call to order the Oh, and my computer screen just went away. Oh, there we go. The December 3rd, 2025 select board meeting. Um, it is 700 p.m. The meeting is being streamed live on YouTube and on Verizon channel 31 and Comcast channel
9. And we will start with the pledge of allegiance. Pledge of Algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
>> I will review a short agenda. Um, we have budget meetings tonight and the department budget presentations are from the police department, fire department, health department, technology, and public works. Chief Clark, would you like to start?
So, um, kind of just some preparation for down the road in the future. Uh, Deputy Chief Amadola is actually going to be doing the presentation tonight. So, I'll be here to pick on her, throw stuff at if we need to, but she'll be leading the presentation. >> Thank you. Thank you.
>> Please hold your applause for the Just um I know that you guys, most of us know uh everything we do here, but um if you don't, we'd like to have a brief overview of uh the department in the past year. Um so the mission of the PD,
it it matters to us that our people know our mission. Um, it's to provide exceptional law enforcement services to our community while preserving its unique character and addressing specific safety needs. We focus on building lasting relationships with the residents and maintaining our rapid response
capabilities. Our vision is to always protect the life, property, and the constitutional rights of our residents by hiring only the best employees and continue to keep them highly trained and held to the highest standard. And uh just on a side note, just in policing in
general, we not only hire the best, if you're not the best, we have no problem saying you don't belong here and thank you anyway. Um so, do we succeed? I believe so. Yes. Um for those who don't know some of the Readings awards, uh Reading was named
the 26th safest city. I know it's a city, but uh in America, according to Visual Capitalist, we received the AAA gold award uh this year for our traffic enforcement initiatives. uh named the 29th safest place to live in 2025 and named the 20th sa safest city in
Massachusetts in 2025. And why do we succeed? Well, I believe it's because of all the community support from the select board, the finance committee, town meeting, the school board, our town manager, all the town staff, our residents. Um you guys,
we have a very competitive union contract. We are one of the only police departments I know that is always at full staff. We're never hurting. We have 46 sworn spots and we have 46 all taken. Um, and the town also offers great benefits. Um, we have very high stand in
our hiring practice. We look for the most well-rounded candidate who can not only stop crime but is also out there to deescalate situations in and engage in the community. We ask our officers to be out there visible and um with that it deters a lot of crime.
So >> he's cutting it off for some reason. >> Cutting the slides off. >> I know. >> Make it smaller. All right. >> Maybe back >> to the screen. >> Um there we go. Is that better? Yeah. >> Um I tried to do just a brief overview
rather than our organizational chart which would be hard to read, but again it was uh we have 46 officers. We have three administrative assistants and a parking enforcement officer that fall under the police department. Um we're broken down into four divisions. We have a patrol division which is run by two
lieutenants. We have a day and a night. Um on that they have eight sergeants, 18 patrol officers and one of those includes a K9 handler. Uh we have our detective division um run by Lieutenant Richard Abati. He has six detectives, one of which is assigned to the FBI drug
task force which is very helpful for us. Um, he also has the two school resource officers and two comfort dogs in his division. Uh, support services is run by Lieutenant Christopher Jones. He has an administrative sergeant. Uh, we have the new cso who is doing awesome. We have a
respond advocate that helps us follow up on all domestic violence um, concerns. Um, that is a nonprofit that's not paid for by the police department. We have an armorer and a fleet manager. We also have the traffic and safety officer who oversees the 15 crossing guards in town.
Next slide. So, I know nobody likes to talk about themselves, but I thought it would be interesting and uh very good for you guys to know a little bit more about me and the chief and um how much we really care about law enforcement in Reading and also in the state as a whole and our leadership and what we bring
back to the community. Um so, just so you know, Chief Clark sits uh he is on the Middle Sex County Chiefs of Police. He's the vice president. He is the chair of NLMC standards committee. So he oversees all the NML policies. Um he's a member of the Massachusett uh Massachusetts Chiefs of Police
Association behavioral threat assessment and management violence risk assessment committee. He is also on the executive board for the Greater Boston Police Council. Um and a little bit about myself outside of uh our department. I am on the MPTC
training committee. So, I'm one of nine chiefs that oversee all of training, the training bylaws for the state and uh the policy advisement to our post commission. I am also um an accreditation commission training committee. I'm on that. I also instruct
others how to do accreditation managing. I am an accreditation assessor. I'm also a promotional assessment center qualified assessor. So, when other departments go for promotions, I go in there and um help grade and choose their promotions. Um, I've been chosen for a few different trainings in women in
policing and how to help women um achieve leadership positions in policing. So, a little bit about ourselves outside of here. Next, we'll go over a little bit of our calls for service and what uh more of the law enforcement side has seen this year. We're on board to about average
probably a little less than last year, but not by much. We'll probably get to about 20,000 calls of service this year. the screen. Um, one of our top calls is domestic violence and mental health calls. So, as you can see, again, these
numbers are only run um, November 20th was the last time. So, the last month and a half really does pick up a lot. But our domestic disturbance, it's down a little bit, but probably beyond point for almost the same. We had a lot of domestic assistance calls this year. That's up pretty high, 346.
Um, our mental health related calls are slightly down. Maybe that's the end of CO. but we don't we have to study it a little more and I'd like to talk to the coalition a more maybe what they're thinking it might be dumb but it's a great thing. Um I also think medical care is easier accessible now than it was a couple years ago. Um section 12
said the same that is um when we send someone to the hospital for an evaluation from a doctor because we either feel they're suffering from a mental health uh crisis or suicidal at the time. So those are down which is another very good thing in town. Um,
again, one of the things that we do the most here in Reading that I know from outside of our other communities is we make a lot of motor vehicle stops. We feel that, you know, obviously helps with our traffic problems because, as you guys know, probably even what you get a lot as select board members,
traffic concerns around town are a lot. Um, safety matters a lot obviously, but also deters a lot of crime. So, this year we've already had 2600 motor vehicle stops. We tried to break them down a little bit so you guys could see, you know, what in town goes on. Mostly
red light or stop sign violations, speeding. Um, we did, I know you guys also get a lot of, uh, complaints about crosswalk, so I threw that in there that we have stopped over 150 cars for crosswalk violations. Um, and then just some other little stats if you're interested.
>> Can I ask a quick question? >> Yeah. Can you say violation? >> That could be a warning, too. >> Yes. Yes. So, these are just violations. Yep. Um, and you know, if nobody has a big criminal history or motor vehicle history, we try to educate first and try
to start with warnings if it wasn't too egregious. Um, so some other notable actions that we've done on the PD. Um, we have responded to 362 crashes this year, which looks like if we're on target for um, the next month, we'll be down about
13% from last year. So that's pretty good. and that could be due to our escalated traffic enforcement. Um, we've responded to 55 suicide attempts or threats. We have filed 21 reports of child abuse and neglect in the town. We
have brought forth 302 arrests or criminal complaints to the court. We have processed and that should say filled 3,13 public records requests which are a dramatic increase over the years. um it's projected to increase
about 45% than last year and 70% than 2023. Also, like with the public records request, sometimes it's not very simple just as in one report. It could be very detailed. Um, our admin assistant, Kate Ste, she might have to look through
emails, um, booking tapes, recordings. So, it can be quite lengthy. So, it has increased dramatically. Um, we've processed over 342 license to carries, uh, license to carry requests to, and that's pretty much on par with where we've been the last couple years.
That's more of our law enforcement side, the fun side and why everyone says, "Why do you want to be a police officer?" This is the reason why. Um, we do a lot of community service programs. I just wanted to highlight a few. We do have a new community service officer and you
know you when you get a new position, you come with new ideas. So, Dalon has been rocking it. Um, he started it was called Cuff to the Mic. We did karaoke with the seniors at the senior center. I have the worst singing voice ever. And I told them that. So, I did a one-word song. We did not drink, but we sang
tequila. And so, that went very well. They had a blast. But it was so fun. Um, they definitely they've asked us to do it again. Uh, we also now have started a certified car seat installation where we offer about two um Saturdays a month for anybody um resident, non-resident to
come in because a lot of departments don't do it anymore. We'd like to offer it. You can also schedule by appointment if the Saturday doesn't work for you. So, we have a team of car seat installers now. >> Is there any video of you singing >> by chance? >> Maybe a little bit. Just a little.
>> I'll send it to you. Um, he also started family feud. We did that one at the uh residence at Pearl Street. Again, they had a blast. Very fun. He brought bingo to Peter Sandborn Place. So, he is out there especially really getting with the seniors where we were lacking a little
bit. Um, but he's doing great. So those are the new programs and some of the ones that we have been maintaining that we love and Chris I hope that point for us right >> she's very familiar >> yes uh we do the helmet citation program
in the summer we try to pull over children wearing bike helmets and with along with most of the pizza places in town and ice cream shops we give out tickets to the kids that are wearing their helmet so it's they either get a free slice of pizza or a free ice cream so we're very supported by almost all
the businesses in town With that, we do the lunchroom takeovers for all the elementary schools. We love that. They love it. We try to do it twice a year at each school. We've continued to offer our RAD, uh, rape, aggression, defensive classes to women. Um, we try to do at least two
classes a year. We are helped funded by the Women's League of Reading, too. They give us a very generous donation yearly to run that program. Uh, we've also done a lot of Special Olympics. Um we've done the Special Olympics at Gillette Stadium and we've also done the torch run um
Special Olympics with the chief there. One of our greatest things we do now, it was our second year doing the youth academy and it's a week long for middle schoolers where they learn laws, they learn defensive tactics, CPR, they learn drill and ceremony, they learn leadership.
Gives parents a free week of daycare to spend with us. Um but it is amazing. The kids love it. It literally uh we put the signups out and it's filled that day. So, we really enjoy it. >> I'm sorry, was it the second one or the first? >> That's the second one. Yep. Went very
well. Yes. Um, another community service event we love is our open house. I'm sure many of you have been to it, but it gets everyone in town around. They can see the whole station. They walk through. They meet. Most of our officers can be there that day. So, it's a great
time to spend with the community. Um, so that's mostly of our we have a lot more, but I didn't want to keep you here all night. Um, so but under the police department, we also have the amazing uh writing coalition for prevention and support. And I call it
the dream team because they truly are. Um, if you guys know Erica, she's just amazing. They're willing to help anybody. Um, we recently started uh she has an outreach coordinator and a mental health clinician as you know. Tanya's also amazing and Justina. We just started the new adolescent part-time
clinic clinician which is not funded through the town. It's funded with the opioid uh funds. She's um doing awesome. She's working 16 hours a week and focused on middle school as an elementary school which where Tanya found she was having a hard time keeping up with everybody in town. So we focused
on having this part-time with uh younger students. Um the vision for the coalition has changed over the years. Oh, you want to hear it? No, you don't have to. The vision for the coalition uh currently is a communitywide coalition
focused on substance misuse prevention and mental health awareness within the broad context of a healthy community in which the life is a priority for all who live, go to school and work in reading mass. Our vision is safe, vibrant, and a
healthy reading in which all members, young to old, engage in making healthy decisions and actively work together to ensure that today's resources shape tomorrow's strength. Their mission is to promote a healthy community environment so that everyone who lives, works, or goes to school in
Reading can enjoy an optimal quality of life. To address our problem that significant number of youth and adults in Reading misuse alcohol, drugs and nicotine. The coalition focuses on seven community changes strategies to reduce substance misuse and promote mental
health. Um, if you know anything about them, they're in the schools all the time. They do a lot of prevention, which is great. And I hope that's attributing to maybe why our mental health numbers are down. Some of our other numbers have been down. If you go to the next slide, Matt, just a little bit for what they've
done this year. They have uh with their coalition, they've reached over 3,500 residents through prevention and clinical support. Uh 200 teens were certified in teen mental health first aid in the high school. They helped screen 477 students were screened for
substance use and mental health. Um by them filling out the survey, we really know what to focus on uh with the use at that time. 225 of them completed the opioid prevention education class. 17 students supported through chemical
health education. So those 17 students were probably caught with marijuana or another substance and they had to take this chemical health education. But 17 is pretty low from what we've seen in the past. So another great sign. Um Tanya has had 319 clinical visits and
293 of them were post crisis referrals. So that's up 15% from last year. But Tanya looks through all of our calls daily and sees who could use a follow-up call from the clinician. So, she's out there reaching out. We've also had 82 residents matched with our providers
through interface. So, we match up um residents with mental health um follow-up care. Tanya is for shortterm, but we want to help set up long-term care for our residents that need it. Um we have also our coalition oversees
our TIP 411 and we have responded to 79 anonymous tips that have been handled through that. Um and they had a 25% increase in services using the opiate abatement funds. So those are very helpful. So that's the coalition. I'm now going
to get into the very fun stuff of the personal expenses on the police side. So our uh current salaries salary is about 6.5 million. Our projected FY27 is 6.7 million. Most of that which you don't
see on the slide is just our regular increases for salary um with union contracts or the um town increases. A few lines that you'll see shifted around um police overtime. We are asking for an increase of 55,000 to that line,
but only the only new money is about 40,000, which is 1.25%. We're transferring a few lines. Uh we no longer have cell monitors. We don't use civilians anymore. Um we only want police trained officers monitoring our detainees. So we no longer need them,
but we need the money still for if a detainee goes to the hospital, we still have to go with them. So that costs us police overtime. Um the school crossing guards have also we've um downgraded a few of our posts because over the years we've it's
actually hard to fill the crossing guard post with full-time crossing guards, but also as community needs change. Um you know, a couple streets with young kids no longer need that crossing anymore. So we are down to um less crossing post than we used to have, but we have been
using that savings to offset some of our police overtime. So, we want to move um 30,000 of it is going to go to the police training line. The other 12,000 is going to go to the police overtime as well as that cell monitor line. Um and
another thing, if you see our overall budget, our uh level one budget, it might look like the specialists were increased a lot, but it's really we're moving specialists are what I can what we were talking about the support services. So, the traffic officer, the community service officer, they're specialists. They get paid the same as
detectives. So, we're now moving them to the detective line instead of police officer line. So, it's not it's just a change in the line. Um, next slide. So, some of the reasons why we're asking for the $40,000 increase in police overtime is we're as
great as the town events are, it costs us money. Um, so we are required to have details at the fall street fair, the bear gardens, the pride parade, the winter fest, shop the block, uh, the holiday tree lighting, the Nora lighting, and then any night meetings that our officers are required to go to
to um, you know, represent the police. So that's the overtime uh, training as always to keep up with what we want our level at. We need more money for that. So we were asking to move that 30,000. Um, some of it is state required training, but we also like to get um we
have our own instructors certified in deescalation training, firearms, less lethal training, defensive tactics, CPR, mental health aid for officers, and active shooter response. That's very unlike unheard of in other departments, but we want to make sure we're the
highest trained. It also helps our accreditation needs to have our own trainers in each one of these. So by having our own trainers, we can easily schedule a training with our own department. Like currently today, we had our taser training and our shield training, deescalation training. Um so
we like to pro also provide leadership training. We have so many different things in policing, leadership, um deescalation, tactics, then we need to know the law. So training is invaluable to us. So that's why we're asking to keep that money.
Another thing is we um when I went to the police academy, we had to pay for it ourselves. Uh no longer again, we are at full staff, but we don't have the uh line out the door trying to become a police officer anymore. So, we now want to cover the cost of the police academy.
It's currently about $3,000. Um so, we started this year with starting to pay for our recruit academy. So, that is the police um personnel expense additions. Um, next is our dispatch and coalition,
which are very small increases. Uh, dispatcher increase. They have a salary right now at about $750,000 and it would go to about 752,000. It's only a 33% salary rise and that's because one of our highest paid
dispatches retired this year. So overall, a very small increase. We also get about $80,000 a year um from the E911 grant that really helps offset that budget as well. Um dispatch has 10 dispatches and one dispatch supervisor.
The coalition um same thing. It's just really salary increases. Um they're going to go from about 267,000 to 275,000. Uh the operational side currently the police operational side we have budgeted 374,000
and we're asking for FY27 to be at 392,000. Um you could see there's just a few lines we'd like to add to uh police weapons and maintenance ammo costs have risen and continue to rise. So we need to um keep up with that. Professional
tech services um we're asking for a thousand in that. Um, as all technology that our taser iCloud storage cost has increased. Supplies and equipment again with technology we now use e-citations. So we have ecitation printers in our
cruisers. Those were given to us on a grant from the state and the paper. Now we have to replenish it ourselves. The grant is no longer. We also have been buying handheld translators for officers on the street um to be able to speak any language to whoever they come into contact with. Um, our radar units as
well, the service fee has increased. Our public safety supply, we're asking for just a nominal amount of 500 and that's for our community event supplies. You know, with all of our community events, it's all to build trust with the community. So, the more we have and the more we can get out there, you know, our
badges, our sticker badges, everything really helps just build trust with the community. Um, cruises is our biggest increase we're asking and that's because our vehicle and equipment just has had that much inflation rise about $10,000 um the whole and that's to outfit a
cruiser with its equipment as well. The operational expenses for uh dispatch and coalition um are very small and I'll remind you that we did level fund last year these two budgets but so we're only asking still for a small increase. um
the professional services line. We're asking for $1,000 for a dispatch and also $1,000 for their software license. So that would bring it up to $41,000 for FY27. And that's just the increase in our state licenses that they need as well as
the technology that goes with the emergency medical dispatching. The coalition, uh again, another small fee. They're going to go from 41,000 to um we're asking for 43,000 and that's just for their educational materials and
other expenses. Um again, they do a lot of proactive and prevention. So they need their training materials basically to help them with that. So overall for our total budget of the police department, it's a 2.59%
increase. We also have goals for the year uh FY27 and that encompasses why we have the increase of 2.59. We want to retain all our valuable employees that continue to provide the highest level of service by instilling
trust within our community. This can only be achieved by having the support of our participation at community events, giving officers a high level of diverse training, and continuing to competitively compensate employees for their hard work. We must also focus
on the mental health and well-being of our officers for what they have endured on calls and their rigorous schedule where they have to work up to 18 hours a shift. That's our internal goal. And you know, everybody here knows as a leader in a department, you have so much inside
that you have to take care of and outside for the town. So, our external goal for FY27 is to continue to keep Reading a safe and welcoming community by proactive policing, being visible, approachable, and ready to answer any calls that we may respond to. We will
strive to continue our great partnerships and relationships with many town organization, businesses, and other departments. And that is all. And I've been losing my voice for two weeks, so I apologize. >> It's all that singing. >> Yes, exactly. See, I should have done
it. >> Anyone want to start with questions or comments? >> Carla, >> uh, I need I need this I need the slides back. >> You need the slides. >> So, Jackie is running the >> Jackie, can you put the slides back up if you don't mind?
>> Turn the heat off. It was it was the one with all the stats on u I think and no it was >> oh the notable one the
>> those are the calls for service >> it was it was all words it wasn't a gra >> okay it's about three slides down yes that one >> yeah that one so how does this one a compare from previous years and b how does that compare there with I'm not
going to say peer communities. Oh, sorry. >> Sorry. >> So on this slide on the other slides you had, you know, 22 23 24 and this one you don't. So I'm just curious how this compares to >> I just didn't want to hit you with too many graphs. That's
>> all a major increase the same. >> Um I see you know 2023 is there but and what the towns that touch us Wilmington, Wakefield, Stone Meadows. How do we compare guys? Do you guys >> No, I don't have an answer on that right
now and um we can reach out and ask them. I don't know for sure. >> Not a big deal. I'm just wondering how this compares to previous years for us. I guess >> um the suicide attempts and threats is a little low but not but it's pretty much on par with last year. Um I don't know
if you remember the >> Yeah. So just we're also getting Sorry. >> Um okay if I speak Melissa? >> Yeah. Actually, I have my thoughts. >> All right. Um, remember these are only run up till November. So, it's tough to come in front of you and say the percentages, but we some of them we knew
for a fact like we are projected with decrease in car crashes. Uh, we think it's a direct result of the extra traffic enforcement. So, we can definitely show that the public records are correct. We can definitely show some of the other ones like the uh calls for suicide attempts and threats are um they're up there with last year.
We're also coming into the fire department will back us up on this. We're coming into the time of year where we're the holidays, the cold weather. So, we're probably going to be right at that, if not more. >> Sorry. Yeah. So, we had 70 last year. Sorry, I have all the info here. I just >> 70.
>> So, we had 70 total for the suicide um attempts and threats last year and we had 82 the year before. And then the like the 51A, we had 37 last year and 38 the year before. >> That's the child abuse neglect 51A. Can
you pinpoint this PR stuff? That's just crazy that number. >> So, sorry. I can tell you that since they changed the law, um what has happened now is at the beginning of the month, every lawyer out there um lawyer
out there law firm requests all the traffic accidents reports of the previous month and they start contacting people to hopefully get people to sue. >> Oh, so the ambulance chases. >> Yes. >> Wow. So, um that has we've seen it now with um not they've really told us not
to charge and they've limited or made it harder for us to charge for public records requests um to make more state. >> Yep. >> Um a result we're getting more and more people that are some people are just nosy. Some people are colleges doing it for a paper.
>> Um some are doing it news agencies just to see if they can sniff around for something and have a news story. So we get requests and and then sometimes they don't even come and pick them up and they just sit there but we have to process the request. So that's why we've seen such a dramatic increase and as the
deputy said most of them the accident report ones those are fairly quick. We have a system that redacts dates of birth social security numbers that kind of stuff. The bigger ones when they're requesting phone recordings, radio recordings, everything those get >> So you used to have to pay for it and you had to pay the salary of the person
that was doing it. Now it's all free. And we can't state >> the state says you can't charge anything. >> Well, you it's so minimal that it's not worth the billing for it. Um to be honest with you, but um we have seen a
dramatic increase every year anyway. Uh but especially the um it's the car crashes. It's the December one, >> boom, they get them a whole bunch from law firms >> and and our and our chiefs across the state pushing back on this. We've tried,
but it's all about um the whole push was transparency and opening up and letting people see what you do so there's nothing being hidden and um like I said, the big ones we usually get is when it's a >> somebody um some nationwide group that just randomly picks police departments and sends a thing in for all your arrest
reports dealing with um suicides or domestic violence for the past year >> for research. >> Yeah. And then we have to go through and redact because you have to go through and make sure there's nothing to do with juveniles. It it is a it's a very timeconsuming process. >> That's horrible. Sorry. I'm good.
>> I I just had a follow up on that. What So I thought we're like So the police department is separate than town hall with the public records request. >> Yes. So we have to be separate from Laura because of the information we see. >> I understand that aspect. I mean more of
the the time involved. So what you're saying is somebody can make that request that you mentioned that they're going to ask for the whole year's worth of stuff and someone could spend like 30 hours doing a request and you have to give it to them for free >> and we have 10 days to give it to them and if we needed an extension we have to
write that into the secretary of public records. >> So somebody at the state came up with this brilliant idea. >> Yes. >> I mean I don't know what to say to that. That just sounds ridiculous. is so why doesn't same token town hall then just
give the whole thing away too why why are why if we're so committed to transparency why doesn't town hall just give 30 hours worth of stuff away for free >> I mean it just doesn't you can't have both I just think it's ridiculous that we can't recoup that money especially
look the increase on that is is lunacy >> yeah we've had to shift around like Kate Steer used to help a lot with license to carry packets now she's like fully engul olved in this >> like wasn't it like 4 hours before or something like that is what you >> It was not much at all. Yes.
>> Yeah. I I don't know. I have other questions but Karen was next. >> Oh no. >> Oh. All right. Um uh so without mentioning personnel because we're not going to be talking
about uh people's jobs at this point but your budget increase was 2.59%. >> Yeah. in total. Uh, so what would you do if you had to cut the 0.9% off that because
of a failed override or whatever else? Like because I was running the numbers as you were doing it and I'm like they're pretty close to two and a half and like um I know it's not perfect, but is there something that you could see to be able to get that number down
other than employees? I'm not going to ask to any staff members to be cutting people. I'm just Is there anything else? >> Honestly, Chris, we like the deputy mentioned, we level funded dispatch and the coalition last year with the raise with the way the inflation's going up.
That was a cut. Um we are we didn't put in the exact what it cost us for cruisers. We're still not anywhere near what it cost for cruisers. Um ammunition's going up. We have to have we have state mandates of how well we train, but we also don't want to become where we train at the bare minimum. We're always doing more. So, something
would have to come out. Could it be community policing, which we don't want to do cut back on community policing and reaching community outreach because that's how we have gotten the public behind us and trust and built all that. We spent years, we have spent years
building that trust with this community. And I I think we've achieved it. Um, is it perfect? No. There's still some people that don't trust the police, but I think we've really gotten the trust behind us. So, something would have to suffer. I >> we and we already we didn't mention it, but we cover a lot in our budget with
grants as well. Like our protective vest is covered half by a grant. Um, a lot of some of these community events are covered by a grant. The K9 is covered by a grant. So, we are trying to find as much as we can outside of the department. But like the chief said, um, we about 10 years ago, maybe more, um,
we didn't have any community service programs. All of a sudden, everything got cut rad. It was awful. we didn't interact with the community. It was very different. Um it wasn't motivating for the police officers. So, we wouldn't want to see that. I know if you make us come up with something, we'll figure it out. But >> in partnerships, we work with our
partnerships like the Women's League of Reading is extremely generous with keeping the RAD program running twice a year. The Trooper Trooper Tamaruchi Memorial Fund is going to be helping sponsor the youth academy. Um the senior citizens dinner that we just did, I know the town manager the other night
mentioned Harrows. Harrow's donated all the food to that. It cost us nothing. So, a lot of stuff we do that we work with partnerships that we don't touch the regular budget for. Um, the drone program, for example, we had some seizure money come in. We used the seizure money to pay for the drone program. So, it didn't cost the taxpayers anything. The two cup dogs
were donated to us >> and we had donations um helped cover a lot of that. And the vet when she was downtown didn't charge us for her services for the dogs. So, we've so those and our those are cuts. We try to kind of in fees. We looked at fees. we're at the max for state fees what
that we're allowed to charge because we're actually regulated by the state what we can and can't charge. So if >> so I I think for the I know you know to streamline the presentation I understand you can't include everything but what you just mentioned there would be helpful to summarize as well like
anticipated harrows was $1,000 or however much and like this way here you can present it to show that it is 2.59 but in reality it should be 2.7 >> or you know what I mean like >> um because there's obviously going to be
difficult conversations in the future. And the closer everybody is to two and a half, the better. And I mean, >> if you if you tell us if the my boss comes to me and says, "These are your marching orders, we'll make it work. If you call 911, we're coming." >> It just means I think we're my our fear
is we go from being proactive to become reactive and we go back to 10 years ago. And that's that's what we don't want. So, we get it. We understand. We'll follow the orders. We'll make it work. But it is it will affect something that we do. >> Is there any vehicles to sell that are
too old or how are we holding on to things? >> So we hold on to them as backups. And what I want to explain is so let's say we have a SWAT call out. Um we've had one back in the fall where a person was armed with a handgun was intoxicated. So the entire shift goes down surrounds out. We started back in the neighborhood
waiting for them SWAT to come in. We have to back fill to cover the tunnel reading. So Stonehen Wayfield and North Reading will come in and cover the town until we can back fill. When we backfill, they need cruises. So they're jumping into all the cruises that we keep or if a car goes to the shop, goes
has a recall. We had a year um we had five cruisers get recalled last year. >> They also all have like over 150,000 miles by the time we put them kind of like into a backup. >> And that's driving mileage. They usually have about 250,000 idle mileage sitting at a car crash running radar and stuff. So they're beat by the time we get rid
of those. We we don't get anything for them. Um a lot of times we give them to the GPW and they use them for spare parts to help replace some of the cars that are there and they basically strip them. >> Yeah. I'm just thinking more granular where we have to ensure and maintenance and like all these other hidden numbers
that may or may not be in your budget. It might be in the town's portion. >> Um but anything that we can >> we work very well with Mike Pontton who's the head who does the head mechanic over there does everything. when he comes to us and says this is end of life, we don't dump money into an end of life project. We try to keep a couple
of spares, but we if it's an end of life, we just get rid of it, so it's not costing the town money. We're very cognitive of that, but we do need some spares. >> Yeah. Thanks, >> I don't really have much to say, but thank you very much, and I love the presentation, and it's really nice to
see you in the community. Um, it was great and I appreciate all your efforts to try and get it down to 2.5 if you can. But >> thank you. Thank you, >> Karen. I think I saw Karen online. Do you have any questions or comments?
>> Yes, I do. My hands up. Can you see that? >> I can now. I could not before. >> Yeah. Thanks. Um, great. Um, yeah, I I appreciate the effort that went into this presentation. Um, and um, I know you folks do a lot of community outreach, which is um, terrific. And um,
I'm just going to echo some of the um, um, requests made earlier, I think. >> What was that? >> Oh, sorry. Echo was being difficult in the background. Ignore her. Um so heading into this challenging fiscal
um period where we are talking about the size of an operational override on top of these important capital projects that we've already committed to. I would agree with what my colleague said that it would be very helpful to understand the amount of community and grant
support that this budget is depending on already. I think that that is just very helpful because we're going to have an awareness and an educational process. So I would I would echo that request if we could and um so and and I was listening
carefully and I see the PR's request going up a lot and um you know so I sent went through town hall for a personal reason and apparently I made a really big one. So I got this letter back from our town clerk that's really big. We're not doing it. here's what you get or you
can pay for it. So, I don't know if Laura can help me with that because I was like, yeah, I definitely don't want to like spend a lot of money on this and I didn't and frankly I did not realize I was asking for so much. So, thank you. So, I don't know. I'll just throw it out
there. I'm not going to tell you how to do your jobs or pretend I understand all of this, but could there be a little more coordination with town hall to help to help you fend off PR unreasonable PR requests um just by frankly just telling
them how much it is going to cost them? Um but and then the other thought I had is that and and you all do come and see the select board and CPDC and um town meeting recently and there are like even events and I also see that you know your
schedules are up to 18our shifts. So, I'm just going to throw out there whether you know overtime is always something that's not completely predictable and perhaps could help us um stay within two and a half% or as best
we can. Um would it be possible because for some of the folks who do a lot of presenting to our boards and committees to have scheduling changes so that they're doing it they're you know their 18our shift or their long day is the same day they're presenting to the
select board. So I just I can address that one real quick if that's okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but um so we have like so when Lieutenant Jones comes in, he's actually not on patrol. So his job is to um deal with like building projects, traffic
traffic issues, that kind of stuff. That's his position. That's what his job is. Um contractually, his schedule is set. I can't change his schedule without negotiating with the contract and changing his schedule. So anybody, same thing with the traffic and safety officer. So when they come to meetings
outside the normal hours, contractually we have to pay them overtime. For me to change the schedule, we'd have to negotiate with the unions, open up the contract, and negotiate a schedule change with them. >> That's really helpful to know. So, so then I might suggest that the next time
that we go into contract negotiations, you know, you're able to say quite frankly, this is a position that is going to have some nighttime requirements. Let's put that into the negotiation. Is that fair? We can ask the union can say nope and then or yep
it's but going to cost you this much in raises. It's always a conversation but it depends on how willing the union is to work with us on that. We're very lucky with the three unions I deal with >> but that's always an issue. >> Yeah. And and we do see Lieutenant Jones a lot. So that's a perfect example.
Okay. No, thank you. I appreciate this. >> You're welcome. And as far as the public records request, Karen, I believe, and I could be speaking out of turn here, I we fall under slightly different with the public records request than she does. And I know from the state in the state secretary's office, we were given
guidance about what we can and can't charge for. If we could charge, trust me, we would be, but we fall under a different aspect than Laura does, and that's why we're not allowed to do the same as her. But again, we'll look into it to make sure, but it's that's we do fall under different regulations with them.
Yeah, I'm I'm not surprised about that either, I guess. But um yeah, you know, it's worth it. She's um she's great at, you know, or Yeah, I I would I would agree with Chris's statements that like but you can only do what you can do. So, fair enough. Thank you.
>> And I agree with Chris. It's ridiculous. I I've seen it over the years. It's I agree. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Well, thank you guys. I appreciate it. I appreciate all you do for the town. Um, I just wanted to touch some points. I love the youth academy. I think that's a
great way to get the kids, you know, involved with the police department, be comfortable with you guys, familiar faces. I know the officers are in the schools, but I think that's awesome. Um, the a couple questions I had on the PR, you said the law changed. Was the law
change with it took away the monetary charge? It took away the charge for the paper itself, which was like 10 cents a piece of paper plus the cost of the personnel that's doing it. >> Got it. Okay. >> Um, yeah. And I think that we do, we're a little different. If we we can't say
something's unreasonable. Anything we do, we have to write the secretary the exception and see what they tell us to do. >> And a lot of times, sorry to interrupt, deputy, we get appeals, too. When we say, "We're not giving you this because of this exclusion." They appeal right to the state secretary's office. They reach out to us. We then have to file why. And
it just and sometimes it creates more and more paperwork. >> I actually didn't even know that you could say a public record was unreasonable, but >> yeah, some things of it. >> Yeah, we have a certain exact list of exceptions and most of it doesn't Yeah. Allin anything we can accept.
>> An act of investigation is one of them. We're obviously not going to release on an act investigation, but >> Yeah. Got it. Um that's a pain and I'm sorry because that's just unnecessary and I'm the fact that the state did that is ridiculous. Um the police academy I
love that we're paying for it. Is that typical for most towns? >> Um yes. Um but we've also been very lucky just so about the past 14 hires. >> Yep. >> Uh 10 of them have been transferred from other agencies which has saved us the cost of the academy in the six months
they're gone a body for us. >> Got it. >> Um it's only we happen to find this perfect hire. This kid Jordan Reyes um who we all loved at the interviews. Perfect. Exactly. We're looking for Reading. Um he's our first Spanish speaking officer. Okay. >> So, we're thrilled to have him on. Um he was a great hire for us, but he needed
to go to the academy. >> Okay. >> Adam Elmore and Zachary Castigleon. The two recent hires. One was a London New Hampshire police officer. >> Oh, you're talking about the academy. Police Academy. >> No. Police Academy. >> Oh, I um >> um that one was a Georgetown police
officer that lived used to live in Reading that transferred over and Zach was lives in Reading as a Reading kid, but he back four years ago. He could only get a job up New Hampshire was commuting to London, New Hampshire and he has four years experience. He came down. >> Great. >> So, we've been very fortunate with that and we've been able to save a lot of
cost because our academy is six months long and the camp work before >> and sometimes like for Jordan, we hired him back in beginning of August, but the academy didn't start till October. >> So, we couldn't we didn't pay him or anything, but we offered him the job and we waited till the academy started. He'll graduate in March and then did two months of field training. So, he's not
going to count as a body to us until the end of May. Mhm. >> Again, we're fully staffed, >> however. >> Yep. >> And then, um, we do have one officer who's with the National Guard that's been deployed since July who the orders extended him through 12:31 of 2026.
>> Oh, wow. >> So, we're not going to see him for a full >> year >> year >> plus. Okay. Um, >> but yes, we do try to like when we can, but it's it's we used to have 100 people take the job. >> We're having five or six people put in for it now. Yeah. The first time we left
Civil Service, we had 500 people take our test. >> Yeah, exactly. $300. $3,000 is fairly minimal in the grand scheme of things. I was just trying to figure out if other towns do it. Um, will you guys be looking for any vehicles coming up in the future? >> Just the standard two we buy that's
already in the the budget every year. Every July one, we buy two and then we'll take the two oldest out of the fleet. Got it. >> And put them as backups. The two oldest backups >> will come out. Okay. That's why we do have a a very a significant plan with that. >> Got it. So the only thing that I think
that I would ask if we can look into and I'm not sure that there is a solution to this but is the overtime especially when it comes to events. So is the only time I assume if they're private events you charge. So it's just the town events
that are costing the biggest part of the increase of overtime. Is that what you're saying? >> Yeah. years ago, um if an event was run by the chamber, the chamber paid for it. >> Um but then a few years ago, the um town manager and council said they're kind of
town events, so you need to pay for them yourselves. So that was a big change for us. >> And it wasn't this town manager >> before that. And and again, a lot of it is union contracts. Like we can't >> and our shifts are so busy. We also used to be able to say, "Okay, we'll put one shift officer in the square for that
event." And then but now we can't even do that because they're so they go to call after call. So they have to be off patrol fully just for the detail. Now >> so when you say it's union contract are you saying that you can't charge or >> Oh no I'm sorry. That's like the officer's overtime itself. Like we can't
>> I think that I would be interested in having a conversation with town about that when it's for example when the chamber is running event and maybe it's maybe it's not the full cost maybe it's half the cost or something where the town and the police department isn't you
know holding the whole bag of what's owed. Um so maybe a conversation we could have and could >> it was a big change out of nowhere for us. Um, we were surprised by it, too. So, >> okay. I think that would be a conversation that's worth having. >> Yeah, we can talk about that. We always
look, we have those DRTs and and we asked, you know, if they could shoulder some of it. A lot of these are smaller nonprofits and it's it's too much. A larger nonprofit, you know, that would be something for sure that they could probably cover. >> Yeah. And and like I said, maybe it's
not uh the full cost, but I I think something's better than nothing. I mean, I don't want to see these events go away either because they're well attended and the residents like them, but I just feel like we need to figure something out because it seems like a big shift for you guys for the town. >> We can revisit >> and when we meet meet with them, we
we're very conscious of it. So, we try to have what the only what's necessary there. Okay. And we it's not like, oh, we're having this event. Let's have six cops there. Yeah. >> Because also it's their days off that they can order some coming in for this or sometimes we've been ordering in for it. >> Yeah. And that's
>> but it's hard too because we want to keep treating everybody the same. So it's like well how come you have to pay and you don't? So it's been complicated. I would say just real quick to that point is that um I think any events that are getting
sponsored by other people or local businesses or whatever that any organization like I know the chamber obviously gets sponsors for events but in theory they could just have an event every single week and this falls on you and then you see what
I mean like getting into a money-making operation. It never was like this before. >> But I could see maybe that being like the the catch in there that you know perhaps something could be >> I think if I don't want to quote if I think it was like well it's your town electrician it's your town DW so it's a
town event even though you're not the one actually putting it on. That was their thought process I think a few years ago. >> But how much are we talking to cover events like say the the tree lighting? Are we talking that was five grand 10 grand? Um, a little we had four
officers, so it would be under 3,000 for that one. Like probably 2,000. >> But like the fall street there, that's about five or six officers. So that's more like $4,000. >> All right. >> Yeah, I think it's a conversation worth having at least.
>> Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. I don't know. Just confirming. Oh, I think Karen has her hand up. >> Sorry. Thank you. Um yeah I so I wasn't aware that um sort of the capital planning for the police vehicles are two per year. So that was um interesting to
learn and and um uh y'all have been very proactive with putting hybrids and electric cars into service. I don't know if you have an electric. I know you've been proactive with the hybrids. So, we are now a green communities community and every year we can apply for grants
up to $250,000 and vehicles. Um, if you can make it work work um because your vehicle is more specialized, vehicles are absolutely reimburseable under this grant program. It's just a matter of but but I don't think and I don't think
you'll be the first in Massachusetts. But, but I but anyway, I just throw it out there again. there's this pool of money that we have and there are spring and fall application cycles every year now. Vehicles, vehicles, vehicles. Um so
that'd be great and and and thank you for already, you know, really putting a lot of time and energy into um converting your fleet as it is. >> We we do have two electric vehicles for the parking enforcement officer and the coalition. So anybody that's not a response, we are trying to uh get an
electric vehicle if possible. >> Yeah. Right. And and and I know the issue was a couple years ago was like maybe we you weren't seeing um electric vehicles in mainstream. I don't know how you categorize it, but just you know
that's an easy one and it is definitely valid. So if things are changing and you guys can make it work, that's an option. >> And just so you know, our cruises run 247. So shift >> is on the road, evening shift comes in, evening shift jumps in, they take that
same cruiser out, midnight shift comes in, they take that same. So they're driven 247. >> So this and what I've seen hybrids, I don't you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but you can find you can easily go into the green communities website, just look at what's getting approved. I don't think hybrids are off the table, but but
you guys have like heavy duty vehicles, but so, you know, I' I'd diver def defer to you, but I don't think it has to be exclusively electric. >> No. And even the hybrids have been tough to get, Karen. I'm just going to be honest with you, and the two we've have have spent a lot of time in the shop. Um
cuz the because we run them 24/7. Um they take a beating with the the radar, the radio, the emergency lights. They take a beating. They spent significant amount of time at the shop and outside the DPW because it's outside of the DPW's expertise. They've been sitting at the dealership and they're also it can
take up to a year and a half, two years to get a hybrid in sometimes. So sometimes we've had to grab a gas car and I've said this to the Lord openly in the public before start looking. We're going to do it when we can. It's just sometimes I can get a gas car in three months >> that's not in the shop and I can wait a
year and a half for a hybrid and the hybrids have been shown to go into the shop a lot more. >> Yes, they have. Yeah. Well, they'll get better. But, you know, we had an interesting discussion last night about the trials and tribulations of getting a firet truck and and we didn't even talk about like hybrid or electric, but anyway, I just wanted to make sure
you're aware of it. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thanks. pulled a great warm. It was freezing in here last night and it was really warm.
>> How are you? >> Good evening. Good evening. Not sure how to follow that. Can I pass my turn with someone else trying to follow it? >> Drop the microphone if you feel better. All right. Um well, welcome. How's everybody doing? >> Good. >> All right. Uh glad to be here and um
we'll uh we'll go through we'll go through the presentation. So, what I'm hoping to do um a little different than last year is to really kind of uh dig into the budget a little bit so you can really get a good breakdown, get a feel for what's what's included in the budget. So, that's kind of what I'm
hoping to get get to by the end of this. Um all right. So uh so first of all uh much like the police um you know our primary mission is to protect lives, property, the environment. How we get there is radically different though. Um we use uh basically four major
functions. Uh we have a fire suppression function, emergency medical services, uh fire prevention. Fire prevention is very important. The the injury that doesn't happen or the fire that doesn't happen is the best option. So fire prevention is critical. And then we uh as as the emergency manager uh management director
for the town uh we're involved with that. So major disaster preparation and things like that. So that's kind of the four buckets that what our work falls into. Uh so it's much more than just the big red trucks and the fires. It's a it's much more robust environment that we work in. Um you know we deal with
fires, hazards, chemicals, carbon monoxide incidents, medicals, car accidents, alarm activations. There's a long list of things that we deal with. Um, a lot of departments, some departments have even changed their names from fire departments to like all hazard departments because if it's not a law enforcement issue, then it's kind of
ours. >> So, it's it's it can be a big bag. It can be a big bag to deal with. >> Fortunately, we have a lot of very talented people that bring a lot to the table and uh can help deal with that. So, this next slide here, um, just want to call out that, you know, we're not adding any new positions this year. We
still have our 51 uniform people. The chart on the right kind of shows the breakdown. There's four there's four groups uh scheduled to have 12 people. Uh 12 firefighters on the group. Uh we have our fire prevention officer in the front office with us and then assistant chief Kio and I in the front office with an admin assistant. So that's kind of
the breakdown of the department. Now what I thought might be interesting to do is in the past, you know, last year when I did this, I told you we got 12 people in the group. That probably doesn't mean a lot if I tell you 12 people. So, I thought we'd just spend a few minutes kind of talking about how the distribution of personnel are on the
apparatus and the trucks and kind of talk about minimum manning and a little bit how that and how that works out. So, so you're aware the collective bonding agreement has a 10 person minimum 10 firefighter minimum per day is the way it's required and
uh Monday through Thursday. So, Monday through Thursday during the day shift so our 24-hour shifts are divided into a day and a night shift. So 7:30 to 5:30 is our day shift and 5:30 on the overnight to 7:30 in the morning is our night shift. So Monday through Thursday,
we have a fire prevention officer that works the day shift. And currently in the contract, the fire prevention officer um is counted towards shift strength. And as we run through this, you'll see there'll be a time that there'll actually be nine firefighters on that apparatus. And that's only
Monday through Thursday during the day shift. And as you go through these slides, I'm really going to focus on what what these days look like. Um, what I also want to just kind of point a little bit is during the same time, this Monday, well, Monday through Friday, five days a week, but these dayshift, this is actually the busiest time for
us. It's the highest call volume. Well, 60% of our our responses occur during that day shift. So, take weekends out of it, take nights nights out of it. 40 hours a week roughly or 50 hours a week is uh most of our time most of our
calls. So what I'm showing on this slide right here is just you can see kind this is this is what our this is kind of what our department looks like out of the main street station. We run a Tahoe with our command car with our captain in the car. We have an engine, a pumper truck with the water. We have a ladder truck and uh a transporting ambulance. And out
of our Wingman Street station we have also another pumper truck. So on moving street there's always three firefighters, a lieutenant and two firefighters over there. That's the piece when you hear multi- alarm fires and we're going mutual aid to other departments. The minimum staffing you
can send mutual aid is three personnel and that's for safety reasons and the ability to actually get work done. Okay. So when we get we get a minimum of three. When we give we get a minimum of three. So our W street station that truck always has three on it. That's our piece that will go out of town when there's a large incident. Now, out of
Main Street, um, if we were fully staffed, so we had all 12 personnel working, we'll have a captain in the car, three firefighters on the engine, three firefighters on the ladder, and two in the ambulance. What I'll just call out is a yellow zero. Uh, unfortunately, in 2025, we achieved that
0% of the time. Now, that that happened because we were down personnel. We had a number of retirements, and hiring has become difficult. I'll leave it. I'll open up and say that it's it was been difficult. So, we have not had 12 people. We currently do have now one
group of 12 people assigned. Uh we have a second one that will be getting to 12 people when the our young hire is out of the academy in January. So, we only have two open slots left. So, we're doing a lot better. We're gaining ground. Um but unfortunately 2025 it never looked like
this. Next slide, please. So, 20% of the time during the day, this is what it looked like. We had 11 people working. So we have three people on both engines. Two people on the ladder, two on the ambulance and one one on the command car. This this is you know this third person on the engine just have a quick
conversation is an important position that you know the goal is to get to the point where you always have three people on the engine. If you think about what the job of that engine is, they have to show up, hook up to a hydrant and stretch a hose line into a building. Now, if anyone here has ever washed
their car and tried to drag the guard the garden hose around the tire of the car, what happens to the garden hose? It gets caught. Now, try and drag an inch and 3/4 line through a house around a corner up the stairs. It takes a lot of firefighters to move that line. And with
three firefighters, you have one that stays on the engine because they have to operate all the dials and make sure the water comes out. And that's two firefighters, one at the front and one that's going back and forth and back and forth. It's a brutal job, but making sure that hose gets to move forward so we can put water on the fire. So, this
is why that third person is just so important and this is why our goal would be to strive to get here. Unfortunately, this year 2025, only 20% of the time we had that. Okay, our minimum man a minimum staffing is 10. So, vacations, sick time, injuries, all of that. It
takes it takes away from that. So, 20% of the time we got that. Next slide, please. So, this is what we look like with 10 people. 10 uh 10 firefighters working and this is about 70 72% of the time we we were at this which which is which is pretty good. This puts our commander our
incident commander in the car. Um having the incident commander in the car is is is important. This allows that person to show up and be in that immediate big picture command function which adds to efficiency. It adds to accountability.
It adds to safety. It it allows better if you say the word troop as in military better troop movement and preparation. It's a it's a critical position. So this is what we look like about 72% of the time. Um when we get this one of the things we have to do though if you have a fire is the two people on the
ambulance down there hopefully they're in town and not transporting. Hopefully we'll assume they're in town. They then get paired up with that engine because again there's two people on that engine. One of them has to stay with that engine. Now the other one has to pull that big hose line all by themselves. So
now what happens is we lose a whole unit to get a task done. Now they can't be tasked for search for ventilation for a second hose line. So staffing gets really kind of it gets really changes with just that one position not being filled. It really reduces some of our
efficiency. Next slide please. The last one for the manning here is this is what it looks like when we get down to nine. Uh so under the current contract the day officer is counted as I said during the day. So if we have enough people off that that we get to
this point we can now we will take that captain out of the car put them on that engine. So we have two on the engine, two in the ladder, two in the M1, three on a mutual aid engine. And that's what our staffing look like. So we just talked about efficiency. You can imagine what this efficiency now looks like because really that captain they have to
still stand back. That person other firefighter has to still operate the pump. And now we have to wait for the animals to come hopefully they're in town to drag that hose line or do other things. So staffing gets a little can be uh you know initial in the initial aspects of a fire staffing can be really
tricky for us. All right, next slide, please. There we go. All right, let's let's dig a little bit into what the budget looks like. So the numbers I'm going to be showing you now and the percentages are going to be based off of if the projected or the requested budget is is proposed. is the FY27 budget. So the
total budget will be uh $6,818,000 almost $8181 $119,000 and this is the breakdown of what our budget looks like. So 8 89% of the the budget comes from union salaries from the collective buyer agreement and
is regulated by that. Uh 7% of that number comes out of non-union salaries and 4% of that number is our expense budget. And we're going to dig into our expense budget now a little bit. Next expense slide, please. All right. So, this is our expense budget. And I'm
going to further break this. Oh, so if approved, the expense budget for this year would be 247,000 almost $248,000 for the fire department. Now, if we break that down, $31,000 of that, that is actually contractually owed money to
the firefighters for their clothing allowance. They get a clothing allowance. So if their uniform gets ripped, torn, damaged in some way, it gets replaced. Okay, that's so that money that can't touch that. That has to stay every year because they have that's
obligated to them. The EMS $159,000 that is what it costs to run our advanced life support program. That $159,000 covers whether it's our supplies, it covers our fees to our licensing fees,
our association with the medical medical facilities, you name it. It has to do with the EMS program. That's that $159,000. And that that's what's required to run it. And then the the red slice there, the 50 uh $58,000 I'm calling that non
EMS. That's kind of where I actually have get to make some decisions on what gets spent. All right, this is what pays for new firefighters are hired to outfit them with their their structural turnout gear. That cost is about $8,000. They also get about another $1,500 worth of
uniforms when they get hired. So, every time I hire them, I'm about $9 to $10,000 just to just to un outfit them to get them ready. And that all comes out of that money. Piece of equipment breaks comes out of that money. our fees that go to being part of the metro fire
community and the Essis County community that helps get us our mutual aid when we have large incidents comes out of that money. So there's a lot that comes out of that $58,000 and it's just a small it's just a small part of the budget. Um next slide.
I just wanted to show you here just percentage wise what that means. So 64% of the expense budget goes to the EMS program. 30 uh 23% goes to this the non-EMS and 13% is uh promised off to the clothing allowance for the firefighters. Next slide. And just as
far as if we look at the whole budget, so if you look at the whole $6.8 million, less than a percent of of of what that budget is is what I get to spend on outfitting the firefighters and repairing things and buying new equipment if tools lost or gas meter's broken or whatever it is. It's less it's
less than a percent. And that 2.33% is what funds our very successful um advanced life support program. So we get we get a lot of bang for the buck out of that. Next slide, please. So here's kind of the budget summary. So
you can see the first column there's what was in F FY26 and then second column is FY27. Third column shows you the difference the differences and uh the percentages there. If you roll those percentages up, it's it's a 4.01% 01% total change FY 26
to 27. We're going to we're going to talk about how we get there. Uh the union salaries, all those increases are per the collective binding agreement and then there's an increase a request to increase the overtime budget and I'll get to that in a slide on its own. Um the non-un salaries that includes a
1.25% colar and steps and uh we're going to get into the expense expense increases again in a few slides. So next slide please. Overtime. So, I put that up there. But truth be told, every administrator can't stand
overtime. Overtime is not something that we really enjoy. It's hard to predict and it's it's the b it's the bane of our budgeting system. Um, so what what I'm ask I'm requesting this year is our increase from $530,000 in light item to
$600,000. So, when I came into this position, I started looking at the budget, looking at past budgets, and trying to grasp wrap my head around what's been going on. Um I realized a few different things. So first of all in FY28 so the end of FY27 end of this budget per the
collective volume agreement that day officer that's counted will no longer be counted towards that 10th position. That's really good for our operational needs. It hurts it hurts the budget though just a little bit because that means if that 10th spot is open, we have
to hire for it instead of being able to slip that person into it. So, it's going to equal an increase in overtime. And some uh some numbers that have been crunched in the uh when we're thinking about this is it could be anywhere between $50 and $80,000 of an increase that that's what that line item is going
to cost by making that move. So, part of this piece of this increase is we're preparing for this change coming up um at the beginning of FY28. Um another fact is since FY22, the overtime budget has only increased 5%.
Whereas the base salary of firefighters, so base salary, not including premium pay and and some of the things in the contract, has increased by greater than 17%. So the cost, excuse me, the cost of overtime has gone up 17%, but the budget's only gone up 5%. And then since
FY15, seven out of 10 budget cycles, we've required a transfer of funds because that line's been underfunded. So, I had a conversation with Sharon about this because one of my goals was I want to minimize coming back in April looking for more money and I want to try and get us get
us right up front and try and take care of some of these things I just talked about. And working with Sharon, um she believes that this increase in the overtime is reasonable and it will keep the overall townside budget at the at where we want to be. It's not going to
put us over that. So, she believed that this is a reasonable um increase and and would fit within the big picture when you're done listening to everybody's presentations here. Um, what else did I want to say? I think that's it. So, next slide, please.
Um, we can probably jump over this because I think we beat up pretty good, but that was just showing what it looks like once a day officer isn't counted back to 10 people. So, let's go to the next slide in the essence of time here. So, let's talk about the expenses. So, for the most part, we're level funding all the expenses. I have two requests.
Um, the first one is to increase the fire ambulance service line item by $2,000. We're going to dig into that a little bit. Basically, that includes our service plan. So, our some of our equipment is regular maintenance, our heart monitors, our stretchers. They do a reg regular preventative maintenance
on them. And we pay for a plan. So, any repairs they make, it's pretty much paid for itself. because if we had to pay for each repair and each visit, it gets very expensive. And also like our medical service affiliation with the doctor. And then the other line item here is the ambulance billing. Um we had them back
in August, I think it was August, we met, we talked about bringing up the ambulance fees. We've done that. I'm going explain more about that, but that needs an increase to pay the extra revenue costs. So we'll dig into that in a minute. So those are the two line items. Next slide, please.
So, as far as the ambulance service fees in FY24 and FY25, we exceeded that line item. You can see the budget was 26,000 in FY24 and it cost us almost 33,000. FY25, the budget was 28,000, it cost us almost 31,000. Um, this was driven by uh
the requirements by OEM. So, the office of emergency medical services at the state level, they tell us what we have to do for licensing. They charge us fees. They tell us what we have to do um to have our have our license. They mandate equipment. They're constantly mandating new equipment that wasn't like
so we just for instance had to and it's not a bad thing but they mandated that we had to get a different piece of equipment for carrying carrying children. You know that had a cost associated with it. Another one that's coming on this year is uh we now have to get what's called a clea waiver. So we do blood glucose testing. They consider
now now considered a mobile laboratory. So, we have to now get a clear way for which there's a fee associated with that in order to continue to do the blood glucose testing to test blood people's sugars. So, we're not seeing any decreases, only seeing increases. It's the same story you're going to hear in the next two nights that you're
listening to this. Um, but I'm looking for just $2,000 increase in that one line item. Next one. All right. Ambulance revenue billing fees. So, quick quick review. We've talked about this. The revenue goes back to the general fund. The fees come out of my expense budget. It's a 4% fee
based on the revenues collected. Okay. Um, you know, if I don't have the right money to pay that 4%, that $57,000 that I have to operate other stuff, I have to pull money out of that to pay the 4% ambulance fee. So, it's really important that we get this funded funded properly.
So, um, I put some billable trip numbers up there. FY24, we went we had 1574 uh, ambulance trips that were build for. FY25 was 1,624 and um so I'm estimating we're going to be at about se 1700 trips. Um when I
built this slide I only had the September data. We started the new billing in September and the average per trip went from $600 to $823 in revenue collected. And you can see what that what that would mean there means that means an increase of about $400,000 more
in revenue. Um, since I made this slide, uh, the new data came out for October. So, the average between September and October is actually, um, it's closer to the 723, which is in the black on the right hand side. So, we are looking at about a $250,000 $300,000 increase in
revenue overall. Uh, which is good news. We're hoping to hoping to see that when we made this change. um won't really know the full thing until we get multiple months though because months really fluctuate with how the payments come in. So, it's a little early. So, what I'm asking for is $17,000. Now,
$17,000 would get us covered um if we see basically a $200 change per trip, which is very potential. So, that's where the 17 $17,000 request is coming from just to cover that. The good news is the rest of the money is still going to the general fund. I'm just I just got
to cover that fee. Next, next slide, please. All right. Grants. So, we have supplemented our expense and overtime costs on on some of the projects and things we do using federal
grants for many years. As an example, here in FY25, we had almost $23,000 in grants. Uh it was for equipment. We were able to use firefighter buy some firefighter uh structural gear for some new hires and replace some other gear and and replace some aged equipment that
needed to be aged that wasn't safe to use anymore. And we're able to pay for these grants and not have to use you know town expense budget which is very helpful. And as far as safe our safe program with the ch children our senior safe with our with our seniors and the EMPG that's our emergency management
grant is what that is. Um, these are generally used to offset salary costs, so to save the overtime. And you can see that's about $14,000 or so that was was offset using these these grants. Um, I'm going to kind of rip off the band-aid and go into the bad news on grants right
now. Nothing definitive has come down. Be crystal clear on that. But I am getting messaging from two different fronts. From the fire chief's front and from the e emergency management fronts. Federal grants. We just don't know. First of all, is
there going to be funding? Not crystal clear. How much is going to be funding? Not crystal clear. And we're hearing that there are going to be some that the the current administration is going to put in some agreements that the community will have to agree with to
even be eligible for the grant. I don't know what those are going to be, but there's a lot of fear around them and whether or not the community is going to be willing to agree with them or not. And if we don't, then we wouldn't even be eligible federal grants at that point. It's a little scary. Um, but I I don't
really know. I don't have a lot of information on that, but I felt it really important that I I give you guys that information because we have augmented our budget for years on grants. There may not be no more grants for I don't know couple years or who knows who knows. So, that that's a
little bit of a problem. We're okay for right we're okay for right now. Um, but it could have some effects effects down the line. Um, so just two more slides to go. really really one slide. Next slide. Um I just want to end with with real success for us. Um we did get the
assistance of firefighter grant from FEMA. We awarded almost $85,000 in federal funding and required a 10% match. And uh we began this program back in March of 2025. Well, we concluded concluded the delivery of the program the week of October 20th with a
in-person oneweek training session. Um this was really exciting for us. This program was uh a week-long program. It had both classroom parts to it. It had in-person parts of it. We were down at Camp Curtis. We actually were stretching lines and doing simulated fires. And the
whole intent of the program was to modernize how we do our incident command system. So, how we do our command and control of incidents. And what this new method is going to do for us is really going to improve our command and control of these large incidents. And it's going to increase our communication, our
accountability. When we do that, it's going to improve how we use our resources. It's going to include it's going to increase the efficiency of the resources. So, what does that all mean? It means quicker actions. So, that can lead to improved survivability for our victims. It's going to lead to quicker
fire control, which that all says lots of good things when we get quick quick fire knockdown. and it improves the overall uh safety of our firefighters and and the people uh in the area on the scene. So, this program was a was a really big program. It revolutionized
how we do things. It's not going to just be it won't just affect fires if we have other large incidents, hazard material incidents or large car accidents. It's going to change how we run these things. So, efficiency is going to be better. Accountability is going to be better. It's um it's it's a really it's really big exciting thing uh for the
department. Next slide, please. And I just I just want to end because for me this this this whole this whole grant was was one word. It was an opportunity. And the gentleman that taught the course or helped create the course is Chief Anthony Castro. And I loved this quote. We must rethink how we
think. So so to be ready to challenge yourself and your own assumptions. And what this program did is it challenged all my leaders and my firefighters. Firefighters hate change. Have you heard that before? There's two things we hate. We hate the way it is and then we we
hate change. So it's just it doesn't you know. So but my leadership staff they embraced this opportunity. They grabbed it. They ran with it and they are absolutely carrying the ball down the field and this is going to have a resounding effect on the department moving forward. So this I'm I'm so super
excited about this and I just wanted to take a few minutes to share that. And with that that's my last slide and I'll be happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Anyone want to start with questions? >> I'm good. >> Chris,
>> thanks Melissa and uh thanks to you Nelson. I guess my similar question really doesn't apply to the percentages for you because yours is primarily all staffing for the for o going over two
and a half%. So you were at like four and some change or something I think I saw >> one or something. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, so it's not really So I guess in that aspect you can't cut people out because obviously you already went over the the metrics on the fire truck and
all that. So um, how does all the permits that you um, you know, the fees from that, where does that go into this? Like the town gets the money, but that's not being offset in your budget. Meaning you might
have all these, you know, the the salary employees that you have on there is is significant and the increases, but they're generating revenue that is not being shown as part of your budget. Correct. >> Yeah. That that money goes back to the
general fund. So it just helps with that free cash regeneration, but it doesn't we don't have an enterprise account or any type of account that it comes back to us to be used. >> Yeah. So, I wonder if we can find out just um for future and forward thinking,
you're over by four. You know, it's you're at 4.01% whatever you mentioned. You're clearly over two and a half. Everyone's going to be um but you're generating numbers which would knock your 4% number down between the permits,
the collections you're doing, all that. I think it would be helpful to know what those numbers are. You know what I mean? So it can show that while your salaries might be high, you're generating money in other places that's not being >> Yeah. When I met you to change the bread the budget fees back, uh, excuse me, the
um permit fees, I'm going to talk off the top of my head a little bit. We're collecting just over, I think, $15,000 in perma fees a year. Our permit fees aren't high. And on we we do a good number of permits, but it's not like the building department. Um the changes we made when I ran them against the same
exact permits with the new permit fees, we were going to jump up to almost 30,000. So we're just about double our permit fees. Those changes are in effect now. They're made. You guys voted on them and so they're there. Um it's a little early to know what that actual effect is going to be. You know, obviously the number of permits can fluctuate. So that's
>> it's more of the the ambulance portion as well because that's significant. That was what one and a half million or 1.25 I think I saw up there. >> Yeah. So we collected $975,000 last year. Get take 4% of off of that. Take 40 grand, you know, as far as
paying for it. So about 920,000 9 or 30,000 went into the what when is the general fund for for regeneration or free cash with the changes. I'm I'm conservatively and I'm pretty confident that we're going to be at about 1.25, I think, is where we're going to be. I'm
hoping a little bit more, but about two a quarter of a million dollar more. You >> see where where I'm getting at? If your salary budget was 6.7 million or whatever it is >> minus 1.2 like you just mentioned that is a significant hit which would reduce
your overall number like you're going oh you're going from from 4.01% or whatever you have knocking a million dollars off you're probably going down to three maybe even lower than that. So, it's just another I
don't want to say you it's just another way of of phrasing it to show that like I said, you're generating revenue beyond this that's not being allocated in here. So, while your expenses might be high, it's not reflected in the overall total.
So, I think it would be good to see what those numbers are because I'm just throwing it out there. But 6 million, losing a million off that is is it's got to be at least a percent and a half. >> Yeah. Yeah, the expense budget overall, the increase that I'm I'm asking for this year, it's 7.6% when you just look
at the percentage of that that expense budget, but a huge chunk of that 17,000 out of the 19 is just to pay for that the extra money we're going to collect. So, we have a net positive overall. I need to shift some of that money back to my budget to pay for it. >> So, really the only increase is just
that $2,000 I'm asking for. >> Thanks. >> Thank you, Karen. Anything? uh you don't have enough money. Like police and fire to me is very important. Um I was going to ask some of the similar questions to
him. Um I was a little confused about the 12 people and the nine people and how many do we really have and are you going to hire more people? Do you know what I mean? Like I got confused when you were saying >> let's see if I can give you the cliff notes. So the cliff notes is that we
have 10 firefighters on duty riding, you know, riding the big red trucks 24/7 except when that day officers working. We drop down to nine riding the big red trucks. The 11th and 12th person, um, we can have up to two people on vacation
at a time. We limit the number of people. We can have up to two people on vacation. So even with a fully staffed shift to 12 with two people on vacation, particularly during the summer, that's pretty common. We're running at 10 all all summer. >> Okay. >> So the 11th and 12th is when we have
when when don't have injuries and we don't have people on vacation. So it happens but it's not as often. You know I in an ideal if you said I got a whole bunch of I found a pot of gold for you. Here you go. Ideally would go to an 11 person minimum and that would put the third person on the engine all the time.
Okay. There's a significant cost to that obviously, but in that in an ideal world, that would get us to a really good place for a community of size. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Sure, >> Karen. I see your hands up. >> Um Yep. Thank you. Um Oh, I love your
graphics. Thank you. It's good to see um firefighters. Um you know, I hear I hear where you're coming from. It's going to be the same story with every department. I get it. Um but um what caught my attention was um the ambulance being
classified as a mobile laboratory laboratory glucose testing and 2K um and you know that sounds like something that could come from the hospital fund and um um so I don't remember who the select
board liaison is but I don't know if Matt and the liaison could or if anybody has talked to the trust fund folks um about helping to fund that for the the coming year. That seems like a a wonderful use of that trust fund that is
growing a lot and not getting spent on anything related to hospitals for reading residents. >> Yeah, something we can look into. We you know I have I have I have another hope that I wanted to look into. I guess I'll just say it in public is so we have our SIM mannequin where it's a high fidelity
simatic. It's used in hospitals. We do um high acuity, low occurrence training on that. So the calls we don't see all the time and we can simulate. It can cry, it change colors, they they put the heart rate on it, they can give us simulated medications. It's it's it's a wonderful tool and really um kind of
sucks you into and gets you thinking like it's it's really real. Um it's a wonderful tool. It's an expensive tool. It's going to be coming up on end of life. Do you remember when? >> Next year. >> Next year. Next year. So, I was actually hoping to have a conversation about that hustle fund to see if that would be an option to replace that so I don't have
to look for capital. So, yeah, it's it's it's a critical tool to maintaining our skills. >> Well, I don't know what when you say year, I don't know if we're talking fiscal year, calendar year. I mean, but but both of these items, I mean, I just Yeah, we should that I I don't even
remember what the numbers are. It's a couple million. It's three million. I don't I it's it's insane that that is sitting there. and um you know for these small things and somehow we managed to shake some funds loose during co and I
I'm really asking that we um work with those folks who I'm sure want to um ensure that people that the funds get used for what they were designated for would would are going to be open to um requests. >> Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I'll I'll be sure to that and I will
work on that. Thank you. Yeah, I absolutely agree with Karen. I think that fund is actually way up there. I think it's even more than a couple million. >> There's a lot. >> Yeah. So, I I would love to try to get some money out of there. Um, but thank you for tonight and your presentation. I appreciate it. Um, just a couple
questions. When you say you're um none repairing things, $58,000, is that like maintenance on trucks, building maintenance? Do you have to pull it from that? >> Oh, great question. Uh, no. The building maintenance is that's taken care of by facilities. >> Okay. >> And truck maintenance for the most part
is taken care of uh by the DPW garage by by Chris Crew. Okay. >> So, for the most part, we do have to do like radio maintenance and some small items, but they tear most of that. That's probably the only reason why I can survive with the with the 50. >> Well, that's why I asked I can't imagine those trucks are inexpensive to fix.
>> I was just talking to my friend who's chief in North Andover. I think he has a $110,000 repair budget and it's not enough for his trucks. >> Yeah, that's exactly kind of. We can imagine the relation of that. So, >> yeah. >> Okay. Um, and then for overtime question, do you think your overtime
numbers would go down if you were had more firefighters? Like, is some of you are overtime because you need to have so many guys on trucks and at the firehouse or is it for other reasons? So, the majority of our
overtime, and I I don't know the percentage off of my head, but you know, I'd guess as high as 96% of our overtime has all to do with st just staffing the trucks. >> Yeah. >> Um for generally, again, 96% of the time, if we're doing details, so if we're doing a detail work, uh that's
maybe if like uh what we call hot work permits. So, someone's doing some cutting and welding, that's paid by that's paid by the person that's get we're getting hired. So, our details are almost always getting um reimbured the town. So that's not coming out of the overtime, you know, out of the overtime
town's overtime account. So that this is just staffing of the big red trucks. >> So doesn't it make sense to hire a couple more firefighters? If you can I know you're saying it's not that easy right now, but would it would it would would it be less expensive for everyone
if we just had more firefighters? >> It's it's it's a very it's a tough balance, right? It's a tough balance. So I don't know, you know, if we kept these I'll just going to talk out loud pitbull. If you keep it at a 10 person minimum, we go to 13 person groups. So now there's three people above the minimum.
>> I imagine that that would have some sort of an effect on on overtime. And it would have a good effect. Average firefighter costs $100,000. So now we're talking $400,000 in salaries. I don't know that it saves $400,000. >> Okay? >> You know, you know what I mean? So it's
it's close. Um, I'd certainly kind of take a take a good look at that and and we could have a future discussion on that. See where that falls. >> Yeah, I definitely think it'd be worth it because if we could save money and it makes sense just to hire a couple more men or women, then it might, you know,
solve a problem and maybe save us a little money. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Um the other things that you mentioned that you're asking for um money and are to me seem like they're just line items that were typically underfunded.
>> It seems like year over year you're just coming back to ask. So in my opinion it's just that you're just asking for maybe proper funding on those items. And when it comes to the ambulance billing I mean it for me it's just you're bringing in all the money and you just need to
pay the fees. I I mean I can't even I don't see how anyone can question you on the fees that you have to pay with the you know income that's coming in. Um it looks like this year you the department besides the um FEMA program it looks like you guys got about 37,000 in
grants. Does that sound right just from your >> Yeah. Yes. I think >> is that typical or is that you know I don't know what a year is that? >> No that's pretty that's pretty typical. So those those grants that I showed, I don't know if you can flip back to that grant slide. >> Yeah, it wasn't too far back, I don't think.
>> Yeah, but it was it was more towards the end. It was more towards the end than the beginning. >> Yeah, it was um very close to the end. >> Yeah. So, yeah. So, those grant those those four bulleted grants right there. Those we've we've they're competitive grants. They're not guaranteed, but
we've been successful for I don't even know how long, as long as I can remember, we've been very successful that they've been available and gotten those grants and be able to use those. Um, like the MPG grant, I just had the meet uh just had a meeting with them that they're supposed it's supposed to come out. The window is
going to be really short. They're super tightening now what it could be used for. Um, everybody's kind of throwing their hands up because I think this grant cycle is going to go by, not going to be able to do much with it because the thing with the grants is if it's a short grant cycle, you have to put in for it, get it, once it's awarded, you
have to get all the services in place, have all the payments in place or you're not you don't get you don't have the money. So, if I start a project in January and they're talking about it only being maybe available to the end of March, so three months, a piece of equipment or if you can't get it in that
three months, >> Yeah. then you're on the hook for the money. So, it's there's a gamble there. I wouldn't want to stock something that I it would would fail. >> So, it's gonna be it's going to be tricky. >> Okay. >> Yeah, it's unfortunate. >> Those are all my only questions. Thank you so much. Does anyone else have any
questions for Karen? Do you have anything else? >> Um Karen Herrick, no. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thanks everybody. Good evening. >> Good evening. >> My name is Adi Solar, public health
director for the town of Reading. I'm here to present the health department's proposed budget for fiscal year 2027. Next slide, please. The health department's mission is to protect and promote the health and well-being of our residents and
visitors. Um, as a result, our key responsibilities include, but are not limited to, one of tracking and responding to public health complaints. Two, leading public health activities related to disease outbreaks and surveillance. Three,
administering vaccinations. four, managing establishment permitting and inspections. And five, uh, collaborating with federal, state, and local agencies to coordinate public health responses.
Next slide, please. Our department in conjunction with other town departments and community partners provide a variety of public health programs to our residents um throughout the year. Um, some of the programs include bringing Dana Fers mamography
van to the town of Reading and also the 2020 vision I care van to our community. Next slide, please. We provide multiple hearing screenings and vaccine clinics to our residents
year round. Next slide. We collect unexpired diabetic supplies and medical supplies for donation year round. Next slide. And we host multiple blood pressure
screenings and collect used shops year round. Next slide. Our department has four full-time employees. We have the health director. We have the public health nurse, the health inspector, and the administrative
assistant. We also employ the expertise of independent contractors such as the weights and measures inspector, the tobacco compliance inspector, the animal control officer,
and the pest control contractors. Next slide, please. Here's our proposed budget summary for fiscal year 2027. This chart includes the salaries budget
and the expenses budget combined. We're looking at a net budget increase of 2.62% in the amount of $14,053. Next slide, please. Looking at the salaries budget independently, uh you can see that we've
proposed a budget increase of 3.66% which is equivalent to $13,800. This is consistent with the fiscal year 2027 salary projections and cost of living adjustment.
So this is not like we're not really asking for this. It's it's projected. Next slide, please. Um looking at the expenses budget independently uh you can see that we've
proposed a budget increase of 0.16% which is equivalent to $253 mainly due to the increase in mosquito control expenses. Next slide please.
So in summary for fiscal year 2027 we're proposing the following. a $253 increase in the mosquito control line item in the expenses budget and a one and a $13,800 increase to the salaries budget to
reflect projected salaries and cost of living adjustments. And um as a result, we have a total combined net budget increase of 2.62% in the amount of $14,53. Next slide, please.
concludes my presentation. If you have questions, >> anyone have any questions? Go ahead. >> Can you uh Who's controlling the screen? I'm sorry. Is that Maddie? >> It's Jackie. >> Jackie. Jackie, can you go back to the staffing uh few slides back all the
positions? >> I think it's 52. Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. So, these are all full-time position. Oh, sorry. These are all full-time positions a day. No, we only have four full-time positions. The health director, the admin staff, the nurse, and the health
inspector. >> Okay. And the other ones, waste measures, tobacco, animal, and pest. Those are just contracts. >> Correct. The independent contractors. >> Okay. And other than the obvious tobacco
control, how does that get done or who do you use? How does that work? We use um Marin Bosby. She's our tobacco control compliance coordinator and we actually work in conjunction with
um other municipalities like Melrose and Wakefield. >> So where those line items, those last four things fall in the those are counted as salaries because they're not salaries. >> They're not salaries. Um >> so are those counted in expenses or
where are those counted? Well, I I put them as um let's see. I mean, they're not listed here as salaries, but they're considered. >> So, what I'm ask is how are they
expensed? I guess >> so. The rodent mitigation is under uh expenses. the weights and measures under expenses and the tobacco control is funded by we
have a grant that funds it. So we don't pay for we actually don't pay for it. >> Okay. >> And uh let's see what's the other one. >> Animal control is under expenses. >> Okay. All right. Thank you, >> Chris.
>> Thanks, Melissa. Thanks, Adai. Uh so yours is the Amazon Prime version of uh presentations. It was nice and quick and I mean your number is 2.62% so there's not much to obviously cut
there. Um so I guess what's the so the increase to the mosquito is that with the middle sex people who spray is that that's all that is? >> Yes. So they usually send me uh like a projection for the fiscal year and um
we're currently at 48,000. They sent me 48,253. So I had to add the $253. >> So all the other shared things that we have like animal control inspector um that's been working out um like budget
wise and all that. >> Absolutely. It's been working out well. Um no issues at all. And do you think there's anything else that can be kind of alleviated out of the expenses in general? I know it's in the grand scheme of things, it's very low with what you
guys have over there, but >> I mean technically speaking, we're only asking for $253. Everything else is level funded. Um I'm not sure we can really cut anything. So in your expenses is weight measures,
tobacco, animal control. Well, one of them had the grant like you mentioned in pest control, but like what are some examples of other expenses that might be significant in there? Is there anything significant or it's primarily these couple here and and that's pretty much
it? >> Talking about looking at like >> Yeah. Like do you have a $10,000 expense to do something? Like is there a big numbered item that supplies Yeah. something >> because I understand your number is low
but obviously if the health department helps out then it helps another department out kind of. So I'm just trying to you know >> I you're at a good number. I'm not criticizing that believe me. Like 2.6. So like
percentage wise, what what what are you trying to get to? >> I guess I'm just looking for expenses. Like what is the other than weights and measures, tobacco, animal, and pest control, what is your biggest expense beyond these contractors and mosquito?
>> All right. So we have the um health professional um services. So that's at 16,500. So, I was planning on using this money for the MBTA studies if we had to do it.
>> So, we always factor that in every year. Um, two years ago, we had to board up some homes. It cost us about $14,000. We had to use this line item. Uh, we have the regional animal control
um line item for $25,000. We have the sharps medical uh disposal for 4,000. Um, I don't think we can cut that. We have waiter measures. Um, I don't believe we can cut that
either. Mosquito control is at 48,253. I don't believe we can cut that either. We have professional development for staff. It's at 5,000. Um, we may be able to cut about a,000 from
that. if possible. Health supplies at $500. I don't believe we can cut that. We have health inspector supplies at $2,000. I don't believe we can cut that either.
Health clinic supplies $500. I don't believe we can cut that either. We have the mileage reimbursement at $2,000. Again, we all use our vehicles for inspections. I don't believe they we didn't cut that either. And then we have
the load and mitigation which is 50,000. I don't recommend cutting that, but if the town really needs money, >> so I guess so I was more concerned about the bigger numbers because when I hear
50,000 that's easier than, you know, $2,000 for this or that. So the 50,000 is that shared with the school like the rodent mitigation? >> No, the schools fall under desi guidelines. >> So they have their own budget item for
the rodent mitigation separate from those. Okay. So I was thinking of another avenue where if it wasn't but you're saying that it is separate. So >> it is separate. Um I tried to look into merging and u
>> I remember that from a prior meeting >> we couldn't do it um since they have separate guidelines. So >> okay all right well it's good to like I said 2.62 62 is something to be proud of obviously. So, and I know your
department does a lot of good in town and um Liv was mentioned by Matt previously does an excellent job and you know she really cares and uh you know >> it's pretty much it but thank you.
>> Thank you >> Karen. >> No but Karen >> Karen you can go. >> Great. Thank you. Um, a thank you for the presentation. I um um all of the um I'll call them clinics
if you will, the flu clinic, the mamogram, the eyes and ears. Um it's great to see those. I'm not sure I saw all of them in our um social media. So, um I just want to make sure those are getting out there. But my question related to those is do you have numbers
for how well those attended? Which one of those is the most um widely attended? >> Okay, so I can give you uh a breakdown of each of them, >> right? >> We had 19 appointments for the Dana Fiber um mamography van in April.
>> We had 17 appointments for the 2020 vision um vision clinic. We had three earring screenings February, August, and September with 44 appointments. So far, we've conducted 29 blood
pressure screenings with 121 appointments. We've had um we've taken back 1,200 pounds of medical and diabetic
supplies and about 1,700 lb of shots. Let's see. And with the vaccine clinics, we've had um we've given out administered 168
vaccines so far. Okay. Um, great. Um, you know what? Um, it's funny. I was like driving to Wilmington to get rid of like medical supplies. So, um, you know, that's great that we're offering that service. So, again, I just
want to make sure that people know that we can take um their excess medical supplies and put them and that you'll put them to good use. That's that's wonderful. Are all of these which of who's paying for all of these
clinics? Are are we paying for that? Are they grant funded? Are they part of the state? And what we're serving as is a coordination or your department is serving as a coordination. >> We more of a collaborations between um you know town departments and community partners. So um for the mamography van,
we don't pay anything. Um they show up. Um, same thing with the vision van. We don't pay anything. Belone, we don't pay anything for the hearing screenings. Um, blood pressure, leave does those. Um,
vaccine clinics are done by leave as well. Um, and the medical and diabetic supplies, they just drop them off. Um, we have to transport them to where they are being donated. So, we actually have
to spend, you know, some money on mileage reimbursement to do that. >> Okay. Thank you. That's um so that's really good to know. So, so a lot of what your department is doing is um taking advantage of programs that are
out there and making sure residents have access to them. And and part of the reason I was asking is because, you know, the the landscape has changed where, you know, you you go to CVS, they don't really really ask you for an insurance card anymore. You get those things. So, I was just was wondering how
these clinics fit in. And um and then I also had a question about whether um your department had a vehicle or you're using your own vehicles for your department related activities. >> We don't have a vehicle. We use our >> vehicles. Gotcha. That makes sense. The
mileage and stuff, >> right? >> Um, and then the same thing with the hospital trust. I mean, you you do, you know, you're talking about clinic supplies that you need. Those are hospital related things. Um, I would love to see the trust funds
of this hospital fund. You know, you know, a few thousand dollars could help. Um, so but if we're not asking the hospital fund trust commissioners to pay for some of these things, they're
certainly not going to do it. And um, so I don't I don't know if you've had an opportunity in the past year to meet with them at all. >> No, I haven't. >> There's a pile of money there related to hospital. Like supposed to be a
hospital. Ideally, a hospital would have been built in writing. that chip is sailed and um but it is a large sum of money that can be used for clinic supplies probably targeting a lot of the same residents that you're you're
already wonderfully targeting with these programs which luckily a lot of them are free and it just required being coordinated um I don't think they're going to help us with any rat control that'd be great or pest control um are are there any opportunities that you're seeing for
grants Aside from the opioid settlement funds, which I'm assuming you you get to use some of those, >> uh we we haven't used any of the funds uh yet. >> Okay. So, you're not accessing the opioid funds. Okay.
>> Correct. >> Okay. Um are you seeing any grant opportunities? Um at this point uh no we got uh a bunch of grants uh during COVID and we were able to procure a lot of um equipment and supplies
uh needed. >> So >> Okay. >> All right. Well, so the only other thing is there's a full-time admin and I didn't know, you know, I'd leave this to Matt and Jane to whether, you know, that admin could sometimes help out other departments that get tight in town hall
where you guys are all all close together. Um, but that's not necessarily a savings, but it could help our um just help our tax dollars go farther um and provide better services. So So um I appreciate that. Thank you for all
these clinics. I just hope um I'll try to pay attention more, but I just hope we're getting those are those are pretty good numbers, but you're doing a lot of great clinics and if it works into people's schedules, then that's those are wonderful opportunities that people take advantage of as long as we make
sure they know about it. So, um thank you very much for preparing this. >> Thank you. >> Uh thank you, Ad. I just have two quick questions. one is the rodent mitigation, the $50,000. Are you is that um sufficient? Because I know at one time
we had kind of a big issue. >> It is uh adequate at this point. Uh we have 50 boxes around town. >> Um complaints have dropped drastically. >> So, >> okay, great. Awesome. Um, and then the quick question. So, are do you have
opioid funds that you've received and you just haven't needed to use them for I don't know if they need to be used for specific items or you have not received anything. >> The opioid funds go to the coalition. Got it. >> I don't have access to it. >> Okay, that's perfect. All right, that's
the only question I have then. So, thank you for your presentation tonight. We appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Technology technology. >> Hi everyone. Um, thanks for having me here tonight. My name is Kevin Ferilla. I'm the CTO for the town's technology
department and I'm here to present the technology department's level one FY27 budget. Uh, I'm also joined here tonight by Jennifer Aayashawa. She's the assistant department head for the techn technology department. Um she her position is the technology manager for
the department. She's been with the town for 10 years. Um recently got her PMP and uh as a running resident. So uh Jen and I worked on this FY27 budget and I'm happy to be here to present it tonight.
Next slide. So the presentation approach this year is definitely different. Um I'm accustomed to being up here and talking about what we've accomplished during the year. um the specific services that we offer to the various departments, um maybe the
unique challenges that we have, but considering the financial conditions this year, I felt that the time would probably be better spent trying to communicate how our decisions are being made, um why they're being made, how we're spending our money, and um
you know, the the solutions that we're typically focusing on when we when we do these things. Uh, I'll talk about the specifics for the FY27 budget. I will get into how the expense budget is broken up and what the impacts
are changing different parts of it. Um, what I'm gathering is that's important to everybody to understand. Uh, I see our department very uh comparable to facilities. you, we support all these
other departments efforts and much like telling Joe in facilities that he has to cut the heat. Um, that's not really as much of Joe's concern as it is for all the people that want to stay warm. So, um, our stuff is very, um, very similar
to that and I'll try to I'll try to communicate that. Um, I also want to touch upon some unknowns that are coming up that we see and uh, you know, I I'm also very receptive to any feedback that you might have about tonight. I am, you know, this is a definite different
approach than certainly some of the other departments. We did not have any karaoke um, things this year. Uh, >> whoa, whoa, whoa. Didn't Tim sing. >> We had people show up to that event, but we didn't conduct any of these events.
We didn't have any rodents to deal with or hoses to get around cars. So, you know, some of our we did, you know, we did almost cause a fire at the town hall this year with with an expanding battery. Um, but showing those photos
would just highlight uh, you know, uh, >> response, >> John Kio and Rick Nelson's team's response. So, that's not in here. Um, and then, you know, before I begin, I just want to talk about the process that I've gone through with this budget this
year. It's really been uh funny to to watch. It's been interesting to watch how I've gone through it. I I started off really defensive about our our budget and then I came to learn that I'm not defensive about our budget. um defensive about the conversation that
takes place um or the decisions that are made and and um making sure that they're given the appropriate attention and and discussion that they I feel that they that they deserve. So, if I come across
as defensive about the numbers, it's it's certainly not what I'm trying to get across here. Um and much like the police chief said earlier, our our role in the technology department is to do what is being asked
of us and um we have no other agenda than that. Um that's you know our our supported department's priorities are are how we focus. So um I hope tonight that I'm able to communicate how we spend our money and why we're spending
it this way. And um and like I said uh very receptive to any discussion or suggestions that that anybody has about this. So uh next slide, Jackie. Uh so this is our department. I'm not
going to I'm not going to talk too much about this, but you already I already described who Jennifer was. Uh Tim is probably the most outward facing of our department. She makes the rest of he makes the rest of us look like we're uh
friendly uh and um you know val sharp guy and very valuable resource to our team. Matt Dean I don't want to say he's the opposite as far as friendliness is concerned but he's opposite as far as outward facing. He's behind the scenes. his solutions, his work can be seen
across all departments, but um not many people get to see him because it's um maybe more complex uh data analysis or mapping or database type work. In a similar way, Kevin Connor's on the team is taking care of infrastructure uh
behind the scenes type systems um mail filtering and you know, things like that. So, not really um front-facing as much. And uh but also part of our um our five-year goal to get only Kevin's in
the department. We're 40% the way there. So, uh in a few years, we hope to be 100% Kevin. Um next slide, Jackie. And these are the departments we support. I usually dive into this a little bit more, but these are the town departments. We share some resources with the school department, but that's a
separate environment. Julie and Car over there has a great team and we collaborate with them. We uh coordinate our solutions with them. Uh we support one another, but it's a separate world and I'm thankful for that. Uh uh next
slide. So this probably is the most important of all the slides. This talks about um why we make the decisions that we make. Mandates are requirements dictated to us
typically from usually from the outside. So, oh, is my time up? >> Yes. >> Yes. Yes. Uh, >> so child >> we um, you know, we have financial audits, we have state police audits, we have rules for the fire department that we have to follow, we have cyber
liability insurance um, hoops that we need to jump through so that we qualify for that insurance. Um, these aren't optional. These are, you know, there's no there's no negotiating with mandates. Uh fiscal responsibility, um that's obvious. I'll
give an example of why that's difficult to prioritize exclusively in a second. Uh risk mitigation, that's everything. You know, probably similar to police, fire, um but you know, a balance between something
being usable and um increased risk. And I worked for a a company years ago um that had skiffs. So they were like sensitive compartmented information
facilities and they're like had um classified information, top secret information in them and they had no connectivity outside of that room. And that is to reduce the risk. But the um
you know with that sacrificed um with that lowered risk you sacrifice usability. That balance is at play with all of our decisions here. Um no password is going to make a system very usable. It it increases your risk. And so um you know that that's baked into
all of our decisions here. uh service quality for the residents. That's usually more driven by the departments that we support than by us. Um we partner with them for these solutions, but it's usually the the department um the department's needs that that leads
that. And then work efficiency. You know, we don't want to have employees sitting around not capable of doing their jobs because technology is standing in their way. So these are the things that factor into our approach when when we're doing things. Uh the example I wanted to give for the fiscal
responsibility is early in early in like 2003 maybe right around then we got a grant for a reverse 911 system. Everybody's familiar with 911. Uh reverse 911 is when the town wants to
send a message out to the residents that might be impacted by circumstances or a situation. and 311 is a system that we also have here that is for um non-emergency reporting into the town. Usually the DPW
department um fields those requests because it's potholes and and things of that nature. 411 is something nobody really Christine Amadull is too young to know 411 but some of the some of the rest of us remember what 411 is. >> But in any case, our reverse 911 system
was funded by a grant entirely. We paid for five phone lines. The town could make five average um of one phone call per minute. So five lines gave us five calls a minute. In an hour we can make 300 calls
to the residents. If the message was to not drink the water, that wasn't sufficient. So the service quality for residents suffered for the fiscal responsibility there. That's just to illustrate that there's always a balance and
Um, we've since addressed that we have a although they they did suffer a little bit of a setback last week in the previous weeks, you know, we do have a system that's able to blast out this communication real effectively and that is in my budget that I can talk about
later. Um, next slide, Jackie. And so these are our strategic focus areas. What I said on the previous slide was the why. This is the how. Um, and I'm going to blast through these pretty quickly because I think that they're pretty self-explanatory. Uh,
next slide, Jackie. Cyber security and risk management. This is like mostly what you hear from technology departments these days. Uh, just to single out one of these, the cyber liability insurance requirements. We've had um requirements that we have to satisfy in order to keep our cyber
liability insurance. Cyber security awareness training is something that we've been awarded a grant for for maybe six or seven years now. Yeah. >> And so that's free to the, you know, that's not something that the technology department's paying for, but uh thankfully we've we've been fortunate to
get that grant. Uh MDR, uh MDR is like uh virus protection on a computer. Um we had EDR, which is virus protection, but it would depend on the technology
staff looking at these alerts. And so Saturday night it wasn't getting so much attention. We were awarded a grant just at the end of the summer that allowed us to upgrade from EDR to MDR. What MDR comes with is
247 manned um network operation center watching our alerts um and mitigating any threats. So we get a a network operation center responding in real time to our alerts. that's for no change to
our budget uh for three years because of that grant we were awarded. And then MFA other requirements, you know, are just always coming up. Um and then next slide. And so infrastructure reliability, this is sadly my most favorite thing that I
get to do at work. Um the departments dictate what we do though with this and um it's not because we in technology decide we want to do the latest and greatest thing. It's for this can't go
down. We need redundancy. We need stability. Um, when I first started here, all of the town connected uh, internet endpoints were leveraging a DSL line um, across across the town. Everybody here except for the water
treatment plant. And so when I had to download something, I'd start the download at my desk. I'd get in my car, I'd drive to the water treatment plant, I'd connect to their computer on the uh cable modem, talk to my friend Peter Tassy as it downloaded and um get in my
car, come back, and it would be completed before the download at my desk. And you know, I'm not saying that to say anything other than that's what the environment dictated at the time. That was the need of the environment. It wasn't so dependent on the internet. We
and so that's the solution we had. Things have changed. We spend money now on redundant internet connections. The meeting tonight relies on that internet access. So if some if an ISP goes down, we fall back on the other one. These are charges that, you know, when I talk
later about the specifics of the budget are not, you know, going back to the facilities um analogy, we we look to save money and get rid of some of that redundancy. That's fine. Um but we just have to be aware of what
we're what we're sacrificing here. And so that's what I'm really looking to capture. Um and uh next slide, Jackie. um modernize. You know, this is this is really driven by the uh departments that
we support. But um the website experience, um the the permitting system experience, the mapping solutions that we have, all of these things are um you know, more driven by the needs of the departments,
but with our partnership. So, next slide, Jackie. And then efficiency and operational cost savings. You know, if we're the new CAD system, uh the hope is that we will gain efficiencies when we implement it. Uh CAD system is the computer aated
dispatch system over at the public safety and um and we have a document storage system that's reduced doc uh you know paper files and uh increased our ability to you know made us more
efficient. uh we got 85,000 as a grant just a couple of years ago um to upgrade that system. With that upgrade, we got some functionality. With that extra extra functionality comes an increase in our subscription cost starting this year. I'll talk about that in a second
once I get into the details. Uh next slide, Jackie. And so much like last year, this is uh this is fiction. So, this is what Jen and I had been working towards. Um, when
we put the budget together, um, we stayed within the guidance that we were given. Uh, the salary line is basically we're all non-union employees in the technology department. So, that's all cost of living increase. That's all step increases. Um, that's pretty much
comparable to your other non-union employee salaries. You're going to see expenses. Look how great that 1.9 number looks. Like it's it's just amazing. And um it would be great if the power went out now because um you wouldn't see the next slide, but Jackie, if you go to the
next slide. Um this is what it actually is. >> Oh my god. >> Expenses go off the chart. And um you know I feel um sad when I stand up here next to my other uh department heads and and I have to show this as such an out
buyer where everybody's been really responsible but you know it comes with a explanation. There's one thing that is driving this and that is the computerated dispatch system that we are migrating to and that yearly
subscription uh increase that um comes with it. I try to see like the glass glass is half full sometimes. Um we did we've been very responsible saving money up until this
point with the previous system. Um the system doesn't have what the department needs though to move forward and so with that additional cap capability functionality comes an increased cost.
uh this is a cloud-based solution and they have customers in Florida. Um one advantage to that sort of illustrates the value is when they had a hurricane or one of the hurricanes they had in the last couple of years um a lot of the
data centers and a lot of the on-prem solutions got washed out and that's a long recovery. If you have to replace hardware and then restore from backup and get everybody back online, that's a different experience than the cloud-based system that this company
provides. Um they were um proud to point out the speed in which their customers in Florida were back up and operational. And it's those types of things that we're gaining with this solution. Um, but it's a, you know, with our 1.9% on
the previous slide and the $78,000 increase for that systems yearly cost, that puts us out of whack here. And so, um, >> oh, no, no, that's I mean, unless unless you had functionality that's worth
highlighting, but I think that, um, you know, the money probably maybe at the end if they have questions specifically about why this change, but um, next slide, Jackie, sorry, police chief was interrupting us.
So, uh, the, you know, this sums up the expense budget, and this is what, because it's >> shut my phone and email off, so >> because it's, it's such an outlier. I want to dig into this expense budget, make sure that I'm not guilty of >> your house.
>> Uh, not communicating it. um 852,000 this year for the expense budget, up from 760 last year, 1.9% plus that 78,000 that that captures the 12 127%.
So, uh next slide, Jackie. Uh risk of funding not funding this subscription change. Uh it's an operational risk to police and fire in my opinion. I I don't want to come up here and say it's non-negotiable, but it really isn't. Um, other things could be
negotiated, but this thing just can't be. So, let's talk about what those other things are. Uh, next slide, Jackie. So, um, of that 852,000ish
expense budget, 615,000 is software costs. uh either hosted solutions, on-prem licensing, um maintenance agreements, those types of things are 615,000. I think it probably because it's the
lion share of my budget, probably makes sense to pause on this one and just talk about some of the the bigger items from it. Uh top of the list is our financial system 115,000 a year and the
I guess to highlight where my frustration comes in these types of discussions. We can certainly move to a less expensive solution. When we last did this, it was 2006 and we went from a
financial system that when a user showed up to it had a blinking cursor, just, you know, no guey, no no real direction. You had to learn the commands to use the system. Um, that was very inexpensive.
Migrating to the solution we have increased the yearly cost significantly. But more importantly, that migration cost over a million dollars to move. There were some other technology components that were part of it. But the
majority of that was user training, data migration, uh hardware cost. It it was and so why I say that is any one of these things that we say we could find a different solution for, we could find a less expensive solution for. Um it's
it's costs money to get there. And so I I just want to make sure that we all appreciate that. Uh that's 115,000. Second on the list is um the computerated dispatch system that manages a decent chunk of public safety. Uh that's 100,000.
Email and office automation tools. Uh uh that's $68,000 a year for us. The sad part about that is we had been so responsible up until the last few years by self-hosting our email system. Um what co really
highlighted for us was we had some uh some services that would have been very appreciated very much appreciated during that time that we weren't in a position to offer. um since the migration we sort of jumped into um both a more expensive
way to handle it but also uh the flexibility that we had been lacking a few years up until that point. Uh our permitting system is about 58,000 a year that's leveraged by a whole array of departments. Uh it's really injected
some more online interaction between the residents and the town. um an ability to apply for permits, uh a workflow internally, and a way to pay for them. That was just great timing for us. It
launched in uh the summer of 2020, so keeping people at their house and still able to do business with the town was was a nice win. Um I have things that s start to taper off in cost, but our electronic document storage system that
is going up this year. We are going from what we had budgeted for previous years of $18,000 to 25,000. That's the result of a system upgrade from that $85,000 grant we were awarded. And this is the first year that that um additional
subscription cost is going to hit us. We have things like email security costs, uh backup costs, uh immutable uh uh cloud-based backups, uh airgapped backups. um we have a array of
applications but as these go down the list the prices go down and rather than just consume everybody's time with all the specifics I I just wanted to say that any one of these that we decide we want
to get rid of or reduce is less of a decision for me and less of an impact to me and more the people that I support. So if we look at the financial system because it's the biggest one here, there's HR modules. This is leveraged by the school, the town, a little bit of
functionality that supports RMLD. Um it's our financial system, accounting, uh utility billing, it's all of that stuff. If we say let's cut out some modules, that's that's great. That's that's Sharon's department. That's um HR
department. So that's that's the part of it that trips me up when I'm discussing my budget and I'm hope I hope hope it's clear and um but moving on the um communication costs the 113,000
that's um internet connections or internet costs that's wired phone lines that's wireless cellular lines um and very comparably if if we want to reduce that budget
We reduce cellular connections out in the field, whether they're in the cruisers or the uh fire department apparatuses or out in the field at the DPW. Uh wherever these things are, it's everything can come down. Printer contract 20,000 a year. That can come
down. We reduce the number of printers. Uh PCs, we're on a about a 5year replacement cycle, and that number can come down. We need to get more time out of it. uh about 15 17 years ago we had a similar challenge with the budget with a
different select board and one of the members asked about refurbished PCs and why couldn't we do that and any one of these things can be done differently what I see is the refurbished PCs are a lower upfront cost but then back to my
earlier slide that user productivity is going to be hit because they're probably going to experience additional downtime time. My users are probably going to spend or my my employees are probably going to spend more time supporting this equipment. So, it's it's very similar to you get what you pay for type thing.
But, um I'm receptive to any change in approach that anybody sees here. Um card supplies, network hardware, that's all the extra stuff, cables, and you can see tonight like our users, we've got police officers dropping microphones, and these
aren't meant to be dropped. Um the police chief opened up his drink and it spilled all over the place tonight. That's tonight in this room. And so >> you know the fire department's here too. >> Uh so >> the um and then professional services is anything that falls outside of like what
we can do what what our in-house expertise is. So um I hope that that that that equals the expense budget. Um, and I I talk about it in detail like this just to give everybody a clear
picture of um, you know, where where there's room to talk. Um, so next slide, Jackie. Some of the concerns I have coming up um, the recal uh, the center for active living, that project the it's not set in
stone yet as far as the specifics, but it likely will come with increased technology. We, you know, it is a little bit further away for our to drive to support, but it's it's an unknown right now, but I guarantee that if you add more video
conferencing capabilities and more TVs and more access control and more cameras, there's more costs. And with it being a little bit of a gray area right now, I'm I'm anxious. In addition, the Pleasant Street Center with its future
being up in the air, if it were ever to stay within the town's hands, that's another, you know, we're adding a new site to it. Very comparable to facilities and their their need to heat, cool, clean Pleasant Street Center. If we keep technology in there, we've we've
increased the number of locations. Uh, and then another thing I just wanted to call out is the long-term impact of some of these projects that come with technology. That technology ages out. Sometimes that that cost isn't really captured or appreciated. But as that footprint of
technology increases, the um the costs that go up over time and all of these things tie into technology staff moving forward. With there being unknowns, it's clear that we're just staying at our five full-time employees right now. But
just a preview of coming attractions, we start we start loading up new buildings or additional buildings with with additional technology that we will we will uh have a point where we're not able to support it. So um next slide,
Jackie. And so that's it. And you know, as far as questions, I'm really receptive to any any criticism, any any change in approach. Um, I just want, you know, a
lot of it is uh it's not as much me as it is the departments that I'm supporting that will that that should be involved in the conversation. >> Open up to the board. Anyone have any questions? >> Karen, raise your hand. >> Karen.
Great. Thank you. Um, thank you for that presentation. Um, so you keep referring to the financial system. Is that still MUN? >> Uh, yeah, it is. >> Okay. And Sharon's on the line, too. I'm going to put her on the spot. So, we've
been invested in MUNS for how many years? >> So, >> many years, right? Over a decade. >> Oh, yeah. about 2006 uh to 2008 is when we were implementing and and it was in
production >> and it has it migrated to a cloud-based system or is are we still maintaining servers um that kind of model? >> Yeah, it's an on-prem solution. It's one of those things that I'm looking at moving forward as a software as a service. They do offer it. Um we've
always kept it on prem. We've upgraded the hardware. We've upgraded the versions over the years. It's not from 2006. Uh it is it is there >> 2021. >> Yeah. 20 and we're we're migrating to their newest version by the end by
January. Oh yeah. >> Um and so it constantly keeps up with the times. It's not frozen in time from from early 2000s. Um but it is self-hosted. So, and and so that's why I was going to
ask um you as well as Sharon. Is that is Munis showing its age or is it still you think the leader in in what we should be doing? And I'm I'm actually surprised that they haven't move to cloud-based and and that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to save us any money, but I'm just this system.
We've been invested so long. I'm just looking for those looking for an opportunity to get a little caught up in in where we are with respect to um that system specifically. >> Okay. Yeah, they do offer us a cloud solution. Um the cloud solution is more
expensive. You know, basically we are handing over the the care of the servers to them. And so that comes at a cost and it is the same version that we're leveraging with our on-prem version. So
it's not that we'll get increased functionality by moving to their cloud solution. It will be more expensive. I'll be happier because I don't take care of that server anymore. I just get on the phone when something's not working. But it's >> well to your point as we bring on recal
for example and potentially um be responsible for sections of the pleasant streets then then maybe that is a conversation like that would be the time that rather than having to grow your department you know maybe that's that's I appreciate that insight.
>> Yep. Yeah. No, I I'm a I'm a big fan of leveraging a cloud platform when it makes sense to the town. For sure. Right. Oh, here's a here's a question I have. Oh, is that Sharon? Go ahead. >> Yeah, I just wanted to mention that currently it's the best product for
municipalities for financial software. We don't have any options out there that are rivaling it. To say that it's I I I'd say that it has its ups and downs with their customer service and all of that, but I do feel like the product does more than all the other software products, which is why we've stayed with
it. There hasn't been anything that can't has come out that's better. Gotcha. Thank you. Um and and thank you for going running through all of the um you know expenses. The dispatch, what's that costing us? Our emails are hosted
online and the permitting system which yeah gets a lot of use by a lot of departments. What that costs yearly? That's all helpful for us. Um as well as the electronic document storage increase. Here's a question. Um so we've heard a lot tonight about and we heard
it last year as well the demand that public um record requests put on us and um it can be very times consuming and are you seeing any um a movement towards
it would be great to use AI if it was applicable to sort of take that heavy load off of people because I expect it's not the most fun job in the world either. preparing these PRs. Um, so I just thought I'd throw that out there to see what you got anyone seeing out
there. >> Yeah. No, I'm glad you asked that question. I was I was uh tempted to stand up earlier when the conversation was unfolding because some of it does seep into my world. Um, anything to do with a electronic discovery um
especially email uh comes through me. We have an archiving device. So if somebody they can't delete it fast enough, we've captured the transaction and so we're able to to provide that record. And where I see the problem or the challenge
is not as much from me. My queries are pretty straightforward. When I turn to that archiving device, usually I'm given a date range and some criteria to search on and as long as it's specific, I my job is done. uh the job the real heavy
lift comes when I take the output of that system and I hand it off to somebody that needs to comb through it. So if the query is defined narrowly enough where it it yields 15 records that's that's like a fast job. If it
yields 3,000 records, which isn't an exaggeration, that's an actual, you know, result we can get. Somebody has to go through those 3,000 records and make sure that it doesn't have personal information um priv you know sensitive information uh information we're not
allowed to release. Uh typically that is Lara uh and when it exceeds two hours I think that that's basically um when it starts to be uh problematic. I I don't Lara would speak um is better to speak
about the rules that need to be followed but that's where I see the the holdup if a records request I guess a commercial to put out there if these records requests could be narrowly defined so that we can you know harvest exactly
what the the intent is that makes everybody's job easier especially mine uh sometimes I'm presented with oh I need I need messages sent from from this guy to anybody in the town and um I
don't know who this guy is and so that type of um you know when it's vague like that it it's it creates a challenge. So, are you seeing then are you getting hit with like, you know, oh, we have a
new AI solution. We're going to make your PR, you know, process. We're going to save you labor and save you money because we're going to be able to automate that. Is anyone seeing that yet? >> Wow. >> The analysis, not the query, but the anal, as you as you correctly pointed
out, the the have the manual combing through it to make sure that there's no information in there that shouldn't be distributed. We have a new AI uh we have AI capabilities integrated with our archiving solution. Um we haven't
tested its ability to save time but that's great that's a great um that would be a great efficiency to gain especially for Lara. Uh we are we are in between archiving solutions. Last year we moved part of it over. This year
we're using um the budget for what the previous system was to import the the uh historical data. So we we're not totally on board with the system that we could leverage AI um yet, but by by uh FY27 we
will be. >> Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Yeah. >> Anyone else? Karen, >> I just want to say this is my first budget cycle and I don't have a lot to say, but I really appreciate the presentation and for dumbing it down a
little bit for me and um thank you for all your hard work for everyone that's presenting tonight. >> Yeah. Well, actually AI helped with that. Told me don't say hyperconverged infrastructure. It had a whole list of things not to say and I I did perfect job at that. So,
>> anyone else? Chris, >> thanks Melissa and thanks Kevin. Um, second Kevin, first Kevin, whichever. 20% Kevin. Um, uh, other than you having your own sitcom, uh, NBC or something in
the future, maybe a podcast with Karen and Carlo. Um, there's nothing we can do with a hospital budget for you or anything. The trust funds, nothing. You got nothing up there. Like how does the I mean I'm I'm semi- joking but like the
70 or how much is it the increase for the big number? It said 70,000. >> So what is that used for again? >> That's the uh public safety computerated dispatch solution. So we had we had asked for and were and received
$450ish,000 for the effort. And this speaks to my concern about moving to a new solution. That's to get us from the previous solution onto the new solution. All the data migration, all of the training, all of the um you know the purchase of the
software, the first year uh maintenance agreement and and uh software license um just to get there was that much money. Now that we're going to be there next year, it's it's a $78,000 increase. >> And that's going to be year-over-year with a little increase.
>> Yeah. Yeah. This is clearly not just a capital thing. This is an expense budget item. >> Yeah. So, you don't have the luxury because you're supporting all other, you know, departments. If you were to carve out certain percentages, your budget would completely tank.
>> Yeah. You know, I've thought a lot about it. Like I said, you know, the anxiety I had early on uh made me feel like I was being defensive about it. It It's not the case. Um I I use the cell phone example because it's the most clear-cut. You tell me that we need to get that
number down lower. I'm not holding on to $60,000 worth of cellular, you know, subscriptions. I need to go to DPW, police, fire, wherever these, you know, we have some um some devices out in the field for the the DPW department that
leverage the cellular network for devices to communicate back to, you know, their health or to interact with them. So, uh water, you know, water sewer, anything that sends out an alert might be talking cellular. So those types of things to ask me to scale them
back, I'm just going to quickly turn to the departments I support. And that's where the that's where the u the anxiety comes from for me is um it's not it's not as much of my decision. It's very uh
very much similar to facilities. He says, "Yeah, I'll cut the energy costs by shutting off the heat." That's going to be everybody else that feels that impact. So that's what I'm trying to communicate here tonight. >> Yeah. I I think that it's only going to
get worse the more cloud, you know, that we have to rely on. You're locked into, you know, their subscription model. When Microsoft goes up 10%, there is literally nothing you can do. It just goes up. Adobe's gone up
some crazy amount too. And like so it was good to have on premises stuff like you had mentioned before. Obviously, we had something older and now this is, you know, uh with you being in the cloud with Microsoft, I mean, it's night and day. It's so much easier to administer
and and all that, but you're locked into their pricing and you will never get rid of it and it's only going in one direction. >> Yeah. >> So, but to go back to your point of uh replacing computers every five years, that's the same thing that I do for all my clients. It's all three to five
years. Um, I would never get refurbished stuff like you mentioned, ever, especially nowadays. Um, I mean, for my daughter, I got her a refurbished MacBook and if she's watching, then that's what she's getting for Christmas, but I know she ain't watching this. Um,
but something for her, obviously, that makes sense. But in the grand scheme of things with the prices of computers and, you know, uh, they're not excelling as much as they did back in the day because now everyone has SSDs compared to before. I that's obviously night and day
uh of a difference, but I think that you're doing things the correct way only because I do them the same way as well, so they have to be correct. But um no, it's you have a lot that falls on your plate,
including the phone calls and everything that had to happen yesterday. Um, as well as the the first time that I have ever been impersonated, which you think someone would impersonate me as the owner of a company instead of all my
clients that they do that stuff to all the time. The first time that I ever got impersonated was for my select board thing where they sent out that email claiming to be from me or whatever to every board and committee in town and then, you know, it had to scramble and send out alerts that it wasn't me who
sent it and and did all that. So you reacted, you know, the way that you're supposed to on those kind of things. So it was just good to see. Not I mean I guess the first time if it's got nothing really to do with me, fantastic. But you
know uh you guys handled it well and you know good job on that. >> And so that like we do have a line item in the budget for uh email filtering. We do have AI involved with that interrogation of messages that are inbound. There is something called
impersonation detection. Um but they find ways around it. Um we have seen inbound messages being filled out by the actual form that we use for direct deposit changes being filled out with handwriting from an employee with an
actual bank, you know, account information to change the direct deposit going to the the right person. And so the challenges are increasing. Um, the solutions are trying to keep up, but it feels like we're we're always having to
plug up some holes in the in the system. We do have a a nice uh email filtering service right now, though. So, it's we are we have the luxury of not being burned by a lot of these threats >> currently. >> Thank you.
>> Thanks. >> Anything? >> No, thanks. I I uh you know the the analogy I was trying to think of as far as, you know, police and fire are an essential service to
everybody in town, businesses and residents, but you guys help support everybody that we rely on a daily basis, you know, 24 hours a day. So, I I think I don't know why he had anxiety. was out of your
control. But uh I see this as all essential is only going to get harder as cyber security threats and spam wear and ransomware and all that stuff. So you guys need to be the forefront of that. So
no one wants to see budgets increase obviously for many reasons, but there's a lot of things that are out of our control and out of your control. So, you do I think a lot your department does a lot of work to help the whole community and uh I I'm glad that you're getting it
done. >> Thank you. Yeah, I try to communicate that to everybody. If there's not a fire in town, what use is the fire department? But everybody's using the internet. >> So, that's good point.
>> Did you not listen to my presentation? a heart attack. They're coming, Kevin >> or not. >> Question. >> Um, >> thank you Kevin for this. This was great. I just have one quick question. You did mention that RMLD uses some of
our financial software. I think do they reimburse us for any of our um You're laughing. >> I'm just This is probably a Sharon question. Do we get reimbursed from them at all if we're paying a subscription? >> It's probably
>> I do know that there is some agreement with, you know, the RMLD is a regional >> they they serve four towns. >> Um they have a relationship with Reading. I think it grew up because of them located in Reading that has them um giving us funds for things. they don't
connect into our financial system, >> but I think maybe purchasing >> um maybe uh I know checks come out from the financial system regarding RMLD. I think that there might be something. >> Do you want me to answer? >> I did Sharon.
>> So for RMLD, for anything that um we do to support them because we reconcile all their cash, we pay all their payroll, we pay all their bills. Um there is indirect costs that are paid from RMLD to the town for the different departments that support them and that
would be my department. There'd be some um charges for technology um HR whatever departments actually have to touch um stuff that's RMLD related. So they do kind of pay us back for the services rendered. >> Perfect. That's all I wanted to know. Um
and thank you for adding some comedy tonight. We all need >> All right. We laughed, too, so it's good. >> Okay, DVW is the last one of the night. >> Well, thank you and good evening. Um, I just want to thank you for allowing me
to present the um level one FY27 budget for the Department of Public Works this evening. Uh before I begin, I would like to recognize uh my assistant director, Mike Kesman, um for his constant support and assistance throughout the year. Um
Mike is a rock star and I couldn't do what I do without him. So, thank you for all you do for the department, Mike. >> Thank you. >> Uh next slide, Jackie. So this is a just a flowchart of the public works department and currently um
we have a workforce of 60 full-time employees comprised of nine divisions highways storm water equipment maintenance engineering cemetery and parks uh forestry water sewer and administration. Um, and for part of the year anyway, uh,
we also employ up to two temporary, uh, seasonal positions in cemeteries and parks and one in water. And in addition to Mike and myself, these employees are overseen by four supervisors. Um, for full-time positions, I have
three vacancies at the moment. Um, one one water labor position and two engineering positions. However, one of those engineering positions is actually being filled um this coming Monday uh when the new employee starts. Um
I would also at this time like to recognize um one of our employees JP Cormier, our managing forperson in water and sewer. Uh JP will actually be retiring in January after 38 years with the public works department. So I'd like to thank JP for his years of dedication
to DPW and wish him well in retirement. Uh, next slide, Jackie. So, before we get into the budget, I just want to highlight for you some of the many achievements acco accomplished by our staff during this past year. Um,
so this is public works year in review. Uh, so starting with administration, uh, staff organized and assisted with the roll out of over 16,000 trash and recycling carts. Uh Mike and I then worked with Mass D and town staff um
such as Matt Jane Sharon and procurement uh to produce the new automated trash and recycling collection contract. Uh staff also issued over 1,900 stickers for the compost center including handing out 19 black earth compost bins which
are tied to the new subscript uh sub subscriptions. Uh in addition to the usual phone calls and emails that we get in DPW throughout the year um related to resident requests uh for service uh this year we were also inundated with countless number of calls
and emails from residents requesting smaller trash recycling carts. Um the administration division also continues to provide all cemetery administrative services um as well as performing all accounts payable and payroll services for DPW.
Um now moving to the forestry division. Um the staff removed 144 dead or hazardous trees including 27 which were ash trees. Uh we planted 115 new trees along with
trimming 578 hazardous tree limbs. Um and then one other job we do every year in forestry is we install over 20,000 holiday lights on the common as you can see out here tonight. um which amounts to actually 3.8 miles
of lights. Um so the parks and cemetery division maintains over 80 acres of grass area between parks, cemeteries and all other town properties. Uh they maintain 16
tennis and basketball courts, uh six skating rinks in the winter and 13 ball fields, which at the request of the baseball leagues this year. Um that the frequency of the maintenance was actually increased um to do more around when they're actually having their games so the fields can be ready for the uh
like playoffs and so forth like that. Um we also had 87 cemetery burials which were facilitated by town staff as well. Uh next slide, Jackie. So between the highways, storm water, and engineering divisions, we resurfaced
a phenomenal 4.7 miles of roadways this year, filled over 300 potholes, replaced over 4,300 ft of sidewalk, um repaired 47 um sidewalk locations around the town, rebuilt 52 manholes and catch
basins, um and address flooding issues at many locations throughout the Then on top of all this um this year the highway division had another task. They um they then had to deliver,00 cart swaps for 752 properties which were
requests by residents for smaller trash or recycling carts after having already received the standard issue um that the that we um provided them. Um the contractor will take over these duties once the new contract takes place in July. Um
then under vehicle and equipment maintenance division um they performed the regular service throughout this past year on over 200 vehicles um that encompass police, fire, schools, facilities, recreation, elder services,
and public works. They do it all with four mechanics. Uh next slide, Jackie. So, and now in the water division, we received 224 applications for second water meters, replaced 78 primary water
meters, installed 28 um new primary water meters, uh replaced 48 water services, and installed 13 new water services. We also repaired 12 water service leaks and repaired 13 water man brakes. Uh this fall we replace the
water man on Sandborn Street between Wman Street and Haven Street and we'll be replacing the water man on Hopkins Street between Maine and Cedar Street in the spring. Uh the division also performed final calibrations and final site work on the new Auburn Street water
tank. Uh the sewer division performed routine maintenance on our 12 sewer pump stations throughout the year. And in fact, the Longwood Road um sewer pump station was just replaced this fall. The division also responded to four sewer main backups um which were all due to
excessive amounts of grease found in the sewer main. Uh next slide, Jackie. So, this next slide illustrates all the cick fix requests that public works received over the past year. Uh there were a total of 2,244
requests for service and were broken down by the following types. Uh the largest amount of requests were for rubbish recycling and leaves mostly from miss pickups and amounted to 27% or 609 requests. Uh this was followed by
requests for trees and branch issues at 17% or 385 requests followed by pothole requests at 16% or 350. Then there was also a group which were all 2% or less um which shook up a good
um piece of the pie. Um followed by parks and field issues at 6%, animal disposal at 5%, sidewalk repairs at 4% and then snow and ice requests at 4% as well. Uh next slide, Jackie.
So now I would like to go with uh through with you the proposed level one um FY27 budget with you. And I'll begin with the general fund. So currently storm water wages are split between the stormwater general fund and the stormwater enterprise fund. Uh per
Sharon's suggestion to reduce salary expenditures within the general fund. All stormwater salaries within the general fund would be moved to the stormwater enterprise fund. Uh this would amount to about $180,000 and would be salary for five positions including
overtime and out ofgrade compensation. I am requesting an increase of $31,200 in parks and cemetery seasonal wage um seasonal employee wages which would increase the seasonal employee staffing level within this division from two to
three employees um just based on the workload that they have in it's a non-benefited position. Um, this additional seasonal employee would greatly assist the division in maintaining our current level of service at all parks, cemeteries, schools, and town building properties.
Um, now moving to expenses. Um, in order to further provide relief to the general fund, all storm water expenses, which only amount to about $3,000, would be moved to the storm water enterprise fund as well. Um, in the highway and equipment maintenance divisions, I am
requesting an increase in police details by 7,000, an increase in equipment maintenance by 17,000, a $2,000 increase um for new street signs to help replace some of the older signs that have faded significantly,
a $10,000 increase for sidewalk repairs, and a $5,000 increase for pothole repairs. Next slide, Jackie. So, in the engineering division, the only increase I'm I'm requesting is $10,000 for traffic control repairs. Um,
in the parks and cemetery division, these first two items are just housekeeping measures. Um, for me, uh, there are two line items, uh, chemical, uh, chemicals, uh, and seed and turf treatment. Um, both of which are
utilized for the same things, um, grass seed and fertilizer. So to minimize the number of accounts we draw from, I simply moved all current funds under turf treatment into chemicals and seed while also adding an additional $1,000 in chemicals and seed. Uh furthermore, I
requested that parks and cemetery supplies and equipment be increased by $3,000 with trees and shrubs to be increased by 2400. Uh moving on to the forestry division, um I requested the police details be increased by 3,000.
um stump and brush disposal to be increased by 6,000, which is all the grinding of the stumps and uh tree branches that we have to do up at the compost center each year that residents bring in. And then shade trees to be increased by $3,000. I was able to level
fund the administration division. Uh next slide, Jackie. So then, as you can see in the summary table in the general fund, my salaries are down by 3/10en of a percent and are tied to both contractual requirements and non-UN compensation plan in addition
to the shift in the stormwater salaries from the general fund over to the enterprise. Uh my expenses did increase by 6.8% um but bottom line um of the total budget increase including fuel um was
only at 1.4%. Uh, next slide, Jackie. Uh, one thing I just want to mention before we leave general fund is that at town meeting it was suggested that $50,000 be added every year to the public works budget for um, invasive
management of the town forest. Um Sharon has advised that until the town has more certainty on what will transpire with the budget. Um that a request like this should remain a separate ask for now and let town meeting approve it. You know maybe some down the road once the
budget's more stabilized we can do that but not not at the um at the moment. Now that's all I have for the general fund. Um do you have any questions on the general fund or before I go to enterprise or do you want me to just keep going?
Chris. >> Thanks, Chris. Uh, so real quick, so your number is well under two and a half% on on that. So, I mean, I don't have any questions. >> I believe Karen, you have your hand
raised, but I can't see it currently, but I thought I saw the notification. >> Yep, I do. >> Go ahead. You can go. Oh, I thought Chris was asking. Okay. Um, yeah, quick question. So, police sale details increases, um, you know,
for the work that you're doing. I just had a general question. Do we have different rates for police details? Do we have an internal rate? because it's a, you know, transfer from one department to the other versus retail rates for developments
um and residents, you know, needing to for whatever reason get a police detail. >> Well, police have left the room, but from my understanding um any town any town projects is the um the overtime rate for the police officer, like the contractual rate.
>> Um Oh, what happened? >> Coming for a little bit. >> They were just talking about chief if there's um what the different rates are for um details like versus town versus if there's any you know the town is the overtime rate for the con for the contract. >> Same thing with non town too.
>> Yeah. >> So is it one rate no matter who requests it? if internal departments request it, if a developer requ a commercial property owner requests it, um, and a resident request it or needs it or is required to have it. >> Yeah, she's saying it's all over time rate.
>> Yeah. >> All right. Well, we we're seeing it, you know, it's a and it's an expense that goes up because salaries are going up. So, okay. Thank you. >> Anyone else? back.
>> I just had a couple quick questions. Um, you mentioned the second water meters were in um there were tw 224 applications. Do we know how many were installed? >> Um, most all were installed. Um, that's why we we closed off the applications on
November 1st so we could get caught up for the winter. >> Okay. Um but um you know most anyway, not all probably because I think there's still a few that are hung up on one one aspect or another, but most for all intents purposes that have been installed. >> Great. Um and then you mentioned the
Auburn Street tank. Is that the same as the new water tower that we just Okay. So is has that not been put online yet? >> No, it has. >> Oh, it has. Okay. I just >> Yeah, we were just doing like final punch list, you know, items to get um like with the SCADA that we have that we can communicate with the what's where
the water levels are on the tank. just getting that calibrated properly and things like that. >> Perfect. And then I think I understood that for the storm water enterprise that mentions the five positions, it was just money being moved from one account to another. We've always had those five positions. >> Correct. Correct.
>> It was just money that >> the storm water money and the general fund moving to the enterprise. >> Perfect. And then the last quick question is you kind of mentioned it briefly, but with the town's paying when people drop off brush and stumps to the um
um compost, I wanted to call it the depot, which I knew was wrong. >> Um are we charging them to do that? I mean, brush I understand, but stumps are >> Well, we do have we do have the fees for the compost stickers. So, we are collecting, >> but that's like $25, right, a year.
But I mean like when residents bring branches or we have we take down a tree, we have tree stumps, you know, the the trunk of a tree, you know, we need to bring in a company to grind up all those stumps and everything. >> I guess that's my concern. It's not necessarily the brush and stuff. I don't think that that's as big of a haul. But
like those stumps are not easy to grind, but we're paying to do that. >> Well, I mean I mean the the the stumps are from what we're taking down. The town's taking Yeah. >> Okay. I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that residents were bringing these large stumps. I'm sorry. I should
have and then the town is paying for companies to come in. Okay. I >> It's a combination. It's a combination of grinding down the stumps that we're taking down from the trees and the general brush that the residents bring. >> I misunderstood. Okay. Sorry. All right. I'm good. Anyone else? Are you good, too?
>> I'm good. >> All right. We can continue. Thank you. >> Okay. So, uh next slide, Jackie. So, now we'll move on to enterprise funds. So, in water enterprise, there are no changes in staffing. Underwater expenses, I requested that brass
fittings um and valves be increased by $5,000 and that copper piping be increased by $10,000. And as usual, the MWR water assessment was estimated at a 3% increase. Uh, next slide, J.
Now, on to sewer. So, in sewer enterprise, there's no um change in staffing either. Um, under sewer expenses, I requested the inflow infiltration prevention, which is for mitigating issues causing storm water to um get into the um the sanitary sewer
system, whether it's through um cracks in the pipe, you know, tree roots, um bad joints, um so we can seal those up. Um that was increased by 5,000. I also requested that safety equipment, sewer station supplies, and the sewer distribution system maintenance each be
increased by 2,000 a piece. And like with water, the MWA sewer assessment was estimated a 3% increase. Uh, next slide, Jackie. And now again under Stormwater Enterprise um there is an addition of
that $180,000 in wages from Stormwater General Fund which as I said previously was the salary for those five positions including overtime and out of grade compensation. Um but aside from this there are no other changes in staffing. Um under storm water expenses the only
addition is the $3,000 in supplies and equipment which was moved from the stormwater general fund to the enterprise. Uh next slide, Jackie. >> So then to summarize on the enterprise funds here, so water salaries would
increase by 4.6% with water expenses increasing by 3.6% which includes the MWA assessment. Uh giving a total water budget increase of 3.8%. Um under sewer, sewer salaries would
increase by 4% with sewer expenses increasing by 3.3%. um which again includes the MWA assessment giving a total sewer budget increase of 3.3. Um under storm water uh salaries saw an
increase of 143% largely due to the shift in salaries from the general fund to the enterprise fund and expenses increase by 9.4%. Therefore, storm water would see an overall increase of about 73%.
Now, that's all I have on enterprise. Before I move on to accommodated costs, are there any questions on enterprise that you'd like to ask? >> I just have a quick question. Um, the 3% for water and sewer that was expected. That's about typical.
>> That's the number that we use every year, just not knowing what the number is, but it's always been a conservative number and, you know, it's always been adequate. Okay. >> Does anyone else have any questions before we move on? Okay. Okay, next slide, Jackie.
So, now just moving on to a few accommodated costs here that DPW is responsible for. Um, we first have snow and ice control, um, which will be level funded again at $675,000. Uh, Reading is part of a multic community consortium for road salt and liquid calcium chloride. Um, so the
pricing you see here at $57 per ton um for rock salt and $145 per gallon for liquid calcium chloride is the same as last year. Um, however, this is the last year of this contract and it will have to be rebid for next year. So, um, we
could be seeing a fluctuation in that price for next year. Um and while we are on this topic for some context um for an average storm to salt the entire town including all roads and uh parking lots uses about 300 tons of salt and for
comparison our salt shed only holds about 800 ton. So one round of salting around the town is almost a half the salt shed. Um, and then also, so when we come in on overnight or a weekend assault the entire town, it typically costs about
$20,000 just to go around the town once. Um, with an actual plowing event, you know, and I'll I look back at a storm we had last February uh when we were plowing for about 10 hours on a Saturday. Um, the cost of the storm from town staff wages to contractors and road
salt total about $17,000. Um, so you can see with multiple plowing events, multiple salting events over winter just how fast the snow and ice budget can be depleted in which we have to go to fin and request more funding as we had to do last year. But snow and ice
is one of the um accounts that we can run into the red um and you know just go go back to fin if we have to. Um when we do um then we have uh street lighting which was level funded at $135,000
followed by an increase in fuel by $5,000. Um and lastly the trash and recycling budget would see an increase um by 39% u mostly due to the new collection contract with public services which is going to start in July. Uh next slide
Jackie. So now these next two slides just go over what is driving the 39% increase for trash recycling. And I'm not going to go through all the details again because we just did that with you all. Um but in summary, with the current contract ending in the new automated
collection contract starting in July, the FY27 cost for trash and recycling collection services with Republic will be $2,289,279. Uh this includes weekly automated trash and recycling collection with no included bulk collection as part of the
contract. Uh residents will pay for any bulk disposal with Republic on their own. However, with the new contract brings new costs that we currently do not have to worry about um such as processing fees for cycling and fuel escalation costs. These items are both
based on market conditions. So, while we did budget ourselves with a small cushion, um they are both still unknown annual expenses and or expenses we will have to monitor as the year progresses. Um then we have our disposal contract with Reorld, formerly Coanta. Um we are
currently in a six-year contract which will expire in June of 2031. Um this rates uh this year's rate was $98.35 per ton. However, years two through six are based on the consumer price index um
not to exceed 4 and a.5% in a given year. So, we won't know what the true annual cost will be until next July, but have budgeted for a 4 and a half% increase just in case it comes to that. Um, next slide, Jackie.
And then this is one of my last slides right here. Um so this is just a summary of the other recycling programs that we offer to residents here in Reading. So we still hold the two hazardous household um two household hazardous waste events each year for residents. Uh the one in the spring is held at the
Reading DPW garage and which is then available to Wakefield residents. Uh the spring this spring's event will be on Saturday, May 2nd. Uh the fall event is hosted at Wakefield High School and in turn is open to reading residents. Uh next year's fall event will be on
Saturday, October 31st. Uh we also continue to have drop off recycling for styrofoam and electronics at the DBW garage. Uh textile recycling can be arranged through simple recycling. Uh mattress recycling continues to be through tough stuff
recycling. Uh where for $55 per unit, Tough Stuff will pick up your mattress or box spring in front of your house. Uh for $30 $33 per unit, residents can bring their mattress of box spring to a container that we have at the DBW garage. Uh and we also, as you know,
have the Black Earth composting. We are currently at 519 subscribers, uh which is about 19 more than we had at this time last year. Uh Black Earth doesn't actually weigh the compost collected, but they estimate about collecting about
2.2 tons um per week from Reading. So at the current disposal fee of 9835 with Reworld that amounts to a savings and disposal cost of about $11,000. Um the current pricing plan is $69.99
per 6 months or $12.99 per month. Um and there is the bi-weekly collection option which is only 52.99 for 6 months or $9.99 per month. Um once the town hits 1,000 subscribers, which is the next threshold before um Black Earth is
willing to lower their price, um the price um drop would be as you see up there, um the $59.99 for 6 months or $44.99 for six months for weekly bi-weekly. Um lastly, we also have the home composting bins which residents can
purchase and are available at the DPW office here at Town Hall. They are available for $30 each. Um, that is next slide, Jackie. That is all I have for my presentation. I thank you for your time and would gladly field any more questions that you may have.
>> Great. Any questions? Go ahead, Carlo. >> Uh, thank you. Other than plowing uh overtime, what are the overtime typically? um all the recycling events we have at
the DPW garage, all of the setup for the beer gardens that we have, um the fall street fair, the the um tree lighting that we just had. Um any of these uh the road races that groups have around the town that we have
to block off streets. Um you know, we're bringing somebody in for that to help block off the roads. Um and then just emergencies, you know, tree comes down, you know. >> Okay. So, standard
>> standard stuff. Okay. Thanks, >> Karen. Um online. >> Great. Thank you. Um thanks, Chris. Um it's a lot. Um so, I appreciate you going through that with us. Um and I just I had a question. Um your street
light maintenance is are all our street lights LEDs now? I think they had been replaced. >> I believe they are. Yes. >> Okay. So, it's just when they wear out, you just have to Yeah. Is that Is that mostly just replacing things that get damaged or wear out or are these They're
not We're not doing enough new building of roads, right? It's mostly just maintenance. >> Well, so this this um street light maintenance is is actually not maintaining the street lights themselves. It's mostly for paying for the electricity for um for the street lights.
So, so there there is a component of it that um allows DPW to make repairs to like the downtown street lights, the decorative lamps, but the ones that are owned by running light um >> it is for paying for electricity as well as paying for the electricity for all
the traffic signals in town. >> Okay. So, that's actually Okay. Sorry, that's electricity. Okay. Um and speaking of the holiday lights, so the chamber used to do that for us. Are they involved in that anymore? I don't know what that meant. Used to do
that for us. >> What do you What do you mean by used to do that? >> That was, you know, lights, holiday lights in the red town of Reading brought to you by the local chamber of commerce. So, I guess that has gone by the wayside. Well, at one point
originally, I believe the chamber was funding the purchasing of new lights, but um you know that um that hasn't happened in several years. Um this year, the chamber did purchase us um all the new bows that you see on
the garlands. Um because those bows are about $75 a piece, I think. And there was there's like about 86 bows, I think, that were needed. So, the chamber did um they had a fundraising drive actually I saw and the chamber raised the money and was able to um purchase all of those
bows for us. >> Okay, nice. Thank you for sharing that. Um and then so the excessive grease and the sewer mains like those particular items were those where were those what
what triggered that? it is um residents um or businesses pouring grease down their um in their sink um you know which you shouldn't be doing because it just clogs up and builds up in the sewer man
and eventually blocks the sewer man from flowing. >> So I don't know if you know these were these in residential neighborhoods or are these in the downtown? Um, I don't know specific locations, but I know, you know, past history, you know, they've
been all over from the downtown to residential. And we do and we do public education to let residents know, you know, you shouldn't be pouring grease down the drain. >> You know, you should let it solidify and then just throw it out in your trash. But
>> Right. Right. and and you know we've had more restaurants open so that's part of my question understanding why it's both is what I'm hearing um and you noted all the C click fix calls um
are they trending up >> um >> we're seeing more use of it >> yeah definitely seeing more use of it I mean I think as far as um we go um like rubbish and recycling cycling I know was
about if I remember correctly I think it was around 30% last year. Um there was a little shift this year in trees and branches versus potholes. Potholes was number two last year and um trees and branches was number three, but they've
kind of flip-flopped this year. Um, but >> is it about in your estimate is it um I don't know 2,250 was roughly on par >> with last year. >> Um
I believe it was a little bit of an uptick. Um I want to say last year was around 2100 possibly. >> Interesting. It would just be helpful to see how people are adopting that. Is that is
that helpful? Um them people using the system. >> Oh, it definitely is for reporting potholes and deficiencies, you know, out on the >> out on the town. Definitely. >> Okay, good to know. And um oh the only other thing we're kind of
stuck at about we Yippi we made that 500 um um subscriber threshold for Black Earth composting but I was wondering if you were planning any promotional events um you know coming up to try to it's going to take us a while to get to a thousand but I thought I'd heard numbers
that people could estimate that you might get 20% adoption in the town. Uh that might be a little high, but 500 is nowhere near that. And the more the more tonnage we can um shift towards
Black Earth, the better. The schools are now all composting, right? >> Yes. Yes, >> that happened as planned. >> Yeah. >> All right. So, we don't get any That's interesting. We don't really get credit for that for Black Earth. No.
>> You gonna be talking to them soon? They don't >> No, they don't credit us for that number. No, >> but I but I can assure you that we are promoting the Black Earth composting as much as we possibly can where um at all the the town days, the town events, you
know, we have the Black Earth information there. We have the green bin. Um >> I just had the green bin with me. I just gave a presentation to the um at the Pleasant Street Center for um the new trash contract and I b brought the green bin and a flyer with me then to try to
you know see if anybody knew wanted to sign up. So we're trying. >> You know what you need to do? You need to get the kids hooked because they will torture the parents. So you know you need maybe you could give out some like um tickets like RPD is doing.
Um, I don't know if you have anybody on your staff who who could help us do something like that. The when we first rolled it out to Birch Meadow, the pilot, what I was hearing from parents is that, "Oh god, we're hooked. The kids come home and they're like, this is what
we learned at school, mom, we need to do this." So, you know, that might be if if somebody on your staff um could do something fun like that, that might be a way to help us n it up.
It has to be fun. It has to be a what's in it for me. I guess we I see we seem to have hit the limit of we should do it, so we're just going to do it. And now it's you know, we have to I guess we have to be more creative to get more subscribers. 20 in a year, right? That's
That's not great, right? Anyone else? >> Okay. >> But I would also say that Jane um sorry, you know, Jane has a very creative team over there. you >> Karen I don't know if you can hear me go
the microphone but um we are doing promotions on black earth composting from time to time and we're working with um reading compost resident group and um they're working on some spots with RCTV to do demonstrations of how to to kind
of demystify what composting looks like and in short video spurts that will be um on YouTube and on the local cable channel. >> Perfect. I had heard that that group was um reactivated this fall. Thank you. >> I think we are all set. Thank you
everyone that came tonight and gave your >> I have one quick question. >> Chief Clark, >> I'm sorry. The station's called me. >> Do we do we do we lose Bridget? >> No. >> Okay. All right. I was talking to someone she was on vacation or something.
>> She was out for a little bit. I can't say why. Not that. Um but she was out for a little bit and we tried to have officers cover um when we could. But >> yeah. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Do we have a motion? >> Oh, you're looking at me. I have in
front of me. Motion to adjurnn. There you go. Second. >> And good night everyone.