yeah all set and that Richard good afternoon I'm now going to call the Wednesday March 26 2025 meeting of the N County Commission to order on Wednesday March 29 2023 Governor Healey
signed into law chapter 2 of the acts of 2023 an act making Appropriations for fiscal year 2023 which includes a two-year extension of the option for public bodies to hold remote meetings by suspending certain
provisions of the open meeting law Mass General Law chapter 38 section 20 that action was effective immediately extending the current option for remote meetings through March 31st 2025 thank you I'm now going to take I'm
going to now ask everyone to join me in saluting the flag pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America to the repblic for it stands Nation indivisible withy and justice for all thank
you call the rooll commissioner stady I present sir commissioner Collins commissioner Shay is present number three no executive session today number four minutes of the March 5th 2025 meeting please Mr chman I
reviewed them they look fine I'll move approval after the Joe I wasn't there for that one so you might want to second It 2 to zero I'll second the minutes of March 5th motion made and seconded all in favor all I'll yeah two to zero to
one okay number five appointments I think we can take Todd under po comment okay Todd come up and sit in that chair there Todd big seat thank you so we're in the public comment now uh well there are no
appointments but took you no we'll take Todd now he's there he's our sounds good me okay and this is an introduction uh this is Todd Salomon who is now a assistant director of our
wallison recreation facility oh he's also a Greenskeeper nice to meet you and we're learning things this year because we replaced our golf pro and our assistant superintendent so it's a big change kle Remains the
superintendent uh we're proud about Golf Course is the long long history it was acquired by the county 1976 when the original wallison moved to Milton and that's flourishing in Milton when I was a kid
uh wallison golf course was at is is now NAA County was kind of a Hoy toyy place so we would go up there and try to get a job C but I didn't get too many candy jobs I don't know why but we're proud of it uh we own it sometimes we wonder why
but we're happy with it and we're doing the best we can but this year we kind of look do a lot of resumes look around and uh I might have director throne and make a comment that uh it was eye openening process we hadn't done this kind of
hunting in several years so uh I had dreams in late January that we wouldn't get open because we didn't have a golf pro we didn't have a a assistant superintendent but all that's by the boards the team did a great job Michelle
labadini did a great job and John did a great job and uh we want to welcome you we know you're working I today is yesterday your firstday it's not it's not too sunny so
we so this is just an introduction and we're excited and hopefully you are too and uh we're ready to go and I'm sure you are so hello and you have any questions of us uh we're here all the time and we're
here every Wednesday if you and John John and bill will be working with you and uh of course you work with Carl and the crew over there Amy and the part-time is which are obviously elevating the golf weather and then they disate you go to the
winter so that's our story we're you know we're sticking to it we we're we're committed to some change the problem is it costs a lot of money and you know we're always working on it but KL does a good job of making us aware uh we did for us some a lot of
work in the last couple of years now we're doing more on the tennis courts we did the parking lot we did a new T land playground there with some help from the great General Court we got some money from the state but we know the big one is a new new uh irrigation system and
eventually a clubhouse but we're doing the best we can yeah so welcome Todd do you have any ideas and questions for us at this time no I'm just happy to be here happy to meet all of you happy to work at
presidents hopefully see it continue to grow and improve and a little bit your background where you came from so uh originally from New York I went to Ohio State the Ohio State University where I studied Turf science I have a bachelor's
in Turf and I worked for many years in Long Island and more recently in Connecticut and now in Massachusetts uh I was previously at the country club for three years where I was an irrigation technician but before that I was a Class A superintendent in Connecticut um I
love golf I love my business uh it's been a pleasure meeting the golfers the past three days and I look forward to meeting more uh golfers and with Sue the new golf pro and with Carl who uh is
great uh has a wealth of knowledge about the business uh has been very supportive very kind uh in the three days that I've been working with him but I think we'll be a good team I think we'll do a lot of good this year and a lot of good in the
next coming years thank you okay Commissioners any questions real quick comment congratulations and welcome sounding a great resume very we qualified what town do you live in now quy quy that's I thought well welcome aboard thank you
yeah look forward seeing you often joh so just to wrap up um Todd was the recommended candidate that you've appointed previously um it was a u long drawn out process I think we interviewed a total of four to six candidates um one of the things that separated Todd was
obviously his experience but his turf management but his irrigation skills um the golf course relies on that technology a lot and we recognize the golf course needs that kind of investment going forward coupled with his um strong customer service um and work ethic I think we have a excellent
assistant superintendent going forward we look forward to investing in him in the work that needs to be done at the 12 course thank you Mr chairman okay last call welcome welcome good Lu thank you okay thank you BL thank you
thank you thanks for coming thank you number six all right each meeting we have a section on our agenda for public comment whether the person is in Zoom or in person now is the time to have any public comment so
they went out in Zoom land for public comment now is the time director cron do you have anyone for public comment no sir last call for public comment okay moving along number seven old business
I have no old business John do we have any old business sir okay number seven old businesses are gone number eight Personnel MERS for consideration commissioner stadi yes Mr chair we have several uh first at the wallon recreational facility I'll make a
motion to uh approve the notice of rehire Thomas Ford of Quincy as a seasonal golf associate at the race stated effective date 32725 so moved second thank you all in motion made in second all in favor I I and the second at the
wal recreation facility is Mo approval of notice of contingent appointment of Steven luuk or Luke of Quincy hope that's right seasonal golf associate rate stated effective 32725 so Mo motion made in seconded all in favor
all right it is a vote next at the nor County Agricultural high school we have one Mo approval of the not appointment of Kurt Buckman of ram as the animal science for person replacing Wendy Cameron at the rate stated effective
32725 so moved second Mo motion made in seconded all in favor all right it is a vote and that concludes number eight how about payroll expense warrants Mr chairman I'll move approval the following for a warrant list of 3 2625
first of all item 25 -38 payroll of the county moved the sum $146,300 so moved second motion made in second all in favor all it is a vot next second for the expense of the county item 03
0425 move the sum $572,000 cents so moved second motion made in seconded all in favor all it is a vote next and at the school a will approval of the expense under line itm 259a the sum
342,000 3519 so moved second motion made in seconded all in favor that's all we have thank you you're welcome that concludes the payroll expense warrants for approval number 10 fiscal year proposed commission's budget for consideration
and possible vote director Cronin thanks Mr chairman good afternoon commissioners I'd like to hand you a copy of the proposed upy 26 budget and a slide deck that I will get to Mo thank you okay I'm gonna have John go
over this and he has a a slide presentation which is on top oh I'm sorry that one's mine one's yours huh don't give me that one SL okay thank you okay for your information we're looking
at a fiscal year 2026 proposed ner County operating budget for fiscal year 26 as I said dated today March 26 2025 as well as the presentation verbalizing I guess the proposed fiscal
26 ner County budget present to the County Commissioners John Cronin executive secretary executive director as as well as Chief Auto Watcher you moving up take it thank you Mr you never know
Commissioners I'm start thank you I'm going to start with the slide deck first and then we'll move to the budget itself we won't go line by line but as you may know in the past I use callouts and we'll go through the budget with the call outs to highlight the areas of interest and of course accept any questions that you may have um so on the
slide deck Bill if you would go to the agenda um there are several areas I'm going to cover uh briefly this is about 10 or 12 slides I'm going to give you an overall picture of the fway 26 budget a revenue view um where we stand with overall Revenue compared to last year
the details to some extent within each of the budgets that are nuanced um I'm going to couple it with a capital view because I think this something that the Commissioners need to see not just in FY 26 but the view ahead from a capital perspective how things are playing out and then finally The View ahead which um
is the last item and I think it's the most important so we'll start with the overview um on slide three Bill the proposed FY 26 budget is 37,8 24798 34 remarkably this increases
spending by only $2,410 from last year because we had two large sets of um offsetting costs and revenues um the largest areas of reduction came in contributory retirement contribution of almost
$900,000 we reduced Legal Services for next year and uh six departments overall are coming in below FY 25 funding levels for a variety reasons but the aggregate is 327,000 in savings the proposed budget funds um separate salary reserves
for FY 26 to offset the costs that are expected with looming collective bargaining that will probably um come in sometime in early uh FY 26 so it's something we do all the time it's a separate account we'll draw on it once the the Agreements are um reached and we'll do our transfers sometime in
September o or December As Time Time dictates uh finally this budget also includes funding for a 6.75 increase in health care costs um it's a lot by any measure but it is remarkably low compared to Market healthc care
increases that many of the communities in Eastern Massachusetts are facing through their other carriers Mayflower has done an exceptional job flattening out um these increases that come from time to time um by design so we're I guess happy with 6.75 because some
communities are looking at 8 9 10 12 14% increases so better place than most can I ask you a question please I should know the answer but I don't is this this 6.75 is this a one-year increase we deal we we have we
deal with this every year we do and it's fixed of course it is it's voted upon in March by the um board at Mayar okay thank you you're welcome SL four bill so when we get to the revenue picture and start looking at sort of the offsets um
the FY 26 projection includes increases based on Market activity so Deeds XIs and transaction fees from the registry those are large um areas of Revenue that we rely on to balance our budget and we see some Trends in FY 25 that are worth
moving into FY 26 so correspondingly for each Revenue Source we're increasing by that amount of money very comfortable be able to achieve those next fiscal year um interest earnings um we are collecting interest on the so-called quiny District Court money that sits in
your Capital fund so we're going to use that interest to offset expenses this year weights and measures um are expected to grow in FY 26 and so we're looking to collect more revenue and then finally the aie is increasing Revenue by $393,000 to offset their expenses on the
other side of Ledger we see some reductions the commissioner as may know when you sold quiny district court in July of 23 which was F School 24 we were on the clock um the court excuse me the state provides you reimbursement for those expenses usually 12 to 18 months
in a re so we continue to received the least payments for um quiny into FY 25 but it ends in fy2 we're cutting out $300,000 and Lease revenue from the state because we no longer under lease we still collect money from the state
under a different vehicle a rental agreement that's about $683,000 so that's um that's a result of not owning quinsey any longer that's the drop um we are drawing less money from arper interest n FY 26 which I think is
a tremendous development we're drawing almost 20 over 250,000 less than we did last year which is great um the share ofe U per the DOA schedule dropped $780,000 that's calculation by the state but our overall revenue from FY 25 is
down $266,000 so we see some changes structurally but everything seems to be in in sync there's not anything um damaging going on we don't see a t a tumbling of registry revenue for example
uh we don't see extraordinary extraordinarily high and non-discretionary spending peaking things are kind of inbalance and this reflects that okay ask the question please yeah if I could Mr chairman so the revenue is down 266 but all those
other things are down as well so they count as decreases in terms of yep on our budget right and then we offset them with the increases on the left side okay I see okay all right okay thank you just give you a pulse of how things are moving on the revenue side commissioner not not everything's stable every year
there's always going to be some modifications but clearly the upper left corner of those deeds and transaction fees those are drivers um those that's a significant amount of money that is I'm not gonna say we can't say volatile but it moves every year depending on the
transaction and activity of the registry so you have to constantly keep an eye on it all right Slide Five bill so the details um following the smittle of the department budget request the County's public viewing version was deficient by 2.7 million you know this
happens every year we receive the budget we post the numbers put it up for public viewing people can give you feedback um that deficiency is our St starting point it's how we view what the Department's asked you for versus what our available resources are and continuing on our path
of annually improving your budget and its appearance for that kind of public input we um we added some features which you'll see in a moment that we think begin to move the budget more towards a relatable transactional and transparent document we'll get into those in a minute but we're always striving for
gfoa standards um we're doing it incrementally um and uh at no cost our fiscal team began reviewing all the submissions uh following um the department H presentations to you for savings and payroll accuracy we went through a total of seven table reads
over a period of four weeks uh the team uh developed uh sort of a tendency to look at every kind of cost on every line item based on prior spending market trends utilities and then finally the payroll which is Shell's World um a lot of work goes into analyzing every single
employees um payroll line their steps and so forth so it it went through quite a few uh lines of review and Analysis the Commissioners heard from the department has almost all of them had requests for hiring and expansion um this budget does not support any new
hiring proposals they were all removed due to insufficient Revenue to support expansion FY 26 reflects the first year without Revenue to offset the qdc expenses I mentioned that earlier but we're still collecting rent 68300 that's
part of our Revenue bucket page six bill so uh looking at the the budgets and in kind of an aggregate here um The Wallace and recreational facility we've modify the maintenance staff to 40 hours per week at the request of the
superintendent and the cost of that is offset by the salary s uh savings from the golf pro as you may know the old golf pro left the new call Pro came in we saw our favorability and so in the aggregate the Wallace recreational facilities actually below last year's budget because of that
savings the maintenance department we are still carrying five unfunded vacancies to manage the positions associated with quinsey district court if and when closure is announced this is something we've done this will be the third year in a row I believe um in conjunction with asme we want to ensure
that when the state moves to um close quinsey District Court um it effectively means our relationship ends we have no idea when it's happening we've been through various um conversations with the state about what their plans are I believe it's
sufficient to say they're frustrated they haven't found a solution almost two years later um but when it happens we want to be able to have funded positions for staff to slide into so we avoid layoffs um so it's part of our dialogue with ask me to ensure there's no
harm uh the treasury uh the treasury requested move one full-time employee from point8 to full-time and also to fund an $88,000 contract to conduct conduct a transitional activity review of operations and roles within the office and make recommendation to the
treasurer much of that increase was offset by um the loss of temporary salaries within his budget finally the registry EDS requested 3313 million due to projected fy2 spending and mandate Guidance the
appropriation is recommended at 2.9 28359 to get to that figure three unfilled vacant positions within the Reg were removed and miscellaneous non-salary line items were also reduced to flip to this
number Bill page seven quick question please could real quick how is that number compared to oh it had to be the same number then right could we could you the registry number of 2928 359 how's that compare to fiscal 25 it's
down oh we down we'll get to that in a second okay all right all right all right um um page sville thank you so now we're starting to move towards the bigger picture Commissioners this is your capital and stabilization view I'm leaning into where things aheading here but I want to show you on the left that
as a result of following Deeds at Revenue the county did not fund a capital plan in fy2 um the county did fund however $2.5 million in arpa projects that included Capital style projects for $300,000
wallon Recreational facility Court improvements $12,000 in facility equipment for the Aggie the course and maintenance 225,000 for the Kemp hul HVAC at the Aggie uh we're doing upgrades for HVAC at three of our
courts through maintenance and of course the large maintenance project of $800,000 for the Denham District Court building management system which is currently underway and expected to be completed this spring so we're very active in capital space we're just using a different bucket of money U so the
Investments towards your assets continue n FY 26 the Outlook will be determined by the amount of surplus that if there is any that the county realizes um after FY 25 closes and I think you know that's in July so we'll talk about this in September and if there's something there
we can do it we we we'll come see about it all right P J um now looking at your your your reserves you have two primary reserves you have a capital Improvement fund and a capital stabilization fund your
Capital Improvement fund was created in 2023 when you received the $1.4 million in sale from the quiny district court that money has been drawn upon already to uh fund a $2 million cost with a deim superior court HVAC project uh we have
collected some interest associated with that so the balance shows as it is now so that's your Capital Improvement fund on the right side is your stabilization um over the years the stabilization fund has been used for a variety of reasons prior to me coming here I believe there was some drawer on
it back in 2022 I think 2023 we deposited large sums of our large Surplus at that time into this fund I'm pleased to tell the Commissioners that $6.5 million is a healthy stabilization fund my view of the stabilization is it should be seen
and not used um try to avoid the use of it at all cost by controlling your cost in your bottom line it's there for a rainy day um don't use it to offset normal operational activities you should be using it to stem any kinds of wholescale problems that develop as a
result of structural issues um so that's my view of stabilization now we kind of take a turn into slide 9 thank you Bill to give the commission as an overall report the County's financial position is very
stable you maintain a stabilization fund balance that provides with 177% of your operating needs that's pretty good our goal according to the Abraham's grow group is to reach a maximum of 20% of your reserve to cover operating needs
hopefully when revenues take up someday we'll be able to put more money into the stabilization and Trend towards that 20% it's a good number your Capital Improvement fund is recommended for use of Capital Improvements to courts only as expected funds will Beed through the
lease agreement terms with the Comm law these funds can allow the county to attend to large scale projects without borrowing costs ultimately the decision of what to do with the capital Improvement fund is the Commissioners followed by The Advisory board however it is my strong recommendation to use it for the courts
only the county will also need larger Capital investments in the next several years we are as commissioner stady excuse me Shay just mentioned looking at the um 2 million plus cost of irrigation at the um at the golf course it looms our irrigation system is old and uh for
that reason it needs replacing but it works so it's something we'll keep an eye on in our future Capital needs but should the county realize Rising Deeds excise Surplus and that's inevitable um we'll have to fund them in the future uh for things like um the irrigation
system slide 10 Bill the County's operational budget will continue to receive pressure from the projected cost of paying off the norfor County Retirement liability the Retirement Board in paric are committed to resolving the county
retir system liability by FY 32 much sooner than this mandated uh 2040 guidelines set by per to this end the Retirement Board changed the basis of calculation method to Actuarial base in FY 23 and the Commissioners may recall
there was a bump up in our contribution but now uh the Retirement Board is positioning to attach additional risk and inflation factors to the REM remaining liability payment schedule contributions are expected to
rise Bill I'd ask you to go to slide 11 please commissions I hope you can see this okay y okay I can this is an important view of your world over the next several years and it really drives where this budget goes the County's contributory retirement cost has risen
steadily from $2.1 million in fy18 to 3.8 in fy2 that money is coming from your base budget so the projection ahead is something you should be aware of and I just wanted to show you if you look at the the grid that's captured those
figures are currently known to be erroneous they were built upon an Actuarial vote taken by the Retirement Board in December that we Now understand was flawed we expect those values to go down by a minimum of a million dollars a
year but that doesn't elude the fact that if you look at some of the trends and I'm not going to call them out as true if we stuck with a 3 million-ish payment between now and F by 32 you should be okay but if that value starts to Peak to 3 and a half or 4 million
you're suddenly starting to reach into space on your Revenue where you might have to start looking at stabilization to balance so the next five to six years for the county are critical this is very important to see because this is a cost that's an obligation you must pay and
it's a commitment that does have a sunset if you look on the right side FY 33 FY 34 and FY 35 the costs drop off the cliff dramatically which means you get a windfall so at that time the county will
be well positioned to handle whether it's Capital needs or expansion of programs and services it's just you have to wait to get there because this obligation will be primary before you really receive any relief but it's substantial relief and some would say it might be worth waiting for but it's a
big issue and it's really going to be prominent in the budget planning for the next five years by 12 so this annual contribution has consumed larger and larger portions of the County's discretionary spending to the extent that the county can no longer expect its natural reversion of a
million dollars annually to find capital projects the county must Embrace a fiscal policy of minimal to no growth until FY 32 when this obligation begins to paid off to be paid off in operational budget Capac capity emerges the county should plan to use any of the
spike and revenue opportunities that may be driven by economic conditions that yield higher than expected returns to handle these Capital needs certainly Commissioners if you look at the history of Deeds excise and transaction feeds it it looks like a wave on a bar chart we
are currently in a trough we expect it to recover we see some modest increases coming this year into next year those opportunities will give you positions for Capital budgets as they arise but I want to say we're being choked by our
contributory um allowance which is blocking a lot of your flexible uh discretionary spending the county should utilize the capital Improvement fund exclusively for court related Capital needs and then finally it is my proposal and I had a I left a message with the
superintendent today he wholeheartedly and full-throated agrees with my last bullet request the county should collaborate with the agricultural High School to develop a Capital funding plan that includes joint contributions to the school's Capital fund as each party
realizes available funds each year this fund this fund plan Mission should Target a sum of funds that'll be needed ultimately to replace the most vulnerable building while the school pays off its existing MSB loans so what I'm trying to say is I think we need to
enjoin the schools and a planned agreement to use our Surplus when we have them and the school Surplus to go into the school's Capital Improvement plan or ultimately facility improvements for their assets again the superintendent fully
supports that slide 13 Bill finally commission as this proposed budget is balanced it's sustainable as long as we don't grow too much the county has strong reserves for operational and capital needs but must use both sparingly and as intended to manage the next five five to six fiscal
years in the economic Peaks and valleys that will follow the County's use of arpa interest will allow for Revenue offset for the next 3 to 5 years if used sparingly and th is thus it avoids using any use of stabilization funds the
County's use of arpa Project funding also allows for asset infrastructure investment in Project activity at least through the end of December 2026 that concludes the PowerPoint presentation Mr chairman um if you'd like I'll jump into the budget and we'll go through the call outs yes commissioners of course we had just
through the PowerPoint presentation this is by and Lodge what what we'll see at the advis board correct correct next is the breakdown of the of the fiscal year 2026 budget it's 87 again Commissioners I'm happy to
answer any questions on any line item but I did Target the call outs the areas of Interest okay we'll go right to those and I'll call let Bill know what page to go to so this is your proposed FY 26 operating budget following table contents on page three there are a number of call outs
this is your Revenue page we've already um spoken about some of these call outs but I just wanted to mention um that the arer interest was over $940,000 in FY 25 we're drawing significantly less that's a good thing we're ring less and less on
that balance which as a today is about $2 million after this draw the $800,000 that we collected miscellaneous receipts includes the rent we're receiving from quiny um the total projected on school revenue is down 295,000 from last year
also towards the bottom you'll note the school's um revenue is projecting at $1 13.9 million which is up just under 400,000 from last year and our net spending overall as I mentioned is $20,400 above last year's number kind of
remarkable the next page um for the first time we're publishing within the budget for transparency reasons uh the calculated indirect cost sheet um in the past these were sent directly to the schools register and so forth we're just publishing it now for everybody to see it's integral to the budget um and these
proposed numbers are based upon metrics and call outs that were developed on my predecessors they're always open for dialogue and Mr Wallace and I have had some conversations about talking about some of these numbers they will likely be tweet going forward because some of them are estimates but that's the nature of the direct class estimates okay but
now we're we're placing it within the document the next page is um you'll start to see a lot of the same things we incorporated last year this is an or chart um that shows the overall structure of norfor County government we've updated the planned FTE by Department you can see the loss of two
positions um in an accurate net agregate uh from 216 down to 214 um page six um showing again the reflected um increase for healthcare cost of 6.75 and the drop in the County's contribution of um over
$850,000 Clos to to 900 page seven um I'm reducing legal costs in FY 26 as we anticipate less and less activity on the labor front as we negotiate contracts we won't be doing
that all year long and we're hoping that the lawsuit with the register ad is settled uh early in FY 26 if not beforehand so we see some savings opportunity there it's okay the next page Bill I'd like you to go to is Page 15
bill um just a call out to show that we're calculating an increase in Medicare cost of $29,000 that's a percentage of your overall uh pel costs page 16 again it's IID we've uh we're tracking the uh the legal cost here we
already covered that bill the next page I like you to go to is page 26 you're going to see here that this is the salary page for the golf course there are three staff that had been previously working 37.5 hours the director would like to bring them up
excuse me the superintendent up to 40 hours per week get more work during the uh the the golf season hours the cost of that 40h hour adjustment was picked up by the salary savings on the golf pro as I previously mentioned so you can see overall the the golf course net is um
just slightly above last year page 41 yes sir repeat that again okay the the difference between 37 to 40 yes and and why is that I just so the superintendent asked that he move the golf maintenance workers to 40 hours per
week beginning July 1st we'll be getting more hours per week productivity from them because they were previously at 37.5 the cost of bringing them up to that level is offset by the um lower salary of the golf pro and all all all overtime cost comes after employee hour
employee that's right next week okay it's the federal law yep thank you uh the next page bill is um page 41 technology so Sam did a great job they all did a great job uh Sam saw some savings but we also want to call out that we're going to keep tracking uh costs associated
with it broken up between the registry and non norfor County um we we began that when we Consolidated several years ago it's working quite well so we were able to identify what you spend on each Enterprise so we're going to continue
that page 47 bill which is the treasury um this page shows the $88,000 miscellaneous contractual Services I mentioned to conduct a transitional activity um uh report to assess the operations and roles of the office the
um Treasurer when it was before you had made this request and that's funded there these are offset by his uh reduction and elimination of All Temporary salaries just two more Commissioners register Deeds page 66
May's P page 66 thank you so in this area the registry um as you as we've done each year we take a snapshot I believe this was the February 28th payroll excuse me February 28th spending um could be wrong
I'll check with fill on that um we we targeted 1.94 expended we take that value we extrapolated it out through the end of June and we come up with a number of 28569 36 we apply a 2.5% increase as required
by the mandate to arrive at a target of $2,928 359 the registry had requested 3313 in his budget so we had to modify his budget um by over $385,000 commissioner stady you asked
what his budget was was last year it was 3152 million as you can see on that page you're writing on it's right there in the grand total line so the difference is approx well you can do the maou it's just under $200,000 um if you go to the next page
bill which I think is um salary page the registry had reported three positions that were vacant um no employees were in them one was the non-union position of director of support services that was removed
each of the three I removed are in the flesh colored uh shading on the page in front of you the second is a head clerk position that was vacant and the third is a principal clerk that was vacant what page that I'm sorry um it's
67 that's it oh I see the color Okay y I didn't see it okay yep there are two colors Commissioners just for your distinction the flesh colored are FY 206 recommendations the green show the cuts that came in last fiscal year they were brought over by the register they were
not funded but I'm just carrying them to show you last year similarly we reduced four positions because of lack of uh funding and uh they were removed from the budget this year we're planning three more those are the ones in the flush color okay that's the difference uh that concludes the call
out and distinctions review the budget um Commissioners i' be happy answering any questions you may have thank you Commissioners well first i' say a very thorough job excellent excellent presentation I is this the fourth year we generally use this one a great job y
I want to go back I'm going to leave this for a minute go back to that uh PowerPoint yeah and I said it's not Germaine to next year but you were forecasting like you were saying so now things are starting to come into Focus you were saying in 2030 and 31 32 God
help us if we still around but you said it drops down my question would be Let's see we are we aren the commission the future board whatever wouldn't at that point though the Tipping Point say for say fiscal 28 29 which could be
something we'd be dealing with wouldn't that behoove you to use stabilization I know you don't want to you have a sacan but wouldn't you move would then to kind of soften the blow with the thought that as you said the future looks good and with that drop off you could then
replenish stabilization I mean we have be something it's just speculative it's not on the table but stabilization in my town and it's a different vernacular I know that local stabilization isn't the same as County stabilization but it's still kind of the intent is it's a
reserve it's a reserve and you use reserves you know for a rainy day when you have a problem so if you're at that Tipping Point you know F schal 27 28 29 I saw the numbers they were getting bigger and bigger and bigger they may not be enough Revenue something going to give so right you know right the answer
is yes you can and you should but my recommendation is if you're looking at that picture it would be financially advised to start planning for expansion towards FY 32 if you run into a situation where those revenues that are reliable that are baked in and those
start to fail and you haven't grown your operations but you need to make maintain what you have stabilization is the answer right that's when you use it for on the other hand if the Commissioners at that time in 208 2930 are going yeah we got money coming so we're going to start baking in some positions we want
to grow some programs you might be looking at a problem there because you can't predict that those numbers those those revenues will be there commissioner stady until they are that's not advisable so stabilization may be used to rescue you right in short-term
onetime events um my train TR is keep it dry you do have arer interest right we've planned that as a sort of front-end loaded stabilization which is good and we're drawing on it meagerly to get these budgets through until the promised land arrives but the hope you
don't have to but your answer is yes you may use it good point um but it's really strategically how the county wants to Envision the grow into that space we may also generate addition revenues too things too but I just just hypothetical F fiscal 26 is clear as a Bel I was just
looking at that down roote yeah I think it's important that um you know we do we do our best with financial forecasting it's a struggle with the county because nobody has the economic lens to know how the basic Revenue uh elements of our budget are going to function in the next
five years it's hard enough to picture what it's going to look like in six months so second question I think it's on point for you Mr chairman in view of the fact that we've just got a great bu budget presentation but we see the problem we've got would it make sense to
provide additional information through bill or somebody to our legislative leason to get that bill so we're trying to get maybe push a little further you know what I'm saying as a group because we're type for Revenue we got put documentation to show it and we got a great forecast how it looks that would
behoove them maybe look a second look at that you know that bill to try to help us out that would give us additional Revenue yeah I mean the argument could be made the additional Revenue really rescues your Capital plan because um Capital needs are always going to be great you're asset rich but you'll never
have enough money to take care of things especially if the current situation stays the same it was actually interesting that John Martin it's related got a letter from representative Arena D Roa and basically I if you caught that but basically he said it had to do with the policy of the lottery but
he said the solution is to have more building space to have more students but we can't have more students at the Aggie if we don't have more buildings and we're kind of stuck there right right now we got to build them right so we need the revenue there you know all right the third thing would be um what
effect if any is there going to be an effect when you're taking away positions these aren't people these are positions correct okay so they're okay they're vacant I'm thinking about the effect because that registry generates our Revenue we don't want to damper that so
but those are positions not people okay all right all right that was all I had okay MP um I'm always talking about budgeting
being an ongoing process we're at the end or nearing the end of the ongoing now there is outside approval needed disos Evis board Etc so is there yeah I would say that we need a vote today to forward this budget to go to the next
step which is advis your board and you know everyone else send it out to the department heads and uh um you know if you work here today you're working here July 2nd when's the advice report April 16 only a month away less three
three weeks away and uh you know it's business as usual hopefully I mean there's no other reason to hold this up is it in your mind I'm sure no
um you know a year ago commission yeah a year ago I presented the budget on March 27th and you voted on it that day um we will take the budget and documentation that's presented today following this meeting put it up on the website so the department heads and everyone else can see it we'll make it available certainly
to The Advisory Board well ahead of their meeting on the 16 so that they can familiarize themselves with it as well so politely I'll ask we had several several department heads uh engineering Sam and a few others look for increases to their budget you know they were
looking for no they were looking for much so were they notified I believe they're all taken out were they they told of this they are they aware of this or not directly no no okay I report to you folks so okay so they'll find out decisions all right they'll find out for the Y okay all
[Music] right commission any comments get this voted today sure I don't see why not I mean if you want to wait but next week is not a good week for you so we're looking at because because of that
okay I mean I yeah I go back to my first year here a second year here when we went all through this and then realized we made a million dollar mistake I don't think you remember that you may have heard about it when you on The Advisory Board and you know I mean if anything anything like that should happen it
comes right back and we have to straighten it all up but you know all right so I'll make the a motion to approve the fiscal year uh 2026 Nora County budget in a total
amount of 37 million 82479 34 as presented by accounting director I'll second the motion for discussion Mr chairman I just have a comment to make second motion for discussion what's your discussion commissioner um
so this this vote incorporates um the budget from the aie right and the trustees and we're we're part of the trustees and the trustees voted on on the Aggie budget uh the other night and that's part of this budget and so I just
wanted to explain to you because I voted against the Aggie budget I have no problem with the county portion of the budget because I voted against the Aggie budget I'm going to abstain from this particular vote because if I vote it now that's right I've reversed my vote from the other night yeah okay makes
sense what's your point John just to let the Commissioners know the school's budget is off um from the vote you took last week by $26,000 Mr wace is here I gave him an indirect cost sheet last week when it became available as a result of the Mayflower vote the number
he used in your vote was an estimate these are the actuals so following I think your April 9th meeting as trustees you'll probably have to take another vote reflecting the actuals but the actuals are here today so this is the right did it go up or go down it went down oh okay we'll deal with that on
April 19th yeah there you go that is all thanks okay all right I agree I think we should push it along we we're sticking by our calendar and you know we're going to be with the adviser board so we go from
there okay motion made and seconded to accept the nille county proposed off County budget presented on March 26 2025 the fiscal
year budget in the amount of 37 m82462 34 as presented by the county director all in favor I I that's two to zero and I'll Stand yeah and one exstension that's good all right thank you I write
Primal on these because every time we get a new one I'm given the wrong one out but as of now this is it okay number 11 report from peent Department regarding a bid opening Andor contractor
one Marin come on in hello good afternoon look do we have this week we have a position that is to be filled temporarily between April we'll call it and June the end of June a temporary plumber we're having trouble apparently
finding a full-time plumber and that's advertised okay and John we're going to one day a week so we're going to bring our retired plumber back one day a week yes till we find a plumber yes as of now it's still J June 1st then go from there what do you say there
Commissioners I I move approval okay it's a motion I guess would be in order to approve uh the temporary high of an onall plumber for one day per week at the rate stated through uh June 30 2025 to perform work necessary at n county
buildings and if needed an emergency uh to serve you know one day of work that week second okay I I don't know if we want to say use the word on call because we do have an on call Plum too you know yeah for the middle of the night or something over his head right it's a contract
that's a yearly contract yeah I think it's it's I know what's a temporary employment contract okay this is a temporary employment contract okay I have no problem with that thank you motion made in second to hire a temporary on a temporary contract PL one day per week from April
to June 30th of 2025 till the new plumbers on board all in favor thank you okay Mar anything else that was all for now thank you still looking for Plum by the way commissioners okay 12 report of the county director
thank you Mr chairman Commissioners um and for those listening department heads will be receiving uh later this week on Friday um the annual use lose report um department heads are encouraged to share this information with their employees so that they may tend to any um potential
loss of vacation or personal time before the end of the fiscal year according to the employee handbook and related collective bargaining agreements that information uh will be released and if anybody has any questions just give our HR people a call a reminder to those so designated uh if you are uh ethics
filing uh is required by May 1 this year just a friendly reminder I did mine last week um next week the Commissioners will receive upon invitation I presume register ad who has sent you a request to supplement his FY 25 budget he'll be
here to speak with you about his request uh the following week which is April 9th um I will present to you the proposed April slf final supplemental request for the county uh in anticipation of the um Advisory board meeting following week so
just in sequence a couple of sub isues coming up following today I'm pleased to let the commission is know our fy2 24 audit is approaching a near it's a critical end phase by tomorrow we should have our financials completed uh and handed over to our um our financial
advisers for compliance uh they will proceed with the final elements of the audit and hope to have it done by the end of May 2025 um den of Superior Court earlier I spoke about the capital issue and how it plays with the capital Improvement fund you funded a $2 million Improvement to
the HVAC system of the Superior Court uh just a brief update on that project it is large it is a very significant project I got great news yesterday from the architect um we're expecting to have full 90% drawings completed by April 4th
um by April 20 2 we'll be looking for a decision on uh potentially moving to bid based on the funding estimates that'll be provided to us um and the bid could be up by miday um conceivably the permit to proceed if everything goes according
to plan by June so then We're Off to the Races on a project as I mentioned earlier that will easily take us into 2026 it's a significant project but the architect was pleased to tell me that they were looking at an area to place a lot of the uh condensers and we commonly
know as rooftop units in areas within the dam Superior coat attic which as you can imagine looks like a 1847 attic but they found a preferred space much more accessible um on the back end facing Pearl Street that they think would be even better and will reduce our cost
dramatically so it's a big development they did a nice job engineering it we'll look forward to seeing what the the bid process does for us over the next four months okay um March 31st uh early mentioned that arpa has been paying for a lot of facility improvements at the Aggie our
maintenance department and the golf course the golf course wanted a replacement to their Ford 350 that vehicle was ordered this winter it's being delivered Monday so uh Carl will be happy to get that um see and just a quick reminder as the
chairman started the meeting he read the remote participation language that as you know currently expires March 31st 2025 um a bill from the house and the Senate has made its wage to the governor's desk I believe it was sent on Friday it sits so as soon as and if she
signs it we'll alert you and we'll be back in business I believe until March of 2027 is the language currently structured I thought it was June Jun June okay June Jun language yeah goes yeah two years good plus fine CR so
we'll let you know when we hear or see smoke from the State House white white smoke right Rich that is all thank you Mr chairman quick question commissioner State who you the con director um electric charging stations where we are you
meeting with him next week or uh I don't I can't recall if I'm meeting I check with our procurement office today we were I told him I needed to get him the electrical bills for each location right um the work to get that took on more Dimensions than was needed I spoke to Marine this morning I I I need this
today so she has it she has what I asked for and I will be getting it to Mr McAn hopefully by the close business he's been in touch with you and John as far as lining up buildings or correct there was a side visit plan for one of the locations I think it was rent them for yes someday next week I is it April 2nd
I can't remember thought my head but I also owe him the electric bill so he can do his analysis great thank you you're welcome all I have thank you sir okay I'm sorry anything else no sir any other questions for John number 13
emergency topics that chair did not reasonably anticipate to be discussed I have none we have an regular schedule meeting next week and uh I remind that we're still in morning for sergeant
Scott I'm afraid I forget the officer's name yes s is it session I'm sorry from the Randol Police Department Sherman Scott Sherman yes sergeant of the Rand Police Department lost his life last Sunday and he's being buried this week
so I'll take a motion with Jan I move beour Mr chairman at 202 second Mo seconded all in favor hi hi we areour thank you very