e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e good evening I will call to order the finance committee meeting on March 3rd
2025 at 7 p.m. uh we have uh two items on the agenda this evening uh communication from city council president aing with the proposed amendment to the municipal aggregation order number uh 19 -175 78b also a communication from mayor
Dumis with a transfer request in the amount of 626,000 8 uh $224 first uh from Peg funds to the ma cable trust to fund the operating and capital budget of wmctv for FY
2026 also a reminder to the council president aing did read uh his letter of conflict of interest into the record uh and that was on our uh February 24th uh 2025 city council meeting I'll begin uh
by reading the letter uh from the mayor de council president aing and councilors in close for your review and acceptance is a transfer request in the amount of $626,000 capital budgets as you may recall the fiscal year for
wmctv runs from April 1st uh to March 30 31st uh enclosed from letter from the wmctv executive director Ryan malar milear uh details what these funds will support in the coming year uh which will include some exciting capital budget
expenditures uh for the updating and replacing city council chamber and school committee room broadcast equipment um executive director milear has brought in several new and exciting programs over the last year and has managed to decrease his operations
budget due to payroll savings um he and his dedicated team continue to provide high quality programming to our residents and to our city uh please do not hesitate to reach out to me or my office with any questions Jay Christian Dumis mayor good evening
director you would like to open up and say a few words on your budget then I'll open it up to the finance committee hi councelor so good to see you and um especially over the past few years it's been great to see more and more of you especially as you've gotten involved
producing some content at the studio as well it's been really terrific to have you there um the budget is pretty straightforward I uh I really pride myself in how detailed it is we really track our
finances really well um you as was noted in the letter from the mayor there is a decrease a slight decrease in our operations budget we had previously budgeted for another part-time employee but our current staff is managing the workload uh relatively well so we didn't
see the need to to fill that position the major um change that you will see is that our capital budget is greatly increased from previous years and it's it's detailed in in in pretty good
detail what those costs are for and um that is really to improve the technology infrastructure that we have in this room where we are right near this right here this is sort of the heart of our operations government transparency is
what Peg access is really known for is bringing that level of of government awareness to the local community where the larger State programs and local news Affiliates aren't picking this up you know um so it's improvements um in audio
quality it's adding an additional camera that can capture a full vote in the room those votes happen pretty quickly and right now we our staff Gan there tries to pan the room very quickly when a vote passes by and it's been noted to us many times over the years how C can you get
everyone voting can you get us all so it's little things like that that we're hoping to address the technology that we're running in that room is is no longer up toate and they don't even keep up maintenance for any of the technology
that we're using right now so it's it's swapping out older technology with newer technology nothing that will really blow the roof off of anything in here we're going to uh of course consult with anyone who might have a mind for
maintaining the historic uh aesthetic of the room because I know that's been a conversation in the piece uh in the past in terms of how to continue to have the technology that we have without ruining the beauty that we have
in this room so it should be minimally invasive and it should really uh provide just greater quality of coverage going forward and similar uh changes are being anticipated for the room where school committee meetings are held as well
thank you Geor and now open it up to the city council councilor orm thank you Brian I had a few minutes to talk before the meeting but uh one of the conversations I was having with him is the same item I bring up all the time is um the contributions to the peg funds
from uh Comcast as well as Verizon and we're at the present value I mean the present transfers and available is 937 th000 so the request for this funding would be fine in respect to that but
our discussion was ended because we had to get started but is the future of Peg funds and I myself feel guilty because I switched off and went to streaming you know and I still pay Verizon a little bit of money but it's concerning that
you know where that may go and Ryan I don't know if the industry has talked to you about that and what might be out there to try to recapture some of this funding so I'm I'm in this indust because I believe in it I was introduced
to community media as a child as a host on a show called Kids Corner and Piscataway New Jersey where I was given wonderful opportunities as a youth I I love what we can do for the community the model of where people receive that
information is changing we see the how quickly print media is disappearing think of how many local newspapers there used to be in marbro and what we have now I feel like the content and I believe the content that we produce is valuable it's valuable in terms of like I said
earlier government transparency but it's also valuable in terms of histor history and the archiving of what goes on in this city uh we think of the historical society and commission and what they do digging up the past but we are creating
And archiving that history right now so it's not going to be too difficult 100 years from now to find all of this information this capture of everyday life so I value what we're creating however the model is Antiquated um so what do we do about
it if cable if this is our our source of Revenue if it disappears then we will have not if cable disappears then does wmct disappear or are we still valued in a way that there is supplemental funding somewhere in the city that can support us that's just a
big question I don't have any answers to it what I can speak on is what's being done in the state and there have been previous attempts to pass similar versions of this bill and it's called an act to modernize funding for Community media and what this would do is it would
put a fee on streaming services there are many other states Across America that are already taxing streaming services this is a little bit different because it has Peg access operations and its heart and in its mind it would
essentially establish a Nexus so that any fees put on these streaming services will be reserved specifically to be integrated back into the peg funds that have already been set up for these Community Television Studios to operate
um they're approximating that it would be a similar tax to the uh a similar fee to what's imposed on cable television the max cap for that is 5% so we're sort of looking that maybe that would be the model that would happen this didn't pass
last year there was some negative attention so they pulled it before it would have a no vote attached to it but now entering into this legislative session we already have some progress with it so hopefully it's already at a point where it can just continue to push forward and we'll see where it goes
thank thank you and if I can just couple more see Council Idol has questions too just couple more notes um and I appreciate your your to what you do as well as your answers to my question on the peg funds and I as a customer would
be more than glad to pay the 5% on my streaming service cuz I left cable it was a better deal but I would be more than happy and I'm sure most people if they see the value would be in the same category uh just a couple rental expenses I notice went up a little bit
not bad it looks like a very small percentage but we got to remember that you're the open market for renting so uh the telephone internet went up a little bit is that just doing business cost or was there anything new we've added an additional Hotpot that allows us to
stream from remote locations for uh areas where we're not able to plug directly into the internet and utilities is that electric or is that you don't pay heat do you at that building is that you rent the Heat versus we do we do it's it's all factored in with so your
utilities could be the cost of the Heat and so forth oh it's absolutely the heat yeah and um you know I'm in favor of this I would motion to approve when it comes to the end of discussion um I see no problem I like the fact you're improving your equipment you had a
10-year review done with the consultant um it makes sense I mentioned to you I'm very glad to see that cable will be available to people that are hearing impaired uh as well as within this room and so forth as well as the school committee the city council will get
better coverage so fantastic we need that transparency boy you hit that right on the button I'm with you 100% on that and um just one small note when I was a wad 6 counselor back in 1990 this is kind of interesting I sat
where our Council president's sitting right now because the wad 7 counselor ended up being president so I ended up in the wad seven seat and guess what was sitting right next to me and and I was a new counselor the TV camera and it was a
good siiz one and I had to stand up and I remember and we had microphones we had a hold back in those days and my hands would be shaking because as a new counsel it was a little nerve-wracking having a TV camera right on your nose now maybe I speak too freely in here
because I forget there's cameras in here but um it's amazing how far we've gone in technology and again thank you I support your budget I would make a motion to approve not to stop any other discussion but that would be my motion motion has been made and I will
second that uh to approve order number 25-1 19375 uh transfer request in the amount of we talked about Peg funds could you kind of explain it to the people at home what that is that a tax I would be thrilled
to explain it to everyone so it's considered a fee um because similar to what we were hoping to impose it has a direct transaction where it is issued directly to the city of marbro so I'll try to give my nutshell version of what cable
access is picture picture it 1982 marro Charter C that's my my Golden Girls for you so Charter Cable comes there's already telephone polls but they say we want to bring cable to the citizens of marro and it's already been established at that this point that the cities and
the communities are saying well what's in it for me and it's really held in high regard that we want to be able to deliver this local level of transparency this these opportunities for residents to have locally produced content and the
and this platform on this hot stuff which is cable TV so this is sort of worked into almost every contract that they going to provide some sort of support either monetary back in the day they were even providing their own sort of Studio setups so that's how we got started in
this business uh back in the day the models have changed over the years um so you might notice that if you look at the the sheet of transfers it's only 2017 so that is when the city accepted uh a new law that would say that the each
Community can establish a peg account which is where that money is transferred to and money is transferred out by a propriation so how are we fairing with Comcast and Verizon now we received three specific types of payment from
them so from um for Verizon we're currently in a 5-year contract that started in 2023 and in that contract we we negotiated for one additional channel so we have one highdefinition channel uh
which is a simal cast of this government channel so we have our standard three channels plus one in in HD and we received from them uh 4.82 5% gross revenue quote for Peg access Channel operating support or other Peg
access Channel costs and expenses we also receive from them a grant it's called a peg Grant um totaling 232,000 $500 dispersed over 3 years so we've received two of those payments already in this 5-year contract each for uh
$77,500 quote to be used for Peg access Channel Capital funding purposes and we also receive one weird sort of thing which is a license fee which is0 50 cents per subscriber per year very unique uh
Comcast is very similar although we were in a 10-year contract with Comcast starting in 2016 so that's up for renewal in 2026 we already have legal counsel that is assisting us through that negotiation process we currently
have three channels from them we don't have an HD channel 4.82 5% gross uh annual revenue quote for Peg access purposes and um our Capital funding from them was not too hot back then 10 years
ago um we received 156,00 $ at that time it was prioritized that the fiber connections that we have between this building and the studio between where school committee is held and the studio those are direct lines
that we actually have so even if the internet should go down if cable is up we can still transmit from here or from the studio onto cable TV which is great for any sort of emergency that we might have so that was prioritized at the time
um but that Capital funding is quote Capital funding for Peg Access Equipment Andor facilities and also we get that license fee of 50 cents per subscriber so that's that's how we're doing with it so these Peg funds are negotiated they
are negotiated the Comcast of Verizon and the city and the city so wmctv or maror cable trust is never mentioned by name in any of these contracts cuz we're considered the peg access design so that is what we've established
in our long history with the city but is also the city's prerogative that if we were not doing our our our responsibility that they could find they could issue it to another organization to run similar the YouTubes of the world
the the uh other streaming they don't they not don't have to negotiate with the city at all to no no though there are many subscribers in the city that are now using those Services point of information so PR so Council vital let me help you so this is mandated by
Congress so you can call it a fee you can call it a tax but Congress says if you're going to have a cable station they're going to be paying something into public television Congress hasn't figured out how to get on of the streaming service yet it's coming as Council Navan pointed out your cable box that you sit and you
have at your house they're going to get out go after that here shortly all right so it's coming but if you if your answer if your question is is it a tax refe you can call it what you want it's a the tax that I have to pay to use the cable system whether you like it or not that's
the deal Council or if you feel guilty you can write Mr Ryan a check anytime he'll be the happiest guy in the planet to take it I don't think you're going to feel that guilty for not using the cable system and that's that's a good point Mr just one more question so this
negotiated fees or taxes as as Mr aing points out has the trend of for those that money that that comes to the city is the trend about the same or is it going down every year you can look at the sheet of some
has been down because of people cutting cutting their cable bill yes so I've pulled some numbers and um the state maintains subscriber numbers but the city itself maintains the revenue the actual money that the
deposits of the numbers so 2015 was our best year for subscriber numbers we had 13,00 833 cable subscribers in the city of Marboro that's Comcast and Verizon combined 2023 is the most recent year
that I have access to that's 7,179 that's a 48% dip in cable subscribers that's 6,654 less subscribers however if we look at you
know i' I've added up the years just by income coming in on the the sheet that we have here and um although it looks like our best year was
20 2017 we had 831 $500,000 20 um 2018 $815 point of information not not I am interrupting I think believe the
council's question was has the fee that's charged per user changed or decreased over time we know the users have decreased over time so the fee that's charged on that cable bill has it stayed the same or has it increased I believe that's your question Council
actually I was talking more about this about the trend that we have for operation expenses well the the users are going down if the users go down we collect less money unless someone who I don't know who changes the Fe structure and I believe the fees have stayed the
same Ryan you can tell me if they've changed I only I it's hard to dig back that far I don't have all of those cable contracts I'm sure the city could provide them um I believe that when we renewed the Verizon contract the the previous renewal was also at 4.82 5% but
I don't know what the capital was for the previous 5 or 10 year contract my dad always said don't ask a question unless you know what the answer was and most of those questions I asked I kind of knew the answer already but it's important for the people at home understand what's Happening Here In The City the trend is that is the money
that's used for the operation of of our local access channel is going down every single year and if my forecasting is correctly in a couple years it could be almost to a point where there would have to be some serious cuts to the to the
studio and I think that you know the the our citizens of marro if they like their local access Channel they should get more more are actively involved with their local legislator at the state level to try to pass something that's going to um spread out the taxes as Mr
Austin said that's all I want thank you Mr CH any further discussion see a none all in favor it carries 5 to zero thank you director thank you next up is uh order number
25-19 19358 communication from city council president aing with proposed amendment to Municipal aggregation order number 19175 78b good evening president aing good evening Mr
chairman I'll let you fill in the blanks and and and have the floor Mr President do you want to read the letter or do you want me to do you want to read the letter you I mean I'm happy to read the letter oh you can read the letter Mr thank you dear City Council Members the municipal aggregation committee met on
January 30th 2025 and discussed updating the current order for municipal aggregation to reflect the advances in the municipal aggregation process the primary change is to remove and I'm quoting on a yearly average be lower than the National Grid basic service
rate during the same period unquote this is being revised to read will focus on obtaining rates that are lower than National Grid basic service rate the reason for the change includes since the DP DPW changed the end grid buying dates for electricity the changes in
electricity pricing will not be as drastic as we've seen in the past reviewing other Municipal programs the programs focus on obtaining rates that are lower than National Grid not requiring them to be lower than National Grid obtaining long-term rates 24 to 36
months provides participants in the program with stability and predictability being able to forecast when the National Grid rate may be lower than the city rate may not always be achievable when obtaining long-term contracts if the National Grid rate is less than the city rate residents in the
program can opt out at any time the municipal AG aggregation committee supports the above change as shown in the attachment and recommends the city council approve the change councilors I put a short uh presentation
in front of you I'll just go through that quick so the purpose is to amend the order to reflect the advances in the municipal agre ation program and to take advantage of market conditions to secure favorable electrical supply contracts so the current
wording the first part on what we're looking to do is remove the words and on a yearly average be lower than and we're going to replace that with to participants in the program Additionally the municipal aggregation committee will focus on obtaining rates that are lower
the National Grid's basic service rate the history program started in 2007 the initial order that we had said it required us to be lower the National Grid that meant we had to go out to bid every 6 months because in order to be required to be
less you had to know what National Grids right which was good but the problem is everybody there was bidding on the program knew what Nationals grids rate was as well so we didn't get much of a savings so from 20 2007 to 2019 those 12
years we saved about $4.2 million in 2019 we changed it to be on a yearly average be less than National Grid the program saved 32.3 million in those four years actually a little less than four years so being able to go out for a
long-term contract has served the city extremely well but there was no guarantee when the longer term contracts were entered into that we' be less than National Grid we used the best information we had at the time and could for and try to forecast that we'd be lower than National Grid and so far
we've done fairly well so I read the reasons for changing I just read them in the letter so I won't repeat those what I do want to bring to your attention so colonial power has 93 municipalities that they deal with for
municipal aggregation programs and their contract lengths vary from 7 months to 36 months as you can see in the chart uh there's four with seven month contracts three with eight one with a 10 10-month contract one with a 14-month five that
have an 18-month the 22 is your fabulous city of Malo 63 of the communities have a 2-year contract one has 26 two have 30 and 12 have 36-month contract lengths so one asks okay so of those 93
municipalities I said well what are their rates and how do they compare with National Grid so the National Grid winter rate which ran from August of last year to January of this year all 93 communities did a good job they all had a rate that was lower than the National Grid rate the summer rate that we're in
right now goes from February to July 34 municipalities have higher rates 59 municipalities have lower rates and of course we're one of the ones that have a lower rate so of course the question then comes that I asked National Grid do people bail out of the program because
again the National Grid rate changes every 6 months and the answer is no their data and it happens with the other Min the other contractors that have other munag programs because people looking for stability and predictability in their
electric grates if they want to get out they can the challenge is once you find out with the National Grid rate and you submit the paperwork to change your rate it takes two months to the thing to catch up and then by the time you think you're seeing the savings and the savings you're talking about I'm going to go in a minute are about six bucks a
month depending on the rate that that's that the municipality is saving or negotiated isn't really much uh of of a big deal and then you get lost you get short change when the rate goes down because you got to go now change
back so participants do not leave the municipal aggregation programs when the National Grid rate changes this is because the stability and predictability of the supply portion of the bill outweighs the small amount of savings that may be seen so how is malro done with our new
contracts right so we've got first point power we have a 22-month contract we got a fixed rate of0 1415 and it runs from January 2024 till October of this year so the National Grids rate from January
2024 to July was 18 cents and the Mal rate was 14 cents that's good we were lower the last last year's winter rate which went from August 2024 to January 2025 the rate was 16 cents Mal rate was 14 again we were
lower then the national Goods summer rate which we're in right now which goes February 2025 to July 2025 the malor rate is 14 Cent 141 and the National Grid rate is 146 so we're just slightly under what National Grid rate so if you're going to ask me
what's going to be in the winter rate when it gets set in August I don't know National Grid is going to set it I don't know if I'm hoping it's lower I mean we all we we looked at the forecast councilor naen councelor Scott I mean commissioner Scott Christy homie and the
mayor we all get the best data we can and try to make a good decision do I think it's going to be lower yeah M would be lower for the next one so that's good so the municipal aggregation will continue to focus on obtaining rates that are lower the
National Grid M residents will have the price stability and predictability for the electrical supply portion of the bill mobile residents always have the ability to opt out of the program if they want to that they can do that so I recommend Finance approve the changes to
the existing order um so just to I figured I'd highlight one example the 34 towns that were higher than the National Grid rate uh during the winter or summer rate last uh 6 months ago the highest one had a 16 C contract it was a
24-month contract that they entered into I mean they they beat the 18 cents for the winter portion but the 16 cents is higher than the 14 cents now that averages additional $8 per month or $48 over the 6month
period that that one town is paying there's no Mass exi is from the program from their residents because just it's just not happening so again I encourage the councils to support the change because if you don't support the change it's okay but if I come back and tell you we weren't less
than National Grid on a yearly average what are we going to do there's nothing we can do so this is really an attempt to just correct the order to reflect the best practices which is to let the committee do the best job they can to get rates that are lower than National Grid will try but it's really the
stability and predictability um that we're really striving for and we've done real well in the six and when we Chang the order back in 2019 and I don't see any changes going forward thank with that Mr chairman I'll open it up to uh questions
from the councils thank you president Council vital thank you Mr chairman Mr President how many residents are in the program right now I think we have I think it's 11,000 but that's that's about 2,000 of them are
Industrial and Commercial customers I think I I'd have to go back they can get out anytime can they go in anytime or is there once a year so when you you so you move to Malboro you automatically get entered into the program you're told about it and you have the opportunity to opt out so you're automatically put into the program actually the first month or
two you're typically on National Grid because it's called sweeping so every 3 months they sweep the program and then everybody that's moved into town we put you on the M Municipal aggregation program and then if you want to get out because they get you get a card says Dear Mr vital welcome to malro you're
now in the municipal aggregation program if you want to get out just let us know when we'll take you out thank you Mr President thank you Mr chairman councilor Brown thank you Mr chair um and I just want to thank president aing and councelor naven and the municipal aggregation committee
for compiling this information for us um periodically it's very helpful to see um I think the change makes sense and um it's a wording change so with that I
would move to approve the change motion's been made will second that to approve order number 25-1 9358 uh communication president oing with the proposed amendment to Municipal
aggregation order any further discussion Council oh Council n Council n anyways the quick question is this and great job it's nice to see that we can
compete for better electric rates I also use natural gas and it's not easy to take those bills right now are there any communities that are looking at the same type of program for natural gas so the state hasn't authorized a what I call a
municipal gas program versus a municipal aggregation program so they don't have that right now Council Orum so um there's been talk about it but nothing I'm sure that what's the legislature is going through right now uh might spur some more activity but
I won't go into the whole thing the issue is getting gas to New England we just you just the Supply Port you just can't get it here so it's just hard unlike electricity it's flowing everywhere you just can't get gas we're getting all our gas basically from
overseas and tankers thank you for your answer y thank you Council Council na thank you Mr chair um I'm not on the committee but I do support this um I want to thank the president for the work that you've done on this um it is a I will challenge one
uh assertion by the um the folks at Colonial I'm not sure that the average homeowner is um looking for the stability and predictability it could be like in my house where we're not sure how many subscription Services we have and how hard it is to cancel them it's they don't National Grid doesn't make it
very easy to get off and get back on but I do think that um you know the way the order has worked and and people are confident in the work that's been done um you've done a great job making sure that people know what is happen happening um the quarterly updates I think are really important um that we
give folks um and they should feel comfortable that when if we do get into the position in the future um we will be very forthcoming with the fact that um the rates are not the same um and that they are able to opt out um but I do think that you know people have full confidence that the city is working hard
to make sure that the rates are advantageous because it's advantageous for us as well as it is for the general public so um you know and it is worth hling you mentioned it in the letter but you know this is an effort that dpus putting forth to make sure that rates are smoother for everybody at home so we don't see the sticker shocks that Council or just referenced on the gas
side um although your rates are getting cut for a couple of months although they'll be recouping it for you over the next 6 months following so um you know it is um utilities are expensive um and so this is a good effort um to make sure that people know we are continuing to
make that fight so thank you and I'll just add council name that it is if you want to get out of the program it's literally a click on the colonial power website to get out you can contact the mayor's office and it's all on the city's website but you if you want to
get out of the program you can I mean all the services at our house are very easy to get out of as well and I can tell you that every month it goes by I still have not canceled them that's and that's no comment that that's a comment on my own laziness that's not mentioning for people in the city
so thank you Council name any uh further discussion seeing none all in favor it carries 5 to Zer thank you Mr presid thank you for the information I will entertain motion Mr chair motion to adjourn motion is made and second it to
adjourn all in favor we are adjourned it 7:36 p.m. thank you