##VIDEO ID:H5mCNdcNS9I## e e [Music] all right it's 7:00 calling the meeting to order tonight we have why am I hear the echo [Applause] no send the call the Mee to order tonight we have our budget budget presentations from library facilities technology Finance shared costs and then a budget summary so I don't know who's I see Amy here so Amy Albert's Alber okay uh K this Who's online Kate Jackie's running Jackie of course Jackie tonight fabulous great um so thank you turn thank you for having me um my name is I'm the director of the reading public library um online is Albert plus who's our director of equity and I think U Michelle filio is on her way any lock I'll be done with the presentation by the time these show so um next slide please J um just a really quick overview uh every time someone comes to the library um there really they're stepping into sort of what I like to call a mission in action and our mission is very simple and I think it's very important we connect people with each other and we give them the opportunity to learn and grow in a welcoming space and welcoming community space and what does that look like there's all these words up here what does that really look like and you know it's somebody finding a quiet place to study someone using our computers to find a job it's a parent sharing a picture book with the child um it's an older adult visiting with neighbors and old friends so those everyday moments are really what make up the essence of what the library does and our core values next slide um just a little refresher on what we do I'm sure most of you know um libraries always bring to mine books which are very important but we do offer so so much more last year uh in fiscal I should say in fiscal year 24 we've had 173,174 [Music] computers or hop on the free wireless we average about 4 to 5,000 Wireless uh sessions per month they came came to attend some of the 728 programs that we have including um most of those are um in person although we have a few online and virtual they come to get help from our expert knowledgeable staff for Research Services they had almost 20,000 reference interactions fiscal year 24 and they come to print scan and fax important documents and I always think this is interesting uh I won't make you guess but I always think it's interesting it seems like a very little thing printing scanning and faxing in FY 24 there were 15,000 documents scanned or fact there were 37,000 pieces of paper printed so while I know that you can do that a lot of people can afford to do this at home or they have it or you know that printer does actually work when they need the report sometimes it doesn't so it is a service that we provide and we're we're very glad to be able to do that we're also generally open when you need us um in FY 24 we were open 52 weeks 3,602 hours and that includes Saturdays um some Sundays from October to May and then um evenings and if we're not open when you need us you can't make it there um it's not a problem because we have a lot of services online uh 247 you can access 84,000 ebooks almost 40,000 audio books 40 plus research databases um our users have access to online tutoring to test prep for everything from College Testing to um graduate school to civil service skills um things like that and there's also uh over 200 digital magazines you can access uh next slide please all that is to say that the library remains a really great investment um most of you have seen some version of this slide um in FY 24 the community had over half a million physical and virtual interactions with the library and while we can't measure uh some of the sort of Social and emotional impacts that we have we can uh tell you that with the parts we can measure it translates to a pretty cool 365 return on investment and it's it's um basically residents receive about a $10 million value million budget um so the library is more than a building with books and it's really just the heart of a connected and nor Community next slide okay so that was the sales pitch right that's the car that we want you to buy um but now now comes the money part um La at their November meeting the trustees approved a 3.6% increase for FY 26 in the coming year um the that translates to a $78,900 increase so it's $78,000 almost $79,000 and I'll just say You're going to hear it from post tonight and you heard it last week we are struggling to keep Pace with the rising costs as well as maintain the service as well as respond to new and and um evolving needs of the community of the $78 $79,000 increase through .6 $ 55,800 goes to wages so the fair wages to our staff who I argue turn every single budget dollar into some form of community service salaries make up 80% of our budget it's standard number and that comes from the FY 26 step plus Cola request for non-union staff overall um $5,800 is a 3.2% increase over FY 25 uh salaries so that leaves the remaining $23,100 that will go towards an increase a 5.4% increase in our operational expenses the operational expenses that that we um need money for will help maintain our certification which affects our Municipal Appropriations requirement affects our materials and then it also helps us to continue support supporting the existing services is as well as support townwide diversity equity and inclusion efforts next slide please so just to talk about um the existing expenses just a quick dip into that it's very little um to tell we don't have a lot of expenses kind of gets all bundled up into things like technology supplies professional development and of course our materials which is locked up with our our normal budget increase um the biggest change that I'm just going to note here is that our it's kind of squished in there our program budget is down by 61.9 62% it's been reduced from $10,500 to $4,000 that reduction of $6,500 is moved or transferred to a new budget line for the office of equity and um I'm actually going to turn the mic over to Albert uh plus our director of equity who's With Us online he's going to give you some context and background for this next part of the expense budget so it's a new budget line that we're implementing we've talked about it for a couple years I think we talked about it last year just wasn't ready to put any numbers to it and so Albert's going to talk about um the overall request next slide and Albert great can everyone hear me okay yes wonderful and so I couldn't be there with you in person just some recent developments that forced me to be online with you but I would miss this call for the world so again AL director diversity inclusion um in the office Equity social justice what I'm tucked away in the beautiful library that maybe just referen um and so you know there's kind of these two buckets that really I think a lot of the work that I've been doing fits in and the future work uh to to come and you know one of those buckets again out little more context to this um is Staff training and development um that's what we're calling it here and then you know overall Professional Services um but again just take St back to go forward again I want to thank you know our to leadership want to thank you know you the select board for uh your work on the continuing supporting this effort you know I'm 14 months in you know to my job there this is a about a two and a half year old experiment that we've been playing around with here at reading I think that we really mov the needle on a lot you I'm with my colleagues every just about two times a month across the state talking about our diversity efforts talk about how people building how work in their municipalities who look just like us so we're all trying to figure it out but again I want to say ready we're we're moving this really great pace so it's really good to be working in this town um so again these two buckets you know one of the things that we are grounding the biggest thing we're grounding our work in is the de assessment that we uh work with our Consultants up consultants for for about a year uh they shared to you the board their presentation back in April um then we really have tried to be intentional about now what is this mean for the workforce because we engage data by Workforce and then also what it means for our community uh and so for me I think you know my focus for this is really begin to think about how do we you know again do this uh engagement employ engagement piece and do it well you know I think that this is found that spread so for me when I think about what we do how we do this is just equally as important in um so that's really why I'm excited about having this internal implementation team that's really helping me drive this these are folks that are one staff um um you know in the town that are get me probably a couple of times a month either in person or on a zoom call to help guys some of this work and a lot of these things under Employee Engagement popped up around just being attention about things like lunch LS um things like really making sure we have content experts who come in and really help to to to guide some of these conversations you know we got to celebrate this work you know uh again we recognize often times D is that term that just been twisted and moved and still misunderstood and then we want to make sure that we are trying to unpack that and and and um and celebrate what we're doing around these diversion C together I'm little bias be but I think we really move commun some other really quick our work here you know a a lot of our work sits in customer service you know really thinking about how do we provide that customer service um to all our residents and in ready particularly our diverse C uh community members which often times their voice is not heard the table and that's not intentional at all it's not time just the way it goes you know I live in a small town you know I often times my boys can can be uh um not heard uh and so we want to with this office and his efforts to intentionally engage those communities um and so we want to make sure that we're thinking about how to build culturally competent training you know really to make sure we're meeting our employes divers communities where they are spending time on language I know that we have made inred effort through our you know our sister Tom James her work and our Communications we want to build that effort around making sure that we're being intentional about having different languages and uh being offered and different ways of make sure that we're being uh again CL confident for our Lang this other bucket around Professional Services is again a lot of continued work that we've been doing um you one of the things I referenced earlier about this uh assessment that we done which I feel really really good about um what was missing in that assessment typically what comes after that inic plan um it didn't happen it's fine why you have Albert come in and help guys some of this but we really needed to be able to get that work moving because the assessment data is only important as a plan that drives it so we engage with the local consultant here we doing the larest work over probably 15 20 years and really beginning to now move some of that work along and a strategic kind of way so we want to continue to support that things like that efforts like that to continue to to move along our work the other piece uh in as we engage employees we have to engage our employ our our community this is all our community this is not about picking and choosing and so I think one of the things that we really want to make sure we're doing well with this and this is kind of where I bring my public health thinking is we do this work through Partnerships and collaborations there's some existing Partnerships that we some existing organizations in RIT that we uh the offic is has begin to partner with I think we want to be intentional about those Partnerships again B Money to really engage in this in a meaningful way to make sure that we are building sustainable Partnerships that can last beyond you know just some of the the uh you know if something happens in the community this and happens we want to move our work beyond that so been a really great exciting part Church to face Bas organizations some of the all smaller based organizations Alliance club and others so it's really been great doing that work um and also one of the things I've been celebrating anywhere I go is talk about our really collaborative work with the red Public Schools you know we've been intentional about doing for the last two months got about another month or so ago with these listening sessions where we want to make sure that we're listening to young people and what they have to say about this work um they were missing voice in the assessment no intentions around that but they just were missing so really working with Tom and his team around there to really make sure that we are using all their resources they have to make sure that we are um listening to young people and then we're going to provide a report but also the biggest thing this is going to do is in April we're going to have a newth town hall at the library which really going to be get into youth run to make sure those young people not just for an event but really to make sure that they are finding a way for their voice to be heard in all the things that add to us same thing right so that works to come cost money um and then following the bucket is really uh it's not about Albert but it's about supporting whoever's in this office where we making sure that we this office is supported in regards to credentialing uh and just professional development um there's a coalition that I reference a lot in this uh in this body um I'm the co-chair of that that Coalition so uh what that means really in the short ways it really allows me with my colleague Lynn to really help shape the Coalition these are the directors across the state to really make sure we're having best practices as we're going about doing this work um there's conferences again I'm not a big big conference person but I do believe when you are in other places where you can build out um your knowledge base around being with other colleagues just helps you and also helps this it's kind shared um learning uh and then finally a certification I think these certifications are critically important now more than ever to make sure that we are having best practice that we're using um um kind of foundational work that we can build off of uh so again these these are all things that uh for me that I I'm learning a lot from my other colleagues across the state what they're building in their Co and their municipalities again a lot of people a lot of my colleagues are focused on that that internal piece you know how do we build and work on you know ourselves first before we have of Goot work and again that's kind of the figure I am with this at the same time I recognize likees coming up next month that we have a probably our biggest celebration of mon king um and bringing all our different parts together so import of having an event to bring people together um so again so more to come and looking forward to coming for your body hopefully in a few months that we to share a little more about work but this is really around where that extra money we ask okay thank you Albert um next slide Jackie so again just the summary that's the request 2.2 million change uh 3.6% increase salaries are 3.2 expenses are 5.4 um just also a reminder that our budget is 1.6% of Municipal spending and it's really not just um about maintaining those leval Services it's really an investment um in the future and ensuring that everybody in our community does have access to the resources that they need so um that's that's the Shi about the library and that's our request for FY 26 questions any questions or Albert anyone anyone you Chris Mark was gonna go thank you Amy uh two quick things so you mentioned the amount of visitors 173,000 how is that tract a door counter you come into the library so it counts us when we go into me when you yes divides by two and is that up this year compared to last or how is it tracking it's about average um I'd say it's probably um we probably see less foot traffic than 2016 and 2017 when the building opened but it's leveled off off that was probably closer to 200,000 but it's leveled off around that 160 to 180 kind of thing it kind of goes obviously Co there was nobody but um yeah that's pretty average and then I didn't see it mentioned anywhere um but so the library has an app now yes um has that worked out do you know well we would love for you to download it and test it um I think with any as with anything it it integr with the third party our Evergreen our ILS system and it integrates also with things like kupla and canopy and some of our other things it's it's meant to be a separate thing from our our website which is a different animal it's used for a different purpose so we'd love for you to download it and let us know what all the bugs are because our beta testing was about four or five people and then you know four or five staff and that's not a huge uh testing group so we'd love for people to kick tires and just if you notice something happening you put something on hold it doesn't come in or you can't find something or you don't maybe like the way something looks or it's hard to read um accessibility is a really big thing so we do want to make sure that you know um it should be in a visual color blind accessible colors it should be in fonts that are accessible but um that's a lot of that is in theory and um so we'd love to have people test it out and send comments so yeah because I didn't know about it till I just happen to stumble upon it at the end of the website page but at least you actually have something there so people do know that it exists so yes yeah I think um I don't know if I saw a post from the library about it back then but no I'll definitely check it out now and see it's a this is a version too this is a slightly different version that I think is is better um but when you change when you know this when you change anything um everything on the surface that you changed it for and all those things were great and then you find out there's three things that you forgot about that you need to kind of bring up stuff so yeah please do that thank you all right good question um so first thank you for all the the work you're doing thank you Albert for the work you're doing looks like you're making some really good progress um in terms of a budget here for a second so no change in people right same head count no okay great awesome and to the expenses allow you to maintain the accreditation uh for purchases that are required yeah absolutely no um the budget the budget is is definitely within the municipal appropriation requirement the biggest increase we had last year which I asked for was in that programming because of the community service and budgeting and now we're like well you know that's not paying for the story time you know that's paying for MLK that's working on bigger programs and bigger initiatives so it just made sense to sort of separate that out and kind of let Albert have I mean he already had access to it but it kind of carves it out into an OJ uh budget line okay well Albert's kind of a oneman band he is and I just you know he didn't really say this but I just want to say that when we talk about you know getting consultants and you know whatever he is a oneman band so sometimes you know um there's I don't want to it's not it's not a single point of failure it's not because it's not failing there but I I do think that it's a stress there's risk of burnout there's you know falling behind just needing help support implementing a lot of this he does get a lot of Community Support um I think all the Departments you know have committees and boards that get a lot of community support but um sometimes it's just nice to have someone that you can call and say can you come over on Tuesday on a program with the with the whatever and help out so I think that um that's part of that Consulting those Professional Services will help fill in for whether it's design work or strategic planning or just simply running a facilitated discussion it's it's modest it's very modest but we understand that we've heard we've heard from our fearless leader that you know and our wonderful town accountant that we're trying to really control costs always a good thing thank you oh I'm sorry I'm so sorry I don't know thank you so much for your presentation and Albert thank you too for being on Zoom so just a quick couple questions I thought Albert was getting someone that was going to be we' had some interns and one was PID one we were able to pay out of fy4 with extra money and that was just a temporary three-month position and we had a summer intern that was paid through um she was paid through her College maybe I just misunderstood I thought we have we have no dedicated administrative support um the quick question so some of the money is being transferred from programming to the offers do we know what program ISS we're going to lose the library we're not going to lose any programing we're not no the 6 the 6500 was actually added last year specifically for larger Community programs that were meant to be under um under the oesj in 2023 in FY 23 we tracked expenses looked at where we were able to get you know Community Support donations or get a cultural Council Grant and that thing and that was about $111,000 and so then we we brought that down to about $6,500 and that was added in fy2 and so what all I'm doing is taking that money that we knew was an increase in cost from o SJ related programs and events and just kind of defining it out so the original Library programming budget was always 4,000 okay got it understand and then I assume but I just want to confirm I'm correct when um Albert's doing training I assume it's all Town staff not just Library staff um yeah so Albert I don't know if you want to speak to that a little bit yeah it's a great it's a great question Melissa and I want to clarify so this is all I used to 75 is the number could be up could be down but this is all the employees for the town uh H why the excise that we're doing right now is meeting with every Department to sit out to decide what they're with them what their Equity goals are and then that's going to lead into this kind of strategic work as we kind of hear from them so this is not just Library again just to clarify I you know these positions obviously that sit in the library you know I'm hopeful even with my background showing you my talent offices uh ours is that I'm really trying to be intentional about uh being with my other colleagues as well but that's a long answer to say it's not just Library staff I assumed that but I was just asking I assume that yeah that that was yeah no no problem and I just have another quick kind of comment and not really related to budget but maybe so I had asked Pat Ed who I behind you too about this so recently I had tried to reserve one of the rooms at the library there's like the 5 day window before yep and I'm trying to logistically understand why because I feel like people probably don't plan that far ahead and it could be a source of maybe minimal income for the library but if you could bring that window down to a shorter period of time we could definitely think about it right now we have a 5-day mostly because of the time that it takes us to to review the process like I know the schools have 10 days um but it's there are logistical things of making sure that the person needs the eligibility ility making sure the money is paid within 48 hours that kind of thing um it's we review the policies every year basically and we go based on some of that but a lot of it has just to do with our staffing can I just ask what eligibility would be needed on the the SP it has to be you have to be a nonprofit or a resident and it has to be for an education cultural purpose purpose to go our yeah and you have you can only use it so many times per year and so you know someone has to check has the have the Cubs Scouts now used it you know is this their 12th time or is this their their 11th time or their 10th time um so it goes goes sort of through that and it just helps us go through and make sure that everything's sort of sort of vetted for for a good reason so it's not meant to be a private study room or a private meeting room which we'd love to be able to have and build up well I didn't say bu up didn't say that um figure out a way to have why couldn't a group like the Cub Scouts use it more than 12 times a year I guess what's the end what's the reason for that I think it's just how it's always been so that people don't use it as a clubhouse and then end up meeting there every single week and then it's like every Tuesday the CB Scouts have it kind of just let people have it but again we revisit it like every every year and we have changed it I think at one point it was um more than that and maybe then there were some issues and um I don't yeah it's been more than 12 so yeah all right yeah it's definitely worth thinking about and I think it's something that any place that has Community rooms that can be rented um it has to go through you have to look at risk management and liability and safety and all that other stuff so it's it is not just a matter of just having the space thank you I appreciate it y yeah I'll just put in a plug for MATA cabin because I know sometimes there are no rooms available and I'm not sure Mata cabin gets all of the visibility it needs absolutely are a number of uh well the scouts for example Ed a lot but it's not used it's under LED unutilized yeah so maybe you guys can be like yeah also this space yeah right I mean I think keep R Street Center as well too so I think I think with that yeah there is this room over there upstairs yeah so so there's multiple options all right thank you Amy all right hi everybody I'm Joe Huggins I'm the director of facilities for the town of reading I have Kevin kaboy our assistant director with us tonight um uh next slide Jack so we're going to go through the requested core facilities budget summary tonight the requested Town facilities budget summary uh then the comb combined totals between the two Kevin's going to talk about work orders by location our preventive maintenance program and some Project work that was completed last year we'll talk about the organizational chart and um again more of the accomplishments next slide please so I think everybody knows but I'll I'll go through it again I do every year so the facilities department is responsible for the care and maintenance of all 18 Town buildings that's 10 municipal buildings and eight schools um we have two budgets that we're talking about tonight one the first one we're going to talk about is the core facilities budget which is the basically the maintenance and upkeep accommodated cost to maintain all 18 buildings then we have the town facilities budget which is made up of custodial staff as well as outsourc cleaning and then a third budget which you folus on voting on which is the school facilities budget we're we're responsible also for um uh 18 and a half custodial staff that clean all the school building but that's a separate uh cost center so if you look at this first slide right here um salaries are up 5% this represents salary increases for steps and Coler and collective bargaining agreements we level funded our maintenance overtime for a total core facilities wages increase of 4% and there is no uh no adds to the uh Staffing this year at all just so you know next slide please check okay this next slide here is going to we're just going to quickly go through some of our expense uh the expense side of the budget uh the core energy expense line is up 1% that's natural gas water and electricity um 1% there core maintenance repairs is going up 6% uh that's we it's going up a little bit this year because of onetime support for um another department HVAC is going up core HVAC expenses is going up 3% and the reason for that is the equipment is getting older in town we have our equipment is in good shape but every year year over-ear we are putting more and more money into the systems we have a really robust prevent of maintenance program but it costs money to do that so our goal is to make sure that we stay ahead of you know any kind of uh breakdowns on the equipment Plumbing expenses and electrical expenses a level funded we have a full-time uh electrician and a full-time plumber on staff we're able to do 99% of all the electrical work and plumbing work inh house which is why we level funded it that represents a lot of um materials and supplies associated with that type of work elevator expenses is going up 33% that jumps out a little bit um we just um got a new we just went out to competitive bid and have a new elev company in there doing the work and there was a sharp increase a lot of it has to do with prevailing wage rates you know year over year it's all prevailing wage when you do work in the state of Massachusetts and again the equipment is getting older so uh and we do maintain our elevators which a lot of places do not we have a monthly preventive maintenance program for all of our lifts and elevators in the town of already which is a smart thing to do when you think of the number of elevators we have which is 17 n we have quite a few in town uh you know four at the high school alone for example 12 12 12 elevators total um alarm expenses is going up 25% um when I say alarm I talk of I talk of like uh intrusion alarms and I talk of uh card access and cameras and every year because we have a a new system was installed a few years ago townwide um we get more and more requests to enhance that system adding more counter readers and more coverage for cameras in areas and we also have a maintenance contract that's coming up up for bid um Fire Equipment expenses is level funded Pest Management I know you folks have been hearing a lot about that we have an integrated Pest Management policy through the state of Massachusetts that's in place for all school buildings the IPM uh we have uh it with wallan services and basically we've been having issues in and around all the buildings so that that program is taking an increase because of the activity that we've been seeing so we're on top of that okay Jo real quick just so I don't forget why why the increased activity you think um there's been increased Road and activity I'm sure you guys have heard that there's a lot of construction going on that does that that impacts it quite a bit um not by the schools per se not by the schools but in surrounding neighborhoods and things like that you do see that um and then in any downtown area you see that type of activity happen too and then also it can be Wetlands areas and things like that that bring that stuff on um said on RS for a second um given that the health department is is looking to do some pretty major activity there at least coordination so you guys kind of know what's going on between you I looked into that and I'm not 99% sure but I will get Matt an answer to report back um it's a separate um contract we have integrated Pest Management with the schools yeah yeah it's totally separate it has to be filed with the state of Massachusetts so I don't think there's really an opportunity to combine where it's an IPM it's registered you know licenses and things like that actually I don't hopefully I didn't use the word combined coordinate in other words understand what what one is doing what the other well we do communicate with a day and let him know what's going on we do we definitely have a good uh uh rapport with him and we make sure he's aware when we're doing anything and I've consulted with them several times person if I could follow up on that as well I guess what Mark was somewhat trying to get to is we approved the um the safe kind of thing for the rack control Etc y with whatever program that that person's be doing is the schools requiring that you have to use some pesticide type stuff or are you if we use pesticides under the integrated Pest Management policy we have to uh provide um a notification it goes out in the kids backpacks or it goes on the website it goes right to the parents of the the community or whatever school it might be so if we are going to use like something like that there can't be any kids in school when it happens there are some mild pesticides that they can use while kids are in school but generally speaking it has to be when there's no school going on so we only use safe Alternatives around the schools which is trapping all right or bait station with safe uh bait CU I the email that you referenced I know that somebody forwarded to the board um mentioning the pesticide or something that they were going to be doing I'm just I'm thinking if we're if we're in favor of going the non what whatever rug that we approved last time is there an opportunity for this to get introduced to the schools as well so then you don't have to do this or are you required by the state to do whatever pesticide or something has to be done exactly I'm I'm I'm mandate we're the the pest control company is mandated by the state as to what they can use while kids are in school and when they're out of school so it's pretty stringent on what they can do okay and that your question I think so I think it's it's this coordination question I think that's kind of I don't want to use a bad analogy that that's something we want to talk about okay just to make sure because if there are all sorts of efforts going on that could benefit maybe would to to coordinate that understanding that you've got very different reporting requirements to go through but it may still make sense okay all right I'll talk to Matt about that so the expense budget is up 3% uh at the end of the day um the next slide please Jack so this this is the um the town buildings is the custodial like I said the custodial and the overtime budgets are up 2% on this particular budget outsourc cleaning services we're expecting around an 8% increase that's going out to bid sometime in June um and that's to clean all all most of the time buildings are covered under this contract for nighttime cleaning because we only have four custodians on the town side so the total expense budget's going up 6% 6% for a combination of a 3% increase on the town buildings next slide Jack so again like I told you before this is the combination of the two the overall increase between the t uh m91 and M92 core facilities and town buildings is 3% or an overall increase of $150,000 and then below that you're looking at the wages and then the expenses for the two cost centers okay I'm going to let Kevin talk a little bit about um work order completion and some other stuff we had completed last year as well as good evening everyone Kevin kaboy assistant facilities director for the town uh thank you for giving me the opportunity tonight to talk about these next few slides uh so as Joe mentioned we got the work orders by location here uh all the buildings that we maintain um you can see we're up quite a bit overall um but if you look through that uh graph you'll see it it es and flows um you're going to have you're going to be up in buildings down in buildings it it's it changes every year if you go back historically you're going to probably see the same thing um you usually the high school and the two middle schools are going to be our Front Runners because they're the biggest buildings simply and these work orders could be anything from mechanical equipment breakdowns uh to custodial activity um or uh work orders for the carer uh so we you obviously we had a big a busy year we were up 40% um like I said for a lot of different reasons sometimes programmatically in the schools things change there's moves uh there's build outs there's things that has to be done to accommodate those programs so we have to get involved and it increases the work fors next slide Jackie please I want to talk about our facilities Department prevented maintenance program this is something that um we feel like it's the foundation of our department uh we definitely want to be more proactive than reactive you can't always uh you're never going to knock be reactive there's always things are always going to come up we have to react to but we try to minimize that through our preventive maintenance program so I'm not going to hit on everyone but you can see uh the amount of equipment we have and how often it gets serviced um and then at the the bottom there those last ones are Life Safety which you know we pay a lot of attention to Life Safety obviously so we're doing our our sprinkler testing our fire laap testing uh the fire extinguishers our exit signs and emergency lighting um as Joe mentioned we do our elevators monthly and I've worked at other places and I can tell you no nobody does them monthly we do them monthly does that mean we never have any elevator breakdowns no we have elevat breakdowns but I think they're minimized by doing the monthly PMS that we do uh next slide Jackie please so this year um we did a lot of uh projects and the year projects um things that we'd like to try to do to spruce up the buildings um we did a lot of painting this year I don't know uh one of them in particular if anybody's been over the Westside fire but um we did the whole apparatus Bay floor over there including the we did the floor the walls the ceiling um our painting contractor that we have did an excellent job over there um I know they're going to be having um an open house over there of sorts on January 4th January 4th right for the uh antique pumper that they have over there um we actually built a little uh display area for that and uh they're going to have it open to the public to to present that um and we like I said we went through that whole apparatus floor and really made that place Stand Tall it hasn't had anything done like that in the time that I've been here so um coolage I know you guys were involved um with the funding for the fire alarm change over there we changed the panel the coolage and quite a few of the devices it wasn't a complete um system change over but I'm very happy to say that since we did do the panel and the devices that we changed it's cut way back on the amount of calls that we've had over there nuisance call so that that was a big plus to get that done um we did some new doors at Town Hall I don't know if you're aware but those two doors right there were replaced and we did that inhouse um with our one of our Carpenters was was able to do that and he did the door out to the courtyard um we did Birch Meadow I don't know if anybody's got kids that go to Birch Meadow I think Chris you do correct we did extensive exterior painting over there uh it was needed and it really I think it really made the building pop over there you know we know that building was built and I think it was a 57 Jo yeah 57 so we haven't done any exterior painting there well we've done some railings and whatnot but we did the trim all the way around the building we painted the loading dock the stairs uh we did all the railings over over any any trim that needed to be painted over there got done so that that was a really big project really made it look nice over there uh I think a lot of we do this with contractors and we do it with our own guys and I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say that you know we're very fortunate to have the staff that we have between the four maintenance staff uh people that we have four Town custodians 18 School custodians in total uh but in particular our four maintenance guys they cover a lot of ground over the year and these guys are are very good at what they do but they're also not afraid to step outside the box and and help another trade or you know get something done get get even something to just carry us over until we can get that area of expertise vendor in here to to you know rectify the problem permanently so um that's about all I have tonight Joe you want take the next thanks okay Jackie um so like I said there's no no ads to the uh that's our organizational chart um and again like Kevin had mentioned you know we have um we run pretty lean over in facilities we think we do um we get a lot of work done um and um the buildings I think show it the buildings are in good condition so that's all we really have for you guys tonight if you have any questions happy to answer SOA firsta just a couple questions thank you both for the presentation I appreciate it um not t question um so the 29% increase is that mostly because costs are just rising or visits it's more visits than anything so what do we think is driving the pest issues at the schools is it one school it's not just the schools it's schools and town buildings okay all right so it's both over 18 buildings okay all right that's fair and we know we're having issues in others of the town okay um one thing I noticed is the work orders for woodend seem considerably High considering the age of that building last year this year yeah and I think a lot of that like Kevin was saying has a lot of it has to do with any kind of project work we do there's like over I know over at that building they brought another program in there over the summer and they're using two classrooms over there they're using two classrooms yeah I was kind of what I was talking about it's not they're not necessarily I'm sorry they're not necessarily maintenance issues a lot of that was moves because they they took up two big classrooms there we moved stuff out um that program mainly moved their own stuff in but we did have some work to do in conjunction with that so it's not necessary maintenance no no exactly that's what I was trying to check um yeah that's all I have thank thank you B um so is Town Hall entryway like gonna be painted next year maybe because it's that right out here right out of here I think you guys did some work on the doors this year which looked nice front doors we actually did um we painted the exterior Town Hall we did a lot of paint work we did some exterior paint work this year and we did do that stairway once several years back and we did the one over this end last summer yeah so to answer your question yes we rotated we have to if money wasn't an object believe me we'd be doing way more painting than we do and like painting is like it's it's a nice to have but it also makes a big difference in the way your building looks and that's why we every couple of years we try to hit it as hard as we can and spread it across all the buildings I Kevin really didn't me you in the essence of time but you know we did a lot of paint work everywhere this year police station was another one we did work here at Town Hall this is a this is a brick building wood a wood with wood so we're constantly on this building making sure that the facade of the building is in good shape and then coming inside and doing work is this best of you all it's pretty dated yeah love to maybe see that next year okay yeah we'll get it on the list all right thank you and then I was wondering um I'm sure Matt has some input too we don't want to leave him out no no we've been talking about that for a while so I agree it could use a sprucing up for sure it um I think it's noticeable when after it's kind of beat up when you walk in but then you see the other areas that have been done I think it's more noticeable yep um so I was just going to ask you about your uh I don't have any past questions but getting back to your maintenance plans um so the heat pumps are starting to add up um two School the fire stations got some heat pumps the police stations got heat pumps probably get the high school somewhere too so just about every school has some we've been using heat pumps for the last 12 years 12 13 years so I didn't see any breakouts on how those are serviced annually are they wrapped under something else they're part of the the HVAC contract that there's not a lot of pm on those other than washing the condensers which would happen during a PM and a lot of those to fil filters are washable so the guys just pull them I was just I was at the library the other day with the custodial staff there going over that with them and a lot of the ones over there you just pull them out wash them vacuum them put them back in yeah it can be get a little more um involved there are some sections where molds can grow and having them done it my year I'm watching the guys doing it so well I mean that may be what they're doing so far but and if that's all they're doing just giving you a heads up there are like um there's some sections that it's it's an add-on service for me to really get in there and he's like come look at this isn't it heric there's like mold in there I'm like okay I'll get that scheduled too so yeah what you're more talking about is is a inducted system and if you're talking about like a conventional no I'm talking about heat pumps okay well two two things if you're changing the filters and you're doing it on a regular basis and you're doing it like three times a year which we do that really minimizes any issues that you have if you're not doing it you've got 30 filters in there and you can run into a problem so that's why we're doing it three times a year which is you know oh you're doing it three times a year I'm only doing it annually okay no three times a year the filters and the the general PM gets done three times a year it collects dust and stuff like it'll and sometimes if it's a if we have a really high poll in year we've got a fourth yeah okay yep so okay all right just curious say it wasn't broke it's not broken out separately so it's not like unit ventilators you might need a new bullet for next year that's all okay great thank you for a lot of work thank you is there a reason we was there a problem with the elevator service company that we were using you just men going out the bid the elevator company that we had um was in the second of a third year contract and we did not knew them okay they were not asked to come back and then went out to bit and the company we have we've used in the past we've had great success with them so we were happy to get them back on here should have asked this last year too have we spent all the money there we approved the town meeting for security yes probably a while back yes we're going to have to kill you on secret stuff no I'm going to ask my rat question I can go over that again if you want all right thanks all right thank you everybody that was Kevin there's two Kevin K Kevin Europe up another Kevin sorry about that my name is Kevin F I'm the chief technology officer for the Town's technology department I'm joined tonight with uh by Eugen iosua she's the assistant department head for the technology department as of July welcome Jen uh I'm here to present our level one technology FY 26 budget next slide Jackie thank you so this is the same as it is every year the technology department is responsible for providing and maintaining the necessary Computing and Tech telecommunications infrastructure and system that the various Town departments use in a secure and thoughtful manner additionally we have a GIS system that we maintain that provides the various departments boards committees commissions um with um mapping custom mapping and more detailed uh data analysis um that's going to be the way it is next year sorry that we talk about that same slide every year but that's just the way it is um what set sets this technology department a apart from maybe one that you're accustomed to are the customers that we have the Departments that we support um we support Finance we support facilities and the typical departments a company will have but we also have Public Safety police fire Health DPW public library and that's a diverse and unique set of customers and and that's really what's different about us Jackie next slide and this is our team we're the smallest Department you'll meet tonight we have five people we bigger than I thought though we're uh we're fully staffed this is the same group that um we had last year when I presented um like I mentioned Jen is our technology manager assistant department head uh she takes a lot of she's taken a lot more responsibility on over the last year even leading up to the position change she's in charge of our phone system and today she did a a portion of a project to migrate us off to more redundant uh less expensive uh Pathways for our phone system to leverage and you know she takes on our pering our financial backend support um and you know there's a lot that she has on her plate and we're also trying to overlap with other people in our department as much as we can the next person in our group is Matt Dean he's our GI s administrator if you see any mapping that's a little bit more sophisticated maybe they've got little Rats on the map uh or maybe data analysis has been they um guy to reading they probably pass through Matt's hands uh next up is Tim Tim Johnson you've probably met him he's the most uh customer friendly member of our group is he the one rescuing us at our community meeting he is yeah he's uh he's the one we like to lead with so that we all see him a light and professional he's taken on a tremendous amount he's really grown into the role and he's he's in charge of uh you know one of our accounts that's a 72,000 uh cellular we did a big cellular migration because the carrier we were using wasn't cutting it in T and so he was responsible for a lot of that um and the last one on the list is Kevin Connor he's the most recent Edition he's been here for a little bit over a year he comes from uh the medical industry at least uh technology wise and comes from an environment that supported clean rooms and had a lot more bleeding Ed Edge technology than we have here and so we're fortunate to be able to leverage some of the solutions that he comes in with knowledge of and we've already adopted a few of them next slide Jackie so this is the services provided they're basically two categories there's a boarding Services the things that really people no nobody really cares about the network infrastructure the DNS servers the virtualized infrastructure the behind the scenes things that need to uh be exist so that the directly consumed Services can be used the email or the financial platform or the cad system over at the police department those those are the two groups of what we do and it will be the same next year and um I apologize for that but it's not as exciting as some of the other departments tonight uh Jackie next slide and so I want to get ahead of some of the I want to get ahead of really the big story for our budget this year this is the current fiscal year this is what you you know what was approved last year plus a little bit of an ask that occurred in town meeting in November that was approved uh Jackie next slide and this is what we're proposing and you know separately they don't really tell a story but Jackie if you go to the next slide uh this is the comparison of those two years and this is the unfortunate part and especially after watching all the other departments come up here and be so responsible with their percent increases I I feel I owe everybody an apology across the Departments but this is the reality we're facing uh salaries are pretty much in line with what the guidance was given from fincom but expenses of is obviously out of line and so I I'll explain why that is and in the subsequent slide but overall we're at 88.1% that is what it is that's not um you know despite what I'm about to say that captures what we're asking for here uh Jackie next slide if we're talking about fantasy world this is what it was going to be um it would be a 3.2% uh there are two major changes though that account for the the big difference in in what we're seeing Jackie next slide and so the difference is explained I'll explain the second one first because it's easier when the when Chief Clark was up here the other night he mentioned $5,000 reduction in one of his accounts and this is the $5,000 increase in one of our accounts so from the town's perspective it's a wash that's the good news uh that is a print that actually that's one of the things that Kevin Connor is the newest addition to our group uh he's sphe headed that effort for the town we are paying the same with a new contract for service and supplies that we had been playing paying for just the supplies and he also managed to get three months for free and four devices that got us $10,000 extra and it was a good it's a good change just to make everything under one um account we've done that transfer the second thing is not so great uh the security system that Joe mentioned in his presentation was installed a few years ago uh the covid times didn't seem like the ideal time to do a project but in this in this instance it was all the building or a lot of the buildings were empty uh a lot of the doors needed to be outfitted with new hardware a lot of cables needed to be run so it was great timing for that project to take place it came with three years of software support that three years is expiring in FY 26 and that's where the $54,000 comes from that's three additional years I would have liked to have done it just year to year that would have been 18,000 if we if we divided but that's not the way the software company deals with it uh it would be $7,000 more per year so $21,000 would three years if we hadn't um you know if we're choosing not to op into the three-year uh that is explaining that horrendous jump in percentage I equate it to the parking enforcement charge it's a charge that has to land somewhere I wish it went in with the facilities to be honest he was know he was saying this it could have landed at any Department though police I mean wherever you'd think security access control uh but it is software so it's it's appropriate that it's Landing with me it's not horrendous it's needed yeah yeah but you know when I see Amy come up and give her presentation and see all her numbers following the pom's guidance it does feel next year three years move it there she's already looking at oh how do I get my printer to our budget line over there too oh no we're we're covering staff cing staff at the LA great Jackie next slide and so I know I'm doing this a little bit backwards but I needed to get in front of that percent change make sure that if we needed to discuss it that we had time um for our expenses this is these are I can talk in detail about what makes up each one of these but I've I've sort of grouped them by um how I saw them to be appropriate software licenses or hosted Solutions those are the licenses needed for our self-hosted Solutions or the subscriptions for the cloud-based Solutions when you look at 492,000 um you figure you must own every piece of software there is but there's big chunks of that that are consumed by individual packages our financial platform is 112,000 and that's for the licensing and the maintenance for that piece our Microsoft licensing is 65,000 for the year for the users that we have um the security systems 54,000 the permitting systems is 54,000 the facilities work order systems are 22,000 so you can see like I've already listed off enough to be greater than half of that so it's not that many solutions that um that have the price really tick up there uh communication lines those are all the lines that are necessary to connect us to the outside world 72,000 for wireless communication or Cellular Connections uh about 40,000 for land lines or you know for everything like elevator lines alarm lines uh tra or PRI telephone lines internet service connections uh they're all in the communication area hardware parts and supplies for 95,000 that's all the traditional it stuff desktops laptops monitors mice keyboards Mouse mats pens whatever you think that we're handing out or supplying that's captured there uh Outsource Services we're much like the facilities Department we're sort of proud in the fact that we take care of a lot of what we do in house uh we do have to Outsource about $55,000 though to people that just for the tests that we can uh achieve um Fiber Optic Cables need to be moved on a telephone pole I'm not doing that so got a fair of heights and it's not appropriate so Jackie next slide um something that Chris asked last year sorry that it's a year to get around to this but uh you had asked about Wireless maybe in place of our fiber Network and so I did reach out to our vendor that does both he'll take either he'll take our money for either solution so um to explain how we got here we had a little Hub and spoke fiber Network when I started so 22 years ago we had a little you know just connected town hall to police and fire Library very small scale we had contract negotiations with the cable companies and they wanted to get out of the old copper inet system that they maintained they supplied and supported it's what rctv would leverage to broadcast they didn't want to be in that business so we negotiated $250,000 to install a fiber Network to connect all our town and school buildings and that's what that that Foundation is still there today it's as fast as we will we will probably ever need it and it's not you know it doesn't degrade occasionally it needs repairs um but I'll talk about that in a second we've been building upon that over the years and small changes here and there two years ago though we were awarded a fiber Grant for2 200,00 to really make a a significant leap as far as the the capacity and uh hitting a couple of other areas in town like the new water tank um to put it on the network whether it's a SK system or uh Public Safety radio system you know the ways we're leveraging it are pretty pretty uh diverse um and then just this year we got another grant for 14,000 to further increase it we're going to have fiber going down Main Street uh underground and we're going to increase our strand count there and create a little bit of a redundant loop at the same time so we're really this is a real important piece of infrastructure for the town um to Chris's question last year if we do find ourselves in a situation maybe down at like the compost center which used to be our old water treatment plant and we needed to get connectivity there it might be more more cost- effective to stand up a wireless uh solution in that instance rather than bring drag fiber down the road that would would probably be too expensive to to justify um our yearly maintenance for this network is split between DPW and Technology it's about 16,000 but much like any atrocious storm occurring um you know that that puts the dpw's budget out of whack we could experience like an ice storm that took down a lot of poles that would seriously impact our our uh our fiber Network and probably have the the repair costs for that go through the roof so um we we have enough money to maintain but uh if they were ever something catastrophic to impact all the polls in town we would be in a tough spot uh Jackie next slide and then there's a couple of other grants um we just finished up an electronic document storage migration uh for 85,000 and we had an issue where the software had an incompatibility with the operating system it was running upon two weeks ago the vendor addressed that they had a they had a fix for it um it's been up and running Laura told me right before this meeting that Melissa might have reported that it wasn't uh I did confirm that it is still still up and running so we do have some a few weeks under our belt of stability um one thing that is yet to be done though is a security certificate and that might be the thing that you were encountering we purchased a security certificate it just needs to get installed yeah I need to join in I don't want to keep complaining about the the same thing but I am frequently doesn't matter what week it's unpredictable hitting that system and it comes up with the error message it's it's pretty damn frustrating as of two weeks as of two weeks we haven't had every time we've encountered the incident we've had to reboot the server nothing short of that has and you know we we proactively check on it and reboot but usually it was reactive hearing a report in through laa or some other pathway and we restart it and then it's good for maybe a day maybe a week but it was real unpredictable we do feel confident that the fix that was applied is is holding um at least for two weeks now and that's that's not the experience we had leading up to the fix um but I'm hopeful that we're on the the software had an incompatibility with microsoft.net which is something that it's built on top of okay and so the software had to have a um a resolution yeah a patch configuration file a coup that would be great CU really I I it's been yeah I was I was really excited to talk about that success story until I walked in and then I was like oh excited I I'm test it I'm going to to test it yeah do and reach out to me if you find that it's not the case for stuff from 2012 in the testing I've done so far it seems to be stable including when I before I walked in and I didn't touch it I didn't restart it before I walked in it was accessible to the outside world so okay cuz I love telling residents to go on the town website and go check out our packet so that's a security certificate if you click on Advanced and then continue that's that's a known issue that we have purchased a security certificate for and uh and so what does that that's the last piece of it is you're prompted with a warning like be careful about going through there okay um because it's not encrypted in a trustworthy way okay we're self encrypting it but we've purchased a real certificate for this need and and we just have to install it so that should be wrapping up that that effort and should serve us for five years four years at least five six so and Lara is a tremendous resource because she knows the software inside and out and uh we really lean on her for and she gets the calls uh yeah she actually does we only get the system outage call so we're fortunate for that we also have a cyber security project grant that we were awarded that is has not taken place yet not talking about that uh the cyber security awareness training every year we're awarded the state's Pro uh we are awarded a grant for to participate in the state's program all of our users get cyber security awareness training and that helps with our cyber liability insurance they they want to see that a lot of times a company really fortifies their Gates and puts up systems to block people coming through the door the users other the windows that they've decided to crawl in through that's how most people are exploited these days is is um targeting the end user and so that that training is real valuable for Jackie next slide and then my favorite part of this whole presentation uh so we have you know it's funny how things work out because in 2019 we were to upgrade some of the AV Equipment in our our locations it was time that we had gotten enough time out of them and for whatever reason it got pushed off to 2020 and that's just that was just ideal because the solution we would have had in 2019 is much different than 2020 we would have been tossing some things out and and spending additional money in 2020 when we had a need for remote participation we couldn't get an AV company in here to take our money they were too busy taken up they they made bigger customers to be honest and so we not only had to do something that we could like a homegrown solution but something that we could install something that we can maintain and support and and troubleshoot and that's how we've landed with the equipment that's in here now um enough time has passed where we are now circling back and polishing that stuff up U Mark has mentioned this at two previous uh meetings uh on the heels of the last meeting I approached fidell and I said how do we do this like there's no money sitting there and he said I'm not sure uh good luck and so uh I met with Matt about this and we had to get real creative there is no money sitting aside for this and uh but we were able to get you know creative and in in a way lucky and um and so that's that's what you're seeing here Pleasant Street Center um they they spent some arpa funds on their AB system upgrade and that's installed and running the company is still here working on some bugs they had a microphone that wasn't working for Bingo night the other day or bigo day the other day and uh that wasn't great um you can't hear the numbers called you might not win so right um but the vendors come back and they're polishing these Solutions up uh the ring public Library they just outfitted both their community room and the lower level conference room with a you know video conferencing solution and unfortunately if you were part of uh the financial Forum you experienced um what I think is our first failure here um where the equipment didn't allow the meeting to take place in the room that it was scheduled that's frustrating to us because it's the first time we've relinquished control to a vendor for these meetings we average about 800 to 1,000 virtual meetings a year this year we're at 400,000 minutes which is right under 7,000 hours of virtual meetings to so to have that first failure that couldn't take place in the room be right when you handed it off hand it off control to a vendor it's just frustrating but uh they are over there including I think this week um further adjusting the system uh Board of Trustees meeting had some feedback issues last night that weren't appreciated so so um and then the last last but not least is the select Board Room uh I had wanted a scheduled date for this um we don't have one other than vaguely February and so you know Mark offered to bring in his Home karaoke machine to troubleshoot this issue still good yep Mark wants in room amplification so do I the problem is we have a rctv with sailing mounted microphones we have our our remote participation you know video conferencing system the audio is really complicated once you have that you need you need a digital signal processor to take this and make sure that there's not feedback issues so we did appreciate the karaoke machine offer it's just it's not appropriate for the other needs of the room um but we're we're real hopeful that some of this less polished equipment starts to um look a little bit more presentable um they'll be a TV there for presentation there'll be a TV over here for the audience to see or maybe so Matt doesn't have to be looking behind them during every pres presentation um there'll be Wireless goose neck mics they'll be um you know I talk at length about the solution but we should be in good shape and and uh you know I appreciate you you beging me on and pushing me through the finish slide so uh Jackie next slide and so you know this is the summary slide this is the same as it was last time uh it's really we're here to support all the other departments without all the Departments we we're pretty useless um unless robots take over and then we're the most useful but that's that's a few fiscal years away so um with that I guess I'd like to ask if there's any questions or yep thanks yeah so um I gave a plug for my terar Kevin earlier I don't think there's any Wi-Fi up there and and I know there's none of this equipment up there but people do need meeting space and I don't know how complicated it needs to get but you know whether it's wireless or wired is that something we might me all think about next year yeah coincidentally we do have our fiber Network pulled right up to the top of the hill because there's a public safety radio system in t in there so we might be able to jump right on our network but short of that we do have um a Windstream line oh a Verizon line pulled into Mata cab um we'll just have to talk about how that gets paid for we might be able to just turn on regular Verizon Wireless I think that would be a huge Improvement that much appreciated by whoever uses it and help us get more use out of it yeah and so just to illustrate the advantage of the fiber network if we did tie into the fiber Network they'd be able to leverage our existing internet connection for nothing and so that's what we have done at all the other Town buildings and what the school is doing in a comparable way over at the school system y thanks Kevin for for uh for everything and for for jumping on that will that solution with the wireless mics Etc that'll allow amplification in the room oh yeah as well as connection to rctv zoom yep it it does something called steps up the volume of a person's voice so if I'm standing here talking it will be subtle but it will be in the sailing mounted speakers and just just enough to and that can be adjusted but just enough to get it so people can hear um and that same feed goes out to the uh rctv broadcast and to the remote participants on a on a video conference call does the owl still P play a role in the new solution or well there's no reason that it couldn't but we'd have to talk about that you know we we do what our customers are looking for so if that's a value then that's what we do okay yeah I just didn't know if things had Advanced since 2020 you want to know who would be responsible oh sorry wow that was a funny one obviously it's only 8:15 later parts of the world Chris thanks car um I feel like I could go over all this stuff uh at nauseum but I'll skip the ad nauseum part uh real quick on on Matera the only real solution is if the I mean inexpensive solution is if the water tower had Wireless then anything that sees the water tower you'd be able to do so in theory if my company was doing it if the water tower already had Wireless up there and adding Mata cabin on is like $300 cuz it's the Enterprise access point over to there and you donezo like super easy so the whole and then like you mentioned saving the money because um it'd be on your network here instead of spending $100 for a Verizon line monthly or whatever would have to get done over there um so it would be good to see if the fiber solution like you said got pulled up there um but like I said who knows how much it takes to get from there over to matara but you have to kind of work that out um the 54,000 thing pains me because I seek open source where stuff isn't pay you know where my clients that I have aren't paying for anything for licensing I'm sure it's a little bit different here with the security that you have but uh does the 54 Grand include access controls and cameras all in one program or is that broken out between like two different programs that you're using it for yeah that 54,000 captures the licensing that's needed for the number of access control points that we have and for the number of cameras that we have I'm uncertain like if Joe went through a big effort to really outfit one of the schools with a larger number of cameras which I don't see as being the case because they really built out a a robust system when when they installed it but if that were to really Spike uh number of you know access control points or cameras that's going to send my licensing up what the licensing does cence what we do have as far as all those components are concerned but the cameras and the access control would work without the license you'd just be on an older version of it with no support though right oh are you talking about the physical cameras no I'm talking about the software licensing for it yeah so I guess there's two parts there's the software licensing that exists on the cameras so like an access camera might have software that's on it and you're right it exists without a system uh to connect that system to connect that camera to the system costs a license and I agree with you it is unfortunate to see all these packages um have the price really climb but the package that we got was selected because of how flexible it is with what it can um support you know that's their claim to fame as they they can support any device um known um and then just to Circle back to your wireless connection we did bring fiber up to the tank um we we do know that that's a great position for wireless that would be where you know we'd put you know if we were doing a point too Wireless that that is where we put it um they're currently capturing water meter um readings from the tank and I think they're able to capture 70% right right out of the gate without any effort um so it's ideal for that type of use like you were saying I just I just know with 54 Grand spending it on licensing that's 54 Grand of cameras that you are not getting it's 54 access control that you're not getting you're just you know tching it on licensing I know it I know licensing exists for a reason because same thing with the Microsoft licensing that's been going up up up I understand that you have to pay all that so do I even though I hate licensing um but yeah it's just unfortunate is is VoIP done in house too do you have your own hosted it is here or so you're saving money that way y by doing it inhouse yeah we have a selfhosted control as does the school department and that's part of the project that Jen was in charge of today we moved it um from our PR trun to you know over a couple of internet connections so that will save us you know to reduce to to eliminate a trunk to just leverage the internet would be a a cost benefit uh and then my last question is on the email do you know when we're getting swapped over to the easy uh reading ma.gov email instead of okay a wonkiness y I don't want forever I don't want to impact the migration in any way but if somebody were to send you a message right now with the read.gov domain it will arrive at your email box you still present yourself witho messages at ci. ring. us but um you will receive messages to either address so you could start publicizing that uh we are doing 120 accounts over the coming week um a lot of police fire DPW accounts are getting migrated um on the heels of that I'll reach out to the I think we have four remaining select board members to sign up for multiactor authentication once that's done it's just a flip of the switch we hand off the instructions um real straightforward you know if if all else fails if your laptop connection or your phone connection doesn't work you could go to alo.com after the migration so should have shouldn't be that big of a panic during the migration of your accounts I'll just call Chris uh that's all I got thank you than you thanks anyone else thanks Kevin than you thank you I hope you got your new monitor by the way I I hit that one perfect Shar is next Work Kevin so I have Jackie running my slides it's good to see you guys in person I almost always see you by Zoom because I'm trying to multitask from upstairs yes I'm always trying to get worked on like other people are talking but I thought it'd be nice to be here in person tonight next slide please so I'm going to start with the finance budget and then we'll be going it to Shared cost and then obviously the spending scorecard that is our budget summary so this first slide is the um board chart for finance department and when I was looking at my presentation I realized that when I went to add our new position that we um asked for at November town meeting that there's a position that's always been part of Finance for many years that is not was never part of um the org chart because it's not paid out of Finance it's paid out of benefits but they answer to um the treasurer um and that is the benefits analyst position so one of the largest expenses outside of salaries is benefits and so years ago we kind of made the case that um we have 1561 members of our health insurance and we've always done without before we had this position we did that reconciliation every month in the finance department person by person so for 561 people we made sure that the deductions match the bill that the bill was appropriate so that we didn't lose any money we did not want to bleed cash and we made the justification that having this person um would save the town money because you only have so much time to go back to Maya and say you build us incorrectly and have them corrected so he he pays for himself freely because he does all of our reconciliations of our health insurance our life insurance our dental and he makes sure that people are charged appropriately for the the plan that they're on and that that Maya charges us the right um amount so that we don't overpay as a town that the employee pays their share and that the town pays theirs so I apologize for never including him he does not work in our department but then I realized there are a couple people that are on the slide like the assistant collector who's paid out a water sewer um because they do all the water and sewer billing I mean that's why assistant collector um is paid from there but they are part of the finance department so I figured this year I would be very inclusive include everybody that works in finance there's 16 people but three of them do not get charged to my finance budget and the other person is the assessor the assessor is in a regional position so he covers three communities which would be Wayfield which is his home base here and um Lindfield and so we the benefit of a regionalization for the rser next slide please so we have 12.93 positions um that are actually paid out of finance and this would include our new treasury analyst position that I mentioned um if you recall that November time meeting I asked other department heads if I could um redirect the savings from their Department to create this position because Finance is probably the most voluminous area for work and we do a a lot there and we were really struggling um especially taking on the budget um and I still wasn't able to train my assistant department head on budget because she's that busy we're both that busy so this treasur anal should be helping with cash reconciliation um so that we can be properly cross trained I don't like having vulnerabilities like that we're a good group in that everybody in the group is willing to be cross trained in different things but some things are just too big to be cross trained when you have a fulltime job and so we really do need another position to help us out there um so we've been very fortunate our our group has been very loyal people that have been with us 28 years we just got a great group of girls up there that I'm just incredibly grateful for um well Victor's not a girl but Victor's not my employee um so yeah so we're very grateful for the hard work that they do and their willingness to just step outside what their job description is and fill in where needed and and that's why we're able to be successful next slide please so this is the general Finance key responsibility so when I say General Finance I'm referring to the treasury function which is your treasure and assistant treasur and then your collector um so the collector's office has four people that work there and then you have two people in treasury so um and so all this work that's listed here and probably more um is done by those um six people so the payroll is done by one person it's done by weekly about 12 00 employees on average um and then cash management and Reconciliation is done by the treasurer and with some help from her assistant treasure but she does all the payroll as well and so that's a big task because cash management for the town rml and retirement so we're talking about $380 million of funds that she manages and reconciles over 60 accounts every month so we're not talking small dollars and we're not talking small volume um and then we do all the state and federal reporting so that would in our 941s for our quarterly payroll reporting and we do do the payroll for also our MLD and retirement not their retirees but their employees over there so we're doing reporting for them in normal D um and then we're also doing the W2 reporting um the 1099 reporting 1099 RS um and then also the 1095 C's which is um the Affordable Care Act we have to there's a lot of work that goes into the federal and state reporting so I I kind of leave it there and I say that and I never really explain how how involved it is um debt issuance so we do all the debt issuance for the town currently RL does not have any debt but if they were to issue under the town we would manage that as well um we do quarterly property tax billing of 9,41 properties um through our collector's office and we do the utility billing so the water and sewer billing is done in the collector's office and I recently learned that they do more than just the billing that's some extra stuff that we're trying to kind of redirect in terms of scheduling some of the water sewer people to go out when there's problems and answering a lot of questions related to how meter works you know they just somehow end up in the collector's office so we're trying to redirect some of the work just to kind of keep that volume down because in the um collector's office they process 128,000 payments a year and the majority of them are processed souped To Nuts by the collector's office the Departments do process their um departmental receipts um but every single receipt that's received by the town eventually is verified and posted by the collector's office so it's no small task there's four people in there and they're processing that level of payments next slide please the assassing office this is their key um responsibilities valuation of real and personal property field review and data collection on the properties they do all the administration of the statutory and local property tax exemptions they do the billing for motor vehicle excise tax which is about 22,500 bills last year um and they do all the abatements for property tax and motor vehicle they do maintenance of all the property tax records and they do the tax classification presentation to the select board every year and the general public and they advertise and administer the senior tax relief program that's been highly successful here and ready next slide please and in the accounting function there is me assistant Town accountant and then two um administrative staff that two administrative staff process 26,000 bills a a year about 500 invoices a week so like I I'm so impressed by the volume that they do and still manage to find time to help me wherever they can so I I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for them um so we do our monthly budget reporting to the department head so they get all of their year- to-day budget reports on a monthly basis from our staff and they're prompted when things look like they might be a little running R maybe you're charging something the wrong line we're we're prompting them and helping them with their budgets and that's what the budget and oversight support is we're like the key players for munice we're like the power users so we help all the other departments when they struggle with our financial software and I I set personally all the security settings to keep people out of what they're not supposed to see um and then the tax recap I do the tax recap with the um assessor but I also have changed my assistant Town accountant on doing this process too so she's been involved um every year I'm sure if I wasn't there she'd be very nervous to do it by herself but she is very much familiar free cash calculation she's also involved in that as well as the schedule a reporting um she usually starts the process and I help her tie everything out and make sure everything the fact that I have that assistant Town accountant that I can delegate to has really helped me to be able to take the budget on she really pulls her we in more um then we do financial analysis and Reporting and we compile all the audit requests for the Auditors next slide please so the overall budget for finance is going up 2.9% 2.99% just under 3% 3.57 in accounting We're Going Down by 18.39% in assessing and I'll explain that when we get to the slide and general Finance going up 6.46 for a grand total of 2.99 next slide please so in the salary area all of the staff and finance are non-union employees they get a step in a cola um the steps for non-union um employees if you're a management level staff it's 25% the step and 2.35% of P non-management staff so the range would be between 3.6% and 3.75% so accounting is at 3.6% assessing at 3.34 and general Finance looks a little wonky and um when I explain to the fact that when we had somebody for nine months working 19 hours a week helping us in finance the person actually worked in administrative Services as an operation specialist so there was $220,000 within the budget administrative services that now has to be transferred in fiscal 26 to finance to make our full-time position so it looks a little wonky but if you remember the administrative Services mentioned our operation specialist is going away because they becoming part of the um Finance group and so that's why those numbers look a little bit high but that's what's going on there is that treasury analyst that we've added is made making that number look a little wonky because not the whole budget was here in fiscal 25 and next slide please so for the expense budget the big thing that's going on there accounting is level funded assessing is going down by 18.39% so when we were building the fiscal 25 budget our regional assessor was doing three um communities but he wasn't the third Community was pretty new to him and it was a struggle and he was thinking I'm not sure if I'm going to stay on so when I built the budget I built it based on two communities sharing his pay and so I had a $92,000 budget for him and building this budget I know that he is still on in lynfield and hopefully he will continue to stay on and I budgeted for three communities to cover his pray and benefits so I was able to cut a significant piece out of assessing to help out with some of the other things we have going on and then in general Finance the only thing that's really changing there is that we're adding just a little bit more money for um professional development we have a new collector who's going to need to get certified and go to all the trainings the treasur goes to and all of that and so I wanted to have a little bit more money for that travel and professional development but overall expenses down by 12.19% next slide any questions Jackie do you want to bring up this the shared cost um PowerPoint thank you we'll just move right on so next slide please so these are the shared cost and again we have another year where it looks very Wonky where it looks like it's only going up 2.8% but what's going on here again is that we have one more um debt excluded excluded debt payment going away so in fiscal 25 we paid the last Library excluded debt payment and so that was about $1.28 million and it's going away so it's making it look like we have very controlled shared costs but again anything but benefits are up 9.2 and capital is down 20.5 capital and debt kind of work together because we do 5% of our budget in debt and capital and debt looks like it's going down too but really um debt is going up inside the levy about 24% but outside of the levy the excluded debt is 100% reduced so that's what's making it look kind of funny the vocational schools is going up primarily because the um Capital charge for the new school that we had was 16,000 last year is 368,000 this year so no no luck there either um and then obviously Inc reserves a flat 200,000 so no no increase there and going forward our our vocational schools so the way it works is the The Debt Service on the school would be allocated by how many students you have attending at the time so it will flux based on how many of our students are there and so also the other thing that was last year was We we brought back we I think we had 260 originally budgeted last year and they hadn't fully kind of executed all their debt so The Debt Service payments were lower and then also if you get more kids going there you're going to get a bigger share of the debt um because they prated on the how many people from each Community had so it's a Prat a share of The Debt Service for that year okay but so the but the the cost of building a school we're sharing in that cost yes we all are they borrow for their project and they have Debt Service payments like we would um and then each year they have to figure out okay my debt service is on $5 million how do I allocate that and they base it on how many students are there from each community and not the actual cost of the building well both yeah both it is because hopefully they've borrowed for all of it at this point I mean when I saw that I'm like they must have borrowed I mean I know there was some delays they had hit some ledge there was some problems so I think that last year we were kind of cut a break because I had 260 on there because I expected to be somewhere in that 260 to 300 range um and then I got word from them that we were actually going to see a 160 because they hadn't fully borrowed yet and so we did C catch a break last year but then this year it went up has our students um going there increased over the years or Essex Tech I feel like there's a couple extra students have got started going there maybe anticipation knowing that it's going to be a new school and okay it's very hard to get into Essex North is what I understand and so people want their options open and this is going to be a brand new school as well and so you're going to probably see a lot of people opt to go that direction depending on the shop yeah depending on what their offerings are yeah so so what is the bill look like because my understanding is there's a tuition for the vocational schools so the tuition is based on how many students you have and then when they're doing The Debt Service they you get your pro red share over the total number of students and how many of the students are from all right so it say broken out into debt service lines when you see it and if you look at the financial forecast one of the recommendations that this board had asked was that we show the the capital charge separately and so if you look at the financial forecast when it goes into the book for the warrant you'll see that they I'll show you what the capital charge is and then what the regular tuition is so that we can kind of separate the two right it's good to know your question on the capital and de question so I understand that the excluded stuff comes out will we per the budget will we spend 5% of the budget I absolutely we always spend 5% okay that's like how we start when we're doing the budget we do we project our revenues and accommodated cost or project it first and debt and capital or accommodated cost so they are looked at first so we figure out how much is our budget and what is that 5% then we figure out how much is our debt service planned for that year and the remainder is capital and we use all of it without a question 6.5 million does represent 5% Bud yes okay yes thank you so next slide please so this slide shows you the detail of what makes up our benefits that's up 9.2% retirement is up 12% that's the combination of our assessment going up our pension assessment going up 8.3% but as you recall our health insurance last year after we' already started to build the budget came in at a higher number I reduced oped to make sure we had enough for health insurance to 200,000 from 500 this year we're trying to restore it back to the 500 making 150% increase not the nicest number but it is what it is Medicare at 2% um health insurance and life insurance 8 and a half we've been seeing very low numbers for at least a decade we've really done a lot of work to control those costs but Maya is saying to us to start planning for 7 to 10% to be conservative because the numbers are just getting a little out of control um we we are running very well and so they expect that we'll be at the low end but we have to be conservative here because when we're building this budget we don't know what our enrollment is we don't know what our increase is going to be and we don't want to be looking for that money later so we have to be conservative a lot of times what will happen is if we do realize it comes in much lower we might use that money for something else later at a future town meeting we move it away or we let it go to free cash um workers compensation up 1.3% and denif 4% and unemployment has been surprisingly going up at at a pace that's not typical for us so hopefully one thing that we have to do is when we get the bills we have to pay them and if we if we want to challenge anything if we think something could be fraudulent we can get that back but we are seeing a trend for unemployment going up and I'm not quite sure what's what's driving that because I don't see a lot of that on the town side but there is probably a fair amount on the school side next slide this is the capital that we have planned for um 2026 I put 2025 I was definitely awake um and so I'm listing all of the things that we have planned for fiscal 26 the typical 50,000 for the permanent building committee 50,000 for Parker Middle School auditor lighting upgrade 105 for an arc flash study um a wood and water heater at 15,000 is that um gas I don't know would you know is it gas that the water heater at wood end I didn't I'm sorry is it a gas water electric it's all electric it's all electric okay does that answer your question you mean the water is all electric hot water over there is all electric thank you and then we have our districtwide technology projects at 150 um the telephone system for the school um that's another 10,000 technology on the the townside at 100,000 and then we have a pumper engine a fire truck for 1.15 million we have um alss defibrillator monitor at 70,000 275,000 for our highway standard truck 50,000 for fence improvements 100,000 for pickle ball courts 100,000 for rock wall repair program 50,000 for parking lot um improvements 100,000 for sidewalk curb and pedestrian safety 100,000 for skim coating and crack seal patch and 535,000 for Road behaving and I I do call that you know this has been just a hard budget just to get what we need for road paving so wherever I have extra I Tred like so like something like if health insurance were to come and lower that might be a spot because in order to keep the grade of the roads we do need to put more add in and if the state doesn't give us more we're going to need to find ways to build that Gap and he's definitely made that clear to me next slide please can I ask a question yes um is that a second fire engine like the first one hasn't from three years ago hasn't been delivered and this is a second another one there's a long lead time to get a fire trck it's amazing how long it takes so they're picking one up this week and that one is for fiscal 26 and they'll probably have at least a year time to get that amazing believe time okay what is the permanent building committee going to do with $50,000 so they have that always in the budget so that if there's a need for something like I think we did use some money from the permanent building committee for um for the the community center OPM you know so whenever they have a a need to do something whether it be hire a consultant to look at something related to the buildings they have some funds to draw on a lot of times that does close close to free cash if they don't use it but it's it's nice to know that we have when they do have issues that W be looked at by an expert so that's cons we're calling Consulting Services Capital so so the OPM is what they used it for it's it you know if they're having a concern about one of the buildings it will probably lead to an actual Capital project so that's kind of why we would be rolled into capital projects because all that's the permanent building committee is is looking at our facilities and and issues related to the facilities so anything that they identify that they want to look into will more than likely result in a very large Capital project and so that's our justification and why this 50,000 sits within the capital budget because all of the costs that lead up to a big Capital project by feasibility study and where you're going to do the design work all that even though it doesn't actually it isn't the actual tangible asset it's all the cost that relate to that project um to get there does that make sense no well I was kind of like I understand that why they might need a budget for these Services I'm just struggling that this isn't Capital but I don't anything nothing that the permanent building would be involved in wouldn't be a capital project they'd be looking at timing they would be like how long can this last like it's more like from my perspective they need a budget I understand that I'm just like why is it here that's what I'm struggling with because it's part of the cost of identifying a capital project so I think that's how we've kind of always kind of Justified it is that nothing that the permanent building committee would put their eyes on wouldn't be a capital project it would usually be something large related to one of our buildings which are capital assets that improvements so one of the I've been having some conversations this week when when people want to donate property to the town are reading I understand that Town Council has asked us to now do a survey before we can accept any of it m before we can accept and ask say we're going to have to do a survey so that can you know that's thousands of dollars conversation why why do we have to do a survey did she say I'm not familiar with the rationale behind it I'm just taking it at face value so I've been um struggling as well because that's one of those things where it might not happen but when it does then what do we do we like either we we can't accept the donation or we have to go pull it from somebody else's budget and but if somebody's donating like a piece of property to us a capital asset and we wanted to do some some you know checking on it I think the permanent building committee could look at like you know do we want to accept this asset and there's a checklist of things we want to look at and you know they they could utilize their money in any way that would kind of I'm not sure that's a PBC function to to accept a donation I mean it's not not a donation I'm saying if if part of the checklist is to identify whether or not we want to accept a donation of property like like a piece of land or a building or whatever it might be I could see that they could inva when you said property I'm thinking a building I'm just talking land I'm just talking land at this point but but land is a capital asset as well it is and and to Mark's Point their their charge is not to deal with nonb buildings so that's no land I thought when you said property but otherwise I was kind of this is kind of what I'm thinking about if you can have if we're putting items in the capital plan it could be related to capital projects and if they don't get used they get closed out to free cash mhm so we did this a couple of years ago we got a couple pieces of property that the town to was gifted at zero yeah North End of town right so we had to serve it um and I think we found some some funds to do it but it's pretty unusual that it happens I mean how much money are we talking to do survey work small three to 20 it you know it depends and it would and again I think it sounds like something we'd probably put to use free cash or I mean or something or even if it's an unexpect we go to town meeting to get that approved or we go to fincom we could go to Fon reserves and ask them for whatever we needed to spend on the survey okay when you said survey I'm thinking like a list of questions about why oh sorry surve survey surveying the L the services yeah the engineer survey wasn't following why would she have you fill out of survey so like our you know the other thing we have is legal cost and our legal cost kind of budget for them we have a budget but we these are just like some smaller items that um that we don't really have when we're building the budget is unanticipated that comes up that's kind of what the fincom reserves are for so something like that were to come up we could just call the vcom together and ask them for those funds and and that way they would hold up the donation you know because we small item but yeah okay I mean but you know we have regular meetings with them anyway so it just be the added agender item and have to wait for a town meeting to ask for extra funding cor that's usually what we use them for so I think there was a couple properties that ARA funded for conservation Chu came in here there was two or three surveying Sur yeah we used AR funds for that yeah we had a couple negligible but yeah yeah no it just got me thinking cuz yeah but um but it could be something that we could have regular lineup if you really thought that that was something that was needed but you have to understand that if you don't use it it's going to close to free cash and it's going to and we may not use it right I mean there's also been that conversation where a lot of times this permanent building committee has this 50,000 and then they don't end up using it and it does take away maybe something else they could have so it's a conversation to talk about because you always want to have money available if something comes up and there's a problem and you want to have the permanent building Committee involved um but it does take away something else you could have had so there's definitely a conversation that could go both directions on that line item specifically but we did it did come in handy when it came to the OPM for the senior community it was a good solution and they voted for it over while so I think it in the end it was good I mean I understand what you're saying about why is it a gap R but I think in the end it was good also I don't I don't know that I want to TI personally I don't know that I want to tie up $50,000 with the permanent building committee as an annual permanent line on certainly something we can talk about just big number 10 I think when the permanent building committee came into play was that when we had the library renovation project we didn't have a lot of pre-work done to help us get those numbers really nailed down and then we had to go back to town meeting and then there was a lot of conversation about making sure we had some money to start you know looking at things or you know and obviously it's not enough money for like a feasibility study but some numbers that are kind of based on some kind of real estimates done by a professional um and I think that's why they kind of felt that we should have this community that could potentially get together and you know have all these people are experts in the field looking at something and saying this is what I think would cost and let's put a little bit of money and see if we can get a little bit of a better estimate because we did have to go back twice for the this is a big number though this is I'm going to say this is beyond little no but when you talk about when you talk about design work design work is about 10% of project right CU it it was required but we've had they've used it this isn't the first time it's been used and the other question would be is it um when it was approved as a committee did it have a budget Associated no okay this was the only thing that's ever been available just in case something comes up is it's kind of like a safeguard right but but most projects could do the same thing they could go to fom and ask for money because Capital project is a big PLL in their 200 50 is not a small pull I don't think they should be spending 50 this is more us yeah we should have at least this much we should be the same well that's another topic I wanted to bring topic yeah I agree with you so understand that like what I think was in mind with this 50,000 is design work when you're trying to come up with the cost of of something not not building a building of course but like it's usually about 10% of whatever the project is and so if there was something identified at one of the buildings it may be able to cover and so 10% is a lot when you talk about a lot of the projects that are done at these buildings and this wouldn't even scratch the surface of like most buildings yeah I think that's kind of the point though it won't even come close well no but if you were to identify a major issue with one of the buildings and it's an immediate situation where you want to get somebody on it identify how much it is so that we can bring it to town meeting at the next town meeting it could potentially cover let's think about like just uh so we Walgreens we all did that with Walgreens we didn't engage the permanent building committee and we they weren't involved with the wens no no we didn't select we did it I just think that's a big number I want to be very cautious of up that much money arpa money for that right it was I don't know what did we it was arpa money it was is arpa for everything ARA no more arpa I'm still going with ar I mean I'm open to the idea of making it a lower number if that's what you failing is um but this is just what we've been doing just to hold a number that's a fairly sizable number made a request and we're like reviewing the request I think you have that backwards no so this is this is what's been there typically so that's in the past what what has their uh budget been spent on the permanent building Joe probably has some good information so when we did the building assessments they went through and looked at all the town and school buildings and they ranked all the buildings we had an assessment tool that we used and they did come across a couple of instances um where they wanted an outside consultant to come in and look at and it was mostly structural work that they looked at like foundation work foundation work some supporting columns and a couple of locations they felt like it was okay and it was okay but they wanted something to come out and look at it so theyve used it for that and we used it for one other thing doesn't get tapped that often the OPM was the only other thing that came up yeah the OPM but they do that's the sort of thing I'm thinking it's like foundational issues where maybe there's leaking water coming into the building or there's a a suspected like a crack that visible that could be it could be anything so how long have they had this budget of $50,000 eight years since after the library project that was when the idea do they do this RW of the Town buildings uh well they just finished it three years ago uh I would imagine they're probably going to do it every three to five years redo it so are they actually even spending their budget every year not not usually no it's just it's there as a safe card it ties it up it means we can't but it does tie it up it ties it up but it is something that when you have this many buildings something could go wrong I was thinking like folks I'm G to bring up again like three times magic hatrick but so Mata was having those flooding issues and no budget no Trails committee budget to like deal with flooding issues like but if they know they could that's a municipal building so go to the permanent building committee make a request like then I I'd feel a little better about it if people knew like there's a pocket of money there if we're having an issue like that I guess to Karen's Point what stops US from taking the 50 Grand ourself and then giving it to the permanent building committee as part of our budget that we always do because because because what they're dealing with is capital and we're trying to keep that 5% set aside for debt and capital so if I were to pull it out and to put it in your select board budget it would no longer be debt of capital it would be just sitting there in case you need to allocate it we're trying to make sure that we're staying in that minimum 5% debt in C and it's kind of an unusual thing I don't see that a lot of communities do and I think it helps us stay on our our our Capital assets and and keep things as up toate as human possible that we have that discipline to say 5% of this budget has to be used on debt and capital so that we can take care of our Capital assets and our infrastructure yeah that makes sense I think we're we're all in a little bit of like uh agree in the select board like I no no if forget that I get that part I get that part accounting wise but we're all some I mean is there a number that you think it should change to I would ask them i' ask I don't mind ask them yeah I I could ask them I mean I I don't know how this number was derived it might have been what they suggested when they you know because I I feel like it's a lot of people on the that committee that have Specialties in building which are Architects and engineers and things of that nature I would guess and they must have some idea of what would be a nice you know what these things cost when things come up up with buildings when they have structural issues or things that are being identified that they're not sure okay and want to have the FL into and I think that's really the key is if there's something that they're concerned about they have some but they could go to fincom too they could go to fincom too yeah they have 200 Grand let's let's move on let's ask them ask a question though um so I'm not seeing any vehicles on here I'm not seeing any vehicles and I know some of the at least one department has mentioned oh you know I know I need to transition to like fuel efficient vehicles and I don't there's a lot of vehicles it's because we have a fire truck in there okay I don't have a charger so I need a charger too and so so usually when they want an electric car they make it clear and the price that they're asking for would include the price of the charger it should you know they're asking they're giving us like a an estimate and and when they're referring to an electric car it's usually much more expensive than the normal car I'm actually surprised there's no vehicles in here except for the truck we normally have a lot of vles right this is just an odd year whenever we have a fire track because we try not to borrow for the fire tracks if we can afford it within the operating budget and not borrow because we don't like to waste money on interest um we do it and in those years that you have a fire trk every you know five years or something we have a fire trk those are the years where you're going to have less vehicles in there because this truck eats a lot of that vehicle away so you we have to still do some baseline Paving and everything it does you know we could borrow for it but it's you know where interest rates are higher than they were a few years ago we prefer to keep it in the operating budget if we can and we're still doing a fair amount of work um we're still using our money I think in a way that's benefiting the town I see rock wall repair program is that do we have more than one rock wall that is a DPW item I I'm imagining that they go they're working on some rock wall that they you know taken pieces I guess like they're doing more work each it's expensive Ro not a climbing wall I thought it was a climbing wall that's what I thought okay I think they actually mean they do mean falling down rock walls yeah okay gotcha every year we put money toward because it's just too big to do yeah let's write real Rock never mind oh it's not a rock wall you mean like the climbing don't we have something at of school with the things in the walls that would be wonderful but that's not what it is that's a play theying that's what I thought okay moving on okay a question here and I know it's not on this budget but I'm this is something that's crossed my mind a couple times when we talked about it when we replace vehicles in town we're not going all electric correct I think it depends on what kind of car it is well my concern would be is what if we have like a natural disaster and we don't have electricity and then we can't run our cars I don't think that're we're not even close to having all our vehicles electric I would think that I understand the the reason why you would go hybrid but I would be very concerned we have some hybrid vehicles like but I know that there's been you know for police department for the those vehicles are running constantly so when one person comes off a shift somebody else is in that car and so they don't really even have the time to charge them and so it becomes hard for it to be 100% electric because there's just no charging time so police vehicles and vehicles of emergency nature are never probably going to be anything more if if hybrid maybe could be used but not fully electric in those scenarios I think that we're making a conscious effort to do more Electric Vehicles because you know but I wouldn't want to even say our facilities are DPW individuals and a all electric hybrid yes no hybrid is what I've seen a lot of DPW it would just concern me I'm not the one who makes the decision but they usually come to me and say to tell me what kind of vehicle and what the cost is what I'm putting it into the capital plan and if I can fit it in for an electric and they think it's a good spot for an electric we do it got it okay thank you right I know what pickleball courts are is this on top of the oper money we allocated or this is so arer money was design money to designs and we have some very generous donors that're putting a significant some towards the pickle ball courts and this is um we're going to put 100,000 of the Town SP okay so this is that was design money okay gotcha so um this slide here shows you a little bit more clearly how The Debt Service breaks down it looks like it's going down by 14.9% but you can see that the um debt within the Le Levy is going up 24 .1% and excluded debt is going completely away so after fiscal 25 we don't have any excluded debt until we borrow for any other projects um and that obviously requires votes of the residents so right now we have nothing um after 25 you said yeah fiscal 25 we've probably already made the payment that libraryies paid for gotta um so the one thing that I think some people don't realize is like excluded debt it really makes the whole budget look a little wonky because is on top of the shared cost looking lower than expected it always makes your revenues look a little bit lower than expected because when that Debt Service goes away so does the money that you charge the residents your your revenues go down too so when you look at the budget of a year where excluded debt goes away the last couple years for instance it looks a little wonky and when when did the residents see like the difference so they would have they should have seen a small piece of the difference um this year and then next year they will see um the library fall off so the overall impact of all three projects that fell away within the last couple years was about $300 for an average household of about 800,000 um problem is is your tax goes up based on the value of your house and your house is going up and so it kind of gets buried in the mix so I don't know that people would notice that their taxes are going down it probably just makes sure taxes go up a little less unfortunately because the property values here in renting have always been you know climbing at a good pace and so it probably isn't enough of a savings for you to actually say hey I'm paying less than your it's not like yeah no one's bills no one's bills are some people's bills might have gone down a little bit but it's it isting it's not easy to see because every year you're you're you're kind of being built based on the assess value of your home and all that and the levy goes up 2 and a half% and it's allocated kind of based on your PR a share of the value of all the property and so I would think it'd be hard for somebody to see the savings but knowing that there's no more excluded debt out there at least it's is nice when they're looking at a couple projects coming their way they know that those have gone away or another way to put it is it would have been $300 higher for sure your bill would have been $300 higher because this came and then some of them would be a little bit more like we're saying an average home at 800 something thousand if your home is worth more than that you would have probably saw a Bigg bigger savings so I just wanted to mention that because it does make things look wonky in the last couple years it has looked pretty wonky next slide please so this is um vocational and um fincom reserves and as we spoke about I highlight to you that what's really driving that um is that $328,000 of capital charge for The Debt Service on the new school the new vocational school and that's really driving that 18.6% we do tend to get you know High percentages depending on how many kids are enrolled and when we're building the budget we don't ever really know who's going to be enrolled so that can be kind of a wonky line to begin with but having the capital go from 160 to 328 that's 100% change and so that really made it um look pretty pretty aggressive do the vocational schools let us know how many kids from applied they don't yeah they don't tell us anything until after you know we might learn in October after the school year starts or November and so we're kind of basing it on what we knew from the prior year and what we sometimes the superintendent might know of kids who have applied and have some information but it's really hard and so you'll frequently see me ask at town meeting for a little extra money here and there to cover what you know because I didn't know oh there's an extra student there that wasn't there before um so it is kind of a line that you'll see us frequently kind of ask for additional funds when we when our projection is off um but this this Capital charge is the Big Driver here y next slide please any questions on the shared cost I think we've been asking them as we went so I know you've been great about that while we're on the slide all right so the next thing we wanted to go over was um Jackie could you bring up the um spending scorecard I have it in front of you so when I when everybody did their budgets and put in what they asked for we had things in the budget that weren't in the budget last year for instance the parking kiosk the cost to run the parking kiosk was 45,000 within the police budget 54,000 for the um building security software those are things that weren't there that are like true ads to the budget so when everybody put their budgets in and what they needed we were over by $16,578.84 to each department you know being as you know diplomatic as I could about how much I took from each department and how much and what line items um and I don't like to touch people's budgets without their knowledge so I sent last night um you know emails to each department head this is you know this is what our shortfall is we need to come in line with budget and this is what I'm proposing to change in your department does this cause a hardship would you prefer come from someplace else or explain to me if you have a hardship everyone of the department heads was very cordial about it and and understands that we need to fall in line with the budget that has been allotted to us and there have been some proposals of can we change it to this line instead of you know don't take overtime take this instead or whatever it was um and and because they were so compliant with with what I sent we are in Balance right now um and what you're seeing here is the actual budget that will go in Balance if can you scr down a little bit Jack so see that 36 m74 291 that's the municipal budget it goes up 3.6% which I know our operating budget is 3.5 but what you need to understand is in some of those departments are accommodated cost so facilities has utilities that's an accommodated cost um DPW has fuel cost for the vehicles that's an accommodate cost and you saw that those percentages when we did our um budget our financial Forum that those costs were going up at higher percentages than we would like accommodate cost was not well behaved and so you are going to see that the numbers are a little bit higher and the school department is going up 3.6% but they also have a of District special ed which is an accommodated cost so that makes it look like it's more than 3.5 but the incomin costs are in there as well the shared costs that are up at the top um Jackie can you scroll up to the top a little bit the shared cost are the kind of the cost like benefits Capital debt those aren't mixed into departments whereas utility costs are in the facilities core budget the fuel and so those are kind of accommodated costs that sit by themselves in essence but some of these departments do have the mixed in Property and Casualty Insurance is in the um administrated Services budget so there's a lot of them kind of dispersed um Public Services has the veterans Aid in there and that's an accommodated cost so just to make that make more sense for you so Y no go ahead Mark so the just following the very bottom so the 145 m596 491 grand grand total so 2.9% increase um so you have revenues that equal that right that's where we start so yes we start with the revenues we don't start building anything until we know what the revenues are going to be making sure um so but also too when you're looking at the 145 you're looking at that's across not just the town but the water SE storm Waterville all of the R so we do we start with the revenues and then we're balancing back to it what we in that Financial forecast that I show at the fin so this is the the balanced budget bu and unless somebody comes back to me and says Oh I thought I was okay with what you asked but I realized this isn't going to be okay unless that that happens we're where where we should be and I won't have to move any of these numbers around is the fingers crossed wouldn't the just because of people cutting cable wouldn't the peg be going down or you have it the same number so I have it the same number Peg is the one number that could potentially go down I have to still do the analysis there but that money doesn't come from our um that comes from the Verizon in contest and so that number could change but when it comes to like the operating budget the three and a half% those numbers are all like are nailed down pretty much unless something comes up that that requires a change in between now and fincom and town meeting these numbers are the numbers that we're going with I doubt it's going to go up no more than likely it's been going down um it went down from where it was Prior because the capital part of the contract from Verizon and capital you know Verizon and Comcast both had a capital component they paid in the early years and then that's been exhausted so it makes it go down what is the landfill Enterprise fund so that is um it's kind of like a I call it almost like a performance deposit so the landfill used to be over near Walker Brook Drive and when we we had to do landfill closure that's like a whole EPA thing we have to do all this landfill monitoring to make sure that there's no pollution or any problems still oh yeah like 30 years I think it's 30 years and so because we were the owner of the landfill what we have to do is in the beginning we had a financial responsibility to some extent for okay it's going to end eventually so what happens now is the developer of that property pays us $37,000 a year and I hold it until they provide invoices that say they did the monitoring okay so right now we don't have any Financial like you know burden related to the landfill but because we're kind of on the hook responsib wants us to make sure that this doesn't go by the wayside that these this is actually done every year and so as they give me the bills proving me that they paid I give them back their money up to the 30 C but is the monitoring in perpetuity for 20 30 years is it 30 years so every year in January they send me a check for 37,000 I keep it in an account and then I wait for them to send me proof of what they in year 31 it's done I don't know if I I have a contract for 30 years so I think it's done yeah I don't know if the EPA can AFF for something else on us but that's what I have currently and I don't know a lot about the EPA so I don't know if something else could come up but that's what I know are all the telecom companies paying us now do we have leases that are active with everybody that paid for I know that we have Revenue coming in I don't know anything about the contracts yeah we do all of them well I think we're still waiting on Verizon I'll check ran last but the rest of them were we are getting Verizon want to do extra like put because the north part of town is horrendous well we were talking about the the water yeah I we want them to do extra short I would like them to actually I I never have a good sign no that was gun range or something I didn't know that they were it was supposed to be a well we talking about two different things like were they going to do extra on the water tower to make it better or because they are talking about another tower that would take three to so bad that they wed I thought they were talking about doing the small they weren't on yeah if they weren't on the original water towers it would be on yeah I'm looking for are we getting revenue from all these folks now yeah most of them we are not Verizon so yeah let's see what Verizon they on the tower and it's small I don't think they're on the tower if they AR paying are they on the tower we didn't have all of them it was 500,000 a year right it's to check I I think it's more than that but Che yeah yeah we make sure everything yeah no it's a good point it's a good point I can definitely when I do my next quarterly review tell you what we've like th far if that's helpful it be great confirm like who's on the tower I haven't seen the actual contracts so I think the revenues went down I think I made the comment that I can't believe this went down instead of up even though there's more like I could be wrong is it that they pay us for just they leasing space on our water yeah they're essentially leasing so during the time frame that they that we were doing the water tank I think that we had um somebody else have a cell tower that they all took their stuff and put it on and we were just getting minimal revenue for the place that was rented there and then once those contract once they started to put things back on the water tank they're back on contract with us and we'll start to see the revenue return not the revenue does that make sense yeah just just make sure we're getting it oh yeah no it hasn't highlighted to me when I'm looking at the finances so hopefully I mean it had stopped or gone way down oh had gone way down but like I said all we were really getting was the rent on the wherever that cell tower was placed it was our land or whatever and whoever bought the rights to do that was collecting the revenue from the other vendors and we were just getting rent from that one whether it be T-Mobile I forget who it was um and now that the water tank is complete and they're starting to move back over we should see our revenues return to normal levels maybe higher hopefully higher because we didn't have pron before but right in the same on the same line um so the ice arena is another source of revenue for us so I was just wondering how come we don't where do we have to drill down in here to see like Revenue that we were talking about the revenue from these Verizon the telephone providers the carriers and also like our lease with Burbank is Peg call I'm going to assume Peg is called out here because of some regulatory so we have so we used to do Peg very differently than we do now do had changed how it was done and said this is money that you really have to have appropriated at town meeting because it's your money like Comcast and Verizon is paying you for you to provide public education and access related to and we we we have rctv do it so we kind of were just forwarding them the money and it was never appearing on any appropriation like you need an Enterprise fund and it needs to go through there and it needs to be appropriated by town meeting and that's how we've been doing it um and we do charge them some indirect costs for my time to to set that up and do everything that needs to be done for them not a lot of money but and then most of the money goes over to rctv to f your operation so should we have Enterprise funds for all sources of revenue then oh no I mean I think like what you were referring to our um were you saying RCV or you saying the ice arena the ice arena I was saying the two things the telephone the wireless carrier Revenue stream we were just talking about and so you would never see um like a line that said um there where that would fall is there's a line that says fees that we charge okay and there's all sorts of things in there there'd be ambulance charges and there'd be cell tower fees and all sorts of different um charges that fall into that category group when it comes to the iso Arena we have a separate fund that those funds go into a completely separate fund and we used to use it as a support for the operating budget years ago um but because um they had many years where they had more Capital work to do and they weren't going to be able to turn over much to us we stopped relying on the money and some money has built up in there I want to say it's like 400,000 that's in there now so we have been starting to see an increase in the return coming in from the ice arena and it could be a funding source for something but we haven't been using it for the yearly operating budget and we can't budget for it either because it's all over the map no but if it's already sitting there I could say oh there's 400,000 I could use 400,000 for next year's operating budget but then I'm kind of building a cliff of it's not going to be there next year so I have to be careful about what I used it for a one-time cost would be pretty much ideal like if we were using it towards a project or something but or or a small or small amount like we used to use whatever they plan to send us every year they would send us a pretty standard amount pretty much every year they give us an idea when we're building the budget of what they thought they' turn back and we just build it into the budget because there was so many years where we got practically nothing or very little we stopped relying on right right right right ask a question so I know that one of the things that the uh IA board brought up is using their money for wreck in town if we have a $400,000 is account why can't we use the100 th000 $100,000 out of that for pickle ball instead of out of our budget it requires a town meeting vote to do it I well we could if we went to town meeting you could I mean and I think that they had hoped to use it back when they I thought that there was at one point they were trying to um get something on the town meeting warrant to utilize the money and then they ended up dropped because it's under Capital expens so we don't think it's going to be a year-over-year $100,000 no no it's just a one so I mean I think that would be a great use of $100,000 it certainly could be but it's but it might slow up the like if it's built into the budget they can kind of plan they've already started the design work on the um pickle ball courts they know that they're getting donations and these people are donating really want to see this happen sooner and be sure that there's going to be enough money we don't know what it's going to cost yet because right now we have we just sign contract the design work that came out of AR right right see if the design comes back we could we could supplement because shockingly sometimes estimates come over budget yeah like if something comes in higher or a project I mean there's always that money sitting there that we can exercise our right to use Quick thought leave it but when we do a funding article at town meeting anyway we always talk about the source of funds it's required I would have to say that that would be the source of funds but essentially is in is it in free cash right now no Ty fund what what kind of account it's like a revolving fund if it's like a receipts for appropriation I think it's called I thought they wanted to keep a minimum amount in that like the roof just cost them 300 Grand this is money they've already paid the town is holding and has they us Mone after for the work they need no no no I know that this year was like1 and something thousand do right yeah it's not so that's they've already transferred but why can't you just add that to the potential source of funds in the town meeting article to to Melissa's Point like you go it's kind of a decision what to use it for I can't really decide that's income usually they could ask me not asked me in the past can you tell me what other sources of funding especially when money is tight and we don't want to use a lot of free cash I give them options of things I see sitting out there that they can use as funding source but usually it's it's disc we could support the use of this and because they could up and tell to meeting we support this article whatever and there supporting source of funding usually that's where we have that discussion what's the best funding source for this unexpected something you know and yeah once we get do we want to use more free cash you want to take a smart grow stabilization or do we want to take some money out of this you know ring ice can I ask a favorite so we do have a series of these accounts that have some funding in them um and it's clear that we we don't necessarily know what they are what's in them is it possible to kind of put that together at some point so you've got smart grow stabilization you've got Ice Arena money I gave it at the last was it the last Financial form didn't vcom ask me for I can certainly give it to you it's it's something they ask for periodically just so they know what other extra buckets of money might be able to be there to be drawn upon for projects that we're working on exactly so they definitely asked me fairly recently I have no problem providing that to you thanks thank you and sorry would that include the account that Karen U mentioned I don't know the exact name it's like a hospital fund that someone trust I understand that but I think it would also be good for us to be aware of those funds that sitting those funds that are sitting there in them because I think it would be I certainly could include it in a quarterly review like the report that the trust fund Commissioners see and what what funds are sitting there but know that for every fund that's sitting there there is a trust fund document that dictates how it can be used not necessarily available for whatever you think you know so understand that piece of it yeah the wishes of the trust yeah absolutely but I think it would just be helpful to be aware to be aware yeah absolutely so it can't be the hospital pickle ball Courts for the student the reverse side of that the result of pickle ball there's going to be a lot of injuries always the wishes whoever donated it and what they wanted it to be could it be you know we have our active Living Center could it be a n station there so that specific question has been asked I assure you sits on the commission so he knows a lot there's a actually there's a a legal agreement that defines most of the structure and it there are also on that one specifically income requirements that relate to it also as it turns out I don't think we're income limitations when you know a particular activity for people of limited means that could be used for that but but I'm I'm with you yeah it's unlikely we're going to build a hospital in this town because I don't think there's a place for it what do we buy masks with it PP equipment we did not check people's ID and we didn't Lifeline stuff and and I don't know how we got that out there but it IAL related and we did not check people's income to give them service I I think most anything that's coming out of that has gone through the anything that goes through the trust funds we have through the SC we're kind of on the hook I believe it I'm just saying I it was done it was great it was good for the public and and we didn't check people's tax returns so I don't what was this they got what the lifeline is that our I think we did you got some money out of there that was the yeah you did at the beginning of Co you got money out of there how'd you do it again no that was that was different money it was very very much but just know that wasn't Hospital F any idea to use some of those funds would be checked against that trust all right let's move on okay done so that's a wrap um so if you have questions priorities I have until the end of February to get the budget over to fincom so we have a good uh Head Start here we we generally don't show the scorecard this early but I wanted to show a draft scorecard the balance um so thanks to Sharon for putting that together on the Fly thanks to the department heads assistant department heads for all of their input um so I think we're going to have a good budget this year we're going to have to keep an eye on the future because things that you can see are getting Tighter and Tighter um but for this year I think we're going to be in really good shape so but if there are other priorities questions you know let me know I'll reach out to all of you as well um as I put the final budget together so yes I would love to um like understand where the town managers like discretion line item is and under the town manager's budget you're talking about the discretionary fund yeah make sure that's increasing with inflation and then at least it's got to be more than inflation but okay to your point the the budget that we have that we have to ask Town Forest Trails and conservation I don't know who else come before us and justify the use of it that has been set at that level for a number of years I'd like to see that increase what was that the the the 35 Grand talking about to the individual 20 to 25 I think it's 35 okay are you talking about the committee money yes what is that coming ask I'd have to go back and look but but bottom line is like we we're so tight we were over so I probably couldn't haveed those numbers I'm sure every so that's where I get into like those are capital projects a lot of those projects are capital and they're not and Meanwhile we're holding funds for like what do you mean capital for the committees or capital projects what do you mean like I don't the money that they have set aside like you know like for different committees there's such a small amount of money you're saying the capital is what they we're talking about well so not on the scale of the Town Forest thank goodness but deferred maintenance X number of Boardwalk feet in our Trails cost $155,000 you know there are maintenance tasks Capital that needs to be done in those committees and they do not have budget so they come to us and they like everybody else have seen their costs go up um know it's hard but like I don't know if it's Capital though that's repairs to it's more like I think building new Boardwalk is capital that's what they're doing of building new boar as capital I if it is or is it where I had to cut money from operating budgets I did not increase those committees I just couldn't afford to like but you you level funded them level I didn't had them the one thing that you did mention that I did cut was the town manager um just by a couple gr I mean and I brought it down to 18 but like everybody had to share a little of the pain to get down oh you were at 20 thought it was at 10 he's got 18 over there guys full disclosure I cut it I couldn't and that's fine you know we like I said we off to pitch in a little bit to to get the balce budgets we don't have a we got a shov today you know I was the bad guy but people were so nice to me cuz I took a lot of money from our budget was 20 yeah no our budget is only 20 and it's been that way so select board budget yeah the budget to fund those committees it's been that way since at least the operating budget had to be my okay we can we can like I said we can still take a look at things and a get a motion it's small stuff okay thank you thank you all motion to aour Second all those those in favor meeting is adjourned 9:30 e