Good evening. Welcome to the Warrant Committee meeting of July 13, 2026. This is the first meeting of the new fiscal year and the first meeting of the newly organized warrant committee as appointed by our moderator for this year. Uh, I'd [clears throat] like to call us to order
by have just doing a roll call around the room. If people around the room could just say your name. We'll introduce ourselves in a minute, but just say your name starting with the person on my right and we'll say who's here. Macy Lee, >> Larry Johnson, Andrew Co,
>> Nick Taggman, Jimmy Stinar, >> Levita Johnson, Elaine Craig, Cecil Yang, >> James Leas, >> Jay Funing, uh Lindsay, are you able to uh >> Yeah, I'm here. Lindsay Sans. >> Okay, great. Uh now I guess we'll do
sort of the same thing but a little bit longer. I want to, you know, just go around the room. [laughter] Don't go that direction. Okay, we'll go this direction. Go around the room. >> Just say your name basically. >> Say your name again. Yes. It's like a party game. Uh, say who you are. Say
your involvement with Milton Town Government so far. Say your professional background. Short and sweet. Get let people know who you are. >> Okay. Uh, so yeah, like I said before, I'm James Lee Das. Um I was formerly an
IT uh systems manager um of all things from networks to all types of infrastructure and bringing us from onrem or paper to the cloud. Um recently I switched careers and I'm now an accountant. Um
>> so so now exactly. Yeah. [clears throat] Um my wife's a CPA. She's always said why aren't you an accountant? So finally just bit the bullet and joined her crew. Um, and I've been um in the IT committee for about a yearish,
a year, a little over a year now. Um, maybe two years even I think >> and then with the warrant committee now going on to the second onto my second year. >> Nice. >> I'm Cecile Yang. I'm a software engineer. Um, I moved to Milton like a
couple years ago, so I'm not really super involved in town government except for warrant committee last year. Yeah, I'm Elaine Craighead. Um, I've lived in Milton for 22 years. Um, I'm a dean at
Mass Maritime Academy. Um, I have been involved in the Milton Cultural Council um for three or four years. Milton school. I also chaired the Milton Cultural Council um school committee for
six and now the Warren Committee for uh a year and this [clears throat] is year two. I've also served on other town committees as part of my duties on school committee. Looking forward to a good second year.
>> Good evening. Levita Johnson. I've lived in Milton for 16 years now. I'm new to uh town government. uh and I am an entrepreneur um primarily focused on uh procurement specifically supplier
diversity um helping large corporations um develop working partnerships or procuring goods and services from minority women LGBTQIA disability and veteranowned businesses. >> Hi everyone, I'm Jimmy Stenaris. Uh I'm
a director at an investment firm uh doing investment compliance. to manage a team. Um, this is my first town committee. I'm hoping to get on some more. Um, specifically maybe school. Um, but yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
Thanks for having me. I'm Nick Tagy. Uh, this is my second year on the Warren Committee. Um, I'm one of those crazy people that grew up in Milton and I'm still here as an adult. Uh I was on the um uh town meeting for about 17 years and I work at a investment management
company in Boston. I've been there for 36 years. Uh I'm Andrew Co. I've been in Milton uh 16 years also. Uh been this is my third year on the
warrant committee. currently uh I'm an operations and IT executive. I'm currently a CIO for uh insurance company uh and looking forward to wrapping up my time. >> Um I'm Larry Johnson. I've lived in
Hilton for 26 years. Um I've been on Tom for about 13 years and uh on a couple other committee sign committee. I committed with James Lee. Um I also uh run Porsche Fest Porchfest. I don't run Porsche Fest. I
should say I'm on the committee for Porchfest. >> And then um uh I work at IT as well. Um most recently I've worked in cyber security as a manager for managing cyber security department for about 10 years. Uh now I'm working as a project manager,
program manager for another health insurance company. >> As I mentioned, I'm Macy Lee. I've lived in Miland for 23 years. This is my third year on the war committee and I previously served as the secretary. Um I'm also a candidate for North County
District Attorney. >> Okay. [clears throat] >> My name is Jay Funling. I've been in Milton for almost exactly 20 years and uh I've been on the this is my fifth year on the warrant committee. Uh, I've
been on town meeting for about 15 years, similar to Larry, I think. And um, what else? My I I work at Eversource now. I work in the uh, regulations department means I pretend to be a lawyer, but I'm
not. Previous to that, my previous career was I was an employee benefits actuary. So, if we get around the table, I didn't do this much last year, but in previous years, if the table would start talking about health insurance or pension plans, I had a lot to say. Um,
so that's that. And we have two members on the line. Uh, Lindsay or Ron. I'll go alphabetically. Lindsay, do you want to introduce yourself? >> Lindsay Sans. I've also been in Milton about 16 years. Uh, I'm an attorney for
an energy company called Vicinity Energy or District Energy Company. Uh, I served on one term on town meeting not too long ago. Uh, I helped on the override committee and I most recently uh ran for planning board.
>> Great. Ron. >> Hi, my name is Ron Sia. Um, I'm a resident of Milton since 2009. So, um, what is that? 17 years. 18
years. I think 17 years. Jay, how's my math? >> [laughter] >> test your actuary skills. Um, yeah, I I've been on town meeting I think six years now and this is my fourth year on the warrant committee. I I also work as a in-house corporate attorney. Um, and
yeah, excited to have another year of uh, you know, service for the town. So, thanks everybody. >> Okay, so that's everybody's introduction. Uh let's move on to the first item on the or the next item on the agenda which is we have to elect a
chair. Are there any nominations for chair? >> Uh Elaine >> I'd like to nominate Jay Fundley. >> Okay. [laughter] >> Thank you. >> Okay. Are there other nominations?
Okay. >> We like to nominate Nick. [laughter] >> [laughter] >> Can I decline? >> I like to decline. I do not have time to do that. I'm flattered by that, but no,
thank you. [laughter] >> Hard note. >> Okay. Do you want to go through? >> Um, do you want to do what we did last year, >> which is you again. >> No, no, I [laughter] definitely definitely I definitely >> I feel like Andrew wanted to thank you
>> some competition. >> Well, if there's a pause of discussion, I' I'd like to say a little bit about where I see the committee for this year and after that, especially if you hate what I said, certainly time to nominate someone else. Uh, I'd like to share my screen.
This will look similar to well it'll look very similar to what I shared last year around this time. Um and uh >> there slides Jake. >> Oh, I'm not going to go through all the slides.
>> That's exactly he changed the dates >> pretty much. [laughter] I I marked and read the things I changed. Now I'm aware we have three new members. We 100% attendance from our new members. So I you know I'll go over a little bit about what I went over last year and even people who were here last
year might be hearing things with different ears. Uh this is my agenda. Let's for sake of time. So what is the role of the mark committee? Why are we here? What do we do? We have a few roles. One is we're the trusted adviser to town meeting.
Uh, I'm not going to read this. Uh, town meeting when I describe it to other people who don't live in New England. I grew up in Texas. If I describe it to my friends in Texas, I say that instead of a city council, we have a group of 281 people. A group of 281 people cannot do
the investigation and research of all the items that you would expect of a a city council. So, we do that role. We do all the research and self-educating about all the issues that will go before town meeting and then we present the
information to town meeting so that they can make an informed decision. Uh we do recommend how they vote. Like if there's a bylaw coming up, we might say vote yes, vote no, vote with these amendments. But the most important part we do is not saying vote yes because we
said so. Vote no because we said so. The most important part is and here's what we learned about it. we did our research town meeting. Here's what we learned. Here's where we uncovered all the questions that we thought would come up. So now you can make an informed decision.
Uh next, we are by law the finance committee of the town. Uh what does that mean? That means and we'll be discussing this a lot more later in the year, but the budget eventually is approved by town meeting. We are in the middle of that. The town
administrator makes a budget proposal and the town administrator gives the budget proposal to us. We review it and we give the final recommend budget recommendation to town meeting. So the budget that goes in front of town meeting is officially our budget
recommendation. Now we do rely heavily on the employees who are paid by the town but it is our recommendation. Uh we also should take sort of a long-term view of the finances. Uh here's a slide that I didn't have last year because it's going to reflect a change.
Uh I've had pre four previous years on the warrant committee and every time it sort of feels like the town administrator with the help of the select board makes the budget and it comes in front of us and we say yes. Now partly we say yes because the town administrator with the with the select
court's help does a really good job but I want us to take a more active role and I think I think that's up to us to do that. uh written in the bylaws and also in some schedules that people have agreed on. The town administrator should
be providing a a budget to us on January 31st. Not to get too into the weeds, but between January 31st, at the time the more goes to print, some things will change. We'll have more money coming from the state. We'll learn, you know, our health insurance number will be different, etc., etc.
Uh last year and in previous years we sort of sat back, let the town administrator do that and tell us what he thought. This year I'd very much like to have, you know, they're in the room right now. The town administrator Nick Cololano, the financial director, Amy Dexter, I'd like to have them in more
often, especially after that January 31st deadline. Okay, you gave us a budget on January 31st. The numbers have changed in this way. You know, what do you recommend as far as how we change the budget? Okay, thank you for your recommendation. Now, we're going to decide, oh, we have an extra $500,000 in
the budget. Where does that go? After the January 31st date, it's really in our hands with the advice of the town administrator, with the advice of select board, of course. And I I spent a long time thinking who needs to change their behavior to make that happen. It's
mostly us. It's mostly we need to get these guys in. We need to have them talking to us. We need to be proactive about making decisions. So, that's one change I want to make for this year. Uh we're non-political. Uh elected boards answer to
voters. Town employees answer to their boss. We don't have any of that. Does that give us some perspective, some freedom that they don't have? Possibly. Time commitment. This came up much more last year when I was talking to a lot of people who are joining. What's the time commitment going to be? What I tried to
do last year was to it's it's a good time commitment but to have people doing work outside the meeting and to reduce the time amount around the table but making up for that with people doing work outside the meeting. Uh for example, you know, I'll talk in a second about we're going to
have subject matter experts that worked very well last year. So article five coming before us and I'll say you Jimmy, you're the expert on article five. you go research it and come back to us rather than all of us sitting around the table learning about article 5 you learn
about it come back and teach us um I will do my best to keep us focused at the meeting discussions can can wander and I'll try to keep us focused uh I did add you know the things the things that I'm uh putting in red are things I've added for
this year people have time limits people have restrictions on their availability that's fine we're all human we all have personal lives we our professional lives. Now, communicate to me. That's fine. I'm not going to mandate that everyone do exactly 115th of the work
for the next 12 months. People people have uh commitments. Um going back a little bit about I I said we were going to have I [clears throat] tried to minimize the discussion around the table. the last meeting we had which was the last meeting of last year
there were I I heard the feedback that people wanted to have the article sponsors come in now I tried to not do that last year again to minimize the discussion around the table but I did hear that feedback so I'd like to sort of hash that out you know and as we're building up to fall time meeting to
people you know to what extent do the people want the article sponsors to come in or to what extent is that not a good use of our time uh what's the role of the chair keep us on ask uh I I I will have my opinion. It's no more or less valid than yours.
I'm going to abstain from most votes because if the warrant committee votes A and I thought B, well, if I abstain, I can still my job in front of town meeting is I get up and I present to town meeting, here's the warrant committee's view. So, if 10 of you vote for A and I personally thank B, I'm
going to abstain that I can get up in front of town meeting and say, I take A. Uh this is my final year on the war committee. If you let me chair, it's my final year as chair. Uh I think it's important for me this year to make sure
that the role is ready to pass on. Uh not to put define a point on it. I spent way too much time in my basement working on Excel spreadsheets last year. I'd like to make, you know, like to make sure that things are in good shape. Hand it off. One of my jobs this year is to pass on a
job to any one of you, whoever is going to be chair next year, a job that can be maintained with reasonable effort. We're all volunteers. If I can't do that, then I've failed. Um, subject matter experts. I'm going to go over this a little bit quickly. It's
it's what I said earlier. Each Warren article has an expert. Uh, they one or two experts usually they go back, they report to the rest of us. I did. I'll skip forward. Yeah, there was
we were trying it out last year and I know I stepped on some people's toes that uh you know other people were the subject matter experts and I would call up some people related to that and talk to them and so I stepped on people's toes. We're figuring it out. So I would
say that if again Jimmy is the subject matter expert on article 5, anybody in this committee who wants to learn about article 5 can just go through the subject matter expert to keep things sufficient. Um it got a little funny also with the school committee because
school committee budget school budget former warrant committee chair Dave Humphre said it's like Jupiter it's grad gravitational field affects the rest of the solar system. So there were some things some aspects that I felt as the mark committee chair I had to be involved with some aspects of the school
budget but then we had school subcommittee. Was I stepping on their toes? I don't know the answer to that question but that's something to hammer out this year. Uh last year we had a a summit a two night training since most people have experience maybe it'll be cut down to a
one night training one night training but I think it was really helpful and even for people are coming back maybe seeing with fresh eyes of what is our role what is our role in town meeting what is our what is the warrant things like that I think it worked pretty well last year
um financial policies I'm going to gloss over a little bit that was something where I don't think I was very successful uccessful last year of like big picture policies. What do we do with our stabilization funds? What do we do with our free cash? Um I don't feel like
we as a warrant committee really had a unified voice on that. Uh so that's something that I didn't succeed on last year. Maybe we'll have more success this year. Financial policies, warrant committee, internal policies.
um just sort of, you know, we're not it it's it's a it's a balancing act. We weren't chosen for our 15 opinions. We were chosen to do what's best for the job and what's best for the town and to lay out the town. Here's what we thought
was best and here's why we thought it was best. It should not be, well, there are 15 of us. Eight of us vote for A, seven of us vote for B. Okay, that's a town meeting. The answer is a um [clears throat] we really need to lay out our reasoning behind all our
decisions. Uh what else? Individual department budgets. Again, it's always a balancing act. I think we leaned, you know, we're approving every budget. The I use the library as my example every time. I don't know why. Know we're
approving the library budget. We're telling town meeting the library budget should be x million dollars. Does that mean we get down to the nitty-gritty and say you know should this money go to library or not? Uh to a certain extent yes. If the town has extra money then
it's our decision of does the extra money go to the library? Does it go to fire? Does it go to savings? Um but also maybe we shouldn't be getting in too deep into the weeds of the individual budgets. It's um it's uh it's a balancing act, but each budget will have
one with the exception of schools, each budget will have one person assigned to it. That person is encouraged to get in the nitty-gritty and just come back to us and say, "Yeah, things are good." Or, "Oh, here's a place where I see some changes." Uh, okay. Hey, that was so that was faster than last year. So, I apologize
if I short changed anyone, but uh that's my vision of how I see the warrant committee running this year. Having said that, I will once again say, are there any more nominations for chair? Hearing none. Um, we have some members
on Zoom, so we need to do a roll call vote. I'll do the roll call. I'll guess I'll go around the room. Macy, >> yes. >> Larry, >> yes. >> Andrew, [clears throat] stand. Okay. Nick,
>> yes. Okay. >> Yes. Yes. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Seal. Okay. Okay. Uh Lindsay. >> Uh yes. >> And Ron. >> Yes.
>> Okay. That passes. I am chair for this year. The next thing on the agenda is the election of the secretary. Uh one question you might ask is what is the secretary? I view the secretary largely as vice chair. That's not the name, but
I copied the secretary last year on if not every email I sent, then practically every email I sent. I wanted the secretary to sort of be my, you know, be a witness to everything I was doing and to uh, you know, be my sanity check. I often reached out to the secretary last
year to say, "Oh, what are we going to do in this week's meeting? What's pressing? What's coming up?" So, I see that as a vice chair, somebody who will see everything I'm doing and give me advice. They also during town meeting they have a special role in town
meeting. They sort of shepherd the people while I'm up there speaking. They deal with the war committee members if needed. And uh yeah that's it. So I am opening up the floor for nominations for secretary.
>> Macy >> I nominated Elaine Craighead to be secretary. Uh she's lived in Milton for 22 years as she mentioned. and she's currently a dean at Mass Maritime. Served on the school committee for six years, five of which she served on the science committee, also chair of the
cultural commission. She has demonstrated dedication to this town. All of us have but she is organized and I see her fitting into the role as vice chair. >> Do you accept?
>> Yes. Thank you. Okay. >> Second. >> Oh, yeah. I guess we didn't do it. >> Yeah. Okay. Are there any other nominations? Okay. Let's do a roll call vote. I'll go around again. Macy, >> yes. >> Larry, >> yes.
>> Andrew, >> yes. >> Nick, yes. >> Yes. >> Sure. >> Okay. [laughter] >> Yes. >> Yes. All right. Uh, Lindsay, >> yes. >> And Ron, >> yes.
>> And I will abstain. I didn't abstain from last vote, but uh just count me as an abstension for the last vote and for this vote. Okay. We have our chair and our secretary. So, we are organized for the year. The next thing on the agenda is the discussion of town finances from
the town administrator and the town financial director. You join us at the table. Would you introduce yourselves? >> Sure. Uh Nicholas Milano, town administrator. >> Um Amy Dexter, finance director.
[snorts] >> Do you want me to start you? Do you uh Sure. Or I can just dive right here. Okay. Um, thank you. So Amy and I will just take a few minutes to talk about our
preliminary results of fiscal year 26 on the revenue side and then do an overview of year end close out in terms of how our fiscal 26 ended on the expense side. um for the new members of the committee. Several weeks ago, our committee met to
appoint um or designate a member to approve year end transfers and reserve fund transfers which are um within the power of the warrant committee to do so at the end of the year to move money across budgets or out of the reserve fund, we need approval of
the warrant committee. And so, um Jay was designated to be that person. Um so we'll talk at a high level as to what those transfers ultimately look like um after I talk about the general fund revenue um preliminary results. So I'm
putting up a chart here. Hopefully it looks a little small. Sorry for that. Bigger. So what we're looking at is um just a summary sheet showing uh where our revenue landed for fiscal 26 which
is the year that ended on June 30th. Um, if you just look down to the bottom line, we had estimated about $145 million of revenue. We brought in about 149.5. So, we brought in about 4.25 more than estimated. Uh, the big drivers of this
have been uh motor vehicle excise tax and we spent a lot of time talking about this before committee, but motor vehicle excise taxes continues to be a place where uh we're bringing in significant revenue [clears throat] year-over-year. I will note for fiscal 27's uh forecast, our forecast for 27 we had increased to
$5 million. So moved closer to where our fiscal 26 actual was. And just to flag a couple of the larger outliers, uh penalties and interest. So this is where penalties and interest on longer outstanding tax bills um and other leans
would go. Uh the tax collector has done a good job of cleaning up some longer outstanding tax bills. So we had expected another bump in penalty and interest although as she has cleaned up um the number of collections we would expect that to slow down in future years.
And then um license and permits at 2.4 million uh so well above its estimate of 1.485. That's great to see. There are a number of large projects going on around Milton. Um and homeowners and um small property owners continue to invest in
their property. So, um, building permits continue to be very busy. I will note of that $940,000 above budget. 770,000 of it are tied to three um just to three permits um for a large 40B
project, a daycare, and a project in Winter Valley. So, those large projects that are one-offs really do contribute to these large outlier um revenue sources, but uh we're happy to collect it when it comes in. And then lastly, interest or investment income, which is
largely interest on our money that we get from um our bank accounts. As with everybody else, we continue to see high interest rates on our savings. Um so that's generating um uh significant revenue on a kind of annual basis. Now,
for the past couple of years, we've been careful about bringing up that budget forecast too much only because if we were to return to the low interest rate environment of, you know, 8 to 10 years ago, that number could um significantly fall. So, um happy to see these numbers,
but as we indicated, we view three or four of them as really kind of not necessarily one time, but also not necessarily recurring at this point. So that's very high level overview of where fiscal 26 landed on the revenue side but happy to take any questions uh on what
we're displaying here. >> Yeah. So the license you said we have a lot of license and permits a lot of building permits. Does that mean that in the next year two or three things are getting built things are getting approved that's increasing our
tax base so we'll have new growth. Does that >> Yes. So, what we particularly when it comes to larger projects that are paying these larger one-off permits, um they will be a source of new tax revenue that will
increase um the amount the amount of value and taxable land that is out there for the town to uh assess against. So, these large 4B projects that are being built, we capture them as growth even under construction. So if it's 30% built, we're going to assess it um in
fiscal 27 at 30% of what its total value will be and they will start paying taxes on that. So it gets built in over time, but it increases um the overall pie for lack of a better word of of money that the town can can bring in. >> Thank you.
>> I was surprised that solid waste that's like up almost 6% from estimates. Yes, we had increased trash fees for two years ago. It was an increase by a dollar. Um, so I think we still were a little conservative on on our
forecasting as to what that additional dollar would bring in. So last year and this year I think we're around around 1.7 billion each year. I don't quite remember last year. >> I don't >> but there was a dollar increase. Um, and that also is for the leans and penalties
going there as well for trash, right? >> Yes. So if there was a larger number of people who didn't pay then eventually they paid any penalties would have recruited to this account as well but the $1 fee is the main driver of that. >> Is there an inverse correlation between
the property taxes and the uh the penalties and interest why is there under estimation on that? >> Uh so we don't necessarily we collect about 99% of the taxes in a given year. It's it's not necessarily that we're collecting 100% of the taxes. We levy
100% of the tax levy. People will owe us that money, but it doesn't mean we necessarily collect it in a given year. So, um we we don't always get to 100% of that amount. If there's a year where we collect a little bit less, the following year might be a little bit higher
because all that's that comes in later. So, actually that's a good point. So does that when it when the money comes in the following year for the tax revenue for the for the property taxes does that line fall into the property taxes or does that fall into the penalties and interest? Does it get
split up? I mean >> here what you're we're showing is just a summary um line for real estate profit taxes will continue to attract them on a fiscal year basis as to when they're levied. Any penalties and interest that somebody might have paid for being six
months late, they would have paid interest on that. The interest portion and any penalties will go penalties and interest. The tax portion will still get recorded tax line speaking. >> Okay. >> Okay. Great.
>> So that is the revenue side. So that's good news. We certainly want to be on the positive side of that ledger. um not be talking about a problem potentially in terms of the other element that I mentioned which is um year-end
transfers. Uh so again there are largely two types of transfers that we seek uh warrant committee approval for. The first is reserve fund. Um we put aside a few hundred,000 every year in the operating budget reserve fund. Uh that fund is held and only transfers can be
approved out of it by approval of the warrant committee. So typically as we approach year end, we view that as kind of a backs stop for the operating budget if necessary. The other transfers that we will describe are when uh the town meeting approves the budget, whatever budget accounts are listed in the
warrant are um what the departments are allowed to spend against that line. So for example, the police underspends their salaries and wage lines, but whoever spends their general expense line to move the money from one of those accounts to the other requires
an approval of the warrant committee as well as the select board for these appropriation transfers. So I'll I'll just kind of say in the big picture, the challenge that we were facing in fiscal 26 was that we had a significant winter with a couple of very large storms. So,
we had a very high snow and ice deficit in the DPW budget. We are allowed under law to deficit spend that account. We had budgeted 20 $160,000 for that budget in fiscal 26. We spent close to 1.6 1.7 million. So, our deficit was about $1.5
million >> that we were then looking to make up. And I'll tell you in the warrant, I think it usually says this too, but on a in a given year, our snow and ice expenses are typically around a half million to $600,000. So, we go into the year knowing we're kind of up against it already within DPW with snow and ice.
Um, the fiscal 27 budget does include an increase to that. So, we're starting to make a little progress to to right sizing that budget a little bit better. Um, but that's just a way of saying we don't put very much towards what we know is a big expense. Um, so when we were as
we were get working our way through the year, um, we had concern over a deficit of that that size. Um luckily however um the budget is in strong enough condition to absorb that and um we are utilizing a reserve fund to absorb it as well as
transfers from other budgets. So in terms of snow and ice specifically I'll just share a couple of slides or a couple of PDFs here and I will say Amy shared this information with me this morning. I have
not yet emailed it to all of you, but I will. [snorts] >> Uh, so the first is this is showing what we um is being proposed to be removed out of the reserve fund. $277,000 of the reserve fund to go to snow and ice and then um two smaller adjustments in the
audit budget to pay for the audit and then the retirement budget to recover the retirement appropriation. So the $282,000 reserve fund is being 100% utilized partly with snow and ice and partly to these other two smaller adjustments. >> Can I give some context to the reserve
fund for our new members or also our attorney members? It's a fund. It it had obviously 280. That's a very exact number. I don't know why we put that number in there last year, but we did. Um, [snorts] I I would say it's primary use, although
I've only seen it used once in the past four years this way. Its primary use is it's emergency money. If some department in town has an emergency expense that couldn't have been foreseen and they need the money and they can't wait for town meeting to approve it, they can
come to us and we can say, "Okay, that happened once. I want to say two or three years ago. The wood chipper of the DPW failed. they needed $100,000 to buy a new wood chipper. Instead of waiting to go to town meeting, they came to us. Can we have $100,000? We said yes. So, I
think in my brain at least, that's the most important use for it, even though it's not used that way very often. Then the secondary use for it is at the end of the year, again, things that went over budget. This is a release valve. Am [clears throat] I wrong?
>> No, that's right. extraordinary or unanticipated expenses I think is the literal language. So I think that covers exactly how you describe it. >> Does this uh leave us at risk if anything else comes up? >> No, I >> that was that was last year's
>> Sorry. Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. I'm I'm almost done closing the books and we're in good shape. So I'm comfortable with using all of it. There should not be anything else that's needed for. And the year that started 13
days ago, we have a new budget, >> right? Yes. >> Like the year we're currently in, we have a new budget. >> What's in FY27 then? >> Correct. >> I think it's 300,000. >> Yeah. I don't even remember. >> I think it's 300,000 even. I think we moved it to a round number. >> Yeah. With 10,000 left over after snow
and ice. >> No, sorry. No, for >> So, we're we're like two weeks ago with this. [clears throat] So, we're back in fiscal 26 with this. So the $300,000 that's available for fiscal 27 we have not touched, we have not tapped into and we anticipate not doing that until
around this time next year. So that $300,000 is there available. >> And so sorry that clears the deficit on snow >> partially. I'll get to the next the next um sheet will show how the rest of it was um covered. >> Thank you.
>> Sure. Uh so as mentioned um the snow and ice deficit was about $1.65 million $160,000 had I'm sorry the deficit was 1.49 we had appropriated 160 but our actual
expenses were 1.65 million. Uh so the way we got to balance that out was the $277,000 is described from the reserve fund. The DPW budget itself was able to absorb another half a million dollars largely due to vacancies and and a bit
of a spending freeze as we kind of worked our way towards the end of the year. Um there were probably between um depending on a time of the year six to seven positions were open throughout the year. So um of the 26 kind of operational frontline positions, six to
seven of them were vacant um I'd say probably for the course of the year um on a consistent basis. So there was savings um within DPW already but because they were under manned understaffed um the other departments where we propose transfers are from the select
board budget. So the psycho board budget is um where my staff is. That's the town administrator, assistant town administrator, human resources director, the admin in our office, as well as the director of planning and the assistant planning director. The director of planning and the assistant planning
director were vacant as well as the assistant TA position were vacant for much of the year. Uh so we had savings just due to openings in in our small um office. The legal budget, we unders the legal budget. So proposed to to transfer
that out for snow and ice general insurance. We um we were just a little bit high on our budget for insurance. Um so we proposed to use that to offset snow and ice. And then lastly, debt. With the $282,000,
we had um adjusted our our plan and strategy around when we were going to issue debt. So money that we had expected to pay on principal and interest payments was went unspent and instead will be um paid in fiscal 27 after we issue debt later this calendar
year. Um so altogether the combination of the reserve fund absorption within the DPW budget as well as these four budgets here. Uh the stone ice budget for this bill 26 is now at zero. Um and the deficit has been erased or absorbed
I should say by the other accounts that you see here. what's appropriated for snow and ice for FY27. I'm just curious. >> Uh so we increased it by 90,000. So $250,000 is appropriate for fiscal 27. So uh we expect to spend more than the
250. Um hopefully not anything like 1.65 million. Uh we will keep our fingers crossed, but just the salt alone runs us several hundred,000, never mind >> um the labor as well as outside contractors when we need them. So you're keeping the same salt reserve as last
year then? >> How do you mean >> like the the money that you're spending on salt? You can scale. Okay. >> Yeah. We expect to spend, you know, regardless of if we have those large storms that require multiple days and multiple nights of work, that's when we get budgets like this. If we have just a
a more typical winter of a bunch of small events, >> um it's a lot more manageable. Um, it's when we get to the point where we're calling out contractors, and then if you'll remember hauling snow in the middle of the night, having contractors on and staff on in overnight hours to
put snow in dump trucks and take it away. That's where where this costs start to to shoot up. So you need didn't need to touch any of the I think it was four million of extra revenue over a forecasted budget to So what happens to that money?
>> So we we can't use the revenue to cover anything like this without a town meeting. >> Okay. >> So that falls to the calculation of free cash. >> Okay. Um, so basically the base of the free cash calculation is revenues in
excess of what we budgeted and expenses below what we budgeted. That's the base and then there's a calculation where we I have to deduct things and but basically it's like the net income is the base. >> Great. Thank you. So we like Amy is
saying we we had thought we might need a come to town meeting to appropriate money to the snow and ice deficit and that's where we could use anything brought in over and above fiscal 26 but we can't take from the revenue to the expenses without a town meeting appropriation.
And just to to zoom out across to the other the town departments despite absorbing the snow and ice deficit several of our other departments had um underspent their budgets. So we do expect to have decent turnbacks, which is budgets not spending their full
appropriation. Um so as we close the books on 26, we expect to still bring in um still have you know excess of a million dollars underspent money across all of the town departments um just as you know they spend what they need to spend but they don't overspend which is
what we ask. Uh and then the other piece is there's we had set aside money for collective marketing agreements that went unused. So that money is again going to not be spent in fiscal 26. >> So it's a lot of free cash to start 27.
>> I'll qualify that by saying yes, our starting number for the calculation is very high. So, more than likely, you know, result. >> Are you gonna say it or should I say it? >> No, I'm not saying it.
>> Amy feels very strongly >> a free cash number is not a number until it's certified by the state in Octoberish. >> Um, yeah. And if I can get my act together, my my goal this year is a little bit earlier. So, it has to be the
calculation that I do. I do it and then I submit everything to the department of revenue and they go through and they certify it and oftent times I may miss something or I might treat something differently than they do and we work together to come down to the final
calculation. So I'm very leerary to ever disclose a number until that certification has happened because there have been instances, not here in Milton, but there there have been instances where
people have been wrong. So I just don't want to go public with a number. So I always say and that comes back to my very first year here was I was told there's no free cash until department of revenue certifies it. So that's kind of where that's going from. >> That's great. When does that free cash
become budgetable for next fiscal year? >> Soon as Yeah. As soon as it's certified. So in theory, if we had a need, you could go to fall town meeting if I had the certification from the department of revenue back. Um historically we tend to
wait till town meeting, right? >> There's nothing pressing that we need. >> So always kind of year of rears. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. And I'll just add that this is, you know, we're still closing the books. We're um very they're positive results,
but we won't put a number on it until that does happen. And you know, and the the accounting team, the treasur's office continue to to work very close to 26. So I guess I'll sort of follow up on [snorts] Nick's line of thinking. Um,
so our new members, [clears throat] I don't know if you saw this, but I got up in front of town meeting and delivered some scary numbers in the spring and you [clears throat] know, yeah, we're barely making budget this year and next year it will be bad and the year after that will be bad, bad, bad, bad.
Whether you're a random resident of Milton barely paying attention or whether you're a member of the warrant committee who's very involved, you could say, you know, why are you saying we're going to be $4 million under budget last year when we got we were $4 million over or
in the good direction this year? Now, I will say I didn't do the math off the top of my head, but let's call it $5 million out of $150 million budget. Larger than $150 million budget, that's only a couple percent.
So, what what I'll give you credit. What you did was you managed a hundred and something million dollar budget within a couple percent and going the good direction. So, that's great. But I do see where again whether the man on the
street or us in here making decisions for the town. Can we act like it's, you know, this spring hair on fire, we don't have enough money for the budget when we've been millions of dollars in a good direction, not only this year, but the
past couple years. You may not have an answer to that. I'm not trying to put you on the spot. It's just something we'll need to think about. >> No, I agree. And I think where we've tried to be, you know, I think we're all in town hall
kind of naturally conservative and want to keep our revenue forecast low and want to hold the line on spending because this goes the other way. It look it gets really bad really fast. M [clears throat] >> um but we've tried to be very deliberate
about second-guessing those kind of biases or natural instincts to be more conservative and and to re-evaluate on the revenue front can do we feel comfortable with increasing projections and if yes where we feel comfortable going to so I think that's been one of the ways we tried to address a little
bit of that is to to really dig in deeper on our revenue projections and and get to a place where um we're happy to move them up and still feel comfortable with Um, so I think that's something we'll continue to do through this year and then um, you know, it's
always going to be this is um, largely like I just described with the revenues. A lot of it is one time, not necessarily one time, but also not necessarily recurring. So getting to a place where we feel how long the building permit revenue will be strong for before it starts to kind of get back to its
historic norm. U, these are some of the stuff this is some of the things that we'll have to work through the next couple months. Thank you. And then I I will note that we did share with uh with Jay um a number of other transfers that are largely from that are
within departmental budgets when taking lines from taking money from one line to another within a budget. Um, so, um, I don't know that there's anything to call out specifically. Um, but just know that in addition to these transfers that
we're talking about are taking money from one budget out of it to another one, there [snorts] were some transfers within the departmental budget across the lines that the town meeting approved um that was sought permission for. >> Is it requiring the committee to approve it too? Internal transfers. Yeah, these
kinds of transfers require the approval of both the select board and the wiring committee. The war committee designated the chair, former chair and current chair to do so. >> Yeah. So, at the the last meeting, you all voted me to be your designate. So, I signed off on these things this morning
>> and the full lists uh Jay has shared. >> And so, a lot of these are can you go back to like just look at you know cemetery or or police or consolidated facilities. All right. It's like consolidated facilities in the warrant. There's a line item for consolidating
facilities salary wages. There's a line item for consolidated facilities general expenses. And those have to be spent as they are stated. And in this case, consolidated facilities, they overspent a little bit on general expenses. They underspent on salary and wages. So they
have to ask for our permission. Can we move from one pocket to another? And that's if you look at this sheet, that's largely what's going on. That's all I think we had unless there's any other questions or discussion items
you'd like us to >> do. Do we have like a number um for each department where we underbudgeted? Do we have like a full list of where we under budgeted and where we stand now? >> Um >> or over budgeted or whatever.
>> We will have one. I haven't finalized that yet because we have until the 15th to continue to pay bills for the 26. So I usually put that together after the last vendor one is processed. >> And when we submit the departmental
budgets to the wire committee, it includes a summary sheet of the prior year. So you can see what their expenses were on the prior year compared to what their budget was. Um for some of these things, they might have been um expenses that we
understood and realized, but then fiscal year 26 were happening. And so we adjusted their budget for fiscal 27 accordingly. So some of it we may have addressed already, some of it we may not have. Um and that's what some of our work will be next. >> So there are adjustments going forward
if they underspent this year. >> So yes and no. So if they had spent this year and we didn't realize it till now, not necessarily, but if we saw something happening in the fiscal year several months ago and were able to adjust their 27 budget for the [clears throat] new
year, Yeah. We will make that adjustment and then it'll be fed into what we consider for their budgets for the next year as well. >> Thanks. >> Okay. Um I guess can I ask you to keep sitting there for the next agenda item which um is discussion of annual
schedule and plans. Uh I have to admit I did not plan out much to say about this but can you remind us? So, we have a fall town meeting coming up. Can Can you remind us when that is? Is that mid October or has it been since >> October 19th? >> Okay. So, a week or two earlier than it
was last year, >> correct? >> All right. So, working backwards from that, the warrant will [clears throat] go to print. And again, lie to us and say it [laughter] earlier, but late >> Sorry. So, uh, the warrant for the
special town meeting has to be, um, received by town meeting members 14 days before the meeting. So, it's a little bit of a longer, uh, duration than the annual requires. So, it'll be in the mail, >> [snorts] >> uh, by September, the week of September 7th is when
>> I'm sorry, the week of October 7th. >> September 7th. >> No. >> So, I'm sorry, it'll be with the done and with the printer by the week of September 7th. Okay. for them to do what they need to do to get it in the mail in in mail boxes by October 5th. [snorts] >> So,
>> okay. >> So, we need to have made our decisions about these fall town meeting articles by let's call it September 1st >> is the first week of September. >> First week of September. Yeah. With you know being done by September 11th.
>> Okay. So, we don't get our summer off. It's good to know. Um, >> that's great. >> I I will say that my my uh plan for last year was hell or high water, whether we're busy or not busy, to meet every two weeks. I didn't succeed in that. We
pretty much did that every two weeks, but we did more than every two weeks as needed. Um, I haven't put pencil to paper thinking of how are we going to get to getting these things resolved by the end of >> Do we know how many articles there are?
>> Yeah, that's the next question. So, Can you speak to that? >> We are discussing with the select board tomorrow. Um we've received the draft of an article related to a um historic district in Milton Village that has um kind of bounced around the last couple
years. We have a potential article related to the acquisition of Laboratory College. Um we had talked about bringing the Athetherton station appropriation for the fire department. Um, so that would be the appropriation for the total project budget to town meeting for
October. Um, the fire section building committee is still working through what their schedule will be. So, um, we'll keep you posted on on that. Um, the planning board's been working and deliberating a short-term rentals bylaw. Um, [snorts]
it's not complete yet. So, whether that will truly be ready for fall um, still to be determined. The DPW engineering department has submitted a request for an appropriation for additional money for water manes. Um, so we're evaluating
that currently internally. Um, I know I'm gonna forget something. Um >> then we have um some it's more of a housekeeping um but we have some work to do around past capital projects where we borrowed more than we needed for the
capital project. So we need to appropriate those monies to another capital project or elsewhere to put them to use. So it's a little bit more financial housekeeping. Um, and I think I will have a list um, an
improved list after the meeting tomorrow with a slight order um, to share with you, but that's kind of the the back of the envelope list right now. >> Okay. So, that's that's tough. It's not a long list, but these are tough items. I mean, Advent Fire Station, we spent quite a bit of
time talking about last spring. you know, if we're going from approving a million dollars to approving over $10 million. It's going to need another look. uh labberet as I understand it as I understand it we're going to be not
not saying we're going to approve the whole chunk to buy it and turn it into a school but we'll be approving the smaller amount to buy it which in some ways makes it easier but in some ways makes it harder because then we have to answer the question well we want to buy
it maybe we'll turn it into a school and that's a good idea because of this or maybe it won't turn into a school and that's still a good idea because of that. So, that'll be complex. Um, and then the short-term rental, anytime
we have a uh a a zoning zoning issue, that's involved. And uh sounds like we don't know when it's going to be appearing on our doorstep. So, um, yeah, I I I'll guess I guess I'd
like to hear from everyone, not now, but maybe through email, what your availability is the summer to dig into some of these. I mean, I know, you know, again, we're all human. We all have our schedules. Some people disappear over the summer, and that happens, but we obviously need to put a good bit of work into these this summer.
>> Well, I mean, it'd be nice if we could get started right away, but we don't have any of the articles, right? That's not all we can do [snorts] except for maybe the fire station. We kind of know what that's going to look like, but >> yeah. Um I'm trying to think do I mean, you know, if we have a fire station
person Oh, I'm so glad you spoke up, Larry. Fire station. [laughter] Larry worked on the fire station last year, so it makes sense for him to continue. Sure. You know, you can start talking about [snorts] open up conversations with the fire station building committee. >> Yeah. >> Similar with whoever's going to work on
Labberet. You know, there are hours and hours of school building committee meetings that I have not watched. I'm not saying whoever works on it will have to watch those meetings, but they'll have to somehow get up to speed. >> And I'll just so on that those two specifically. So I know the fire station building committee is targeting meeting
potentially the 21st or the 28th. >> Okay. >> The school building committee is meeting a week from tonight to hear to have the architects in with their initial evaluation of the library building and campus as what it could accommodate for a school project and how much that might
cost. Um, so their initial report is due to the school building committee and they'll be presenting that a week from tonight to school building committee. >> Okay. >> Because they have to make a recommendation toward the SL by the 2nd of August. Is that what you're >> We've we've tried to get to a point
where school building committee is delivering kind of their take on the campus and the building by the end of this month. >> Okay. So, I'd like to assign experts to these articles. Probably if we're going to if we're
going to be meeting every two weeks, I shouldn't say. Let's say we're meeting two weeks from today. I'd like to sign experts before then. So, I'll be communicating with all of you through email. See what your interest is. You know, what you'd like to work on. These big ones will have two or three experts
each. Short-term rental library in Atheertton. ly. Um, historic district Ron, I believe you looked into it in the past. >> How does that work if we have two or three experts in the meeting, open the meeting rules?
>> That's a good question. Um, and one we sort of maybe didn't handle last year. I mean, for the budget issues, we had one person per budget item to avoid, you know. So if there's a subcommittee, the subcommittee can only
deliberate, make decisions in an open meeting, that's a pain in the butt. Not because I'm against transparency, but what I found in the past is let's say Larry and I are subcommittee and we want to discuss our issue. Zoom call Wednesday night at 7. Okay,
fine. At least two days, but in reality, 3 days before that, we have to have it posted on the town website. Okay. 6:30. Larry's busy at work. He can't make 7 o'clock. In any other situation, I'd say, "Great. You can't make 7 o'clock. Let's talk at 9:00. Let's talk tomorrow
morning at 10:00. You can't do that. You have to reschedule an open meeting for it's going to be the next week at that point." So, all that is to say, um, the open meeting rules make it tough to have subcommittees. Now, when we had the experts last year on these non-financial
articles, we didn't call them subcommittees. I don't think we had open meetings. Was that appropriate? Was it not? Uh I thought it was at the time. Um >> I think you're hear everything here.
>> Yeah. I think I think the distinction is a subcommittee decides things. >> Yeah. >> If you're the Atherdan subcommittee, you would have a vote as the aan subcommittee. They want $12 million. We think $12 million is good. let's vote as the athlet subcommittee to tell the full
committee $12 million is good. If you're not voting on that, if you're just sort of factf finding and then come back to us, then it's my understanding you're not a subcommittee and don't have to have openings again. Not because I'm opposed to transparency because it's a big
thing. So that's my understanding. Uh Nick, does that sound right to you? I'd have to think about it. >> Okay, let's just call it a research team then [laughter] be done with it. It's not a subcommittee.
>> Yeah, it's a re research team. >> But arose by any other name. >> Yeah, we're not making decisions. I think we're >> I think that's the key. It's not making decisions, just reporting back to everyone else. >> And in this case, I mean, there's 15 of us. There are more of us than there are
of we have to have multiple groups. And some of them, you know, are going to require more than one person. Like the >> Yeah. >> You know, short-term rental is going to be a piece. >> Mhm. [clears throat] >> Okay.
>> Uh so yeah, I'll be reaching out to try to gauge people's interest and availability soon. And uh yeah, hopefully have it hammered out by next meeting. >> So we have all the articles now.
>> We have none of the articles. >> We have none of the articles. >> But for example, Labber, we don't have an article in writing saying, you know, approve X million to buy Labber, but we know we know the topic is coming up. So we're in Fire Station, we know the topics coming up.
>> So we have topics. [clears throat] Okay. >> So you can start educating yourself about it, right? before before it's in writing and officially sent from this select board to us. >> I haven't seen the planning board meetings about the short-term rental, but I think it's probably a pretty good chance to be ready for longtime meeting.
You think >> it's hard to say, but it's so complicated, you know. >> I mean, Nick, do you have a sense of >> you said another nuance is that it's actually going to be a general bylaws amendment versus a zoning bylaws
amendment. So, while the planning board is tackling it, um, and we appreciate their work on it, ultimately it's >> it's really a select board that they would they would work on it, submit it to the select board. So, >> the it requires um a lot of inspections and registration process. It's more
about getting all any kind of short-term rental registered, having them inspected. So, it puts a lot of burden back on top departments to to do a lot of work. So, I think that's where trying to figure out the right balance between regulating an activity that is happening in Milton. There are 74 short-term
rentals registered within the state tell telling the state they're operating in town. We don't really allow them in Milton, but they're operating anyway. So, it's something that's happening. >> So, this would get a regulatory framework around it. Um, and allow us to collect revenue from them. Um, but it's
just getting to a place where balancing, you know, wanting to regulate them if that is the policy option, how to do so in a place that doesn't kind of overwork departments that are already stretched a little thin, but just kind of balancing those factors. What's tricky? >> Um, so yes, it's uh [clears throat]
something they they tackled and and are working towards for fall, but I I I don't have the latest on on their progress on that one. >> [clears throat] >> Um, and then after tomorrow night's select board meeting, we'll have a little bit more line of sight into that I can share and update that. And the select board's also meeting on July 21st
where I expect um a couple of these other articles that are more within our control [snorts] to be uh finalized and submitted before the market. uh labor will certainly take a little bit more time just because there's another
partner here that we have to work through through the real estate market and and that so it's a little bit more complicated. Um, but as always with any of these articles, if if whoever is working on them has any questions, you know, he's around, I'm around, we're available to meet with you whenever. So,
we can get you some information. We can point you in the right direction if helpful. Don't hesitate to reach up. Okay. I appreciate I'm promoting Joanna McCarthy to panelist in case she has something to add, but uh maybe she's just one of our fans. [laughter]
[snorts] Uh okay, thank you. So that's uh we've got we've got a busy summer in front of us. [snorts] If there's nothing else, I think we can adjourn. If if one of our members who isn't here, Lee Michael, is usually good about pushing that side and saying,
"Jay, stop filling the time. adjourn. Uh >> motion to adjourn. >> Second. >> Okay, we're not going to do a roll call vote. All in favor say. >> Thank you.