##VIDEO ID:O0DujZ7pYA8## good evening chis than Tom how are you I'm all right that's good apologize for the din in the background huhuh that I apologize for the D in the background I'm on a business trip and I'm not with my team oh anywhere good Melbourne Florida I'm right down the road I'm in Fort ladale oh need get the uh we listening to the wind blow from whatever the tailor whatever hurricane is ripping into the Gulf we're hoping to watch the SpaceX launch huh we're hoping to watch the SpaceX launch in about 40 minutes oh really yeah someone something's going up tonight yep wow that's cool busy busy day in America very e please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance the flag of the United States America the nais all good evening this open meeting of the select board is being conducted both in person and Via Zoom speakers on the agenda will be participating remotely and the chair may allow for the public provide comment uh the select board would like to hear public comments and if there is further action that is required by the board the chair will add the matter as appropriate to a forthcoming agenda depending on the comment board May if they are able to within the confines of open meeting law respond with information as opposed to needing to deliberate on the matter please please note that while an option for remote attendance Andor participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public the meeting and hearing will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast to individual attendees unless otherwise required by law accordingly Please be aware that other folks may be able to see you so please take care not to screen share your computer anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording all the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on board Docs and we recommend that the members of the public follow the agenda as posted on board docs unless I note otherwise we are now turning to the first item on the agenda before we do so permit me to cover some ground rules for Effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks the chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment questions or motions please hold until your name is called and further please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes for any response please wait until the chair bless you please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking see you again if members wish to engage in colloquy with other members please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself for items with public comment after the members that spoke in the chair May afford public comment as follows chair will first ask members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only once the chair chair has a list of all public commentators I will call on each by name and afford three minutes for any comments public comment for public hearings will only be accepted in person per open meeting law uh just a couple of notes on the agenda we did not conduct our executive session so that was removed from the agenda uh and item seven which is the Amy Grove marker has also been removed we will add that back to a subsequent agenda uh once we've had some time to refine that language uh we will now turn to the first item of our Open Session agenda which is public comment the board would like to hear public comments and if there's further action that is required by the board the chair will add the matter as appropriate to a forthcoming agenda depending on the comment the board May if they are able to within the confines of open meeting law respond with information as opposed to needing to deliberate on the matter is there any public comment in the room this evening are there any public comments online this evening all right very good we'll move on to item four which is the consent agenda we have two items uh a cemetery deed and a use of town property uh from the mainor business lines and the cultural Council uh for the winter fest on January 18th I will uh move to approve consent agenda items A and B is presented contingent upon adherence to all federal state and local public health and safety guidance authorizing use of digital signatures second motion has been approved and seconded all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes I'm a yes as well Linda did you want to add anything about the Winter Fest I wasn't sure if you're here for that or absolutely very went too fast when you did the ice sculpture yeah so is the ice sculpture coming back is it going to be a dolphin all right moving on to item five we have a petition uh for special legislation this is the mayor Corner Store uh which is related to the home rule petition Greg do you want to add any details here yeah sure so um I guess this the standard procedure these days although we had to be um in ordance with the direction we got from Kate H's office representative Kate H's office um and gri did her Chief staff let me know that following the town me um was for thetion to legislature to increase the town's alcoholic beverage quota specifically for that um now that that's been done but it comes back to the executive bage board to provide notice to the legisl so that's what you see in front of you as well as um the certified copy from the work's office because the vot that so it's procedural although um I won't hold your bre I think it's going to take a while for the legislative session to come back in I think they just went into informal session so it's this is I don't know when they'll get to this particular matter as far as's concern just process any questions on the home rule petition Bor us all right anybody want to make a motion I will move to approve the home R petition to Grant a section 15 package store all alcoholic beverages license for the mainor corner store 49 W Street present seconded motion has been made and seconded all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm a yes as well moving mov on to item six we have two appointments the first one is for the community preservation committee uh we have Thomas hescock who is a former member of the CPC uh who would like to rejoin uh and I'll just note we did have another applicant Jill Snider um we're going to try to find another uh slot to put her in if you can find an opening on another committee so we'll certainly take a look at that application uh but but Mr hpot good evening how are you today hi how are you sorry I'm uh calling from afar I'm down in Melbourne Florida on a business trip could make meeting in person but yes sir I'm looking to potentially rejoin the CBC back currently on the recommission but I would resign that post provided you guys provide me an appointment on the thank you I thank you for joining us I picked up about 80% of what you said um so uh as I we have your application in front of us uh so as noted you've been on the CPC before so obviously you've attended meetings AR familiar with it um are there any questions from the board Tom are you driving or walking uh I'm walking away from where my team was having a a meal so just get some quiet for you so yeah so just sorry about that no no no problem at all I just saw you looking around yeah I was just looking for a place where I could get light on my face because my team is at a restaurant outside so I excuse myself from the from the team dinner to to join you guys for this meeting so I just want to get to a better place my apologies Tom I've got a quick question I've got a quick question for you and it's it's in no way I mean I I very much support your appointment uh so the question that I have is um having served on the CPC before and I know your interest in Recreation and the whole issue especially with alumni I think is significant on your list of of desires to address so I I want to focus in on um what are your thoughts on trying to be as aggressive as possible with how the CPC might go about utilizing its funds within the constraints of the of the wall it seems sometimes may may be more conservative than other communities relative to what we're willing to do uh commit ourselves to with CPC funds do have you observed that and what your thoughts on on that where I in other words I think we might be able to stretch ourselves to be able to use it for more projects in What We believe We Can U but it takes some time to explore whether we can or not and just want to get your thoughts on what you think sure I mean that's a that's a great question I think the the the CPC typically looks in my past experience on the CPC we typically look for the best uh you know we we bring in the projects and I can't I can't tell you well in my tenure we very very rarely uh said no to a project unless it was just just not very well you just we didn't understand it or you just not basically the quality of the Grant application was just not there with regards to projects like the Alumni field project there's some very interesting language in the community preservation act that discusses stadiums versus out you know versus uh improving spaces for for outdoor recreation and in particular the CPA in my understanding of it really focuses on the outdoor recreation piece of uh improving the community so buying open space and uh improving open space for the purposes of the actual recreating piece so we leveraged that actually quite aggressively when we looked at Fowler fields and we you know that and used a chunk of CPA money yeah to improve Fowler fields and that was directly improving the playing surface for the kids to play on and directly improving the surface for the you know for recreation for the recess and for other programs you know we kept the softball fields there and of course as you know soccer is probably the biggest program that uses those fields outside of the schort so I think we were really I think was a good example of using CPA funding for that that area as well as using CPA funding to buy the e Z you know for the rail trail so I'm a big proponent of being aggressive in that nature I think one of the things we need to be careful with CPA is that CPA is not a stop gap for um Capital Planning by the town or Capital Planning by other organizations or just failure to maintain things because the CPA requires you to have a a good strong maintenance pale associated with any project you fund and I think and one of the things that I know I helped I felt really strongly about for any project that was presented to us is that the presenter had to have the associated maintenance because if we're going to invest our CPA funds we wanted to make sure that the project was sustainable and maintained by the community and so far we've seen a pretty good examples of that so in so far as you know being aggressive I think we I think we are aggressive with the with the and I think we are good stewards of the CPA money to improve the open space the recreation and of course you know now there's some pretty interesting housing projects that are coming along down the pike that I think we're looking at L CPA funds from the housing money that we've been setting aside over the years so you know as long as it meets the guidelines for the CPA and it has the strong maintenance tail I think we you know I think we'll be in good shape I answer your question David yeah it does quite a couple of quick quick follow-ups um on that first is uh I believe that the funding of the golf course is starting to wind down I don't know the exact year that we'll be done with it but I believe it's on its way towards its conclusion U so that'll open up in the near future a bucket that bucket of recreation money for consideration of projects on for recreation related items and I think that's significant because we can begin to potentially plan with the knowledge that that's going to wind down and we'll have that money available to us uh once the golf course obligation is behind us the second point is uh being the nerd that I am I watched the uh Littleton special town meeting that was on uh the Night Before Halloween and they had a huge project um for recreational Fields uh now of course they have a they have a whole they have a whole lot of different issues that mayor does as far as the ability to raise funds but see a whatever but they did an entire couple of projects on fields entirely through CPA funds and no tax revenue whatsoever big Improvement to their fields and that's the type of thing that I think we have to explore what they do go to school on them and see what we what they did to be able to build up the funds to be able to allow them to do a project like that whereas we always seem to be spinning wheels and unable to get major projects off the ground from certain perspectives other than the the one we did a f which was fantastic given the constraints that we had and they also re private funds but given the the uh constraints that we had relative to our ties to the golf course so that's that's those are my observations you don't have to respond to that those are more just points well you you bring up some great opportunities the golf course is its own project that we still need to get a conservation eement on if I recall correctly and then I don't know what you know I believe Littleton might be a 3% Town not a one and a half percent town so they may have more CPA Revenue coming in than we do which obviously changes the calculus and gives you more yeah so so there's there's obviously opportunities all the way around that we can certainly look into and I'd be looking forward to taking that as a challenge uh as part of the CPA CPC any other questions oh just one quick does this fulfill all five seats on the committee now I believe it does Tom do you know if the other seats are full right now I believe they're all full I think I'm um I believe they're all full I think I I think yes pretty sure they are but we can make sure that's true I see there's a meeting tonight would anybody like to make a motion I will move to appoint Thomas HBO to the community preservation committee with a term expiring June 30th 2027 authorizing use of digital signatures if approved second all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm yes as well thank you very much have a good evening enjoy the rest of the game no I'm not I'm not a game it's a you it's a work project so but thank you very much thought I misunderstood you enjoy the rest of your meal Tom Tom if you Tom if you need me I'm right down the road just give me a call if you need me all right take care good night guys good night all right uh next we have uh a motion in front of us for an appointment to the cultural cultural Council uh Emma Rose stick gold come on up uh would you like to we have your application in front of us would you like to just introduce yourself and uh I moved to town I'm still to present cage with my family my dad little older um so I'm 50% M Cambridge Cambridge um and played mayor soccer many years ago um but now um I to been working with the coner players and other cultural groups and I'm very excited that um me has this very vibr first thing people told me when I got to town was if it's great culture and he didn't here so I would love to be a part of that because a great way to get to know my town I'm a Fresh B I renewed energy and I would be very delighted to be uh and in addition to your application we have an endorsement letter from uh the chair as well are there any questions uh only I just noticed you have a background in German ISM I know one of the things that we all fairly frequently complain about is is the the shortage of of Journalism in town so anything we can do to address that would be wonderful absolutely and I um been 10 years Globe filtering news tips so I can tell you how to get around the system there any other questions all right I joined the cultural Council pretty quickly after I moved to town uh several years ago now so glad to see you joining in so quickly after coming and joining us my pleasure would anyone like to make the motion move to point Emma Rose stick gold to the cultural council with a term expiring June 30th 2027 authorizing use of digital signatures of approv second all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes and Ms as well thank you very much thank you so much good luck yes good luck have fun thank you uh we'll move on to item eight which is um the local Initiative Program for uh another set of housing units this time uh the bankr street um from the clage old former former clage school that's right so now it's the Calvin um and it's well underway so we're joining this evening by long time friend Bo Taylor Bearden um because we've been in business relationship with civico for years now um but I was uh lucky enough to pass Taylor in the hall the other day in town hall and he asked me if I want to go on a field trip and I took him up on it and I also grab Bill ner and he took me down so we went to Bound Street and we check it out and they well way so um my Lial Arts degree doesn't really uh allow me to understand everything I was looking at but um T go into the detail for the for the board this evening you're being asked to approve regulatory agreement which is relative to the ort housing you know aspect of the Redevelopment which probably speak to more as well um but it is all part of the initial concept of rehabilitating and reusing that property is to to take advantage of the opportunity that for housing plus affability um St do you want to say anything else or do you want to uh you know Taylor could give a just overview of the units briefly and then I'll thaning okay Taylor uh thank you Greg and uh members of the board um so as as Greg just said so we are seeking approval from the select board to sign the regulatory agreement this has been a long time coming uh this document has been reviewed and approved as I understand it by members of town staff and thirdparty Consultants to the town uh we are seeking uh your approval relative to the regulatory agreement that will uh regulate three units in perpetuity a one one-bedroom apartment at 60% of area median income one two bedroom apartment at 60% of area median income and then one one bedroom at 80% of area median income this was made possible by support from The Manor affordable housing trust which allowed us to increase the depth of affordability and add an additional unit over and above what was required by inclusionary zoning want to add that bankrupts units so three out of the 12 units that they're building that's 25% of the units by Statute allows us to count all 12 of their units as affordable and that will once included once registered with the reg of deeds will put internet 10% of subsidized have so [Music] you so I I encourage the board to do this any questions from the board Tor congratulations to you guys on uh all the effort and work and long time coming and then is the uh is the fencing going to be gone by winter I was gonna get there after the B go ahead uh thank you for the question and and to be honest we should we should be thanking the good people of Maynard for their patience I know that a ton of people put a lot of time and uh love and attention into making this project possible uh so we're really here at the at the tip of the spear uh but it it was all made possible by the work of others um with all that said I don't think we can commit to the removal of the fence uh By the time winter is here uh just because it's necessary to obviously enclose the construction area in its entirety during construction um that said uh if there's anything we can do to enhance accessibility from the top part of that Hill will do it but I guess the only point I would make is that since the parking lot is presently out of commission since it's under construction uh there's probably more incentive for people visiting the park to park elsewhere at this point I'm I'm not pushing back I think that um the benefit we will get as a community uh from having this project finalized uh will will outweigh one season of of a lack of use and of course we're not going to get any snow this year anyway so we'll be fine any further questions or would somebody like to make a motion move to approve the local Initiative Program application for local action units Lau for the Calvin 12 bankr Street mained as presented authorizing the chair to sign if approved and further to authorize the chair to execute any other documents which may be required to effectuate the approval of the lau and recording of any required documents authorizing use of digital signatures if approve second all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm a yes as well congratulations and thank you Taylor good luck Taylor thank you all Take Care thank you all right we will move on to item nine which is our annual tax classification hearing so I will start by opening the public hearing uh as required by Massachusetts General Law chapter 40 section 56 the Mainer select board will hold their annual fiscal year 2025 tax classification hearing on Wednesday November 6 2024 at 7:20 p.m. the purpose of the hearing is to determine the percentages of the local tax levy to be born by each class of real property the public is welcome to attend all right and start with you want say anything Gregor should I go right to no no so this is RI joed by St he's on the Board of assessors these two joh have done a lot of work that they always do this is Rick thir all right very good um briefings been SL he've been working with the board of Assessors for weeks months now leading up to tonight's discussion and for so all the credit is to you all and I think we're getting the slides pulled up now s we full screen this is big I think we'll do and we've got a local copy zo a little bit I think we're we got the copy on our go ahead you're good please okay thank you Mr chairman members of the board those of you who don't know me my name welcome to classification 2025 I'd like to the outline of the presentation um setting um activate refy 25 and the steps that come with it we will outline that we have a interim year this year but we're also going to discuss the recertification here we'll talk about New Growth and How We Gather it total Town value ly calculation tax rate calculations and classification issues such as the minimum residential Factor open space we don't have any so no need to vote that residential exemption small commercial exemption have to answer some questions a recommendation and a vote at the tail end I'll ask for the recommendation but I'll also do one slide Beyond just to go back to some of the information that we covered so the steps in setting the tax rate first we need the levy this year's Levy is 41 m66 th000 801 and then we have the total all the real property residential class and C class which is a little bit over2 billion as you can see we as assessors we classify each property you will see that on the la4 that comes up now um very soon that's the uh form that is submitted to the state for approval a pain certification for values and new growth and that brings us to this phase present the classification options and ta sh options for the select board again resal Factor residential exemption small commercial exemption once we have uh a vote on the tax rate we submit the tax recap sign the la5 and hopefully the tax TR is approved by the dep this year is not a recertification year our last recertification year was 2021 next year is a recertification year in 2026 we do have some work ahead of us for that what's the difference the interir they don't look at too deeply into your records where R Val they will go through all your land schedules uh income and expense statements all that sort of stuff every year the Department of Revenue reviews your values and your growth I'm happy to say we're three weeks earlier than last year on approval on our values and our growth uh they were appr September 18th I I was new grow deriv well Ry 25 is July 1st to 23 to June 30th to 24 and the residential class we captured family class and also the mixed use class commercial it's 86412 industrial 6524 personal property 23238 for a total FY 25 510 759 which is up almost 47,000 that's based on our La 13 far as new grow history is concerned these last three years years 23 to 25 was pretty stable prior three years uh we had a lot more growth and that's attributed to the digital W project I'm sure uh commercial building residential buildings there it's good good news these are ways still building some buildings that's why we have additional growth this year it's a little bit higher our anticipation for next year as we forecast forecast the growth um we have 115 Main Street aside of CVS everybody knows the building that's currently in process uh we have a boat under construction it stops June 30th as to where it is the there's two buildings in digital way on going coage School Bop 12os there uh potential development at 182 part stre we have properties NY before that weren't complete that will pick up an f425 we have some that weren't even started we also have the fy2 new permits too and lastly we have the fire station that we should get some there as well the next slide is La this is State form Bri down all the classes and how many properties are in those classes out of about 4,200 Parcels that including personal property single family e condominium make up about 3,300 parcels and the total value is a little bit over2 billion we next have the um value classes a percent of the levy which is very important the residential uh is about 91% of the town and the cipo commercial industrial and personal property is a remainder at approximately 9% when looking at the Town value the total taxable value we look at FY 24 we look at fy2 and in the residential you can see it increased 133 mil 68383 for a percent change of 7.1 in the commercial almost 6.1 million that percent change was 3% the good news overall Town percent change was about 6.7% when you look at the commercial industry and personal property it's not that these didn't go up we had class three which is commercial go up a little over 7% we had class four which is INRI go up almost 5% and personal property went down a little bit at 4 and a half% so so in combination even overall 3% next we have the tax levy calculation the important thing to know here is in 2024 you see a number highlighted in yellow that's 36 M325 228 that is the stting point for FY 2025 prop two and a half is part of that next followed by new grow that gives us a new leing of 37 mil 7448 and that's cied any debt or obviously our debt went up this year with the green meal schools so went from about 2.5 million to almost 3.5 million the maximum permitted Le uh this year was 41 mil 23756 what we need to raise is 41 m66 801 then used Levy limit Ed Lev capacity 17,7 so when you're thinking about tax rates uh it's simple for single rate what you take is you take the levy you divide it by the town value and you a number in this case it's 1842 so if we went one rate over the whole town is 1842 with the average single family in mind FY 24 55740 FY 25 increased about 38,000 543 324 speaking of medians in FY 24 43700 and FY 25 went up also 52 an idea we look you go single split rate on this next slide here there's two things I'd like to point out to you you have uh split rates back to 2000 um been split different ways on the right hand side you will see a ship uh basically presents the last four year were developed at 1.29 in a 200 12 they split the rate at 1.39 what I've included on the next three pages are potential shifts residential and CP or commercial industrial and personal property the First shows 1.29 and it shows the rates are almost the same as this year rates this year were 1788 this show 1787 uh commercial was 2381 the shows 2376 on the next page you'll see 1.34 highlighted all the shifts are in between and one 1% increment here 1.34 great goes down about 11 cents and again this is all um estim it's what theway system tells us from an estimated idea they don't round all the and then the uh the CIP rate is 2468 so that goes up it's 86 or 87 cents and finally on the third page this is CP split from 1.41 and 1.50 being our Max probably don't want to hit this page too too soon but it is still available to us at some point can if need be so when you talk about the single rate we talk about split rates if you take the average single family rate and it's 543 324 you multiply it by 1842 average single family tax now would exceed just slightly $10,000 if you did the same thing with a split rate of 1.34 which is slightly higher than one this year it would be about 9650 the difference in savings would be $353 one might ask what does 1.29 do 1.29 would make that savings about 299 so basically how it breaks out it's about a 5455 off doll savings can when you look at the next slide here what I've done here is I've actually opened it up a little bit so it's easier to see what the numbers look like overall I did a 120 to 150 split I've done a 125 to 140 split hit a little bit more concise and what the dollar numbers are going downward so to see it at the 1.29 you'll see it's 979 that's what the average tax fill would be based on that split and then if you go down to the 1.3 it's 9655 so those are where those numbers came from and if you do the math it's 5455 depending this page the next page was interesting and I did this kind of from my presentation on the side in the red so you can see the last five years uh and where we are in terms of what the average taxs bill was and what the range is in and in in the difference the range is $93 to $372 in 2025 you see that n that number climbed a little bit so 9655 is it tax difference of about $613 annually however you must keep in mind the residential and the CIP the school was factored in so if you actually you're paying for the school regardless but if you did take the 248 out that number would go down to 365 and it actually fits into the range of what we've been doing we just took on extra debt so it's it's not out of site the average commercial value or shifts uh I figured you want to know what those were as well they're they're hard to figure out um you got to pick what you need what you want to use really because what happens up in digital way all uh condominium buses so um when it comes to the code three commercial it's $26 million which really skewes the average overall so I took that out in this event I we have 138 Parcels I divided by one less at 137 I came up with an average at 477 774 you can see where 1.29 and the 1.34 where those numbers come in the difference there just for fy2 would be $439 and if we look below FY 24 the value there was 85 mil 562 562 th000 we took is way out there too it had a different value the difference in value is there's a lot of building so they had an increase this year we divided by that same Pro count of 137 and that yielded an average commercial rate of 46319 and it's whole tax of 11,27 if you take FY 25's number minus from FY 24 split the difference is $325 if you do the same formula at the 1.34 split it's 76 and again do it take into account the school 248 so those numbers are in there as well looking forward to the industrial property I did the exact same formula um I struggled with clock tower which is $2 million roughly and it's half the value so I subtracted that out to give you some type of aage and we had 22 fils and 25 we took one back so we divided it by 21 getting a the same mathematical formula as we did in the commercial at 1.29 and 1.34 the difference between the two for fy2 is $888 when we looked back year FY 24 we did the same formula once again interesting enough in 25 we had one more fossil than we did in 24 so that's why those numbers are different when you do all the MTH and you take FY 24 you take the average value you multiply it by last year's rate 2381 you get total taxes 23293 you take FY 25 versus FY 24 you do the m and you get a negative number that's because you had one less f then you do the math on the second one it's 238 84 excuse me minus 23293 and that becomes 521 that would be the differential on the industrial at a 1.34 split I going too fast good or any questions not yet okay no problem looking at surrounding tax rates as we all like to do um the next page on left column in the blue is uh the years obviously you can see that mayard is in the second column there and along the top you see the towns that have a split R uh main residential rate is similar to Stow act um at least in the neighborhood there and our split rate as compared to sbur and Hudson fits in the the mid-range there and what I did like about that Hudson has a lot of commercial base sbur not so much but the overall makeup of our town fits in the middle of all of those it kind of worked out nicely that way I realized subber is more expensive but we only have so many selections to compare what I was surprised about when I looked at this was boxboro if you look down in 24 boxboro has 18% commercial and ideally anything over 10% is ideal to split uh and and residential commercial F and it's my opinion that they do have a lot of vacancies in in the way of offices office space and that's probably why they keep it $15 14 499,000 choosing a one of the classification issues is choosing a minimum residential Factor pretty straightforward Factor one is one rate for the whole time anything less is a split rate the M as always back the 2020 split the rate the board of assessors uh the do support split rate a minimum um residential factor 9649 which is a cop shift at 1.34 the idea behind that uh was the rates kind of stay the same if we split the same this year but the values went so the idea was to um give a little tax need to average single family if they went to the 1.31 and we ran as high as 1.39 and that was kind of a thought process behind that with respect to open space we don't have any partes in open space the open space discount is 25% you're good please continue sorry um the if you have a big parel land most people are in chapter because they get much higher discounts and that's chapter 61 61a and 61b 61 is forestry 61a is Horticultural and agricultural 61b is Recreation so this really just doesn't apply just trying to show you it had what it would be residential exemption this allows the community to Shi the tax burden within the residential class only from owners lower Valu Residential Properties owners of vacation homes higher valued homes and Residential Properties non owner occupied this is designed for vacation homes no not owner occupied properties uh the the interesting point is the amount of the tax levy doesn't change um just the res just the value is going to change you're going to take the exemption away from the value so if you had a million dollars and you had $200,000 for an exemption that would become 800 you work that number within the residential uh Levy and it would be able to hire that's how you get a higher tax R most am going to qualify for um owner property Shar it's not suggested we never adopted it here it all stems around a break even point so let's just take hypothetically first second 0 to a mil 500 let's call that the break even Point properties above that line are going to pay more as that tax rate is reworked and properties below that line pay less if you own more than one property uh that second property clearly isn't own or occupied and you will pay more on that property I think the message here is is simple since we have a large order occupied Community um really all we'd be doing is dividing the town between the higher priced homes and the lower priced homes you really what you want to do is have the non-owner occup pay seasonal uses pay such as C areas like that so when you look at 351 communities there's good reason why only 17 um towns of cities Implement and for the big Apartments such as Boston Cambridge and Brook line Sommerville wallam non occupied properties and then you look at the um respons provin TB same idea so that the res STS year round gets a benefit from the numbers the board of assessors does not support the residential exemption the last classification issue is the small commercial exemption this allows the select board to exempt up to 10% of the value on commercial property so set for less than a million and business that has less than 10 employees if adopted it can reduce the rate in commercial properties the interesting part here is class three total value equation of class three is redistributed within commercial and Industrial classes not personal property so personal property will be made separate there are qualifications for this as well the small commercial property has to be occupied by January 1st of the assessment date in this case fy2 yelds 1124 these businesses also have to be um certified with the Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development we get a list just before July and when you review the list uh you have to really go through because there's a lot of um businesses that run out of the house that don't they have to be class three properties if they have multiple tenants all tenants must qualify so running through that list we had very very few properties that qualified and quite honestly we split the rate as it is so why would we um split the rate again that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense uh in the commonweal there are nine communities uh that do small commercial exension they they have adopted it in big shopping malls once again one of our properties here R brancher use it commercial properties are smaller and when I say smaller under a million dollars under 10 employees once you surpass that the property doesn't qualify so smaller commercial buildings if you have a lot of them it could work in that capacity last I knew I know Westford used it for a very very short time it be five 10 years ago and they don't use any the accesses does not support the adoption of the small commercial exemption any questions I have one more slide if you want to see it now I'm happy to do it if you would like to ask questions I'm happy there too whatever you would like so I'll I'll start just um this is the largest shift we've seen usually when there's a recommendation for different shift over the last couple years that you showed it's in a downward Direction and by a point and now you're recommending going the other direction by five point so I see a lot of uh clear data about what that shift means in terms of a dollar value but not much on the the reasoning that the board of assessors came to this recommendations so can you describe kind of the thought process uh either of you about why why the shift in this direction to this magnitude away from the residential and towards the CIP section like answer I'm happy to answer it the shift and why we shifted from 1.29 to 1.3 the motivation as opposed to the the dollar value behind [Music] it down 1.29 and that shi terms of values and then before we tried to bring the the sh you would end up not you to at it's essentially if one section the [Music] town commercial was in the more [Music] inre we discussed all that then came out that they want can you repeat that last part please repeat that just the last sentence well we decided to shft a little bit more a lot of people mov did the board of assessors discussed the impact on on businesses and on both the commercial and Industrial properties that would see the burden that you're shifting away from families yeah it's so many things changing it's really couldn't figure out that there was that much um Serv [Music] and any questions from the board may I add to that you may I we spoke about why we do this laring part due to the school um adding that extra uh 16 million 17 million onto the budget we try to give a from presidential taxpayer with values going up if we kept the rates at 1.29 the average single family just gets raised as well it's 91% of our population here in town uh I think we kind of catered to that particular group but was so much here in town it's not an 8020 split you know it's 91% which fincial and uh new families coming and um if we keep going up in our rate I think people will look at town at some point know a little different because we have a tax rate so it could impact that and we've got the B many items regarding that we also talked about the commercial properties too with the commercial properties as well one instance you could see there was a negative number I think was the investory properties and I think we're thought of actually small bit it's only 11 cents so I thought the industrial property negative number was more of an artifact by just you know the extra parcel being counted and that meant there was a decrease in the average value so that we had the values but we had a negative number and want from the standpoint that that meant the taxes went down on on the average yes because of the inclusion of another parcel yes so it still go up for the same industrial property from one year to the next though it went I think it went $500 or something to that effect I think that industrial negative number is more of an artifact of including a partiel of a different value in the average and it is a true decrease for that property class I think when we looked at the commercial values and Industrial values we didn't see first shattering jumps so if you look at the average single family you are you're at $613 with the school if you if you look at some of the Industrial and Commercial they weren't in the thousands they were in the hundreds too so it made sense where a lot of the taxpayers are residential taxpayers to recommend that shift otherwise if we stay at the 1.29 we can go somewhere in between these are just the recommendations but if we say where we are every single family and people ask me this all year long what's it going to be you know what are increase going to be all year long I go through this it's going to go up that's the bottom line with the same tax rates it will go up because the values and single family in general almost $38,000 at 1787 rather than 1788 so you're looking and add the school in there too I didn't count for that because I had you'll see a really really big number but I want to show you on the next slide you so kind to go to the next slide I know it's hard to read up there I thought it would be a little bit bigger but when we look at the bottom uh two in the yellow up there it's 1.29 ship and 1.34 single rate thank you single R gives you 10,000 the 1.29 979 9 you subtract at the 1.34 that 9655 the shift is $54 just in that residential P you can see what the tax that's annual it's annual that's correct it's $54 annually $55 annually and I say that with a little bit of hesitation because we haven't submitted the recap yet when we submit the recap those numbers could change so the just estimates and and you'll see in the lower right the white portion red you see what those numbers come out to be um at the no ship 965 would be the increased uh 1.29 667 would be the increase at 1.34 uh you know 612 toal difference of about $54 again just to show what that impact had on the single family and that's all year long I'm asked about the single family that's kind of what we focused on but I took it a step further because last year I didn't have commercial in here like I put in here this year and I wanted to make sure that you got the best information possible to make a choice thank you any questions from the board and just procedurally we we have a chance to discuss um with the COA and and with the town assessor we'll go to the public if there's any comments there uh and then we can close the hearing and then we'll make the decisions Greg did I get that correct yeah so we will be another time for um deliberation after we close the hearing as well before we make a final decision yes Chris is there any um is there anyone on the board of assessors that is a member of the um you know the commercial owners anyone that's going to feel the the brunt of the change as opposed to Residents anybody was a business own the of assessor that is a business owner own I don't think so property I don't business property okay we we have a guy who works in Watertown does commercial property um I don't know if Grado is anything um just you know just getting to the point of was there any was there any conversation with anybody that this is going to affect in that way as opposed to you know uh people that if we go to the 134 that's going to obviously affect them in a negative way I was just wondering if they were anyone from that population statement was on that board or if anyone from that population statement has been you know kind of consulted or spoken to about it you know given an opinion we didn't have any conversations with people that own commercial property no okay no we did not please our V recommending no standing so to speak it's just a recommendation up to the board so they can choose whatever yeah I think and and we get that I think Jeff's question which was sort of he asked exactly the direction that I would have gone in um Jeff's question got at okay we see it we understand that that explanation you gave about giving some relief to the residents okay um you know I guess when I when I look at this um in my 16 17 years on the board I had always indicated that my desire over the years was to reduce the split so that eventually would come down to we would where we would join the majority of communities in the Commonwealth that don't have tax although it's been difficult because of yeah child manage our size makes it difficult de on that um and this going in the other direction as Jeff said sort of is it's the first time in the decade that we've that we've seen that um so I I want to try to get an understanding of why we are not reversing that and 60 bucks a year as much as I don't want to see anybody's tax bill goes up by even by 60 bucks versus the business tax the business owner that sees a much higher increase with that this really minimal shift in the wrong direction is somewhat concerning however Steve made a point that uh sort of hit me when he spoke about services and the impact of services to particular commercial properties because correct me if I'm wrong the condos over at uh or the the senior home Senior residence that that the fire chief is seeing a lot of additional business from uh is adding costs to our services in the community that are being borne by people who aren't necessarily seeing the benefit of those increased Services yet an increase in the way that you explained well it shifts the burden but that's only one property out of those what however many described yeah yeah when you talk about commercial in general um CPA isn't part of commercial so they get that discount as it is now that's another side of it where I sure board CPA text can be really big money well that's true that's a valid point too CPA that we talked about earlier yes does not those folks are not paying the CPA tax right anywhere we implemented that um and we brought that rate at 1.29 and went forward they have a savings there I've asked right when I came here why do we not Implement that and I was surprised because that's a discount I was surprised by that we implemented it where I work for we implemented where I'm under Bo does the law does the law allow us getting off topic do the law allow a community to add the CPA toting go David I'm not AB sure I'd have to check on that for you I thought it was limited to just but if we did if we did to your point point I think it's going to be you know it's reasonable money as you climb that ladder in value too so if you shift it or if you get the CPA you might come out on the bigger property certainly you're going to come out on you know probably up I just don't know value tax value I don't know if CPA allows commercials but that's a different discussion um I want to hear what the board has colleagues have to say about the shift um and going in that opposite direction or essentially six may I ask you a question you've been on the board for quite some time yeah what was the reason in 2012 they went to 1.39 I can't remember that far back let me look at let me look at the uh at the list see we thought about this long and hard this didn't happen overnight we didn't just walk into the office at a boa meeting say boom we're done no one in that no question no no I'm not I we gave this tremendous thought when we came before you and all these issues we raised we talked about them and that was the agreement going with it but I was curious because the 1.39 I didn't go back any further but I will go back further and look yeah if I want to known him where were we why were we there we were moving my recollection is like that we always were trying in 16 17 years this is my 18th year I think sitting on the board for that tax here might be 170 um that we've always tried to either go down or kept say I don't recall going up um and until I saw this that we went up uh so I don't recall prior to 2012 so are you saying that prior to 2012 it was lower and it went up was 1.39 according to the records I have yeah I see that on 2012 but 2011 I you don't know I didn't go back that far all right I was just looking to see why it may have been that way here's the other part of it that my guess is that 2011 it was like 1.41 that's my guess I don't know here's the other part of it that maybe I didn't um explain well enough but we do have a good chunk from the school coming again if we borrow borrow the 17 16 million 17 million we B the next two-thirds of the levy next year just in simple math is going to be around 44,500 roughly which is going to put impact on the tax rate what we tried to do this year we didn't want to go from 1.29 to 1.39 we saw 1.34 is kind of like a middle ground this next year if we borrow that 2third of the school like I'm told it may happen it doesn't happen that it's going to happen the next year to build that school now we have that same issue only doubled it right here with us and we're going to have to face this again but with more money in the levy that way that doesn't take into account an override if one should pop up yep yep yep so no I hear you and please don't think I'm discounting the effort board put it you guys the boss I know that not the way the boss just because you know speaking for myself I very much respect the uh the effort that goes into this by the board and by yourself so thank you we put tremendous effort into it try to come up with something reasonable um people out every day when I go to houses people tell me when of the taxes going down why do they keep going up every day I get that question how are we going to get tax we you know we talk we had Tom reading we talked about the bleaches we talked about all these things that you all know so well every day I feel that question and I kind of feel like I I don't have an answer for down the road because we're going to be keep B more money you have prop two and a half we have a lot of building up there so we're going to have more growth that's going to add to the levy too so we're going to add a higher Levy next year the when he's borrowed and will you run those numbers real quick um we were thinking if we borrowed all the money a 1.39 shift would would be recommended but we didn't want to do that when we only B small piece as compared to the whole so that's it so so so prior to um sometime around 2014 2013 2014 we actually had um a number at every you know up until probably up until you know the the time of the pandemic pandemic we had a a number of you know business owners in town that would come to this meeting every year and Lobby on their own behalf when it came to the split and then they you know they kind of it it ended sometime you know you know right around the pandemic like many of those things everything was um remote and those guys you know in particular were have not been to our meetings but um that's just kind of what you know what took place and why the why the shift ended up going down because those guys were coming in lobbying to go in a different direction and um and and we did in you know in some sense we we obviously we did go down but um I guess that you know that's just that's an aside to that but what um do you so we're you know and I'm not saying we're I'm not saying that we're going to um go against what you suggest because I don't know what anyone's going to vote but my question is are you do you have a a historical perspective do you have the information that would tell you over the past say five or six years what um what the Assessor's recommendation was and what the decision was the final shift number was have we um have we changed your the Assessor's um suggested shift in the past and and if so um do you know you know how much in in each year type thing there have been years P Chris where we have gone against the Assessor's recommendation um the first year the first year the first time we got one recommendation that and decided make afterward and that was just looking at the chart that would have been that would have been nearer to when I thought but 2021 is when we put at 1.29 so the recommendation from the assessors at that point was a higher a higher number yeah I just I just don't recall the um I just don't recall the instances where we've you know where we have gone with a different number than than suggested I was just wondering if anybody had that information but I don't remember that either Chris I I do remember like Mr Doyle coming advocating for the single rate but I don't I don't I don't recall he was speaking for himself or on behalf of board the of assessors but I so I don't recall obviously it didn't stand out enough that we all like unless well remembers but the rest of us we don't remember that particular moment when there was a discrepancy between what the board assessors recomend there definitely have been not on a regular basis but there have been years where the boy did not with expected some of it was attitude of the presentation I think at times that caused that to happen um so you know just trying to bring you the best information that we have and the thought process behind it I think people coming into town I think next year or something we forecasting I think I wrote Chef I said last year we forecasted what was going to happen this year and we put that on our radar and we thought we going to get that whole number all at once and we realized we didn't get it we took a portion and triy to do this thing in two steps rather than one just like I would if I found really bad problems out there in the real estate like I found some things and um nobody wants the whole answer lot at once she try to grad do it any other questions for the chief assessor Mr Pon before I open it to the public commentary um just just one general question um I know that certainly a lot of people I've met over the years people who've moved into Mainland because the the housing is cheaper here than in the surrounding towns do we have any sense as to whether or not over the last 10 or 15 years whether that Gap has been closing or not in other words is maned uh in terms of its tax uh burden getting closer to the likes of uh you know subber comp good Lincoln and so forth which are obviously much wealthier Town than us I'm just wondering what the trend might be in terms of a our tax burden does that it's time really for me to answer I've been here for two years in the middle of this crazy Market you know we've seen the values go up and up and up we've seen some sale prices where I think we're going up seven or 8% next year right that's a guess I haven't run the numbers but I've seen some off the charts already so I'm preparing for that as well um what I do see is as we climb people have a certain budget they can pay this much whatever that number is doesn't matter so much price of the property if you have high taxes it's going to drive down the prices at some point because they they have what they can afford and I think you know with a higher tax rate you take more buying power out of there okay and our housing production plan addressed some of the issues relative to the tax burden on residential units and Mayers addressing and the issue is that mayard residents were found in that report to have I forget the phrase that they used but a housing burden I think was where they put more so than on some other local communities and other words a lar a larger percentage of people's income goes towards taxes than in other communities nearby now our our tax rate and our tax bill may be less than Sudbury because it is but the percentage of the average income that goes towards that tax bill in mayor because we have an average income that is is so the tax burden on the residents is higher than it is in some communities that was all factoring into that yeah I think you're right just be clear the tax rate is higher the tax bill is lower lower but the percent but the percentage of based upon income sense is uh higher for a man generally speaking when you split the rate I live in a split rate town and our rate is something like $11 per thousand so taxes are low people pay more and they have it's all over the place just like me but it's different are they're spending more money they're taking it know it's not the tax end of it generally when you split the rate residential goes down quite a bit with the loss of digital Corporation I'm sure everything fell on the residential taxpayer and that's probably how we got here well they split the rate and the rate was higher because you didn't have that contributed to the tax base that's how it that's how it began that's just my my guess for confirming that but that's why we're in where we are because most towns if you look around you won't have that um in a perfect world boxb should be splitting their rate you know 18% commercial they don't have enough commercial businesses so say they're similar to usest downtown we don't have that I I was I'm catering to them too because I realized we're hot in one market at digital way and we're not so hot in another Market so I was cognizant of what I was doing and looking at values and trying to get you an average commercial and Industrial value but we have a new project which is just abs doing so well and then we have an industrial project that's been here for a long time maybe struggling a bit but it's worth a lot of money and then we have all the smaller businesses in here so the only way I could really come up with something of substance for you was to do the math I explained earlier and let you know about it because there's no perfect answer here we have downtown vacancies we all know that we don't want that we don't want more I get it believe I get it uh understood and um to David's point one nice in a small ad for next year might be the um average single family tax bill from suround communities on that chart that might help explain the difference that the David is highlighting there on that chart so that could be a good line to add just for the most recent take up some of the splits and add maybe something like that yeah yes yes yeah I just thought it would be good to see it plotted out here okay any other questions before it open up to the public for commentary okay um is there any public commentary okay all right any other comments before I we can close the public hearing and then we can open up deliberation on the uh both the shift and the exemption questions all right well then I will make the motion to close the public hearing at 8:24 p.m. second All In faor Lindsay yeah David yes uh Mike yes Chris yes and I yes as well all right so the public hearing is closed we'll move on to item 9B which is the uh classification shift vote anybody like to start this conversation i' just like to hear the thoughts rest Bo on I think the the explanation is makes sense to me as to why the recommendation has been made the question is um whether or not Ford wants to move in a direction that sort of goes against our Trend which is which has been and maybe it's been wrong maybe we you know maybe we should U maybe this board feels differently but the trend has been to try to lower that shift not raise the shift in order to eventually and we used to say you know it took us 20 years to your point it takes 20 years to get to the shift that we had it's going to take a long time 20 years if not longer to get it back down and this just seems to be going in the other direction but maybe this is the time we have to based on what we've got in front of us but that's discussion I fig I would open U can I ask a question you can maybe it's for one of you may I don't know what what is the um what is the benefit of not having a split rate why is that it's the general practice the suround 1842 is going to raise an average single family over $10,000 um anyway as you have a single rate the law in Massachusetts if you reach $25 per thousand or more you lose all your growth so you don't want to elevate that over time if that keeps coming up so you had you get 4 million uh to the budget next year you have a $5 million override before you know you're $22 a, you know it just really pumps up value for everybody if you have a single rate on there what you're trying to do is you're taking 91% of the people and you're shifting it with the CIP so the rates are different for a reason CIP at 9% of the town is picking up a little bit more and this one comes down just a little in our case tonight 11 cents in an estimate if you kept one further point if you kept 1842 a000 uniform rate and you're looking to help the businesses the 1842 is not going to help the businesses that's going to add a lot to their burden and the simple theory has been had been over time that a single rate encourages businesses to want to come to a community because they're going to have a lower tax bill on the prop but um you know many of Manor businesses business properties are not the business themselves it's the the the does though throw any increase in taxes upon the small business owners now that you've got over it digital way you've got huge conglomerates that are over there that are um that are different from you know downtown businesses that are just m mom and pop quote unquote Stores um those businesses uh this this this change doesn't affect them one bit it's the ones downtown that are seeing um impact from their landlords that are the ones that are going to see the impact I do have numbers on that as well but Market basket I took them out of the equation have those numbers taxation wise and what that would do then I you know I I I think theyve this point it's it's a relatively small expense for them but it's it's a fair amount of the tax burden shifted on for us as a town is what David is saying um I'll I'll I don't know if I agree with that I'm pretty sure that Market Basket and uh trailer supply and all the companies that are there are there because they pay attention to these things they're not there because they don't pay attention they don't mind an increase they're there because they pay attention and they don't stay in communities that do these type of things to them it's not it's not Market Basket isn't going to get an increase in their bill in 2026 or 2027 and say it's okay it's it's not that much money those people are in business making the kind of money they make because they pay attention to every dollar and every cent trust me I do business with most of those guys they know what they're getting charged and then not taking increases lightly of any kind so you know whe whether or not you feel as though well it's a big company we we let them have it that's not how it works the big companies are more likely to cause a fuss than the small guys because the small guys you know it's cost of doing business they eat it big companies aren't the same I don't I think that's a I think that's a bad way of looking at it myself but that's just my opinion are we hearing from small businesses at this point or in the past about this question is to what the sense of it is are there any are there any in the room Mike uh not well we got one got not there there that's what you get that's what that's typically what we get from Main businesses they're not in the room and not they're not saying anything about anything why is that yeah with which asks begs the question is it because uh either because they just don't pay attention to come here or because they don't care or uh do they genuinely care and and just don't want to participate I'm I'm just trying to get a sense of uh what kind of opinions they have and how it affects their business is it is it likely to uh affects the people wanting to come into mayor to do business uh no no residents spoke up during the public comment period either we didn't get any public comments from anybody I get that um I'll just going back to Lindsay's question one other um philosophy that I've heard is that a split rate encourages owners of vacant property changes the math on them encourages them to be more proactive in filling the vacant space so one theory is that if you have a vacancy issue this might apply more to the mill um that it encourages them from a business perspective to to start to get some tenants in those spaces but as Rick mentioned the mill is just one very big piece and don't separate up the mill from you smaller businesses who look nothing alike as Chris noted from business perspective downtown too I don't think yeah no you to think about all the vacancies downtown too and how how are we going to fill them I don't like the seeing vac nobody does you know we have to come up maybe with a plan get some people in there at a at a low rent maybe to start them and and bring them in and raise it hit them on an escalator rent or something like that and if we can do that we get them in there for a couple just you know just to get the buildings filled up looks that requires cooperation from landlords that that requires cooperation from landlords to get them into the building to get them to encourage businesses to rent from them part of the problem I I have some friends who are business owners too and they do charge a lot right now just like everybody else and um personal property this year we lost a lot of accounts people went out of business just for example we picked up some new accounts um but we lost a lot of accounts overall and that's why personal property went down along with the 504s my point is very simple these small businesses go out they come and go all the time and they don't stick around all that long that's our issue kind of talking about that downtown but on a a bigger scale right there a lot of these personal property people run business out of their house and it's not that much money so we got to get somebody in those commercial buildings you can run some type of business but they've been vacant since I've been here and that's almost two years now we we haven't had much luck with um uh two of the larger landlords downtown over the last several years yeah they have no apparently they don't have a desire but that's a different discussion than not I I guess you know most of those people um rent space right right most most of them so the business owner is responsible for that tax ultimately so when you start talking about the small commercial exemption there it's good for the business owner not for the business doesn't necessarily get passed on to that person occupying yeah you stop talking about a whole bunch of things if they're they own the building that might be a different scenario people other discussion the board so I'm I'm uncomfortable with shifting so much of the burden onto commercial taking you know what's being absorbed by 90% in the residential class and shifting all that on to 10% at at such a large step change even if we were philosophically aligned on the direction um so I'll put that out there I think it's now I think we've said it was a $54 decrease relative between the two different splits on an average single family and it's about a $440 increase on a slightly cheaper average commercial property so are you leaning towards leaving it forever it is or a smaller step change up if if we want to and I do respect the plot process that the P assessors went through I'm okay with a a slighter increase if we don't choose one of the two that we presented we really don't know what what the number is on the businesses or res because we don't have the actual numbers do we we do but it's it's pretty proportional so if you do something halfway between it'll be instead of that 440 number it'll be 220 I guess that's yeah so halfway between 29 and 34 is what 131 well that's a the big jump to if I might add um came in the commercial from the building of digital way so that's where a lot of the value increase came from again one particular area we're looking at that so having said that the values in the other property I'm not talking about the I'm not talking about the total value I'm talking about the the difference on the commercial property in that shift value from 1.29 to 1.34 against an average value excluding digital way as you've done the math here on the average value is 478 right here so that's that's why it's talking about that 440 increase on the commercial property versus the $54 decrease on the residential that's that's what I was so I'll make a motion see if we get a second I will make a motion we uh and I don't even know what terminology to use for it uh you do the percent shift of I believe one point right I Look to approve commercial the commercial IND property CIP and residential tax rates with a percentage shift of 1.31 that's two fths of the recommendation of the magnitude of the shift that would be what what you'd be voting in this case would be the minimum residential Factor right the side of that 680 and the equivalency there is the CP shift of talking about the 1.31 so is there a second to that motion for discussion I'll second so the motion has been made made and seconded on a tax shift of 1.31 is there any further deliberation I I can get behind that I think it's a smaller step change then so it addresses my primary concern yeah I'm on board Chris or Lindsay any commentary I'm I'm okay with that shift I like that I like that you know it's a compromise I know not everyone in the room is happy but it it is you know yeah all right I'll call the vote uh so the vote has been made second Mike second Mo been made and seconded for uh CIP shift 1.31 all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm yes all right thank you for that one I think the next ones will be relatively simple um the open space discount doesn't apply uh the residential exemption uh we do not support nor do we support the small commercial exemption and I will move to vote no to the residential exemption second all in favor Lindsay yeah David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm a yes and I will move to vote no to the small business Commercial exemption second all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm yes as well gentlemen thank you both very much thank you very much thank you good job good job Bo I was impressed that was that was not an easy one you all did very well thank you all right thank you thank you if there's any comments that you have in terms of as your things go on uh that you would like to have the presentation provide information help it was very thorough I just it was a pretty small thing I was asking for but overall very impressed with the volume of data and the different um ways to look at it to help us make that decision y I think we've seen great Improvement on the presentation guys thank you both very much all right we are going to move on to FY 26 um and so we'll start off one um item that we have been talking about I think since I've been since before I've been on the board is the the need for a deputy fire chief oh I'm sorry well then I'm gonna stop talking and Greg do you want to introduce the the fire chief or do you want me to just turn it right over to her my favorite fire chief not yet retired so um this is uh our Ang years coming years yeah been like two decades worth of work but um I think for you guys a letter on your do something thing but I printed out when it just in cas wanted but she she um apologized to me that she didn't have this time but I pointed out to her as I looked at over her shoulder I can see Cali so busy and literally and I'll let you literally twice last week as we were talking and I was in her office she got crawled away twice so we couldn't even finish two meetings last week because she was so busy she she got a call get to go so I for what it's worth I thought I thought that alone just just like that week of of how busy she is was indicative of her need for supports at the top which is what she get I did kind of make that as a joke because I know that you asked for this information somewhere around August and I've really been trying to get it to you I said to Greg when I hadn't even started this presentation days ago I'm like can I just give them my calendar so that he kind of I appreciate it and it's Tim because we do have a quad board meeting coming up next week and we've been trying to make sure we have as much of a holistic picture about all the different needs and requests in so I'm I'm very glad you're able to join us in advance and we can hear a little bit more detail on this particular request can dive into it a little bit if that helps go ahead so small little presentation and I'd like to thank you all for taking theity giv the opportunity to present to you tonight as you came into my joke so as your new fire chief I want to point out tonight that there's a critical need in our department that directly impacts our ability to continue to provide the high level of service that our community expects although I'm new in this role the request of the Deputy fire chief is not new it was first identified over a decade ago and brought to the board in 2011 after a fire department analysis since then this need has been presented to the select board and the Town Administrator every year and with each passing year the case for this position only grow start our call volume has increased annually and we are responding to more simultaneous incidents than ever before while we're fortunate to have a mutual a agreement the help with these demands the pressure of our department continues to rise the growing number of emergency responses has limited our Captain's ability to handle tasks that were previously assigned to them to help build ding Gap as a result these responsibilities have now shifted back to the SE and further stretching our capacity to what is now a breaking point because of this the essential responsibilities of the fire chief are being delayed due to more ENT operational needs as Greg just described um that demand more immediate attention the greatest impact that I see with the last Deputy fire chief is our fire department um fire prevention department despite our best efforts we're falling behind on commercial property inspection residential inspections and per inspections additionally there are new safety codes particularly those that are related to the battery electric battery storage and solar panels that are adding the complexity to this work we simply just don't have the staff to keep up right now the workload is being divided between myself and Captain just in the fire defense prevention division each of us have different levels of expertise exp experience training and knowledge of the Cod this inconsistency leads to delays confusions for property owners and gaps in our inspection process to resolve this we need a quality qualified Deputy fire chief who can serve as a consistent authoritative presence in fire prevention ensuring uniformity and Clarity in all of our another challenge that we have is plans review process this is more a new construction renovation um that's an opportunity for us to catch things before obviously we lack the trained Personnel to thoroughly assess building plans and ensure they meet safety standards these issues are not just administrative they have real world consequences fire prevention laws and building codes exist to protect lives and ensuring that we follow them follow them properly is essential to community safety and align with the industry best practices to address these challenges unting a creation of the Deputy fire chief position this role would focus on two key areas fire prevention ensuring consistent inspections and plan reviews and operations in training streamlining daily operations and supporting our on Shi train the Deputy fire chief would assist the fire chief in managing and coordinating all aspects of Department activities including personnel management training operations and overseeing emergency response operations additionally this position would provide critical leadership support to our captains and the ship commanders enabling them to focus on their primary responsibility which is ass assuming our Public Safety and our community we have been fortunate to have strong Community Support I very much realize that we're sitting in a brand new facility with a brand new engine outside and we have an outstanding firefighting H help to continue to provide exceptional service our staffing structure must keep paying to the demands that we are facing I fully understand the financial concerns but at this point the position is a critical need no longer a luxury the addition of a deputy fire Chief will enhance our operations improve fire prevention and ultimately help us Serve the People ad maned more efficienc I respectfully ask for your support in making this position a reality so that we can continue meeting the public safety expectation Comm thank you for consideration thank you J any questions for Wallace one question your presentation you reference 7% annually um increase in volume of yeah I didn't go all the way back I can give you all that data but really it's been a consistent 7% since the um building of digital W so a lot of that comes from so it's increased in senior proposition but yes I could attribute that to our biggest resp lot of things there since digital way we're consistent wouldn't that be in one year or maybe two depending on when people were moving so So eventually that would ideally level out but even still you we have now seen a 2ish per increase over the last five six years or so yeah call volume our call volume now just everything we do with impacted like our training and things that we used have more time to do it's just as soon as we pull something out they go on a you know they're averaging about six to eight calls during a day it's hard to do all the things um I would want to know what the actual costs associated with it are what the estimated um salary and what the benefits and everything else with the overall cost would be now when we had a similar presentation Made To Us by the police chief who was looking at the time several years ago for a deputy chief part of the sales pitch was that there would be cost savings recognized in his adoption of a deputy chief and he went through the process about where those savings would come from do you have a similar analysis relative to cost savings that would result well I mean I think part of it for us be succession planning um is I don't know if that's necessary a cost savings but to have somebody both with the same plane and the intention of some they be leaving and that person coming up could potentially be a big Coster um I would Envision that that definitely would be more a salary days job um so it would eliminate some of the needs when we have have two captains they could fill some of the overtime roles those are the types of things I'd like to see some analysis on that type of thing over time estimated overtime savings or whatever um overall I I think I I I support the uh the theory of deputy chief I just need to see it established as how we can afford it and then if we push it why it's necessary and why how where we see the benefit results and I would think that as Greg begins the process of developing his budget proposal going forward that that's the type of thing that he can have a discussion with you and present us with the documentation that supports that so then we can go out and sell it to the public right because then the question becomes where does the money come from and I understand that challenge I'm just here to kindy to present it operationally not funding we could we could find the money in the savings like the chief did when the chief police chief did the deputy chief and essentially there was no no no additional tax burden I don't know if that's going to be the truth here or not but in when the police didn't speak similar I don't totally know the operations of how they VI their Comm no and I'm not asking you to compare just saying that certainly helps sell no I just feel like at this current time our expectations of all the staff is they're all maed out so it's not I don't know if we could eliminate any overtime or something from that they're all doing L shift so it's not it's trying to kind of get it back so that operationally we can do better um I think some of the cost savings is what we're trying to prevent and you know our first thing is property conservation and I think that there's it's just shown with all the commercial properties and things we should be going in and doing inspections and making sure there's no risk to our community members and we're just not even get so that's the part where I believe that we have such a void in that service that it has a potential of costing us more money later on saving us money right now I understand what's what's our statutory obligation to perform those types of inspections so for our inner bylaws in anything that's over four units residential that's like a multif family home we're supposed to go in annually um we hav't been able to do that since before Co so I actually had an appointment today to go through all the McDonald um properties which took a long time to get they had to cancel last minute so we rebooked that that's a big chunk of our residential unit so I find that as a win that we have down the calendar um just and then we have three Lies We Do all those that's happening this week so that get Su you know we have those licenses that it's a service for the community as well as business um and that that that was our own town bylaw so that's a Mayer bylaw is that I'm I'm not sure if that's connected to some other often we have bylaw because not all usually the town biolog right that's what I'm saying just because it's a town bolog do mean it's not reflective of a a state um statutory requirement um and then I'll just to speak to Da I think one of the things we're looking at here is the um reviews during the inspection phase you know that's a better service for for people doing renovations or new build outs and things like that and so delays miscommunications um just improving the pering process as always there's unrealized savings that we're not going to be able to quantify from those types of processes and that's something that I think our business owners should appreciate especially being we just increasing tax over there we can show maybe we know as pointed out there's an expectation ofing this year we can show like the demand that that puts on the department growth is good like we we're looking for like an economic growth but that we have to parallel that Services we're not coming up be H brow well and I mean according to the COA the population of seniors and manner is going to continue to grow and if that's increasing your whole volume by 7% annually then you have to look at whatever that projected growth is and then increase it even more if you're already completely maxed out then eventually I assume I feel like we're at a Breaking Point right like just the duties that I try to finish every day and I'm sure this is comparable to a lot of department heads you know I come in with to do this I 14 things on it today and get any of them done so that pushes to 14 tomorrow on you know I just feel like as the role of the chief there should be a lot more strategic planning and able to write grants and those kind of things and instead just really catching up all the time and I just feel like we can do better as a department for that's really what comes to but the reality of it is call 911 we're going to show up but I still think we can do better stats on call volumes manard relative to other towns yeah I could I can get all of that for you other comp that so it gets a little mixed up because So like um if we need help from subury they're going to come to us so is that marked as their call or our call we have that divided out okay but the other thing that makes it a little sketchy is every department handles it a little different so some Chiefs call make runs for all their inspections that they do to inflate their runs so to speak we don't do that we keep that as a separate and and you would see that if you looked at our incidents um probably 12 years ago maybe a little less we' have all of our inspection things in our R volume as well so it looked like we did 3,000 calls one year and then dropped down to a thousand just because of reporting procedures it was just the way it was imported in our data record system so wait okay yeah so fire prevention things used to be started as an incident right keep track of it so what I'm saying is if I try to get comps from other towns I'm G to have to try to differentiate how they do it because every every Chief wants to do it different on how they want to do their brants or funding or what their s want so the saying is see a fire department youve seen a fire department so everyone does it slightly different thank you any other questions having been in the assistance of administrator myself I I absolutely recognize the the types of issues that you're facing in terms of Staffing so I appreciate your presentation legitimacy of what we Tred to achieve with thank you thank you I appreciate it I think we are the only Town Department left that doesn't have a wingman sub right so still have it no but right now they don't even have it I hope you're not proposing that any other questions rep Chief um I may have missed you saying this but is like an estimated cost of town something Greg that you but that was part of my next the next agenda item oh okay sorry no it's okay moving so I can get into it now Mr chair uh yeah unless there's any other questions for chief thank you very much for taking the time to come in this evening thank you uh so as Bri said we'll move on to 10B which is the general fund FY 26 development status right so this this is a traditionally um this has been on the agendas leading up to town meeting maybe maybe two stop but here we are in the process and largely what I'm about to say I said at what Mee so at this point um according to oured bylaws we are collecting the data so um Revenue projections as well as the Department's submissions and the board had already release budget message so just sort of like in the bis stage of developing the budget but even with that as I as I will present to you tonight and as I said in Bud sub um and for this is my sixth or seventh budget here with Town seventh budget in town um um I can take a pretty good stab of what we go so with that there's some highlights um and if you want to follow along you can but I'm I'm largely referencing that page General plan budget but I also which I'm about to say in boards so um at the very top we're talking about property tax revenue which is what uh Rick glad and the board assessor going over and for that it's a percentage of the L limit we have existing and then you project new go and then prop two and a half multipli through your current leg limit to your next year so with all that being said it's about a $1.4 million increase in property tax over this this after that it gets a little tricky because um both state aid is kind ofle you can't just assign a number to it it could be 2% it could be higher than that it could be lower than that um local receipts which is like voting permits and meals uh taxes excise taxes those those me and the finance team have already sat down enough TW Le um and then you have some trans Investments but largely the bulk of your new revenue does property taxes and then um so that's the one side of The Ledger on the other side of Ledger is the expenses now a lot of this is Ence in fact even when I get down the list of Public Safety and in the fire department even Stephan I just you just noticed I was pretty close but Stephanie had a slightly number what she might be C for um but right off the top we have a number of contracts my contract needs to be incorporated into into next year's budget um my contracts changed with this year was already sort of accounted for with what we put aside for small contracted um and so for next year the Public Work Director contract is up um and two unions the labor union and the defend dep part so we try to sort of like have through that and an estimate contract um and then there's liability and property insurance increase I put that as 7% I don't have that number yet um but we we get know we get scary stories from our liability proper rep all the time um which is a reflection of claims but mainly the mark So how much it cost to Ure everybody and then uh energy cost how much it cost to keep the lights on um that's a gamble every year um our our consultant recommended a 10% um increase to those costs that's a lot but is what it is and then I Incorporated a couple of of um well this will this kind of lead into the next topic experence agenda I Incorporated a couple of sort of extranes things things that like we haven't traditionally addressed in the past and one of which being the senior center so we want to move into a space um based on the presentation we got from the senior center committee a couple weeks ago I Incorporated that into budget projection that's about $200,000 increase for the for the council so $200,000 leasing the utility cost programming expansion again that was based on res that the seni and if I may Greg we're expecting the COA um to come just like Chief Wallace did to talk about that increase said enough make S yeah GRE the um just so I I know where to look um the COA increase you're talking about what line is that found if you're looking at that big spreadsheet I'm looking at the the three General government yep look at the general government so it's got a huge increase that's 6 632,000 15 15.3% 37 okay so it's included in that in that line okay so that that includes the the senior Center and the deputy fire chief no it does not include the deputy fire that's public yeah kind of cut some my notes but I had it it on the side so yeah you uh good question David and the general government is really a cat alliz so it so it includes utilities and and certain personal personel costs myability Insurance a lot of pretty much everything that was just discussed um until we had public safety in schools public works that calls and then um yeah so Capital funding so uh this fiscal year we put aside $50,000 towards just general Capital funding from the general fund for offering um and we want to bump that I I just without direction from the capital planning committee just take this as the granta I just put it up 100,000 and then um and that again falls under General government um although on this fren you can see where it has Capital non-bt that could be another place you would put it but we we we would we've been appropriating that under General government so the 633 includes the 200,000 for Capital well yeah what it includes is 150,000 this year weide 50 so I'm increasing it to 00,000 that's the so 633 is 200 for the senior center 150 Capital yep um 7% increase for liability 10% increase for energy and then I I came up with a number for I think okay and then um this is great I appreciate these questions kind um because I think about this nonstop for now until May so good and then um yeah so then well I I put 140,000 um that was an expectation of both salary and benefits 70 came up slightly bigger number but it's all sort of it's all sort of um just it's just a number so really we would need to do some research and find out what is the going right and according to our population and our our Advance just as we do for any position we Market where we are and again keep in mind we don't compete with our neighbors as much as we would at with the Department of Revenue say so but it answers David question but it's a b yeah yeah and then um school department so I haven't got direction from I haven't I haven't got a hint in the school department yet so I came up with a number which was an 8% increase which I believe is f what their initial increase basally going into this SCH so last year this time I think i' gotten an 8% number in my head from them so that's what I did that's a 1.8% I'm sorry $ 1.8 million uh increase if they got 8% again that did not come from the school committee so I don't I'm not trying to like put words in their mouth um but that that's what I put in there and then as you can tell that that in a loan would be unsustainable because for at least for our our expected um tax increase without an overide because as I point out I'm only string $1.4 million in property taxes so it's a lot but I'm just saying it's and um and then go ahead um just get on to that 8% um was that as a result of the negotiated contract no I didn't hear from them so again I again okay that 8% could have been and I'd have to remember where where I'd have to look back where I got the 8% but I believe 8% was a that their initial proposal last year they presented to us when they said here's what we're looking for after Greg can sent out the thing say but do it at 2.5 % Max whatever the number was yeah so this doesn't include the I mean the last SM we had from what they're going into reserves is around 8 to 900,000 sounds right so I mean this could be considered you know maybe a million plus what they need to cover the reserve shortfall on top of that so you could look at this as6 yeah it could be or I think it's more like you know $800,000 reserve shortfall and it's another four to 5% increase on top of yeah that or something but the point is it's a big ballpark number we don't have the official right from the schools yet I wanted to put a number yeah so it's that number will change yeah and then um um and then my other point I I point out board is benefits locally healths I put a 9% increase because that's what I was told to put it at of our our health insurance Consultants um that's a reflection of somewhat of our claims Although our claim don't uh W ra as it's called is not so bad it's it's slightly it's a few percentage points over where our our insurance provider would would like it to be but um but the increase is reflective not just of that but largely of the market as whole so if everyone's if everyone's going back to the doctor which is a good thing some of those costs are going up which is true then every has and I was I was told expect a 9% increase now I've Been Told large numbers like that in the past and then it's going to come down the months and but this this is a particularly frustrating game because I and I say this every year I won't know what that number is until March so we when we go to the MMA then the end of January they they do this Big Show and they say this is what everybody's averages and that doesn't tell me so I I try to sort of extrapolate from that average based on what we told as our loss ratio and I'm like okay so the average is 6% and our is better than everybody else maybe only do four so it's not it's not great and then eventually I get another but I'm I typically I am very conservative in this whole process because I can't can't be wrong yet if I if I under budget we have an unbalanced budget so I okay guys so that that was fall short of it um that's where I am right now the the Departments have been submitting their their operational requests I've been helping them out and um and they and they are getting them in some are bigger than others some are tiny so um it is what it is and um or or like let's say some other so this is again just the general fund you do have the enterpris space you have the the water the the ambulance and soon you'll have a a Sol um so This Not That and again as I pointed out the only influence of those Enterprises into the general fund transfer so like an administrative cost you know I have someone in DPW that's doing some some water work and some general fund work than than transfer um that is so at this point your uh deficit per se estimated deficit um ballpark big big picture ballpark uh is close to $1.9 million know and last year and I mean you've done seven budgets you said so over the course of time probably the average has been right around that number right around that number no you're not wrong um right around that number we've had some good growth and so that's really helped sort of relieve um some of that and I and I I chose numbers too I I came up with the strategy for the deadline for the province so like I just some departments i' be like well let's see what a 2% increase in departments but most of the Town departments you SE Offices here it's tank and most of their budgets is driven by contract and I comment observation just because people might watch this now or might be watching it next week and say oh my God they're $2 million under you know it's that's right not we're not it's not unusual this is really really yet throw throw a dart at a at a big wall not at a not even at a at a a dartboard yet that's there you exactly and so I so this will tweet and tweet and tweet and um even from the time I submit the budget according to the Charter by the 21st January and then when we have the joint budget review a couple weeks later not change so it but this gives a good sense and and again I try to incorporate which will be maybe into the next agenda item I try to incorporate some like big ticket items that we' we haven't really wrest or at least we haven't done it all inclusively so if we were going to go to an override it probably wouldn't be the excep maybe the schools probably wouldn't be just the de fire it would be an override because we're trying to do the bot or some things are just sort of Beyond me for example health insurance like right now unless the board tells me otherwise I sort of prioritize the people I have so I prioritize making sure those people that I are been paid it's and then unfortunately for cheap then I say like okay so where what discretionary which doesn't exist like what what sort of like money can I put to invest in some things um that's how that's how I ask a question yeah what is in the culture and recreation line that's a library it's a library library can we change that Recreation yeah I think this theate reporting category actually people see that um we've gotten criticized on social media over that can you believe this that the cultural council is getting whatever the number well that's why I was trying to figure out what that is no we can complain from the cultural Council that they're not seeing so I mean in the past we've we've thought about some other like reserve fund has spend $250,000 I've been here I like that number there but every year we talk about J um it's come up the town meeting too somebody stood up and said I'm what's this cult tral yeah um any questions on the status update for FY 26 thank a very thorough review Greg thank Chris do you have any questions NOP I rehearsed from the hour yeah another question this does not assume any hopeful Grant windfalls like the 500,000 got pursuer on no no because I don't like the gamble I know so yeah aare that that's a great question and that's also onetime money so wouldn't even be incorporated into our operating budget anyway no but if that money comes in doesn't it alleviate in some ways for example $500,000 we got for the sewer project wonderful wonderful example when Justin comes before yall and pitches uh the race for water sewer he's going to say okay far as capital planning goes we thought we were going to have to invest x amount in our but we now we don't have to do as so maybe there'll be a fraction perc okay it's it's like long it's like long thank you all right all right there's no other questions move on to quad planning uh closely related topic um do we have a location yeah uh yeah uh so yes so um I reach out to the superintendent's office and he and I uh brainstorm a little bit and actually his proposal was to host it in the F so we have the um I was reled at that as it's my understanding is it's not meant to be sort of like one person talks it's me to be a little more collaborative so I had to Envision that the stage and he said no you set up on the board so there you go and they have this thing called wabm which has much more technological noow than I do so um so on Friday I will be walking the floor with um The W and set it up so yeah I think I think that could be a good fit and if I remember correctly there was a time limit we'd have to be out of there for at the schools is that true check on that same place we have town meeting not set up like town meeting Flor we'll be on the floor everyone will be yeah it'll be very e there what about 30 40 of us so I told I the way I estimated was I'd like chairs for 55 is there's four boards for members alone plus a couple of guests as and a handful of like Town St shows up so I kind of just like the number and and May and the IDE is also to do was the library disc it was I'm not a fan of the roselt room it gets really F stuff really quick when you about the FBR oh sorry um was I don't know that's B big enough to see people in a circle or whatever they have uh was that the faculty meetings there about 50 or 60 sorry all right yeah all right very good well we'll once we finalize we'll make sure to we send that out to everybody so they know where to go uh tomorrow because the holiday on Monday we have the agenda tomorrow good call glad we move our one one to earlier in the day all right so uh So speaking Mr CH so um based on the conversation we had MEC um I have a loose idea not actually s you draft of the agenda um but it hits these topics which I included here um I can give a quick overview maybe even quicker than I just did budget and then um and then those major topics Senior Center School Department um benefit Scout plan uh and then lastly we want to go priv experience and based on your direction Mr chair I started together like PowerPoint one slide per topic and I given that direction to Department I told superintendent on side think po CH just but I think I one side then um senior cator as well so maryan Shield chair and Andy L one slide uh Capital planning committee um they weren't happy about it but I said one slide and um and I I do want to encourage any of these groups that want to send a longer backup deck that's supplementary to include that and we'll make sure we include you know this um Senior Center committee presentation the COA needs assessment etc etc down the line so that all that data will be at our fingertips for the discussion as well um can we add somewhere and it could be on a Town slide um the the storm water Enterprise just so we get a holistic view even if it's a bullet point level do we unless you have a time estimated time impact even if it's in a Year's measurement for that I can make a bu yeah Chris did you say you're in Florida yeah so you won't be here for the meeting you'll be a zoom presumably if you're able to make it what meeting the the quad board meeting yeah I'm only down here to um get believe it or not I'm here to meet meet the Cable Guy to stall a cable in these two places we have have a hybri option yeah I'll be I'll be home I'll be home Saturday Okay I I I didn't realize I didn't realize Monday was a holiday I might have to change my plans but I'll be I'll be I'll be in person Tuesday for sure all right so I think Mr chair just to kind of help this I think we have a fine plan I I love appreciate question about timing because it's tough like this is a lot and and I think one slide is still going to be a lot people sort of understand the dig this I think something to keep in mind is what does the board want out of this what I would like is to to sort of like get persectives from the people in the audience for the board to hear and the board gives me dire so that that's kind of what I'm trying to get out of this I doubt and myself I doubt anyone's going to all right here's the plan we're going to do this and then this and then this that that's hard to come by especially size but in general and and it's not up to me it's up to you so um that's I think if nothing else the value of this meeting is to just s let's let let's let make sure everyone can't say they didn't hear everyone's going to hear the same information everyone's to get same Concepts even though there numbers they're going to change but they're so the school department is on your list and when we had our last meet meeting if I recall correctly we were being told at that meeting they were not going to be prepared for any type of presentation on what their presentation will be is that has that changed can't speak for the SCH committee I communicate with the superintendent yes superintendent understands to be prepared to provide one slide on 12 okay there's a difference between a one slide summary of where they are today versus this is our detailed proposal for FY 26 so I think they're they're prepared to talk for a slide or to submit a slide yeah but it won't be won't be the full you know this is our FY 26 budget defense with the you know the full deck that we normally see in J no I don't think that's from my perspective that wasn't what I was expecting from that at least an idea of the the magnitude what it is that're talking they seem to be where comment we heard at the last meeting was hesitancy to say anything unless you know oh we'll speak to the finance committee and then we'll speak to the capital planning committee and then we'll speak to the you know never speaking to one group get it all to get it all mixed in with the big picture so I don't so we Mr chair you can decide this later I think for the board to be because speaking of time it's already I'm not trying to drag this but my usual advice is think about what you want to have out of anything particular St think about a time limit if you want you could like try to keep in mind you don't want to go all night which maybe you can't anyways what are you trying to get out of it then have that meeting over two hours in that type of venue or setting with that number of people it's not going to be productive I would say two hour time I said Mr chair so otherwise I provided some information I did look up overrides I mean it's available online and I gave I gave some notes um so it's a little complicated but it gets into how you ask the voters to buy their preference how if they're going to do an over how and I my suspicion is no Two Towns do it exactly right so the the the secretary st's office and Department reue kind of give like this is how this is what you can do and this is you can't do but it doesn't say this is how you do Mo it just s getes like big picture correct and it's important for the members of of all the boards to understand the different options we have as a town to present some of these discussions to voters in the fall so um this will be the first time we will have listed it out like that for them and so certainly of the things I want to see is that there are strong opinions for how we should do some of these presentations or ideas on how we could do um some of these presentations all at the hypothetical stage so far but want to know where where people are at so is there anything else no unless there's anything from the board or any significant differences between the proposed format and the agenda all right very good well then I think uh looking forward to a productive conversation next Tuesday moving on to item 11 select Board of [Music] goals uh we had a nice session to get these cleaned up into the format we see here so any further commentary other than what we had closed at um our last meeting I'll move to approve the select Bo goals for fiscal 2025 as presented second all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm yes as well um I'll note one thing just looking at the the three to five year forecast and Nathan Wingfield on the finance committee has developed a three to five year forecast and so um uh he may be willing to give a small demo at the uh quad board next week if he's prepared to do so um finance committee may bring that to the table so to speak but it's got um ability to model different you know Deb exclusions and overrides and things like that so I think it'll be uh nice I think he's got it at you know 85% once he get upate 100% it'll be it'll be a nice planning tool for us to quantify some of these conversations a little bit uh moving on to Senior Center planning Chris do you have any updates here no I don't know Greg might have I don't I don't have him but Greg might because he's been not too much I mean I I discussed with Amy actually the sort of incorporation of conservative that's I don't think they you all meetings we meeting tomorrow meting tomorrow and the green M School building project moving along we had a meeting the other day I joh didn't speak for it but my understanding is progress like that it's I actually am interested in Walking the site adap to where lot of protective equipment maybe but um my understanding is the the new access road around the the baseball field is is successful and really alone for all the work to having efficiently and safely the blasting continues um there's big I don't know or um yeah I mean they were reviewing the the 90% um construction document submission and as I recall um a couple of we M more detailed experts Ken neuhouser joshh Mo people like that we're going to be able to go through uh some of the definer details because this is essentially the last chance we have um to make any of the more substantial changes that that might be necessary at this time before it goes to the msba for their I think they actually actually we voted on and passed the um 90% submission we did vote on it and but I think there was as I recall there was uh there was still going to be an opportunity to make any changes if uh if there was something that was found that was necessary but as of now I haven't heard that there have been any further Chang noen I haven't seen any changes but I know they um we we voted we voted to submit the 90% construction documents um on those two topics the senior cent of the Green Meadow we both included those at different phases of those projects to bring attention to them I feel the the Green Meadow schools now move much further down that path uh and then the senior center committee is getting much more attention through a lot of other forms including the quad board and and coming to our meetings so I think that engagement is highlighted so do we still feel the need as a board to have these topics on every single agenda or do we think we can remove them I think it's good to have them on to at least just if anything comes up just leave it on until thing's over if we skip over we just say if there anything no just don't feel obligated to say something and nothing tap it's fine with me to to continue to um you know provide information as as you guys want it we need we have it okay I I think I think you know most specifically I think I think the um the school is a school you know we're in the process of building it's just going to progress until it's done the the um the the senior center issue you know may require more information coming back to the board based on you know where they're at with um you know different options for lease and and all the things that are going to go with that you know build outs and everything else that they're going to be necessary when the time comes and they're they're working hard to um move it forward all right thank you Chris we'll keep them can I ask a quick question where I've been looking for where when those meetings happen and I can't find it anywhere on the town website or the school website when which meetings the green met but if I wanted to see in advance when the next meeting is like not two days in advance like a month in advance so I know when it's coming so I [Music] can school as last time I checked had past meeting information um it does not include upcoming I'll get unless I missed it but the school page is difficult to navigate to find that kind inform so like meeting agendas is one of in their top navigation and you cck in there and you get uh past meetings like 10:28 is on here maybe if I go do I need to go into it no because it's not minutes it's just an agenda let me I'll see what I can do okay the next meeting is November 18th at 5m they usually ask about an hour um and I I have it you know I have it in an email from col Andra but um if I ever don't if I ever can't get back to her email um I've gone into the um school's website and it's it's it's buried but it's there somewhere but is there any reason why it's not also put on the 10 website calendar No it should be I'm on the school website right now and I went into agendas and there are no future agendas they are past agendas I went into minutes and the most recent minutes that I see posted are from April 29th so theoretically if you went into minutes maybe then it would be like it would tell you the future either way it's not there it's not accessible and I'm assuming that if I'm looking for it other people are also more so it is posted so the town coach office does post those but only advance so I my suspicion is there are not agendas repopulated for weeks and weeks out that's my guess because most but I would say least that's right I my understanding the rhy yeah like just when they meet just in case like if I want to go to a meeting you know and it's going to happen during business hours or an evening I I definitely need more than 48 hours to plan that um and I assume most people do so it would be helpful if there's some place where it could live so let me also talk to you if you attend that meeting and there's already two other members of the board no I know I can I'll be on it yeah I know a question on that though can I attend if I don't speak yes then you are not sharing your opinion with him yeah if I just listen and can you follow up on hygiene with the minutes as well Greg sa persistent problem um all right any other comments on item 13 which is the green medal School building Pro all right we'll move on to item 14 which is correspondences a through I um and all acknowledge we do have a request from Armen who's in the room with us uh for use of the select board fund for a community event so maybe Mr J you want to accept the minutes you like the board to accept those minutes oh sorry correspondents uh yes I just wanted to give the board a see opportunity if they want to respond to that particular correspondence but can do that in either order well what what's the uh our precedent in spending that money to a private organization well it's not a private organization that but um so no I actively discourage you from spending money on private events even if they're nonprofit just the that's that's the point right so this is this is presented by the economic commit so it's not it's it's fine in that sense um like you're supporting public I get that it would be to the EDC and they would be using it yeah at yeah yeah to support service but um it is rare that you get direct requests like this community events is usually because there's um some event that that they they're asking maybe a little support to cover least detail l so it's it's usually not as direct as this it's usually like you're supplementing whatever something else already is going on and you're or you're recognizing that look it doesn't hurt a little money here and there help out this is a little more on the nose but I I'm not saying that this is an inappropriate use of these funds but it is the board I don't think we have questioned in for this type of use uh or or magnitude I think is what I was my issue would be um using public funds to pay a private organization to conduct a public apparently a public event oh to the sanctuary sanctu is that a challenge grade no I don't think so I mean think V all well that's that's question is there a problem is there a procurement issue here no it's or ,000 I don't you're not giving the money to this you're paying them for services you are pay theay for the use of their profit aren last year uh this is the second year you would be doing this correct and when when is it it's in March correct 23 okay um what was the attendance like last year about 40 people 40 people okay and it was 40 people who are all members of Like members of businesses in mainard mostly bus so people who are receiving Awards and supports I mean I was therey was there Greg was there yeah and AR um remind me um since was donated last year last year is so is so is if you're if you're looking at this event this year versus last year there's no there's no um nobody that's donating the building there's nobody donating any of the catering or any of the um Awards or any of those things that that is correct and last year um we were lucky enough that we had a gracious you know John CR donated money for theat and up with some small funds for incidental you know costs but because the room was donated to us that saved us L yeah so so so the the so the new owner decides they don't want to donate so we don't do we look anywhere else for a better price or a [Music] we be some he said yes they are looking at other places Chris oh okay I think I don't want to put words in your mouth but I think part of the sense is because it's supposed to be sort of emphasizing Maynard's downtown you would like to have it in Maynard's downtown well you guys are telling me for two years now that the Elks and Powder Mill is part of downtown so I mean you know just as just as an example of downtown we we stretch it when we want to but then we don't want to we we we compromise and you know we consolidate it back into downtown can't have it both ways but that's okay it NE it is or it isn't but I mean what you know I don't know I I would think there'd be a lot of people in town who would really like to have a $50 lunch for themselves if there's only 40 people in attendance per person cost it's 40 people for a th bucks but that was 40 people left more well it's 2,000 it's 2,000 and it says it's 2,000 divided by the 40 people is 50 bucks a person is not and did you have a question I did um Arman this is a question for you how would you characterize like the ROI on this event what what's the benefit of it I puted that in my reest is welled and and I think we building we're building on that one of the ways of trying to you know support the local businesses and at the same time promoting and hopefully other you know events like these recognizing businesses and not only just business there's also philanthropic other volunteering their time to help [Music] with this is a large fraction of the overall events budget we could always offer a smaller amount to help out the EDC as well we didn't feel comfortable with the larger amount so so um just for context um the community events budget for f25 the select is $8,000 I don't remember how much you pay out of it but it's like it changes every year sometimes you get request sometimes you don't so but $8,000 probably the consistent amount we put it in many many years and $8,000 isn't really think and payments for less 50 but you're requesting $2,000 so that would be a quarter of that so if you do 1 th000 you'd have to come up with EI the other th you or you go somewhere else that's um when do you have to book s already they just saved they saved the DAT uh so there's no urgency per se to get the dollar amount out you can look at other places and yeah do we have any other applicants for using the community events account no no know that's I'm saying it's inconsistent every year it's it's more like um I remind the board if if someone says like oh we' like to do this but we didn't we like to do this or that event but we didn't understand the detail cost would be X like it's the police chief says you're have to have some details out there usually I did it get used up for the last two or three years than you he says not but this this account is funded is this going to be a recurring account or is this kind of funded from the marijuana thing okay this has been around yeah okay want to make sure it was the right account no no you're right no that's you're thinking that we F District enhancement fund and that's that's what I asked of you guys to use the all of it to every part so we'll come back to that is so so Greg would this be the money that pays for like coffee and coffee and donuts at the February budget meeting and that type of thing is at the same account I could do that yeah that although sometimes we pay that out of a meetings account but yeah it doesn't really matter because at the end of the year um it's all select board so yeah I'm not I'm not worried about this I'm not I mean we're not happen to be the fiscal year but I'm not really worried about this hurting this so I don't foresee when the re may come although you know someone who runs the holiday parade may hear that you have $8,000 just made a note of that yeah to ask anyone who runs the holiday par to heard about that yeah she knows I think she do trust me she knows but so there you go that's the gamble anything you you spend now you won't have it B from feelings on this we can always add to an agenda I know it's late right now um talk about 8,000 um sorry 8000 the total budget 2,000 request do you have any other or thoughts on like other revenue streams we you know fun part of this where how you could raise money cover the rest of the cost or would it just be [Music] donation supplemented some we did it last year but you're lucky enough to have that's all right um what's that trying to help you want to table this yeah let's table it for tonight we can come back to we yeah go ahead I don't know whether not John approach got uh no I don't think so okay well is that something oh sure but but that would have to be both start go yeah probably but I mean you should ask there's a cost wherever we going so we to find is um the new yoga studio on the corner of whatever that is thank you summer um they have a fair fairly large space that I know eventually they want to rent out for events I don't know what eventually means um but it's a lovely space consideration where is it is that the old Nights of Columbus yes yes there was a dance a couple a dance studio you know dance a it's a yoga studio and they kept the big like open event space at studio um and it's really really nice it's beautiful in there but right now it's EMP it's well they teach it so they need tables chairs yeah you have to rent that me that's or it's possible they have that stuff I have no idea that's a question where sometimes people who do events all right um AR do you want to come back when you have some more thoughts on other locations and as an individual member I don't want to eat up a quarter of the this relatively small budget but I I would be behind a smaller amount if that helps fund an event like this I agree any other comments on any of the correspondences all right we still need a motion for the correspondences move to accept correspondences a through I accepting C we're going to hold on C right no we can accept the correspond correspond okay move to accept correspond a through I as sh second all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes I am yes as well moving on to item 15 acceptance of minutes two sets of minutes tonight move to accept and approve the meeting minutes of October 15 and 22nd 2024 as shown authoriz and use digital signes second all in favor Lindsay yeah David yes Mike yes Chris yes and I'm a yes item 16 the T administered report Lightning Fast um hey the clerks and everyone else involved with the election yesterday did a fantastic job and I was very impressed I swung by in the morning and going there was a blow of all day they were very late um town offic will be closed on Monday for uh Beth day um myself and planning director B ner did go to wster to hear the announcement from the El Administration and C sta legisl uh for their um community on St Grant Awards like wish did get that happen gr for um there is a brand new shining firecut um at the firehouse Chief wased to me and then got called off um to go to the North Shore and put out the fires surrounding Salem so um the fire department is busy but of course my hats off to all those firefighters particularly from vanger traveling all that way out rest of the state and then um also want to highlight our fantastic public pel Mor Carter um he been really great at the council aging recently I you know the report says that she gave a briefing on C and flu season but also you know we pointed out howest vaccination plan was that she held um our uh our red police chief has been working for mayor PD for 30 years um which is pretty pretty cool a long time and he is reti which board Hills so I use that as a caveat to um talk about succession so um if the board like to interview a candidate as a possible successor um Stephanie was so good Stephanie was so good to um come up with a six-page document of possible questions to his success to a successful candidate my recommendation is that Stephanie and I will provide you what we think is the highlighted questions from those from that list of six pages and you can agree or disagree but I think six pages of course that's 30 39 questions I think she and I can probably come up with solid well I mean this is maybe up for the board I could even see as maybe one each member asked one question even that's know maybe a half an hour of just to one cand so that like in in the short amount of time she and I talk about it that's what we thought might be but the board got decide but in at a minimum we can provide a recommended set of questions the board to consider at a future date but but but presumably as you heard from the chief he's advocating on you know DET access and this isn't hypothetical uh the deputy chief is available for our next select board meeting um on the 19th of November uh for an interview and so we we can bring him in I'm curious to know where the board would like to go in terms of format on line with using the questions that Greg and Stephanie have provided and going through us I don't know if you want to set a time limit for the total interview and ask questions until we get to the end of a certain block of time um in fact I'm proposing that for an hour but if there's other formats than is there a reason that we couldn't just have if we're interested in bringing the deputy chief in which I assume we are it's not L conversations we've had in different venues but um can't we just have a discussion and just instead of having a really formal and instead of having it be an hour it probably be a half hour and just have him tell us a little bit about himself why he might be interested in what moving up to become the chief and then have us have questions ourselves that we ask rather than formal questions that are derived from his conversation with us and rather than a a formal and I understand why the formal questions come up typically when you have multiple interviews you want to ask first the all of the candidates the same questions and that's what typically happens happens is you get a list of questions and you go down the line what's wrong with just a conversation well I like that idea and and by the way the the question to sort of provoke that conversation a great interview is where you're really get into um and I think of these questions I you know Stephie and I actually we already kind of looked a lot of referen of that I believe a lot of these questions that I highlighted and he highlighted is really to get to who this person is and what they could derive from Community that's that's a lot instead of like give us an example of how you did this one thing this one time like we're trying to it's went to be S PL di but it's a little more and but I was I was gonna ask 7 there there is a sort of like protocol though like whether it be from like you we we don't want to of violate iron is so does the board need to be let's say you you decide to interview more than one candidate the board then need to somehow mimic the exact questions they asked for in second if that ends up being a they want inter second yeah can't we can't we introduce it as we're interested in speak to the deputy chief as being a potential candidate okay we speak to him in that session in that format in just a general and then if we decide no we're really not interested in that individual but he'd certainly be welcome to apply to the general then we do much more does that make sense yes thank you and this is an addition to any onetoone conversations that that we can have with yeah I encourage that still your deputy chief so you should get that and then might s y different information you should try to be but I I disagree David I want the formality I I want him to go through an interview process um I don't want it to be it's not a for bold conclusion that he will be the next chief I want him to earn it I want him to describe what you know some of his philosophies towards policing are what his future plans for the Department are how his experience and how you know what he's been doing uh both in his um during his time as Deputy Chief and before that with the coner Police Department is preparing him for this role and I want to make sure that he's able to answer those questions in public forum and I think that's unreasonable so I think the formality is is good for us I think it's good for him and I think it's good for the public so I I I feel that's important question so again this is all up to the board you're the appoint so how you do this we're just try to make sure you do it legally but yeah oh I want I want to do it legally too yeah yeah but you know we don't want to like over you so so I don't know so Mr share if you want to do that format that too that's that is my preference is a formal inter rview format in which uh at that point I I would recommend we would just rotate through and ask questions for a predetermined period of time and if we wanted to either divvy up questions or take the recommendations of the Town Administrator and assistant Town Administrator and which questions I'm open to that um but that's that's my preference and I think the the high level nature of that role is very significant one for our town and deserves the formality of the with an interview any other opinions I agree okay is that right David no OB the jury the board that's the way to go um is everybody okay if staffies up with questions and if you have any particular questions that you would like to ask then you're absolutely free to do so and I'll when we get to the actual interview I'll just simply go down the line and when we get to the top we'll go back and uh we'll see how many questions we get through in about an hour and if we feel the need to talk more we can but I think at that point we'll have a good sense sound good great all right I'm looking forward to that that's that's all I have for my report fantastic thank you any questions for the Town Administrator on his report all right um chair report so I uh I believe we all respond I saw a correspondence today from Mara relative to the Amy's Ro marker that came in too late to get onto the correspondences but um I will meet with a member of the store commission and a member of Mara and just see if we can get some alignment or at least to see where everybody is is I think um you know people are making some good points but they're not aligned so we'll we'll get some folks in the same room and then go from there so I don't know if I saw that um it came in today I think morning it was it was earlier this morning email is hea we'll make sure you get a copy of it the author of the email is Heather O'Brien I don't think I saw it but that's okay yeah I don't saw it either doesn't sometimes I don't get the external email H you were not on I don't need to be but if you your T came at like 11 o'clock this morning 10:30 11 o'clock um so anyway I'll follow up on that as as Le is on to the historical commission um I had the opportunity to attend a legislative breakfast since our last meeting which was at the fire station so um it was very nice to see a number of uh uh certainly the state delegation and MMA but also our our fellow select members from other town so um always glad to have those in mayor and kind of showcase our town a little bit and our new fire station uh um the trick- or- treat event I didn't make but looks like it was success so my congratulations to their organizers very well attended from those I did have the opportunity to attend the Fall Ball which is in support of the mayor holiday parade uh and chief Noble was present he's being recognized as a guest of honor connected to his uh service record so um it was nice to see him being honored there as well uh and then and Greg already mentioned but we'll have the Veterans Day Parade coming up on Monday so hope you'll all be able to join us that is it for me and we'll go to board member reports starting with Lindsay uh I also want to Echo the town administrators thank you to the town cl's office and all staff and volunteers for successful election yesterday went in the middle of the day and it was busy but but well run and organized so thank you um thanks to Jen pelli for the fall ball that she executed quite well um weeks ago I think she raised about $4,000 toward paying for the free which is great in addition to the community events budget sure she'll be asking for um uh congrats to the town and Greg I know I asked you who wrote that grant for the half a million um for sewer on Powder Mill Justin Steve Bill and Julia collectively so thank you very much for their work that they did on that to secure that funding um I also went to the downtown trigger treat I had kids there it was fantastic it was really packed a beautiful day um also very well-run Just A really lovely tradition and manner so thank you to the organizers of that uh I think that's it me very good David uh very quickly I uh I attended the manor music associations event fundraising event this past weekend annual um what you call it casino and it was very well attended very good cause to raise funds for students who need help with either tuition on certain things to go certain uh classes instruments that they can't afford to rent that they want to be learn to play and then just supporting the um the scholarships for the schools for the music department department and also um students who are interested in just music in general going on field trips and um traveling with the band wonderfully attended event I don't know how much money they raised but it was free to uh they have silent Raffles and live Raffles that uh that former principal Chuck um does does a fantastic job as the uh as the uh the harder so very well attended very well very great great Community event and I want to congrat you for that very nice anything else no um I wanted to go back and just recognize something on the half a million dollar Mass workk Grant and just note that we were able to apply that because we're a housing Choice community and just kind of connected it to the whole um you know Parker Street but just to to not we're cling Choice Community because we do work on getting more housing and more affordable housing and that's what allows us to get that designation that was allows us to apply for those grants so I just wanted to to make sure was connecting that line that we do take housing very seriously and we do want to see sustainable housing growth um that makes sense for our community great thank you for remind half a million dollar Grant which is also nice as well um can I add one other thing yeah go ahead s last um we also had the first annual mayard bot ball tournament in Memorial Park um which my husband and my sister uh were managing but um with the help of a grant from cultural districts so thank you to the cultural district and the council for that it was really fun um they learned that the Memorial Park is not a great Bing for location while it's a great location for an event very uneven and full of rocks and roots and sticks but it was really fun we were there you know all afternoon we had a great great time um and the quote legendary de BS for the winners like instead of Bot balls like giant like cubes like dice something find another Park anything else no that's all thank you m right well I've been pretty well preempted by most of this but uh I will offer my personal thanks um for the the running of the election yesterday I was proud to have my first ever presidential vote in this country to exercise that at least but I I recognize that there's a ton of work that goes into that and just happy that we're a community that can uh hold an election without incident it's good that's it good to see the new town clerk succeeding oh yeah Chris yes um yeah I went to the Fall Ball and downtown trick-or-treating as well and they were both great thanks to um Jen for the fall ball and to um Sarah cresy and that team for the downtown tricket treating it was fun and it was I don't know Greg a lot of people how many people do you think was walking around that that day hundreds andss a lot it was a it was easily the most I've seen for the downtown trick-or-treating maybe was good by far but um I have one question Greg um totally different subject than praising all the the nice things going on in town the Beijing Royal school that property do you know somebody somebody that why this person goes to check on these things and see these things is far beyond my mind but um somebody called me and said can you go up there and take a look and see what's going on and um because they drive by often enough to realize it within the past few weeks they put up wood uh plywood in front of all the windows yeah so we we being in town but through the off Services I believe they did that in response to a letter that we gave them because they were getting vandalized yeah so there it was like falling apart so I think we made the wood because the windows were getting okay yeah I mean it's it I I never I don't I I mean there's nothing there but an empty building so I don't find my way up there very often but I was it was a little discouraging to see the um amount of vandalism on the floors above because they only so far they done the bottom floor I don't know if they had plans for the rest but the amount of broken glass and smashed windows and everything else up there is really it's disheartening precisely so maybe we didn't require to do the both fors because the acccident you know yeah I I don't know but it just it was just I I had never heard anything about it and when I went up there I was shocked to see the uh the condition of the um the the windows in the building is yeah if nothing else that letter we gave them reminds them that we are paying attention I'm not want them to be successful or whatever the vision is for the property they do own it but we don't they can't be neglected so that do do they I understand that have they said anything else about any type of plans or anything I don't I can't speak to it it's been a while since I virtually spoke to any of the representatives of the F group who owns it um yeah if I hear clearly I haven't heard anything or else okay I I was just curious on that end but the the the boarded up Windows and everything and the the broken glass above it was not good to look at but all right anything else Chris appreciate it no that's it for me okay uh our next meeting is actually the 12th because we've got the quad board but following that our next regular meeting is the 19th and the Veterans Day Parade is on the 11th um of course uh I will make a motion to adjourn exactly all in favor Lindsay yes David yes Mike yes Chris yes we are adjourned thank you everybody have a good evening thanks have a good night too Chris thanks