e e e e e e e Bon Jeffrey is not so I'd like to call [Music]
Ton uh so we are hybrid so we got to do this by roll call uh Mark yes Joe here Emily here Harian here uh Ed here Andre here John here and Joe
here Joe caran here both jokes um uh would you like to call call the SBO order you have Chris and I don't know posted uh you are posted yeah posted according to the sign in the hallway you're posted and and both both Mark and Chris
are on Zoom you are posted Carlo if you could do the honors posted somewhere for I will call the select vot to order roll call vote Mark here Chris here Carlo here anyone else not
that I see on Zoom no all right thanks I thought we were post it thank you y excellent so welcome everyone um got a uh it's not many lines the agenda but a a lot to cover because we are doing the
town manager budget tonight um so uh last week I thought we weren't going to have any liaison reports because our meetings are only one week apart and I think that we had three um so before I go on I do want to give anyone on the committee who has liazon report chance to
share I do not go I don't know I know wck met last night and I don't know if they discussed pickle ball further but none of us watched it so I imagine we'll be discussing pickle ball soon enough um right well then in that
case next on the agenda is a to hold our public hearing on the town manager recommended budget um if uh Vice chair could please do the honors to the inhabitants of the town of Reading Please take notice that the finance committee of the town of reading
will hold a public hearing on Wednesday March 12th 2025 at 7:00 p.m. in the select board meeting room of town hall 16 L Street Reading Mass or available remotely on Zoom to solicit public input on the town manager's recommended budget
for FY 26 prior to a finance committee vote on March 19th 2025 the purpose of this hearing is to provide the public with the opportunity to provide input on the budget and priorities outlined in the town manager's recommended FY 26 budget a
copy of discussion documents regarding this topic will be in the finance committee packet on the website at www. reading ma.gov all interested parties are invited to attend the hearing in person or remotely remotely
via Zoom or may submit their comments in writing or by email prior to 6:00 p.m. on March 12th 2025 to town manager at reading.com go by order of Matthew a kralis Esquire Town
manager thank you um I'll entertain a motion to open the hearing on the fiscal year 26 budget so second thank you Emily thank you Joe um voting roll call U Mark yes might not have been prepared for a vote but I think we have yes we
have to do a vote to call the to to open the hearing uh Joe yes Emily yep maranne yep Ed yes hry yes John yes Joe yes all right so as this is a public hearing I will be you know trying to recognize people with questions that being said we
have a presentation to go through so um you know I'll let the uh presenters set their own pace in terms of whether they want to take questions in the middle or at the end um I do have zoom open um I know some other folks in the room have zoom open as well um I do see a hand up
on Zoom uh um so I will go head and uh if this is sort of a general public comment you'd like to do before we get started uh please go ahead Mark yes that's okay to do General comment I would like to do that um Park doer Diva Road time me Member precin One member of
the board of the select board excuse me um so thanks folks as you're deliberating tonight and looking at the budget one of the things that I I wanted to ask you folks to take a look at very carefully is how we are using free
right now to support the budget and different aspects of what free cash is is kind of all about so having certain on finance committee for a while um I know that we had established a 7% number to use basically as a buffer against
unexpected kinds of activities and that's nominally what free cash was to be for or at least that's what the 7% was supposed to be for more recently we've started to be a little bit more Reliant on free cash of the operating budget and part of that I
think is because we do a really nice job thank you Sharon um and thank you Matt budgeting conservatively with the net result being that we tend to regenerate some funds back into free cash although we usually start out with a pretty large number it looks like that we're pulling out um the
last several years maybe even decade have shown that we we tend to actually regenerate similar amounts to what we've taken out sometimes even a lot more than what we've taken out we're currently sitting in a position where we have a lot more free cash than the
7% and one of the things that other communities and I think ourselves as we were thinking about it is to think about free cash again 7% to make sure that we can cover unexpected kinds of things but that when there is a larger amount in there that might be a source to pay for
capital projects within that result being that the community doesn't have to borrow as much to take care of some of those projects objects so I think at the uh Financial Forum late last year I brought up this topic of thinking about using free cash some modest amount of
free cash to be able to support some capital projects and take some borrowing off the table we're right now we're considering two very substantial capital projects the recal project the killum school project I think that it's a
really interesting time to think about using some amount some again some modest amount of that free cash to lower the amount of borrowing that the community is going to have to do so what I wanted to do really is is kind of bring that topic up again to you this evening um so
as you're thinking about it in deliberations over the budgets um thinking about the operating budget and also thinking about kind of where we are how free cash might be an opportunity to lower the amount of borrowing the community needs to do and that that's what I wanted to share with you all so
thank you for for listen appreciate to that um no I think we're not supposed to respond ack comment if it's not especially if it's not exactly on our agenda it's it's definitely on future agendas so um all right is there anyone else who would like to offer a general comment
[Music] before uh no I don't see Hands on Zoom uh what I was going to say a second ago before um Mark's comment just there is I'm trying to watch Zoom uh if I miss someone with a hand up um some please uh you know feel free to interrupt me um I
will do my best and that I'd like to hand it over to um I can Str and hand it over to Sharon and also Jackie is going to share the budget document on the screen so I'd asked her to prepare that right now so we can have that up but thank you very much um I'm pleased to
present again the FY 26 budget again it's a team effort this year there's the team out there and you'll be hearing hearing largely from them tonight um we were a little bit behind because we did recal and killum last week so there is a chance we'll be able ble to get through
the whole budget tonight depending on how things go if not we'll be here next week to wrap it up um Sharon as usual we'll kick it off she'll talk about the financial forecast revenues spending shared costs capital and debt as usual and then we'll go to each department
we'll go pretty much in order there are a few people I'll take out of order if it makes sense but I'll let you know what pages we're on and we're just going to follow the budget document which um seems to be the most logical way to go um feel free to ask questions of the department heads of me um as they come
up I think most of you have been on fincom a few years now so you know how we've operated these uh budget hearings and I think it's a good way to proceed so so with that um and in the interest of time I will turn it over to Sharon I believe page 11 of the budget document
itself the PDF is a little different but if you look at the budget document itself um that's where we'll start with Sharon's um presentations thank you m so I was just going to briefly go over um the projected revenues um just because we had some changes and I just wanted to
kind of show you kind of where we're at and and I've asked for additional free cash I want to go over where that's coming from so um free cash is listed on here at $6 million you approved 5.8 and I'll get into later why that is um but I
put it at what I'm asking for just because um I didn't have any other place to put to be honest um property taxes look like they're going up only 2% and again I've mentioned this in the past um the excluded debt going away makes things look a little wonky on our budget it
will show up in the property tax line and it will also show up in accommodated cost because debt is an accommodated cost and all our excluded debt is paid off in fisal 25 so fiscal 26 has none so it makes our revenues look a little wonky it also makes our accommodated costs look wonky um our local revenues
now property taxes make up 70% of our overall revenues local revenues are 9% state Aid two is 13% so um I didn't mention local revenues are going up 5.1 state aid 2.5 and transfers are from
other funds 2.2% and our cash is going up 40% which is outrages um unfortunately can you go to page 14 please did you want me to go over the accommodating cost now or yeah if you
you like to might as well yeah so we had over the last few years our budget looks like in the financial forecast that our accommodated costs are well under control and again like I said um the excluded debt falling off in fiscal 24 and fiscal 25 make it look more T the
increases in accommodated costs are more like 6.95% and our revenues only go about three three and a half at most so that's why our our preash uses become much greater um and I feel like nothing has been behaving since you know the last
couple years I feel like you know property casualty has been up 10% and you know we had n natural gas go up 30% and um just not one of these lines will just behave for me so that we can have a normal year and then for the I should
say that but snow and ice have been behaving and this year is not um and so it's it's just one of those things where we can't seem to catch a break we had an 88.3% increase for our retirement assessment the last couple years um and then we just got the bad news of our health insurance going up
13.5% so we were Guided by Maya to plan for a 7 to 10% increase and he said you guys have good numbers so I would say you're probably going to be on the low end of that so how surprised was I when it came in at 13.5
$650,000 higher than my budget so I did have a couple things I could work to get some of that money we always use opep as a hedge for um health insurance coming in higher than expected when we're building our budget we never know health insance insurance at the time we don't know enrollment we don't know what the
increase is going to be and so what we're not mandated to fund OPB so whatever we have in OPB can be potentially used when we have these issues coming up we had a budget of 500,000 for oped for fisal 26 I took it down to 200,000 um just so that we'd be
putting something in but um we could have brought it right down to zero but I I left 200,000 the other thing I had going on in the budget is when we built it in September October um we are planning on the um rubbish line going up
like 12% because one contract leave it's the disposal contract is is expiring and in fiscal 26 we will have a new contract all of our proposals we saw from The Collection side have been any nothing close to favorable so I had a really
conservative 12% number after we had presented those numbers um we had been in talks with the with the contractor and got much more favorable numbers so I brought the number down to a 5% increase even though I it's probably going to be a savings um just to give us a little
buffer um and that took another 150 off at the top so we love go ahead and finish your sentence and Ed I do see Mark um you have a question for me okay so 300,000 came from OPB to help fund
this overage on health insurance and then 150 from the rubbish line because I had it up 12% um and we we have since have we signed that contract with them yet no it's going to the select board next week you be kond new world re re
reor what it's called so the number I had was higher and that helped us in this regard so then I struggled with what do I do to get the additional 200,000 we need to balance because this was a $650,000 problem um and so the only place I thought would be the easiest
place to look for is free cash because then I had to play with revenues I wasn't sure I could you know I was like okay we've been increasing investment Revenue um because we have been getting you know really high numbers there but who knows when that's going to stop and that number is going to start to fall so
I could still do that if you guys are opposed to the free cash use the other option is to take opep down to zero um so you have options before you go on um Mark Saro has a hand raised okay yeah Sharon I got
questions on capital and the debt inside the levy so is the debt inside the levy is that additional debt coming on the debt inside the levy it's it's debt payments that we already you know money that we've already borrowed that we know we have scheduled debt payments
for so it's existing debt it could be um debt that we plan to take out too like I think we have Birch metal Phase 2 is planned for a debt payment in fiscal 26 but we still don't know when we're starting that they're they're trying to figure out what that's going to cost um and so I have a planned debt payment
that doesn't necessarily mean that we will borrow and have a debt payment fiscal 26 but what I would tend to do is if I realize that we wouldn't have a debt payment for that project in fiscal 26 who we haven't borrowed yet um I would I would transition that money to
Capital um because we have that 5% debt or Capital yeah so in I guess my question a so we've got some large Capital outlays that have been approved you know the the phase to we've also got the 3 million for the fil tows and a million for the
trash GES are those in any of these numbers here between capital and debt they they're all planned for yeah they're all in the debt service numbers the the $3 million I moved um we only have an interest payment because we're probably going to ban for that because it's the only project that I'll need
money for in May um and it can't wait they're going to start that project in June I have to borrow for it before they start um and so we'll probably do like a one-year ban and we'll only pay interest and then the debt payments will come in fiscal 27 on that project everything
else is in the place in fiscal 26 okay all right that was my question thanks so everything's included then everything's included yep I do see a slightly larger uh increase in debt inside the levy and FY 27 in your projections here it's for 4% as opposed
to mhm 2 and half or three whatever but when you look at you know you look at our increases accommodated cost looks like it's only going up 3.65 Which is higher than what we usually see three you know 3 3.2% um but it really is more like 6.95
if you eliminated that debt payment from from you know the excluded debt that 1.27 n from the calculation it becomes almost 7% which is really outside of what can be afforded with the revenues that we have and so that's what's driving it is just inflation all over
our budget you know the accommodated cost and everything really um and so I've mentioned it before we're very close to needing the oide it would be you know within the next couple years and so that's um that's why we're using so much free cashes to keep that at Bay
I would like to respond to what Mark said it would be lovely to use free cash towards a project I'd love to see us be able to do that but where we're relying on so much free cash to do the Opera budget I don't think it would be wise because I'd be looking at using you know if you say let's say $5 million if I was
going to use $5 million for a project and then $6 million to fund the operating budget I'm looking at using more than half of our reserves I mean I could jeopardize her Tria blond reading and I don't want to be that not not ahead of one of the biggest barings we've done since I've been here so I
mean I would love to see something like that happen because we do tend to have high reserves but at this point where we're so close to needing an over I don't know that it's the best choice we're we're relying so much on it because of inflation right now I saw Ed Mar uh so
uh maybe kind of taking a set back um and looking at you kind of spent a little bit time talking about the cost side of it um on the revenue side of it um have we seen much um impact like New Growth I know
we've talked about that in the past has you know has that started to level has that um you know um you know I thought there was a you know kind of a healthy spike a few years ago um we were on that trajectory and I know we've kind of banded other revenues
based on investment income in the past but I'm just more Curious you know from again we know full well how the revenue p is and and where we get our revenues from but you know additional growth from the from that segment um just kind of curious you know what what
you've seen what you project um because that's the other side of the of the point yeah I've talked to the assessor about it because it's it's very random um you see that in fiscal 22 we had one point on page 11 $1.6 million of new growth and then fiscal 22 it fell to
900,000 or 916 and in fiscal 25 was down to 693 um it's hard to know we've we've seen some development but is it large enough to give us any substantial New Growth I don't know and so he says try and keep the number as low as you can and then if you get extra then you can
use it for something else so he's telling me to be conservative because he's not entirely sure things any development that is out there will be substantial Enough by the time we go a bill to be picked up on the bill roll so I'm trying to be conservative just to be safe um but I still feel like my number
might be still high even though I'm trying to be conservative I've got 875 which is a 10e average and which is still north of it's still higher than what we had last year so I mean this budget has been challenging at best for the last couple years because inflation
has hit us so incredibly hard I mean you can't have double digit grow on almost everything in your budget and not and not have this problem um you know obviously salaries didn't go up double digits but most of our expenses are pretty intense especially in the commod cost area so it's a hard I think that
we're not alone I think other communities are suffering the same fate I mean and I know I heard a lot about the health insurance and our 13.52 made me want to cry but others had numbers closer to 20% so I mean others have done layoffs as a result of that so I don't
know what to say I am so sorry that my projection was low because we do take advice from Maya and I really believed we've been low I mean our our increase last year was 5 5.65% to jump to 13 and a half I don't know anybody would guess that that would
have been the case there's I don't think there's much you could have done differently as far as projecting that and we take advice from them but a lot of times the advice they they give us is kind of a little late to the game too like as they start to know that it might be worse it's kind of late for us cuz we we really start early we're in September
and October doing our financial forums and building these budgets and so we make adjustments along the way the best we can but this information came way too late um we had no idea it was coming so I apologize for that I know it's very uncomfortable to be put in the spot um I
felt uncomfortable having to bring it to you so so all right thanks job so I think the um the the Q now it's marann Chris on zoom and then Joe so um I'm building a little bit on Ed question about averages because I see that you
have a conservative regeneration focus of 3 million is that the what's been the I know you've told us this in the past and I don't remember the number is that an average amount of regeneration that we have or does it vary no our average of The Last
5 Years regeneration has been about $5.8 million over the last 10 about 5.2 million it's a safe number it's a number that I've seen every year since I've been here at least $3 million I've seen the Regeneration so it's my safe number it's a number that I I've pretty much
seen every single year since I started 13 years ago so it feels like you know this economy has hit our budget hard I I could see regeneration start to come down as well because our revenues might not come in the way they have in the past and so and expenses we may be
turning back Less in expenses be things are costing us more right I mean I see the projected free cash use now is is it's not quite double what it was last year but it's a lot so it's now we were we were always under the Regeneration number and now we're probably going to
be over the Regeneration number for the coming years so that kind of makes the idea of yeah it would be you know I used to think too yeah couldn't we use some of our free cash to help with with a project but I don't know if it would be wise and I don't think save people enough money to make it worth deising
the triple they B yeah I mean if if we thought that that this was a coming more at don't affordable level I don't feel like they're I don't think they're outrageous for the impacts where I could really save them a lot of money by doing that um but I mean if people aren't looking at your budget summary I mean
you're projecting by 29 like you'd need $9 million in free cash and that's excess of the Regeneration and if we have 19 million you know nine goes in twice then then you're out of free gas I mean I will say that last year our regeneration was up over $7 million but
they held almost a million dollars because they if you have a deficit that you don't collect the money by September 30th I think we had a fedal grant I want to say it was for the MVP Grant or something um we spent the money but we hadn't been reimbursed they hold you free cash so that impacted the number
that I quoted you and then what ended up coming out as certified because we didn't get the money at time um so that sort of thing we are see we have been seeing consistently great regeneration numbers but I don't want to count on great regeneration my my final thing would be with the
geopolitical whatever you want to call it right now nothing being conservative is probably the smartest thing for our town right now until we know things settle down I mean we've been having wonderful investment income Revenue because our treasur is doing a great job
locking down really high rates for a long period of time to try and get us that number we can only lock numbers down for a year at most and then we have to deal with the market as it stands at that time when we're trying to get better rates and she she fits the banks against each other and she gets the best
rate she can which I me it's a lot of work to do um and I was hesitant to change the investment income but is a spot where I think it may be okay if you guys are feeling uncomfortable about the free cash but I feel like the free cash is something we know we have the
investment income could go south on us and I wouldn't know it was coming so that's why I asked for the free cash but it's up to you I'll go the direction you guys think if you want me to increase investment income or decrease the opv to zero I'm with that when when do you know
the investment just since you mentioned the investment when do you know when do you know that when do I know what the returns are yeah she's locking in numbers right now we have some money that's locked down for six months and some for a year and um she's she's got I think over 5%
because I'm numers and now she's negotiating around 4 and a half you know so we may have the next 6 months or a year some of this money at four and a half but then in six months the other amount that she's locked down will to whatever we're going to be a slave yeah
we're going to be a slave to like what the market is and it's a lot of work to move this money around she spends a lot of time on the phone and she a lot of conversations and a lot of paperwork to do it we need we've never been so reliant on the investment in so she feels it's absolutely necessary to do
that than sorry about that um uh next up is Chris on Zoom thanks um I guess for me I don't uh I don't see the need for Sharon to be apologizing for really anything at this point these
numbers are you know seesaw from day-to-day Etc and if one projection was um you know a little bit low and compared to what it ends up being I mean so be it um and I would just like to say
that uh Sharon is the only one mentioning the override for a reason none of us and we all know why we're not mentioning it um and I appreciate her uh being on the record and mentioning that it's
coming because we don't want to say that um but it is as she just mentioned once again and the last time I heard it is the last time from Sharon the same thing on the budget the override is coming probably 3 years 2029 Etc um you know I
appreciate you Sharon for telling it how it is is and uh you know that's uh that's my take on all of this thank you Chris one thing I did want to mention that I haven't mentioned in the past when it comes to the debt exclusions just as something to mention the numbers
I quote about what the average um average home would be seen for an impact on their taxes that wouldn't be all at once because we wouldn't take out the whole amount of debt on either project we probably do it in tranches two or three Tres so the taxpayers is not going
to see that full impact in any one year it's going to come on more gradually than that but in order for them to know what the real impact the total impact that's why I give you the total number but I don't know that I entirely made it clear that I don't go out and borrow $88 million for the project and you guys
immediately hit with that huge hit is going to come on as I borrow the money so then uh walk us through then on it's a great point I don't think anyone's mentioned that in the past when would you anticipate that it gets to to that level by the couple years couple years
so we would probably have to borrow right away to to keep things going like you know within six or seven weeks of the the actual boote you probably could get a general obligation bond out there um and then it would be based on our cash flow from our OPM when we would
plan the next borrowing so that cash flow becomes really really important about how often we borrow and when we borrow we have to spend the money within a certain time frame to make sure that we don't Tri any Arbitrage we have to payback excess interest um but I just
felt like I realized I never said that to anybody I gave them here's the total impact but it's not going to come on like okay you guys approve this and next year you're going to see this huge hit it's not going to come on like that it's going to come on as I borrow the money as I have debt service within the next two or three years you'll see it fully
hit um but it will be more gradual than what what I stated thanks thanks for that clarification that's awesome I know Joe had a hand up just just quickly Sharon um for to Prior questions but like the new growth right I I agree it is an estimate and you're trying to work
what you have um but like 20 20,22 is definitely like an outlier and ex skews that average so in I'm not it's like much now I'm not aware of like big major projects coming last year we only had 693 and
we're protecting 875 so we're definitely probably going to have a shortage there right yeah and if I do have shortage I'll know it in November and then I will adjust accordingly so like that investment income would be where I put that additional need or something like that but actually I don't know if I could at that point but we would we
would might need even more free cash for that if that were the case but it was so low in in 25 I thought it was going to go back up a little we did have some stuff going on that has been since completed that I don't believe was on the rooll for fisal 25 so so could roll
I'm hopeful it's you know it's all over the place so the only thing I could do was kind of take an average because it's not consistent by any stretch of the imagination you hit a high at 1.6 and all of a sudden it drops off to 900,000 like we don't have a lot of new growth in general compared to other communities
we don't have a lot of buildable space so you know it's hard to it's hard to know where this number is going to land and until the assessor locks it down he couldn't even give me an estimate when I asked him he just said just try and keep the num as low as you can cuz you just don't know you know it's just it's one
of those markets but what I did say was like I do see a lot of Permitting Revenue coming in which makes me think people are pulling permits to build so that's kind of part of what I base it on is what am I seeing coming in in permitting Revenue are are there things going on that I I can expect might help
us with and um you kind of answered this about the investment income like do you have like a run rate like where we are like actual like to date like as of February or like how are we with our projections I think we're we're over the
projection already as of February I think we're over by 900,000 last year it came in about $4 million and I expect we might be very close to that because she locked down this year's number at over 5% on all the money that she locked down so I think
that we'll easily get the 4 million but fiscal 26 is so far in the future that's where I get a little nervous like what if when when these things come do when she's looking to lock down an interest rate to get to secure investment earnings for us and then the rates are much lower that's where I get a little pH but
you're assuming what like the your free cash that's budgeted that 4 and a half and then 5% at that is that basically yeah I mean so some of this this money that's maturing this week she's been working on and she's getting rates that she can
secure four and a half some of them are coming in at 3.6 but she's got secured some four and a half okay um so that's not significantly lower but lower than what we had locked in this year so it is on the decline let's just hope we can keep a fair
amount we can't play interest rates and go out a year because we have we might need to we have a higher Reliance on it than we've ever had since I've been here and so we feel that and that's why we're making sure that we're trying to lock in the best possible interest rate for the money that we have opening in bank
accounts okay thanks looking around for other questions you got a bunch right there and we actually right I mean there was there was an implicit question posed to the committee about how the committee feels about uh using more free cash than we
voted to recommend in the fall which is that's a new experience for me this never happened to me either okay you got a lot more experience than I do so um it's not usual for us I mean I'll make an observation that
that all the things you talked about as alternatives to using 200,000 for free cash are generally areas where we see regeneration so there's a little bit of I you know six of one half a does of another because we can either take 200,000 of free cash and get 200,000 more
regeneration or we could not I think I prob de down to when I was looking at investment income or free cash I'm like I know I have the free cash I don't really know about investment income for the future I'm guessing that will happen because we're collecting at $4 million and my projections like 2.2 I figured an
extra 200,000 probably still could get there but you just don't know you know like we don't know what's coming is there a recession coming or interest rates going to come you know barreling down like it's hard to know what the future holds and we're doing this so far in advance of what I can lock down for
interest rates that it's hard to so are we are we questioning about whether we're okay with going higher is that I mean I guess we're going to when we vote on the budget we're going to as a commit you know be expressing our opinion on that so I just figured I'd give you some
options you can express whatever you want to do you don't have to decide now I just figured I would mention some of the options I thought about when this came up so that you're informed can I I know this is two different fiscal years but I'm just mentioning this because I
saw this in my newspaper on the way out the headline of the chronicle said school officials projecting a 242k budget surplus for fy2 so I don't know if that's money that they're putting into their they'll probably put it in the put special so what they've been doing the last few
years is putting any extra money they have into this and so my my question is if there are I I don't know how things work between the town Min and the superintendent but if there are extraordinary circumstances and where accommodated costs do impact the great
majority of the town the municipal staff or School Employees would the schools ever say we have the flexibility instead no we will give this back to the town because next year they're going to need that money that's definitely a conversation that we should be having with the
superintendent I had no I know just when I saw the headline today I saw oh gee that's close to what we need you know I did see that as well it's not too dissimilar to what we did for on the other side to pay for um kindergarten
right Community priorities yeah so there where it's this particular expense impacts mostly School Employees arguably right I don't know more School Employees than they have to I mean what percent of all the Municipal Employees what percent of the schools and what percent of the town I don't know that off the top of my head but I would say it's more school
than town but it is in the budget this year which I really I'm not sure if we've always had that but we had FTE numbers in the budget which I appreciate it you have FTE on the town side but I don't know the the schools the school did have FTE I just don't FTE don't mean people cuz FTE could be a teacher Works
3 time a one quarter time but yet they still get benefits if they work at least 20 hours so they're on the accommodated costs anyway they're benefiting from us scrambling around so so it definitely some conversation we should have because I don't think they even need feedback
from us to decide to put it into the SP stabilization so if they are looking at a surplus we should have a conversation because our high Reliance on free cash means that we need High regeneration numbers to you know put off human and the schools also you know
we've given them some good growth numbers above what we typically support so they could add a lot of Staff in a few years and reach a a nice steady state okay well a little pushy about it but I think we should ask I'm glad that you mentioned it because I didn't see that article they haven't reached out to
me yet so I don't know that they have Serv this projected so that's good to know good information thank thank the chronicle looking around for others no I think we're actually going to let you continue okay page two so do
you want me to go over page 19 where we talk about our shared cost or do you want me to go over the accommodated cost using the financial forecast because it actually will have maybe that's what I'll do um Jackie can you scroll down to the more detailed Pages I'm looking at
page 16 probably is a comor let me just look and see I kind of scroll past if so it is 14 has a more summarized view 16 yes page 16 the record show Jo was
right so I just want to highlight to you some of the areas that are driving some serious change for us um in our budget um first off in vocational schools wow that's really small can you that um vocational schools are up 18.6% because
because our um our Capital payment towards their new school went from 160 to like 330 um between fiscal 25 and 26 and the way that they do The Debt Service it's based on how many students we have over there so our proat a share so it's kind
of hard every year that could fluctuate so that went up to 339 I think it was um so that 18.6% that hurt um the added District special ed is up 4.6% which that's not a small number either contributary retirement 8.3 um I
do have some play in that um we are having a valuation at the Retirement Board I'm a board member um and they do um an actuary valuation every two years and a a new funding schedule's adopted so now that we're having such tight budgets I could say we can't do 8.3 you
need to bring the number down it might push out our funding schedule longer but it might take away some of the hurt so I can maybe impact that one line um but the the board has to agree with me that the board members um and then of course our 13.6% for
health insurance not a not not a healthy number for us it's not a good number for us um anything else casual Property and Casualty I've at 2 and a half% because the last couple years it's been 10% let's hope I'm not wrong because I had to balance somewhere
um and rubbish you can see that I brought that down from 12% to 5% that's where I got that 150,000 we leave snow and ice at the 675 because what whenever you go to a level you can never go down so you can't say Okay 700 and then next year do 675 so we
always fund it at like a baseline level and if we need extra funding we do that at a subsequent town meeting so we kept that at 675 because right now we can't afford to bring it up to right now um and state assessments up 2 and a half% other than that the shared cost is
kind of the same it's the accommodated cost but it's this it's the accommodated costs that aren't built into budgets departmental budgets it's benefits Capital debt income reserves and Vocational but I kind of already went over all of that so any questions about any of
this just quickly why is electricity going up sorry M it's probably because our run rate is we might have a little bit of surplus in there and I felt like that's a line item that we've been seeing a little extra money in there at the endend of the year so I felt like we could go with the zero and still have
enough okay let's hope I'm not wrong can I just go go going back to the topic I brought up now that I finally read the article instead of just the headline that 242 is going back to the town and they are still putting 300 in their um stabilization fund so Joy some
good news for you yes that's why I wanted to up sorry that's awesome news that is a that is a worthy Interruption thank you worthy absolutely worthy thank you zoom in the going through it I know I guess so we're GNA go with that it's all quoting Phil Philip little haill who
seems is impressed me with his Precision so [Music] right the only comment I'll offer is is just the observation that it's not just the percentages it's the percentage of what and the third the the you know the only
eight-digit number in the accommodated costs is the health insurance and that's the one that's up % that one hurt so bad I had it up 8 and half% and it was another 650,000 I'm trying to do the math on the Fly not quite but that's looks like you know more more damage
than all the other stuff put together um unmanageable is what I'll call it all of it but we're not alone I feel like did I do why is this happening doesn't make it better that doesn't make it better that's that's say
yeah here in other towns are unhappy does not make me happy but all right looking at Shar should looking at Mt yeah you all set I'm all set great okay so we can start moving into the Departments then and talk about their
butd um so the first Department up is Administrative Services that's led by the assistant Town manager Jan Wellman who will come up and right after administrative Services which is on page 26 of your budget we'll move to to page 38 of your budget which is public
services also U managed by Jane Wellman and then we'll move to technology so a little bit out of order but I think that makes sense so um so I will turn it over to Jane page 26 thank you Matt I'm going to um do a little intro uh on both of
the Departments my department and then um take any questions so foremost for FY 26 my department is delivering a level Services budget working closely with the manager and the CFO we have done our best to trim the budget where we can and work creatively and cooperatively with
other departments to achieve savings while continuing to provide excellent Services across all divisions to our residents our our businesses and our fellow colleagues um some notable highlights in elections uh the budget is reduced as there will only be one election in FY 26 uh the annual Town
election it may cost a little bit more than usual should we plan to put in Charter changes because we have to mail the charter to every household every voter household um and so that would drive up the postage cost and operations it's not currently budgeted um vote by mail I
also want to note has increased postage costs associated with elections in recent years and we anticipate that this will continue um however with only one election in FY 26 we will um still achieve savings over fy2 where our staff survived five elections um including the
presidential election in 2024 uh Property and Casualty Insurance as you just heard um had has seen higher increases in the past but it's m since we have maintained excellent loss ratios over the last three years our increased this year is about
2.5% um as we upgrade our Fleet and um we see regulatory uh inflationary pressures drive increases to cover replacement values for our property that's why you see those costs go up um we have an excellent award-winning Safety Committee that helps to keep our
cost low and um we earn grants annually through a rigorous training program across all departments including cluding rmld uh last year we used our Meer Grant to secure radio headsets for our forestry division which came in really valuable in the recent wind storms uh that down trees across our region um you
may note that we have a new um halftime part-time position in public services this is a new position that was previously supported by arpa funds um it is the volunteer coordinator and the Elder and Human Services Division by combining the duties of a nurse Advocate and the public health nurse roles under
the health department we were able to retain two full-time positions in community services that were partially funded by arpa and help fund this part-time volunteer coordinator position these positions have been in place for over a year and have all brought significant value to our Recreation and Elder and Human Services
divisions uh Community Development operations and HR all remain at static Staffing levels with the first two divisions seeing some savings from Staffing turnover we continue to pursue grants to help find work we do to support Community initiatives including
um the next uh Walker Brook uh massw Works Grant which uh we recently received uh we awarded rather um projects this department has continued to work on in the last year include uh but are not limited to the green communities designation and NBTA
communities the kilum school building project the reading Center for active living project climate week the Eastern Gateway initiative arts and culture Grant um MVP 2.0 Birch meow Phase 2 project and more okay that's what I have
so you can open up to questions on those departments not quick question you mentioned multiple grants all state funded grants so I love that you asked that question because we are on the same we we're sharing a brain Emily um no I asked the
same question of my staff this morning I'm like where are we at with our exposure since we have this uncertainty at the federal level we do receive funding from eoa for our Elder and Human Services uh formula grant um I looked at
the funding for that this week and Sharon may know more about how that's funded but it's in the general appropriation from the state I would not be surprised if there's Federal funding you know that backs that up that we received but which one is that the Elder and Human Services formula grant that we
get every I know you're saying you think there's a federal compl I don't know if there's a federal compl from the state it does come from the state it does yeah I don't know that if it's a pass through I still have to show it as a federal and I show it as a state let's hope it's I think it's stand alone there's no
concern and we've reached out um our staff have been reaching out through to their colleagues as well at the state level because like for instance we just saw that Federal funding from the USDA for cafeteria grants for Farm you know programs um across the state is being
limited so that's $12 million in the state so that's not in this department um most of our grants are local we are still waiting for um the mlet SS Morgan uh $2 million Grant to come in and so um
that that's yeah so I checked on that this morning and I have a some phone calls to our um our Congressman please get them I'm I know I every day I wake up where is it so uh yeah no that there's there so there's some we are we
are fully qualified for that Grant that's that work is done the the paperwork is there we're trying to see why we haven't been paid that that yet so um we continue to we will continue to put pressure on our Congressman
so yes um Jane thanks for this awesome um again thank you for uh you and the staff for all all of your help for everything um that you do um question I have is on on Staffing um are you at like I know what's in the budget budget
but from actual fulfillment of open all positions we are fully staffed staffed we are fully staffed for the first time in a while and it is it is great and and folks AR mov we we do have we had one uh opening recently that's opened up in um
uh public services but we we'll put that out um for hiring so thank you okay a comment so your budget is going down 7% yes fantastic but it's a level Services
fantastic Sharon is Sharon is very good but it's s but really that's elections I mean it's really elections elections is down because she had five last year and our staff have you know that was uh two ballots in one election right I may not
may not remember going to the bill the the polls four five times but it's a it's a tremendous matter of work but that's that the postage it really is something that we carry and so when we have another big election year you will see those
cost man just further to elections and thinking about okay so we we do have the um special election in May and potentially if some of that doesn't come out the way they want within 90 days they could have another election how
much extra would having another one cost like say killum for the msba money right so it's the the question is if um the debt exclusion for kilum did not pass at the first fite of the apple and it was to be brought back and just for information purposes the project and the
boote would have to be brought back for the same money in the same Pro and it's actually in two different fiscal years kind of right because one's in May and be afterwards one the election yeah then if there was another election it would probably roll into the next fiscal year so I will ask our yeah much it cost to
run one of those what's an election cost so whether or not it's in the next speci year it totally depends on how fast they get the the second election going um they have to give me 35 days so if it's on May 13th and they decide to have another one it could be in June okay but
what's it cost but um the typical cost of an election is about $40,000 between 40 and 50,000 depending on how much um vote by mail we have vot by when I first started this an election was
$20,000 now it's more like 40 to 50 thank you that and everything else um uh actually just a a question about election about um so we have two projects which we're voting on De exclusions is that going to be conducted as one local election correct okay one
okay so right so most there could be well actually I guess there could be two redos because they wouldn't necessarily be redoing at the same time if they both were be doing but let's cross that bridge if we ever come to it I just to the the kilum school project I think has
a tight there tight there are tight restrictions on how that can be red recal could just come back and come back at the same time as a fall primary they're not dependent on it's 180 days for killing so there's some
Runway there yeah so so Ed uh just a quick thing on you mentioned by mail if if if there was so if we do we bear the whole brunt say it's postage stamps go up does that we don't get anything there's no like bul rate or Al
break that we get as it relates to that so like if if stamps go up you know five cents whatever it is um we cannot do it as bu we have to um do it as the the flat rate however I
tend to purchase the forever stamps knowing that there's an election coming just in case the rates go up with that said I will also state that we do get reimbursed for some of the vote by mail postage costs from the state from the state okay thank
you than very much appreciate it that is definitely how we call here all right other any other comments or questions for Jane all right thank you very much thank you very much J thanks Jane so we can move on to technology that department is
led by Kevin fella who's here tonight and we can start on page 36 thank you for knowing we need Pages six of the budget hi so I'm Kevin farella uh CTO for the town uh I guess
just to jump right into the numbers my numbers are not as great as James were um overall budget increase is 88.1% and um with two exceptions we were
held to the guidance that fincom gave us and we had 3.2% increase but there are two exceptions that that change this so um one change is a $5,000 increase for
print services that we've just changed the vendor we've changed our approach to it um to offset that there's a $5,000 reduction in the police department's budget so overall that's that's not so sad um but we do have a townwide
security system access control and video surveillance system that town and school buildings leverage uh that system was implemented three years ago was finalized three years ago and the licensing licensing that it came with is
expiring this fall and so that is that is what throws my budget out of whack that's a $54,000 increase or $54,000 um ad that didn't have a line before
um and I can go into the specifics of how the expenses are broken up but just at a high level um about 400 492,000 of it is software it's licensing it's
subscriptions it's cloud-based services those types of things and we have 117,000 that is for our communication cost whether that's cellular devices or
uh internet connections those types of things then we have 95,000 for Hardware power supplies is some Network equipment and 55,000 for Outsource Services things that we're just not equipped to do uh repairs to our fiber optic Network for
instance uh that's about 7 or 16,000 um so having said all that I have the detail of all the accounts that I just briefly touched upon do you have any
questions for me about specifics or Joe um yeah I think on the security software so are we lcking in three more years at the 54,000 or is that we are yes okay but we'll take the hit in like
next fiscal year that's where we handle it so yeah and we talked to the vendor about the costs ass if we had just done year to year and I want to say it was about 30% yeah 30% 30% more and so the
and we don't typically I I think we'd have to go to town meeting for anything over three years so that's why the three years was was picked okay and I'm assuming now like the switching cost of going with something else like it's everyone's happy with the software so
far oh it would be a heavy LIF to to change to a different solution for sure okay thanks just a follow up on question the uh 54 you mentioned something it was related to school St just just that the system
supports supports to and school buildings and what's the usage percentage how much is used by the between the two uh it's greater percentage at the schools for for sure but uh the town buildings do I mean
police um police like cameras in the cells um you know there there are it's not just a small amount of town buildings but there's more schools there's more cameras at the schools so uh the majority I don't know the percentage off the top of my head but
certainly much more at the schools the school has no budget for this they don't pay anything for this to just m yor more um I'd say for the software charges true yeah they they don't not yeah they're not paying for
the licensing this is to by licensing we're looking um why are you having such a reduction in technology overtime it seems atypical compared to your usage of the other years which were around 18 to 20K and even last year and now you
you're you're forecasting it dropping to 13 so what what why did you plan that it would be so much lower in FY 26 I guess it fluctuates based on the projects that we have
um and we just had a pretty decent size it it seems like every year I'm like oh we've got a new effort that we need to take on and last year was an effort to move to um Microsoft 365 licensing so
there was a there was an increase we don't have those types of projects coming up this year and so that's but just the pessimistic side of me always feels like I discover some new challenge next year and we're we're back
asking you know in pendent but right now there is nothing that would warrant um okay I didn't know whether you know I saw the intern line for this year and I said oh maybe hiring an intern means you don't need as much overtime for something else yeah that certainly
helped out a lot um to you know some of the tasks are you know a little bit more repetitive routine things that um having interns has really been uh helpful for so are these college students that are
interns or high school students or College college okay thank you um on the part supplies and other so the actual for 24 was 14,000 18,000 sorry so and then you
projecting for FY 26 um 45k why is it such a high uh swing there for that line and so for you have a specific account number you're the under the
parts and equipments it's parts supplies and other Jackie's following and it's actually using her Mouse to highlight the lineing question under under the Parts and Equipment section the line for part other and that's okay I think you
mentioned the printer was in there the printing was in there right no that's been um was that somewhere else is [Music] that my my accounts are broken down much more
it sounds like that's where that would fall I think it's I think it's where the pr so I think that the police department used to buy their own and you're bringing it all into a cont yeah another thing that we did this year though is we positioned things in
accounts that were more appropriate so uh historically we had paid for something um out of an account that we corrected this year so if you see a category go up by 15% there's probably something else that offsets it
uh and so I I I shuffle things around between different accounts these descriptions here aren't the accounts they're a little bit more Bank more summarized yeah the that matches the in the in the budget summary Pros um it
says you know another note where the expense related increase is in the accounts that comprise parts and supplies so I assume it's that line uh there was an increase of 5K due to a change in out pror supplies services are handled across departments so I think we're talking about the same thing you Police
Department know they're going to have a reduction that's the L yeah I think just I get the impression that you have a lot of accounts and then Sharon groups them so that it's it's only a page long for us that we would
show you all the lines and it just too much especially facili facilities has the same accounts for all the different building things it was just too much and so we summarized them to make it a little easier to look at yes anded uh Kevin I just on uh your
side um your full staff or any openings no openings full staff thank you Joe actually just question like do we have enough in here to generally cover like Disaster Recovery frequent backups like do you think it's adequate
enough or oh definitely yeah yeah Okay and like that will all just be kind of embedded into real software numbers I guess and operations yeah and that too is spread out among a few different accounts because we do have a hardware component to some of that uh we do have
some cloudbased uh storage or there's some Cloud components to our solution or Solutions but um I feel pretty confident about that part of do we do like daily or weekly backups
or how frequent is it um so we have just an array of um job types that run some things like our financial platform are backed up on a much more regular basis than some of
the more uh stagnant storage um and then from there we have a retention cycle that you know for for Sharon stuff because she's so important uh I make sure that were able to go back a decent
um you know far back into the past uh some of the other storage isn't as necessary so between the backup schedule and the retention cycle it's sort of a balancing job because we can't have everything backed up all the time and
kept forever yeah this costs do yeah exactly okay great yeah [Music] thanks I don't see any other hands so thank you very much Kevin thanks Kevin Kevin see you so next we can move on to
Public Safety which begins on page uh 56 start with public health our director here ad salarin then we'll go to Fire EMS police Coalition and dispatch which is all part of the sa Public Safety budget so we'll
St good evening my name is AD Health director for the town of Ren our budget is um pretty straightforward um if you look at the chart the bottom half is the expenses budget and the top half is the salaries
budget so looking at the bottom the expenses budget we are proposing a $2,000 increase to the mosquito control line item so we're going for from 46,000 to 48,000 and we also proposing a $11,000
decrease to the professional development line item um and you can see where it says help other uh that's part of you know that's part of it so we're decreasing it by $1,000 and then if you go to the top
half um we are proposing a $27,900 increase to the salaries budget um and this will reflect projected salaries scheduled step increases and cost of living
adjustments about $112,000 out of the 27,900 will be a direct transfer from the community services department to the health department budget um and this would cover the salary for the public health um nurse
position so at at this point fy2 the salary for the public health nurse position is currently um we pay about 77,000 and Community Services pays about
12,000 so pretty much we're explaining it but in FY 26 uh it will be paid fully by the health department so if you look at the budget in its uh entirety we are proposing a $1,000 net increase in the expenses
budget and a $27,000 9 $27,900 net increase in the salaries budget leaving us with with a total net budget increase of 6.3% in the amount of $28,900 just I want to just understand
you were explaining that the public salaries nurse salary really isn't going up that by that much you're just taking on a bigger share of it correct okay so we're getting the balance from the community going in a few
years so percentage is a little bit um artificially inflated if you look at it right that's okay that's a good explanation thank you Ed Staffing on your side is it full full we're fullly
staff our predicting that question your uh support staff line is down slightly from last year before is that staff turnover here recable Heth
yeah correct so that was the uh original salary for the health nurse and we tried for over a year to hire somebody and we couldn't find anybody and then we came up with a brilliant idea to merge positions with the Nur Advocate position
that was um open at the community services department and um yeah it worked out pretty well I think this is the support staff add I think the question was about the line the line the salary line that went
down which is lower am your ad ad oh okay yes it uh went down um because uh we had um an employeer that was in the position for
over 2 years and um we rehired for that position and um we were able to get a a better deal we this like right yeah turnover happens all right
other questions I don't see any on Zoom either so uh thank you very much a thank you okay so page 60 is where the prior EMS budget is so chief
chief and ass Chiefs me fire chief introduce uh Rick Nelson our assistant fire chief Rick uh was heavily involved in reparing the budget and I'd like to have him present the budget uh to you tonight uh obviously any
questions for me or rck we here thank you a lot of pressure those are really big shoes ex are giant shoes last chance I was say this is the last chance uh Chief bur this is the last chance you're going to be coming before a fire chief
right soft Landing by doing doing it this way please take it away all right thank you all uh for those that have my name is Rick nice to meet you all T night um just real quick I'm going to just review a little bit uh I'll go right through what's in the budget book uh just hit some high points so just just as a
reminder uh you know we we conduct four major services for the town fire suppression fire prevention emergency medical system which is at the advanced life support level and uh Emergency Management so uh managing our Emergency Management plan and and writing FEMA
grants for major disasters um then I'll jump down to the grants they're going to catch up on way way off of Grants So currently we have um a number of grants in play we have two grants for a safe program both safe and Senior safe and these are the the grants that allow us to go out to the schools and do fire
safety with the kids and the senior safe allows our firefighters into actually the homes of Elders and help support them uh with some of their needs uh such as fall prevention smoke detect replacement things like that um we do currently have um a grant for fir Fire
Equipment about $119,000 um we typically have been using this grant to help supplement our expense budget um so we wrote this grant uh for the most part to help cover uh expense budget items such as personal protective gear um so that's for the most part we're going to be using for
that uh we do do use a little bit of it to purchase some new equipment that we would not normally be able to purchase um the $6,500 Emergency Management Grant um this grant we're going to be able to use this grant to provide um some training to the supervisors Public Safety that is going
to revolve around um active shooter events Asher events uh to help prepare our supervisors for these type of events and uh a real exciting grant that we got was we got a $93,000 grant um f uh assistant to five Fighters Grant and this is going to be rolled out to allow
us to do um instant command training so management of of of um of instant scenes and it does require uh an 8,456 match that's a 10% match is how this grant works and we'll Circle back on that in just a little bit um this
one's really important to us we recently promoted uh many new offices we we had the four new lieutenants added a couple years ago we've had some retirements so we got a number of really new officers and uh you it's really critical that we set them off a success so so they're successful during these emergency uh
scenes and um part of the success it really depends on the proper use and efficient use of incident command um and then on top of that our Target hazards have changed you know bedroom community the reading has always been the one two bedroom um houses now we have a lot of these multif family dwellings in town in
our world that makes a real change and what our tactics and and our strategies are going to be and how to how to organize things um so this program is going to focus on command and control our tactical decision-making uh the goal of this is going to be to improve and standardize how we do that it's going to
bring us in alignment with both um OSHA standards and NFPA which is the National Fire Protection Association standards to get us in line with that and uh this training ultimately what it will do is increase the life safety for both um our residents our visitors and our fire firus uh so it's really important
training that we're very excited to and we just actually we're going to be kicking that off next week so it's a really exciting time for us um as we go down a little bit farther I'm just going to make two Corrections in the narrative was was off we we have a mistake there um the overall increase is 2.7% instead
of 2.4% it is in the charts correct below when you see that um the expense budget of 88.4% that is correct and the wages is um is 2.5 2.5% instead of the 2.2 um at this time we have 52 full-time
positions uh this number has not changed we're not asking for any increase in in Personnel this year um we do we are currently down down in positions I'll get ahead of you question um so we're ultimately for fy2 we're going to be
down five positions uh yeah and four four firefighters have retired and we one firefighter trans transfer out to another department so we we are down um you know and just a note it's it's become tricky to fill these position it takes a real long time to get them in
the the pool that we pick from is a smaller pool than it has been in the past so that makes a little tricky and then and then once we get them picked it's it's a long it's a long lead time to get him into the academy uh we we did a job offer about a month and a half ago and he won't even sto in the academy
until July so it's it takes a long time to get people in unfortunately um all right let's break down into the first chart um so we looked at the first at at the salary part of this chart right here and we look at the top four spots that that's our administrat side non-union um
all of those changes there are du the increases cold increases in the paying classification chart um you can take note that we do have a marginal savings uh with the change in the chief position um with a long 10e Chief going to a new Chief that's a little bit of savings
there um we get down into the union union part of it all of those increases are all due to the collective bargaining agreement and then as far as the overtime budget uh just to just to say it out loud we really hope to kind of increase this this uh this this part of
the budget this year uh for two main reasons one um salary increases overtime rates go up that that needs to increase to kind of go along with that um but also to note uh at the end of the current CBA uh which is going to be July uh
2027 um the fire Venture Position will no longer be counted towards shift strength that will require us to hire more openings which will increase our overtime budget um so we were hoping to kind of Step Up into that as we go along so we'll be look looking at that next
budget year um okay drop into the last chart here and TR to wrap this thing up um so real quick real quick I'm going to use the term fixed uh fixed items what just to Define that real quick those are uh
the line items that are required payments so when you look at this if you look at uh the billing services and we're going to circle back on that one the billing services the supplies and our our service fees um our fire dues and memberships and then the uniform
line a lot of that the majority of that is uh what's uh paid for by or guaranteed by the CBA so something we have to have available and these are costs that we we have to pay it has to do whether it's our controlled narcotics licensing or ambulance licensing or uh
some service contracts of some of our defibrillators and items like that um so our FY 25 expense budget was about $211,000 out of that the fixed cost is about $177,000 so really we only had about
$34,000 to cover a lot of our operating costs and that includes things like purchasing new new equipment repairing equipment apparatus M uh maintenance and then importantly to outfit our new firefighter as I just mentioned we were down some it's about $99,000 per new
hire between personal protective gear and uniforms to outfit our new firefighters so do the math there it's tough math um um and then you know as we go down as we go down through this a little bit um as far as the billing as
far as our increases we'll talk about the increases now so Billing Services you see we're asking for a $2,000 increase so billing services that is uh when we when we transport by ambulance uh there's a third party then bills that then the revenue is whatever they
collect in Revenue we then pay 4% of that uh as far as the service fee for for what the work they do um the $37,000 of the fy2 budget that covers $925,000 worth of Revenue if you look at the
numbers our Revenue numbers in 20 uh 23 was $984,000 so higher in 2024 was 950,000 so we're trending above that number so what happens is is now we're overspending the money that's allotted in that account so it comes out of other
parts of the the expense budget so we're looking to increase that to go along with what we're actually making as far as Revenue uh collections our uh equipment maintenance line we're looking for an increase in that um that's we've heard it already tonight you're going to hear more of it material costs surface
increases we're just trying to keep up with it um and then as far as the professional development line that's a that again that's been grouped that's been grouped a little bit from a couple different of our categories um so we'll look at $8,000 increase with that so so
for FY 26 that $88,000 increase is to pay that $845 match for the grant that's we're looking for that money there and then beyond that um we have some uh some some gaps we've really been trying to solve here for professional development in
particular fire prevention and our EMS Department um these are getting increasingly more complex more challenges more equipment uh you know the EMS Field the medical field is constantly doing studies and coming with scientific changes and to provide the high quality service doing now and to
make sure we're on The Cutting Edge and always giv the best we need our people you know constantly being trained so that money is going to help fill fill that Gap moving moving forward and then the last line and to wrap this whole thing up and looking forward to taking any questions you have on the uniforms
and clothing um we are looking for an increase in that uh we had we do have some contractual obligations and some the ocean requirements are changing so there's going to be some changes to what we need to provide our our firefighters um again more expensive cost everything
is going up and in particular they're going to be rolling out you may have heard in the news the past as far as the past free gear um that's coming that's coming real soon when that comes we've been told by the manufacturers that's going to come with an increased cost and
it's going to be mandated so yeah exactly and um you know and then and then of course we're hiring we're down some people Ed and as we mentioned and we're going to be hiring more people so we're looking for a cost to help offset some some of that so that that is a description so I would love to hear any
questions you have Emily Ed likes to ask about Staffing I like to ask about grants um thinking about the FEMA Grant where does that said have you already been awarded is the fund are the funds in hand um you know just knowing the current Administration has casually
mentioned on Twitter or X whatever it is now that he may dissolve FEMA you know just want to make sure that if that's a thing you really want to do that that money is close in hand awarded so it's so it's been awarded yes uh is a reimbursement Grant so we spend the
money and then get get the reimbursement afterwards is how that Grant works so if that if that goes away is this still a program you intend to implement so all right that's a great question so we're the first step right now with implementing is is is going to cost we
spend $10,000 that Grant and get our reimbursement on that soon we're in that process right now the remainder of it the program is not going to happen until October middle of October so if between now and then it all blows up well we may
have to go to plan X okay so yep great and um I think that was it and with thanks to Chief Burns for many years of service it's been a pleasure great job on your first one so actually I'm following up it's kind of the same question but but this this FEMA class is
this something that you get the grant money and you do it here or are you going to the FEMA Academy that I this ABC News March 8th article says which I did read not just a headline FEMA
cancels classes at National Fire Training Academy amid federal budget fing cut so is this something different or is this the same thing where you would go and get the training that's a great question yeah now the NFA that's something different I've been myself it's a great program no this is uh we we
put it out to bid we got some bids an outside vendors coming in so this is the cover vendor cost overtime cost and some expenses of of running the program and that is it'll be done in town actually uh John uh look at your overtime budget line for the 20 2023 and
24 actuals it seems like the range is kind of there a big range in that amount is that the budgets for 25 and 26 is that kind of trying to get an estimate for where that's going to come in it could be higher or lower let's ask it one more time John uh there's a big
range on the overtime budget overtime actuals for 2023 oh yeah $100,000 difference so like is that just I understand that like over time it's hard to predict and it could be a lot more than you thought or a lot less is that the 2025 and 2026 numbers you would would you kind of imagine that the
actuals would come in within that range like that could be 50 more could be 50 less yeah is that range kind of an expected range or some those unexpectedly higher low well you so we're doing a lot of projecting looking looking at the FY 2025 budget where we
are and uh with the openings that we have um we are we are looking at a bit of a deficit deficit on this one so um we don't know where it's going to fall the good news is we just did some more looks like it's trending better than we originally thought so that's that's
that's some good news but yeah to answer your question it's it's it does fluctuate this year is a little tough because we had number openings cycl we are asking for money for the fire department of April Town 25 so they definitely are seeing it
trending closer to on your uh performance key performance data at the top those like total emergency responses is it seems like for these three is kind of more or less flat is that the long-term Trend that you're seeing or
would you say are they up or they down long term yeah so so if you look at the last three years it's it's pretty level if we go back to 2019 or you can go back 10 years we've really had a an increase in in the numbers so the short term looks like
that with with the all the developments coming in town and the increased um we're anticipating that we're going to we're going to see more more people and more smalles you would imagine 10 years from now that number is going to be higher more if if more likely to be higher than to be kind of on that yeah
if the population density keeps increasing then I think it's very safe to to assume that we're going to see that number increase yeah absolutely yeah if you look at the 10 year is it's a clear trend line uh wait I think I said andry and then Joe um so on the fire inspection
and the the UHS issue there is a decline trending on those what's causing that uh that Trend that it's going down on the fire inspection is a permit issue uh to be to perfectly honest some of that was just record keeping uh the it wasn't as
accurate as I would like to have seen it uh I think you're going to see a nice increase this year to back to where it was uh but some of that we just can't control because some of that we have we have you know there's a lot of a lot of projects in town so like for instance when uh postmart was was being built um
that building required it was one project but a lot of inspections whereas if someone's doing addition on a house they may only get one or two inspections so a lot of that is also dictated by the type of projects we have going on Town it can so that can really fluctuate that you know when I was doing five
prevention that eight postmark I probably had 120 Inspections just in that one building so that fire inspection line has nothing to do with the engine is the town on the engine the uh software that collects information from vendors and
give it to the fire department the compliance engine the compliance engine yes yeah no that that that that program so we's talking about this this program called the compliance engine uh what happens is the vendors when they do a fire inspection on a farm panel or
sprinkler they upload a record of what they did and in that they then indicate there Z deficiencies and that software filled a gap for us our Gap was we couldn't monitor all of these different systems so that what that does is fill that Gap and alerts our fire prevention
office and matter of fact we just had a couple good ones the last couple weeks to go out and follow up to make sure they're doing the right inspections this number is actually recorded physical inspections that our inspectors go out and do so whether they're doing a smoke inspection or fire prevention inspection
or sprinkler inspection that's what that number captions Jo I know you hand up but I want to follow up that so I mean my my assumption and I think this is what you said but I want to make sure I understood is that the inspections generally go along with construction and
so you know much like the new growth numbers that were high and then went down um it seems like there's a similar trajectory you know in both cases we just like oh well someday interest rates will go down and there'll be a lot of building um but we don't actually we can't predict that is that it is
connected to construction am I 100% so so bilding of Main in Washington 459 Main should you be able that's going to require a number of inspections because there's a lot of steps in a big building like that so that will drive the numbers physically up it's all the same permit and actually that those permits for
those buildings are actually building permits so that wouldn't even be reflect our inspection numbers would be reflected but our permit fees it doesn't affect the permit fees yeah just quickly if I um can you remind me how the ambulance like Revenue works so is that you're saying like is the ambulance services like that
28,000 is that money that we're like we're not breaking even on or that we're making up the difference the Amal Services line like 20 just flip down to get the same place you are yeah so he said like okay so so so the Billings okay so when you look at the that that
chart the third line down Billing Services y that in particular that is the that is the line that's tied to revenue collection so that's the that's the one that reflects our 100% fee on what we collect what they're able to collect in
revenues because they don't C 100% of of of what they build so that and then that fluctuate the number of transports we have and the type of transport whether it's uh you know a more complicated Advanced life support it's a higher billing number there something else the
ambulance services number that that's tied to that's tied to it's our narcotics licensing our ambulance licensing our medical director our service contracts for our equipment that because they their service regularly to make sure that they're they're ready to
go so that's what that line reflects but if I looked at this maybe it's kind of naive but um like the 950,000 in ambulance Revenue right obviously there's like all all the manpower to support that right um but like how much
do you think we you make on that on the 950,000 yeah well that that is the revenue number they make but but netting that out like I'm just so the only things that you would net out obviously a lot of it is the like the the the Manpower
or you know the power to support it right behind the scenes yeah the Manpower cost is it's already paid for we we're paying for five fighters to be there whether they do one call or or 20 calls they're they're still there and ready to go um but that Revenue number
is BU built on the number of transports we make how much they bill for and then the percentage of that they collect so that's actual Revenue coming back to the general fund does that answer your question yeah I think I think so and then but but we feel comfortable like you know dealing with Healthcare billing
right like just that it's it's not fun I'm just just wondering like we we feel comfortable though we're getting reimbursed oh the the amount of reimbursement yeah like adequately yeah you I don't know if there's any way to challenge that or not but I mean some of it is you know regulated by Medicare
regulations stuff but do you know the percentage rate that our collection rate off time I don't know time excuse me building is is kind of difficult in that we we have to we get reimbursed for what the
patient has for insurance so if it's a if it's a Medicare um patient that's an ALS patient we may get like $400 or $500 for if the person has a major um health
insurance we may get $2,000 for that but if the we if the patient doesn't have any insurance and doesn't pay we will get nothing for it because it's it's a it's an unsecured debt there's nothing we can really go after a person for and
I'm not saying don't show up that's kind of that's that's what's troubling that's that's the the odd thing about ambulance billing it depends upon what they have for insurance a lot of our patients are elderly and are are on medican if
somebody is you know a worker's confence we may only get $100 for the $150 or something for that transport but so the to makes a little bit of money on the AIL service but what they get is an outstanding service we can provide a EMS
service that's second to none in this area because we've registered all our fire engines and our lad truck as class 5 ambulances and they arve with paramedics with a full comp equipment that an ambulance has and they start ALS
level care right there in somebody's bedroom that doesn't happen any place around us if the ambulance isn't available they're getting a much lower level of care until that AMS gets they're only getting generally BLS BLS level care until that AMS gets them and
so we put a lot of resources in our EMS program um that makes it a little bit more expensive for us to operate we have to have several different licenses because we did that we have more expensive um uh uh service contracts
because we have more defibrillators and things like that but we have a busy system so when our is at the hospital we get another call we want to be able to render that high quality care with the trained people that we have so so our our expenses are a little higher but in
the end it doesn't cost the town anything but you get outstanding service for it so yeah yeah yeah and definitely not question the service it's great like but um so just trying to understand the process okay all right thanks can I ask a follow up
on so so the ambulance service from what I remember it's a paid service like we pay a company to do do the collection the one thing that I don't remember is if that that company gets paid on collection so if they don't collect anything they don't get paid correct I
remember correct so so to answer your question that Revenue that you saw coming in it's costing us only like 30 grand yeah to collect above and obviously it's it's their best interest to try to collect that's why it's linked to them if we collect $925,000 or if
they collect $920,000 we're going to pay them $37,000 yeah no it's it's it's good good investment yeah what they do for us in kirax and the patients they goild quickly because they they build the the insurance company with the car accident for the for the medical
treatment try to get that in quickly before that benefit for the for the person gets maxed out so as Andre said the um the collection agency is motivated to to quickly turn that around for for the which is helpful for
us good for so this one's uh you know kind of uh not so much about this budget but just something that kind of came up recently that I was kind of curious as far as you know thoughts and maybe future plans so in during the MBTA communities you piece of it there was a
lot of talk about you know if if if things um you know the number of trains increase um it there's an effect on you know um uh emergency vehicles waiting for the train so forth is that something where I think where you would have to do
some studies just within the town as far as you know again obviously there's the Westside station there's you know the main station but like you know would you necessarily need to look at like may possibly Staffing changes where people are where where vehicles are you know
timing like and is that is that stuff that you know what kind of what would the process be or is there have been any thought about what that study would have to be in order to kind of know the impact again I think from uh you know from a resident perspective we recognize
you know kind of as Joe and others have mentioned the high level of service that we get this would impact it and and so I think having a little bit more clarity around that I think would be helpful for all of us to know so so so absolutely we've had a a lot of a lot of conversations about this um you know
we're looking a lot of different data points we're looking at um we we have our our our firefighters if they're delayed they're they're making radio Transmissions so that we can we can track how many times that happens uh we're looking at call location not just side of the track but also area because we do have the bridge for part of the
town but not really South Main Street so we're looking at that uh we're looking at types of calls so uh medical AIDS versus other calls you know uh because we only have one ambulance but we have two engines right so we're looking at all that and to answer your question absolutely it could result in in some
changes whether it's uh adjusting Staffing increasing Staffing that my question adjusting it could be adjusting how we actually operate our operations changeing some internal policies and procedures I mean that that could all affect it um if we see numbers that if
we see things that we think that that area mry is not going to be protected enough that area of town then we're going to make adjustments absolutely to increase that protection yeah thanks I don't see any other hands so
thank you very much by thanks again Chief Burns thank you so page 63 will be the Police Department chief Clark is here this will be nice and slow yes oh yeah um unfortunately my uh lawyers told me I can't take any questions tonight so
this is going to be very quick so this will be good um now I gave uh the deputy chief and I try to alternate meetings uh she's been very tired up with the select board lately so I said I'd come tonight and she's got the night off so terrific um let you know um so what's that question yes okay great question yes we
are at full Staffing um here we go um so police wise we're at full Staffing dispatch wise we're full Staffing um including the park enforcement also at the Coalition in crossing guards I do have two retirements coming up this um spring we're going to have to hire for
we have put out for laterals or transfers to come over um even that's still going to take us about three or four months to the time we do the do the hiring like look at resumés do a round of interviews do a very very extremely thorough background check psychological exam medical exam until Tak us a few
months to get in the benefit to that is though um what it saves us time wise if I have to hire somebody to send them to the academy um it still takes about the first 3 or 4 months to get everything ready then we have to find an academy um and this is no knock on the fire department it's slightly different there
firefighters can work and train with the fire department if I'm correct unless that's changed um before they go to the academy ours can't our Academy is 6 months long so if I have to hire a brand new person the academy it's going to be a full year time before I get them out on the road because of the hiring
process the six months in the academy and then the 3 months of field training whereas we go with the transfers we're first of all getting an experienced police officer and we've been fortunate with that out of the past 12 hires about eight of them have been transfers other agency some with eight or nine years experience some with one or two but we
get an experien police offic are coming in and we can do abbreviated field training because they already have they know how to do traffic stuff they know how to talk on the radio they know how to run sieges they know how to ride a police point so that's why we're trying latal first we just put it up last week we already have a bunch of rumes in so
so on that um just from a budget perspective so you know so in that scenario say they say in this in the second scenario where you sending them uh to the academy do we are we still paying so like it's not like there's no
um it's only if you don't have someone identified whereas you're we're not paying for them but if they're you know heading off to the academy and you're in the academy for six months they're still on our books and we're still paying them from a budget perspective correct yes so paying them as a step one police officer
um so if they're off my books for a year because even during field training they don't count as a body towards Staffing um yes we're paying that person for close to a year there um there a step one police officer there's actually a court case that just came out some agencies were paying him a Academy rate and if that's been deemed illegal um so
it's a um it's a it's a step one police off in paying so it could be paying for a year whereas we've been very fortunate but I am not going to take an officer to save money if I think somebody's not the right fit for what we're looking for for reading I will absolutely pass but we've been very fortunate with the people and why they want to come here and the
experience um I don't think it only benefits the town cuz your people from the sheriff's department from all sorts of different size agencies that really it's been a great benefit the people that are leaving their agency to come here they think up aurity so they're going to the bottom of the barrel last pick on shifts last pick on vacation and
so the people that come here want to be here yeah so they when that when that they they level they don't come with they no not at all they come in at the lowest step and um at the um and and they know they're giving up a lot to come here so the people that want to come here are coming here because they want to be part of a great agency we're
we are very well Ed agency and we're also a agency that people know that the town likes us and supports us which is not everywhere in the Commonwealth right now so it's we we do have a very big draw for the people to come here that's awesome that's great news I we didn't even let you
start have no questions anyway so we're kind of done Maran go ahead no this is one of your budget lines and I I heard something informally from someone so is is your miscellaneous budget line the one with the kiosks is that why that's gone way up so yeah so I can
explain that so um like Kevin from it I was well well well below the recommendation for the budget however there was a piece of software floating out there that somebody had to pick up um so it's either going to be en rck Nichol had to pick it up and add to his budget I she had it to the budget or we had to our
budget and it's parking software it's not strictly for the kiosks it's a software program that the one we were going to get was going to work with these kiosks but we still needed some type of parking software that the parking Force officer she was walking
around handwritten notes timing on her phone um so it's a parking software that it's where she can basically type in the plates which she's walking through scanning plates and then lets her know when the hour is up and she can go back and ticket those cars it all gives us when people challenge the tickets it gives us a time stamp as opposed to her
handwriting on a piece of paper it's also software we use to communicate with the registry whereas if somebody doesn't pay their parking tickets if the registry assigns the fines as they go up and allows us to clear them out of the um so if somebody goes to renew the registration and they have 25
outstanding parking tickets we if they pay us the full amount we can then take it out of the registry and let them renew their license get the registration again when they go with so it's overall the software we're looking at was tied to the kiosk to answer your question but we still need a software package for
parking if that makesense and my question is is this onetime cost or recurring cost it's it's going to be for the the it was for the devices that Bridget carries around there's an annual cost we can absorb in the regular budget but this is to get the software up and running and get the program not going to
be $45,000 every year no okay that was for like mostly for the um uh the actual device they use and we're actually having it the officers when we're out there writing parking tickets instead of the handwritten pokets and the triplicate paperwork and everything they can type it right in that automatically sends it over to our system and it
prints the ticket um from that little machine it keeps track of it it's smoother it's cleaner that's actually saving us a lot of paper instead of like the triplicate forms we have to turn in one to the registry one of the company one on the car um the difference people have noticed is sometimes people like oh there's a car legally parked you haven't ticketed it we have that they're not
bright they're not the bright orange punch you in the face tickets they're a little smaller and they're white so we're still ticketing cars but they're the smaller because it's because it's printed out it takes less do people still notice them when they're not not not everybody I know um yeah they've been people been
paying them so this isn't going to be5 every year it's going to be we're I can absorb the regular service because we always had it this is to upgrade us to get us kind of from um 1983 to 2025th cury technology to 21st yeah get us more
caught up with technology so um just go into that so dispatch we level funded expenses the Coalition we level funded expenses the place Department was the only one that we had an increase in again we were below except for the
parking software um everything else was modest increases um cruises are getting ridiculously expensive 're constantly over and spending cruises every single year with the increases and going to match what we need but I can kind of Shuffle around from work Shar and I work together we can Shuffle around from
other areas um what we are trying to do is the portable radios are in great shape it's the batteries that starting to kind of getting near the end of life so instead of coming to you and asking for a a 50,000 ask in a capital plan and but having our batteries all sort of die at the same time what we decided to do
is we I added extra money in we're going to slowly start buying a group of batteries so that way we can kind of spread it out over a few years and that way we have a a a shelf life of batteries that they're not all dying at once we kind of always have fresh ones in so that was um something inad like I said instead of capital plan risking
them all dying at once we kind of slowly going through the radios themselves are in fine great shape is the batteries that actually have a shelf life and um everything else is just couple um minor expenses nothing heavy we really try to keep um we understand and there's some people that had bigger ass than us we
really tried to keep it under um I was trying to keep under the radar but then I would had either throw Andrew mcnick or Kevin under the bus and Kevin already got thrown on the bus with some other technology stuff for security so I figured i' I'd help him out a little bit um but yeah dispatch has 11 civilian dispatches in there that do police and fire an emergency medical dispatch
they're full Coalition is full um we're doing okay but like I said I do have two retirements um one um never going to be able to place Christ oan is the Community Service Officer there's going to be a huge loss to the department which he does but um it's she's uh looking to retire and move down to fla
yeah call her no other questions break sorry I didn't hear you what it's an easy one okay so there's a line for cell monitors uh is that that's going away so it went away what is that can you us yes what we used to have is we
used to have um civilians um people it used to be um lotteries that would come in and sit in the subblock and watch prisoner CU we have to check the prisoner every 15 minutes and there's um and we'd have somebody actually sit in there all um all day long all night long if we have them the reason we've done
away with it is for a couple reasons one is it's if something there's a medical emergency in there they still have to run and get a police officer if the police officer is checking on the person um two we've vated um a check system where it's actually a be a system that logs in the check so if anything have
happened we can prove when the office went by the check still between the cameras system and this check system and us in the middle middle sex Sheriff's Department have joined this what's called safekeep program and what it is is if somebody's going to be a guest of ours for the weekend um because Court's
closed or they can't make bail we're not trained to House people we're not trained to feed people we're not trying to give them medication Sheriff's Department is that's their job so what it is if somebody can't make bail or they on a warrant can't get released we call the sheriff's department they come down and pick them up in a van and take them to the House of Corrections and
they stay there we then just have have to go in the next court day we just have to pick them up and Cruiser bring them to court um the liability that that saves the town I can't even begin to tell you if anybody's ever seen anything about an in custody death the liability that says a town you can't put a price
tag on um but it's also for the short term we're just using police officers that's why we got rid of the cell water line it's just it's I'd rather have a trained police officer train in first aid trained to deal with deescalation if it's a if it's person's faking a medical and then somebody opens up the cell and they start fighting with the person but then it's also because of the saf keep
program that's great you're right that was an easy question Ed same question that I asked on the fire side would similar study that you'd have to do um for MBTA and the and the tracks I know again thanks
again you're um uh vocal and uh you for us uh for for the rest of the residents on this but curious s similarly um looking at possible Staffing you know and and where um you know kind of calls and how you respond
like are you you know kind of assistant chief looking at that you know you know same type of uh you know kind of where the calls are coming from the deployment things of that nature yes so we are so some of our fellow First Responders we have our offices calling over the radio if they get delayed by the train um
right now the town is split up into sectors and there's a car dedicated to that sector um and there's backup cars that float between the both that our concern is that when it's a serious call armed robbery domestic and a bad car crash a rollover for example on 129 um
where it's when trying to get multiple cars into that sector that's our concern without having how much of an impact it is we'll adjust we'll frig out away um I would just like a little cooperation from the te and I'd like an understanding of what the TR go is going to be so I can make those decisions um but yes we will maybe have to adjust
we're also going to be looking at forecasting what construction projects apartment projects are coming in cuz depending on how how much housing develops in there that's more alarm calls more 911 calls more domestics uh more breaking entering more carest more accidents so we're going to have to
adjust at some point and we'll constantly Do It um since I've been on I'm in my 30th year now um we used to have um two sectors but when um like uh Jordan's Furniture the Staples came in Market Basket and everything we actually added in a sector three and we changed
the sectors around and add a sector 3 in so we we will constantly monit that and if we have to split the town instead of North and South with the rail tracks like we do now if we have the split with Main Street into East and West um we'll we'll adjust um I just I would like some data to figure out what I'm also trying
to figure out the traffic concerns um as you if anybody's ever driven down 129 or 28 there's an accident on the highway the dump off and um that's my concern is I would just like to see what the impact of actual traffic is going to be because traffic impacts their ability to respond and our ability to respond and it causes
more accidents um not to mention I said I think I told him there was 26 times the gates was suck down oh yeah last year um wasn't even because of the train 26 times and that's a concern of ours as well as our ability to provide services we're going to come we'll get there I just my concern is if it's a really serious call and get one officer
responding alone because that or the sector 2 car and the backup car tied up at one call and a second call comes in that sector and now we're trying to get there and you got three cruises sitting there thinking waiting for the train to come by um that's that's concern us but will always adjust we'll make it and we're always kind of monitoring it
anyway as developments come up but yeah it's going to be a concern of us thank you Joe just uh quickly I might miss this but the animal control and Crossing Gods it's good news it's flat but why is it flat again so animal uh animal control um I gave to a day uh years ago um
actually falls into Health in a lot of agencies um and half their job falls into Health like kenel inspections dog bites Health would get the reports not us we still re will go to a dog bite and get the information so we can give it to the Animal control officer but it just it fits better under Health with a lot
of the inspections they do so um a year or two ago we transferred what I had over and we sent it over them so it should be no money at all on that line unless I really messed up um says 182
yeah say it's probably it's probably P it's probably off a line or something must be off it should be zero it should be zero yeah that's why it's going Z this happen something's not right yeah it says
change nothing and then it's the same as25 so I think that that line is supposed to be crossing guards the animal control is cross guard the same too and I think that the next line down is Lieutenant so it's it's the formula is messed up on the chart I can fix that
yes this is different what I have for for for the chart but it's yeah it should be so Crossing gods are there was there some modest in seasonal employees in January 1 that's already been a reflected there there is a small percentage increase there we be spending
as much on crossing guards as we are on the tenants no it's this the lines aren't lining up I can tell you that this this chart they're not lined up correctly in here from what we have animal control is zero so crossing guards is the 182 everything's off one
line from parking enforcement down yeah the bottom line okay like the 60 the total is correct think just linking in properly yeah I know the bottom numbers are are accurate somewhere when it translated over a line some line moved
up somewhere but all the other numbers are accurate numbers a test show to see if you're looking at it and make sure you're kind of that's a good catch though because we can fck so just the animal control Shi everything but then that gets like
overtime is not zero and like 2500 for training and 45k for overtime those look rsh so and obviously control officer is the big line and that's what you'd expect so I don't the overtime line it's
messed up too yeah Excel formula gone arrive yeah it looks like maybe it's been added into something else ours are like I said the formula we have is more broken down by years and everything so when it gets transer into a smaller thing to the sheet I must have just added some line
over but I I do know the bottom line numbers are all correct the chart is just messed up I'm sorry so what is the overtime then do we know what's the real overtime is that 45 right or is that no it would not be right it's probably
added into one of the other Patrol like probably under the the patrol or one of them other lines CU I don't see it oh actually no okay I'm not sure I'd have to let me look it up actually you know what we
look at the chart that makes that chart while you huh you can my I'm just going to pull up the chart that creates that chart that linked to so Jo uh there was uh something in the
chat um oh on Zoom it's not open I have the it's not necessarily a question I'm just not sure if it's um it says that it's supposed to um no that is a question for
Jackie don't remember um recording will stop I think it's going to stop at 9 so just me um I just had a training where they fireflies a do not
situation all right okay so overtime I've never heard of it before yesterday now I see it the overtime is pulling to the cross crossing guards yeah the 415,000 is it's just in the charts all messed up
so the spreadsheet we have for some reason when it's it's when it's being condensed here it's colling yeah it's listing it to are do you want me to share my where the numbers are coming from since that look so
that Jackie can I share my screen so they can see um the actual munist document that makx it up thank you and I can fix this so for anyone not looking at the chat Ed
I I I right so this is where it's pulling from right here boy is that Bigg okay so I'm making a bigger B I'm making it so you can't see all of it so the chart's over here and it's pulling
so it's obviously pulling the wrong cells so overtime is 4:15 okay trying to make it so we can see everything so Animal Control is not Al line oh and that's probably what happened in the chart needed to delete
it so if everything off okay probably because it's zero you probably didn't make yeah the mun report did not pull a line for it because it's zero um so that makes sense that so so it needs a dummy line so that it'll match her yeah I would need to like just check all the
formulas again because it's definitely wrong so these charts over here are created from files from Unice so you see how all the account numbers you wouldn't want to see all this for every Department which is why we summarize it so it's good that that got caught because it will be fixed for the because that is confusing we don't have
overtime at 45,000 so good catch I apologize because this is all me none of this is so everything software and not thinking it a million bucks here I am looking at
everything that's gone up and ignoring the things that are flat some of they yeah actually quite interesting yeah cuz it's easy to just go look along them look at the percentage changes and not look look the other way and say what what line was that yeah I mean everything's pretty normal it's just
that chart isn't pulling you know so like I said crossing guards is the school traffic line okay which that's good and you're over time 4 15 and sometimes it Trends higher it's hard
to and so ERS we haven't budgeted for that in a while so that's why I was kind of surprised hry when he started asking about that thought it's so it looks like the actuals are zero and then for some reason the budget is not zero but still not large yeah we did
have some actuals to show but it's no we looking at the wrong line this says 2500 for sell monitors yeah this just a small amount yeah should be actually no that's police officer training I'm on the wrong line cell
monitors is zero uh Z 25 and 26 yeah just a re of just it's been zeros but there is 2500 here what saying it's a tiny percentage yeah anyway all right level
it's not any fix that yeah fix all right so I'll stop my share so we've seen that I don't know why that happened but I will fix it all right so Jackie's bringing back
the budget Joe I'm sorry was there a question in the chat uh no there was a there was a we got a notification from the AI notetaker I assume that if it needs to get reinvites is on top of it didn't today I learned we I noaker oh I see yeah says it in the
chat thank you for fling that if someone did have a question in chat I would want them to be able to ask it all right other questions Chief thanks Chief thank you very much see you okay next we'll go back to Sharon on
page 67 so she could tell us about her Finance okay um let's go to page 68 I want to look at the chart okay and see that finan is going up 3% in total um scroll down a little further so we can see the other
charts but that that's the first one the stop there um so wages are going up 5.5% so um the the reason that that first let's say this all the staff and finance are non-union employees they get a 1.25%
Cola and a step and the step could be 2.3 to 2.5% the 2.5 is more management levels down so you're looking at about a 3.6% increase so the reason that that Finance one is higher is because we
added that treasury analyst um and the part-time person that we had was working in administrative services so that money that 19,300 that was in that budget for fiscal 25 is being moved here in fiscal 20 um 6 so it it makes it look like a
higher increase but you'll see a reduction over in the administrative Services budget for us taking this operation specialist that was doing the job over to our department if you could go to the next page please and then under Finance expenses
We're Going Down by 12.2% and the the big thing that's going on there is our assessor is a regional assessor he does um Wakefield Lindfield and breing um but that's only been going on for a few years and when we built the fiscal 25 budget he wasn't sure he was
going to continue with the Community wasn't sure he could you know it was it was a lot of work um and so when I budgeted for fiscal 25 I budgeted for his benefits and salary because he's a weight bu employee we pay them towards his benefits and his salary um for only
two communities to be sharing the cost of him it turned out he was able to find a way to get it all done and keep all three communities and so in fiscal 26 I reduce the amount that we pay Wakefield for him because now all of that is being spread through three communities and we
enjoy some savings which was helpful because when we initially did um the budget we had run a little short with the select board and this was some an area I was able to cut to get us down um you know by 21,000 which was helpful um
so that's the major change that's going on there in expenses because he is not an employee of the town but an employee of Wakefield other than that there's not a whole lot going on in finance we have the new treasur analyst position that you guys we added as you know by moving
savings from other departments and then there was 19,000 that goes towards that salary that was actually paid out of the ministry of services that's beinged here and then this Regional assessor um change other than that we're pretty flat with our budget no increases really
small 450 which I think is professional development Finance area we have a new collectors who are trying to get a little bit more professional development there because she's new and we need a love of the municipal training that we go to which also answers a question a
preemptive question about why the collector salary line is gone down but if you've had turnover yeah we had a a very experienced collector retire and then we had somebody who's um coming in at a lower step on the scale and so we have some savings there understood uh Joe M just quick the
assessor like do we just split that like three ways or how do we like it's just PR or three ways equally but I think because um lynfield is smaller they get a little bit smaller of percentage um but it's it's it definitely still a savings for us to have three communities
as opposed to two because you know I think we do 40 4020 or something because they were a smaller Community than us um but it does provide US savings and I'll take anything that gives me a realation budg I said we renegotiate I think that the contract I was looking at was um
expiring so I don't know what they do going forward this was the introductory contract that's just expiring tell them until they're on the hook watch out I was kind of surprised it wasn't 33% across the board it was a little bit different than that but um hopefully they make it a little bit because he is
putting he was putting a fair amount of time in getting you know established over in the field so maybe they'll negotiate a little bit more so that we get a better split thanks R further questions I'm not seeing any
all right thanks Sharon thanks Shar thank you we can move in keep on going forward move to DPW on page um 75 the director Chris B is here and hopefully from there we can go right into the Enterprise funds on page um 156 because those are covered by Chris
Cole as well so thank you mat welcome um so we'll just start off with Staffing uh we have um no change in Staffing numbers we do have a few open positions right now in the department um we have two present two open engineering
positions um but we have hired one already and they will be starting with us in June um we have a senior operator in Highway uh position that is open we're going to be hire uh interviewing for that next week and we have a labor in Parks Cemetery um that is currently open
we're interviewing for that next week as well um and we also just uh post for um two seasonal positions in parks and cemeteries so we hope to fill those soon as well uh but uh let's see starting on
page 77 um the overall um General um fund wages were up 4.8% which is based on contractual and non-union compensation requirements um overall expenses were
actually down 1.6% and I'll explain that the moment um moving on Jackie to page 79 on Administration uh Administration was up 8.1% um we we had a slight increase in professional
development um moving on to page 80 on engineering that was actually up 18 and a half% um which was $5,000 increase in both traffic um control repairs and police details
um moving on to page 82 in Highway um that budget was up 1.6% which um was increases in equipment parts maintenance uh Fuel and police details uh on page 83 storm water was
level funded um now moving on to page 84 forestry you can see there's a reduction by - 64% so back in November of town meeting um this past um fall town meeting
approved an additional $150,000 for a um phase four of the Town Forest removal and phase five of the invasive management um so that's um not needed now so that's what the reduction is um by that and then we had a few
small increases for shade trees brush disposal and um police details again um moving on to page 85 uh parks and Cemetery we had a minimal increase of 3% and um that is all for general fund
um have any answer any questions you might have before I call myself um the uh one of the increases the police detail line was interesting because the actuals have come in way below 25 budget and the 26
budget is up from this is actually one of the few increases this is on page 80 uh this would be the last uh I guess this is engineering division expenses yeah if if actuals are coming in below
budget I'm I'm curious why budget's going well you talking traffic controller P you said no no he's talking about police OH police details I'm sorry traffic control repairs I know people keep running into things and breaking them and it's not good and we have to keep paying to fix them I get that I understand that problem then though this
one I was curious about yeah so um so that is just um increased um work that we know of this year um you know we're going to be do doing road construction on a lot of major roads that are going to require police details and the overtime costs are continually going up
so we just um added a little bit extra in there to to help us along Joe just just quickly the um page 885 like the laborers for cemeteries and like box and cemeteries mhm What's d than
that like like you mean like the um the 35 Ian it's it's it's going right you know I guess a good direction but just right so that um
that that typically is if you have um you know some someone that's more senior level um leave and then you fill out with a lower position so it's they start a lower step attrition you me Junior operators the laborers is going up aren we looking at
the same thing yeah so you're wasn't looking at the same thing myself I think that's saying that I think that's saying that somebody left that was a higher level and they hired yeah I think it's just shifting page 84 uh sure go ahead on
page 84 what's that huge 150k adjust ones so that's what I just mentioned that back in back in November um town meeting approved 150,000 for um 50,000 for phase 4 of town Forest tree
remov and then 100,000 for invasive management um but we don't don't need that at at the moment in April 11 if you're curious I actually I took the wages numbers the expenses numbers
took 150,000 from fy2 to see what of the the real difference yeah so it's like it's a 6% or 5.9% expenses increase um if you're curious what what the you know real what the impact yeah so obviously
that's just swamped by the U the tree cutting expenses anyone else questions so uh I guess is it Enterprise funds now yeah I think um Chris will handle Enterprise funds that's on page
156 scoot down to that page we have to do to get the school budget not in the middle I know yeah the school budg smack in the middle so we'll start with the water Enterprise [Music] fund so we can uh just start at the
table on page 157 Jackie so um water wages um went up 3.6% which is based on contractual requirements um moving on to page 158 the operating expenses um now that actually went up
increase by 45% um mostly due to um a $200,000 increase in the water meter line item for the second water meter program you know 20,000 for normal
primary meter Replacements that we have have to do every year and then an additional 200,000 on top of that to just cover for the um second water meters don't don't the people pay for the second water meters they do but we still have to pay for them up front and then then the money comes in the back
end after they they pay for them so and then's see and then the uh mwa water assessment um increased by uh 3% plus we had some increases in fuel police details and copper
pipe Rising cost um moving on to page 160 Jackie sewer wages uh sewer wages went up 4.7% um and again was by contractual requirements uh page 161 uh the
operating expenses went up by 18% and that was all for increases to sewer you know um you know maintenance cost for sewer stations Supply funding for the uh the sewer pump station increase in fuel and the mwa SE
assessment was increased by 3% uh let's see moving on to storm water wages on page 162 Jackie uh again wages were up 4.8% for contractual requirements and then on lastly on page
163 the operating expenses increased by 4.7% and that was for for drainage slight increase in drainage maintenance and equipment and supplies question you have on Enterprise I've got a question on the uh
the meters so is it going to be 200,000 then a revenue coming through on those yes so Sharon is that in the budget anywhere yeah it's projected revenues so you have the expense line item and then we'd be projecting 200,000 more in
all right so it's in okay thanks Ma I'm just curious um over the past few years professional development you know it was 2500 something dollars in Fally year 23 and now it's 21,000 is there
some new standards that everyone's getting trained on or something why his professional development for this what page is on I'm sorry I'm I'm looking at page 161 so under expenses and then I just it
just was a an unusual Trend I don't know what kind of professional development you need but it and it isn't just this year it was last year so I don't know why is this required I mean that's just um different requirements for um licenses and um a lot of them are like
the uh the Water and Sewer licenses the costs go up for the different classes that have to be taken and um training and so forth do they come in at a cluster like is is everyone maybe people around at some periodic renewal and they were all due or something at this time
uh yeah very well could be um not totally sure for for last yeah I just don't don't understand why it would go from like 2500 to 20 21,000 over three years like what changed if you needed new certifications or something yeah I mean I mean like like everything else
cost of going up and cost of going up on training classes too so that's quite that's like right yeah could be yeah yeah yeah we have a lot lot of employes if somebody's going for a certification they didn't have more required to get there okay so if you have attrition and
people leave and get a less experienced person account for it it might be a sharing question but for the water Enterprise fund like on page 156 the 1.7 million like how much would we still have left in reserves
then which what are we looking on out there the um is it water suit what do we yeah for water first like water Enterprise fund like if we're using like the 1.7 so the 1.7 I think they have close to $6 million of reserves so it would be
a little above 4 million okay and then I guess a little over 4 million I don't know the exact number off the top of my head but it's just shy of $6 million they have in reserves okay historically is that like higher or lower inar I mean a lot of
times we we put in um enough to cover capital and try and keep the rate from going up like I'm looking when I'm putting that number in I'm looking at um what our average usage is and then I know we do tiered billing but when I build this I look at it and say I just
take the lowest rate if all the water is sold at the lowest rate and this is our average water intake this is how much revenue and then I look at what our operating budget is and I try and get that increase needed for the water were down to a reasonable percentage so the
free cash tends to be a plugg to try and keep your water rates more stable y yeah okay and a lot of times you know Capital will drive it so there's $725,000 of capital in in that budget so you're covering the capital and then kind of
trying to keep so really a Millions to keep the rates okay right I guess similar on the sewer side too you're doing the same same sort of thing can happen on the sewer side look at the actual usage you know we keep a spreadsheet that's all the usage we're going back on our 25 years and we
conservatively project the volume of water that we sell and what the rate would be okay thanks around for other hands I'm not see any is that it for Chris section y
that's it for Chris section thank you Chris the the last two um Enterprise fun funds one is the uh Peg cable access Enterprise fund it's essentially a pass through the money goes to rctv we get money from Comcast and from Verizon
every year we negotiate our licenses with them to get those funds that's on page 164 I'm sorry you can see it's declining right and it's declining um although I think at least have to check the dates but at least one of the licenses is coming up
for Renewal so we'll be uh talking with I believe it's Verizon again to to negotiate a new license I'm not expecting that that Revenue will go up at all um but hopefully we can at least keep it the same level at the beginning of those
contracts don't they give us Capital they some cap they frontload the licenses with the capital rctv likes to have the capital up front because they could do more with it so now the capital has already been you know paid out and expended and so they just got the the
regular um the regular payments every I think it's four um and the the final Enterprise fund is just that landfill Enterprise fund it's essentially a monitoring it's sort of a pass through um it's the same amount every year $37,000 in $37,000 out um and
that was established back in 2002 uh and it the land the landfill is where um staples and Home Depot and all that place home yeah Home Depot and Jordan since so before my time here so
those are the last two Enterprise funds yeah the landfill is essentially performance deposit to make sure they do the monitoring so the development Pur is required every year to pay is 37,000 and
then send us the invoices that they PID based on so it's kind of like a performance deposit to ensure you know we agreed with the EPA to make sure that this was a landfill has to be monitored and and that's essentially what's going on here and the longer you get away from
when they purchased it the more the burden Falls to because in the beginning there was some burden on the town more burden goes to the development as time goes okay all right all right so we have um two more departments left so the're
Reading Public Library on page 86 and then facilities would be the last Department of the night so all right I'm Amy Lon the director of the Ring Public Library um we're a very busy Library as many of you know um we have
um open for over 3600 hours a year including Sundays from October to May uh we have 25 FTE we are fully staffed and do not and um uh we fully staffed and that has not changed from uh FY 25 is
the same essential number um we get about 14,000 visitors a month and last year we had uh over 700 programs our physical and online resources are well used with over half a million hits um and that includes books movies streaming
audio um includes research databases online tutoring language learning Etc so in summary our overall increase is ask is 3.6% um the staff wages increases by 3.2% all of our staff are in our Union
um and then the overall expenses go up by 5.4% um which is a total for a total of $450,000 it's a 20 $23,100 difference between uh or two you 100 difference between the two years um
with expenses all I can say is that um uh if you go down one more Jackie thanks you can see a little bit of the breakout of expenses is things like our equipment contract software licenses are going up just like
everybody else we're ending certain contracts things are just going up so we're trying to keep those costs down as much as we can but um some of those were uh had less increases over the last few years and we're sort of seeing that come to fruition now um and if you could go
back up real quickly Jackie thank you for being so fastel um to the actually the previous page at the bottom of the previous page the one new line that we've added this year it's a 17 $177,000 increase for the office of equity um it's a net increase of
$10,500 which is really not that much because we've um we took some expenses from other other line items and got 6,500 squeeze $6,500 out of that so 6,500 of existing funding and 10,500 of new funding um it is a new line I know
it's a tough time to add new lines um it is way cheaper than adding a part-time assistant or trying to get an actual employee to help out this is a department of one or division of one um doing a lot of things townwide and these with all our department heads assistant department heads team leaders um so it's
it's a very busy job and um this money will allow for Outsource vendors bringing in coun experts and various programming um for both employees and for the community um I think that's it
um it's basically the summary that's to ask all right uh looking around for questions okay uh J um Amy what's the um the expenses like what's OE SJ Professional Services yeah that's that's been so that was it's like a big bucket
for for um for um the $177,000 is so it's it could be having Consultants come in speakers come in programming training uh train experts 7 not experts for to come in for either staff or Public Training which we've
done both of okay thanks um still the end kind of question are you um does this Library get any federal grants yeah with this year actually in f25 um we received a $20,000 Grant from
it's it's administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners but it's a um LSA Grant which comes from The Institute of Museum and Library services imls and that is funded um it's not something you get every year it's a competitive grant that we go for every year the building was
funded through an lsta Grant so um it's a it's a larger much larger program and we you know those grants range from anywhere every year you can apply for them range from to usually 25,000 for the smaller subject matter grants so could be providing services to um Elder
Services it could be Civic engagement this one happens to do about the environmental sustainability and health so we're doing a lot of great programs with this it's meant to be an add-on not a substitute yeah because like it seems like it's aous thing that it came in fy2
because I'm I get concerned with um even I mean you have the director of equity and last year it was called the director of equity and social justice or did the title change no it's still the same it's just too long the title to the little box because I'm just wondering if
like you were worried that in the with the having that in your library would make you be a target from the federal government to not get future federal grants because you have a position like with Dei and you you know
like they'll just look into at keywords you know no I think it's something we're definitely looking at um you know and if you look at the list of words you're not allowed to use there's a lot of euphemisms you can't use but um this is a library we got lot smart people there and I'm sure we can come up with a lot ofs that aren't on the there there are a
few thores in the library I I say that gly but I don't mean it gly do I think it's still an essential service I do and I think you know is it that it's in the library or if it were in another Poli no I'm not I'm not disputing that I'm just saying when you have those names of things yeah you know
absolutely no I think there's I think it's definitely something we you s future federal grants there is a coalition of Dei directors all throughout Massachusetts with something like 61 members from communities all over the state and you can at your bottom dollar that they are speaking every week about this they're working
with um uh the MMA and mapc and they're they're you know really talking about what the role is and how to how to finesse and continue on really needed Services um in the current environment yeah well I mean it's at
least you're not too dependent on federal grants I guess that is my my point that correct that's correct so even if even if it's that situation you're independent of it that's good thank you would not want to be applying for a building BR right now question they
come I don't see any questions all right thank you very much Amy thank you Amy thank you so the last Department of the night is the facilities department and that's Joe Huggins the director page 91 in the budget book H
everybody um Jack can you go to page 92 so before I get started I think you guys last week was fincom um worked they did the school schools budget and Facilities takes care of uh core facilities maintains all town and school buildings
uh we do manage uh around 20 people on the school side um for the custodial operations over there as you know which encompasses cleaning chemicals and custodial Staffing but that's voted separately um what we're talking about tonight is the core facilities
department and the um facilities budget um if you look at uh page 92 the overall increase is 3.4% um going down to the bottom of that page you're going to see some numbers that are probably going to stick out at
you um there been a 33% increase in our elevator service contract uh the reason for that is we competitively bid all this out um through procurement and we had a really a very inexpensive uh price for the last contract and and we
finished it out with this company and as we thought we'd be coming in we were having issues with them we put it back out to bid and now we're paying really the market rate for what we're getting so that's why there's an increase there and we're mandated by by the state on on
yearly inspections of all the lifts elevators um and things like that and all the the 17 units we take care of townwide okay um there's also an increase in uh alarm expenses and that has a lot to do with
uh Kevin had brought this up earlier the software associated with that this has to do with the maintenance and repair of these systems that's in all of our buildings and uh we have these systems installed three and a half years ago and
of course every year we have equipment that either breaks or we need to replace it and the cost of the equipment and the prevailing wage rates have gone up dramatically and we're seeing that across the board that's there's an increase in that line right there um
Pest Management Services also is up 28.5% um we've seen an increase in um Pest management needs in town and school buildings uh rodents to be um more precise um which where actually you
have a very strong integrated pest manage management program that's through the uh through the state and where um we mandated on what we can and cannot use to take down this type of threat if you will so um but because we've had an
uptick we're doing a lot of work to keep that under control um if you go to the next page page 93 under the energy budgets energy energy budgets up a total of
1.3% but what you are seeing is uh an increase um under energy conservation phase one and phase two of performance Contracting we do something called measurement and verification and what that is is the checks and balances to make sure that we're hitting the mark
every year they come out and they do an audit of all our buildings they were out there about a month ago I want to say and they get in and get in on our Energy Management systems and make sure that everything is set to the parameters that they put it at to achieve savings so it's it's a checks and balances because
if we don't hit the savings that they we guaranteed Nesco would write a check to the town but we've exceeded savings every year on that um down at the bottom of the um of the page under the expense budget under the this is the town Town
expenses um we're up 7.7% we took on a new building as you know we had the Birch metal Pavilion building that sits out there in the field and the cleaning services are paid through the um Town facilities budget so that's why there's an increase in that line it's not a big increase but there
is an increase so the total on the town facilities budget is up 3% on for questions John I'm alarm expenses line big increase from the last year but down a bunch from the two years prior to
that it was down the two years prior to that it's down from the two years yeah and what it is is we a lot of the a lot of the cameras the cameras have a lifespan we we didn't realize this but the cameras that we have installed a lot of them are outdoor cameras and so what
we're doing was systematically going through and we every year we have we pay for it but we have a maintenance agreement with uh the company that does the work and the cameras take a beating outside and they're very expensive so what we're doing is we're targeting a group of cameras every year so we can
stay on top of it I'm trying there are a bunch of there's I noticed the pattern there's a lot of things where this to increase this year it's actually the same as FY 24 um I think part of the story there might have been the energy expenses in FY 25 which were uh particularly sharp
increase yeah so I'm guessing there was probably some scrunching for savings last year that now things are reverting to what they were the year prior which yeah and if you look at the the energy portion of our budget makes up a huge piece of the
budget and that's what drives our budget like this winter we've been we've had a very cold winter and we're feeling it uh any savings that are generated in facilities are through our energy you know so if we have a mild winter that benefits us if we don't which we're not
we haven't had so far um the costs go up and the consumption goes up so we try to manage that Kevin gabuzzi who's our assistant director that's his primary F focus in the winter time is to make sure among other things that the buildings are running at optimal run times and not
you know to avoid uh Peak demand charges we don't turn everything on at the same time we stagger the startups so but we also have to keep in mind that when it's cold like that we don't want to have freeze up so we end up running the buildings for longer durations to keep water moving in the buildings that have
you know hydronic heat in them so Joe on the um same question on the energy related um for electricity right like page 93 electricity total is only going up
like 25 but I thought the residential rate like rmld was going up like six or seven next year or something okay oh on page 93 top of page 93 is this the same question as the one in accommodated costs is this the thing that added up to
being an unchanged electrical line if you look at what actual are what our budget was for school you know it seems like we've had some savings there and so that's why would go up we had you know we had more than enough in the prior year so that was an area
where steady and still have enough even though there's an increase there um obviously that I I don't take that lightly because that facilities budget is very important um you can see the actuals of the prior year and it does
seem like there was excess in there so actuals might be up 7% like our power bills yeah but that would still be 7% more than 53 is L obviously I can't do that for two
years in a row but it was it was an effort to keep something glad I don't know if I said this but there is we're we're fully staffed right now um but I not to be a wise guy but we are going to you know we're we're heading towards potentially two large
building projects um and I mentioned that because um you know we're looking at um the need for more help um in in terms of Maintenance Staffing you know operating money for electricity because he's going to be full electric buildings
um and then service contracts so we will be having this discussion yeah we're going to be having this discussion going forward um because we're we we do it all right now with uh four maintenance guys for a million 1.1 million square feet
the rest of it's contracted out through service service contracts but the day-to-day work can Crush you and and we we try to stay on top of everything but when you add that kind of square footage to the footprint so so and maybe just
kind of a followup question on that so like given that they're potentially newer buildings does that when you look at that um divisional labor between staff and then service contracts is that because a newer building would that be more on staff versus a service contract
because just of the newness of the building or is it or is that not a determinant for it I think it's both actually you know we're going to increase our service contracts to cover you know right now kilum 70,000 square feet we're going up to 120,000 sare ft
potentially tripling the size of the senior center so there is more activity that goes on in there and even though they're brand new buildings things do break we need to cover those buildings right um and we also need to you know extend things like you know fire alarm
elevator HVAC all that electricity budget Water and Sewer things like that so there's a lot of things that you know make make up that but you would start like again where we've got a few things happening in a few months that to help determine that
but like you'll start that as the projects Move Along you'll start to look at projecting staff we already are looking at it yeah yeah yeah but yes yeah so I mean some of those Staffing numbers you know say for the for kilum
that really won't hit until 20 7 28 28 yeah yeah yeah gotta okay other questions for Joe I think that's it so than joob so I know Sharon had talked about
capital and debt at the beginning we have the capital plan at the end of the the budget so let's go through that line by line line by I'm gonna I'm gonna pause to salute everyone here staff and committee because we just powered
through the whole town budget thank you very much this usually takes us two nights and we only have two more hours left guys so don't get I I think that's we have we have do they don't I'm leaving with
them not that much time left so yeah one second while staff well deserved are we going over the capital Ben this isn't the right one this one's the one for November time I started
making changes inv us than thanks G any change was in the book and I got a change that happv so right um so yeah is there is there
anything to be said or asked about the capital plan here I think that she has that same file open there's a tab for 26 like she was just on the wrong tab so if she had that one open what they saw in their packet is on
the tab next to what she was on okay I don't know do you guys want me to open it on the screen can you open it on your screen or do you need Jackie to show I can open it okay she just had it up that's all okay um's so the one in the packet is not is
the correct is the correct she pulled up one that's not the one that's in the packet it's for November to meeting started on changes that I'm it's on 168 yeah little was on the schedule yeah sorry went to the end to the big horiz it doesn't take there's not I had a
change come in for facilities and I don't want to make a change until November because the book is you know pretty much getting close to being ready to Beed I've got it here so sharing in your first line I know I'm just going to ask about
that on I think Jeffrey mentioned it when we had the school and so I was just curious okay do you guys want to go over the highlighted sections how do you want me to do this so anything you see in purple has some sort of change and when when it got printed for the book and I I think
it's normal that we don't show you but over on the far right like so let looking at faciliity master plan if you look to the right it will tell you what I did and it will say this is a new item something that they're asking so they're looking for a facilities master plan to
happen so that they can determine kind of priorities in terms of what's going on with other buildings and help us you know build things into our Capital plan that might be needed and then going down to the next line here um this is going to be funded by Green community so I had
it here and then um and then I think it was 150,000 um but Joe Huggin said that they're getting a green communi grant for it so I took it out because we we could use it El parents that's what that is um this Ropes Course
I another three years I move it out two years so I know in the past there's been times we've printed so you could see my little notes so you know what I'm doing but it's a basically if you see like the blanks going outward it means it's going
in and then if the number you know if you see blanks coming in that are colored in and then I'm moving it up so that's essentially what how that works um what else do we have here do you have the screenshot I sent you because I I had the question about how this worked and I took a picture to try to explain
it I didn't see the screenshot oh okay CU I said my maybe if it was there I didn't see it okay it was down at the bottom I I was like I think this is an example of something was added I think something was pushed back and something was pulled forward and you said yes yes I mean so sometimes they're new items
sometimes it's a pricing change and so I think maybe going forward when we print this for the packet maybe we should make sure that my little note is it will help you understand what I'm trying to distinguishing a pricing change from a completely new edition yeah it's really hard different questions and and that's where the new note would come you know
like this is a new item something that's being added so so so maybe in the name of on that column A for example I could put new change put that new or change but then I got to take it out for the next revision so otherwise people continually think it's new but that's
definitely an idea of something I can do so in this case we have this fire um Main Street fire station they have a need to have their elevator replaced and they told me to do they told me to put in fiscal 27 and and the change I made
today that will come up in November is this is actually going to cost more like 300,000 and they wanted in F 26 so I had to move things around to make that happen so um but this change is the change that I knew about at the time that we were um finalizing this and that
he's realized this is actually going to be more um and so I have to increase it so you'll see that at November time meeting has a change but this is what he projected at the time and in the timeline we thought about doing was 2027 um and now he's saying I don't know
if it will last might need to move it up so these are the kind of things that come up with some of the assets is something shines as a high priority just because it's it's breaking down they're dealing with more problems and some things are just too expensive to keep repairing so the elevator um came up
in the town hall as well you see that two down that needs to be replaced as well and we have that in 2028 and the pricing of that is going to go up as well but this was just to hold a spot I guess I guess when they realized that they had some issues um and then this
town hall roofing project we have designed and then 550 it was scheduled for 2030 and I moved the design out one year and the um the actual project out another year see what else do we have and then I saw
the pickle ball court still in there at 1.95 mil in a few pages is that was that did you have that in there before the select board discussed it so before the select board discussion in order for it to even get that for I have to schedule the debt so that's something that could come off if we decide not to do it but
um when when they told us what it was going to cost and what they have for donations I put 1.65 million as a a debt offering um even they at the time gave us a 1.95 and then by the time they had the meeting with the S Bo it went down 100,000 so what I have in my debt
service plan is borrowing of 1.65 if we don't move forward with it that would be released so that more Capital could be done so that's the you know it's just holding a spot right now same with like the um the Birch Meadow phase 2o um there's some thought that
the money that we asked for might not be enough for the project so we're waiting on bits to see and we won't start the project until we know for sure what that pricing is and and how the community feels about the new pricing if it's higher so um we have a couple just you
know Carpenter cutaway band you know we have to move things out sometimes to make this balance and these were moved up quite a [Music] ways 2028 so what are we
talking said Mo about one year looks like more than one year I must have changed it again and I didn't change my comment um in order to rebalance when we did all the elevator stuff I obviously made changes to this to get the elevators in um and other things things
got moved around to like fit the elevators in because they were not there prior let's see what else do we have some changes with Carpeting and Flooring a question maybe I mean actually this might have been a Joe hugget question
unfortunately just miss it but like I elevators I'm I'm I pay attention to anything the capital plan where it was a you know new addition without a lot of lead time because I mean certainly you notice those because they make your job hard um but they also you know it's it's
money that we hadn't planned on spending um and usually we're pretty good about oh yeah no we know that this truck that we bought you know has a useful life useful life surprised that we didn't have elevators on elevators are a thing that don't last forever either and they last probably longer than your car but maybe I don't know
it's one of those things that you just don't think about until something happens so it might have just been like you know we hadn't had to replace one yet and so it wasn't really thought about I'm not sure but I mean I think it's important to have a line in for anything that we think we might need to replace at some point whether there's a
number there or not just when we're going over the capital plan to remind us to think about that asset is that asset how old is that asset and is there any need to do anything with that asset whether it be upgrade something or you know um how old is it it doesn't need to
be replaced everything has a useful life so sometimes things get missed just because nobody thought of it honestly and that's I think essentially what happened here with the elevators because I think they got a recommendation for maybe they s these
they know these they bed so yeah I mean the fact know how they determined it because we have them we have them inspected so they probably said you probably get one or two more years out of this and that might have been a surprise oh think about this replacing this one in town hall did break down recently it was down for a couple days
so they probably looked at everything here said prob that's the only handicap accessible yeah no I know that's not yeah for sure it's a big problem this building this building is made of stairs yeah so we have a couple got a question go for
itk um on the roofing roofs on the building I know rmld has programs now where you can uh put solar p up and get part of the roofing cost covered is there any opportunity there for the town to get you know I'm not sure what kind
of conversations um facilities has had with them about that I don't know if that's included because I'm getting the cost from facilities and we upgraded especially as we get closer we look more closely at the pricing to make sure it's accurate um so I'm not entirely sure if
that pricing includes some help from rlt like you're saying I would think some conversation would be had with them if there's some savings to be had but I have not been particularly involved in any of that so I don't know for sure and we don't have solar pan on
panels on any of the roofs of any buildings do we in town uh Town buildings no Kum supposed to have will and we were looking at Parker but it wasn't going to really work out at Parker because of not enough space there make it worthwhile but I don't think any
buildings exist currently that have them but kilum will will that's in the plan yeah Burbank looked at it too yeah didn't work it didn't work at Burbank either there there's certain circumstances that have to be ideal for
that to even be worthwh guess exactly yep all right moving on um Carpeting and Flooring and doors in the later years get moved out a couple years then these Birch this was helpful the Birch metal service line food
service line and the barrels um food service line those were 85,000 each um Joe came to me and said that the um school lunch revolving fund was going to try and capture all their Capital like make themselves completely reliant on the revenues that they come in how is a
food service what is the food service line I think it's something that where they have the heated you know where they when they're serving the kids it's the place where you line up to get your school so all they put those metal trays and and they heat they keep the food warm and they're serving it out of there okay they both need replacement and I
had them on my Capital plan at 85,000 not knowing if they could cover them under their revolving fund cuz School launch is kind of self-sufficient they're supposed to be it's almost like kitchen equip but sometimes the capital take care of the person in charge there thinks that she will have enough funding
to do it through the robotic fund which took simp bur away from us which was outstanding both of those were 85,000 each um so that's just something going away that was planned for or was unplanned for fiscal
27 and they also had um I don't know I see it if I haven't gotten down to it yet there was a um food service vanan was 52,000 that went away too they're going to buy that out of their revolving fun and then we have this firewall
upgrade that's happening um at April town meeting it's a $6,000 ask and we add some information so I was made aware that the artificial turf at Parker Middle School is not in good shape and it was on the capital plan for
later years um in order to expediate that being repaired we gave 150,000 in 2026 we moved up on the capital plan and we're planning debt for that um because we're estimating the cost to be somewhere around 1.5 million doll and
we'll spread that over 10 years same thing with the pickle ball courts they told me they get 200,000 in donations and then we have 100,000 in fiscal 26 committed towards pickle ball so if we did go there I would borrow 1.6 to Deb
service for that instead of capital because it kind of was an unexpected something that seems to be a want soon and the debt would make it actually um more manageable and that's why I chose that can I just ask Matt a question are
they are you not getting a second opinion on that that that pickle ball estimate from like anywhere like an actual company that does installation I'm still it's not my my sandbox but it just doesn't settle and and I know Jane
had worked on it quite a bit the number seems to be coming down a little bit we'll have some more information on that we've been working we've been working with the existing architect and with activitas um who's done a lot of those and you know we we could get a quote unquote second opinion but I think when
working with them and doing some value engineering we're getting it down to something a little bit more reasonable I know some of the funds too that that's on the table to possibly use some of the Burbank funds um we'll have to look at that also that could
definitely decrease the baring some money from there I'd rather see a lower a more comparable cost to other towns like what they're paying for it it's just still there's L I was shocked by the cost like long B was more than double but they they gave be originally
go look in the CPA page where everyone does projects and they're listing what they pay and I see nothing this and you're doing projects so I just I mean I feel like they they pointed to a lot of site work that needs to be done there is a lot of land prep
there it's different some of those other projects are on like existing playgrounds where you know you have good land to work with there's a lot of land prep because we're looking at Simon's way which has been untouched and needs to be excavated so but I get me saying everybody was
you'll hear at town meeting I'm sure we will but I think for town meeting we may have a more reasonable number I think you have lights and number of Courts I think what Seven's proposed and towns often do just six so different the lights may be able to
wait you know so we are working on it we want to we want to get to something we yeah no you want to see something happen yeah exactly exactly come on I mean this will obviously be next week we're doing the warant for town meeting so there's going to be something yeah there's a for us to talk about that hope hopefully
close to what's actually presented to well yeah so the capital plan's just a stab this is this is just like somebody somebody somewhere said said spend $2 million so Sharon wrote that down yeah and it's a doesn't me SP2 million that means Sharon was listening when someone talked about it right we make changes
all the time anyway so sorry what were you saying it just has to be listed if you plan on Bor you I have to have it listed somewhere and I don't want to forget about it and have you know them authorized de that I don't have schedule that that's not but if he doesn't get approved I think just and it frees up
more money for some for capital or something else so this is held in our debt service plan at a borrowing of 1.65 when you see debt na a that means debt not authorized so it hasn't been authorized by anybody yet hasn't
probably. 1.65 is what I have scheduled but I think that the number I have here is what they gave us the day before they saw the select board and then came down 100,000 but I didn't bother changing because I have no idea what's going to happen with this I felt like the number was
outrageous it may come down more before it passes down meeting yeah so that's those two thing I mean again the same thing with the the Aral offal tur Parker it's a going to be a debt no issue or not issued or not authorized yet so if
that goes you know if that's authorized we usually spend money on design to get a good number and then we bring that to to think so um that's why that's that way when end repairs field repairs mov a
years it's really hard when some of these things are big numbers 325 is kind of a big number so you'll notice if something's bigger and we don't balance they tend to get moved to a year that we can manage it but then sometimes things free up like when I don't have they say no to the debt and I can do things
things start moving back forward um and so it's unfortunate I hate when I have to move things up but it's it's just so hard sometimes you can't do everything you want to do these got moved out as well Memorial Park replace Bandstand and Court reservice both of those got moved
out around the years I say two years and then what else do we have a breathing apparatus about one year 400,000 it's be more than one breathing apparatus I
hope at 4,000 yeah I hope so I'm imagining I'm I'm I'm imag imagining they need it for every one of their firef L all of these have I think have they pricing changes or
200um guess that's price so this is a pricing change so you can see me in the cell adding 30,000 they're telling me that their cars all their cars are coming in much higher than they expected so in in every case I'm actually increasing the my
increasing the cost all of their stuff you know as we get as they get closer they start to get better cost pricing and they they they give me an increase to put in um so in that case you know those are all increases you don't see any movement this one's being moved
in two years it's being increased 20% and it's being moved up 202 years so the notes on the side are very helpful and and we have printed in the past and maybe in the future that should be a vental note that we make sure that we print that because
it's helpful um and then these radios I think are add no increase by 20% so nothing on this Capital plan has stayed at the cost that they put it on everything has G up double digits I it's
so hard I I struggle with these Highway um all these DPW trucks because they're super expensive and they're going up astronomical and I end up having to move them out because they just can't be afforded you know in a quick timeline oh more points to the fact that at some
point we need an override to reset things you know to help us um be able to kind of replan things because I feel like with the with the free cash level in such a high place we keep can't do what we did in the past where oh we need this we'll just ask for more fre cash we
just can't you know and the and the cost and we can even entertain the fact of well 5% debt and capital we haven't Revisited that in years but we're not in a position right now with all the free cash we're using to even entertain a change to that once you've kind of done an override and you move away from that
you can say really that number needs to go up a little bit so that we have more money for capital in Deb I would be curious you know because you're right now you mentioned so many things that we vote in after the budget of town meeting our Capital um I would love to find out
what we really spent on Capital you know which was more than 5% because we added some 5% is the minimum and that's how we build the budget extra money we we're adding more Capital then we're adding operating expenses during the middle of the year every year then we're spending more than 5% on capital for sure for
sure and which is apparently even then and then maybe that data if I put that together would help support that if wanted to change for yes things come up S you think it should be seven we should
change it's been it's been fine for how long now forever I mentioned it but with everything else it's not in L when this isn't on our agenda because we're talking budget but when you say override and we need an override like when it
comes is to think about an amount of an override is it well we always have to supplement the budget by 6 million so an override has to at least start hitting what how much we're coming short like we'll have that discussion but is there a formula that helps you everyone figure
that out when we get to that point I feel like some people would just say oh there's 6 million there or 7 million you should ask for an override well we have a standard amount of regeneration that we felt comfortable before I mean before before inflation we were staying at a at a range that we were comfortable because we knew we regenerated far more and so
it wasn't a problem um so you could say well okay at 7 million say in fiscal 27 maybe we're asking for five so that you bring your number down to a $2 million because I haven't seen a year yet that we haven't regenerated $2 million but it's one of those things like I I think
the larger the override is the less likely people are going to be able to afford it you know and especially with all that we've had to ask of them in recently we have to be compassionate about when and and how much um and I feel like a smaller number could make things a whole lot better just get us
back to normal level LS of free cash R right I just didn't know if there was like a an amount there everybody approaches it when you see the numbers that are in other towns that aren't passing in your life well are they getting no regeneration how did they come up with 14 million or 10 million or
something which feel that was one of the reasons why I was asking the Staffing questions today because that that was a source of part of the Regeneration if we had positions open that took a time to fill then you know there was a piece of that that came
back the fact that we're are where we are um and we're fully staffed um for um means that that's not necessarily a lever that would be used for regeneration and so you know uh it's you
know I think it's it's incumbent upon us to be able to try to be able to project and forecast you know as best we can um but knowing you know you know the levers for regeneration that we've had in the past
if some of them are just not there that lends itself to you know kind of another component um as far as what you would want to project for um something that you need to do for a budget S I want to interject a little point of order if if that were actually
off topic I would cut you off because we're not supposed to talk about things that are our business but not on the agenda but I think it is because as part of the budget we are being asked to change the amount of free cash being spent so anything having to do with free cash projection is Absol we we're trying to you know keep the town need to
understand when we make the decision to say what you know whatever we're and it has to get out of this room because not every you know you go look and like three people are watching the fincom meeting we don't get the attention of the select board and that's uh three times more than we normally get yeah you know oh and I'm guessing that it may be
nobody at this hour but it the public will suddenly say hey why why didn't you tell us and it's like no we've been talking about it it's four people four people okay one one other thing to keep in mind is people will say to you today I'm fully staed that doesn't mean that they didn't have a position that was
open for three months during this year do you know what I mean so that doesn't necessarily mean that there's no regeneration there that just means right now there isn't um and the other thing that we're we're seeing is we've got five or six retirements over in the fire department in two and police those do
not happen quickly and so you do start to see that there's a period of time where they are kind of saving money when when the fire chief goes they're going to replace the fire CH and then they're going to you know have to if they promote from within they're going to have to replace that position and then
that person is starting back at one in their savings related to that so there is that's the kind of thing that happens on a regular basis to us that helps us um I know that we had um an assistant engineer somebody that was you know certified engineer that they promoted up
to assistant engineer he left us he's not DPW anywhere we just promoted him because he went to be the engineer somewhere else that sort of thing happens all the time DPW has on a regular yeah I remember that from Jane and Chris yeah you just see well doesn't
every Community have regeneration or do we compute it differently like when you say I think the way we do it is different than every Community because because I don't think they all do kind of what we do in terms of I don't know that they do the accommodated cost and take that off the top before they split the bu split the money between the town
and the school and in the school and a lot of them will say we don't use any free cash to do our operating budget but I think we've always kind of been on the philosophy we know we have the free cash we don't want to be overly optimistic on the revenues and push our revenues I know I have the free cash and if I'm if
my I'm conservative about my revenues the money is going to go back to free cash anyway and that's always worked for us but we're now at levels that I don't feel comfortable that we'll keep regenerating past what we've used and and that's why I say what I say I know that it's close I don't want people making decisions about soluions without
somebody saying okayy we're a year or two maybe away from the right because the the inflation is hitting every Community equally but not everyone's building their budget the same way we are and making the same assumptions so I guess that's why we we've made the last one last the other thing I would say too
is some will say I use free cash for onetime items like Capital well we spend 5% of our budget on Capital and that's usually three or4 million so and we use free cash Maybe you could say we're using that towards the one time item one Capital item um so we do it differently
so it's hard to compare um and but I still I just don't feel comfortable that we're a comfortable space with what we're using fre cash it's definitely not where we're used to be yeah I mean I hope we don't have to go here either but unfortunately like
head count is such a driver of the cost right like hiring freezes like that accomplishes the same thing as not rehiring people exactly but I don't want to do the [Music] team you know there's just every
component of the budget is increasing every component at one place or another salaries Union contracts every you know everything is is happened and and that and that's outside of see for energy what we're seeing for you know for uh
negotiated contracts you know these you know the analogy that I've used with other people I've talked to is that you know um it's you know it's it's it's either one of two things it's you could pay the same amount of money you know uh um and say you go to the grocery store and you
buy orange juice and it's you may be getting you may be spending the same amount of orange juice but the bottle's smaller now so you know so you're just getting less for the same amount of money that that you can you can draw that same analogy to to how um to the
service that the town can provide well there's things we legally have to do we can we can you know not put in pickle ball courts but we have to have schools right so there's things that we can we can't do less we can yeah I mean I
actually and I I actually want to push back a little you made you made the statement that everything is going up the same but it's not salaries like no no I'm saying everything everything in the budget is going up not by the same amount but everything everything is going up right but but if Revenue you know like I mean I'm looking at Sharon's
email where she said that you know Revenue increase would be 3.48% if you know when you don't count to the reduction due to excluded debt so you know we have an operating budget increase of 3 and half% like that's the same number if if everybody's salary Goes Up 3 and a half% and revenue Goes
Up 3 and half% we're fine the problem is all the accommodated costs going up 7 10 133% yeah and then and fire going up 500 I want to be clear about that narrative because I don't want I want to you know I don't I don't want anybody to think that we're you know spoiling the town
staff here they actually are controlling costs if we went and got failed over that's where you cut people that's what's happening in Melrose if you go look at their stuff Melrose has got like 4 million dollar shortfall in their school budget there's just nothing you can do but cut I mean that's the biggest
expense we have is our salary so if you've got a shortfall like that that's where you have to go that's the painful place to go and that's where you have to go you either reduce service or you yeah but I mean I I do care about the narrative here because when the voters decide on an override if they think that
everything's been going up the same they be like well you should have controlled costs better so that salaries Rose in line with Revenue salaries did rise in line with Revenue it's everything else that R faster yeah so I I I I think that's I think that's an uneducated that's an educated
uh response and it's a very simplistic response if someone says that they're just not paying attention that there there are so many things you know that you are are lumped into that bud into accommodated costs that are increasing people are feeling it however
you're feeling everyone's feeling it in their home why would it be any different when you expand it out to a town it's it's exactly the same thing all aspects of it are going up you know and you know as as a as a as a household you're
you're figuring out how to do either do more with or trying to grow your pie you know you're trying to increase you know your your your salaries the money that you bring in a town is no different um except it's just more constrainted as far as what it can do you can't you know
the town can't go and get a and get and get a side hustle there's no side hustle there say I'm glad that my you know I have at some points in my life gotten races bigger than two and a half% and I'm glad and that and that's and and and and that's the and that's the constraint and and again I don't I I'm not don't
want to appear flippant about it um you know by any stretch it's very serious um and you know and it's a burden that's shared across the community but it is something that one of two things has to happen you either you know we go through
that process and you do modest overrides probably a little bit more frequently um or you live with um less you know you you put the town and the schools in a in a in a situation where they have to do less um and it's either less staff
there's less there's less less Services there's less teachers there's less you know police and fire you know you those are the things that you know that that exist that they're they're very Stark there's not many levers to pull um and so that's I mean our biggest source of
Revenue is our property tax revenue and it's 70% of our revenues and it's constrained by probably two and a half and then we're in an environment where nothing is 2 and a half% increase anymore and so we're we're set up for fed in that way so the way that it's set up with prop two and a half every so
many years you really do have to go to the voters to to get a little bit extra top to pick up that excess and it's it's horrible I or you can have a ton of New Growth but has been pretty clear that that's not what and and and there yeah and and and and again that that's exactly the
point like there's you're you're all you're you're boxed in from all sides um because up I mean you're just at a point then you're tearing down and putting in something bigger where and then it doesn't end up being the same reading which you hear quite a bit too like you know this isn't the reading that I grew
up in well you know maybe stop and shop will close and we not not saying I want that but you have to look at Stop and Shop no but something some big piece of some you know with all the retail closures there could be something that oh there's a sudden unexpected opportunity you have the Eastern Gateway
which it could go I guess we have that survey not that it's our job to promote it but it could go in a housing direction or go into a m Village Direction y right I mean I think which has housing but it isn't predominantly housing yeah I just think that's you
know um you know and I and I do think part of the narrative that you know that you know that we talk about here and and and you know it will be socialized through the select board and school committee and everything else the last time we did this it lasted a lot longer than you know last time we did an
override it lasted a lot longer than people anticipated and and you know that's there's no guarantee that that's going to happen the next time pandemic and arpa help helped us though because there was there a few years there where we were not having to spend money you know this may be something too like I
think for us to to think about you know and and Mary and you're great about you know kind of um you know knowing about what happens in pure communities I I wonder about the Cadence and the degrees you know because everyone's in the same situation I and I agree with you you know kind of the the pandemic and arpa
and things like that helped um things out but I think you're seeing people that uh towns that did um overrides after us are starting to do some of them before us and so I think there's a component to that and I think that's you
know not that I'm you know uh I I think it's worth having that as a um as a resource to be able to kind of point to because it points to uh the the degree of which um and how well the town is run yeah I also just look at it as a um a
mood of people and what people are willing to tolerate I don't think the people in stonum and Melrose and North writing are that different than reading people about what they're willing to face but they also look and see what what did our town do with the money that we gave them the last time and we
certainly did a good I think we did a good job here I really like reading's answer to that question so that that is I mean there are many ways by the time we ask it would be at least eight or n years the last exactly I feel like a good long time when we
told 2018 yeah was 2018 so yeah 2028 would be 10 2029 would be depending on when we ask you know it could you know but I tell you I tell you that that's a lot longer than what Bob projected that money would last you said 4 five years I
thought or four to six years at most so we're being good stewards we're doing the um uh not to be too far off well do we have an agenda item talk about fut so we do need to talk future agendas minutes so is there any else yeah so let's let's actually ask are there any
does anyone have any more question about capital or anything like that okay so I believe we can close the hearing on the so have to make some announcement or you just say it you're going to vote on the budget next meeting then correct everything was heard tonight so you can
just move to close the public here we'll vote on the budget in the context of voting on all the financial weinar we have one person in the um yes yeah no we're we have um Zoom um so all right so in that case I'll like move to close the public
hearing on the fiscal 20 year F year 26 budget second thank you Maran thank you Emily uh Mark yes Joe yes Emily yes miam yes Ed yes hry yes John yes Joe yes all right thanks we even did the thing we
were supposed to do in the Cher which I'm not sure we've actually done every year um point point of order the select board never adjourned they adj they did not adjourn want to handle that minutes yeah Mark left and then uh they all fell
asleep not here not everybody so no thank you for hanging with us yeah no that's a good I actually missed I was meaning to pay attention because Carlo was in the room I was me and he went out for water and he came back and and Mark
had already left by the time that Carlo was yeah it marks leaving and and and it was based that was the tree that fell okay so so in that case yeah I don't know if it's possible to tell from the record we'll leave that up to the select board
that's that's it's not our problem okay all right just put that on there yes no that's yes try to keep an eye out for it but there's too many things to keep track of and I am trying to pay attention to the budget discussion um so so Jo quick thing on the just you I know we're on a future agenda agendas correct
um so the meeting that we have the set up for April 2nd now is it um agenda wise is it and is this a fincom meeting or is this what what are we just posted for it we're
posted for it but we're not we're not uh we're not running it it's not our meeting yeah so so we're we're running it as as a town just to get both projects together so it's just projects not override right oh yeah not override at all just the projects um just to get ready for town meeting hopefully a of
town meeting members will come that's good I just want trying to improve our odds of getting through the special town meeting in one night yeah um so people know about and can someone also just remind me what the dates of town meeting are April 28th and there's a special one
in the middle of it special May 1 is a special town meeting where they'll hear the projects no is it April no April 28th is the second Mondays wait but it's Monday start on the 21st or
28th starts on 28th and then it's the 28th the first I think the first is the special time oh boy I just realized I have a schedule problem because I some reason had that off by week first is the Thursday and then if it
continues so we probably won't get to the bud till the 5th okay good news is I'll be here for the 5ifth bad news is I won't be here for the first so I'm gonna miss up that one step up to the
plate all right so future agendas all right so okay we're getting we're definitely we're losing we're losing discipline here all right hold it together folks so we can actually finish the meeting all right because actually I got news with respect to to uh just a few minutes before the meeting when I
got Matt's email uh I learned something about future agendas so right now we're slated next week to um discuss the uh annual town meeting warrant uh sounds like the special town meeting warrants will not be ready yet
we can't discuss it we can't vote on it today it's going to be closed by the select board on April 1st right so that's the so we have a longer period with special town meeting warrant um I I'm going to check on the language there's a few things I was waiting to hear back from the msba but if it's
ready in time we may have it for for next week week but you'd be voting ahead of the so that which I mean I'd be in order to avoid having an extra meeting I would certainly be happy to vote on the proposed text and then we'll meet again if it gets revised okay but you know I
would like to assuming that the proposed text is what the what goes into the would be when is the select we voting April April April 1 well we couldn't like have a little meeting right before the hearing on the second and uh it would be it would be worth checking with
the select board if what they prefer would they be offended or if we voted before them that has happened in the past we're only slated for the 19th and not the 26th clarifying no that's why that's why
it's kind of a concern so but it all be ready but um I love you all I was not planning on a fifth meeting with all of you right I mean it could be could be ack meeting it could even beag on to the second right I mean called to order yeah we could we can meet we can meet ahead
of time or right I mean so the the meeting on the second if if you know we need to get a quorum of us there considering that this is a big freaking deal I'd like to get as you know all of us there if possible but um I don't know if all of us were going to be at the thing on the
second I got ad I'll feel obliged to show up but if I wasn't the chair I probably wouldn't because boy I've heard enough about kill him enough times and I would not be learning anything I I don't you know yeah um I think it's I think it's a little bit I mean and again for you know for
for both projects you know given the um I I I'd Advocate that we should be there or or most of us should be there even if we'd heard about it just because question there's going to be so many people from town meeting that you know I
I think it's it's a it's a good show they're going to ask the question about an override someone there will ask that and we the people there sort of the answer some a question I have a feeling we'll be criticized if we're not there so or you know we don't have a quorum there yeah
no we'll we I we should aim to have a quorum there and maybe tenative do we have a time I is that supposed to start 7:00 7 right that's right at the pack getting a quorum together at 6:30 might be hard I don't know about we do it
before time meetings no we do it at 7:00 before 7:30 meeting starts at 7:30 pre start bring your dinner with you the kids to bed there exactly yeah the kids to bed with you the
B got sleeping bags back there they good so anyway so right now all we have for next week all we have for next week is most of the warant yes the the entire strictly speaking it'll be the entire warrant for the annual town meeting and of probably
none of the warrant we could get a preview but maybe don't want to vote on the special town meeting warrant if to town will be enough with all those budget lines and signing of your one articles it's send you yeah that will be
a lot on by itself yeah well and something something pickle ball cards um so yeah now that'll be um we be know anything about what the S we does with pickle ball then pickle ball they have they have a meeting before next for they meeting on the they're meeting next um
next Tuesday right before us but they're not but I don't I don't on their agenda I don't think I mean picco Bal made it onto the warrant it's there you know so oh they put it on the warrant so the number May is still in flux but in terms of because the because the open meeting
law article is vague you know all articles like that there's not enough information to meeting means the numbers need to be buttoned up by the time they oh because we'll put it in the back so we're getting we're getting there so um the warrant that that you will that
you'll see for an for andil town meeting we have a lot of the background in there um which becomes what we call the report on the war so you have that there what happened to that TV part of the um I think it's part of
the there's going to be another one just notic the pain the anyway all right um that is definitely not our agenda sorry I was just I've been staring at it going what what was there yes yeah no select board is not discussing town meeting stuff at their next up meeting on
Tuesday including they've already voted on the mar and then yeah but we'll I mean our recommendation is undoubtedly going to be influenced by how much is actually being asked for yeah so yeah we'll have some better numbers for yeah I me the
the number we're presented with is the number of town meeting we presented with then we can vote a recommendation y so um keeping us in suspense but okay um all right so let's see so and then where are we with the idea
of an April 2nd meeting or do we need to do a different yet another date I mean how many of us can informally think we're going to be able to make it like I I was 6:30 at the pack at I will make it happen I mean it
shouldn't take long it's just the standard language voting on The articles' already all you need is five people right yeah I mean it's it's um still it's going to be it's going to be a little weird when we do the the the fincom recommendation uh on like hey we
want to borrow $30 million uh only five of us have weighed in but yeah I mean I can certainly explain the situation if it was up to me that we you know we we we had a full hearing
on March 5th and ask a lot of questions but given just the timing of everything only this many people could get together for it but I can't speak for any member who didn't go and who knows how many we're going to get y yeah all right so do we have a a quish amount of people
that have already agreed that they'll be there 60 I for sure not okay all right I bet you Jeff cor will be there but I can't speak for him but he lives across the street he can walk there and go home and have a supper yeah so um all right okay so then in
that case let's plan on and I guess in terms of meeting space uh jez would be meet find a classroom library or you can you know if you're in the packets people already starting to come in I yeah no that might
be awkward trying to whole meeting on the state standing around in a circle on the thing is if we're posted we have to be in an identified place so the public can find us your classroom would be that would be a public space right but if there's a yeah if we can get a classroom or something Band Room behind the stage
the library use the library library wouldent has big enough space technically right technically if someone wants to watch the half a dozen of us get together and vote we they can do it which is important okay you should be
able to do that right make it out to that date all right um and so yes the only agenda we're thinking about for that is uh the special meeting all right um motion to approve sub minutes from 35
2025 as presented second second all right thank you I had a question on the don't worry I wasn't going to let him vote without discussion Mark go ahead Mark the uh the scanner I thought the scanner had a cost of 4,000 not
10,000 oh Lura Jem isn't here you're right I think it was lower that's why we got a bargain on it 4,000 yeah it was 4,000 good catch why do we put 10,000 in I like I that they put my complete and utter shock quote in
there usually someone would edit that out like no that needs to stay for posterity so on that it's just saying the 10,000 was to purchase the ieed ballot and to help the store yeah she asked for
yep yeah I think you end cuz I remember that was that 10,000 was the line item that they fall on that comma after the scanner not be the grammar police um but it's actually interfering here um I don't think that Comm is necessary and it does make people think that the scanner is separate ah scanner and to
help yep you get it Mr grar spend spend unusual amount of unreasonable amount of my time telling Engineers where to put commas just ask Microsoft co-pilot or whatever you know they they'll do it for you I I'm sure that CH GPT and Gemini
are both better at oh I know you work for Google pushing the right in any case um all right are there any other so we have we have literally Struck One comma and I think that's
it I did I second motion to approve the minutes as as amended sounds sounds good with Karma removed all right so I'm a little procedurally confused sounds like maybe
start over Emily all right the motion to approve them as as amended instead of as presented s all right second all right thank you Emily thank you Brianne um I didn't have anything else myself all right let's just do this and get out of
here all right um uh voting to approve the minutes uh Mark yes Joe yes Emily yes Marian yes Ed andry yes John yes and Joe carahan yes motion toour second thank you Emily
thank you Ed Mark yes Joe yes Emily yep maram yep Ed hry John yes and Joe yes Sor I got confused because every said yes before I said his name and I was like e