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 18th 2025 at 6:00 uh we could first stand and say Pledge of Allegiance
please flag right here and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty for all all
right thank you we have select board here I'm hoping John is going to join us so that we will be a complete select board and uh in a bit we will have uh the rest of the finance committee join us whenever they come in we're uh going to do some budget hearings but we've got a first set of agenda items before the
uh budget hearings start for the U uh Council on Aging and the police department tonight and uh so let us uh start anybody here for citizen speak anything that's not on the agenda off hand particular issues no all right well I'll
just throw out one thing um for those who were brave enough to come out on uh what was it Saturday night for the uh event at Panos for the 250th anniversary our celebration event of the uh Valentine's music Bingo we had a full
crowd uh had close to 50 people there and uh people hung out and managed to have a good time and um so it was great to have uh such support in spite of the snow that was coming in that night and as the people left we had a little little dusting to say the least more
than a dusting on the cars by 7 o' but everybody had a good time so thanks everybody for coming out and all the contributions that people made for thater and that's the uh beginning of some more events coming up there's a book club event uh at the library on
Thursday I believe it is and then on Saturday as far as I know the CB Scouts are still planning to do their snowbox Derby on Church Hill uh so that hopefully will will happen and when Kate comes a little bit later we'll pin down a time for her on that CU she's the one of the ones running on that uh and then
after after that our bigger events are going to be in March so there'll be a couple of events in March um as mentioned before the Southampton Town trivia night at the Country Club on March 21st and then on March 29th pancake breakfast at the Congregational Church so those are big big things
coming up in in March so thanks everybody for chiming in every time I turn around I seem to get a new idea from somebody who you know we've had this loose group of about 20 people that have been meeting every couple weeks but yet there's always a new idea that comes in so that's that's perfect it's it's uh
the kind of very um evolving committee I guess I would say so it's great okay well we have uh on the docket tonight actually the public hearing uh continuation of a poll hearing uh for eversource um it is about it is 606 so
um could I have a motion to open the hearing please open the second all right second all those in favor I I I all right so with that and just keep in mind this is our only microphone here so you guys have got to speak up a bit um we
have in the meantime uh received a communication from eversource uh and basically this was a couple of days ago saying that at this time eversource no longer wishes to pursue the grant of location request SL Poole petition for the new line install
on manhan Road in Southampton please withdraw our petition application effective immediately so with uh there is no business for us to conclude I don't know if that means that they're going to go back to the drawing board and come back with a new idea but at the present time uh we need to just
basically close this hearing and let whatever new things happen happen in the future so I'll take a motion to close the board take no action and close the public hearing okay all right any comments questions no okay all those in favor I I I all right so do we know if
they're been productive con Sation outside of this narrow request no I've contacted U the representative multiple times and try to schedule a meeting with the neighborhood um have been met with resistance so yeah right four five
different by the eversource by thece so there's been no meeting that's been able to happen at one point I know our Highway super was working with a regional manager or somebody from ever Source at one point in time I think they had made some some initial progress there but nothing more has come of that so at this point in time it's uh off the
table and um if there's a new plan I guess we will hear about it when it happens okay all right so with that uh we just close the hearing am I correct yes thank you very much okay uh Scott just a Town Administrator report um just a couple quick updates the Green
community grants uh have been completed and I'm going to be seeking reimbursement this week There's a few things I have to get together uh the big announcement is zeroc College Highway the public Workshop is February 27th :00 at Norris um please tell everyone uh
Hampshire Regional preliminary preliminary budget was presented last week um and you'll see it tonight as well uh the treasur and I met with uh Bartholomew last week as well to review our investments um and I forwarded the materials to the select
board um we also had our do pre 25% Greenway design Mark last week with uh Ty and bond uh M do and about 40 or 50 other stakeholders um some things come came out of it I'll update on another time um
and then ever Source obviously asked to resend their application for manhan road so okay any questions of Scott anything um you can keep up with the planning on the town website under the
events somebody can be more specific okay um select word reports Dan you got anything yeah one thing to mention is the Housing Authority un since the last time we spoke and um the most important thing that came out of the Housing
Authority was member of the community um volunteered to join the the Housing Trust which we've been really working really hard to get someone to join that person happens to be here tonight Stephen Johnson so that moves on to select work
as the ones that need to um form that well formed but somehow get on to it yeah well we need to figure that out because we've got a five person trust that needs to be enabled and and put together we've had a couple people that are interested that have been
interviewed there's a third person that I haven't been able to catch up with and then there is a member from select board as one of the five members okay so we got to figure out if this is one of the five or if it's the select board delegate so so that we'd have to work that out so that was the that was the
big news for housing the other thing was talked about a couple other properties in town and really we're kind of debating as a Housing Authority like how many active projects can we really handle at once that's the the question you know we have the the two properties on College Highway we'll probably have
deciding that's enough for us to handle at one time then adding another project and trying to do that at the same time we'll see we'll see what we say so that's all I have to say Okay and from conom uh I think was that the last
between they'll have a meeting coming up in the beginning of March I believe right yeah okay okay stepen nothing okay CD hello well first of all the open
space committee had to cancel their meeting last week because of a lack of a quorum because of sloppy weather um the um the Board of Health met on the 10th of February um and a lot of attention is
being paid to the multiple properties that are being looked at for various reasons because of safety issues because of you know issues regarding um that the Board of Health is reasonably involved in ETC septic issues ETC so it's quite
quite a list I counted eight that night that we either got little or great updates on um and um also uh the Board of Health is in my opinion working very hard to look at the whole budget issues and we'll be here we'll be hearing from the future
budget meeting um they also um the um Public Health Excellence shared services Grant has come before them and they um are um the chair strongly urges that we complete it to the extent possible um some of the questions there is no answer
for it other than we don't know or we're not involved Etc but it's recommended that it be completed as best as possible in order to give State the understanding of what the status of the Southampton uh Board of Health is at this time um and um there are gaps
clearly and this will help um and that's not due until um April or May um and uh let's see here what else um I guess that's it from the Board of
Health um the board of assessors met today uh with a it was a regular meeting um we um are making in my opinion great strides in terms of the various responsibilities of the Board of Health looking at exemptions and looking at um abatements Etc like that but also
looking at process ways to improve things um and discussion on various ways that we could improve on the capturing of new growth and other things uh an idea came up today that's so brand new that I'm not able to report on I need to
do some research first but I really like the idea that came out of how to be a little more efficient and effective in that whole board it's a very extremely important board as we know to capture the growth that we need to and to tax appropriately everybody in town okay
good that's it that's it all right very good okay uh on my end uh not a whole lot in terms of the grant committee movement at the moment there's a couple of things coming open I attended a sat in on a webinar today for the um MVP Grant the municipal vulnerability
preparedness Grant um with the a lot of the examples that they've shown from various other towns there's you know there's big big projects many towns get involved in that are nothing on southampton's radar that I can tell that would equate with some of those these
are like half million dollar projects in in Northampton and part of the eastern part of the state and so forth um and nothing jumped to my mind yet anyway I'm going to go back and look at the priority grid list that was in our MVP plan which coincides with our Hazard
mitigation plan um we had talked about putting in for some um uh a feasibility study for heating and cooling center in town uh and that is as far as we've gotten we never got feedback from them um when we put in our expression of interest but I asked today and they said
doesn't matter if you didn't get any feedback you're still eligible to apply anyway so we'll have to look at that again and see if there's something that makes makes some sense but I'll I'll forward around some of the other uh ideas of what's been done in other communities communities and um we're
we're not thinking in the same league I think in terms of some of the issues and problems that other communities have and a lot of it's related to flooding for many of them um and some some issues that just aren't necessarily applicable to Southampton that other communities have you know just got involved in um so
that's probably the main one coming up um the expression of interest for the onetop will be coming up fairly soon um and I think that's about it right now for Urgent grants um even though we put in the uh the mass Trails ones and then the uh the female ones for the
assistance to Firefighters grants who knows with everything going on whether there's any grant money out there quite honestly uh I think it's a big question mark this year in terms of what's what's possible especially from the federal level um the only other thing happening this week is the is the bylaws committee
review uh review committee's meeting on Thursday to look at a couple of amendments uh that hopefully we can just tweak a little bit and get them onto the special town meeting War but yeah Stephen yeah uh no I will take it okay okay so that's kind of it for that
um let's go on to new business so first up I think we have the water department overtime policy so I see Brett want to come on up to the table here have a [Music] seat yeah yeah so Brett Simmons our water
superintendent go for it tell us what you're doing looking to get the second of the overtime policies approved the uh we had one approved um and it barely snuck by the ppb board um
they wanted clarification on the we didn't have the words in there that were um personal sick holiday time we're considered hours work so this is a new policy that was signed on January 14th by the water
Commissioners to add those words okay would you for the listening public would you just read the overtime policy non salary Salam water department employee is required to work on a Saturday or Sunday that employee shall be compensated for a minimum of 4 hours at a rate of one and a half times the
regular base hourly rate for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week the new language here is vacation holiday personal and sick time shall be counted as time work for the purposes of computing over time okay so even though the just for
our purposes even though the water Commissioners have signed off on this this still has to come before the select um so do I understand that pqb is in favor of this and has passed it to us is that what's happened the policy was
initially voted on the PBB um and I don't recall the date um month or so ago um I was supposed to follow up with John lumbr I believe he was We were supposed to get
some clarification on it but it passed the ppb board for the initial M overtime policy on November 2 was signed on the 26th I don't recall the
date sorry okay um okay so you're looking for our approval of the same thing that the water Commissioners has has put their name to right correct all right uh questions I have a
few well is this consistent with other Town policies in terms of computing overtime that the added wording of vacation personal SI time would can be come towards the purpose of computing over time you know the answer I'm not
attempting to compare us with the DPW but this is consistent with their with their language okay so if somebody's on vacation approved vacation for a week but then they they come back from vacation and they need to be called into work and it exceeds the number of hours
because they have the vacation week then that meant that they would be eligible for the overtime compensation that's the understand correct adding the words vacation holiday personal and sick time okay and might I also add that this is not only comparative to the DPW this is
also very competitive to other water departments in the area which we are actively competing I know to keep people that isn't my educ water department wo's educational tour that I was been on um
that is not going away anytime soon so just a question I'd just like Clarity in terms of what you mean by required to work because I think other departments if somebody like highway department for example if they're called in because there's a snow emergency and they have to work on Saturday that's a separate
thing so what is required to work mean for the water department required that's in your first sentence there somewhere so what is I mean I mean well we have to do the weekend well checks we have to be in that building
365 days a year so somebody has to cover it so it's not necessarily an emergency uh no but it is outside the normal working hours of Monday through Friday why couldn't it be done during the week it has to be um physically
someone human being has to go into water department licensed individual from the water department has to go to that property the we the treatment plant 365 days and a week out of the year they can't be there's no there's no maintenance work that has to
be done that we have to go in there but we have to write in our DP chemical ads we have to look at the Palms check the the flow rate everything and make sure we're having no issues in there so they actually have to go in both Saturday and Sunday every day every 365 days a year
someone from the Southampton water department has to visit that property and spend at least a minimum of 1 hour in that building and that was part of our sanitary survey well I it's it was it was written in the sanitary survey from 202 that I
supplied uh my educational tour back a couple months ago in September but that is a requirement from the D that we have to go to that building and we record our data we do our ad sheets we take our fls from the previous day um if uh timing
falls into it we end up adding mixing chemicals um anything that and that's that's what what's bothering me a little bit is there's no minimum in here I mean if if if I went in it took me 15 minutes to do it do I still get four hours to pay um well it's required that we have
to spend in one hour in there it doesn't say that though that's why I'm asking for that Clarity because that doesn't give me that clue about what that means required to work I mean if if this is the reason why somebody has to work on a Saturday or Sunday then I think we should say it's required specifically to
go and monitor whatever has to happen at the well because this this is you could drive a truck through this that's the only reason somebody's getting out of bed on Saturday morning for the water department or Sunday morning but I think if you want something solid in policy it ought to be more specifically said that so that
everybody's clear and there's no nobody's going to have a Miss interpretation of what that means that you know somebody's got to go in there to to read gauges monitor whatever file a report whatever all that entails in that hour and that you know there's at least that's assumed to be at least an
hour's worth of work from what you're saying it's that's minimum required is 1 hour is worth of work one hour in building yeah okay I do want to just point out that this would actually apply to their Administrative Assistant as well who works 40 hours Monday through Friday for the town so if that employee
worked an hour on Saturday or Sunday she would then be eligible for this the way it's written now it's anybody mhm yeah at my discretion and they not going to have her administrative assistant come on Saturday to yeah but I think all we're
saying all we're saying I think BR is just to have it laid out clearly in black and white so there's no no misinterpretation of what it can be 20 different ways of skin a cat and everybody actually this is the reason why we're here that's another time is because every time we hit one of these
boards somebody has a very specific well something they want me to add to it I'd be willing to absolutely have everybody tell tell me how they want it written so that we can end this move forward it's a concern about required to
work and recognizing that there may be a state regulation there may be an emergency where you lose pressure if if there's an emergency I I I understand that I mean I think that happens with other departments like the highway department for example the way this is written
right now is pretty wide open is the way I see it I agree and I'm trying to key in on how to fix it can and I think required work is meing some further definition can can I ask something different um if is there every single
weekend somebody going to get overtime or are there some people whose work schedules are such that part of their 40-hour work week will happen on a Saturday or Sunday and thus this will not be an overtime compensation for those is this like emergency kind of
thing so and so is on vacation they generally work Saturday or Sunday therefore somebody else is going to have to add to their 40 hours and cover that person for a Saturday Su is that the circum historically Monday through Friday like
any other Town job here right is Monday through Friday correct at current Staffing levels there is no ability to shift somebody's regular Monday through Friday job through uh Wednesday through
Saturday job at that current CU you got what two people that's it and you need a third right we need a third and I guess while we're at it I have uh I want to add that I have 26 applications good from
November 22nd of 2024 and of those 26 not one single person that has submitted their application here as a distribution or treatment license so ultimately um they would make them unable to do this job um at least have
pass license get license through the state drinking water board to go along with my question though if the regular work of someone is 40 hours and they have the proper certification and licensing Etc and can they shift their work and work that week
Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday so there's 40 hours and therefore be getting the regular rate not the one and a half times rate is that something you can do or is that not possible if we find the right candidate that is willing
to call their Saturdays and Sundays a regular shift I would imagine that oh it's a choice thing right so how do you how do you figure out who comes in on Saturday so it's both Saturday and Sunday it's not Saturday or right yeah 365 days so so that's first of all so it
should be Saturday and Sunday not Saturday or Sunday right it's both but is it how do you how do you schedule now I mean you take turns between the right now Andrew's been doing it uhhuh okay I mean I don't know I just feel like we need to get more clarity here in
terms of and I think we need to put in that you know assuming that a minimum of 1 hour is required or something um and what the duties are specifically it's not the normal regular duties during the week that somebody would do it's because they have to come in and do this
particular State regulated task and Reporting on on that weekend right the state regular task every single 36 so I think we need to specify that in in there that's all I'm suggesting is that we add that more clear want to restrict
the the Water supervisor that much um because he may need people to come in on Saturday so for other purposes um so it may not specifically be that uh I think really it's it's around the required to work part I think if we just tra change
to say if if they're required to work by the Water supervisor if if he approves it then uh they can then they can work those hours on Saturday or Sunday as approved by him maybe that's the one part that's missing so people you know
have anybody can just work sat Sunday without well there's only three people involved you've got the You' got yourself the your assistant and you've got the admin assistant so I think we definitely have to make it clear that it's not the admin assistant for example I mean
you're coming in because you've got this task to do or it's an emergency it's not because you didn't finish your work on Thursday night right that's my assumption nobody unless unless I approve them to work on a Saturday
whatever okay go ahead I mean it seems like but you're but you're approving Andre basically every weekend to come in both both days to do that right correct yeah so the other question I had is you also want the ability to uh authorize
overtime for people um out say an emergency happens outside of normal business hours such that their hour their hours go beyond 40 hours a week maybe you would like some type of the overtime policy to allow you the flexibility to uh have people work more
hours that week with at time ah half so suggestion your choice is it not currently the policy that 35 Plus or 40 plus is compensated as overtime well there over 40 is
definitely compensated as overtime what the issue is if you work one hour or 15 minutes then you get compensated for a minimum of which is the real issue and usually those things are reserved in Collective barging agreements so that if you have a worker that gets called in
for an emergency at night or on a week weekend um they have to upend everything and so you need so they're guaranteed a certain amount of pay at least that's like half of a day pay um it's usually not for scheduled work or things that are ongoing it's usually something for
an emergency or something out of the ordinary i' I've worked with other Wastewater treatments and water departments and usually they'll you know they might do someone work Sunday through Thursday and then another person would work you know Tuesday through Saturday something like that so there's ways that you can offset it have people
if you had a third person that might be possible non salar if we swapped out State licensed or whatever it is that distinguishes the person who can go down for an hour and
qualify so state license employee is required to work on an emergency basis rather than the schedule bis I think that's what we're talking
about but this doesn't sound like it's an emergency on Saturday and Sunday we're giving some feedback Saturday and Sunday 365 day coverage is a scheduling challenge right not an emergency in my
mind I right so if we want to make sure that you know there's some recognition that this is an imposition um recognizing an emergency condition where
you need a licensed person uh some special consideration may be due that minimum hours but I I agree this is um too fuzzy I I think one of the issues also is just comparing it to other positions
so we have like an administrative assistant in our Public Safety that works 40 hours if the police chief called this person up on a Saturday or Sunday to work 2 hours they would only get paid overtime for 2 hours they wouldn't get the minimum same thing with like the assistant Treasurer who's 35 hours if
there was a billing issue that and they had to come in an emergency payroll issue which unfortunately does happen and they had to work additional hours past 40 hours they would work the actual hours and get paid overtime they wouldn't get a minimum of so if it only took one hour they would get paid for that one
hour we're also trying to find somebody who's willing to get out of bed on Saturday Sunday so now you're now you're assuming I find that right candidate you want to pay them for 1 hour you're assuming that this day and age you're going to find a candidate
that wants to get out of bed on Saturday morning for $30 an hour for 1 hour and Sunday go back to my professional career which was nursing and we had to cover 24/7 and I have to say we knew that we were going to have to it's not about
getting out of bed I mean if you know that every Saturday and every Sunday somebody has to go in and it's so so is going to do it um does it have to happen at a very early hour of the morning it it has to happen like at 5:00 a.m. or something or 4:00 a.m. typically at 6:30
in the morning that's when our computers dumped the numbers from yesterdays into and so it can't happen at 9:00 a.m. it has to happen at 6:00 a.m. um there's occasions where it does happen but yeah to be consistent with our data and if the system's running at 6:30 in the morning we're taking levels of a tank
that's still running so if we get there at 9:30 versus 6:30 our numbers aren't consistent with a 24hour good levels and DS we're taking dose per day per doses of what's in the drinking
water which going into our resink important honestly I get that I think that if you're going to be every week guaranteeing a minimum of four hours so it's not really an emergency but they should have to work the four hours and there's other stuff that they could do well that's kind of what I was asking if there was a way to
say go go home at noon on Wednesday in order to cover the 4 hours on Saturday and work the 4 hours especially well any of them for you know if if it's a uh non-exempt individual that's has that
been thought about or you're worried the person will quit because you're going to say that's um amazing I'm trying to be competitive with other water departments and this is what other departments
other water departments in other towns are this is their standard operating procedure there is not one person in any water department in Massachusetts that you will find that doesn't get paid over time for for minimum pay with overtime 4
hours on a Satur but could could we consider two hours instead of 4 hours for example I mean I mean what's what and then that person is going to go consider putting his application in other place because we're being competitive because they say I said it during our meeting um during the slw
meeting we're competing against other water departments people are not coming to Southampton because they like spelling Southampton on our paychecks or the color that our paychecks are written on they're coming here for compensation and compensation only and there is a shortage of licensed people in
Massachusetts with drinking water distribution and treatment licenses and we are stealing them from other towns I have poy right here granted their Union but they're
giving $1,000 $2,000 stiens per year they're giving longevity pay they're giving $1 to $2 an hour on top of your listed pay rates per grade of license so you could
be getting one to $2 an hour on top of your list of pay rate plus an additional 2ou $3,000 if you have addition distribution three license plus if you stay there then now you're getting longevity pay so again people are coming people aren coming here for cuz they
like the town hall or they like the water department they're coming here for the pay and this is what we're trying to be competitive with and so if I can't be competitive including on weekends there's been some off the table
discussions on where we're going to get where we're going to end up trying to get water from whether it be oil first Campton when we're unable to staff this department because we cannot be competitive well how can we rework this so that it's a little bit tighter just
in terms of what we're talking about anybody have any I got a pen I'll write it down this way we can uh I thought the the part about the required was a little bit uncertainty around you're just saying required my suggestion was required by the water
superintend would be a way to Ure that no one is um taking advantage no no yeah the time sheets are signed by me reviewed by me signed by me yeah they're also um
reviewed by uh Joe L the Water Commission one of the water Commissioners I mean there's there's nothing's going to get from town hall here just because someone sneaking in on Saturdays and sneaking in a fake time C so is it is the non-salary part the correct part does that take care of the
yourself and the other employee or does that include your administrative he's exam I'm examed right but the two other ones are non-salaried yeah so it would apply to both so would only apply so we have to make that more specific it should not include your administrative assistant I
don't believe so so I think it needs to be your Tech whatever your licensed water technicians um if a licensed water technician if you want to put in whatever license they require um
uh is required to work on Saturday and Sunday by the looks here or because I could I can come in outside of my regular 4 hours so that's why it's do okay so on Saturday or Sunday to
complete whatever the d you report whatever it is let's let's be specific about the task that that I mean it could be a water now we're ping this down to very specific I'm getting there the the Water emergency could happen too but the the
reason you want this is because you've got to do this report every day right so whatever the name of that report is let's what is it called got a number or a name or something B whatever water quality control report or something
whatever it's called so let's let's present you know whatever the name of the report is so now this now this policy is only going to be specific to this what if I have an emergency in the guy well we can add that language that's where we're going so this is this is just taking what you've got right here so cuz right now so I mean you can throw
in the emergency first part if you wanted to I suppose so if a licensed technician is required to work because of an emergency determined by the water superintendent I don't know I I mean I think just a couple pointing out a
couple other things is with the counting the vacation holiday personal and sick time towards hours worked is something that the town normally doesn't do um so if you had someone not saying this would happen but in other instances where I've worked someone would be sick Monday through Friday and miraculously they get
well Saturday to get the for minut hours minimum for an hour work and then Sunday they're better and then Monday they're back to sick so it's kind of language is specifically copi directly not again not trying to compare myself with DPW the
water department but this is directly from the DPW the highway guys I can hear you though on that one well I mean I look from a perspective of the town has a need right for weekend coverage and whether the person was on
holiday sick or whatever they work the week I don't really care it's the coverage of the week need s it's abuse someone I have to answer to the budget every year I'm I'm avoiding
abuse that's if you didn't that's why I'm hired to trust my judgment yeah telling you my judgment is sound I think you avoid you avoid abuse by having the water superintendent being the one who determines who's going to be covering that
work go ahead and say it again didn't hear what you you you avoid the abuse because you have the water superintendent making the decision as to who is going to be covering that shift over the weekend so
he it may be the event that someone is on holiday during the work week and he has no other choice but to have them come in for that weekend I would like to have him have that ability and not be well because that person worked or was on vacation holiday whatever um on
Monday through Friday that he can't use that resource on the weekend cover with such a small staff yeah and I gather Scott what you're looking at because we have with the highway department they're on a union right so the director's not but obviously the the employees are so whatever the clause in
the union is about being called at DOR I don't know but we can double check that but I think the idea is then I'll try to repeat what I started to say and see if this we can agreed to it or not so if a licensed water technician
is required to work because of of a town emergency declared by the water superintendent um hang on got F in Saturday and Sunday in there somewhere um on Saturday or
Sunday and uh need to um somehow fit it in that with the filling in report of the d report required well coverage to to do the well coverage report or something like that that would be a little bit better I you
know I'm I'm I think we need to say that that that employee needs to work a minimum of one hour that's what you said it takes at least to do that report that's what the D requires a human being or licensed human being to be in that building an hour per so let's let's just put that
down and make that clear then it's clear so nobody can question it nobody can come back and say well gee they were only there for 15 minutes so how come they got paid you're saying that they have to be there at least an hour so that would be my recommendation that we'd have you just rewrite that
we'll pick it up at the next meeting and I have to raise the question however that just let's assume it's a weekend that you intend to cover and then there's an emergency that occurs and the
other employee who is who is um non-exempt um the Water emergency occurs on a Thursday night and it requires and I witnessed this in my own um neighborhood that somebody come out and
dig you know a hole and fix the water line and do a whole bunch of stuff that happens it's an emergency um and it exceeds the 40 hours they also will get time and a half for something over 40 hours but it isn't going to be a
4H hour minimum do you see what I'm saying if it's two hours that they so this only applies to the Saturday and Sunday and it only applies to the language that Chris just said so somebody that works a regular 40 hour work week is that what it is a 40 hour
work week or 35 hour 40 so but they have to work additional because of a water emergency outside of a Saturday or something do they only get the number of hours additional that they work so it depends on whether or not they have checked out this current employee that's
the only other employee there is regular schedule is 8:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. okay so the second he goes home second he turns around he has to come back but it isn't a 4H hour minimum at that time yeah for nights and weekends it's a 4H hour minimum even for that circumstance
most most of our emergencies when it gets to that point we're not nitpicking over 4 hours because it takes 2 hours to call an emergency Tak so there's no such thing as a 2hour emergency basically you're saying not unless it's something internal in a house you know but for the most part but but when it comes to to
digging in the street I mean usually we're there for at minimum MH you know I'm generalizing day but I mean we on 16 16 hours over there inen December 3rd okay well that that would
be my suggestion is that we have you rework this language a little bit you can tidy it up a little bit talk to Scott about final version of it if you want to before then but we'll pick it back up at the next next meeting stenting we got a long agenda to come I believe
frustrating believe I know we just heard about nights and weekends triggering over time automatic whatever that language is means to be either adjacent or inte if there's another
policy that automatically triggers overtime at less than 40 hours we'd like to understand okay okay typically was is at work I have a signed acceptance letter from
women the water techers and normal work week will be 40 hours per week with expected hours 8 to 4:00 p.m. sure are yeah that doesn't really address
what so somewhere else do you have it written down that they get the overtime is it in another policy somewhere well and I can continue to to read if no that's fine I just whatever we are writing down if we have to expand this to include whatever you're talking about now for overtime 40 just per week not
eight per day right and I'll continue I'll finish the paragraph in this acceptance letter normal work week will be 40 hours per week with expected hours 8: a.m. 4 in the event of an emergency you will be expected to work at a rate of at a rate of time and a half with a
4H hour minimum for weekends and call outs okay but if that's true that should be part of the overtime policy what I mean with letters of offer or acceptance that it's not binding because everything still has to
go by what the town policies are or we would have different things for different people if that was the case so and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to codify this into an actual policy yeah offer the guy otherwise we're it
say expected yeah okay so let's let's work it re rework that this gets finished next time what would you like that to clarify the next you just um in the last few minutes introduce another overtime
I it and I just think it needs to be adjacent to this so we we can see it as a whole and you know it's reserving judgment whether this is the ideal overtime policy for emergency workers
but we need to see the little picture and it's going to be comparable to what the DPW has in their language well that'll give us a chance to take a look at that that's the way it's been there since for six years in
the water department so okay not a new issue probably not never been I think we can we can put it down on paper in black and white so it's clear so we don't have to keep debating it over well and the challenge is of running a two or three person Department are profound
yeah recognize I think we should recognize that sounds like he's having a heck of a time getting and just so you know I I have been covering since the day I started I covered every single holiday down there give give the get a break so talking every holiday you want
to talk about holidays in here too such that you're not doing every single one okay thanks BR appreciate it all right thank you we will pick it back up well one other thing then um in our meeting minute not so once this is
clarified uh we have that uh the Water Commissioners Ved that this should should be retroactive to when he started um I'm not sure if that was brought up but it was it's an amedium minute note it wasn't written in this policy because we're not we we'd have a PCF coming in
for that most likely to act on the PCF right and so that yeah it's not becoming it's not saying retroactive in there because it's not right it's going to be no it wouldn't in policy yeah that would be on the personel form that would be on the personel form another on policy okay
thanks all right thank you all thank you next up Hampshire Regional budget review overview rather so we've got Margaret and Dawn maybe or who's who's going to or both of you or one of you both part of the
bud I know this is the overview of school budget that they went through last week okay that is not budget what happened because okay so we have Margaret Lawson and Kim I forgot
your Don is our new business administrator um and I sit on the Norris school committee but I'm the rep from Norris to the school here okay can we give you 15
minutes well uh let's see no um I do have a question I understand I'm I'm a little confused because every town is a little different and there's the finance committee in some towns is involved they will be here you're sitting in their seats they're coming at 7:30 for Budget hearings this is not a
hearing this is just to give just information but they don't need this information well they'll get the packet part of it they won't yeah they weren't planning on being here before the budget hearings which are but Doug is Doug is one of those person my name's Doug so Doug is one but um we've got the regular
budget hearings that are scheduled for tonight oh that's the 7:30 event yes okay yeah yeah so this is Margaret came in last week and said Canen we come in and give an overview of what happened at the meeting cuz Scott was there but we were not there so that's why this is
happening so whatever you can do in the most efficient way possible would be helpful but that's okay here we are all right so we um let's go through this this packet right here that has uh this on it I'm going to skip certain slides
uh the the superintendent talked about the Strategic plan and basically um these are four four elements of the Strategic plan in year one and the one that's being focused on here is the in District Partnerships and Regional efficiency where we're developing a budget blah blah blah you can read that
and then um the goals for immediate action is to for this was for for the superintendent he was to build a central Office Team and create a culture of support build an efficient effective fiscal system and um so this the rest of
this document is really focused on the budget um now the preliminary budget um is what is contained in here and it reflects feedback from the all districts committee that um we received and you have I think John lumber was on that
committee and who else is on that Margaret um from Kim from Southampton yeah so they're representatives from each town and um there was a a level level um funded budget a level service
and then a level Service Plus and the level Service Plus basically discussed um a different way of doing uh the information technology so bringing it from an external service
to an in-house service and the um price tag for that was deemed to be too high number one and also um the question was is this the year to go full board um when there's so many when there's focus on Forensic work so to speak and digging
out of the problems that we've had um and that exist and still exist within the central office which we are trying to address so that came out um and then anything subsequent to th those meetings which were December 16th and January 16th uh there new
contracts um new information that was factored into this budget as well um I think there's some we also meet with the finance subcommittee of the Hampshire Regional school committee um which Margaret sits on and Tom and our chair
and then a member from Chester Hill yeah Trish Trish CL monom and so at that point they we didn't have complete we didn't have a lot of Revenue numbers we're starting to get some Revenue numbers so the initial Revenue numbers are in here they are not final we do not
have balances carried over from previous years we're still working on that and um it captures items that have not that were not reflected in the um 20 budget so when you look at the growth from 25 to 26 sometimes it looks like
it's going up higher than it is because somebody forgot to budget in 25 for those positions that have existed for a long time so um let's see I'm going to I'm going to leave you with some details I'm
not going to go over it right now but I'll be glad to address any questions regarding the central office budget because the central office budet is one component of the whole um Hampshire Regional budget and that was reviewed at length at those ABC meetings but this is
the data um you don't have that in here I'm going to I will pass it up separately but it goes down to the Nat's eyeball really in terms of these are the various departments here's the superintendent and this is his salary and all the salaries of the people in that department then it goes to the
finance and HR department it talks about all the salaries and then any other expenses like these software expenses and things like that that will be on these two documents so that's the backup to the central office that's the back up to the central office exactly and so um
that's not what's up there that's not what's up there either um this is it was right there yeah that's it and so the ones that are highlighted are the ones that represent the Hampshire Regional portion so that middle section right through there and then at the very end
it's says um 1,964 351 that's what the projection is for the 26 budget that are factored in to the whole budget that you're going to be seeing so this really is just one
line code and um I think I heard sound effects over there from Steve and I understand because in 25 the approved budget was a, 674 and it has grown to a mil 964 uh as I said some of it is because it
wasn't budgeted originally and some of it is um The increased costs um some people were hired at uh a salary larger than what had been budgeted um in order to attract those people um it wasn't me
but um just to say and um anyway so this will go into that level of detail so I I'll say to you that when one of the things that I think has been eye opening for Dawn because she
was with the town of Goan um is everything that central office does it's I I think it's it tends to be a little bit mysterious all the things that they they do for the district um because it's not just a superintendent
the business office it's also our um the person who runs all of our curriculum and is trying to coordinate curriculum between all of the elementary schools as they feed into the high school um as well as as special ed and the special ed that's a lot of work to do that across
the district yeah I will agree with that when when people would say well central office I really was this a morphous thing I didn't know what central office does but it has I thought it just did the budget basically but it's it's the onboarding the HR portion this the budgeting portion the um as Margaret was
saying the in some places it's called the sped director but here it's called the pupil services and um in addition to that curriculum and the superintendent you know um activities as well so and then all the forensic work in order to
clean up issues from the past um because we um we have not been able to file some reports on time because of the forensic work is still ongoing with previous years and um that puts us
at risk of having the Department of Revenue and desie say no sorry we're going to put you on a on your own budget you know we're going to decide what your budget is uh and so we have to keep putting money at this problem um and
we're hoping it will be resolved by the end of this fiscal year end of f 26 fiscal year um and let's see so I think um starting off with the the next one I
don't know if you have this one Scott um this presentation but it has the summary of the FY 26 budget yes and so the budget is going up 45% um the revenues are about flat from last year and the assessments are going
up 7.35% and when we get to the assessments um or if you want to turn to the assessments because that's what everybody's interested in it's the last page um here's the assessment to each town and um just to to review that so
Southampton is the third one down but I think the thing that's really important to understand is that um the state calculates what the minimum contribution is from each town and they do that based
on the equalized um value it's called the eqv it's the assessors um you were talking earlier about the critical assessors um roles and one of the things they do is they go by do requirements for assessing each each property's value
um and the Department of Revenue requires valuations to be updated every so often and um this unfortunately was one of those every so often so every town has seen across the state has seen their property values go up um and then their tax rates go down but their tax
bills go up because the valuations have gone up and so what what they look at is they say what is the value of all of the property in this town and they use that as a measure of your ability to pay for your schools that's number one they also go
to your IRS filing um or your Massachusetts state filing and look at your income so they look at what is the income of everybody within the town and then they look at the number of students um that you are sending to the school so
it's a mixture of things um and so they say based on all of these variables you should be able to pay at least this and for our whole uh region it's 6 Mill 6,172 310 for Southampton it's
3,407 of course you have the majority of the students so that factors in as well um and then they're saying okay Transportation you have to pay for transportation as well so the those first two columns add together to come up with your minimum requirement so for
Southampton it's $3 million 795 and I think one one um aspect that's important to understand as well is that we have often in a lot of the school committee meetings that I have gone to they talk about the fiveyear rolling average of students um that fiveyear
rolling average only applies to the light blue column in the middle um the minimum requirement they factor in what is your current enrollment so the 5-year average tends to smooth out
the ups and downs but um depending on what the ups and downs are in these first in this first minimum requirement total minimum requirement column the one that says 6,864 you'll notice the note under there it uses the current year enrollment the
other one uses the 5year average that's important when we when you do out the math you'll see that and then for um it looks like our 5year average is 336 for Southampton on the previous slide there some yes yes that's why you slide Builds on to the other but if you have short a
short amount of time I wanted to make sure you saw this one and so you'll see that your assessment is going up 389,000 almost 390,000 which is 6.8% which would be middle of the road compared to um uh
Westampton that's going up 1.3% and uh Williamsburg and Goan who are going up 14 and 12% so so yours is not the highest increase but um certainly and what is the factor that makes those that high what is the fact
the driving factor that makes those two that high William the driving factor is the assess the the property values proper and also if we go back because I do think it's interesting to see go back to page 10 and you'll see the enrollment
and so your enrollment over a period of time the the the town of um Southampton has no not page 10 back no it's down it's not P 10 yeah it's on page 10 on this one on this one here okay just I think it's done right about there Scott
right about 19 or oh you're in there yeah and you can go can you go back one more Yep so here's the here's the enrollment by town for the current year and then you'll see the five average so five year average I guess you can't get them both on the screen but 5 years ago
Southampton had 360 students going to the school to Hampshire Regional and then it went to 346 321 329 and now you're at 324 so when as Southampton moves so doesn't the rest so goes the rest of the towns so even though
Williamsburg has and Goan have had a fairly stable student population they are inheriting the scroll down one Scot just they're inheriting the the um percentage that when when southon goes down everybody else has to go
up so that's that's a driver also percentage wise percentage wise yeah so so um and that this number will you know it it obviously changes and they're having the biggest kindergarten class
they've ever had at Norris we expecting that to come in and that those creates these bubbles uh which you know go up I think we at the high school we have the largest ninth grade class we've had in a long time like 130 students and that's
huge so we're not accepting Choice anymore in the ninth grade because we just so um then if we can so that is that's sort of the end story there the assessments and the FTE I'd like to point out a couple a couple of things with respect to the budget itself so if
we can go back there and um if we look at um this page Scott which is page five budget by category yeah budget by category um so here you will see um what was happen what was approved in 25 and what the preliminary budget says for
various categories staff salaries and benefits and sped tuition services and transport regular Transportation buildings and grounds central office um and uh Administration State assessments Etc um if you look at it pictorially
you'll see that you know what's driving this 45 + 16% so 60 whatever that is 50 61% is um Sal salar and benefits and so that's really driving it the next thing
um that's huge and it's gotten big for every single school is the sped tuition services and um transport and then you'll see it goes down to little narrow pieces and if you go to the next page we combined some of those little ones into an other category so it's not so prowed but still you see
the same picture um so categories that were less than 2% we just combined into the other um and then the revenue you'll see is relatively flat based on what we have had what we have at the moment the
state aid um has gone up the tuition um agreements so that would be Worthington comes in and they have in 2026 I believe it's $111,000 per student um which is greater than the 5,000 for school choice and of
course less than what we pay um to educate each of the students again Worthington also pays their own tuition and their own sped costs transp and and transportation right sorry that that's say um so for example if we send a person a student
who needs special education services that cost $100,000 which is not unusual so if Southampton sends that that cost gets covered by all the towns because they're all paying into Hampshire Regional if Worthington has a student paying and they have to pay 100,000 they
pay the whole thing so there has been times plus transportations but has been times when they have paid much more than our towns have paid for their students because of that situation and that was just by agreement that that's when came into the district yes and that agreement
ends next year so they started at 7500 we've been gradually moving them up so it's not such a shock for them um but that will be renegotiated and are they Capt at a certain number of students no no um if you go to page no let's see
we'll stay here you'll see then um what's really going down is the Hampshire Regional School District school committee po I'm still on Revenue by category and um so there was the tuition agreements which was worington and then Clark um the Clark School um
yeah has I believe it's eight students and they come in at varying varying amounts and it's going down next year because we're I think three or four people are graduating so that's why that that income is um lower all right so
under the school Comm line that is money that the school committee can choose to augment Revenue because we might have a balance in our school choice fund or we might
have excess and deficiency which in the town all free cash um last year sorry that orange folder stays that's part of the finance Comm tax you'll have bring those back
but um so last year we discovered that there was a revolving fund that was primarily consisting of Transportation but also some tuition like it had just become this bucket and um according to
the Commonwealth we are not allowed to keep money like that right um and so we were really afraid that we were going to lose that and so we applied the entire thing to the budget knowing that that means that this year might be a little
bit different however we didn't use any end last year we didn't use school choice we just um excess and deficiency which is like our free cash in a town okay uh only Regional Schools are allowed to have excess and deficiencies so if there are balances in
those funds then that is money that the school committee can apply to the budget in order to lower assessments would be the goal for doing that um so right now there's 250,000 from school choice I believe that um but this is very
preliminary because they're still working on some balances and so they're maybe additional Revenue coming in so Scott if you go to page page eight uh so down a few more act yeah yes so this is what Margaret was
talking about last year you'll see that that thing called miscellaneous revolving fund balances and um then we don't have any of those this year that we're aware of because we we were able to effectively spend that last year um the Desi has we're in constant
communication with them and they have clarified that um there are certain things that must be used up in the current year uh rural a for example Transportation has to be used up um by the following year you're not allowed to keep it multiple years and we did have a
pot that had been accumulating so that was that's what that 1 195 was last year um we don't anticipate that for next year um the 250 it could grow um and I don't think we'll be able to apply any excess and deficiency excess and deficiency would be like free cash for
municipality if we put some in um it hasn't been certified um yet and I don't expect it to be certified before the final budget presentation which is in March uh the do desie has indicated that if it gets certified before the first
town meeting that we could lower assessments by applying that um with the vote of the school committees to do so but um we are being conservative and saying that that there are no excess and deficiency funds to to add to that um
then this next page um Scott if you want to flip down goes to um various Grant offsets they they offset the very the budget um so this 240 which is a special ed Grant um Medicaid reimbursements come
in for students who need special services um and then circuit breaker uh that's another one that you can use from one year to the next but it must be spent by the second year it's 27 months
rural Aid Etc so that the revenue would would decrease the budget um I mean the assessments and the federal government has said that they are not at this point touching idea that is a Federal Grant and they are saying that that is going
to remain in place amidst everything else that's going on there the one other thing I wanted to point out is back on page five where we're talking about the budget and that is um last year as you'll remember was a salary negotiation year for um the
teachers and um it looks like the salaries only went up 42,000 and that's not the case um if you look at let's speak this document this document right here it has
the detail um narrative that explains I think there is it yes it's on page three on page three so I think this one is an important one for you to see the staff salaries the total increase to staff salaries due to the settled contract
contracts was about 360,000 um and this particular budget has two additional staff people they are um Paras they're required um in order to meet the mandates of the special
education so we have those are each at 30,000 so that's adding another 60,000 and then those increases are offset by 2 and A2 FTE reductions in Staffing that the principal has um proposed and
additionally remember how I said there were some expenses that didn't get budgeted in 25 here's an example of the opposite last year um the principal also reduced two FTE but it never got removed
from the budget so 25 salaries were artificially higher and so even though the salaries went up 360 uh 360,000 it was off set by it it didn't look like it was going up as much and the only reason
I mentioned that is because this year it will be going up 42,000 but next year there'll be no uh offsetting amount so you can expect it to go up um 300,000 um and
um I just mentioned that just for full disclosure because if if you really look at it it seems odd and I think your finance committee would look at it and say how in the heck could you go up to only 42,000 but this these explanations give you the details of that does that
increase so every year is going up by 300,000 that's why next year we'd see a jump it's no it's not quite that it's not quite that it just um it depends let's see so last
year the in what was factored into the budget would have been let's see if you can think of a better way to say it Margaret but last year what was in the budget was a lower amount and so the impact of going up is more profoundly felt so the next year it's already up at
a certain level so it won't be as large an increase it could be somewhere between 250 and 3 for the for the um value of the of the um increased Cola yeah yep um so I just thought that was
important to point out the other thing that is unbelievable which you probably already know and Scott probably already knows is that we all participate in the same um Hampshire County health plans and that um for employees who have the
HMO it's going up 18% and for the employees who have the PO it's going up 20% so that is an enormous increase um for the benefit plans so
um you can see like an agate on that I mean like does it go beyond the Hampshire County Health is it a larger population or is it a small what's the population of people that have fall into that into that um trust the Hampshire County Insurance
trust I don't know the answer to that I can find that out but it's most of like eastampton the reason I ask is Are there specific individuals that unfortunately have had to utilize more services well it's not only more services but it is the it's the drugs what do you call that
o it's a lot of these drugs that are out on the market now that are really really expensive and so they're being prescribed more readily and so the cost for the for the healthare that the trust is providing has gone up so they are increasing the premiums for everyone in order to cover that so it's not only
it's it's not only it's not that there's a huge increase in the number of people covered it's fairly stable but um it's the but because of specific circumstances not everybody gets it no but specific yeah some some
Pharmaceuticals and treatments and yeah and then the other very large increase for this year and for next year the FED cost so I think that you'll be able to um you know go through this and read
about you know read about all of the increases and um I'm glad to answer any questions now or later I don't know how much time you have but this is this is basically um you know I went through it very quickly at the Hampshire regional meeting I went through it much more
methodically and and built it you know Crescendo to the to the assessments um but we went right for it that time and um so what are your next steps what what what happens next you've got to get to a budget in March but yes you're working on the revenues so we don't have the
final Reven yeah the next step the the really big step is the revenues the revenues and then looking at there if the school committee would like to see additional cuts um and what generally happens is that that
looks like Staffing Cuts uh so there's already two positions two and a half positions that are either not going to be filled or um we're going have to let the teacher go I I was going to ask are there are there staff what do I say are
there Staffing situations where you have a position but you've got a vacancy that you might just not fill in order to there may be retirements and um yeah there may be some retirements and they may may not be filled I think um if the
if the principal were here she'd say she's you know we're walking into dangerous territory because nobody has been spoken to about anything so you know can't get more specific than that but I think um what she is trying to do is to um make targeted reductions that
will have the least impact on students um and um yeah and so I you know It's tricky because we are a magnet for school choice yeah you know we get a lot of
school choice people in um and once you start increasing class sizes or reducing programming then you get not only few a choice students in but you get more students likely to go somewhere else and
although we only pay $5,000 per student if they're going to another school they're going to a charter school and we pay whatever they ask and that could be $20,000 a student and um as Margaret said the charter the thing that I'm passing out
now is just for you to read at your convenience and that would be if the principal were here or if you had been at that presentation this is this is the presentation she gave that sort of talks about what's the what underlies these these numbers what are the um what's the
curriculum and the um the educational aspects of what you're seeing in the financials yeah so go ahead I was going to say a couple things sounds like there was some fudging on the numbers because of you
know found money and money that was used and shouldn't should have been more acknowledged or you know people that were hired at greater than you said greater than the amount that was actually budgeted for secondly there was this negotiation of the Union MH
therefore I'm wondering if you don't fill a position and thus classroom size class sizes have to become larger or something's not offered that was always offered that's going to be Comm a union issue thirdly school choice is a
wonderful thing and I'm glad that because I happen to have a person up there and I'm very happy that it's a quality school um but at the same time um if you don't do what you've always done before schools and the the draw
changes that could change the attractiveness of school choice these are all the factors you're trying to B yeah I'm actually more concerned about students leaving the district than not attracting as many schools kids in yeah yeah so those are those are the
underpinnings and that's what um that's what Lauren has tried to address in in some of her and what's the what's the I don't know the answer to this what's the state picture I mean what do we see more support member what's that woman's name who was going to represent um small
rural communities out here yeah is she like on this to get more statement to support any of this well I mean that's where the rural Aid comes in so we do get additional Aid that places like eastampton and Northampton do not get um we're trying to be conservative on what
we're expecting in rural Aid um the other thing that that we're doing much better better than I think we've done in the past is seeking all the appropriate reimbursements for special ed costs so
the way you you invest in your special education program every year and then often the reimbursement of that comes in the next year and so that gets tricky when we have a bunch of expenses in one year we have several students maybe they're outplacement a single student
can cost $250,000 if it's a residential outplacement and so yeah yeah that look on your face is the way I always feel about this hard to believe but then there so then there's uh what they called circuit breaker which is um a
mechanism for reimbursement uh and there's also extraordinary relief so if you have spent x amount over what you expected you get extraordinary relief but again that's for the previous year and so the timing is always a little
trying to reconcile all that as for sure the other thing I want to before um before you shut me down you know before we have have go on to the next thing is that um I'm sure it's no surprised you've heard that there have been a lot of things that have happened over the last year that haven't gone quite quite
right and um one of the most recent discoveries um that we reported to the school committee um in the last round you know when they met a couple weeks ago is that if you remember in this presentation over
here um there's the line for central office and in 25 you'll see it was 587,589 that's on here including the central office and so those assessments go out to the towns for the high school so Southampton all of the five towns have
been assessed for the whole budget and the town appropriated the money for all of all of this now you get to the Municipal Elementary schools and it doesn't work in the same way as the Regional Schools so there's not an assessment but there is an allocation
that is made for the work that's done in the central office to support the elementary schools there is an amount that goes to in their budget M typically that amount is invoiced say
quarterly to the mun to the those schools and it says oh don't forget Hampshire Regional or the Hampshire District paid on your behalf this amount of money please pay us back and that did not happen last year so in
2024 there were central office costs that were not invoiced to the Municipal Elementary schools and um neither were they paid so now we're into
2025 so those bills are will become prior year bills so that invoice if it's prepared or when it's prepared would be presented to each school and it would be a prior year Bill you're used to having prior year bills that come through your your annual town meeting or special town
meeting warrants but they're usually $200,000 for bills that that didn't come in on time this is something that we just noticed and will have to be taken care of and um we've spoken to Scott we've spoken to John lumber about it and
indicated that um we have to come up with a number um for so that you can put it on your your next warrant so I don't know if you had that if you had the that coming attractions at some point is this
something that Bradley identified as already encumbered from or funds sub side in anticipation no this will be separate sounds like it should be on auto I I agree with you I think we have to look at how I think we have to
look at a number of things in the coming year and one of them is why don't we just treat it the way we treat the assessments to the to the regional schools just have a bill it's out there and you just pay it quarterly just the way you do the assessments so I
just wanted to mention that CU that's another big um poops and um needs to be needs to be taken care of so could we have any hope that with the 6.8 whatever 6.8 assessment changed that that might get a little bit lower once
you get all the full revenues in right this is not our final number by any means this this is our worst case scenario I would like to believe so that gives me a little bit of comfort yeah I mean I think school committee doesn't want to see a assessment as high and so the question is is it are we just
relying on additional revenue or are we changing the budget you know changing expenses I think the additional revenue for those recurring revenues is reasonable I think to rely too much on the
revenues um there's a balance and I think that has to be considered by I'm sure the school committees will be thinking about that right well we don't um we don't want to repeat what happened at Norris years ago when they used all of
their school choice balances so we always use whatever we're expecting to come in in a given year but there's balances from previous years and we try to leave a hefty balance in there so that we can make choices um because we don't want to be in a position where we
don't have have any ability to lower the assessments using that and so you have a lot you have a lot of you have a lot of information we do thank you I'm give you this just because if you want to know what the central office is spending their money on it actually is in here
okay thank youing oh well thank you is there aough estimate of the unil allocations for the central office for the I think it's going to be um for Southampton it'll be somewhere between
425 and 500,000 and so that was appropriated last year that was appropriated last year and so theoretically you should be under your budget by that amount and um we're working with all the
accountants Bradley um to that's one thing that I don't think happened either where there should be a Reconciliation every quarter between the the school yeah department and the with the accountants and that hasn't happened consistently and that's where we got off
track with a lot of the grant money and so forth happening as well so that's another another issue so good uh yeah you can do a set right there because there'll be another Finance person coming y that' be great thank you okay thank you thank you all right well thank you for coming in and giving us this
Overview at least we'll have a little bit of homework to sit down and read through all this but U and then the next time um is going to be in March 10th I believe at Hampshire Regional so to the extent that you can come to that I think it's great because you hear all of the
questions and you get other people's perspective and also you get a more linear presentation this one I hopped around because we had limited time yeah no great and I think you also see that school committee does not rubber stamp anything yeah ever
exactly good all right well thank you very much for giving us that overview and presenting all this stuff for us appreciate it all right go [Music]
okay I okay all right everybody okay for two seconds you a break quick stretch break but we we got to keep going can't let you can stand up and stretch I don't want to lose
you we got a little bit more to go before we get he into should I read warrants in this yeah delivery everyone else's all right how we going okay so we need to open well yeah
the if you let's revenue and expense reports yeah we can skip those and um we just say how how far how close we are revenues up until when oh uh yeah Brad you're all set through December so
y y all set so and then uh I'm just do two weeks until March 4th for the warrant Oho all right we're going to get started guys sorry please find a chair thank you pick up a couple extra chairs we got a
few more issues on the agenda here so we'll get to you guys in a minute have ever wait till my a bodies come back in yeah so actually Ste why don't you go ahead and read those warrants while you're I agree with you do that have the following activity okay
warrant w25 29 in the amount of 676 8106 followed by p 25-30 in the amount of $ 350,677 PD 25-30 the amount is $
63,5 199 PD 25-3a was 277,000 3979 PD 25-3 B is $38.70 W
25-31 is 1, 15572 3188 lastly payroll 25-32 the amount is $372,900 okay we'll go back up to the agenda we've got a couple other items just to
finish up before we get into the budget hearings um as it turns out so revenue and expense reports just very briefly uh we won't go through them but where where are we in terms of our our dates of where we are with revenues to finish up wherever we are with last fiscal year as
well as this fiscal year obviously so we um Bradley has completed the revenues up until December we can put them into our Revenue sheet this morning uh so we'll have that for everyone next week okay um now we just got to work on January make sure we don't fall backwards okay and
then everything is all set in terms of revenues and expense for last fiscal year but we're still waiting on the school I take it for reconciliation stuff yeah okay in order to close the books on last year school year hopefully we can not and we get something for
special town meeting I hope so all right okay speaking of special town meeting we need to vote to open the warrant is that correct M all right so we need a motion to open the warrant for the special town meeting slated for March 22nd could
somebody that to open the warrant for special town meeting scheduled for March 22nd second all right all those in favor I I okay want to give us a little overview of what's on the uh yep list so far oh sorry I lost it
um it's not in the uh Isis State uh it's literally a draft but a little bit bigger maybe sorry there you go so um the OPM is
obviously the first one uh for the public safety and Senior Center we have the investment committee that we've talked about before for the uh trust funds uh with the investment that to the left a little bit then we can all see that there we go thank you um the treasure has two requests PR investor
rule in the oped de de Declaration of trust that we weren't able to get to last annual town meeting uh the moderator um would like to point out um the finance committee being appointed uh rather than a uh elected uh we have some
Highway um transer funds an unpaid bill as Don mentioned um the fire safe Grant back from fy22 we have to reimburse the state for um a bylaw change for annual town meeting being uh put back onto a
Saturday um I have I'm going to have a request for legal budget um conservation committee commission has a amendments into the bylaw that they're working on uh then the bylaw committee has uh 1 two three four right now you can take off the wetlands that's the same thing oh
got byland yeah got Wetlands twice one of those just reduced okay um Highway and we we're going to have to talk about that one with Rand a little bit um a heating system repair that he's been trying to get out for Capital and then
uh the busing fees which Don had mentioned um a lot of these we can actually wrap together in a consent agenda so okay that's where we that's where we stand right now so our our department still able and committee is still able to put in requests until did you have a
deadline on that uh March 4th I would close the the warrant officially but I think most mostly everything's in okay so then we've going to now put this all in the legal language of the draft motions Etc that will take a little time and
have KP law take a look at all that so this is a pretty heavy agenda too for a special time meeting actually so okay Scott can you just quickly Give me a summary of the change of the finance committee I'm a little bit ignorant on that uh so right now it's elected uh
this would change it to uh being appointed by the town moderator like most communities have it as an appointment by the moderator very few have it actually elected that mean just chooses people does that mean uh well there's a little bit more of a process usually it's like just like
how the psy board would appoint a committee oh okay so just from my understanding does that mean the moderator makes the selection M based on applications or based on recommendations from yes people
generally that's the way it works yeah more details to come but yeah it's a lot a lot of different commit a lot of different towns do not have elected positions we have an an awful lot of elected committees yes in this town right which is very hard to get get
people elected especially for three years or five years in a couple cases like Parks Commission um and so um consideration of of making an appointed committee rather than a is there any other committees in our town that have any other boards of committees that the
moderator makes the appointments to at the current time no no but it's the standard throughout the state that most moderators make appointments to like the Personnel committee uh the finance or the um you know the general committee um so yeah it's usually common place for
Town moderators to do that okay we'll talk about it more all right okay do we need to then the warrant is open so we're still receiving yeah things and so it's not closed yet it's still open okay all
right perfect we can move on to the next agenda item yeah do we need we don't need to vote to close this right no be somewhere around March 4th okay okay um next one up then
would be the just an update on the land uh land use planning uh you all had a internal meeting today yesterday sometime yeah uh earlier today went uh very well we had the internal uh meeting and we're looking at um just a reminder
um the public will be on uh February 27th at 6 o'clock yeah and that we're planning on having e stampton media record that it won't be live streamed it'll be recorded um I understand that the uh the format of the
meeting is going to end up having some breakout out into smaller discussions so that may be a little bit challenging in terms of how they actually um you know decide to film some of that but we'll do our best to get as much as we can uh recorded So that those that might not be able to make it um will be able to at
least see what happened at that point in time okay all right Green community Grant I think you mentioned early on we're basically done with all of the projects and we just have to put in our reimbursement requests that's it y from the state and then that allows us to
have more money to spend on new Green community projects or we have to apply again uh we'd have to apply again but hopefully it'll save us enough money through our electrical bills MH or we can do some other projects MH okay I move approval for a one day alcohol
permit of con Park August 23rd 2025 for the South Hampton 250 andary comme all right thank you thank you yes I was going to bring that up so that's basically both use of the of Park and then a one- day alcohol there'll be a
BYOB obviously uh at the park um I would further if we don't mind I would like to think about requesting I will request if we could possibly consider waving the permit fees because we're paying out of one pocket of the Town into the other pocket of the town which seems rather
rather um that was in my if we could if we could wave the fees that would be great because then then we don't have to make extra work for Bradley to have a a set of paperwork going back and forth take it in his account and put it right back in the same account again so um is that what
you yeah is that a an amended motion there is that okay all right all right anybody any questions or discussions about that so this will be a uh August 23rd event at conut Park with a band uh and bring the
biggest coer yeah right indeed all right very good okay all those in favor I I all right thank you all right um nothing much else to say about 250th I mentioned it at the beginning of the meeting uh we've got some events coming up and we've got a Facebook page that people
are starting to catch on to a little bit more and the website as well uh we're trying to keep that updated there's also an Instagram account so everything related to the 250th um and you'll find it also in various newsletters around town we're trying to do our best to get
publicity out there um so our next event uh is a book club meeting on Thursday uh at the library and then I believe we have the snowbox to Derby on Saturday 1 o00 1:00 on at Church Hill so um everybody with their snowbox deres or
not or come with anything right card board cardboard or anything yeah to come on Dance Churchill so so meet at Church Hill behind the Congregational Church and then our our other events will be in in March so very good okay um
any other business that can't wait until the March 4th meeting anything off hand all right so we are going to actually adjourn this meeting and open up a new meeting is that what you want to do in here uh no you can just continue okay the finance committee just
has to okay I've got just weird paper here I just posted it for sever ways just to make sure POS we also don't have a quum so oh you don't right oh okay yeah you don't okay all right so we will um we'll continue on we have um next select board meeting will be March sorry
uh February 25th another budget hearing meeting with finance committee and then March 4th uh all right so with that we will continue on and we will have the finance committee join in we've got Doug and Becky here so we've got two our finance folks thank you thank you for
coming and I think our first presentation will be Council on Aging you may have a seat at the table and tell us about what slid you'd like and we've got them all on sure so just a just a couple of points um as presented the personal cost would
be 100% funded by the general fund which has not been the case in the past where it's been using grant money to use it for the um either arpa or State uh grant money for the person um there are additional hours for part-time employees but everyone is still under the benefit
eligibility um the act the operating costs have been requested are actually below what their costs have generally been historically so it's actually underfunded they've been relying on grant money for that and one thing just keep in mind is uh thinking about costs associated with the
new building in the future so that's going to be um something that we're going to have to hopefully budget for in the next year or two and everybody in your for the left hand side of your package you've actually got the printouts of the uh and I think you should have them I hope in the finance package okay but we've got them all up
here on screen so where do you want to start you want to do the year overview or you want to where do you want to start we can start it kind of goes through everything okay all right so just a general overview feels weird um so mission of the Southampton Senior Center um we are a very active Center
provide information referrals and access to Community Resources a big addition over the past years has been Medicare and shine County ing um I'm the shine counselor at the councel and aging we have public benefits counseling um so snap is um basically food stamps EBT card Li Heath is the lowincome heat and
energy assistance program so it used to be called fuel assistance but now since a lot of the energy gos are also electric it's a more inclusive name um there's a lot of housing applications that we assist with um transportation we have our own fradan that um transports
uh South ampen residents and activities programming had a plug in there that we have more than 2100 residents in town that are over the age of 60 with another hundred coming up by the end of this year so happy birthday happy
birthday um so this is our staff I popped our hours up here just is a little cheat sheet um so I'm Kate I'm the director and the shine counselor at the center we have a volunteer coordinator um that's 14 hours a week the rest of the staff are part-time um Andrea Pam conet our program coordinator
we have Tim Huber and uh Bill khita fra drivers they are not based on hours and more based on days which vary each week depending on what we have on the schedule Darlene is our Administrative Assistant she comes in and does data entry for four hours per week specifically related to some of our fides and answers phones and we do have
a staff vacency that we are currently accepting applications and interviewing for for the Outreach worker um similar to town hall we are open Monday through Thursday 8:30 4 um but we do have B rids also available Monday through Friday so they are AC working on Friday when we
are closed this is a snapshot of our regular programming and activities that happens either every week or once a month or bi-weekly um every day we have access to exercise equipment we have a a pretty big book Nook um Outreach
appointments puzzles coffee tea just so that TV just TV folks theoretically this is being recorded so absolutely I don't know what people can see at home but we'll try um so we do have on um to specific highlights um Highland Valley lunch distribution we
have a partnership with Highland Valley Elder Services they deliver grab and go lunches for us and it's been a very um popular program over this past year um some of the you can if you want to go to the next slide Sor so these are some of our special programming opportunities
that we've had Scott made us pancakes in September so that was very well attended um we have monthly luns with our friends of the Southampton Council on agent they've been extremely active over the past last couple months and have so much more up to come over the next year um we've been partnering with the
Southampton fire department for Falls Prevention classes Public Safety we've been trying to get a lot of informational talks out there so folks understand the resources that are available not only in Southampton but the surrounding communities um and it's been nice to have uh more art and
culture and just information in general brought to the senior center um it's on one of our information sheets but our attendance has grown more than 20% in the past year so it's a nice highlight so if you want to go to the next one so
this is in the just the general narrative um some of our big highlights like I just mentioned our attendance numbers have increased by more than 20% we've launched several new programs we have a public health nurse coming in once a month we have new watercol classes um we have a new class um coming
in that started last year it's a partnership with KY Dickinson um and then any opportunities that we have for an increased socialization um in resource sharing we try and highlight we distributed 1376 of those Highland
Valley meals last year um and we had 1387 trips on the frav van so those are for medical appointments grocery shopping blood work um any of the field trips that we have we brought our veterans to the Big E on um the veteran appreciation day our volunteers have
loged more than 2100 hours and I say that cuz we're trying to get them to log as many of their hours as possible it's easy to be there for 5 hours and forget to pop them in so um in one partnership I definitely want to highlight um Triad program um which is a partnership with
the Hampshire County Sheriff's Office and addition to the police department Northwestern District Attorney's Office public health department and the fire department there's a lot of resources that we are able to combine there's the winter wellness check um and the resident reassurance program that the
chief is is hugely instrumental on um and has been a very important project in the past year um especially as folks are living alone um unfortunately it's a check-in program um so it gives a little bit of accountability and peace of mind
for family today we had 13 calls alone for things related to Triad for durable durable medical equipment sand refill so shout out to Randall for refilling the Sam this morning um and then also for lock boxes and reflective numbers it's
um so triad's been great so some of the challenges that we face um we do we desperately need the funding for staff salaries and increased hours as of right now I am the only full-time staff person there um if you combine the hours of our other staff members it just covers
enough hours in case I'm out sick I take vacation need to take a time off or even just have a backup for a second set of hands um we have a lack of office space there's technically four of of us working in one office um soon to be five when we hire our Outreach worker which
makes it extremely difficult for private meetings and accommodations for current staffing needs we often use the select boardroom to have those private conversations Medicare counseling housing applications um lack of event space we are one room we try and set up both sides of the room um this Thursday as an
example we have our healthy bones and balance class of 10: a.m. and then Michelle has her Veteran's um coffee hour on the other side of the room um that we set up so that's starts almost as soon as the exercise class ends so we try and do back-to-back programming as much as we can and best utilize this
space as possible um the primary large challenge is um the our fra van drivers are funded through a reimbursement process through fra we pay them through their paycheck but then get reimbursed that's something that Bradley does every single month um but all of our staff are
the ones that answer the call schedule the rides manage the applications follow up with the folks um if they have to leave message over the weekend it's very time consuming very time sensitive we probably get close to 5 to 10 calls a day just trying to schedule rides throughout the um throughout the month
and I love it when they call ahead because it makes life a lot easier but just trying to figure out the logistics so we can best support our folks in town um so but with fra only the van drivers are reimbursed our we don't have any additional staff reimbursement for the
time taken on that um so this is just annual funding and revenue sources that we do have the state formula grant um this year we were allotted $287 24 it is an average of 15 or it is actually $15 per person per individual
at 16 over in town so it's a set cost based off our residents um funded by eoea known as executive office of Elder Affairs which has just been renamed as the Executive Office of Aging and Independence so it's only up there once so I don't have to say it much um so
that's for the fiscal calendar year they have not designated what the allocation will be for next year hopefully it's still the $15 and it does not go down but um going know keep our eyes on that Counsel on Aging operating expenses um funded by the town of Southampton last
year's numbers were $1,829 we're asking for 2500 this year just given the increase in prices for printer toner cartridges all that other fun stuff um budgeted salaries for this past year $65,500 not um have folks pay a membership fee
in order it's a free service for folks to be able to come and attend there are two specific classes that we have that are regular on our on our calendar Cherry yoga is $5 a class line dancing is $3 a class if they came every single week with an average of 8 to 10 people
it'd be roughly about $2,900 um for Revenue that we have back in um to help pay for some of the class fees and then I popped in there it's the fy22 uh COA earmark that is what is currently funding the Outreach position once those funds run out they are done
so um that is another reason why the Outreach uh salary line is in our request for next fiscal year so just to have it as external funding we don't get double from State formula grant but I did pop it on here twice um for this past year we were
lucky to get three specific uh service incentive grants from uh executive office at Elder Affairs in the Massachusetts councils on Aging we had memory Cafe Outreach and marketing which both of those allowed us to bring in additional programming performance groups pay for food the marketing of the
COA allowed us to create the welcome packet that was in the folder for for this meeting along with um it paid for the Outreach laptop in the office um and it's those two were very instrumental for how we operated last year our senior center modernization Grant ends at the
end of fy2 so far with that we've been able to purchase the beautiful shed that is out in the hill behind the senior center um we recently purchased a mobile television um so that like for example for our veteran services uh meeting
Thursday Michelle is able to do a zoom um at that part of the room so we can better utilize the space that has full of Internet accessibility we will be buying a looping system um to assist folks with hearing aids that is portable so we will be able to use it in town hall and at other functions if needed um
and then we're also going to be buying some patio furniture outside to kind of expand our footprint of the center and in nicer weather the friends of the Southampton Council and aging is our 501c3 organization that helped support the um the senior center last year um
they provided $452 and I love the 75 on there um for various supplies food anything that we basically needed the friends came in and helped support us um their main um um
opportunity is to um create socialization opportunities they have those monthly lons but they are raising money both for the senior center but also for the future of the um Senior Center the new building um and then the a purchase and installation um put in a
request for arpa funds for that we will be getting an AED installed at the senior center hopefully in the next upcoming weeks they're still waiting on it coming in but it has been ordered so similar to what Scott had mentioned at the start of the meeting um town of Southampton currently funds 100%
of the director and administrative assistance salaries and 50% of the program coordinator salaries so this estimated number is with the salary increases um that were presented to you last month remaining 50% of the program coordinator salary and 100% of the
volunteer coordinator salary funded by that state formula gram so if you think about it we only get 28,700 per year and 25,000 is taken out by salaries which only allows us to have 3500 $24 remaining for 12 months of programming supplies food and additional
operational expenses that's a huge hit and I will say like even the hours that our staff are working we are flying around the center every single day so um it's I don't for us we're trying we're doing what we can to best support the needs there's still so much more of an
opportunity for us to do more there um but freeing up that state formula grant will allow us to better support our our 2100 seniors in town um and then like I mentioned the the FR driver salaries are reimbursed monthly by F frta so this is
a year in review um a lot of this information I've already gone over um the one thing that I did not mention is there's a 65 different program offerings so if we we have walking club on Monday Wednesday and Friday that's only listed as one specific program offering so 65
over the course of the year has been fantastic um we're looking to do much more including hopefully therapy dogs in the future once the weather gets nicer um so and then it's highlighting the external funding and Grant awarded down at the bottom
so I think that's it I spoke a lot so my apologies do you have any questions let's see let's see the budget itself itself sure so their budget actually isn't too much most of it as Kate said is is focused more towards the um the salaries
um couple of things this again is 100% funded by the by the general funds um the two FR drivers we have a revolving account that they're paid out of uh so that isn't actually impacting the uh budget at all uh for operating
expenses it's just that $2,500 that they're request so it's although it's one of our most um forward- facing and active departments is actually one of the simplest budgets that we have would you back up just a second
on so if if I heard you correctly the 116,000 represents everything were were budgeted from the town not not including grant money right exactly so this is 100% town if we if we took on 100% of everybody's salary yes not okay now we do have grant
money available um that we'll probably use and we'll switch on to revenues for later on in the budget cycle but this is just to show you an an actual picture of how much the request is thank you these net budgets are
mind I have one question so um moving the 25,000 or whatever from currently the um the grant to the town for the salaries what's the benefit of doing that as opposed to say just asking for
programming money um so specifically with the state formula grant it's dedicated purposes to be able to survive provide programming and services the nice part about it is that money rolls over if we don't use it
from the state formula grant so last year we did have some additional funds that were left over because some of our programming was charged to the memory cafe or it was charged to the Outreach Grant um and because it is a rolling over fund I'm not sure what the technical term is for it um we are able
to utilize it that next fiscal year as opposed to it going back into the general fund if we don't utilize those funds that makes sense um Our Hope too is that that grant money given the certain state of things could go away at any time I would hate for us to have to
cut our staff back even though we're we're going to be providing hopefully the same type of service if their salary lines go away because we don't have it on Town salaries um I think it's it's a hard it's a hard balance in the sense that we want to be like even just having
people there is a resource to be able to provide what we need to for the town having their salaries on the town funds allows us to do that because hopefully there are other grant opportunities for us to go out for and applies for if the state formula grant isn't going to be as
much or might not be a thing in the future I don't want to jinx it at all saying all of this but um I think also having the salary lines on the town specific budget just shows the town's commitment to our demographic that we're serving as well so having those funds
open up on the state formula grant provides us a much larger opportunity to be able to provide additional Services coming in and additional resources um in the community so I don't know if that answers your question okay similarly the $2,500 is not reflective of the actual
cost to run it oh absolutely not I keep pointing that out why we're so relying on like the friends group to help subsidize some of those costs we don't keep pulling from the state formula grant there's a lot of overlapping resources that we use so when we order napkins and bulk and porks and knives or lunch distribution a lot of that is are
the things that are either left over or purchased by the friends for their lunches so we try and make it be a cohesive and collaborative effort in that respect but um it's everything is so expensive when we at least especially for our events try to have coffee and some little noty type items doing a
dozen donuts is more than at this point so do you have a sense of what your your actual or what your your your potent potential budget would be for for that for expenses rather than 25 what's what's a more realistic figure I mean assuming that you somewhere you had
4,000 from the friends for example yeah so I'm assuming that's a piece of that but I mean you're getting a lot of grant money right now that is helping you but it really it helps but it it also gives a false impression about how well you can operate with the meager funds that you're getting right yeah so
i' I've looked through our ordering for the past year it's very hard because when we have the grants we're doing things specific to the purposes of the grants so we're probably using more printer cartridges we just ordered two of our color cartridges and they were $600 those are going to last us maybe the next 3 to four months if we don't
print a ton of Flyers there everything's just so expensive um honestly if we were to do closer numbers if we're talking about food and um I mean even getting the floors we done and cleaned and Polished this year that was about
$11,200 um I think it' be probably closer to the $10,000 range um but there's a lot of things that we are doing in support of our programs which to me makes more sense charging that to the state formula grant if it's for those specific programs M um I will say
it's been hard to kind of figure out what those numbers look like because if we're ordering a ton of cartridges cuz we need to get Flyers out for specific memory Cafe programming those tartes were purchased for that specific purpose so it's in like it's kind of hard to tell that if we're doing all this
advertising for um those those programs what it would look like if we were just kind of moving forward but I would say it probably be closer to the $10,000 range and then just back on salary just I'm going to be sure your narrative I think was pretty clear that the numbers
were confusing me originally but now I get it so what you've got the narrative I just want to repeat it so the director and the admin assistant are fully funded by the town so there's two that are fully funded by the town yeah and then your program person is only about 65%
thereabouts from from the town so that's not fully funded by us and then right now your Outreach hello no your volunteer coordinator is on the formula grant which hopefully for the 10 to 14 hours that you're looking for the formula grant ought to be able to cover
that for the foreseeable future I mean that if you had to move if we couldn't do all of this on the town budget where would your priorities be I mean to me I I think your your your Outreach worker is more at risk than your volunteer coordinator for example I would say
Outreach and program coordinator given how busy we are program coordinator being on site more often than not is beneficial overall um and then definitely the Outreach worker given the fact once that money is gone it's gone so um did you mention that that position
is unfilled currently currently yes and you all that 25 was that also an open position um for portion of it I will say I was in that role through was it September I started as director it's been vacant um cuz open enrollment for
Medicare took up about 70 hours of my time you me um for 3 months um so we are actively searching for it there is a savings in that so say we were to hire somebody for March the funds that are left it's about $227,000 left in that um
in that specific account it's $27,600 that was paid out for my salary for July and August right now it's on hold those funds are specific to that position so we're not necessarily able to reutilize them for another another type rule um so it would give us say
were're to hire somebody as of March 1st or mid-march it would cover their salary through the end of fy2 and then we'll cover them through FY 26 at the estimated salary line that's on here if they did come in at a higher salary rate the money would run down quicker so yeah
the money the arer money is all going to be spent by the end of December calendar year [Music] 26 okay I have a couple of questions just a clarification so the um the
reimbursement of per senior $15 that's based on population it's not based on utilization right so you just figure out how many people are yes 60 and over um and therefore I happen to know there's people that come from other
towns and utilize it's a wonderful great point it's a great place friendly people super committed staff and the only drawback is there's no space time um so I just didn't know how that worked we we
can't go to another town and say you have 10 seniors that show up here on a very regular basis give us your money we can't do that but on the other hand there's loads of people who are of the age group that don't even go there for any of a variety of reasons I just want
to clarify no thank you for mentioning that so I will say that a number of our um people that attend our programs um come from outside towns a lot of them from hilltowns number of them are from West Hampton and eastampton I think the great part about our Center is that we don't have to designate friendships at
Town lines um with the eastampton Council on Aging they give priority to East Hampton residents as they should given how large their city is um but if you are from Southampton you get put on a wait list for different events it's it's hard to have those socialization opportunities if you don't open it up to
a larger group of people um as a shine counselor I'm not allowed to dictate I can only handle Southampton residents we have a number of folks coming in from the hilltowns from Westampton because there aren't designated shine counselors at each of the councils on Aging for us it's a great opportunity to grab more people in there's more people coming to
the Friends lunches there's more people hopefully in support of the new Senior Center when we start building it I find it to be a great opportunity to bring in more of our of our little bubble that we have in Southampton but it is true we do utilize um the center is utilized by a number of residents outside of south
camp okay um so the second thing is given that you know we're looking at the fact that some of the salary is going to show up in the general fund um budget what about some of the other things being covered under the general fund like she mentioned the the uh cartridges
for the um printer costing a ton of money I think you're the only color printer in they have one now too know that now we know okay but I just didn't know if there's another way to kind of put some of their things into and you know I do know that their floors
look one look full better than the floors and other plac town or they did look anyway but I just don't know if some of that can be uh spread across the joural from I eventually I would like to get like an IT budget that would take over all the cell phones all the copers
all of the regular maintenance stuff um so that each individual Department doesn't have to kind of worry about that themselves it just makes more sense to have one general fund for everything um instead of having five different Verizon accounts we could have one Anda get a discount something like that same thing
with like copy leases things like that so that's like a down the road you know idea of economy of scale kind of thing yeah yeah cost efficiency [Music] ideas one know the but one of one of the obstacles to that is just getting
everything into a uniform thing so that you know we go with Novas for printer it's a common thing so that we can just order a stock of toilet paper for example and not have have five different dispensers and have to find different sizes and different things one for the police station and
one for the live know I spent my last Friday on it uh trying to find favorite towels that are no longer fit certain ones so yeah so um one thing I will say too is we like at least since I've stepped into my role
we've tried to do a really good job of um eliminating waste and um using things that are a little bit more uh Evergreen for example the table covers we used to use plastic table covers all the time we have purchased the they say they're
stained food they're not um like this the ones that we can wash so we bring them home on the weekends we wash them and we bring them back sa so much yeah we saved so much money just not having to utilized P like the plastic tablecloths those are insanely environmentally better and they're so
much better they're not in the landfills and the ones that we do use like for last week we're saving for the watercolor glass so we can have those for the next event next week so we're trying to do our best at trying to figure out how to minimize costs and um be a little bit more Forward Thinking With how we're utilizing our and there
are limitations I I think I know the answer to this CU I I personally am not in favor of all the plastic wear you know forks and knives and spoons but on the same token um is is the health department okay with you washing um fors
and knives and I leave so yes we do have a dishwasher downstairs so they don't have to take my washing skills um but we do have a dishwasher so we're using it a lot more than I think I've ever seen since I've been there um which is great but it's also there's not a lot of
storage to handle in industrial size area of of silverware and glasses and that type of thing so wherever we can be creative yeah but I agree with you I hear and I'm going to say we have a great friends s the coun it's fantastic
because we have a great chair of the friends fantastic who happens to whoc and a great chair of our board too I'm I know I put it one the sides we're so lucky to have the support of our boards um they've been absolutely phenomenal for us
so okay anybody else have any questions D St it's good okay okay I think that's it thank you all thank you appreciate it than good job you never know we may call you back
question I'll have that wire for you tonight though I just got the text back our list down what you found out good luck sir you have HDMI or USBC uh it should be
I'll sit in the back he got his jacket are you wearing a tie and a I am wearing a tie and a v no that's no is the tie tie is
not thought it was the chest is bulletproof though I don't know that goes what's that I'm in right all right no I'm on I'm on oh you [Music]
connected get going in a second so we'll have our police chief for the police department budget coming up and that will be our last presentation for this evening is that correct I believe y [Music]
so Jan Jan wasn't the representative okay good evening everybody and thank you for having me I want to just um I Pro provided a a PowerPoint presentation here and I I went into a lot of minutia like I do every year as far as the expenses and
wages because I want to make sure I articulate everything um because I have a larger budget than most and in this year including there in wages in particular there's about a 4.6% increase which is about a 2.6% variance if we were going to go with a
uh a Colo of 2% and I I wanted to explain how that occurred and why it occurred so everyone understands so just a little background on the police department um we have 12 full-time sworn officers one officer currently is in the military it's
important to know that he returns from the military to uh duty to the police Department in April of next fiscal year so that's going to include an increase because the last two years I have not had to budget his salary we have sworn part-time
membership three officers we actually have we had four now we just lost two in the last two weeks uh last week rather uh one got a full-time uh position in another department and another one has moved to closer to his full-time position and he uh can't commit to
Southampton So currently now we have two part-time officers and that's important because I've explained in the past um the attrition of part-time officers since uh the uh police reform like I said the police reform reform came with a lot of uh uh very important and uh
good um uh reforms however an unintended consequence was part-time officers and it's affected smaller departments especially out here in western Mass significantly um it's an affected it's affected us we have two restricted
part-time membership officers these are retired officers we don't pay for their uniforms uh they just work Road details that's it we don't pay for anything for them and our non-sworn membership is uh one part-time Administrative Assistant we share that with the fire department we share her with the fire
department um all sworn full-time and parttime officers work on uh uh work conditions fall under a collective baring agreement and that's important to know so just some functions of the police department here our daily functions we have we respond investigate
crimes proactive and reactive patrols we address quality of life complaints that could be neighborhood disputes barking dogs anything along those lines we respond to Medical calls uh en force and mitigate unsafe traffic uh operation administrative functions and
these are just some of them we issue uh Firearms permits solicitation permits public records request sex offender registry use of force reporting and crime reporting one thing I want to notice is this is this our public outre Outreach is starting to increase significantly and that's that's a good
thing right since the um uh since the uh 2020 reform Federal reform you know the the culture of policing went from Warrior to Guardian and we're trying to evolve as well to
that and what I mean by Warrior police officers were considered it was just traffic enforcement crime crime uh enforcing crime making arrests that is evolving in a good way and um public out public Outreach now is increasing so that's that Guardian side of us and part
of our important programs we have the resident reassurance program uh we have winter Wellness checks that our officers do after any winter storm or winter event they'll there's certain residents that we check in with Handle With Care we just uh signed anou with the Hampshire Regional School District and what this is is a
program where if the police respond to any um household or event where there might be some trauma involved in the child we notify the school and we don't give them uh specifics about it all we
say is child John Doe Handle With Care and that gives the school to that that gives the school indication like you know if the child's uh acting out or might be quiet there's because something happened at home it doesn't give any specifics we uh have a coalation with uh
Coalition with Triad um that includes the lock boxes we install lock boxes we install the street numbers um we distribute sand for seniors uh we have a drug abuse response team that's called Dart officers and what that is is whenever we have an
overdose overdose or we know of somebody that has an addiction we have officers that are trained and they respond to the household they provide Narcan they provide resources for addiction we also have a veteran engagement team this is new this year um the veteran engagement team is whenever
officers respond to calls for services now they ask anybody that's involved that they're a veteran they're resident of Southampton and then we refer him to them the off the veteran to the uh the veteran engagement officer and that officer um will reach out to that person
um provide them with resources and actually stays in touch with them every six months sends letters phone calls and just to see how they're doing as we know there's a lot of um uh PTSD involved with veterans and we get we receive a lot of calls for service um with veterans with PTSD and this is already
even this is already helping us we already have connections with uh certain vet veterans our veteran uh engagement officer is a veteran so that works well and we also do daily house checks so when people are away on vacation um we will check in their houses so that's
just some of our uh our functions as the police department is a veteran engagement officer a part of the police department or he part of the police department yes yes it's a it's it's more of a um uh it's a it's a relationship that is consistent so that
officer is supposed to reach out to all the veterans that that that we have registered and um on every 6 months reach out either send a letter to that person or reach out um this was a we were asked to uh um become part of this team it's currently Hadley and
eastampton UMass and Southampton that are in this uh this collaboration could you go back to the previous slide um in terms of public Outreach uh this is fabulous all these things you've got there but what I'm wondering is what
outside of PTSD which is something related to service usually or often 100% but there are people with mental health disease and uh with mental disease and um I just wonder are do your does your staff get training around somebody who
might absolutely have psychosis of some sort yes yes they do it's it's part of annual and do they do you have have you developed protocols not you maybe your department but I mean protocols around the country we don't treat them as criminals you treat them as people that
are maybe some support yes absolutely it's part of our policy okay it's part of our policy in fact um often times you know if uh if it doesn't require if there's an action that was caused and it doesn't require an arrest we refer them to hospital um versus an arrest okay uh
but absolutely there that's part of an service we don't have um clinicians that assigned to Southampton municipalities a lot of them do eastampton for instance we wouldn't have enough calls for service but to have a regional uh clinician to to respond to
calls would would make sense um it is increasing especially our our calls for mental health issues are are those calls are increasing so for certain one thing I also wanted to add here just recently we have a a working group that we just
put together for um scams uh about I would say about a month ago 3 weeks to a month ago and within two weeks we had about $150,000 of uh citizens in this town residents in this town scammed out of that much money so we're working on
on um Friday we're meeting with um Bank security and asset protection from local banks as well as um I I invited Kate from the Council on Aging uh the police department and my detective and we're going to put a working group together to
find out how we can do this because we're realizing that um social media and even just Council and aging um meetings relative to this while it helps it's not reaching everybody not not even close um
and the two people that lost the one woman lost $50,000 and another uh a woman lost about a 100,000 Within uh I'm sorry gentleman lost lost about 100,000 in fact Let me let me increase that within the last about a week and a
half ago we had another woman lost about 100,000 over a span of two years from scams they weren't involved in the Council on Aging and they're not on social media so what we're trying to do is we're putting this working group together and see if we can come up with potential legislation and then introduce it to uh Senator velis and and and um
representative PE well and we ought to somehow get the word out around town so however we get the word out in terms of what to watch out for it is it is you know we can do it social media we can have a form I'm planning on putting a form together this is this working group is going to try to determine what is the
best practice so um that's that's that's on our agenda this week in line of avoidance of problems um the U Handle With Care Program sounds absolutely tremendous and that's in response to
some call out to a domestic it could be a domestic it could be um uh a child's um parent or Guardian went to the hospital uh that's all traumatic it could be a car accident um anything like that where you know instead of uh um you
know staff will understand like if this this this child is not acting like normal if there's a devian in their behavior in school this is the reason there could be a reason but the there's confidentiality with this so they do not the staff has no idea what it is right you know we would never tell them that
there was a domestic violence what I wanted to pick up on but there is a triggering yes something right do you have a similarly beneficial relationship with the schools where there's some
concern about uh students absolutely personal well-being or threat to others we meet with the school we have um meetings with the Hampshire Regional High School in particular and we uh with the da office and all the local Chiefs from the district as well as the DA's
office and the Hampshire school administration meet and discuss just that where we're seeing that certain children have a lot of interactions with police and how to respond to this um uh certain children might and I say children but even somebody in high
school I don't mean nor school age children but people in the children in high school uh it could be um we're seeing signs of uh a lot of drinking at the house uh mental health issues and we bring that up to the school and so we all understand that if we have to put
somebody on a certain list to watch we we uh we do that yeah confidentiality is Paramount we're talking about care it is yes yep okay um so the goals and initiatives two here and I have another one in the next
page but is uh it's to maintain current level of services and Staffing so in calendar year 2023 we had 9,939 law log entries and calendar year 2024 was 14,000 so we had a 45% increase in log enturies um and also um obviously uh
public and officer safety so that's why I want to maintain our our um our current staff same definitions log entry does a log entry does not necessar it means some form of action or act that had to be logged in our system so it
could be somebody coming in for um it could be a police officer running a a I'm sorry stopping a car it could be somebody making a complaint it could be an arrest it could be um a various it's the the the um uh the categories are are
really broad inclusive of some of the community activities absolutely yes y yes so they increase significantly um expanded out public Outreach obviously as needed and identified like I said we just identified the the Outreach for
scams um and to create and maintain a succession plan this is something I want to make sure the board and and the finance committee recognize in the next 3 to 5 years four officers of our department are eligible for retirement and they're I guarantee you they're going to
retire um so that's about 130 years of institutional knowledge and I just began coming up with a a plan for succession and and what I mean by that and and why this is important is training training training um
I have to get more officers that are are um coming up through the ranks more training so they can take over when we inclusive when we leave so that's something that uh that's a goal of mine and I've already started that I've had
um uh interviews with officers already all the officers to see where they want to be where they want to go what type of uh train they want um where they where they see themselves and that's a plan that I have but that plan is going to require financing because it's going to require
training where does that distribution let you is that you know if I look here is it yourself the lieutenant and then your next two sergeants or it so it's myself my lieutenant and yes the next two Sergeant yes so it's the whole it's
yes yes y um so that's where that's that is significant to me I want to make sure that there's an easy transition when we all leave whether it's a year apart two years apart but I want to make sure that the four of us just don't leave and
then leave the town to you know officers that aren't um aren't experienced or have the the uh particular knowledge to to uh continue um some impacts in the budget um overtime expenditures part-time shift hours from F fiscal year 21 to 24
declined by 60% so it was went from that many hours 4,100 hours approximately to about 16 1,670 hours this is still declining as you know I just lost two uh part-time officers so um for budgeted shift hours
for um fiscal year 26 was 1100 hours I budgeted um the increase in overtime for shift coverage for use of acrw personal time off so what happens is you know in order to maintain that that Staffing level of two officers when somebody use their personal day or any type of
personal time off the part-timers historically would always work that we don't have that that Workforce anymore so it has to be um uh the overtime budget has to be supplemented I a question about that yes so with the addition of um the um
officer that's coming back from the military will that help in any way it will reduce it will reduce but he doesn't come back until April the end of it yeah yes yes but it will reduce it and and I can show you some data where we have a full-time officer that is
working a split shift it's a split shift on the days I'm sorry on the evenings and midnights and the reason why we have it on that shift is because most midnight officers are hard to fill with part-time midnight positions it's also um sick time is often more used on VAC
on on uh midnights because they're they're worn out and 4 to 12 that's where most of our officers have seniority they rather they a lot of them prefer to be on that shift and because they have more seniority they have more vacation time so we have that strategic placed that that officer strategically
placed on the um two shifts on the eaves and two shifts on the days our Fleet this is concerning um so this is our Fleet right now this was as of I think I I this was probably around uh January 6 was when I gave these when
I put these numbers up here so it's increased but as you can see our our our mileage in our Cruisers is getting significant um this is our newest Cruiser we about 25,000 miles a year per Cruiser just an indication in fiscal year 23 we spent about
$5,350 in repairs and what I mean by repairs is I'm not talking about maintenance I'm not talking about tires I'm not uh talking about um uh um um oil changes that's repairs the
last fiscal year it went up to 19,8 60 um so the Cruisers I've asked for I put in for two I'm hoping that I can at least get one but um I just to give you an ident an idea of of where these are and this car right here um had a new
transmission in last year um so this we're putting money into cars that have a lot of mileage what has to happen going forward with requirements for hybrid or electric or anything like that there's no requirements there are no requirements
um we've done some research the state police have they have to buy all hybrids and their mechanics uh we reached out to their mechanics and their mechanics there's still a lot of flaws with the hybrids and there's been a lot of maintenance issues with them um so they they because they have such a large
Fleet we we we sought their advice and they're suggesting that you don't necessarily don't necessarily go to a um hybrid just yet um that was their suggestion something we had to just double check with our Green community Grant yeah parameters here cuz we may be
required required to do something and again if that's the case I'm willing to take anything at this point um because it's it's getting it's getting tough so this is my question um a year or so ago at town meeting I think our DPW um person Randle said he needed
a new truck and got a brand new truck and somebody came up to me and said why is it we buy brand new isn't there a market of lightly used used a vehicles and I didn't ask about Cruisers but that and I'm I'm responding only to this
person coming up to me who by the way was a public safety person in another Community but lives in town and um is that something that's ridiculous to not to go to get somebody else used vehicle because they have some kind of policy where they turn over more quickly like a
larger municipality well if the larger municipalities are are getting rid of their cars are you referring to like take some of their their surplus vehicles they're already at 160 140,000 Mi other municipalities so it's dumb because you're I don't say it's dumb I
don't I don't want to say that but I I think I think if you to go used and then you have to you have to upfit these vehicles too with with your Insignia your your equipment so it does it does there's some additional expenses TR one nightmare for another nightmare
essentially yeah okay does the town have any kind of vehicle replacement plan we're working on it um is it C are they currently do are they just Capital yeah so alter alternative funding sources so with the merger with East
anthon with the um Communications mer merger with the uh 91 system uh our Communications we receive for the next we received it last year $175,000 we'll receive another $175,000 this year
I should say the following year fiscal year 26 as well as fiscal year 27 and then from that point forward the state will only pay 50 25 and then zero so um no it's six so it's actually 7550 and
then 25 is zero so um that is some alternative that's put into the grant every year in the in the development Grant um we appli for a road safety grant that extends for that's for this fiscal year but it does extend into July and AUST August um and this grant
includes uh essentially their Traffic Safety campaigns um but it also includes equipment so one of the equipment that we asked for was a a solar um speed sign that we can place uh as well as a um a
portable breathalyzer that we needed one broke so that's what we we that's where that money will go to um we also with this particular with this development Grant for the next Grant we asked for a voice over Internet Protocol phone
system it's the same phone system that the town hall here H has so we'll be able to inter interconnect with them I and the reason for this is so eastampton will have it as well and so all of our calls if somebody calls our business line it'll automatically go right to
East Hampton There's No Interruption um and then they can just transfer the phone calls from there so there's no interruption of of um it's a direct call rather so that's important for Public Safety it will reduces time time to uh reach a a
dispatcher so we have that and that will so we're aware of the the indirect cost to that or the continual costs would be about $2,200 that's for both the fire department and the police department a year that's not budgeted because that Grant hasn't been approved but um that particular part of the grant um but it's
about $2,200 for um fees a year uh with I think the town is you have how you know what year you pay monthly for the your voiceover Internet Protocol not off hand yeah I think it's it's around the same I think it's around
$184 a month that's what we are that's what the so it'll increase um those continual costs but it's very important that we get that because what we're finding is I'll give you an example the fire department has a phone line it's the 1700 phone line often times that the
fire department is not not staffed somebody will actually call that for an emergency and if they call that for an emergency that number is they're going to get an answer ma she when they're not there so that that phone number will automatically just be um go directly to eastampton dispatch and that's what's
going to happen with all our phone lines and that would be under the road safety Grant no that I'm sorry that's under the development that so they I just provided them with a quote last week so we could we could uh hopefully the state 911 Department approves it I think they would because it doesn't approve uh the disat maging um and makes
it more efficient um highlights and challenges highlights I have to say this is the first year in the five years that we've had a full staff so um that's great that's a highlight challenges the attrition of part-time officers okay the budget planning
process my process I've done zero based budgeting since I've been a chief and um I'm very very uh I detail minutia I'm sorry that you have to put you this but I have a budget that's that I I want to make sure every everyone no I do but I
want to make sure everyone understands where it's coming from I don't want anybody to say hey that something doesn't make sense here right so um so some of our fixed costs I can I can employee based salaries I can nail that vendor contractual agreements I can nail that no no no issues certain
additional wages shift differential um that's when an officer Works evening shift they get a a125 extra an hour we can differential if they work the weekends it's another dollar an hour that's all contractual that's that's stuff that's a fixed cost certain expenses Firearms qualifications annual
fees for memberships and so forth the variable variable ones are are are are tricky the overtime part-time wages Cruiser maintenance and it expenses that's just some of them and I'll I'll explain in more detail so right here so this is how I this is how I uh determine
full-time police officer salary computations and if you look at this you'll see that this is for one particular officer and there's two columns the reason why there's two columns is because there is Step increases this particular officer here doesn't have a step increase but for a
certain time of the year they might be under one pay pay pay incre pay step but then they increase to another pay step and that all calculates to what that officer's base salary and if that part officer has an education a master's or a uh bachelor's
they get a 10% increase in their pay and that that that's what that is there so that's how I get every officer's um uh annual salary and it's very very specific um right down to so for instance um this is this would be uh I
can actually show you one that has a everybody see that okay didn't come up here hold on for some reason my uh link is not working didn't come up but I can show you a little bit later but the link didn't
work now I lost my okay let's go back okay so that's how I come up this includes their you can see here this will include their vacation days their um and everything's inclusive
right down to um their roll call so I can nail that the officer salaries down pretty pretty close and that's for I do that for all 11 uh all 12 full-time officers so for part-time officers this is how I um uh I develop this
and my mouse is not showing up but the First Column for instance I've allocated like I said earlier 1100 hours towards part-time shift wages shift wages and that's decreased by about 100 from last year and open weekend shifts
so it's about I allocated 576 hours to that all those uh um the hours for professional development we do it online now so um uh there's no hours for that they'll do it during their shift firearms training those are requirements they have to have that's about 48 hours
every officer has to have that taser training have to have that semiannual staff meetings I try I I try to do them if I can if I have the money to do it um uh polls and elections there I previously I had these columns filled
but because I don't have any part-time available it's not I don't fill them so roll call that's when they come in early they get a125 uh I'm sorry they get um uh 15 minutes extra in their pay for coming in uh um uh at quarter of their
their their shift time that's all contractual professional development Firearms instructor so our Firearms instructor is a part-time Firearms he's our part-time officer but he's our Firearms instructor he's our lead instructor so he has to go to professional development I put 400 hours
allocated to our vacation coverage and another holiday coverage uh cover is 124 hours the 576 124 and 400 is at 1100 hours and that's where I place them okay
um so if you look at the corner on the left it's hard to see based on where we're at here but if you look at the totals um there is with all the full-time acrs it is um it shows can you zoom on this I don't
know if you can maybe not let me see maybe not what it is is I wish I had I you look under the 62 vacation hours is that y so no that's so you have five there's total of 560 personal hours of time for the officers 400 hours of sick time 576
hours of paid holidays so if they do don't work on holiday they still get paid regular rate on the holiday so instead of 40 hours of pay they get 48 hours of pay um and then I believe that is 1,952 hours of vacation time so if
you look underneath that it says approximately 6002 vacation hours will not be backfilled leaving 1,350 hours filled by overtime and part-time and that goes to your question are we we're not back filling anybody so if I have and uh if there's always two
if there's three officers working on a shift they go out call out sick or they go on vacation or use personal time we don't backfill that um we just we as long as we have two officers on that's that's how we keep it um 232 personal hours will not be backfilled and
and 167 sick day hours won't be back filled and that's all through calculations and I can show you the the uh data on that later on as we proceed these are some additional wages so officers paid to officer um holiday
hours paid to officers not working the holiday that's that's that's what I was referring to so when you have a full-time officer and he's not working that's an additional $18,400 that is um again they they for every shift that they work they for every hour that they work on a 4 to 12 or a
midnight to 8 the 4 to 12 they get a125 an extra an hour and a $150 on the midnight shift that's all contractual the officer in charge is a 5% increase so if there's not a supervisor working and it's a patrol officer contractually they get a 5% increase in their hourly rate and so whenever there's an officer
in charge based on fiscal year 24 and 25 that was 215 hours um uh of OIC so that equates to that number there field training officer same thing
whenever there's an officer training another a newer officer and this is based on previous years fiscal year 24 and 25 there was 41 total hours um and it's a 7% increase in their in their um pay rate our police administrative assistant is uh currently
at at um with her new increase would be about 27,1 144 and then the these are the weekend shift differentials so here's our overtime wages so because we had 1,200 hours of
part-time last fiscal year but we I I I reduced it by 100 to 1100 that's going to increase overtime hours because that somebody has to work the shift and uh vacation cover I just play I vacation
coverage is 950 hours um for uh would be covered by part uh full-time sick time 233 personal time 328 holiday cover so when they're working a holiday they also get overtime working the holiday so
that's important uh that that's why there's there's that number there and there's court if they if they uh have to go to court for any reason on their time off that's an additional um so last uh the average is about 28 hours uh
a year not not too much first responder training was about 28 hours total this is you know for all the full-time officers um and I have seven officers versus 11 is because the officers are working so they're if they're getting trained on their ship they're obviously
not getting um they're obviously not getting the over time school lockdown drills trainings if we scheduled two um again it's seven officers because there's going to be two officers or three officers working that time we don't need an entire staff at the at the
trainings firearms training same thing we eight officers because us it's during the day and it's during a weekday so myself and um and um and my lieutenant as well as a patrol officer would be working so that's why it's it's only eight officers taser training these are
all required trainings that we have this is not this is not something that we are requesting or asking in order to maintain a taser you have to have this training in order to maintain Firearms you have to have certain amount of training um School lockdowns are now required um semiannual staff meetings I
try to maintain them I try to have those but there are times last year I didn't have any I just didn't have the money I ran out of it investigations about 135 extra hours of overtime a year this I didn't have last year and the reason for that I just kept on missing it every
year but we have an officer that's um in the military and we have more than one officer but one officer that's um and I'm not referring to the officer that's done the three-year leave but for the military obligations he has to leave for about 40 hours a year and that's going
to have to get back filled by overtime as well and um so that is important because I want to show you where in the next it might be in the next slide here okay for wages in particular and that's overtime part-time wages and full
fulltime regular wages there's a 4.6% increase from fiscal year 25 and you're asking yourself why is that the case if if um I put a placeholder for 2% Cola so you ask yourself why is there a 2.6 variant increase and this is the
explanation for that so the cola for regular wages would add amount to about $225 182 a 2% Cola increase placeholder for allotted overtime hours is another an additional 2,400
$76 five officers will receive 2% step increases so we have that means that we have of our 11 full-time officers I don't get step obviously but of the 11 full-time contractual officers that we have six are at their top step five are
not so every year when they reach a certain date they get an additional step until they reach their TOP Step so that's an additional 2% step increases so that um adds to $ 5,936 approximately officer on military leave
returning in April so again he's returning in April that's the remainder of his salary 12,960 I did not have to budget for that last year so I had to back if he comes back in April which I I'm hoping he does um then that will be
the remaining um uh balance of his of his um salary and then the added um 40 hours of overtime so overtime increase by by about 227 hours remember 100 hours went
to because we we lost that parttime because the trending down 100 hours plus 40 of um military leave and then some additional training that was been required so that that right there if you add all that up that comes to $56,500 we we' reduce that by
$2,395 hours and that's why that right there is the number that that comes to and so that's why that 54 673 is a 4.6% increase that's the explanation okay does anybody does did I explain that well enough MH okay can't imagine the uh the
imaginations you've gone through putting all this together but you've done it so many years I know you've get it down P but it's very helpful to understand your thought process I just it's important because anyone it's a reasonable question for somebody from the finance committee to say why if you gave a 2%
increase in Co col increase why is it up 4.6 and that's that's why yeah Chief yes uh the big number at the bottom y why does that not match the number in your it's $200 off I was off just a couple
but they will come together yes I I certainly would you know but that's just an explanation I mean $200 I'm not too too particular of but uh that would explain you know if someone were to say why is there such an increase those numbers right there they're not to the
to to the dollar to the to the penny but um that that's why that you have that yep the 2% Cola that's just a placeold yes so that's that we put in Bud reason right and the reason for that is the uh contract is is expires on June 30th and
so negotiations are going to have to occur soon or later our building expenses again this is the minutia that I just uh wanted to explain here janitorial supplies Electric get that off there
electric um Charter Spectrum oil gas and electric fire extinguisher inspection that's for insurance we have to get that done refills General supplies and incidentals generator maintenance um water
department septic service again i' I haven't been able to do septic service because I've run out of money furnace service what we do is we just put new filters in the the um the uh custodian puts new filters in for us uh water coolers for fresh water um and
then um and then that's the monthly fee for our water cooler professional development um my in service to include my hotel stay because it's it's in Norwood um and the training so that's uh
about uh $1,300 officer in service we're doing it online now officer of professional development this is where I want to start getting officers into training this is part of that succession plan uh uniform allowance that is that's
that's um those numbers right there for full-time it's $1,000 a year for per officer that's contractual ENT research classes we have four officers that are are ems um and so we we pay for the research classes Firearms qualifications so we have to qualify in
our pistol we have to qualify our rifle and we have to qualify in what is considered a less lethal which is basically a bean bag um in order to maintain any of those that equipment you have to have this training it's it's pursuant to uh uh Mass Coda regulations taser qualifications um the
same thing you have to have two uh um that's we do that once a year they have to do two cartridges to um shoot two cartridges so that's a a qualification food reimbursements so if they go to class es they get a $220 reimbursement $600 and rad membership we have one
officer that's a rad that's um um somebody that teaches people uh rape defense uh we maintain that uh in the event that we can support that program have you offered classes in town no we have not offered that class no no are
the uh taser qualifications how do you get 17 officers 17 officers is that yes yeah so if if we were to hire new officers so everyone so new hires have to be trained so you have 12 full-time to include
myself and if we were to have five part-time officers or we have to replace an officer it's it's about 17 two officers only have to be T tased once they don't have to be they don't that's not a requirement any longer no so they don't have to Ride the
Lightning you volunteering you know it's it's actually an option but nobody's raised their hand to say they want to do um but it is a life-saving um that's a life saving device it really is uh so I know it's we make fun of it but when
somebody we've we've had circumstances where we'd have to draw the taser and um I'll give you an example of somebody came out of nowhere with a a a shovel and went right at us with a shovel and was going to strike us with a shovel until um the officer that was closest
drew the taser and and the that person recognized the taser and dropped the shovel if we didn't have tasers that officer would have drew his firearm so never got tased he nope just the sight of it just the sight of it somebody left to tell me what it looks like but the
what the importance of that is is if you if we didn't have the taser the officer would have drew firearm because that's potential deadly force um this is just an explanation of some of the how expensive these qualifications are um uh that's that's where that comes from that's where that
if and you um Scott does does the finance committee have the the worksheets that we provide that I provided do they have access to those or no that uh that are in the general that we submit to you okay those AR all right um but that's this is part of it that just explains why um it's so expensive
and how much we need for each qualification vehicle Main Cruiser fuel um based on fiscal year 25 it's been about $2,500 a month so if we're going to go on the current prices of fuel it's going to be about
3,420 repairs I'm hoping I never I don't have to install another transmission so I I did increase repairs to about 9500 I didn't you know um I'm hoping that I get a cruiser but uh I want a little bit more of a buffer in case I do have to replace some significant drivve training
issues uh Cruiser oil maintenance uh it's about $71 42 and oil change it's been that way for a couple years we do about 2 and a half changes per vehicle for seven Vehicles do do you bring it to it yes you don't do it yourselves we well we certain cars we do an officer
will do it but we also bring it it averages when we bring it to the um the officer doesn't have to do it he does it by choice I couldn't make him do it but he does it by choice so if uh he said you know what I I can't do this anymore I don't want to do it um it's $714 per Oil
Change uh Fleet inspections that's that's standard Cruiser tires it's about $850 a car for all four Replacements Turnpike fees we're averaging about 65 and radar calibrations what that means is our radar units and our cars they have to get calibrated every year um in
order to use those to stop vehicles uh because if it was ever if we stopped a car based on speed and we didn't have the radar Radars calibrated it could bring up a a defense for for um uh if something were to come out of that car and that or that motor vehicle
stop police technology DTS scheduling so since we merged with East Hampton we had our our dispatchers doing all of our scheduling we we don't have we don't have that option anymore so the DTs scheduling is an automated scheduling it schedules for uh details it schedules
for um our our um our shifts so that's something that was new to our our um our uh department since we merged the data plan for six Cruiser mdts those are the mobile data terminals the computers and the Cruisers so that's the data plan for
them we have four cell phones reason why we have cell phones now is we have uh I have one we have two for the officers on patrol and one additional for our detective uh you don't want to use personal cell phones for cases because
it's always it's it's it could be discovered uh it could be used for discovering you know you don't you never want to expose your own personal information if it were to get uh um required to be uh discoverable um Communications this is
incidents due to regionalization so if something would happened to any of our um radios or something that in the eastampton dispatch that Southampton owns that's $2,000 that we can that we have um uh we can uh um attrib towards
that for instance our we have a monitor in there for they monitor when they monitor our um our lobby right so that monitor we're to break we're required to pay for that stuff like that our Cad and police records contract so that is um our computer computer AED
dispatch that's our records that's how we keep our records we've had the same system for about um oh since 1999 uh the annual fee with a 2% increase is about6
$534 we are going to try if if it's if it's something that we can afford we are going to try to um uh uh have the same CAD system as East Hampton because it's not uh practical for the dispatchers over there to use two different CAD
systems currently they have the same CAD system but they are uh they are transferring to their new CAD system within the next couple months and the downside of that is every time they hire a new dispatcher they're going to going to have to train that dispatcher two different CAD systems that could
increase our annual fees that's where I actually have a meeting um um the early um the first week of March with uh to get a quote if we this CAD system will be paid through through the development grant that state
911 development Grant but again you have those continual the continual costs for the fees and I don't know what that's going to be I can't I have to wait till the first week of March and our copy release that's a copy release so that's a chief on the switch of the cad sofware
is there a potential to license that through East Hampton to kind of get some efficiency some economy so it would it would be so there would be it would it be a continuation of them the only thing is important is that we want to ensure that our system is distinct from theirs we
don't because of confidentiality we don't want to integrate our system with them um because we're we're a different Police Department um but yes it it would be the the quote hopefully would be lessened because there's going to be
more um uh Terminals and uh uh the the actual so for for instance this fee is based on um I think 12 users and four Cruisers right so if
East Hampton is you know three times the size of Southampton it could be uh 36 users in East Hampton and let's say 12 Cruisers or however many Cruisers they might they we might be able to get a reduced fee as a result of that because we're using the same system that's what
we're hoping for that's that's all the stuff I have to discover in this meeting is there a training cost for that shift or all of your officers going to need to be retrained they will be they will be y I just can't put it into the budget yet because I don't know if it's going to be practical I mean if if
our maintenance fees cost you know $330,000 then we just might not be able to do it um that's something that I have to just discuss more with the the board and and Scott and and uh the finance committee Department
expenses this is an this is um so where you see nothing there it's because I don't I hopefully don't have to hire a brand new recruit um full-time Academy tuition That's goes with the new recruit equipment for full-time Academy recruit so that's nothing medical equipment it's
about $500 a year ballistic vests so if we hire uh a police officer it's about um $1,000 a vest so you know with with um uh if we lose an officer we have to hire somebody we have to get a fitted
vest for that person we can't give them an old vest um we apply for a uh uh a reimbursement Grant it's a 50% reimbursement Grant through the federal government um but we still we have to
pay the ,000 uh um um outright for each vest crime scene processing equipment and materials were sufficiently supplied new employee site test so if we hire two employees again we have to do a site test on them um so that $500 a piece
every year we have we you have to go through about five identification cards with either new officers or expired identification cards those are required by state um it's a it's a state we don't make those ID cards post office fee post office box fee we have that $100 Language Link that's a $100 fee so that
is if case we have somebody that um is speaking of another language we can contact language L link and they will translate for us that's been very helpful in the past as you know we have a lot of Spanish speaking people in town we have a lot of um uh um people that uh
uh um speak many different foreign languag we have Turkish Community um so that's been very helpful our labor law labor law poster it's 100 bucks Meal Pay Meal Pay is this when somebody is required to work if they're forced to
work or anything over four hours after the regular Shi they get $10 an hour extra in their pay it's called Meal Pay that's contractual we average about um um $1,670 a month weemac fees that's uh for
a regional radio system that's called Western massachusett Law Enforcement Council that's for a radio system where we can actually communicate with other departments uh um that don't have the same frequency as us uh western Mass Chief Association these are all just fees um so those are
all um associations that we were assoc that the police department is associated with vent is continued The copier paper about $270 color toner 300 a year black toner 440 media storage this is right
down to the two terabyte solid state drives that we have to have our detective needs um right down to 100 pack of CDs where we transfer videos to the DA's office labels folders officil 200 new employee medical evaluations we
don't need those unless they're going into we support them through the full-time academy and our agreement contract that's the criminal history systems board that's a requirement that's so we can run plates we can get people's criminal history that's a fee that we have to pay the state every
year equipment maintenance radio consoles that went up dramatically I'm going to try to reduce that but as of right now it was $3,200 it went up uh about over 6,000 about $6,000 um because our
five year we had a um 5 years ago we had a new radio console installed and part of that um installation was 5 years of no maintenance and it just expired on December 31st so I was hit with a $3600
bill uh unexpectedly that I have to come up with money for but that's why that that's increased significantly all Traffic Solutions that is where we have those sign boards the electronic sign boards and our um our uh uh radar
signs um that's where we get the data or we could program them that's how much it cost a year for that taser subscription plan we don't need fingerprint scanner contract doesn't not necessary this is new mountt Tom repeater contract so we had a repeater previously um that was on
mountt but it was not maintained it was very difficult to go to and it would often uh with any this past snowstorm we would have been out of radio service for uh you know a several hours if not 24 hours um the mtime repeater is where you see that large stack of antennas right
at the on Mount Tom that's maintained by H Gas and Electric so there's a roadway there in order to get to our other uh Tower you have to take either a snowmobile or um a groomer one of those groomers that like a ski groomer to get up there uh in the snow there's no
there's no road to it so we transfer the fire department as well as the the police department to that the fire departments now this is for both police and fire fire department's repeater was at the Town Hall and they had horrible service where because of the um uh the
Topography of town so now that it's up there fire department has can can uh they don't have poor Radio Service and we have a more consistent um uh uh repeater than versible we had Communications expenses so this is
175,000 a year this gets reimbursed but it does get budgeted so we're trying to put money aside to save for the future when we do have to dip into it and pay right and just to give you an idea this is the same budgeting process that I've
used for the several years this is for fiscal year 25 we're about week 32 February 8th would have been week 32 we should be at 61% I'm at 5938 so I'm right on the money where I'm supposed to
be that's impressive okay this is something of an full this is something that ask um I want to try to incorporate more of a comfort dog this is versus a therapy dog a comfort dog has less um uh
requirements I have an officer that's our school resource officer he's also our better engagement team officer this is his dog it's Simba he would like to get this dog on his own um certified as a comfort dog I believe this this is very
important we don't need a Kine for other reasons what we do need though is a I think a comfort dog is very helpful um and he is willing to get the dog certified on his own but if this is
something that the town would um uh entertain here are some here's some data that we we've uh determined this is the last slide so it's based through the alliance of therapy dogs membership insurance is through the alliance of therapy dogs Veterinary costs
incidentals if the dog was hurt say he was in a cruiser and there was a car a cruiser crash you know that's negotiable food miscellaneous Cruiser altercation alteration rather um it would be about 40 $400 start up if this is something that is the the
I I I would be a proponent of this um we have it's also good for a critical stress debriefing um the officers see a lot of bad things um to have a dog at the station would be great um again it's a it's a it's a comfort dog it's a
comfort dog so it's not a dog that's going to be you know chasing people down and and and um where it's not going to be a liability is I think what what I'm trying to say here it's not going to be a liability if this is something that the town is will entertain but they can't
come up we can't come up with this money then I'll ask if it would be supported if I got donations um but I just want just the board to to let this marinate because I think that this would be a very good um addition to to our
department and that's it any questions can can I ask a comfort dog question yes well there is an organization can't remember the full name but the word bright is in there what is it bright something so uh it's come before the council and agent that they would bring
in um the dogs that are trained for that um and I just want to say very positive things about this uh when the Board of Health heard about this one of the people who is a member of the Board of Health who's a physicians assistant at KY Dickinson emergency room said they
use them in the emergency room to help mitigate the stress of whatever's going on CU it's usually awful stuff in the emergency room so I I have to say this is really good but at the same time are you saying this is one of the
officer's dogs person do they own the dog they own the dog the dog so what he would like to do yeah is if he can get that dog if if that if he can get that dog certified and as a comfort dog not a therapy because commands are a little bit different for a therapy therapy dog is you have to give a command they have to be able to put their their head down
on their this is a dog that just comes in you can Pat the dog um and if he's willing to if if the dog meets the certification pay for all that but if we could incorporate him the dog into our department as a as a comfort dog this is
what it would cost roughly how much is the certification certification is is for him to get it certified the annual certification is $30 a year but for him to get it certified he basically I've seen the dog he he uh it's a very very
well um disciplined dog um he would just get it certified on his own so if he he would get the dog certified um if it if it met the the conditions of certification do we know what that cost is for that what is what does the officer have to pay to get it certified I don't I don't think it's much he has
to just prove um on several times a year that the dog will maintain uh will will abide to certain commands that's how it was described to me does does the dog live at the station no it would live at the officer's home so how often would the dog be at the station when when the
officer's working oh just when yes or when the dog is NE if we if we call him in specifically let's say um you know there's a situation that warns the dog let's just say the the Council on Aging wanted to see the dog or uh the school
again he's part he's he's not he's our school the Aon he's a certified school resource officer it would be nice to bring a dog to school sometimes or if we have um any situation where um a traumatic event where the dog we call the dog in and and the officer in with
the dog to to help sure there are situations like that where um often times with DCF is involved and we have to respond um to have a dog is a distraction is very helpful DCF is Department of Children and
Families Are the cruiser alterations similar to a keine unit it would be fan in an AC unit yes so if the dog remain in the car in a hot day um it's just a window but in the future if there was a can9 unit specifically a police dog
could use that Cruiser for that you could yes yes I don't I don't have any intentions of a of a canine honestly um I shouldn't say this but I have yet to have a successful K9 respond to to a
call you know and in fact I I run with the K9 Officer to find out the dog was chasing a butterfly so uh sometimes it's you know some are very very good but I have yet to have that uh um uh experience but also our
our calls for service and our types of call for service don't warrant a k9 we can always ask for um neutral aid for that so at this point this is not put part of your budget is not this is something that um I just uh think would be an asset to not only the department
but the Town M okay especially if the dog the the owner is willing to get it certified on his own the insurance is that liability insurance or is that health insurance the no that's liability insurance and that comes through this Alliance of therapy dogs that comes through them I don't know if it would be
something that maybe perhaps uh we have to research if the town would have to um um incorporate an additional insurance policy yeah I would assume that a k9 right if you have during an arrest you have a bite right that's a different you know liability
you know a therapy dog at the school soone PS right right exactly yes so um so uh that's it is there you want to go through these slides or yeah I mean sure just so that y those that are watching
home thank you though that was very very did you catch the pencil uh I think it was hidden in paper clips yeah yeah you did do my no sh job I I do I do I just it's I I I recognize where people can say Hey where's this
coming from where did this where did this amount come from and I I think it's reasonable for anybody to ask that question and I want to be able to explain it well if you didn't do this kind of crap as bizarre as it is be spot
on on budget perform that's why I put that in there what whatever I've been doing it's it's it seems to be working each other and this is the first time that we had a full staff so I've actually been able to test it right so I
do have another question because you mentioned that there'll be four of leadership positions that will be uh they you know retired out soon so are you do you see the leadership roles being filled by the current staff or do you think there's going to have to be some
Recruitment and um there's going to be cost related to that and also do you think Southampton is a great place for police officers to work do do you have any trouble getting people to come work here like we heard I can tell you this
water department I can tell you this our retention has a specific correlation to their pay me we they received this the select board has supported their pay increases and I have
seen that correlation the IAL part is we are next we border a city East Hampton is one of the highest paid departments in western Mass so is there a draw for our officers to go over to East Hampton where they can make a lot more money
there could be but as of right now we're able to been retaining officers that's the drawback well might be partly your culture is a welcoming supportive culture too yeah I hope so I hope so I mean out of out of the staff that you've got Chief how many are Town residents
are they um we have unlike our fire department that we you know we're relying on people from other towns are the full-time staff the majority are yeah that's the majority
are yes I'm just trying to let Lieutenant is one Sergeant's from Westfield two sergeants are for Southampton and then there's probably about four other op off from Southampton so yeah the majority of them is from
Southampton do we have a residency requirement for the chief yes you have to live something at least with my contract it's not a requirement of the town but it's part of my contract yeah and not in the Union contract I'm not the you already
mentioned not part of the contract there is ASAC cro flies though right no oh there isn't there's no what's that what's the actual premium that he's hand this pay what is it for a I would just ask this I had a meeting
origional dispatch meeting last week and they hiring somebody um and they said if an full-time police officer in East Hampton has a master's degree and in ENT their starting pay starting pay is not
including overtime is about 106,000 a year for a patrol offer that's is a small pool EMT plus Master yes it's not when you're get a 14% increase in your pay with than ENT so they they get they get
a 14% increase in their pay we get a 7% they get a 14% so it's not hard to get your very very much motivation to go get their em yes yeah okay shall we just run through this very quickly and just see what uh I think we've gotten all the the
level of detail here but if you've got something else that You' like to say from how you put the sheet together SC so these are just the uh the permanent positions that we have as and have use the second sheet on the um so you have the officers all the way to the administrative assistant uh one of the things with the grades and
steps we didn't put those in we just put the actual numbers based on the chief's calculations um because we have to negotiate the Union contract and nothing will be finalized until we actually come to an agreement um for operating expenses we have the we separated you
know there was maybe about two or three line items uh we separated this out to police technology vehicle maintenance professional development so you can actually see the the the costs involved uh communication expenses um $175,000 that we paid at East Hampton which is covered by the grant we have
the uh 175 Grant we put that into Revenue so that will be neutral uh last year we kind of had a uh problem yeah figuring out where we're going to put it um and then police equipment maintenance and expens is pretty straightforward uh one thing that
we're going to have to start thinking about is uh the capital budget eventually um we we don't have a formal capital budget or vehicle replacement plan um we have an ambulance that's getting as when the fire chief comes in we have an ambulance that's that's
coming up uh that's going to need replacement as well street sweeper um a few of the buildings need some significant work especially the DPW garage so um we're going to have to to kind of think about how we approach Capital differently in the
future cuz right now we have about $350,000 and that's not going to cover on the um just the question on the uh police equipment maintenance how did that go down by nearly half uh well we also took out the custodial wages um
there equipment maintenance right so vehicle maintenance was put in I think it was vehicle maintenance was in the it was um equipment maintenance fisc year putting m in this this particular fiscal year included so before we just had the
police department expenses B more so equipment maintenance included our CAD system copy release radio consoles generator maintenance our criminal history systems board agreement all Traffic Solutions uh that's that uh contract for
$4,900 and this year our maintenance includes they've been some of these uh numbers have been put into other this year it's only radio councils all Traffic Solutions and mount to Peter I
so they're they're they're distributed to other line items okay got so those variance numbers because everything's been deling a little bit more okay aren't represented of past years got it okay it's going to
take two or 3 years um to actually see the yeah progress in it I think at some point in time and I seem to remember for some of the grants that you've gotten in the past you've been able to get and I don't know if it's a 911 Grant or one of the others where it's been specifically for I think
it's been for staff training but you can use it for salaries as well and then I think couple times you mentioned that you hadn't actually ended up using all of it and then the money was just turned back into the town to the general fund the only thing that we've had for training and it's we have to whatever we don't use it's reimbursable so that was
through the state 911 department when we had dispatchers they pay for their annual inservice training uhhuh um so that was always we would we would draw and then we would get reimbursed reimbursed yes but I thought there were some that you were saying that you a couple years ago when we were talking about grants that there were some that
when the money was left over you didn't need it you didn't need to have it in the in the in the police department it ended up just going back and there are some funds prior to me being cheie where there are some leftover monies okay um that were specific to something that
weren't spent so that that does exist but not since I've been on okay one of those wonderful things Bradley's trying to clean up I think the special Revenue ones I just had a question on the um under the employee count it lists one
for the under 20 hours per week but in the list I don't see anybody under 20 yeah that should actually be moved to cuz the assistant is benef eligible just by the employment at the police station but she's also employed by the fire
station as well so I have to move that into a permanent benefit eligible employee so she's doing 20 hours at each place so she's full-time yes oh okay okay great these are some of the programs
that we were talking about earlier uhhuh um yeah there's some on top I guess uh 20 26 and 27 there lines 26 oh there yeah way back up there
too yeah there's bits of money yeah so for that that one right there that has to be that has to go towards police because it's that's drug confiscation money and you have to like that has to go towards um purchases of police equipment or wages for investigation but
for instance project dare we don't have a DARE officer right now so whatever is in that L that money was provided to us by the PTO mhm um
so what is this list this is extra money found money this is special revenue and grants and some grants that have not been closed out um stuff that has been around and hasn't been used in four or five years and we're trying to figure out if it's been build already and then
this is our reimbursement and it just didn't get put in a in the correct account when it came back into our confers or if this is Mone from a grant that remained unspent that we have to turn back to the state or something
um thinking few and far between on those in a way because most of our grants are not an upfront amount usually most of them are reimbursables so yeah I hear you okay it's a little uh it's a long list that hasn't been cleaned up in quite a while um sale of
cemetery lot 66,000 yeah so well that's but that's probably correct though the op settlement money that's in there did we decide where if that was supposed to go to a separate fund or that was on a warrant to do that or something what was
that the cemetery lot one oh the we established a trust fund for that we set up a a separate stabilization fund for that right yeah so cuz I see 990,000 listed in there uh where's that it was down towards 2023
yeah I line 61 so that's maybe that is the stabilization account that we created though no no it's not it it would be that would be the grant that money would received but to put into a stabilization fund I imagine we'd have to go to town meeting we did move
that money mhm we did to establish it but I don't think we actually moved it into we we approved the account we definitely did but did we approve the money going into it at Le so check yeah I think we did yeah that definitely should be
there y okay yeah so anyway they just to say some cleanup so probably if you have some history on some of these police we spoken about it I'm sure this going to be a topic for Thursday's meeting yeah be a few to clean up I
think yeah so good I know there's some old traffic rants in there from several years ago that you know was not being used yeah and and I think I'm you know I'm assuming that a lot of these are not ones that we have to return the money I mean I think this is money that maybe
got reimbursed M that we just never put it in the new pot when it came back in that's my thinking but hard to know so okay any further comments or questions about budget this has been a long evening but I think very instructive and thank you thank you for
all your well I thank than you for tolerating my now the the real question is how are you going to train somebody else to do this exactly when you retire fin yeah
right all right so we have uh as long as I don't have to I think that's the end of our agenda we have another meeting spreadsheeting Crown but we have another meeting on the 25th comp oh I can't he's so more advanced than I am in that all
right so February 2th will be back here for another round and this will be basically purely budget this time I think yeah there might be one item or something on the agenda but not much it'll be basically budget focus and uh yeah as long as you guys call your
meeting I mean all three of you can certainly if you post your meetings okay all right well that's fine feel free to take a whole stack of anybody see Reggie so you can take a stack of the the school budget papers for him
yeah they're all on the F place on the budget thing except for this this right all right let's let's finish up here any final details oh all right if not I'll take a motion to adjourn second
all right all in favor I all right we are adjourned about almost 9:30 this government meeting is brought to you by eastworks and our local cable subscribers for