formulas in that one okay the workbook has been a learning experience
so it'd be better if it wasn't doing things on its own probably at the moment yes so anything that happens there I'm logging and so I will fix that recreation that that shouldn't be seen as cut entirely otherwise there's not really going much
going on here in the human services okay do we have an increase in COA yes 5.4% okay okay all from uh personnel salary mhm so I thought you Oh the furcog assessment you've pulled out of there okay so two
different uh furcog assessments so we don't have an assessment to furcog um for being a member we just pay them for their services and that's what comes from the DPW line whereas for Piner Valley Planning um we are a member of
that consortium and and they they that goes to our cherry sheet uh that the state automatically takes the the money from us for that like they do for uh actually do they do that for us for transit i'm not sure yes they do there
you go so um let's talk about this unclassified the first two I think are not worth talking about county retirement um we were given these numbers from Hampshire County Retirement System uh our treasur's office did the work here to
calculate what the offset should be from water and sewer enterprise funds so that minimizes the taxation amount um that comes from enterprise instead but it's still a 6 and a half% increase unemployment uh we budgeted an additional $5,000 because it's
additionally originally 20 that shows a 25% increase that's not as much as it should show a 23.76% increase in health insurance this is we've talked to you about this but this is uh the numbers that we're getting that's a large
increase same with uh Medicare those numbers are calculated for us general insurance you'll see is lower we've been budgeting over for that the last few years we had just been adding 5% to our budgeted amount each year not not um updating for the actual amount of spend
so we've been budgeting you know over way over what we needed so we should be fine with this this amount for next year which is nice the little little savings for us and then these transfers you see 100% increase because we'd like to do a a $20,000 transfer to the OPED liability
rather than 10 okay so on the health insurance at one point we were going to take some money out of free cash and is that still in here or not i've removed that for now we removed that great thank you unless we need it
yep i would not suggest we do that i would not suggest we do that we were looking for The reason to do it is because you got a 23% increase in one year right and presumably you won't get a 23% increase next year as well um so you can spread it over so the reason to
do it would be to spread the difference over a couple of years so I think if we were in a tighter situation that would be Yeah that's why not in there now but we we were in a Last week we were yeah i
got you okay next week we might you just never know i feel good now i mean Terl that's that's spoken like a guy who's been through this a bunch of times well if the federal government cuts the $150,000 from the school budget next week then we got to find then guess what
then we got to find that okay because you and you who knows what the federal government's going to go do tomorrow never mind next week right right so we're you know as far as money is concerned we are um you know this health insurance line the the sort of spreading it out uh
has not really been happening there um if you look over the last five or six years the overall increase is actually not very much uh relative to what other people probably experience in the world um
but there's been mechanisms at play that have been lowering that one is they get good rates which is helpful but the other is that they've expended money from the trust to reduce increases so you've had two years with no increase
and a year with a negative 2% which I don't know if anyone buys their own health insurance but negative -2% is not the norm uh so you know it's it's not a bad
deal but the fact that it's all come at once is uh at the end of that period is uh not great but then arguably we we you know may see a leveling out next year something much smaller i would really hope we don't see
another% increase next year i mean that would be outrageously and is that just rate increases are we are there more do we also have more insureds we don't know that no that was just rate increases it was just a provided that
that's s that the number of insured is significantly playing into that i think it's mostly a rate increase a rate increase okay you know and keep in mind it's self-insured right as well so again just
like the vocational transportation situation you're self-insured up to a certain amount so you know a limited number of large claims can have a big impact right because you
don't have a million people it's not right you know it's not many and there's some prescription drug things that are also driving Yeah oh I am well aware i've done a lot of uh Yeah work-wise a lot of uh
driving some of these research on that yeah yeah so that's it is what it is with no end in sight correct to that by the way question we got as employees 19% I'm just curious what the four and 3/4
depends on what plan you're in one of the one of the plans is a larger increase and one is a smaller increase so has that changed since we have paperwork from town the treasur's office on Friday because we were told either 18 or 19 depending on which plate So I just want to make sure we're right
some of that might be another person okay you know what I mean yeah that's what I mean i know she was so there could be it could be a 20% increase on rates and then the other 3% is someone else joined yeah i want to clarify Diana had asked and you didn't think there was any new employees but if there was Yeah
i don't think it's contributing significantly i think the big increase is the rate is the rate i mean our employee number is never static so of course there's always going to be changes in that could be one person decides to take it but didn't take it last year and you know there you are
right or changes to a family plan somebody leaves that didn't have it and somebody comes in that wants it right yeah you're not you're not increasing your number of staff you're just increasing the number of staff that choose to take the health insurance
right um I'm going to skip over this for now enterprise funds debt enterprise funds cable was looking to make some purchases this year and their their budget was already was was not very big
so it looks like a giant increase but it's just for some additional equipment that would fit into their operating budget right not taxation no taxation not taxation um none of this is And here's Can you uh
change the total line so we get rid of that um number it can't recognize because it doesn't fit in the cells thanks no problem water there were a number of line items there
that historically were significantly overspent and I just needed to update that to show that it's really a higher budget so we're going to need to figure out if we can actually afford that or if we need to make some changes there but I think it it made sense to at least make
those changes and then we'll we'll see where we we land looking at um what the rates would be if we funded this entirely but um that's where I'm at for now okay great so that is is the uh is the vote
for the increase in water sewer do we have that penciled in sometime in May or early June to make sure we have that done for the July one bills yeah um we have that ongoing with with uh DPC is going to help us set the
rates we have a we've worked with them that's that's uh going to get started and pencled in i I think we should make the end of May happen so we're looking for just so we don't miss it this year miss it
great so that's what happens when you go um through the department budgets and again it all feeds this workbook here and the overall summary would show that we're here this 13848 at the moment for a surplus so we
need to see which will be uh 12 15 115 right uh once you add that wreck wreck committee and the 10 and financial reserves committee and then and then leaving it like that because we have had late breaking vogue transportation
information yeah it's a good number to leave it at it is a good number to leave it we're going to find other some other things no doubt yeah I mean there's been a number of things in here that we've seen how to do it um but I I I feel mostly confident and it it I will feel
even more so once we go through once I take those department numbers and look at what the total numbers are that come out of that it'll give us a total taxation number and everything else so that that'll be my next step now that we feel comfortable with this yeah we're gonna Yeah we'll go through
and add them all by hand just to department budgets just to make sure we're This is not Yeah and the next thing I can do with the spreadsheet um is to look at how we plan to use our free
cash which there's an area here to to do that to show what what uh what we plan to do for appropriating free cash the only thing I've put in here is the OPE trust that I'd strongly recommend that we do this year uh that comes from our treasurer and the snow and ice you put
in snow and ice i put in We don't have a number yet but that would be that goes under 25 that's under 26 right stone eyes i didn't put in because it does it I was trying to get everything right for this year's budget
so it just it doesn't affect this this uh these lines so I didn't put it in yet and we don't have that number but we are working on getting that considering it snowed today well the hills they had eight inches what's that they had eight inches up in the hills they did really it it actually
covered the ground in Springfield today a surprise so the next thing I need to do is [Music] the in the other spreadsheet it's in the other spreadsheet the uh any special articles but we'll update that once we
work through the warrant and we know what it is we want to be spending on okay that's our overall position at the moment and we can probably talk about um capital and y the biggest question in
here is that this does not meet uh the budget that was submitted by the fire chief about 247 operations yeah so we'll need to um we're going to we'll need to put together an alt budget at some point if we're going to
have a question so we kind of need to know so that we can be prepared with that um if there's going to be an override question then there needs to be a budget that expends those funds in appropriate manner so well it's relative 247 funds yeah i mean
whatever whatever the question is that the select board decides to put on the ballot we're going to have to create a budget that ex that appropriates and expends that money somehow in for fire presumably well I would say the work
that the fire chief did basically set me up to be able to do that because you can look at what the the gap is between the 247 personnel line and the the current state of affairs personnel line and that gap kind of becomes you know what you would increase here under personnel
services and then that that shows you what what you're missing in the overall spreadsheet and you but there's other funds too right because there'd be insurance for people there'd be you'd need that contingency
uh temporary building um is there additional training and things like that that would need to be added no just that stuff's in the budget best case would be the contingency would be the temporary housing one additional full-time person over what we should be allocated for
already because theoretically we should already have four positions and it would only go to a fifth full-time in total including me and then I think the benefits would only be for one more position it would only be one more full-time person would be added under that plan right but the
benefits appear in a different line so it's something okay so do we to do this do we want to go through warrant articles and the capital planning items how do you want to attack this Sean sure i mean so the
um um I mean some of these we're going to skip I assume well yeah I mean article technically article one is the discussion on the They left off on article 19 we did um so if we go to
article 19 that captures everything it does except it doesn't capture the discussion on the fire department that to it for a second is that was that us the connection dropped i had to restart it again oh you
want to take a two minute pause sure two which was wastewater and um drinking water and this is just the last one so um I think we were um I mean are we going to are are you going to want to
identify funding sources tonight we can talk about it yeah I think yeah i mean I think free cash would be a good It's a one time expense it's a one time expense yeah so you make it free cash
okay article 19 is um $42,000 for the repair and replacement of six fire hydrants this is something we talked about a lot at the capital planning um and getting sort of a you
know a plan going of regularly replacing six seven eight hydrants maybe a year um some of them are quite aged um and I don't remember what we thought what the what the capital planning
thought of for a funding source i mean is that an enterprise expense is that a water enterprise expense that it comes off i don't it is water department that that takes care of those things it could be that or it could be free cash uh
could go either way town expense huh feels like a town expense took time necessarily water enterprise we had we had free cash on we had free cash at capital planning that's fine okay you do that easy in a year when we
have a sign a fair amount of fair free cash versus years when we don't right right okay um the article 20 is to um replace Smith
Academy carpets um this is the the total project to replace finish the carpet replacement there and that is that $76,200 will be offset um that right that oh it's over and above the $40,000
okay so we there was a $40,000 negotiation I did with one of our host community businesses okay um and so um it as part of that negotiation they wanted that 40,000 to go to do some
rooms um at Smith Academy so this would actually finish all the floors so the work is really the one 10ish 116 116 this is replacing carpets that you wouldn't school i know it's an original
carpet even worse when I went to school only a couple it's not that much worse not that much worse a little bit that's true i did stand on those carpets yes it's time yes it is time
[Music] um Okay so then the next um article 21 is $3.3 million um roughly and that is to uh mill and pave um Billings Way as
well as the parking lots at the elementary school and Smith Academy and the roof and the roof oh and the roof oh it's all everything boilers roof the whole thing is together I should be saying boilers huh boilers yes I believe
two boilers so the the thought process was to put them all together one question yep okay debt exclusion i mean we don't we don't think the state
is going to state is not coming through with any money for the roof there doesn't seem to be any reason to wait the boilers need to be repa you know as well as right they got to be replaced and the paving it's been on the capital
plan since oh 5 years yeah it's more than doubled in cost since oh well more than went on to the capital plan which it's deferred maintenance we just keep kicking the can down the road um and and Billings Way certainly needs it also so if you fix that whole area up it'll you
know the schools are also trying to attract more students more school choice kids the more presentable you make your campus look too the more apt some K family might be to say "Hey yeah this looks really good let's go." Or you walk
drive into that parking lot now and you say "Well what's going on here why are you not really taking care of this property that well?" So um and it it made sense to us to put it all together primarily because it's not it's not a question of
policy you know uh like should like like there's some questions about like how should the town operate you know how should it function that might be voters can decide individually on it but si since no one is going to presumably
inspect the boilers or go up on the roof to look at it to see where the holes are like what basis would you use to decide whether the roof is more important than the boilers if you didn't
and I think we've had this discussion in the past if you if you make it into a menu thing it makes it more complicated for people and it it it just causes more chaos so and the bottom line is we think all these things really need to be done
yeah these all need to be done so just one shot at a time right just and the the the fact of the matter is like we've been talking about those parking lots for like six or seven years and as was mentioned the price is more than doubled now and really for no good reason we we
there was never going to be an easy way to pay for it and it's just getting less and less easy as we go it's not getting any easier so it sort of gets it's that sort of ch I think there's a a change in how we've we've avoided
overrides and debt exclusions at all costs which has led to a lot of deferred maintenance but I think we realize that we should be letting towns people decide towns people should decide which 3.3 3.4 million over 10 years
okay you're you're you know you're not talking about a huge expense on an annual basis divided by all the households you're you're not talking about a I mean it's something we talked about too is we'll have some sort of a handout that says hey if you pass this it'll this is how it'll affect the tax
rate this is what it's going to cost you to to to to fund this if you if you if you vote in favor of it it's going to cost you I don't know 50 bucks 100 bucks whatever it is for the next 10 years and there was a good reason to wait on the roof because of school building
assistance right and the potential solar which didn't work out but then school building assistance got pushed back five years or whatever i think it's been five five additional years now so you have to wait but not only do you have to wait for the years but now all the other
people who had projects in the queue are also now in front of you for you know there's more of them now well and then there's also the monies we've been spending on repairs and 50 grand that they've had to spend on repairs over the last four years right i thought it was
80 what's 80 is the 80 the boiler could Yeah I think so luke had a question i was just gonna for devil's advocates sake you know we've been pushing off the the repaving for six years like you said what's the plan if it doesn't pass
what we actually talked about so my my only thought is like if you were to split the paving separate from the roof and boiler section they both pass fantastic um but if you split it apart you might get one to pass versus the other and if the boilers I understand they still need still need work and
stuff um you know but if those can get split off and you know we can defer that expense for another couple years the plan I think would be um to uh do some kind of borrowing to at least take care of something some of it
i mean you have to do the boilers this summer yeah you have to it's the only time it can be done and and that of the three is the correct me if I'm wrong that's the priority because if the boilers are they're in such bad shape is my understanding if they fail the kids
can't go to school gotcha and we have to do it in the summer because Luke you have you make a good point because I I can see the argument for not doing menu style um overrides but debt exclusion questions i
think there is an argument for doing the menu style and giving people more choice you know I I know that these are all worthwhile projects had we asked for a debt exclusion six years ago we would we probably should have and it would have been a lot cheaper i um I I think the
other argument and I'm going to try to say that is towns people look to all of us for these decisions and capital plan has vetted this the selectmen have talked about it the finance committee has has worked on it those are the
people the town's people are looking towards so my kind of my counter is that's that's why I think all three are necessary and all three should be be put on merits both ways but I I agree i understand what Luke is saying too i
mean I But and I you know there is a safety aspect to to the parking lot big time situation really bad so it's bad it's really bad so i mean I mean the schools did try to find funding for the roof through the
solar program and the solar program and they they tried so they found out that the solar program we our demographics don't fit the program that that solar program is looking for right you know they haven't even rolled the
program out but they've also found out that even if the pro program comes out and we're ready to go with all the information that our community doesn't fit the social justice or something i I can't remember the the qu that they're
looking for uh they're looking for communities that have a lot less money than we have for example plus it's pretty simple if you don't fix your roof you're going to have other problems down the road if you had if you needed a roof on your house you'd call the roofers and put it on because you want to protect
the asset that you have that million how many millions of dollars have we did we spend to build that building not to mention the health and safety of kids inside now if you water coming in developing mold the the the boiler goes without saying you can't have school open with no heat and the parking lot
becomes a tripping hazard for people after a while it's all heaved up and stuff and and you know projects like the boiler and the roof depending on what's happening with tariffs who knows what's going to happen to those pro those numbers if we wait
longer right uh because where where all that stuff comes from i have no idea most of your coming from other roofing companies are in in the United States but you don't know where they get their materials that's just it right yeah i
have no idea who manufactures that membrane right i looked it up before I came down can we add free cash as an option is there a reason that's not in there for funding um
we talked about perhaps adding that we talked about adding regular if regular debt to it can you capture all three uh is it cuz would you prioritize not doing the boilers and doing the
carpets 76 grand there i mean as we go through this I think depending on the wording I think it's um the way it's written now is for exclusion um and I asked town council if
there's some way to say we can have a contingency if this fails can we then fall back to free cash whatever else and and he didn't think that was possible but I can try to find out is there some kind of mechanism available well you could I I
mean whether you can include it in this question or not you could do you could fall back to it right it would require a a separate you would do a separate schools could always spend the $600,000 to fix their boilers out of their current out of
their regular budget and then come to the T and then ask for a special town meeting to appropriate this $600,000 back to them right if if however however we raised it whether it be borrowing or free cash or whatever
well ideally we would get a definitive vote of town meeting because that's the the decision-making body right and not do it that way well Well you would need a you would need a vote of town meeting to but Right um it it this does include
a borrowing though it does include the borrowing yeah so you could so so it says such borrowing shall be contingent on the passage of proposition two and a half oh you can't there's not should talk to him because I thought we
had done I thought we had done I know we've done that before right I mean I'll see if there's any way we can do it yeah that it just it just makes it less messy because otherwise then you have we have to put a separate well you could put a separate article on and um for a
borrowing for authorization to borrow and then if the override passes you just never do it it doesn't Yep just because you vote to borrow something doesn't mean you ever actually have to borrow it only so you're saying put in just borrowing for the boiler
or for the entire thing could do the whole thing if you wanted to thing if you want it and then just and then if the override fails presumably at town meeting I mean the debt exclusion presumably you're going to know uh after town meeting right because but do we
have that kind of debt capacity but again just because you authorize it doesn't mean you do it we we you could authorize it and then decide right the project cost less or we didn't do this or whatever you could do anything after that you're suggesting adding another
article I mean I think it might be wise a discussion with the town attorney to to see how it would go okay i mean the reason we wanted it on debt exclusion was so that we would not in future years take more money out of a already very tight budget you know we've already and
we've done that before where we've authorized it and never borrowed it and then right go clean them up a couple years later and just get rid of the authorizations right that's not uncommon not on time exactly would you do it for the boiler or everything do it for
everything okay i mean cuz So that'll be in the draft we review the final the one that Okay and just we will come back to this but if that's the way we're leaning then most likely we'll be comfortable with putting the this ballot question
on the on the ballot and we can discuss that tonight but we'll we'll get there yep okay all these are the comm are we all set to move on to article 22 which is CP um C
um pardon CPC stuff right yep this is um CPC um can we come back to any other um possible capital PL capital projects that are not currently written uh because there's there's a couple other
projects that we have that are I don't believe there's articles already written we should Yeah I this is my first peek at this warrant so I'm literally going through I'm I'm reading this right as we go through it so Right and we didn't talk about the lease program either correct so we we need to make sure that
gets discussed what's the deadline on these articles in case I don't know if I missed that april 29th thank you so I say we do CPC and then we can go back to other capital okay so um article
22 is just sort of their boiler plate housekeeping yeah housekeeping article 23 is $35,000 for um this is part of the cemetery projects um restore and rehabilitate main roads on the east and
west sides of the Brad Street Cemetery oh that is approved by Community Preservation good that's over in your neighborhood Darl huh that's over in your neighborhood yeah yeah we'll keep cemetery you guys used to play in with
Donna um okay article 24 is um $14,000 this is to expand and rehabilitate main road the main roadway in the main street cemetery also approved by community preservation um article 25 is $30,000 to
install an irrigation system at Smith Academy Park um this was approved by capital planning and I do believe this I don't know if it's written in here but this would be actually to dig a well right that's the I think the all these
are supported by capital planning um all the community preservation committee articles i think what the the community preservation wants them to try to do a a point well right versus automatically putting it on town water right so it may
or may not work it depends uh what they can find for water out here if they find the water then perfect then it doesn't cost anything uh as far as the water's concerned but if it they don't find enough flow then it would go we would hook up to the water main and some some
way to fund it i mean we've spent a lot of money out there it's a it's a it's a nice piece of property we're doing a lot of cultural council things concerts you know all that kind of stuff we might as well keep it looking nice does look nice and uh irrigation will certainly help that and it's a nice resource
um Okay and those events also support our town businesses absolutely right which is a really nice benefit um okay so article 26 is $91,700 for rehabilitating and restoring um day pond um this was approved by um
capital um excuse me community preservation article 27 is $40,000 to restore and rehabilitate the Cutter Farm Museum barn siding and roofing also approved by community preservation um article 28 is
$48,000 um to install um this is um also in the cemeteries right yes this is um to create a new Oliver Smith Park within the Main Street Cemetery um that's approved by community
preservation and then um article 29 is um $20,000 to restore and rehabilitate walkways fencing and other historical features in the main street cemetery so quite a lot of um projects um
to make sure that our cemeteries are appropriately um maintained so nice projects but that doesn't include So this warrant doesn't have any of the the other capital items um so we need to go through those now um it does
it doesn't even have the budget article yeah it does have the budget article i think it's 13 oh it's early lucky number 13 okay I think that's what it was it is it's article 13 should I change that we should change that yeah um we usually do
that at the very end but okay we we don't have So David are you going to do double duty here as both um capital planning and um so there's a number of um things that capital planning you know we met for maybe four or so months
um and you know went through a number of requests from departments and we um prioritized them um by sort sort of by the funding source the lease thing first and or other projects first you you can do however you want to do start with the
lease why don't you do it okay so Andrew and I sat down the other day and we went through some of the um requests for the uh for vehicles that would go into the lease which is a line item in the DPW budget it's been there for years and years um we have very
little debt left in our um lease program at this point we have one payment of $50,000 due July one actually one due in May and one due the following year to finish paying off the the uh the current vehicle leases and one payment left on
the ambulance which will pay off our ambulance which part of that comes from the line item but part of that comes from ambulance uh revenues right uh 20,000 surplus revenue surplus so so we have we have some pretty good capacity
to add things to our thing our our leases so there's a number of requests many from the DPW um and some from the from the police and some from this Council on Aging um and so we we looked at a Andrew and I put
the numbers together the other day and there's a number of ways we can go um I think the ones that capital really supported um and really think are important are the DPW ones which is a new dump truck
uh which replaces one that's a that's a 2001 U and the and the the sort of the daily 2000 yeah the daily driver uh Ford F450 that they use um every day it's that's it's And that
one is like a 200 i'd have to go back to my notes and look uh just say it's old it's old it needs to be needs to be taken care of and and again I'll I'll I can also say that these
2011 vehicles that are looking to be replaced the town mechanic is recommending that they all be replaced uh because and he knows better than anybody whether or not these things need need to go and there were ones that he said were okay so he was very objective
for sure so um the police the police department is is requesting a new cruiser um which would be be replacing a 2017 cruiser which is over you know over its
miles over its hours again the town mechanic said that thing needs to be replaced it's time for that to go uh the council on aging has requested another van to replace the van that is that was donated to the town uh from the PVTA um
it's a 2015 now there was a lot of discussion in Capitol about this project because the schools have a van that pretty much sits in their parking lot and does little which is handicap accessible wheelchair
accessible but they don't currently have a child that they need to transport on a daily basis so one of the thoughts was that if if we were to purchase a new van we would would like to make a deal we there was a
I don't know if make a deal is the right thing but make have an agreement between the council on aging and the schools that if the schools were to need to use a a handicap accessible van that this van that we would buy for mostly council on aging use would be equipped to also
hold a child's wheelchair mhm then we could get rid of the van that sits and really does nothing whether we sell it outright to another school school department or we trade it in when we when we purchased the new council on aging ban or whatever okay and the
schools are more than willing to step up to this but my understanding is that Andrew had a conversation with the council on aging director and they don't really have an interest in uh having an agreement with the schools to use it if
necessary there's no reason right now and and it may never come to fruition that they need to use it but the schools would like to have that as a backup for adjusting case so I guess that kind of to me brings up whether
the Council on Aging is not willing to enter into that agreement correct they they have concerns that um their times for using the van drop offs and everything else could easily conflict with with time that the it would need to be used for for that student should that
need occur and they feel like that would u impede them being able to use the the the van properly that's their concern keeping in mind that the student is hypothetical right doesn't exist it doesn't exist it may never exist right
right i mean we had to get the van because of a student at one time as to my knowledge that's the only time correct that's the only time you know I mean anything can happen but so I I don't know where whether we
pass on it for a year um I mean the other thing the other thing that I personally concern is we we would be buying two vans in a very short period of time two new vans and I look I'm looking down the road four five six years and then and and when looking at
replacing those at some point and if they're so close together you know will we actually have the ability to do that down the road if they're farther that problem exists whether we do the school deal or not
correct right right um I don't know and and you know and and another thought that we really didn't we we thought would be a a good idea but maybe if we had capacity was the the request from the DPW to for the sidearm mower that I
think we all know we could we could spruce up town a lot more than we do now and it could also possibly even be a revenue source um because if we own that cuz we're currently borrowing or rent I should say renting to do the work that
we need to do uh in town at what $6 or $8,000 a year um to to do the work that we do and and probably aren't doing all the work that we probably should do uh I don't know that's a I I don't know
that's a consideration I think that we need to to think about well and now just one other thing before we go um the water department and the sewer department both are requesting new pickup trucks as well um which the mechanic says is are both need in fact I
guess and I think it's the water department one the gas tank actually fell out of the bottom of it a year ago or so and had to be replaced um but the plan would be to pay for those out of uh water and sewer enterprise and not
necessarily from the line item in the DPW budget did we make I know we had a lot of discussion about it the DPW director truck yes yeah um we don't need correct um should be traded could be
traded right so it could be traded traded or sold to offset the cost of any of those vehicles i mean it makes sense to do it out of for the DW still owe money on that truck so it's not going to be so it's not going to be a huge that's
still part of that two-year those that two-year uh pay those two payments that we have left that truck is part of that lease current lease that's in effect so uh maybe it could be traded and then that that number
reduced um I don't I don't know how the the we probably have to talk to the folks at the lease company to see how how that's that would be handled dpw director would still need a vehicle getting around inside town or going to meetings at PVPC or whatever but there's
other vehicles that he or she could use yeah or we purchase something that's a lot less expensive than that right that big that big that big pickup truck that they don't really they don't really need or or we pay mileage or you pay or you pay
or you pay mileage yeah right luke I just have a couple questions so the um the dump truck and 450 and police cruiser assuming that they're all replacements for things that we already have those would all then get sold so
we'd get some revenue back from that it would be those would be considered surplus items for all three for all three yeah obviously Luke there's not a ton of value yeah yeah I know but it's just Yeah how many It's not a cash cow right but also like do we keep the
vehicle and then it's also an additional expense in the future trying to maintain the only one we've heard about wanting to keep uh or request to keep is the cruiser which the finance committee is not in favor of it's a backup to a backup
cruiser right which that I think that how many backup cruisers yeah there was we had a lot of discussion about that for two years in a row now and then my other question is is that that black van that the school currently does have since there is no student currently that needs it could that van be used for
the COA for in temporary use we we we met with the COA they took the drivers down there and that kind of stuff and they looked at it and it's just not set up for what they need it doesn't have a door that the the door the driver would have to get out go around the vehicle
open the doors the height of it is is is not appropriate we we we talked about that that was one of the the discussion points and it was meant to like pick up a wheelchair put it in the back kind of thing you know what I It's got some bench seats but they're really not set
up for not set up for elderly folks yeah yeah the the way the the ones that we have now where you can step into them is just really the way to go not for sure it was probably a question that I'm sure people do yeah oh yeah we did try we did try you know and that kind of that kind
of it's it's I don't know how many years it is how old it is it's got very low mileage i imagine that some other school department that is looking to maybe replace a van maybe they'd give you I don't know you'd have to find out what it's you'd have to find out what the value is and you know I mean the other
option because we know that it's not likely is we we do the tradein and then we as a town say we'll deal with this situation if it arises without asking the Council on Aging to to do that so that's another option too because you
could probably pretty quickly get into a rental situation if you had an immediate need arise while you wait to make a purchase right well I mean there are services out there that you could contract right exactly that's what I mean yeah i think we probably bought it because it was less right it was cheaper
over the course of time in that particular situation that existed before bob you can answer my question if there was an active plan with that plan because it now has been sitting for over two years right that's the other thing we should do something with it one way or another even if we can't make an agreement between school and COA or
whatever it should probably go while it still has some value right and with assurances to the school that should the need arise we would Well yeah i mean I think it you know if it's cost effective to buy a new van because that's what we have to do then that's what we're going
to do right like I mean rather than what our alternatives would be that would be more expensive we probably wouldn't want to do that right the longer it sits it loses value you might No question about it more mechanical problems and putting more money into it if it doesn't drive
for the next 5 years discussion as well yep so So I I'll bring up like the boom mower and to me there's there's people around that do this as a service that have been hired by towns and I I I have
a problem i do we have enough guys to to do all that i mean I understand it needs to be kept clean and stuff but I know know the people that you that the guy that used to get called all the time and he's like I don't understand why
they don't call anymore so well and at the same time we've made the decision to do that same contract out our street sweeping services and it's kind of the same it's a you know once a year maybe twice a year on the mo mowing and I think what they've done the last couple
years is um actually rented a blue mower from somebody and then it's kicked in overtime that's been the the piece of equipment though is significantly more expensive when you're talking about street sweeping no I understand yes I understand
expensive you bought the bumo you contract it out to other towns if you own it yes yes do that we do that actually yeah we do that with And there's I think there's a revolving fund for that there is $5,000
yeah so they actually keep the money you actually get some revenue out of it if you did buy it i'm sure there are other towns or cities that might want to rent well we could we could look into selling the truck and buying it yes what happened to the tractor that we had
cuz we had already a boom mower on it probably a 2015 2016 John Deere that had a boom mower on it we already owned one of these and the tractor was still sitting up there as of at least 6 or eight months ago we have a brush hog on the tractor but I
don't remember the boom boom mower you probably know see it better than I do but I don't remember i know Mark used to run it all the time up and down Main Street but I think that was one they rented that was the one they rented that town of Hatfield on the mower itself or on the tractor on
the mower i don't remember that it's a good question i know we talked to them we talked to everybody at the DPW john Deere that they have is that this is a John Deere sidearm mower for the current tractor that they already have okay so we were renting the previous
attachment probably yeah okay and it did kick in overtime costs for the length of time you which would be I think probably a concern for if you're going to contract it out to other towns right like if you're going to send if if Hadley wants
to hire Half Field with their boom mower to come and mow you're going to have to create an expense line for that overtime for that personnel to go and run it as well i don't No they they run it themselves they Oh you just let them run your That's what we do with the road we
just go for it i I'm kind of with you if it was my tractor and my mower I'm not letting it go we would never refuse this but that's not my decision okay so David looking at this list um you can see it's
all laid out right up on on the screen to see which ones we want to go with the the column D is the annual payments um to do those all those things the 14,000 is that what we're over or under
andrew in this we're over 14,000 if you did them all if we did them all our budget line right now is 233 however if the surplus is the way it is you do but if if you if you did something with
the school van and you did something with the director with the director's truck could you get enough revenue to offset that 14,00,000 possible i would say it's possible probably a good portion of it at least i mean the van is a little tricky right
because it's not tied into any of this i know you kind of just have to sell the van somehow right not well you're not going to trade it in and I don't know is that the school that decides to sell it or how does how does that work presumably well yeah but the town owns
the vehicle right yeah yeah the school department doesn't own the vehicle we would just have to assure them that if they were ever to need a van like this that we would take care of it because it doesn't I mean everybody's point is perfect that doesn't need to
sit in that parking lot any longer if you put some sort of an RFP together to and sent it out to all the local school districts somebody might give us I don't know 20 grand 25 grand for the thing rather than them having to go out and spend 50 or 60,000 on a brand new one i
don't know the the other thing we talked about and I don't know last week was the 85,000 for the police cruiser that's a more frequent item just because
of the way that goes and so we did have a little discussion about you could you could you could take that out of free cash so you take that out you just pay for it right away that as as an option then you reduce your overall lease
you're under the limit you're under the right and there's plenty of free cash to do that there is there is your recommendation so far in free cash what's left do you Oh well we haven't really got We haven't touched it we haven't really
touched it the discussion we had last last week Ed is we feel pretty we'd like to keep as much of it there as possible because there's a lot of uncertainty going on in the world today and who knows what's
going to so so cash is kind of good to have and Oh I I'm sorry and it gives us gives us gives us some options in the future of what to do yeah I did make notes on um the storm water assessment which is
28,000 the um fire hydrants we recommended as free cash and then also the Smith Academy carpet that comes out to about 145 $146,000 those articles that are already in your warrant and we we've got we've
got a million if you take $100,000 for estimate right now for snow and ice that gives us 900,000 that we could we could throw some in stabilization well we had that discussion we think putting it in free cash is just as good
as putting it in stabilization then you don't have to go to town meeting understood but well you might have to go to town meeting but it's a But you don't have to get the Yeah you don't have to get the two/3 vote vote and you want to add the cruiser on top and then add the cruiser i mean we're
still not even coming close to Right and it it it it gives us some options you know depending on how the vote goes i don't think we'd ever be sorry we put the cruiser in free cash just because of what it does to our leasing abilities
going forward a few years absolutely yeah no I don't think we would be and I don't think we'll be sorry buying any of the vehicles now instead of waiting i know that's the other thing i mean right yeah waiting would be costly right
um the other thing to look at is back to the capital plan if there is anything else on there that hasn't shown up in in the war in one way or another there's I I think four things going to circle back there's the Elm Court yep um
building phase three so we've invested in phase one and two um this would be about 1395 and it would finish the project capital planning um did identify that as a should project
how much 13 $139,500 and it would complete the project we Yeah we we then the mechanic would get moved to that building freeing up space at the highway department to keep
more of our vehicles undercover year round versus out in the open that's the that was the reason that that building was put together yeah and we had talked about hanging on to around five or 600,000 in free cash in
case we need to do something right you know depending on what happens with debt exclusions do we need to immediately uh go back and fund this might be the year at least the board at least get started on that because since we have to
do it over the summer um you know if we lose $150,000 out of the schools yeah we're going to need to find out to figure out where to get that we can't just take a $150,000 hit and walk away right so
um it's kind of a good it's a good position for us to be in actually it's very good um if you add in the if you add in the Alen Court building you're and the cruiser you're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $370,000
total total spent out of free cash so that leaves you $630,000 left which is is good good place to be good place to be luke Dave Dave did you count snow and ice uh no I did not no no I did no I Yeah
you started a million take a 100,000 out of snow and ice yeah it's 1.1 million yeah it's 1.1 yeah yeah so we're good the million is there after snow and ice good yeah i I just was kind of thinking
about certainly back to the the boom mower discussion kind of I think what Daryl had touched on it's a $6 or an $8,000 a year expense to be able to mow the the levies in town and stuff like that so we're going to spend $30,000 a year on a boom mower to save ourselves
six or eight without having a guaranteed revenue stream coming back in being able to rent it out we don't even know if any other town would contract us for it so but it's also got a very long life expectancy compared to the years that we'll pay the 30 yeah but they're also
very high serviceable expense machines they they run a pretty rugged lifestyle so it's there's definitely an expense that comes with owning a boom mower um and so I guess my thought just
speaking candidly would be if we waited on the boom mower until we could find out if we had an actual revenue stream coming back in from renting it you could keep the police cruiser where it is it put you under your limit and then we'd have even more free cash available
yeah I think part of the reason that they are and Capital did this not me but part of the discussion we had was around they're spending that money to rent it but they're not getting it the amount of time that they want and also they're doing it on weekends because they can't
rent it all the time that they need uh because either it's not available or they don't have the money and so they're ending up spending overtime to have people do the work that if you had the thing 5 days you know Monday through Friday you wouldn't need to do that
presumably somebody's using it some of those days so we're getting it also on the weekends to try to crunch the time up you know so it's driving up our overtime as well i think currently the levies are being mowed by an outside contractor right i'm pretty sure Rich Jask is the one who
mows him with that Blue New Holland and I'm pretty sure I've seen an RFP go out for him too right rich Rich does that but it's not just the levies they do right they they they do like main like Main Street down our end of town around all the guard rails and the side of our
the side of our street side of your street they took down all those trees that you know i mean they're not just mowing really like they're Right right yeah but it is a highmaintenance very high maintenance machine
spend 30 to save six or eight when we could just for another five or six contract out a couple more hours to an outside contractor to do it for now it I don't know it just seems like a high expense item for something that we probably won't cover in terms of either
revenue stream coming back in or the added savings to to the town but yeah I I I tend not to consider the revenue in these kinds of things just I mean if you get revenue back in you know presumably
you're going to do what you do with the road which is put it into a revolving fund and use it to maintain the thing basically that's what you're going to do with it so it's not really like as a cash to the town kind of situation but Right a and also presumably you're going
to be using the thing it's also something that we could defer a year and have input from a new DPW director on and maybe look at it with fresh eyes would that be something serviced in town or would have to go out
i mean from my experience we have at my work we have similar style mowers and you know the blades and bushings and bearings and all of that is stuff that you can you can fix in house but none of it is cheap i mean any service specific item like that they really get you on
the parts uh because they know you can't you can't go and get it off a shelf anywhere you have to buy their product you know so you know a set of blades might cost you 25,500 bucks or three grand just for a set of blades and depending on what you hit if you hit an old buried ballard somewhere and you you
can total a set of blades pretty quick now I'm just I'm spitballing numbers here i don't know if that's 100% accurate but they are very high serviceable machines to run we probably at work on ours we probably go through two set at least two sets a year
bob did you have a question i did the mention of the Elm Court property um and going into possibly finishing up phase three i've thought about this the last couple of years and I vividly remember the previous DPW director saying that he
wanted to put up a building on Elm Court for material storage so the guys didn't have to drive from one end of town to the other i'm curious as to when it became the new maintenance garage for the DPW but I vividly remember the DPW
director saying it was materials storage only and it was supposed to be a high hoop building and then it became a butler building with garage doors and rough plumbing and electric and a bunch of other stuff i mean we talked about this as the mechanics location quite a bit last year this was three years ago
when the first part of the project got approved for the fencing grading and the building actually went up i know last year it was to become the mechanics garage and put in the electric and the heat but the original project that Phil Genevie proposed when we originally
approved I think it was 95 or 96,000 was only a hoop building material storage oh he's right i think that's how was that Daryl on floor but I don't I don't Daryl use it the the the hoop
you're right okay how it going that we originally agreed to just a materials building and now we're going to be into this building for what probably 350 between all three phases to put the mechanic there that's not what originally was told to the residents
when they voted for that 96,000 i I very vividly remember 96 for a hoop building for material storage and now we've moved it to DPW mechanic what are we doing anything with that building currently that we know of as far as I
know it still has dirt floors right so do we I don't know similar to the school van that sits in the parking lot do we let the thing sit there and do nothing um or do we try to finish a project and get it done and have it be serviceable in some way whether we
whether we put materials in there and store them or we move the mechanic there let's get that project to finish it's not big enough from storage that's the problem i guess we're doing a building that wasn't originally planned and now we're going to finish a project that wasn't what it was intended for maybe
not but maybe the ch maybe there was a change when it was origin from when it was originally presented and I don't know that when that happened or if it happened but do we just leave a building there and not finished or do we leave it for next year director to put fresh eyes on right or do we wait
till next year when it's going to cost 1500 what What is the 13 i said this person better be good if we're going to leave all the stuff for them right i think it finishes all the the heating system and the floors and the So it pours pours
yeah i don't I don't know exactly what it all what it all entails garrett would probably have have an idea huh finishes it basically i don't know what has to be I don't know what the building looks like never seen it inside of it or whatever so looks
nice huh looks nice on the outside right but I don't know what it you know what needs to be done on the inside does it does it need to have a lift put in it does it need to There's nothing on the inside right we It It did spark conversation at the capital planning committee about these phased projects
right and that we need to have a sound understanding of exactly what they are and know that we're going to do all of the phases rather than you know right um so I am saying that as a resident i felt like I was as a taxpayer I was duped on
the original project it was material storage that something else went up and how did that not come back to the residents to approve a completely different use of a building than what was originally told to the taxpayers this isn't as my official job this is
just I I was thinking it was for you know extra trap rock or whatever they were going to put up there and then all of a sudden it's a butler building and now we're got rough plumbing and a bunch of other stuff going in there so it was just as a resident I still thought it was a building i feel like we were we
were kind of led one direction to get the vote and then now all of a sudden the project Yeah has very much veered off to several hundred,000 over the original project cost enterprise it leads to additional expenses i mean I think that's something
to keep in mind well sorry that's something to keep in mind generally i guess every time you go down the road of adding something then there's additional expenses you know it would have been an additional expense if it was just the hoop building for storage because it doesn't need to be climate controlled it
doesn't need to have a concrete floor presumably for material storage it doesn't have to have garage doors and some of the other things that ultimately went into that so I understand if you're going down that path there's going to be other costs if you don't do it all at once and you're doing it as a phase
project but it was only presented as a storage building that storage doesn't need to be heated or I don't I personally don't remember the storage building discussion i don't know how many years ago that was but have materials ever been stored in it no I
don't think so yeah i mean I I remember I remember the conversation and I remember you know but here we are it's $139,000 it does finish it off it does
do some things that probably should be done get some vehicles put underco that need to be put undercover you know but you addressed it already in capital going forward there needs to be much more
discussion about these phase projects and what the end goal is and it's like if we ever decide we're going to do the water water lines on five and 10 or put a new sewer on five and 10 and it's going to take a three or four year project where it's design and then it's this and then it's then what the
project's actually going to cost the when it when it first comes on to the warrant that's to spend $100,000 as design well they should be told well at in the end it's going to be a $5 million project or a $10 million project that's what you're talking about like the well
work that exactly on the land yeah no that that certainly is something that I think we've been lacking in a lot of places around around here as far as those phase the phased projects i mean we we've done it with several buildings so sure it's a problem that is this
building this building this building is a great example it's a problem that it's gotten repurposed over 3 years but it's also a problem that it's never been used for the original purpose so I think there's a lot of good points that are brought up
yeah no argument here yes okay so um on these numbers we do have to make a decision about I mean I feel like we decided to pull the cruiser out um there was a suggestion about removing
the boom mower i don't know if people want to talk about that or leave the boom mower in well I mean I don't know should we have a conversation i mean should we get more information about that if we have questions like what are the costs here that we're
talking about what are the over you know what what did what did capital Yeah what kind of questions did you ask that you know did you ask some of those kinds of questions we did not have a conversation with Garrett about this so could I do that that might be
something that uh Andrew have a conversation yeah i mean when I talked to him he said it was the number one priority of of DPW for capital projects he was having the boom mower and and made the case that I think has been communicated tonight but you know one thing you could do is we can see where
we're at um for free cash expenses and that will help drive the conversation about if we want to if we're able to pull out the police cruise or not and then if if we end up feeling like we don't have the free cash to pull out the police cruiser then you might need to say no to one of the vehicles on here
probably COA van or boom mower but you'll have to decide what you want to do on that so I think I think in the end we know we have capacity to do a decent amount of right in in in the new lease program and
and cover a lot of vehicles whether we get them all or not this year is another story but maybe we wait till we have some closer numbers to the 20 to the 29th and and and make the final decisions on the 29th another $33,000
becomes available next year and then 50,000 the year after that and another question for Garrett is if this boom rental is in the current DPW budget i would think it would be it was $6,000 for one month the last time they did it
yeah but I I still think pulling the police cruiser out and not pulling it out but paying for it out of free cash I think makes a whole lot of I like that idea sense you know cuz then that gets us at least for now we're gets us under
what we have to Mhm right what we have to uh you know what do we we're trying to make sure we're 233,000 or something like that is that what we paid last year yeah so that that gets us well under that number and then
we can figure out the other things seems like the COA van I mean it's kind of too bad and the other side of it is that that that's a rough estimate based on the last one they bought because I don't think they've ever come in with a
Yeah you know a written estimate as to what you're going to need because we when we bought the last van we were working with like 75 or 80,000 it ended up coming in at 110 uh well it's not going to be any cheaper than that i agree so you're Yeah you're
going to need room yeah we need room you do need room can't Yeah but why can't we have a the actual number isn't it just a matter of calling the
the car dealer whatever the dealership that should be something that that whoever submits the project okay should submit an estimate with the project okay and not just put it on a piece of paper that this department
wants a new van and say now you guys go take care of it which is what's happening right now now I I understand that but I guess my point being and and maybe I'm I'm wrong and I don't think you're right I don't think capital should have to go no no no it's not I'm not saying I'm not saying capital or
finance but that might have been something that Phil did did Phil do that when No that came right from the Council on Aging director we didn't even have a number we were just working with the number on the last one that was bought yeah so it's one It
could be Well it depends on how you you equip it you know the state director has looked for other quotes and and and we have you know other numbers that are out there and and I haven't seen them deviate too much from the 110 so it's been useful for conversation have the 110 okay so just
to backtrack though Dave I mean David the boom mower was just listed as a nice to have absolutely no question yeah yeah since I don't think it's I don't think we as the capital said that that's something Garrett certainly did i don't think that we as a capital committee decided that that was something that
needed to really rise to the top that was something that would be nice if we could afford it yep so can we just So we're not making a decision on the boom mower we're going to get some more information um so I just want to stay on track here
um just going through this capital list um so what about the 139 are we going to spend that the 139 not on board oh well that's I mean
I I can't see investing money to bring the building to the place we brought it it does have an intended use and Right yeah and there should probably be some discussion that how it's gone from the original purpose to this point
regardless of agreements on right repurposing it and how to avoid it going forward or how to see what counts people think too i don't know i don't know if it's past that point but it's I think we just talked about how we avoid this down the road
that if it's a phased project that all the phases ought to be put out there on the table at the beginning right this is what phase one's going to be this is what phase two is going to be this is what phase three is going to be and this is what it should cost and this is what the purpose of this project is i I get that but I don't know if it's water
under the bridge necessarily on this project it probably is well if it was past the town floor for whether it's true or not I don't know but if How do you go backwards i mean you can still use the building as it sits down for material equipment storage just because
it doesn't have a concrete floor i mean there's a trailer last time I was up there there was a trailer parked in it anyway i don't think you should necessarily go backwards and I'm not disagreeing with what's been brought up but why was it never used for materials if that was the original purpose
the building was built for materials was it but if it was passed on you're talking about like a hoop building of something i mean the person who could really speak to that is not here and can't speak to it so that's that's we could ask Garrett i mean the DW the highway superintendent could
speak to this potentially and it's probably worth doing to get some some history there and and get a sense of you know was it a conscious change some reason no back in the day jim used to come to all you could get answers to this kind of
top priority for me moving forward and I begged and pleaded the last DPW director to do it he wouldn't I know but that was one of one of the things I really enjoyed about Jim is he he communicated everything there was a conscious decision made to change the original
design i'm sure there was to to cost okay back on track yeah let's let's stay on track for decisions here okay we're pulling the cruiser out free cash with the cruiser yes boom mower we're going to get some additional info right and
for the uh the lease would be the f the truck right with the the COA van we have to keep it on there so I'm what I'm doing is I'm going through the capital planning list um so there's chapter 90
and there's we we sort of broke it down by funding sources so there's two projects that um are are on here we skipped one that I would love to the living quarters the guardrail replacement oh if that's listed as a nice to have
$250,000 we I don't think the capital planning plan to move that forward so we'll hold on that for now okay great that's I'm fine with that main Street main Street where all the white posts are up my end of town yeah not all the way up but from No from like station yes
down right yeah that whole area there where the sewage treatment plan is and all that that's going to be one of those from like that's going to be one of those where the houses end on Main Street and you start getting to the escurs yeah right both sides of the street it would be wonderful but we just
didn't feel it was a priority right now um living quarters i Let's skip over because that's part of a larger discussion the um so there's there's two projects on here that um capital planning was um decided to support they are not taxation
funds so the um milling and paving of Elm Street that's all chapter 90 um and then the other one was um replacing um the sidewalks with cement on um Main
Street but that is a grant funding and we don't know if that's come through yet right and if it comes through it comes through and if it doesn't then it doesn't just do the sidewalks well I said the same thing as someone who doesn't have sidewalks and other people keep getting newer sidewalks but um Okay
and and the Elm Street project for paving would not be the whole thing it would be the the parts of it that need it the most and then next year we would probably finish the project which is why I'm taking the time to go to the state house on Thursday and testify about the
need for additional chapter 90 funding for small towns like Hatfield okay so um so then we already talked about that well the ambulance payment is on here although we should note we did get a significant increase we did get a
significant increase but that shouldn't stop us from getting due to the uh due to the millionaires tax yeah well significant most of that money increase is going to the MBTA no I mean but for Hfield it is it's significant we did get a good amount of
money yes um but you know our our plan shouldn't be pave until we run out of money yes um okay so the the lease payment on the ambulance that's already built in to everything right in the budget so that's that one's just it's on here as a
placeholder almost um we talked about the COA van the DPW pickup those are things already those are the ongoing payments yes and then the um the uh the two F350s for water and sewer
right we've got on there they're not in here but they're built into the operating budget through the enterprise funds okay so that's all set are they part of the lease yep they they will be leased yes they're just not part of this line item not this lease they're only
right and they'll be paid for we don't need to model it from here because it'll be paid for through enterprise okay so all of the other projects that are listed on the capital plan are ones we already went through because they were part of the CPA articles that we went through you should just clarify too that lease is really
lease purchase the wrong word it's it's an auto loan it's a Yeah it's a lease purchase it's not really a lease we don't give it back at the end or anything so the ones that I'm not clear on what we decided were the the Elm Court building we were going to get more
information is that right yes and I'll I'll do that as well as the boom mower yeah i mean from my perspective we have the money the elm court you know I share some of the frustration I've heard but
at this point we should go seems we should finish it i would agree with that capital planning agreed with that okay and you have and you have the money to be able to still keep your $600,000 or
so in free cash as a reserve just in case yep it doesn't bite into and we we did decide that we would see about getting trading in or selling or whatever the school van and the DPW director truck okay y So then the So
then if I'm not mistaken that's we've I' we've gone through the capital plan we've gone through the warrant with the exception of the fire department article i I will just say chair that we didn't cover a couple of these uh free cash expenditures or or other funding source
expenditures in the beginning with finance committee that were in the general town articles that are non- capital related yeah there's a couple right there's a couple at the beginning starting with article six we need to do the free cash transfer for the opioid settlement fund those those were funds
that never should have gone to free cash okay so just if if we're keeping score of our free cash 27 7,741 then add another $1,900 that should go to wetlands protection where where would it go article 7 h where would it go when
we transfer it uh so article six goes to the opioid settlement fund that already exists it's just those are funds that should have should have gone there what are we spending those on that remains to be seen that's part of the survey that's being conducted right now and there's
there's work being done uh by a committee to make recommendations to select board on that and then article nine we'll need to decide what that actually is we'll we'll get a a quote on that it's not going to be $150,000 it's going to be far less um
I shouldn't have put that number on there but there will be a scope of work to um bring us up into compliance for MS4 regulations and that would be a free cash do you have a a round number i honestly don't and I I put the big
number just to just number just Yeah just in case so article 7 you do have David the N 1,917 yep okay yep the the n 19 1900 1900 the
1900 yeah yep yeah i did it as two 2000 we just wrote it down yeah and then the town's website 7500 yep you can decide if you don't want to do that that's completely understandable i mean if it adds additional
functionality for residents or you know I mean forget that it's a one-time expense but that could come out of the budget yeah if we find Yeah like if we I can definitely have all this money left if
we really can figure this money out and we know that we have this money couldn't we just add it to the technology line for whatever is going to happen next year that I did this when there was a lot more free cash than there was budget space but I can put it right back into budget just put it back in and and then
Yep you know I mean there's going to be some thing that comes up under technology next year and the year after that's Oh yeah constant that's that's easy yep new router for upstairs right have a couple of new things for the for somebody's office some new computer new
screen new whatever new printers okay okay that's a I think that's a good plan um $7,500 doesn't a lot either the budget article number yeah it does that's the most important
thing yes so um so then moving ahead we get to the budget article well I think that's all the articles we have that the finance because then we went to 18 that's where we started that's where we
started so that brings us now to the fire department um discussion on the fire department so I I I guess my feeling on that you know last year I did think we were going
to put two questions on the ballot um I missed a meeting we did we didn't end up putting two questions on i think we should put it out there and finally just get a read of what towns people want if they want
247 are we taking a break or are we good okay no just restroom in okay um you know we we talk about if you know there's just always that that's always looming out there so why not just ask
people and see what they want to do i did think that's what we were going to do last year but that's my opinion ask the question what's the select board's take this year
well I mean I just What do you mean i I I mean I I thought that we were going to put two questions forward last year and we ended up putting one the smaller question um which didn't pass [Music] um I you know we we keep talking about
if we go 247 we should just ask we've got to ask at some point to find out if we're doing it or not has anything more been vetted we know everyone knows the study's been done has anything more been vetted on top of that
for long-term considerations too with a safety complex not what one year one looks like but like what the other years look like as well no not in a formal sense the budget as presented is built for
operations for the next three to five does not include any of the capital except the one request which would be a threeyear lease on a temporary living quarters of 46,000 I think if I recall off the top of my head so that would give that three
threeear window to come up with a more permanent solution whether it was a renovation of the current facility or purchasing a renovation of another facility but I don't I don't have that number of what a the big capital purchase would be or the capital per
right portion of it but it is the operating budget as presented is roughly built out for five years with annual 2 and a half% increases or whatever colas are not included that's just as we as we deem right the
progression there would be pay scales built in where currently there isn't and things like that so people would actually there'd be in the first year or two theoretically there might be a little extra money in the budget as people get more seniority they would be entitled to pay increases or step increases however we label them which
then would get us to that big number so by year five you're you're still within the budget that was already presented well at least in that regard too because it's an override it builds the base which then gets built on so in as much as anything keeps pace it
would keep pace presumably no I mean often times things don't keep pace but that has nothing to do with that yeah i I when the whole project came up and I was asked by the select board at that time to essentially try to build a budget for three to five and that's what I did
and how are we doing on calls and I mean I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too much but are we still missing a lot of calls uh as of this morning 28 medicals for the year have missed since January correct and how many
responded how many response like how many how many were there uh we're uh that wasund this morning was 105 I think is that fiscal year no
calendar year calendar year so we're missing about a third of our calls correct what's your what what do you estimate your call volume's going to be ambulance-wise fiscal year uh you
I would say for the because I run everything the numbers are for the calendar year why are they for calendar year aren't we always based on fiscal year so just internally we keep track of calendar year to calendar year instead of fiscal year it's just
first three months of the year right what's that first three months yep so presumably 400 is a ballpark figure like Yeah and you'll probably miss around 100 yep last year was uh 4 487 and we
missed 127 so roughly a third right and and I transports I I saw your post before on the statistics i think that the nighttime calls that you missed was somewhere in the teens for the 3 months
for the Yes this year we the overnight cover overnight calls for to date have been much lower than the previous three years without a doubt so it's been a little bit on the slower side right now but the last three years were much higher i mean we used to be in the 60s
or 70s and then the previous couple years we were you know 96 for the year or or for 3 months for the year no for the year we're we're just under 100 over the last 3 years on just that 11P to 7A time period for for received calls yes
yeah that's right i can't stand I so I guess last year was uh I think like total missed calls was$127 transports was 115 so it was about 87 $88,000 theor in lost
revenue just for mis calls that was total not just on the overnights that was total well I mean it's sort of hard to figure out lost revenue because some of the stuff is Medicaid which is a lower payment right and and some are higher So uh I mean it's sort of
difficult to say 75 grand if you're figuring on the higher end because some of those would be Medicare so I mean just to be fair so we you where it comes from is that we take the average number of either a Medicare or Medicaid call versus a Blue
Cross or Harvard Pilgrim so when you take out the the average between them the idea is that you're using $700 per call as your average collection you do calendar year instead of fiscal year and everybody's using around the same number 7 710 but everybody pretty much uses that
same number to project cuz that would be your average between the that would be averaging it but as I recall there was a higher percentage of Medicaid calls going on in town so we did the average might be a little I mean that's just very basic math what so it's
not 100% accurate by any means I don't think but the the reason I I didn't want this to go on the uh ballot last year was because I thought there was just too many questions i didn't understand you know what this 38080,000 was going to be for
for just covering night shift so it would part of the whole thing would be moving is that it would be a medic and a basic in the station 24 hours a day and I would not be that daytime paramedic so essentially I would come off the line I
would do administrative I would fill in the open shifts when needed if people couldn't fill them during the day or whatnot so I would still be available for all of that and then in turn it also covers the the fire calls which is the other piece of it where a lot of the discussion over the last 3 years have been very much centered around the
ambulance because it is the revenue generating but there is a reality that we're losing firefighters left and right in the town and there's nobody left to come so it is a broader picture of what's going on you know in the fire service and EMS in general so is it
typical in comparable departments that the chief is not considered part of that responding force during the day yeah I only know of maybe about three or four departments in the Commonwealth that the chief is on the primary ambulance
on a regular basis that that sounds to me like we would be changing your job description as well really well in my job description it actually states that I shall respond on the ambulance so long as it does not interfere with the regular duties of the fire chief is in I think it's paragraph
4 of my duties so it's not actually the primary part of my job description or as it's written in my contract it lists all the other things I do and then says shall at times respond as necessary so long as to not interfere i I believe the intent is you are an
emergency as the fire chief not if you were going through a smoke detector inspection or something like that so So yes and no on that but I I still just don't understand how it's that much more money to add just a night shift well it's really not because
you're taking in by adding you're having now a day paramedic that is not me and then the evening paramedic and a basic as far as the hours full day shift so we're changing the structure of the department right on top of adding a
night shift not really i mean you're just you're changing from the fire chief paramedic going out to a paramedic firefighter right but now but now would be the same all day but now we're paying to have three people want working during the days instead of two people working the
day during the days correct honestly I think that will be a deal breakaker for voters yeah i mean that's my feeling i I I definitely know that it's a it is a very large ask but there's a lot of things that are also not getting done on the administrative
side just because of when I am out I can't get to all of the pieces like what's not getting done certain inspections aren't getting done i mean not that they're required but even going to you know regional meetings I can't always make them because I'm out on the
ambulance or I'm out on a fire call or something else has gotten in the way so so this 388,000 is adding two people for nights the level yes and one person per day
we're adding three people for almost 400,000 it's It's not really adding the people it's adding the hours so you're adding essentially 16 hours of medic coverage that's already there but it's moving the
position to a different individual and then adding a basic position on the overnight that currently does not exist how does that break down the 388 yeah I'm still not following how this is costing that much money that that's
that's what I don't I just don't understand it i'm not arguing i just don't understand where this is coming from and chief if that's not the right number then we can totally work on that it's just um I took the the delta between your proposal for status quo and the
proposal for the 247 yep so it would be the increase so for a couple of things would be the full-time salaries that I mentioned so it would be adding one additional above what we currently are the rest would become pdeium or the part- timerrs like we
already have so that ends up being $24,000 that currently is at uh 140 so 204 for three new people no that would be the the PDM staff that would then ultimately be filling all of the the
25,000 for DM people correct so in the in the end it's 60,000 more than what it currently is that's because PDMs are picking up more shifts correct okay it's 61,000 more
away from PDMs it's 61 yeah it's 61,000 more than what we're doing now so So then why do you need a full timer also so then why do you need $200,000 more if it's it's only 60,000 more the line item is 200 right the whole line item is 204 for
the pdeium so it's above what we currently have just like the fulltime ends up being can we can we just time out this for a second Bob that this is a very confusing way to explain it so if is 388 the actual
number you're you're looking for additional beyond additional so can you just break the 388 down for me because I am willing to put this question forward but I that's my personal view and let's just find out
because believe me I hear from very impassionate people on both sides of this issue i think it's something towns people should decide but it has to be we have to be giving a clear example or or a clear picture of what you're asking right and that's what it was last year
for me i just don't understand it yep so in all total the the change to the entire salary section would be 376 and the expense is 14 376
14 okay so let's break it down a little further what is the 376 i mean you must have it broken down by position yep right okay so in mine so it's just over 90 would be in there the full-time ends up being 282 total the
part-time is 204 uh overtime shift coverage for training holidays all that stuff that has been questionable for a while is 647 the fire training stays the same
that it or it goes up by $2,000 over what we currently have and then I had built in uh about $8,700 for um like a shift officer so when no when no other officer is there they get a dollar an hour when they're in charge to
make other decisions and then there's still ultimately the call firefighters that would go down by $2,000 to $18,000 okay i'm sorry but I'm still So you said something about 90,000 in the very
beginning that was mine so there there would be no increase in the 90 right that that would be the same as in the right state so I think what we need to do is figure out the increase of each of those because you just read through what the the new version would be i want to
know what is the new money getting us so if 376 is salaries correct new 376,000 in salaries i just want to know what that is so that would add uh two full-time basic
positions and one medic okay just let me just write this down so two full-time basic beyond what we currently have allowed yep and an additional full-time medic full-time paramedic okay so up to
three extra people so that's three adding three full-time people so the do you have the breakdowns of like basically what they're those I don't have the individual salaries broken down though can I not not on the sheet can I ask a
question didn't Didn't you say you were going to have a full-time paramedic during the day to take your to relieve you so that you can do administrative things so they wouldn't necessarily be a full-time position the
idea is to use the paramedics that we have that are pertium and they will each pick up one 24-hour shift per week so breaking up that rotation because we work on like an 8 day rotation in an 8week cycle each one of them would take one 24-hour shift per
week and then the basics would also be assigned to a 20 22 24 per week staff so some of this is some of this is per the um salary as well so but of the
376 is any of that PDM yes yes that's all of it that's full-time PDM training overtime and two one and increase of $60,000 over yeah if if we're running 24/7 how
do we need overtime in the two to the tune of 65,000 bucks mhm if we still got to cover the shift if nobody's if there's nobody to take the shift and somebody calls out of a shift we still need to staff unless we don't want to but then we kind of just are reverting well so you're adding back filling also
yeah there would be overtime so somebody gets held over for a late call or they you know there's an open shift because somebody took a vacation day of the full time they would still have to be filling the shift which currently we don't do correct right now if you know depending
on what it is it's off like we don't back we don't back fill me at all that's why it's c that's it's a big cost increase that's that's doing a lot more than just adding night coverage that's right that's that's actually adding day coverage too right this is essentially
saying that we will staff the fire and ambulance department with at least two individuals 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year plus a chief correct Okay but then if the if there's an open day
medics position open because somebody you know they have a doctor's appointment so there it's their it would be their scheduled day to work but hey I can't get here until 2:00 cuz I have a doctor's appointment so they'd come in for the other half of their shift essentially the 16 out of the
24 some of those would not end up getting back filled because then I'm still there in the building during the day during the day correct so some of this is built as that you know that worst case scenario you know every shift is filled people are going
to have overtime people are going to have to go to training things that are required and they're going to be required to be certain things are off shift so all of that was being built into this which is also by the the increase so if I had to send somebody for their full 40 hours of their
continuing education and it all is off duty that's 40 hours of overtime that they're entitled to because it's a requirement of the job and this is to pay for somebody goes on vacation to backfill right so we would still stay staffed correct but pdeiums
don't get vacation right no there be because there would be a couple of the full-timers that you'd potentially still have to backfill okay but the prediums could still take a day off they're not getting compensated either we run the shift short or you
have to try to hire somebody to fill that particular spot if they were off so it's not actually overtime but you're still paying for somebody to come in what What about the temporary lodging was that part of this
budget that was the capital for the contingent right it's all contingent it's not It's not in the the 46 it's about 40 yeah whatever Whatever the number is that you want to add to the fire department budget you would I would suggest you add 45,000 to that number
which then covers the living quarters the living quarters this is This is But is it 45 for the for 15 a year or is it 45 a year no it's 15 a year so have 15,000 because if if the override passes
then that 1500 that 15 will be there the next year and the next year the living quarters living quarters does that include heat electricity water i don't know what those numbers cuz we don't pay them out of our budget so I wouldn't know what that number to even speculate is so even project it and then and then
in 3 years in theory then you're you're talking about either building a public safety building or re renovating one of these and I I guess as a citizen the more we know of what those costs could
be i I have a friend in Warren Mass um and they're building they're they're a city of about 5,000 they're building a public safety building right now and it's $24 million they're a little bit bigger and and so
the reason I bring it up is it's it's it kind of goes back to the uh Elm Court thing you know as we're we're building so so we know what's coming coming this is the start of a of a bigger a bigger
project right right right because at some point you're going to we are exploring a potential option of a renovation of another building instead of a straightup build yeah no no and that's that's great and then I'm just that that's why I raise but it is part of it you can get a rough idea though of
looking at what building something would cost based on that based on Hadley's new DPW at what 19 million what did Williamsburg spend on well just built their north station i don't know what the price tag was on built one i mean six
so I mean you can kind of project somewhere in the middle but you you know right but towns people need to understand that this would be the first step and then where there would be an ask obviously for a public safety complex i'm just saying you know we we
we keep all of our discussions around the fire department and and even other things are well it depends on if we go full-time with the department we don't even know if town's people want this um and so I think we should ask but I think
that you know these numbers all of this information this breakdown of salaries needs to be very clearly spelled out in my opinion um you know as part of the information that gets put out should be something that's handed out at town meetings so people are educated you know
like even I don't even understand what the shift officer $8700 be like an acting officer to make decisions on shift so if somebody calls in if there's not an actual officer they make a decision of are we supposed to go to that call because of where they are
it's like a differential for being in charge right you're basically you're in charge you're responsible for making decisions above and beyond the normal duties right it's not your normal job so you get a shift differential for or a
differential for How does that work now isn't because nobody's in charge essentially if nobody's unless there is happens to be one of the two lieutenants that pick up shifts it could be just two firefighters and then they
end up calling or texting me and and right now we cover do we cover 16 hours in theory we are located for 16 hours a day seven days a week and I'm the Monday through Friday paramedic yeah right and
and and roughly we missed some calls so obviously we don't we don't cover all shifts or you know you're unable to so I mean just from my own personal perspective again I'll go back to what I said before i think the revenue question
is a secondary question in a way yeah the question is do people in town feel like they need to have 247 you know like that's really the question that's the question whether you can generate revenue off it or not i mean you know I mean it's it'll be We're
not running a business right let's be We're not We're running a town so you know like you're not going to get the revenue to cover it all no no you're not yeah no i mean the revenue will be better but I mean Medicaid is designed not to pay you what it costs right so how you know you can't lose money on everything and make it up in volume you
know like that's So it's just I mean it's nice that you get some revenue to offset it but I wouldn't look at it as I mean because there's there's other sides you know if you could if you're looking at the revenue side you could also look at there's you know these are positions
very um prone to workers comp claims as well I mean right so well there's all kinds of things we do that bring in some revenue but that's not the primary reason we do the thing right we we don't educate kids or run a school because it brings in revenue like that's that's a
side benefit to do I feel like we need the answer to the question we need the answer to the question is is this what town's people want they have to understand though exactly what they're getting and exactly what they're paying for so I think it has to be very clearly spelled out it gets very
confusing i I've gone and met with Bob privately to you know this 16-hour and this and I always understand it when he's talking i think that's it's a little hard to understand when you're not in the business i mean you're getting I think the clearest way to say it is is what the chief actually said at
one point which is that you're getting 247 365 days a year including backfilling vacations holidays you know whatever plus a chief plus a chief somebody is there all the time so
currently that's not how it operates it operates like if somebody if one of the full-time people takes a sick takes a sick day there's not necessarily someone who's going to fill that position so that shift may go uncovered that day and plus you don't have overnight
necessarily so the coverage this will be 24/7 365 with back filling and you know it's going to be done through the hiring of a couple of basics a medic and increasing the pdiums getting a full-time EMS versus a part-time EMS
that's right fire and fire emergency services so so I have two questions and one is of the calls we miss
now I assume South County or Northampton picks up those calls couple years ago there was some irritation because they were picking up a lot of calls
i'm assuming that's better now so so from a town perspective even though Hatfield didn't get to those calls somebody got to those calls yes there were so so you
know um and then the second part or my second question would be if you got the all the money you're having trouble filling positions now and it's not just you throughout it's every
department through throughout the state nationwide nationwide how comfortable I mean do you think you'll be able to fill I actually have I feel like I have the benefit of having more medics than some
other departments one of my pians he's been on a full-time fire department that's in the central part of the state his whole department has five paramedics on the entire department counting their officers and they're doing like 5,000 EMS calls a year we have we're about to
have 13 paramedics on the roster well and I remember you saying at one time if the shifts were 24/7 you could set them up in a way that was more attractive to folks than it is now yes Most of our most of our PDM staff would prefer to come here for a minimum of 16 hours but
most of them would prefer a 24-hour shift it makes it more beneficial some of our staff are driving 45 50 minutes just shy of an hour so to ultimately come here potentially for only an 8 hour shift they're not thrilled about it okay
and some of them said you know I would have picked that shift up but it's just not worth it for me to drive they're doing these 24-hour shifts on their days off from their regular full-time jobs correct so they're getting that's that's how they're making extra money on Correct benefit of that that work schedule is work seven days a month and
they pick up one extra day per week here so they still are three days out of an eight eight day rotation correct so we would get the benefit they still get their shifts and they come for the whole thing that That's what I misunderstood i I thought it was just ad night shift i
didn't realize it was dad so much more yeah like I said I know that is absolutely a very large you know it's a big number but it will guaranteeing that a firefighter and a an ambulance from Hatfield is now coming to that call and we're getting there within an average of 5 minutes that's our
current average response time for us when we're staffed versus not the other mutual aids are currently at 11 and 15 because we keep track of it right it it's hard to say guarantee though i would I I would I would be care I would
I would be careful about you know Yeah but but we're keeping track of all of that to see exactly from the time of dispatch to the time our our unit or South County or Northampton are on scene no he's seeing guaranteed response that's what he's saying can't really you
can never guarantee if we're on another call on another call that's happening now right well you you could guarantee that you're going to be responding to a call you know might not be the one right you're making but yeah the staffing
would be guaranteed right well you can't really guarantee that you're somewhere you're somewhere between about I mean you're between about Well then you're not selling 247 service you'd have to back between Yeah i think some something else that's
important to add you know from from my side of being one of the resident call firefighters is that you know we don't have droves of people coming down that sign up anymore and that's not a reflection on this department it's it's a nationwide problem there's just not
volunteers doing this anymore um I mean I remember when I joined in 2011 I was one of like 27 firefighters from this town that lived in town you know some of the guys were on the DPW they could go to the daytime calls they could come and help out on the ambulance cuz they were
already in town now we have like seven that live in town so like there's just not as many of us that are available to go and when you're talking most of our pdeium people are coming from at least 15 minutes away that really strains us especially in those overnight hours or
those weird midshift hours like the 3:00 time is really hard for us to staff both on fire and EMS if we don't have people staffed in the building because there's a lot of days I'm working till 4 5 6:00 at night what have you and other people as well and so like those times where
you have an influx of people coming back into town car accidents medical events things like that that those are some of the weird times that we have at staffing so you know it we we don't have the the large amount of firefighters that we
used to have in town and so the model of how it used to run 20 30 years ago is is really not comparable to compare to anymore so there really is a need um you know and that that's kind of my two cents on
it but and on the but on the fire side with with your even with your staffing you're not staffed to respond to a structure fire overnight you're still going to need folks to come in your your call folks and then your mutual aid and all of that obviously the only
difference is it puts two people available immediately so as soon as the first the third person arrives the engine cannot respond where in the current model we don't always have that or if we don't have a ship covered or whatnot now it's waiting for three
people to come from home if they're even available there's been numerous times where you know the engines responded with only one person we are as Luke said we're we're just getting down in the numbers of people that are available in town and I'm estimating that I'm potentially going to lose three to four
additional in town call firefighters within the next 2 to 3 years to retirement retirement and other personal business ventures and a few other things that have been brought up when you needed three people to respond and you had 25 in living in
town to pick from that was totally different yeah and now you have you need three people to respond out of seven or eight you know it's a completely different different world unfortunately totally you know oh yeah so if anyone wants to join come on down and sign up
do you see the question of I think Diana touched base on it last year was going to be proposed as two questions so the 388 would the 64 also go on there i guess in your eyes this year and in the select board's eyes
i think the the dual question last year you know ultimately it it failed um I wouldn't be inclined to do that because I believe that ends up being a band-aid it doesn't end up fixing our problem that part of that amount that was supposed to go on or or went on last
year and ultimately failed that was part of that was the makeup of the clerical error from the FY24 issue so and then the rest of it was that to to bring the pay to be competitive we're we're now anywhere from $4 to $6 less an
hour than most of the other services in the area i just got new pay scales from South County Northfield EMS AMR Hadley and now we're we're anywhere
from 379 to $6 less than everybody else so it's hard yeah so the same way I was well my my my feeling was we had two proposed questions we asked one it failed but we didn't ask the other one
so we should ask the other one and just finally find out once and for all what towns people think because I do hear from people you know on both sides still um you know I think it's just an unresolved issue and
so what are are you suggesting it's better to have like a ballot box question I ask the people well it would trigger Yeah it would trigger an override that would trigger an override well yeah i mean there's just in my mind
and there's no reason to have an opinion question oh no no it would be to to authorize the funding yeah the question is do you want to pay for it right that No that's I mean I I'm envisioning an override question
i mean if you're going to ask it so and towns people can let us know what they want because I just think it's looming out there we talk about it like it's this possibility that's coming up i don't know how towns people feel but I do think if you have this question that
we give all the facts oh yes what's going to happen what could happen down the road and I mean it's we're not even counting for another
health insurance benefits well and that's what I was touching on earlier the one additional beyond what we're current what we currently should be for so it should be about 35,000 36,000 that goes in a different it goes in a different line but it's a dollar amount
that's got to go in line it should be included in this figure so whatever the figure is there should there it should include the living quarters it should include any kind of contingency costs
like insurance um because that's that's it has to be paid and then and then a a detaileion a detailed breakdown of what that money is what it gets town's people your salary that you I mean if you have
if you have eight people and they all start with two weeks vacation there's there's uh 16 weeks you got to make up somewhere right and that has to be overtime I mean people need to know all that stuff Right that all of that is already being built into this based off
of those that would be only those that are eligible for it so it would only be the four full-time beyond myself right not the PDMS right pansiums would not be eligible or not not get the vacation or any of the rest of that so is is
this at the current hourly rate or give everybody raises also so it would bring it would bring the top uh a senior medic so somebody that essentially is greater than 10 years as a medic it would bring them up from the current today's rate
$381 so it would take it and put a range in there so a brand new paramedic so like our full-timer Nicole she just got her paramedics she would essentially start with whatever that fiscal year's new entry level pay would be so if we're
give doing a 2% for FY26 that would then become that person starting and then for every two years they go up i think I had it built in as 2% so it's like a step so again that's where I was building in that it's kind of already built for the 3 to 5
years because we're going to take that long to get everybody up to that what would then be the top step but to Sean's point the budget would also be growing at the same extent because the base would already be put in place so this is to give people raises also right it
would take now what we currently pay so the top medic would end up going to 30 an hour and a entry level would end up being for next year would be 27 and change so just so I got this right if if for this 388 whatever figure you have you're
you're planning on how many full-time and how many per DM how how I'm still trying to understand how you're filling everything that's all at the end we would have seven full-time people including yourself
uh as it as it stands right now it would be five it would be five full time five plus myself sorry so six and then the rest are currently already scheduled or slated for you have four but you just said you were going to hire two full-time basics and one full-time
medic but I don't have all those positions filled right now so the allocation is there but not all the positions have been filled but we have to talk about what the allocation covers no currently currently the budget is set for fire chief two basics and one
full-time medic okay so what are you So you're adding two full-time people correct you're not adding three like You're not adding two basics and one medic you're adding two one of one of each probably two basics that's where the confusion basics i'm in
the I'm in I was I was a firefighter for 34 years and I'm confused we're talking about different We're talking about different things too yeah so like the person who's in the budget but isn't it doesn't exist the hypothetical person
they don't get health insurance because they don't exist they're just a position in a budget so they're not taking the health insurance so if you're trying to calculate what the benefit costs are then yes it is another person if you're trying to calculate the salaries then no
it's not because the salary is already in the budget does that make sense so it depends on what question we're answering I guess here so if this is confusing to us and we've been talking about this for years
really the average voter and we need to make sure that we're but you're just way too far in the weeds i mean are we really going to put out like what's the retirement cost going to be for I mean like suffice it to say there's a benefit
calculation it's around what 30% that dollar amount there wouldn't it be part of wouldn't it wouldn't you want that I something put in there as if the override is 388,000 and it doesn't include possible
health insurance i I think it I think there should be a benefit percentage put in 22% or whatever it is i don't think we need to get into breaking down like everything if the person takes a family plan it's going to cost no Sean but we do need to make sure that those expenses
are covered yes as part of that's all I'm asking there's a standard percentage but we just it needs to be if if if this is a question that moves forward then it needs people need to actually understand the difference between what
they have now and what they're getting but I think it's simple i think it's a simple answer the simple answer is you have a part-time fire department and ambulance service now and this is what it costs it's not part time they cover 16 hours a day yeah part-time it's not full-time
it's not 247 and and and for $400,000 as a round number you're going to get 247 365 however that money is allocated to the bodies that actually are there whether
it's a paramedic or a regular person or they're a full-time person or they're a part-time person or they're a PDM or whatever that's really the the the answer to the question do you want what you have now which we which we can fit in the
budget which is 16 hours a day hopefully if we if we fill all the shifts for people to know if the positions we have now are also getting pay raises in this right like people need to understand what it's for sure but that's that could be a general thing some people are going to get ra there's going to be people get
raises we're going to have a it's going to cost us more in benefits it's going to you know people are going to get more some people are going to get vacation time that kind of we're going to run a full full-time fire and ambulance 24/7 365 which is very different from what we have now
well I realize that I was just trying to break down what what I don't think the average citizen is going to ask that question i I know you are Greg i am i'm totally with you and I hear you because you're in the business and that's that's okay you have to be ready with answers yeah i
think they will ask and then the other concern and and we've talked about this some is you know I I'm just concerned that it'll be well we're going to go to this department and then there's going to be an ask now I'm the chief of a full-time department with all
these extra and you know increases to your your salary you know requests for that like we need to have to manage as well if you go to this as well that's so that's a fair question moving forward if we're talking about knowing what we're getting into that's also a fair question
just like just like a facility is a fair question all of that is Oh well a facility is certainly u a fair question because by the very fact that you have a temporary living quarters in here right
you're telling me there's a facility of some kind in the future right like so that's already that's not a question really that's part of known basically right right now if I call at two in the afternoon I'm probably going to get Hatfield people responding to my call if I call at 2 in the morning I'm probably
not but okay and so that's really what I think that's really what towns people want to know if I call at 2 in the morning am I going to get people from Hatfield or am I going to get South County or Northampton or whoever or how quickly is is anyone coming and how quickly is anybody coming yeah but can
we I don't understand I guess the other question about the contractual pieces i I I felt like when we were talking about the chief salary or going down that road and I'm not sure where we're what what what we're I think the
question we're going to ask is the question I think it's the question that people are going to want to know you know we're talking about this isn't just a you know you're building a whole different department and and there's different um No I understand people
might want to know but I don't know what the question is that they want to know the answer to the question is this it is there more coming right that's the question right and that ends up being some a difference on the margins I think but does that but are we talking about
in regards the contract with the fire chief sean I'm talking about what a voter could reasonably be concerned about or expect or have questions about if we if we create this different department what
other things could come up well yeah i mean obviously there's going to be some things that are going to come up the the idea of a public safety complex or renovation or somewhere for these people to live beyond the temporary 3 to 5year structure is one obvious question that is going to come
up that's what we're saying we're we're trying to figure out what the answers are to this and I understand that i'm trying I'm just trying to figure out I I guess I just don't understand what it has to do with the chief's position i mean the chief is going to
negotiate whatever he negotiates with a board of selectmen whoever that is at the time they do the negotiation with wherever the chief is it's a fair question would it would it be reasonable to expect that a chief of a now different scope of department would have
a different Yeah salary request he's essentially doubling his department he's essentially doubling his department you're the one who determines that yes or no word to that answer to that question i I think this is kind of a a side path to go down i think it's I think it's a it's it's understandable
that that might happen but it's also a question on the margins when there's other costs in front of us that are probably worth focusing on yeah so both are true so no true so we need to know it's a fair question it just needs to be known that this is going to expand into more than what what it this is well than
what we're asking for to be honest and and this is not against the fire anybody it's been building for several years oh yeah right i mean and out of necessity a lot of it is out of necessity so to be
fair and and the question is are we making another another jump up that's a simple question if for the two and a half so if it was a flop in the first year does it have to be used the second
fiscal year for the same no no so that's not how Yeah I think the I mean I'm not trying to sway the doomsday all or nothing with this stuff is very important to talk about the the complexes and whatnot but I mean I don't think it's agreeing to 20 the next 20
years voting it through on year one either right i mean it's it there's no legal requirement you know that you have to but Right i don't know that it really ever goes the other way honestly i mean in reality
like you certainly could if something dramatic changed i mean the override a couple years ago went to the schools some went to the fire department and and and they've remained in those departments since then just a basic question no it's a it's a good question yeah good question yeah i mean there is
no requirement it could change right after year one right right because it just all we start with a new budget yeah but but I don't think anybody any public servant would ever take you don't know what might happen 5 years from now either and something
could happen and you do something different or whatever whatever but it's not normal to it's also presenting it as a three to five year yes and it gives more time either I think it's important I'm
just asking questions that I think towns people will Nothing wrong with taking something and tearing it apart and looking at it from all the different angles but I mean I you know I think we should ask the question i think we need to know what if
town's people want this i agree but I think a lot of the discussion too comes down to budgeting issues and issues that happens in meetings and I see both both sides that you brought up tonight i mean well I I
just want to make sure that this is enough if it passes to do what the intent is well that's important that's part of my question about the chief it's the same it's the same premise like is this is this enough is it a starting
point is that that's people are going to want to know that question so I'm asking right is it even enough to get to the starting point right well that's Yeah that's what you have that's as far as you can get really right is Right no it's not entirely enough because you
need you permanent quarters well right and it's hard to know what that costs because you don't know what it is but you could give some ideas about that could be anywhere from five six seven billion to renovate 20 million to build something you know
right but we know what it would cost for this to start say in July right well except you also I think I think you need to add to it i agree a basic percentage which is probably about
20% of for health insurance retirement workers compensation all that stuff is right you know it is a part of adding personnel right no one of my points yeah that's a standard equation
right just it just seems like that's that's not that's not in the equation and that and even though the housing is somewhere else it's it's somewhere else buried in here it's not up front well the house should be what was $15,000 a
year so you add 15,000 to it and then you add at you could add 20% to the 388 whatever that number is i just want to make sure it's 376 in salary so you'd add you know 20% of that so you
Well I just want to make sure like if this passes this passes and for some reason they don't get the housing yeah I think you Oh well the house What do you mean the permanent housing the the part the uh the trailer or whatever it is oh well it would be part of it trailer would be built into that you
should build But that's not built in there now no I know no it is not i know that's not in there now we've done that disability operating because that's capital expended it has to be the right number it has to be the number that will actually make this happen but we've done that before that kind of thing before
and it's not a problem i mean you're going to say to people you're we're voting on this and then there's going to be this living quarters so unless you intend to vote for the living quarters don't vote for this because there'll be nowhere for the people to live i mean
like that's just you know I don't think people would You mean the temporary ones yes yeah no my No that has to be built into the question you just put that You just put that in the number yeah put it in the number you also put the 15,000 it's a capital project it would it wouldn't
part of the put it on the ball but at least for the first year I'm with you i would include it it's it's part of the expense of this department right if if you're not going to put it in this number it needs to be explained that there's other expenses right which which
which I think I think to put it in the number and say it's part of it it just goes in the number then it's expense to make this happen so it should be in the number yeah yeah well it's on the capital plan also so I would say if we want to move
forward with this and we want this to be a ballot question then we need to have the ballot question finalized by next Tuesday the 15th so we can do two things we can schedule another meeting to go over and decide what we want that number to be because at the suggestion of
council we've been told that we should have a number in the ballot question or we pick one tonight um we've discussed 376,000 for salary if we took the 20% conservative estimate for benefits that would add another $75,200
14,000 for expenses 15,000 for the trailer bring us to $480,200 that would be a conservative estimate um and that would be something that we could feel comfortable putting out to pay for all in year one cost of
the 247 model just one thing about that the temporary living thing it's only temporary if you put it in right if you put it in as part of an override an operating your free forever
and 30 years from now when you're no longer having the thing and you're no longer paying for it it's still going to be in there so like I'm just that's why00 right that's why that's why capital items are traditionally separate because but that doesn't mean you have to keep paying for it if it's not here
and and we have a line item in our in our budget for for leases and rentals and that changes annually what right i'm I'm comfortable either way you could do it from you could strike the 15 and just do that from from capital free cash whatever else if we needed to but you
could add it because it's you know it's three years of expenses which makes sense to have in an operating budget it's good to shift some capital expenses but it's only $15,000 and and to put it as part of the budget even if someday it becomes part of some
some else to which it will it will so it's unless I I really don't have a preference i'm fine either way yeah I but I say it's so small just put it on the Yeah you may wind up keeping it longer than you think well that's the other thing
i've never known what to be gone after 3 years to be honest with these my I think that there needs to be a very very straightforward um something put out so people totally understand what the expenses
are what what those what those costs cover and if it includes pay raises and all that it needs to be spelled out in there so we keep it simple with $400,000 more you get 247 coverage but we're still not
explaining how it's going to expand over the future right it's four yeah over the years what was the number we just came up with was number we just came up how it's going to expand the department or the needs like for permanent living as far as probably cost for needs like
maybe the public safety complex down the road or whatever or more permanent living whatever I mean right now that'll be up to the people to decide if they want the 247 knowing that they're down the road
there may There probably will be additional there's nothing wrong with pointing out that the proposal includes temporary living quarters right right which by definition are temporary right so like Yeah but I mean we should it's
it's fair to say we would be looking to fund a public safety complex right because remember they're in a temporary building now right right of some kind they're already in the temporary spot yeah yeah that's a fair
that towns people should know that i just think we need the answer to the question okay if there if towns people are willing to if they want it and we'll fund it that was a call is that fair
well I guess that's kind of where I've been at is I I would just prefer an answer and when the residents speak then we know exactly where we're at from that point going forward yep it is their choice and we should ask them it's not up to me this this doesn't it's not
really a thing for me or anything it's for the residents what they want for services no we will prepare so we'll when we get a dollar amount then we'll just figure it out in terms of where you want to put the money because it's going
to have to go if there's a there's going to have to be an alternate budget yep and it's going to have to be broken down into several different lines it's not all just going to go you know what I mean yes oh right we do have to have two budgets right right but also also we're going to have like um we'd have to add
something we're going to add something to health insurance we're going to add you know what I mean pretty much have those figures right yeah it's not just going to be Yeah so we there's two things going on here one is just the number that we need for the ballot in the question and I think we're close to arriving at that and then there's how do you take those numbers and put them in
the appropriate places in the budget and the budget becomes budget alternate number two and that's fine i I think that's uh that's just some spreadsheet magic so does budget alternate number two have to pass
if you want to spend the money from any potential override it does yes so on town floor if that budget didn't pass the override question doesn't matter is that right you would no you could still have the ballot vote and then you'd have to come back to another town meeting and
depending Yeah and my my recommendation would be vote on the a vote on the question first at town meeting if it passes then we know which budget to put on the floor right you wouldn't pass two budget well we
would pass two budgets well is that how you did it when you did the last override a couple years ago yeah we passed one contingent I think but isn't the question part of question one yeah yeah it is uh question one question one just sets the election but it has the
language in it the election i think it's voting for the election i think you'd vote down it's a good question for the lawyer no I think I think I mean I guess it only matters if it failed at town meeting let's just say it failed at town meeting then you wouldn't need to worry
about budget B any longer right sure is what I'm saying but the ballot would already be printed by then right but it wouldn't matter you still have the ballot okay you still have the ballot you still have the ballot and if the ballot by chance passed
then you you could in theory go have another town meeting and honestly I don't know if that's ever happened yeah meaning like that failed at town meeting and then passed at the B like Yeah it's usually passes at town meeting and fails at the ballot box it goes the other way
around so I think that that budget question I'll I'll resolve with a lawyer that's just not a problem i think we did both one time yeah i So So the other thing you would need to vote on is the debt exclusion for the the projects the capital the large
school capital projects bob did you have something before we just on the the letter that I'll put together the print out that I'll put together you want what it's going to get do you also want to get in that same letter do you want it to describe basically what the current is
and so this is what you would have should it fail like kind of basically you want the comparison not in there not just it gives you this is what you currently have i would say this is what you have this is what would be added with the with the passage of it i I
would just be really careful run anything by the lawyer because you got to be really careful what you use public resources for even explaining it this is what it is it's currently 167 yeah not all shifts are filled if this passes it's 24/7
but there are even there are even rules on who can advocate for an override yeah you got to be real but this would be like anformational sheet this is what we currently offer this is what this override question should it pass offers
and also including that you know make pay scales competitive to surrounding areas i haven't looked two people 247 at the ALS level i haven't looked recently but I bet you there's like a template thing on the website mask.gov that you
can look at to see what's allowable forformational purposes because it is really limited like it's very limited and be very careful but we do want towns people to have information yeah okay yeah yeah it's just weird the way this you some things you think would
just be information or not so we got to come back for this question or we will we be having another meeting that's up to you um so the deadline for the ballot questions is Tuesday a week from today you could schedule another
meeting or if you feel comfortable with the status of the ballot questions which I think you've made most of the decisions you need to on it then you could do that tonight i think so because you've got the new number now too you basically have the number you have a number and if if we were to go back and
find out that that number was totally wrong then we can put a quick special meeting together and you three can fix the number okay but yeah you're never going to have an exact exact exact right it's not going to be exact as close as you can get it right um I would be all
for doing whatever we can tonight i am and at the Boston Bruins next Tuesday night yeah um so Monday we have in your packet agenda um language if someone would like to make a motion and for for
the debt exclusion one there are no changes because that one does not require a number it seems okay i will make a motion i move that the select board place the following Proposition two and a half dead exclusion question on the next annual town election ballot shall the town of Hatfield be allowed to
exempt from the pro provisions of Proposition two and a half so-called the amounts required to pay for the bond issued in order to replace the boiler and roof of the Hatfield Elementary School and to mill and pave the surface of Billings Way and the parking lots at
the Hatfield Elementary School in Smith Academy okay can someone make a friendly amendment to say the boilers instead of boiler oh apologies boilers you you read it correctly i just Okay amendment okay so are we voting on the
amendment the amended version of of what you just said all those in favor i I So now did we vote to amend it and now we have to vote it in friendly so it was accepted so you should be good to go okay all right so that's the the two debt
exclusions and then um I make a motion that the select board place the following Proposition 2 and a half override question on the next annual town election ballot shall the town of Hatfield be allowed to assess an additional 480 $480,000
$480,200 $480,200 in real estate and personal property taxes for the purposes of funding personnel in the fire ambulance department for the fiscal year and you add and associated costs and associated costs funding personnel in the fire
ambulance department and associated costs for the fiscal year beginning July 1 2025 second motion made and second any further discussion no all those in favor
i move to second but the rest of the things we need information we can do on September September Lori April 29th yeah april 29th yeah okay i'll confirm but I believe the warrant
has to be signed that night but otherwise we're good to go we got it just have to finish that was a lot of meeting did we do the uh community project funding uh did you make a mo did you yes we did no we did we did it's
been a long night oh we're still we're still motion to adjourn motion to second all those in favor i