[Music] Good evening and welcome to the select board and wage and personnel board meeting of Monday, July 14th, 2025 at 5:15 p.m. This is a remote meeting in accordance with the provisions allowed
by chapter 2 of the acts of 2023. The July 14th, 2025 public meeting of the Lakeville Select Board will be held remotely. However, to view this meeting in process, please go to facebook.com-lakecam. You do not need a Facebook account to view the meeting. This meeting will be
recorded and available to be viewed at a later date. Call to order. Candido present. Here, Hunt here.
Thank you, Andrew. Let's start us off with the town administrator report. So, I mentioned this last week, but I met with Jack Higgins and Mike Ellis to go over um future capital needs for the schools. So, I listed those out in the
TA report. One of those um is obviously basically the the really the site of Asaws at elementary school. Um I think everyone's probably been there and um I actually been went there for the first time a few weeks ago with the whole uh
incident with the sinkhole and obviously the um the sidewalks are not in great shape. They're crumbling down. Um, so Frank and Nate and I met with someone last week to just kind of go over identifying the problems there and what
can be done to fix it. So we're doing kind of the homework aspect of that and we'll bring back to the board what we're thinking of potentially for improvements there. Um, Andrew, is it just like a surface crumbling that's going on? There's no danger of any underneath collapse?
No. No. Uh, it's just uh crumbling sidewalks. just they just look bad and um they can be improved. No, it's not tied to the that sink holes type stuff. Um but we are thinking of potentially adding on um evaluation of the whole
site in general. Um obviously the everything there is kind of just old and just can be can a lot more stuff can be done there say the least. Um thank you. And then the last uh thing is just the first economic development
committee meeting is tonight at 6 o'clock. So very shortly. That's wonderful. Um did we get everyone sw hopefully everyone got sworn in. Um next item is discuss and possible vote
to appoint select uh board vice chair. Uh as you will recall um and someone will have to refresh my memory. I believe it was June um that member day uh left the board. Was it May or June? Um
and so we gave it a little time but it he will not be coming back and we need to appoint a vice chair so the business of the town can continue on uh if I am not available. Uh, I would like anyone to raise their hand or make a motion uh
to appoint someone as the select board vice chair for this board. I would like to nominate Lorraine Cababonei as vice chair. I hear a nomination. I uh don't see Chris. I will second the nomination.
I can work nomination in a second. Any further discussion? None heard. Roll call. Carboni. I Candido. I Hunt. I And the vote passes. Congratulations,
Member Carboni. Item number four, discuss and possible vote on revision for economic development committee charge. Andrew, can you walk us through the changes that we made to the charge um after our last couple meetings and some input from
members of uh various boards and committees? Yep. Um so since the uh finance committee became eligible for this committee through the town meeting vote in the annual town meeting um finance committee has put
forward um Larry Constant which will be the next agenda item. And so I figured if we take put that member on to keep seven members, I would take off one associate member um to keep us to keep it seven. Um then
the planning board also put forward a recommendation as well, but that's an additional agenda item as well. But that's all I changed. Does anyone have any questions on how this came about or the structure changes that this will make?
just the um just the associate member. Um how is that determined? Um just uh we don't have any associates at the moment. I just figured to keep it seven, we would just take off one associate at the moment. We could keep
two, but it would make it seven or eight total members. All right. But the associate member would be a member at large. Correct. All right. and they would not have voting rights. Is that correct? That's also that's also correct, Skip.
Okay. That's not spelled out though in the body to member Carbon's point. Um, if we could just add on to the charge that that member does not.
Yeah, I can add that. Madam Chair, you've muted yourself. Thank you for being the one sticking up and telling me chatting away over here. Um, okay. Besides that particular item, was
there any other objections or issues? Okay. Well, I'll make a motion um that we adopt the um I guess the change on the charge to the economic development um committee as
presented and with the addition of the language for the associate member. I'll second that. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion hearing? None. Roll call vote.
Harboni I. Candido I. Hunt I. Thank you. Uh item agenda agenda item number five discuss and possible vote to appoint Larry Constant as economic development committee member.
Uh, as previously discussed, um, we have a member of the finance committee and an a member of the planning board that will be appointed to this committee from the various boards. This vote would allow
Larry Constant to be the representative from the finance committee to the economic development committee. I will make a motion um that we appoint Lawrence Constant to the Economic Development Committee as a representative from the Finance
Committee um with an appointment term to expire July 31st, 2026. I'll second that. I have motion in a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Roll call vote. Carboni I
Candido I Hunt I. Next item item number six discuss and possible vote to appoint Daniel Wilgga to to the economic development committee. Um same applies. So in this
instance we're appointing Daniel as a member of the planning board. So, I'll make a motion to appoint Daniel Wilgga to the Economic Development Committee as a representative from the planning board um with an appointment
term that would expire July 31st, 2026. Seconded. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Roll call vote. Carboni I. Candido I. Hunt.
Agenda item number seven, discuss and possible vote to allow Redand Brewery to be open on August 12th, 2025 from 5 to 9:00 p.m. for private event. Attached is a request from Redand Brewing to be allowed to be open August 12th, 2025
from 5 to 9:00 p.m. for private event. Mr. Donnie will be coming in August 5th. request a change of hours for the liquor license to accommodate private events. I I'll make a motion um to approve the request from Redham Brewery to be open
on August 12th, 2025 from 5 to 9:00 p.m. for a private event. Seconded. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Roll call. Carbon I
Candido I Hunt I Okay, we have four more minutes until the finance committee comes on. Uh do we have any new business to put before the
board? No new business. Do we have old business? I do see one item discuss and possible vote to appoint John Gregory to the energy advisory committee.
As you would remember, we this is a this is a vote because we did not have the charge voted last time for the energy advisory committee. Now we have the charge voted on. We've reduced the membership from 7 to five and now it's time to fill the membership.
All right. Well, I'll make an a motion to appoint John Gregory to the Energy Advisory Committee with a term to expire July 31st, 2026. I'll second that. We have a motion, a second. Any further
discussion? Hearing none. Roll call. Harboni. I. Candid. I. Hunt. I. Congratulations, Mr. Gregory. Uh, did we just invite more people in?
People loading in. Well, I'd like to go to 11, but we have to we have to uh we have to wait a minute. Um, economic development committee member. Say that again. I said here is our newest economic
development committee member. Welcome aboard. Thank you. All right, two minutes until 5:30. Good evening. I know Barbara will be joining us. She confirmed and uh Michael didn't say he wasn't. So,
okay. Very good. We will have a moment of fellow time while we wait. Unless there are any select board announcements. Lorine, you want to sing a little song for us or something while we I was um I was hoping you would start
and then I would chime in. No. Uh, looks like Mike's on. Hi, Mike. Hello. Hi there. Can everyone who's just signed on check their mic to make sure we can hear you?
Like Mike Ellis. Hello. Hear me? Yes, we do. Darren, we heard you. Mic right. Mic right. Yep. Check. Okay, good. Thank you. Am I missing anyone?
No, we're just waiting for two more members to join. Who is ME appraisals? Is that Barbara? Larry, you're right. Larry, it's Larry.
Hi, Larry. Thank you. And we have five seconds till six o'clock. Thank you. And we're just waiting on Barbara now. Correct. Uh we are, but we have a quorum if you want to get started. Perfect.
There she is. Good. Perfect timing. Look at that. Yes. On the button. All right. If you guys would like to convene. Absolutely. So, I'll call the July 14th, 2025 Lakeville Fincom meeting to order at 5:30 p.m. Roll call.
Nikkovsky. Hi. Darren Beiel's here. Thank you everyone for joining uh for this very abbreviated meeting. Um we're meeting with the finance committee to discuss um our cleanup issues for the FY2025 budget transfers. Every year we
find ourselves needing to make a couple housekeeping items and shift some money around within budgets. Um, and attached is a list of FY2025 budget transfers and a copy of MGLC 44S33B
regarding transfer of appropriation restrictions. Um before you you have the account uh description, the general ledger um where the increase is and where the decrease is um and well where we have the overage
and where we're taking it from uh rather I will ask Mike Ellis to go through the list and speak to these items. Um and then anyone you know raise your hand feel free to uh comment or stop mic or
ask questions during the process. Thank you very much. Um I'll start from the top. So um first two is myself and the principal assessor. Um obviously we contracted that out and they were paid out of expense lines in the past and now
we have two full-time employees coming out of payroll. So we're really just shifting the appropriation from the expense line to the salary line to to clean up the deficits there. Um the next one down is the legal expenses. Um, we
had a vacancy in town planner for most of the year. So, there's a significant surplus there. Um, on the flip side, we went over budget by about $60,800 in the legal expense line. So, we're just going to use 61,000 of that to
clean up that deficit. So, I'm going to stop you right there. And Andrew, this might be an Andrew question. Um, I don't remember seeing that in last month's budget overages. Um, so I might have just missed it.
What's that 61,000 for? Um, and you know, and what what did we budget last year and is this going to be a recurring uh issue next year? We've, correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, we've budgeted probably about 75,000
for town council services the last few years. Um, it's really a number that's really a lot lower than what it should be. And I think we're just um I don't want to say it too cast too large on that, but I think we come
accustomed to using town council for more things than we should. So I think it's just um it's just a a confluence of just using it way too much for small things and it just that just that bill just rises up and I think what has happened
also is KP Law raises their fees yearly and our expense line has just not increased. So we have 75,000 and it's not getting us as far as it used to. Um Okay. So but we have 75,000 for the
upcoming budget as well. Correct. Correct. Correct. Um, that's why I typically don't like to reach out to town council unless it's like really needed. I try to find, like you had mentioned with the with the legal policy, trying to find a past president or past or past practice to
try to limit that. Um, it's probably a goal I should have in my TA goals is to try to decrease that. Um, because that they again raised their fees to 215 an hour. So, we'll probably see a deficit next year if we don't cut down on it significantly. But these legal fees
these are these associated with the TA office or are these associated with various other departments? It should be all town departments comm. Oh no, but the but the overage is there a percentage that makes up the majority of it or is it just across the board
just everyone's over? I'd have to I have to do an analysis and I can do it pretty quickly, but I imagine I know planning and zoning typically have town council at every meeting. Um, that builds up. I' I'd have to get back to you on the exact percentages.
All right. It might not be something we can control, but it can be something we can measure um and try to get better at and create some more controls around access to town council and you know what rises to the threshold of of having town
council in. Um so I don't like to be surprised by that. Um so we can work on that, but I'm not surprised there's an overage. Um, I know in years past, Andrew, it was past practice um that
there was a line um some I forgot what budget line, but it was a a services budget line um and that some of the overages would go out of that services budget line. So 61 was way higher than I was thinking. I was thinking there would be like $20,000,
but that's concerning if we're not budgeting for it correctly. May I ask a question, Moren? by all means. You know, I always have questions. Um, when the bills come in, do they articulate what the breakdown is? So, when I was on planning board, we did
not have um we did not have a number for uh for what the legal fees like. We didn't have a budget for it. We didn't and so we had no reference point. We were calling in people to this is when we're doing the hospital site, right? We're bringing people in to talk with us, but we never saw the expense for
that. Do we now have a uh a line item breakdown that we can then share back with the board so they're aware of the expense that they're incurring with these questions? Andrew, you can reverse engineer that and uh and or Mike actually. Sorry, Andrew putting more on you. Reverse
engineer that. Um and let's keep a running tally of that too. um as we break it out at least four times a year. Um and just to see where to your point, Barbara, that where our expense lines are are coming in, where the money is
coming in uh or the the charges are coming in from and then we can kind of fish where the fish are um and focus on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt your flow. Nope, it's all good. And I just want to
add, you had mentioned that you didn't see such a large deficit on the on the prior budget report. Um APL was a bit behind, Andrew. I want to say two or three months behind in billing us. So we kind of got um April, May, and June all at once. So that's probably why I've been there. Yep. I've been there.
So yes, I know they do that. So yeah. Okay. So next on the list is to increase the total facilities uh expenses by 22,000. So, um, Paul kind of picked up a lot of slack in his budget this year because we had so many, um, ARPA projects going on
that were under contract with a fixed amount and during some of these projects, um, you know, you need a part here or a subcontractor here and it was just something that we had to draw down out of his budget. Um, he did a great job trying to keep everything in check. Um, he probably doesn't quite need this
amount of money, but he has so much ongoing projects right now that I'm putting a little more here in case he needs to encumber any funds. And if he doesn't need the full 22,000, it simply just closes to free cash like any other surplus would. And to offset that, we're we're taking uh 9,800 out of the vacancy
for the custodian in his budget and the remainder is 12,200 coming from the vacancy and the assistant to the town administrator. Um the next one is the uh agricultural transportation costs. Um, this is actually going to be for both um,
Bristol County Agricultural and Norfolk. Um, I I really can't speak on the origins of this. It looked like it was under budgeted last year um, because we needed about 122,000 um, in transportation appropriations to cover this school year. And it appears
there was only about 98,000 put in there. Um, I I don't know why I wasn't here for that budget process. So, we kind of need $24,000 right up front to cover it. And uh we are still waiting on some June invoices to come in. So I'm just adding a little extra there um in
the event to add to that. I have some context to add to that and I know member Carboni does as well. Um we were presented with a $75,000 transportation bill two years ago um year and a half ago somewhere around there. Um for one student
at Norfolk. Um are we saying there's two students that go there now or are we saying There is two students who go there now, but they live at the same residence. So these are So what we did Yeah. What we did previous was we went out for bid for our
own bid and we cut it down in half and that is why it was less last year. Um has the possibility of us being able to do that passed already or can we still do that because that's
unacceptable. Like that number is it's unacceptable. I I I would I would actually say it is so unacceptable that I would be game for a friendly lawsuit. It's that unacceptable about that amount for two students coming from the same
address um to go to school being more than two teachers salaries. I'll provide the car. I'll do the driving. I'm in. I'm in.
Barbara, are you okay? You're a good driver. You got it. But I volunteered for that last year. Yeah. Yeah. I I know we probably missed a little, you know, between the transition about how Bob had handled it last year. But if you go back through um
the minutes, he got a separate quote um and reuse that. This is one location. This is not two different locations. There's no way that it could increase like that. Um like that's criminal.
Yeah. As I said, some of this transportation cost does pertain to both uh agricultural schools. I know the list just says Norfolk Aggie, but it's the same budget line. Um and the Bristol Aggie contract is a fixed amount of $428 per bus per day for the first four hours
and then it's a $100 per hour for every hour after four. So, it's hard to accurately appropriate for that because we just don't know based off traffic if there's going to be any uh overage of $200 here and there throughout the school year. Um,
and it does kind of fluctuate. So, I'm okay allocating the funds, but I, you know, and knowing that if we can fix it, it goes into free cash. Um, we we would still have to allocate to it. Um,
but my request uh of you, Andrew, and and Mike, is to go back, look at what Bob had done a year prior. Um, and also reach out to Desessie on this um because that's not how Desi wants to spend these
funds as well. We'll do. Thank you very much. Madam Chair, I have a question as well on this topic. Um, you said that some of this is Bristol. Uh, do we have a breakdown of what's going where that makes up this number? Yes, I can I can provide a breakdown.
Um, I can email that out to everyone if you'd like. Um, I can export it from our software and um, it's two different vendors for each school. We use uh, first student for Bristol Aggie and we use ton motorized carriage for Norfolk Aggie. So, um, I can certainly do a breakdown of each vendor um, and the
expenses that pertain to each. Okay. Thanks. Mhm. Thank you very much. Yep. Anyone else have any questions on this line in particular? All right, Mike, I'll let you finish. Sure. Um, so the next one is animal
control. Um, the callback stipens. Um, this is not Mr. Freight. This is uh the wage line in there. Um, so this is obviously a moving target each year depending on how many calls after hours um this person gets. and uh they went over by about 8,000 or so. And uh you
know, we still have a one day June 30th on a Monday to post plus the the Sunday, June 29th. So, I'm just adding a little extra in there. Um and then the next two lines are also related to animal control. These are the expense lines. Um I think we talked about this during budget season, but they saw an influx of
uh food supplies and cleaning supplies throughout the fiscal year. So to uh offset this, I'm rating the electrical, plumbing, and gas inspector surplus lines for uh the 9850, 5,000, and the 4,000 to satisfy those.
Um and then last is our snow and ice deficit, which can legally be spent into a deficit per mass general law. um you can raise this via reserve fund transfer, budget transfer or you could pass the burden on to the tax rate um
during the tax rate setting. However, we have uh a very healthy budget this year. So I Andrew and I spoke and we thought we would just do a budget transfer to cover it instead of raising it on the tax recap. So, uh, to satisfy that, we're using 5,000 of the turnback and the planner salary, 5,000 of the
veterans agent, 25,000 in the, uh, group health insurance, and then $2312 in uh, public works buildings and grounds that was set to be turned back. So, that will offset the 37312. Fantastic. Does anyone have any further
questions about any of these transfers? Hearing none. Member Carboni. Yes, ma'am. Do we read them? Do we read them out individually
from where it's coming and where it's going or can we just do the the amount? In my experience, we've just done the grand total. Um, but I'm not sure what past practice is here. Um,
yeah, I think we just do the the total transfer amounts. Yeah, as presented. As presented. Yeah, as presented. Okay, I'll take a motion. All right. I'll make a motion um in accordance with Mass General Law Chapter 44 section 33B
um that we approve the budget transfers as presented uh to be made effective June 30th, 2025 in the to in the amount of $243,162. And I will second that.
I have a motion and a second. Can I get a roll call vote? Carboni I. Candido I. Hunt I. All right. I guess as a finance committee uh we will also um put that to
vote. So I'll I'll make a motion that the finance committee approves the total transfers of $243,1622 as of June 30th, 2023. Second. Second that motion. We have a second. Any other any more discussion?
Okay. Roll call vote. Start with Barbara Manovsky. I Wright I. Be I. Fantastic. That concludes our meeting. If you would, unless you have other agenda
items for the finance committee that you'd like to conduct. I have one new business. Um I think Andrew uh emailed me about town the town hall building reuse subcommittee. Um and finance committee needs to have a representative. I know Larry is not able. Um I'll throw it out to Mike and
Barbara if they're interested. And if not, then I'm I'm more than happy to do it. Um so Barbara, any interest? Mike, any interest? I'm gonna hold for now. Thank you. Okay. Uh I can do it if you have too much on your plate, Darren.
No, I'm again I'm happy to do it. It's totally up to you. I'll let you take this one. Okay, there you go. Andrew, I will uh I will be the FinCom representative. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other business, Fincom?
Only other comment is I just want to give kudos to Andrew and Mike for really doing a nice job and I'm I'm glad to see they kind of take the spirit of what we're looking for here. So, yeah. Thank you. Wrapping it up. Yep. All right. Motion to adjurnn for the
select board at what time is it? 5:47. I got a motion. Have a second. And a second it motion and a second. Thank you everyone. We are now adjourned. Okay. I'll make a motion to adjurnn the finance committee at uh 548.
Second. Second. Don't jump too quickly. Roll call. Ryan. Yeah. and I thank you everyone. Thank you. Take care.