this government meeting is brought to you by eastworks and our local cable subscribers calling to order the meeting of the Southampton select board for March 4th 2025 at 6:01 p.m. if we could start by standing and saying the Pledge of Allegiance
please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all
okay all right do we have anyone here for citizen speak uh anyone who's not got a issue on the agenda you do okay please uh stand up and give us your name and address what where you live basically what your
issue is so we have a microphone up here so speak a little bit you can stand up wherever there wherever you'd like but um my name is Margaret carenzo I'm sorry my voice I'm just getting it back um I live at 17 Cottage AV and I'm having an
issue with the Board of Health trying to condemn my house cuz they want to put an illegal tight tent next door on a new construction um I'm not sure if you're familiar with 19 cotage app but I bought my house 15 years ago almost 15 years
ago um with a government loan and it was all inspected title fives my water was tested um everything was all legal and no problems for all this time
and for 10 years or more I had sewage speaking from 19 Cottage a the sewage was would back up into their house and they would go out back and dig holes so that it would drain and it would drain
into my yard so and I'm sure there's record of me calling and uh them coming out and there's pictures and so they couldn't do anything couldn't do anything couldn't do anything so event I just put a patio over in the fence Garden area so my kids and animals
couldn't get near it and we went on complaining over the years because it was a drug house and yeah they used to do some things so now um Chad Alexander bought the property and it was a bestos that's why
we we didn't purchase the property it's very tiny it's a very tiny lot and um he owns the property adjacent to it he purchased that one as well and he has tenants that live there and that house is also in very
poor repair it has beans coming through the roof it has I mean it's like the tenants that live there have to take their dish water and their bath water and dump it into the yard because their tight tank can't handle all everything
going through so we did go to the Board of Health and address this issue and so Chad Alexander wanted to put another tight tank in next to me so this is what I have the problem with and now the board
the hell is saying I keep saying my water is contaminated but I've proven it's not I I did give them a a clean water test they said they didn't want us to complete the water test because the water test people said that it was so clean that they didn't need to finish it
but they would if they wanted it and they said no and they agreed that we would wait till spring the problem I've had is the tight tank and the people that maintain it for lack of maintenance
that is polluting the area and that was my concern with my well I never said my well was contaminated I said that the house next door was contaminating my property and I was worried about it contaminating my well at the time but
it's been dry there for several years and it's been wonderful I just don't want that back if the people who buy that property do not maintain that well I mean that TI think here it comes again
and do what degree and so that's what I've been kcki is friends with Chad Alexander we don't well I have him on my ring video telling me so he came over to my property and convinced me to go on
the down water with and Chad was paying for it now why else would Chad pay for it I mean and why would Charles kikki be over my property convincing me to go on and has never helped me with the sewage problem but now it's coming after my
well trying to shut me down so they have to go I don't have we're going on public water there's not he wants it by March 1st and I called Friday and I told him if you can dig that Tren you come over and you dig it you put it in and so I
and as a result I got a court demand today and so that's why we're here we just need to stop Charles keni it's a personal Vendetta I call the ethics commission and they advise me to come and see you and I did send an email and
someone stopped say they was supposed to give me a call back I didn't I'm sure you were busy so that's why we came and we just want this I'm sick I mean I'm not well I'm I'm disabled and I just want to be left in
peace I finally got that property dry cuz they wouldn't help me and now they want to put another tight tank in on a new construction which is illegal you can't put a tight tank on a new construction and not that the the the
lot is so small and they're not doing anything about Chad Alexander's other property they're not requiring a Title Five on his subject they're not requiring any inspections on his properties um next door to me is another
well they're not requiring to hook up to town water not that we're not going to go on town we we are going on Town water okay as soon as it thoughts but we can't do it by March 1st I mean and we all agreed when we went to the Board of
Health meeting you were there I believe and we all agreed to wait till spring right so that I mean we got no problem with getting a Title Five on our we have we maintain our property okay I mean it we have it reg it was just emptied in in
in August so I mean we have no problem with anybody inspecting our property we have no problem with hooking up the original problem was they wanted to dig up my driveway because they thought the hookup was under the drive they thought it might be under the driveway and they
wanted to dig that up and I wouldn't allow that so at their Board of Health meeting they agreed to put go through the street go through my yard and and and we agreed so it's okay well thank you we have we allow usually about five or six minutes for for open time so this
is the first we're hearing about it at the select board level so thank you for presenting it I think we would have to touch base with the Board of Health ourselves and find out more details about this and just understand what the issue is from their perspective unfortunately time for strange I I'll
talk to Charlie tomorrow yeah I think there might have been a miscommunication on hooking up the town water okay okay no there's no miscommunication he's being a smart he's laughing we're we're not going to do name calling I've let you suggest his name that I should not
have actually even done that we can keep it to the title of the person in terms of the Board of Health okay agent okay but we're not getting into personal attacks and name calling and so forth so we will follow up yeah I have video in my house I have cameras every and I'm
sure they've got their records too so we'll follow up with them and find out what we can what we can learn from it I would really appreciate that because like I said I'm sick I can't keep I don't want to have to keep to court and I don't have to deal with this they it's all paid for we signed to have it put in
no one's ever called us to to have it install Okay so and that's what I told them on Friday as well I said if you think you can come on okay thank you thank you for coming yeah okay anyone else for open time okay
okay if not let us go into the actual agenda tonight we have a couple of appointments and uh we'll run through these uh Scott you've actually got them up on the board here um would someone like to read one of these I don't care I would yeah s it looks like new
appointment of Carl kushy to the Senior Center building committee and the term will expire June 30 2027 uh are we talking about just's do one one at a time okay all right we have a little bit of background from him I believe uh he's been a carpenter and I
know this has gone through the um through the the Senior Center building committee and they have given their they're okay with the idea he's attended a couple of their meetings so they're familiar with who he is um so um could we have that as a motion Cindy and then
I'll have take a second so I moveed that we um appoint kyl kushy to the Senior Center building committee um effective immediately with his term to expire June 30 of 20127 second all right all right all those in favor I I all right next
one Dan yes I would like to see that as as the uh planning board representative from the select board it's is my great honor to uh make the request that we uh appoint James L to the planning board um until our next
town election which is May 20th 2025 that's a motion all right and for those that may not know um Jim has served on the planning board before for a number of years he's also been on the select board in the past um so he's
decided he wants to come back on the planning board so that would be uh something that I know planning board chair has also followed up and recommended that as well so that be a motion Dan yes it is all right second all right all those in favor I I all
right and I'll do the last third one um jenet Kane resignation from the Southampton Housing Authority effective May 1 2025 second right and I know Janet's stepping down to do various other things and uh so this is an elected position
and we need to have the resignation on on file so that we can um I Lucy already knows about it so she can put it on a ballot as it's an elected office is that before the term ends I this will be um it will because it has to be on the Ballance oh okay so it's a timing thing
it is a timing thing yeah yeah so because the uh the election will be May 20 something I forget the date on the town election um it'll be the 3rd Tuesday I think it is if I'm not wrong um so yeah so this gets enough time to get um the word out that there will be
an open seat okay all right so uh I'll make that motion that we accept the resignation of Janet Kane from the Housing Authority effective May 1st 2025 second all right all those in favor I I all right so pass next uh Town reports
uh Scott um last two weeks have really only been land use planning budget and um uh Town special town meeting so we we'll go into a little bit later but um those were the big three three things that we've been working on so not much
to report M all right we know you've been busy uh trying to figure out all the numbers that's for sure so uh and thanks for putting together all these budget packages and having these joint meetings I think the finance committee has been very very organized very helpful this year so far so good all
right any SEL reports Dan anything funny yeah yesterday we had the Conservation Commission meeting um I think the one thing to note is I know they talked to the Open Spaces committee or people who approach the Open Spaces committee about a property near Wolf Hill that they're were interested in adding so I think
that's Al involves Castro part of the the project switching out one of the properties so I think that it's important for this group to to mention that um besides that for com k um there a little talk about the bridge again you know I think we're ready for that but it's
really I think that project's really cable now yeah um that's that and the planning board see we have we'll talk about the alternate for that um later on so I think that's about all I have to
say um the Board of Health has not met since the last time I gave a report um the open space space committee has met um and we've had um conversations regarding uh several properties in town first of all the
mountain Waters projects there was an extension of the state Mountain Waters Grant uh usually would end at the end of the fiscal year but they've agreed to extend to the end of the calendar year so that's beneficial um two of the original properties are that were pre
presented um have withdrawn for various reasons therefore there is some funding available that is already been agreed to uh by the um state in terms of the mountain in terms of the landscape partnership Grant as well as um CPA
monies however if we are changing properties we will have to go back to town meeting to State there's a variation in what specific properties are involved uh Dan made reference to something and this is going to be a joint report from open space committee
as well um as from assessors um we do have an application to withraw all to withdraw property on Fulmer Road owned by um uh a couple named Jeffrey and Carolyn Floric for two different lots
and they own a larger portion of property probably in the 20 acre range um that only two of the Lots on the Frontage are listed as withdrawal from chapter land in the meantime they met with uh members of the open space
committee myself being one as well as with um kestral Land Trust um conservation manager and expressed an interest in um seeing the back portion of the property which is closer to Alder Pond limited amount of Frontage uh and
maybe would there be a way to see conservation of this property which would result in be becoming acquired by the town utilizing the monies or at least most of the monies that are available through the landscape partnership Grant which is called the mountain Waters project little bit
confusing um they um have been really interested in in seeing this area conserved they do already have one lot on their property which has got a house built on it by their daughter and of course that's allowed under the withdrawal from
chapter property and they have a SE separate lot that they're holding for their son when he's ready to build a house and so those are two lots um two of them um there is this application to withdraw from chapter property which we do have to debate on but the open space
committee decid to defer on any kind of decision we are not really one of the statutory groups for um submitting an opinion to the select board but this select board has welcomed you know opinions from the open space committee at least for the last year or two it's
been great um and um in the meantime conversations have continued with the property owners um and they await um a an appraisal which is going to be paid for by Cal Land Trust um to understand what the value of this other
non-withdrawal property is and um uh they are interested in working with the town to determine if this could all work together it's it's obviously complex and not clear at this point but it's hopeful that we can work and the whole point is
that more more Aces can be acquired for because it's back Acres even though it's next to the pond it has less amount of Frontage so that it's um sort of an Economic Opportunity I believe that was discussed at the Conservation Commission so I'm sort of like a little bleeding
into these different things and I think you had a member or chestal interest present on Zoom call and that was that was good to be helpful on that um so that's uh one of the items we were talking about at the open space committee so it's not ready for our action yet it is definitely not ready
for our action and one of the things I need to research because there's this question and I don't have an answer so I didn't have a chance to look up this today well how what is the process for letting them extend the deadline on the application for withdrawal of chapter 61
I don't have an answer they just need to put it in writing is that what you're indicating but right now that is one of the things it is a very complex picture at this point there is another property that we've talked about in the past which is totally lay unlocked it's about 40 Aces it's the end of um rattle Hill
Road and it goes I'm sorry sorry thank you wott Road it's landlocked it's next to other Town conservation property it's owned by a family who has inherited a from their father who passed away last year and um that's we're going to call it the treneri property that's the
family's name they also agreed to a um appraisal which is being paid for by Kestrel to determine the value and they have expressed an interest in having the town acquire that and that too might be able to be purchased it sounds positive to be purchased with funds that kro land
trust is going to be able to help us um utilize for that might swap out the funds that had already been approved for at least one in this case this one wouldn't be swapping out funds this would be a separate um amount of money that Kel seems to have a on okay uh it
would be very valuable for the town because it would extend a current conservation property uh and it in many ways and I will say the Conservation Commission in the past has extended it's um has St U stated a a real value in
having that property once once again it's totally landlocked there's no Frontage on the public road so that's that one and finally I'm going to give a report from the um assessors and we discussed today the other property for withdrawal from chapter land which will
come up this not that no this one okay this is the floor property again uh and after a lot and after a lot of debate I haven't had a chance to WR write this opinion up today this is Assessor's meeting earlier this afternoon um the um the assessors believe that the Floric
property the two lots that I said had Frontage and they want to withdraw they are um of the opinion that the um select board should consider um exercising it's right of first refusal and um and it's all pending what kind of Finance could
be available and how this fits into the larger picture once again back to the Floric property it's very complex it's right uh it's on on Fulmer Road and it's a very beautiful beautiful lot down there on next to other conservational land which is Wolf Hill Sanctuary uh and
um so I don't have all the answers I'm just keeping the select board informed of what what's it do and we're still within our 120 days I assume yes we are yeah okay so I kind of mixed a couple properties there um and I think that is enough report for me sounds good and for
those that are listening that we have uh one an entity a homeowner wants to withdraw their property from chapter there's basically a clock that starts ticking 120 days for the various boards to act upon it um planning assessors and
concom first before it comes to select board um to make that decision whether we want to exercise our wrer first refusal or wave it I I do need to do a quicky addendum to my report we have recognize we the board of assessors as well as maybe the select board and other
entities that our process for withdrawal is a little on the shaky side we We are following the law but at the same time it's it's not 100% clear when should something be received what should be date stamped what should be accompanying it Etc so we are um actively working on
that that will be achieved within the next month um I'll be looking for input of course the select Bo will have a chance to um weigh in and we're looking for certain expertise on that cuz we uh think we can do a better job of this it's been a little complicated
and right this gentleman has been very patient with us since experience yes it has been yeah so that's my agenda all right very good okay um from my end uh just uh focusing on the um Grant committee there are two
uh two grants kind of on the horizon right now there's an expression of Interest out there right now for the uh One-Stop Grant which is due uh before the end of March and we talked about it at public safety building committee yesterday and agreed that we would go ahead with putting in
um the expression of Interest similar to what we had done two years ago which was to focus on the uh construct well the not the construction the the preconstruction activities so the architect and design engineering activities for the public safety building and that's just an expression of Interest the full application isn't
due until June uh and we may or may not keep that same expression of interest when we actually do an application um the MVP Grant Municipal vulnerability preparedness one that is an actual Grant application that is open uh and needs to be dealt with and we had put in earlier
on as an expression of interest on that one the feasibility of um a heating cooling center somewhere in town looking at two or three locations and coming up with um a feasibility study uh a plan and hopefully a little bit of funding to actually implement it I mean I
think I think in general it's it's very difficult sometimes we we do feasibility studies but if you don't have the money to implement you're still kind of back at square zero here and so this is one where I'm I'm trying to see if we can put that in together and and make it a little bit of a a package and not um not
just a feasibility study so we'll be working on those two grants over the next probably two three weeks at least um next month basically and that's basically it uh bylaws committee we've done a couple things and we'll be talking about those in just a minute um so that's it on committee reports I
don't have anything uh without John here I don't have any updates on the school um Scott may have more than I do and anything on that but uh we'll move on to new business so first one um bylaw Amendment uh we've got one draft to review um we'd already put on the um the
agenda um um that you've already seen on the saf swimming pool um bylaw Amendment and what that has done is change it to swimming pool safety as a name of the bylaw and then um some updates there that we've worked on with the Building
Commissioner updates to building codes regarding setbacks and so forth and where the pools need to be height of the fence the the Locking gate Etc so that's an update on that one uh and then the new one we have is just an amendment to
the uh naming of public buildings and this the one sorry yeah naming of public buildings structures and lands um and this one uh we've gone through and tried to see if we could make it I think partly also amongst
various uh various groups in town as well as uh I think even our even with our legal council at one point in time we were being very tight I think I would say very struct very structured on this one um and tried to loosen it up just a little bit uh and instead of making
everything so bureaucratic and having to go to uh town meeting for every kind of change this particular one is suggesting a change and these are suggestions at this point in time that the the naming of these facilities would be by a
majority vote of Select board if they were named then they wouldn't they couldn't be renamed unless they did go to town meeting so there's a level of decision- making at the select board and we'll look at the criteria on that um and some of this has come U partly from
concom and then a couple of other committees have made some comments on this as well but we were the cross out here is um where some of it's been just it's just a different format basically formatted in there um and then there's one one change
in there so basically um any proposed naming of any public building structure Bridge public land um shall be submitted to the select board inwriting accompanied by a recommendation from any agency I.E any committee board commission uh having jurisdiction over
it so if it were um concom wanting to do a trail for example which I know of the issues uh or something like that or to name a conservation area or whatever it would have to be accompanied by a letter from concom but it would come to select board um and then there would be a
letter of support if it were I'm sure I heard you the wrong way around naming of lands would come before the select board naming of trails is not in the list and would not right now it's included in the whole thing we'll we'll get to that right now it's but it's
still it's still jurisdictional so it would be recommendation it would be recommendation with it would be recommendation with concom for example of something that they wanted to name as just using them as an example um there would have to be a letter of support from the historical commission if that
were applicable uh and then just the the ones that are listed as 1 2 3 4 5 here they've just been collapsed up into here so the select board uh if it's name if anything is named after a person select board shall take into account the nominees pass residents in town extraordinary service Andor contributions to the town and then any
public lands could be named for natural descriptors of the land or after a specific individual as part of a bequest or some kind of special circumstance so that's broadened a little bit from what had been done before which I think is number five down here where it had been said that we wouldn't name it for any
commercial property or or any commercial entity or living person um and so this trying to think ahead if we amend this try to think ahead to our future facilities that we hope to have in town you know from Public Safety Senior Center other things that are happening
we want to make it so that it's doable and not so restrictive which I think this ended up being kind of inadvertently um and then basically instead of uh this is just a change of wording from um public hearings which mean usually that we have to advertise it in The Gazette that costs hundreds of
dollars oddly enough to advertise a public hearing so we just change that to a scheduled public meeting which is often times what we do anyway rather than a public hearing on a public meeting will allow for input from anybody who wants to attend that about their thoughts about the proposed name
or any other comments they have and this also gets rid of the other thing here about naming um sub areas so rooms and sub areas that had to be less than 25% of a structure or a land and it just it was getting
too too convoluted I guess I would say in in generous terms and so we're recommending that we cross that out alog together and not not deal with 25% of of any anything um so that's kind of it and
then if there were any um uh features and so the features can be anything from plaques to benches to whatever else is defined up in the definition there um that could be done by the jurisdiction uh by the agency having jurisdiction over the same and then um if we wanted
to set and I think we already do have it concom at least we've got set signs for our conservation areas theoretically they're all green although I see there's a blue one around town but they're all supposed to be one color that I know of um and so those were all you know sort of a set design and that had been done
quite a while ago so that's just putting that in there just say that we might so may not shall but may after a scheduled meeting establish any standards or specs for for plaques or markers or anything like that but it's just allowing that to happen not saying that it would happen Yeah question can I have an example cuz
I know K's going to want to do this so let's say we have a conservation area and we want to Rel all the trails sort of like a ski resort we want to make sure every Trail has a name so people know which one they're going down would we just this kcom just will come with like a map marked up with some names on it and bring it to you guys and you
approve it I think that would be basically a simple way to do it be to do that and and put a recommendation say you know we want to name it after Dan La Valley it's like well give us a little clue as to why you know um I mean I think that would that would be choose I mean we didn't we didn't list every Ste
Ste we we didn't list every eventuality here of you know every kind of thing that could be named so trying to think of like conservation lands in in global terms that in my head would include Trails without specifying Trails but can can you back up to was a a a
Conservation Area named but somebody wanted to change the name it has to go to town meeting right if it's been if it's already been named yeah it's already been named and you wanted to name it something new correct that would have to go to town does it farther a little bit further way up top very first
thing and then what has to come in order to make the application for the change what do we need to be some of the same criteria okay so it's essentially as if there was no name at all and it probably comes first to the select board and then because it's a change in name it would
then have to go to town meeting so it doesn't change every year yeah yeah we don't want theoretically most things that are named stay named I mean it's very rare I think that we would find a shifting around of of naming things um but once it's been named and and we've
agreed to that then you know if there were a compelling reason to name it something else then I think that would have to come not only to us but to town meeting but I would think it would follow the same criteria that would be my thought excellent careful at the Red Trail anything else um so that's that's
a just a what we're going to recommend anyway and I don't know we wanted to to select word bylaw commit I'm speaking from bylaws committee now um to have as usual select board make any comments thoughts about it and then see what you think about it and if not we'll we'll move it on to KP to put in their two
cents worth and they may have some issues with it too so can I come at the same issue in different direction mhm um there's a list of things to which names might be fixed right under the definition up there
maybe the fact that Trails is not called cuz there's no change means it's included right okay yeah there's there is a definition section sorry we didn't put it up on board a room m is not in
the list that was one of the sub areas so like a building so like what we had done before was in here so like if the library the concept of building and it comes for review right we we we've taken out at this
point we took out the idea of a sub area which would have been like a room at the library or room at the school yeah a lot of crazy definitions sorry it was very complex that's what we're thinking the concept is naming a room goes through
what procedure would go through if I'm not mistaken it would go through the say the library that has jurisdiction thereof and bring it to the select board board for review and approval or I think am I right on that
mhm unless it was already named yeah if it was already named would still come to us within into town meeting but if it doesn't have a name if it's just so if the senior center want to name their what common area in honor of their major
donor MH or or something meeting the criteria they would nominate it to the select board correct through their board right yes through their board their accompanied by a letter from whoever's got jurisdiction at the the jurisdiction
there meaning the entity that's proposing it I guess is what I'm saying so yeah so that agency word is kind of a weird legal term but it really does mean board commission committee okay so I think using uh Steven's example right there if somebody wanted to name
something major in the senior center like their common area but they didn't go through the board they they can't come Direct to the select board or if they did would they be advised thank you but please start going through the board okay that's important to know Y and so
this there is a definition section we didn't we didn't change any of that so none of that got copied in there but so features would be benches bricks flag poles plaques scoreboards whatever um uh public land was any property owned or maintained by the town or any
Department thereof not limited to playgrounds Parks courts athletic fields Etc we didn't throw trails in there but well given they were all hopeful new public buildings being built in the next few years uh there's likely going to be
a lot of those kinds of things are going to come up and some of them it might be related to um it might be related to donations to Bricks um yeah depending on how that all works out I mean I've seen buildings be built in other towns where
you know if you put in whatever $500 you get a a brick in your name or something like that so that's but that's that's individual features it's not the building itself so features okay any thoughts about it is that is that it's helpful I mean is it it's simpler but
does it achieve what we think we want to have happen and and again I I've been hearing it more from from lands and and trails kind of things I haven't really heard any problem it's not even come up yet on in terms of buildings so does it
allow us enough flexibility or is it too the problem that we had before where we didn't have a clear method for naming subsections of say a conservation area like we want to name a trail for example how can we just can the Conservation Commission just name it or does it have
to be approved by this is great it's at least it comes through another layer of approval with some rationale but it doesn't have to go through the onerous process of waiting months and months and months to make it on a warrant for a town meeting so it does it does have another check if you will another step M
um to sort of you know provide that rationale and justify it but it doesn't doesn't make it go you know make it be a big issue I guess is what I'm trying to say there there's another consideration and I know 30 years ago the uh the owner of the summit of pal Mountain wanted to
name it with his last name and um it was already named by is it USGS that and so therefore if there's a name already by say a federal agency or even a state agency can we override it or or what I think he need and I think that's come up
with the acquisition of another larger property that we got through the mountain Waters project that apparently and I'm sorry I'm not going to remember exactly what agency named it Breakwater Conservation Area yeah Breakneck break neck Ridge I believe it was something no
that was my Breakneck Ridge so I just think we have to consider whether or not theyve been named all right so we might we might if anything Scot that we might add in just something saying should there be a name already designated m and this would be a land issue really name already designated by who the by a by a
by another Municipal entity like state or federal state or federal entry or something I mean per then whatever would we be able to override it that's the big question or not I would think probably not in my head but I don't know that for sure I kind of doubt it well if we if we
the town owns the property versus the state that's right sure sometimes they put names on things cuz they didn't have a name right yeah it just carries over yeah so that would be you know something we could add in there maybe ask the question as it goes on to legal to I would distinguish between the name of a
property and the name of the geographic feature mm and we're talking about naming the property based on ownership not elevation the mountain we can't rename
except from an act of Congress is my understanding border no I wouldn't think so but no but the property could be we could decide to name it after the donor if we ran that
through the process I believe unless they have to be not alive any longer isn't that part the criter we changed that's bur them at State okay I mean you know in general I mean you know a lot of the lands we would assume that what's in the new one is a lot of the lands would
be named after geographic features of the of the property but it could be named after a person depending um but it might not be a bad idea to add in just something that you know should there be a a land area already
named historically or by state something the wording is I don't know what the wording is executive order executive order right um you know we at least maybe need to put that there and inquire about it I think from legal that
would be my only thought on that that's a good good point so make more complicated so maybe this doesn't apply but is there a process for naming streets I know that we probably I don't know Rand would have I don't know how that happens actually Rand Randall um did send an email that
he wanted to see if we could include streets I it might be a little bit too late and too complicated at this point oh so okay why would that be that much different is it well the planning board is the one that who who's responsible for name
Street no we we have we have because street address we've had some new Street developments our Street's brand new yes exactly and I think what we did in that case I was on the planning board at the time we accepted the people that were developing the property it was Fitch and
there was Gil farms and those those names just I guess they put it in their application for the development of the I think in the past they resulted from properties that had been farm at the time perhaps I don't know if that was part of it I
mean they were they were the owners they formerly probably did Farm them but well I don't think the town controls those appr no I think that's true that's true especially if it's private yeah private roads we don't have much say over so public ways we would but not private
ways very good point yes we can we can just maybe just double check whatever Randa was wanting to say and we can you know I mean I'd really kind of like to do this once and for all and be done and if it's not going to be ready for for the special town if we wanted to add streets or something you know at least for the Maytown
meeting but I would I'd like to get it done this time if we can but um you know let's just see what how complicated the streets part is so with those comments anybody have any other comments or are we okay to send it on to KP with these couple comments and see what they think
about it sure F Bill okay I'm taking that as a yes I'm not hearing any objection on that y you want a motion all right I think we're going to have discussion that Tom Maybe than Sor do you need a motion sure why not I'd like to make a motion that we uh
you want to both the uh the naming what was the other one the two name of public buildings uh bylaw Amendment name of public buildings naming of public buildings structures and lands yes that and also the swimming pools we already did the swimming pool that's already
done the naming of public Village structures in land article the wording of that along to our legal department okay with the with the couple notes that are been mentioned in our discussion yes as mentioned okay all right I'm the second second all right all those in
favor I okay everybody okay all right next up conservation fee schedule um this is request from Conservation Commission um George you're actually here if you like to speak to it but I
think it's relatively simple um the second page got down actually is the current um concom schedule um so there's very little change there's actually one minor and then two other changes to it so we'll pull it back up
again uh and what it is is adding in the the notice of intent the two things that are new would be the $125 for each dwelling D dwelling unit in a duplex that was missing completely in the current one and 350 for a multif family
three units or more um so those those two were missing completely and then in the feast schedule the um the N red is based on linear feet not square feet so that was a minor change from what's already on the current books and you can pull it down if Dan looks like he has a
question no this is something that got proposed at concom apparently and came to us um so so we have in here the an red is the uh abbreviated notice of resource yeah uh resource area
delineation uh and we had that as a square foot it's currently what's on the books and so concom makes its fees but selector has to approve them um so this would be the request to change that to linear feet and then add in the other two uh 125 and 350 I believe and those
other two in number one okay any these These are select board um this does not have to these are con these are conom policies right do they have to go before Tom meeting or can we just no the decision is okay these are concom policies that come to select board and we recruit them and
and the receipts go into what fund it goes into the revolving fund for conserv conservation revolving fund as far as I know and for these we have title for that particular fund i' I'd request that you send the specific title
that we are authorizing um to both the agent and the chair okay I think it's conservation revolving funds but be more clear in the 10wn meeting warrant than it is in other records yeah
I believe it's just conservation um conservation revolving fund and then there's a separate one on conservation forestry revolving fund it's a completely separate one yes and okay more and more yeah there's a lot oh there's only one forestry one
that I'm aware of no forry so um I don't know if where these were done off hand but every year we vote on the actual amounts of money in the con in the revolving funds right so here you've got what the use is so
conservation operating expenses admin expenses conservation forestry is oversight and management of conservation areas including forestry land so that's the only two that are under concom as far as I know under revolving funds so the fees would go
into the first one the admin yes they go in the admin one for fees for permits like that and if I could geek out I'm just asking staff double check the general ledger account number and make sure that there aren't somehow two and one
is carrying the balance and there more of them I I have no evidence okay I the the forestry one was only created a couple years ago so it can't have a whole lot I'm talking about the conservation revolving well that's fun yeah so that
authorized in time needing warrant no problem right and those daily operation that I'm just likeing to be clarified as a internal Financial control issue that things are coded correctly it's all I'm asking okay it's fine it should be on
Bradley's um revenue reports so when you see them under the special Revenue that's where they would be on a normal report I'm not as close to it as the agent is and I would ask that the two staff people communicate clearly
directly and that's outside my jurisdiction so I'll shut up okay all right so that's basically um conservation fee schedule um anybody have any other comments or not we'll take a motion to approve that as
requested a motion to approve the Fe schedule proposed by the Conservation Commission as as shown all right all those in favor I I I all right motions approved all right uh let's do the next fees Y and we have
another one you can make that a little bit bigger Scott if you mind uh we have fire department uh permit fees um we have some new ones this I believe uh Chief want you if you want to speak to it I I know you said this hadn't been updated in like 10 years uh
10 years so this one uh kcom I think has been only a couple years 2 three years um this one has been out there for a good good 10 years where it hadn't had any up so and these are new fees and they're uh they've been updated there's
not a lot of changes a lot of them are set by the state um so there was wasn't a lot of changes some here and there a little bit nothing nothing really drastic I just wanted to update it there was some that weren't on there like the solar plans uh
those just became a fire inspection in 2022 okay so those weren't on there the hot works permit was on there uh plain hot works yeah hot works is um for instance when they built the bridge on East Street they needed a hot works
permit when they were doing welding um so they had to have a fire watch and Fir Fishers that kind of stuff got it so any type of welding or using a torch they're supposed to have a permit got it yep that's a question about the solar panel just a for my planning
board you want understand is that for solar panels that are roof mounted as well as uh ones that ground mounted or right okay you have to inspect both now yes okay uh the solar panels what that is is before it became a fire department
uh inspection you could cover the whole roof and now that the fire department has a uh estate permit um there has to be access for the fire department to get up onto the roof and across the top
and then also the uh ESS is an energy storage system a battery uh Tesla is the big one um before you could put them anywhere now you have to have uh you know fire rated doors and walls and you
know you can only put them in certain spots okay we're in the past um we had a call this summer for a totally separate uh smoke in a house it was a chimney malfunction went down in the basement and they had a uh battery storage system
just hanging on the wall in the basement so mhm okay and everybody knows now with the uh the batteries they you know you can't put them out they just have to kind of burn out on their own right so that's why the fire department got involved and now there's permits
involved for it okay so these are all permits that they would have to come to the fire department anybody would have to come together the uh the solar plan we actually have it on the town website already uh plan review okay uh so all the solar companies they all know to uh
fill it out and send it in with their plans M then we sign off on it and then they can move forward on the installation okay and is your annual food truck inspection is that in addition to what the Board of Health does or the same thing yeah different
purpose yes yeah we're there to inspect their uh fire uh systems okay you know Fire EX signature system so and the propane where they're mounted and okay all that are these um onetime permits required or a periodic updates
uh most of them are one time um the annual inspections you would have to you know you do them every year right so the but these are all one time uh daycare inspections once a year uh food trucks they have to get them inspected every
year okay and I I see you designated to to your permanent tank the yeah tank truck yeah most of those are you know when you see a pickup and they had a little fuel cell on the back mhm that's what those are okay all right is there another page on that or is
that question how does the how do the people know how frequently they have to rep permit or get R this well the the fuel tank all the you know when you give them a permit it's good for 2 years and they have to come back so it's written on the permit yes paper itself okay and
right now we're still on paper permit perit we're not doing online permitting on this yet well now that you know we have the permit fee structure we're working to get it online okay great okay so this is an update
basically of fees yes and any more there know on down down down down uh pages and Pages Yeah couple pages right so the old one oh more 2015 so it's about 10 years old oh that's a yeah from 2015 okay yeah definitely not
quite as detailed okay so um and just one last question for my end the individual vehicle cost per hour so that would be uh like when they did the uh The Damp Studio did that video shoot on uh
Flector Farm yeah okay yeah so we supplied a brush truck and two Personnel got it okay so so that would be for a sort of a special event it's not because you send a firet truck out right to and currently right now the uh the dance studio again the in the old Harley shop
yeah they're doing video shoots in there with a smoke machine so they have to uh shut off some of the alarm sensors mhm Y and so they have a fire watch there all right you never know what what kind of things are involved in in all these
events that's great okay all right so this is basically an update that'll be put up on your on your um page on the website M Cindy question um I'm just looking at the bottom there materials and Equipment build replacement cost so you have to get a quote on what the
replacement cost would be and then medical observation SL treatment treatment that that's a you know like uh they used to have the third part breaks in town oh yeah uhhuh uh we would they would Supply an ambulance and so if
somebody got hurt and we transported their insurance will be paying that that's considered the responsible party un have it right so y okay one thing that most residents May care about is the yearly burn permit that go up
burning permits are on there um the only uh agricultural permits are are free you know for the farmers yeah bur was somewhere I saw it where'd it go yeah it's kind of in the middle there how frequently do you do the smoke detector
in the carbon monoxide how uh whenever a house is sold ah yeah have one y so Dan you're residential today or weekend something people at home may be interested to seeing correct season pass yeah so two-day weekend pass for $10 or
a season pass for 25 for your burn burn permits up until May 1 bring a check no other form of makes it easier for everyone yeah okay so could we have a motion to approve the new fee schedule for the
proposed new that the proposed new fee schedule be um approved okay submitt okay and second from stepen yes you have no further discussion all those in favor I I all right very good can I make a motion that we move one point in the
agenda I know Mr Hy is here and um thank you Chief he's the last sure yep now we got a couple more thanks yep all right so we have uh you want to take that c um do I want to take it well well there's an application uh that
I think just came up on your screen that um of the withdrawal of properties on peat Road and um Mr H represents the estate of Janette judge who was your mother is that correct and um as far as
I know has been to Conservation Commission has been to the board of assessors and has been to the planning board right we've got all that in our in our packets open SP after the courtesy and we appreciate that a lot um so uh would you like to talk about your
properties okay um well you have it up there actually Heritage is doing the anr on it and they SP I think they might have got it to the application right today so I don't know if it's easier if I to show you where the dot is up there
yeah that's what they put and let me acknowledge I got really l with the terminology and I understand when you say anr it's a survey created by the local survey or
Not by the state agency or somewh and you're taking two existing lots and joining them correct and they are next to each other so it doesn't require the planing board to approve or acknowledge or I will say I saw I saw a correspondence from the chair of the
planning board today and he referenced this as an anr and I'm learning that terminology I've only heard it when splitting Parcels oh but any cleaving of parcels whether apart or
together so I've learned this and I want to say that uh I was confused because joining of parcels is far less common than splitting parcels and you also got a street number on that now too great that's 94 but I don't know if you need
to see all this but this is we see the whole map all right it's new for me too so think I believe you're right okay so we do have this up as uh it's been um checked out
it it will be known as 94 peat Road I think before it's been known as zero or zero rear or something like that um and so um the assessors I think confirmed that they had looked into it through Cindy and we we did we we discovered that there had been a street number assigned by the planning board and
somehow the communication didn't get to the assessor's office but it has been received so we do have a street number for that so we have we have in our packages a a communication from planning board recommending that we wave the right of first refusal um similarly from the board of
assessors um and similarly from the Conservation Commission so all three requisite boards have recommended that we wave the right of first refusal to purchase this property uh and therefore I will and I will speak that the open space committee also did I'm sorry I didn't get the
correspondence to you for tonight's Mee but understood and we welcome that but again there are three required boards and that's all that's required by the mg and uh so I think from what we know you've you've followed the process and we have a you have a purchase and sale
or an agreement on the property already uh and you've gone through the requisite boards to get the approval and everybody's recommending we wave so with that can I have the motion from select board please to follow the recommendations of our sub boards and wave the right of first refusal on this property known as 93 sorry 94 PE what I
move that we the select board wait the right of first refusal and um and allow these to be withdrawn from chapter 4 conversion to residential according to the notice submitted and the purchase and sale attached there according to the
notice submitted and the purchase and sale that you've attached okay thank you okay second all right all those in favor I I I all right it is there you go thank you very much thank you you believe it right gone through the
process very good got the other all right I'm sorry to H up on language sorry get my head in thanks very much you okay all right next up uh we don't have any paper on this but um
we have a request um from uh planning board um basically um and also um somewhat from Steven himself but um the planning board um usually has a delegate and an alternate from planning board to
the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and at this point in time we've understood or I've understood from the chair that they're having difficulties finding an alternate from planning board uh the chair himself is right now the the designated um delegate from planning board but he is recommending that we
make an exception and allow an alternate to be appointed from select board because planning board doesn't have anybody who's willing to give the time and effort to do that and stepen has volunteered to do that and the planning board chair has agreed with that idea so I would like to make a motion that we
approve Steven Johnson as the alternate delegate representing the select board to attend the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission meetings and its various subcommittees as they determine second any discussion on that I'm willing okay yeah we should ask that are
you willing okay all those in favor I I I all right there it is thank you and Stephen you just abstain or do you want you can vote for yourself I suppose however you want I don't know what's appropriate we can do a three and an
obstain how's that yeah you know I uh I think I understand between Paul and myself that I'll do most of the attemp and we'll work on the communication which should come back principally to the planning board I'll share liberally
with the select board sounds good yep okay thank you um Scott let's talk briefly on the uh special time meeting warrant and where we're at with that please okay um so we're having the special time meeting on uh Saturday March 22nd we need to get the warrant
signed and posted by no later than Friday uh in the 6 different areas of the town where the Constable um I was able to reduce it a little bit some of the things are going to be would have to be moved to the annual town meeting uh but the biggest one is article one which I was able to get the language from Bond
Council um one of the things I just want to stress is sorry let just this apocalpse um here the amount of money that we're borrowing for is not in the actual article itself it's going to be in the
motion and in the explanation so uh the right now the public safety complex uh we have the estimate at $21.4 million um the Public Safety Committee is seeking uh
3.1 million for the OPM and Architectural and Engineering costs which will have to be borrowed for through town meeting if town meeting approves it by 2/3 vote it was then go to the voters and we're looking to have this on our regular uh municipal election in May 20th I think it was May
20th or 22nd dat action so we won't have to do a special election we can just do it along with the other thing um the senior center is not going to be requesting funds for the preconstruction cost right now uh but ultimately we're going to be looking at probably early fall for another special town meeting
for the entire cost and then um within 90 days of that vote we would have have another election so probably within 90 days but no more than 35 days so between 35 and 90 days we have to have so it probably be October November if we're going to keep the fall
schedule so this would be just looking for the architectural engineering services to start moving on the public safety complex and it's just to give the authority to borrow on Undead exclusion mhm correct and then um next week or in a
couple days I'm going to do the rest of the article the explanation send to uh finance committee to get approved and um hopefully do a very quick but thorough uh public education within two weeks you can change a board of Selectmen please
to select board in that motion um and since we're live um and you've highlighted the number I is that a TBD number often the highlights are left blank uh that was just from Bond Council so roughly 3 million is but I'll put the
exact amount we don't need wording of the motion till the meeting no so the wording of the the the the warrant right the warrant doesn't have the value that will be the uh motion and the wording and the explanation will be distributed beforehand beforeand so to post a
warrant we just need the actual artical language itself I understand the peculiar legalities just and then and we'll work on that this is just a cost estimate that I put together for the building committees the blue is Public Safety purple is senior center and then the
cost and show shows a very basic preliminary tax impact uh for each stage of the development uh doesn't include interest or any other stuff so will go up so and do you want to mention just just briefly since we're on live uh or not
live but we will be recording we are recording just what the um what this impact of the 3.1 might be uh it should be right around $43 to the average homeowner per year per year per year per
year per year yeah it's not again a very rough estimate not including additional expenses like interest and things like that so or offsets from Grants and or or off yep yeah exactly MH okay next uh we have The Prudent investor rule which is
um this was actually language from KP law uh it's a request from the treasur that would allow the treasure to invest funds outside of a very small restrictive list um to open it up a little bit um this isn't the same thing
as I know John had mentioned the um trust fund committee so that would be probably at the annual town meeting um but this is it sounds similar but it's a little bit different um you would also have the oped Declaration of trust which is not only recommended by KP law but
also from our Auditors uh to establish one of those uh we do have a Amendment to the general bylaws to go back to Saturday uh morning um for annual town meeting uh heard the
request of the moderator we have the swimming pool safety bylaw that we mentioned before as well as the uh naming of public building structures and lands uh this one literally just came in about 20 minutes ago the wording but uh
unpaid account for PR fiscal years for the busing fees um I don't think it's going to be from free cash because I know Norris has a separate SE amount that they have the money in so I got to talk to Don the the business manager and uh Norris and Bradley just to make sure that we get
this wording right cuz it definitely don't want to come from our free cash it needs to come from the school's free cash cuz they never transfer the money from no school to the central office so this is for busing for okay for the the kids at Hampshire Regional uh for Norris
school for Norris School y so um a couple years ago that's built into the Norris budget Norris is supposed to transfer the money from North to Central offices that pays all the bills uh they haven't done that for a few years um so they should have a positive cash flow
that will now pay for that so because this is a prior year bill it needs to have town meeting approval do you know how big that carried balance is the t uh school's preach I don't know it should if not
preach the account that was just never sending out it should be close to that I know that John has uh talked to no so it should have grown up grown with the amount not sent over to the central office so hopefully if not we have
another problem so you're hoping to get more exact figure before we post this on Friday um that's the exact figure according to Don um just got the email okay uh I haven't read it yet but um so $454,000 basically
yeah so and then obviously we can't take from our free cash so that's a different thing so okay um transfer funds for legal cost just an additional $5,000 I know we did the transfer from um the finance committee last week so hopefully I won't use all that up and this will
just take the place of that uh we have some unpaid accounts from fire fiscal years uh mostly from the elementary school um I didn't want to put the busing one into this this list so I separate it out cuz it's a little bit of a different amount of money uh these are
just our general smaller paid bills um you know I think the biggest one is um there's a grant that we have to repay from fy22 for the fire department uh that's the biggest Municipal one other than that um $97 um things like we don't get the bill in time or aren't able to
encumber funds um what's the weights and measures one didn't we we didn't pay that bill uh we did we did but we have I guess it's I I'll check with Judy but it's part of the um the thing the uh Bradley's paid from uh previous fiscal
year so we paid this fiscal year I see so and just out of curiosity dog control what's that about is that or Westfield animal uh I don't know Lucy yeah Lucy know that bill came in when I was in the
hospital okay and didn't get paid so um I was think the vendor was a little I didn't understand what l dat design do software that I use oh okay got it all right okay so previous bills yeah and then last but not least uh request for
CPA funding for the First Congressional Church this is for heat pumps mhm um okay that's last but not least so the order of the articles is already established right uh I mean we can change them absolutely I I happen to know that person
who's got an interest in article 10 wondered when it was going to show up on the warrant so I told that person that I didn't know if the order had been established yet so I don't know usually CPC CPA funds come toward the end of the war they yeah just about always I mean
you have some moderator if we need to revise it we can make a motion at the beginning of the meeting for a good reason that's our experience correct okay all right so we've got it down to 10 articles basically y that's it and we didn't need to do a consent agenda um cuz most of it was just un paid bills
which I instead of doing individual I just lumped it in together as one article so okay so we'll have some of the ones that we thought we might do that we'll hold them off until the May town meeting so this is just for the special town meeting okay anybody have any comments or questions if not we would need to
basically vote to allow Scott to tidy tidy these up and get get them posted on by by Friday at the latest yeah and then he'll be working on the the summaries and the Motions for each of these I move that we acknowledge and
accept the draft warrant subject to further edits according Town manager or Town Administrator and town councel and uh they will be posted according to the statute second all right any further question discussion okay all those in
favor I I all right there you go okay and just for everybody again uh town meeting mark March 22nd Saturday 10 hopefully done by 12th Road Race yeah yeah road race Saturday we didn't realize that's happening
hopefully what time's the road r 1 o00 1 o' oh we'll definitely be done by then definitely be done by then so is it at the school um yeah it's at the school town meeting is at the school yes okay all right next up uh just want
to do a little update on the land use planning Scott we've gone through the process the couple nights ago yep so we had a really great great meeting last Thursday with Dawson and Linker and pbpc I invited a p the public for a interactive workshop on what zero
College Highway could be named and would look like in the future um a lot of good participation we had almost 70 people show up um that signed in at least we might have had more um but the next phase is Dodson and flinker is going to take all the information that they
gathered from that um and start doing you know a very basic um outline of what the property could look like I also just want to mention that it's not the last time that we're going to be having a public input first of all there's a survey that's out there right now for anyone to participate in that may not
have been able to do that so it's on the town website it's a Survey Monkey um after we get a little bit further down the road we're going to have some other uh public participation once we get some designs finalized so I think there's going to be one or two other ones probably in April and then throughout
the summer as well mhm yeah and I think you know people in general I think appreciated the the chance to have a small group scenario it was very interactive session and the um as of this evening the the video of it uh eastampton media was there videoed it
um and also took some uh some still shots that incorporated that so that's up on our town website now for anybody who wasn't there and want to uh catch up on that so please feel free to check in on the town website under the special projects uh land use planning
great all right anything else one p to that and Scott was good to mention the upcoming opportunities for the broad public to re-engage there are committees and subcommittees that are working with Consultants on a weekly basis but it's
not driving to one pre-ordained solution it's exploring different options and so I'm sure that the next public meeting there will be at least two options that we can compare and contrast and U that's
really important this is about getting the community engaged and you know as close to consensus as we can is a big deal mhm very good thank you yeah I think one other thing I just want to mention before we move too far away from
the special to meeting warrant um trying to find it now but I got a note from our town moderator um he will be doing his usual run through his draft run through of the town meeting warrant I believe it's going to be the 1th okay and probably 7 p.m. 7:00 p.m.
thank you and I'm sure we will if that's not going to be televised live it'll certainly be recorded one way or another uh we we'll figure that out before the 13th but Robert runs through each of the warrant articles and U so that's for the public to get aware of them and as soon as we have this posted we'll certainly
post that on the town website and so forth as well so that you can understand all of that um next up 20 250th anniversary um nothing more new it's the uh we're continuing to work we got some new new things coming along the next one is
going to be the trivia night at the Southampton Country Club on the 21st so please uh study up on your Southampton trivia um and we do ask that you send in an email if you can uh to Sharon tilby that's on the Flyers that are floating around here about that uh just and we
just want to do a headcount so that we know how many people might be coming uh and then they'll be on the um 29th I believe is a pancake breakfast at the Congregational Church so those are the two main events coming up in March and we will have another meeting on Monday night for the committee that's working
on the planning of all this um very active and engaged committee um and uh we thank everybody who's been involved so far um any other business that can't wait for the next regular March 18th select board meeting
I only have one thing myself if anybody has anything no okay um one thing that came up at public safety building committee last evening was the desire to do a little bit more public education about the public safety um building
itself which will be obviously on the on the warrant uh for the special town meeting so they are um that'll be on the war but this is also just in general public education There's an opportunity to try and um save a little bit of cost and yet get
the word out broadly through putting inserts in the tax bill uh and the tax bills will be going out I believe the week of March 17th I'm thinking it is from what Jen told me um and we won't have another select board meeting theoretically an informal uh regular selectboard meeting before that so uh
what public safety building committee would like to do would be to do basically a a um both-sided two-sided flyer just a piece of paper with two sides one of which is talks about the cost that Scott has mentioned tonight as well as just some basic facts about the
public safety complex and why it's necessary and just some basic facts and figures we've got to be sure that it's written in such a way that it's not intended to sway the vote it's got to be a very neutral tone so Public Safety would like um select board's approval to have that go forward once they've
finished their drafting they would put it through Scott Scott would put it through legal council and nothing would be given to Jen to stuff envelopes with on the tax bill until it was approved by legal council but since we won't have a meeting before she needs to do that uh we won't have a a formal select board meeting we might
have another Finance meeting I'm not sure but we won't have a regular select board meeting before the 17th so I'd like to see if we would be in agreement to theoretically vote um to allow an insert to the tax bill regarding the public safety building to be included in
that I have some questions um who is going to be the initial drafter of the information the co-chairs the co-chairs secondly you didn't mention this but you probably did mean to mention it will that include dates and process such as
going before town meeting and then going to the ballot and um a percentage or you know is it simple majority versus 2/3 I I urge very strongly that the very specifics be put in there right I think so yeah I there's enough room on both sides of a paper and they've got you
know it's part it's going to be similar to U other fact sheets that were handed out probably several months ago now um but just updated with information that we've gained so far from the um from the architectural company that we're working with and obviously some updated facts and figures in terms of costing
implications so I'm asking you to sort of approve a blank slate I don't have it as a draft but I know that uh nothing nothing can get forward and I know Scott has made the point many times to the committee that this has got to be very very neutral in its tone uh and legal council would obviously weigh in on that
even heavier uh so before that happens um you know it can't get into the tax bill but we were just trying to save um postage uh as well as take advantage of an existing mailing uh which can be done so I move that the select board approve
the in uh creation of an insertion into uh the tax bill of information regarding the um public safety building and the opportunity for the town to um vote
all right any questions no good all those in favor I I all right thank you I will let them for chairs know that um Chief Ensworth and Christina mson photographs and
then then um we have a couple last things um minutes to approve on February 4th we have minutes on the select board for February 4th if everybody's had a chance to read those make a motion approve minutes from February 4th Mr leftward okay can I have
a second second by Steven okay any discussion okay all those in favor I all right minutes are approved and our clerk will sign those when they get to her um and then we have just one other thing a
Personnel form we have um uh this had kind of come around but we hadn't formally um acknowledged it um fire department has got a person request form Personnel requisition form to uh start the recruitment for uh two full-time
paramedic firefighter positions uh this come about finally now after they've done their compensation plan for the fire department and that's allowing now um some real facts and figures for them to go out and try to do some recruiting on this so there is a prf in front of us I would just like select board's
approval to approve uh approval for the prf on the two full-time positions that had been approved at town meeting last year I believe it was uh for two U paramedic firefighter combinations I move that we accept the
prf for the two fulltime positions for paramedic SL firefighter okay all right thank you all all those in favor I I all right it is okay Scott uh old business I'll let you take up whatever you may know on that and then
we'll um really soon I'm sorry uh the stormw Enterprise fund we're trying to get a meeting with tyan bond in early April right after a special town meeting uh the ada8 door openers um we finally got the tax exempt through the
uh business um and we're going to be ordering that as soon as the debit card is loaded um and the hazard mitigation plan has we had our final meeting uh so we should be getting a draft final report I'm not sure how long you said it'll take a
little while couple mons I think before she gets to us I think so once we get that we'll have to have another public hearing um probably in the same format as before with the select board okay and Railway sewer next steps anything uh nothing on those okay and nothing yet on
the um Broadband Committee in charge either we've got to get back onto that and capital asset planning as well um so we've got things that are hanging out there that we've got to nail down for sure um we have um our calendar just our next select board meeting should be
March 18th unless we know that we've got something happening on March 11th which I'll leave that to Scott maybe to tell us later on um but if not I think that's all we have for our regular meeting and
we will then just move into almost on time um our joint meeting with the finance committee to look at the next group of budget presentations uh tonight we'll have the town clerk clerk uh concom Housing
Authority Town Administrator select board and the treasurer regarding our debt and our insurance in particular and then once we're done with that select board will go into executive session okay so with that would uh Finance like to call your meeting to order yep so we
have a quorum so I'll call the meeting to order at 7:24 okay thanks very much all right so first up I think is town clerk luy come up have a seat at the table be a little closer to the microphone hey you all have the yeah so we've got
it in our packages but Scott's going to put it up on the screen here too which is very helpful so for the town clerk there isn't much to the specific daily operations of it a lot of it is separate from the uh elections that Lucy has to
do um there's two people in the office there's a parttime person non benefit eligible and then you have the town clerk themselves uh we have the salary adjustments for uh those two positions and then for the operating expenses we
have the regular office expenses every day stuff you know toner office supplies ecode 360 things like that that are incorporated into that and then we have the election registration expenses as well um so it's about a little over $9,000 for each of those and for the
election wages um Lucy is requesting about $5,500 for the upcoming year so we you know we we might have a few special elections next fiscal year so well the special town meeting is going to cost money for workers and then if we have a special election we're going to have to
pay for ballots and workers so yeah so we have no other there's no other state elections at all this year we've got just our town election in May and then theoretically a special one sometime in the fall perhaps okay and besides elections I mean I I'm sure
I don't know if you've seen my narrative but I just not just all about dogs and and Mar certificates and gu certificates and I do a lot of other stuff right um you know jet asked me today
for stuff for zero College Highway and I researched it and gave her all the work that she needed today without hesitation so okay yeah I think we've got the the budget narratives there too so yeah we really thank uh thank people for taking
time to do budget narratives this year I think that's really helped us understand things a little bit better um one of the things I know that we've got to and you and I have talked about it is just keeping up with our famous ecode 360 people and getting things just making sure either they're billing us on time
and it's an annual maintenance fee if I I can tell you that I talked to them today again and each time we do a supplement or an addition it's going to cost between 1,895 and 2500 for the supplements to be
added onto the system onto our website and for them to print out three copies okay so so that's not per not per bylaw it's like if we gave them five it's that fee for for the package right exactly yes but then there's also the
$695 fee that we pay annually that's gone down first it was $1.95 and then it went down now 69 it's gone down each year so but that's why I put it into my budget so in case anything comes up any
changes are made they raise their prices then right we have I think our challeng is especially like with bylaws at town meeting we always have to wait at least 90 days right and then this year has been you know even more of a challenge but for a variety of reasons but we know that we've got some that maybe weren't
posted before yeah she texted me I mean emailed me today and said that she they are submitting them they're working on them and I said go ahead okay so any that we do say we've got these couple at special town meeting we might have a couple more at annual town meeting it
would behoove us to wait to give those to her all at once all at once okay that's what I want to understand I mean after the approved that the town meeting it's up to the attorney general corre I mean the Attorney General is working on one from a year ago yeah for the zoning
and so you know once they make the changes they have to right okay that's good okay any questions comment yeah on this page see I would wonder if the second line is is is low
for 9,000 where the actuals from 2023 2024 or above that um but also yeah it is what's changed well um election we had a national election oh that's why
okay for not two years no both years the state was before we had state so we're not expecting any major elections this year we don't n how no unless you know something from Boston comes I mean in 2020 we weren't expecting Peter K got
that's right all but we had to have a special election in March for that we had uh four other elections after that so so if it were for the elections it kind of drops back down to 9,000 is okay I get it and the other and you do sorry and
you do get some reimbursement from the state I do get reimbursement for postage fees um for uh but it depends they the state picks and chooses what they want to reimburse us on so um I have to do a
survey every year that I mean every year that we have elections that says how many workers we had how many hours they worked um how much they're paid mhm um do we have police detail did we have right um how much we had in postage how
much was mailed out how much was mailed back in okay yeah good I made the other one the the first line it seems like maybe entire right cuz it's this only cost about 1,500 bucks 2023 2024 well
the census we we have to mail out and then when people don't respond we have to do a second mailing in June for confirmation cards oh um every year we have to do that there's more there's more things happening this year in that col yeah Ro yeah yeah cool yeah
interesting y I stepped out a moment do you charge fees for anything for example marriage licenses or request very so they're $10 for a certified copy for death certificate marriage certificate for a certificate
$10 each you know other towns charge 15 some charge 20 we we charge 10 for each Cy so and then we CH we charge $25 for a burial permit that a funeral home will have to ask us for if they need it
because the person has to know that so um I mean it's pretty clear the office supplies we go through a lot of envelopes because we get certifications from the state every day from the R&V and people go to change
their you know change their license renew their license they go to a state agency and they sign up for Mass Health we're always notified of a certification which is for us to recogn whether it's a duplicate person the same
person just doing something different changing their name but we have to mail out a letter every single time per the state M so we go through a lot of envelopes M yeah okay any questions
comments from Finance at all no okay pretty straightforward straight forward all right thank you Lucy appreciate it all right thanks Lucy all right if anybody else has any other questions any other time
just me all right thank you very much thank you sorry all right next up uh Conservation Commission think I see a couple of pieces George Russell yep and K Hill yep
yeah good hi hi the treasurer of the Conservation Commission right very good yeah okay so again it's a pretty straightforward budget um they're requesting a $6,000 increase for their uh operating expenses and that's things
like operating expenses fees um some other things uh and then the Personnel Services where the bulk of the money is uh the conservation agent um it's a part-time position they're looking to increase it from 16 hours a week to 18 hours
uh the other part of that is it would be it's currently funded half half by arpa funds which will be expiring for next year right Ry we fully went through the the conservation agent project so now we're going on to the general fund okay
so no more arpa arpa funds are done yes y so um so it would have to be fully um funded from the general uh budget for FY 26 I'm just curious would it be possible for some of the uh fees that you collect like the revolving fees um to put that
towards the administration costs could we do that um so I'm just starting to I'm it was Art big shoes to fil it was Art before me um sorry can repeat that question
again so I'm not sure how much the account has but with the with the fees that you charge there should a revolving account that you can tap into for administrative costs is that that's right Ry so I'm wondering if might be able to use some of that to offset it in the
upcoming budget well we we kept it level uh it's possible yes um the filing fees that we collect uh from permit applications uh can be used for the Conservation Commission to quote carry out its duties under the ACT
unquote and yes it could be used uh from salaries and for Kathleen's benefit we did approve the new conservation fee scheduled tonight before you came all right can I ask a general question are there other expenses that the town had
that were funded by arpa over the years that all of a sudden the money's gone and we're still trying to maintain the the expenditures there's two that I'm thinking about well there were three two anyway so the conservation agent was partially funded through arpa there was
um um plan um planning board consultant funded through arpa there were three new program three new teachers up at the nor school for neurodiversity in particular those have finished um and they're
carrying on that cost themselves now um COA COA was it wasn't our arpa that was Senator vas's arpa that wasn't Town yeah that wasn't the town arpa that was from a state earmark from Senator Vas so that's more a program though it's not
for salary and that's still ongoing they're still spending that um those are the only things that were salary related that come to my mind that are kind of continuing and or now they were partially funded by arpa and now it's up to us to figure out where the money is
coming from so I know the school has has moved on to including that in their budget now as these positions are more permanent with them um so yeah weed not to do there no example where we stop spending the money though uh not that we sto spending it no
there's but there's very very very few that are still ongoing I mean many of them have finished the money for the project that was awarded okay project related yeah so many things have been completed and they've turned in their reports and they're they're done drawing down in in a few cases there's some
balance of the arpa money that was awarded to them and that's what Bradley and I continually try to figure out um and we're still quite understanding not quite understanding I think where we can put that money uh because it came in as arpa funds and now that you know if we've been able to have a little bit of
excess we don't know if that has to be returned or where that has to go so that's the question that I don't think we've gotten any guidance from the feds or anybody else about that in state or anybody at this point in time so we're being cautious about where where to
where to put that but um yeah so there's there's a couple that are you know like salary related that do pose some issues that's why we tried not to do too much in terms of salaries cuz that really is kind of a little bit of a trap yeah it is a bit I mean it was a stop Gap kind of measure but it has consequences later
on Yeah question yeah the followup question to yours um maybe it would help in this process while we're walking through these we you seem to reflect on on costs but not so much the sources of the fundings in these budget overviews maybe something to add to would
be where those fund is where that fund is coming from the money is coming from such as the variant right now just show shows like it's a very small variant but really it's going to be larg VAR time because we don't right so right now
right is coming from the general fund right now already right yeah I see my apolog but that's a good point some yeah if it was different funding this is what the town is going to spend right the way this set up right for example we're going to have a separate section for
offsets and the revenue part um which I can actually bring up so Sim like last year we got a little bit confusion with $175,000 communication Grant we got for the police department because that's going to be stepping down year after year um
so one thing that we wanted to make sure is that when we use grants or revenues or other sources that we include that in there yeah yeah so once we If U for example if we use like the
cemetery um we'll put that in there rather than funding from the general fund and we'll do it from the we could use like the revolving fund from concom we'll put that in the offset or how about using money on deposit like in some cases the expenses
might exceed revenue but you're going to use some of the money that's on deposit to fund this particular year and I think we heard that with Cemetery they had tons of money in the in there and that was in their um in various various accounts was revolving
fund I forget on theirs too uh their interest fund and their um over $200,000 or something so we would offset so if we don't take it from the general fund we would offset or if you approve it then we would offset it with those types of funds if we don't take it from the general
fund what can I ask question what about um the forestry fund forestry account like I know that's money that we get from forest cutting um that I know that has quite a bit of money in it right I'm
going be offset with that not for salaries to my knowledge we have to look into it a little bit more and see what the purpose of the revolving fund was for and that's that's the only thing yeah we can take a look at that was only done a couple couple years ago at town meeting um my
recollection was that it was to be and I think it was in something we looked at tonight um was for the management of conservation properties so that was lot more ensuring that you know if there you know if there were some trees that needed removing perhaps or something that something had happened and and
maybe there needed there there's a like a few years ago we had this terrible storm over at manhan Meadows right and we had trees all over the place and we had to spend time at least getting them down because there were several Widow makers and whatever else um it could be maybe something like that I think part of it was supposed to be for trail maintenance but I I'd have to go back
and look at how that was crafted in the thing I don't think it can be used for salaries though in my recollection anyway so the trail maintenance would be very helpful for us because for instance the Southampton Trail blazes right just got approval to put up a bridge in in um
Alice Brown okay uh they just uh they want to put up signs about you know no dumping no whatever Mark the trails uh to use it for equipment quote or quote like that would be extremely beneficial M so it looks like there's only uh one
General conservation evolving fund has the 4222 in it and then the rest of them I'm assuming have restrictions on what they could be used for bunch of different BS around yeahor protection monitoring yeah the red brick estate is a monitoring one
that's requirement right y um the Hazel Young memorial fund has got to be tied to the manhand Meadows that's the Hazel Young Trail Park one F The Wildlife Fund that one I'm not aware of at all honestly on that one um
the um Mass man F that was that was actually a grant um to concom for the I think that was for the bridge that never got finished before it expired
because of the waterways permit and all that stuff so this is money that probably is not I don't think we received it up front this 42,000 is money that is not available to us I think we would have gotten a grant for 50,000 and we would have only spent
a portion of this and then because it's a reimbursable grant my guess is May show as something but I don't think it's actually money that we have because it's very rare that we would get money up front for for an entire Grant mhm usually it's all reimbursable so my
thinking is it was a $50,000 Grant and we probably spent 8 7 or 8,000 of it toward that bridge scenario with Collingswood and various other studies that you all had done um so I think the 42 looks like it's a balance but it's
not money that we've ever received okay so it's not it's not ours it's the state never gave it to us cuz we didn't turn any receipts to spend it is my firm belief but we can double check that Bradley is is that actually a negative 8 huh is that actually negative 8 no I
mean we just we spent and say if it if it's following my my reasoning here we would have spent 7 or 8,000 and that was justified the state agreed to it and they reimbursed us so we would have had you know we had to pay it up front and we get reimbursed so we spent 7900 yeah yeah so something like that
yeah so I'm thinking this is the balance of the grant that never was able to be spent mhm it's according to Bradley the other day you sent it to us and it was 105 in the deficit like a deficit of $105 for the mass man hand m
well there were two grants so one was for the trail work I think about 50,000 and another one for the bridge so there are two separate grants two separate years I believe it was phase one and phase two oh yeah this is the phase two yeah so the bridge we did we did pay for the engineering for the the actual
Bridge itself and we've sought reimbursement so hopefully we'll get that $2,600 back so there may be some a little bit more to go on that but I think this is money that yeah the trail work in phase one I believe was probably spent down um cuz that was rerouting the trail that
was putting in the Bog Bridges all those kinds of things at man yeah and taking out the old bridge right and whatever else was done and the uh yeah and so this is a second grant for phase two I'm pretty sure okay
um and then the mitigation funds that was funds received from the state I'm not sure what the that was due to some Wetlands issue up behind Big Y and the church or something or other up there I believe eversource yeah uh might have been the
eversource one is down near Westfield no ever no eversource was something else yeah but this this came about and this was um I don't know something that the whoever was in violation had to do something to remediate it and the town was going to benefit from whatever they
were supposed to do how this how this one can be spent I don't have a recollection of it myself art was saying that it is typically spent for invasive species management uhhuh we had allocated for invasive species and also
it was originally thought to to um to put a bridge in the zipa Farm property where there's this uh there a Culver Culvert removed the Culver and then either filled back though with stone or or something that it it fell it fell through for some whatever reason um we
couldn't couldn't see that full part of it that's that's the history so so you learn yeah have these conversations yeah so a couple of these you know may have some some restricted things in terms of what they have to do but your your main local fee one is the one that um you
definitely have access to for you know various things um ni a question here regarding the forestry one did I hear that there's payment for Approved um timbering operation is that going to the
Conservation Commission yeah is that the Forestry down here like number six and how is that determined and when and is there like a paper trail the forest manager exactly approved by DC right yeah and that's chapter lands that are
in forestry chapter 61 it could be any forry it could be any it could be private for so how does that determin like you know um does somebody say I want to cut down 15 trees and they come to the Conservation Commission no this is conservation property goes to oh it's
strictly resources that's an important point no no this this got started with I believe I see the conservation property up on the mountain there's a couple probably three four years ago they had the student Conservation Commission come in I know working on Trails but the the
whole that was one of the first cuting that was done and it came to town meeting to establish a conservation forestry fund to recoup the money that the Forester had to you know when he sold the wood so sold the timber K got some money and I believe there's probably been a second on Alice Brown y
now beyond that I'm not aware but that's that's where that happens is when it's decided that there needs to be a cutting a management plan on one of your conservation properties not not individual people because the assessors are contemplating stumpage fees on um
other yeah that's that would be separate I think so I think so separate thing conservation yeah okay any other thoughts and questions from anybody here on that um again looks fairly straightforward I do have a question it
sounds like you're presented with opportunities like the Trail Blazers interesting developing Bridge or spring comes and suddenly there's an invasive species
management um this must be a diverse grab bag but it must be something you wrestle with every single year how do you fund outside of that budget that you
present well um are you talking about public property or private property no no no no public property the bridge the signs the trail markers that Beyond which you have inventory Trail markers are small that's
in your office supplies but Bridges like how do you decide which account or well we get the money where does money come from for these it's activities it's a very substantial project it have to come from some type
of grand Source like so it really is you you depend entirely on special purpose if it was something that was relatively minor relatively being the offer the word um and it was critical to the Conservation Commission performing their
duties they could take it out of the Conservation Commission rol but I have a parle for that absolutely clear it's the things that would exceed the things that aren't the minimiz so again statutory language is
the spending of the funds must be directly related to the commission performing its duties MH that's why for bigger things we have things like the forestry the the money from the logging right that was why we set up that that fund the idea was we
could use that for trail maintenance for things that are little more costly but not enough where we ask for a grand mhm um and yeah it seems money comes in but not clear money goes out so that's we just talk about project talked about the
uh talked about the bond bridge and how would that get authorized by the Conservation Commission they authority over that F all good okay but I I was going to add something a few years back there was the establishment of a 501c3
friends organization called friends of Southampton open space it's still there but um we don't have the um Personnel who are interested in doing fundraising so there is this already established friends organization there has never been an active
fundraising thing happening there which I'm saying this loudly because people are listening as members of the public that we should figure out a way to get interested individuals to work with the already established friends of Southampton open space to do fundraising because you can't fund raise you can you
can charge fees and you can get budget items but you can't get grants fundrais and grants right so that's a it's a really big need right now for our town yeah and I think so far the you know the the go-to grant has been Mass Trails for the most part um but then I know like on the on the conservation property over at
zipas that was a land grant I believe um l andd Grant Program um and then there's there might have been a couple of the others might have had um say lwcf so um water conservation fund or something like that water these
were for the bigger you know conservation property typ of well they were under the water commiss jurisdiction so water ones are yeah correct that's another consideration Clear Water had something I forget they had a land grant the that was the land
grant for clear water anyway so yeah so Grant grants are basically your other source of potential income but it takes time to put a grant together to Grant application yeah and they're you know usually just annual so yeah Reggie um you talked about not getting enough people for the
board that's still a problem are you going to move forward with trying to make it smaller for instance uh last night's meeting uh everybody was SW acrossing their fingers because we knew one number wouldn't be there yeah and we were we have a COR mhm
you have what five members now is that right we have five sitting currently sitting authorization is seven seven so what is a quum that before um yes I would like to say it depends who you ask but um no we have a we have a council
opinion that the way our bylaw rest structured quum is uh for okay and part of that has to do with something in terms of how you how a come before you under the
wetlands act if I'm understanding that partly um having read the legal opinion I thought it was the way the bylaw was constructed because for instance under the open meeting law reform would be three mhm okay but not under the local bylaw MH okay so that was one of those
that you wanted us to take a look at as well which we're going to try and work on that before the special not for the special but for the annual town meeting as a bylaw Amendment maybe yeah that's why they suggested change in the by right yeah it's a little complicated because of that legal status there so we
definitely have already got legal uh pronouncing upon it but we got to figure out how we can solve it somehow okay good any other comments questions for conom forward good thank you very much for coming tonight filling Us
in it's very helpful to hear people's presentations anyway and understand what what we're dealing with so good all right Scott I think think you're up next with Sierra Sierra oh I'm sorry I SI oh she's hiding behind Dan I'm sorry
doesn't have a technical budget but as we found out this afternoon you a little presentation did not even see you sitting there I just wanted to come and say hi to you guys thank you you were just bored needed to come have a little uh yeah you know all right Sierra Simmons Housing Authority
chair yes ma'am so um uh when we met to talk about you know the new budgeting process um Scott encouraged me to fill this out even though we don't have any budget requests just to have you know transparency for the town so they can see what the Housing Authority is doing
um and so um I did want to talk a bit about the work we're going to be doing and where the funding sources are coming from that are not this so um we're still working a bit on we're almost done with the 34 colge Highway property that we're developing for affordable housing um
we've been spending down the CPA funds that we um appropriated for that a town meeting um and that's going to be we have plenty of money in there to cover um the rest of the process and we're almost done hoping to have RFP out in the next couple of months for that so it's been a long time coming there's
been a lot of things we had to learn about the site to prepare it um but we are finally um seeing the end in sight on that um we're also set to be part of the planning for zero College Highway um so we are uh crossing our figures that
there's going to be a part of that property that's designated for housing um and once that does happen we've been talking to MHP the mouse Housing Partnership which is a state agency that does all sorts of free stuff and they're amazing in case yall didn't know and um
they have this awesome opportunity where um once a piece of land has been designated by um town meing as for housing they basically we have $35,000 to spend on them
or45 $35,000 worth of their support that we can get so they can yeah um it's almost like in kind support except then um once we get a housing RFP it would be built the cost would be built into that so the developer would have to pay it but the things that they can do basically runs the game out of
everything we could possibly need so they can do surveys SEPTA capacity bedroom capacity due diligence Wetland engineering reviews they can help us create the RFP they'll give us a scoring Matrix um they can support our additional Community engagement that might be needed Beyond what's already
been done concept plans some basic feasibility so all of that can be done without having to request any money from the town mhm that's great yeah and um that's about it didn't want to keep you as a s bir represented on the on the
haing authority i' just like to recognize the Sierra's energy and the enthusiasm she brings to the role and it's really helped to continue to move these projects forward so thank you very a thanks D love having you on
te go ahead oh I'm sorry no goad I don't know where that other property is on College Highway the first one you were talking about 354 it's 34 a little past if you're coming down this way it's a little past the um Country Club on the right okay so heading Y where the speed
limit changes you pay attention to 65 something like that yeah we see it on the individual one yeah the individual one yeah and it's basically recognizable there's a there's a kind of an iron gate right yes it's okay yeah yeah there's a little there's a gate there so there's
nothing there now there's nothing there now right there we just had an environmental site assessment done no problems we went through a concom hearing um to reclassify an area that was like on the line of being whether it's a wetland or not um and we're right
along what do you hope to put there a one affordable house one unit how many how many acres is it um it's like 1.3 and we can fit about a three-bedroom on that but I mean okay
one is not a lot but it's better than none which is how many affordable housing units we've created in the last like I don't know 10 years so it's 100% increase in our past um sell it and um home home ownership is a really is a much more rare type of
project for affordable housing it's usually rental but it's create more stability for people who are trying to sort of like move up in the world so it's a good thing to have could this possibly be a duplex at all we did consider that that was our initial hope however when we spoke to um Habitat for Humanity which
is really the only local nonprofit developer that does projects in this area that are this small everyone else is looking for larger projects they are interested in this project I've been speaking to them regularly um they said they do not prefer to do duplexes for
home ownership because requires you to have a condo agreement and it requires both sides to figure out what we want to do with a property and so it just doesn't create as much of a sort of I don't know autonomy and um bit more comp self-empowerment it's just extra stuff
and they have I think it's more overset on their part so since they're most likely developer we okay we will I we're we could still put in the RFP the option for one to two units in case someone comes out of the blue and yeah let's do two okay good then it's this is also
right next to conservation property right next to town owned it's called the linman family Conservation Area I think it's a little to the south of it and yeah and uh very good thank you um I
love this map expertise that we can get and um something else I was going to add to this so if it's for sale will they have deed restrictions is that how it would be S exactly and um once we uh once this property goes into the hands of the
non-private developer the RP includes like handling all of that so they have to deal with the sale there's all these rules about how you Market it and make sure um the right people get it and the deed restrictions so they're going to have to handle all that which is good because we're a volunteer board and we have no expenses there you go and while
you're on our volunteer board uh you have four current members we just picked up a resignation tonight yes so is that one one empty slot now we have an opening would love any of y'all not on yeah um yeah right anyone listening
please join us Bradley you know hop on the committee and this has to be an elected position right yes I believe well right nowed position is I mean it could be appointed until the election but the election's coming around the corner right our appointed position right now is Ann and she's going to go
for an election so I think we could have another state appointed person someone started expressing an interest by the time we got around to elections but it's yeah I mean we're going to have the special town meeting you know right away and then in May will be the annual so if anyone is interested we will knock down all barriers to get
them the goal would be to to get up get on the ballot and have as elected position yeah maybe mention the Housing Trust which we have a representative well we've still got to get that lifted up yet it's not not ready yet we've had two interest interest people and we don't have a
third person yet so um yeah we're we got to work on that too it's on my list believe me list chis it's getting longer every day okay good thank you SI appreciate that thank you all good to see you all right all right um so between Scott and
Jen who wants to go first um I can go quickly um so for the Town Administrator budget there's going to be three different parts the first one's the actual Town Administrator office and that's comprised of uh myself and Judy I am requesting um Judy's hours go from 16
to 19 um not above 19 uh we tried to do it last year but some things got mixed up in the budgeting process uh for operating expenses we have $500 to the town report Printing and then administrative expenses not that much but things like um paper
office supplies dues um you know going to a conference so uh outside of personnel it's you know a little over $2,000 so uh so that is our uh budget for the actual Town Administrator office uh one thing that we doing this year is
to try to consolidate um things like uh shared resources shared expenses so it's a little bit more easily uh viewed um so we did a shared uh information technology and a shared
maintenance if we look at the information technology so we looked at combining townwide uh software or services that are um used by everyone so not just one single Department but things like near map which is used by Highway assessors
um Treasures Office plan planning board exactly um and put those into one so it doesn't count necessarily against one specific uh Department's budget uh we have the it capital which is just using for upgrading Hardware things like
laptops routers um things like that um Communications uh which is our void telephone um which we cost probably about around $112,000 a year I think prly would you I forgot uh our internet costs which we use through Charter and
then our code red which is our reverse 911 system um our web page hosting uh is a little over $44,000 and this year we put a small amount of money uh for support services in case we do need to use someone um if we don't have a volunteer to volunteer their time that
has a technical expertise we could actually come to an agreement with them and uh give them a rate a little bit of a little bit of money for the the time that they put towards that um we also have software licenses which is probably
the biggest one that we put towards town and that includes uh Microsoft 365 and I'll show you the uh how we break that down uh we have Vadar which is right around um with the additional licenses yearly it was around I think
16 or is it 22 very sure we paid $60,000 bill for the setup so I I do have that um and then we have $122,000 for the for the near map um with the Vadar is Harpers figured in there too the payroll Harpers is just in
the treasures depart uh F but I'm wondering if you pulled up the other software license from the water department and that's the esri art GIS license m and it's coup gr oh yeah yeah y they're
paying for that out of their inace fund though they're paying that out of thepress yeah what about the hosting fee for the quote Town GIS it primarily feeds of tax accessor data but a whole
lot more the bond yeah there's fee paid to Tian Bond and of course it starts with Tian Bond taking our latest um property transfer well it's your sessor mapping right isn't that not to be assessor
budget yeah we do it's an our Bud question why when it provides utility to the whole town like trash pickup really hear you don't know that was
the example you got follow his presentation so your question is why the tie-in bond mapping for accessories is not part of the overall it budget is that your question um that's the second one the
first one was the argis license and you know uh yes a Enterprise fund can pay the bill but I'd look at whether it has greater utility to the town it might but when you're trying to get down to nickel and NES of where we have to spend money
and we've got another source that afford it I think that would be my answer but so go to the question that you well formed so the hosting fee with time B I think that's under the the town Maps
line item with the assessors it is it is and I'm just saying it's like trash pickup it benefits every Department that needs information about the geography and ownership properties they might be able natural resources could be able to
potentially put that in I'm just trying to follow your lead which support fully yeah yeah we can definitely I mean we about that probably be the second round when we go through and do the final movements yeah absolutely good yeah I'd
like to see broader use of it because it is useful in fact you pay money and the vision software is related to that that's the assessors yeah that's together yeah vision is
for uses it yeah but here it is I'm wondering if it it's expandable though I there is other benefits within Vision we don't use so I just don't know eventually that could become more but I guess my one question would
be oh now we're under assessment I'm sorry yeah this is we're back under assess the um okay the townwide okay you were getting to that the townwide permitting that you're talking about expanding is that okay that's where we are right now yep the uh the e-
permitting so there's still the $4,000 that we're going to owe for the building department this year uh as we transition to the other model with potentially incorporating the fees that should be an opportunity to be self-sufficient um we just have to design it implement it do all the proper changes and hopefully we
can kind of go for that model but we still um the new stuff is funded under arpa for the first two years but not the building department and they can pay for that usually through revolving funds um but I put that into the information technology because eventually it's going
to be a townwide um cost so is that one that we need to put aside kind of like the the communications cost for the police department that we we put it aside knowing that we don't use it this year but we're we're building it up so that in a year's time or in two years time we can use it or if we if we can do
this uh self-sufficient fee model we wouldn't have to okay so hopefully all right um um and then we have our photoc copy or line item which is our yearly leas with at least with a couple overages that we have if we print
too much um but the biggest one is our managed Services through uh Nova technology um so this year it's going to be about $37,000 um for tech support for tech support yeah um so it does a lot of the stuff
that they do I have no clue but a lot of you know security and um making sure Network isn't hacked um so they do a lot of that stuff which includes all the software all the firewalls um they worked with our eopss to do our
vulnerability assessment um they've also helped us write you know a few grants as well so we're hoping to expand them into the other uh departments our fire department police and Library eventually um but we have to get the infrastructure
set up there before they are willing to take that on cuz it's very subpar it's Scott what would be emergency escalation support um so if we can't do it through you know your password that's not an emergency so if your password I have to
go to get it reset if there's the server goes down or we can't access something they would they can escalate that into the different steps so we have a Colin who's kind of our dedicated support person um so if he can't fix it they have other specialist that can go into
that okay Scot the majority of this it budget was all individually contracted was there any redundancy or is this just a budgetary just budgetary there is there is some redundancy that over the next couple years I hope to re kind of redo
things like our phone our cell phones Council on Aging has a an account police has an account each department has account I think we can do much better if we combine everything under one plan um so you know there are some possibili
that we can do that similar to what the trash was although I think Randle gives us a pretty good deal I don't think he's competing against other other departments so uh but things like that you know I think there is a way that we can consolidate a lot of that um so this
is just our budget planning from Nova's technology how much it's going to cost um so it's the 37467 for the for the base fees and then our licensing which is our Microsoft 365 um there's two tiers the first one is our exchange online which is really
just an email um so if you just have an email through the town uh it's roughly about $90 per year um if you have U 365 premium which is the um the teams where you can share files you have your email
address um you have that special login access to word excel PowerPoint uh basically everything to the network that's a little bit under $500 I think it's like $490 $495 per person per person person per year for
that so that is the uh that's the technology and then we have the maintenance so we're doing the first step this year for the maintenance [Music] um so for the maintenance this year uh we combine our custodial services so we had three
separate um line items for one custodial service so Dave W who's our custodian does about 16 hours a week um he does goes from town hall to the library to the police station um and then he has three separate pay sheets that I'll have to be signed in processed and everything
so um it's a little efficiency Maybe by combining that it's a little thing but I mean it it eventually adds up but I want to get down to the point where we have similar toilet paper dispensers cuz we we all different toilet paper dispensers and different paper tow dispensers we have a WB Mason rep coming in so we can
just buy bulk and have it so we don't have to do different things so um this is just the first step for that um eventually I want to consolidate the other things like billing for like you know utilities and things like that but this is really just for custodial services this year um and waste
management from the highway uh so let me just bring up the actual budget for some reason that's not showing up so we have um Personnel Services which would increase the hours to 19 for the custodian he's about 16 to
17 right now and that would uh Encompass all the things so if he has to spend if the library has an event and he has to spend a few extra hours there then he should be able to do it or if you know the salt in town hall and the urance way during the winter time you need to spend a few extra hours here so it's it's
really based more on needs than actual appropriated time um and then our request for maintenance operations um our town hall utilities we budgeted the same just we switched to LEDs so we're hoping that's going to go down once we see the the actual changes we'll be able
to a little bit more confidently uh do that but we do expect that to go down uh Waste Management so roughly we we between all the Departments it was right around $20,000 that we would give to the Enterprise fund I'm going to talk Rand about the 26 but we did want to put in a little bit extra money for cleanup this
year dumpster rental things like additional support to move stuff out um if you've been to our basement been to the police department been to the highway department there's a lot of stuff that we need to like you know we have a pile of chairs right there that we need to get rid of um so a few
thousand additional money just to clean up all that stuff would that be fire department too fire department as well yep so they're not listed there um I think they I think he does this part of town hall oh a double check okay but yeah it'll be maybe yeah okay
and then our Our Town Hall uh building expenses so our paper goods toilet paper um paper towels it also covers our service contracts with um Johnson Controls elevator inspections um our regular maintenance for our
HVAC um fire Alarm Monitoring as well as uh maintenance on our sprinkler system which gets relatively expensive so uh that will kind of cover everything for that mhm
that's that so what's our total uh change from by combining it I mean we're just moving it into a different place really for a lot of this stuff right MH um a question no apologies for why I'm asking this but I think that uh I I
personally think there's some deep cleaning really required at the Town Hall I I will say the the assessor's office I don't think that floor has been washed in a number of years and I know that the uh Senior Center they arranged for a redo of their floor several months
back and it it was worth it and it's a good idea and um generally speaking I think that's this is an important building and it doesn't represent well our town in the sense of the deep cleaning that's required I one of the things that we
want to do with the additional money for the um expenses is we don't even have a tool set in town hall we do not have a tool set don't have a tool set uh so we have you know we're going to want to buy just a basic set of tools just so we can do stuff get a pressure
washer um Dave needs a battery for that floor machine that we're trying to locate um but we canceled all the agreements that we've had with local companies so we can no longer use our accounts with them so we have to reestablish stuff with like the Home Depot and you know Tractor Supply things
like that so um yeah ABS yeah absolutely but even a contracted service to do this deep cleaning I'm talking about like over a a holiday period when it would be empty or something well absolutely certain offices unlocked yeah yeah yeah does this um include select board budget
yet or no no not yet I have to okay for the smaller budgets I think we could probably do that next uh next one yeah okay I do have I think I do have it um cuz that really is just basically the
our our scribe who transcribes our minutes and uh that's basically that and then we have sorry is that where the legal fees are AGG no that's a separate part of his yeah uh so that would be so this would
be our um Kathy Ingram who does the um transcribes the recordings for our minutes and then we usually put in a little bit of money for uh you know if we had to attend a conference MMA or select Board Association if there's some
some travel money or something retreat in berm there we go um yeah yeah so we did did do the same with shared expenses um which we have the wage adjustments from last year um employment advertising postage our legal
expenses uh weights and measure contract our state assessment from schools uh State assessments I forget what that is um pioner Valley planning Town report and actually that might have been double and
our insurance which is going about about 3% this year and then our Peg programing for eastampton uh public media so the insurance is the is the biggest one um outside of schools that that includes our cyber underground
storage tank which went up a little bit this year our General Insurance liability um our chub insurance which covers our Public Safety our police officers which is a special rider for them so those types of insurances wow does your chart of accounts change
up to reflect these new groupings or is this just a budgetary level uh budgetary that's why these two columns are uh vacant right now yeah or empty that's where the account numbers are going to go yeah So eventually if we get this
approved this would go into effect for July 1 right so that would make a yeah new budget structure so it's great to budget this way but if you can't track and Report expenditures it's kind of shoting yourself in the foot we're changing process and I just wanted to
check in on that hopefully it's a one time thing right we're this change and next year be able to see wait till you see how those numbers rearrange and how C it is but it's going to be Bradley on top of it yeah we have a lot of stuff we have to do clean up on um on our
accounts old vendors that we have to we have what like seven or eight different Verizon vendors I think it was and we really only used two or three so we have to clean that up same thing with our old accounts so that's one of our goals for this year is the uh the legal fees it's only
a small increase there does that reflect our current spending I know you just had to add some more money in there but maybe we're we're hoping that some of the bigger costs that we've had this year from land acquisition to Board of Health condemn properties Etc yeah are kind of at a at a level where we aren't
going to be spend as much maybe next year and then we back to just normal regular legal fees without special project kind of stuff I'm Ming okay it is speaking speaking of legal fees I know there are some towns and cities that have their own legal team or Le or
attorney on staff for the purpose of this are we are we there about whether or not we could save money by having a part of attorney or something not yet yeah we're pretty far away we'd have to have a lot more um cases for that and plus to find
us a lot of town we have like Specialists for litigation for housing for Real Estate um I think it would be almost impossible to find someone compt in for everything yeah it's the advantage of having a bigger firm that's true and they do Municipal right things
cannabis like that for later tonight you know very specialized um so okay is that it for your general budget all right any questions for Scott how this is laid out I just I I think
this is a wonderful new way of organizing the budget it's much more accessible I think we can govern better we understand what we're debating and improving and then I just want to
recognize that implementations make this happen going to be intense I find a little difficult to try to track and they said what is a change what's new that's just moved around so yeah I agree with you but I heard uh
Scott said before that the first year is going to be sort ofest year and a little bit easier as time goes on okay let's move to our last one tonight the treasure collector Jen where do you want to start where we got it looks like we're
starting okay um so for Jen the treasure collector's budget we have uh three employees um we have the salaries uh the treasure collector and the town clerk we I'll have to discuss later on where the Cy
wants to move uh we're going to do things a little bit differently this year with the annual Town warrant most towns will actually separate the um elected official salaries other than just the budgeted uh but we'll have to have a a further discussion on where um that should be on the scale so I just budgeted at the next highest step
closest to the midpoint for temporarily um then we also have our operating expenses um for for the treasure so things like our bonds our training education dues um Bond Council
Bond Council comes out of that as well our tax B Cel did you say yeah they not that's not part of expens oh where do they come out of just when you borrow
sorry we I was just communicating with them um software support so this is for uh the Harper payroll and our W2s our ACA reporting um and then we have our tax title expenses right so what can you what rate
can you borrow at these days um it's looking to be I just asked fre that question I want to say around right now around 45% 4 or5 or 405 it depends like I don't
know exactly what rate we can borrow mean it changes every day you know y so what would have been like the last we did would have been for the uh the bridge the U garka Bridge was that yeah so the last one we did was for the bridge that note let me see if
I and that was 4.5 4.5 over what 20 20 years no we're still rolling that year to year oh we're not able to go out to bond right now because we're not up to date um we don't
have up toate audits so they were not able to go out to bond and so that's something that's really going to have to be taken care of all you know these new buildings that are going to be built um so we're not going to be able to move forward with that and go it to
bond you know unless everything is up to date so the audits will have to be up to date I'm not sure right now they're Auditors are still working on fiscal year 23 so so so who did you borrow for for the Bridge Project who's it from I mean
who's where's the money from I believe that on that one Greenfield's Co-op might have won that bit okay so it's like a so it goes out to bid and then a bank yeah different banks will bid on it and whoever has the lowest bid gets it okay and that was done when how long ago
um well CU Rate rates were a year and a half well we've been doing it every year okay since so so that's more of a current rate that so this last time we did it was um this past June okay yeah so it would have been lower when first taken out probably the rate was very
lower when you first out right so if we were able to actually you know go out to bond is it possible that we would have had it lower yes yeah probably mhm definitely MH Jen do you want me talk about the debt
service sure so wpat so th bonds there's um three of those total those are for septic betterments um so that's just money that is borrowed and then the residents can borrow from
that fund if they need to do a um new septic at their house and then they pay it back at 5% interest um there hasn't been I don't think there's been any new septic betterments yet this year for for any residents that borrowed but that is
what we're currently paying off um so larab be renovation that's for this building do you know when that's coming off that comes off the last payment is 2030 next another four years right so
that's good with all the new buildings coming up that will probably fall off you know any time we have our newest one our newest one and these are these are just principal right now we have another spreadsheet for interest right so that's
just the principal and that was just the amount that we have to borrow for that land and I believe we got that by putting out 20 years that we decided 20 years so um the dump truck
that it's from the May 2020 bond issue I believe let's see yes so these are the ones that are currently on the books in terms of our borrowing right and what what's that what is our
borrowing capacity I don't have that in front of me I could better understand this as a bar chart showing when the bonds are
mature and done so we can look at the total Scott and or Jen sent me this debt schedule that H that has that can you turn that into a graph I can't read well I couldn't even print I'm not very good with my Che a printer at home but I
couldn't the whole thing right now yeah it um but it goes through when all the payments when they end yeah and uh the rate and the and uh principal interest and we may not have a upper limit established until we get further with
Audits and such things I don't know yeah yeah I mean we're rolling over in the the two big ones for right now um once we get that we'll be a the longterm borrow for the zero College Highway and the um what was the other one that
we zero College Highway and the um brige yeah the bridge and then you know there's also going to be I know the water department as projects coming up that they're going to want to go long term so the question is when when you get up
to tens of millions of dollars I mean how does how does that work if we went out to the market and said we want to borrow $30 million how does it well we would go out to bed again um so we would go out to bond it would just be going out to bed
um and I mean and right now it'd be more of a shortterm borrowing because we we can't bond bonds right so I've been doing year notes and rolling them over every year it's really not the way no sounds like that would be difficult
for thinking about borrowing some real money can I a question um do we are we paying somebody to do the audits now yeah we haven't had it are you and they're working on it I think that they're still waiting on information waiting for mostly um the
school department to close out there is that a line item in this somewhere that should have been it in the shared I think was shared yeah was it in your budget br it was oh was in the I think the question I'm
getting is there any way we can increase their funding such that they can perform this Duty faster it's not their it's not their issue they're waiting on the school okay we're holding them upol they have to close their books in order for them to audit audit the accounts I mean we' we've already upped
bill on these guys yeah we were down at like 25,000 and we're paying like 40,000 now and why can't they CL their books there must be a reason Staffing or the the school went
through major Financial issues lots of funds that were not clearly spent and recorded up at Hampshire region they've got a couple years of forensic auditing that they're doing to sort things out I'm remembering the presentation like our like our special town meeting
warrant where there's $495,000 that they forgot to collect yeah so they you know they're they're working on it but giv you idea we we can't speed them along much faster unfortunately but it it impacts us yeah I mean it's it's taken our double we had
a double a bond rating hit one point yes yeah when I started on SB we had AA minus or something B minus yeah we still have that current rating on the what we've borrowed right um so it stays on
what we've borrowed but you know SNP has been reaching out to me and they do need the audit so if they don't receive the audit in a timely manner they will like take that Bond rating away and we also have our our state funding as well on hold
eventually so our local Aid is already on hold I believe and we didn't receive February local Aid really and the potential for and I can let you know just it usually comes in right at the end of the month so I'm pretty sure I think this year last time Bradley right last year it was February
2 where it was cut off because they need to receive the schedule a by certain date in January I believe or they cut off local Aid so when does this become a cash FL problem um it didn't at all last year I
don't suspect that will happen but I mean we hopefully we're going to have you know the books closed and I don't know where the goal was to have it by a special town meeting fortunately we were not going to be able to make that but I think last year we
did it literally hours before annual town meeting um we should be able to do it far ahead by that time we are not going to wait until May again absolutely not can I just get a clarification of the the local Aid was just recently suspended correct so last year it wasn't
a cash flow issue because we had those funds it was spended last year too it was for how many months Bradley do you remember how many months Lo it was a couple it was at least two to three yeah it was up until May when so it was suspended for 4 months then so March
April anyway understand I'd say about 3 months probably but but if we're always late are we going to have problems uh borrowing long term yes if we never catch up yes yeah I mean that seems like a really big issue if we're talking about borrowing significant amount of money and
unfortunately you know our our budget is so dependent on the school I mean we've got you know the biggest chunk obviously among all the towns you know is for Southampton you know school not just that we commit the dollars we rely on them to provide the accounting that's
where this got really tells why don't we withhold our contributions until they until they get the books couple years ago we got really grumpy it's not it's not acceptable they do have a completely new team in I will um say that Don and
and the superintendent are working this is definitely their top priority um absolutely 100% is not only figuring out what they're doing for this fiscal year but they're also unraveling like about three three and a half four years of FIS school year um
entanglements so it's they have a they were cut out for them I think we need to make it clear to them that our local Aid has been suspended and we need you know super fast figure it out I mean this has got to be their priority I mean truly because this has got other ramifications
that we shouldn't have to suffer when we voted to suspend um there didn't seem to be much appreciation for the cash flow that was present to us there a new team in now so maybe that'll be better understood it it does feel quite
different but we're not out of the woods and it's a long path I know and speaking of which I believe there's a school meeting budget meeting on Monday night up at Hampshire Regional that we're invited to I think the 10th oh really okay I'm thinking so y
okay so outside of the school committee are there any mechanisms we could put in place to monitor like their ongoing performance no because we're a regional we we don't really have any direct control over central office we have more direct control control over
Norris because we have our own school committee for that but everything kind of flows through the central office unfortunately could we could we make payment of fund stipulated like once they dig themselves out right because this obviously was a multi-year problem that it wasn't under your watch
but it went kind of unaddressed right for multiple years yeah can the town funding be stipulated on like quarterly reports or some sort of you know evidence of timely accounting once they get this repaired
our plan was to have monthly or quarterly meetings to catch up and make sure our accounts are in line so we don't have to deal with that at the end of the year and ship through every month yeah so do a continual monitoring as you
go along during the year yeah we got to make that a goal for the July going forward period for sure well I would say that you wouldn't want to borrow a lot of money if you couldn't Bond it for the
the period because rates could go up even more and you you know you committed to something that you don't know what the financing costs are going to be I think it's a huge problem is there a risk that because we're doing short-term borrowings that
we may not you know when we go out for an RFP that we may not get interested parties like is there less of a capacity to borrow in that kind of shorter duration versus funding I mean I would I haven't seen that no it's probably reflected in the
rate yeah because there's more risk in lending to the town of Southampton without a without a rating or financials and otherwise I mean we and we did that them are un audited um schedule a and balance sheet from
fiscal year 23 so they do have that but it's just not finalized yet right they also but they're already looking for 24 and the audit hasn't even begun you know so really you're supposed to have the audit complete we used to start the
audit in January and it would be complete you know by March you really want the audit complete by the march of the previous fiscal year so right now we should
really have already closed fiscal year 24 and been audited for it and that should be done M and we haven't begun the audit on that yet no it's not fiscal year 24 is even closed yet that's where yeah yeah right so they're waiting on the closure yeah
right so so we signed the audit engagement letter that I know but yeah okay so when is it going to happen that we get the important report from the school and in order to close 23 that's Bradley in the school not 23 is closed
24 is a pending closer oh yeah I thought but but the audit's not complete for fiscal 3 23 you just said the audit of 23 is still ongoing there are small items that us the at the Town Hall need to complete and I believe there're
School related audits also that are pending for 23 yes 23 and and that my question is what do you anticipate is going to be the completion date is it soon or is there some I have to re is there some human that's holding it up of
some kind there possibly I'm one of the humans that are holding it up but I need help with some request that I've never done before ah okay that are School related or something else they're just new uh asks
from the Auditors that I've never done before and I don't know how to answer the question so I'm going to reach out to them tomorrow okay okay so Jen or keep on going here wherever we are so we were on the jump truck so um that falls off and Fally
year the last payment is in 2028 that's and then you know we have the East stet bridge I think that will only be the so I have a question for Bradley when we
when we budget our total budget we have interest expense for all these loans do we also have the principle within the budget itself so you know you've got to pay x million in principal whatever it is that's got to be a line item because cash has to come from somewhere each has
a principal account and then an interest account okay yes let's why there on two separate budget requests okay so then we got a dump truck and a loader that are there okay y yes so that so the East Street Bridge
the dump truck in the loader I've been borrowing for all of those on one note every year and rolling that over um so the dump truck will would
fall off in 8 years this will be the second payment on the dump truck and then the loader also the second payment but would fall off in 5 years second payment also on the East
Street Bridge assuming that we're going out 20 years um So eventually like once we go out to bond you know that changes it yeah it's almost like you should do the math and see what we would be borrowing at if we had have this problem and Bill
it to the school cuz it's it's it's real money just because of the way rates change but yeah we would be borrowing much at a lower rate have this all locked in so even though you're bundling to use my term of those three together you can they pull off at different
different time frames you correct even though you got them all together it doesn't matter yeah2 b to most of the May 2020 Bond was for like well it was for Meadow Land which was through Community preservation and
then refunding of two USDA loans for the water department which saved a lot of money so that's good but for the Enterprise fund um and then two other water projects in a dump truck but yeah so you go up to bond and although it's
for multiple Pro projects they'll fall off at different times okay M so you just changed what you got up there so that's right here and the other was the principal right mhm and so the total together is
1785 plus 36 have a total sheet sorry 362 and 1785 so 5 40 almost 40,000 okay next
up uh next is our our biggest line item which is uh employee benefits so unfortunately this year you'll see what the biggest one is our health insurance um unfortunately we
just got word I think last month that we're going to have a about an 18% increase for our health insurance we're self-funded through the Hampshire Regional what's it called Hampshire Regional Hampshire um Hampshire
County Hampshire County Insurance trust there are things that we can do to reduce our our health insurance costs unfortunately we got it way too late to actually do anything we can rebar we can go out to bid for our cost we can you
know look join the GC we can join another group and go out on our own self insur insured fully insured we can adjust deductibles or co-pays but that all takes months and months and months of time to not only go out the market but negotiate with the unions and we've
already passed the GIC so you have to let the GIC which is the group insurance commission for the state that allows municipalities to join you have to let them know in October so that's not even an option so uh for this upcoming year I do want to think about getting a broker
in to look at our claims um see maybe even go out to the market individually outside of the Hampshire County Group Insurance trust and see what you know potentially our rates could be um I also we also want to make sure that we audit
I don't know if it's been done recently but um making sure that there's no retired employees or people that should be on Medicare or Medicaid on the list um people that are part-time that may be receiving benefits uh incorrectly um
there's definitely not any part-time people receiving benefits and there's definitely not any retired employees on the active plans unless they retired like um a retired police chief who retires at 55 would still remain the active plan until they were 65 y but
there's no one like on our plan that shouldn't be and even Group Insurance trust watches that okay and if and if there was they would like they would definitely reach out and you know they're they're very careful about that just uh I'm always wary of that because our our one of our neighbors to the
South recently had a little bit of an issue with hundreds of employees that they were paying out years of uh health insurance premiums for so um I haven't had a chance yet to actually dive into that the the Insurance component of it but um it's something that we're going to have to look at this year just
because I mean an 18% increase is will trigger something that we have to look at and you know look at potential Alternatives there was an 18% increase to the HMO and a 20% increase to the PO and that is a lot
unfortunately with Hampshire County Group Insurance trust they went many years without giving an increase or just giving like a really small increase and then this year the with all the um I guess what really hurt them this year
were all the weight loss drugs um it costs like you know around $5 million like just in weight loss drugs I guess that's a big thing now and they're very expensive so unfortunately after you know they try so
hard to not give increases or give small increases but then it's like adding up over time and it kind of they almost would have been better off giving increases every year than all of a sudden this one really big increase you know cuz that's hard even for the
employees because like for instance my family plan would go up you know over $100 a month out of my pocket so it's a pretty big increase for employees and for the town but it is really great
Insurance it is good insurance might be a little too good be honest with you to change it would be really hard cuz we would have to negotiate with all the unions and I remember when they just like went to change they already went in Group
Insurance trust itself was changing um maybe the co-pays and it took forever for that process we've done it through Regional groups though before multiple times it's just um you got to get organized you got to get your claims in a row you got to
be able to educate and explain to the unions why I mean realistically $250 co-pay for inpatient hospital is like 20 years ago so I'm I I mean it's really it's really great insurance but we're
paying for it um so I know that the prior Treasurer did go out and look at other look at GIC and other insurance companies before but had didn't find it to be any better I'm
not sure how that is now but that cuz that was you you know over like seven that was like 7 years ago but did do that well more cost effective or better I would have I mean I think she probably outweigh the benefits between the cost and went from there like I don't really know for sure I just know
that because ultimately insurance is it's just Cost shifting so deductible is just cost shifting into the uh the subscriber right um so the the insurance you still it's you still get to go see your doctor just are you paying $1,000 a doct or are you paying a $50 $50 co-pay
so that kind of right and then you have the behavior behavioral issue uh where if you have a deductible that tends to lower the claims as well makes people spend it a little bit more um wisely or if it's an you reduce the number of providers that also lowers the claims
EXA we could also like I think that the employees do like value this insurance which obviously they're going to because it is great insurance is it Valu less no the employees like it's a great benefit it is one of the great benefits of working here this insurance you know I
said value um but Scott can you just slide that over so we can see the percentage in the last column S I mean I think that Scott had other ideas like I obviously you can oh I guess look to see what else is out there but I mean Scott you had other ideas like um having
people yeah mean sign like saying not going to take the insurance or we're going to about $2,000 you know right so there are um I for um what it's called um it's on the tip of my tongue um there there are mechanisms that we can encourage people to leave our insurance
by giving them a financial value so usually like the GIC does it I've done it in other communities so if we have someone that's long-term on insurance the town's paying you know 20 to $225,000 per person if they have insurance available through a spouse mhm we might be able to say well here's
$22,000 if you leave our insurance and go on to The spouse's insurance I can go towards co-pays or something else exactly that they see as beneficial to them if they're not a loss to them it's just a shifting to a different color although it sounds like our insurance is the best there is so um well not
necessarily because if if you have like a $2,000 deductible and we're going to give you $2,000 towards a um towards that then you wouldn't have to pay anything realistically because usually you wouldn't have any co-pays so if you're high use or low use that might be a
are really good what percentage does the 70 but even when you look at like the the prescription coverage if so who like obviously we're we're trust but who weighs in like do we have input
on like the the formulary the prescription list and that type of thing like the one thing that jumps out right is the big cost of these gp1s right a lot of employers don't cover that the trust has made the decision to cover that I'm not weighing in whether that's you know something we should or shouldn't but as like members of the
trust do we have a say in that so I mean not I mean not really there's an executive committee for the trust that is made up of five members and they are all from different towns our prior treasur was on that executive
committee um and then there's the advisory committee so the executive committee makes all the decisions puts forth like what we're going to vote on you know what are the new premiums going to be they're the ones looking at over all of that and making decisions and by the time it gets to the advisory
committee and we do vote there's really not everyone always just votes yes it seems there's not really any SC it on last time and um you got on last time to the meeting for the insurance advisory committee and
he did speak against you know the increase but it was too late at that point everyone sure goes on there and yeah it's just I was going to ask the same question as Doug about the weight loss drugs I mean I think that's very difficult when you've got
some new product that people want well then the question is who is ordering it and is there any kind of process for example if it's related to something like having diabetes that's different than um somebody that doesn't have um
secondary health problems cardiac problems or ocrim Province or something and they really would like to drop 100 lb or something like that and it's valuable but it isn't is it is it medically necessary so we're self-insured and we
use Blue Cross as our administrator so if they were fully insured which is where Blue Cross would make the profit so they only charge us like 2 or 3% to administer the plan so if they approve a drug there's no incentive for them to deny it or approve it because
they get the same amount of money no matter what they usually tie that though to existing prescribing policies and underwriting so like my company is self-insured but we have blue CL Blue Cross Blue Shield and you know you have
a similar um rate of denials and requests for like prior authorization I I would hope so okay question do we have the opportunity to impact any of this for
this budget season or is this all we we could there is there is we're ranting here running late here so there is a potential doing an opt out program where with the GIC you know they do 25%
of the cost that they would pay and so but you obviously have to stay out of it for a certain amount of time we can think about um you know the savings that that could do so if there is a potential of someone that could go on to a spouse's plan and it cost us you know 1,000 $2,000 $3,000 to get them off to
say 20,000 you know that's a good chunk of savings in the short term in the long term um a lot of times when we end the op out program then you have a flood of people coming back on the insurance so it's something that we have to kind of plan for year after year
so once you're off we want to try to keep you off got off maybe we can add this to our agenda over the next year like this be a subject we try to improve right we're not in the middle of the crunch of the budget yeah won't be something we can Implement right now for
sure but anyway so we recognize the increased cost for this coming year all right so that's where we are so I can't remember what OPB stands for um other post-employment benefits oh right so that's for the oped Actuarial
so we do that every year um you can see like in 23 it was 3,465 and then in 24 it goes down because every other year do they do a full valuation and then so the lower cost is for a partial
valuation okay and basically that that ends up telling us what our post employment benefit liability is do we have disability coverage of any kind short term or um so we have the
disability coverage that's in our policy for the town so the town pays that out of basically out of it I don't think there's a budget line for it it's something that I've always thought we should have a budget line for because if
say um like someone in the assessor's office for instance um ends up on that plan and then they're going to get paid 75% of their pay for 26 weeks and then you also have to replace them the budget's never going to be able to cover that so
then we're all you know looking for funds but we've never had a line item for that but as far as do we offer short-term disability to employees yes we do um through Boston Mutual and afflack but it is fully paid by them
it's not a group play or anything like that it's fully paid by the employee oh so it's an election you you say I want or I don't want it correct yeah yeah and we had looked into probably about four years ago now when John Martin was on the board he spent a
long time looking at disability insurances Etc we had various presentations and never came to any good conclusion about how we should handle short-term and long-term disability so what is the liability these days for OPB
um CR I wanted to say we were at like 15 15 funded at the minimum million righton yeah million and we're just at the minimum statutory funding level which is
Jen we're at the minimum for funding for op right now what percentage like how how much are we unfunded that's what I'm looking for I don't know off the end but I have the report I can send it to you okay but are we catching up on that one we're catching up on one
of them aren't we like on the uh pension is it the pension we're paying extra to catch up there wasn't return that helped us catch I don't know I think it was Donna that sent me this um
report okay yeah but within certain number of years that was going to be fully fed that's a state requirement oh is it a state requirement so all all towns have to get there that's Hampshire County Retirement that's the retirement contributory so yeah so we'll be fully
funded um as of 20 32 yeah it wasn't that bad I remember so we're still going to you know have an appropriation that we pay but it will be yeah as of 2032 we
had been fully funded that's good news it's the other one that we're not really making any brogress on or nobody's making any progress on I should say okay good is that it for budget for tonight maybe any other comments
questions else if you don't have any other questions yeah oh now we got to do all the hard work but this at least gets the presentations pretty much out there got a couple more small ones maybe to do find I feel like the Auditors mentioned
that as well um maybe one of the presentations last year they yeah they have yes we have done those aors every year yeah good all right so thank you very much um
and I think um select will actually go into we going to make a very short executive session I promise um but uh Finance if you're ready you could go ahead andour your meeting yeah we have some business to especially because
we've got to talk about meeting again that's what I was just going to ask Scott so you need us to meet before the 22nd yes um and then we have to figure out the next phase two of the budgets just to um start reviewing it um looking at reductions we haven't gotten School budgets yet obviously so that's the big
one revenues as well with everyone so we'll probably need um another meeting just for revenues special town meeting war and start looking at potentially reductions in the
budget so we work backwards when do you have to post the final warant articles like three days before the meeting uh yeah it's for for the the the motions and everything so that that would have to be a couple days before just to
publicize it oh you doing on Friday though you said you have to have the language ready for Friday just to war articles but usually we we give it a good week at least so that people have a chance to read the Motions because we should have the final one before we meet maybe we should meet next week
sometime hey Scott C could you give me your copy of that uh side by side with the uh public safety building and the that chart you did you want this one yeah just I just need one so here you guys
I have another one at home okay thank you will the other meetings be joint meetings board um they don't the one for the warrant doesn't have to be the uh the budget one's probably easier to do that yeah yeah so that might be the next the 11th then on that one or I think so
are we just continuing on Tuesdays is that uh up to up to everyone's schedule does that work for people or is that mostly yeah so let's assume that we might look at revenues on probably next just a budget joint budget meeting on
the 11th is that what you say yeah and just to see where we are I mean hopefully we have a little bit more guidance from the schools um that's the big thing is how much we're going to have to cut is dependent on the schools right yeah is it going to be 200,000 or is it going to be 600,000 you know 200,000 I can find
right now not that bad if it's 600,000 that's a different story yeah sure so okay Che one a meeting for next Tuesday then I can't be here next okay that's the only day I can't be here
you can't be here Tuesday no but that's but we should meet some other time then right we need to meet so I can I can do Wednesday or Thursday at work for I think for me too okay Thursday about 6 o'
here okay okay and um I sent some minutes out for last meeting I don't if anybody saw you want us to I was going to say if you you guys could session yeah all right so we're we're still on session you're still in
session and you can turn down to the break room or somewhere just finish up all right but otherwise we we'll plan on a a budget meeting Revenue focus on Tuesday the 11th and then whatever you guys are going to do for your own okay thank you very much for coming
appreciate it night all right so with that um I would like to hold on a minute you need a motion thank you um we're going to be going into executive session and the reasons for going into executive session
are per mgl chapter 30A section 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares this is related to the Cannabis host Community
agreement and also mgl chap 30A section 21 number 6 to consider the purchase exchange lease or value of real property if the chair declares that an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiation position negotiating position of the public body Glendale
Road property so with that I would like to take a motion to close the public meeting and move into executive session I move to close the public meeting we do two different motions or just one motion and go into executive session okay
second okay second by d uh yeah by Dan all those in favor hi hi hi hi all right we are adjourned at 9900 p.m. this government meeting is brought to you by East works and our local cable subscribers