good evening and welcome to the Warrant Committee it's April 3rd 2025 karen could you call our [Applause] role sorry about that um I'm going to call the names because I
haven't seen everybody uh I know Tom Steve and Lori are there do we have Liz no he's not here okay Jay I'm here allison is on Zoom julie Joyce I don't think we have we have Andrew and Macy on
Zoom peter here julia here ryan here aman Ron and Judy is on Zoom you have a
quorum thank you Karen uh welcome back everybody um we're going to as we uh indicated last night we're going to discuss our two remaining articles uh that we have to vote uh our capital appropriation and our school
appropriation um we are fortunate to have Amy Dexter here also to assist uh some of the numbers if we have any uh questions as to those um now I know there was a couple of things raised last night uh one being the generator and the
second uh there were some questions concerning the engine the fire engine at the the 1.1 million um I received an email uh from um uh Chief Madden today um just to describe the situation
um some more backup information from the chief uh concerning the request for the replacement of engine 2 i'd like to take a minute or two just to read this email um so my apologies we weren't able to circulate to the group the group go um the former fire chief uh Grant uh put
this place uh schedule in place to replace the engines approximately 15 years ago uh the chief uh believes the plan in terms of replacement of the engines within every 15 years works well for Milton um and I this is some of this is repetitive so I apologize but there are three frontline engines and one
reserve spare engine one ladder truck with no spare which needs to be ready to be put into service uh at any time replacing an engine every 5 years allows each end engine 15 years as a frontline piece of equipment and a 5 years as backup the ladder should be replaced on
the 15-year cycle as well milton Fire Department actually has space for a reserve ladder now and the current ladder one will fill the reserve role when the new tower ladder arrives fire apparatus a complicated piece of equipment with many parts that need to run properly to be effective the apparatus is more than just a way to
carry firefighters to the scene the water pump and aerial ladders are key life-saving components that require yearly testing and maintenance the idea behind this schedule is to ensure that the Milton Fire Department always has the equipment necessary to do the jobs that they are tasked with you can't afford to have a fire truck that may not
start as unable to climb a steep roadway or driveway an engine that will not pump water effectively at a fire will put citizens and firefighters in jeopardy the area lot ladder must operate um to get the firefighters where they need to go and strong enough to carry their weight in the persons they are rescuing
all lights and warning devices must operate correctly to ensure the fire department arrives in emergency safely and you know the chief goes on then to indicate how the fire service is still recuperating from the pandemic uh in the ordering of equipment and the difficulties the cost for the fire apparatus has gone up significantly over
the past 5 years and the lead time for a new truck as he indicated to us when he was here is 36 to 48 months um he goes on to uh describe the um the maintenance milton has a fantastic mechanic and Charlie Koligan who has worked miracles in keeping our apparatus in service
numif fires engine one purchased uh 2006 ladder one in 2005 and ladder engine three in 1999 which is the spare require constant times costly repairs to keep them in service engine one and ladder one's replacement have been ordered and
are due in 12 to 18 months engine 2 purchased in 2012 is the next engine that will be replaced and moved to a backup role purchasing the new engine in fiscal 26 will get the department back on schedule engine 2 will have a 15 to 16 years in service on the front line
and then be moved back to a reserve role i will add that there have been times that firefighters had to respond a utility truck as one of the frontline pieces were out of equipment i've been working with the mechanic um and we have put the fire apparatus on a tight schedule for required maintenance and
testing uh the mechanic the Milton's mechanic has made the fire apparatus a priority in the town and has reduced the out of service time for minor repairs he frequently goes to each firehouse to make the repairs directly there to limit downtime and keep all apparatus in service uh due to the age and complexity
of some of these repairs some trucks need to go out of town um and we see that and especially in our older trucks in our fleet these repairs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and take four to six weeks for the repairs to be completed uh Engine One is currently getting extensive engine work done and
it's been done for about a month they're hoping to get it back this week um goes on to discuss other uh municipalities uh most towns begin to replace their frontline apparatus around 10 years milton has been able to extend the 15 years due to the diligence of the firefighters and mechanics in town um
uh the mechanic and the chief have had many discussions and the roadworthiness of the tire fleet of the fire fleet the trucks that we have scheduled to be replaced are tired and have uh served the town very well even though we are replacing them as frontline pieces they will still uh fill the back reserve roles so the mechanics can continue to
perform testing schedule maintenance and repairs without having to put them back into service in minutes we have agreed that placing the order for engine 2 now is needed to ensure the safety of the residents and the firefighters uh he goes on to thank us and hope that answers some of the outstanding questions that we had subsequent to his
visit here to the warrant committee so that was the correspondence uh just concerning the fire truck um I know Andrew had shared a document with us he had a conversation with uh Mr mallet today regarding the IT
budget um and um I want to um let me see and there was some additional information according the DPW vehicle requests um I can forward this um to the
committee if you would like to see it um he addresses the pickup the dump truck the water utility truck pickup truck storm water the catch basin truck um I should just read this okay related to the DPW equipment the pickup
truck that was being purchased is replacing a 2013 vehicle with 85,000 m on it and a significant vehicle hours the time mechanics recommend replacing due condition the amount of work they've done on it the dump truck is replacing 2016 vehicle fewer miles again but due
to conditions and repairs recommended for replacement the water utility truck it's a 2015 vehicle is used daily by the water department but also involved in snow and ice operations recommended for replacement since it's at the end of its useful life and the condition is deteriorating another water pickup truck
uh was a 2010 Ford Expedition that's being replaced with 1000,000 miles on it it's in poor condition need uh needs replacement the vehicle's used by the water and sewer superintendent uh storm water line uh the catch basin truck is a 2003 vehicle that is beyond its useful
life and also recommended for replacement uh the administrative vehicles that we discussed are used by various town departments but the following are currently in use there are three 2009 Corollas two 2010 Fusions a
2011 Ford Escape 2016 Fusion 2018 Focus and three 2019 Nissan Leafs one of the09 Corollas is in bad condition uh and 2011 Ford Escape has been uh recommended by the mechanic uh to also be taken off the road some of
you may remember Judy uh told a small short story about that 09 Corolla the other night so that's an update from the town administrator and the fire chief just concerning those two pieces um I will obviously if Andrew can if he'd like to mention just what he discovered
with the IT budget but Brian I know has some information about the generator yeah I just No I just asked like what we had a two questions I think what we had for generators in the town and I just it just went out I think I think Kevin forwarded it but
um what we had for generators in the town and how often they went down and uh so um basically I'll read it if you Um so Tom McCarthy is out for a week so I didn't get the answer on other ones
that have been down but we have one two three four five six seven eight generators town Hall Police Fire High School Pierce Cunningham Colocott DPW and COA and he said "We've had occasional
outages at town hall when it comes on without interruption of services in the last few years there hasn't been any storms causing long duration outages for us e 911 dispatch in the emergency ops center is it the police that's it okay i I think uh one of the
things that I caught in that email was that u we haven't had any sustained outages lately right um and the other thing that I wanted to bring to your attention regarding the uh capital budget that was
in the IT budget and I I didn't have a conversation with Rob Mallet today it was u several weeks ago but um I did have a conversation with them several weeks ago but what did come as a surprise in the email that he forwarded says a vehicle request for $30,000 in
there i'm sorry a vehicle on the I vehicle for it exactly there's a if you open up the attachment that I forwarded earlier to everyone comments yeah um there's a line item for $30,000 for a vehicle that uh I
don't see a matching item in the capital uh capital request for any other vehicles so that appears to be new mr um chair yes judy Andrew yep when um I was doing some IT work with Bob Mallet
maybe a year ago last year he mentioned to me um in conversation that they have to go out a lot around Oh yeah but the problem is the equipment they need to bring with
them no no I understand and I it's not that I dispute the need for it it is that um I was surprised to find it in the IT budget rather than as a um alongside the other vehicle requests
right and so I I can't answer to why it's there now i only know sort of the backstory and um it could have it could have been added late did
we not see it uh I didn't see it anywhere else and the line item is $30,000 the other vehicles uh in the uh capital uh before it does not include that vehicle right so did we already vote on
that no we're my understanding is we're discussing it now oh okay thank you um for that but anyway it was more or less when Mhm he that department shares a vehicle and it requires loading and
unloading equipment to process um the call for it and it it was indicated to me at that time verbally and this was a year ago that it would make it easier for them to go out on
calls if they had their own vehicle with the equipment in there although I wonder how you lock up that equipment at night just thoughts again my information is a year old but it if you open up the Excel file that he
provided there is a um a separate tab labeled vehicle that uh articulates their their need uh and I can read it it essentially that the IT department currently signs out a
g general purpose vehicle from the select board's office and he said they sign it out nearly every day sometimes multiple times a day um because it is general use they don't leave any spare equipment in the vehicles which has resulted in longer
repairs with multiple back and forth trips to get parts from the office there are also other times when the vehicles been signed off which can delay when they are able to show up when what problem occurs okay thank you
tom you listed Did you list all the um cars or vehicles that the company that the town owns um yes hold on how many was it it was um Hold on i was going to I have to pull
this back up again that's okay sorry karen forwarded that at 644 the email with that information uh DPW vehicle info followup is the subject line uh
one two three four five uh three yeah so apart from the DPW equipment it talks about three 2009 Corollas two 2010 Fusions a 2011 Ford
Escape a 2016 Fusion a 2018 Focus and three 2019 Nissan Leafs it's 11 vehicles in addition to the dump the two water the two water trucks the storm water catch basin
truck which would be one two three pick up dump so 11 vehicles in addition adding the IT 16 16 on DPW and town
one for it for a total of 17 Amy yeah if you please yeah it' be very it probably be very helpful thank you so much for joining us so just if I can shed some light on discussions that the town administrator
and I had along with um the members of the capital committee that vehicle request was not considered a priority okay um he has use of what we consider pulled cars that you do sign in and out and we felt that that was meeting the
need and that the vehicles we did recommend were those that are replacing older vehicles rather than adding a new one to the fleet which would result in more insurance more maintenance costs and we didn't think it was the time to do that
okay for the most part we try to share the vehicles and not request them by individual departments for that admin pool yeah that makes sense so that's why it wasn't recommended
okay h how many cars are in the uh admin pool i I think um you guys just talked about it i think it was 11 and there are some that are used mainly by a department head like for instance the
cemetery um they have one there because they have to drive around to get to the different sites um and there's some that are labeled specific i think assessors has one that has a sticker on it but for
the most part we try to share them and the amount you know the usage by other department it just wasn't considered um a priority need for the amount of times that need they need it that they would have to have it it hasn't really been that much of an issue they can
borrow and we wouldn't want him to leave things in the car anyways so right our employees body's allowed to use their own vehicles and get reimbursed or okay so in that the answer to that question
yes yes sorry great thank you so the it's a non-bond to capital item um IT infrastructure upgrades for the IT department at 100,000 and software upgrades at 25
okay does anybody want to speak to any of this i have a question um and I'm sorry for not raising my hand because I can't I'm having difficulty spotting that on my phone um but my question is what is the rate of reimbursement for miles for
mileage if the if a employee uses their own car 685 it's the um I don't know the exact I'll tell you amount but it's the IRS i think it's like 6 68 1.5 cents something like that it's close to that went up in January so I don't know the
exact amount but if you Google IRS mileage rate that's what it is so there's no special mileage rate for Okay I'll tell you what it is right now and and we do have some people that that do that okay
and that's not Do you have I guess follow up sorry N you have a cap on that or is it just submit it no I'm just looking up my own employees travel expense for the state because I think it has to be the same for everyone um and I
I think it's more than 68 cents um but the reason I'm asking is to see whether it is more economical to purchase new cars or to have employees use their own cars and be reimbursed for mileage
is that was that a Yeah it's a question you can't force employees to use your personal vehicles for work uh yes you can actually um you can uh for municipalities and state you can because all the employees in my
office use their own cars to travel to Springfield and Taton and Tukesberry etc um okay so looks like um but go ahead i'm going to calculate because I have a bunch of
reimbursement forms that I approve so I'm looking at one that's 17 miles and the mileage amount came out to $10.97 so I'm going to figure that out oh actually you know what it is it's 62 cents per mile i thought you're right
it's the same 70 irs approved this is interesting but I don't know i think we've maybe gotten off the topic of the of the capital request no I'm just like I said the reason I asked is to figure out it seems like
it's it's it's more economical to purchase new cars that was my question Jay yeah i'm not sure that it is for the amount of mileage these people are just kind of going across town for small trips here and there and to purchase a
vehicle pay the insurance do the maintenance on it and all of that i would say it's probably not cheaper to do that but I have not sat down and done that analysis we're not talking about thousands of dollars
being reimbursed a month couple hundred here or there but for the most part it's certain individuals that do it and we haven't had a push back really from anybody they don't want to use their car then they can use one of the pulled vehicles so it hasn't been an
issue and it seems to be working and this request from it was kind of would not have been a priority that would not be the department probably that we would prioritize it for because of the amount of trips okay
thank you for that you're welcome does anybody have any questions you know about the couple we raised last night fire truck generator is there anything else that anyone wants to speak to in terms of this capital article um he didn't give us the hours though on
the firetruck though i didn't get the hours on the fire truck did we get any clarification as to how the generator uh the library getting the generator before the schools happened
so can I make a clarification before yes you may so the just to clarify that the generator for the Glover school was requested by the schools for fiscal 27 so the capital committee didn't really talk that much about it um
they did not the schools did not ask for two generators in one year i think they realized the the cost of that would be pretty expensive so they were phasing them in and that's been kind of their approach over the last several years so that was part of the reason the
capital committee didn't even consider 27 the request for Glover and then I don't know if you want to speak to Will Adam Czech the um library director did give us an email regarding how it would be used at the library it was it was
sent last night the email all right the the other point is Glover doesn't have an elevator either so um there wouldn't be like a safety issue with children or staff getting stuck in the elevator
whereas um the other locations do amy can I ask you a question maybe Lori um in terms of um and the in the schools requested or Glover in specifically they said the B could wait till 2007 27 yes
and they're and they're and the they're fine with that the principal i did not talk to them directly but that was what was approved and passed on to the capital committee through Tom McCarthy the facilities director cuz he
would work on schools facility capital which the generators fall under okay with the school committee okay thank you Amy so it's not that we're saying they don't need it it's just something probably that the capital committee
would look and vet in more detail come next budget cycle in the fall when we're considering because it it will be on there i'm pretty sure it will be on there for next year for Okay that that's this is very helpful priorities yeah it's very helpful
could have saved us a little time last night oh and then I don't know if you want to speak to Did everyone see Will's email that the thought behind why the library trustees felt it was important was that
a lot of municipalities will use libraries as like a cooling or a heating station because if the power goes out and they need places for residents to go and it's during the school day the students and the children would be in the school so they would want like another location for people to have
access to to stay cool or warm without it being really like an emergency shelter where people are sleeping i think did I say that right Lori yes you did okay anybody have any questions or
anything to that any other questions concerning article 4 bonded non-bonded Okay so um the recommendation for article 4 to
see what sum of money the town will vote to appropriate for capital items and will be recommend that the town appropriate the sum of $5,793,500 to fund capital projects listed in article 4 both bonded and
non-bonded capital items anybody have any other comments or concern as to that appropriation in the number yeah I mean do you want comments yeah if you want to make a comment i mean I just I'll go back on the generators and I won't say anything else on it but I
don't think it I think it should be a safety thing and if the school is a um shelter should have a generator I think police obviously fire obviously i don't know what else that falls in that thing but I don't think that the f power
goes out that much we definitely need it it seems like a lot of money because you have two and a half million dollars right now in generators across the town and it seems like a lot and it seems like is that enough that can handle the population but I mean it's a nice to
have i don't know with a $9.5 million override if you need to have it is my thought and um and the other thing I'd say is maybe on the it the vehicle I think if they have a pool of vehicles I don't think they really need a another
vehicle and I do think separately I mean it probably it would be it would be more economical for the town to look be looking at reimbursing people for mileage versus having a car sitting that probably sits there a lot of the day doing nothing
is my thought it's administrative vehicle where but that's not that's not I agree what i agree with the car piece where is it where is it brian where are you seeing that called out inside the the breakdown for the car
for it do you see that it's in the It's in the email that went out um no I I know it's in the the It was requested but not approved is that correct oh is that what it is yeah it was not recommended i I just saw it sent out today so it capital request so
this this was pulled it's a want it's a want that the town administrator did not recommend and the capital committee agreed with him okay that's what I thought okay it's not to say we wouldn't it might be there again next year because a lot of
times the things that aren't recommended get resubmitted um it's just for 26 is not a priority did not feel it was um the right time to be adding to our fleet that we were going to focus on replacement vehicles to replace older
ones that the mechanic felt were end of life okay anybody have any Jay yeah I just like to say for this line item we have a committee the capital committee that looks at this 12 months a year some people have been on it for years if not
decades um and I I trust their judgment i know other other items in the budget we also have committees that look at it but uh this one especially I feel like we have a committee who's their only job is to look at this think about the numbers so even more than other articles I'm inclined to uh to give that
committee the benefit of the doubt thank you Jay very much i do appreciate the robust discussion but at the end of the day I'm going to go with their recommendation so I have a question for Amy sure Judy thank you um what do you do with the old
vehicles when the new ones come in especially the firetruck sorry well I'm teasing sorry yes the um regular vehicles not a fire truck well I guess the fire truck too i um do you send them
to auction do you get um some sort of trade in for them uh we more times than not we would trade them in but in the event that it was not traded in it would have to go to auction
because we're subject to um bid and procurement laws when we buy things and when we sell things and and so if it went to auction um say you got 500 it would go back into the general fund of the town correct
general fund revenue classified as sale of surplus equipment okay thank you you're welcome thank you Judy anybody else okay anybody like to make a
recommendation you ready to do that make a recommendation to approve article 4 as summarized by the chair appropriating uh for non-bonded and capital items the amount of 5,793,500
second seconded thank you Steve thank you Peter karen could you call a vote please as to article 4 capital uh projects yes lori yes jay yes allison yes
andrew yes macy yes julia yes peter yes brian yes judy yes and Tom yes
the motion carries okay article four thank you everybody thank you thank you Amy very thanks Amy thank you um okay warrant committee and then there was
one article 24 and I'd like to thank everybody in the war committee for all the hard work and especially time that we put into these all these other articles um I really appreciate the work you're doing
now and we'll be doing through June but as to article 24 um like to open up the discussion um like everybody obviously as we always do everybody participate I'd like to give a little deference to members of
our subcommittee um given all the work that they've done throughout the course of the entire year with the schools um I think they're well healed um to lead the discussion but of course as in more committee uh fashion everybody please chime in Um you know
it's important uh that we make the comments um you know comments we discuss this and vet this as we have uh for a while now but just discuss it and uh prepare our comment for a town meeting
um so I'd open up the floor if anybody would like to to discuss or mention anything concerning the appropriation now I know there was a school committee meeting last
night and um the non-contingent recommendation here in article 24 is 67,233,68 the contingent recommendation is a reduction of that budget by $5,640 $640,36
significant um would anybody like to mention or speak to the school committee i know there was something last night was there any discussion of further cuts i didn't watch the meeting okay i was
here um yeah I don't I don't know if anybody watched it i did um there was and there their slides went up which was helpful to go through and
do it and um it didn't give give me the total i didn't write down each slide that came up for what they be taking out of the budget should there be a non should should they not get
um if that number has changed from what we had seen before i I don't know it's a million yeah they cut another million another million they're in a deficit for 2026 okay
can we raise the volume on the TV is that possible what' you say can we raise the volume i can barely hear that can we raise the volume on that okay can Can someone explain that so the why why they're in a million deficit for 2026 no not the million
deficit oh how long do you have it's like what does anyone have any information on what the school committee did last night i I watched it so um they they for the the finance part is that
they obviously they borrowed from the free cash to to get the deficit for 2025 and they will need another million next year to for the budget for 2026 so they'll need free cash to fulfill the
the um positions for 2026 and they they did um slides of what they would need to cut if they do not um or if they don't get the like if they don't get the override or they're not
getting free cash or a way to so we paid to financially get through 2025 but this would be for 2026 does that make sense so and and it includes the total is a million58,000 i'm sorry Allison this is Jay are you
saying that's in the situation where the override fails or in the situation where the override passes it sounded like they were in the deficit no matter what okay i'm looking at at on Peter's recommendation and I pulled up a
slideshow on their website that's titled non-override budget okay and has exactly what you said 1 million $5,000 and Amy do you have any insight that we don't have into this i didn't get a chance to watch it um but
it was my understanding from the select board meeting last week when Mr luring and Dr carol came in requesting the free cash for 25 that that would they
understood that they wouldn't have that reserve in the special ed reserve and therefore their their reductions in a non-override year would have to be approximately a million more and I believe the article that Mr milano and I
have in in the um warrant reflects that yep so I wouldn't think that they'd be projecting a deficit for 26 they would have to cut and that number in the
warrant balances it out in a no override and nothing in special reserve yeah my understanding is sort of what Amy just said but just to put it a different way since they're since they're taking the money now to make for the the deficit now let's forget if it's 700,000 or a
million let's just say the money so what this board said was if the override passes you previously would have had a million dollars in the special ed reserve now you don't if the override fails since we're using up a million dollars now your budget has to be a
million dollars lower so if the override passes this doesn't affect their budget if the override fails their budget has to be a million lower is my understanding right and I think there were concerns because they depleted all
of their reserves that in the event and this is again I did not watch last night so this is my understanding from last week in the event that they incurred special ed costs more than expected or anticipated in
26 they would not have reserves to fall back on like they have in prior years and that was the concern so I don't know if my assumption is maybe that's what they were referring to
but I honestly am that's just what it is as an assumption based upon the facts I had from last week so um I'm not following 100% that it would be a deficit other than because of what um
Jay just said like that was the whole idea of us setting up the special ed reserve and taking a million dollars of free cash and putting it in there would be so that there was a place to go in the event that they had additional costs
similar to 25 and 24 that for special ed now that's not there so it very well could mean that they may run short next year because they have nowhere no reserves anywhere from Yeah
yes I appreciate um putting out like that i guess um whether so we wouldn't have a way to pay for the position the positions for next year we're we were able to take from the reserve this year but there won't be but if the override
doesn't pass funds available but the positions they would have to cut before the school year then so then I guess to your point then um so there wouldn't be because there wouldn't be a way to pay for it there there wouldn't to your
point not be a deficit it wouldn't there wouldn't be a way to pay for it i'm I'm not really following that i I think the way it's presented in the warrant is if the override
passes they are funded with their level service requests and not to confuse people with the 700 but they had replenishment of a reserve in there that we took out and put it in this special ed reserve to separate it
yeah we didn't feel like it belonged there right here in the event it fails i just Yeah the reduction that they need to make I believe is I got it right here 5 six or something yep m and they would
need to do that before the school year opened they would have to make the reductions in staff in order to to make those costs but then there's a layer of unanticipated costs such as special ed
they can't control those there's nowhere to go if that happens we don't have a special ed reserve fund now to fall back on and they've depleted their other reserves like circuit breaker mhm that's the
concern and I think my guess is that may be what they were referring to mr luring is on Zoom oh yeah maybe he should speak before me i'm looking at the chair recognize Mr luring okay sorry
if I got Oh no you didn't say thanks so much i I thought I had a handle on this you want to recognize Mark uh Mr luring you on Zoom i think he'll have to be promoted
first by Karen hello well can you all hear me we got you promoted hi everyone how's it going um wow jump in uh so again appreciate the time oh hold on
mark I think they're trying to get him in hello hey Mark there you are hi Mark uh yeah I can clarify so there is really no change since our last
presentation to warrant so I just want to be clear on that what we presented to the warrant committee you know whatever last week time flies um it is still holding the same so there is no projected deficit within FY 26 so that
that is not true uh we have a budget within FY26 where we have addressed the structural deficit where we have increased the special education line items that have historically been kind of overfunded over spent as well as utilities and sub coverage all the
things we talked about and went into so those things are are adjusted to accurately reflect for FY26 in both an override and a non-override scenario so in both of those scenarios that is adjusted the
difference is obviously the cuts so in the non-over in the override scenario we have those about a million worth of cuts and then the $300,000 worth of re reallocation uh for the ELA curriculum right again
all the things we shared previously but in order to cut the $700,000 that the the town um cut out of level service budget for the schools in a but those are the only that's the cuts in the override scenario in the non-override scenario what that's what we were
talking about last night at school committee and essentially the conversation was because it's possibility as Jay kind of laid out possibility that the if there is a non-override and the school committee would need to use a million dollars the
school department would need an additional million dollars in order to cover the SY25 deficit again I want to be clear we are currently projecting less than that hoping it will be less than that working towards making it less than that but that's a conservative number based upon kind of things up in
the air and so we were advised by the town administrator that the full million dollars of pre-cash in a non-override scenario would come out of the school's operating budget and so therefore we need to make more cuts in FY26 in a
non-override scenario and so what we discussed last night were those additional cuts that the school committee that the school department put together over the last week and started um presenting to us and presented to finance committee Wednesday morning and then full school committee Wednesday
night and we voted on the additional cuts uh and so that that is what was discussed it's another million dollars worth of position cuts uh for a non-overrite scenario to bring the total FTE reduction to to 75 uh up from kind
of the 66 that it was uh and in addition to that there there's additional programmatic cuts in order to get that full million down so that that is what was discussed i'll say for like numbers purposes appear it says it in the
warrants as y'all reviewed it um the other day with the town administrator where like the FY25 allocation is the 67.22 number and in a non-override scenario it's essentially a flat budget
for the schools it it increases by $8,000 um and so it is it is a a devastating cut there but that that was the discussion last night and happy to answer further questions folks might have about that
anybody have any questions for Mr lauren hey Mark I have a question for you this is uh Steve um hey thanks for joining tonight got a question for you on these district leadership or the the cuts how many of these are from that 80 80
people that were hired over the last few years are these uh lower tenure folks well so I mean again not to focus just on a single group of folks but a a lot of these folks like the interventionists are uh the preschool director is uh the
sixth grade teachers uh are in terms of again the class sizes in Pearson Middle School have gotten quite large um and so the whole sixth grade team that would be cut in this uh and push class sizes up to 28 29 students uh in sixth grade uh
that that was part of some positions added over the last number of years um some of the high school teaching positions were positions added over the last number of years um so lots of those things adjustment counselors so I obviously the full list
of positions added going back to 2017 is on the website uh for yall's reference and then obviously the the slides from last night listing all the positions that that would need to be cut in a non-override scenario are listed as well brian uh yeah um well I
Oh no i I was saying Allison raise your hand but I was trying not to interrupt and I failed um yeah so I guess for me the question I have is um what what changes will be made to evaluating kind of the processes
of these positions um are you guys you know if the override passes you know my my biggest thing over the last few years is evaluating positions um having somebody that looks at processes kind of um having a somewhat
of like a you know you guys are the ultimate people that sign off so the principles being involved the superintendent and you guys being the you know the the superintendent reports to you you know I think um streamlining
and evaluating and holding you know kind of a chain of command that you know we look at um you know my biggest thing is for years has been a lack of you know job descriptions HR you know evaluating kind of streamlining because you know as
we've done for the last few years I mean we added 80 positions which is fine if they're needed but um I don't know if I've you know I've asked for job descriptions on the finance for years just really evaluating and and being
fluent in the processes um so I'm just curious to know if um you guys have talked about the changes that you'll be making in the upcoming years after this and what is the backup plan um from the school committee
thanks i'm not sure I understand the second part of the question in terms of the backup plan can you can you clarify is that related to Yeah do you have like a plan in place if the override should pass to not pass yeah yeah the plan in place if the override doesn't pass is the the list of
cuts um which again is obviously devastating uh you know we I hesitate here a bit to speak for full school committee because I was just trying to hop on to to clarify a little bit about the the money and so I just want to hedge that um absolutely i've never
loved love to talk for the the whole committee but uh I mean you know our our job and the district's job and the teachers job is to do whatever we can to serve kids and and provide the best academic uh experience possible and best overall educational experience possible
for for our kids and our neighbors kids and everybody within the community's kids um and so that that job doesn't change regardless of whatever the budget is the job becomes much harder uh and it becomes much harder primarily if you like the teachers and the staff inside the schools because of how much is just
being ripped out there um in terms of what what is supporting the kids that they are serving so uh the the plan is if the non-override pass is what we have have shared in terms of in terms of the cuts and where we think the cuts are are
least impactful even though they are devastatingly impactful um and then as it relates to uh HR improvements yeah we would we've been looking for a way to add an HR director for for a number of years
because a district of uh you know the size we have not having an HR director uh seems crazy uh but the ability to to fund that position has been a struggle last year it was on the the needsbased budget and we we tried to look for ways
but we prioritized reducing class size and getting the full sixth grade team as well as the math interventionists that every school could have a math interventionist uh so that was the priority last year we pulled that back and then this year obviously within the override we are we're we're not receiving any any need level service as
is no department and so therefore cut we are actually cutting within our department uh programming and things so so those be could still remain challenges of just how to implement process improvements with uh the extremely lean staff that that are currently doing the work but that's
certainly always things that that need to be looked at uh we as we shared before we're we're excited about the idea that um you know Nick Milano has brought up around the partnership around bringing in a best practices consultant for HR being one of the things we
flagged uh finance processes in general budgeting processes in general but HR being one of those things in particular of just how do we do that uh as well as possible as efficiently as possible given we have such limited staff and given we want to have good ways of of evaluating and ensuring efficiencies
within the the system any followup i'm good okay thank you Allison anybody have any other questions for Mr luring while while he's here and available brian um well I had some questions I sent you
asked us to send you questions i don't know if they got sent to them but I'll I'll go through some of my questions um so I was thinking about this last week it it it came back and we discussed it at the meeting last week and of course I don't think anybody wants to see
teachers cut at all but um it goes without saying but um one thing that came up was the kindergarten the half day kindergarten where that the town now pays for the other half where it used to be where if
you if your child was in kindergarten day you know they parents paid but we paid my you know we paid so is there any what is the cost what is the cost of that and is there any thought that you would bring that back because you're
required to provide education for 1 through 12 but not kindergarten and would there be a thought about bringing that back versus you know cutting heads basically and what's the cost what would be the cost of that
yeah you're getting me somewhat out over my own skis here because that in terms of the actual cost that'd be a a better question here for Katie i I know within the discussion we had that other night right there's uh impacts of that around chapter 7 aid and increased chapter 7 aid that is provided for uh full day
kindergarten that's not available for half day kindergarten and so th those financial trade-offs there it's not uh as clear as kind of black and white in terms of right paying for it or not paying for it and that that kind of being being it there are other like loss revenue opportunities with moving back to a half day kindergarten i'll I'll
reinforce a point I made at that meeting too which is just we know the earlier we can get kids to read and be literate uh the the much greater their um their academic journey is going to become much easier it is much less likely they are
to be identified for special education services uh the much less intervention services they're going to need all of those things which cost money down the line and if you require people to pay for kindergarten kindergarten is not mandated uh by the state and so folks
will not send and you're going to have a lot more kids coming into first grade behind you're going to have to invest a lot more in bringing those kids up and overall that's not uh an improved quality of education and so I again I can't I don't want to speak for the full commit school committee we have not
taken a full-ike vote or had a conversation on this i'll say for myself as an educator I would not be in favor of that given that the negative impacts that we know that has and I just say that like as a town there are lots of things we do that we're not legally mandated to do that are the right thing
and the good thing to do for the residents of the town and for our kids we're not legally required to have as many wonderful parks and beautiful spaces as as we are but we're look y'all are looking at Everly Park and right that was a great uh presentation and that will be a wonderful resource even
though that's not something we are legally required to do um you know a lot of programming through the Council on Aging is maybe not something we're legally required to do but that's a wonderful resource for our our citizens and our our elders uh within the community and so I I just think that's
also a a lens of this is like what do we what do we owe each other and what do we owe owe our kids as it relates to kind of a a wonderful educational resource that we are investing in them and that we are providing them uh as kind of the
the taxpayers of the town i I believe you in the benefits of it but my I thought somebody said something like 90% in the past when we did it there was still 90% of the kids went to kindergarten and I'm I don't really know the answer why the other 10 didn't but I
suspect it might be that there was a um financial issue and what I would recommend would be make it an income based thing you know I mean if you have kids are probably going to kindergarten for the full day because both parents
are working is my suspicion a lot of times and but if you can't afford it then maybe that would be where it would be free making it an income based thing so you do get 100% participation it's a thought
any question like what's the question I can't speak for the historical I I have no idea what the historical participation rate was uh prior to the the full I thought somebody said that I don't remember but I think it's I I mean parents It's two two people
working are looking for something for their kids to do all day so I And if they're two people working then they have an income it's a lot cheaper than daycare anyway
child care you know kind of teaches absolutely yeah absolutely um I can only chime in on that for a second we had two in daycare was throw over $36,000 a year for us right bought a second house when they went to kindergarten should give
you an idea how much money that is for families how much of an impact that is not everyone's in that position to do that right so it's tough there's a lot of families out there they're worth it though absolutely
um Yeah um another question I Well it's a it's a thought about how much money would that cost or would you could you save you know that would be worth it and my other thought was that came up was um part- timerrs do you know how many part-
timerrs you have and um is there a way that when you have a part- timerr um if it's 20 hours a week you have to pay full health insurance which could be up to $20,000 a year 25 per family or something I think
so the town could save 25 if you had one full-time versus two part- timerrs the town could save 25,000 a year per per person is there any thought about that as a cost-saving measure
yeah again you're I I'm not sure anything about the number of of part- timerrs it's not information I have usually if it's part-time and they can consolidate a role into a full-time role um that's more attractive and easier to get people uh and as you say there's some cost cost efficiencies within the
district usually if there are part-time multiple part-time positions it's because multiple bodies are needed usually a lot of times like at the same time right we talked about the community schools program as an example that doesn't hit the school's operating budget but they have a lot of part-time
people they can't combine those two people into a full-time role because they need them both at the same time at those after school hours so uh that that's usually one of the limitations but typically organizations Yes for all the reasons you said would rather have a a full-time position um because there's
some cost efficiencies and and because it it's just more attractive and you're able to retain people longer usually within full-time roles but I can't speak to the number of of full-time folks okay but following up on that Mark wouldn't we couldn't we have posted the position
as 19 hours so that we didn't incur the extra benefit on the health insurance at the town level so again I I'm not sure how many positions within the school department itself um hit that threshold or don't or or right around that
threshold obviously there's also just the impetus that like having health insurance in and of itself is is compensation that makes a position more attractive so there are times where in order to fill a position if you need somebody in that right that is that is piece that needs to be weighed of it
needs to be enough compensation andor benefits in a certain way that somebody's willing to do the job otherwise the job is unfilled and therefore the need is unmet for for the students whatever that might be um so that that is that is always the balance but I'm not sure of the the particular
halftime positions that that exist within the district off the top of my head and um and how those are or are not kind of scheduled and and if those could be reduced to 19 hours versus 20 and what the impact would be on the ability to to hire for those but those are those
are the implications of when you kind of remove benefits that obviously makes a job less attractive uh for the people who otherwise were were doing it and expecting that benefit i think and I was more focused on the community schools because I think that was part of the big
increase in health insurance this year because you added a number of positions if I recall so it Yeah you probably don't see it because it's not in your budget the jump in health right um it's a thought maybe it's a thought
for the consultant because you said you're going to hire a consultant which is you know synergy thing um and you won't know the answer to this but maybe it's a Katie question but um like the net cost
on people shoot me for this but like how much what is it what do we charge people for like athletics band or other activities versus the cost is there something on that and um a way to try to mitigate the expenses
yeah I mean we are increasing the athletics fees for next year uh and so that that was a discussion on the finance committee meeting on Monday uh those I guess slides are are available and I can send them over uh if that's helpful uh and also um you know includes
information around like comparative districts around here in terms of what what they spend I'm sorry what they require of families in terms of the investment and so those are things that we are increasing next year in both an override and a non-override scenario um
so those are um those are things we have looked at in terms of the exact percentage of what is covered by the district versus what is covered by the boosters versus what is covered by families uh I don't have that at my fingertips so that that is information that get the district can I'm sure get
for you but I don't want to speak for for Katie and Peter yeah it be worth looking at you know and what competitive towns do i don't know the answer to that yeah well that again that is information we did look at and was in done oh okay and
uh in I think this was asked before so I don't know if it's been fixed or if I don't mean fixed if you have been able to produce this but is there a Excel spreadsheet that just kind of tracks all the expenses for the t for the schools
over the last three years do you know that it's in an Excel spreadsheet versus the um PowerPoint or PDF version we we have uh again that would need to be a question for Katie Blake uh again the
all the spending for the past dozen years whatever is on is on the town website through those PDFs but in terms of a single Excel document um I I don't have one um but again that would be a question for Katie i'm sure that's
something she has or could get together okay Peter thank you thank you Brian mark oh actually uh Peter we have Judy waiting for a little while i'm sorry judy thank you jay Judy you're up next you've been waiting oh thank you i just thought Mark
was leaving i wanted to catch him before I almost got out the door um in a past year there was um a question why the schools did not seek reimbursement for out of
district students that could have been sought and money come back into the um to the schools for educating those children um
I don't see it as anywhere this year so perhaps we no longer have that situation of out of district school um students yeah Judy I appreciate the question i'm not aware of that we don't we don't
serve any out of district students that I'm aware of um just primarily given our our space constraints right there are some towns that will open up their programming you know traditional district schools that will open the programming and and allow students from other districts to come in and attend
either a specialized program um uh that happens a lot with with Boston public schools and folks sending to there because their their size they had a lot of different specialized programs um I I don't believe that exists right now within Milton i don't want to say 100% though Judy just because again I don't
know that yes to your point that has not come up within last year's budget conversation that I'm aware of or or this one of the issue of us having those students and not billing for them i unsure why the
town wouldn't bill for services that it's legally allowed to bill for and entitled to so um but right now I don't believe we're providing any services to out of district students oh thank you very much for that information yeah hi Mark um I've got a transition
question for you uh you've got sort of the perfect storm working here you're doing budgeting you're looking for an override uh or I guess trying to deal with what a non-override looks like you've got a new superintendent coming in is there have there been any discussion about getting him involved
earlier in the process uh I don't know whether that is a legal issue or not but um he's going to be dealing with this going forward with the budgets going forward with the process going forward um I would think the sooner he gets
involved the the better for the for you and this and the town yeah and just to catch up on the war committee members if you didn't see it because I know you were meeting last night too but uh the school committee voted to move forward with um an offer for the interim
superintendency pending negotiations uh with the candidate uh John Failen former superintendent of Belmont uh who at this point is retired lives in Milton uh so great resume really uh impressive um individual i have not met John Failen i've not spoken to John Failen
personally he just reviewed his resumes uh and has obviously stood out not just to me but for the whole whole committee um right now though uh he is not the super I just want to say that like pending negotiations is an important little caveat there so that is something
that the school committee chair and vice chair along with I assume our legal council as well and sure whoever um you know John is is involving they they need to just work through that first um and
certainly he has great expertise of running through overrides and you know running a district of comparable size and all all kinds of great skill set that you know is one of the things that attracted us to to him i also agree with you bringing on um you know the
transition sooner than later would be helpful we do have the budget issue though uh where you know we still are paying a current superintendent through the end of this fiscal year and so to bring on a new superintendent prior to the end of the fiscal year means we
would need to find revenue within FY25 which we do not have as all of you are aware um and so that would just grow that deficit further uh which is not something we want to do so that that is another significant limitation uh it is
possible that you know informal discussions could occur um and conversations similar probably to a much lesser extent given it's an interimm role but similar maybe to what Peter did before he officially started uh but again I I don't want to admit John to
and and also to have you know it's he has not accepted the position and at this point we haven't totally offered it because we haven't done they haven't done whatever the contract negotiations need to be so I just want to h edge all of that with with those comments i got you um I'm putting the c before the
horse but um again anything that could e ease the process appreciate it no I appreciate it anyone else has anything else for Mark mark can I ask you a question please
mark this kind of just goes along the lines of what Allison had asked you earlier and and the school committee as a whole articulated a lot of those things to us were here and you repeated them um and you have a very unique role
on the school committee given your work with the finances right uh working with Katie yeah i mean unique uh yeah unique just in the sense like wrong year to volunteer to be chair of the finance committee that's I guess yeah that's
what I meant you know you do a lot of you know you're really kind of in the numbers and and I have to say Mark I've watched more school committee meetings this year than I watched in the previous two um so I really got the opportunity to see how you discuss things and you know how how you work through issues but
I just have a just a general question for you and not in your role as head of finance on the school committee but what would you describe as the duties and responsibilities of a member of the school committee yeah uh that's a great question uh I
mean one of the primary duties and responsibilities of the school committee is to oversee the performance of the superintendent so to work with uh you know broad question evaluate ultimately the superintendent and the superintendent of performance of running the district um so that is the the
primary role right the district the superintendent is like the town administrator in that they carry forth the the mission of the school district they hire the people they evaluate the people they hire the people who then evaluate the people they make the
purchases to uh identify the programming uh direction the school committee can provide insight um you know input into some of those things uh there's a you know it's some of the governance conversations we've had is just like what what is too much in the weeds of
the school committee what is not enough in the weeds of the school committee because ultimately the superintendent is the one running the district um I I believe that strongly like we need to trust in the people we are hiring the superintendent the principles um that those are the folks who are going to be
able to make the best decisions uh on the ground for students because they see the kids every day and they know what they need and they know their staff need uh and there's a lot of difference that needs to be done to them um at the same time the school committee brings the voice of of the community as well and
listens to what is the community saying are the the issues and raises those as questions and items of discussion uh or presentations within school committee meetings um as you know we had the DEIB presentation last night we've had school uh different school presentations
throughout um the math and ELA directors uh presenting student data so like all those are like important things to to learn about and help inform the community about and ask questions that the community is asking questions about to have everybody feel um that like that you know it's the trust but verify that
things are are being run well uh that we're providing the best possible experience for our kids but that we are also throughout the time not just trusting that it's happening but but verifying through through learning and engagement um I think the other role is to to support um and and help advocate
and so when the superintendent and the the principles and the teachers say they really need something and there's there's only so much they can do like the the advocacy around financial resources or space resources or other things are you know some of the role of the school committee as we hear that
most directly than anybody and our job is to bring that forward to the town and say "Hey this is this is it can you help us out can you help the schools out they really need this." And that's what I think we were um we are elected to do um and then obviously you know a key part
of that is in terms of the trust verify is working with the school department to receive the kind of budget reports go through those talk through those ask the questions um and um again support and question and um and and collaborate
wherever possible to just um give whatever we need i I often personally just find it a little bit difficult in terms of the the balance of again the the kind of being on the dance floor versus in the balcony uh metaphor where
boards are usually supposed to be on like balcony but I do this work in my day job and so there's sometimes where I I worry I'm too too much in the weeds I have too much perspective on on some of these things in terms of how I would do it or or do do it in my own in my own dayto-day but that that's a little bit
of a personal aside of the challenge I have with the role of a board member um I I hope that rambling answer Yeah Mark i I I really do appreciate that answer uh very much and um I appreciate the work that you're doing on the school committee and some of the things that
you're attempting to accomplish there especially with Katie Blake and and I asked that question just you know just I just want to hear from you but um over the course of the several meet the many meetings I've watched I just know that you know I think there was an acknowledgement by the committee that
not enough money was appropriated within the budget um the failure to budget at the appropriate levels um basing budget numbers on past budget numbers and not the actual so like things like that and
what what I wanted to clarify in my head uh was the the school committee as it currently sits i is is there or do you feel as a member especially as uh one who deals with the finances that there's a a recommmitment by the school
committee to actually pay attention to the numbers and really work with the budget uh along with curriculum advocacy for students advocacy for parents and those other roles because in my view of the the meetings historically you know a
lot of times there isn't a lot of budget talk and there's a discussions about many other very important things but I think I think the question I have is is the school committee going to do the not fun
work and really start to focus on the budget the money the appropriation and really start to take um you know budgeting for future years um and kind of bring that a little bit more to the forefront do do you feel like you're
going to see that from other members of the committee uh I mean I think you've hopefully that has been seen within the current year right in that we have almost every single school committee member attending every finance meeting uh you know
testament to them even though it's not on finance a meeting every twice a week for the last three months and the the desire to dive into it again I think it is a um a place where it is there's
more intent focus and ongoing intent focus is I think the point you're making um to make sure it is a trust but verify scenario of you know there been kind of um faith and uh trust
of potential past school committee practices of just you know this is gone well there hadn't been kind of budget issues we'd had you know the esser reserves and so things or were fine or whatever it was i I don't know i can't quite speak to all all the past
committee meetings obviously this is my my my second year first year as chair but I think we from the beginning of of this fiscal year even before knowing about the deficit coming out of the FY24 situation where that deficit was first told to school committee in July um you
know said like this is a huge issue we need to we need to pay attention have uh consistent meetings bi-weekly meetings tried to meet very early and often as as we could with the warrant committees tried to meet early and often with the swag board finance committee and that didn't work quite as well as we we had
hoped um but I think we I hope what I brought into my role as chair this year is a uh intensity and focus on on the budget um that is both helpful to the the community at large and understanding the school budget and and um being more
um feeling like they have a better window into the school budget as well as something that is more helpful for the district too and helpful for for the work Katie Blake does and all the other uh business side staff and uh the superintendent um and again not just me but also the other you know finance
committee members who are are wonderful um value ads uh to that committee and and ask uh really good questions and and lead to great discussion yeah Mark thank you and I I think like for me and uh this committee in advising town meeting
I think that's an important piece um and Allison asked questions and I know Lori has and we we've all discussed it but is just uh it might not be the right word but just the the way that the school committee is going to approach the the
budget uh moving forward uh just with a renewed focus because I I understand and and I have children in the schools and and I the educational experience is awesome and I know you want to give the best educational experience but when the bottom line isn't looked at closely ly
enough and evaluated and scrutinized that is jeopardized and I think good budget practices ensure that great experience for students and that's why I'm just concerned about the budget itself but
when I hear uh from you and and the rest of the committee about this you know the how you're going to be approaching it um moving forward it's um I'm very happy to hear that so um it's just I find it you know I was going through in my head as a
warning committee member telling town meeting you know these are the things that they're going to be doing and like you said the the trust but verify we we can we can move forward they're going to be things in place and I don't know that that's just kind of what I was I've been thinking about over the past several
days and um you know I I appreciate your answer and I hope we can get those things in place and I think um using the words from the committee at at the community meeting just rebuild that trust um from the public so that's really all I had to say mark I
appreciate you coming in today and uh answering the questions thanks for letting me crash i apologize no not at all school committee can crash whenever they want thank you very much i hope you all don't stay too late tonight thanks thanks Mark
thanks Mark thanks Mark does anybody have anything else in this i know there's some stuff to talk about yeah I think you just uh I'm sorry anybody else oh no i think you kind of hit the nail on the
head for me which is same group of people are going to be managing their way into the next year with without the overact um they
got here um the cuts you know the process that I watched and I was focusing more on the people than the the dollars it's very difficult for them to make uh make cuts
and uh it's I don't blame them for that it's tough you got kids that that uh you need to teach and um but um the concern I have about um the
override passing or the override not passing is pretty much the same is can these people handle the budget the reason I asked the question about the superintendent is I know you've got an experienced superintendent coming in he knows the town he knows some of the
people uh and I expect bigger and better things from him um I do also acknowledge and I have here that Katie is uh uh very good at what she does way overdue and if she was here earlier we probably
wouldn't be in the mess that we we find ourselves in um so and I want to basically do I want to feel good about um the process going forward i asked that question at the
last meeting when they were here and you asked it again got the same answer but I think with Katie and with the superintendent um there is hope that uh the process goes more smoothly going forward but
it's it's awful also difficult for me to get over the hump of how poorly it's been managed over the last 3 years just an opinion thank you Peter brian yeah um the tail on Peter's
comments is uh you know they I know one of the I thought they they had some good ideas to try to address issues going forward i think there's probably more that are out there maybe we should help them with that but um you know one of the things they're going to do is hire a
consultant and I think that's important and um you know to Steve's point again like they were they hired 80 people over the last three years and like maybe I think there should be a deep dive in that like what was all that
and what was the uh what was behind it you know and um you know uh I don't know you know I know they have the titles and stuff but like is that like standard is that best
practices I don't know but it was a big jump and that's one of the things that I still wonder I I that bothers me the the most so I think and the school comm school finance committee should be managing
that consultant right now deeply yeah i was I was encouraged by what he said um and how he answered your question about the role of the school committee i thought that was a really great answer actually um you know but when I look at that and I listen and I
hear what you're saying the challenges I mean you say what's changed um we're putting more money in it's the same people manage the same money then I come back to these numbers 75 90 6 3 and
zero 75% of our traffic cameras don't work in our town that's a pretty big problem we're not addressing that in our budget $90 is needed by the police to hire an IT person so they can wear cameras on there and they can dump phones and get into We can't do that
that's risk to the town um you look at number six each shift to the fire department they're short six firefighters are rolling out with 11 they need 17 we're relying on mutual aid that's a problem it's a risk to the town three three years in a row the
schools have missed their budget they're not executing and we're about to give them a lot more money to exe and hope they execute with different practices which we hope they do and in zero that's the number of times that this the police and fire and DPW have come back and asked for more money they're managing
their budget and they don't ask for more and as I outlined there's a lot of challenges that they need and I'm hoping these the folks do better this year we need them to do better I want them to do better and I'll do everything I can to help them to do better But it's
concerning for me and one of the things that it hit me u when I was coming down Edge Hill Road on Saturday I was walking with my dog and there was a a car that was driving and I got rear ended police rolled up fire rolled up ambulance rolled up and I saw them sitting there and as I came around one of the cars
there was a firefighter standing there was a little little child in a car seat and the firefighter and the kid was crying and the child was crying and the firefighter said "It's okay daddy's right over here." And it hit me that well how much they m mean to our town and I feel like we have to do more for
our first responders and our folks that work for us every single day as the schools as well i just don't want them to get lost in in the inefficiencies that are happening right now in the schools that's all julia please
um just to respond to a few comments i think oh sorry um I think it needs to be acknowledged that the school budget is obviously orders of magnitude bigger
than the others and uh probably similar orders of magnitude more complex so yes the other departments have been managing to their budget and that's they should you know kudos to them and it's a significantly more complex um
budget I think with a lot more variables for the schools so there's that and then I also just want to say I understand the that you know the hiring of the 80 positions over a um you know a few years is concerning and people have a lot of
um people have a lot of concerns about that i also just think we need to acknowledge that that was also during unprecedented times with unprecedented money so I don't think it's particularly fair to consider those
few years as like the trajectory you know like uh you can't um look at those few years and look at the few years before it and compare them um so again I understand the concern and I'm not
saying that um there aren't parts of that that are valid but I also want to make sure we're not like comparing you know apples and oranges here that co was uh you know first time in a century we'd had a global pandemic first time kids
are permanently being educated from home via Zoom kindergarteners trying to learn to read via Zoom so it's not surprising that there have been and continue to be tons of fallout from that and the need
for unprecedented positions is there so I just want to put that out there as well thank you Julie allison allison thank you
um yeah I mean this is a tough one i you know we've been doing this for some of us three years um you know and saw the the the percentages for the schools continue with the money that they were provided
for the really hard times um and not be used for the interventionists and the ELA curriculum that could have been changed which I was fighting for 3 years ago to be changed um to help relieve
these these kids who needed um were having challenges reading so you know and that would have been a great time to use that free cash so it is really hard um to see you know us go through some of
these challenges of adding positions late that could have been added in the beginning so you know the the trust for us some of us who have been on finance has been broken I think a little bit um and you know advocating for these
students to come back from co um has been a a fight for us and you know for a few years um when they weren't hired money was being granted for that so you know I do feel a certain
way towards that but I understand um the need to move forward and and to get to the place where we move the needle it's just unfortunate it's taken us three years to get the ELA curriculum and now it's not even going to be you know and that's where that one time money really
is used correctly um so some of this money was from ARPA and some of the money is from um you know um grants and stuff that weren't being used but you know those those have to be budgeted but you know we we had a 9% increase and
then now this year we're at a 14% increase and to Steve's point you know I I believe in the schools i'm a disappointed in the plans you know I I do think that we could have um you know we've talked about a little bit but you know you look at the the the
the breakdown of of how it works and I appreciate the the response from Mark and and the questions being asked but the processes and you know I've stood behind this that you know I I don't think we would have been in this position if we had better evaluations
and and really it starts not just from the HR perspective but it's the principles and the super you know everybody having um some sort of evaluation so that we aren't double dipping in multiple positions we we
really are using our money um wisely to fulfill um long like you know the amount that we need and I think we've always added rather than really evaluating so I would love to see us change you know that process moving forward and you know
it's I didn't hear that necessarily and that's a little disappointing but sorry um but I do think that you So it's um it's discouraging to that aspect but I I think um you know the plan I would have loved to heard that just in
case we didn't meet um you know they did some evaluations i think the town would have felt a little bit more trust if you know we didn't go necessarily for the full amount and we weren't needing to to close a deficit again for a million this year i think that's a little bit of a
challenge for the public and you know I I look at um the other departments and what they need and I I don't think they got as much as they deserve to be able to move forward in this override um but I think you know and I think if we we
went back and and we cut a little bit of some of um the resources like and we looked at the positions that were non-initiative positions and we said "Hey look to the town." we really did um some evaluating we could have you know moved
this override in a in a different way so it's it's discouraging to hear that we would just go and say "Okay we're going to cut all these positions." Like instead of saying "Okay well we looked and we um looked at the efficiencies of all certain positions." And I understand
every position is crucial but you know maybe it's that full-time or that 19-hour you know position where it's like okay we could have made them a 19our and not paid benefits and then we changed the position for something else
like just that really deep dig dive thank you Allison um Jay okay um thank you so sorry sorry i didn't um I just got caught in my my Sorry Alison so I um I just think that just to close
out I just I um I think that process is you know where we could have gone in um because I I do fear for the some of the people that will will be impacted economically from the you know making this decision and it won't be one that's
taken lightly for some families so I I just wish because this is the biggest override in 30 years um 15 if you know you add up 15 years and that equals this one override just to put that in
perspective so you know it would have been great to to maybe have looked at the number and did a little bit of digger deeper so that it just maybe didn't impact so it made it a little easier for people to make the decision um for the override or not um and I I do
look to our elected officials to to be thinking of you know not just um a a no um position getting rid of all these positions like but what can we do you know it would be an override in June you
know like we're going to fight for that because we know you know and maybe it's a lesser number but you know and I understand maybe that's not the tactic that's you know uh beneficial to to the process of of for the community but it
is um something as as a a parent would do in the schools that I I want that that to happen if this does it you know um and maybe it's just a little bit more of an evaluation and it's a little less
you know but um I appreciate all the work that's done i just I have um you know many years of seeing this process so it is challenging to see some of the the the the work kind of not quite there
yet but I I think we're on the right track for sure i just it's it's a hard to you know to have full understanding with that with such a high amount but um so yeah that's just my my uh viewpoints on it so far
thank you Alison if I just make a comment you know uh we look back at some traditional just your point about the part-time people if you look back warrant committee historical warrants the schools would frequently cut those types of positions okay so you're talking like
2012 moving forward they they would you would see there were like the cut of positions so it's not uh as Allison said every position is important but it it it has been done in the past and they positions have been identified that were
part-time or you know some other type of position that wasn't full-time would be cut so I don't know just I look back I just noted that you know positions that have been cut in the past it was sometimes these
unique ones that weren't necessarily like full-time science teacher or math teacher or something like that but like I said I just wanted to throw that out there jay the floor is yours okay thank you so when I look at this I don't look so much at individual positions i feel
like how can I add value if we're talking about individual positions in schools I don't think I add a whole lot of value in saying well can we look at this one can we look at this one so what I'm looking at is the total school budget and how that relates to the total town budget so um no surprise to anyone
I've got a Oh I was going to share my screen karen can you can you let me share my [Music] screen uh so you should be able to you can't pair uh let me try again sharing is not
turned on the host is not allowing Sharon for this webinar okay give me a second i don't know why that's like that okay [Music] i'm wondering if a Milton Access can help i'm not sure why that would be
okay thank you okay thank you very much okay click share click okay so I've been looking ever since we got the total town budget
from Mr balano earlier this week i've been looking at that looking at the uh schools and how they fit into the total town budget and uh trying to see where things stand and I wish Ron was here cuz earlier this week Ron made fun of me for
being an actuary but the motto Thank you the motto for the side of actuaries is to substitute facts for impressions and I realized I had several assumptions about the school budget and how it fit in the larger budget and I
want to take a close look and see are my assumptions correct or do I need to take a second look at them so the first assumption I want to look at is what's driving the override so oh okay I've made a list here wasn't that nice of me um the three things I'm looking at is what's driving the override why are we
having this is it mostly because of the schools second one is is the school funding growing too much as a part of the town budget and the third one is did the schools get a bailout last year and this year so let's start with what's driving the need for an override well if we look at the budget Mr milano sent us
we can see how much was spent in 2025 and how much was spent in FY20 how much is proposed in FY26 i'm talking about the override budget and the change in spending the increase in spending is almost $14 million and when you break that out the schools are a little over
40% of that public safety is a little less than 10% of that other departments are a smaller amount and then you've got benefits and stabilization m each making up a large chunk to fill out the rest okay so schools are 40% of the increased
budget from FY25 to FY26 well let's take another step let's say what if there wasn't an override if there wasn't an override we wouldn't be putting several million dollars into stabilization so let's take that part out all right if we take out the stabilization well then what's left the increase little more
than half of it is due to the schools a little more than a quarter of it is due to the increase in benefits specifically the increase in uh health care and then you've got public safety and other departments making up the rest of it okay well we can't do anything about healthare that's it's it's like gravity
it just happens so when we look at this you know what I'm seeing from the last slide what I'm seeing from this slide is schools are certainly a significant part of the increase in the budget but they're also certainly not the only driver let's move on to the next slide let's take out the employee benefits let's just look at what I'll call
departments ignoring anything like ignoring things like healthcare just the departments how is that spending going up from year-over-year well the schools are at over 70% 72% public safety a little over 15% the other departments a little over 10% okay
so schools are clearly the lion share there schools are the department that's driving the most increase from FY25 to FY26 but as we know schools are the biggest budget schools are the biggest department so is this growth the fact
that they account for I have to speak properly the fact that they account for 72% of the growth is that out of proportion to the size of the schools going to look at the next slide i'm going to talk about this for a second i realize there are no numbers here got numbers for you in a second what I have
here on the left is the FY25 budget split you know only looking at departments split into these three groups the schools public safety and other departments you can see the schools are the biggest part that's the FY25 budget on the left and then how much they're contributing to the
increase on the right now I've got numbers for you in a second but first I just want to look at this look at the colors look at the pictures is the amount that the budget's growing due to schools wildly disproportionate to the budget of the schools it's somewhere in the ballpark
all right I know people like numbers i'll give you numbers schools were 67% of the department's budget again the departments in the town schools are 67% of that in FY25 and they contribute to 72% of the growth so they contribute to a little
bit more of the growth than is proportional to them but I just feel like for this whole year we've had so much wailing and nashing of teeth of the schools are growing out of control the schools are making us have an override the schools
the schools the schools they're growing so much and they are growing they are growing a little bit more than is proportionate to their to their size but mostly it's everything growing in town everything's growing schools are growing
a little bit more than everything else and they're just the biggest one they're the 800 pound gorilla so when they grow we notice it um I'm about to move on to the next topic any I feel like this graph Does
this graph make sense okay all right so the next assumption I wanted to look at and this is something not only this year last year every year I've been on the warrant committee uh schools are growing fast the school budget is growing fast it's growing fast
because of requirements of special education it's growing fast because of priorities it's growing fast because of for whatever reason is it growing faster than the rest of the budget is it crowding out all the rest of the departments so to figure this out I went to the library and I looked at old town
reports i took them in 10-year chunks i looked at a town report from 2015 2005 1995 1985 1975 and looked at the accountants report and what I saw was that if you
look back over the last 50 years again I just looked at them in you know once each decade over the last 50 years Milton has consistently spent between 40 and 50% of the total town budget on the schools and
if this override passes then Milton will be spending 45.1% of the budget on the schools so you know we can still have questions about things here and there but this gives me reassurance that this makes me
feel better this makes me feel like yes if the proposed override passes and if this override budget comes into place then what we're spending on the schools as a proportion of the entire town budget is in line with what Milton has done for my lifetime
so this this very much reassured me that what we're doing is not uh is not out of line and the schools aren't crowding out the other departments so the final question um and this one uh this one took took me a
while to get my head around but the schools to so to speak got bailed out last year last year they missed their budget they got bailed out this year the shortfall they're getting bailed out i wanted to really look at that are they are they really getting bailed out well
let's start with FY24 so what happened in FY24 in July fiscal year 20 July of 24 the schools said "We finished everything and we're $415,000 short." And the select board was not at all
happy with that but gave them money from the ARPA funds to close their budget i don't want to diminish $415,000 that's a lot of money but I'll also say that's 0.7% of the FY24 budget that's how much they were over their
budget once they used their stabilization funds etc and so is that you know having to bail out a department with 0.7% of their budget is that out of line well I checked to see how the uh the reserve
fund has been used the past few years for the past three years at least DPW every year they need about 2% of their budget coming in from the reserve fund because their budget can't hold it okay I'm not saying that's due to the
DPW mismanaging their budget i don't know if anyone's saying that you know the schools were 0.7% above their budget dpw is 2% above their budget uh legal last year went 63% over their budget couple years before that went 11% of
their over their budget and then as we can all see there's the Oh no it's cut off that's the punchline oh that's the warrant Oh hold on i got to show this the warrant committee and two and two
FY22 went 26% above their budget that is a $3,000 excess of the warrant committee in FY22 so again I don't mean to diminish $415,000 i don't mean to diminish the fact that they drew down reserves but in
the end of the day if we feel like oh is the town bailing out the schools the town bailed out the schools to 0.7% of their budget a lower percent than we usually bail out DPW and then what about this year well we talked about this a bit earlier in the night so February
they realized they were having a shortfall of 2.3 million they've made cuts they've managed their budget they've lowered it to $683,000 so now and I'm I'm repeating some of what was said earlier but I need to repeat it to get it straight in my head so what's happening now what's the
deal that's been cut $700,000 is being transferred to the reserve fund with the intent of covering this year's shortfall in exchange for that the if you want to put it in this way the deal they cut with the select board was two-pronged override passes override
fails if the override passes they were previously going to get they were going to get $1 million in a special education stabilization fund now they get zero in a special education stabilization fund if you view that as school money which arguably it is that
means the school gave up $1 million in order for this $700,000 coverage if the override fails as we heard earlier the school budget is $1 million less than it would have been before we made this deal so again to get $700,000 covered this
year they're giving up a million dollars in budget next year so are they being bailed out well the the bailout is coming from the school's budget and not only that the schools are giving $300,000 back to the town's budget none of this is to uh diminish that there
were issues none of this is to diminish problems with the school's uh you know with the finances but I hope this helped put things in perspective for everyone because it it certainly helped me see things in a different light jay thank you jay can I ask you a
question please do thank you for these slides um what do you think you made a comment um just about um you know the schools are heading in the right direction and it's not as you know large you know what
was reflected on the slides it's just a different way of looking at things and then you think you know like year to year yes okay think things are getting better or you know it's it's but what do you think when you know you're an actuary and and I I have a lot of respect for your control of numbers and
just you know the you know how to characterize the situation from looking at those numbers how to analyze them what do you think went wrong at the schools what do you think they did poorly and do you have like specifics I don't I'm not put I don't think I have
any insight to add unless you have unless you have a more specific question i don't think I have anything to add there okay i only know what we've all heard okay so it's just um I have a question thank you J okay appreciate that yeah
andrew and a comment and Jay I I always really appreciate um the time you put in and giving us data points like like the ones that um you presented and I'm really struggling
with this whole article and part of it is um that while I acknowledge that they're great data points that you pres presented and when I think about the both the growth and uh the growth and
the budgeted uh slide that you had and if you don't mind bringing that back back up um one of the problems that I have with that is uh when we're going to sort of go from the 20,000 point view on
a a budget and then scale down um the things that we're not we're not controlling for things like when I look at other departments and public safety
uh we're talking about large one-time capital expenditures um so I think looking at a single year um may give us uh false data points uh as opposed to looking at it over time because these capital expenditure
onetime capital expenditures happen in five 10 10 year and in some cases uh 15 or 20 year lumps i I I will say I'm not including capital expenditures in here okay it's the on it's the budget line
items for and I I think that and you you already acknowledge this but I I want to bring it up again one of the things that I'm really really really concerned about is the lack of controls
um and sort of the ab absence of what I believe is conservative budgeting that's happened within the schools and I think one of the biggest things that um most public se uh private sector organizations will do is plan for both
growth and contraction uh and my perception of what the school does is it's a one-way valve it plans for growth and doesn't really have a plan for or have a a method of deflating uh staffing
uh or needs when one-time funds disappear etc and so that sort of absence of what I believe is planning uh or smart planning u really really really
concerns me uh and it's also uh one of the and I guess you've already answered the the thing about li controlling for uh onetime capital expenditures but I do want to
sort of bring up the point that u when we've talked about it for example uh and you'll notice that when I talk about budgets in general that I really when possible advocate the
u the for the idea of moving away from large long-term one-time capital expenditures where possible and so uh if you sort of extend that to human resource planning it's the same thing where
uh when there may be one-time needs or needs of unknown duration uh I think they should really really focus on ideas or plans such as 19hour
employees or or other tactics that allow um the school budget to both expand and contract uh and as we know an override is a it's a one one-way process there's there's no way to go back from that but
um you know that that's really my only comments on this and I still struggle uh struggle with the the the whole article as a whole thank you Andrew comment anyone
else like to speak to this article liz well welcome thank you just on that point I wonder if anybody has information about if any other town departments
used one time or ARPA funds because I remember being at a select board meeting I believe it was last year and there was a discussion about it was last year and I remember there was a
discussion about the select board expressing concerns about their old use of one time and ARPA funds and so I don't doubt that the schools did that and that does concern me as well
but I wonder if that was a more across the board practice and if so what measures are we putting in place to avoid that i mean I know we don't have those COVID related funds anymore but what other measures are we putting in
place i've seen what they've said that we're going to do as far as the schools go i don't know if that's enough or whatever i like that there's progress on that um but as Jay sort of pointed out
there is sort of overspending there are other budgetary issues and so I'd also like to know is that a practice in other departments or other boards and committees and if so what are they doing to kind of
bring that ring that in because I do remember this whole discussion last year at the select board sort of saying that the year prior they were able to bridge the gap with one-time funds the year prior they were able to do that and the
concern was raised that now there would be that cliff of no more ARPA funds because of CO sort of being where we are now and what were we going to do to address that it's a good question amy could you
assist us maybe on that ARPA question thank you so much for sticking around hot seat so ARPA funds were utilized on both town and schools um I think what you're
referring to was we used approximately 395,000 to offset um employee benefits last year to help balance the budget so if you look at the comment that's in the draft warrant you'll see there's a table in there that kind of shows um the main
components of why employee B benefits are seeing such a large increase um year over year 25 to 26 from 25 and that's part of it um as far as hiring people
with ARPA funds on the town side there's only one position that I can think of where that was done and that was a mental health clinician for the police department and that has since been um absorbed into the police department
budget um Chief King felt it was extremely important um to have that type of position on staff um but other than that you know the board of health has some positions that are grant funded not
ARPA but when those positions are hired and also as well when I was at the schools and I was there for a lot of this making decisions and advocating for ARPA funds to hire these positions
um it it was because of what the school department was seeing with the kids and what the town was seeing that we needed help and there was no other way to provide that for the kids and and I recall coming out of my mouth at that
time and um Superintendent Jet at the time like we understand that asking for this is going to mean somewhere down the line we're going to have to make some hard decisions and probably go out to the the taxpayers and ask them if they'll support keeping these if there's
a long-term need but at that time the information we had when advocating for these types of things we didn't think it was going to be this long right we we thought if we get a couple years to help these kids get back on track that's would be a great use of ARPA funds and
Milton wasn't alone doing that if you're following a lot of the other communities are having similar issues um mainly in the the schools and their budgets with they did the same thing because these kids needed help
and that was one of the eligible costs um of that so I'm not sure I really answered the question completely but we've done it on both sides but on the town side the difference is we didn't really create a lot of positions but
because of the nature of the schools and what the kids needed wasn't the same on the town side thanks okay so and this might be a really broad question i don't mean it to be but the schools could use ARPA funds for specific purposes right
for limited purposes like you couldn't just use it for anything and anything that was approved for ARPA was approved by the select board the request came from the school committee to the select board it was publicly
vetted conversations were had and nothing funds were not used without approval of a board outside of the school committee they couldn't just say we're going to use it they had er funds which was different what I meant was I don't know ARPA came from the feds and
were there restrictions on what you could spend it on for Yes so the schools could use it to hire people that was a approved use what other you know maybe you could spend half an hour answering this but what other were there other things ARPA funds could have been used on in the
schools um I mean probably but I don't Okay i don't know like I'm just saying I wasn't as involved on in this role with the ARPA back then okay i was more on the side of the school and advocating for Well yeah that that's what I mean when
you were in the school's role could the schools spend ARPA money on something besides hiring people or is it they could have requested to do so so for instance one of the things that was funded with ARPA was to increase nursing
support and to increase the kindergarten aids from they were point8s but that's people to full-time right but it wasn't hiring new people okay they were already on staff they were part-time considered a 8 FTE equivalent and they were just
brought up to cover the full school day which they would have to leave early at the point8 i guess what I'm wondering is when you're looking at your options for ARPA was it that hiring people hiring people or you know extending part-timers to full-time is the best well obviously
you thought it was the best use or were there other things like the ELA curriculum that you could have spent it on could you have spent it on the ELA curriculum i guess possibly i don't I don't know the answer okay to that um I sorry to put you on the spot with something four years ago say we also use
some COVID relief money whether it was ARPA or ESSER I don't remember or CARES Act money to purchase Chromebooks when the kids were going remote we had to roll it out to all students at that time all students didn't have a Chromebook so
there were I believe I just don't remember if it was ARPA or one of the other COVID grants that covered that it was probably ESSER um so it was used on some Okay probably there you know there's certain there's a lot of guidelines in the ARPA it's like this
yeah yeah um I guess what I was wondering when people say "Oh you shouldn't have hired people with ARPA funds." I didn't know if that was the only option no I don't believe it was the only option okay i think it was just a decision made at that time for what it
was felt was needed the most to service the the kids thank you and Amy maybe you can answer this or maybe another member of the war committee because I remember when the school committee was before us two years ago and we were discussing this very same thing didn't the federal government
send recommendations and guidelines for that money well that specifically saying hire hiring full-time positions this is not meant for longterm does any member of the committee remember that
like did the Fed said like if you hire longterm like we're not going to continue to support that position right didn't they say it's for COVID related it was a COVID relief i don't know i'm just saying I thought there we were told that they there was a
warning um about the hiring for the for the same reasons that you're saying it now that there's going to be a cliff and I think that was acknowledged at the time that there would need to be a decision made in the future whether that was to ask the voters for support or to
make changes again the information we had at the time we didn't really know what we were dealing with you know it was as she said earlier it was unprecedented times you know and certainly were yeah
and who would have thought then that we'd still be seeing the effects of that you know but we are think it's going to be for the next 10 years the generation it was very helpful thank you you're
always helpful sometimes I talk to No no not at all not at all you're great thank you does anybody have any followup just to ask to that jay thank you liz thanks for that question um I thought I read in the paper a while ago that Quinsey didn't do that which is
why they might not have a problem they didn't use it for I did I did read that some there was a community that did not yeah we we talked about it in here yeah and I and the school committee did acknowledge that just like we have to do this and we were like this is creating a
problem will create a problem this will be a problem so it was you know it was acknowledged i wasn't saying it wasn't it was you know that was that was like big part of the decision no I was just I know I was there for those conversations and I was one advocating it for it at the time so I just want to acknowledge
that we did have what's that it's your fault um no but I think it it was valid points made at the time like I mean I I had a a kid in elementary and middle school and
it was terrible you know it was it was tough yeah and I and we did hire interventionists and we did hire adjustment counselors to help the kids that were having a hard time with
it going remote was really difficult not just on learning but on the social emotional side of things as well so it was adjustment counselors it was nurses it was interventionists it was all kinds
of those those types of things and then some positions to support to you know support the increase in special ed okay thank you struggle lori tell us tell us the struggle the struggle i feel like um my
str my personal struggle with all of this is um you've lived it when I from my perspective joined the warrant committee I was excited the year that I joined or was appointed the during that prior town
meeting there was a request to defund the schools at town meeting and I thought what is that all about and I wanted to get to the bottom of it of why somebody would think that we need
to defund the schools and I thought I am going to try to get to the bottom of it and figure it out and if there's an answer that's very clear that if this is what it costs to do this I'm all in and
I'll sell it and my struggle over the last three years is that I feel like I can't get enough information clear information you want an Excel spreadsheet and we don't have an Excel
spreadsheet the um workbooks that are put together by Amy and the team the town departments are beyond so detailed they tell us everything there's eight pages of information and it's it's very
clear it's very transparent and that I think is lacking on the from the school department and I can't wrap my head around or understand why that is so difficult
but it is difficult and I still don't have an answer to why we can't get that um so that's one major concern back to what Allison had said
we've been asking for three years to understand of the positions what are the positions it's been I feel I've been hearing that that we add there's an issue at a body
there's an issue at a body it's happening in all the schools it's happening across the district we add we add there's got to be some redundancy at some point we have to understand what everybody's doing i asked this year I said let's start with
the org chart that should tell us something there's no org chart how can there be no work chart um so I haven't gotten the level of
detail or the information to Allison's point we haven't seen or understood that a complete review has gone on of all the positions within the schools to
understand what everybody's doing we have preschools in a couple of school district a couple of school buildings why aren't they in one and maybe there's a very logical answer but I I don't have and why if they're in more than one why
wouldn't they be one in every school so that you're in the school of your district is there is there any efficiency around that it's it's questions like that that seem um it's and it's like an op I don't know
if it's an operational audit it's just a review it's Andrew even talked about it with like processes and procedures but yeah it starts from the bottom up what's the foundation what are we doing who's doing what the core is are the teachers in what classrooms and then what is the
support around it and to go through and really take the time to re-evaluate the 631 positions that we have I feel like is something given what's been going on co is a problem and there may very well be a logical answer that's clearly
explained but the clear explanations are are not available that's I think my biggest problem it's not transparent enough to me about the schools the cost of the
programming it came up yesterday one of the savings to get to the $600,000 shortfall we're going to have um was the neck program it's a special ed program $350,000 we're going to
save well I was in the finance subcommittee meeting and then there was discussion about the program and then Katie said well or Peter asked Katie to discuss what what that's going to look like now and in
going through and understanding the components of that program it seems like the cost of the program when we take it away from the con the NCC and bring it in
house we're probably not going to save that kind of money it's less so we're making an assumption on this is what it's going to save us but we don't have the details we haven't we don't know what that cost is so to me that was just
like another indication of do we know what any of the components of the school is costing us and and have we looked at all the positions have we looked at redundancies there I can't I can't even remember the
position there was a position I saw today in one of the schools and I thought why would we have that here when we don't even have those things going on here so maybe it's an error on the website but I don't have the org chart to check and see where these people are
so um I I struggle with that would be the baseline and I'm excited to hear you know Katie has been great and done a lot of provided us a lot of information she went through the the fees the other day
um but she's only one person she's one person and and this was this this you know situation is not a oneperson situation that's not a twoperson situation there's many people
involved so the fact that we everybody keeps saying oh Katie is here and this will be great but it's can't fall on her we need a superintendent who will support her and the decisions and create processes so
that we have processes hiring processes purchasing processes um that has to happen and schools have to live within their budgets tom referenced going back to old warrant articles i went back 15 years
and found a lot of examples of oh we are eliminating assistant principal positions i mean I don't know what the job of an assistant principal is there's a lot of kids in the school it's probably valid but positions were and I that struck me because of the position
that it was positions were eliminated there there was no discussion of eliminating positions it was how like what part of this budget can we cut thus you know
the that was a big number that we thought we could cut it's turns out it's not cutting positions is not like in the realm of possibility and now we're to this point that it's substantial and it
is a lot of positions that's you know 75 positions they're looking at cutting is a ton of positions yet that's like what we hired in the last three years and or six years and I think there's probably a valid reason for a number of them but
maybe there are some that we don't need to continue to have i don't know again the review does not seem to have happened and for me that's a struggle and it was $3 million of ARPA funds spent and it's not potentially not
sustainable if this override doesn't pass and I feel like that would have been a very good exercise although time consuming to go through and really identify it and we would have had an org chart out of that exercise but um
that that hasn't happened so I'm I struggle with that so I'm feeling very disappointed that I don't have a good handle on where the schools are after my three years of going to meetings and all the subcommittee meetings I've attended
it's not clear [Music] so I'm frustrated disappointed and I hope with um you know the new hopefully hopeful
superintendent that joins will be um an asset i think I said two years ago we should call him didn't he just retire um I think that is the best news and hopefully it happens and it
happens quickly um so I think you know as I think it was Allison said um I think we're you know we're moving in the right direction but we do need controls in place in order to
ensure you know processes and we have checks and balances controls accountability it's a big number that we're spending of the taxpayers money thank you Lori anybody any followup or any additional
comments or questions um I well I agree i mean I think accountability was a big thing and I think if they get the principles in charge of the budget and be responsible for that I think that'll just be a different mindset if they manage it like on a monthly basis I think that'll
change things you'd think you'd see some cost savings from that um my uh frustration is I hate asking questions because I don't always think I can get the answer and um you know I know it's like their budget in three years jumped
like 18% like 11 million dollars which is a lot it's really hard to get a handle on stuff what was that like why this big sudden jump and uh it's something something happened
something changed it's not just all operating no that's true and I think it's also difficult because of the revolving funds so try to determine what's coming out of the revolving fund based upon the spreadsheets that we see what's the
expense versus what's getting booked against coming out of the revolving fund which is dangerous we just voted for another one that's right but yeah that's
true anybody have anything else like to mention i do kind of think it's the definition of irony that if the override doesn't pass Katie's position will be eliminated
katie's position really is it I thought that was on the left no she's being um I think she proposed a pay cut assistant superintendent to director
i would think I think it might be well a good idea for if the override doesn't pass that maybe the warrant committee people work some people could work with the school to try to figure ways to mitigate damage i think that might not be a bad
idea i think it'll be all hands on deck anybody who has any way to help it happens yeah like we throw everything out there and see i don't think you know you don't want to see teachers go yeah i
mean 24 days so are we have to vote on this 26 days election there's a lot on the table does anyone not know how they want to vote on this i don't I don't think we
should have to vote i I don't understand if this is not for town meeting like why we are voting if this isn't like this is the town election vote this isn't we're voting for a contingent and a non-contingent
budget yeah I'm just not comfortable i mean I'm with voting for prior to to what the town votes on the budget to be honest I I think as a I would abstain from voting i I'm not okay
voting for a budget that the town will decide on and if they decide for an override then I I can have a perspective of agreeing to that budget if they don't like I I just I'm not gonna I can't You're You're not voting on a budget for
if it passes you're not voting twice you're voting for one budget thank you Alison anyone want to talk to Alison i have my hand up judy and then Jay oh oh thank you um in regards to
Allison I I can I feel how you um I understand how you feel about but every other town department is in the same situation that
we voted on that there was a no override figure for their 26 budget and there was an override figure for their 26 budget so it's my
understanding how this will work and I please somebody jump in that so the town votes on the 29th there will be a decision that
decision will actually pick the number that town meeting will approve for the budget for everyone because it's baked in
that the vote on the 29th will determine which column of numbers gets approved for every town department including the school
so it would seem to me that the school is no different in this regard than the other budgets that we just voted on and I know we went late some nights but
I wasn't that tired i think we voted on every budget there was saying yes with the understanding that the determination of the column of numbers will be
determined by the vote on April 29th does is that what others see or am I off i agree Judy i I don't understand why we wouldn't vote on this one when we've have voted on all the others oh sorry
um just off and I know that school is the biggest number that we've had before us um in the last week and a half we've been looking at the numbers for longer than that but down to crunch time of
voting it's you know um the only thing is is that let's say the override passes which um then as a person evaluating the override amount you know like or the positions like similar to what we did
last year it's a different mindset of saying that like you know I would I would look at it differently as as somebody voting on it because this is basically a vote for kind of the
mentality of like what the override passing or not passing when the override passes or if it does like you're looking at the the the budget differently like we did last year like last year we nitpicked a little bit more in the sense
of like you know we didn't agree even in the last hour they added positions at the end where like this isn't the ability to look at the budget for that amount you know like we it's a totally different scenario i mean I understand
your point of we we we agree to the other ones but the seeing how the schools is so big and they're so much more it's so much more detailed it's it changes the comment it changes everything then that but as we discussed we should
have been cognizant of both columns of numbers and if we I I posit it this way if even one of those columns is problematic for
your consideration of a yes vote then the vote should be no that that's the option
um to say no based on one of those columns didn't jive right for your understanding or acknowledgment of the budget with either one of those
calls and a no is is okay i don't know it's how I see it now so if you feel as though the column that has the override numbers is a
problem and it's too big or just not where you think the budget should be for 26 then a no vote would indicate that um would indicate that there was a
problem with one of those columns thank you thank you Judy thanks Liz liz yes Liz okay um so kind of to Allison's point I think that it is hard this
situation that we're in i said this I who can tell the days anymore but I think yesterday because in some ways it would have been a lot easier if town meeting happened first before the election rather than the other way
around but it is what it is so I think like to Allison's point it's really hard because as I said also maybe yesterday when you have the vote you can
say "Okay the people of Milton knowing what they know about all the budgets have decided like as you said before that it's important to them to continue to fund these positions that were paid for with the onetime ARPA funds or
whatever it is this is their values this is what the people have decided i agree that it's kind of hard because we don't know what that vote is going to be so then I think about it like okay well it's not really our kind of role to
sort of think about politics or how people are going to vote so our role is kind of to think about the budget which then leads me to what Lorie said which is that it's sort of hard because we haven't had the opportunity to kind of deep dive into it maybe the way that you
know some of us would like to however then I think to myself okay well we're sort of in the situation that we're in and we have the budget that we have and I mean we've been saying this sort of since August that it would be great if the warrant
committee could dive more into sort of the decisions that were made in previous years leading up to but we haven't been able to do that so maybe in the future sometime but I think that it makes perfect sense if people want to abstain
i think it makes perfect sense if people want to vote no makes perfect sense to me if people want to vote yes i think that we have the contingent budget and we'll explain in the comments sort of because we don't know how the people of
Milton will vote and it's not really our role to say sort of our own personal opinion I guess about it um except to raise these issues i feel comfortable voting now I guess my long way of saying that but I
want to acknowledge what Allison's saying because I do think that it's problematic the way that it was sort of scheduled and to Lor's point not having all the information that we might like to have but we're in the situation that we're in so I'm happy to vote whenever
people are ready I guess is my long-winded way of saying that thanks Liz lordy I would just like to share um on the record um the Brockton had a budget deficit of 18 million a number of
years ago and this is their audit report and these are the recommendations that um seem to apply so I'm just going to put it out there the school finance department should build its budget based
on actual expense information from prior years the school finance department's budget must be more detailed and transparent the school department should maintain a human resources personnel system that accurately tracks employees by location position and funding source
the school department must track spending relative to the budget approved by the school committee the school department's um that's not relevant the school department must share key data throughout the fiscal year the school committee members should undergo annual
budget and finance training seems like um could be good the school committee must as required by Mass Law approve vendor and payroll warrants they do approve those warrants
i don't know that they approve them individually like I don't know what they look at or if it's here's a stack of invoices that is a h 100,000 pay it yes I approve it or if they go through them one by one the school department should
be led by a superintendent with a fin financial background and prior experience managing a large-scale organization the school and city finance departments should be consolidated the school department and city must bridge the artificial divide between the two
systems and work collaboratively on school finances the city should engage a certified public accounting firm to conduct a periodic review of the school department's processes protocols and internal controls the city should and appoint an umbman to allow city
employees school department employees and members of the public to anonymously report issues affecting the financial and organizational health of the city so I'm I'm not sure to what extent we need the audit because now we know what
to do just food for thought well those are all things that we have the schools and others who have been in front of us have mentioned some of you know if not all no and I think a lot of that could go in a comment regardless of the way our vote
goes yep to add that color from all of our discussion i Yeah and the only other area that I mean I brought up some you know ideas of savings and kindergarten and and whatnot as Brian was talking
about today but the other issue that we didn't really discuss was residency and I know we had a new policy i asked about it you know I think there's there's more information I think that could be shared that I have not seen again I had a list of questions
that Peter was supposed to go back to his office and get me but he didn't so um I think that that is another area that should be reviewed and looked at there's savings there i mean my kids
knew kids that were pals of theirs that lived in Quinsey um that's something that should be updated because I've seen other towns policies and they left from RNC they have updated it since last year when they do yes
when I saw my own and I think what would every three years now yeah they have um yeah it's like kindergarten 369 so they added third grade yeah you know I just want to mention
that like and I know the residency but you know I went to Milton public schools and it was a problem when I was in school and I and we knew kids we kept our mouth shut you know but it happened i remember at the same time kids were trying to get into Latin school in the
city you know so it happens i think there are some savings there i agree with you Lori um on that issue um I'm glad they updated it glad Dr burrows like when he came in he like really kind of took it which was a good thing um I
don't know it's really all I have to say to that issue but I think that goes to the overall transparency which Mark and the committee had indicated that they're going to be working on right moving forward so um on the school's website the residency update is
2012 and then there's another policy that is says it's 20 okay it says 2021 it was updated 2015 but they updated 2021 was more recently than that yeah so
it's not on the website but it's executed I mean I just had to do it for my rising preker again like it's happening even if it's not publicized on the website you you can tell cuz town halls is really busy that day everyone grabbing their
old excise tax bills and you walk in and they're like registering for school right kindergarten registration due tomorrow as a reminder public service announcement right there public service announcement kindergarten actually yes tomorrow i hope there's a late fee on
that too i don't know then you don't get kindergarten registration at the kindergarten near you you might get sent to a different one [Music] um as I do with every other article I have past couple of
nights does anybody have anything more they would like to speak to in regards to article 24 and the contingent and non-contingent school department budget for fiscal year 26 i'm gonna say it's going to be
interesting to see what happens next year i was just going to say that i was going to say wait I don't say it maliciously no I want to be at all but it's going to it's the rubber is going to hit the
road i wish I had another year because then Yeah be here to see all the good news and report that I am fully in support i fully back it i've been convinced that's what I want to say
it's not a hard three years this is the worst no I just mean technically one-year terms yeah reappointed every year there you go doesn't mean you're you're you might not be done yet [Laughter]
going to find another ride i'll drive you home lori clarity sure what is What does a yes mean vote mean on this a yes means that we approve both the contingent and the non-contingent numbers as a number as a number it is
not a recommendation for the town in any way it is a recommendation to town meeting that we believe this contingent and non-contingent numbers are sound and that they should vote in favor of them or actually
frankly yeah whatever it may be right what do you mean whatever it may be either the override passes or it doesn't so it's either a contingent budget or it's not a contingent budget so we're just saying whatever's in front of youtown meeting we vetted and you know we're putting our
confidence in that number you know to Liz's point it's kind of but that's what we've been served with so to Allison's point you know Allison I think is not wrong
let's do this was that to make a recommendation oh all right are we ready to vote is that you want Well am I am I feeling the committee i I feel like this has been a process since started with me in June
um and everyone else in August so I don't know do we do if I'm not forcing anything i've posted for Monday ready steve make a motion so you're saying committee feels like now's the time to make the decision on this i'd say I
would agree you want to pulse the people on Zoom make sure they're ready is everybody ready on Zoom well yes there you go okay okay we have Judy is anyone else on Zoom andrew and Alison andrew alison alison all right thank you all right we're ready to rock I guess all
right okay do I have a motion as article 24 school appropriation fiscal year 26 sure make a motion to to vote yes on article 24 uh for the uh non-contingent
recommendation and appropriation of uh 1,363,747 and a contingent recommendation of 52,000 you read the schools 24 i'm sorry am I on the wrong one it's like did I hear one schools are 1 million 67 article 24
that was like the 1975 you solved all their problem all right the new 24 would you like to go ahead Jay why don't you do it old 25 okay i will make a motion that we approve the Well you you talked over me so go right ahead make Sorry man it's all right just good protocol keep
going i'm sorry it's all right i make a motion that we approve the school's budget in a non-contingent uh non-contingent amount of 67,233,68 and a contingent amount of
5,640,36 seconded seconded by Julia thank you all karen can you call the vote on article 24 school appropriation fiscal year 26 steve can you come back to me please sure lori
regretfully no liz yes jay yes allison obscene andrew no
i think Macy left is Macy gone she's gone julia yes peter no brian no judy
um I I believe I will abstain please uh Steve uh yes tom yes the motion
carries you have five yes four no and two abstensions just going to It's kind of like a what's it i don't know what the feeling is now that's over with that it's a big one
great job i don't feel that way i I I think what he said is I think there's a lot of risk i'm really nervous um about that but I just Yep i'm putting my faith in the school
committee and the new superintendent and Katie Blake i'm putting my trust in all of them to do the right thing moving forward agreed and if they can't do it the taxpayer will the next election they'll fix it so
agreed can I ask something this is an issue that came up last night it came up again tonight the issue of does the warrant committee have an official position on the override i think I sent you an email today i looked at the 2017 warrant which
is the last time this came up and in the beginning of the warrant there's a several page letter from the warrant committee as always and in that letter they took a they they took a position of we support the override and we hope the voters support it so the most recent
time the warrant committee did take a position jay I'm going to address that in my message to town meeting i think may I may I make a comment a rebuttal please sure Judy i I didn't mean to interrupt you no no that's fine i'm sure you're on
this but I just wanted to add my two cents i believe the warrant committee has now done its job we have taken every article but one we still have the lighting and we have
deliberated discussed investigated um very thoroughly and made a voted decision on every article which is our job we do a job
for the town meeting members to be informed when they vote and enact policies for our town at any town meeting our
job is not in any way at all to publicly endorse an election which this ballot question is
part of an election if you want to endorse do it on on your nonwarrant committee time have your friends and family post on
Facebook what your beliefs are because we're encouraged not to get word out walk the streets whatever you want to do but it is not a warrant
committee job to determine how people should vote because if you want to vote on the um this ballot question oh why don't we all just
get up and endorse a candidate we like hey let's take a vote on uh Peter Rabbit he's running for you know the animal shelter how do we all feel should it be
Peter or No Coyote that is not our job to influence the citizens of this town and how to vote and I stand firm on my belief of what our job is and
what it is not you can have your opinions you can get them out there but not on the warrant committee done thank you all for letting me have my two cents
thank you Judy i understand that sentiment when it comes to candidates and issues out and about you know within the town that we may discuss as a
committee but I do think there is an argument to be made that as the financial committee of the town having put all of the work in and the hours and that we have over the last year and as I said last night arguably
some of the most informed people in town due to our access to uh to the finances and the the people who manage them now you know we have the 30,000 view and the sort of micro view of the
departments i don't think it's unreasonable of us to to say based on what we've learned and that may be impossible because we may not have a united opinion on that but you know I don't think it's unreasonable to say as the finance
committee of this town based on what we've seen you know and learned over the last year we do or don't support the override because it challenges our private vote we're on record if we're on record as
voting at the Warren Committee it somewhat negates our citizen right to cast a vote at the ballot box mr milano does
not indicate to us or to the public they don't take all the finance people at town hall and ask them to unite and let the p they present the facts this is what's going to happen if
we don't have it this is what's going to happen if we if it does not pass we work for town meeting in in a way because town meeting
represents all the citizens in the town we possibly work for the citizens however our job and I I I will shout
this from the rooftops it is not our job i know it seems like it's a very important issue and you know people may look
citizens may look to us as individuals and as a committee for guidance however all the information that we have has been made
public go to YouTube or wherever they're flashing these videos that we're all talking on do your research preferably not through Facebook um where opinions are they're out there
and um they're amusing if you really want to get away from the New York Times for a few hours um it it I stand firm and I I would be so
disappointed to see our committee veer into that I mean they people can watch us and probably guess maybe
um if I were to guess and I could be a fly on your ballot I would guess you would vote yes what would you think of me you don't know do you would you want to be a fly on my ballot
i am not giving away in a public domain where my ballot is going to choose to have that overfilled it is not my job on this
committee and I signed on and I promised to give it my full attention in research and listening and um being involved in the discussions and
I feel that I have fulfilled my my promise that I would be an engaged committee member the citizens and the town meeting members got their money's worth I feel
well not to toot my horn but I I fulfilled my obligation to work it is not my obligation to tell the town how to vote the town citizens how to vote on an
override they can check us we can be fact checked we cannot hide so um I will leave the room if the committee does decide to have a vote because I'm opposed to us doing that
thank you though Julia for your opinion because it's what you believe and that is part of being in the warrant committee that we're not bor we have opinions and a lot and they're
valid and we're allowed to express them and that's what makes us stronger as a committee that we just do not ever rubber stamp anything everyone has a voice they're always given an
opportunity to express their view of whatever they're discussing or we're discussing and um I think I am overly passionate about this so I think I should probably sign off and uh allow others to um speak
thank you thank you Judy peter then Liz Judy I agree with you 100% um when I was asked to join the warrant committee I was told I should provide information the best information possible to the
town meeting members and to uh therefore to the taxpayers uh of what is going on in the town and what is to uh and to help them understand what they're voting on i've
read warrants for 35 years that I've been here i have always agreed with the warrant committee because I see them as an independent source of information of good information uh that I can use to make my
decision i don't want that to change if we go one way or the other on this and the town people go way our credibility is shot and I just don't want to see that happen
so that's really my position i think it's similar to Judy's i don't see it liz yeah so I mean by and large I agree with Peter and Judy i mean I think the hard
thing is is that this is a budgetary question and we are the finance committee so it's sort of hard because it's kind of right within our wheelhouse however I also agree at the same time
that because it is a question that's going to be on the election that everybody needs to make up their own mind and not have this committee tell them kind of how we feel and to influence
that but again I think that if it were sort of done in the opposite way I keep saying this but done in the opposite way or a town meeting and then the election happened rather than vice versa maybe that would have changed you know my
position on that but I think I understand what Jay and Julia are saying but I do really agree with Judy that everybody has a right to vote confidentially and so you know I think that
that's very important um but also everyone has the right to kind of make up their mind i think that people can get the information that they need from the town's website or wherever else um but it's hard for me
because this is a budgetary issue and we are the finance committee for the town but nevertheless on the margin I agree with uh Judy and Peter so I would prefer not to weigh in my personal feelings about it steve sure weigh in i agree
with Peter um with Judy and with Liz i I feel like we've fulfilled our duty i We were asked you know last summer when I was asked to come back and we were told to stay off Facebook and stop posting opinions and doing all and I feel strongly about that we should not be
weighing in on those options i mean we need to be seen as independent that's a big deal um there's a lot of trust in us to do the right thing and I and I said it last night when people read that warrant they they look at them and say that's how they feel i'm gonna go with that because many of them that's their
source of truth they're not reading a million times they're not on all these websites so I agree with you i I don't want to weigh in on that i agree too i agree i actually agree too um Judy you made
some very compelling points that I really appreciate and um I was more you know there is an argument that could be made i don't even know that I personally am making it but um I I appreciate the points you raised
Judy and um I agree i say as the chair I'm going to write a letter and I'm going to be respective of everyone's opinion and the information that we shared as a committee i think
our vote tonight is illustrative I think of how we feel or some of us feel about the number and I think that is Jay a vote to the town of confidence that we trust that this is a good number and if
you as the taxpayer you can we trust it you can say yes you know like we we have faith in either of these numbers and if you feel as if though you want that overhead you vote for over and But one committee says it's okay i don't know
i feel like that's the opposite of what this group just said they wanted to app no no i'm saying in terms of writing the letter you know I'm going to look at how the vote came you know but you're saying that either option for people so to my point that
we're the finance committee for the town what you're saying is that either option financially with we believe that with the town's approval so if people choose that they want to have an override and increase
taxes for the majority of residents of this town those finances make sense if people do not want to vote for the override do not want to increase taxes the finances based on that the numbers make sense and I think that that's our
sort of role rather than weighing in yes I personally believe no I personally don't believe that sort of thing but to say budgetarily to your point we believe that either way depending on how the town votes we believe that we have faith in
the school committee or or whatever i also wanted to add I mean I think the other thing is too is that we're having this or or they they said we were going to have this new committee with a couple members of the warrant committee a couple members of the school board a couple members of the school committee no to kind of go over I'm just shaking
my head oh to kind of go over some of the finances and so that's sort of another I just want to bring that up again another excellent an excellent I think measure so I agree with Liz i think what you want
to convey is we are we're backing these as like budgetarily sound numbers but yeah you make the decision you want less services go for it if you if you want level service and nothing more there's the
number right here you know and here are the reasons why you can pick either one you know I think it's I think addressing what we're gonna lose you know addressing what's what could happen i I think I think that is our responsibility to town meeting you know I agree
factual yeah i agree with Liz's statement my take away from that was we're we're supporting the voters essentially we're going to support their coming out yeah makes sense i fully support whatever the people decide to do that would be my
position is that whatever people decide to do I fully support that thank you Amy thanks Amy thank you so there we have it make a motion to adjourn wait does that mean no Monday no Monday when are we
going to see each oh before you um Oh stop yeah don't don't do it just yet no I have I have Judy I have something for you can I talk first oh I was just going over it um not it what am I trying to say at this late
hour um where we're at with the doing that last article thank you sir yeah Judy I was going to ask you could you write the cemetery comment oh I'm so bad at writing comments can you just bullet point everything you've
learned and then just give it to someone else to actually put it into sentences yeah you can send it to me but I I need it before Sunday i will do that anybody want to help out in the CPC comments
yeah I will you sure yes yes I will okay let's cuz I was paying very close attention brian handle our planning board brian thank you our school subcommittee is doing our schools judy's going to bullet point cemetery uh
Liz is going to do CPC and the lighting pilot i've already done mine right you've already Yeah i I'll be doing the others you've given me a review again if you need i already did mine you ready for 39 articles
um what's the good one i'll definitely do employee benefits and we can talk about You want to do employee benefits well absolutely jay thank we can talk about what other ones I can help out with thank you Jay so Jay will do employee benefits and maybe others saying who's doing the planning but you already did all of that
the warrant I think is going to go to Prince um Tuesday holy moly yes okay i know the anxiety is just like Then the next time we'll see each other is to discuss the lighting east Milton Overlay
yes lot it's big huge east overlay mhm the flood plane mhm uh MBTA communities it'll be fine 10% 25% whatever is this May and June it's June no I'm talking about the lighting
bylaw that's on May yeah light lighting bylaw's coming in May but somebody coming we're going to green sheet and Okay i was saying when we when we're discussing those other ones we're going to try to get our lighting bylaw friend here to discuss um that article and then we can green
sheet it like a week before town meeting when are we going to see each other next we're going to see each other um Monday no I'm going to take Monday off we take just take a like a little like a week break a week please um I'm going to be posting
very soon and we're going to have to get planning boards coming back in so we'll have a dual planning board warning committee meeting um light uh not the lighting the flood plane and then you know NB MBTA and so the planning board is going to be running the show here
excellent and that is for the June uh um town meeting the the planning board basically it's like a and the lighting is fall and the spring okay and the lighting is from May and the lighting is for May yeah but we're going to green sheet that one Judy in an
effort to get um a member of the select board or town council or someone else in here to discuss what changes were made the article is the same as it was corrected on the floor of town meeting or just previously to that so there have been no additional changes okay april
15th june 16th okay april 15th that's a nice day to come in tuesday tax day you have paid your tax yeah wait till the I mailed them on the 15th i I pay file my extension on the 15th brian I
have a recommendation like if we don't like I think we all thought we should for the lightning we should get a expert in oh yeah yeah yeah if we don't get one in can we say no like put it on the June one since it's so close oh no no we It is Oh no no no we We I've already We
lost that battle you lost that i lost that battle committee valiantly i I I wanted it in June and um it was going that way and it fell that way and then it fell back to May
right i think um um upstairs thought it was better to deal with it who are you pointing to upstairs just upstairs just in general upstairs just upstairs the third floor second floor i don't
know thank you so what's the date for our next meeting 14th 14th probably the 14th is it next week take a week off no it's the following week and then the week after that is school vacation and the week after that
is nothing and then the week after that is town meeting oh lovely okay we're not meeting the 14th Monday motion i thought
you came up i made that motion do that meeting okay I second it okay motion to adjurnn oh we did i motion second seconded no I made the motion to adjurnn a long time ago all in
favor i I I all opposed none thank you warrant committee thank you town of Milton