this government meeting is brought to you by eastw works and our local cable subscribers calling to order the meeting of the Southampton select board for February 25th 202 5 at about 6 so
whatever what time is this 6:14 6:15 okay so if we could stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance please alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God
indivisible Liberty Justice for All see the health department yeah good pull up another couple chairs if you want so all right so tonight we are basically
uh select board and finance committee joint meeting uh and we're continuing on with our series of budget hearings for FY 26 and we have four different departments up for tonight and um before we begin I just wanted to make one small
announcement just to acknowledge um some of you may know that we have a few centenarians in town I think uh there are three people that have been at the age of 101 and unfortunately we've lost one of them last weekend so Leona hendrik has passed away at the age of
101 so the selector and I will get a card together and we'll send a card out to the family um on when we meet on Tuesday but I just wanted to acknowledge that it's pretty amazing that we've got three people in town that have been here and live that long u it's quite amazing but we've got two more
that are doing quite well I've talked to both of them so they're doing well okay so with that I think we have the Board of Health up first so whoever would like to come on up yeah come on up pick a chair and take another chair if you like and and Scott will Scott will run through your slides we've
got we've got your handouts and stuff that you've given us with the budget and the budget narrative so you don't have to you know explain you don't have to read it all but we'll have it up on screen and you can to figure out how you want to introduce this Scott so we'll leave it to you uh just two things of note from last year uh the first one is
the request is uh 35 hours for the health director in the last couple years it's been 32 hours funded from the general fund and then uh 3 hours from the septic betterment system uh the other thing that we moved into the budget was the monitoring cost for the
closed landfill uh over the last couple years that's been under um the transfer station I know we talked about it last budget it's really a cost that should be for the town if the transfer station didn't exist or whatever we' still have to pay for that money so it's not necessarily A
Transfer Station cost it's atire town we have to pay for no matter what so um generally Health departments kind of oversee landfills and those types of things so um that's what that's for um and then
the budget you know the health department budget is relatively straightforward Personnel cost and uh operating cost so okay so um I'm here my name is Kaitlin Rooks I'm here with Kate Savar and jar Health director um just wanted to quickly
review our budget I know there's been some changes to Jerry's wage line I believe the most recent um number was 641 12770 which is reflected in the spreadsheet above and that's based upon the rate of 3510 an hour so I'm glad to
see that that's updated um as Scott mentioned about the septic vment fees the amount of time that's been actually allocated to management of the septic vment funds does not equate to 3 hours per week which is why we're advocating for it to be centrally funded
um Jerry's been working 35 hours since the pandemic and um it's been about 5 years so we think it's reasonable for it to be centrally funded at 35 hours um I mentioned to Scott that we our budget has been pulled from various
sources over the past couple of years one thing that is not noted in this budget that I wanted to kind of discuss and you know just uh kind of come to a consensus about so Charlie Ki has been doing our health inspections last year we
increased some of our fees to ensure that the cost of the inspections that were being performed were covered by the change in cost of fees however we I did a calculation I reviewed all of his invoices for the past year and about 25%
of his inspections are related to housing which doesn't generate fees so while we have this revolving fund um the board estimated that it was going to be between 12 and $155,000 of expenses that weren't going to be covered through the revolving
fund we have about $11,000 in there currently we were given a $10,000 start seed um his fees kind of vary per month depending on what's happening but we don't anticipate a significant decrease in the amount of housing um enforcement
activities um so yes I the past year it was somewhere between 12 and $5,000 that we think is reasonable to request for supplemental inspection fees also want to acknowledge that a lot of the work that he's doing is extremely
time consuming Court processes you know dealing with reinspection um and so I just want to make sure that that's that's um accounted for in the budget right now it's not there correct right not there right so you your suggestion was to bring it to this
meeting as a discussion point so here I am um our Revenue to date so we usually bring in about $4 to $42,000 each year we're currently have brought in a revenue of 368 2827 so I'm optimistic
that we will um make more than what we did last year because of the adjustment in fees however a lot of our inspection fees uh come in through permits at the beginning of the year so it's kind of difficult for me to know exactly what our end ofe
Revenue will end up being um also this this uh revolving fund is a new thing for us as of July 1st and so acknowledging that um it's not like we have past years to reference and can you know longitudinal data to pull from so I'm oping over the next few years we'll
be able to collect that information and be able to uh come up with a clear number of what uh what to request um the only other change from the previous year was We asked for an additional $500 for the sharps program
um the reason for this is the cost of Sharps disposal and the cost of the Sharps Containers has increased substantially as with other inflationary changes this is something that I'm seeing at my work um and so that change that just allows for us to continue
providing free Sharps Containers and Disposal for Southampton residents which is pretty well utilized um everything else other than the landfill monitoring that you mentioned Scott is uh level funded any
questions I'll start up with one so you mentioned the4 $442,000 of uh permitting fees and a lot of that is um what it's um permits like so your your trash hauler permit it's your um food inspections food inspections we got
restaurant uh Title Five inspections all of those things go into and those funds go into where after you collecting where do they where do they end up in in the revolving F in this new revolving fund right the only thing I have is a revenue report which is the year-to date figure that I reference I don't actually have
the upto-date figure as to what's in the account but as of like a month ago it was about $111,000 or like a few last week or a week before it was 11,000 right yeah you mentioned that some of these Special Projects were especially expensive do you have
outstanding bills that are not related to the permit scheme no well so this is another thing I talked to Scott about a little bit is you a lot of towns will have a a budget line item for problem properties which is the cost of boarding
and securing properties um we have never had that um it's always kind of come out in the wash with in terms of cost and recouping those costs but it's certainly not guaranteed right like we're in a receivership process for one property and some of those expenses can be$ 10
$15,000 up front thankfully Charlie's been very successful in helping us to get that money back but it doesn't happen instantaneously right so that was very good political answer do you have any outstanding invoices char No we pay him out of the revolving
fund I know that's the source there's no outstanding invoice stent Charlie for these unusually expensive projects no thank you um they out you described several categories that are outside the permit structure
yes is have you explored other ways to recoup the cost of those Explorations understanding that there's possibility of money later when everything is resolved but in the current year how do you cope and I will
note that although you receded $10,000 you've been really good at managing it because you're up a $1,000 um please go so we currently the only we've looked at a lot of different options for
covering inspectional services and we have been in touch with the um Regional shared public Public Health Excellence program they have um started training trainers to be able to manage maybe some of the inspectional services in the future in fact this past year they took
over our food service inspections and we still get to collect those fees so that's actually been really great for us in Southampton they're not yet offering housing inspections but I've been in touch with uh Kristen Dearborn who is the the regional shared services
coordinator and expressed interest that if and when when the housing inspections became available through their program and again they're servicing 17 communities with one or two inspectors um so what I would anticipate is that if they were able to take over
some inspections they would not be these problematic properties that have court dates that require extensive I mean Charlie's experience in dealing with problem properties and navigating the court system is incredibly valuable to southon just they might bring it back to you you know they might be able to
strategy for funding those projects where Charlie is uniquely valuable to um well and I just I want to interject real quick just to be clear so there's no confusion so we're talking about kind of two separate things so one thing is
there's small fees that uh Charlie is directly associated with for these problem properties and that's his just hours that he's committed to that the larger fees like the 10 to 15 that we're talking about is uh like charge to the town for securing and boarding
properties um there was an inground pool that was just left open that we had to put a chain link fence around one of these abandoning properties so we're not paying Charlie that to do that these are like third party companies M so to clarify you're saying that those would not come out of the revolving fund
correct okay there's a line item in the uh building commissioner's budget so the 12 to 15 that we estimated and today we're going to ask for 15 for um Charlie's additional Inspection Services is completely separate from potential line item of problem properties we're we
don't even believe that we're going to necessarily propose that today but I just don't want there to be any confusion between those two things and in terms of finding those I mean there's no way to collect permit fees for state required housing inspections um we've done benchmarking with other
communities we've looked at other surrounding towns to see if there were any local other towns that were collecting different fees that we weren't collecting and there are not it's just a statutory obligation of the town to provide those Services um there was also
a suggestion that maybe a local another municipality might be able to take over some of those Inspection Services what I would say is the those those inspections are still not going to collect a fee so regardless of who's paying for it I still feel like it's going to be a cost you know incurred by the town um whether
or not it's eastampton hoyo Westfield Southampton um there's no there's no way to generate additional Revenue around these inspections I will say that Charlie's been really trying to get caught up in the P you know since the pandemic we have a number of multif
family dwellings that are supposed to be inspected annually that weren't for for a while and those uh properties required a lot of time but I'm hoping now that a lot of them are becoming compliant that the work around those properties will decrease but just as we kind of cross
properties off the list there's just as many that were getting C about or other situations that are arising and so you know based upon the information we have from the past year year and a half I don't anticipate that the number of housing issues is going to
decrease so just to to be clear I'm be sure I understood everything so you you we had in the revolving fund I think you had a $10,000 seed money right that was in the revolving fund and you added a th000 to it now from revenues we know that you might collect close to 40,000
in revenues during the year so you're halfway through the year basically so in my understanding that out of the revolving fund there would be enough to pay Charlie for his services but if you had to put in the chain link fence or board up pool or whatever that comes from something else that would be
from something different and and I'm bringing it up because Scott and I kind of discussed like making sure that that and I didn't know that there was a line item in the housing it's in this budget proposal oh okay so then as long as that money is somewhere I just put that in30
though so there isn't going to be there's going to be 25% less than we need in the revolving fund to cover Char's expected so if we could if we could focus on that for a minute cuz I I think if I could state it a little differently you started on day one with 10,000 we're 7 months in you have 11,000
left you've collected 33,000 I think 36 36,000 has flowed in there and gone out to cover all Charlie's bills which has let you left you net positive of $1,000 because you have $10,000 seat right so you have four 5 months give or take left
to go you're front loaded on your permits yes right so historically you can see those and historically you probably have a good idea of what permits are coming out in July or June May April tile inspection and after
looking at that that's where you think somebody has a cash flow or workflow of paper over 12 months with historical data that would point to where coming in with this $115,000 number right or is it a gut it is not a gut I went through one year of Charlie's
expenses I highlighted all of the inspections that do not collect the fee and that's how I came up with the 25% number um again it's based on one year of data because we before that we had a part-time inspector that wasn't covering
some of this work um so that number is based upon the past year of Charlie's inspections and I've used a calendar year because I mean this is a calendar year so I might have used a slightly different like December to December time frame but I used 12 months of inspection
data to come up with that 25% figure can I ask a question it would help me to understand I think there's two different requests of money maybe two different colors of money here one for additional time for Charlie to do
housing inspections which maybe that's the 25% and then maybe there's another lot of money that is in events that you have to do things to secure a property can we detail out what those two lines are just so we understand what this I think you're talking about two separate
pots of money so on this budget Dan the second to about the 8700 is a is an offset from the transfer station so last year that was over in the transfer station budget that's here the bottom one is 15,000 to cover the independent contractor over on
the building commissioner's P budget there 's another new line with $20,000 in there to cover the fences and the building because as long as it's somewhere cuz I'm I'm assuming that in theory it would get turned over to the Building Commissioner to make sure it gets done and that's why the money's sitting over in his his budget I mean
historically I think we've kind of managed those processes independently with the assistance of I mean it say independently but Charlie's doing a lot of that work um I don't know honestly as long as the money is somewhere and it's accounted for it I think that that's it doesn't matter it is a new entry to the
budget so okay any other questions I would just say that I know that when we originally started down this road of the revolving account it was clear at least to me from the Board of Health that there were going to be
things that were going to be done that there was no Revenue Source coming in and there was in theory kind of be a trial and error time to find out what our Baseline seed deposit was going to have to be every year MH yes and I will mention that we also
removed Nicole Sha's uh wage line from the budget not last year but the year before well we had it in there but we used it to pay Charlie's expenses that's not reflected here so we had a budget of say $115,000 to pay for Nicole um Nicole's health
inspection services when she was employed by the town like that was a couple years ago at this point so it might not be showing here okay now moveing so I had that sure we had the revolving fund started at 10K
M over time went up and down it it landed at 11k currently right if there were services that Charlie was doing I'm sorry the health inspector was doing they weren't um refundable then why wouldn't that number 10 that 11k that's currently now why
wouldn't it have gone down to like zero because okay so in the beginning of the year you have a lot of permit fees for the whole year so this seed this revolve fun went into effect on July 1st so it's been about 5 months we're we're going to notice that the beginning part of the
Year we're front frontloading the inspection the inspection fees but we I don't know how many of those fees we're going to continue seeing hopefully we'll still continue to have the title 5 inspections we'll continue to generate some revenue from food inspections food
truck inspections over the summer but we again we increased the fees hoping that it would offset some of those costs but you can't have the person paying for a Title 5 inspection cover the cost of Charlie going out to address a problem property
right it's not fair to put off that cost on somebody else so um yeah we like I said somewhere between 12 and 15,000 and I'm just saying $155,000 because we don't want to underestimate what the need is again saying if it we don't use
that money it's going to remain in the budget so it's like a 50% increase from equ was 10K you want to go you think it's about 25% of the times he does these extra activities 25% of his time
that's not collecting fees yes but so but if we start at 10K we we're adding 50 sorry we're adding 5,000 to that then think think of it this way we've already paid Charlie $35,000 for 5 months right 36 and we put 10 and there's 11 about
$3,500 a month average okay yeah and this is correct me if I'm wrong this is effectively moving those uncompensated fees to a separate line item correct or pulling that out of the revolving fund so it's separate buckets so following that line of reasoning I'm confused by
the title of that new line because you have a fee schedule for what inspectional services and you've drawn the distinction between your fee income and the activities that generate no fee
mhm so so I'd be mandatory mandatory non fee I mean it could be contracted uh contracted services or something like that no no no like the the housing ones where no one's going to pay the fee but the inspection has to happen that's that
should be the General Revenue what St say you can break you break out the inv reimbursable nillable non billable should almost split between the two so you can get them one to the revolving fund and one against this
budget that's a good way of thinking about it right because then the defense says we need the general fund money to pay for that because nobody else out there is going to it's it's a it's an unfunded mandate that we have to do these inp we could certainly for us to split that into I that's not a problem we haven't done that year to date but
right but I think a year from now when there's all new faces here it be easier to say here's the unfunded mandates that we're doing this is what it costs and that's kind of what I did in preparation from this meeting was kind of Define what was F what was reimbursable and what was not and it's not dollar for
dollar sure um but when you come here next year you'll basically be able to show that the revolving fund is standing alone without those Services yeah hopefully yeah that would be ideal do you have a sense of how many multif family places we have in town that Charlie has to inspect list he did and I
don't have the list with it was two pages more than one less than 100 no I'll give you I you number because Charlie starting uh we're trying to hey get better information because we're also learning about some of these
properties as time goes on yeah so all the all the all the housing ones that are not funded elsewhere not not avilable would come out of this new line is what you're talking about correct much right if there's no feate because of a state or something like that and then my guess my follow question that
would be how would we would you want us to change how we've addressed the the separation of funding since since the beginning of the fiscal year or would this be something that we would do going forward I would probably make sure that any inspections that we have to hire the
contract for should probably be reserved in a separate pot and then the other inspections that are done by the health department would be will be separate just so we can make sure that the contractor's Revenue neutral on those fees that we collect cuz I guess you are kind of asking for two things you're asking for this for the budget going forward but then it also sounds like
you're asking for a mid-year appropriation to get through the rest of this year when free cash gets certified I kind of anticipated that the $10,000 seed fund would be this like would for this current year would offset those a majority of those costs that was my hope
I wasn't hoping to ask for more money um guess we'll see what happens at the end of the year but yeah um I so then to answer your question I would say July 1st make sure you're separating separating okay that's fine sure the the
only other comment I have and it's not necessarily it's not for you guys but on here I think it would be good under the landfall mon monitoring after the example in red put that this is an offset from the um cuz you're really reallocating
that cost Transfer Station transfer station so to the to the uneducated person looking at this it looks like a brand new cost and they're not going to know enough to go to the transfer station and see the relief per say yeah there was a note note at the bottom down there but it's okay yeah
yeah okay cuz really that's neutral on the budget right the money that you're bringing in um for the food inspection stuff that we not paying somebody to actually about how much is that and is that going into the resolving fund we this just started
at about 6 months ago Jerry 6 months I'd say 6ish months ago um maybe 20 food inspections I don't I can try to get you more definitive dollar f figure might be born that if you begin counting you know
TRS trucks and everything that's time consuming because it has to be done with the fire department too scheding people we've asked the state to take it over and do it regionally they I'm on that sub I'm going to be on that subcommittee too
because we I believe that a regional approach to inspectional Services for food trucks make sense in our area but it's kind of but when somebody pulls out perit the check goes into the revolving account right now that's correct I'd say
$2500 that's that's again that's a random number what's the permit fee up for food trucks and and food inspections the food inspections go based off of occupancy of the um restaurant but I would say $100 for the size of ours in
town per inspection yeah and the regional program is state funded it's not a cost to the town to participate no yeah they could remove it with the caveat that with all of the issues happening in the world um this this also could
dissolve this is go away there's no guarantee this is going to remain um so we're hopeful that it will so the answer your question there's $15 million allocated for improvement in public health resources at the state level that are separated amongst these different M
well they're really trying to not mandate but encourage shared service agreements so by offering extra resources and funding for these shared Public Health Resources it kind of incentivizes communities to work at a
more Regional level the difference between western Mass and eastern Mass is that we're geographically very different and so it's not that easy to have one inspector who's covering 15 towns you know because it's just impossible to get from place to place and so that's one of
the obstacles is how do you how do you designate inspectors for such a large geographic area in such a short time frame I'm just grateful they're able to do anything yeah good point okay any other comments questions
anybody okay well I'll make one comment I've been the lays on to the Board of Health um for only a few months but this whole concept of trying to figure out the financial part of it seems to take on off a lot of energy on their part
trying to think creatively about how to do this and um it is a challenge I I I I hear them the the board trying to think of other ways think of creative ways to to have things covered um and also I'm
looking at the statement made in the budget book about the attempt to hire uh when the um when the health agent resigned in 2022 they're saying they did just tremendous amount of work to to try to find somebody to be a regular employee
not as a contracted employee now we know Charlie keki has extensive experience in the background and knows the town super well and that's all very beneficial but a regular employee would be really good and I know you you know that so I just want to comment that um I don't have any
answers for it but that they're you know they're sensitive to how else they could become um you know economical and try to control the cost and I think I'm going to add one more thing if there were other ideas on how to do this there always with was always reaching out
saying got any other ideas on how to do this and I don't but hey that's why we have a revolving fund yeah that's where that came from so that's my general com thank you so much for being ear been so great three minutes that's cool Y and
just one last question for me I guess so right now there's the three extra hours that you're talking about for the health director are coming out of this itic betterment fund that is proven to be workable from what I understand I so that was a proposal we went to the budget meeting I think last year and we
advocated for 35 hours we said Jerry's been working 35 hours since the pandemic I I see what's coming down the pipeline in terms of mandates and requirements for us to develop Regional emergency preparedness Frameworks I mean we're three volunteers on the board so like Mark we're already putting in a lot of
time and so I I do think it's reasonable for Jerry to be funded at 35 hours to adhere to these new regulations participate in training she's here L tonight at the at 6:00 meeting um that suggestion was made because there was a pot of money that could be accessed the
question is whether or not it's appropriate to be using those funds when they're not actually being used to manage sep SE really it's like an administrative fee so we collect administrative fees and we have this unused pot of money because we've always been pulling out of the the uh Central
salary general fund um but I know Jerry's not using 3 hours a week to to administer septic betterment funds so I guess that I I pun that question back to you and say is this something that we should be do is it appropriate could this be
something that we might face scrutiny for if it were to be audited at a future date I don't actually know the answer to that question but it wasn't something that we proposed as a solution so guess I'll follow your lead a little bit it is nice that we have that pot of money there yeah there's a fair fair amount of money in
that last time I looked I think I'm not mistaken I don't even know how much is in there but I didn't even know that there was that partt of money there you know it was a Learning lesson during our last budget review there's about $36,000 there and that money also if
somebody came in and uh needed it we could use that money for a septic loan and then they would um you know be able to pay it back okay anybody else have any other comments questions just so I understand
the paperwork so it says 35 hours with health directors that so that went up so that's it's currently 35 hours but three of those hours are being funded through the SE and I also will mention I sorry I failed to mention this before there was previous um feeling that the the health
director position was a non-exempt position but under re-review it sounds like Scott is in support of that position becoming an exempt position and this is something that we have been been in support of the entire time I've been on the board so um I think it's appropriate for to be an exempt position
she's on call 24/7 in the event of an emergency um yeah so we are welcoming that position being transitioned to an exempt position if that is going to be authorized okay good no other questions thank you very much thank you appreciate
it thank you you want down yeah all right thank you so much thanks thanks for coming good night everybody I'll okay next up I believe we have the fire
department so Chief I did uh I did print outs of um some of the paperwork that the chief had submitted so a lot of the statistics and stuff are in your packets the chief's going to go over I'll put them on the screen as well
uh good evening Rich thei fire chief so I just have a quick review of the department uh we currently have uh 49 members on the department that includes myself and the uh part-time uh
Administrative Assistant we share with uh the PD out of the 49 um 30 of them work full-time for a municipal fire department um three work at local hospitals uh two work at private
Ambulance Service of the 49 11 live in Southampton everybody else lives out of town so we have we have members from eastampton fire Westfield Northampton and then they're they're kind of scattered here and there agam oo
chicke uh moving on to call volume uh it was our busiest year last year 1,000 48 calls um on the EMS calls we did
794 um 629 of those were transports the rest were um just well-being checks lift assist uh that kind of thing um so last year we did 2023 we did
993 10 years ago we ended the year at 530 so we we doubled in 10 years um our biggest customers I guess you call them would be the uh urgent care in the six group homes in town uh
we went there 141 times last year and in uh 128 College Highway the uh the building behind Cumberland Farms we went there 105 um that is low income and elderly uh
lived there um Mutual Aid we uh we responded to other towns 58 times and we had 188 times uh different
departments came to Southampton some of those a lot of those were uh overlapping calls meaning our ambulance was already out and another call would come in uh that actually happened 200 98 times last
year um and would that be both both ambulances out or just one what's that would that be both ambulances were out uh could be both ambulances out uh could be the one ambulance out um also that number would include if our ambulance is coming back from the hospital and hasn't
made it back to the station and ends up going on another call so that's where they would overlap that's why there's so many uh moving on to our our vehicles everything is in service except for obviously engine one uh is still is
out of service for the major repairs um that we're looking to replace with the FEMA afg Grant uh I can speak more about that in in a minute also A2 just went out of
service um on Thursday for a fuel leak I got notified today that it's the fuel tank is leaking and that being a 2008 Chevrolet ambulance I called uh B Chevy
for another tank and that tank is Obsolete and he check he's able to check all the Chevy dealers and United States and nobody has one so we're going to have to see about possibly repairing that it's a steel tank so it might be
able to be repaired if not we might have to have one made specially for it um trucks Frost truck Chief car those are all fine the uh two fire trucks are being pump tested our annual pump test
those will happen in April uh one thing that uh I one of the things I added to the capital expense was the uh utility pickup it's uh it's rotted out pretty bad I I brought it to a body shop and
they said you know you can't fix it it's too far gone and the frame is is rotted as well so they don't even recommend uh pulling our trailer for our UTV Capital expense I'll be putting in a request that's the 2007 yes sure so that
has uh almost 150,000 mil on it um on the fire stations I had the uh all the lights repaired outside on the on the station right here in town and Center Station
that was uh $2,500 on expected uh the exhaust system that the town uh paid for approved the Town Meeting those are all in and the company that installed the Mercury Specialties they were out of Boston they actually
donated the uh extraction hose kit for engine 3 so what that is is there's a H hooked to the exhaust and as the truck drives out the building it automatically disconnects and uh then you hook it back up when you're backpacked in so they
donated all that uh we finally have uh I had the furnace fixed so now we have hot water in the station again it's been a couple years for that uh the generator out
back um one of our guys on the fire department works for anchor El electric he actually Services the the town hall generator or PD generator his company donated that generator to the fire department W they
had got one in a trade in and it was almost it was fairly brand new needed a couple small parts and they uh they donated that to the fire department so right now in the winter uh the UTV UTV trailer is stored
down at the bler Road station so we keep the heat as low as possible in there right now it's about 50° just enough so nothing nothing look for um moving on to
equipment uh we've had the yearly inspections all completed on our fire Stingers the fire hose ladders we actually have uh 6,100 ft of fire hose on all our trucks so there's a company that comes
in every year they unload it they test it and then they rack it and it takes them only takes them like 3 4 hours to do everything our uh SCBA compressor is another thing I'm added I've added to
the capital expense uh spreadsh sheet that was actually donated from Barnes spire this is going back probably I started in 93 so it probably
was right around 95 96 that we got that and it was manufactured in 1990 so it's it's in uh they got their money out of that it's uh obviously it's an old unit and it's difficulty getting replacement
parts for it um it's serviced yearly and the air quality test is done quarterly so I mean it's still okay to use for now but it's eventually it's going to fail um our Scot packs are due to be
inspected in May uh that was another part of our FEMA afg Grant um SCBA bottles those are tested every 5 years for hydro test this year we had to send out six for
that um as part of our line item on our budget the uh structural turnout gear I've ordered three new sets so that'll keep us on schedule for our 10-year uh NFPA
ruling fire prevention we've started that um working with the senior center we've done slip and fall classes blood pressure clinics uh CPR for the staff we actually did one for the town this past
June uh we did a CPR first aid class that that went well we're going to redo that this year uh we are scheduled to go into nor School in April to do a safe student awareness of fire education classes for
first and third grade this spring uh we currently have three members that are trained in the fire prevention for schools uh our a the a that um Council of agent is receiving we have it at the
station we're just waiting on the uh training device basically the training device is it's a AED but it's strictly for training so that you can put the pads on and push the button and you know nobody will get shocked make sure you get the right
one them up so is that the only you have no the town hall has one right inside the door on the left um that one there if you open the cabinet it will sign the alarm to dispatch that somebody opened it and took the uh a out so we'll be
notified right away the one that's going to be in the uh senior center it's going to be in a compartment it has an alarm in it but it's only going to ring in the senior center cuz somebody's obviously going to be there so is there one at the school
the school has two of them and they're set up the same as the one here in town hall they have alarms in them any of the commercial properties have their own like Big Y or anything that you uh that I don't know I believe Big Y does yes okay
so we approve funding for Parks um they've requested it in their budget yeah so uh fire inspections um I've updated the uh permit fee list um and that needs to be
reviewed by the select board and then I will post it on a town website it hadn't been uh updated since 2015 there's not a lot of changes there I some of the fees a lot of them are are set by the state so you can't really
change a lot of them um last year I did uh 167 inspections that's FY 24 uh so that brought in $8,900 to the
town um and chief is that smoke alarms and CO detectors right smoke alarm Co you know anytime a house is sold propane tanks oil tanks oil burners um when we go and do the liquor license inspections we get a fee for
that yeah so the uh there's actually two um daycare preschools in town so we get a fee for that as well those get done once a year what is the inspection fee fee what is the fee well it varies on what the INSP spection is so if you were
to sell your house in town it's $50 um like the liquor license one is1 uh propane tanks depending on the size of the tank it's either $40 or $60 so there's a wide range like the uh
food truck inspections are 60 okay so now that money gets turned back into the uh General budget so this year we've done 167 inspection or excuse me this year we've done
$19 and $6,500 that's gone back to the th now the fire inspections are uh East Hampton fire received the grant last year and they started November 1st it's
it's been working out really well um but the uh that expires that Grant expires the October 30th so we're currently trying to negotiate with eastampton for them to
continue but it's uh they're requesting $115,000 and I mean where you only bring in like not quite $10,000 so but we're still working on that uh state grants uh I've received
two state grants so far one was for a gas be gas meter from Mima um so so now we'll have three gas meters apparently we have them on our two fire trucks engine 3 and engine 4 so
once the new one goes into service one of those I'll be able to put into the chief car because a lot of times I'll respond to the scene and I still have to wait for truck to show up with the proper meter so this will save some time
really uh our second Grant was through Mass fire service uh that was $15,000 15,500 so I ordered some uh rescue strut kit and some new lifting airbags uh we
don't have the rescue struts now so if a car any kind of car accident where it ends up on its side or it's you know on its roof you know we can't stabilize it to get the the people out of the car uh the airbags are that we currently have
are 20 years old so we've we've ordered two of those and the third Grant it just came out last week uh the fire Mass fire uh safety and Equipment Grant it was a 5-year
Grant and so they had money left over from the uh from the 5 years so the town uh portion is $7,750 so that came out last week you had to have all your paperwork in by
this week and then um they're going to notify you in April if you receive it and then you have to spend that money and have the equipment in by June 30th so that's why I've ordered uh two more sets of turnout gear and what
that'll do is hopefully it'll free up money for next year out of that out of that line I know uh finally the uh FEMA grants the afg assistant to firefighter grants uh
with help from the grant committee uh We've applied for two grants one is for a new tanker for uh $7,500 7 750,000 right $ need some Comm and then
uh the second one is for to replace our outdated Scott packs currently those packs all of them are over 15 years old what does SCBA mean uh South say contained breathing apparatus okay
so it's the air pack with the with a bottle and a mask so we're just requesting the the packs themselves so out of the the afd grant FMA received
7,176 applications for $4 billion that people have requested yeah so so and this year there is uh $291 million available for that Grant so
it's quite competitive yeah keep our fingers crossed we don't hear about this until July and August and it's usually been a rolling right rolling announcement July between July and September we here whether we have it or not so also in your your thing you should see a uh a list of all our
incidents our breakdown M um another list is our apparatus how many calls they went on so you can see A1 went on 572 A2 went on 120 and then I go down the other ones listed down the
bottom uh that would be eastampton ambulance eastampton uh engine uh right there MFD is the mon Montgomery tanker so when we' have any kind of fires out of the hydrant
District we automatically call Montgomery and Westampton um and obviously Westfield ambulance and Westfield engine so all right can we jump into the budget part here you oh okay um just a couple
things I just want to point out um we have the updated Fire EMS wage scale that was improved a couple weeks ago um it's going to be changing the hourly rate significantly um but we it's still going to be level funded for this year yes uh and that's in part because uh the
two two full-time positions I know that the chief um you finally have everything squared away job description we have the wage schedule uh and know we're going to be looking to hire those two full-time positions that were approved a couple years ago at town meeting right uh and then significant Capital needs
especially with the ambulance getting older um I didn't know about the Casas tank but yeah the ambulance I I put it on for actually next year's uh Capital expense um the the quite expensive now
492 so 100,000 right yeah so and then the problem with the ambulances are they usually take about 2 years to get they're such a bad log so well begs a question what do you have in ambulance receipts and how is
collections going um that I don't have the uh I don't have that number on me um they've been going quite well we I'm working with postal to get all our uh overdue uh invoices taken care of so I
put in request to them and I haven't heard back from them yet okay so let me see if I plan the year today so those are for emergency calls what about non-emergency do you do this for example if somebody who needs the assistance of an ambulance but it's
not anery go go to hospital being discharged you don't you do those we only uh collect fees if we transport to the hospital we don't we don't pick up people from the hospital now so if they show up at a house and they refuse and they refuse service and the ambulance
leaves without the person no charge right yeah there's no charge yeah but what about because of my background you don't go to the hospital help transfer people back home again need no we don't do that we're strictly a 911 emergency so okay so ambulance receipts we don't know
what that is right now uh we can look it up yeah it would be the special Revenue file that I created but that would only have up through December 31st Revenue perfect well while they looking at that you mentioned um some the the
group homes I know and then the building behind the Cumberland Farms with over 100 calls in there are they all in your view legit calls or I guess and without singling a group out do you have repeat offenders for false alarms or false
calls that are drain on um not so much false calls we have um regulars or in the business I guess they call them frequent flyers MH where we've had people where we'll bring them to the
hospital they don't like what the hospital says to them they get discharged and 3 hours later they're we're back there transporting again so there probably there's probably not much we can do about that no I just wondering if there was any
um need to create some sort of bylaw that institutes fines for repeated false alarms uh we don't have a lot of false alarms like the medical alerts or anything like that no okay we don't have a lot of um most of our like fire alarm
calls you know it's a a faulty detector bad battery something like that so there's not a lot of repe offenders there usually when we go to a house for a fire alarm we can figure out which detector is bad and you know we let the
homeowner know to and then they get it fix okay so so this would be the ambulance receipts or yeah up until uh December 31st 283 that's one fiscal year no oh I think I think we took like 400 out
of it from this last budget yeah this is cumulative right so this is this is not one year it doesn't close out go back to 2006 that's when it was established oh probably earlier than that yes all all those fees go into the general fund the only uh money out of that that we use is
for intercept fees so so the 283 up there that's listed for intercept fees is that the sole source of what I call ambulance receipts or what I know to be ambulance receipts or
is there another line item no those are that's where the coastal money goes into that fund okay is there another way to look at this because you see that Coastal charges 4% for all the money that collected so all all monies they collect they get they get 4%
M and then when you when you have to do a transport sorry when you have to call in East Hampton or Westfield for a transport because you guys are already out on a call or whatever right now that town that town collects the insurance but right now we only have they they
collect the insurance but we also are paying 500 per call for East Hampton right East Hampton we do only because of our a few years ago our state license uh was in Jeopardy for paramedic service right so they worked out a
contract with East Hampton where they would be our backup automatically and so they charge a $500 fee I've spoken the chief Norris about that and um as soon as we get the two full-timers HED they're going to do away
with that okay um on the ambulances this year the state comes in every year and insects them um we got a score of 100% uh first time ever don't tell them about the fuel tank so they didn't have we
didn't have any defects to repair and they also inspected the chief vehicle and engine three are now certified first responder Vehicles okay so great yeah well there's some serious improvements there from a couple years ago so yeah we
have a we have a very good crew on there for our EMS coordinators and all the all the you know they all work for another department so they know MH you know they're very professional Okay so
so back to the other slide you had there you want to go through Personnel first or where we got yeah uh so Personnel we broke out the fire chief and the administrative Aid that's shared 20 hours per um per week between the police department and the fire
department and then we separated out the two fulltime positions um reflective of the new wage skill as well um so just just on that is there there must be some thought there why there's a difference in Pay are they both they're both
paramedics right yes you're looking to hire two paramedics and yes one one is currently on the fire department now um so he's just so is that potentially the higher hourly rate and you're taking to account number three would be his rate
yes I get it and then the fourth one we've uh I mean obviously we haven't posted the prision yet but I've been everybody knows to uh you know we have 30 people that work for other departments so hopefully by watermouth
we can get a good person we'll probably hire internally what's that for both we'll probably hire internally for both internally people that already work for you one only one one only one yeah the good news here sounds like these new
salaries or something you can work with compared to what you had before so well in the benefit here at least right now at the fire if you come over here you don't have to pay your union dues where where they're working at the same rate they're paying union dues and they got such a great boss to
work for they'd never want a union all right what else we got here go ahead um the bulk of our wages actually come from the EMT and those are the part-timers so the top part is just our our permanent full-time or benefit eligible positions or part-timers um because we have so many part-timers that's all just one big wage item right
here so that big variance the 93% is because of the two new hires anticipated new hires okay y um and then the other the other the 138 that's based on the other fire department I came up with that number by
uh minusing out the two full-timers oh what their pay would be that's why the the numbers are are lower this year than last year year M okay the wage they'll stay the same I mean you know the my contract and the uh
Administrative Assistant are due raises that's why there's a difference in the in the amount of $3,000 $4,000 this year you know everything's all my budget will be staying the same the only request I made was uh a little bit more for fire building
expense um that is because in the previous year I had no way of tracking the uh ever Source bill it always came in you know no payment needed and now that we have the batter uh accounting I can keep track of
that that's why um we're actually behind a little bit on our building expenses uh if everything stays the same I'll be uh short like $4,000 which I can transfer from another account are you getting your credits for
the cow plops for what for the cow plops yeah cuz someone's getting all those credits yeah you should be right I mean you you've been working at rectifying and reconciling the uh the cow power account it's going towards the eversource bills that's why he gets no pay it's going through the a source bill I mean my my building expense you know
like I said I I spent $2,300 on on new lights for the building outside yeah so that was you know one hopefully a onetime expense yeah um it was kind of like last year where fire truck maintenance I had to spend all that money on
tires um and then you know we're working on getting the town internet over at the fire station so that would say you know right now I spend over almost $1,100 on internet M
so in terms of so it should all equal out where you know 3,000 I think should be good mm yeah J I want to ask you a question about building expense cuz you mentioned some property on Bloomer road that maybe had s of temp to keep it down there is that another building there
they try and keep it at 50° but even then um that's the other fire station for the South part of station okay so do we use it we we store engine one in there now and we store the trailer um so
basically it's a two Bay garage yeah um way back when even before I started there was like 30 I've heard 33 people out of that station years ago so this was back do you know where it is D it's
over seen no idea it's over uh amongst the ponds in that section if you go down County Road you go past the the tow on your left yeah it's the first house uh First Street on your right my question is if we're not using
it should we just get off our books and get rid of the building or I think it's a uh use it it helps with our ISO Insurance rating oh they have a a station over there I see it's also covered parking for the engine you would
have went that out exp to the El there's that one other engine that is sort of not terribly functional right now but going down the mice get it you'll never get yeah is it is it right there oh and it's
like a quarter quarter of an acre very very small building no sign no nothing never guess I will tell you a a town resident asked me why is it so messy looking that was the person's concern are we really doing the right
thing by our fire department by not for the refer to the highway superintendent is he here tonight anyway I couldn't answer cuz I'd never seen it were they volunteering to paint for the building yeah really that would be a DPW job I think I think at
one point there was there was a a an old junky pickup that was on the outside and bunch of branches clean doesn't look pickup is still actually there just in the Weeds on the building if we were to get a new fire you know Public Safety
complex would you still need to use this building uh again I I I'm not sure about the iso rating um you know cu the that fire station the new one this one here currently is so far away from the the
pond station they go by mileage even though you know technically we don't use it but it helps in different ways yeah okay thanks all right other things anything else that's about any questions guys I had one question about
the turn here given the 10e life should that actually be a capital request versus an expense line item um it used to be the problem is um I think with that is we don't replace them all at once okay um we usually do
three sets um every 10 years um I mean it doesn't we could submit a capital expense every year but we would have to do it every year so you got a rotating how many you have and you so every every
year you're rotating yes okay yes like I said with that second Fire Equipment Grant I'm going to be purchasing two sets which are actually you know they're coming off the line early but it will save money for next
year is the plan and then you're putting in how many here in the budget now then three three three three yeah um three sets of gear is a little over $10,000 and then you know I use the rest on boots helmets gloves cuz those
are all on the same 10e life cycle and I'm assuming so when you have people that are on your roster I know over time we get things that select work where we're you know somebody's resigned or somebody hasn't been on duty for right years have you you have the people that go away but that gear is not
transferable to somebody else it it is yes it if it fits it's yeah um the new New Year that we order is custom fit for the person but a lot of you know other guys will they'll fit into the you know the coat or the pants or whatever
so so the big the big pictures are coming out pretty flat right and the reason the change in in salaries is um pay us is because you the money you had allocated for the
temporary employees is offet right okay right right cuz I mean currently you know those positions are filled every day it's just not the same person every day so the the pay rates vary you know depending on their years
of service and remind us when the new um uh Compensation Plan that we approved is going to go into effect then not until um that the um already I was told by the treasurer department that the they had
to have a signed PCF so I made up a a whole list um the policy procedure board signed it okay the uh Bradley signed it obviously I signed it it just needs to be signed by the select board okay
you've already approved it it just needs to be signed and when we voted we we made it retal to the First full pay of this calar year the 13th or January 13th or something yeah okay so that would apply to them okay yeah I think we've seen that in front of us yet but we y
yeah yeah she said she was putting it in your mailbox down okay I will check on my way out tonight okay thanks okay any other comments questions guys um this looks pretty straightforward in many ways I think it's it's straightforward I
mean just I would point out what what I think is probably obvious to everybody but just to put it on the record for those that are going to watch from home later on is the next catastrophe here is the equipment is the ambulances in the fire truck we either find some grant money or we're going to need to come up
with about $2 million right you said about $400,000 give or take for an ambulance right it'll by the time we order it it'll probably be over 500 we got to figure out something with this pumper whether we get the grant or not we we can't have box trucks when we need we need
Pumpers Chief when you were I assume you had the ambulance already on a capital plan replacement schedule yes uh we have that well we have the I mean but you had it but it was going to be one that you were aiming to replace fairly soon was it not and now something earlier should
have been replaced a couple years ago yeah oh really okay but we're supposed to be squirel away x amount percentage of the ambulance receipts into a special fund to pay for the ambulance when it comes up and we haven't done that since I've been on the board we used it the last time around for the ambulance
whatever that was right okay um which probably 08 or I don't know what those ambulance is and and I'm sure you know Randall sitting here too the way we currently utilize the capital project plan is really a joke
yeah no we never have enough money to do the big items totally agree and I don't know how we would ever even with with ambulance receipts my uh spreadsheet that I have um yeah so it's 27 you were aiming at getting I put on this year I I'll submit
for the compressor I mean I don't I don't think I'll get it this year um the ambulance and then eventually you know a few years down the road was that 2032 will'll have to replace the other ambulance yeah and then our engine
three in 2000 I can't see what that number 35 yeah it'll be 30 years old yeah so your first ambulance though you were going to the one that's already giving you a problem is that the same ambulance that's giving you problem that's the one that's out of service currently okay so so even with the
ambulance receipts though I mean suppose we set up a stabilization fund or whatever for the ambulance future ambulance replacement there is one but I mean how much money do we have in we're never going to save enough to buy a new ambulance are we yeah I mean
the the problem is we're not putting any money into over the last several years and the costs of ambulances are increasing more than we're putting into it so realistically we're going to have to go big funding chunk what's what's the typical useful life of an ambulance
10 years 15 years yeah it all depends on on the usage but yeah I mean I so it's almost like you got to take the first 50,000 in ambulance receipts mhm so every 10 years there' be a half a million doll that A1 if we replace it it
would be 15 years yeah that's the bottom one yeah um obviously A2 is a 2008 mhm so time that's almost but the other option if the capital committee ever gets together is there are funding mechanisms that the committee can put forward M you know outside you know by
Town law or by law you know whether it's debt exclusion or things like that they can put together this package and be able to show to the voters this is why we need we need to fund $250,000 every year in capital cost to be able to eat away at these things right have something put away yeah okay that is uh
next year's project is to do a cohesive Capital plan for everything so I just know the next time you get a Chief's car no heated seats okay that's a little extra luxury there for the taxpayers to pay for you can have
AC a steering wheel oh my goodness let let the record show you did not purchase that you didn't purchase that one right very good all right well no other questions uh thank you very
much all right thank you very clear and uh very well detailed so thank you okay next up I believe we have the highway department hi Randall Rand do you want to use your computer you want to sit here um I don't
know how much detail do you all want to see 50,000 about 45 minutes with a lot of formulas and that's up to you do you have um plug in yeah the question is going to be how do
we switch back and forth between well maybe why don't we go through these things first and then if you've got supplementary sheets that might be useful but you know I mean I I think you know we we went through a lot of detail with you know um with the chief of police when he did his but I don't know
that we have to go into that level okay Mina I think I think we got oh there's a ladybug that's doing the touch screen hey get out of here whatever
never know what's around here about to call noas all right let's see how we get get going with this first anyway y are we doing both uh transfer station and Highway tonight uh probably just uh
Highway good we still have to work out direct Coston yeah there we go um a little bit bigger maybe so for the Personnel um we do have to finish up our contract with the highway superintendent uh we have
the administrative assistant um Robin who actually works for the transfer station the highway department and also provide services for the water department um we have eight budgeted positions four are currently filled uh we're looking to fill these at least
aggressively advertise them over the next couple months fill a couple of them um for the most part the senior Foreman foreman and the two machine operators those are the ones that are filled one machine operator one labor one labor I'm sorry so we're looking to do mechanic and three machine operators um we
budgeted those at the opening the lower step minimum qualification for the position with with the new wage scale so we're hoping to be able to track some some people so mechanic and three machine operators I have a question back on that she how
come it's 100% variance for everything in the bottom bucket so if you can see actually you're right here so you can see this I when I do my my spreadsheet for um for wage uh calculations I have it in a slightly
different formula than Scott has it I haven't we haven't broken out different lines for overtime wages um it's always been then I have one wage for um General Highway which funds 33 weeks and then I have one fund for winter roads which
funds 19 weeks so I I calculated it like that um I have all the numbers to separate out it's just it's never been presented like that but our children are still the same I noan no they're not
because we just uh negotiated uh the union the CBA right where we have some we brought wages up to uh more competitive levels so there is a pretty big variance there anyway but we have to fill positions to get work done so I
think uh select board has we worked really well to get toward that goal M so where are the principal differences between I guess would you the top table and bottom table the grow total of
69,000 versus 6 467 um really high level the difference in the wages from um the ramifications of the CBA well yes yeah but your CBA says 69
total and then you got 646 so the the the two numbers should match yeah that uh that looks it's just an error yeah yeah that needs to be just we went through this um we got him to
match Scott during our meeting yeah just a for a formula error didn't do anything uh right yeah um when I do the screen on this for some reason it cuts it off so it's down here yeah but no sorry scroll up bad
okay so the top section fiscal year 26 salary sub total 6,969 right that cumulative now down the requested is 646 sorry oh so I'm just guessing that's not
outside contractors or something no these are only in-house wages yeah I can't help yet so what is form I'm sure it's the formul what is the total salaries regular that's that's that one from up above right or no all right I figured it
out it's overtime is it it's the two overtime light items cuz that wouldn't be reflected up on top the 6700 and the 30,000 yeah okay yeah that makes sense that's that was a test people try to keep up that was the problem so in my in
my spreadsheet I have estimates of normal uh overtime per person uh it's factored into those two accounts that we've always had and then in this new formula it's separated out for over time that's part I kind of struggle with
like understanding how was the Delta between years of of overtime wages that's buried in people's salaries and you're and you're probably one of the only budgets with the PD would have it too that actually has overtime yeah Scott can you go back I think you still
shouldn't you be backing the 173 of winter wages at Sal something different there in Winter wages Randle some of that salary um winter wages
uh so basically this is how I calculate I I've got it here um all the guys wage rates um and then uh what it costs for 33 minutes of General Highway I defend 20 hours of overtime per person
on a separate spreadsheet and then over here is 19 hours of winter wages at those wage rates and a defendable 90 hours per person for over time so all I can pull out all of the numbers but it still doesn't include uh mine and my
office manager uh lines up there up the first two lines cuz those were uh I got her down here as as a separate line but mine has never been something that I've had control over it so was just in the budget is negoti I should know this the second
year through but the winter wages have certain um reimbursement mechanisms both both expense and um wages uh and we have some people who know this verbiage more than I do but we can overspend them upon
select for Declaration of emergency which we're approaching by the way well it's almost yeah Saturday tell you we already did with we've over both according to yeah
so these figures are not quite correct then is that right they are it's just overtime cuz overtime would not be up and the established wages up top top is just a straight 40 down the bottom he's got two lines of overtime overtime should equal right the six and the 30 the 36 that's the
difference between the 6 and n and it should equal 37 $ 73935 up top is just the base salary correct for everything what's the difference between L wages overtime and winter overtime winter wages is just the 40
hours a week for 14 uh or 19 weeks for people who are not normally employed the rest of the year incorrect noting it's for my regular employees yeah 40 hours right yeah great so 33
week 33 weeks out of the year it's on top time this is a round weing yeah it's a separate separate you know allocation if you will for winter
time I will I will have it broken out next year in a better fashion I just love this I've been using it for but yeah I think this is clear though I I see where you're coming up with the the T on the overtime there
yeah and I've got historical data to um show what we've spent during the winter um going back to fy22 average overtime per person which defends my overtime um estimates because because everything is an estimate um is
if you can tell me how many storms we're going to have the price of Commodities I'll tell you what I'll spend next so right now just to be clear that that when your wages stuff it comes for 20 20 weeks of the year that right uh 19 I believe you see the Shadow or
not okay all right want to go on uh operating expenses spit M operating yeah um where do you want to start General Highway sure yeah okay so
most um of the um most of the expenses were fairly similar um from what I requested last year um we did John you're going to have to
remind me how we did the whole winter thing because we had put a placeholder you guys didn't want to increase yep the winter wages because of the mechanism where you right so we left it in one of the other line items yep so you can do a trans your opinion to yep um I had put
in my budget that it was 75,000 but that is suggesting it's only about 40,000 and I don't know what the number was where we ended up last year of how much you you guys put in as an ear I'm calling it an ear Mark I
don't remember either yeah cuz here you want to go up when it roads that's that's because I'm always going to suggest that because we you know you have an average cost for what it cost you in the winter time I'm always going to advocate for that because if you keep it the same you keep my funding the same and commodity costs
go up and wages go up the Delta becomes bigger and bigger and it looks like every year I'm managing my budget worse yeah so I think as we put it in one line item it allowed you the flexibility to transfer funds out wasn't that it and it didn't it didn't penalize
us cuz once we put it in we can never take it out right well you can take it out but then you're not allowed to deficit spend the next 3 years right so however you want to make the sausage at the end of the day I think I'm always going to advocate for it
being what I think is going to cost me next year for win respons right so my my all right so that that's why you you're reducing General Highway by 38 but I'm assuming leaving the 203 in there will allow you sufficient money to
do everything that's over in that explanation that you think you need to do next year yes um and I can list that out if you want to go through no I trust you if if you I mean I do I don't know about everybody else listen we we all know how my my it goes right um You have things you want to do but at the end of
the year if my budget doesn't support it I have to cut uh investment in infrastructure right um for example in previous years I've been asked to cover the winter deficit from General Highway right so then you're not investing in roads
yeah a budget question I think you might touched on this John so if you want to spend money in your winter road expensive but you're say under that that one but you're overing your your General Highway you can you have the discretion at your level to move things around within this lines I he he can go into
deficit spend right and then then it's on us to determine where the where the shortfall money is going to come from the first place we look is do you have any money within your existing budget I and whether it's that or unfortunately traditionally he's been four people shorter year over year so there's money
there money wages to cover that but if he if he spent every dime he had and was in deficit then it's on the select board to figure out what other departments are getting cut to come that money on General Highway but UND spent on winter roads could he within his
discretion move around money with couldn't do it without approval but what the the situation you're describing happens every single year so why don't you just make one called General Highway puty because that's nobody well also
under under the honestly I I I under mgl there's two winter roads there's two lines and they have to be coded that way those are the only lines you can deficit spend and the select board has to declare an emergency declaration or whatever annually yeah but I guess I'm
looking at the granularity of the other things and like that's where you guys come back and ask for pluses and minuses that's up to you guys your comfort level yeah it happens every year we make it work okay okay um I do think having separate like I've got the
separate categories in General Highway and Machinery maintenance it does give the public some sort of transparency on where the money goes right cuz we have an extremely bad winter or a lot of ice the taxpayers will understand why that why there's such a big deficit there if
we didn't have a single snowstorm or a single salting event right why did you overspend sure you know sure sure yeah um but for example if I if I end up spending um Machinery maintenance has been one that's just gone aging
equipment has just gone through the roof uh for mechanical costs I go through um the expense reports when I'm preparing my next budget and I will pick out all of the like if I had to pay for them through General Highway I will pick those out of General Highway and put them into the account they should be in
so the numbers I I provide you are what it cost for those particular lands I guess what I don't know I mean I'll say this and then I'll I'll listen to what Bradley has to say if I'm way off track here but would it be beneficial if if we
collectively still didn't just want to True up Winter Road expenses could we add another line item a description a miscellaneous expense line item that we knew this is what that was and we put the money there versus bearing it in Machinery maintenance or something oh so
you have a dedicated line item for like miscellaneous emeres because then I don't have to explain every year why I took money out an ear Mark right well you should still should be able to transfer between these accounts for the major ones oh sure into okay yeah but
I'm thinking like tell what the what the winter was none of us can remember what we put into the General Highway for the mark last year but if if we move that 68,000 into Machinery maintenance right so he's asking for us to put winter roads at 68 Grand if we add the 68 to
the 38 right we're really overinflating that maintenance Machinery maintenance line so when future people are looking at it's like wait a minute you're telling me you have broken down equipment and you have issues here but you left $100,000 on the table you know I like
this idea of a separate line item that says winter whatever can you can you think of any reason why we can't have a miscellaneous line item no under expenses it's just a you just you're saying you don't want to increase the Winter Road expenses and wages so you
can't but we want to put leave the money in his budget so he has discretion so it's still hit in the budget the same way as just increasing the those two wage and expense lines yeah but if you want to keep an emergency and then if we don't need it it flow back into the general fund right it would follow out
as free cash at the end of the year so you take it out of the 190 figure is that what you're talking about yeah like if if he requested 122 even go back to actual 24 spend was 147 I mean I could I can see I could make a logic but we should add $10,000 to it we should bring
it up a little bit but not necessarily the full 68,000 cuz again once we hit that 190 we can never go back down right but we can leave it within his budget so so miscellaneous sounds like not included a Bo and I think what this
sounds like to me is more like a contingency fund yeah yeah is it possible that the highway department could have a reserve fund you know similar to whatever words we have to dance around yeah because that that that winter Road's expenses
has been funded at 122,00 $100 and going back uh I'll go backwards in time from last year was my request so FY 24 actual um 147 130 oh I have
138 but I I'm I move stuff in my budget to where it needs to go um 126 the the year before 107 well remember 23 and 24 here are the actual spins those aren't your budget 23
that's what you really spent in those line items well that's what that's what Bradley's office says I really spent on them I go through the town account that's what we go by it's his signature on the bottom of that form I have slightly different numbers because I P through my condition
account and move stuff where it was supposed to go but what what what does Finance think I'm okay with that I think you need to be careful with the description so it doesn't get lumped in with Winter Road expense because then you're locking yourself into the same thing you're were
trying to avoid in the first place M yeah so just throwing it out there you know leaving you know bumping that up by 10 grand or maybe even 13 bring it to 125 and then move the balance of that into another line item that still falls under the highway department with
constructive descriptions and it could be created you can create a in such a way that we wouldn't be able to touch that until we expanded the other ones right I mean you could put guard grills on it
comfortable I think the only way to do that is it'd have to be out it'd have to be like a capital account within the department stabilization account somewhere else that we need to go to town meeting to pull money out of it that's getting a little messy yeah yeah it's a little bit too complicated you have to be very specific on the wording
of go name to put in his discretion yeah General Highway building expenses within the understanding yes that it it is once this is These funds are expended so Johnny you're saying instead
of that 684 on the side there bump bump that down a little bit to maybe 60,000 or something to well I would well he's he's he's budgeted the current budget is 122 right so bring it up to 13 yeah right then the difference there
come down into a separate line is right yeah so 40 46 something 68 something's not Computing you said 135 yeah 35 so you're saying this would be like a
contingency for winter road expenses without putting it in Winter Road expenses right so leave it in the highway department so at the end of winter season when's Winter Road season in April April so then that means he'll know May June or July if he's going to
need that money or not and if he doesn't he can look for the next disaster on his list that needs to be taken care of per se well I mean I if you're not spend it on winter roads I would think that would go back into a free cash well it could but say all of a sudden you have a gas
tank that's leaking now that needs to be repaired and you've exhausted all your other areas that would potentially be a as long as that's okay I I I can find things project but it would leave your budget flat year year guys be okay with that I'm asking for it for
winter right but again I think if we describe it as relating to Winter expenses I think it basically Us in the combined amounts will be okay cuz that leaves it with that leaves it sorry that leaves it within your budget flip side
of it is if we didn't want to leave it within your budget we could take that dollar amount and increase Reserve Fund in finance so you'd have to go back and justify why you're pulling this money over which Finance would ask you did you overspend your winter roads because that's the
first place this money is going okay and just lay however however yall are comfortable doing it I just I I I I don't want to be taking deficit spending out of the town's infrastructure I think that's a
poor that's a poor financial move we under I think if we were to pull that out we really got to describe what that what that is and what how it can be used yeah I mean cuz last last year for Allens purposes We buried it on a line
item right and this is what happens it doesn't get spent so as you go down well wait a minute you're not spending that so we get a real lean time yeah you never spend this 55,000 so we're going to cut it so therefore you don't need it right right right yeah so this would preserve it a bit but at least through the end of the fiscal year but then it's
going to go either general fund or somewhere it would it would fall out the free cash yeah free cash but in reality if it's budgeted there's there aren't guard rails on it that's one say if you want a layer of protection we would make it part of the reserve fund calculation
right now you guys have a $30,000 Reserve fund we would add another 50 in there and it would just have to be documented somewhere that that's how we came up with this number as part of the budget which could be a footnote in the budget under the reserve fund 30,000 for General discussion 50,000 first for that
would be the easiest way to be able to access something if you needed it I think right cuz that that that would be a you know a request with with the finance committee to cuz not doing that right and again you set a reserve fund up you feel the the pain the first year cuz the
second year if you don't use it it just follows up the free cash comes back in right it's when you use it you feel the pain to readjust that so the um there was a point there I was going to make it it just starts it basically becomes a savings account that Clos out closes out
every year to free cash MH um that creates a record mhm if you don't use it but I if you honestly we've had some pretty easy Winters the last five and yeah this one is not even that horrible but take the people out of it I mean at some point in 30 years you're not going
to be the highway super sure sure so we need to put the guard rails in now for the position not the person now you just got to keep Finance fully staff so you can get a vote but it does sound like the you know the easiest way to be able to manage
that would be to put it in the reserve fund rather than putting in some other yeah like with a footnote on the calculation so again future bodies can look at that and say why' we go from 30 to 80 oh it's because here it is I just throw it out there I mean yeah
good idea okay well we won't necessarily decide it tonight but it's a good idea to keep in our heads as we uh move forward on our final looking at things because with the exception of that the rest of the budget's neutral as far as expenses go yeah so I usually ask for U
the underinvestment in infrastructure I usually ask for more money there but the state has um given us a supplement this year so I didn't I didn't ask for it is it going towards that bridge um it may and what's our share because that's what you didn't put in that email so do you anticipate our share of that that's
because that's kind of higher level than me nobody knows what the ownership of the bridge is I mean I can tell you and 100% eastampton 100% eastampton I think we uh we own a lot of it this this is a br you
say we own a lot of it he says we own none of it well no I I've talked to East Hampton and the suggestion is that maybe we we go 50/50 but I don't think that's a Greg and Randall discussion that's a city council andard we having yeah so
this this is the bridge up on that's got a problem that needs yeah yeah and we have another potential um same construction same vintage um downhill from the winery on um GL
Glen and a third on uh which we own completely uh gun Road oh yeah they're all same construction wooden peers y okay so oh do you want other good news sure uh so on Capital I have
not got my Capital um done yet um uh we're we're kind of drowning a Highway uh but I can just tell you that um in preference there's an Omnibus truck Bill and a carb regulation I don't know if anybody's heard of them but
they have put in exemptions for police fire and arborists for some reason that they can continue to purchase um diesel vehicles everybody else is supposed to purchase um electric vehicles however
the technology does not even yet exist for plow vehicles uh the state of Commonwealth Massachusetts has uh put off the Mandate for 2 years so we have two years to buy um diesel trucks and I would suggest we do so we
have two single axle dump trucks that are um we're dumping more and more money in um they're going to be my top ask just because of that looming deadline um we are looking for a
roadside mower um that's the I don't know if anybody's seen it it's a big green tractor with a big mower that comes off it's got a lot of torque on it and the arm has fallen off before it's at at the end of its useful life for that purpose but I would like to reuse
it um I would like to buy a new roadside mower um and use the old tractor uh and put a brush hog Mower on to maintain some of the open space um Parcels that we're acquiring that um we
can mow Fields with um those are the kind of top priorities we also um the approved money for a heating system upgrade for the highway department it was insufficient once we started getting
uh estimates in so we've got it design um and we're going to need a supplement for that money to replace the heating system that's also high priority lower priorities and some of them may be able to be accomplished through uh existing
funds in my budget um we have 11 humongous garage doors on the uh Highway Department um they all need some TLC some of them need replacement parts um I had somebody in looking at them yesterday I haven't
got a estimate yet uh our salt shed out back has um High Press metal hly lights in it a number of them have been going out I would like to upgrade them to something more efficient anyway some LEDs so we when we're in there those
lights are on for 24 hours a day how we didn't include that in the in the green communities originally um who asked me to be part of the Green community no I'm just wondering cuz we did the library police in town hall I did my own facility but we did the interior those
were a little above the guy I had do the rest of the facilities uh uh Comfort level um but I get everything else my whole otherc the rest of the facility has been upgraded to LEDs okay I leveraged um funds for that and I think
we've been saving some money on that uh we're looking for a new box truck it's like our mobile tool box when the guys have to go out and do stuff our current one is 2
truck is a 1999 it's uh more rust than truck right now so Rand the first one you said were two dump trucks is that two single axle CDL level dump trucks truck with uh you know integrated sander in it is the only reason for that need
the state Mandate of electric fuses no they should be replaced but um you know instead of trying to replace one and then you know going for another one in a couple years I think it makes sense to go for them now um rather than be
stuck not being able to get trucks because then then where do we go like they haven't they haven't made the trucks yet that would be able to be run by B batteries that would plow in sand roads um so they haven't made those an exception I mean if you got fire and police that are an ex fire police and
arborus figure that out just reclassifying your department yeah make everybody on arbit yeah I would suspect that they're going to have to make an exemption but this is going to be my recommendation with the the information I have right
now I would wouldn't be able to have enough stock to provide all cities and towns of massach for those they wouldn't have enough even if they were starting to produce them this year they wouldn't have enough yeah stock for everyone Mak sense but
either way those vehicles are getting up to the point yeah I mean one of them is 's uh 2005 all right so 20 years old on a on a piece of public uh safety equipment that usually has a 12 year
useful life and the other one is 2007 so right behind it Scott talk about this capital budget he going to work on next year yeah well I'm hoping to maybe I don't know Capital cash been
certified um anyway so that's all the good news no but it's 30% cash yeah so you're only talking $120,000 round numbers that's going to be available for Capital that's capital we have 350 from last year I know it's
not oh R I know I'm on the capital commit but you got some from last U currently it's 350 yeah for the so on top of and I'm sure it's being invested and earning 10 11% interest and then we've got the 120ish
maybe as an estimate this year a third half a million well we so do we buy the ambulance or the diesel truck good question I see yes okay thought questions yeah other stuff yeah
um anything else that I can explain I think you talked about a little bit of supplement on the chapter 90 money did you not in your yes we have um well I don't know if everyone knows we get about $314,000 a year in chapter 90 funds that
is program for um infrastructure improvements um um I try to develop a work plan sometimes like last year I saved up a couple of years of appropriation to try to uh leverage a
better price by doing more roads we did 11 roads last year of of level Mill and fill we call it Milling in then level overlay um this year we so we've got the 314,000 plus I believe it's
119,000 supplement I put it into the narrative but I'm having trouble reading I have a bigger screen in my office and my eyes are old road we don't know yes the Ral roads
is it 119 119 yeah so we don't yet know the cost of that bridge so while I'm going to put in a work plan my Franklin Cog estimates have to be in this Friday um I'm going to put in a work plan that we're going to do you know a couple of
roads but that may not get done depending on how much the repair to the bridge costs um we are allowed to use chapter 90 funds and I believe the Rural Road supplement as well for that um but right now I have no I don't even have a wild guest of what is the bridge
currently restricted did they put the barriers up um Greg uh the DPW director in East Hampton is helping us out with that he has ordered the um they're not up yet I'm not I came over it yesterday in the year yeah but this was kind of
dumped on us right before a couple of snowstorms right so um Good Times who dumped theu the Massachusetts Department of Transportation INSP people so I guess they had um they have
a consulting firm taking a closer look at um existing Bridge inspection reports so this bridge was inspected I believe in 2022 mhm and now they do just a fly over scrutiny no they're pretty I mean
the report you shared today was much better and thorough than the initial one that we got that just had the diagram on top didn't have the pictures underneath and I wasn't going under there to look so yeah exactly
yeah I just have one last question sure is on your last part of your narrative is just to just to understand a little bit more about this pavement management plan yes with pvpc um that was done in 2018 was the last last update
um it's it's sort of a document that becomes outdated the minute it's produced um it's it's it's good for that year so I use it as a general it what it will do is it it's a snapshot in time they um PBC P pbpc rides around and
evaluates the roads and they give them a uh a subjective score okay it's called an oci A A overall condition index something um so they'll give them an empirical score they will then um recommend
different pavement preservation techniques for different segments of Road um I will utilize that but I also utilize my knowledge of the roads the volume of the roads like I might there might be um a road with a higher
oci um but um higher volume of traffic like Pomo Meadow Road yeah that you you have to keep that road in chistine condition because it's got so much volume over it where you know you might see some side streets get a little in a little more
poor condition but they're they're they're servicing the people that live on those side streets um I do try to balance it out for example I did a pavement preservation technique called micro seal that we've never tried before um
on uh I forget how many streets off of pal morning metal road but we tried to take care of some of those side streets with a more cost effective pavement preservation technique um it's it's it seemed the salesman was really uh he
brought some really good data um but it's it's a technique that we've never tried before so we tried it out yeah and I guess my question is so does the money to do that is that all out of your chapter 90 money as well or is that yes we fund very little um the General
Highway doesn't have a lot in it okay for I mean we might there are certain expenses that chapter 90 won't cover or I wasn't able to bid them out because there there are very strict guidelines on how you can use the chapter 90 money
everything has to be bit out um follow procurement laws there are some uh it has to be over 500 ft of pavement um very regimented so there are sometimes situations um uh say I forgot to put
Road striping repainting the traffic lines on the um the Franklin Cog estimates so they never got bit out then I would pay for those out of General H because I wouldn't be allowed to use chapter 9 but for the most part chapter 90 goes
directly to roads and that's pretty much all we put into it so make a observation similar with John's about the fire department equipment we had several million dollars of kind of deferred maintenance on the roads and
we're getting 50 500 or so thousand of the chapter 90 and the rural roads a year mhm um so if we look ahead without really allocating um Town funds towards that like what are the roads going to be like in 10 years from now do we have several million dollars like waiting to
crash or I think the state um and federal government are both recognizing the scale of the problem um I've I'm a member of the um sh County Highway superintend
Association and we we've gone to Boston to talk to Regulators about you know we need more funds more investment infrastructure um I think they're listening because we've got that um rural roads supplement we had a uh another supplement last year um I'm
blanking on the name of it but it was another 200 19,000 and they did all those side streets off pomoy Meadow with that allotment um so I think the message is getting through that we're getting more state and federal funds but yes
equipment and uh Commodities asphal is not getting any cheaper so um it's going to have to come from somewhere but we're we're doing our best to uh do right by our residents and apply them where we can yeah we just have to hope that yeah
that F and everyone else starts to pick up the slack yeah but it's I mean it seems like no matter what industry you talk to there's there's that looming what are we going to do and you kind of have to if everybody's in the same boat it's not a compelling argument that mine is any more uh you know drastic than
anybody else's got it okay any other questions if not thank you yeah any questions come up um I prepared all these beautiful spreadsheets if anybody ever wants to see them I'd be more than happy to share
them hold on to them for seven years in Cas and we'll deal with the transfer station separately later on yeah okay that one's a little easier yeah only SL sounds good all right thank you all
for your time thank you thank you all right okay water department Brett br br so just a couple of things with the water department uh this is our first Enterprise fund of the year so for those
at home Enterprise funds are a little bit different they're self- sustaining based on the fees and the uh the bills that you get so when you look at town meeting it's actually going to be a separate vote for their budget so it's kind of a little bit independent um and then one of the other things that we're
working on this year is revising all our indirect costs so we're still working on it we're slowly getting into the the percentages using the the best practices uh provided by the state so hopefully in a week or two we're going to be able to get a more accurate cost on that uh probably I wouldn't say that
yet um so for the person expenses um we have uh four positions right now two are filled and then we have the administrative assistant which is uh the shared position between Highway uh
transfer station and and water department um sorry for some reason the the scales change whenever I go on the computer um on top of that we have the overtime for the department and as well
as Highway support wages so obviously we have an agreement with our highway department when there's a water main break or they need construction um the Enterprise fund will pay money to the the highway department for that um for operating
expenses there hasn't been much changes um the indirect costs we're working on right now uh generally we've just used one number over the last couple years but we're going to uh kind of go into a little bit more detail with that was there nothing in school year 24 I think
we just forgot to put it in okay yeah the number is still the same 15799 but is it it had to be uh 24 we never got an actual indirect cost like we budgeted an amount but we never calculated poor fiscal year 24 is closed
in the books and needs to be uh rectified chewed up whenever count terms so I think it's elevated about 40 50 Grand Maybe based on positions that were not
filled oh see I'm I'm your ghost from earlier yeah yeah um so we had a little incident where we were both editing it at the same time um so just like how I say St ste's in there looking at it change a number in there you change it
what is going on I kept changing it back so I'm not but I am in there okay only at four yeah so you want to go through operating expenses pad or where would you like to go tell me it's my first
time here yeah no whatever you'd like us to know so operating may be the easiest way to go start with that see if we have questions are you looking for a breakdown detail and please mean I I look at it looks like a very specific numbers that's probably ping up I don't
think we I don't think we got a a narrative from you Brett so that's why I'm asking why don't think we have a budget narrative operating expenses includes everything from uh Neptune which is our billing software annual accounts Building Maintenance communication education travel
Association for the water department electrical um for all our buildings fuel for vehicles generator maintenance we have a generator at the booster station um propane for that generator uh miscellaneous office stuff which be
supplies uh copier leases posts for the year um purchase water would be one of our bigger numbers in all that which is uh emergencies and supplemental from purchase water from East Hampton um the other large one in the uh
operating would be the electrical um we've in the past it's been as high as $30,000 for the year and we have budgeted about 50 um and that's for the well primarily or yeah well and um and then the other out buildings we
have uh out building control room at the tank that has electric heat um and then we have uh an old coronation station on Gilbert Road which also has water in there so we have to heat that so in their old just concrete block buildings that back when they were
built in the ' 70s there was no insulation no deficiencies and anything I mean I'm looking to potentially ran out of time this year I wanted to uh spray foam one of our our small control on building um at the tank um $500 investment in a little bit
of our labor um probably save hundreds a month so BR can I can I back up because I don't really understand how this works but you've got the the well is that pal pal Road no it's on College Highway it's on College 57 just pass where we were the other day corner of Glendale Road
okay we walk down there cut inv bases just wanted you to know back all water comes from through the town yes is our single solitary uh well uh called blend2 why would you need to buy water
for yeah well got explain that because our our infrastructure is reaching the maximum capacity of our pumping permits we are allowed 700 I'm sorry yeah we were allowed uh 550 gallons a minute to pump out of that Barnes outa from that
window L2 per year and and are pumping data but that thing runs 550 gallons a minute for 24 hours straight and in the past that our drought years things run for 3 days straight and that is our
maximum permitted capacity that we're allowed to take out of the Barnes oper and it's not because there's not enough water there that's just the max you can take that's the maxim so then you have to go and buy it from somewhere else and that's usually when you we've declared a drought or the drought has been declared right uh theoretically we should be
using water when there's a drought and all these people at the green no but that's when you have to go buy it I mean right now this year there was no drought there's no drought restrictions it's going to be coming and that's going to be another learning C for me too cuz we're going to going to make sure we have Town bylaws that we
can enforce does that cut down on the permanent amount if there's a state drought declaration so you still have we're purchasing water from East stampton just a customer which which then means we follow East Hampton's drought so Southampton may not be in a drought because we're purchasing because
we're purchasing we have to we we right now we're both on the same um river gauge which is a which which is going to change it's going to get difficult in the next couple years because we're we're right now we're permitted but not we're registered but not permitted um DP
language and I'm still trying to overcome um and about 2026 27 our permit has expired in 2014 has nothing to do with us it's a state being behind rewriting on his permits there's going to be language in there that we'll very specifically make sure that we have Town
bylaws that are enforcable um to enforce water restriction water restrictions correct is this water management act permit or a different law permit I'm not sure what the title exactly I think it's a govern it's not
our source water permit um it's a separate per withdrawal permit from so just to be clear so we buy water from East Hampton not only when it's in a drought situation no not has nothing to do with
a drought just we when our system and our residents are using more than our well can produce at 550 gallons comes out to 700 2,000 gallons a year we could kick out 700 but we're only allowed to take I'm not sure that that has been totally understood I think people think
that we buy water you know because there's a drought in the summertime and we're we are out of out of what we can do we need to buy water from East Hampton or something no we've just exceeded the capacity our distribution system our our permit our infrastructure
of our our res has exceeded that well capacity but yet oh I'm sorry no go ahead I'm sorry I was just going to say um the what percentage of our residents actually draw from the Town versus their own private
Wells kind of an uncertain number I mean we have what 6,900 residents I think the town website says 62 62 to um dwellings it's not dwellings no we have 1658 service accounts okay um and if you
go according to the DP and your annual statistical report it's 2.5 people per dwelling right which doesn't exactly math up from the annual statistical reports that I've that were in the past and I produced like my first one last year being here um but I
didn't I never met I back up a little bit I interviewed 2 hours after the old superintendent retired so I've never met him so I was handed a password for the building via text message my desk is the one on the left good luck and the passwords in the drawer so a lot of
stuff is how much time do I sit and stare and dig through files on a computer good succession planning there I guess yeah so a lot of this information I didn't have a per copy of our permitted thing uh when the drought decoration came out this summer for
other municipalities I started to kind of panic didn't have a copy of that permit rot back to the girl with a clean uh for Boston and said can you give me a little more detail she was oh I'm sorry it was a the language isn't in your permit and
I said can I get a copy of that so if nothing else came out of it I got to copy the permit in my building now okay that was never that I never had so have we had to since you've been on have we had to buy water then oh yeah oh yeah yeah so there's um and so now getting to know the system a little bit
more um we start to adjust pump schedules and a lot of it is actually it's not it always seems to fall in with cycle of shutting off our biggest demand starts atly 5:30 in the morning people getting up and then Sprinklers and so it's a little bit of not allowing that
tank to be empty at 5:30 you know not empty but you know at the turn on at 12 12 or 12 Stakes whatever we have a summer winter on and offs but if it's at 12:6 at 4:30 in the morning and off we use more than 550 gallons a
minute and so that tank starts continually dropping so it's a little bit of managing it on a daily basis of saying you know um make sure the tanks make sure we try to adjust the numbers on a daily basis sometimes at night I can do it remotely that I know the
Tank's going to be on and running and close to full at 5: in the morning so that we can overcome that 430 to 9 Peak demand and then but if the tank hits 119 right now we buy water um we had a main
break on December 3rd we bought qu million gallons of water what is the cost for a quar million gallons you pay we got a slight break from East ampton it's uh $361 per 100 cubic feet so 100 cubic feet is Si 748 gallons
so I'm not that fast it's like 04 you know I mean it's relatively cheap I mean if you all think about it walk down the AIS a Big Y and look at a gallon of milk or a gallon of water I'm sorry Poland Springs you're $2 you know dollar per gallon unit price you're
getting 12,000 gallons of water 10,000 gallons in water in your house for 63 am I missing something cuz I don't think I've heard an effort to advise Town residents to shorten their showers get low water toilets stop
using sprinkler systems you're water if you're on the Water System you get your water bill quarterly yeah and if it's less than a dollar a day I got a thousand one things to worry about with with three kids and that's not going to be one but but he's describing an aggregate problem you know of that 5:30
till 900 in the morning it doesn't sound like a problem it sounds like a regulation problem need a bigger tank well it's a but it's happening we can say people don't take a shower until 11: a.m. you know or something like
that people are selfish they're going to go doing what they need to do a l they don't there's people with 4,000 are there solutions to the issue expanding capacity or getting water I mean do we have a contract with these so we can yeah we have a 20y year
contract probably four years into it protected get as much water as we want yep okay and then what's entailed so so I guess one clarification it's that's point in time the 550 R limit so it's not average over 24 hours right so it's
not like we can max out the pumps okay it's 550 gallons a minute time 24 hours I think it's 732 bigger tank storage we do need a bigger tank that tank right now is uh installed in 1996 right and what was we were probably 4,000 people in town
instead of 6 now what's the capacity of it 744 th000 y 550 * 24 and then how does that relate to the water tower on W Mountain that is the that is the tank M oh that's the tank okay I thought you
made the well I'm sorry yeah no the well got it and then the permit itself what's entailed with going for a greater cap like draw capacity under the permit like does that push us into a new water system probably maybe a 5e process maybe
ERS and uh an engineering company is that mass mass Waterworks or mass D prob well it's got to go through D start in the state so so and to be honest which I wouldn't even know where to start never done it so is it was uh
put in in 2001 2001 so is the cost of buying water from East Hampton does it is it break even for the water department or is it putting us in deficit spending uh I think it's right around the same just close the
same price I don't know we actually did the map but I don't I don't remember that's a 20 year4 so6 but you need to cover all your cost and you're just going to build it out eventually right everything everything is buil to the rate payers you know they're not taxpayers they're the rate
payers and and absolutely there are a lot of infrastructure things that have done unintended to well so that was going to be my question on the budget so first the capital 50,000 is that you're appropriating it this year to be used over time or that's this year's projects
to do it's a it's a carryover number that has been in there um for emergencies so is it build does it build does it build does a build so 50,000 you don't use it this year next year you put another 50 you don't use that now you all our money stays in the Enterprise fund so it doesn't go it's not like I know there's that like it seem to the
year and we go he we're going to go buy right so I know there's million dollars worth of projects coming down right and your predecessor asked us to Fork over half of our arpa money for the 100-year old wood wooden pipes right which we did a portion of it but 332,000 it it would
stand a reason that the commission should be raising the rates to start building the reserves whether it's a nickel or something I mean the Enterprise much like the transfer station should support itself and never ask for general fund money right there's going to be a Awakening come June again
we when I first got here June of 2023 was a 9% hike in uh last June June 24 was a 3% hike but I think we're it's open for big discussion cuz that's also one way to curb water usage yes well we did we we
raed we raised rates so we we had we have three different tiers zero to 12,000 gallons was the old rate it was June of 20 just changed to June of 2024 was our first building cycle old billing cycle 6175 for 12,000 gallons so you could use
one gallon or 11,999 and you would get charged 63 6175 plus the $8 meter fee which is in a separate account we raised the rates by 3% rounded the numbers up just so the tax collectors wouldn't have to be deal with pennies so it's
6375 and we lowered the tier consumption from 12,000 gallons to 10,000 gallons to essentially kind of start to curve and we you know Cal Water pigs you know like to stop to to start yeah getting people realize hey your water bills you know the hit people
in the pockets and soon as that and we hit right on our biggest quarterly billing cycle so we had I say I probably had about 15 18 people $700 on a water bill was every year every quarter you
know coming this time that uh June when when we were lowered tier consumptions and the rates went up um to 0 to the 0 to 10 was 6375 and we dropped the the next tier from
12,000 to 24 down to 20 so uh $900 people started calling so I was in a lot of people's basements and on a lot of toilet test packs and then saying Here's Your Last 5 Years bills you definitely used 100,000 gallons of water you so I
had a lot of you know yeah I sat on a lot of people's couches for half an hour trying to explain to them so did you do did you guys make a conscious decision to do that last year to cover deficits or to build to build reserves for future
projects um we were we took out $50,000 we we had a bad quarter um it rained pretty good last summer so one of our quarters was $100,000 below quarter before so we get a little Revenue know estimates so um I would say just about barely
breaking even at this point and so know there's not a lot of money as my memory says I think the Enterprise Reserve funds for water is usually consistently just sitting at 300,000 it never grows I mean so that's like your stabilization money and knowing all these projects coming down the
road that you know if you guys are already taking steps that's great and not necessarily you but I mean the water Commissioners you know to put the rates in place so that the reserves are there so that the because the argument will be is I'm on a well why am I now using my
general tax dollars to support the Enterprise fund there no general tax dollars it's rayer well except when you ask us to borrow for you or you take our money which which again it wasn't you it was your predor yeah it was 3 32,000 yeah and the
remaining 340 something was right out of our operating right our now a rayer so I don't care you take it but you know so one number that I'd like to get an handle on we kind of waved arms around we know how many residents we know how
many service hooks but what percentage of citizens are served by the water system we say about I don't know a percentage but moning CTIC recorded by 4,92 people are served 23
4,92 out of 6700 no I can't believe there only 300 on Wells 2,000 we're talking residents 4,900 res y our served are served and our population is what 6 6200 yeah okay y
yeah I guess maybe around 60% yeah are served so 40% are paying and managing their own private system you me which which I should add they're also drawing from the bar Aqua for time of drought mhm MH
people can say I'm on well all you want but the water's still coming from there and eventually it's you seen that There Will Be Blood you be oil you know how do we ensure that you've got a big enough Capital account stabilization
account to do the critical work that you've identified and it comes in major um increments when we've only got 60% of the people benefiting and what about fire protection for the other
40% yeah that's that's a different conversation but it is that's where you could make an argument for a piece of of the general fund to guil towards but it would have to be proportionate and then spelled out and and the fire hydrants would all have to be operational if you
wanted to extend service to every residence you could which I don't think is right at all I me not right at all so from a plan long range planning perspective you're going to need additional Source permitted you're going to need treatment of
unknown quality going forward and um and and perhaps a service expansion plan but not to the whole town um and I'm very passionate about that I picked out the hilltops for you I know
where the next 100,000 gallons is coming from but I don't know what it takes to treat it and distribute it and I just think a 10year look at this is critical very critical we have uh like I said our tank is 1996 which is one of the older
of the glass line tanks from Aqua store glass L 1.3 million milon was the last estimate that I got um on the 10e capital plan depending on which one you find the one find in the D or the one I got from CI uh one has it from 75 grand
not that doesn't exist is 75 grand but you're marked for it um for a a plan to figure out an engineering study to figure out where it's got to go I mean we have uh low water pressure on the north side of town top of the hill Valley Road um it barely you know barely
gets the iso stand standards for fire protection um the next section of water main replacement here right that's going to be from which was initially was going to be in three
different phases uh from so from Fulmer the first part was the bridge it got done under Hazard liation so the state paid for it so Fulmer to Clark so from former to Clark was about $681,000 total you're talking Route 10 between
yeah right here yeah that's replacing to get a what was it 12 in it's a 12 in um but half the cost comes because the engineers couldn't get the water man out the street and so half the cost of the project is just Road restoration per
Mass Highway and their and their pering in their specifications so to REM that whole Lane cost $881,000 I think the project just happen in April 2024 and that was the third of the toal yeah cuz you're going to go now from from Clark to East Street
right and then Street to so initially I had uh estimates that it was about $678,000 to go from Clark Street or you know con Park to the front door here yeah and that uh materials Co
all this stuff and now we're looking at closer to 978,000 and I really need to get to here based on the water the quality of the water Ms right outside here we had a water main break in Fe 2022 right outside the fire department after hours
so a little bit overtime Highway crew um water guys that were here was before my time but I had to have it repaid M and that patch out here just passed the fire department in the southbound lane was nearly $144,000 for a 20x 20 patch MH so
anything that happens on this STP is this extremely expensive yeah so now because 10 years ago the water M was not connect from the front door to town hall across here to East Street they severed it because of the quality of the condition of the 1932
Main and the way that that project was left where so it pretty much dead ends and it was supposed to be a kind of a seamless transition um multiple things obviously a regime change over here State revolving funds the srf money is
no longer available it scores really well on the uh srf funding because all the money is going to lead service inventory which is another project we're in the middle of that we're overwhelmed with uh but we're hoping that they put more money in it
for 2026 or 2025 and we hope that we get $255,000 Grant to finish that project we kind of bought cuz two people were just really not we're just spending our wheels so getting it to East Street but then you still got it you were going to go all the way up to pummer M right and
so um I was really H to break ground within a couple months um had a special town meeting at the last special town meeting was going to try to get an article funded but it was a LED service just too much paperwork um to get
moving the only source of funding is USDA because there's no srf funding um so it's going to be an additional hoop to jump through to get funding for that because USDA does not fund during the construction so you have to get a temporary construction loan During the period of the construction and then
transfers to Us St alone so it was 968 from con to front door here and about 978 from here to the new the newest section which is just by party Patrol pal meow road so we're looking at almost
$2 million and I'm hoping to put it together and have it done 4,900 ft and it's going to be a miserable summer for the residents and everybody traveling on the street but we could save maybe $100 $150,000 for mobilization and unit pricing um because
this project out here that the first phase was nearly $400 per foot to finish from uh cut to repave so it's very expensive out here so we might be able to save it but that brings us into the where's the good
news we got the best so I mean that puts us already based on the numbers that I cohered out of town hall when I started here we're roughly $3.4 million in debt before I take any loans out that's the Water
Department Long debt term service so pass around some people say that's not really that much but that's existing debt that's on the book now that the current rate pay is making your 234,000 pay and that's uh the latest was $ 1.7
million for the the booster station which is the tie in East Hampton for emergency water and supplemental water and our new treatment plant um down there at the booster which included the umide I don't know that you know this answer but it's the W was it
wwta water pollution abatement TR is that still a 2% can help me on on that I just learned what that term meant after uh it was abbreviated a bunch of different places we not I'm not even sure that that still exists deleted it from last year's
budget well it is a state program where specifically for drinking water in the Commonwealth you can go to them to get it and I haven't looked at in a couple years but it was always locked at 2% interest which is cheaper than what the toal can borrow at right and USDA is
right around % also so I mean there is a line item in one of the revenue ledgers uh which is why a lot of times on water debt it's year debt at the 2% too we're not getting any srf funding to
do any water man justes score high enough lead service and work for this project um on the P well I mentioned P we um good news bad news we are not zero
we have one uh PFS XS um is not zero it's not non detect at a laboratory but it's right at the method detection limits of the laboratory detection the equipment the actual technology good news bad news is
it's well below standards is6 0.53 microG parts per trillion and that was our May sample our October sample uh was uh 0.63 but we before my time we were
entering a class action lawsuit with 3m Tao um something else and so I filled out so much paperwork and I'm hoping there's some some type of return or scores now um so we're at that point of we're not zero but we have a tiny bit that we can say there's some we
can't because we can't say it's zero so I feel like we're if we're going to have some in the water it's like the perfect place to be um I'm hoping if they score it and if they give a dollar score we might fall in $600,000 were scored at at 64,000 but it was clearly multiple times from an attorneys
on on paperwork this is not a dollar amount it's just a score so I got my fingers crossed as at least the dollar any idea when you might hear on that at all it's it's coming they keep sending out soon soon soon interesting so okay all that um back to
the operating budget um lot other stuff I ended up at purchase water um treatment chemicals and supplies uh is roughly probably one of our Biggers also it's we're budget for about 63,000 um that is chlorine or potassium
hydroxide and sodium hyper chloride um we buy them in I say both quantities but we have small day tanks so we get them in small Del drums we transfer them over a lot um obviously it's this time of year we transfer every 4 days um but
during the summertime it's almost every other day when we're double capacity or roughly or um the average daily use right now is about 300 298 300,000 gallons but our overall annual usage is uh 376 per
day average daily so that's taken in 752 th000 gallons a day for summer and so uh other ones are uh Laboratory Testing vehicle maintenance uniforms the invo
one thing I never knew I got a bill for $1,279 for 2023 cuz we pumped $18 million gallons out of aquafer and D centers ofel still pretty cheap but I first time I ever heard of it also I guess we're reading your 6 a.m. water
quality report somebody is bullet point J their job exactly and so uh the last one Cy cyber security um I had it on there for $25,000 last year but um we got a
$30,000 Grant through the DP and we're in the midst of getting that done so SP 11,000 of it on hardware and software is there any it sounds like we've grouped a lot of things under the water operating expenses is there anything that makes
sense to pull out like your purchase of water for example should that be something that should be more visible and trackable or not I I would trackable on me I have a daily sheet how much I would suggest it's deliberately done that way think of the schools you can
just see the Top Line because it's an Enterprise you're not really allowed to dig into the on the school definitely but I'm thinking they're taking the same approach I see why well on the school specifically well cuz it's an Enterprise
account as long as the receipts are covering the expenses it's up to the independently elected Commissioners yeah okay to manage that that's true I was fed out last year about transparency and I put this spreadsheet out the well people still talk about it
yes nothing to and then the general long-term debt is related to what oh that is this long-term debt sheet right here um I mean we we just hit in 2023 to 2024 it's actually kind of excited that it was uh $552,000 drop was one of our
long-term debts dropped off so that's what's debt currently issued by the wire department that they're paying ual princi interest or just interest I'm not I'm not a banker but that's got to be principal in
interest well he needs the money he needs the money to pay principal somehow I mean it looks like interest in a way because it's declining yeah as principal declines well that's true which one is it uh one the one that just dropped off was this one here there
some always de payments something USD no well I don't know how Bradley does it here but you usually want the flat so just give me the same so I have the same number to budget for although I was looking at the
Scott gave me the the debt schedule most of those loans are fixed as principal so the same amount of principal Pleasers so they decline the total payments decline get to what I was remember okay so good news bad news um
definitely pulling together a bunch of things that need to get done bad news is um probably in the next time not just meeting but following one going to ask for $2 million to be voted on um what that what that's going to
help us do is actually eliminate um it probably won't really matter but didn't get we the Leed service inventory was 690 um letters that we sent out and it broken out into two different parts of private and public public is a water
main to the front yard we call that main the curb we own that we're responsible for that if it leaks we pay for it we fix it if it's we go out there it's leaking out your front yard we shut the valve off and it stops leaking homeowner um and we can identify
the public side I'm sorry the private side which should be going into the people's basements daily looking at Leto pipes and you know um plastic lead but lead lead doesn't exist in town that I can tell based on Roger ball Joe clattery and Todd J Ross
guys together they have 100 years of experience you know service here and they've never seen a lead line we do have two galvanized lines in town which are also part of that and I kind of leave that off a lot so it's easier to say a lead service but it's lead and galvanized wiring replacement
um so this whole section is our oldest section of town so everybody on this section everybody on each Street which is probably also going to get done in 2028 2029 where it's going to be another half a million dollars where I'm going to request the borrow
because that section of road is getting redone and we're going to be that project is going to get done under What's called the nonparticipating nonp participating contract so we're only going to pay a unit price per foot to get put in the ground and we're going to get new water man from here to Clark
Street and everybody's going to get a new water with the public side so we're going to get off the street um and that's going to be in our best interest because it's probably going to save us $400,000 and um that street will not have to get dug up cuz typically they
pave the street we water Department's usually the first to break into it a week a month so we typically have a 6x6 hole in it no matter where you go it's just I don't know if it's the paving Gods the water gods or uh yeah just a
vibratory of the rolling and stuff y soal budget is where it's so I have a question uh you were at a previous select board meeting not long ago and we were talking about Personnel but Personnel doesn't come out of the Enterprise fir there four people it does
MHM okay the contract with the sampton how long is that I know it's 20 years but how how many years do we have left I believe well that building was built in 20121 so I believe we're only 3 four years I have we have a lot of un I was told once that I worried too much when I
ask questions about things like I we have a waterm break that walk out road all the pressure in town from the water tank I have to shot that for 12 hours to fix it there a 12 in main broke we don't have the system in place from
Hamp that will the water I mean cuz that that system over there it just turns on based on that tank levels just stupid just sensors pressure differential sensors thing says am it's 119 11.9 ft turn on turn off when they at the at the
set level to turn off but there's no way to balance it so I'm trying to work some of that stuff in with our um um industrial controls guy um to come up and reprogram some of the the skater program systems to kind of come up with
a a run on pressures versus just levels so there's a lot of stuff that whether it was never thought of or never Pro passed from one regime to the other that keep me worried
sometimes yeah it sounds like you're trying to fix a lot of these little things through little quote unquote little things but things that need fix that maybe had a lot of attention ding stuff down the amount of effort to get this yeah was days begging
and walking from desk to desk you know like where is it you know I want to know where $243,000 of budget is going I want to break down of it okay good anybody else have questions I do yeah how often do we
maintain our inspect our fire hydrants we flush them annually we do we're required by the DP to flush them annually um we do not touch every single fire hydrant in town um for the most part you know some
of the stuff that you see in the news the fire hydrant didn't work the fire hydrant worked just wasn't a lot of pressure because it was a 80-year-old pipe that was tuberculated down from this big when it was new there's so many minerals on it it's this big it just can't produce the volume through it um
for the most part ho when I worked in hoyo same thing fire hydr always worked there just wasn't a lot of pressure one of the ones that hit the news and ho up when I was there was it wouldn't shot off the rod broke you know 100y old things Break um and so a lot of the ones
you see are pressure related but um I mean a lot of the hydrants around here are some I don't even want to look at they look like they're so old I don't want to look at them yeah there's a couple that are sunken pretty but you see you have to flush them annually but you don't touch every
hydrant annually no so you don't flush them annually we I I'll get you a number I'll tell you how many we have a flushing program that goes on for about 3 weeks there's four zones yeah uh we flush 375,000 gallons of water out of our system um it's a uni directional thing
so we have to go out we um so you don't have to open each individual hydrant you could do like skip every other one if it's on that we do it at the end of the line trying to get one the incre velocity through like greater than 2.5 ft per second through one line and
that's getting out any scouring and dirt um any bofilm that might be inside I think way back one too we I think we had figured out maybe it was with the firefighter grant that we just worked on but believe we came up with about 30 35 to 40% of the town is is on
hydrate if I'm not mistaken right number I did get that from Chief I think it was right around that figure I think that is actually on higher was higher than 35 4 I think so I think we did it based on the miles cuz I think I asked R how many miles how many miles
and we had 45 miles of main I think we did the math that way M okay anyway but yeah so there's not quite as many hydrants as I might have guessed at some point but a lot too yeah okay if no other questions
thank you very much Brett for sharing all that me with your number sharing all that information yeah I don't remember what I hate from bre you know how much it weigh good all right so we'll let you depart and uh what else do we have on
our agenda here only we aut I think we're no sorry we have our next uh select board meeting on March 4th and
that will be um bus that's more Challen budget who's up uh yeah ta treasure employe benefits debt um the still joint one yeah yeah a few other things okay more internal right okay so March March
4th that'll be a joint one also with with finance will there be a business component for us or uh it should be a regular that'll be a regular select board meeting so we'll have some other some other items on the uh understanding to keep bringing
forward because we have some pending we do so these have been special in between our regular select board meetings just I'm calling that out for clarity yeah yeah no just just Finance hearings yep so we had a regular select board meeting last week whatever it was so our next one is time around next we
have work to do we' definitely got a lot of work to do no doubt about that all right so would you all like to adjourn your meeting first yes and I'll have ation to all right Sten and
Cindy we Jed at 850 thank you very much this government meeting is brought to you by East works and our local cable subscribers