Thank you everybody. I will call the Tuesday, December 9th select board meeting to order. The first item on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. Tonight's meeting is being um broadcast on RT on RCTV uh as well as Zoom. I will briefly go over the agenda.
We're going to have the department budget presentations from library, then facilities, then public services, administrative services and finance, followed by shared cost, and then a budget summary. Uh, and then at 9:00,
we'll have a discussion and vote on extension of deadlines for town manager review and notification of contract renewal. And then at 910, a vote to approve bond issuance of $68,915,000. And with that, uh, we're on to the
library budget. Matt and >> Amy's gonna come up and library budget. >> All right, you guys are all you guys are all fancy here. Um, but I know how to mic. So, thank you. I think I I know everybody. And is Carlo online
or um we have at least four out of five here. Um but thank you again. Um been here before. I've seen most of you before. Um as soon as we can get there we go. Um my name is Amy Lannon. I'm the
director of the Reading Public Library. With me here is Michelle Fiel. She's the assistant director and Albert Ples who's the director of equity. So they are all key parts of how we put our budget together each year. So, um, next slide, please.
Um, so we're here to rent present the level one request as, um, we have a number of presentations to get through. I'll try and go as quickly as I can, but the Reading Public Library provides a vital community space and it's a set of
resources where residents can connect and learn and grow, and they're not required to purchase anything. Um it's really something a true third space. Um we have students that are just left today. We have students studying um in quiet areas. We have job seekers that
use our computers to find jobs and families that use the children's room to share books together. So these everyday services reflect our core values which are education, equity, access, and accountability. Next slide please.
Um it's service beyond books. Um while books are very important, we offer a lot more. Last year we had over 175,000 visitors come through our doors. They came to use our 22 public computers or our free wireless. Um and we have
about 16 wireless sessions every hour that the library is open. And we actually have more sessions than that because our Wi-Fi is available for limited hours outside our normal working hours. So we have people that hang out in the park a lot and either charge their car or use the Wi-Fi, one or the other. Um they attended some of our 700
community programs. They get help with research and what we call reader advisory help figuring out what they'd like to learn about or read about and print, facts, scan um important documents. We had almost 20,000 um scans and over 32,000 almost 33,000 pages
printed at the library last year. It's clear 25. We're open when you need us in FY25. We're open for 3,76 hours. That does include evenings and weekends. We try to be there when people with work schedules are available. And if you're
not able to make it to the library, we have online services that are available 24/7, which includes over 84,000 ebooks, 39 over 39,000 e audio books, um 30 plus research databases, online tutoring,
over 200 digital magazines, um test prep if you have anyone know anyone who's getting ready for the GRE, the MCCAST, the MCAT, um we have a lot of those preparation things. Um so we have a lot to offer. Next slide, please. Um, the library remains an excellent
investment. Um, this is a calculator that I use every every year. It's called the um I think it's called I love you your library. I love your library. Um, but it's something that's uh used through the American Library Association and um some other um groups put it
together. If you look at just the value of the physical circulation, which are the books and other materials, it's over a $5 million value. So that's just every time a book is checked out or a museum pass is checked out or a children's DVD
is is checked out. Um those are our physical items. So the value in that is over $5 million. And then you add in things like a our digital content, our programs and other services, the value is pretty good. It's about a 315% return
on investment. And the easy way to think about that is for every dollar invested into the library, the community gets back about $4.15. So that's my case. Um, in FY25, our budget was 2.18 2.1 million. We get
about $9 million in value and we still remain about 1.6% of the entire municipal budget. Um, next slide, please. So, in order to maintain this excellence, we are asking for a 2.7%
increase. It's cut off a little bit in the corner there. Um, it's a $59,950 total increase. Uh, the budget would be $2,320,000. The trustees did see this and approved this last night.
But I just want to say that like all of the other people here tonight that are presenting this um even just this last week, but I say this last budget cycle, but even in the last week, this is really a delicate balance of trying to
keep our budget cast costs low and keep pace with rising costs and keep pace with our staff and and services that so that we can meet the community needs and expectations. Um, this budget supports fair wages for our staff, supports certification,
current collection, and essential services. Um, next slide, please. Salaries make up 80% of our budget. And so therefore, uh, 59, I'm sorry, um,
$52,000 of this increase is going to salaries. Um, I do want to just take a note and say that a lot of just like all of our other departments here, the library does um pursue available grant opportunities when we can. In fact, in
FY25, we received a 20,000 LSTA grant, a library services technology act grant uh for green programming and green space improvements to um the green space improvements for along the parking lot side of the building. And I'm very excited to announce that that's actually now a certified wildlife habitat. It's
something that we've been working for. Um, but as I said, most library grants come through federal agencies such as the institute m institute of museum and library services and the national endowment for the humanities. And that LSTA grant was one such grant. So we will continue to pursue those grants as
they're available. So getting back to staffing. So 52,000 of this increase is just for staffing. For four months of the year, we have 24.5 full-time equivalents who provide services six days a week for 60 hours a week, six days, and 60 hours a week. And
that's across three floors of a 40,000 foot building. I just want to give you a context because a lot of this would be different if we were in a much smaller space. Um, our FTEES increase to 25.2 in the other eight months of the year because we add Sunday and we add hours
on Sundays. So that dedicated staff is a really great investment. So that's where most of that uh increase request this year comes from. Next slide, please. Okay, the expense budget breakdown. Um
we are requesting a 1.8% increase. It's $7,590 over FY26 expense budgets. And again the delicate balance really trying to be sensitive to the tight budgets that we have the townwide fiscal
constraints and we are committed to responsible resource management. We know this is a challenging budget cycle. We're trying to manage cost. So this budget really does it reduces some funds or level funds certain things so that we can accommodate like I said to keep pace
with increased costs. Our library materials appropriation must go up a certain percentage. You see it going up 2.6. That is equivalent roughly to our whole over request which is about 2.7. The materials need to remain at 13% of our overall budget. That's part of our
certification requirements. Um the one increase we have that's rather large is our software licensing agreements. That is something where um some of it is a few of our software specialized softwares are going up but the majority of it and remember it's majority of
$79,000 which isn't a heck of a lot. So I think it's like $4 or $5,000 is going to one contract that gets renewed every three years. So um there's a particular bump this year. We are therefore cutting things in professional development. We're cutting things in supplies. We're cutting things in public technology. Um,
this is that is different than the technology that Kevin presents in a much funnier way than I can present. Um, but it's it's it's technology. The town does not pay for the computers that the public uses. The library pays for those. So, um, and that goes to, you know, part
of our municipal appropriation requirement to stay certified. So, we're cutting that, which means we'll make some of those public computers stretch a little bit longer. Um, I think everything's up to Windows 11, which is good. But, but you know, just like Kevin, we do have to maintain certain
security protocols. There's certain software licenses that come with that that we need to kind of follow up for this year. Okay. Um, and the last item on that list is OESJ expenses. Um, and if you go to the next slide, Maddie.
Thank you. Um, this it may look a little bit familiar, but it's a little bit different. Um, I won't go over it in detail. This particular site is in your packets. Albert is here if you have questions about it, but as you know, uh, one of the things he is continuing a lot with a lot or we are continuing um, with
this office within the library. We are continuing with a lot of the projects that we discussed last year, including large community events. We've also done l youth listening sessions with the coalition and the running public schools. Um we've done a he's uh we've been working a lot particularly has been
working a lot with employees and this year just um within this fiscal year has been assigned or appointed as the ADA coordinator and that's a role that he's filling out more and taking on a lot more responsibility there. So, the funds
um I'll be honest, if if we'd had a fully if if if tightness the budget tightness hadn't been an issue, we probably would have asked for about 3% increase, which is a difference of about $7,500, which would have we wouldn't had to have cut those other things and we might have
been able to give a little bit more money to our um equity and ADA uh work. Um although I believe a lot of that is we're hoping will come through different resources such as grants and um other funding that comes through things having an 88 commission. So um we feel like the
1% 1.8% increase in expenses in the overall 2.7 increase to the overall budget is fiscally responsible and will only provide a minimal disruption to our regularly scheduled services. And last slide please.
Um just in closing on my one of my favorite quotes um from Kate Moran library in the middle of a community. It's a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. Cathedrals of the mind, hospitals of the soul and theme parks of the imagination. It's
more than a building with books and it's really at the heart of an armed community um that connects and thrives and um it's a good investment in our community's future. So, questions. >> Thank you, Amy. Um, I believe Carlo's on
Zoom now. Carlo, did you have any questions for Amy before I open it up in here? >> Yeah, thanks. Um, thank you for good presentation. Amy, I've been asked in other departments, is there any overtime in any of these salaries?
>> Yes, we have um well, it's not really considered overtime. Our Sunday budget is is in a different bucket than our regular salaries. It is paid at overtime or premium rates. I like to call it overtime. It's at premium rates. It is
also um occasionally we have one or two people that have to work overtime, but it's very very minimal. That those funds are really reserved for Sundays or um I know talked about this here when you have someone who has to work the fall
street fair and they're working a whole extra day and they just work five days like that just they just worked a full work week. It seems appropriate to compensate them for doing that extra work. That doesn't happen very often by and large. the fund that says on our budget line when you see it, it should
actually say Sundays. Um, but that's what we use for overtime and it's a small amount of money. >> No, I understand that part. Thank you. Do do you have any idea? So, given you have a good mix of part- timerrs and full-timers, are there certain, you know, and and I
apologize for not knowing this. Are there certain requirements of staff when you're open? like who needs to be there or can Sundays be covered by anybody? >> Sundays are are Sundays are covered by anybody. Um and for people obviously who are full-time, it's automatically going
to be at a premium rate. For people are who are part-time, it's it's also a voluntary. Um I do have the authority to call people in to basically work mandatory overtime or mandatory Sundays. Um it is a premium rate. Um we don't I don't know if that un answers your
question. Um, but we don't have it. We have a require we have a staffing requirement in terms of the number of people that need to be in the building for security purposes. >> Okay. See, that was part of it. Yeah, that part I already knew. I was wondering if there was certain positions and need I know you're like, you know,
different titles that need to be there to be open. >> Not particularly. No. Um, we have a mix of exempt mostly non-exempt staff. We have a few exempt staff because they're exempt and they don't get overtime. If they work a Sunday, they generally will take some comp time. Um, you know, maybe
take a Monday morning off or something like that if they've worked a Sunday because they're not eligible for overtime. >> Okay. And then, uh, Re-educate me, we're closed Sundays in the summer. Is that the >> Yeah. So, we're only open on Sunday. I say only, it's actually eight months out of the year from October through May.
So, after the school year be begins and a little bit before it ends. So, >> all right. So I I guess I would just say in closing that you know what we're looking down the road of operational budgets you know for the two new
buildings and the library is a book big building as you stated >> if we could try to you know curtail at least the overtime or have part- timerrs that are working so many hours just just to be mindful and I know everyone's doing their best but I think if there's
a way you can schedule without having premium pay. I know that would be appreciated by other departments as well so we can >> you know make it leaner a little not leaner but make it more clean >> so we're trying to avoid overtime because I know
>> sometimes overtime has to happen like you said when you're covering these >> or we don't have substitutes or something. Yeah. I will say our first recommendation or our first request I should say is when people have to adjust their hours is that they back it out. So if you have to cover Saturday, can you back it out on Monday? The problem just
then becomes if someone a desk is going to be empty Monday, we can't get a substitute. Nobody else can cover. We really don't have to do that very often. Like I said, it's very rare that we have to do that. Um, and it's usually an extenduating circumstances. Like for example, we have a couple of openings right now. So, we're down staff a little
bit. We try to fill in with substitutes who are permed. They don't get overtime. Um, actually, they get premium pay, but they don't, you know, we try to back everything out. And that even goes for part-time people. So, even if you're working a 20-hour week and you're asked to cover an extra shift, the first the
first thing you're going to try and do is back that out of your regular week. If you can't back it out of your regular week, then you might get extra hours above and beyond your regular 20. So, that is that is a practice that we have. >> Okay. Yeah, just thank you. And what what are the two positions that we have
open? >> Um, well, technically right now we have one position open that we're interviewing for. Um, we had someone leave and then a promotion. Um, and then we have two retirements coming up in the next uh 30 days. So, we're going to be filling those positions. >> Are those are those full-time or
part-time? >> One is No, actually, they're both part-time. So, the opening we have now is full-time, but the other two openings are part time. >> Okay. All right. And and then again, I don't run the library. Are the two
part- timerrs that are going to be leaving slashret retiring, do they need to be replaced or you want them replaced? >> No, 100% they need to be replaced. >> Okay. All right. I'm good. Thanks. Board members, any questions? Karen,
>> hi. Thank you very much. Um, couple of questions. I'm wondering if you have >> You might want to put it on. Sorry. >> Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Um I'm just wondering about all the visits and the uses whether you have the ability to see which demographics within our community
are using um the services. >> That's a really good question and it really kind of rides the line of privacy. We have very limited access to how we can use uh library card data. So I could run a report and say and we have run a report on demographics to say how
many people actually have active library cards. what I was like 12,000 something uh library cards that are are active that haven't expired every year. You don't renew your card, it gets expired every so often. So, um but 12,000 people have active library cards right now. And
we can do and we have done in the past or cost a demographic survey of that. How many empty nesters, how many families, how many um how many people drive luxury cars, how many people live in certain districts of the town. Um, all of that is available for a price.
What I can't tell you is what they do. Um, and that's for a very good reason. Um, because it protects their privacy and part of the Massachusetts laws around libraries to protect to protect intellectual pursuits. So, we are not permitted to actually do anything that has to do with did you go, you know,
whatever. I can tell you we have family programs, we have children's programs, teen programs, and adult programs. adult programs that are often attended by 20somes, programs that are attended by 55 and plus. Um, so um that's about all
I can tell you in terms of that. Is that answer your question? >> Yeah, I was thinking so you have to decide what programming you're going to offer. Yeah. >> And so if you don't even know um you actually got into more granularity. I was thinking broad swaths. >> Yeah.
How our seniors represent 30% of our population. Are they using >> I don't know if you could say 30% of uh library card visits. >> Yeah. I don't know that that's a I mean you probably could figure that out, but I don't know that that's a that might be a false equivalency of some sort.
Meaning um just because you're in a certain age demographic, you may not be um the primary, you know, you may not be a target audience because you may make over a certain amount of money. So, um, you know, a lot of a lot of what we're trying to do is to get services to
people who need them. Um, I can afford to afford to buy a book at White Lambs, but I also like to check books out of the library. So, I'm actually probably not the target dem demographic for what we're of some of the people that we're trying to reach. Might be people who aren't very high on the literacy rate, people who maybe English isn't their
first language, people who have different economics, lower economic status. Um, so those that's what we would want to use our demographic information for is to make sure that we're meeting those people that that we can I know that I can we know that we
can reach somebody who's a literate, educated, employed person. So we have, you know, we know those general demographics. We have a very I have to tell you that reading is one of the most I'm sorry this is like time. Sorry. Yes. So I don't know if that answers your
question. >> Okay. No, I mean we have um I see that prior to recal opening and and given the space constraints at the senior center, it's been serving as a community center, but you guys have to decide what kind of programs you want to run. >> Sure. And so,
>> well, I just I want to give a nod to like many people in this room. >> Um we do work very closely with elder and human services, with recreation, and you know, we don't want to duplicate anything. We wanna, you know, we want to be able to offer things that can launch somebody into something, but nor are we
going to offer, you know, micro soccer, you know, we're not gonna we're not going to do that, but we do have registration for cheerleading and popcorn or we meets at the library. Will they meet at the new recal? >> It's depending on the rules or whatever the costs, I'm sure they will.
>> Um, getting back to Carlo's point about interesting how you manage the overtime. Um, and Matt, I wanted to ask you, I don't think we've talked about that. Um, it's a fair question for all of the departments. So, are we able to are
other departments able to do that reduced overtime? >> If I could just I just would like to add to that the entire library staff is non-unized. >> We have a non-union library staff. Okay. Yep. So, that's why I'm asking a question. What What are the factors?
>> Yep. And I I don't want to speak for all the department heads, some of them here tonight. We do keep a a really close eye on overtime. You know, that's something we use if we need to use it. Obviously, you heard from the fire and the police department last week. That's something they rely on. Um but we it's not handed
out sort of willy-nilly. We really look to see if we really need the service and if so, you know, we we put the overtime out there. But otherwise, um it's it's handled during the course of business. You know, obviously police and fire a little bit different. DPW somewhat
different sometimes, but yeah, >> thanks. >> Thank you very much for this presentation. I um it was very clear and concise. I appreciate it, but I just wanted to say thank you on your expenses. I see that you had a couple things that were going up and I
appreciate that you mitigated some of your other things with going down so that increase is minimal. When it comes to the 52,000 on salaries, is that for new position? Is that just for like increases of current? >> Yeah, that's using the current um which
is subject to change at any time, I suppose. Um but the current non-union increase townwide is a step plus a 1.25% cola. It's for no additional hours. Okay. >> And in fact, there are no increases to our Sunday or premium budget at all.
there's no increase to our substitute budget at all. So where we could stay the same, like where it's not actually attached to a human being, those numbers stayed down. Um, and you know, in the worst case scenarios, we get to be like May 2027
and we're on our last two Sundays and we've run out of that premium whatever and we would come to this board and say we need $500 to finish the last two Sundays. So there's no increase in that. So obviously everybody else's salary will hourly rate will go up, but we're not increasing that and we're hoping
that that will be should be enough to cover all of our premium premium hours. >> Perfect. All right. Thank you. That was my little question. >> Karen, did you have anything? >> I just wanted to say thank you very much. I they covered a lot of stuff, but I appreciate how mindful it seems that
you were with all your numbers and how you approached things and um thank you for your services. Thank you very much. >> So, for me, Amy, um yes, >> one more person that might have a question, you know, like shoot. >> Now, it's time for the hard questions.
Um uh first off, I'll say that the visual presentation that you provided is the best one I have ever seen. not just with budgets, just pretty much um in my line
of work and anywhere else. I think that everybody uh no offense to future people in here in the packet looking like the laser beam thing from high school backgrounds. I have to say like everybody should be copying whatever you
did for this going forward. Like there is no second place >> in any of these budgets. So thank you. uh in terms of library materials is 301,000. What is an example again? Because that's the biggest number obviously.
>> So that's everything um that you can think of that you would um download, search, borrow, um read. So it includes digital magazines, ebooks, e audio books, includes Hoopla and Canopy. It includes
all of our databases, our test prep, our tutoring, you know, brain foods tutoring. It includes newspapers of the, you know, the Boston Globe. It includes the digitization of those newspapers so that they can go on to our reading archives. We have the reading chronicle
back to 1860ome and then whatever it was before that external maybe back to 1854. Um, all of those have been digitized. So, it pays for things like that. So, anything that is considered consumable by a patron, those are our materials and it could be digital or it could be
physical. So it's more so software licenses are really licenses but these materials are subscri subscriptions could be included. >> Right. Right. And ebooks are very different in the library world than they are in in the consumer world. So
>> we only lease them. We don't >> we don't get them. >> And then programs is 3500. >> Y >> it seems like you have a program like 19 times a day. >> Yeah, we do. So, how are you managing to spend the $3,500
>> because that $3,500 was put in? We didn't have a program budget for many years until um probably 20 2018 maybe. Um actually, it might have been later than that. It might have been after CO. Um a majority of our programming money
comes from the friends of the Reading Public Library. So, it's sort of your PTO. So like the Joshua Eden PTO gets to pay for the whale mobile to come in or the juggler to come in or something like that. So they do raise funds for that. Um they also like many fundraising
groups occasionally have years that they struggle and they also are very focused. They don't get to select the programs by the way. We do the programs. They just write us a check. Um but we, you know, we may be focusing on early STEM literacy. So that's where all of the
children's programming goes. and then all of a sudden we'd like to do a community event or we're doing a community read or we want to supplement programming that for a grant. So that grant I mentioned um usually when you get a grant someone will say well what are you guys you know we'll give you 20,000 how much are you going to put in?
So we have to agree to sort of an incline. So that three or 4,000 would go to additional green programming or things like that. So it's usually for the little the other things. Um and uh we also have some really creative team
team members that can provide um many of our children's actually not many I'd probably say one two we have three with their not only a master's degree in library and information science but their master's degree in children's literature and we have preschool teacher who's taking
classes in childhood development. So, a lot of their classes that they can offer, whether it's STEM or STEAM or um even um their early literacy curriculum, they can do in-house. That's not something we have to pay somebody else to do.
>> So, I think going forward, how I mentioned it last week, I think it was the fire department budget, I think it would be helpful for you to put in here that we did $200,000 worth of programs that were done by the Friends of Library or something. Sure.
>> Because that to me says more than I know how you said that we have scanners and pages printed. But I think that actually seeing a a realistic number like that and seeing that you know that the the library is putting this out, the funding
is being used for that, >> right? >> Uh it's not really 3500. It could be 200,000. I could be way off, >> right? >> But I think that number would be uh extremely helpful. >> Okay. >> In justifying lots of things going forward. >> Yeah. And most of that's public information. We file all of the
additional funding that we get and spending that we get with the state. Um it's absolutely possible to get those reports. >> And then um so you're at 2.7% so not terrible. Um >> terrible >> compared to a two and a half scenario.
So using the same overtime Sunday metric, do you have data that backs up that Sunday is being utilized >> as much as it is >> or would you be like say Mondays like
nobody comes ever. Would you ever >> justify I'm just throwing out a Monday because like would you ever flip-flop a Monday for a Sunday kind of thing? >> Well, I think you you could do that. First of all, there's there's a couple it's it's complicated. So, let me just start by saying it's complicated because
you have people who are in a regular schedule. So, if you take out a certain number of hours during the week, so if you didn't have Monday mornings open, you said instead of Mondays, we're going to be open Sundays. And maybe you take away the premium pay, you could save some money possibly, but you still need to pay that person for the 37 and a half
hours. The money that you would save in premium pay may not make up for it. Part of the issue too is that we by certification must be open a minimum of 60 hours a week or maybe it's 59 which is why we're open 60 hours a week for those other four months. Um the
additional hours do get used. Are there hours that during the week? Yes. Unfortunately when we do those statistics it's not like Monday mornings or Tuesday nights. It's Monday through Friday between 11:30 and 12 because, you
know, or whatever because people have gone home to take naps and have lunch and it's before the school kids come in. So, it's very difficult to chop the day up that way and have someone come in and change their hours. So, it's not a one for one hour swap um because you still
need to offer certain services. So, um, the open hours, um, is the number of hours that we're open to the public. That's not necessarily the number of hours we need to get the job done. So, um, so I it's it's kind of a tricky Does that answer your question or did I make
>> Yeah. No, I I was going to equate it to the same thing with the MBTA. Same thing. There's nobody taking trains at at noon time. But, >> I can't >> I can't not run the train at at noon. Like, I still have to have someone because people do people do call and people do come in. And I'll say some of the other things when we talk about use.
Um, we have people that come in. God, you guys are like, "Shut up, Amy." Um, we do have people that come in and this time of year particularly, we have some people that come in because it's much less expensive for this son to sit in the library,
like just reading the same newspaper over and over and over again for many hours than it is to be at home and pay for heating. And it's the same thing with the summer. Sometimes we have families that come in because it's really hot. So I it's hard to express that in terms of a metric, a
quantitative metric in terms of use. Um it's really more of a a qualitative value and to be like sorry you got to leave for the next two hours because we have to close. So like you said, it's it's it's hard to it's hard. No, it's more of if you saw like only 10% of the
people come on Mondays and 80 are on Sundays, then obviously I mean it it seems easy enough, right? >> Hour for hour. I think Sundays may be more use I think I think we figured out like maybe it was like Thursdays. There's one day that is less than the
others. Most of them are on par and there's four 12-h hour days and two eight hour days plus Sundays. So we try to do it hour for hour, not by day by day because we try to figure out, you know. So, um, but Sundays are per hour for those four hours. They do get quite a bit of it gets quite a bit of use.
>> All right. Anybody else? >> Thank you much. >> Thank you. >> All right. Moving on. Joe Huggin. >> Hey, everybody. Well, we're going to get started tonight. This is our FY27 requested budget.
Uh, next slide. Just a quick rundown of what we're going to go through tonight. Of course, if there's any questions as I'm going along, please stop. Next slide, please. So, there's two parts of the actually
there's three parts of the facilities budget. There's the core facilities budget which you're looking at the uh wages right there. Then there's the town facilities budget and then there's the school facilities budget. The school portion is voted under the school school department's budget. We're not going to
be talking about that tonight, but it's worth mentioning that that's part of the um the organization that we manage. So if you look at this first slide right here, um salaries have gone up um 4%. that's dictated by uh union uh labor
contracts. And this is the core facilities. This is the four maintenance guys in the shop as well as the three of us in the office. And it also represents uh three non-union people. That's going up 4% maintenance overtime is level
funded 0%. Um I should also mention that there are no new positions being added on the town facility or the core facilities budget or the town facilities budget. Next slide, please. So, this here's what we did. This is the
the biggest part of our budget, as you can see, is the energy expenses, which are the accommodated cost portion of the budget. Um, and we worked very closely with Sharon and went through, you know, what our usage and our consumption is and where we where we're spending money
and we reduce that number by 4%. that savings that we generate. It's important to mention that the savings that's generated in that budget, the money is put back into the buildings for major breakdowns or anything like that. It keeps us from having to, you know,
request capital in a lot of cases or if and I can name you're going to see a few things that we did with savings from last year's budget, but we've reduced that number. We're at a spot that we feel comfortable reducing that by 4%. The next line down is core maintenance
repairs. Um that includes like plumbing, elevator, fire equipment, pest management, and that went up by 4% just because of the age of the equipment out there in the field across the town. Um HVAC is up 0%.
Um plumbing 4%, elevator expenses 3%, core fire equipment expense, again that's fire alarms and fire suppression. the equipment is getting older for an overall decrease at the bottom line for expenses of -2%.
In the expense side of the budget, okay, next slide. So, the town buildings, town buildings is made up of uh four custodial staff that clean the town buildings as well as outsource cleaning services for this
building you're standing in right now. the Reading Public Library, the police station. Um, and we we outsource that because we just don't have enough manpower to do it. So, that's been something we've been doing for quite a while. And we do save money doing it
this way. So, wages have gone up 4%. Again, that's union and we've level funded the outsource cleaning service as well as our building supplies for an overall increase of 3%.
Next slide. So if you put everything together, lines M91 and M92, which is core in town, we're down negative 1%. Request for FY27. And that's our ask.
>> Are you sure? I'm sure. >> I'm sure. >> We want to get Kevin in here to provide any humor on this at all or we're good. >> We're good. We're good. We're good this year, but in a couple years it's going to be a different story when I come up here and stand here when we have the new
buildings, you know, but I think everybody knows that. Um, >> can I ask one quick question? >> So, if you go to the next slide, please. >> Can I ask you just one quick question? Sorry, just one quick question. Um, on page, it might be helpful. Page 15.
Yeah. on the core miscellaneous expenses. >> Yeah, >> the FY26 actuals are much higher than what they were budgeted for for town meeting. >> Why would that what how >> Oh, because we some of the some of the expenses were were not cate categorized
correctly and we moved them out of another line in there. So that that's why >> so that's why. So it's okay. All right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Um thank you. So, this next slide right here, just we do this every year to give everybody sort of a year-over-year look
at where we are and like where where the workflow is going. Um, we we're upund I think it's 174 work orders and you can see the the high school risefieldhouse because we had the modular moves fieldhouse floor project going on that
we did a lot of the work inhouse on both of those projects. So, that's why that number is up, but it remains pretty consistent. I'm talking the difference between the work orders year over year and we get a lot of work done with four guys out in the shop and the rest of the stuff is outsourced through you know
like HVAC is outsourced um right now um you know and uh drain cleaning fire suppression roofing things like that is outsourced labor that comes in and does that work for us but the day-to-day repairs are done by four four guys
covering over 1.1 million square feet of Yes. So, we get a lot of bang for our buck. >> Question. >> Sure. >> So, um going back to your earlier point, so um schools get a lot of activity. So, I'm not surprised to see a lot of work
orders. Um and then and then you mentioned there were also the fiddleish maintenance expenses covered under the school budget. I was just wondering how do you aortion that out? So every building has its own um
town and school buildings have their own budget for each one is split out by schools and a lot of it Sharon could explain this better than me but a lot of it's because of desi reporting that we have to report out for their per per pupil spending so we know how much we have allocated for energy at like
barrows you know natural gas uh water and sewer and electricity and we also have if it has an elevator we have a line for elevators and that number is pulled from our contract we have we have with our elevator company which is a yearly fee that we pay along with the
other trades to get to that sweet spot where we need where we budget for every building. So we do know what the spend is at each location. >> And then one more question. So we will be seeing a presentation on a school budget as well. >> So but some of this is wrapped up in the
school budget. >> The only thing that's wrapped up in the school so The school facilities budget is made up of 18 custodians and a halftime corer. Um, and then outsource cleaning for the
high school and Coolage Middle School. That's insaning supplies. That's what's in there. But all the physical plant maintenance accommodated cost is under the town core facilities budget. So it's more labor on that side. So, we're not
um it's not being presented to us like in two different budgets, the same numbers in two different budgets. That's what I'm trying to understand. >> No, that these numbers are strictly town numbers. And what you're going to see in the school budget is school facilities. It's it's it's the custodial staff, the
cleaning, and the supplies. >> The four custodians, which sounds like a really no low number, is just for the municipal buildings. >> Correct. And then we also outsource outsource some of the cleaning. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. Um and again this next slide please. So
this just shows you um what we do every year with that money that we just talked about. You know what where do we spend the money and it's to maintain the equipment. You know rooftop equipment. I'm not going to go through each one of these but there's a lot of equipment to maintain. There's a lot of ground to
cover. And we have a really robust uh preventive maintenance program to maintain our equipment which is kind of like the the key to a successful facilities department. And if you don't maintain it, you don't, you know, keep on top of it, you're going to get into trouble. So,
next slide, please. And this is just a breakdown of the department, um, showing you what we take care of. And the, like I said, it's myself and Kevin Kabuzi, our assistant director. Um, we have an admin in the office and then the school facilities
manager who is in my office but is paid out of the school budget, reports up to me. Okay, next slide. So I wanted to talk really briefly like I was mentioning to you folks earlier where are the savings used when we
generate savings and we don't always have a lot of savings but sometimes we do. Number one was the killum modular move but that was paid for under the kllum project fieldhouse floor we all know is capital. Um this third one started process to mitigate the uh to m
it should it says migrate the johnson medicine system over to tridium. Long and short of the whole thing is we always try to get on the same platforms with technology. So it you know across the board that was paid with savings from our utility budget. Okay. So, we
did the parka gym floor over again. There's another one. We installed a new fire pump at the Parker Middle School. That was like $80,000 for that. And the list goes on. Some of the stuff is small, some of it's bigger. Um, but we do make sure that the money when we have
savings goes back into the plant, into the physical plant. And we take a lot of pride in doing that. And I think that was it. Carla, did you have any questions? >> Uh, yes. Thank you.
So, uh, thank you, Joe. Ba, basically, same question. Other than emergencies, is there a lot of overtime in the budget? >> No. Um, in both the town facilities budget and the core facilities, the it
was level funded. um overtime for both of those budgets is used for um like four major things, right? What do you think? Snow removal, >> emergencies, weekend emergencies, like if we have um a roof leak or a freeze up that could happen, that's where that
money's going. Sometimes if we're behind the eightball on the core facility side of the fence, which handles the school buildings and the town buildings, if we're behind the eightball and we've got something to get done and we need to step on it at the end of the summer and give the guys legitimate overtime to get
something done for school to open on time because that's one of the biggest things we do is open school and provide voting for Laura uh and graduate kids. But we do hit it with overtime sometimes. But we don't, like Matt said, it's not handed, it's not a reward, it's a necessity when overtime is given out.
And that's how and the budgets are not that big when you think of these guys what they're making hourly, too. >> So, a bad winter, we can run the overtime down into the negative pretty quick. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. No, thank you. And with our with our new beautiful high school floor,
have you forecasted what that's going to require every few years or every year to maintain it? Yep. Um well, we know that that floor because of the use is going to require us to have it sanded every year, which is going to cost around 8 to $9,000 to have that
done. I believe a little less than that. Um it's get it's already getting a lot of use. Um the nightly scrubbing of the floor and the maintenance and upkeep of it from that standpoint is covered by our custodial staff and by the outside cleaning company. So there are some
increased costs out there, but again, you got to maintain it. You want it to look good and last. >> Yeah. Yeah. Of course. No, no, I was just I I know you mentioned that >> at town meeting and and previously. I just wondering if it's so ballpark, not more than 10 a year.
Hopefully. >> I would I would think that's accurate. Yeah. >> Okay. Are there any other big I know we can't talk about, you know, the the the center for active living yet, but is there any way to given the size of the building, how much
more of your resources you going to have to hire new people? >> Yeah, I mean, we're we're definitely going to be asking for um more custodial staff um on the town facilities budget um for that building because of the use
we anticipate it's going to get. Um and then also um more maintenance staff. We're only dealing with four guys right now and and to cover that building and a new kilum is going to be a tall order with just four guys. So we're going to there is an increased cost. I mean if
you look at Kllum now it's 70,000 square feet or 60,000 60,000 square feet and we're going up to 120,000 square feet in a facility that's going to get used heavily. And then you look at the recal building is five, the new building will
be five times the size of what they're in right now. So there is going to be an increase in the operating cost, the accommodating costs and you know labor. >> Yeah. No, thank you. And and this is what you know some of us on the board
have been saying that you know all these things great things that we're getting for residents. Not only is the debt and the initial costs, it's the ongoing cost. So, it's I know it's going to be needed obviously to keep these buildings up. They're
going to be brand new. But what what we when we talk about an override and we talk about budgets, it it's it's a you know sometimes a necessity, but I think we're going to have to do a better job with the budget in the next few years because I'm
guessing we're going to add what two or three people just on your end alone. I'm guessing that's what it sounds like. >> Yep. It's going to be probably two additional maintenance guys and two additional custodial staff. >> Yeah. So that's >> and again it's not all for those. It's
not all for recal. It's kill them too. >> No, I know. I know. I know. I'm just I'm just trying to, you know, put it out there, >> right? There is to if you want to maintain that size footprint, you got to >> have full-time staff, benefits, you know, pensions, uh, you know, all that
stuff. So again, you know, like the other departments, you know, everyone is doing their job and the town looks great, but we have to be mindful. Uh I'm not picking on you, Joe. Just going forward,
we're going to get hit and pretty hard. Um so I just No, thank you. Appreciate it. >> Board members, Melissa. >> Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it. Um, I just have one question I'm going to piggyback on, Carlo, and you probably
don't have the answer to this, so just tell me. No, I don't know. Do we have a projected operational budget for retal yet? >> I I did I'll call it like a a back of the envelope, but really we took a hard look at it.
>> Um, >> you don't have to give me a number if you're not comfortable with it. >> I I have a I have an idea what a number is. I really would rather not say it right now, but I will tell you that a lot of it's going to be dictated by >> what the use looks like in the building. >> Absolutely.
>> Because we can maintain the building. We know what that's going to cost, if you will. >> But the how long the building is used every day, how far into the night it's going to run. These are two fully electric buildings, fully air conditioned, >> so we don't have anything a good benchmark because other than the
library, which is 37,000 square feet. >> Yeah. We don't have anything to compare. >> It's it's, you know, it comes at a pretty hefty price tag. >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And >> just Matt, I think that's something we really need to get in front of us because I think,
you know, knowing where we are right now and knowing guessing what the projected costs for operating that building are going to be, we really need to start having those conversations. >> Okay. >> I agree. I agree. >> And we can continue to refine that number. >> Yeah. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it.
I think we have an update in January, February, Matt, I think. >> Yes. In terms of recal >> recal and killum coming together kind of thing. >> Yes. >> Karen. >> Yep. Um I just wanted to also um mention as well, so so we're now a green
communities. Um >> Yep. >> And they have a list of the competitive awards every year. And I love that they put that out there because >> I know you know all the inventory what's aging, use the Pleasant Street Center gas systems for an example, but all of
those schools and buildings >> and and since the new ones always save energy, um they're always on there. So, um >> I don't know if you've had a chance to look there, but now we can ask for up to $250,000 a year back to fund energy
efficiencies, which is frequently like it's time to upgrade it. But it also mentions um building management systems which we already have. But you'd be surprised how um >> y >> that's a great pool of money I guess is the point >> it is. And I think part of the problem is is that Andrew
and I have had this discussion is through our esco contract phase one phase two we grabbed all the lowhanging fruit in phase one and then phase two we took it a step further. >> So I'm sure there's something out there for a project. We just have to find the
right one. Right. I mean >> because we did like transformers, we did LED conversions, the list goes on and on, but there's something there. We just have to identify it is really what it is. >> I mean, even the library. So that was like all that work was done 15 years ago. So like I mean whatever it's
ongoing. >> Yeah. Actually the library the library is only 10 years old. It's 10 years old. >> Sorry. But the point is uh >> so this grant is now every year but as you're going through these buildings and and things come up that I think you're going to be with and so we'll definitely
continue to work out at that. >> Karen, do you have anything? No. Good. Um Joe, thank you for the negative 1%. As we know next year it won't be negative 1% but we will enjoy it while we have it. I guess my only random
question is so you have 18 pest control service locations. How does that equate with the board of health? Like it's not rodent mitigation being used or what's the deal with this? >> So the schools have something called an IPM. It's integrated pest management
program through the state of Massachusetts. I I I'm going to try to answer this question which I think you're asking me. and the licensed um applicator, the person that puts the, you know, does the pest control in our
building, it's tied to his license is tied to a building. So to try to do it on a townwide scale is very difficult. We need to have that because it's a it's for schools more than anything. The app putting the application down, whatever it is, you know, whatever they use, it
has to be approved by the state for each school. So, we had talked about that earlier, but it's kind of a tough thing to >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right. Anybody else? >> Thank you much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.
>> And Jane, >> I apologize in advance for how many slides I have for you. We'll try to get them >> relative with some elacrity this evening. Um, so good evening. I'm Jane Wellman. For those at home, um I'm the assistant town manager and I've been
with the town for nearly 10 years. I'm joined tonight u by a lot of my staff members. So, and I'm grateful for them to be here. We have Sean Donghue, uh we have Jenna Wood, Katie Gabriella, uh Josh Stallone, and Andrew McNichols over and Laura Jem is also in one of these
departments. I just turned the mic on. Sorry about that. So, um it's my pleasure to be here tonight to present the budgets for administrative and public services. And while these appear as two separate departments in the budget, they are one department under my leadership. Uh this change was made
under Fidel and Matt at that time led the unified department. Next slide please Mattie. So each department is comprised of several of divisions and these divisions are kind of separate and distinct which is why I present each division budget separately and we don't roll it all into one. Um the administrative services
budget includes uh human resources, operations, town clerk and elections and the town manager's office. This budget also includes copier leases, postage, legal costs, and property casualty insurance. Uh the public services uh budget includes community development which houses planning, economic
development, conservation, and the building divisions. Community services includes elder and human services, recreation, and veteran services. So interesting side note adding up the years of service that just the divisions have the division heads have we have
more than 67 years of experience with the town of writing across our leadership team and they're all here tonight. Um next slide please. We're going to begin with the administrative services FY27 budget. Next slide please. Human resources. So our personnel and
human resources include Sha Donnie who's been here 10 years as the director and Annabella Batista as the assistant director. Avantica is the benefits specialist but her salary is carried in the operations budget. Um HR handles all hiring, personnel management, training, workers compensation claims and benefits
administration to all town departments, the school department, the light department, and our retirees. Noteworthy items within this budget um like others, it's been level funded for expenses for the last five years. Most of the divisions have been level funded or come
down in the last five years. Um this team also calculated this year uh all the FI27 salary projections for all the departments. They organized a wellness day for department heads and department heads. Um they've won over $50,000 in May grants this year. Um more than their
annual expense budget and a big chunk of that those grant funds are going to our first responders. Um that includes health screenings. Um and they brought back open enrollment for life insurance for the first time in a decade which is a wonderful benefit to our employees. Can you um comment on that a little bit?
>> Yes, sure. >> So far, >> new employees for 10 years have not been able to get life insurance or what does that mean? >> No. Um the life insurance that we have in place hasn't really been changed in a while. So, employees can join it as a
new hire or at any time. It's a lot harder if you don't do it as a new hire. So, we had a plan upgrade which also allowed people to enter the plan at the same time. I don't know if I'm supposed to get the microphone. I'm sorry. But uh no, they've been able to enroll. It's a plan update and people who weren't in it
before were able to join. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Sean. >> Um a goal for the future is for HR to be able to secure funding for applicant tracking software. This been has been one of their goals for a while. Um they want to explore new benefit
opportunities and look for gaps and update policies. Next slide, please. With an expense budget of 39,000 and a salary budget of 236,100, the HR budget represents a 3.15%
increase over FY26. Next slide, please. Clerk. So, our town clerk's office is comprised of Lord Jem, our clerk, who's been with the town over 16 years. Um, and Kirkshank and Diana Calvocacante, our administrative assistants. The
assistant town clerk position recently opened and we're currently interviewing candidates for that role. Among the many duties carried out by the clerk's office, perhaps the one that consumes the clerk's mo time the most are public records requests requiring multiple days
per week of her time. FY26 um we highlights that we're projecting um include u managing a special election for the recal and the kllum school project and working to make all vital records electronic going back to the 1600s. Looking ahead, the town clerk's
office um proposes and I propose that we include funding for three elections annually rather than switching back and forth from one to three and artificially inflating and deflating the budget. We have traditionally carried whatever number of elections we have. In recent
years, we've had more special elections that have been not have not been budgeted for and but we've ended up paying for anyway because they were necessary. Um, and so we're we're recommending and you'll see the elections increase for next year is what's driving the increase in this
budget and I tried to indicate that in the slide, but um if we keep it at three, this is for the board to think about. This is just the level one budget, so we have more time to talk about this um as a community, but it's we're looking at a $59,000 increase just
to run the extra elections. And in years where we wouldn't be running those extra elections, we would use that those funds or we could use those funds for equipment maintenance um like our pole pads and our um our ballot uh equipment. um or it would c it would transfer out
to free cash if it's not spent, but it would reduce this kind of up and down that we see every single year. Um so that is food for thought. Uh next slide, please. No, I just covered all of this. I
skipped a slide. Can you go ahead one more slide, please? There we go. So if you can see the town clerk's expense budget is just $5,000 with a 0% increase and the salaries is $194,700 for a total of 3.5% increase. However,
the elections budget shows the real growth when we go from one to three elections. uh we go through this back and forth annually, which is why we want to, you know, utilize this more conservative budgeting approach by always planning for three elections, which is something
um talking with Laura that many towns do to avoid this back and forth and and she can answer questions uh if you'd like to have them as we get over this presentation. So, um with the elections, we see a uh 61.83%
increase over last year. um last year was an 11% decrease over the previous year. So, as I said, that represents a $59,000 increase, but it just really inflates those percentage numbers. Um it's just appears here and also in the operations
budget, which we'll get to in a minute. Now, I also want to state that it's very important to note the state does reimburse certain costs related to vote by mail and in-person early voting expenses as well as some equipment uh maintenance related expenses and those are submitted by the town clerk after
the election. We hold $3,900 in the budget because that's the only amount that we're guaranteed. Um, previous years we've been reimbursed between 13,000 and 23,000. So a portion of those and that the 23,000 is in those high
those three election years we receive those higher numbers. So this $59,000 increase will be mitigated but by less than 50% of that increase. Okay, next slide please. Our operations division comprised of Katie Gabrielle as the
director and Josh Shalon, the executive assistant, manages centralized procurement for the town and school departments, as well as risk management, communications, and constituent services. The budget also carries administrative staff from across the department, copy releases, postage, and
equipment maintenance. Highlights from last year include executing more than 30 procurements across town departments, all town departments, more than 20 insurance claims for things like sewer and water issues, road defects, property damage, vehicle collisions. And the division also put out 293 social media
posts and saw a 63% increase in new followers over last year. Next slide, please. People engaged strongly through social media with the town, clicking 6,499 links and posts last year, uh, driving traffic to our website and representing
129% increase over 2024. A good portion of this interaction came from our project posts like Kilum and the recal, particularly the tax calculator, um, which has gotten traction all over the state. We stole it from Nantucket and other people have, uh, stolen it from
us. So that's that's gotten a lot of traction. um the trash and recycling cart roll out and other posts like these. Next slide, please. Operations works closely with the DPW on the entire cart rollout operation. This year is the in the year-long process um
developing and issuing the RFP for our hauling contract. Uh Katie and Josh have been critical working with the um Kilum school and the recount projects on communications engagement and product project support through all phases and operations is looking for a level
services budget again this year. Looking ahead, we are anticipating a two and a half to three and a half% increase in our Maya property and casualty insurance premiums for FY27. Um which is lower than it's been in previous years. Um, and again, we're at level one, so we
we'll know more as they come in. And then the postage line uh has increased $18,000 to cover the mailing of election ballots. So that's the other where the other part of our uh election increase is seen. Next slide, please.
So the FY27 budget impact is showing an 11.14% for the operations division increase over last year um for expenses and um that's driven by the ballots and then salaries for operations are only a 1.62%
increase um due to some attrition and new hiring. Overall it's a 3.6% increase for the division. Next slide please. The town manager division includes the manager salaries, his reserve funds, the cultural council support, the select
board budget, finance committee audit and training in the legal budget. Salaries for our fantastic executive assistants Jagertie and Manny Matty Baptist are held within the operations budget that we just went over. Um boards supported by the staff in division
include um the select board, finance committee, the CPA study committee, the bylaw committee, and Basque. Uh by way of interest, there are also 1,170 subscribers to the town manager minute which is issued from this office. Next slide, please.
>> The expenses budget, it remains stable this year. Um, we may see a slight increase in FY28 for copy leases, but right now we deem that budget to be stable. Um, we are also planning a 1.55% increase overall for the division, which
is just a placeholder value for the manager salary. Once that contract is sorted out and in a further level in the budget, it'll become fixed here. Next slide, please. You may remember that we carry property and casualty insurance premiums at deductibles for claims in the
accommodated cost portion of the budget, but they live in administrative services. We are holding a 2.66% uh increase for the insurance premium here. Um, and we're level funding the deductible line for overall increase of 2.5%.
We are um we work really really hard with the DPW and facilities and police and fire and our library and pretty much all of our departments at our whiteboard to keep our um loss runs low with a
safety committee. And so we have really good loss runs right now with preventing all the prevented maintenance that the facilities department does, all the trainings that all the departments do um for employee safety um and all the other things we do. We have really good loss runs. So we are very hopeful and we are
pushing um our insurer to sharpen their pencils and come back with a very favorable renewal. Heard some that's true. Um next slide, please. So for administrative services, the total increase allin is a 3.9% increase.
However, if we were to back out that election expense, we would see an increase of 1.98%. And so I call that out just because of this fluctuating nature just to show that that it's really just these these extra elections that we must cost and uh we must we must cover and then some of those costs will
be reimbursed by the state. Next slide, please. We'll move to public services encompassing community services and community development. Next slide please. Community services led by Jenna Wood uh the director who has been with the town for 13 years. She is supported by Susa the executive assistant.
Recreation is led by Jim Sullivan the administrator with Ed Shambo and they support the recreation committee. Our veteran services officer is Bill Valier. And the largest division is our elder and human services division that was led by Chris Kovaleeski. He has only recently accepted a new position with
the city of Cambridge and will be finishing out his work here on the 16th. He has done a wonderful job and we wish him well in his new role. Other members of our team include Linda Antinuro, Anna Aini, Carrie Valley, Joe Beninady, Jenna Dau, and our public health nurse funded
through the health department, Liv Barlomi. This division has been hard at work supporting the council on aging and the recount project. Next slide, please. Highlights from the 2025. Highlights from 2025 include passage of the Ren Center for Active Living
Project, the construction of the Birch Meadow phase 2 playground and courts, the passage of the HERO act recently at subsequent town meeting, and the collaborative development of an oper of an operational plan that will guide us as we move all three divisions under one roof beginning in FY28. Next slide,
please. Thank you. The administration portion of the community services budget is projected um for a 2.91% increase. It's mainly driven by salaries. We're seeking a small reduction in expenses uh which is storm
water. So it's dimminimous. Next slide, please. Community services overall saw a reduction in the veteran services line um which is held under accommodated costs um and a small increase in salaries which results in a 1.39%
decrease overall. Uh two items to note. First, the Executive Office of Elder Affairs is planning an increase in reimbursement formula to $15 to $16, excuse me, $16 per resident over 60 years old. And so we are budgeting
110,000 from that EOA grant um to offset salary costs. What's important to know is that many communities use these funds for programming, but in writing we use them to offset salaries. It supports about one-third of that salary line. And so we cannot afford to move this item to
offset expenses. That's over that's elder and human services. The one third of our elder and human services salaries. Second, um we don't carry expenses for the recreation budget as it is funded via the recreation revolving fund. Every
year the unspent funds transfer to free cash. In FY25, recreation revolving contributed 108,856 to free cash. Previous years have been as high as 198,000 and as low as 89,900.
Next slide, please. Finally, we are at the community development division. Um, Andrew McNichol is our community development director and he's been here eight years. Um, Chuck Tyrone is the conservation administrator. Kevin McCarthy is our economic development senior planner.
Olivia Knightly is uh is our um housing senior planner and Amanda Beaches is our administrative specialist. Um, in building and permitting, we have Steve Frederickson serving as our interim building commissioner. Kim Saunders is our permit coordinator. Karen Johnson is our administrative assistant. And we
have five part-time um, inspectors in this department. So, between building, electrical, plumbing. Okay, next slide, please. So, our professional staff works on development review, long-term visioning and planning, grants management, and
supports several boards and committees, including community planning development commissions, the ZBA, conservation commission, historical historic district commissions, the trails committee, the affordable housing trust fund committee, and climate advisory. The uh community development manages a
number of grants. As I mentioned, Eastern Gateway was a $100,000 grant and it supported engagement and conceptual designs that we've been talking about in the community. Uh, Walkers Brook Drive design is a $500,000 grant that's recently relaunched and is aiming toward
the TIP process and at least 25% design, which you need to have that 25% design before you can put it on the tip, the transportation improvement plan. Um, our MVP 2.0 O uh grant was 95,000 and that is uh funding social resilience engagement support and it's trending
toward a project um in engineering review of the main and Washington street intersection and we have a streetscape grant for 2.6 million which is going toward the Haven and High Street project and that bid will be launching I think in January. Yeah, January. Three weeks.
Okay. Next slide please. So for FY27, we're requesting an overall 1.55% increase in the community development budget with a 0% increase for our expenses budget. It's been level funded for at least the last three years. And a
5.78% increase in salaries, which reflects more hours in our building department from our commissioner position and our inspectors as we're going into two major building projects. Next slide, please. So the total for public services budget
is 1.82882 million with both divisions together which represents a 1.96% increase. So public services altogether is 1.96. The next slide please. So finally with
both halves of the department, while they are held separately in our budgeting system, if we were to put them both together, um the FY27 request is for 4.9 million and that represents 3.2% increase. If we were to back out the election costs, the total would instead
be 1.97% increase. >> So that is that was as fast as I could go. >> I mean that was have a little dry mouth happening right now. So that's exciting. Um, so questions, please.
>> Carlo, did you have anything on mind? >> Yeah, thanks. Uh, thanks Jane. So I guess the one thing that stuck out the most aside from community service salaries was all these departments had the highest
percentage of salary increases to date um, of all the presentations. And I know you explained some of them, but I guess the one that stick out stuck out the most was town manager at 4.53.
I mean, I don't think Cola is that high. Am I wrong on that? >> No, you're not wrong. Like I said, it's a placeholder based on the previous budgeted year. So, we we do a level one budgets based on the previous level one funding. And so,
um, that's where that comes from. Um, it's up to the the select board to determine what that number is and then we'll put that in at level two or level three. >> Okay. >> So, it's just a placeholder. It's not a suggestion. We're not, >> you know,
>> No, no, no. I know that. No, no. I know this is this is I I get it. This is >> I understand that, but I'm just wondering why a high number like that was put in. That's all. And and I guess you mentioned on um I think it was the
community planning page department on the the salary increase there was due to some of the projects. Was that overtime or what was the increase for >> the community planning I think?
>> Oh yeah. Um you can you're welcome to come up Sean. That's fine. >> You got it. >> Um thank you. Uh right. So, we're that's a 5.78% increase. Um, we increased the hours for
Glenn Redmond. Um, and we increased the hours for our commissioner from 37.5 to 40 hours to be able to keep up with the level of work that that department already has anyway, let alone going into
these two huge building projects, which recal bid um next week and we'll get those bids in in January. And so that's at 100% design. we need our commissioners and you know looking at all of our our designs and so forth and
then as we go through construction. So that's where that's coming from and again that is our level one budget. >> So the sound is not that great. Did I hear the increases were due to inspectors? Is that what I heard? Uh yeah, Glenn Redmond. And because we have
five part-time inspectors, so we increased his hours what >> 20 to 21 hours from I think 20 >> or 19 >> from 19. Thank you. >> So two hours per week equates to this
high of an increase? I'm I'm kind of confused. it. Well, if you if you look at the the overall increase for the division, it's it's 1.55%. So, >> no, no, I know that that's a that's a much prettier number, but I'm trying to
you know where I'm getting at. I'm kind of trying to plan for the future and I know Glenn's been here a long time and and I know we have an interim uh building inspector or the director, but
I I guess Commissioner Yep. Isn't Glenn one of the highest paid? >> That's correct. >> What? >> That's correct. >> So why did he get the extra hours and not someone else? >> Because he is the most um experienced
and he has the availability to do this work. So he has been acting after our building commissioner left. When Brad left, we increased Glenn's hours to cover a lot of the uh to serve as the interim commissioner and then he backed
down some of his um commissioner work when we brought the interim commissioner in. >> And he fills in for that work. So, it's a lot we have going on right now. >> All right. I just, you know, I just want to be mindful given I'm I'm given the
same amount of uh questions to, you know, most of the departments on >> salaries and budgets and operations and, you know, given what's ahead of us. So, I I guess >> Oh, I appreciate that. >> And I know there's a lot of work that goes into this from everyone and I'm not
trying to disparrage anyone by any means, but I I just for for some reason this one sticks out the most so far. I know we have a couple presentations left, so I'll leave it there and then other board members can ask uh specific questions. Thanks.
>> Thank you. No, it's a really good point. I I should also mention that all of our inspectors are retired to retirement age. Um and a lot of them um work part-time because they're trying to maintain some retirement. Um, they also
come out at 3:00 in the morning when a car drives into a building or when there's a building that needs a an inspection because there's been a fire or something like that. So, this is some of the work that they do. You didn't ask me about overtime. Um, and so I'm mindful of that and I can say that um,
we may be able to reduce some of our public services overtime because we don't tend to spend to the level that we funded at. So, that's something that we'll look to bring down in in level two. >> All right. Thanks. Yeah, because I I know you said that the when I was asking
specifically about it, you know, the increase it wasn't it wasn't overtime due to some of the projects. It was just other things. So that's why I did follow up with >> the overtime question, but I'm glad you brought it up and everyone's got to, you know, keep this in mind. I know, you
know, there's a reason people work in state, city, and federal government for some unadvertised perks, but we got to try to keep overtime at a minimum. I appreciate that. >> Board members Karen Rosill.
>> Thank you for your presentation. >> Um, back to the 5.78 increase. Is that permanent for once all the projects are done and we're done doing all the extra leg work? Would it be able to come down after the projects are done or is this going to be a or is it going to be
dependent on whether we still have five part-time people? Yeah, it's okay. >> That's a lot of it. So, because we have five part-time inspectors and one full-time commissioner, that's where we are right now. When we hire a full-time building commissioner
soon, we hope. Um, we may be in a position to rework how that department goes over time. We haven't been notified by any of our inspectors that they want to fully retire, but we anticipate that that may happen. And so, um, it is very hard to
fill these positions. Um, they require a tremendous amount of expertise and knowledge and and experience in this role to make sure that our buildings are safe in our community and and all the things that we have are safe. Um, and it's a highly detailed role, so they're very hard to fill. Um, and so, but yeah,
I don't know that it's it's permanent, but um, right now this is what we believe is the right number. >> Okay. And then quickly to go back to the election increases. Um well now I can't remember my question.
>> I'm hoping one of you remembers what my question. >> Three three elections. Um reimbursements. >> Three. Right. So three elections. Um the money will go back into free cash or wherever it will go if we don't happen to use it. >> That's correct. was if we were to continue to fund elections annually at
three elections um which we would recommend whether we are in this budget situation or not but if if the community is not comfortable with that we certainly don't have to do that um but yeah if that was if there was extra and we didn't use it for repairing um
election equipment then it would it was to free cash okay thank you thank you >> Melissa >> thank you J appreciate it I'm going to piggyback on this question first um for the building department. So when I saw that there were nine staff members in
the um packet, I kind of was shocked by that. I think that seemed like a lot to me. So I started looking at other towns. So we have five part-time um inspectors or some of them plumber plumbing inspectors, electrical inspectors. So they're not all just building
inspectors. We have two part-time building inspectors and the commissioner and we the others are plumbing and gas and sorry that's the same and um electrical >> one electrical one plumbing gas three building >> there you go three building part time my
three building part-time one building full-time one plumbing inspector one electrical inspector >> right so I understand that they're not easy positions to hire for but what Didn't it make more sense if if we really need
that many hours to have two full-time building inspectors versus a bunch of part-time people? >> Not necessarily, but I'm going to invite Andrew to come up and talk about this is um a legacy staffing that we had for a
while again under Gene Belellios and she kind of assembled um a dream team of inspectors. So, they're all very capable. >> And I'm not saying I'm not saying they're Yeah, I'm not saying they're not experienced. I'm just worried that we
have a very large building department with a large salary that comes along with that. >> Would you like to speak to some of that? >> Yeah. Right now, the way it's divvied up with the three part-time inspectors is different days so that there's minimal
overlap on any given day, but that there's coverage every day. And that's a Monday through Friday service for inspections that we have because there is contractors working on Fridays and even over the weekend, but we'll wait for those on Monday. But right now, that's worked very well for us. I do
think in the future long term wise as if and when they do choose to transition out that if it makes sense to look at a full-time building commissioner, one full-time inspector and part-time or some version of that, I think that will make sense and that's what we're
preparing for in the long term. But right now it's working to meet our needs of the amount of permits and inspections that we do have. >> Okay. Okay. Um now I go back to the other questions I had. Um so
what um for HR um you mentioned that there were some benefit opportunities that you guys wanted to look into um in the future. I'm just curious of what those may be or what it is that you're looking for. Oh yeah, that's that's a you Sean.
>> That's a you. >> Never been asked a question before. >> 45 seconds and done. Um so there's just as Karen was asking earlier about the life insurance that gave us an opportunity to update some of our benefits um that have been in place for
over a decade. So as we went through that process, we started to think about uh maybe short-term long-term disability type plans that could be out there. Uh, and while we're doing this, we're very mindful of um, you know, how that would impact the town's budget because there are some of those plans that, you know,
could be a shared cost. Some of them that would just be the employee. So, those are some of the things that we started to explore. Um, and there's certainly others that could come up, but that was just um, what that meant. >> Great. I was just curious of what those were. >> Um, and then
it makes sense to me to keep the budget for the election at three per year. I mean, the switching back and forth is kind of a false sense of reduction when we get it. So, um, uh, the one question I had about the elections with the mail
and ballots and the big increase in postage, is that some of the reimburseed money we get? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Does it usually come out to be even or >> uh, yes. So, the state reimbures um,
equal to what we spend in mailing out ballots. Okay, perfect. Great. Um, and then under community services, just like I asked about the recal um operational cost, do we have any idea or programming
costs of what we're looking at for recal? >> Well, or or will we get that update soon? >> Yes. >> Yeah, we do. I'll invite Jenna to come up and give you a little highlight on what we've been doing with the operations plan. um in programming and
you can kind of explain the programming model we utilize now which we'll go with. >> Okay. >> Sure. So right now we've been giving monthly updates to recreation committee and the council on aging and we've gotten um so far our first presentation
was just an introduction and then our second presentation was some draft policies. So they included a membership packet, they included the fitness room packet and the room rental packet which kind of outlines some um financial data in that which um was will be really
helpful for everyone to see here as well in the future. Um the second thing that we're going to be going over in the next meeting will be the programming space policy. So that will go over how um we want to run the building operationally as a team and we'll be getting feedback from the recreation and the council in
Asia in a joint meeting. Right now all of our programs at the senior center have been predominantly funded by ARPA funds. So no costs right now at um the Pleasant Treat Center currently. However, we're exploring a new platform
for to join our teams and this platform will be allowed to um take payments for everyone for community ser all community services, veterans, recreation, elder and human services. So that will be rolling out in March and
then we hope to start charging minimal costs um to um our participants like we did prior to ARPA to offset a lot of our costs moving into repal and um obviously we can't fund these programs for free anymore.
>> Um so and then the timeline too for the operational piece we're going to be presenting that we were going to do it in January but we pushed the timeline to February. So all of our teams can meet because operationally as you know Joe
has to be involved. Um several other departments need to be involved in the conversation. So we do have a preliminary operational plan with the finances. Back of the napkin from Joe. Um we do have some information from a consultant that we received and we do
have information internally from the community services department. So, it's just getting together and finalizing those numbers as best we can to give you guys more of a comprehensive look of what the building's going to um bring forward. But, we're pretty confident. We
have a we have great ideas. We have a conservative approach. The whole team seems to be very supportive of this approach. So, um we look forward to bringing it to you guys in February. >> Okay. >> Great. I don't know if we could um get a Oh, I guess I could look at their
packets of the just curious of what it's looking like right now. Um >> I'm really concerned that it's going to really put the town over the edge. So, I just I think that the select board should kind of be on top of that.
>> Sure. >> Um just so we're aware of what's going on and what's coming in front of us instead of February us all being really blown out of the water of what that number might be. Um I think thank you so much. And then um >> do I have any
>> Laura had something? >> Oh, sorry. >> I'm sorry. I just wanted to clarify something on your question. So the question was, does a state reimburse for voteby mail ballots? So what I want to clarify is it depends on how it's requested. If a person requests a vote
by mail ballot, the state reimburses the cost of postage. If a person requests an absentee ballot, which is something different, >> they do not reimburse that cost. Okay. >> So, I just wanted to make sure you understood that. Sorry. >> No. And we were I feel like forever it's been doing absentee. It's just the vote
by mail that's new to communities. Correct. Or newer, I should say. >> Correct. And that's the majority that's requested. Very few request absentee anymore. >> Great. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Um just a quick question. Um Jane, you said operations plan development under one
roof. Is that what you were talking about? Like they're all gonna get on a system well physically under one roof and then that system that's >> I was actually talking literally about one but yeah they will be using one payment system. So rather than paying
for two vendors we'll do one um to accept payments and move to a cashless option eventually um over time being respectful of our clients. >> All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for the questions, >> Karen.
>> Thank you. Um, thanks very much for the presentation. Um, I saw a couple things that I didn't see up there, like the pickle ball project, which is happening this year. Yes, >> that's correct. >> Okay. So, that's another big that's a big thing you'll be working on. That's
not an insignificant project. >> That's a huge project. >> That's a huge budget. Probably want to add that to that slide. >> Well, it's um Yeah, it's in the capital budget, so I should add it to the slide. to manage it >> the capital. Oh yes. >> The same time that recal and
>> Yes ma'am. I am I am doing a lot. >> Might as well like remind everyone. Yeah. >> Pickle. >> Yep. >> Um and then town forest committee is probably supported by your organization as well. So trails are conservation >> trails. Yes. Forest is DPW.
>> Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. >> Collaboration going on support. So yep. But that makes sense. I know DPW did a lot for them. Um, and then I think we should clarify the the select board budget. It it's not a budget that we have any say for. It was it's an
amalgamation. It's it's a bunch of um former individual committee budgets that were dumped into a line item and now dumped on our desk. And I'm not happy with it. And I say this every year. It's not a good thing for us to be spending our time doing. Um, but certainly before
it gets to the finance committee, we should clarify that it's not I would love if we had a budget to do things to for the benefit of the community, but we don't. That is that's a small budget where we have the various committees come and like fight for it and like it's
just not a good way of doing business. But >> we should just make sure people know that that's what that is. >> It's not our beer and pizza budget. >> No, no, there isn't one of those for you. Sorry. >> Um >> or anybody. Right. Good point. None of
us get that. >> Right. Right. Okay. Oh, wait. You guys have Okay. None of that. No. >> Um and then to to the questions about um managing the building inspectors and yeah, Glenn has a tremendous amount of experience and um but I was just
wondering in terms of what part-time inspectors cost us, are they at this point um hourly employees or are they at a part-time level where they're still we're still funding benefits for them? >> Does it depend on the inspector?
>> I think I'll have to defer to um Sean on that one, but I think we have benefits for not all of them, but some um so it just depends. So there's different thresholds for different benefits. So if someone's 20 hours a
week, they qualify for some benefits. If they are 32.5 or more, I believe that's the number, they would qualify for the pension. All of the part-time inspectors are below the 32 and a half. Okay. >> So, it's only if somebody were to elect benefits and then the only other thing
they would get is just um prorated TTO that comes with it like vacation or sick time. >> Okay. So, >> are they allowed to um I mean this this is for the question for the Paris working in the school departments because most of them are part-time and
so I don't know if their salaries cover health insurance but I didn't know if >> so if their salaries cover health insurance you mean like if they hit that threshold for >> they make enough my >> So somebody needs to somebody needs to get 20 hours a week for health insurance. >> Okay.
>> And then there's a split between the town and the employee. >> Yes. So, so some of these part-time um health inspectors could make that threshold. >> Some of them work 20 hours a week. Yes. >> Okay. It's just part of the what what is
it going to cost? And if they're not electing it, that's another thing. Um Okay. Um All right. That's what I just kind of wanted to understand how that was being managed. And then um the um I know the Council of Aging is very
concerned about making up for the loss of ARPA funding going forward and I'm sure you are as well. Yeah. >> So I wonder if this could be an opportunity to um ask about um it it might be a little early where
we're just building the project. But again, the topic of sponsorships, but maybe the sp a sp if we want to reach out to the community community members and have them start sponsoring programs, um that could happen in the current
Pleasant Street Center and be carried forward into the new one as a way to help make up um you know this concern about that those wonderful funds which have like done so much and they don't >> That's a great point. We also um resurrected the volunteer program. So we
have more 70 volunteers. >> I understand the volunteer program for the seniors are huge. Amazing >> and you know Janet Jau created that out of thin air with support from Chris and the rest of the staff brought that forward to you. Um and that has been
really just fantastic. And so some other towns as they build that program up some of those volunteers actually do some of the programming. So we see some of that as well. another way more coming in and and the volunteers are doing something they love. >> Yeah. >> So, >> okay. Okay. And then one more thing just
um what it was it's it's it's nice when the library director can talk about um residents served and transactions in the library and I didn't know if you had access to data showing that you know out of um veteran services and wreck and
elder services how many community members you're serving in your department. I think I think that as we're all struggling with budgets and we're going to be struggling with increases in our tax bills, it's a good reminder this is the the return on investment because I think
>> again and and DPW and facilities and and they we could all do it, you know, reminding we're paying for services and here's how many people are getting touched by these services. I don't know if you have access to data to be able to do that. >> We we have it and Jenna's going to give it to you. Um, but no, that that is a
great point and I appreciate that. Um, that's a great question and I you played right into my hands and then >> Okay, great. >> give you some of that information, but we also will include that in our annual report. >> Okay. >> Yep. So, total interactions at the Pleasant Street Center um from July 1st
of 2024 till um June 30th of 2025, there was 36,459 interactions. Um there was over 20,000 program and event registrations, over 4,200 rides, over 41 large bus trip
reservations. Um we have some great highlights about Liv, our public health nurse who came on board. She has offered 27 blood pressure screening clinics, which is over 160 plus clients that were served. Flu clinics and homebound flu
shots, over um 50 of those, six over 50 60 plus clients served there. Um she also created several free um programs at the center. Um our volunteer coordinator placement of over 55 volunteers brought back volunteer appreciation day. Um and
then let's skip over our wreck. So they offer 148 um unique program offerings in the air. They have 7,486 total program registrations. Um, out of those 6,846 are residents, 640 are non-resident. Um,
and I have all of the age breakdowns for the ages. So 40 4,261 are ages 0 to 10, 1, 10, 199, ages 11 to 20, 258 ages 21 to
40, 485, ages 41 to 60, and 228 ages 61. Ages Yeah. 61 plus and um will continue continues to serve um I think over 300 veterans in a year. So those are some those are great
numbers. I'd love it would be great if you could put those in some visual slides for the heart of hearing and for visual learners because it is helpful when um Amy puts it up there and she's telling us Amy knocked it out of the park. She really did steal. I'm totally
going to steal them right now. I'm watching it. No, I'm just talking about me. When I see them on a slide or maybe you choose a pie chart or however you present it, at the same time you're telling me those numbers, they stick in my head and I have a better magnitude versus >> that was great data. I'm not trying to
diss you or anything. I was just like, oh, I've already forgotten the last one she told me. >> It's all right. We got it on a slide for sure. No, thank you very much for that feedback. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a lot of interaction. >> It's a lot. Yeah, we're doing a lot. We have I'm really privileged to work with such a great team and we cover a lot of
territory in town and um so it's quite something. Thank you. >> Thank you, >> Chris. >> Uh thanks Jane. So um I thought that this is twofold. I thought that Glenn retired, got replaced already, but now
is back in the same thing with the assistant town clerk. I thought we hired someone, they got promoted, I think, and then went out again and now we're going out again. Like, so >> just some clarification on >> So, I think Glenn's retired
>> three times. >> We love Glenn >> and um yeah, so he he uh continues to serve. I don't know how much longer he'll be able to continue serving. Um I think he just got back from hunting and he had a great hunting uh time. So, um,
we are grateful for Glenn's expertise in his town and we are hopeful that he will, um, continue to stay on board as we onboard a new building commissioner, um, in the future and help us get that person trained on sort of the way that we do things and running. Um, >> so we didn't hire somebody already for
his position or am I making this up? I thought this happened. >> Glenn is one of the part-time inspectors. >> Okay. >> We have an interim building commissioner that has been serving. Glenn was the commissioner back in correct however long ago. Then it went to Mark Dupel,
then Brett. Now we're trying to fill commissioner again. But Glenn's been inspector for a long time. >> Okay. So it's just a different title. Is that why I'm confusing this? >> Yeah. Any um and then the And I don't want to speak for Laura. Laura, neither Laura
nor Sean report to me directly. They report to the town manager, but their budgets are within my budget. So, um the assistant town clerk has been with us for quite a while and she has recently um moved out of state with her family.
Um and so the position is has been open. Um there are two administrative assistants that are in the department right now. One's a more recent hire. Um and I would leave it to Laura to to speak about her staff any further if that doesn't answer your question. >> No, I think I'm good with that.
Um and then uh where were we? Oh yes, the um so I got somewhat clarification from Sharon on the the town manager budget because it's obviously the only thing that um out of all these presentations that the select board can
actually control because you know we see all these increases or decreases with Joe Huggin. Thank you. Um >> I had some decreases. >> Did you? >> Yeah. Yeah. some more slides. Turn back money to us.
I didn't hear that from Joe. Joe's like, I'll find a way to use it. But like we welcome turnbacks, too. >> I think he's turned back some money just a little,000. >> So, yeah, that's the only one that we obviously can control. Um, so I don't
want to uh, you know, speak ill or whatever, but I think that in a time when uh, Stonem's lower override just passed, but in a time when we are going to have to do our own override, just seeing anything higher than two and a half% on
an increase on something that we control doesn't really sit well with me. And I know you mentioned that it's, you know, it's only the level one scenario. Um, but still it it it's the only thing that we have control over and I just don't think it's a good look at all. >> No. And that's fair and I appreciate
that. Um, and I just want to make a a a note to all of you that Matt had no input into that number whatsoever. Um, I I run the town manager's budget. So, um, and actually really Jackie kind of runs, but um, no, he had no input on
that and I did not ask the board for um, any guidance on that number either. So I will take ownership of that and we can you know bring that down with level two, level three, whatever the boards happen to be. Happy to revise it down to 2.5. >> Yeah. Know I just I don't have an agree there. I just know that um just seeing
it with with in terms of the entire approach to everything. It's just I don't know. That's my take. >> Understood. Thank you very much. >> And that's it. Unless Carlo had any other followups. No, I'm good. Thank you.
>> I thank you for your um your informative questions. Thank you very much. >> Thanks. >> Okay, Sharon is up. Finances is next and then shared costs. >> Um should be here.
So, this is the finance um cord chart. >> Can you hear me? >> No. I didn't think your microphone was on, but it is. >> It is on. Yeah. I just speak very softly. So, let's get it closer. >> Can you hear me now? >> I can. I can. >> Okay. So, the finance department has three divisions. The accounting
department, the staffing department, and the general finance, which is treasury and collections. So there are like two different divisions within one side my face and then you can see all the positions that fall under it and all the boards and committees that we support. We also have a regional assessor. Um
Victor is an employee of Wakefield and we have a regional agreement with him with them. These are our FTEEs for our department. General Finance has 6.43 FTEES accounting for and assessing two and a half and those remain unchanged from
prior year. These are some of the key responsibilities in the general finance area which is the collections and treasury area. So we do payroll for about 1,200 employees bi-weekly. Um we do cash management and reconciliation
for the town RMLD and all of that. Um we do the whole town and RMLD is almost as big as the town. Unbelievable how much it is to reconcile cash for us because we have that much going on. State and
federal boarding. We do that for um for the town and also RMLD and retirement um because we do pay them through our um payroll as well about the two employees from the retirement. We do debt issuance and then we do quarterly property tax billing, quarterly utility billing. We
manage tax title and we process payments about 123,000 payments a year. In assessing the key functions that we handle there are valuation of real and personal property um field review data collection and data entry of property
information administration of statutory and local property tax exemptions. We also issue about 23,800 motor vehicle excise tax bills. We do all the abatements in the assessing. So that would include motor vehicle um and property tax abatements. We do
maintenance of the property tax records um and then tax classification presentation to you all every year um is done by Victor that's in the assessing area and then we advertise and administer the senior tax relief program which we never added any staff to do.
These are the key accounting um functions and we pay about 26,000 bills a year and that would include the bills for the town, RMLD, school, the whole the whole organization. And we do monthly budget reporting to all the department heads so they can be on top of their budgets and see where they
stand on a monthly basis. We do all the budget oversight and support. So they'll frequently get a a message from me saying, you know, what's going on here? You know, something doesn't look right. um especially with grants, you know, if something doesn't look right with grants, but also with their general fund
budget. We also do um the support and security settings for munis so that people don't have access to things that they're not supposed to see only only the things that they're assigned for. Um also we do the tax recap which is the setting of the tax rate. I work um closely with Victor in doing that. We do
the free cash certification. We did the schedule a reporting for do financial analysis and reporting and also the compilation of anything needed for the audit and then um within the last few years I've taken over um the compilation
of the annual budget and all the charts that go into the book the warrant book a lot of stuff was done by the prior town manager prior to Fidel and I took over all of that capital planning debt planning all of that and I prepare all the budget presentations for fincom and town
One of the things that happened um not last week, the week before, we did get our AAA bond rating reaffirmed by S&P and they made a nice compliment for us um that we got through our Hilltop Securities, which is our bonding agent saying that our our presentation of our
budget, our forecasting, our capital plan, our debt was some of the best that they had ever seen. and they asked us if they would mind if we share the information of how how what we put together so that they could use that example for others. And so I thought that was really nice to hear and I thought I'd share it with you guys
because it's nice to know that they think we do a good and thorough job. So this is our budget for finance overall up 2.7% um accounting 3.17 assessing 2.54 and um
general finance 2.45. Majority of the increases in the department are for salaries and we are non-union staff. So all the employees will get a step in a cola a 1.25% cola. So in accounting wages are going up 3.56
assessing 3.28 and general finance 3.14 for a total of 3.3. our expenses. I did everything I could in my power to pull down expenses as much as I could to help the effort of keeping this budget at 2.75, which is a pretty modest budget for most
municipalities. I reduced um accounting expenses by $1,400. So, I think I took $1,200 out of our professional development budget and $200 out of our um supplies, which I tell you, our budget is very small. So, it's a lot to take anything out of. And then in
assessing, that's where we have um our our budget for our regional assessor. He is not a salary employee. He's uh he's part of our expenses. His um line item is going up 3%, but there's about $400 being cut from the expense line items if and then there's some level funding
that's going on there. I think we took um $200 away from um his professional development and then maybe another $200 away from um publications that they use. And then in general finance, we cut a lot in the
budget. Um some of it related to um professional development. I would say that's probably the biggest area we were able to cut because that's something that we have a little bit more control over whether we do it or not. Um and overall our expenses going down by 1.8%. 8%
>> very small budget so if you have questions I'm perfectly happy to delve in further. >> Carlo, did you have anything? >> Yes, thanks. Thanks Sean. I guess you're so inconsistent. Um, is there any
overtime in this department? >> Very very little. And I think there's about $2,500 in the accounting division and sometimes we do need that if if something's, you know, gone wrong and we need somebody to stay late. But for the most part, we we
try to turn it back to free cash and I think it's about 2500 in the general finance as well, which we tend to, you know, only use for emergency purposes. >> Okay. Thank you. Everything was pretty much, you know, on point and uh thanks
Um, I just wanted to say thank you for being so mindful of your expenses. Um, I we all appreciate that. And then congrats to you on the compliment of best print presentation. That was your >> I kind of used what was given to me. So not really for but we they definitely
bringing it forward. They they do enjoy the way it is presented and they thought that it was something that they wanted to share with others. So I think that's something worth knowing. >> Yeah. No, congrats to you. Thank you, >> Karen. >> Thank you very much, um, Sharon. And,
um, so I was wondering, um, if fees associated with late payments of tax bills, water bills, excise bills, any of that stuff. Are you is your department seeing that increasing? >> We we get a fair amount out of that every year. I don't know if I'd say it's increasing. It seems to be pretty stable
from year to year, but we do get there's a fair amount of revenue in that area. >> Okay. What happens to that revenue? Does it just go to >> It's part of the general fund. It supports the overall operating budget and anything we collect over what we project for revenues goes back to free cash when we do that regeneration. You
can see that. >> Um, so yeah, delinquent taxes and things like that, you would see me break it out for you if it was a large number, but it is something that we do see. I mean, I will say that collections of our property taxes is very, very high. I
would say by the end of the year we've got 99.7% of our taxes collected. So it's not to say that taxes aren't being paid, but there definitely are demand fees that are being paid and late fees and all of that stuff. Um and and we get we do see a fair amount. I wouldn't say
it's increasing. I'd say it's probably about stable. >> Okay. >> All right. Um and then so I was on a meeting with the um um mass municipal women elected municipal officials and so a lot of communities are talking about being in structural deficits and um
that's an accounting term or is writing in a structural deficit? >> I would say because we need an override I would say yes. um because we're using free cash at the level that we are. I would say some portion of that is definitely structural because you can attribute some of it to our conservative
budgeting style where we can we continually regenerate at least $3 million every year. So there's some number in there that absolutely is structural, which is why I've said I really do think we need the override. I think the number for free cash is just far too large and it could impact our
S&P bond rating, which we did just recently have reaffirmed. um at AAA and we're very fortunate for that because free did go down by $2 million this year. So I was a little concerned about how that would be viewed and um so they do look at the way we do things and the
conservative budgeting style that we have very positively. They do feel like we have a very strong hold on things. Um but I there's only so long we can push out because that's what I'd say. >> Okay. And and you've been so good to publish the because it's not just the dollar amount, it's also the percentage.
Um, but from what I've heard, like nobody writes the big checks from free cash that we do and and luckily we're conservative enough that we have been the cash is there and we've been able to do that. But, uh, so it would be interesting to start talking about, you know, which components with the finance
committee or or how much of that is a is a structural. I mean it it's all a matter of opinion really because each year we're we're getting more re you know >> last year was a very low year for regeneration for us. I want to say it was around $4 million.
>> Years prior we've seen six and $7 million. So it's really hard to say what is the real structural deficit. But what I will say is that >> each department the last few years has been flatlining their expenses the best they can. And then you start to see less and less regeneration because costs have
gone up all across the board. And we're we're not giving them any extra money for these line items. And so you're seeing less and less turn back. And I think the fact that that happened last year where we saw, you know, that we went back down by $2 million that that's a sign that we definitely have some form
of a structural deficit there. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Karen. Um, how often are we reviewed for the for the bond rating? Just when we borrow, >> every time we borrow. >> Okay. >> And it's very expensive. So, we try to b
like I always say to you, I try and structure debt so that we're, you know, doing it all at once, that we're not doing it multiple times in a year. I think the issuance that you're going to be voting on tonight cost us $450,000. So, we're not talking small money. And so, when it comes to and that part of that cost is the S&P rating, which I
think was $50,000. So, it's a lot. Are we scheduled to do it again in the next couple years? >> So, we're trying to structure it and it all depends on how things go with cash flow, but we basically are trying to structure it to try and see if there's a way that we can do it that the second
trunch of debt won't come on until fiscal 29 if we needed a 28 override. Um, but it time will tell if things play out the way it's shown on the cash flow currently. you know, if things move faster or slower, it it could change things. But we definitely have a lot of
thoughts about how we can structure um the debt offerings so that they're less impactful to the um residents, especially if an override is needed in the interim. And we've also talked about the potential of if an override is requested, um phasing one in where you
say, well, let's say we need five million or $6 million override, but we're we're thinking that that will still be hitting in that same year. maybe you phase it in where you say okay over three years so two million two so it doesn't hurt as badly so we've we've
been bouncing around a lot of ideas but as thing we have to see how these how these projects play out and in terms of the timing if they move faster than what I'm seeing on that cash flow it might blow up my plan so but we are definitely thinking about it me and the the treasurer Diane Marrio we're we're
working with the bonding agent and trying to structure things so the pain is as minimal as possible possible. It's not ideal. Nobody planned for this inflation to happen. It was carefully planned for all of our excluded debt to go away as these projects came in, but nobody really wanted the inflation.
Nobody asked for it. It just decided to come. So, it isn't perfect timing, but we're trying to manage the, you know, the impact. >> Um, and I am very impressed you don't really use overtime being in accounting and all the responsibilities you all have. Kudos to all of you. I if I work
overtime, I don't get paid. >> Well, I know, but you know, to keep it all, it's a lot of work. And I appreciate >> that term. >> That's it. But thank you. That's all I have to say. Thank you very much. >> Uh, and thanks, Sharon. I guess I only
have one question. So, I didn't see in the packet the actual percentage, unless I missed it. So, what is the >> percentage increase of the whole thing? >> Yes. Uh, >> let's go back. because I see there's >> seven is the overall budget >> in which
>> oh you know I want to say that um and I was going to get to it after we um we had some changes and I think you might notice um the library might have made their changes and I made changes when everybody put their budgets into where we put them in so I could see if we were in balance with what the guidance was
was for income we had a $321,000 deficit like we were over So, I needed to start cutting the budget. And so, I went line by line looking at everybody's budget. And I started looking at their actuals, looking at their budget, seeing
if there was anything, any buffer, any little something. And I had to do this last year, too, that I could cut. And I I I got us back in balance. Um, but to do that, I had to take $56,000 away from the non-union pay charge. um which meant that I had to change what we were
planning to do for the non-union which was uh a step in a cola which would be 2.35% for most employees plus a 1.25% cola. So it was going to be like 3.6 and I had to say okay well let's do a 3% straight cola and cut the 6 to save us
some money and that helped me balance. Um, and then when I sent as we work very collaboratively, the department heads and I, and so as I make changes to their budget, I'm always very mindful of the impact. So I send them out a revision. This is what I'm proposing. Am I causing
you in any hardship here by making these cuts? And what I did get back from a lot of department heads was the s the non-UN salary piece. You know, so many of the unions are getting so much more than that because they're under contractual obligation and knowing knowing that
health insurance might be another year of 13% increases that that 3% is going to be absorbed by, you know, that people are going to feel like they're getting kind of they're we're balancing the budget on the non-UN people because we can because they're not a contract. So, I said, "Well, let's see what we can do
with that." Um, and the chief of police um, reached out to me because he had similar concerns and he said, "You know, we have something that's come up that maybe might help us with this. How much money would it take to restore it back to what we originally bought?" It's a 56,000. And he's like, "We have one
police cruiser that was totaled that insurance is going to pay for. So, what we can do is we can maybe take that 56,000 away from our cruiser line and restore the non-union back to 3.6% 6% that we originally planned. So he
offered that up very generously and and I adjusted the the budgets back. So I had gotten these changes out to the department heads like on Thursday. And so your packets went out on Thursday. Some of us, including myself, would have
put a 3% straight um a 3% cola instead of the step in the cola. And so your what you have in your packet is different from what I'm showing you because I changed it back when we made this change. >> Yeah, that was my question because I'm seeing that and it's not lining up. I
know we got two revisions today. So >> I know that the library had made my changes and then changed it back. I figured I would mention it to you and thank you, you know, not send you another email because I felt like it was becoming an email fest of revisions. I
figured it'd be better just for me to explain. I think that if we can just make sure that this version gets updated in the select more packet online now. >> Okay. >> So that the public has whatever we >> Absolutely. >> Yep.
>> Okay. So we'll move on to the shared cost and then at the end I'll I'll kind of go over some of the where we stand with the budget. So where's my share button down here? What you think? >> Like this is over here. I can't see the buttons.
>> That's good. Okay. So, this is the shared cost. Let me get my mic closer. So, our shared costs are up 23.6%. The biggest driver there is the debt because we are seeing in fiscal 27 27
the first um trunch of excluded debt. In addition, we're also seeing three inside the levy debts being issued. um one being um pickle ball birch meadow phase two and um we actually issued permanent debt for the fieldhouse floor. Um the
one good thing that I can say about that is that um we ended up issuing less than what I had in my debt schedule. So with some savings to be found that that and I'll show you how that impacts. So I think we borrowed 875 instead of a million for pickle ball. We had 2.14
scheduled for Birch Meadow and we only ended up borrowing 1.55. Um and then I think we also had some savings in capital. When I had done my presentation for um income, um Joe Huggin came to me and he said, you know,
with the capital, you know, you moved up um this $65,000 piece of equipment for two years just to balance. I don't really need it. Just push it back out, right? >> So I said, "Okay." Okay. So, I took that 65,000 and I also took the savings from
the debt and I said, "Okay, >> I should be spending this on capital on the normal year, but I'm going to let us go down to 4 and a half% instead of 4.75 so that I can return more to free cash." So, instead of using 6,750,
we're going to go down to 6,550. But we could have saved about 300,000, but I'll explain kind of there was something else that kind of was factored in there. So, they're bringing it down 200,000, but it could have been 300. And I'll show you as I get to it. Um, so benefits were up 11.1%.
Um, capital is down 27.7%. And part of that is because I I had budgeted it to be going down to 4.75. It really is now four and a half that we're doing. Um, and the debt is up because of the um, excluded debt and those three projects
inside the levy. Vocational schools we have at 2.9 and hopefully that doesn't move because we got that surprise this year of $240,000 that I wasn't expecting. Their budget last year went up 10.18% which was crazy and it was like a 50%
increase from the year before what we had to pay. So, um I'm hoping that that gave us a good baseline that we're not going to see another big number. But right now we're at 2.9 and then the reserves being the same from the prior year. pretty much stay the same every year.
So, under benefits, a little bit more detail. Let me move this. I got the little screen that shows everybody and I can't see my screen. Um, so retirement is um 6 and a half% increase. Um, and you can see that pension is 5%. It had been
8.33%. I do sit on the retirement board and and every two years we do a um evaluation of our our pension liability and to do a new funding schedule and I share with the board that you know the 8.33 came at the worst possible time inflation hit and we just couldn't
afford it and they dropped it down to you know pushed it out one more year and dropped it down to this 5%. Last year we did 200,000 for OPED we are only able to do 300,000 but that's 50% increase. Medicare up two and a half. Health
insurance, they're telling us again to expect something in the same range of what we got this year, 13 and a half. So, I went to 14. Not a nice number because it's a big number. Um, workers comp up 4% indemnification 3.8.
Unemployment is up 62 and a.5%. It's a small number, but it's just a big jump for us. It's 130,000. I think it was like 65 the year before. So, Sorry. This is our capital. Is that thing again? We're spending 2,961500
on capital. And this is the detail of what we've chose to use it for. We tried to put as much as we could towards road paving because it is costing us so much more. We're doing we're trying to do the best we can with the budget that we have. And we do still have that $50,000
under permanent building committee, but we could reassign that somewhere else if we want or we could take it as savings and take it off altogether, but I I didn't do anything with it this year. Just wanted to get some kind of feedback on what we think because we have the last two years used it. Um I think we
used it towards the recal project for some of their design work. I I want to say they used for fitting or something. I don't remember. But there was definitely the last two years we did in fact use it. So, it may be a little hesitant to take it away. Um 300,000 is going to be used for um the elevator
replacement at the Main Street Fire Station. We have a carpenters truck. We have doors and windows at the school at 40,000. We have an AR hazard study um for town buildings. We just did one for school, 144,000.
And then we have 250,000 for um school technology projects as well as $10,000 for their phone systems that we do every year. 80,000 for service for the building security system. $125,000 for technology projects within the town.
Then we have our basic life support AED um that we're buying for both fire and police. We try and time it so we buy them at the same time. 60,000 for um rescue tools for a fire. 30,000 for breathing air, two bottles for fire,
20,000 for the um multi gas meters fire. We have a lot of fire this year. Um turnout gear, 350,000. Um then in parks we have a $100,000 tractor. We have 42,500 for mowers. We have every year we
have 50,000 for general fence um replacement. So we're always working on that. Every year we have 100,000 for field, playground, and court improvements. So, we haven't identified what's exactly, but we always try and hold 100,000 in there. 100,000 for walk
rock wall repairs, 50,000 for parking lot improvements. We do those every year as well. We also have 50,000 for forest street crosswalk improvements that is designed um for those improvements. And we tried to increase whatever we could
120,000 I think we normally do a 100,000 for sidewalk um curve and pedestrian safety. So, wherever we can squeeze out a little bit more, we try and put more there. 100,000 for the skin coding and 685 for road paving.
This is the debt in more detail. Move that out of the way. Um, so basically I break it down to within the levy. within the levy, our debt is up 30% and it's broken down um it's broken down to the different um
school buildings, town buildings, and commu community improvements for you there. And also, oops, didn't mean to do that. Going back the wrong way now. It's like flying away. Sorry about that. Um so this the excluded data is broken down
by kilum and recal. Um and it's that first That first debt service is going to be 5,195837. We ended up borrowing just a little bit more than I wanted to originally, but when we were started thinking about trying to time it out so that we could
go longer, we we borrowed just a little bit more. So, I think we borrowed 50,000 per kilum. I mean 50 50 million for kilum and 20 million for recal. and and it's important that we do it in tanches too because as we get closer we'll be able to figure out you know do we have
savings within this budget we don't want to borrow too much there's arbitrage laws that we need to abide by and so that's um the reason we try and do it in tanches so the other thing that we have on this slide is the um AAA bond rating which was reaffirmed on um November 25th
um and then we also issued debt and you're going to be um after I'm done here you'll be approving that debt we actually had a $75 million issuance, but we and we got it at $3.317 the interest rate, but we got a $7.5 million premium.
So, we ended up only having what they do with that premium is they reduce your borrowing. And so, so this here is just telling you that um that's what the issuance is. So, we really did borrow the $70 million and it is looks like it's less, but it's because we apply the
premium towards the debt and don't borrow as much money. Then this is the vocational schools and in that number is $338,000 for our share of that building project at that school. Um and then obviously
our income reserves stay the same. Now it can go away. Any questions? >> Carlo, did you have anything? Yeah, sorry my uh >> Oh, I can see you having trouble with
the mute. So, >> I guess the question would be since health is going up so much again do what is the contribution now of our employees to the health benefits? What
percent? So they they pay 29% of the health insurance and we pay 71. >> I think I think we had this discussion last year or a financial forum. It I think we need to up that. I think a few of us mentioned that. I could be
wrong, but that that needs to be looked into, you know, and and the retirement and other stuff, you know, that that's just, you know, crippling us, but there's nothing we can do about that. Um, but the health benefits, you know, I think we need to take a look at that and
increase that. I don't know what the the norm is in municipalities, you know, 20%, 40%, 29, which we do, but I'd like us to look at that, please. And is it the rock wall in the fieldhouse? Is that the rock wall
we're talking about? >> I don't think so. >> But where is the rock wall? >> The rock walls are done every year. I think it's just general rock walls that we have on our properties like in parks and cemeteries such as >> stone wall. >> Stone. Yeah. >> Not a climbing wall.
>> It's not a rock wall that you climb. >> Oh god. Sorry. I thought I thought I thought we had a climbing wall somewhere. >> No. No. It has to do with >> It's got Yeah. >> And as part of the health insurance, um,
we we do meet with the is it called the public? >> Yeah. So, it's the P public uh employee committee. Um I have been meeting with them. We've been talking about plan design. We have another meeting with them tomorrow. So, and they are committed to lowering costs, too. Um so,
it's a good committee. All of the unions are represented on that committee. So, it's basically me and the unions um and Sharon, Jane, Sean are all in those meetings as well as well. So, so it's something we're actively looking at and we'll have more. I think Carlo, I think
we we brought that agreement to you in an executive session last year and that may be what you're referring to. So >> yeah, I know we had a discussion about it and I just I you know I I a lot of people are struggling, you
know, consumers, business owners, towns, cities. Uh I I just we you know we gotta spread this out a little bit because at the pace we're going I mean you know Stoneman passed their override today and
I guess that's good for them but bad in in in the same sentence but I I I just I don't know what our future holds for us but uh they passed a $9 million override and uh not going to sit well with a lot of people in that community but I guess
it had to be done to have the have the town run properly. But I I think we just got to I know you're going to work on it. I appreciate that. But I think we really have to get into the 30s. I think it just that has to happen. I don't know how it
happens, but I think that has to happen. Thanks, >> Melissa. >> Um, thank you, Sharon. Just a couple quick questions on the V vocational schools. I know you said and it was presented I think at town meeting that
we went up so much this past year 50%. Is that our portion based on the amount of kids we have there? >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So it does fluctuate. >> Our enrollment has increased from like over the last couple years from like 32 students to 51. >> Got it.
>> And so every year their expenses are allocated out to the communities based on your prrated share of their overall population. So, we get a bigger piece of the capital and also we're paying more because we have more students there. So, it changes a lot. So, I'm hoping that um
we won't see a huge jump here because we really can't afford it this year. >> Yeah. Do you know if the enrollment is any different from last year to this year? >> That's the problem when we're building the budget. We don't know and we have to estimate, you know, based on what we
know and who's there and you know, but it's really a crapshoot. We really don't know and that's why you frequently will see this item adjusted at November town meeting because that's when we'll learn sometime after school starts who's enlisted over there. And so it's very
difficult to budget. We do the best we can. Um but nobody I would never budget a 10% increase for their budget you know and people has a 50% increase over what we paid the year before. So that's not a number I would have ever have jumped up myself. >> Yeah.
>> Okay. Um, why is unemployment up so much? >> A lot of it, it's hard to tell because some of it's on the school side. I think most of it's on the school side and I'm not entirely sure. I'm not privy to the, you know, to the what's going on there,
but I do see the rise in the bills. Um, but I it's not information I see the details on. So, >> do you want me to >> Oh, do you do you >> That'd be great. Thank you. Um so the and we work with um with Maya
who works with a third party vendor for us to um tackle the unemployment claims. One of the um cases that we do like other municipalities is um I believe the term is reimburseable employer. So we have to tail only when those claims come
in. But the state has a very interesting determination as to you know somebody leaves and you know they work somewhere else and somehow we still owe a portion and we can try to protest it which we do. It's a very complicated formula that I've tried to fight but anyway um but
they're very unexpected as Sharon said. It's hard to predict, but we when they come in usually on a monthly basis, um I'll look at the town ones and the school will look at the school ones and we'll look to see like is there any issue here? What can we do to, you know, protest it? We do our very best to
protest whatever we can to drive it down as much as possible. And from time to time, although again, I don't know why it takes so long, but you start to see charges come off, but there's sometimes like a year later, Sharon and I were talking about this in the summer as we were trying to reconcile FY25. It was
like, how do we do this? Because it's odd, but anyway, it's all over the place sometimes at the state level. >> All right, I'm so proud. Well, thank you for the clarification. And um I just wanted to say thank you for increasing the road peeping. I think that's a necessity right now. Um so I appreciate that.
>> Thank you. Darren, >> that's great. Thank you. Um, okay. I would love to, um, thank you for letting us know that the permanent building committee did use some of that budget. Um, I think we all agreed at town meeting we needed to do a master
plan and then that got back to me, right? >> It got pushed out of here. >> And I think Carlo brought that up at a recent meeting. I'd really like to see if we could get that back on track. It's so overdue and I think it's about the same. >> I think it's a lot more money than that. >> Is it? Was that 200? I thought it was
200,000. It was a lot, >> right? And we were looking at grants. The first grant we applied to, we didn't get. We're still looking at other grants to cover it. I know Andrew is handling that for us, but it's something on our radar for sure. >> Okay. Um I saw um on the green
communities website um electric lawnmowers and um I think doors and windows can definitely you know go into that category. So those are some of the things on that capital list, just like basic stuff. And I know we're just looking, so I figured I'd just mention that out. Um, it is interesting to see
towns now starting to buy e-mowers. Um, so anyway, that's >> I didn't even know they existed. >> No, they do. >> Yeah. Well, we just bought an e um snowblower at my house and it wasn't cheap, but yep, they're they're very
powerful and they work. So, okay. Um the 3 point thanks for the feedback on adjusting the employee contributions. I'm glad you're talking to them about that. I am hearing what some other communities are doing. Um I thought our
employees I thought we said recently they were at 25%. So, I didn't think there was an opportunity there. And I don't know if I was miscommunicated, but maybe there's a small opportunity that we could um work to get that um less
expensive. And then, so here's here's a thought. We talk about every year we talk about recreation turning back um free cash and then we have a line item and fields and playground maintenance every year in the capital plan. Like and
I heard some of Joe's comments like I am responsible for keeping all these moving and I have these budgets and when I have savings in one area then I can redeploy it to like some other piece of equipment that I'm going to have to repair anyway. So does it make any sense at some point to get wreck more of that kind of a
system? It's like they know they have to maintain these fields and playgrounds every year and >> I think they do um pay um there is money that comes in from wreck to help with the support of the field. So there is some that's a after the fact um this is
what closes out that 108,000 that Jane referred to that's after they've paid support for the fields and stuff. So the 100,000 you see in the capital plan is really for um capital work, not maintenance, but capital work. So like if we're doing playgrounds or if we were
doing like doing the turf over or something like that, we were doing something that they would consider to be capital, but mowing and stuff would be like major. I hear what you're saying and I think what the capital is sometimes my understanding and so bark mulch replenishment but that's I don't know if that's capital or not but the
playground equipment wears out and they you know they're small items are smaller than doing a whole field. >> Yeah. >> So that's why I just brought that up. Okay. And then the 3.1% borrowing I I missed the the length of that debt. Was that 20 25? >> It varies. So for the kilum it will be a
20-year borrowing. Okay. >> And for recal we did a 15. Um, so and then the other ones I believe are all 10 years. Um, pickle ball, the field toss floor, um, and birch metal all 10 years. So they all have different terms just
based on, you know, the size, >> right? No, I saw another community doing like 25 for like their new school or their new senior center. environment problem and you where you're talking about, you know, trunching it and and and I love the the underbaring like getting close but not going over which
is I think way a lot of people do their own budgeting at home. So I appreciate that. Um so I didn't know I mean as you're thinking about things whether there's an opportunity for us to go a little bit longer on these two buildings at an additional
additional time. >> You mean borrower? Well, we've already kind of issued this trunch, so there would be no opportunity there. But I will say >> there's only 70 million though. >> I know we Yeah, there'll be more for the for the second possibly. But what I will
say is that when you look at um the debt schedules for a 30-year borrowing, a 25, a 20, and 15, the 30-year borrowing, like when you see like the Kllum project, I immediately defaulted. Oh, we'll have to do that 30. That's way too big. But when I saw that that debt
schedule for that that project, it was it was doubling the amount of the project. The interest was doubling the amount of the project. And for the difference of $60, I could bring it down $60 for a resident, an average resident, additional $60, I could bring it down to
20. So, >> but but $60 I'm like I'm just like this year like that's $60 per resident that somebody can have in their pocket and that's why I'm just going to make >> $60 to make it go away 10 years earlier. So, we're balancing that because the
other thing we always have to keep in mind is right now we don't have another building on the horizon that we're looking on, but >> but there will be one eventually and you don't want this to make it so we can't if we're borrowing for such a long time and we're burdened by debt for too long.
We won't be able to roll in more and there will be something that will present itself, especially if we do the facilities master plan. There will be something that presents itself that we will need to start thinking about for the future. So, we want pros and cons. >> Yeah. The other thing I will say is that
S&P um was very um vocal about the fact that they like that we pay off our debt quickly. That's something that's makes us stronger than most is that we do try to pay the debt off quickly. And interest is a big deal. Like when you saw these two debt plans from a 30 to a 20 and the difference was for the
average taxpayer $60 in a year, I would rather see it go if it was me. I'd rather force the $60 and get it to go away in 10 10 years earlier. So I I my our decision may not like be what any everybody would have done, but we
definitely we're trying to do minimize how much interest we were paying on these projects and make them go as go away as quickly as possible so that there's room for more projects in the future and that we're not burdened so much for so long. I know and I know there's pros and cons and and what we
have done over the years is we've refinanced some of these debts. So I would say my concern is that right now people are struggling >> and and I'm not saying it has to be 100% across the board but to continue what you're doing is trying to balance these
and I would suggest that maybe in the next trunch borrowing for a little bit longer with the understanding and depending rates could be a little bit lower then because we're expecting a little more cuts. So rates might be a little lower could come in the same price. I would just ask you to keep looking at that looking. And I
appreciate that because $60 to some residents is still matters because $60 here, $50 here. >> Can you tell me again because I shared what you told us last time and and people are still asking me when are are the debt exclusions first going to hit
our tax bills? So I have a question out to Victor because we do know that we've issued debt. Preliminary bills are usually based on your your you know prior year bill because we haven't set our tax rate yet. >> Yeah. And these would be on the tax rate for fiscal 27 wouldn't show up I don't
think until January. But he did say um if it if we would want to have it on the preliminary he would see how how difficult it would be to do that. But my expectation would be January because that's the first bill where you actually have the real tax rate after it's been
set after the do has certified her tax rate. That's the bill that you know chews everything up. And so my guess would be that would be >> so that's what you told us before and that's what I told somebody they're like that can't be that can't be accurate but does it mean that because we're not
making any payments like for any of us who buys a car gets a mortgage when you're not paying for an entire year does that mean interest is acrewing which is going to cost us more >> or no is >> we're still making our interest payments it's part of our it's part of our budget um and and we are a strong enough
community that we have cash flow that even if it was later in the year that we're getting the money from the residents, we're able to still make our debt payments. So, what happens is every six months we pay an interest payment and once a year we pay pay principal payment. Those principal payments are like in October. Um, and we can
schedule, you know, we can figure out where the best month is and then that was the month that the treasurer selected, I believe, is October. Um, but the cash flow for the town, we're very fortunate that we usually have sufficient cash on hand. So, it's not
it's not a an issue. Even if we're getting the the money in the last two quarters of the year, we will still be able to make those interest and principal payments. So, um, and and also keeping in mind we're holding all this money that we borrowed as well. we're going to be looking to, you know, you
know, secure that money until it's needed, you know, in in higher interest rate vehicles. So, >> okay. >> Um, so I think that we still will be fine and it's only the first year where you'll see that and then the next year we >> we're just you're just going to have to keep repeating it. And also, we're talking about potentially an override
like next fall before the debt exclusions have hit. That's what I'm worried about because that's not going to be hitting >> because I want and and maybe we need another calculator because I want I don't want to surprise >> the calculator when when people need to know.
>> They're like, "Oh, you know, I don't want them thinking, "Oh, this is great. We just did two buildings and it really hasn't been that bad. So, you had to do the override and then we crushed them in January." Like, that would just be a disaster. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That would be horrible, honestly. >> Thank you,
>> Karen. Did you have anything? >> No, I'm not. >> Oh, perfect. Uh, thank you, Sharon. I, uh, I took the 15-year approach with my own mortgage, so uh, obviously 30 years or 20, whatever would have been
phenomenal. U, but in seven years, I'm going to be very happy. So, >> uh, I appreciate you going this route in and justifying $60. It's going to be the gymnastics that are going to be
required next month to uh saddle increasing things with CPA by $95. It's going to be a a work of art to see how that somehow squares away. Um so stay tuned for that I guess. The only other
question I had on the capital spending, and I know Joe is going to end up saying that, you know, I'll be happy to talk to you offline about the servers for building security because that just pains me to see $80,000 for that. Um, and then the other 125,000 for
technology projects for the town. What is included in that? So we we every year have something in our capital plan for um technology and and the tech the the chief technology officer will decide what we use that for. So it's always at
least $100,000 and we do the same for the school and the town. It's always there. We're trying to increase it because it's not going as far and we're seeing more and more of technology coming back to us asking for more money at April town meeting or November town meeting because things have come up. And
so it's whatever he's going to need for that year. So we don't spec we don't specify what exactly it is, but there's always something and he a lot of times will hold on to this money until towards the end because he wants to make sure that no surprises come up. But but he does have a plan and usually most years,
but I don't usually specify because I don't necessarily know. Every year we try and give them a h 100,000 at least in each budget. The school department a couple years ago came to me and said when we went to onetoone devices um during the pandemic those devices are
aging out and we don't have sufficient capital to actually replace these devices. So you notice that when I went with the schools theirs is 250,000 and tried to take some of that burden away from them the best I could. So I feel like that 100,000 has been what we've
been doing for years and years and years and now the costs have gone up. It's really not going very far, especially where you're talking about for the whole town. Well, all the town side and then the school side, you know, 100,000 doesn't go very far when you're talking about technology. >> Yeah. So, emitting the school portion, I
guess my concern is on the town portion, why isn't that under Kevin's budget anywhere? >> Well, because capital isn't in anybody's budget. Capital is voted if when we go to town meeting, you know how we vote the the line items? Capital is its own line item. And so all the capital for
the town is in one. It's in their department for sure in our system. But when you're voting their budget, you're doing technology salary, technology expense, capital is everything up above. So you will be voting the 2.96 million
as one number providing details of what makes that up, but it actually hits all the all the different departments that have capital. So it wouldn't be in his budget because capital never is shown that way because we voted as one line item and then just their expenses and
salary are you know department by department. So I guess I'm just confused over what ends up getting classified as a capital project under the IT realm where certain other things like Kevin presented before I
would kind of equate to the same bucket like $78,000 whatever increases on some software scenario that he did like that is clearly a project but it's not a capital project even though it's virtual. Well, licensing and maintenance
agreements, those aren't capital. When we're talking capital, we're talking about the servers. We're talking about the bigger things that that that are maintaining our software packages like the Munis software, you know, we're not cloud-based. He's keeping servers that run all of our systems and stuff and they're expensive pieces of equipment.
And we're not even really talking about computers. Computers in my mind are they don't fall into capital typically for us because they're just too small and their life is too short. Um, usually it's something that costs more than $5,000 individually, one piece, and that's
usually the bigger IT items like servers. Um, so yeah, $100,000 doesn't go very far. And and when we did, I mean, the thing that I asked for, the $80,000 for the building security, that that was because of all the work that
we've done to support that system. He needs that whatever that is, servers or whatever. And so I don't know enough about the technology to be able to tell you why it's that expensive, but I I trust his his quote and and obviously he can't use it for anything else. When the
bills come over, we all review them. And so um I can't give you enough detail to kind of break down what he would use it for because I don't know everything. Yeah, I guess it would be helpful in the future because like when he presented and everything
like I I think he had firewalls in there and I know some of those or switches can easily cost over $5,000, but it was included in there. Now it's not included in here with a $5,000 buffer. Like I can easily see
um a mix on things. I'm sure there's other ones in here. It's just that I'm very familiar with. >> So some things he might have classified as expenses that you might you might normally think of as capital. >> Yeah. Like you can get a Cisco 48 port switch for a,000 bucks or you can get a
$10,000 one, but >> is all fancy with the threeear software plan and all that other garbage they have. So it's it's definitely a significant difference. >> Yeah. whatever he presented to you um when he was here would not have included this money at all.
>> And I don't know how he differentiates what the things are that he considers his capital, but I know for me it's got to cost $5,000 individually and have a useful life of at least five years for me to even entertain it as capital. >> So that's my threshold. He may have some different thoughts about what he uses
expense money for, but capital is usually the bigger things, the service. All righty. Anyone else? >> Okie dokie. >> Do you want me to just give you a quick summary of where we land with all of this?
>> Sure. This thing is in the way again. The little box that shows. >> Okay, there we go. So, as I spoke of before, um, FINCOM had had allowed us to use $6,750,000
of free cash to support this operating budget. But because we did have the savings, we had a few things that went on with the debt. I mentioned borrowing less for pickle ball, borrowing less for birch metal. The other thing that um I pushed out on the debt plan that was originally part of the fiscal 27 numbers
was the Parker turf. um they still haven't asked for a debt authorization. And so when I inquired about that, they said the earliest we could be ready for that is an is is June. So we probably wouldn't even ask for it until April. So I said, geez, I wouldn't have anything else to borrow. So what I would probably
more than likely do if this project proceeds is we, you know, if they if it gets authorized at town meeting is do a ban, a short-term borrowing um and so that I can line it up with issuing the second tranch of debt. So, I left just the interest um for that debt on the
debt schedule and I took the principal payment of 150,000 away. So, we had about $300,000 of savings all in all between the $65,000 saved from capital and then whatever we saved from um the debt. So, typically in
a normal year, we would just turn around and increase our capital so that we got to that 5%. But, we had already reduced it to 4.75. I brought it down to four and a half. Um, the other thing that we needed to do to balance was that the $321,000 that we had was just too hard to cut
without taking one piece out. And the piece I took out, and I'm going to ask Vincent Comp to fund with some of that savings, is the $80,000 for technology for the new software for the police department. Um, it's the licensing and the maintenance for the new um >> CAD
>> CAD software. Um, and $80,000. to find that in your budget when you're this tight is just horrible. Um, and so what I did was is I put it in as a community priority. Um, so down under um the accommodated cost section, we have a
section that we put things as community priority. And you can see that in prior years we were giving the the school department 150,000 as a community priority to get to full day to be tuition free. And this is the last year that it that shows up. And so we didn't
have a community priority for fiscal 27, but the 321,000 I went line by line and I looked at actuals to budget and I took every me and Matt sat down. I'm like, I'm I'm going to I've been losing sleep over this. I cannot get the whole 321. I'm going to take this 80,000 and I'm
going to ask to allow us to take some of that debt savings and put it in as a community priority. So I was able to cut everything but that 80,000. And so we are taking down that free cash use from 6,750 to 6,550.
Um so I think that's a more palatable number. It's still not a number I like seeing. It's way too high. I don't love it. We are where we are. Um but I wanted to make sure that you guys were fully aware of what I was going to request from when we meet with them and um see if they're okay with that because if not
then we still have to find another 80,000. Right now, I have this budget in balance and I I sent every department had the changes and the back and forth to try and negotiate how to get there. I mean, there's definitely a couple people that came back like that's not a line. I
can I can take that cut. And then we went back and looked at something else. At this point, we are in balance with that 2.75 with the exception of this $80,000. Um, the other thing I wanted to show you is where all the departments land after
I make my changes, which show here just a little spreadsheet. Is it even here? I thought I had it. Maybe it's not. Hold on a second. I got to open it. I thought it wasn't.
Oh, yeah. Budget cuts. last year. I I will say that we have such a cooperative team. Like everybody whatever we whatever they could do to help this budget, nobody really fought back with me. They they they're like, "We'll manage. It's going to be fine." You know, because I they knew how
stressed I was about trying to get this in in balance. So, we share. >> I didn't share it yet >> because I couldn't find it. >> Too many things open. So, this is where we are. Is it too big? I can't see it all.
>> So, administrative services, I cut 38,528 from their budget, bringing them down to a 2.77% budget. DBW um the budget they presented, they said they were going up 1.8, but that's where the storm water
money was coming out, and I neglected the the template I gave him. I neglected to take it out of like because the way I looked at it that 180,000 was being used to reduce the cash and was not going to be used to fund the rest of the operating budget. So I neglected to take
out what's there for this year. So he thought he was only going up 1.84. But really I look at it like that. What's left? What what are those line items going up? And so he's going up 4.09%. His line items were really hard because
things are costing us a lot and he's, you know, one line item would he be saving to cover overage on another line item. Things are that tight. Um, but I still could not afford what he was asking for. So, I had to cut $70,200. Um, and and I felt like his requests
were were definitely in line with what we normally would do in a normal year. We just couldn't afford it in this year. And so wherever I could cut, I cut. Um, and I cut $70,200 from his budget, leaving them at 4.09.
>> So you're saying the presentation we saw last week where it was 18 rainbows and butterflies. >> It included it included um fiscal 26 having storm water still sitting there. So it looks like you're going down like there's a huge reduction there. $180,000
of law because those lines were zero for fiscal 27. So, in order to make it all relative, I have to back it out because it wasn't really that 180,000 wasn't funding the budget. It was actually reducing pre-cash use. And so, not putting it on his template made it
very confusing for him that he did. He's like, "Well, I'm only going up 1.84, but I'm like, these nine items I didn't take out." So, he wasn't wrong in that his budget is only going up 1.84, but that money went to free cash to reduce free
cash use. And so, so that's why I say he's really the lines that remain after you take away those employees that are being moved to storm water go up 4% after I cut the 70,000. He was somewhere around 5%. His line items absolutely
need more of an infusion. I mean, there's lines like um we we do um sidewalk and and patchwork in the capital plan, and there's smaller things that he does on his expenses. those were all running over. So many of his line
items really needed an infusion. So he was very much right to ask for what he needs, but we couldn't do all of it with a 2.75% budget. A 2.75% budget is a very modest municipal budget. We're doing very very little um for that kind of
money. So I couldn't we couldn't write the ship of all the line items. He could use a little bit more budget. And I mean that's where you see the pain is that every year it's getting worse trying to find a little buffer to pull out. Um but you know he had this sidewalk line that
was like 25,000 and I was only able to give him 22. Like you're going to have to do a little less. Do you know what I mean? So they, you know, it's just really difficult to cut a budget when that's what you're seeing when you're seeing so many line items where they're not spending their office supplies to cover
overages on another line because they just can't ask for enough because we've been flatlining the expense budget as much as we can for the last couple years. This is where it shows up. Less being turned back to free cash, less regeneration, and a just much harder budget for them to work with. Um, so I
don't think he was wrong in asking for what he was asking for. I just couldn't do it all in one year. He restored some of the lines to to a level that the most important lines, the highest priority lines, and then I had to cut this much from his budget. Um, the core I did not
take anything because as Joe had mentioned, I took $135,000 out of his utilities under accommodated cost. So I'd already kind of taken a huge piece of his budget away because we had some savings there. So he didn't really have much to work with. So I
didn't touch his budget after that because when we talk about these budgets here, these are just their operating budgets. When I pull out accommodated costs, Joe Huggin has a lot of accommodated cost. he's got um the electricity and he's got gas and all
those fall under accommodate cost and we take care of those before we break out the budget between the school and the town. So when I look at these numbers when I'm referring to these numbers it's without the accommodated costs that are built into their budget. And so I didn't go after any more money from his budget
because he really couldn't there wasn't anything left he could take. Um, I took another 700,000 $700 from my budget, bringing us down to 2.7. Fire, I took $30,500, bringing them down to 3.69. And they
also had a lot of increases related to increasing the ambulance fees, um, I had to leave those lines alone, but any line I could take a little bit of money, I had to take it out. Health, we took about 6,500 away, bringing them down to a 1.41%
operating budget. um the libraries under the trust fund commissioners. We when I did the salary change, I was able to show a number there, but once I changed it back, it ends up being back what she proposed, which is a 2.65% budget. The police department took on an additional
$56,000 so that we could restore the non-union back to what we had originally planned, bringing their budget down to 1.68%. And then public services, um, we took $17,800, um, and bringing it down to 2.26. And
technology, I took $4,000 away from him. And that was hard, too, because he had that same situation going on where he's saving money from one line to pay for overages on another. It It's really, really tight on the expense side, and it has been for a while, and it's just getting really harder to balance these
budgets. So, in the end, I cut 241728 from the budgets that you saw. And then this $80,000 I'm going to need to ask Vinc to support me using that savings from debt um towards it and calling it a community priority. Because when we call something a community priority, it
becomes an accommodated cost for one year to build it into the baseline budget and then it's there for the next year. You now he's got that $80,000 in his baseline budget and next year he just builds upon that. if the if that contract goes up, it's not going to be 80,000. It'll be 2,000 or whatever it
is. So, this was a very painful budget. I lost sleep over it. I'm sure the department has lost sleep over it, but you wouldn't know it from the interactions that I had with them. Each one of them took every cut that I proposed in stride. And the same thing last year. I I hate cutting their
budgets because I know how tight they are, but we really we wanted to go as lean as we could this year. And a 2.75% budget is as lean as it gets from municipalities and some of these peop some of these departments are whacking away with a lot less than than that 2.75. So I just wanted to let you know
that every one of these department has cooperated and did whatever they could to help me find what I needed to find. If if if I proposed something that was a hardship for their budget, then we tried to find something else in their budget to make it up. So I just wanted to make sure that you know that we are all
working really hard to try and make these budgets work. So the total of all those percentages is 2.75%. If you were to >> in the end when you look at um the actual um budget when you add up most of the accommodated cost are in the town
side with the with the exception of audit district special ed. So if you took from our financial forecast if you took the town amount and our accommodated cost I made sure that that total balances to what's on my financial forecast. We are in balance right now
and every department head has agreed to all of these cuts, but it's not easy. We've been doing the best we can with what is not an ideal circumstance. >> Carrie, >> I appreciate that. Thank you. Um, and I'm starting to get calls, I don't know
if you all are getting calls yet, that um, so community events that we do there. There are police details and now the word is going out that if you're hosting a community event, the town is no longer going to be able to pay for your police detail. You're going to have
to do that. So like false tree fair. I don't I was going to ask you a a question about how when it's an eternal event like October Fest and we have a police day, are we paying like rack rates and that kind of stuff, but I just want to let select board members know
I'm I'm already talking to residents who, you know, run various communities and and that's a change because this is so tight. I'm going to that's one of the ways that you guys are getting to these numbers and it's going to get pushed out to the
community. That's one example. Are you saying between last week's meeting and and today this happened? >> Yeah. So for next year's events, so the words going out. Yeah. >> Because that's what we briefly mentioned. >> And like Melissa Yeah.
>> I thought we just talked about No, looking into options of, you know, could if if the event was sponsored by outside people, could some of that funding pay for the police detail? I don't think we ever came to a conclusion that we weren't going to pay for them or, you
know, maybe we would, you know, pay half and then, you know, then the town would >> like to talk about that. You know, >> I think we need to talk about it, but I don't think it was ever discussed that it was 100% changing. I think it was just a conversation that needed to be had. >> I think it's in their budget. Some
portion of overtime is increased to a lot for some of that, but it it is something that overtime is killing them like >> 100%. I do think it's something that we really do need to talk about because as much as I love having all of these community events and they are great
events, we that's a huge cost. >> Yeah. No, it is. And we always ask during the DRT process if it's usually some nonprofit or community could could you actually pay for these? Do you have it in your budget to do that? And some do or they can pay for a portion of it.
Some just say, you know, I couldn't do we can't do the event now unless we have this. And we just feel that it's a community event that people rely on. It's a good event. So we have it budgeted and we use it, but we try to use it sparingly. >> Oh, I think the problem will be is that
we whatever whatever policy comes in has to be used across the board. >> Yeah. >> Whatever policy made needs to be used across the board. We can't pick and choose which groups we're going to say, okay, yep, we'll pay for you, but we're not going to pay for you. That's a terrible way to do it. So we just have to do it across >> and we don't do it. We we ask them BA
and it's based on their own. But sometimes they budget in for these things and so do we ask do you have it in your budget to do that but it's not like we favor one over the other or anything that that would be Yeah. >> Yeah. No, I do think it's a great conversation to have. >> Yep. >> So none of the cuts that you made,
Sharon, are impacting this at all. >> The >> what just happened? Like I I didn't think that what Karen said actually happened. I >> I I don't know about that. I definitely think the numbers that you're seeing include some overtime for those types of events. So, it could be something that
could be cut to restore something else if that is what I have not heard that. That doesn't mean it isn't true that they aren't talking about that. Um, this budget does have um overtime in it to help support some of these details for these events from what I understood. Um,
and so if if something about that changes, that's something that could maybe be restored from my list of cuts if that is if they do decide to do that. >> Yeah, I think we'll >> take this offline and Matt can follow up and just circulate an email to us and
then we can discuss it a policy like >> um we kind of want to have in the future based off. >> Okay. But we just need clarification on on that. Okay,
>> that's all I have for you. I think that Diane's doing good. >> Yeah, we'll we'll get to that on that's an separate agenda item. So, >> yeah. So, thank you. I just wanted to, you know, wrap up by thanking all the department heads as they leave for their hard work on these budget, which Sharon
said was correct. Um, it was a lot, it was a team effort and a lot of hard work. You can Um and then you know you're familiar with the process. I have until February to submit the budget to FinCom. We're going to be still working on things. Sometimes surprises come up.
Um so and also I want to take input from the select board having had these meetings. So um if you have been put on it one way or the other, let me know. Um as Sharon said, we've already we've sort of jumped the gun a little bit already gone ahead and made some cuts to the level one budget. Level one is strictly
what the department heads asked for. I don't even really look at them until late in the process and we have to see if we're balanced. So, um and then it goes to FINCOM in March and then town meeting in April. So, that's same process every year. Yes. >> Question. Do we have any um earmark
discussion requests in process currently? >> Um we always do if if I get uh emails and correspondents from state reps, state senator when it's earmark season, we always do put in ear marks and I think we have a few pending. I can go
back and look. But yes. Yeah. For the state budget. That's in the state budget. And so that's it for our budget discussions tonight. And we can move. We have a few other agenda items. So if so inclined.
>> Yep. Yeah. So I guess uh it's page 84, the packet, the discussion and vote on extension guide uh deadlines for town manager review. >> Yeah. So again, we talked about this last meeting. Um, I think it's favorable to everybody to move it out of the
holiday season with school vacation, everything coming up. I know the superintendent is one of the mandatory people that would need to to do the review. I know the school vacations and people take holidays and so it essentially just pushes the deadlines. I'm agreeing to push the deadlines back
a month. So fe se uh February 10th, you'll have a meeting. you can um you can button up the review on that date and then let me know on the contract renewal by the 16th. That moves it from January 9th, I I agree to the 10th because you have a meeting on the 10th and uh January 16th. So essentially just
moves it up a month. >> Okay. Makes it easier. So yeah, >> Carlo, did you have any questions on that? >> No, I'm good. Thanks. >> Anyone else? Do you have a motion, Karen?
>> Move that the board extend the deadlines of town manager review to be completed by February 10th, 2026 and notification of contract renewal to be completed by February 16th, 2026. >> Second. >> Seconded by Karen Heric. Any discussion?
Seeing none, roll call vote. Carlo, >> yes. >> Karen Gillis, >> yes. >> Karen Herrick, >> yes. >> Yes. >> And Chris, yes. Thank you. >> Thanks. And next is the uh the bond issuance. Is Diane coming down or is she
>> I think she's on Zoom. >> Okay. The our treasurer I believe's on Zoom so she speaking. >> If she isn't I can speak to her. >> I don't see. Can everyone hear me? >> Oh, she is. Yes. >> Can you see me?
>> Yes, we can hear you. >> Hold on. Can you see me now? >> Yes, we can. We can see you. Yes. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you. Hi everyone. Um, so on December 3rd, the town offered gen general obligation bonds for sale
totaling $75,425,000. The bond issuance was sold to the underwriter who offered the lowest effective rate on the bonds. We received a net interest rate of 3.317% which in this interest rate environment
is amazing. This largely was due to the attractiveness of the bond because of our AAA bond rating. We received a premium totaling $6,99,719.25, which allowed us to reduce our bond issuance to 68,900915,000.
In the remainder of the premium will be used to pay our issuance costs. In your packet, I provided a the final bond structure that I'll briefly discuss. So, I'll share that to the screen today right now. Hold on a moment.
just share. The sharing is not turned on. So, let me just send that request. >> Oh, Maddie has to make it so she can share. >> Yeah, Maddie can make it so you can share. It should be >> You should be good now, Diane. >> Okay, let me try to share it. It's not
up for some reason. Let me Hold on a moment. Not sure why it's not um showing on my screen. Hold on a moment. It's on my screen, but it's not sharing for some reason.
>> Do you see the the green share button? >> I do, but it's not showing up on my screen for some reason. I'm not sure if it's because it's on a separate a different monitor. >> Did you send it to Maddie and Maddie could share? >> Sure. >> Um,
>> or is it in the packet by chance or no? >> Well, I'll send it to her right now. Hold on a moment. I don't know that it's all that's in the packet >> because the We had to wait to >> If it's the stuff that's in the packet, I have it. >> I got it. I have it right here. Everybody can see us. >> Yep. Okay.
>> Anyway, >> so um this is the final bond bond structure. the lower right hand side, the 754 75,4254 425,000 that is the amount we needed to request to borrow to fund the above projects.
>> Can she zoom in? >> We applied a premium of 6,510,000. >> They can't see it. Can you make it larger? >> Can you can you possibly make it larger? >> I've made it larger in my screens. I
just hit control and I used the the scroll to make it bigger. Can you see it? >> Other direction. >> Just reduced it. >> Oh, yeah. >> The magnifying glass at the bottom right has the plus symb. >> Okay. Yep. Can you see it? >> Nope. >> Couple more up.
>> Going. >> Probably two more >> and then scroll down. >> Okay. Hold on. >> Better. >> Yeah. >> Not really. >> Are we going to get copies of this or could >> I think it's in the packet? >> It's in the packet.
package. >> I didn't know if all the all the documents all the way to the end. >> 200 pages. >> I know. Maybe it is. >> What can you see? >> It's so small from our perspective. >> Just can't read the numbers. >> They can't read the numbers. So, I can read them if they want. Um.
>> Well, how about if we >> Not that we don't trust you, but it means they can't see it at home either. >> Right. Exactly. How about if I do this? Hold on. >> Oh, do you want me to share? >> Oh, that's better. Like if you just show a section of it. >> Yeah. Section by section would be okay. just so they can see because it's just so small on the screen.
>> I'm trying to do it. Hold on a moment. Let me just bear with me while I get the sections. >> Okay. So, >> can you see the 75,425? >> Yes. >> Mhm. >> Okay. So, the 75,425,000 is the amount that we needed to fund the
projects. We applied as the premium of $6,510,000 to it. So, we ended up with a par value um that we borrowed of $68,915,000. That's how we get to the $915,000. Let me get to this section that I want
to show you. So, can you see this section here? >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, um of the 68,915,000, four $4,843,000 was used to finance four general fund
projects, all with a 10 10-year term. >> We had $1,385,000 for the Birch Meadow Complex phase 2 project, which will be completed in May or June of 2026. We had the two high school fieldhouse
floor bleacher replacement and household house improvement projects totaling $2,676,500. Um, this is the amount that we b we for um last year, $3 million. We're going to pay that back with this ref financing. And then the fourth project is the
$781,000 $781,500 for the pickle ball courts here. So the remaining proceeds will be used to fund the first tranch of the excluded
debt projects. In determining how to borrow the how much to borrow for the excluded debt projects, we had to make our best estimate based on the cash flows provided while taking into consideration the burdens of the tax player. Um this is why we're borrowing and charges as um Karen uh Sharon
mentioned. In addition, we had to be cognizant of the arbitrage spending requirements. If we don't spend 100% of the proceeds >> uh within two years, we'll have to return some of the interest earned to the mines, which we don't want to do that. Um,
so for the first tranch of the kilum school project, we're borrowing $50 million, but when it's reduced by the premium, it's $46,293,000. That's over 20-year term. um at borrowing at the 50 um I'm sorry borrowing $50 million we're more than
half of our local share but again we don't know whether the project cost will go over or under until we um you know start um the construction until the construction phase begins. So again we use the cash flow schedule which
includes the estimated MSBA um reimbursement amounts. Um, these funds are expected to be exhausted in June 2027, I believe, according to the cash flow schedule. The first trunch of the
um I'm sorry, the first trunch of the recal uh will total will be totaling $20 million, but when it's reduced by the premium, we're only going to borrow 17,779,000. Um since the running center um for
active living is on a faster timeline, we're borrowing a significant amount of the project and leaving about $8 million as these contingencies built into the cash flow. Um the first principal payment will be due on October 15, 2026
for 1,820,000. Um, I do have the tax impact. So, let me pull that up. We'll stop sharing the screen. So, Sharon, is that May I? >> Yes. >> So, is that why it won't hit our tax
bill till January? Because we make the payment and then we bill ourselves. >> So, we hadn't borrowed yet. So, we just borrowed now. So, in order for it to have appeared on this year's bill, we would have already had to have borrowed. We did that internal borrowing to kind
of give people some reprieve um and let the ones that the excluded debt fall off, let them see some >> We're talking about recal right now and she's just said the right so we're just talking about the bigger borrowing. >> We we did the internal borrowing for both to kind of line this up so that
these wouldn't hit until 27. Um and so yeah, that that's what she's showing you now is what is that first debt payment looking like, right? Yeah. That >> that she's showing on the or she showed on the screen the 1.8 8 to >> 1 million820 is that debt payment that
she's going to have in October. Um, so it's not really about the timing of the actual debt payment. Well, it is the timing of the debt payment in terms of what fiscal year it is, but we hadn't borrowed yet. That's why you don't see anything on your tax. >> No, no, I understand that. But still, you're we're borrowing when? This week, next week. And we don't have
>> You're approving You're approving the borrowing tonight. We already kind of did the the got the bids and and you're just approving. When does the cash hit our account? >> When does the cash hit the account? I think it's like next week. >> December 18th. >> Yes, that's what I mean. It just seemed like a lot for a lot of people and
that's why I'm bringing it up again >> that we don't owe a payment on it for nine months and it is what it is. >> It's six months we pay interest. So we will pay. >> So even six months but >> and then you get your principal payment that they lined up for October. Yeah. So why wouldn't Well, so you know the
principal payment is coming, but you wouldn't we wouldn't see it in our late fall bill >> because you have to know about it when you're getting your tax rate set. We don't we didn't have any all that has to be in your um tax recap >> so that they know that you're charging your resident something above and beyond
the prop two and a half and it's something that's been approved. So they'd need to see all of this. This would already have had to be done and we would have had to have a debt scheduled for them to allow us to put it on your tax bill. >> Okay. >> Thank you.
>> So, if anyone is paying attention at home, it's page 83 in the packet. I found it. So, her previous slide was in there. >> And so, I what I have on the screen now is the estimated tax impact. So, as Sharon mentioned while she was going
over a debt service schedule, the first debt schedule uh first debt service payment totals $5,195,836. The net tax impact is $59059, which is $39962 as it pertains to killum and $190.98
as it pertains to retail >> for an average valuation of 900. >> Yes. of on average value if you wanted to figure it out. Yours was great. Thank you. >> We might want to boost that to a million
because like let's be realistic. I I just rather >> Yeah. I don't want to I don't want to sugar coat it. >> I've given it at least a couple times already that people contact me. >> Yeah. Also touching on what Sharon was
speaking about earlier regarding the interest. If we moved Kllum from a 15-year um loan to 20 years, that'd be an additional 40 $42 million of interest. If we moved it to a 25 year, that that would have been an additional $61 million in interest for killer.
>> Very telling. It was obnoxious. >> I know. We refinanced all our other debt, though. So, it's like I'm just saying you're right. It's that's how mortgages work. >> But a lot of people pay ahead of time. Yeah. Or refinance. >> Question. >> Thank you.
>> She's done because I interrupted. >> I don't have any questions. >> Carla, did you have anything before we >> No, I'm good. Thanks. >> Thanks. There's no public comment as far as I
know. Unless someone randomly is online >> public. >> Um, anybody? Nothing. We're all good. Thank you for putting this together. Like I mentioned, that's page 83 in the packet for what we went over, which is um,
fairly significant, obviously. So, do you have a motion, Karen? Move to approve the vote for the issuance of the town's 68,915,000 general obligation municipal purpose loan of 2025 bonds dated December 18th,
2025 as prepared by bond council. >> Second. >> Seconded by Karen Herrick. Any discussion? Seeing none, roll call. Carlo, >> yes. Karen Rosillis, yes. Karen Herrick,
yes. Melissa, yes. And Chris, yes. 5 things to sign that Karen has. >> And then before we adjourn, we just briefly mentioned that we have to schedule like the separate meeting before the end of the year. We can do a
poll or whatever. >> Yes. Yeah. >> But it can't be next Tuesday because Melissa's out. So maybe next Wednesday or Thursday is what we're looking at, >> right? >> In terms of schedule. >> Okay. Great. Thank you. And that's it. So
>> you guys have to sign. >> Yes. Do >> you want me to sign it and pass the law? >> That's what I think. >> If it comes back to me, I'll check and make sure. Motion to adjourn. >> Motion to adjourn by Melissa, seconded
by Karen Herrick. Roll call. Carlo. >> Yes. By Rose Gillis. Yes. Karen Herrick. Yes. Melissa. >> Yes. And Chris. Yes. 5.