[Music] good evening and welcome to the select board and wage and personnel board for Tuesday April 15th 2025 at 5:45 p.m at the Lakeville Public Library
is anyone besides Lake Cam recording this meeting thank you i'd like to open uh our meeting uh call to order you want to announce yourselves just for the record we'll call to order
paul Hunt Ryan Dick Moren Candida Christopher Blanca and does the finance committee just want to announce themselves for the record as well yeah I'll call the I'll call the Lakeville Finance Committee meeting to order at on April 15th at 5:46 p.m roll call larry
Cost like ready darren Beals thank you uh next order of business is we're going to skip the pledge of allegiance because we can't see a flag in this room um so anyone that's waiting for it I apologize um we are working on the FY26 department
head budget meetings um first we have accounting is it possible to go out of order with it first let's go to it let's
see m page i'm looking at his find accountant we're waiting government page 28 oh it does 28 still in provision over there
28 what was it [Music] okay can you introduce yourself just walk us through your budget good morning good morning good evening good evening bob McN information technology director uh outsourced for the panel uh for our
20 26 fiscal budget uh there is one little minor thing on the first page it actually shows an increase of 22% that is actually a typing mistake it's actually going to be a decrease of 1.13% even better so hopefully I've made everyone's night uh on the next page it
actually is correct where it shows the the breakdown uh we've been able to pretty much hold the expenses uh cutting back on some things that uh we don't necessarily have to do this year there were some increases that we have to take care of for uh contracts uh the contract
with Green River has a 3% built-in increase for this year um maintenance agreements are going up uh licensing is going up so we have to plan to absorb those costs but we were pretty much able to offset everything by cutting back on some expenses in other areas uh one of
the things I had looked at doing was we have to replace all of the computers that will not run Windows 11 by October 5 14th there are a number that will not upgrade to 11 but Microsoft is offering a uh relatively
inexpensive solution where you can buy extended maintenance uh for one year on Windows uh 10 so we've exercised the option to do that on those devices so instead of having to spend $15,000 on hardware we can spend $700 on some license upgrades to get us through
another year and then re-evaluate whether we can continue with those for another year or we can uh get those replacements into the next fiscal year so basically it's it's pretty much level funded we might have some just minor reductions to make a little bit of
a contribution we have a question um Bob appreciate the effort to keep the costs down um the uh the assets that the endpoints that don't support uh Windows 11 uh I is Windows 10 EOL end of life
end of life October 2025 are they and me maybe confirm are they are they are they providing are they patching it or they cease patching any vulnerabilities that's the benefit of getting the extended support the extended support will provide patching
for Windows 10 for one year starting in November of 2025 if any reported vulnerabilities they'll continue that patch so all the security patches will come out we just as opposed to getting it we have to pay for it i believe that doesn't include zero day though issues though isn't that kind of one of the
issues with staying with Windows 10 um well I mean you get your typical OS security updates and then um other things i silence and Huntress are there and then anything else that would come through right but there are some risks though staying obviously with Windows well you never want to be in an end of
life product no matter what it is but Yeah okay so the proposal is we kick it out another year yeah and and most of these actually are laptops that really aren't used that much okay uh so I think any of the devices that are desktops that are in use pretty much every day at
town will take Windows 10 uh I've upgraded a number of them it wouldn't uh wouldn't take Windows 11 at that point though and I do have five spares so if I come across something that I I need to push out I can can throw a Sure something out there but a lot of these from a really use perspective it really
doesn't matter that much okay great thank you stop do you want to tell us a little bit of some of the things that you've accomplished this year i know you um looking at the DPW building and I know that was kind of last year kind of this year but I don't think anyone spoke to
it so I'd love to just hear a little bit about some of the things that we've upgraded in town um anything that's not a security risk please feel free to talk about all right i mean we have the uh new TBW administrative building was completed and we have actually a small
server room in that building we've moved in there uh the plan is once everything is fully implemented to actually make that a full DR site so I have a redundant nutanics uh systems right now sitting at the police station that are mirroring each other the next step is
just to move the disaster recovery one out of the police station and into the highway department and then we're going to be setting up a working with TMLP on setting up redundant internet connection there also so right now our internet comes into town hall i'm in the process
of moving that to the police station uh it's a better infrastructure there for that and I'm adding a backup using FiOS as a backup internet connection so if we lose our primary TMLP we'll still be able to keep things running uh then as a
a second level of redundancy going to have another internet connection with TMLP and FIOS at the highway department with another set of firewalls so if something happens to the physical building at the police station that we can't provide that service we can run
everything out of the uh out of the highway department and including all of the the town service on the new tanks cluster that's exciting especially having your own space for those of you who don't know um Bob was kind of floating into whatever spaces he could
find a seat into for a couple years and then we didn't really actually have a space before it was kind of um yeah just floating forever so having a dedicated space it is kind of nice although now people know kind of know where to find me so yeah know if that's good or bad uh
one of the other major projects we did was for the police department uh which we actually just went live with last month complete upgrade of their CAD RMS system for for dispatch and records management so that has totally a a state-of-the-art system out that's been up and running ironing a couple of
little bugs out of it uh but it's it's pretty much running very successfully and I think everyone's happy with it the nice thing is that we have some legacy servers out there which are some old Windows 2012 servers which I had to keep running to support the old system and I
can start shutting those down hopefully in the next couple of weeks uh anything that we did indeed I have have been able to shut down so far uh we do have one old server that's running a legacy application for the assessors i looked into the with the vendor to see if we
could migrate that data to a newer server and they basically said no that's not possible so I have that server it's a virtual machine that's powered off they only access it half a dozen times a year so when the if there's a requirement for it the assessors just
open up a ticket with me or call me and I power it on they do what they need to do and then we shut it back down again so it's not sitting out on the network okay but I we should have once we get those last couple of servers shut down there'll be no legacy servers out there everything will be 2019 2022
exciting day i can see the hand oh thanks um first of all Bob thank you very much for all that you and your company do and you've brought us just miles ahead of where we were a few years ago so thank you for that um I know we still have a couple months left in this fiscal year but um are you going to
acquire everything you need infrastructure-wise for the new Clear Pond connection soon or is that going to be included in this budget for next fiscal year it really is uh I mean there's basically a a computer that's needed there uh TMLP the fiber is all part of the grant uh TMLP is putting a
switch out there so we don't need a separate switch we're just going to have one computer in that building it's providing the computer and I have talked to parks about budgeting them them for a a PC and then they wanted a printer there potentially so that printer yeah
so they they will they know that that's that's there although one of the main thrusts for that was they were talking about just having a computer and being able to print some spreadsheets and then send the spreadsheets to someone to to get keyed in and with them on the the town network now they really don't have
to do that because they'll be on the same network as as the the parks building so that the printer may be not really a requirement now that that's all in need to be a process analysis there a follow-up question based on something I didn't hear um are we going to be extending the public Wi-Fi there right
now the public Wi-Fi is not going to go there uh that could be done we could add an access point there but the parks department's opinion was it's kind of a recreation facility they didn't really kind of want people coming there and sitting on the beach sitting on their phones looking at their phones that the
idea was to have some family time uh but the the infrastructure is there if we want to do it feels like a decision that would not be decided by individual committees yeah probably not um additional to that member day
um we were hoping for ca some less cash heavy payment options there and um I'm not sure how that kind of goes if we went to some type of system where we were scanning or paying and no one had signal to actually
scan or pay yeah I know the the highway department or the transfer station is putting something in now and that will run either wired or wireless so there's an option to to run either way there if it's going to be in the snack shack then we probably want to throw wireless in there because the uh all the hardware is
going to be in the parts building itself if no one can use it on their phone it kind of defeats a little bit of the purpose yeah actually the the phones don't need to connect uh it's the uh it's kind of a dead zone isn't it it's the terminals that the the terminal that would would take the the credit card
payments that need to connect to the internet unless you do an Apple Cash or something like that yeah like an Apple Pay apple Pay yeah that's how modern do we want to be we're just saying we don't want to constrain ourselves we're big time now
we have Wi-Fi an access point isn't isn't all that cost expensive to throw an access point in there okay anything else you'd like us to know yeah I guess the other other thing is I there is some more uh we did a a cyber audit and we had said good
results from that uh I am adding some extra reporting uh we we're logging everything basically but we're going to be adding some software this year to get some more higher visibility reports and alerts off the system that we don't necessarily have to go digging for today
we'll just appear fantastic any questions from anyone oh Madam Chair one more question one more question Bob the um on stand today so the the internet is being provided by TMLP correct you're working on a um a red a
redundant capability yep through Verizon verizon fires what's the So today if somebody cuts a cable on something a TMP cable and town loses internet you you're basically we're dead in the water deal until they
until we until that gets repaired no security oh uh I'll save that for the IT subcommittee thank you anything about Thank you you're good thank you cool anything anyone yeah uh just for
everyone's awareness so I didn't fund Bob's capital request this year uh one of my first days on the job I kind of asked for all the old capital items and we found that we have $109,000 in old capital accounts for it so that those can be tapped into anytime
fantastic for any big kind of upgrade old server was like it's just kind of like tech just technology improvements okay at town meeting so it's pretty it's open so that's even better yep cool all right thank you very much thanks for
talking to us today you're welcome great [Music] next up accounting please yeah can we do debt come on guys let's break this away like some people can are going to be here longer i didn't want to keep anyone
that's fine let's go for debt y so debt has its own tab it's also page [Music] 79 so total FY26 town debt is 1
million248062 it's down 93,761 from the prior year um of that debt 805,000 is excluded debt which means it's raised directly on the tax rate and the other
$443,62 is uh operating debt so we you know fund that within the levy limit um there is also one other small piece that comes over by way of the Free Lake school assessment 135,480 which you can see on your uh
financing sources and uses in the budget summary tab that comes over with the with the assessment from Free Lake it's built into that um that's also raised uh excluded debt so that's raised on the recap as well um we've added no new debt
um we're still kind of temporarily borrowing for Route 79 and we permanently borrowed for the police station and that's kind of where we stand very minimal um as we discussed before the meeting we had the Asarmsite windows and doors finalized but we're
going to wait on that until MSBA gives us their final approval and then we can uh permanent permanently borrow that as well um but very minimal debt uh mostly raised on the recap so does anyone have any questions
[Music] i'd just like to point out we've got at least two things that appear to be coming off the rolls this year looks like when ambulance was paid off and some of the police station construction costs yeah the police station construction cost was uh it was
exempt debt so it was short-term borrowed typically on a project like that you would borrow in short-term increments until you're ready to permanently borrow when the project's complete so you're correct we kind of paid off those short-term bands for the construction um ambulances paid off and
the library was paid off I believe in fiscal 24 so just for like reference we're going to be um borrowing obviously for the fire station when the time comes and then one potential is Old Colony Regional Vote Tech if the vote passes
one quick comment would be even though this is a significant list of accounts there's not a lot left to be honest no no we're there's a lot of zeros here we're doing pretty well yeah so that's always a funny thing you don't want to have no debt because then it gets gobbled up in the budget and then when
it comes time to borrow again it's like a sticker shock so it's good to have some um but I think we're doing quite well for a town our size so do you know what our latest debt ratio is i don't have that tonight oh sorry i don't know
Erica you don't have that no okay madam Chair um when is the police station When is the police station fully paid how many more years do we know that was it 15 or 20 years um I didn't bring the long-term debt schedule with me but I believe it was 20 years 2019 was 20
years 39 weeks to go yeah we got a little bit time um and then the Route 79 project we haven't fully borrowed for we're still doing temporary bonds which is temporary bonds which the total amount that we were uh allowed at um
town meeting was 2.3 million and that's for land taking and easements um and etc etc uh none of the roadway or uh or sidewalk the road layout construction and with the um fire station have we
started to look into that and like 20 or is that a 20 year loan or 30 have we even started to think about that we have and it's either going to be 20 or 25 years depending on I guess what the interest rate we get from the bank and how how much lead time do you
need for that i think it it just depends on where where we are um in the in the process we'll probably have to sit with our financial adviserss and utilize their expertise to see how long we should go and when you we should start planning but we'll we're going to do short-term
borrowings as similar to a construction loan as we start to build because you wouldn't permanently borrow until the end so kind of to be determined okay thanks yep any further
questions on [Music] deck okay moving on to t collector yeah oh treasure collector page 23 [Music]
thanks for joining us thank you for having me all right why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your project okay so my name is Erica Korea i'm the treasurer collector for the town of Lakeville um as you can see on page 23 um the
salaries portion did go up and those are contractual um obligations uh moving down to the line item expenses um the two big jumps well relatively big jumps tax title went up
2,000 and the postage so tax title I'm just trying to clean up since I've been here so it's it's a slow go um you only have so much money in a year so you can only do so many parcels at a time and it takes a long time for them to get through the
court process um so I have just been you know chipping away at that um the other big item was the postage and that's because um we're going to consolidate it and put the whole town under um my my postage budget
other than that um you know a couple of things went down nothing too too crazy um anyone have any questions related to M absolutely erica so the just a little
bit explanation behind the tax title foreclosure so that's fees associated with you processing all those Yes properties that are delinquent on Exactly a lot of the um fees we have to front and then once we determine what we
want to do with those parcels eventually we can if say we go to auction or whatever we can put that back on it's just not um it's not instantaneous understand and so now you're trying you're you're working through a backlog so you're trying to
But have we recently recouped any of those fees through auctions when's the last time we auctioned off foreclosed property i know we're sitting on some it was a while a long time oh we haven't done any since I've been here we're actually talking um about having a fun
auction soon yeah we have two parcels that we're going to be bringing to the select board probably in the next month or two just waiting on a final few things yeah so give some context i can give you Okay good um so back in 2018 and 2019 it was the first time in 10
years that anyone had touched them and then it takes about 5 years to go through the land court process so that's where we are now so it's just starting to get to the point where it's freed up for her to possibly take action like you said it takes a while it's even more
backlogged since co from what they tell me just because of nothing could happen during that time but yes there was a 10-year period between 2009 and 2019 where no tax titles so Madam Chair do we have any idea what the potential revenue
source is for that and we have to look at the value of uh of the properties um and the remainder value of of what it My understanding is did we talk about this last night my understanding is that we have to return the value right
to the land owner it it's the um it's the borrowed uh amount or the the delinquent amount plus uh 14% per year oh is that what it still is was it still 14% it was 16 now it's 8% yeah they they
changed that so does that mean everything was still retroactive on the 16 or does it No so it changes uh yes so the new ones that go into tax idle those will be new at the 8% that as soon as that clock struck 11 so November 1st
2024 that 16% became 8% unfortunately I believe one of the properties is prior to the cut off date correct um I'll be shooting from the hip here but like 300,000 I think it was the assessed value of that one 300 if I'm not so we could recoup 300 for that and and it
goes into the general fund yeah correct it doesn't like go back in like a revolving and and I'd say too give Erica's department credit I mean she's really since she's come on she's really stayed on top of it so the other benefit is um people who are delinquent
either themselves or their family cuz sometimes it's a senior that gets behind the kids don't even know it they're getting awareness much sooner and getting on payment plans and getting up to date so that they don't like build up so much that they go to the town that now the house is upside down Yeah it's
clarity is kindness you know in those type of scenarios and on that we actually had about three to four payoffs this year oh nice so since I started um I'm I'm big into payment plans like just come and talk to me we can work something out no money coming into the town is better some excuse me some money
coming into the town is better than no money so and and I tell people if you fall on tough times even like missing one payment just call me i'm very understanding tell me what's happening and we can move forward i appreciate you reaching out and being
so kind to our residents especially the ones that are experiencing you know they deserve it problems going on um more questions how many how many potential titles are in for or potentially foreclosure in
town uh so overall or just this county overall there [Music] are there's hundreds hundreds yeah there are varying degrees though right yeah
some of them are I mean some of them are Yeah better than others more desirable than others some of them are um from what I understand like um part of wetlands and so I don't think those are going to be very desirable to people but there's different varieties
so people because it's wet waves they can't do anything they don't know what's going to buy it they don't care they just stop paying the tax on yeah and there's also a bunch of retention ponds in there so just in case anyone's wondering back in the day they used to portion off the retention pond as a
parcel um and then just not pay taxes on it right so I don't there's not a lot of value for the town yeah it's always a way around any
questions uh I believe um your assistant treasurer collector just had a great announcement on a professional goal she did she passed the exam the uh collector exam very proud of her nice yeah that's
excellent i have two highly qualified individuals in that office make a seamless transition for vacation going out yes i'm very fortunate i'm glad you're enjoying yourself we're enjoying having you thank you all right if that's it um I had a general question i think
it came up during the cemetery commission about trusts and I think that was said that this was on the Treasury Department about the trusts and what trusts are out there and what kind of trusts so we do have um
I want to say roughly a dozen if I'm not mistaken trust accounts um to varying degrees and when what did when did this come up again um about using one of the trusts to repair the wall that was damaged the retaining wall that was damaged
perpetual perpetual care so my office does not I I personally would want to look at the trust documents um my office does not have those i've gone through everything since I have been in that office kind of put everything together
and I have not found any trust documents but I'd be curious to see how it was set up and like what and not just that one but any of them what it says in there as to how we can use it and I think the point was is it in an interestbearing
account or is it in non-interest bearing accounts it's absolutely in an interest bearing and are we you know are we maximizing our dollar values in any for any of the trusts yes and actually I'm glad that you brought that up because I have been kind of looking around right
now the bank's um interest rates are they're not as desirable as they were say a year ago but I feel like I can find better so I have been looking into that does anyone know how we utilize the trust you said you haven't
trust someone must know where they are i would certainly hope so um I mean it's great that it's earning interest but it'd be great if you could also use it for what it was meant for as well correct so I would I'd like to think
that the department should have those trust documents as well but I do know that you know turnover happens so I don't know honestly where they would be so there used to be
uh up in Todd's office um and then in 2019 we did a documents uh retention thing and um a lot of documents went downstairs into the vault okay um so the
best person to find those is usually Liil or uh Lola who did our uh all of our document retention kept very detailed document retention sheets so going through those would probably be
your best bet at trying to run it down these have to be the most obscure documents in town history well they're they're for very small amounts most of them like we've been talking about it for a lot of years though and we've never produced these things i was just curious yeah we had one that was for
like $300 and it's for flowers for the for the islands that that's separate oh that was the gift account that was a gift account the difference the maximum trust put on these find these trusts is always been my one of one of our questions anyhow
back to I don't know when I first got on here it was one of the first I didn't even know you had trust when I first came up to the car and we've never seen them i mean I don't know we got to start checking the trunks of cars I guess or something i don't know so man may I make a request on behalf of the select board and the finance committee if we could
identify those documents and amounts please um we have a dates i just question though like how far do we want to go because this might require town council to review the the trust documents themselves to make a determination on who is authorized
to say yes you can be probably just like to see first would be great but you know as we go further you're probably going to figure out like okay is there a surviving trustee on these things that is it do we get to make the determination let's see what the value is determination right if it's pennies
yeah we can add it to that gifts account list from last year we had never seen before always nice to be surprised what else there um so time frame at 30 days i mean is that is that acceptable i can run a list of balances at amunest that's not a
problem it's just a matter of whether or not like the devil's in the details on these trust funds cuz some of them you can only spend the interest some of them you you know so it just depends on how they were written up so whatever you can do would be appreciated yeah thank you on the uh ones where you can only spend the interest like what eventually
happens to that principle like what where's the principle go it's like perpetual interest perpetual interestbearing trust and I believe to my knowledge it just it just keeps keep going unless there's still existing heirs that could oversee or you know
edit the trust but kind of a common problem a lot of they don't usually put a sunset date on a trust no no so I guess we should just understand them what we have and where it is and we might not get everything we might just get what we have right um and that might
be you know and we'll structure obviously if it is interest bearing that would be in your uh you know the interest spend versus just a straight straight yeah yeah um expendable trust I guess you
would say I can also send an email to department of local services or our auditors and just pick their brain about what other municipalities are doing because this is a common problem people have these trusts sitting around for decades on their ledger and the docu documents have been destroyed or misplaced or what have you so maybe
there's a way to you know under a certain threshold you can transfer it in and use it into a special revenue fund or put it into general fund miscellaneous revenue um I know they do that with old grants now like a lot of old grants that are non-existent that didn't get spent down can be transferred into general fund miscellaneous revenue
so you know I'll look into seeing if they can follow the same practice for trust funds cuz I don't want to get us into a situation where we spend like you know $700 in town council time to get $600 from a trust fund so I agree i wouldn't Yeah I wouldn't start i'm sure
things like that happen a lot too and I will say that's probably what you're going to find i mean my previous town had dozens of trust funds and grand total was like $36,000 so it it's but they are what they are you know so all right well intentioned yes original yes
maybe we ask for sunset dates when we we gladly accept it when when does this expire um anything else anyone would like to ask no thank you very much thank you have a great night madam Chair would you mind
taking a two-minut break just for uh two minute break thank you thank you very much thank you for the uh brief break um next is accounting so um some of the big changes obviously
we had a 1099 consultant Todd um as town accountant for the last nine years he was paid in the expense cluster um not through payroll so you see the no salary for several years and then the salary for FY26 um it's also my accounting
specialist and her longevity that round out our total salaries financial services line significant decrease of almost 100% that's where Mr hasset was charged and obviously we've kind of swapped that up to the salary line um
two uh changes there training is now housed under human resource and I moved my $20 of postage to uh the consolidated postage line in the treasures budget um and I tried to shave where I
could based off prior year actuals office supplies um some dues and subscriptions things of that that nature but uh my budget obviously is predominantly salaries so nothing uh significant under the
expense lines so uh any questions pretty self-explanatory it's very small budget wise one quick question if I may is um does like is munis something that we have to subscribe to or is that it is it's actually housed in the IT budget in
the contractual uh contractual services line the subscription out of there thank you yes cuz technically could cover purchase orders and stuff at some point medicare yes so the financial services
line item that was Todd was paid out of that previously right that's correct what's the 750 record mount for so um two things one we started to outsource our annual 1099s because they were becoming uh very complicated through MUN
shadow order special paper the formatting and also the online IRS reporting for annual 1099s has become very intrusive they want someone's social security number mine as town accountant they want a copy of my driver's license they actually want a selfie it It's called IDB it's like very
very intrusive now to upload our 1099 file and for $600 Harpers our payroll services has a 1099 division they will do the entire process file everything which is uh a really good deal to be honest with you i think we sent out
almost 10099s so um so you know for the sake of personal security at $600 is nothing and then um the other 150 um Munis requires what's called a system close and you know they kind of hit you
with like a $150 charge it takes about 20 minutes it's like a full system rollover on June 30th to 71 i came from a more archaic software where you could do that internally um so I put $150 there just in case I need to have that done this June 30th but um I have enough
colleagues in the field that use MUN i'm kind of hoping to piggy back off theirs and see if I can just do that in-house and and not have to pay that $150 so um question for you regard regarding Munis that's the only updates they're doing is like a yearly close or
are they forcing version updates on us anytime the system close is not an update it's it's literally taking your fiscal 25 and kind of rolling it rolling everything over um and it it requires like a system backup and the gentleman actually does he used to work for Munis
he doesn't anymore he does it consulting and he does it in 15 minutes and his fee is $150 he was a friend of Todd's so I kind of left it in there um but I've used Yeah I've used him in the past and it's it's kind of a heavy lift and he's he's so familiar with the software that he can do it in in no time like I said
so it's okay but I'm I'm hoping to piggy back off of it because I'd rather do that internally um so that's pretty much it very good um any questions i have a couple just want to throw them out there
um now we actually have a full-time accountant again after is it nine years was it nine years yes nine year count as high as it was nine years um I I love the capacity i love having someone there every day lots of questions to be answered can you tell us
a little bit of some of the things you've kind of taken on which um which obviously got attention but maybe you're given a little bit more love now that you you're able to be there yeah well I think I mean my role is pretty defined by master and law obviously but I never used mun before so munus is new to me so
even though I've only been here five months I'm really trying to you know take every note I can and and review the software learn that um I think what's great about being in a smaller town is Andrew's kind of pulled me in on a lot of stuff that's quasi finance and not just strictly like previously it was just accounting 8 hours a day 40 hours a
week that's it now I'm kind of in on some infrastructure projects and things like that um which is good because everything really relates to finance in one way or another so um so just kind of being part of the team kind of helping Andrew out we're both been here four months and 5 months respectively so
we'll kind of grow into our roles together so yeah my hope is to keep free cash certification and tax rate recap on course just like Todd did um I was always really early with free cash certification for the last 12 years and just kind of continue that uh that
method so yeah I think we appreciate having um someone for the new town administrator to work with so closely because we are more project heavy at this juncture than I can recall in my lifetime uh for the town of Lakeville yeah and like I said everything you know
comes down to budgets and finance and stuff so it's nice to kind of be on the ground floor of some of these projects so I appreciate it i think we're going to have a big um kind of change with policies going forward um we both don't really care for like the budget as it is like the documents i think we're going
to like kind of overhaul it to a different degree next year i know um the accomplishments keeps coming up um we're trying to do like a strategic plan in the future and then incorporate that into this um you're going to see I guess more detail like we're going to talk about way with the capital plans
like 20 pages you mean like the wise behind yeah so I think this is going to be more advanced next year um I think you're gonna see reporting kind of on like a Mike's not gonna like it but like a fiveyear uh outlook on
stuff 10 year outlooks more like just forecasting um a lot of the I'd rather be proactive on a lot of these things than reactive and I think the capacity is here more to to change that yeah as long as it's transparent what's going to where and we we know like ahead of time
we can all understand you know doesn't just pop up in one line and we're like what's going on i I'm totally open to all new budget um you enhance every few years and if you don't like you're not you're not thinking about you know what the public is looking for and the people
will always want more information but syn synthesized down into a way that distills it down so they can understand you know quickly what it is that they're looking to uh looking to see for financial impact and you hit the nail on the head about like the accomplishments
and what's going on in departments um When the DPW director said all the roads that he was planning I was absolutely floored i had only known maybe a fraction of what was on that list um because it had floated around as as a
communication but we do a lot here and we just don't we don't do a really good job of publicizing all the things we do and we should really let the people know how we're not using budget money to do things we're using grants and we're
using ARPA funds and we're you know we're we're pulling things in from wherever we can so I'd love to see anything that furthers that type of narrative or that educational component yeah you're going to see a lot of goals objectives accomplishments next year
um and obviously coming in four months 5 months we're like worried about all sorts of stuff and we kind of like even the budget kind of is an over afterthought in some degrees just trying to learn the whole job and uh this is like a really labor intensive kind of process that we had to do and kind of overhauled a lot of it with the
presentation and the capital plan and so like there might be some errors here and there and we're basically like strapping this thing together with like a week or two i wrote them all down i know so Mike Mike and myself are like obsessed with looking at these so they're fixed on the back end so um yeah I just No I
appreciate all the effort that goes into it i I do know the effort that goes into it and I do know actually you know being short staffed and all of those things how much extra effort goes into it so I really am appreciative of you guys compiling all of this and and
controlling you know the the spending for us to try to help us out of this uh situation that we're going to be in yes um can I make a recommendation for next year when you're doing um when we're looking at the current year we have um
revised right 2025 revised is there any way you can get year-to- date actual because a lot of times we're looking at numbers that were projected a year ago and it's it's tough to tell like it says 25,000 but is that a good number like it says 25,000 next year right if we're
only spent 12,000 this year you know what I mean do you mean like what we've expended so far correct yeah so like you're you're showing this for 2025 what the budget was but I don't and I'm just throwing out a number like I don't know if that 17
$1,750 for office and and supplies is right like maybe you've only charged $300 this year if that's the case then why are we budgeting 11 you know what I mean just Yeah i mean I think the reason for putting the revised in for 2025 is that shows the most up-to-date budget that was voted at the fall town meeting
in November because the year is not through i could say we only spent 300 out of that now but we may spend the other 1,400 from today through June 30th because we're in that fiscal year understood but I just think having actuals up to a certain point would be helpful okay darren are
you getting I I have gotten that but in this I guess in just this specific presentation it would be helpful got it just my opinion quick comment if I may um just for accounting in general i mean you know you gentlemen have been on for a short
amount of time and like I say like not only did you come to you know a new town but also to be in the situation you are trying to figure out how to make this budget work um really been moving mountains and I appreciate you guys taking like two hours of your time to you know bring me up to speed last week
i know you made the offer all the select board members definitely take them up on that if you can um just kind of seeing how especially the two of these gentlemen kind of play off each other with ideas have been fantastic i think they're making a great team right now and you know Mike's a local guy so he's got a vested interest in the town doing
well and I think also which has been nice as we've gone through this at least for me is seeing that there's really no significant changes from the last few years which tells me that you know previous accounting services are doing pretty well so you know it wasn't like Mike came in and said "What's going on
there's not a bunch of things." Um so glad to see there's consistency even though we've had a big change in the accounting services themselves thanks for [Music] if there's no other questions
all right i say we start with uh human resources yeah then then into fixed costs so human resources uh same tab page 26 [Applause] hello evening good evening lacy Marshall Asia director
um so the difference in the wages is just the part-time um all of the officers are fully staffed right now there's two to three people in there so 3500 it's really in case the select
board office needs that part-time floater they're really the only one that is going to be short staffed uh and the way I look at it is if we need more money then I'll ask fall town meeting question for you say right on right off the bat yeah um the hourly wage
part-time those went into um Lil's budget yeah so if you look at uh 2024 I actually was budgeted at like $45,000 and then for 2025 I was originally budgeted at
$30,000 but we had taken $22,000 and turned it over to the town clerk for her part-time uh because we had you know somebody out on FMLA in the summertime and everything else i had asked for an
increase in fall town meeting uh for the 2025 which brought us to the 14 but going into 2026 like I said everybody's full staffed um you know the assessors is going to be a full-time and a part-time treasurer collector has three
uh town clerk has two full-time a part-time so we're really we're really healthy right now so it's really the select board's office that uses the floater uh so I don't see us needing a really big budget for our floater right
now um so that's another question is you know should we have the floater under um HR or should the floater be actually under the town clerk cuz she had was it $6,000 it was a question that came up
during the clerk's Yeah i think it was $6,000 under floater and I didn't know why I was I did watch that and I think it might have just been an oversight i think when they did the 22,000 that 6,000 should have gone up and then out of the 22 um it should have
been mine but the floater is always in the HR because they're not just dedicated to the town clerk um you know if somebody calls out at like the COA or two of them are out there might be a person there or uh recently you know the
assessor's assistant uh needed to leave early so we have the floater there so typically the floater comes through me but I I mean I I can't speak for other offices I don't know what her her workload is so if you know the board feels that she needs her own funding for
it I'm not against it um I'm not sure But I know it was different than before and that was you know the reason we had said it was just exactly what you laid out is that we didn't know where we'd have the need and putting it in one department seemed like we would be
unfairly punishing that department if they were needed somewhere else and we kept pulling from their budget line and that's why the decision was made to put it under HR um and then to you know go you know pay as you need basically and put put this floater where they're
needed um I'd love to hear the thought behind moving it into a specific department um I think this works for what it is i think it's for all departments except for town clerks correct
so when when all of the money was in here and before the part-time floater all of the floating money was in my budget i'm not I'm again I'm not 100% sure if you know in years past there was a floating budget in there and I just
wasn't aware of it um prior to the part-time or any time that the town clerk needed a floater it came and was paid out of my budget so I'm not sure where that line item came from or what um town work but now it's only got 3,000
in it right yes 3,500 in the town clerk's budget there's hourly wages temporary i think that's that's the the Florida for and that's $6,000 correct it was six we put it down to one we put it down to one um but this this Florida I
think is fine for what it is i mean I think I'm kind of plus more than what you said Madam Chair which is it it just to me feels like the floater budget would be in HR and there would be for me an easy to understand line item that
says hourly wages floating or something i see temporary and think like we're bringing somebody from the outside in um okay but do as you wish but yeah we could put it all under one um I mean it seems like having under one is easy
accounting wise unless Mike says otherwise but then you know Lacy's department would keep track of well we used 5 hours here and 3 hours here and then okay accountability and then figure out like okay we're seeing an extra draw towards this department we need to do something staffing wise with them or
Yeah and then what happens when the person overshoots their budget you know does it come out of the town clerk do we you know do we have to do a transfer um I just want to make sure we fully thought it through and if you know if
you guys think it's the best way I will defer to it but I it's just not what I'm used to and it's not how I would have preferred to set it up yeah we can definitely talk about it internally but I don't Yeah I'd like to talk to the town of work kind of to see
what her needs are cuz if it was a if she has like a specific time or number I would just Yeah kind of like if she knows she's going to need that person then I' i'd budget it into my knowing that like there's at least a hold for her person
you know so almost like the budget the number would be undermined but it would be specifically dedicated to her office i wouldn't mind doing that but I don't want to take like a person or you know something that she needs and we're using it somewhere else and now you know
there's no fun yeah so I I mean I'm willing to do that as long as we you know we have a number that's kind of set aside for her makes sense okay uh expenses so payroll services
uh I actually we just signed a contract with them um they're at about $10,500 the additional cost is they actually do all of our W2s for us um so that's where that little bit extra comes
in contracted services went down by 50% thank you to the select board that's due to um so the contractor services is our Tristan medical and so it's our drug testing it's our physicals um any new person that comes in um so that's the
contracted services and since we're only sending the ones that that require the physicals in the drug testing we're able to decrease the budget by a significant amount on the flip side training and education are now all in my budget um so
that's a a big jump right there postage went over to the treasurer collector printing i don't know why that is in there but um it's really absorbed into my office supplies advertising I decreased um I'm assuming it's going to
end up going potentially to zero once we start using that pec card but right now it's just for uh MMA to do the postings and then Indeed if we need to do it there um and then dues and subscriptions again I looked at exactly what we have
subscriptions to and I lowered the budget down to what that amount is [Music] exactly does anyone have any questions pretty straightforward yeah is there anything you want to talk about going on
in your department i know you have a great newsletter going out that I'd love to hear about yeah so super happy about the newsletter all of the boards have been contributing and every month they feel like it just grows exponentially and I'm kind of hoping that um people
are getting it uh I see that it's been passed over to like Lakeville helping Lakeville so I think the word is starting to get out and I I think um I'm getting a lot of feedback from different people um the admin assistant was actually selected and attended a MMA um
seminar so it was a 10-week course where it was 8 hours uh every week and they went through all the different you know they did union negotiations they did FMLA they did Yeah they went through a a whole uh thing so that was great for him
um I completed the MCPBO so I'm excited to kind of dig in a little bit into procurement um and then really we've been just working on streamlining the employee handbook to make it an actual policy piece so
employee handbook it looks like it's just for non-union people but the policy would state whether it's non-union or non-union union and so it incorporates it all and it's a lot easier to update as like laws change so I'm not going to
bring you you know 115 pages i'll probably bring you know three policies at a time for your review and then we can start posting those on the website as well so that you know everybody has uh access to them great
all good everyone all right all right thank you very much for coming in appreciate your time appreciate it i'm still going to be here for two more seconds for fixed costs sorry so fixed cost is page 82 it has its own tab to get out here
just that one time you sure you don't want to step out for insurance oh no i'll save for insurance oh goodness okay my feet that same drop with me [Music]
all right okay age 86 so Pivoth County the assessment that's a number that we get from Pivoth County it's been 82 a pretty substantial increase year-over-year but the reason for that is their intent is that we're fully
funded by 2028 um so my understanding is we could see a significant decrease at that point um but right now we don't have any say in in the cost that we pay if we pay it on time then we actually
get a little bit of a break on it if we were to pay it like in separate payments we'd get an interest payment so this is the payment that we give uh which gives us that little bit of a discount um unemployment compensation the reason that we increase the number is because we have had a little bit more of a
turnover and also if um we do in fact are not funding the four firefighters then I needed to absorb that cost in case they were to apply for the workman's comp so that's also in there moving down to I guess what everybody's favorite is is the insurance so the
insurance this year um Gateway voted on a 9% increase it's still lower than most other groups um and the reason that we did that is because in 2027 fiscal year um Lakeville will no
longer be part of Gateway uh we're going to dissolve so right now I've been working with the IE yeah IA um I've given them the seven different insurance groups that we could go with uh they all have the paperwork to bring to their respected group
whether it's a union or non-union or retirees and then we'll be meeting in a couple of months to make a decision and and work with whoever those different groups are to see what the rate would be for um
2027 so Medicare town tax um it's calculated based off of the number of employees and then what their share would be so that was only 8% the other ones are all at 9% couple of differences
in here so when we were working with Blue Cross Blue Shield the dental it we had an HMO with dental we still have that plan only now it was a Bluec Cross Blue Shield plan with the Blue Cross
Blue Shield dental now it's a HPI plan with an Altus dental so that's why you see a new line in there for dental and there's um the $30,000 in there health insurance rebates that was
um sorry health reimbursement HRA so when we did that section 32B change remember we had to give 25% of our savings so that number started at the 61,000 we're at 43,000 now once that
number has reached its zero balance we don't we're not required to fund it anymore so that will continue to just decrease um and as the the the number goes down that'll be the number that's in there um health insurance rebates that's your opt out right now um
wellness programs is our EAP and then other contractual is our HSA our FSA um that's those that's the funding for those different programs [Music]
any comments questions i have one if I may is is there any maybe we don't know um but is on the health insurance rebates is there any reason why it seems that we are trending way higher than we were a couple of years ago i mean are employees just saying we don't like the
plans we have i'm going to take my spouse's plan instead or so last year we had more vacancies than we do this year um so as we're filling the vacancies people are taking the opt out if they're
you know spouse already has insurance um and then I do always add in like two into each plan just because we still have vacancies within the town so I always add in um so the highest plan
that we have right now is the PO that's the one that cost us the mo the most money so I always add in an extra family plan there because it's the highest plan and if a family member if a person comes in on a family plan we know that we have the funding there same thing with the
opt out i always give us like a little bit of leeway in it to make sure that we have enough funding for the year smart okay i appreciate that yeah mr johnson I'm I'm so far I'm pretty good with the the health and uh dental i
mean I you said you the the the current it's going out to would you say 17 different possible suppliers so there's there's seven that we're looking at it's G 17 no it's GIC Mia Mayflower
um Mass Strategic Southeastern and there is one more that I can't think of off the top of my head um GIC if we were to go with them there's no requirement to put into the
trust you just are accepted in and you you know pay the rates that they're given um some of the other ones do come with a trust i've spoken to one group that the buyin is $700,000 that the town is allowed to pay over four years who's
that so that is Mayflower um they give the the most amount of options but they're I I fully understand what they're saying you know you don't just come into a group and you're automatically starting to take your
claims out of a trust that they've built so this is your way of essentially paying for your claims um which is the buyin so a few of them do have a buy in i'm right now just waiting to see what the what the IEC you know the people
come back with is it what's most important to the employees here is it the price of the plan is it the plan itself um what are they looking for cuz then we can kind of narrow it down to maybe a top three and figure out which one works the best for us you I know you said Mia so you go working with MMA on
that on the swimming pool so Mia is another one that um I've given them I qualify but Oh okay yeah um they're another one that Yes they have the information on they over the last few years though they've had significant um
increases they're they're usually around like 10 to 13% every year so I'm kind of hesitant on that one mass Strategic offers a very unique plan where the total of the employees falls under an
umbrella so if you have 10,000 employees you get a bigger discount because you have a higher number the um the difference between them though is that you pay for your own claims so if Lakeville has a great year we are paying like very minimal for our claims that
year however if we have one year when we have a significant uh health issues we're paying for it so it's not self insurance yeah so it's not like the trust where everybody kind of puts in the money and everybody takes out the money this one you put in the money and
you pay your claims so they all have like a little bit of a uniqueness to them um it just depends on what people want out of their health insurance plan i don't envy you this sounds very painful yeah I I Yeah when it comes to healthy
Yeah i'm going to trust you as the professional when we get on to the next one we're going to talk what's the next one workman's compensation or property and liability oh okay so workman's property liability
right now uh the quotes are out there so I can't that's kind of like my guess on the number um we have I think I've sent the information now to two separate companies to give back um prices on
where' you send them out to what's the guy's name jeff i forget his name i forget the group uh let me just look it up this is It's just It's always This part here has always been the contention it's It's never got sent out in time
it's And I full disclosure yep i have a direct relationship with MIia uh what I do is property liability i'm adjuster i handle a large portion of their claims for the public so I'm very
familiar with them and the last time I went out to bid I put everybody in touch with each other and somehow it got dropped until 20 days before they couldn't do it so I there was just there was another nothing to do with you different person um they say different
circuits different monkeys um but um so I just I'm I'm I'm every year this goes up and up and up and no one ever seems to put it out to bed and that's why I was really I've been beating this drum since the day I got here because I keep seeing these prices get so much higher
and our cost per claim i mean I mean our our loss ratio seems to be low because we never file claims that's my next was one of my other questions you know we have people crashing into walls and stuff like that nobody files insurance we got trees falling on buildings we don't put any insurance
money you know especially when you're in a trust program it doesn't really affect your premiums you know because it's shared across the entire group and if you don't you know worst case scenario if you get too high they just raise your deductible versus your premium so that
was my only issue yeah so in the the workman's comp and the property insurance it's not just like the town so it's we have separate plans so we have vface for our police and our fire and then we have mega for our town
um so that is the combined number for the the two different ones vist I don't think we've ever tried to go outside of them they're pretty much the state for um like emergency management personnel and then I did see Maya Mia see I don't
even know what I'm calling it anymore i think you confuse me on that uh you do have to be a member though of them in order to I think apply for their insurance is what I You technically are meer is an umbrella is under the umbrella of MMA okay then yeah so you
are we are members of MMA so you have the absolute ability to become you use the buyer program and I'm not saying they're cheaper i don't know if they're not cheap speaking from finance you know go go with the cheapest rate also we got to look at the services they get yeah
well lucky you now I'm MCPBO so I can put these things out to bid there you go so put it out to bid and find out what's you know and and again I also yes I look at the dollars and cents because we're working on a tight budget but also what the service you get that brought this up
before is members of MMA you know um evolve training they have you know Maya has a a vehicle they uh simulator they bring down i've been to them fire stations they do fire station training they do uh you know evasive driving for the police departments right in the
simulator no more sending your staff halfway across the state to do EVO training so sometimes it's a good idea to to look at some of the other services not just the insurance part is my point thank you Mr constant i think the last time everything went out to bid was burn
2017 2018 so it had been been a while a while yeah so um competitive bids lots of work um so I I know that you are struggling through it because it's like mattress shopping there's all different
features and none of them match up from what you're trying to look across and it's connections or names that people will reach out to feel free to reach out to me okay give you contacts he knows he knows the person he knows a guy i I know a guy he knows a guy uh anyone else have
any questions comments about the budget or any of the lines no other than we really do owe it to to Lacy and team for saving us last year and we're in a much better position this year because of it so thank you that was
a herculean effort that you undertook last year at the last minute good times i say good times um I don't have any other questions okay um I just want to thank you for all the hard work you're doing and I know
we're put we put a little bit more on you every year um but I love to hear that you're getting more certifications and that that Chris is getting certifications too i think that's great um I would love everyone to be more
involved in um in what's going on in town and I think there's some opportunities now as we move through some processes where you know we we can use some of that expertise in other areas and and expand um you know some of the the roles it's called performance
punishment and when you do well we give you more thank you thank you have a good night everyone thank you [Music] so capital has its own uh tab page
[Music] 88 so um the town has always kind of had a capital improvement program to my understanding um I tried to spruce up more this year and kind of get into an overview of what capital is what the
process is like in general what it's like in Lakeville kind of a timeline of really what we do throughout the year um ideally this process starts in July um I started in October and Mike started in November so like we felt like
we were catching up the whole time still are it feels like on some of this stuff um so next year this is going to start July before this road even starts um and then we I try to really get into how it's paid um a lot of the the financing
can be complicated and this is kind of a rundown of what it looks like um now like I said before this is probably going to grow to about 100 pages um I'd like to actually show you what the requests are uh pictures and
quotes and the whole the whole shebang um you're probably gonna see more charts and graphs and trends and analysis on some of this stuff but we just ran out of time to be honest um and so we have a 5-year improvement program where it kind
of shows um what was requested in fiscal 26 but also what is coming up in fiscal 20 uh fiscal 2030 um and then the very last page well second to last page is the 26
um request and then how they're going to get funded and then the very last page is the ARPA strictly capital um and so what I think we went to the appendix tab
that's all we did this so when you get to the very last page where it shows ARPA um we try to really hammer what capital really is it's not just what we allocate for free
cash um we want to show like what what everything is so you'll see there's green communities there's chapter 90 there's uh retained earnings free cash uh just everything and so I want to give a full picture of what has really been
expended and so I thought it was important to include ARPA because ARPA really is an influx of capital into the local economy um and so you can see a lot of stuff got done the last couple years um some of it's still ongoing um
but it's good information nonetheless and it's it's 2.5 million we wouldn't have put into capital otherwise um which always helps and so I'll go through the fiscal 26 capital improvement program by
funding source um we housed MS4 engineering um which is really it's a it's a federal federal and state requirement how we handle storm water reporting um and that that's $75,000 free cash that number is really for two
years uh we figured we'd kind of preund it for the next year as well um and then the town website is for 30,000 um since I've got on board even before when I was researching Lakeville people just hammer home how bad the website is um and so
select boarders even even in this meeting has said we need to get the message out with what we have it's tough to do that um we were on a call select board member day and I they said we have the worst type of civic plus that we can
possibly have um I think we have like five widgets and like I think the the the really the next package up is 30 um and so we have like really limited capabilities to get the message out we have basically a bulletin board on the homepage and that's really it um
calendars aren't great the minutes aren't can't just the presentation's awful and so 30,000 is probably a high estimate but that would get us the Cadillac version of what we're looking for question um this completely I I
spaced out when we were looking at this and talking to Civic Plus but police and library have independent web pages i don't know if there's an opportunity for savings there if if that project would give them what they need as well or if it's better to That's why there is a
little bit of a buffer i think it was about 18 to 19 but then there was a few add-ons I thought were important like the ADA improvements and then I think they listed off 2 or 3,000 for each new website so which would be like a subpage like a library of police gotcha that's why the 30 is as high as it is all right
thank you um that's helpful i thought the library was attached strictly to sales it might be it might be i know we can probably have a page that then connects to sales um yeah yeah i I I think and don't quote me but I think it was the
reason we didn't have them last time and this was 2013 uh when we did this is because the library had to be hooked up to the sales network okay this number is a little rough i think we took that call the last
day before I put this on paper um is there a grant there is a grant though that could possibly cover that right for technology It's possible it's possible but that would come out next year um so that's what we had for the select board
um the building right now they want to they need a roof replacement it's been I think 25 years since this building's been um completed um so 250 is a real good estimate actually for what this roof is it's a huge roof
um and the estimate came from a top level company yeah very good estimate because back in 2016 we got uh the same estimate for the police station roof the old police
station roof jeez then again it had multiple roof levels and uh structural issues but yes yeah I was shocked we got that number um it was confirmed so that's it's a good estimate um the controls for the heat system replacement
is 40,000 um what I guess the the theme of this is we're trying to get more into capital stabilization to get away from the free cash um that's really just because of the strain free cash is having on the operating side um and then as we discussed with Paul knee facilities
manager the 50,000 um operating uh capital that would be come out of free cash um the police as uh Chief Perkins mentioned that would be a vehicle replacement um 128,000 then the
irrigation well um for the police station as well um that would save I think he said 5 to 10,000 a year in uh water cost um just wanted to mention again on the vehicle replacement uh the chief confirmed he's doing it around
every five years as opposed to some municipalities going down to like 3 years or so so two vehicles if I recall he said two vehicles between two two and two um the town entered into a lease to purchase for a ladder truck a number of
years ago i think this might be the third or fourth year yeah I have lots of questions on this one so I've never seen a lease on a capital plan because the capital plan would have to be voted on i don't think you could just vote on not
funding a lease so it makes it kind of questionable to me that it exists on a capital plan when it really is what is it 10 years it's it's an operating expenditure at that point in my mind could I get a little bit of
enlightenment on uh I audited for four years and have been in this side of things for about 13 and it's the first lease I've seen on a capital plan myself i thought so um and think it was a normal you know not to get too far down the rabbit hole but is it you know defined as a capital lease which I think
it is which is as you can see in parentheses a lease to buy which means we depreciate the asset we we include it as our depreciation schedules with the auditors so I guess that's a little bit of a loophole there yeah but you know how do you how do you vote something that's No I at least screams operating
to me uh but um I don't know what the you know decision was at that time so I don't know either i I assume there was probably no appetite to borrow i guess I would assume so yeah obviously I wasn't here um but yeah kind of keep it uh keep the
borrow it just seems like a punt what's that it seems like a punt yes definitely uh it definitely was a head scratcher when I first got on board you know i just never seen it it's not illegal it's not unallowable no no no i'm just It's just Yeah it's a it's a funny one i mean w trucks are expensive
was it like I think they I think Chief O'Brien had said like it's 2.5 or something to that degree that's why maybe 1.2 say 1.2 is in my head i thought it was 1.7 but could be 1.7 it might have been 1.2 years ago do we know
how far out that goes that's I mean it's on the five year plan the whole way across but it's a 10 year 10 years i think this is the third yeah and uh if we're going by how long the last one lasted but you really can't with new technology cuz of all the bells and
whistles it was like 30 years yeah you don't get 30 years yeah um what what is it so we did I know we did this on which kind of took me a back a little bit when we first did this um what is the buyout on the end of it is it is it depreciation or is it just a
flat bio um I'd have to look into that and get back to you i'm not I'm not sure what the I think we did this because we really I don't think there was an appetite to borrow or ask for a $1.2 million you know vehicle at that time
and I don't remember how it ended because all I remember is seeing here's the vehicle we're going to lease that one go.4 it was uh up to annual town meeting 2022
1.4 million lease dash purchase and I don't know if this helps or not Mike but it says master general law chapter 44 section 21C if that's anything unique that is helpful so it was 1.4 before that was approved at the town meeting for a
purchase correct lease- purchase lease/purchase just don't shoot the message i never understood it either but I was I was kind of knew that so I didn't I wasn't on any of the boards then question for anyone on the finance committee was this the same fire truck
that alleged it was going to be um part of a agreement agreement with the hospital that the hospital was going to fund it and then we got ourselves in maybe a chickens before they hatch situation yep that's the one got it yeah
I think with the option to buy obviously like I said I think it you can justify it being on the capital plan by that way but yeah it's uh it's unique but I think budget constraints on borrowing too okay i don't think we need anyone to vote on it then at capital expenditures we can
just pass that through because they can't say no right um moving on to public works um typically in the past the town has kind of supplemented the chapter 90 with a free cash article for roadway improvements um I think they
originally asked for 375 we put in 100,000 instead um just because of the budget being tight um we put the chapter 90 allocation in here just kind of for awareness um that number is about 240 grand higher than normal because of
the fair share act um slightly increased this year the bud permit is um deated to there's a a big pile of old soil in the back of the DPW that's contaminated and so uh D has told us they need to have
see it removed and so we pay a certain amount generally every year to just to basically take another bite out of it um I think Frank has kind of said it might take like 50 years at the rate we're going and so we we 25 is just a
small number we could put 2 million and not make a dent that's how big the pile is um I mean if I can make a quick comment there everybody hears me complain about that thing every year um I mean unless we turn it into a sledding hill i mean it's basically taking up
town resources of the land under it where you know DPW could use as expansion or equipment storage or whatever like I just wish we could find a way to fund this thing through some kind of grants or whatever to haul away more than a thimble a year brownfields
I don't know anything it's possible i mean the the crazy thing is this came out of you know catch basins and they say "Oh you found asphalt." Yeah it was a catch basin on the side of the road of course you're going to find asphalt so there's my yearly rant
exactly medicare but it's a good point i've recently become a little more familiar with brownfields from the hospital discussion so how come we have not pursued Isn't that a great use of brownfield a municipality i'm sure there was a conversation at
least once or twice i just wasn't privy to it and I was told this is the brownfields but I I do think there is an opportunity and we should look into it um because as member Day says it's just a drain and and seeing it just reach on
into affinity past our our lives is is a depressing thought right um the next one is a sidewalk plow with equipment um as Frank kind of mentioned I think he said we got at least 20 to 25 complaints this year about sidewalks that weren't plowed
um especially Main Street but also when you get into the subdivisions in town that are accepted uh that's where most of the complaints come from and so um we put the request in for a plow cuz we don't really have the real capability to do it right now um the next one's a
cabin chassis um that's kind of uh I think Frank really valued engineered that one to get it down to 200,000 i think it was originally three or four um so we're getting a good piece of equipment for pretty cheap money um also as discussed the transfer station we're
going to use retained earnings on a number of uh small little projects and that will spend down what we have for retained earnings um Wound Pond Lodge will have some improvements um that other column is
from green communities so that's where that will come out of and then I put a placeholder for a new roof at their park office for 15,000 out of free cash andrew I'm having a a blank that the the sagging roof currently that looks in the
building that looks like a glorified shed correct that's what that was there the office building that they're talking about yeah on the right hand side of when you go down yeah yep so bridal suite in it that's That's very
um Yeah it's a little bit of a chicken and egg like the building is not very It looks like It does it looks like a shed it looks like we could get a shed dropped there and do the same this is like the main one where the office was it's a little bigger than that shed
right it'll look better than one though yeah um a man of chill this is one of the kinds of projects where I always wondered like could we reach out to Hulk oh yes say hey is this a project that while in session it's a small enough building hey let's do a little roofing
lesson and not only that I think it would be good public relations for old Colony to be seen in the parks as part of the community as well um I know they do projects for other towns they were in Fair Haven last year um they they did
the lodge the one of the rooms in the lodge did they really yeah they did a big part of the lodge i didn't remember that um but there are that building might Yeah it just does not look like it's going to stand up to the weight of a new
roof so I just have concerns that that project's not going to be that project that project's going to be 15 plus 15 plus 15 um because of just the you you see it the the bow yeah it's possible i mean I'd have to see who the who the
quote came from but it came from somebody in the area so we'll see could cheaper just to get a trailer yeah or you know 1,800 ft in the middle of the place stop yourself um can you go back to the sidewalk plow for a moment mhm
a wow i didn't realize it cost that much b that's if you think about it a whole new service DPW would be doing so have we also tried to figure out like how many people hours we're going to have to pay for to do that and then when the normal plow comes right back and fills
the sidewalk back in like what's that going to cost i think the DPW director said they were doing it by hand now so I think this is actually time where are they doing that i've never seen them besides town facilities uh Main Street
when I've never seen him out there i'm not saying that negatively was that what he was implying i don't know if I think he he's had a couple guys do Main Street and it takes like a couple days yeah yeah i don't know if they do it like all day drive an ATV down that sucker and take out some pretty sporadic snowfall and
whether or not the gets done or not right that's I think depending on who we what the manpower he has he might just not even do it sometimes uh can we build a state back for that i wish yeah i'm just afraid we buy this for you know 200 and then we have to put 45,000 a year at
people to actually drive this thing around town and like what are we getting ourselves into i think Frank's fear was that he was getting enough complaints that it was getting stressful to handle all the complaints and get this get these sidewalks done so he's like "This is how
we get it done." So um were these all public ways as far as I know they're all public ways yeah okay yes just expecting the complaints to be coming from private that's one thing when you uh when you accept a a public a new road as a public way handling everything that goes along
with that can be costly mhm yes um people don't quite think of that um don't all the big cities like Boston have an ordinance that property owners are required to keep the sidewalk in front of their property clear in front of your property mhm do we we do not
have that ordinance i guess obviously we don't have that is easier to pass than spending 200k just saying by we're giving out Larry's phone number after I'm just saying it's a lot of money
we're trying to come you know trim a budget here i don't I don't disagree dropping 200k is a lot of money right now i'm not saying it's not a bad idea cuz I hate seeing when my father-in-law's outside shoveling his sidewalk cuz his city makes him do it but but I think it's I think and he
didn't say it but I'm just going to throw it out there um we do still have the rule that if you live a mile from the school correct that that some of these kids are walking in the day so I think um those that section um gets
plowed because there could be walkers i'm just trying you're out to high school i'm on Freetown Street there's no sidewalk there's no sidewalks there's no lights either there's Well we got used to that uh but I'm saying in all the directions what sidewalks you know in
front of the school yeah but after that they disappear yeah no so I'm not sure how much sidewalk we have that $200,000 is the right investment and trust me I know Frank wants to do a good job and he does a great job um I'm just saying $200,000 is for the minimum i don't know
how much sidewalk we have h you know is there is there something we can do that's better than that is my only question he did express that that if you guys didn't like it he could take it right off um it was just really his It was his It was really a solution to like
I can hear it i can hear his voice saying those words and it doesn't mean what you think it means it's really a solution cuz we get a lot of complaints and like to to solve those complaints it's resources that we just don't have
which would be beyond that number yes um what would our capital stabilization be back at if this what would the balance be if we actually got all this approved uh 1.9 I believe it's still up there yeah I haven't presentation
[Music] so this is it's up to date is March 31st with interest so if this were to pass right now we would be down to a balance right now is 2,898717 this would bring it down to 2,ion 5,717
i'm sorry 2.5 roughly 2,5,000 so a little over 2 million yep should I ask another question absolutely refresh my memory so money allocated to capital stabilization is requires
2/3 right town meeting vote to pull money back out would require two/3 so okay thank you that's why we se separated them out of the uh um town meeting articles from the
other right yep thank you any questions from anyone no other than you know next year as I learned from meeting with Mike and Andrew I mean
we we don't expect a lot of free cash a lot of Yep budget turnbacks i am scared what our capital plan could really look like next year i mean we'd have to rely on capital stabilization for the most part that's
a that means the wall is approaching quickly if we're relying on that yeah i mean we know we need 175,000 at least right yeah outside of that so it's it's partly why we put more money
this year cuz it's going to be Mhm slim pickings going forward yeah you know 27 right now is at 2.07 million obviously it's way early but I mean we do have some unexpected revenue sources that are close to free
cash we had the 424,000 excess END um and you know the the EMS receipts that were spoken about last Wednesday are going to be close to free cash in fiscal 25 so and and you know we are going to be a little higher there than estimated
um so it could be like an anomaly this year when we certify free cash because of that excess END um kind of giving us that $425,000 boost but um yeah it's uh there's not going to be a lot of turnbacks and not a lot of wiggle room with revenue over expense so definitely
a concern we will have some money from those property auctions um some towns have done that um but it's not it's such a bad practice to use onetime funds to shore up um the budget i'm not saying it's necessarily for the budget those property sales but just to put money in
free cash or something so yeah but um if we continue to go up and up and have to fund at higher rates all over it will end up eventually going right to fund the operating budget yeah and you know motor vehicle is another big one that's
to be determined in fiscal 25 because as we all know that we just got our excise tax a month ago so we we haven't seen what that's going to do to our ledger and where that's going to land but um we're hoping that comes in higher than estimated so
I had a question about the MS4 engineering i think you said it was like preunded for this year for 75 was paying for two years is that right but then on the 5year capital it's a line item out there for 75 each year out yeah so I mean we can it's one of those things we
could kind of like the MS4 we could kind of fund it a lot more than what we do okay um but he did express to me that we could take 75 and do it for two years okay any other
questions uh Andrew quick question for you um I don't know i think I mentioned it last time um if you're able to look into the green communities for any of the heating and roof um needs for the
library just uh in their green community there was some there was some stuff about roofing last year yeah well we haven't laid ours yet we're going to do it this spring and so I think the application period was just up so there's a possibility in the fall when
it reopens we can apply again but we need an audit basically saying that we can do it on the move so difficult you just reminded me of another question um also for the library roof if we don't know that's fine but do you happen to know off the top of your
head was that quote for 20 year a 30-year asphalt a 40year i mean can we get one that's going to outlast us i think it was a 30 year but I can double check this one was 30 right and it's that's what I'm asking like if it's what
is it 25 years in i mean a lot of a lot of the ones in the homes right you see they're advertised now is like 50 year shingles lifetime shingles they have lifetime shingles i don't know like what would that cost or would the roof outlast the usefulness of the the building the building that's
that's that's when you talk about municipality might be a little different cuz the life expenses i think that's it i think we've gone through a winner um that was a good job anything for anyone all I want to say is
that great job with the budget and the department heads all did great jobs cuz they knew we were in so much trouble this year cutting the budget they're cutting their budgets so I just like to say it doesn't have to be a bad fiscal time to cut budgets it can be good times
too it's obviously possible so it was a great job thank you thank you thanks now would you like to schedule like a recap meeting yes i think it's important to kind of touch on the high points um and then get maybe a
little bit deeper conversation on some of the things that maybe we want to individually talk about uh where we disagree with the funding or uh or any of those things end just bring to light
uh the direction that the select board is thinking for town meeting prior to town meeting uh no one should have to guess what we're what we're thinking so being able to have a recap would be really important mike and I are putting together some stuff that will kind of
outline what's really been asked I think throughout but if there's anything else you'd like to see at that meeting just feel free to let us know yeah I think it's also important um if we can get you know even one slide on all the things that we've done with the money that we
had this year whether it be budget money whether it be uh ARPA funds whether it be grants or whether it just be you know us working with our with our own two hands to get some stuff done um we have some amazing department heads um that do
great work uh that I really want to just let people know how very carefully we're spending their money mhm like and I don't know if there's a way to visualize this or not well if there is I'm sure these guys can figure it out
but like I feel like where we're already relying on free cash it's like we're already robbing Peter to pay Paul just to survive this year and like what does that mean next year um you know I know we're doing the I'll say the best that we can unless something new turns out or
state or federal funding comes back but you know it's it's bleak right and I appreciate all the cuts and stuff that you guys have done but how how do we survive a couple more years without you know having the override discussion or do we just have to have the discussion and let the people decide what they want and what they don't want well if you
guys have been following the news it's in so many towns right now there's the discussion everywhere um it seems like every 10 years um it's going to come up for almost every town um unless they're funding outside of um you know if unless they have a lot of revenue streams or a
lot of business which we don't have either of those um which makes it all the more difficult it insulated us during COVID times but it's bad you know for the rest of the time that we just don't have additional revenue and funding sources um so without those uh I
I really can't see where the school uh continues to increase then we have all of the other expenses that go up way more than 2.5% every year um you know for the last 10 years um we're looking at a a net 18% increase in just like um
operating costs and instead of us absorbing that we've been cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting year-over-year level services level thing um and the school has as well so uh we are getting to a point where we're going to have to have some hard discussions and see where the people of
Lakeville you know where they want to be you know how they want us to fund we essentially gave the school free lake specifically we gave them essentially our entire levy increase and then everything else is like you know a dance i mean you know as Lacy was sharing just
the insurance costs alone are going up probably $25,000 like well we already gave away our levy so unless there is something else coming from receipts or new growth where else it's going to be great point yeah you're kind of you're giving the
one guarantee sources away and then you're wishing and hoping that all the estimated receipts come come true to fund everything else and that one guarantee was 900,000 less than they wanted so yes cuz they're going to have to incur cuts on their side with this
this is austerity to them yeah you know if if someone stands up at town meeting and goes for the for the full funding we're going to be in a very bad position for the town where we have to cut essential services until we can figure our way around it so we need to be as
proactive as possible and sound the alarm bells because there there is no oh well you know we'll squeak by this year and next year we'll be better i don't see next year being better i see next year being a worse version of this year um and then you know a couple years from
now recovering but um never we're we're never going backwards that's not how it works um and we haven't kept up with inflation not even a quarter of the inflation so the the mismatch between the two things is going to come to a
head at some point yeah i'm available for parties and you know made people happy but yeah I really appreciate all the dedication especially of this group of having to you know maybe not deliver the most happy news to people um but trying to keep an eye on
how we keep everything afloat and keep our town in our schools running and yeah just give me the questions if you have them need to have that recap and then there's a question that we could get answered for you before what we have to do in the moment m can we try
to schedule the meeting now sure help um actually I'll take the motion do we want to do it or I mean it's not an official vote no it just would help to have Tuesday though or Monday are you talking next
week or um we have a normal meeting yeah what Andrew what was the date you would gave i'm sorry i think that the only date I can't do is the 23rd that's the fire station building committee um so the 21st the 22nd i think there's a I
know the FinCom is leaning towards the 21st 22 oh the 21st i I must have no longer count do we have that discussion i don't know he asked me a question chris you're not on sorry
uh he asked me a question and I said I thought it was 22 work for you double check that's my last thing now after that 21st or 22nd 22nd 21st works first okay 20 seconds it is i'm just not sure what it'll be um but I
can check on the room okay very good i'll take a motion make a motion to adjourn in the select board meeting at 7:32 p.m make a motion to hunt ide we are dissolved all right
yeah feels like