e e okay need one more I no but how you doing B season's going show yeah they want to I I got
nervous was just one started game oh yeah it started end January division all right I'm get going here uh it's Thursday March 27th 2025 this is the lunenberg finance committee uh in accordance with
requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being recorded in broadcast over the lunenberg public access Channel and on Facebook live on the public access Facebook page and will be uploaded to the lunenberg access YouTube channel
after the meeting um for anyone looking to join via Zoom that um can be found on lunenberg ma.gov on the calendar um just look for the finance committee um agenda there's also a call
number for that's also listed on there um and with that let's rise for the budg of Alle flag United States of America the all right um by way of announcements um next week
is posted for a public hearing um after the public hearing we'll focus on votes um as well as um some level of the um the the report the finance committee report uh so we got some writing to do
on that hopefully we get a chance to talk a little bit about that this week so that we can uh start to to draft sections of that and meet the deadline that I'll talk to Tom manager about what our final deadline is on that and how we
fit it in uh this is in essence our last meeting of Department hearings and budget hearings um in an addition if you didn't notice we added the citizens position prop two and a half override on to the agenda um and uh TJ Laughlin will
be coming in a little later to to brief that one I just sent an email with the town manager report uh budget um final budget presentation um and then uh I created a
folder sent you guys a link for the prop two and a half override materials that we've received so that would be the announcements um any other announcements all right
um and with that any public comment from the public look hi everyone uh John Bowen 162 Highland Street um I just wanted to ask uh during the public hearing we're going to be able to comment on each particular subject during the public hearing or
should I make those comments now whoa um you can certainly make comments now um I have been opening it up to people after each um section of the um it does say under public it should have been under scheduled meeting so that's an error on
the agenda but um but yeah you can make comments you go to I would ask that everyone try to keep it to a minute or two um because we have a lot of material to work through I know that's why I was asking would it be more feasible for me to make that comment as those items come up and then discuss them yeah that's
fine okay I'll wait till end for my and there is a full public hearing next week yeah I'm aware thank you yep all right any other public comment any public comment from the board all
right go quickly we can go any Town manager or Finance director reports all right um so under what should be scheduled hearings um the first one up is Town manager finer final budget material
well thank you Mr chairman as you pull up the presentation I just want to go over what the um physical documents are that in in front of you so you have um because there's so many small numbers and your screens are arguably small you have printouts of the ledgers these are
um that they're both the same document just one has a certain uh certainly greater level of detail than the other if you wanted to look at that but otherwise are generally the same and I am ready when you are I'm ready when of you are okay okay we're
okay so um obviously some things have changed since the initial budget presentation so I'm not going to go over every point that we've already discussed um as youve heard from various department heads but I am going to highlight on uh where some of those
changes are so if you go to uh two slides from now on the FY 26 revenues with the pie chart thank you so um the revenue projections are largely the same there's been no um action yet as of yet by the
legislature but I do want to note that um the at the local Aid hearing that was held on Monday this week um um I believe Ways and Means heard loud and clear that communities are seeking consensus around the unrestricted General government Aid and Chapter 70 final figures um as soon
as possible so that request was made um so that if there are changes prior to communities entering in town meeting we can make those adjustments on the front end hopefully that was heard I did have a separate conversation but there's no changes there um the one one item that
has changed uh since or presenting is the assessor overlay uh which isn't part of the revenues but it um kind of is a makes sense to come in here Assessor's overlay I had originally budgeted for $250,000 and they have reduced that
amount to1 175,000 okay and if we could just I'm not going to go into any more detail on the uh Revenue side of it tonight I just kept those slides in there because this is going to be posted online for the public certification so if we could go into the free cash expenditure
plan um Chris it's slide number 11 if that's all right so this one no the next one one more maybe two more one more there we go that's the one
okay so um here is one of the first changes of uh significance um I know some of you have been following along closely to various boards committee and commission meetings and some have not um so for everyone's edification um the original expenditure of free cash has
been changed so that um considering the difficult Financial year uh that uh especially the uh school system is undergoing um there is a proposed transfer of $500,000 of certified free cash to support the ber public schools
in FY 26 um as we approach over the course of the next year what may be uh a override figure for FY 27 so this is a stop Gap measure um in order to do that the original appropriation that was going to
be made under Priority Priority One to the general stabilization account has been reduced to zero that was um a $100,000 original transfer uh based on our stabiliz balance being over the 5% uh minimum threshold that's
recommended I do not feel as this is very risky this year I think that we are safe to make that transfer of free cash this time um that said I feel strongly that we should continue to meet our OPB contributions so I did keep uh the 10%
of our certified free cash in the OPB contribution and then not making a transfer into any of the uh special purpose stabilization funds that originally was uh for $250,000 and if you go uh two slides from this I'm going to talk about all of
the free cash expenditures I'm just taking a note here so yeah take your time we have all night we do no we're not going till midnight tonight right one more there we go all right so um this is how this is the
proposed at this time um expend free cash uh $500,000 to the lunenberg public schools for FY 26 operating budget um there will be under this um article a motion that should a
proposition two and a half um override be successful then I'm speaking of the petitioned article here um this transfer would not go forward and I'm putting in uh if you've looked at the summary that the suggestion that we would then make the normal transfers to stabilization
Accounts at fall town meeting um the next item is the special projects warrant article nothing has changed here it's $152,500 uh for three projects decommissioning a portion of TCP um for
75,000 Board of assessors uh Department of Revenue directive it's 27,500 there are a number of items that the board of assessors uh need to go undergo before the next full re-evaluation and this is uh to hire Consultants to help them um achieve that
goal and a Cemetery Road and network um repair for $50,000 uh the next item this um has changed somewhat are the FY 2025 transfers uh total of 465,000 the they
on the right side or did I yeah you jumped I was still on the one before okay I'm moving you along you I'm you know I'm talking fast but I'll keep I'll go fast enough so uh snow and ice deficit um I do believe that this might be slightly
smaller figure at town meeting but the 415,000 is what will be printed in the book uh it's looking to be just south of 400,000 provided that there's no additional snow uh this season and um oh again with my spelling eror uh special
education move in of 50,000 I have asked the school if it's possible for them to further uh either reduce this figure or absorb this within their present FY 25 operating budget which would allow um
this additional $50,000 to be transferred to supplement their FY 26 budget it's ultimately this $550,000 is going to the school system whether it's for fy2 or FY 26 that's largely their choice um and the last item is we have
removed a $36,250 uh reimbursement for a grant um we may bring that back on at the fall but uh we want to do some more research about whether or not we have to repay that entire amount before just doing so next
slide please okay so the FY 2026 Capital program um $655,000 being supported by three different funding sources one was from
free cash two was from um the reduction in uh amounts for Debt Service and the third is an FY 23 Capital uh transfer so as uh we needed to close the budget to restore some of the pavement management
line uh some of that funding shifted around so that's slightly different but the overall Capital program has not changed um you see a new item for $10,000 this is not something that we have discussed prior uh with this with
this board and but on the town meeting War articles you will see that there is a proposal to create what's called a compensated absences fund uh this is a fund that we would have available should an employee separate from service and we have liabilities that we need to pay out
to that employee namely vacation time so if they're sometimes those separations are foreseen and we budget for them and sometimes they are not so this is a source uh to go in that in that instance uh that money would roll over year after year but I believe a modest amount of
$10,000 is a good place to start and if all of these Appropriations are approved that would leave us at $219,500 to expenditures are there any questions um I do oh I'm sorry j
you the compensated absence fund yep why would we just take that out of this salary Reserve fund because it's a it's a mechanism so compensated absences and salary Reserve are two different things um so you when
we're creating the salary Reserve fund we are uh thinking about things like collective bargaining agreements that haven't been approved raises new positions this is vacation and any other time that's owed to a person P time P PTO
correct and and it does also the other different the other key difference here is that it rolls over from year after year so we put the $10,000 in the fund this year and it rolls NE if we don't utilize it that $10,000 remains as opposed to if it was in the salary
Reserve um and then it would just roll free cash and you'd have to reappropriate for the following year so historically what have we done in the past I would imagine that historically in the past you uh probably did interdepartmental transfers within the
year or a fincom reserve transfer if there was one of substance but you were probably transferring between budget Lines within the year this just gives a dedicated place for that how do you withdraw from this fund you you can just do it as Town manager
correct correct there's V or no no we do have uh one known retirement this year um but you know if somebody were to separate from service tomorrow and they had four weeks of time that we owed to them this would just be a place to
go will just be a Continuum I'm sorry go thank you chair I'm just kidding um I guess my only fa is there a um uh an accounting uh best practice
associated with how much should be in a fund like this so I actually don't know the answer to that question do you if not we can certainly follow up um typically the best practice is to see um is to do the calculation of all the PTO that's on the books of all
active employees and do a worst case scenario typically is 10 to %. okay um we haven't done that calculation this was you know Jen had brought it up at the last minute so the 10,000 I think is a good start but next starting next year
we should actually do the calculations going forward sounds thank you sorry sorry Chris um will this be a Continuum fund where if we use $2,000 this year we'll start start with 10 again next fiscal year will we always keep the same amount or will it just dwindle down
until we need to re it would if we don't make yeah it would dwindle down unless we make another appropr one time one one time y yep so and into that onetime money onetime thing um on this item um I
I could be wrong but isn't the PTO um the vacation part of the of our to employee salaries isn't that is there a maximum that they can transfer from year to year so it depends on what bargaining unit uh they belong to uh it's a
different amongst the organization but yes there are maximums it's just not a one-sized fits all okay and um so you can't give us any details of the max because I'll tell you why why I'm asking I was under the impression was a it was
not five 10 years or you know un limited amount no no more than a couple so uh typically if an employee's been working for for a number of years they they may have somewhere in the neighborhood on average of four to five years four to five weeks on the books right so we're
talking weeks right I hope they don't have four to five years so so so what I'm I'm a little confused about it is help me with this one usually in the private world when we do a a reserve account for unpaid
liabilities uh for vacation or any other benefit you do it based on your current value so you can you know pass that on your books from year to year um and the policy of you know it's not that that amount keeps rolling up what I but
usually that account that amount is associated with their cost their salary cost so if I have four four weeks of vacation maybe I'm a 10 10 year employee I have now eight weeks of vacation but that's part of my total salary so when I
come to the end of the year um you know usually private world will say oh Anna has used only three weeks we're going to put a liability Reserve account whatever you want to call it for five weeks so then we can count that as an expense for that year so anyway so I'm trying to
reconcile our practice with how you know the logic contest because usually PTO liability is embedded on the salary cost so um we it's not the way that we so we just budget that everybody is going to
be working 52 weeks a year in their salary lines okay I also say we don't have PTO we have sick time and we have vacation time they are crew right we can have large balances associated with those on an individual
person correct right but I thought the the the discretionary time was one that has a limit on it or is it the sick time I don't know I did think there was a limit on it so you said it it depend so it there's a limit on sick and most most employees don't get paid out sick at
separation so typically we're talking about vacation time that is compensatory to pay at the time of Separation um but again depending on the bargaining unit there may be different amounts that folks are allowed to carry so what if you had an if you have one or two
employees separating within any given year it's not going to be an issue uh if you have a number of employees who are separating in a given year you may not be able to kind of move things around within to transfer so especially as we're tightening up on the budget um in
a number of areas that we're about to go into it just has a space that's reserved so that it's a space to go if we can't make those transfers okay um the other question that I have is the 50,000 that you have for the movein special at
that's the move from TCP to Turkey hle School no no this is a student uh this is cost associated with students moving into District um well I'm sorry can you elaborate on on that so that that's what
I've been thinking so that's Pro to elaborate on it further than that of what are the associated costs with the student and how many special education dollars are associated with movements this year that's ultimately a question for the superintendent and the business manager um they have identified that
there was unanticipated movements they've already absorbed I believe about last I heard a little over $150,000 within their budget of those unanticipated costs this is above and beyond that to kind close that gap for
fy2 oh so this is fy2 25 okay that makes sense then um the last question is have you discussed with the superintendent how the $500,000 of free cash will be used so uh somewhat um ultimately that
is going to be a decision of the school committee what I have said um and I'm happy to share publicly is that one um that I would like that any um uh unemployment cost costs that are associated with potential layoffs in the
school district be absorbed within that $500,000 uh so that we're not increasing our unemployment line further um and two is um I have urged that folks reconsider restoring um the school business manager
position to a school business manager okay and that's the information you have about how they're planning to use the 500,000 yeah I do not believe that the school committee has formally met and decided what they're going to be restoring as far as to my knowledge with
this money okay um and there'll be a new superintendent so there's also right potentially other things at play well it's the school committee budget so superintendent makes recommendation but anyway it's it was it'll be a new school
committee too with three new members s anyway it was a question thank you very much I have for now one more question okay to compensate AB fund again if somebody separates we budget x amount of dollars for the salary per year so if
someone leaves and they've only been here six months or eight months is there money left over in the salary budget sure so it depends on who separates if you have a person that's retiring and they're separating at the top end and we're hiring somebody that's newer then you you don't have to worry about
looking for that money to transfer in but if you have somebody that's separating um that's on the lower end of the step and and grade system and then you're filling them with somebody from maybe another community that has more experience it's not you know you're not always saving money but if there's a
position if you fill the position immediately you're not saving money but if the position now Jay um but if you fill the if it takes a number of months to fill the position then yes that's where you're going and using that inter inter uh yearly
transfer to cover that it's just a not it's just a safety it's just a safety cushion if we can't cover it within the budget okay it's $110,000 j if it just sits there it doesn't it's
just sitting there it's not available to be used it is earning uh it is earning interest no would it ear interest um we will have to um open an account because it's a separate fund it's a special purpose fund so will have
to open an account it will earn interest like other stabilization funds can I just ask one little quick quick quick thing the 2.25 million here the starting free cash is that I mean could you call that starting FY 2026
starting free cash so the 219,000 No No the 2.2 million oh that is that is what we have currently certified as available certified free cash that's what we have right now uh that we could exp so after all expenditures we're down to 219,000 to start
2027 and so so as we close out the books on uh this fiscal year any revenues that were um in addition to what we anticipated unexpended budget lines uh those um and then there's a number of
deductions that all gets balanced out um Ezekiel submits that to the state including this uh whatever the start the starting free cash is and then we get usually in about October November we get our certified free cash for the next year it could be appropriate at special
time meeting absolutely okay all right so if we want to go down to expenditures please is up okay it's just slow over there yeah all right so first um I want to address um as there's been a number
of comments good um positive comments and critical comments um about um the movement that we're doing within budget lines uh so just to explain that a little bit so first uh the budget task force uh one of their recommendations was to standardize and improve workflow
for uh Town finances specifically to implement standardized Department reporting and consolidate the chart of accounts I think I had heard the interim Town manager uh talk at nauseum about the chart of accounts being overc complicated so um these some of these
moves are to make that chart of accounts uh more simplified uh two is that the changes were made in conformance with the Uniform Massachusetts accounting system which is a manual for cities towns school districts on um on their budget lines there will never be a
perfect time to make these changes there's never I know this is a difficult budget year um next year is not going to be any easier um but this will um hopefully give us a little bit more flexibility with the within the year um
as we as we uh move things around I I working on a document which I've shared with you that's going to be the public facing document that goes out um that's that's to replace this document that's in your in your budget books um I
am looking for when I finalize that feedback if folks think that that's could be made clear more clear to voters I am looking for your feedback on that but that is the rationale and as we go through I'll be highlighting um some of those changes so um next slide please
General government as we go through these um these different uh categories these major categories these line up if you want to follow along with your um spreadsheets that are in front of you or not but they following that order so
General government um has a whole host of different uh departments um it's largely your town hall and Ritter functions um select board Town manager finance committee two accounts that have been moved into General government from General government
unclassified um were the reserve fund and the salary Reserve then uh normally we go back to town accountant assessors Treasurer collector it clerk elections register ations we have a new category of land use this year that consolidates the
functions of the planner Economic Development zba Conservation Commission as well as the Building Commissioner who when we get to it you'll see the Building Commissioner and this is a perfect example of why we're doing this the building commissioner's salary was under what was called other protection
under Public Safety um and the Building Commissioner Works directly in the land use department so um that's I think one of the best highlights of why we're making some of these moves uh architectural preservation Town reports Central purchasing um and physicals have
all been moved Central purchasing was its own category and town reports and physicals were in unclassified so next slide please lines that have been moved out uh or moved under Lines within the general
government uh the audit has been moved under the accountant as opposed to a standalone line but there's no Chang there banking charges have been moved under Treasurer within General government legal expenses moved to the town manager and as I stated land use um
now encompassing planning building concom and zba next slide please so the total General government budget proposed for FY 26 is 2,962
$263.4 um I'm going to highlight as we go through just just kind of the major changes um in any of these budgets there was a $10,000 increase to our legal line um our legal expenses are um we have we are on a contract it's not hourly it's
probably one of the best contracts for legal that I've seen where it's unlimited but it is going up um the $50,000 Grant manager position um that position as the finance committee is aware has remained unfilled or unutilized it's not a real position it's
contract position but un utilized for um FY 2025 and uh I I do know that there might be some use uh by The Parks Commission as we go forward but that line has been eliminated to restore the pavement management line if I may on that one the
reason that that is is that Heather was supposed to come up with a policy for how to use it that never happened correct Carter dragged his feet on it and now here we are three qus of the way through the year and we're not applying for all the
grants um I don't think we have a line of sight on what all the grants we should be applying for um and this body was the one that recommended establishing Grant Services um not a position like you said Grant services so
um I I I I'm not I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of this one so this originally was not um being cut at all in the preliminary budget in fact we were talking about ways to expand this position because we really are in my opinion lacking in contract management
um and Grant Management in addition to potentially the need to research and write additional grants however this is a direct result as the restoration of the page pavement management line direct result so it this is a this
is a one for one on there I would prefer to keep this and take $50,000 more from chapter 90 that's well over 2 million at this point and fund it over the next five years potentially at over $600,000 a year then
to eliminate this position and well this this um service um and really start to go out and identify where grants are um you know we get Capital planning no indication of whether grants are available for things we make
decisions lacking insight and knowledge um and I think as a result you know the thought behind this is if those Services were available it would have a return on investment I don't disagree uh with with that there would
be a return Roi here but again this was I had a pretty clear directive to restore the pavement management line as high as possible it's not when we get there it's not back to the 550 um it's up to 279 but this this was
directly proportionate to that clear director from whom uh both this body and uh the select board to restore I heard pretty clearly from you the first time I presented that uh pay except for Tanya that pavement management uh should be restored and that there was great pride
in the roads and a lot of money spent uh through um a prior borrowing to get them and there was to to where they are and there was substantial concern about uh potential degradation um if we weren't to keep that level of funding so we we went through and made a number of cuts
in order to restore that I I I would prefer to take 50 ,000 more out of the current state of pavement management and restore this 50,000 I think um if if we wanted to have a conversation about using bringing down free cash a little
bit more and using $50,000 in free cash um for this so it's not operational and it's one time of Nature and see how it works with um opening up a a program where we can actually advertise it and see how it's utilized and what the benefit is as a pilot I think that I'm
I'm willing to have a conversation around that um well as a means let me say one more thing do you think you'll get to a position where you can have a policy and a rules of the road if you standard operating procedures for how to
use 50,000 next year for July one you bet yeah if if yeah I don't think that that yeah I don't think we would have any issue with how to hire hire folks share it who who gets to use the grant
writer who doesn't um certainly I shouldn't be utilizing the grant writer right the planner who is who job is largely to write a lot of Grants they shouldn't be using the grant writer but should uh elected boards or appointed board committees and commissions maybe
get priority there sure I mean I think so if we were to restore it with free cash as a pilot I don't have any hesitation that we could put out a program around um okay excuse me oh we were previously
funding pavid management $50,000 from excise tax what is the revenue Source from excise tax I have heard this stated before but there is no direct appropriation from excise tax to Pavement management that may have been stated but
there is you and I had had a conversation about this previously I have reviewed the Motions there is nothing legally in the Motions there was no transfer from revenues from excise tax to the pavement Management program none where did the 550,000 come from where did that number
come from I assume that was budgeted every year but so increasing so 550,000 was not a static number year-over-year the goal was to get to $1 million over time by increasing it by $50,000 every year
uh that funding just came from the General Pool of raise and appropriate as everything else there was no sub motion within that to go from motor vehicle excise tax it just comes from the levy so what is our excise tax revenue
per year uh hold on a moment I can tell you what on on our previous um our previous presentation had what we estimate our local receipts to be for excise tax okay we are projecting 1, 187 $5,000
in FY 26 excise tax so if we took $50,000 from excise tax what would that effect then we need to take $50,000 from somewhere else in the budget there's no special the the excise
tax is a part of local receipts yes so there's no there's the local receipt coupled with the state aid coupled with the taxation all come into the available revenues and then Appropriations are made from available revenues at town
meeting so if we are to take $50,000 from there we need to reduce $50,000 elsewhere in the budget there's not like it's not like there's a reserve fund of excise tax that's set aside it's used it's all
used I guess what Jay's saying it's more of a what was represented was it was more more of a budget practice than anything else so and and I can't speak to why that representation was made but but there's just simply not it wasn't a
one for one from ex no I I understand I think I think when we got our um our pement excluded borrowing there was a plan overall created on how we were going to fund it and an overall budget practice was to you know before you
allocate any money from uh receipts to always s Reserve 50,000 for that and and that was the budget practice that's all we're and to that I would comment that at that time there wasn't um unprecedented long-term inflationary
pressures and um crippling School uh budget pressures across the Commonwealth so we are living in a very different time than that unless that that unless that was in 2009 uh 2008 2009 things
have changed substantially so so DPW director has a pretty detailed assessment of the roads that was just done I think you can look at inflation Trends over the next 10 years I think we should assess what is the right number given where we are with the exclusion
that we had for pavement management and the buildup to the level we had and the increases in um in uh chapter 90 you know what what should be the you know the budget uh operating budget line that
is associated with that and just anecdotally I when I I read that report recently and when I saw what our pavement condition index was which is I believe it it's about an 85 I had to share that with a colleague of mine who's the Deputy Commissioner of the wer
DPW and I said what would you say if I said to you our PCI was 85 and he responded I would say to you that you probably have the highest PCI in the Commonwealth [Music] we get a trophy you know we'll take the W where we take the
W well one thing I'll say is that we have probably have that we have been told that but that has been because we have had a a policy and a practice of funding PVE pavement management and it's paying off we shouldn't simply walk away
from all those practices without doing what have said and so respectfully we are on General government and when we get to DPW we'll see that we are funding it at the same level that it was funded last year okay so um all right so the $50,000 Grant
manager position we talked about that there was a $15,000 uh decrease in the reserve fund uh you originally had $200,000 last year in the fincom reserve fund it was decreased to 185 I think for the
transfer for the town manager search but um I I feel that $185,000 is a safe level for the reserve fund uh I say that um I've been on the board for five years Jay's been on more um in the five years this is the only
year that I recall someone coming for Reserve funds so it it does seem to me that it is wise for us to have ample Reserve funds because of the unknowns and the tightness of the budgets where in in line transfers are
not you know as to occur so so the 15,000 again this is in direct proportion to restoring that pavment management line no I understand so um but I I do think 185,000 on a budget of this size is relatively healthy um you currently have
I believe 53,000 in change left in your reserve fund right now I know there's about 11 to 122,000 requests that may be forthcoming um but but if if we stay on
a similar trajectory okay yeah right uh so the next item is the salary Reserve fund um that's at $210,000 uh for folks that aren't aware uh we are going to be negotiating the collective bargaining agreement with the
police department um for July 1 2026 and the DPW um has changed affiliations with their uh bargaining units so they are joining the teamsters and they have been out of contract since June 30 2024 um so I anticipate that we will
have a new contract for them for July 1 2025 although it's at this point likely going to be a retro um but that houses the funds uh to hopefully cover uh both of those collective bargaining agreements increases as well as uh the
cola uh if voted uh for sa sap employees um just a moment about that Cola let me turn my volume off because I'm getting emails um I had originally uh put the for sap employees
the cola at 2.5% um after announcing that last week I had pretty strong response uh from our non bargaining member unit employees um that they felt that there was not parity
between the folks in the clerical Union and the in the sap um my response to that is ultimately that I believe that we need to finish the job that we've attempted two times so far which is to complete a classification and compensation study um and that uh you
know giving a 5% increase would result in town meeting voters and others feeling like we really solved this issue this year if we were to give that similar increase without solving the fundamental problem which is the classification and Compensation Plan so
that said um they did say well it would go a long way if you considered 3% as opposed to 2.5% uh the additional cost there was $7,000 uh to Across the organization so I did feel as though that was reasonable
so my suggested Cola for the sap employees is 3% this year um good time for a public service announcement that there is no Personnel committee right yet so we need at least three volunteers uh for a five member body um
so I I have a question um you you said that you you thought a 5% increase was too like too much one year what is the um compounded increases they have received over the past five years for
sap employees for the one that you reduced yeah I didn't reduce I didn't well you you change from 5% to 3 no no no no okay no so um what the employee so the uh clerical Union employees have roughly a 5% increase in
their contract okay what the um what the sap employees were saying is if they have that increase we want that increase okay uh that was not on the table for me because I don't think that's the answer
for what they're seeking which is a Readjustment realignment uh within the compensation classification plan I we have a very large Compensation Plan with a large number of grades that don't have many positions within the grades so it
makes it very difficult to grade an employee and then um you get a real kind of there's not enough distance between the grades I guess so that's the fix so I had proposed a 2.5% Cola uh for the
sap employees oh for the sap okay sap employees and uh based on their response um and saying that the 3% would go a long way and it only having an Associated cost was $7,000 I thought that that was reasonable so what would
have been the 5% uh my assistant to manager is going to be presenting that to the select board um on uh Tuesday but I believe it was somewhere in the $40,000 range is that right
roughly um it was about 35 to 40 depending on retirements and things but we had anticipated about 40,000 the the other item with that is if so we did um an uh not a professional
but we did a salary survey uh internally we did a salary survey out to our comp towns our comp communities and what that supported and showed is only that we do need to do a compensation classification plan because some employees uh were
compensated right within market right on Market didn't warrant an adjustment other than a cola some employees are under market and some employees are slightly over market so um just increasing the whole grid by 5% doesn't
fix any of those internal uh inconsistencies or lack of parody um I I'll make a comment and then we don't need to rehash it further is just we have had a um problem in town over the past few years filling
um some positions in town and over the past year and we haven't had a Personnel uh board and over the past few years we've been trying to push it and you know address some of the needs some of the things that the sap employees have asked um I would be you know I don't
want us to go back to what it was two and a half years ago with a lot of openings people leaving um you know left and right and um so I would just you know I'll look forward to seeing the assistant Town manager presentation and and maybe I'll have a uh comments after
that but that's just my comment yeah I I am going to comment back to that because I think that um you can all you know you have to support salaries based on data and that data um did not support
the 5% increase how and we don't have the data because it's been attempted twice and failed twice to redo the compensation classification plan um I in talking to the employees um I think that they understand that the uh interim Town
manager did make some strides in the fall town meeting to improve the sap allowing uh folks to be hired at a higher grade uh making some changes there that make us more an attractive workplace but the last kind of comment on that is that again just like there's
nothing special about Lunenburg facing financial difficulties this year there's nothing special about attract ing recruiting and retaining uh qualified Municipal Employees uh the name of the game in this business is poach from your neighbors who pay a little
less um all right so it Department uh Our IT department um is uh largely outsourced now to suar it um so there is one staff
uh member that does support uh them professionally uh and she also is responsible for all Communications so all of the social media website um any of those upgrades so there is an increase to 32 hours she already has
been working um increased hours under uh arpa funds uh and so this is to bring her permanently up to those hours um if we don't do that um you will see a reduction in that level of communication to the public um and uh some this here
there were a lot of internal lines that moved around things got moved uh from Central purchasing into it that belong in it and some items got moved out of it that don't belong in it but uh the total increase here is we are going to try to see if we can
reduce over the course of the year the number of days that our consultant is inhouse um he's here presently five days a week um almost like a staff member he feels very much like a staff member uh but we are going to try to see if we can
uh wean a little bit as we go forward down to four days a week have employees do some self-service on troubleshooting things themselves and uh see if we can l Clen that up um so under your we are increasing
the um line gotta get the paper sure um the expenses under it Department expenses I guess it's not a line that
section of the budget we're increasing by 166,000 yep and that does not include the position going fulltime no so the position so the position was already fulltime she was already over the the 19 hours but it's
just an increase in hours but um um the no so that is so up above you see a big reduction in um if are you looking at the detailed sheet yes I am okay perfect I always look at detail okay so you see a big reduction um the 79
,000 decrease yep in the salary that was our internal Network it administrator that you eliminated so that's eliminated okay um and then if you go down to contracted Services where you have that big increase of
134,000 it was um it was 25,000 it then got increased uh or budgeted to 66,000 mhm and so now the new contract is 159 but I believe that that's being souer right
now is being offset by arpa funds in this current fiscal year I believe no no no not with ARA funds um a portion of the contract yes previously for the first half of the year because we it sorry not not going forward no that's what I meant that's what I meant I meant that you're not
seeing total cost in that budgeted line this year because sar's contract is being supported by arpa for the present fiscal year yeah okay um and which line is that purchase of s or so it's that's contracted services so so the contract
for this year the total contract is 159 285 so that is the the cost it's not that is not there was an increase that's the cost that's the cost last year for fy2 the cost was actually
159 no so FY 26 no so FY 26 is 159 285 okay FY 25 budgeted was 25,000 right then it was increased to 66,0 203 but that does not include the arpa funds that are offsetting it okay
and that that's my question FY 26 is 159 and it's represent that way because ARA fund is not here but yes because my question was going to be what are the extra Services we are receiving but we are not it's just that line item was
offset by a different Revenue Source that's correct okay so okay that's so it I I just have just what are what is included on that contracted Services is there a way that
maybe afterwards we can get a a description of oh sure okay yeah it can be afterwards yeah because it's a it's a like overall this this department that we mostly contract out is now close to a half a million dollars
and and I just this is a good practice I think you know the contract at amount it's about 440,000 so it's just good to know what you're what you're getting for
this so but above that the the biggest part of that line is the 204 000 M and that's all the software contracts not the people contracts right so so you want a sub detail of the purchase services and the you want a sub detail
of I just want to know what are we buying for $442,000 got it because that line keeps increasing like even the purchase of service that you said the software it's in increasing by almost 20% correct that's so if I
could just get a breakdown of the what that is sure thank you all right next slide please so continuing on with General government uh we had about a $7,400 decrease to elections as it's not
a presidential election year and so the costs are substantially reduced um the the next line we reduced um architectural preservation District uh line by 4,500 this is a line that was recently created and is just not being
used uh so I think that if they have expenses um and they need to come forward we can discuss it but it's just it was another place to find that additional payment management line uh and last is Central purchasing so Central purchasing was its
own Standalone category as I stated previously it's been Incorporated up under General government um it it shows a small increase because here some of those items were moved out of this line to it where they really belong um and
all but it shows an increase if you look in the sublines it shows an increase because every single Department's postage has been moved into Central purchasing so there's instead of oh the treasurers running over in Postage and the town clerks running under and having
to transfer from one to the other it's just postage we just have a postage line now um I have a question sure I'm sorry no um one advantage of having postage uh under separate departments is that you could watch for different expenses on
different you know there are different departments that use postage more than others and they should um do you have a process for tracking that we do so our machine you have to put in your departmental code and so that a portions out the um departmental codes and then
if somebody is let's say not using the mail machine to put the postage John but they're using either like for the town meeting mailer we're using a mailing house or um going to the to the mail uh to to make certified a certified uh
mailing uh those will all still be accounted for from where they come how they come and get drawn from that line you have a plan I could have just said yes Anna I know I know running and monitoring those
detailed L reports that you pull for departments individual you're the one perfect so with the process the way it's currently happening every quarter we run a report from our machine who's using
what and um the payment to the company codes from Central purchasing but they have to transfer from their allines to the central purchasing line in order for the check to be distributed this cuts out the middle person but we're still monitoring the usage on the other end so
someone comes in they ordering 500 uh Christmas cards that were never there before we we're going to see they better not thanks all right so next up is police
um 2,434 77247 overall not a there's actually on the bottom of this balance sheet you'll see that there's a reduction here we know that that's not really a reduction to our police budget because again those
salary increases aren't living in the budget yet they're living in the salary Reserve um but just to reiterate uh we uh do have contract negotiations going on I am very close to formally announcing uh our permanent police chief
um and I believe that there will be um an adjustment there in salary we had talked about how there were two K9 handlers and only one was being compensated in accordance with The Fair Labor standards act so we are now compensating both um we did make small
decreases to training lines um the chief I think had the interim Chief had talked about um the Milo training program and he thinks that there's going to be some savings there with both being able to do things on shift and not having to backfill and not having to use as much
Munitions um and uh we did eliminate the motorcycle lease uh the motorcycle lease is set to expire in October um and it's already been paid through October so uh this was another area where I went around looking for funds to
restore the pavement management plan and uh this was an area that was decreased and then there was a small reduction in the overtime lines based on actuals what was the thought about the motorcycle was there any decrease in service things that they won't be able to do that they
they without it yeah so it can be useful um in some of the uh Community type events for traffic control um but it's not critical path and and so the this reduction was really
born from calling department heads and saying where can I cut where can I cut from your budget and this was proferred by the interim Chief okay next is fire which there's not a whole lot to say here uh but it's 1,744
$587.6 again to reiterate this does not include the proposal to a fourth shift 42-hour work week um I believe as we get through this town meeting and March on to FY 27 which I have said is going to start about May 15th maybe G give
ourselves a little bit time off but so in in in Earnest uh we will be starting the summer on the FY 27 budget and planning for that override I I would be very surprised to see that this isn't part of an override package is that fourth shift um and just uh a two lines
were combined here for flexibility between EMS Equipment and supply um you combined those two lines but you reduce the budget or the budget request there's a lot I don't think so
okay yep okay uh well I think I think it's the advised budget was 25,000 oh okay for one of the lines um so you combin to 34 but I I don't know so so the make
sure the chief is happy yeah he's he's good so sometimes the sometimes the revised budgets um are informative and predictive as what the next year's budget should be and sometimes it's really to cover some kind of outlier thing within a certain year and shouldn't be what we're basing our
ongoing budgeting from thank you okay I'm sorry one last question do you know when that uh fire when is the fire contract up for br negotiation not this year not up so I would imagine because they didn't just
finish and it has to be uh it has to be for FY 27 okay thank you um okay next up is other Public Safety uh this was formally called other protection
uh the total here is $368,900 it includes now Consolidated under other protection is the radio watch uh line uh that was a standalone category it also includes the Spectre of weights and measures Emergency
Management and animal control and the line that has been moved out uh is the building inspector who has been moved to land use under the general government line uh but there are no changes other than movements of things there are no changes
of note here uh I will comment actually I say that and then I changed my mind so we did accept into the I think last time I was before you presenting on the budget we were talking about uh Regional dispatch potentially accepting the community of Hudson and how that would positively impact the budget uh Hudson
has now been accepted into our regional dispatch agreement so instead of seeing an increase here we saw a pretty flat uh Bud for dispatch uh there is uh ongoing Communications within uh that group
about bringing on more communities but the right communities to uh make sure that we can continue to provide robust dispatch um but maintain uh fiscal conservancy and by bringing on those small towns who who maybe are running dispatch
inhouse all right next is uh education I don't have any real details here so please save those questions but uh the total education budget is 27 million $21,995
uh for FY 26 for the lunenberg public schools this is a total of $2,787 $787,500 th000 free cash transfer that we talked about so the 500,000 would be above and beyond
that to show um the growth the FY 25 Town manager recommended budget was $ 23,91606 there was the excuse me override of $948,000
44 and then at special town meeting um there was a small transfer of $31,800 so uh the increase that of $94,900 4,098 increase for
3.64% and the Monti Tech budget uh is 1,334 521 a pretty substantial increase at 8.88% for 8,875 okay Department of Public Works we did have some movements here uh some are
just name changes so Highway labor is now Highway Administration General Highway Maintenance is now Highway construction and maintenance we have snow removal traffic signs and devices vehicle maintenance the recycling program uh was formerly a standalone
category and has now been up under DPW uh as folks are aware the pay as you throw program supports the solid waste uh component of this budget and this is just the recycling only piece uh that's included in the operating uh we also
have cemetery and tree removal here um can I just make a you you went you're very fast on this good job um you made a comment and I just want to highlight that because I think this is a good budget practice for all line items that
you have a change you are showing from the original budget um to the FY 26 from fy2 from fy2 original budget original budget to FY 26 correct that's a really good practice I do understand why for uh the
school budget you change because it was an override that was Target y uh but generally speaking I think we should always show the budget from the original form that was voted at town meeting correct yeah so the school budget is the only budget that we're comparing against the modified budget because that really
those modifications were really theom encompassing the fy2 no just saying good budget practice um all right so if next slide so the total uh
Department of Public Works budget is 2,476 95329 as I have stated they um are out of contract uh so it does not represent any salary adjustments for the employees there um the
$550,000 pavement management line that was the amount that was originally um cut to zero um has been restored to 279,000 so why 279,000 well you'll see that the fy2 amount of chapter 90 funds
was 418,000 in change and we received notification that uh if if a bond bill is approved but it's looking like and sounding like from the newspaper articles that it will be that Lunen BG's chapter 90 amount for this year is
$69,900 and the budgeted amount level um but thankfully the state is supplying us some additional funds there uh the drainage line was increased by 15,000 uh again originally I had come before you saying that um we were going
to increase the snow and ice budget this year so that we're not trying to chase uh such a big uh Delta next year for closing out that deficit but uh We've brought it back down to level services to restore um some lines and there is a
small increase in the $5,000 to the fire vehicle uh line uh we are consider consistently having overruns in that line okay next slide is facilities and building a total of
1,673 19630 uh there is roughly $15,000 increase uh in utility and maintenance lines across uh the buildings um I will note that the uh school department is
planning to vacate TCP as of June 30 and we reive 27 ,000 in revenue from um the school department for use of that structure um and now that that no longer are going to be using it we are no longer going to be seeing that revenue
and that Revenue directly supports facilities so we have supplemented by the same amount uh within the operating budget so there's not a decrease there um where does did that money used to go to in terms of facility did it offset
the budget revolving or do we have a revolving um account for facilities $27,000 yeah it goes into a revolving fund and then what happens at year end if there's a deficit in the facilities
line for those buildings we could do a transfer um because it's a direct one to one for relationer was the was that revolving account exclusively used because of the income coming from uh TCP correct is that revolving account going to go away now no there's still a small
amount of income um the pay the P um access committee are still using that building okay as as of right now as far as on my way oh they are okay we have no place for them to go right now yeah revolving accounts they don't fall under a lot of revision from to meeting or
here so it's really it's a it can be a good tool and it can be a tool of Doom um so you know it's just important anyway so that's why I asked sorry nope good questions um and then there was a $10,000 increase on our Landscaping
contract next slide we have a new category called uh Human Services there uh were uh other categories that have been Consolidated that were Standalone categories into this so Human Services is a total of $478,900 Board of Health admin and Board
of Health cost nishoba health which is our outsourced Health provider Again by being part of that program huge costs saver for the community and nooba nursing uh then there is another new subcategory called entitled special
programs that was formally called I think it was social services or hold on one sec eie you can jump in if you know right off the top of your hand uh let me see it was not on your
street uh assistance public assistance so Public Assistance is now special programs uh and that includes the Council on Aging and veteran services and if you go to the next slide we can talk about those changes there uh Council of Aging has an increase of $3
31,5 46 this supports increasing one position up to uh an increase up to 36 hours and the two kitchen assistants that were being supported by the uh formula grant which cannot be supported by the formula
grant have been brought into the operating budget uh there was a 10h hour a week position of part-time Outreach uh worker that has been eliminated um the thought here is that that position um can function uh with volunteers um based
on what they're doing and a small increase to programs $3,000 this is in line with what Deb asked for correct and Deb uh Deb and I had discussions about how to make this work and it was through mutual uh agreement that the part-time Outreach worker elimination was the best
way to make this kind of all work so was a person eliminated or just a position so uh the person uh and the position were eliminated uh the person was planning to retire anyways in the fall so uh but we did talk if she changes her
mind how there's other opportunities within the organization where we can we can find a home so she actually likes minutes so just saying she really likes drafting minutes can you just lose a minutes oh I've lost I've lost a whole executive
assistant so no but just on minutes I think one of the minutes oh uh yeah Andrea MRA Toro I think she was supporting Parks Commission so we did talk about that uh 10 hour a week job for her I we pitched it
okay okay so the full-time meal site I it's just salary staff it's probably the 44,000 and and um okay I mean makes sense oh okay I was just reviewing okay and then the veteran services benefit
line was reduced by $ 22,277 uh this is not reducing any chapter 115 benefits that any of our veterans are actually receiving and does leave us enough room for um in the case that an additional person qualifies for
benefits or moves into the community and if there's a whole host of folks that we need to account for that we're not we'll have to do an adjustment at a future time but uh based on Trends I think that we will be fine there making that reduction and that's in line with the
request uh so she she knew in advance of making her presentation to you that I was cutting that line and so there's just I mean you don't have anybody who's us utilizing the chapter 115 benefits they're just sitting there and they turn back to free cash or become a place for
transfers also this is one of the lines that gets mostly refunded to the town just um was we get reimbursed yes we do get so we not only do we get reimbursed but we're also turning back funds from
this line right why not um manage some of these accounts through like um um a revolving account and I just cruised them but because that way you can set up a line item that you think it's going to be the one that you use and then there
is an builtin I think it's because I believe and I don't know if eie knows but I think it's because of the delay in the reimbursement is a number of months behind I don't know if you know that is that um yeah so I don't typically see any other towns that have a revolving
fund for veteran benefits I think like Jen just said there's a delay in the reimbursement it could be several months and you don't want a deficit spend on a revolving account um here you appropriate and the any U reimbursement goes back into the general fund which is
essentially where it's coming from anyway okay thank you although just to your general revolving fund questions there have been conversations that are not ready for prime time about ambulance receipts revolving accounts so I I not that someone brought this up a few
months ago all all right the next you can fund this fire department like the first year just with money that's floating up there the next slide is uh culture and recreation again this is a new category um that consolidates
several uh categories up inside of it uh it's total budget of $39,375 request and then what I gave uh the library versus what the interim Town manager had provided for a figure so to be clear on that this uh the library
does include 100 extra floating hours for the library director to use uh as as warranted but does not include the additional $118,000 a year position to cover the teen room and the historical commission uh has been reduced by $2,000
which is more in line with actual expenditures again if there's a need we can find a source I just want to make a comment when the uh Library director was here and he asked for the extra librari and the librarian assistant he said you know generally speaking they just want
to have three people there so you know like we just we just get to you know know exactly I think when they're there they're uh people usually serve in multiple functions not like we are not funding the team room is my point
correct and thank you for clarifying that because that's that matters you yes it does matter so we are um for those in the public that uh don't know about libraries we have a required minimum Aid requirement where we have to uh support the library at a certain level or else
we do not uh qualify for the CW Mars program for inter Library loans and we are we are well above that minimum here in Lunenburg yes we are um so culture and recreation does not include Recreation contrary to the
[Laughter] but facilities which you would never believe includes Recreation [Laughter] does uh all right next up is maturing debt uh we've talked about this a little
bit uh we have a decrease of $393,100 bance out the remainder of the budget but of that reduction $244,500 inside debt and excluded debt outside debt okay and the $2.5 million is the amount of principal and interest
associated with that debt for this year for this year correct all right next is another new category called intergovernmental assessments I'm going to stop on this one for a minute and talk about
um the sheet that is typically included you don't have it in your packets but the sheet that is typically included uh in your handout so when uh folks get to and I'm sure there was good reason that it was done this way so I'm not being critical of it I'm just saying I'm
changing it so when you get to the page uh the last page of the the handout it has a total Omnibus figure on it and then if you were to SLP flip to the next page you have a revenue and expenditure apportionment which is very small that's
at town meeting you you don't have this in front of you this is in your usual books this is in your your town meeting handout what wasn't living inside the Omnibus budget that is sizable that was living on that other sheet is the Wester County Retirement so that was living
outside the Omnibus budget for some reason I have brought that directly into the Omnibus budget and it is now inside intergovernmental assets so um that is a substantial line uh it it will look as
though there is a substantial increase to the total Omnibus but it's not it's just that there was it was outside of the total Omnibus um so the total that line
alone is uh uh 2,392 572 um so last year it was2 milon $127,800 and that was never in that
bottom Omnibus figure so the increase here is uh $264,700 [Music] all current uh employees no uh all all retirees all retirees okay from town and school from town and
school did you have a question it went up 12% did you say so I think that eie you can correct me if I'm wrong I think that there was a standard of the Wier County Retirement was going up 10% every year um and then uh Governor Baker
had signed uh a one-year Cola a couple years back and they pulled all the member communities and it was going to affect retirees for that year only but we have to pay back the addition for like 15 some odd years or and so that's why it's above 10% I believe does that
sound accurate I believe it's going to go keep going through 2029 they have to reach a certain threshold to recruit for a onetime adjustment for retirees but
moving on um so this intergovernmental uh line also includes uh the state assessments the cherry sheet assessments and uh the massachusett region Regional Planning Commission assessment which was formerly under General government
unclassified which we will now move on to so General government unclassified it now includes wher uh workers compensation unemployment compensation employee reti insurance and liability insurance there have been a number of
items that we've discussed um previously but just to go over that have been removed from this line so physicals Town reports that uh montachusett Regional planning assessment historical commission band concerts Reserve fund and salary Reserve funds so those have all been moved out uh the total budget
for General government unclassified for FY 26 is 4,177 n13 um it's been pretty uho loudly broadcast that our health insurance increase was 14.84% that line has not you'll notice
increased proportionally we have about a 7% increase there and the reason why is because this was one of those areas where there was uh an intentional buffer to uh Supply transferability um and to um allow for
certified free cash so that that's my belief I I didn't talk to the former Town manager but that is my strong belief that this is typically how that line is budgeted with some extra room for those um for those reasons um so we are reducing that room uh substantially
by by not increasing this line uh proportionately uh Medicare we have a $24,000 increase here slight decrease uh in workers compensation and again I do want to thank the former Town manager for negotiating on general liability
insurance because we had a rate guarantee and we have 0% increase for our general liability insurance the last item can I ask a question yes why uh do you know is there a reason why we call out the school retirement health insurance in
particular or is it on the I don't yeah it just practice of the Town yeah I yeah I don't have a I don't have a good reason why on the on the detailed sheet that that's maybe it could have been just to try to show how costs are a portioned um what the town absorbs on
behalf of it's not like we we don't assess though the school for that if that was okay um I have a question so I know the previous full-time Town manager budget practice for health insurance of current employees used to be that I
believe she would budget everyone for the most expensive um maybe that's that's what I thought it was budget I don't I don't know I can't tell to be completely honest by looking at the um the formulas
and datas that she had prepared on this particular budget line what the thought process was okay so so what my question is what is your budg okay so good question so uh what we did is we started with actuals what are our actuals um and
then we did the 14.84% on those actuals and uh I think we assumed I want to say it was five roughly five additional family plans coming on which would be those most expensive ones uh but five additional family plans coming on so
whether there's somebody who might be uh getting married or having a family or just new to the community or coming off of their parents health insurance um we have room for roughly five additional folks I think that on this particular line because I don't have a firm
understanding of how it was budgeted in the past this is one that I have marked out of we need to closely monitor this and see how this line actually operates for next year's budget especially uh as we are considering the override for next
year because we have been told that the percent increase is likely to be the same or roughly the same so we're looking at those double- digigit um increases uh roughly 15% again next year could be worse uh and so where we have
contracted this kind of that buffer we're going to want to make sure that we are fully understanding how this operates to project out for FY 27 and Beyond okay I have a few more questions uh why did you choose five and what is the total number of current employees
using uh the program well there's there's a number of different plans um I I can get you the report on why did you choose five versus 10 just because I don't think we're having that with people coming on and people going off it's just an estimate for
it relatively arbitrary but I think it's a reasonable estimate of how many additional family plans you might get and plus if somebody comes on and they don't take a family plan like myself I don't take a family plan so um it's not a net net what is the total number of employees we have using uh or health
insurance yeah I'd have to get you that that we have reports on them and it changes every month so all right let me put that on my the my only comment about the choosing the five some more arbitrary and I do appreciate that your first year and you're making note that you're going
to be you know monitoring closely is that the parameter that you want to use to be consistent so that for in the future years you know if you need to use change the parameter or not oh sure yeah so versus no yeah we I think that this is one that we need to really dial in on especially because this is the largest
driver of the town uh budget is health insurance this is the largest uncontrolled driver of our budget we don't have a whole lot that we can do about it um and so and we've been told that it's only going up um so this is
one that for any discussion of an override we need to really be projecting out um we don't want to just keep getting oursel in the same situation over and over again but I'm happy to get those uh report numbers too um izy and I'm calling him izy because you guys call him Izzy he's raising his hand you
can say Hey you guy of the quter um does answer to anything so I have the health insurance projector up in front of me um it varies from month to month but it um the lowest has been including School 531 employees the highest 5
and 540 so that's the that's the range of number of employees on the plans um you know depending on the plan okay and I understand the way that the school so this is one area where uh for active
employees the school handles um that portion of the budget within their budget and the town does not um so it'll only when it comes to retirees that they get lumped together but I understand the way the school budgets this line is by actual head count very ve they they
budget the line extremely tight on actual head count yes I think is that accurate Mr chairman sorry I just caught you off guard okay I I do believe I do believe that the school from what I've heard budgets by head count yeah so obviously
we need to understand to model this going over the next few years like you talked about correct but we honestly we need to deal with how to get this down and in the dreaded private sector health insurance does not get better every year for employee or even stay the same so so
the the the health insurance is not getting better for employees so or St same it's and it's not staying the same for employees so that 14 so we have a 75 25% split the uh the the uh amount
that's coming out of the employees checks for their health insurance is increasing by the 14.84% this year so they they probably are getting a net reduction in take-home pay um based on this increase but that's just premiums
what I'm saying is that you got um out of pocket maximums for co- insurance and co-payments we need to look at high deductible plans we need to look at how to get this under control so yeah we have already discussing with um so we
have uh Maya is our current uh Health Care insurance provider so but in between us and Maya uh that we have a broker that works for the town uh they don't work for Maya they work for us um and we have already looked at the high
deductible and it's looking like that's not going to save money in fact it's going to do the opposite we've looked at if we do a plus one plan and um and shift some folks to a plus one plan and off of a family plan and while that is
great for the particular employees who have a plus one plan it's horrible it it sends the family plans going the completely wrong way um sends those opposite the problem here with health insurance is ultimately um a national
problem um and it is uncontrolled unregulated health insurance market and right now the the costs are are largely being driven by gp1 drugs in this year so this is this is the effect of gp1 drugs and
uh reductions in co-pays uh or reductions uh that doctors are are receiving so they're increasing their costs to make sure that they profit so this is there there's not many options for health insurance um
the the Maya is the biggest um there's also the group insurance commission um that is an option for municipalities um it is an extremely cumbersome um plan to administer that
would probably uh require additional staff to administer the plan uh and some of what had hoped to be some Alternatives the smaller groups um are starting to fold so if we have over 500 people on
this I don't how many employees we have in town to me that says that most people are choosing lunenberg Insurance over their spouse's Insurance it depends like it if you if you don't have a family if you have a
spouse or an adult children it makes more sense financially to each carry which is what I do each carry your own health insurance so it is more cost effective for us each to carry our own plan than for either of us to car carry a single
family plan it's this is this is the biggest driver and there are not a whole heck of a lot of answers here um until with outside of healthcare reform and regulation that will control some of these
costs I I never accept that there's no I'm an engineer we solve problems right I I just want to say that like we have to attack this problem all avenues all means by which to get this under control or we're either going to be doing prop two and a half overrides every single
year or we're going to eventually realize that we can't afford the answer here is beyond the confines of the borders of Lunenburg is what I'm suggesting that the answers to the health insurance are well beyond lunenberg borders this is largely being
driven Again by not only gp1s but it is largely being driven by prescription drug costs um that are Skyrock right I I think I think again we've got to study this in this off year on how to get this under control as a high
priority and one other thing is we got to stop hiring people if we can Outsource I think that we will look at this I just want to be clear that I don't think that there's going to be a
very Rosy solution at the end of it I I understand I just it I mean it's killing the schools it's killing the town the municipal side right it's killing the town everywhere though everywhere across the country I mean this is this is not
this is well beyond lunenberg well beyond L Massachusetts this is crippling to everyone I just know from my own perspective my co-pays my limit on copays is astronomically higher than it used to be and I have not heard that
we're looking to do that here and that gets you towards those that use it pay more than those that don't use it and we also do have I just want to not everybody's aware of this but we do have uh the Public Employee um the PEC and so that is a contractual agreement they
have to agree this cannot be a unilateral management decision I looked in the teachers contract I saw no mention of the it's not in the teachers contract it's a separate agreement between the PEC and the community I'll I'll I'll share that though I will I will share that with fincom because I
would like to understand like how all the contracts play together with that PEC I would like to understand okay y also I just want to state that our re our recruitment hiring retention is this does not seem to fit in line of how we
want to have people work for the town of lunenberg if we're like not going to offer good health insurance and if this is the same across other communities which I know that it is is like we're going to Outsource these positions instead of hiring Town positions I would
prefer that all the town be outsourced I I don't know why I would rather not hire employees employees cost a lot of money out of control the it is a great example of anyway to respond back to Outsourcing 100% of the staff um it is a great
example of what how you get a better service by Outsourcing a service it is a good example than hiring it in in house it is a good example of that Building Commissioner is not fire is not police is not any uh treasure collector is not I understand
everything I understand it can't be everything yeah but I mean so for example we do have a landscaping contract right so under that Landscaping contract we're not using either Parks or grounds people to do that that work that is a costs saver by by something like
that so uh there are a lot of communities that do that all inhouse if if I may totally unrelated to the current conversation but somewhat related to health insurance um I know you mentioned a few times that the in part the increasing cost in healthc care
is largely being um driven by uh semaglutide medications um I I don't know that for a fact I I do believe that you're likely correct um you know there were a time in the early 2000s that health insurance costs were largely
driven by increases by Viagra um and now we have something else um it is likely that that medication will become more widely available that's going to be GNA level off that medication is it's it's helping a lot of people a lot of people with diabetes is using and they're
living Better Lives healthier lives and people that are using for other purpose also they're having better lives so there is a value to that it's just you know good old capitalism that right now the resources are very limited you know uh you know resources yeah so there's no
generics yet every manufacturer has a proprietary uh device right so so we just you know this is a health related increase and and it is helping a lot of people I just don't want to I just want to for the benefit of
lunber I don't want anyone to be listening to this and think that there's some shame associated with being on that medication which it should not so I'm going to go out and in full transparency say I am a proud user of a glp1 uh medication wonderful that's great and so
but I I it is I mean when our I'm saying it because when our insurance company came out and they gave us kind of the flyer that they're because they're getting the insurance compan is getting screamed at a c it's okay so when they give us the flyer this is like the number one thing is that the doctors are
increasing the cost to make sure they're still taking home their net revenue and then the number two bullet is the glp1 drive you know like I said thousand was Viagra right you know it's just how it goes it's it's it's good old capitalism that's all all right and then the last
item this one still is living so this is one that was living outside of the uh Omnibus Budget on that sheet that lives behind the ominous budget the revenue expenditure sheet uh for accounting purposes it's still going to live there
um and that's tax title at 30,500 and there's uh no changes there so that is the conclusion of the FY uh 206 budget hopefully now if the house does
something and we get more money because then I think we revisit it before town meeting but unless anything changes this is where we're at thank you thank you is there any qu other questions from the board I know we asked them as we went went
through um I had a couple questions go ahead Jay the wrrs assessment Regional Transportation and Mass Bay Transportation what are those oh on our state assessments hold
on what's wrs BO are you on page nine yeah you are so softspoken that every time you talk cre to hear you so the wrrs
assessment that's um that's wer County Regional retirement system okay and then um the mass Bay Transportation assessment so that comes off our cherry sheet um I'm thinking it's an MBTA I I
have to find out I'm thinking it's because of our proximity to the MBTA locations Community locations it's non-discretionary they take it off our cherry sheet but I'm happy to find out exactly what it's for money well spent it takes me two hours to take the tea into the airport
but we should be assessed for that so we'll supplement on exactly I it has I'm sure it has to do I I I don't know if every commun what I don't know is does every community in commo have to pay an assessment into the MBTA I would think no but you never know um but uh
I'm thinking it has proximity to uh the two Commuter Rail stations right so that has to do with a commuter rail I believe so but I'm going to so I I don't want to speak out a turn but I believe so it was not related to lar Transportation I don't believe
so excuse me I just I just looked it up it's for um like you just mentioned it's the distance between Rail stations bus stations and is the general zoning just the distance where you're at between General and VTA Transportation
sites the fitzburg my wife's grandfather Pitsburg detective iif okay and one other question on F charges in the
DPW fuel charges in the DPW I not go be able to go that granular with you but we'll see that's dpws towards the end page six [Music] maybe H6 all right fuel charges are you
looking under Cemetery no under police and fire you um increase fuel charges like under Fire you we went from 25,000 up to 32,000 under police you went from 15,000
up to 18,000 why are we increasing that when the cost of fuel is down now and historically it's never gone like a buyer has never gone over 30,000 I'm put it up to 32 the price of fuel is way down right
now let me look at the actuals actually let me talk to the department heads I'm not prepared to go that granular and I don't want to speak off the cuff on fuel charges okay okay so I'll supplement okay thank you
yep is there anything else um the assessment you put the state assessment there is there the in terms of tuition is that the balance of the calculation or is that like the net the Delta between the assessment and you know
because they have two lines when you look at a cherry sheet on the website so that's just the that's the just the assessment it's not the balance okay the the other part comes in um on the revenue side okay yeah this is yeah so
this is how we offset for those assessments right right I I was just but it's not that it's not the uh net wondering where I was going to see the if it was here like the school does the circuit breaker on their budget which
is any I'm just trying to follow the budget practices all right um in the beginning you said there's no good time to make these switches I I would actually argue that maybe upon you coming on board might be the best time
to do it so and really I mean this is something that the finance director who also this is his first full budget I mean he has been really driving this consolidation practices so okay and I think it's more logical in the way it's laid out it's not a 100% maybe but I I
would be supportive of that I know it's to to folks the biggest concern I think that I've heard raised is that for folks who are going to town meeting and who are not following along to all of these meetings that when they get there how are they going to be able to watch the
budgetary trend lines over time and so that's what I'm hoping to be able to illustrate in the other document is how how those Trends even though they've moved how you can still follow the overall trend okay makes sense all right
so we do have a habit of allowing the public a quick um question or two if there's anything either online or in the room um related to the final Town manager's budget and again reminder name and
address uh John Bowen 162 Highland Street um I just I wanted I wanted to basically make a a relatively simple but complex uh comment okay um the town manager is not incorrect about the difficulties right
and the cuts and so on and so forth okay but the needs what are the needs okay now you had talked about Mr chairman about uh the grant writer that you're very upset that they got rid of that well I found
$50,000 because you want to run a pilot to test it that's called the capital plan there's an item right now in the capital plan that's going to put paint over tape on a Cemetery Road where the cemetery commission has
$96,000 in this s of lots fund that they want to hold on to to gather 1.8% interest for a year they even took out of the omnus Omnibus yeah I'm going to say that right this year Omnibus budget they're going to take they they decided
that they're not going to take their annual $10,000 from that that they put on the warrant out of that this year but then they come here for $50,000 okay they're also taking $50,000 uh the DPW wants $50,000 to do
the rehab in the North Cemetery that has no topography map okay so there's problems that have no plan and we're just going to hand out money the other issue is is the $50,000 requested for the pavement paint over tape striping
whatever he's doing you know with tar I mean I'll go over there with a cocking gun and building cocking it's pretty cheap do you know what I mean it's the same stuff deals with the same heat and friction of cement so you know it doesn't make any sense okay that's not
fiscally responsible that item was entered in by coder in December $50,000 and says oh yeah we'll just throw this 50,000 here cuz we can and then in January and February we say oh but we need money over here and money over here and then Jay mentioned at the
capital plan the other night and said what's this uh I had a crack seal done on my road how come my road hasn't been paved yet well why are we paving the cemetery that was Jay's comment why are we paving the cemetery and we're not Paving the roads that people drive on
that was his comment that people go to work and provide tax money to this town okay the cemeteries need an entire revamping just as an aside okay they need an entire revamping if you remember my presentation that I gave I itemized a
number of different things $532,500 okay in my presentation okay that the cemeteries need which are all Band-Aids these are all Band-Aids these are not items that are in there they have they want to do this little light
project they have a $50,000 light project to light up the flag posts you know what I mean uh to light up the veterans areas you know those are the things that we should be spending money on that's a permanent cost for a project to be completed and done done to light the signs up before outside each
Cemetery to light the flag poles up okay adequately and provide electricity to that okay which also gives electricity within close proximity to the cemetery to be able to hook up electrical apparatus which it does not have at the moment so I mean that is a $50,000 need
right there okay why are we not spending it on that permanent fixture instead we're going to spend $50,000 on crack seal for what that doesn't make any sense and just as an aside okay any other expenditures okay
that are necessary or needed are to go to the places where the town's people utilize to bring money here you want pavement done you do pavement on the road just like Jay said and I can't support that anymore the other thing is
you need 50,000 for your pilot program take that Capital plan item of $50,000 okay and get that grant writer and have the town manager set up a program and get it kickstarted in July she has three months to put it together she's smart enough she's good enough she
can put that together and take care of that business and then we can have board start to apply I think it was your wife that said it carara manad said it uh at the last meeting that no board should be given any money in this town until they have first exhausted all applications
for Grants all applications for donations all monies that do not come out of tax money okay and that is a valid thing to do when it comes to fiscal responsibility let's stop spending money okay and make these
boards do what they're supposed to do to make them accountable because what we're doing here is we're allowing boards to just act Rogue and do whatever they want make a vote here for 50,000 there were two votes today at the cemetery commission they don't have a right to
vote for that money to use it they don't have the money yet it hasn't been given to them yet but they went and made a vote we want we're going to vote $50,000 to be able to do the upper North Cemetery area but you didn't get the money yet we're going to make a vote to
do $50,000 for crack seal you don't have the money yet and you're making votes let's make people accountable let's make these boards accountable and let them find the money before coming to the taxpayer thank you so I will um I will just say on that that I think the
$50,000 request for the cemetery is kind of a strange one and we talked about it at Capital planning that it is kind of a capital planning item that lives outside the capital plan so I think we I will address that maybe when we get to voting on warrants and in that sort of thing
because that one is kind of sitting weird with me um and I don't know the history in but Glen McLoud 436 res V Road I just wanted to give a little perspective as far as being um a retiree from the Wier Regional retirement system that when
they if if we are awarded a cola raise it is on the first $116,000 of the pension so if if wer Regional does issue uh a colif a 2% that equates to about 25 or
$26 a month on my um pension and so that's just another issue to to to consider when uh these discussions of healthcare come in it also affects the you know the retirees
and we're essentially on what we all hear is a a fixed income and it's it's a lot different being on a fixed income than hearing someone talking about fixed income thank you very much thank you thank you all right
um TJ okay okay is there somebody online is there any questions online I I don't see any hands raised there one hand up there Ison oh Mandy maybe see one unless that's the cursor likeand I don't see
any hand I think it's the cursor oh is it yeah yeah that is a hand it looks like a hand it is a hand it's just a cursor hand yeah yellow usually yeah if there's anyone online that maybe Mandy if you had a comment and you want
to make then you can come off mute and do it otherwise we just have a cursor over you okay C okay I just got a phone a friend that there's not all right okay so we're
going to go a little out of order just um for the sake of um the citizens petition as well as as Brian coming up for school board um and I want to give a little context um so we don't get a lot
of citizens petitions that have monetary um uh implications um and and maybe if we ever do they're pretty straightforward like I want $1,000 to you know put a bench somewhere or
something just making something up um but this year we have a Citizens petition for over $2 million for a proposition two and a half override so I kind of went through town manager into Council and I asked the
question and I I'll just read it kind of verbatim here is the finance committee required to hold a public hearing on the petitioned override question um and the answer that was given is not a hearing on the override appropriation per se but pursuant to
statute even more so Lunen BG's Charter the finance committee is obligated to quote hold a public hearin on the proposed operating budget as submitted and further to quote consider in open public meetings the detailed
expenditures proposed for each Town agency uh c town Charter section 66a 66b in as much as the override appropriation will impact the budget the finance committee should certainly consider the
same as part of its financial review prior to town meeting but a dedicated P you know hearing is on the override appropriation itself isn't required so that last sentence wasn't really the question I was asking so um with that
answer I did reach out to TJ who is the citizen petitioner that can be your new name in town um and and just kind of relayed this to him uh there's kind of a lot of questions because typically uh a proposition two
and a half override would have followed maybe a little bit more of what we did last year with a lot of back and forth a little bit of two budgets being worked simultaneously um any any budget adjustments that were deemed um prudent
by the school committee and the superintendent would have been deducted along the way um so to me this is kind of a tough a tough situation we find oursel in to to you know to review this budget but we are where we are there is a warrant
article that has been properly put on the on the warrant um and what I've asked TJ to do is is to come and and present you know the the quote unquote um detailed expenditures proposed for
each Town agency in this case it be the the school department um and through the school committee so um TJ is definitely responsible um I've put in those two documents that uh the one that you sent and then Brian sent me one uh which was
the uh final detailed budget from the from the school the only thing I did on that they're both in the in the SharePoint um I sent you the links the only thing I did on that was I
added a column that um took the level service budget or the two and a half budget and subtracted the budget from the town manager requested budget to show where the Deltas were so
if you if we got kind of go through that it's just a highlight as to um where the Deltas are now I did get from Dr gillson the final budget um and I sent that off to you guys today so there may be some
minor discrepancies in the one file that Brian sent I'm not sure um because I did receive that other one from Dr Gilson I would assume they're reflective of what uh Dr Burnham spoke to us last week about um so for this
article I guess what I'm saying is that the town manager's budget is what is approved by the school committee and what is has been presented to us so this is really dealing with the Deltas to that that arrive at the the
two million and some change numbers I have a question the the one that Dr Gilson sent today is just the approved school committee budget is that correct um yes okay yep that was that would be what was presented to us last week with
um last minute fixes we know we get into this part of the year changes happen rapid and spreadsheets you know get out of date and UNL and formula errors and stuff like that so Dr Gilson should reflect the
um what we what was reviewed last week right but TJ is only um addressing the override budget which is the one that had um that was sent I think from in March 6 that has all the different colors and
addressing the and it's the one I sent today is the one we should be using okay because that's the one that ran sent to me is that all clear to everyone all right so with that TJ I'll
turn it over to you had to say my name and address I guess not because you're officially great love it first time ever um so I'm hoping this is relatively simple um I'll just give some context I think to what you said too is um
the override that I filed as a citizen is a very very simple override um it is the subtraction the difference of the level service budget from the town manager approved budget um so the school
committee put these two numbers out they approved the town manager budget and what's left is the difference right um it's as simple as that so what to me that signals is that the schools have said you know we all you know me and and
a bunch of others including finance committee last year school committee last year select board said last year's level service we couldn't support but we came up with a budget we could support and now this year that budget we all
fought hard for last year is this year's level service that's how it carries over right so when we say we're cutting this year we're basically saying we're going to upend last year's level service so
effectively all the override is is let's fight for and try to fund the level service that we all fought for and tried to fund last year so it just takes that difference and brings it up to the top
so it's there is no other math there was no other calculation except the two values from the school committee that they approved and that's what I put in the override and I do think for context um I
do think the process by which the override was filed this year is different than the file the process last year so those negotiations that I was a part of and watched the whole time um was really trying to figure out how we
could how we could reduce the amount of money we needed in various ways so bringing in arpa money um bringing in other money from other ways U making trade-offs in the budget line items this override is not even close to that type
of negotiation free cash is that which I don't think has gone to that level of negotiation either but this override is not that type of negotiating to pull money from other areas of the budget it's not trying to get grant money from
anywhere it is very simply do the taxpayers want to bring the cuts from where they are today back to level service and restore all positions and all expenses that the school saying they can't
afford it's as simple as that Chris I I'm sorry I don't think I I have an email from you and I have the version from 36 the budget it's in the um sent one today it did want get it you're saying is it email or is it on
the folder I sent an email and then there's a link to the um the material the materials in the sh point oh okay there is an attachment on that no I have one email from you that
has um an attachment with a spreadsheet and and that one does not include the override I do have the one that was sent on 36 I don't know if there's any difference from that this is March this March
12th yeah I don't have that the four documents that were submitted were the colored four diagrams that compared Town budget with level service funding the spreadsheet that the chair from the school committee sent over the
Personnel cuts and the expense cuts okay okay so I did review the The increased budget so I have some questions I don't know if you will be able to answerer them but if you're not I'll just send email to superintendent later or you know whatever the group um
has um and in the beginning of the conversation of the override um there was an a conversation about where the increases are coming from what triggered to be so off you know like generally speaking year-over-year budgets tend to
be pretty stable um and on those conversations it's been represented that um I guess this is a [Music] berer um and your the information that you they you shared with me because you also shared some information with me
um was a lot different than what Mandy had posted um on and one in particular was I don't know what this line includes on the increases which was the special
education it's not clear to me you say special education and you had a total some of the information you gave me that was like five million or something and Mandy said on her information that shared was um increas in U outside tuition so my question is very do you
know what specific lines are is that increase of uh 600,000 so yeah I think we should be careful right like I am a citizen right and me sharing information about the increase in cost for special education
is really just me doing that math the override is actually IR relevant to that math that I did and posted on Facebook for instance right all right so I don't want to deal with Facebook and man's data I want to deal with two pieces of information that's right that which is
officially in front of us right that this is the way that the process needs to play out is that that the data that's in front of us what was that oh the data that's in front of us has to be the spreadsheet and only the
spreadsheet because that's what's supplied to us as the um the detailed budget okay um I think it's very fair at this point then to start scrutinizing every change from the FY 25
to the FY 26 level because some of these you know percent percentage increases are you know over 100% right there's there's some significant increases on this and there was really no no deliberation within the school committee
on the level service budget all the deliberation to date has been on the town manager budget so I think we owe it to the taxpayers to kind of scrutinize the $2 million number here as does the school committee if this is going to go
forward to the um um you know to the warrant and stay on the warrant the only way it can't go on the warrant is for the petitioner TJ to say I'm going to pull it um I I do kind of want to
say that's fair for you to to ask for that I I do question I guess if an override wasn't filed does that mean the finance committee and other Town departments would not have looked at the line item
budget differences between level services and the currently proposed Town budget if what if if I didn't file this override would that budget have not been analyzed line by line to see the differences in the impact of the schools on the level service from Level service to town
manager yeah on the school because that's effectively just the difference from last year this year right so effectively to say like the school committee didn't discuss the level service budget it's impossible not to discuss the level service budget because the town manager budget is the level
service budget minus the the cuts so they effectively were always talking about the level service budget if if there were no two and a half override the town would have to come out of town meeting with a balanced budget right and with the numbers of $2 million at the
table here that wouldn't have been made up any other way other than some external funding sources either a two and a half override that we Levy to the levy limit or um some kind of Grants or you know notice of you know something
else right um this whole budget process is is really about scrutinizing the budget which is why the charter is is written that way um the way we do it is we hear from departments for their requested budgets yep uh schools is
somewhat different because um they have a school committee that controls their budget by law um on the town side the town manager and the select board also weigh in on the the um on the municipal side of um the budget so so yes I I
think what is due the taxpayer is that the requested value in the warrant is actually needed um so I mean I had questions specific to some of the line items on the level service budget it doesn't sound
like I hear you you know you're you're not part of the school committee you trust your school committee to have analyzed and done so so I will reserve my questions you know to a not to you how's that yeah thank you and I think I
think that is kind of what I'm suggesting is the foundation that I'm basing my math off of is trusting that the school committee has reported and presented to you all a true level
service number and a true Town manager budget number that they approved and as long as those are true then my override number should be accurate so one caveat to that is the budget that we are
presented here and discussed is not a level service budget is the Ser is the budget that they brought to us so we don't really go out and and and look at every possible budget that it could be you know similar to the town manager and
her several departments they come in with a budget we can ask you know are you funding pay V or not we can ask those questions but ultimately we are only talking about the budget that's in our hands so yes when the school committee came when the superintendent came on behalf of the school committee
and presented the budget it was presented the budget that is the town manager at three whatever percent it is yes we didn't look into the service service level and discuss that service level and discuss if we have questions
or not which to me right suggest if the if the school committee can present a budget that's decreasing by $2 million I would assume the finance committee would want to understand the impact of said budget and understand the
cause of the impact which is effectively what you're asking me now so I would say so I know you don't want to ask those questions but if they for ex I mean some of these things are a little more nuanced than that so there are estimates that go into it that is you know
movement of they moved athletic expenses they're now there and they're not like there's so much conversation to be had I don't I don't think I I I I'm not sure I would be discussing a budget that where no one is voting for but generally
speaking the school committee has reported what is their plan to do which was they're going to submit they want to this budget they approved this budget they know there's some more free cash coming likely if to meeting approves and they had a conversation with select
board about exploring a override for next year that is what they reported to us and that's that's it so I no and I understand right to ask me for instance what the increase in special education cost is which you don't have to answer I
was goingon to ask if you knew if you don't know what it is I'm just using it as an example discuss the override is you know that number is baked into the math of the override okay that that's and so because the
finance committee was presented with by I think twice by the superintendent with the town manager budget that got approved effectively they they showed you all the increase in the special education cost they showed you the increase in the transportation cost they
showed you the increase in the health insurance cost because it's baked into that budget if you didn't ask about it to understand where those costs came from that's a separate thing that I don't think is related to the override and I'll just say these words this is
not I think you Ed these words when I was talking to you it's not an override budget this is the level service budget I didn't add anything to any budget there's nothing changed for the override this was the
school department themselves said this is what we have today this is what we're losing and here's the budget we came up with to accommodate no this is quite clearly the override budget by law this is what goes into prop two and a half to raise the limit the money has to get
dedicated only to this cause there's contingency funds that are being assigned Revenue sources that are up in the air associated with this to go into town meeting with this budget with this
override against what the town manager's budget which is the entire the entirety of what we've prepared for and annual town meeting for um this clearly is the prop two and a half override and it has second order effects that we've got to
deal with we're we're taking free cash to give additional money to the schools this year if this doesn't go through that now means that free cash won't go over there uh there's a lot of permeations on this so which I was told the school committee was going to handle those permutations so I assumed that that was
happening not no no no the the the warrant articles themselves will have language that says if a two and a half override occurs agreed this money will not be transferred which is the same thing we had last year for the yper money right but it leaves us in a
position where now we have monies that are not allocated and we have to go into special town meeting to actually allocate those monies so or some other type of town meeting um so so this is this again going back to last year last
year was done right and all the scrutiny that went into it all the public Outreach that went into it all the wh if analyses on on multiple budgets right remember we had three or four colors of budgets that
we were looking at you know in the end we scrutinized that budget in detail I I don't see how we scrutinize this budget in detail between now and town meeting um now that said I think what you're saying is in
I I agree with you you're not on school committee you're not you know the the the school department is not here to answer the detailed questions but what I guess I do need to have is how we arrive at getting to a detailed budget analysis um also based
on the recommendations that both school committee and um select board will take up next week as to whether they support this or not um but it seems to me and I can work with Dr Burnham and Brian and and town manager that um how to how to
arrive at our ability to collectively get through a detailed budget because I think the schools committee should do the same thing as as what we're doing here um to make sure that all these numbers are accurate there's no errors in them that they're absolutely
necessary um Etc so um but with that is there any other question from the committee just one I mean my understanding was that the school
committee isn't isn't um supporting this is that other so I can let Brian directly but what has happened to date is two weeks ago there was a joint school committee select board meeting and a quote unquote straw poll might
have been taken at the time to say where people's feelings were but neither neither body has taken a position on the override yet they haven't voted them they haven't voted they I kind of watched it and it was kind of clear that they weren't supportive at that time of
an override so I've individually asked several members of both bodies and I think that they would say that their votes next week may be different than what occurred there um I think there was at least two
members of this the select board that didn't give an a firm opinion um there was three others that maybe were split two to two to one so um and I don't know maybe that they could have changed between now and then right
maybe they've they've they've seen so yeah I I agree with you Tom though I think that's how we've arrived at the state we're in though I I I I and so I just want to say that the school committee is in charge of and and they're the experts on the proper way to
spend the money now I I would bet that if we said hey we want to give the school committee $2 million more dollars they'll find a way to spend it and spend it wisely and do a great job the question was is that if they're not if if at the present moment their feeling
is um you know for the town that's not the way to go then I would take their expertise on that I am not going to say you know is this teacher really necessary is that teacher really necessary I think all teachers are necessary um but I think it's hard for
me to sit there and go like well the budget that they wanted originally with an extra $2 million um if we had the $2 million I would have probably supported it but if they're not willing to make
that judgment and say yes we school committee want an override and want $2 million here it is then I think uh I wouldn't um until I see that I wouldn't want to do anything because they're the experts I don't know how this works can
I can I so so I I think that's fair and I think that's all valid um I think there's a subtle difference in what was said is as I don't think the school committee said and I don't want to speak for them but this is what I'm hearing as a citizen hence why I filed the petition
I don't think the school said we don't need this money and that you know if they got this money it wouldn't go to good use what they said was they want the money next year because it's strategically better so it wasn't it
wasn't undercutting or downplaying the need for the money it wasn't downplaying the budget itself it was effectively saying politically strategically was better next year unrelated to the funds themselves I think that's a big difference well
again you could say that about the fourth um shift for the fire department absolutely that's another one that you know they're not pushing it this year um my view is is that they thought this was really important I mean I mean not
I don't want to use the words important because we're talking about our kids we're talking about education something we all agree is very important and so um but I think it's there if they thought an
override this year was the right way to go for not only the school committee but for the entire town then they would have done it by now or would will do it soon if they can I'm not even sure if it's even possible to do it uh it might be um
and that's where I would like to leave it with with them that' be my personal view um because I like the experts to make experts decisions I agree and um you know not to bring Facebook in but I
put my position on Facebook of why I filed a citizen petition um one of the reasons was you know last year I was part of the override citizen committee um and I saw I saw the politics of overrides and there was people on this
board that continually said an override is not possible it's never going to pass no way this is ever going to fly in our town uh meeting after meeting this was said across many boards in in private right um which would have scared a lot of
people and we continued pushing it and this year I saw the school committee specifically the school committee afraid of the politics of an override and trying to plan strategically for an override which is totally valid and fair from my opinion
what I did with the citizen petition intentionally was to take the politics out of it and try to bring it to the citizens to say I don't know if this is going to pass or fail I don't know I don't want to try to guess if this is going to pass or fail
because we guessed last year and it didn't go like a lot of people guessed so this petition is fundamentally just trying to take the politics out and trying to see if numerically we can get this number to pass by the citizens let
the citizens decide take the politics and guess out next year if we want a bigger override which is the only other option on the table that I'm aware of a bigger override next year we can do that that's fine and that's the current strategy so that's kind of the reasoning
behind all this which I don't know if you're looking for but that's why it exists yeah okay so um just one additional thing is there is a process right a legal process which is why I read that and I sent the um town
council's you know we are the Ways and Means Committee if you will as it relates to like Boston or or or at the federal level right so things need to come through Us in order if they're moneyed articles in order to properly make their way onto the town Town floor
um I do think that I'm I do not think we've had um open public meeting on the detailed expenditures on this right now could we get there between now and town meeting perhaps so um I do think next week's votes will be telling as to the
support from the school committee especially um and also the the select board because they could choose not to put this on the on the um ballot um which in essence vetos it right it's a veto fact that that um so all this stuff
was really kind of deliberately thought out when I guess prop two and a half that was about 8 maybe when that came out um was was thought through um but I do want to afford the opportunity to the citizen who petitioned for this and
clearly he's got backing from people on Town um to properly get this thing through our process so um I do think if the school is behind this um in their vote next week um there should be
additional rounds of discussions with us um on the details of the expenditures I would also say that I think the school schols should give a level of scrutiny to that to that line as well and um you know based on based on the votes
I can work with with Brian Town manager and and the superintendent to make sure that we get that between now and May 4th as it relates to our charge on on voting on articles it would probably mean that we would would likely defer
until the floor of the meeting on the on the article and it will be a something that we'll have to figure out how we put into our our budget report I mean if the oh because it's going to be printed on like the uh
finance committee supports or not yeah like okay I think we owe the finance committee's report like next meeting which is is it next meeting or the meeting after the uh document is going to the printer on April the
7th okay so that means we have we're gonna have to talk about this but we're gonna have to somehow come up with a if we want to put something in the warrant um we're GNA have to figure out how to how to write that between now and next meeting okay and last year's there
was it wasn't was it included the one last year we got it in oh okay that was the year before we didn't though okay okay yeah all right uh this year's you I mean we had delays right um New Town manager and
other things but you know that that that explanation will not work next year new town manager we'll have a new superintendent though oh yeah all right all right any other questions no I have questions about specific line items on
that budget but DJ said you know I I understand what you did and um and I I'll look forward to getting elaborated on all that okay so I know I gave this to everyone just today so I'm sure everyone's not had a chance to review it I think um you
know I I think the proper thing is to start collecting those questions so that if we do have a a more detailed um hearing on this down the road we can we can ask those
questions okay um if there's no other questions from the board are there any questions or comments I just want one question want say um you know I was like I don't know if I sounded critical but I just want to congratulate you on the effort that you
did because you know we're sitting here trying to get people to be on the HR committee um that anybody puts that kind of time and effort I kind of saw on Facebook your things and I've seen this St put a lot of time and effort into it I and that means you care and that
really you know makes us a better town so I want to thank you for that uh also you know I had a friend that uh actually uh did did a Citizens petition to get rid of plastic bags and when I first heard it I said I think that's gonna I
don't think that's gonna go through I don't think this town's ready for that okay and it passed and to her effort and all that so you know continue the fight thanks yeah and I'm just charged as chairman of trying to follow a process
right so okay understand that um but again with that is there any questions from the from the uh well there's no more from the committee right right all right is there any questions from the um from the public um and if you have a question online just raise your hand and
I'll I'll allow you to I hear you and then uh Brian did you want to say anything or are you just here to hear okay all right all right all right thank you TJ thank you allk
you okay the next item on the agenda would be um Capital items and other moneyed articles chairman as as a recommendation perhaps for your consideration do you want to do these as we go through the actual
warrant and do kind of two at a time we can we can do that just considering the hour I don't know I think we can do that you don't have anything else prepared right for it not really I mean I could go through just the moneyed Articles and then go through the
rest of the articles but however you want to do it I am fine with um doing this part of the going through the warrant so taking the hour I do want to say that I I have I have I have a lot to say as we all have noticed and I did put a presentation together with some
questions that I have about the overall budget and I wanted to organize it that's why I have a presentation um so I if we could allow me and we have an agenta item for Budget discussions just to make sure that we I I'm allotted
sometime for that yeah do you want to do that be after the warrant sure okay just ask okay so um you have I think the most recent update of the warrant went out yesterday it should say if you're looking at the right one it should say on the top of it so I mailed one but
then we got a hand hard copy yeah oh yes you do have a hard copy in front of you so um to explain the color coding if it has been if the article itself has been highlighted in green that means the select board has already voted to
include it on the warrant um the yellow is just really for me to come back to different areas before it goes to print and make sure I check on those spots so no real meaning to anything in yellow um and the select board you'll see in some areas you have their approvals um but
they haven't waited on every article so um the articles are not numbered at this point they're lettered until we put them in final order um but I I would suggest if we just go through one by one the first is um to hear the reports of
committees and towns and to accept the reports that are included in the annual Town report I do uh anticipate that the storm water task force is going to be giving a short oral presentation to town meeting and the budget task force as well giving um a report about next steps
now of the budget task force as we plan for fy2 s any questions on that one NOP okay uh the next article is a new article to Lunenburg and it's to authorize the town to enter into an agreement with the bank
um this is really a uh failsafe um measure that if we were ever to be short on Revenue in town if revenue is dipped and we needed to uh borrow in anticipation of um bringing in those
revenues we would be able to do so the next one is also similarly a failsafe mechanism that likely will not need to be employed and that's to expend a chapter 90 funds in advance of reimbursement from the state and as I said we believe our
apportionment for this year will be uh 69,6 70 I do want to comment here um that I am keeping up uh the new tradition of the interim Town manager of including the summaries in the printed
handout that go out to folks and I do like I like that yeah you know warrant articles are not written in a language that a lot of folks understand what they mean and so when they I think putting those summaries in
does take a lot of those uh questions out for folks you can use periods uh the next article is our uh setting the spending limits for our various revolving funds including the two most recently approved revolving funds and uh the COA mail site and the
parks programming revolving funds um I did have Ezekiel go through and look at actual spendings and we've made a few minor adjustments here on spending limits um so why well I'll just ask the
facilities revolving fund is that that that's not is that a revolving account the one that the TCP money used to go into it so I'm just trying to understand government it's the type of revolving
fund it is so that's not a true revolving fund the I could send the um finance committee um the guidelines for what which type of revolving funds require spending limits there is a guideline by drr I can afford that to
you gotcha thank you okay the next article is to pay expenses from a prior fiscal year I actually thought I had one because it said July 1 of 2024 and to me that seems so long ago but no so I this time I don't have any uh bills of a prior fiscal year but um I
am going to just include in that summary so that voters are aware just because they don't see one listed here um there may be one that crops up between now and town meeting that does require a higher threshold vote for fifths at town meeting uh the
FY 2025 budget adjustments uh this is here largely as a placeholder for right now I don't know of any uh transfers that we'll be making at town meeting is this a article that would be to increase the overall Town budget or to make interde Department interde
departmental transfer not increasing the bottom line okay I didn't think we had to do that I thought what we we only had to do do like front of a interart not inter department but yeah this is this seems like a a
placeholder I don't you have your Omnibus budget provides a substantial level of flexibility for transfers within lines um I yeah I I think that this probably will be passed over anyways but it's just a placeholder right now but we also
had accounts though outside of the um right that's right out of the right you could transfer from other accounts uh fiscal 2025 Closeouts um that we'd had talked about this earlier when we talked about free cash and this
is that special education move in and the $415,000 to close the snow and ice deficit the planned again the planned funding source for these Appropriations is free cash and I did call out uh here in the summary that those items uh those
numbers may change within the motion at town meeting lower um okay now we have the the FY 2026 Capital program so the total
Capital program is 1, 225,000 uh there are a number of items here um that go in chronological order in alignment with the um Capital planning committee's recommendations until you get down to
number 14 and then where you see jumps from 13 to 15 and 17 to 19 and 20 to 22 that's because um the items that were ranked uh that have been skipped over are of a value that would eliminate the
the remainder of the the listing so um I this was the the capital plan as put forward by uh Mr terenzini I largely agree with uh this plan and um but we talked about
it briefly at your last at one of your last meetings two meetings ago but I'm happy to answer questions if I can about well we talked about at the capital plan no but here a couple we I would did go over the slides with this group a couple ago but I'm getting confused that's
okay okay so just any questions specifically on the capital plan you have Patrol Cruiser listed place there's two Patrol Cruisers all right there's two being replaced y I think at Capital planning there was
a question that was raised about um whether the we treatment qualified for the length of time and um I talked to Chris Ruth and he is expecting that that um the raking in mechanical treatment would last more than uh the
requisite amount of time I do want to call out here that I um I had a discussion with representative Scarsdale um and she was collecting um earmark requests from her communities in advance of her meeting with ways and means I
think was today and I my first request was I don't think that there should be any earmarking across the Commonwealth this year and just give us those funds in unrestricted government Aid or Chapter 70 which is not going to happen so that said um if everybody else is getting a marks we should too so um I
gave her a number of items the the requested Target about was 50,000 um I asked what her priority kind of areas were and I found four items and sent forth those four items that were already on this Capital list um for her
consideration and the one that she uh is trying to obtain um funding for is the security uh system server upgrade at the schools uh so if that is fund within the marking process then obviously we can reappropriate that money in a future town
meeting um one thing that I'll mention and I don't I haven't I'm no longer in the Parks Commission and um and we should just make sure because the capital plan titles play a role on the future on the use of the money um we had
requested money to get the permit for Marshall Pond and town beach and I don't know if town beach kind of fell off because the the I just want to say that the at the time the higher priority for the Parks Commission was to take care of
town beach so I don't know as as we move a lot of information around if uh if if it was supposed to be one one item that now someone is now thinking just verify yeah I think I think if I have this correctly because the town beach is on a
great Pond we can't do the mechanical treatment on the Great Pond and so that's why this is only on Marshall Pond okay um but there is the permit though that you worked on obtaining does apply to I believe both but okay it's
something about the status of it being a great Pond okay I just want to you know that sometimes we addit the titles and then we get stuck with one way or you're absolutely correct on that thank you um so again the funding source here is
being split between uh three sources free cash um uh from FY 23 Capital program to items that were not used so transferring that money that's sitting there in the FY 23 Capital to off to uh the FY 26 capital and then
from taxation uh the next article um I'm not sure what's going to happen with this article I did get background on it so uh this is an item that was put forth uh by the school outside of the capital planning process um the there was a
little bit of a timing issue as I understand with why it came up the way that it did and the thought here was that um if not knowing at the time what our financial condition was if there was additional uh free cash available that we could abortion free cash to this
project it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 project I believe uh that the school committee may be um with drawing this article or asking the town to pass over this article at town meeting we have not got
to that point yet but there is no funding source for this article so it's this the bulging wall thing yes okay and and the uh drainage so the wall and the drainage yeah that's what's causing so what would we go out of ton
meeting with an unbalanced budget or you would need to no so I so you could if this so first this you'll see that this one is not highlighted in green so the select board has not voted yet to include this on the warrant if it was included on the warrant and it has no
funding source I would imagine the motion would be to pass over certainly somebody could make a floor Amendment moving funds from you know you could say instead of allocating $500,000 of certified free cash to the school system you're GNA I'm just saying for example
you're going to allocate $400,000 and then take $100,000 of free cash um to support this article but I do believe I I think that the school committee is going to ask either for it to be withdrawn or passed over but I guess we we'll
see um so uh the next item and this is I think we're probably goingon to have some discussion it sounds like about this item so these are those three special projects um that are living outside of the regular Capital planning process um the first one is the
decommissioning of a portion of TCP and I understand the reason why this one didn't go through the regular Capital planning process is because um it was not known until afterwards that the uh school department was going to be vacating TCP um so that is what kind of
initiated that we can shut down portions of this building um drain the sprinkler system um put up a firewall and start containing some of the costs associated with operating um the structure as we make and I know there's a lot of um
uncertainty about the future of that building but it's to contain the costs around that um the initial thought by um by folks was that that $300,000 uh roof repair that was voted at special town meeting that we could
move that to the portion of the building that um is going to remain potentially um and I had uh some great uh input from folks uh in the community about how specific that vote was um at Town
Meeting of where exactly the $300,000 roof repair um was going to take place and obviously it would be over the part that we have closed so without we won't be going to the roof repair piece without bringing that $300,000 item back
to town meeting potentially in the fall I just wanted to I know that came up at Capital planning and having research that after the fact it was quite specific um the vote to repair the roof um the location thereof could you not take that 300 to fund the 75 associated
with this well I think that the goal would be that we would ask town meeting voters to revote the 300,000 for the roof repair on the front portion of the building as far as I've heard the thought is that that portion of the
building would remain in a future whatever even if the back portion of the building were to be demolished but I think I think the municipal building design committee or some others really need to weigh in on we have tenants in this building right now um we have user
so both internal tenants and external tenants um they don't have another location for the time being um and obviously there's a lot up in the air with the vote uh that we're going to be getting on the municipal building design that would change some of those things so there's a
there's a lot in Flex with the future of TCP um the you've heard uh from the public about um the Cemetery Road Network repairs um the DPW director had put in a capital request for 225,000 to
repair and repave um the roadway system throughout the cemeteries that was not supported Within the capital plan um so this 50,000 um the the director was still as I understand still looking for funds to do some repair for the worst
areas of of the uh Road Network within the cemetery so removing those those really bad areas with this funding so I will say like I understand the TCP coming up as a popup out of the capital planning process but the cemetery roads
was on the capital plan process in two things one we voted not to rank it highly but two you have the authority to add your own ranking to the capital planning I think that I would say to
that that the the the smaller repair was not considered by the CPC though so you considered you considered a very different project it's in the
same location doing similar work but it wasn't under consideration by CPC that's why I think it's living in its own article I mean I you know if we're looking for $50,000 for a grant writer um
um I would rather this go to a grant writer so yeah is it really that urgent that it needs to be done this year I mean if I mean it went to the Capitol Camp the whole I mean I'm a process guy and
the the committee said no or said it's not as important as other things so now they come back and say well okay we just want a little bit I mean can it be done brought to the capital next year as a smaller project or bring it back as the full project
with you know saying we now need it I I to me it it was given us the shot in the beginning and unless there's something new we found out that says if we don't put this $50,000 in we're going to have $500,000 worth of work next year so in
full transparency I have not put my own set of eyes on the roads to to look with my own eyes um but in talking about this with the director um he did feel strongly that he would like to still go forward with this 50,000 request to
repair the worst of the worst is this North Cemetery or South I'm gonna ask John B and I think it's north North Cemetery it's not the worst of the wor not the worst of the wor have trees
pushing that up okay so the other thing I would say Cemetery related is I did drive through South Cemetery this past weekend and if I were going to put many money into Cemetery I would fix the gravestones that are cracked fallen over
um Etc over over fixing road so um I think part of the being them you know our representative on the cemetery commission I think one of the things that led me to vote any of these Cemetery items low is I see no Cemetery plan right so just little fixes here and
little fixes there a couple years ago there was a $600,000 wall that they wanted to build um there's just no plan right so that's why I'm not inclined to do it um and so so yeah so I think I don't know
how the cemetery Works funding wise as well as others do either but especially on things like gravestone repairs especially on like these are like really old gravestones right if you if you drive through there um the historic kind of I think they're historic kind of thing same in North Cemetery I yeah I
just haven't driven through North Cemetery but it's terrible is the town responsible for historic Cemetery stones I don't think the town is responsible for the repair but if repair like you're
not required to repair them but if repair work was to be undertaken it would have to be undertaken by and through the town if that makes sense so you're not just the historic Stones yeah historic so
um there yeah there are communities get grants often for these and to repair these we could use the $50,000 to write a right to fix now we got multipliers right we don't want be I
mean to you know I I think that um I think that I haven't really fully considered having heard it here tonight for the first time of the swapping of the $50,000 fund from this from this as
it's a portion now or to the grant writer and I think before I kind of give my offthe cuff opinion I'd like to that's fair think about it a little bit my own personal opinion is I do think the 75,000 on TC pasio is wise because
we're thrown money at that building we do need to start the process of decommissioning it somehow or or making it whatever its future State needs to be we got out liability with it
pardon we got to reduce our liability with it yeah even just the cost to keep it from freezing right it's yeah well we avoid those um the last one is um the the
upgrading the neighborhood codes for the Department um under the Department of Revenue directives for the board of assessors and that's really that we have been directed to go through the entire coding of communities where we code the neighborhoods and update them and that
requires um outside assistance to do that it's not like a finding is a directive of finding like you better do it or else yes and we have um a number of them that we need to accomplish before the next full reevaluation that's five years from now
because we just had one right right so this is this is probably going to be something that we are going to be funding okay we've done this directive what's the associated with the next directive can we do it inh housee or not but um that more more potential costs
associated with compliance with those directives but no uh we are we have to do it before the next full re reevaluation have to be bundled together like this I mean you're requesting them to pass as a bundle I
mean this is like putting a zoo and a swimming pool in the same so articles yeah like this well this article like it has three things to pass you have to pass all three of these you don't have to pass off three not this one people can you can
you can make motions y okay yeah so even we could for example let's say for argument sake let's say I don't switch this to grant writer for $50,000 and it remains as is but between now and town meeting I say I
want to I want to change that so what I probably would be advised by Council I could not do is I probably could not switch from Cemetery Road Network to um to a grant writer because the warrant hasn't put people on enough notice that
that's possible to be discussed but what I could do is we could draft this motion and the motion that would be read would say to approve only the two items and for the Lesser dollar amount and then that's how you would excerpt one that's
printed and just approved too um that could also happen by a floor Amendment uh so the Marshall Park debt exclusion um you had the separate presentation here um so I think you pretty well know what this is um we we
have so this is a language now officially from Bond Council um there is a question that we still have to work out with fond Council and that's where there is the potential for a a smaller project being approved at town meeting how that how we print that on the
warrant Because by the time we print the election warrant the ballot you mean the ballot yes the ballot question on the election warrant um do we print both on there because by the time it's printed that's an advance of town meetings vote so we don't know what the outcome is
there um I think eie did share um with the finance committee the impact of multiple borrowing iterations I have not had a chance to look through and digest that as of yet and how they impact your policies but um you you do have them to
you see if this one passes and this one doesn't if it's this year this length of term and not so various different options there yeah one thing I would like and I'd like it um quickly to be presented at next meeting maybe but
maybe even in advance of that so I can start to draft the is the impact is is how we relate well maybe the impact the impact is in the thing but so which one borrowing which of those scenarios do we prefer because then the impact is in
there but the second thing is how does that relate to the 4% 11% and 14% problem how it directly relates to your policies right y yeah are we within that 14% policy what what are we at okay yep in the
11% um next up is uh the municipal building design debt exclusion also heard on that and that would be the same obviously those two have to come together uh then we have the Omnibus budget I have not filled in on the
bottom here where the money comes from but you've heard a very long uh presentation on that uh the next item is the free cash transfer to um lunenberg Public Schools so that is sitting at its own article separate into side so that
we can have that language that it's subject to um a proposition two and a half overrides failure so if the override if there was some talk of could we transfer the money to the school regardless of the override and hold it an escrow no we're just going to we're
going to have a condition within the motion if the override passes the money doesn't go and then um the next item is it was a placeholder that I had put on um if for a town and
school override um I did not remove it because I have not had that discussion with the select board as of yet about officially removing this off the warrant but I would imagine that that is not going to be on the warrant after Tuesday
all right the next item um is addressing a couple of positions uh within the salary administrative plan uh one is the communications and it manager we talked about that earlier in the context of the budget um so that is
in in a different position than the person is currently in um different title and with more responsibilities so it has been placed there um and a grade 12 in the DPW director um position
regraded from a 16 to a 17 um the assistant Town manager will be presenting on that next week if folks are interested in more details um but essentially this the DPW director is to try to bring him more in line with uh competitive salaries for his
position and then the sap adjustment that's the cola for the sap employees um I still have x% there because I have not presented it officially yet um but it's likely to be 3% instead of the 2.5
it would be great um if when you have that information to if you could give us a the compound increases that they have received over the over the past five years for the sap only yeah well that's the one we're voting yeah right just I I hear everything you said is just you
know yep thank you I think I think last year it wasn't an increase I think so some of them might not just be percentage increase I think last year it was an increas in it was a removal of step one off the off
the pay plan and and so then you had a new one so it's not a percent increase it's a restructuring of the actual grid but was he was getting us up to the minimum wage the bottom Step at the minimum wage yeah so uh next is allowing holiday pay
for call Firefighters um this is to assist with a little shift coverage uh it is likely to have a low um a low Financial impact the fire chief estimated it was about $7,000
Maximum Impact here um but it's it may be less than that it's really just to help get coverage uh for those holiday shifts a little bit more incentive incentive to come and cover a Sunday holiday
uh the next articles um the motion is likely to be to pass over these articles I have language at the bottom after explaining what these fund types are that due to the plan transfer free cash to the lunenberg public schools for FY 26 the plan motion is to pass over this
article at the annual town meeting s so s and t okay but again anybody could make a floor Amendment right so we don't know ultimately what's going to happen we are choosing to pass over them but somebody
may not I mean you could choose not to have them on the warrant and I think it's important to show the public what we are forgoing to do the free cash transfer to the schools okay um for those that are not watching as
intimately um then there's the OPB transfer of in accordance with the policy Financial policies of $22 22,500 is article U uh article V we've talked about is to
establish the compensated absence fund and then following that is article W so if uh if established it would be to fund it with the $10,000 article X is to transfer funds to the OPB sewer trust fund um this is
for those those staff um whose jobs um are touching anything with the sewer Enterprise so the sewer Enterprise supports that portion of their opem and then um next you have a number of sewer specific articles so it's the FY 26 sewer Enterprise um total budget there
of 1,886 1522 a transfer into the sewer uh ini stabilization fund uh and that's $1,144 sewer Reserve uh capacity
stabilization fund $ 5,133 15 uh the next article is uh supports the pay as you throw program and so taking the pay as you throw revenues and applying them to the program uh and
that's $500,000 so the total trash and recycling program between the two sources is about a million dollars for trash and recycling I don't know if you want to know this but I'll tell you uh gron has a similar
in size to lunenberg and they do have a a recycling program that's partially sub subsidized in the trash program and they're only transferring about I think two 200,000 to offset recycling so there
are other methods yeah no I think that this is definitely an area that is ripe for consideration in the context of an override um about how to how to get how to shift as much of it as possible off of
Taxation yeah especially for a service delivered versus a you know public roads that everybody's using correct you know correct it would be great if we don't talk about the word override a lot because I don't I get be okay let me
rephrase um this will be discussed in context of cost-saving measures for FY 27 much better uh next is uh to support the water Enterprise 45,000 and then the peg uh programming
our pack committee filming us tonight um as you heard from the chair of the committee um the revenue the anticipated revenues coming in are not supporting the program in full and so they are into their um retained earnings um or their
Enterprise funds sorry um to to support the program we're going to have to keep an eye on this um the public has a high expectation of the services that are provided through Pac and as the industry changes we're getting less and less revenues from the cable providers so
stop funding them last month you know cut the Cod how you're kind of late to the game I know I am save $200 so um this next article is going to be very long in the warrant once fully replaced it's a full repeal
and replace of the entire flood plane map um this is a requirement uh that we update this map this year um there is an impact to um about 20 homes um and those folks are going to be notified
separately and next is another required article this is this one now is in final language the accessory dwelling unit updates so this is to align our bylaw with uh the state law and if we don't do this the state law still prevails um it
just becomes incredibly difficult for folks who are trying to look at our bylaw and decide what they can and cannot build so it's to marry the two on the FL flood plane thing what do we do as a town to approve it I mean what do we examine it do we does it have
public meetings I don't yeah all through the planning board public hearings through the planning board um I believe that public hearing has already occurred um and when the flood plane maps are updated it's we are
mandated to right make the update um the next articles are obviously not to amend Massachusetts general laws um that's how they were submitted but um council is working on redrafting both of these so um you may
recall there were some changes to um some of the tax exemptions put forth by the board of assessors last year and when they made those changes they inadvertently dropped out um the automatic colas um and so this is to so
they made some positive changes but then accidentally that part dropped off so this is to bring it U bring the colas forward uh we have a Citizens petition um related to uh the cemetery commission
and changing of their um powers and duties or further defining their powers and duties there would be no Financial impact on that one right I not that I can see but I wouldn't want to say no but I can't see a financial impact
okay um and lastly is the petitioned override any question on any of the warrant items so just for the newer members um what we will do is next week we will um vote on
each of them we we tend to vote either recommend approval recommend disapproval defer to town meeting which means then we will vote publicly in front of everyone or U find no Financial impact um so those are the four that we
typically do I don't know maybe there's some other variants that we've done over the years but um and Mr chairman when you get me those votes if I'm not here recording them myself if they're not unanimous if I could just know yeah we score have
exactly score for you thank you um yeah so that will be that will be next week um we'll also um have public hearing ing um as well so again public we kind of have rolling public hearing but this is a an official public hearing
um for that I would imagine I'm not presenting again but here for any questions yeah we tend we tend to usually do public hearing the same time that we do the final budget y but you know this year's a little lot of
sequence so um we will just open it up for for okay any debate I guess um all right so I think we owe you everything you said by the sth at the absolute
latest like I need it to go to the printer during business hours on the 7th 459 am I close at three okay so uh um any final questions for Town
manager okay Anna you wanted to present something this would be under just general budget discussions yes and I have a I'm gonna share my screen with a um okay zoom zoom I
see hold up [Laughter] um I have the thing muted the whole computer not just the zoom oh yeah but this is a Mac where is you got to mute you might be your
speakers I I did that but it's oh it's on the presentation that has the mic I think that's what it is okay um let me see if I see where that button
is on the presentation oh I might just show it and not do the presentation as a present in the presenting mode it's just uh people in the at home may not um see it as well
until I figure out what oh it might be the same thing I'll try one more time about oh much better all know this is Dave palus you just need to mute your computer audios there's a Mac that's the
problem you Mac users I'm not okay okay I think it's all set now right okay um so it is can you go full screen or something yep I'm going to do that okay okay so I um I spent a lot of time
reviewing the school department budget and and in the end of the goal of this presentation is uh is to have a a ask from the fincom to the school department and I just thought I would organizing the presentation so that you
all could see what I'm talking about so this a this was my review of the school budget and I utilize data that's there um and I just called out the uh this Slide the fincom uh you know what is our
job but basically we're supposed to advise Town town meeting and to review expenditures and make that that decision one thing I want to say right out of that is that the teachers salary increase are not the primary driver of
rising education cost um between 2020 and now uh school cost has increased by 23.8% and teacher raises has only increased including the four four and a half perc of the past year by 15.2% so
all the the majority of the increases are not going to support the teachers so I just want to get that out of the way because I I did this for myself so just we all know um so that was just recapping that that you know overall there's been 23% which
is quite a question is is that teachers or all School staff this was teacher just teachers yeah and and this is based on their contract and not necessarily how much school is spending so so that's the contract adjusted not
not how much the the school not the budget line okay so okay so that's an individ ual average teacher yes okay I'm including teachers that have been added full salaries these are just this is just based on their contract okay based
on their contract they they have received a compound of 15.92% since 2020 and the overall School uh expenses have increased by 23.8% um next when I started reviewing
the school department budget I had a lot of questions here are some of my questions that I was trying to answer um what is the school department head count we know they're cutting some staff but I don't know what the percentage is of that overall um the school department
health insurance cost increased ases an align with the schools I I personally feel like I I need to understand that a little bit better because I think their level service budget is about 21% versus the 14 and now I understand why the town
budget only went up by 7% said what is the financial impact of the teacher head count reduction so one thing I have not seen it is you know when you do a when you cut a specific line item by a percentage you usually see how much of
that line item um we have seen where the increases were that led to needing to cut some teachers but I actually want to know what is the total because all the cuts that we that are being proposed they should live inside of the fy20
budget so you know this is part of my goal trying to understand how come cost has increased this much in just one year um I do want to understand what are the budgeting practices around the estimated lines such as private tuitions C
collaborative tuitions how did we arrive at FY 26 estimate um the some of these tuitions they like I think there is one line for the level service budget in particular is is a total of like an increase of
600,000 but over the years since 2020 we have not spent more than 250,000 so my question is what is your budget practice on this um and then you know how can we have such a large deficit you know I I've been looking at the uh their
budgets quite a bit and you know and the biggest question that I have with some of these questions is how can we prevent that for next year so those are the questions that I had sort of like at the beginning um and what I think think um I have four requests that this is what I'm
hoping that I'll get from that this group will have for the school department which is to provide an employee headcount from 2020 to 2025 in including from all funding sources um I can show you I did find other School
departments that have provided something like that and it is showing uh this is from Hudson they had a really nice little graph whenever that uploads I'll show it um I don't know if you guys want to necessarily see it I think it's uh
page [Music] 56 but you know something like this fy20 we had this many employees FY 25 we have that many and just an overall idea you
know what is our headcount I I do like that um and you and I had talked about this over the weekend um I wonder if fy19 would be a better year to start from because I it's interesting to me to say how do we start to align to the
preco um Staffing levels over time because um we're pretty flat on um enrollment uh perhaps declining over you know the last some years so perhaps fy19
would get that data point in there yeah I mean if you remember fy20 was voted in um in in the in f in it started in 19 right so but you're looking for actuals not budget I'm
looking for actuals yeah so um so so I lost that presentation and that is that is a good Trend I like the way that Hudson did that yeah so I um oh it was another thing okay so that's my first request I just want to understand
because you know talking about Cuts is one thing are we cutting 10% are we cutting 15% I don't know and I think that's an important question to have to have answered um the next thing is present a comprehensive budget operational budget for FY 25 and 26 I
didn't want to get carried away that encompasses all the school department operations irrespective of f sources so one thing that I'll elaborate a little bit on this one is we have seen some expenses that get moved in and out of
the budget and the athletic department is one and the reality is the town is receiving services that encompasses the grants everything and when all something goes away we got to make a decision if we are going to fund it or not or how
we're going to f but right now we don't know how big is the school budget and and that's part of that request is just put all your expenses in in one page put all your revenues in another page and let's see what that is so we can understand our
liabilities um the next thing is detail of Revenue sources respective of purpose of orig again goes with the previous one the last one is something that we gonna understand as I go through the presentation is that future budget
presentations to the fincom show the changes from the last public presented budget to the fincom not just the latest budget version of approved by the school committee this approach ensures consistency transparency and alignment and we're going to see a couple examples
of that but this is just a budget a good budget practice and I'll show you examp but anyway I do find these requests to be important uh ensures transparency and accountability supports accurate budget
analysis which which is our job allows us to better assess the financial risks of all the de expenses that we have and AIDS this decision making um especially the last point with the second consecutive year of significant deficits
impacting staff and services we need to fully understand what we are funding and what we are not and and I think this is important so um so I just want to go through some of the things I wish I had all these answers and I didn't have any
questions I have gone back back to the superintendent and asked her for some information but I find that that there's enough missing information that I cannot make a true assessment of the budget so uh I'm calling this reconciling
information health insurance increase um we know why the town side is only 7.8% and not 14 but the school health insurance side it has a 16% for their uh reduced budget and a
22% on their regular I in I personally would like to understand you know more details about how that information was put together and so forth um eliminated positions I have gone to the uh superintendent and ask about were the
eliminated added positions since 2021 and she did share with us some information on the school department uh presentation that she gave us last week um there is also a a school department
budget analyst that they shared in the school committee these are hyperlinks to all the documents I'm talking about I will be happy to share this presentation afterwards if you want to uh check them but basically this was a headcount
um presentation that they gave it uh in in the school committee meeting and had this graph on that presentation they said and I actually asked her uh the superintendent last week about you know if we cut 27 teachers we're g to be
going back to 20 19 or 20 numbers and she said yes so at that point I was thinking they're cutting 27 teachers okay um then within the school department uh presentation they gave us last they last week they also gave us
this list of uh positions so I got his positions I put it in a little pivot table on Excel and according to this list there are 12 teachers 12 roles for
a sum of 9.6 full-time students um positions so my question I'm left with more questions as I try to find answers are we cutting 27 t-shirts are we cutting 12 the fulltime so this was
quite a bit so anyway I documented that I couldn't find the answer um again I'm on staff staff is the biggest part of the uh school budget and under presentation um within their presentations this was also from
their budget analysis they had a this little pie chart and uh and I think two meetings ago she said oh yeah all the salaries are represented on the pie chart okay so for fy2 the pie chart represents 14 .9
million in salaries and again I'm I'll just trying to figure out the impact of Staff reduction but then I looked at the fy2 budget that was given to us for the FY
26 and fy2 budget salaries is budget at 17 million so I don't know the difference here is I'm left again with more questions than answers for their FY 26 um on that same presentation it was
represented that there would be a 15.6 million in salaries and but their actually actual FY 26 school committee approved budget the total salary line is
16.6 so I couldn't reconcile that information still on I I went for another source it's still on the same presentation about staff this is an a staff representation that they have of all the
school buildings and for FY 26 and 25 and the head counts I was like okay this this is good information I'm looking for this and so the primary school the elementary school which is Turkey Hill
the uh Middle School the high school and then I realized they had not included central office so I mailed the superintendent said can you give me a similar slide that represents the um the central office and I did say on my email
I did copy past on that email that my goal is to add all these slides and get to the total budget Aline item um and she did send me I did have to zoom in zoom in a little bit she did send me that slide with the head counts and the
total for FY 25 and 26 so like okay great I have the information that I need so then I added out the totals on the slides for fy2 and 26 and again I'm not getting a number that matches so I I
don't have that information yet and I did try to go several ways about to answer to find information there are that I could reconcile and I wasn't able to okay so then I moved on to um
getting the information that she gave us on staff reductions on the list that she gave us which is on a presentation that was you know schol budget presentation to finon she represent and when I say represented is just that's the
information that's given to us I'm not saying it was a misrepresentation the information given to us um that a position called uh instruction instructional coach uh specialist coach coach math was
added in 22 there was a reduction in 25 there was another reduction in 26 I was like okay we hired one we were letting go of two there was likely another one you know more staff on the Budget prior to 22 I did look at her slide of her
central office there if it is the account if the central office that I think she's talking about is the same as the 2112 2110 but I saw that there were true positions so then I started looking at the budgets prior Year's budget to see
what that was there um so for fy22 um I'm going to just zoom in towards the end it's under curriculum sped uh special education director um I do have a link to the budget there this was taken straight from the uh school
committee website that was for fy22 $67,000 all right so like here is $67,000 I don't know if this is one position two positions half a time position but it's there so then I kept following the budget for FY
23 um now we have that position that was 67 for FY 23 70,000 I was like okay I'm seeing you know that position there for FY 24 and this was a presentation that is
called out as FY 24 approved budget um it was 91,000 so there was about 30% increase I don't know if it's more hours another person a half a person but this the what was shown on the
budget so then I went to the fy2 budget and this was the fy2 April 3D budget um and this was not the override budget so I just want to make sure we are clear on that and this is the
the budget that's listed on the school website again there's a link there that position is listed as 91 for fy2 24 which matches what we had on the previous slide and 125,000 for
fy2 and and that's another 35% increase which again I don't know if it's a raise full-time what have you I'm just getting numbers here and jotting down this is a lot more organized and my notes were so then I
went and I took a look at the FY 26 budget and I saw that position there fy2 um 125 FY 26 128 I was like okay we're here
but along those lines and this is something El lro understand I noticed that fy4 was now 12 so what made me highlight this was this for
fy4 this position was 91,000 as of April of 2024 and between that and today when we received the now that position with three months left on the on the fiscal
year it had a big jump and I don't know what happened and this is you know the retroactive thing kind of like is what really caught my attention there so I kept going um I did one more and then that's when I stopped I was like I
think I need to get a a more comprehensive budget so I'm not getting lost in rabbit holes of every single position here uh the athletic director I looked up the athletic director because that's a position I know it didn't exist
as a separate position when my kids who the last one graduated about uh nine years ago that was not a position there so I was like I'm sure I can see some changes on that so fy2 for FY 18 that
position did not exist in the budget for FY 29 uh 19 um it looks like that position was hired for 49,000 and it looks like it was hired in FY 18 now it's important to mention the
school uh committee does have the the authority to sign the budget the way they want I'm not saying that anything was done improper I'm just saying that you know this school year I'm just going through the motions of reviewing
budgets and that's what we saw for fy19 then this is also an fy19 the reason this here is that this slide is here this is the athletic department fy19 budget which apparently they used
to have presentations of and and here there was a question for me which was did they use uh revolving funds to pay for the athletic directors so that's why this here this budget includes uh revolving funds and taxpayer
money and it does not look like the athletic director was paid outside the town the regular Town budget it was just uh this one here 49,000 like okay we're we're good with this um and then FY 4 um
19 uh this is the actual so it looks like um we we stayed on that then we went for fy20 and this is where I'm getting towards my end of my presentation I want
to call this out and I did type my call out so for fy20 that position was presented to be $882,000 so that position was made I'm going to assume fulltime because I know we only have one person on that Direct on that position so the position was
made full-time after town meeting and after budget season when this body sees the budget the following year when the fincom had review the new proposed budget the pro the the position was shown as fulltime from 2019 so the
scrutiny that we usually go through every other Town Department of give me you know are you increasing someone full-time or not because the the the budget practice of just showing the last
approved school budget we miss it just by their budget school practice so I think that's goes back to my request that going forward they're showing us the difference between the last budget they presented us and the new budget so
that if there's any big increases that happen that way it'll be easier for us to spot and we don't have to go into past years to see what happened so this then I looked at the fy21 budget and it did get interesting again um so this is
for fy21 so now we learn that the F the athletic director actually became full-time in 2019 and not in 2020 as it was presented in on April 3rd
2019 so you know in the end of the day it was I I was like I I cannot I I just need one budget that I'm not going back to years years of documentation um and this is my review and assessment that I do not have
sufficient verifiable data to fully understand the operations of the school department or a detailed break breakdown of its finances and budget practices as a result I'm unable to make it comprehensive uh I I not able to comprehensively assess the ships in the
proposed budget for f 25 26 and the override budget um I do want to again acknowledge that the school committee has the authority to adjust the school budget and its allocation I want to emphasize I'm not at all implying any misconduct or in ill intent by any
member of the school committee or school department staff is simply my request that was at that first page is simply because the finance Finance committee's role is to analyze the budget the budget impacts and provide gu meeting based on information information
currently available and that's that's my presentation is really if we is if we could as a committee because I have gone back to the superintendent and by the way the superintendent has been very
accommodating to all my requests that I have um that she has accommodated I just not there will not be enough pieces of information that you can give me that I think it would give me the information I need so that's my request do do we think
that we can elaborate these four requests to the uh to the school department is that something you guys are comfortable what are your thoughts I only did a presentation because I wanted to organize all this in a way that I could
follow so let me let me just ask I I think there's two two things jump out at me one is that the budget that was presented to us has errors in it just potentially errors
or the salary lines like well that whole analysis you did on the FY 25 salary versus what's in the spreadsheet like a this year is there an error somewhere in there so not on the spreadsheet because I did verify the
spreadsheet um like I resummed everything I I think what I don't have is the budget analysis presentation that she gave which was the holding document for to support her and when I say her I do I am speaking about the
superintendent she gave a presentation that is the school budget analysis and the information there does not match her budget so I cannot I don't have any supporting information that I think the presentation given to us should be in
the end reflective of the budget in its details right and I think that that is something that could be an immediate action to go ask to reconcile for um so but let let me just finish so that's like I I want to separate that from
something that could be maybe a longer term offseason ask associated with the way that budgets are prepared and the way that data is presented to us and I will say that last year's budget was a complete anomaly because we would just
flipp and spreadsheets amongst everyone this year's budget presentations to us was wholly inadequate and the ones to the schools was like a million hyperlinks that is impossible to to kind of navigate
through and I did go back to years past maybe four or five years ago and the budget presentations flowed they they flowed as well as as the town managers did tonight um so I do think that there's a longer term
how data is presented to us and how it it it is then also reflected in the detailed budgets I don't think that that's something we can tackle in the next couple weeks but I do think that if it's something that's related to our comprehension of the budget and our
recommendation for the budget then we should tackle those things immediately yeah I I think that budget practice is a future request okay um I think the the first three lines of that um uh of my
that I elaborated as a request is something that that it should be done for this year um because I'll bring that back um you don't have to bring it back up just ask like I want because I we' got other business and it's getting late
but if there's a longer term ask I think the number four yeah number four is a is a long-term ask I I think um two and three are relevant to this year and I do think one make would make the analysis
easier okay so what I would ask then is POS those questions for two and three immediately because they do relate to the budget and our comprehension of the budget that's in front of us right now um CC me like you've done so far but I would say go ahead and do that and then
I do like your thought on how budget should be presented to us going forward and this is something that we took up like two or three years ago but last year it just everything blew up last year and this year a little bit of recovery in my opinion that was my fault
um well you know if it's Chris thank you for your support um I I do again there we go every time you changes the screen that does that um I if it's possible I I wonder if the the the other members of the of the
commissioned committee could speak um you know if they think think this is a reasonable ask uh because I I don't want to be bothering like you know this is my I'm I'm not even here I mean I'm less time here than Jen is in town and I I
just want to make sure this is the com the committee you know the other members support you know one two and three and and you know and I try to give the information why I think this is important for fy2 and FY 26 budget
analysis um so it it's it I don't know if any members have any thoughts on that any other members I'll say real quickly that's impressive very impressive that's a lot of work it's crazy so that's very good I'm I was like
okay um I agree with Chris that we can't just be targeting school department on policies and procedures on budget submissions we should be holding all of our departments accountable to the same process to the same amount of information that we get as detailed as
we want it um and by the way I agree with that um so just we know but do they have time I feel like they've presented to us over and over and over is there going to be anything different that they're going to present again is it going to be more so so the main thing one thing that has been a problem with
with the budget well not a problem um so when you look at the school department budget by the way I just want to Circle back the sewer department presents budget where it's comprehensive of all their operations and funding sources um
so I I do think it is possible it's just right now what what's missing is parts of their operations in their budget and and what happens and I'll use the athletic department as an example they used to fund certain items under some of
their revolving accounts and now of the sudden part of the $200,000 plus increase in in transportation is because their revolving fund no longer can support that so they move the entire line to the uh the town funded
taxpayer funded line so we we get put that in because they are able they have the the so all they need to do is to really list all their budget lines of all their funding in fact guess what I made a template I made a template which it has
a a the their budget their FY 26 budget there and I listed some of the other lines that I know exist like extend the day um you know I'll give you another one is the school launch you know since 2020 has been funded by the
state you know like I don't know what that I would like to know what's that amount in case that goes away we got a no if next year we're going to be asking you know we're going to be needing to fund that but I don't know if that's
200,000 or 1.5 so I do think that information is easy um two and three are relatively easy and I do have a a template that I can send it to them um and uh I don't know how they keep uh records of their stuff so what's the ask
for them to come here and present again provide us you I clearly can do a spreadsheet you to send me a spreadsheet that's included I can break it down and make the presentation okay so I want to say like again we have a we have hard deadlines coming up next week I can't
deal with longer term actions right now I don't want to talk about them what is the immediate ask related to this I think the one thing that jumped out on me is that their budget presentation did not reflect the line items and I walked away from that last
week's meeting very confused about the fact that we didn't even get a budget presentation out of that and it didn't tie back to to the one prior and when you were showing that data it shows that it's inconsistent so I think a immediate ask is to get to the
send me the final budget presentation that ties out to the actual budget I think the rest of the stuff we're not going to get by next week and we don't have the time to deliberate on it between now and town meeting so I think going forward I'm in
agreement with all of it I do think number one though is extremely important as it relates to the override because I think that there I think there's a lot of saying with cut positions but if you go back they added
a ton of positions from fiscal 20 up through 24 and really what we're doing is rightsizing back to fiscal 20 I I don't know that um but I anyway I I anyway uh Jay do you
have any thoughts on on these things well yeah I like what you did um having um accurate information and accurate data is is important and having the headcount and going back like you
said to L 2020 so you can have a comparison is a good idea the school department has you know the biggest staff and the biggest infrastructure and they're and they take up well 52 to 55% of the budget so these are good
questions to ask and the information from them needs to be accurate and detailed so we can compare it okay so I would support doing this yes um how about you Tom yeah if the information isn't accurate then can't
make good decisions about how we're going to recommend or not recommend all historically the school department is is um is it and the U school
committee are unorganized on their on their budget last year was really bad and for a lot of reasons uh plus we didn't have a uh a finance person in the school department last year um so
um it is definitely something that I've always been con conc ered about um hence wanting them to somebody to buy a budget software where you don't have items that don't add up because they can't hidden
hidden U cells that you you know that are actually part of the total but you don't have it or vice versa it's you know it's you have a huge budget and doing it on the Excel spreadsheet doesn't always seem doesn't seem very
business like so but like you said I I agreed just give us the numbers give us the presentation that lines up with the numbers so so we can see it this year and then we can talk about all the other things you mentioned over the summer right Jean do you have any
thoughts again I just you know mirror what other people have said and you did a great job and for this year I think the very gist of it is that they have to
tell us what the real numbers are and don't know if there's confusion because of what happened last year and Gilson had a hard time going over it and and again with the software
they use but there's got to be a way that they can rectify the budget for this year and as Chris said that's an important consideration for any override and to the extent they can do that would be helpful to all of
us I do think if the Mike give Mike am I the chair just so I do I do think that um if they are in voting for an override that they support an override I
do think we need all of this data and this is the details that's needed um for us to review um I do think that if it's just the town managers budget they've gone through a lot to try to say how they might fit into that but it's aligned
with normal Inc percentage increases that we've seen historically um I don't think we need to scrutinize it as much as if it is an override um but yeah Mike what is your thoughts uh pretty much what you're
going to say there is um I mean this the budget's huge we all we all get that tons of line items there um maybe there's some miscommunication miscalculation who knows um but I I would like to see kind
of a final something accurate I mean if we're gonna comment on a $2 million override on a budget that we're kind of looking at seeing a lot of gray areas um I'm not
comfortable that right right yeah okay okay so Anna do you have you have my authority to ask for what what you want on this conversation all right I mean it seems like the the committee feels the same way and and I'll I I'll
elaborate something around and I'll C seeu okay and um and I'll drop it um so this presentation I have links for everything all the documents that been posted I I'm happy to share um it it does have a lot of transitions
so I might have to just put it on separate slides because transitions look funny on so what I would ask is um in the budget material folder okay I know you created like a little subfolder where you were throwing some stuff in have a lot of stuff there I know um but
what I would ask is that this specific presentation because we deliberated it on it tonight is added into the budget folder not in you know where you're storing some temporary file FES okay does that make sense it does I I will
clean it so that it can be saved in the perent form like a and it shows everything okay because anyone in the public can ask now for because it's part of the record sure okay one more comment sure uh one of the
recommendations of the budget task force was you know a deep dive into the budget and perhaps uh you know for future considerations is maybe the school department needs an outside source to um
assist with presenting a budget you know an accurate budget um and perhaps maybe that's where grant money could come in go with an audit well they talked about a deep dive into both you know both town in school
side but if we're seeing inaccuracies in the school budget where it is such a big budget they have had a finance director they have't change over and help sometimes it's you know to have an outside source to review your work and make recommendations um might be
helpful yeah I'm not doing this thank you Chris for allowing me the time yeah no thank you for doing all that work too that was all in my head so it was good to put it out I know you had to get it um okay so the next thing I want to talk
about is under new business is the finance committee annual report um so I've been spending a lot of time in my car and on walks outside of town because we have nowhere to walk in town
because of our Parks not great um thinking about what to write in this in this um annual report and I think we have two op we have two op options or maybe three options we have the option of putting out something that we need to
approve as a as a board next week um that would still have questions related to it but would in my mind would kind of highlight for the voters what the critical items are that they need to come to town meeting um to go on and I
think you know there's um a a prop two and a half override obviously in two uh borrowing articles um and I think those things have to be highlighted throughout the um you know what's in the
warrant um and then we can do some a little bit of the normal like what's the over overall budget you know what etc etc right but I think that those three things are probably the critical things that the you know the finance committee
needs to alert the public as to you know um um you know where we are on that and and to a large extent I think those three things are very personal as to whether you support them or not right um and
there's going to be a lot of you know debate and um Etc at town meeting in in that sort of thing so we may not have a position yet at the time of writing that um on those three items maybe we will maybe we want but um what other things
are on people's mind that should be in that oh oh wait so that was one option the other option is not to put something in the warrant and we did that two years ago um and then the third thing is to put something in the warrant and then give an update um at town meeting um you
know have a handout of of an updated um kind of report so first of all what what what is people's thoughts as to how we should should handle that well two and three isn't fair to the residents I don't think to give
nothing I don't think is a good idea and then to give something and then change it at the last minute is feels I don't know I think the changing at the last minute my thought would be that we would augment it with additional
discussions that have occurred perhaps between now and then um at at that one toown meeting yeah I still have a lot of unknowns I haven't thought through everything we're going to be voting next week public hearing next week we have one week to write something that we all
agree with um so sounds like you're leaning towards option one write something one or two as long as it's I mean I think it feels you know um but one or two I'm leaning towards I don't like to get
anything at the last minute and then I feel like it makes that whole town meeting longer then there's emotions and then there's articles and changes and it's just it seems a little bit bit um unsettling for residents to get something at the very last minute um but
that's just my okay it would just be something they would read it wouldn't be something they would vote on it would just be oh this is it' be it' be something in the the the pamphlet they don't look what's this oh and um so could they not pick up that piece of
paper off the ground in front of that microphone and write something based on what we're well they hopefully that will give more information so that this is not an article thing this would be more about you know it might affect how they think or Vote or maybe ask a question later on but it wouldn't I
don't think it would and it might change their mind I don't know but it's it's it's supposed to be informational and also giving our opinion on whatever it is we've done it both ways you know we've done it up all up front and then all the meeting
I I think it would depend on where we we are we have till we have really next week right we have next Thursday we should be very we have to vote on it I guess that's the last time we can do it before April 7th so the alternative is
we have a Monday meeting after that we can yep What's Your Capacity Chris you know what I mean like I have like very little capacity I mean that's why I originally planned two full weeks for us to write a report on this um so I know some people think we can just delay
hearing budgets till the end we really got to accelerate um into into February when we hear budgets um and honestly there's very few unknowns coming into the year you know we don't need to wait for the the governor's budget to start
this process we largely know that we're getting 1.3% on Chapter 70 increases right I mean there's not a lot of unknowns I guess is my point but I can certainly
um it's not does everyone agree then we should definitely try for number one is to put out as much as we can um a lot of the war the Articles they're not too controversial right it's closing out accounts and it's it's a a typical
budget obviously the prop two and a half and the is is probably where we need to F so thinking about what the group has said you know related to the presentation the school and
everything um I and what you just said that we have actually have very little unknowns it seems like we are ready to speak about just about everything but the true the override the override I have a lot
of questions that you know and this it sounds like I think where we landed so I actually I wasn't thinking on but I'm thinking one it's doable because we know what the budget is for the schools the only thing we don't know about the
school is how they're planning to use the the half a million dollars which they usually talk about what they're going to use any money yeah in the end the town appropriates one number to the school yeah and they can do whatever
they want with it I hear you and I know that but they usually talk about what their plans which there is a difference for me like you know I'm just saying for me there is a difference if they're talking about buying you know a
redundant loan mower I'm like really you want to use onetime money for that I I don't know so it does matter how I vote they're meeting tomorrow I don't know if they'll feel compelled to elaborate um but that's been talking about they've been talking about it
since Jen came in so I think they must have a plan but they haven't elaborated yep that's the only thing on the regular budget that I don't know about it okay so let me let me take a note on that so because I am trying to gather ideas of what should go into the into the the
report as well so the 500k unknowns where it will be spent um another one that I'm thinking in terms of money and taxes uh we have
two money articles they'll take a which is the constru you know uh building and Marshall um I think those you mentioned we have the numbers um you know help the community understand
where where how much that would add to their uh bill you know I know we have had some uh some that that expired you know like in my mind I want know okay we approved these things for me I want to know do I
have to allocate more money for my taxes and I think that's a a just fair assessment of we're adding these two things kind of replace the others or not we are adding and I think that's an answer something that we can tell people if it's going to happen or not okay so I
think so yeah so for all three of those there will be need to be the dollar impact on the average sure I also want to take it on the debt exclusions because we' have retired debt
and we've not put other things into debt and I think it's best practice to have a certain amount of debt right yes for for a municipality which is why I asked for those specific how are we against our policy which is no more than or no more
than 11 and no more than 14 right um and I think if we're within those guidelines it's an indication that we can afford to take on this debt because it is within the policy of the town and we can also analyze how much not analyze just do the math of how much that has rolled off of
our books recently that does have an interactive impact on people's tax numbers because like the school uh the I think the primary school has been paid to make the library and I think the Public Service public safety building is
coming off over the next few years okay so yeah so mention retiring Deb and we can also give a value to those we should also mention the other the expectation of
future debt for example Turkey Hill are we going renovation or you know replacement uh is something that's coming up according to the school committee over the next decade so we need to prepare ourselves for that uh do
we will we have enough Capital uh some borrowing assy uh at that point so I think those things are all part of what we should discuss the other thing I think we should discuss in
there is just overall why are we in this our perception of why are we here and I think that would be like well the you know this is revenue and in expenses and insurance
and so why we are here Insurance well I mean you look at that you look at some of the things that we've done over the last couple years when we had all these um uh openings and we were saying oh we got to get new employees and why we paid
them more we we had to that was part of the deal that raises rent that raises expenses so you know so I mean there's a lot of those things that that are out there but do we believe do we believe Town employees whether it's school or Municipal salary
is part of the reason we're here so I do have a spreadsheet that I did do an analysis of that uh but I only did on the school side um and uh and I was looking for a specific that's not a I actually did for fy20 to FY 26 I can
probably get a overall if Jen has the older spreadsheets I don't know I can easily do that that okay so salary question mark yeah like as as a percentage of what I did was you know as a percentage
of salaries are specific you know how much was that on the budget in 2020 and how much is that the budget on 2026 okay there's also reduced state aid right yes we can also do an analysis of that to to
me the like number is not really two and a half because I think with new growth and other things it's it seems to be more like 32 33 33 is kind of the number that is in my mind is that it fairly accurate in your in yeah okay
so 3.3% is kind of our new Revenue every year increase so everything that's above 3.3% is causing the structural problems that we're in yeah there there's been cost of
buying Vehicles now is a lot higher than it used to be so that drives to free cash I think we're at a slightly lower free cash position than we have been historically um well when that funds free cash
right um Jen saw the spreadsheet so when Kerry was here we used to have very little free cash that she used to keep it at like two three% and when Heather came Heather increased you can see free cash going at a much higher rate um
which it makes sense because when Carrie was here was during the Great Recession um but I don't know if I I don't know if that's a I think that's more of a budget practice of the to manager than truly a
reflection of uh New Growth yeah per se okay anything else on folks mind all right I I think one thing we can like I you know
i i as of now I don't know how to assess the school budget and I think I have made that clear um but you know I I I don't we I don't see us necessarily in a budget crisis I know we
get to address some issues but you know the town just we need to learn to navigate with the budget that we have and maybe make inform and intentional decisions about our how we spend the money and you know and like the recycling program is one is a great
example of something that right now you're using taxation to provide a very specific service so as we go for in the next year I think one thing I would say on that report is that we do need to do an assessment of of how we are operating
government and and make decisions and we can use the recycling as a as an example of something that you know and I think last year the beginning of last year they increased fees for uh for the building department because they were spending a lot of money on that so I
think there's a lot of things we need to understand the functional of government versus someone receiving a service uh because I think that's where a lot of towns are going for it so I'm gonna I'm G to try to avoid anything that's um not factual so I won't use budget crisis
right right because what's a recession is when your neighbor gets laid off and a depression is when you get laid off right right right so the budget crisis is in the eye of the beholder right and that's and that's exactly how I feel I mean we have we have had increased
revenue from our taxation plus New Growth every year like that's not a budget price like in 2010 we it was a little tough yeah okay um anything
else okay the second ask I would have is is there any one you know we can kind of do this I can get help from less than half of you which means one or two other people does anyone want to kind of help me over the weekend and into next week
with with um pulling this pulling this together in anyway you okay and then um we may be writing this somewhat real time next week so
um and maybe I will need to schedule a zoom meeting on Monday the following week as a as a backup and the reason I say I'll need to schedule it is just that would have to be in I think by
Thursday right for be Wednesday Wednesday Friday would people have time if we just as a backup on that Monday what Monday is that the the
7th yep I'm FR okay all right so I'll schedule it Monday the 7th Zoom I'll just do Zoom um you guys want to do 6 6:30 7 probably aim to seven if no one has an
objection good work yeah for finalizing the document yeah yeah that's I need to get it out the door on Monday the 7 oh I okay um as I said Tuesday um
the 7th is the Monday yeah Friday okay well we'll just we'll have to do we'll just have to do it until Friday morning on Thursday okay um
okay anything else on that all right um so next week will be another busy week um like I said we'll go through public hearing we'll vote on all the
Articles and then we'll we'll finalize our report um and we can determine oh there's also going to be a um Reserve transfer request that I'll send you from
um the um fire chief for vehicle maintenance um so we'll we'll have to see if we want to approve that it's like 10K 11k or something like that
okay all right so um did anyone have a chance to look at the minutes they just got posted yes okay yeah I did I did you did I did not all right I didn't either right we can wait on him I think that was the one that
went past midnight so yep um all right any committee reports that anyone wants to mention okay [Music] um any actions or future meeting topics I think we're nearing the end here right
so that's the good thing all right um any public comment from the public can I thank anyone who's who stayed um hey Chris I don't know I just jump in yeah okay okay go ahead
TJ awesome I don't know if you can see me on a different computer today there we go um yeah I mean my first name and address now though man I thought I got over that earlier uh TJ Laughlin 207 Rolling Acres
Road um Chris your comment about walking is interesting uh because I see the vice chair walking around town every day uh including through Marshall Park so maybe she can give you some routes um so the other important thing I think here is um
Miss Lockwood called in a question uh some really really big things uh with the school budget uh unrelated to an override right she called into question the number of cuts of teachers the teacher salary line item all together
she called in a question uh which is single-handedly the biggest part of the school budget again unrelated to override um she called in a question the salary increases and the impact of that she called in a question the transportation increase not being accurate um again these are all
unrelated to an override um these are the fundamentals of the biggest budget of our town um so to go back to what you said Mr chair if the finance committee has the responsibility to do due
diligence for the taxpayers to do analyses of these budgets so that we can make a good decision as as taxpayers it seems we're not there yet even for the core school committee uh school budget um to me and I think this is true just
mathematically in budget wise everything that was in that presentation calls into question the school budget not the override budget which you're calling which fundamentally calls into question the town budget and it calls into question the omous budget
which means we we as the public probably need more open discussion to get to the truth of the school budget from the finance committee if you guys don't agree that this is accurate truthful information the taxpayers need that with
not a lot of time it seems like we have some work to do to get to that truth um and without that analysis how can we to quote kind of you peripherally Mr chair how can we as taxpayers know what we're
voting on at town meeting for the budget so I you know you know and kind of secondly uh as a taxpayer I can't reconcile how approving a town manager budget for the schools requires less scrutiny than what
you're calling an override budget again it's the biggest part of our budget so why would that require less scrutiny um and lastly happily adjust the override dollars to accommodate whatever the outcome is of your analysis I used what I had
available as the truth if you guys found that to not be truthful happy to adjust thank you thanks TJ um Dave go ahead yeah very quickly uh it's a late night and I congratulate you guys for making it
through all of this uh Dave Paso Jefferson New Hampshire presidential highway just a uh comment I've been through through the uh trials and tribulations of trying to get uh consensus for a finance committee report to be uh printed in the warrants over
the years uh I'd just like to throw out a suggestion and that is put together the best report you can within the time frame you have but then consider including on that page maybe in the upper corner um a link or a QR code to
additional information that will give you the ability to put information out there to the public that can that is able to access it through the internet uh right up to town meeting just a suggestion but I think it may be uh
prudent to do that thank you thanks Dave I know we all want to go home 162 Highland Street uh John Bowen uh I have to say Miss Lockwood excellent um that was kind of opening some clarity um for
us to see I just wanted to mention that uh the citizen petition warrant article for um the uh Cemetery rules and regulations do have some Financial impact which is the handling of financial Direction and in that warrant
article it basically says that unless there is a plan Chris which I know is concern of your and this board is that unless there is a plan there is no money from the sale a lots fund that can be used unless there is a formidable plan
that is efficient that is been looked at by the town manager approved by the Department of Public Works to worked on with the cemetery superintendent that's part of that article that article is basically a statement saying that the people will vote whether or not that
money and that plan is necessary at town meeting okay special town meeting to change rules and regulations can be done there or at the annual time meeting but any money that gets requested can only be done at annual town meeting so it does have some bearing financially the
other thing is uh when it comes to uh we had spoken earlier on the crack sealing issue if I had mentioned the electricity specifically to light up the flag poles to put actually functioning utility in
the cemetery I think it's a better use tax people money then it is uh since the cemetery doesn't want to spend theirs that um I would be open to uh even a consideration to spend $50,000 on providing electrical to light up the
flag poles to light up the signs and to put electrical outlets in those locations to be able to use electric apparatus that's necessary you know uh for work to be done on the cemeteries because they complained there's no electricity for us to do stuff well we're on a 250 350 foot cord now you
have some work to do so just a suggestion just a recommendation but like I said I'm on board with no plan no money and that's where I stand with that let's have a plan thank you thank you blood McLoud 436 Reservoir Road uh
I'll I'll just read so I don't go down a rabbit hole so to your to your comment about making informed and intentional decisions I I would encourage you to to um reflect on a lot of the issues a lot of the narratives that are currently going on throughout town at various
boards and committees and those have include this is a just a list I came up with now it is certainly not all of them uh you know the cost of providing level Services across town citizens over override petition if that passes the
subsequent years of override um petitions Marshall Park Town Hall project any undisclosed unknown maintenance structural problems with the current Town Hall that are not accounted for in the 23 plus million estimate TC
pasos building in the uh liabilities associated with that Turkey Hill schools future it's the oldest school building uh the Brooks house storm water utility the impact that that will have directly on residents as well as the business community and the impact that the uh
business Community has will certainly be passed on that cost will be passed on through the employees as well as the customers um the uh Community preservation act which would add a lot of discussions are ongoing about that and there seems to be a lot of uh
support and that's up to an additional 3% on um the property tax the water district water takers are dealing with regulations on uh removing past past um I don't remember specifically the
numbers that were previously presented but it was like 35 million or 45 million and that would be spread across those who are water takers you know I'm I'm in the water district but I have a well so that would not apply to me but we have to keep that in mind of course one of
the most pressing issues in town fire department Staffing Sewer Commission default rate of approximately 27% of their customers now I have not watched the most recent uh Sewer Commission meeting so hopefully they they had sent out uh demand notices they finally
worked through munice and got those out and so hopefully that was just a clerical mistake and people just didn't realize it and they're paying up but that's a a very serious concern for those people if they actually are unable to to pay that bill so if if that holds true again last I knew and it could be
updated 27% is very troubling and you know I've concerned concerned for that elimination of the TR uh the trash pickup service and part of being I think a you know a transparent government I think part of that if that were to go it would be important to explain to the
residents the impact that that U the impact a trash pickup has on their tax bill so for example say it costs them you know $10 or whatever and then highlight what the ongoing cost is to hire a private uh contractor to come in
and take out take take your trash out uh and then pack with the dwindling Revenue Services so those are just and and you you you mentioned several other issues tonight so those are just some of the big issues that came up across my mind and I would just encourage you to just reflect upon those as you make these
very difficult decisions on the UPC upcoming articles and uh you know God bless you thank you very much thank you all right any other public comment from the public any public comment from the comme
I I have a quick one just because I really want to emphasize that um throughout my presentation I didn't call into question the budget I I I wanted to reconcile information I didn't say what was presented was not truthful
it was truthful to someone's ability and information they had it's just we need to get all the numbers matching it's just a question reconciliation the school committee has the uh authority to make changes we it's just the supporting
document did not match the budget so I don't want to my my presentation that was very well you know reconciliation we just need to reconcile information it was not calling into into question the how truthful the the budget
is uh so that's all so please remember that anything else what you all right motion to adjourn so moved second all those in favor I I I we adjourn thank you